
How three pacifists were convicted as terrorists - swombat
https://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/05/15-7
======
einhverfr
When I was growing up as a Quaker, I was raised to see such people as heroes,
and I still do. These people took their beliefs and their convictions and
chose to live life on their terms, not bowing to the authorities of the
government. They knew what the potential punishments were. They used the trial
to make their case. They made it. Like many other heroes of great magnitude
they have sacrificed much and now stand as political prisoners.

But in addition to making their own cases, they have exposed something deeper
about our system of government. We are all in their debt.

I shall listen to Jack Warshaw's "No Time for Love" (as a tribute to political
prisoners) tonight, both his version[1] and the Moving Hearts version[2]
(which was published first interestingly).

[1]
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NT8p1XhTc2Y](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NT8p1XhTc2Y)

[2] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTgD-
QveQrU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTgD-QveQrU)

~~~
amirmc
_" They knew what the potential punishments were."_

I completely disagree with this. They could reasonably have expected to be
charged with trespass and vandalism but to be labelled as _terrorists_ is
ludicrous. I doubt they even expected to get as far as they did (they had to
hang around and _sing songs_ before they were finally arrested).

~~~
hobs
In the current police state, if you do anything to infrastructure you are
going to be charged with terrorism.

~~~
VladRussian2
on related note - Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act in MA (and, thanks to ALEC,
coming soon to your state).

~~~
einhverfr
That's a good example of exactly why I suspect they would have expected such
charges.

------
mtgx
This is becoming a lot more common lately. The discrepancy between how much
jail time the people who upset the government get, and the people who commit
real crimes is getting bigger. And that's without counting the complete lack
of interest in prosecuting bankers and other corporations that are very
friendly to the government. Justice is becoming increasingly more unequal.

~~~
kiba
Becoming more common lately? Or it is becoming more apparent to you lately? I
would like a citation on wrongful prosecution activities.

~~~
naasking
Well, as but one example, computer crimes are more harshly punished than in
the past, and sometimes get harsher sentences than causing bodily harm.

~~~
tzs
> Well, as but one example, computer crimes are more harshly punished than in
> the past

Computer crimes cause more damage than in the past.

~~~
naasking
DDoS hardly cause damage, just loss of revenue, yet they carry very stiff
penalties.

~~~
NoPiece
If you've ever had to stay up all night trying to get a site back up during a
DDoS attack you'd know there was more damage than just lost revenue.

~~~
Glyptodon
Not decades in prison worth of damage.

~~~
tptacek
Has someone been sentenced to decades in prison for DDoS attacks?

------
jasallen
I don't particularly agree with them, frankly, but I would still hold them up
as an example of the proper use of civil disobedience as a tool to affect
change.

a) broke the law, knew there would be consequences

b) did not cause harm, injure or endanger people in the process

c) used the attention to proselytize their cause, not beg for leniency

So, as a person who does not want society to stagnate, I applaud that there
are people out there will to take risks for (perceived) needed change.

However, that only stands as long as there is a society to be 'risking' it
against. We need laws and we need structure to _be_ a society. And not every
change truly is needed.

Since there is a compelling reason to punish people who break into government
weapons facilities (we don't want every high schooler with a naive moral
streak imitating it), It strikes me that, while I hold nothing against them
and applaud their willingness to take the punishment, I think their _does_
need to be a fairly harsh punishment.

Now, if despite the harsh punishment, more and more people start doing this
and if the less brave of us who _are_ in agreement with them are vocal (I said
already I'm not particularly in agreement), and the less brave still at least
vote, then over time laws and government can change. But in the short term,
the brave revolutionaries must take the consequences.

~~~
rapind
I disagree. I think they should have only been charged with the trespassing,
and instead the management of the facility should have been been on the hook
for some serious negligence charges. Let's just assume for a second that there
are terrorists out there younger and a little more nimble than an 82 year
old...

If the whole point is the send a message to the public / make an example of,
then it should be those responsible for security (and the budget for security,
etc. up the line) that should be made the example of.

~~~
jasallen
Also, I think its important to note that no one is disputing Destruction of
Property as something they genuinely are guilty of.

If there was naivety involved in this, I genuinely feel for these people. If
this was the stand they wanted to make, than this thread is perhaps the start
of the attention they wanted to the topic.

But for reals folks, if you are not prepared to spend 'years' in jail, do not
_break in_ to a government weapons facility, guarded or not. Please, for me.
:-)

~~~
danielharan
What do you think would be an appropriately harsh punishment for an 82 year
old nun and couple other seniors breaking through a fence and putting up a
banner at a nuclear facility, then wait to be arrested?

