Last Wednesday I posted about a federal judge in Oregon who is letting the federal prosecutors and defense attorneys give arguments for and against the idea of using anti-terrorism sentencing guidleines on a group of ALF/ELF arsonists. This sparked a discussion in the comments section which I was not able to join, due to my employer’s blocking software. Go here and read the comments for and against, then come on back.
Ready? here we go.
While it does appear to be an ex post facto application of sentencing guidleines, I do not find it to be an issue of worry for me.
The states of Pennsylvania and Georgia consider me a “domestic terrorist” simply for the flag in my blog banner. I have never committed a terrorist act, such as burning down state facilities or private vehicles, in order to spread the message of my political preference. Yet those two states would treat as though I am about to, or have already committed terroristic acts.
I cannot deny that I believe that if they ever got their hands on me as a suspect to a crime, that they would push the issue and quite probably look at me a little bit harder because of their official prejudice at what I understand the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights to mean. Call it paranoia if you want, I don’t care.
And still, I don’t worry about using new sentencing guidelines for old crimes. Not because I’m “innocent and have nothing to worry about”, but because the punishments need to fit the crime, and if this is what we as a nation have to do to make the punishments fit and try to stop political intimidation, then so be it.
The ALF/ELF eco-socilists are not your everyday firebugs. They are religious fanatics. Religious fanatics who used serial arson as a means to not only intimidate builders of ski resorts and sellers of SUV’s to bend to their religious and political will, they used these attacks as a drum to bang on in the hope of drawing people to their “fight”. This can be seen by their leaving of graffiti markings wherever they attacked.
A smarter than average serial criminal leaves clues for the investigators to find so as to let them who is responsible in a “catch me if you can” sort of taunt. These fanatics left multiple large icons where the media was sure to find them, not as a taunt, but as a sort of calling card to let other people in the area or industry know that they could be next. They even had a “spokesman” who said that if the research and the new construction didn’t stop, that these attacks would continue.
Construction companies had to hire security personnel to guard their sites. State and private universities and privateindustry labs in the business of research had to both hire extra security AND go, quite literally, underground in order to continue their work.
ALF/ELF, and their partner in crime by way of financial advancement, PeTA were and are terrorist organizations.
They have spawned multiple smaller gangs of eco-terrorists who spike trees in the hopes of injuring enough loggers to make them stop cutting down trees and spike rivers in the hopes of sinking inflatable tour boats and discouraging travel on rivers.
They like to cry the words “We never killed anyone!” over and over, but really, it was both their cowardice and their dumb luck that they haven’t done so. I seriously doubt that before their attacks that they went through buildings floor by floor and room by room to make sure that no one was inside the building. They simply crossed their fingers and hoped for the best as they set the timers on their incediary bombs.
Killing people is not their goal. Political intimidation through property destruction is. They will not stop until their will is the dominant one and their attacks will probably only get more damaging until they have succeeded in their goal. They are no better than neo-nazis who burn crosses the yards of people they disagree with.
Burning crosses is terrorism too, and those people should be tried and sentenced under the same guidlelines as the eco-socialists.
Disagree with me? Fine. This is America after all. Put your counter-points in the comments section or send me an email. I’ll even donate this wanna-be tear jerker Op-Ed out of the LA Times from the sister of one of the terrorists to the cause.
Lets discuss this.
The criminal justice system is just beginning to make up for the abominable hack job they did on the ELF and ALF and EF! cases. The only reason that they’ve gotten as far as they did is that they got ONE snitch to turn over, one who had a fear of Bubba the Cellie I would guess.
Their stupidest error was to fail to squeeze the one guy they did have early on, the “spokesman”. They knew and could have proven that the spokesman had information of an inside nature that only a cell member could have had, yet they refused to arrest him, afraid of what the lawyers would have done to their case.
It’s simple, you haul him in front of a Federal Grand Jury, and when he refuses to elaborate on his knowledge, you lock him up, for the duration of that Grand Jury, six months. You can do that four times before you have to “recycle” him through another grand jury. They could have kept that “spokesman” locked up for the foreseaable future.
The dirtbags would have gotten another spokesman, to which you do the same thing. In the meanwhile, lots of cash is being spent by the orgs on lawyers, and maybe some of the movement of that money would be traceable.
Eventually, you would have gotten Mr. Crybaby as one of the “spokespeople”. Orgs would have been busted, cases cleared, terrorists in prison.
As I recall, all that happened under the Clinton administration.
Interesting that you brought this up again. I spent some time discussing this with one of my sons this weekend, and essentially talked myself into seeing that the eco-freaks often use terrorist tactics, and should be arrested and prosecuted as such.
The example I used in your other thread about the blood being thrown is what actually tipped me towards identifying them as terrorists. If I’m walking down the street in a leather jacket, and some freak tells me to remove it or they’ll throw blood on me, they’re clearly trying to threaten me with physical violence unless I come over to their side. Even though it’s not as severe as blowing up an abortion clinic or SUV car lots, they are using the threat of violence (or actually acting upon it).
That cannot be tolerated in a free society.
That’s why this kind of stuff is terrorism. They are stepping outside the law to get their point across, because no-one will listen to them otherwise, despite how “righteous” their message is.
And that is the problem. As soon as someone believes their cause is “righteous”, their actions tend to become extremes. Because anyone who doesn’t believe like they do is wrong or defective or evil.