Letters to the Editor
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You thought of one instance????????????
Oh, the muslim clerics who were spread out on the airplane and scaring everybody to death? Those muslims? They were begging to be thrown off the flight by their actions. They wanted the publicity. Thank the real God, they were thrown off!
Now, can you think of a second rounding-up? You know, that involved INNOCENT muslims?
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one more point...
before I leave the shoutfest-
5) To the poster who claimed in regard to this case that the reliance on informants- especially informants turned by legal coercion, provocateurs, and undercover infiltrators is an outgrowth of the War On Drugs: you have it backward. The reliance on such harsh and shadowy tactics has always been a part of investigations of espionage and terrorist conspiracies.
Their adoption by the "antidrug" inquisition is a much more recent development- one that reflects the ignorance and paranoia of Zero Tolerance crusaders, whose leaders have always treated the users and sellers of those drugs that they've criminalized as tantamount to terrorists in society.
It's a terrible over-reaction and folly to employ such measures against the contraband drugs market. But I have little objection to undercover infiltration and reliance on informers in investigations of violent terrorist conspiracies- although the testimony of informants who use it to benefit their own situations should always be scrutinized and carefully weighed.
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"Violence motivated by political goals is terrorism."
You do realize that legislators, and some voters, authorize, and police and soldiers perform, violence motivated by political goals?
It is part of the definition of the state. I am an anarchist and pacifist, I consider the state a terrorist institution, but I know that some people are using a double standard, e.g. approving lawful violence (the rulers' violence) while condemning unlawful violence (anybody else's violence).
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Briana Waters
Those that should be prosecuted have rolled on innocent people. The FBI needs to do their jobs and quit putting innocent people on the chopping block, just so they can claim "case solved". We all know how many innocent people are framed by our system, simply because of sheer laziness on the part of the FBI. They don't want to know the truth, they simply want someone they can convict for these crimes. Are you telling me that out of all those that say they were involved this woman is the only one to have to face real prison time?
What the hell is wrong with our system, when innocent people are constantly found guilty of crimes they did not commit? We must go after the real perpetrators of these crimes and leave the law abiding citizens out of it.
The word of a heroin addict was worth more than the truth.
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Roundup ready
"Now, can you think of a second rounding-up?"
Actually, this one was the first:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/23/nyregion/23detain.html
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@cabdriver
"But no one should expect that the counters be re-set to zero, simply because they share her political views on environmental issues."
You're distorting the federal government's argument, cabdriver. They are saying that environmental intent should ENHANCE the counters. To argue that the counters should not be enhanced is not to argue that the counters be re-set to zero, or that charges for the underlying crime be dropped.
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the gov't is saying that environmental intent should ENHANCE the counters.
No, they haven't said that.
They said using terrorist methods should enhance the counters, be it for environmentalism or other jihad. Planting trees on arbor day is fine. Bombing universities that do genetic research is not.
It's not the view or the slant or the subject, but the VIOLENT ACT.
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That's facism and we live in a free county
that got a laugh out loud.
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soooo....
Animal rights activists are lumped in w/ eco terrorists, so this brings to mind a true story. I remember when a group of people broke in a lab in Silver Springs, Maryland a number of years ago. They literally stole the monkeys that had been unmercifullly experimented on by our scientific elite. These "animal rights terrorists" had plans to give these poor creatures a decent life now that they had been liberated from their research hell. Plans were foiled, the researchers got the monkeys back, and instead, killed them to "complete" the experiment. Now, who are the terrorists? In the eyes of the monkeys, that's a no brainer. That incident taught the animal liberaters to never, but never, trust the research industry. Could the researchers have finally given the monkeys some peace and happiness? Sure. Did they? No.
And they call the animal liberators terrorists.
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The motives, NOT the means, are the criteria for the longer sentences.
Another letter claimed, "They said using terrorist methods should enhance the counters,"
So arson is a terrorist method if its done for the environment, but a non-terrorist method if it's done for the insurance money? They DO apply the enhancements to cases involving environmental politics. They DO NOT apply the enhancements to cases involving right-wing politics or insurance or other motives.
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mte...
Okay, so you're a "pacifist anarchist."