------
jfaucett
This piece is extremely disturbing, are you kidding me? Has the US Gov't and
its justice system degenerated so far as to label pacifist as terrorist and
incarcerate them? What disturbs me the most, is that I had heard nothing at
all about this case, and I consider myself fairly up-to-date on political
happenings...

~~~
einhverfr
Anyone who was so naive as to think that terrorism laws would not be used
against political troublemakers has no perspective of history ;-)

We've known for some time (and it has been controversial on many sites I
frequent on both left and right) that "terrorism" has been used to label
groups believed to be radical by the government (i.e. those groups which
threaten the bipartisan consensus. Environmental groups get added. Groups
espousing local governance get added. But it is nothing new in this country.

The words of Jack Warshaw, originally applying the experience of Americans to
the Troubles in Northern Ireland are as true today as they ever have been:

    
    
         They say that here we are free 
         To live our lives as we please
         To sing and to speak and to write
         So long as we do it alone
         But do it together 
         With comrades united and strong
         And they'll take you away for long rest
         With walls and barbed wire for a home
    
         No time for love if they come in the morning
         No time to show tears or for fears in the morning
         No time for goodbye, no time to ask why
         And the sound of the sirens, the cry of the morning.

~~~
silvestrov
terrorism is the new communism

~~~
einhverfr
The names change, the tensions stay the same.

------
omonra
It could be just me, but this story bothers me a lot more than all the non-
stop coverage about NSA.

Perhaps I had always expected NSA to snoop on everything on the internet
whereas this shows complete breakdown in common sense by the government.

~~~
jeremyjh
The most dangerous crime you can commit is to embarrass this government.

~~~
dasil003
It's a pretty ballsy move to martyr these people. It may end up bringing much
more awareness to the simple undeniable fact that the people charged with the
defense of one of our most sensitive military facilities were totally and
utterly incompetent. If they were smart then they would go totally by the book
to make the story as unexceptional as possible, anything that draws attention
to this case does not look good for them. Of course their incompetence has
already been demonstrated on the ground, so why should their PR be any better?

------
rdl
Am I the only person who dislikes the headline?

"Turning a pacifist into a violent terrorist" is what happens when you send
someone to Gitmo, break him, convince him the world has no meaning except for
through violent terrorism, etc.

Prosecuting a protesting pacifist under laws meant for terrorism doesn't "turn
them into" violent terrorists; I'd be perfectly comfortable around them/not
afraid they would kill me, although I do think they should get some slight
punishment for destroying government property and trespass (suspended), while
the security at Oak Ridge should get vastly more scrutiny.

~~~
orthecreedence
I disagree. While you are right that turning someone from a pacifist into a
violent terrorist can be done by "breaking" them, I think the point of the
article is to show what lengths the US government will go to destroy those who
disagree with it, whether they are citizens or not.

I think anyone who perused the article for more than 30 seconds sees that
these people were not "converted."

The fact that they have been _labelled_ violent terrorists for a peaceful
protest is much more worrisome and impactful than throwing them in prison and
watching their ideals erode away.

This is our country right now: a peaceful person can be labelled a violent
terrorist. I think the title fits.

------
sc00ter
I couldn't help but be struck by the parallels between this case and that of
Aaron Swartz, given the significant overreach by the prosection in continuing
to add federal charges to the indictment as the case progresses. We have a
glimse here as to how the Swartz might have ended; it will be revealing to see
how the sentencing in this case pans out.

~~~
wl
The behavior of federal prosecutors in the Aaron Swartz case wasn't anything
unusual. The same holds true for the case this article speaks about. Piling
inappropriate charge upon charge to coerce a plea deal is standard operating
procedure. This stuff is happening every day and has been happening for a
long, long time.

As for the sentencing, there are rules that we can apply to get an idea of
what to expect. The federal sentencing guidelines have a bit of flexibility,
but not much. These people probably have a criminal history level of I under
the sentencing guidelines. The sabotage charge has a base offense level of 26.
The property damage charges each have a base offense level of 6. I'm guessing
the property damage charges would be considered a part of the sabotage charge,
so we'll just stay at 26. That yields a sentence of 63-78 months. I'd be
seriously surprised if any of them get more than 7 years.

------
RexRollman
Conservatives complain about "activist judges" but I would like to see
something done about "activist prosecutors", who stretch the law to imprison
people in ways not intended by law. The computer hacking statutes are also a
good example of this.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
This is really not a failure of prosecutors. I mean it is, in the sense that
they aren't actually obligated to do this, but they have every incentive to
and they're human.

The real failure is of Congress not to over-criminalize minor offenses and to
distinguish what these people or people like Aaron Swartz did from people
doing the far more malicious things whose actions are used to justify the laws
and penalties these people have been charged with.

