Trumped-up Criminal Sentences Render the Word “Terrorist” More Meaningless Than Ever
Posted by Richard S. on June 5, 2007
It’s not exactly as obscene as the sentence once handed down to Jeffrey Luers, but the recent rash of sentencing in the “Green Scare” cases (i.e., crackdown on eco-saboteurs) is still pretty ridiculous. Most absurd is the judges’ repeated use of “terrorist enhancement” in their sentencing, declaring that people who committed property destruction without any violence against other human beings are somehow “terrorists.”
Hello, terrorists kill people. They kill as many people as possible to make their point, and they deliberately kill innocent people, ordinary people trying to go about their daily business, to maximize the shock, i.e., the terror.
Eco-saboteurs generally do not fit that description, and the people recently sentenced especially do not. Whom did they injure? Whom did they kill?
The word “terrorism” is rendered increasingly meaningless.
Meanwhile, NYC activist-organizer Daneil McGowan got seven years for being a “terrorist.”
Oh, well, no surprises there, actually. Bombs and Shields has the grim details.
————-
P.S. Also via Bombs and Shields, a very good opinion piece published by the Los Angeles Times, My brother, the ‘terrorist.’