The implicit implications of that stance, played out under practical "real world" conditions of 21st century style anarchism:
1) group of self-appointed environmental defenders takes "direct action" against their chosen target: the office of a university researcher who they have been led to believe is involved in what they consider to be unpardonably unethical research into genetically engineering trees for increased lumber production- (an incorrect assumption, as it happens- but close enough for terrorist work). They torch the university building where his office is found.
2) A private coalition made up of the university administration, private corporations funding bio-ag-technical research, and local residents distressed about arsonist conspiracies pools a large sum of funds to hire the Hellfire Private Security Company to investigate the case and deliver them to vigilante justice.
3) The company posts huge reward notices and uses their cultivated "gray area" contacts and professional provocateur infiltrators to obtain one or more names of those with knowledge of the case. They find the residences of the suspects, kick in the doors, "detain" them, and give their captives the choice of rewarding them for their cooperation, or killing their families if they stay silent.
4) The conspiracy is broken up, and the ringleaders are summarily executed. Some are later said to be innocent- pacifists, and people who would never think of participating in destructive acts. But there are no more firebombings at the offices of university research institutes in the area.
5) Some time later, a sympathetic group of self-appointed environmental defenders decides to avenge their martyred companions. This time, they decide to prepare better, by learning skills like how to field-strip automatic rifles in the dark. Since they completely lack those skills, they decide to sign up for the seminars offered by the Zero Government Self-Defense Institute- a discreet subsidiary of the Hellfire Private Security Company...
And so it goes.
As many hypothetical scenarios as I've read in comment sections like these, I thought I'd offer one of mine. There's your "anarchy."
You sure aren't going to get any GMO regs out of a government that doesn't exist. And there's certainly no point in demanding that the government to forbid things like poisoning wells, or in enforcing safe air and water standards- or, for that matter, death-squad vigilante actions like the one I just described. There is no government- it's "anarchy", remember?
It's possible to accept the reality and necessity for governmental structures and institutions operating under sound, commonly agreed legal principles, while still remaining fiercely opposed to the corruptions or betrayals of stated principle by that government. One motivation for such acceptance is an acknowledgment of the imperative to avoid societal conditions like the ones outlined above.
According to what I've been able to glean from my Net searches, the Federal government's role in arson cases is delimited, and full of legal complexities. One of those complexities has to do with recently enacted "hate crime" enhancements; another has to do with "terrorism" enhancements. Both of those provisions are recent, and subject to challenge under the government's syatem of laws; I expect that both will eventually find cases that go all the way to the Supreme Court, on appeal.
If I might sum up a few of the differences between arson for insurance fraud purposes and arson to serve political goals:
arson for the purpose of monetary gain through insurance fraud typically consists of someone burning their own property- although fires have a way of getting out of hand, which is one reason that arson is typically handled much more severely in the courts than other types of fraud. Furthermore, arson for insurance fraud purposes is typically the act of an isolated individual, perhaps soliciting another individual to perform the act. Conspiracy is uncommon.
Arson intended to serve political goal targets other people's property, without exception. Because they target other people's property rather than their own, there's arguably a greater risk of unforeseen consequences. Arson for political purposes is often carried out by a conspiracy, and the planning and capability of a group increases the possibility of a larger magnitude of destruction. Because the perpetrators are motivated by political grievances that aren't to be satisfied by an insurance payout, there's a much greater likelihood that they'll continue to do torchings and bombings as long as their goals are unmet. Serial arsonists are rare- unless they're pyromaniacs, terrorists (a category that can be said to include hate crime arsonists), or both. Special cases like that deserve special attention. They're the most dangerous type, because of that tendency to keep striking until they're caught.
I think those factors provide a better explanation of why acts of arson to serve political ends have recently been defined as "terrorism", than allegations of persecution do.
Turning the topic to the comments of another recent poster: I've done an Internet search on your allegation that a radical animal rights group performed an illegal break-in in order to free a group of monkeys from their cages in a laboratory in Silver Spring, Md. I couldn't find any record of such an event. I did find stories about a possibly related event- but I think you have some major details about that case confused.
Finally- for me, the most troubling thing about the Briana Waters case is the possibility that two confessed conspirators received leniency in return for information identifying someone who, even if guilty, may have played a lesser role than their own in committing the arson. That's an abuse of an already ethically borderline interrogation and investigation technique- something the police first began doing in drug conspiracy cases, if I'm not mistaken. And it is bool-sh~t.