~~~
tomjen3
I read an interview with a prosecuter (it may have been an AMA on reddit)
where he said that while a lot of lawyers wanted to become defence lawyers
because they dreamed of saving innocent people, as prosecutor he had the power
to simply drop the charges, with no reason to go to trial.

~~~
Zak
The supposed obligation of a prosecutor is to seek justice, not to put people
in jail. When the incentives favor injustice, they should be adjusted; public
campaigns personally shaming overzealous prosecutors are one possible
disincentive that could be added.

------
Radim
Any threat against a government's monopoly on violence is a threat against its
very lifeblood. The outcome is pretty predictable.

What do you think would cause a more passionate and exaggerated reaction in
the IT community?

* _someone stealing a few computers from a hardware store, or breaking other people 's computers on purpose_, OR

* _someone saying computers are inherently evil and should be abandoned and banned forever, while rallying support in that direction_?

(to be clear, this is an analogy to a government's expected reaction to theft,
vandalism, rape etc. versus a perceived existential threat to its military and
police)

Being suddenly outraged or shocked by the development in this story displays a
lack of understanding of basic historical patterns. If anything, the
government's desire to send such exaggerated, exemplary signals by means of
giving peaceful old nuns "a lesson" points at some surprising weakness &
insecurity on its part.

------
qwertzlcoatl
Looking at just the title, it makes it sound like the government somehow drove
former pacifists to violence, which isn't remotely true. It's a story of how
the government has been treating those pacifists like violent terrorists; they
haven't at all become terrorists.

~~~
VLM
"they haven't at all become terrorists."

Of course that's what they've become. They were even convicted of it. What Big
Brother defines as terrorism has very little to do with reality, of course.

The real problem is if you make the penalty for non-violent protest the same
as the penalty for violent protest, you're relying solely on the perpetrators
ethics and morality to not shoot the place up and burn it down. After all they
get the same penalty for holding up a banner as for doing something actually
violent... so why not make "more" of a statement?

------
xenophilia
A group of people trespass into a nuclear weapons facility, carrying written
statements indicating they may be there to sabotage the weapons, already
caused damage to the facility, and they didn't expect something like this to
happen? I don't think their charges sound that terribly unreasonable. Maybe
somewhat excessive but it's definitely not a bigger deal than the NSA issue.

What's the problem with nuclear weapons anyway? They're simply a fact of
international relations that you have to deal with. Should all of NATO have
just thrown all their nukes into the ocean during the cold war and let the
USSR have our way with them? They've only been used in wartime twice in
history, and that was to save far more lives than it took, and since then
they've been an adequate deterrent.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction)

~~~
ucee054
_What 's the problem with nuclear weapons anyway?_

As a signatory to the Non Proliferation Treaty the US is _LEGALLY OBLIGED_ to
get rid of its nuclear arsenal.

~~~
xenophilia
As far as I can tell from the wikipedia article, the US doesn't have to /get
rid/ of the nuclear weapons, it just can't "proliferate" them.

~~~
ucee054
The wikipedia article states:

 _The International Court of Justice (ICJ), in its advisory opinion on the
Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, issued 8 July 1996,
unanimously interprets the text of Article VI as implying that

"There exists an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion
negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict
and effective international control."_

------
mikecane
This is why they want everything secret. Perversions of justice and insane
prosecutions such as this. Because open coverage reveals _their_ multiple
levels of failure.

What's next? Being charged with "Interference with Lawful Surveillance" if you
encrypt files, use TOR?

------
csomar
These guys sneaked into a nuclear (weapons) facility. Which I guess is a very
critical and important facility to the US.

How can we know they weren't real spies?

There is a difference between freedom of expression, and cutting a nuclear
facility fence. Try to convince people about the dangers of the weapons and
not cut the fences.

Cutting the fences will obviously put you in jail. Maybe the sentence was too
harsh, but I have little sympathy for them.

If they were detained for speaking about the dangers of nuclear weapons,
they'll not have only my sympathy but also any possible help I can give.

~~~
redbad

        > Maybe the sentence was too harsh, but I have little 
        > sympathy for them.
    

I cannot rightly comprehend the sociopathy that assembles the facts of this
case and renders a judgment like the above. I hope you never need stand before
a jury of your peers.

~~~
mpyne
Did you miss the part where he said NUCLEAR __WEAPONS __FACILITY?

There are absolutely zero places I would want more defended than a place
holding nuclear weapons. Hell, one of the points used to oppose nuclear power
plants is the fact that they have nuclear fuel at all, and that kind of fuel
doesn't even blow up in a nuclear yield. But nuclear _weapons_ can!

~~~
gambiting
Precisely. And that's why the managing director of that facility should be the
one charged with 35 years in prison for not protecting it well enough, and
thus endangering the safety of the United States of America. These people
should be only given the original charge of trespassing and spend at most a
year in jail.

------
switch33
Read the article till this rediculous paragraph:

"Describing themselves as the Transform Now Plowshares, the three came as non-
violent protestors to symbolically disarm the weapons. They carried bibles,
written statements, peace banners, spray paint, flower, candles, small baby
bottles of blood, bread, hammers with biblical verses on them and wire
cutters. Their intent was to follow the words of Isaiah 2:4: “They shall beat
their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall
not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”

And was like, uhm, ok they may not be terrorists but they are nut job
religious people. I mean baby bottles full of blood what the hell?

And yes it is sort of terrorism to go to a nuclear power plant of a country
and say dismantle all your weapons with something/anything that may look
threatening!

But regardless I don't think terrorism should stick in the court cases as
much. They should get a bit more of a sentence than normal protest and maybe
include some invasion of private property but terrorism seems a bit out of
touch.

------
fowkswe
_In the dark, the three activists cut through a boundary fence which had signs
stating “No Trespassing.”_

They broke into and vandalized a nuclear weapons facility. If you mess with
the bull, you're gonna get the horns.

~~~
tomjen3
I am still kinda shocked that is even possible. I mean the US go to great
lengths to prevent Iran from getting nukes, but they don't even protect their
own storage facilities?

I understand that you can't exactly just press a button to make a nuclear bomb
go of (although if the PAL is still set to its cold war default of 00000000
that might be just that simple) but on of the US fears is how close Iran is to
be able to make enriched uranium, best case (or worst case, for us) estimates
are still years away but if they can simply waltz into a weapons storage
facility and walk away with it, then they could get it at any time and what is
possibly worse is that they could finish the rest of the components (which
wouldn't worry the US too much, as they still wouldn't have the uranium) and
then get the uranium in a few days (and if the storage facilities aren't
tracking their inventory closely enough, the first indication of the nukes
being stole may be when the Iranians announce that they have them).

And if Iran doesn't want nuclear bombs, then we know that North Korea wants
them.

------
pmorici
It sounds like they had a horrible lawyer.

~~~
Joeboy
I imagine they either represented themselves or had a lawyer who acted in
accordance with their wishes.

------
angersock
See, this is the sort of thing that cheapens the word "terrorist", and which
underscores the strategic failing and corruption of the US justice system.

By clearly being adversarial, petty, and unjust, we are in effect giving
permission/encouragement/polarization to elements which would wish us harm. If
we did this to aged protestors, anybody who is considering something similarly
mild may as well try and up the ante--after all, they can only jail you for
life once.

------
ak217
> The federal manager of Y-12 said the protestors had damaged the credibility
> of the site in the U.S. and globally and even claimed that their acts had an
> impact on nuclear deterrence.

LOL

------
w_t_payne
With broad enough laws & proprietorial discretion; coupled with sufficient
levels of surveillance and record-keeping, we are all effectively at the mercy
of the whims of the agencies. The only missing piece is the capability for
mass incarceration .... oh... wait a sec. ..

------
steveklabnik
The FBI has been referring to left-wing activists as 'domestic terrorists' for
a while now, specifically the animal rights / global justice / anti-nuke /
anti-capitalist / green flavors.

------
Symmetry
I wonder how much of the expansion of the charges against them was due to
embarrassing the government, and how much was due to them not pleading guilty
and forcing the prosecutor to take the case to trial.

------
pyalot2
The (potential) application of statutes may be outrageous for the kind of
infraction. However...

"In the early morning hours of Saturday, July 28, 2012, long-time peace
activists Sr. Megan Rice, 82, Greg Boertje-Obed, 57, and Michael Walli, 63,
cut through the chain link fence surrounding the Oak Ridge Y-12 nuclear
weapons production facility and trespassed onto the property."

Stop right there. You did what? And you didn't expect what to happen? Really?
Geeze people.

You seem to mistake exercising your first ammendment with breaking into the
property of a government nuclear weapons facility. Contrary to popular belief,
you can exercise your first ammendment without running afoul of the law.

Don't be surprised that they do throw the book at you, if you give them the
means to do so.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
>The (potential) application of statutes may be outrageous for the kind of
infraction.

You can stop right there, because that's the whole point. If the government
had charged them with trespassing and fined them each $1000 or put them in
jail for two weeks (and then taken the opportunity to have a good hard look at
the security of their facility), nobody would be complaining about anything.
This is about proportionality.

> Don't be surprised that they do throw the book at you, if you give them the
> means to do so.

The idea is that they should not have the means to do so. "Making the
government look stupid" is not a felony. Trespassing is not a felony. "Here's
the defendant, find me the crime" is a miscarriage of justice. A law that
allows them to do that to anyone is a broken law that demands to be fixed. And
yes, there are a lot of them, and they all need to be fixed.

~~~
gwright
The litany of charges seems a bit much, but a light sentence for trespassing
is too little.

The penalty, must deter future attempts by other people. $1000 and a couple
weeks of jail is not going to deter other similar protesters.

~~~
pgeorgi
Fixing on-site security will - with the neat side effect to deter criminals,
terrorists and so on as well.

~~~
gwright
Assume the security was 'fixed'. Doesn't mean that someone couldn't come and
chop the fence with full intention of getting arrested as part of a political
protest.

If the known penalty for doing this (even with fully operational security) is
light, then that activity isn't really deterred.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
The government isn't _supposed_ to deter harmless political protests.

The whole idea of civil disobedience is to get yourself put on trial for
something you're willing to do the time for. "They aren't being deterred, the
prison sentence has to be increased" is obviously a flawed response to that
unless your goal is to suppress dissent without regard to how draconian and
disproportionate you have to be in order to do it.

~~~
gwright
1\. trespassing at a nuclear processing facility is not harmless political
protest

2\. insisting on physical security (i.e. no trespassing) at a nuclear
processing facility is not in conflict with the idea of peaceful assembly and
political protests

------
dhughes
What if they had been shot by guards? This wasn't a very good plan.

~~~
peeters
From the article:

> The DOE agent admitted the three carried a letter which stated, “We come to
> the Y-12 facility because our very humanity rejects the designs of
> nuclearism, empire and war. Our faith in love and nonviolence encourages us
> to believe that our activity here is necessary; that we come to invite
> transformation, undo the past and present work of Y-12; disarm and end any
> further efforts to increase the Y-12 capacity for an economy and social
> structure based on war-making and empire-building.”

The ultimate reason for carrying such a letter would be to explain their
actions in the event they could not explain their actions themselves. For
example, had they been shot by guards.

And later they said:

> "For this we give our lives — for the truth about the terrible existence of
> these weapons."

Sounds like they are very much aware that their actions might have ended in
their death, and accepting of it. They are 82, 57, and 63 years old.

~~~
dhughes
It looks like they expected to be shot.

------
kghose
[Edited: Deleted, wrong thread. Thanks for pointing it out. Sorry]

~~~
honzzz
Wrong article?

~~~
kghose
You are correct sir. This is entirely the wrong thread. I am deleting the
comment.

------
youngerdryas
More link bait. Charged != turned. The puffed up charges have to hold up in
court.

Edit: I somehow missed that they were convicted. Regardless of the semantics
of the law I am quite sure they do not support violence.

~~~
femto
To quote:

"...convicted of violent crimes of terrorism. Now in jail awaiting sentencing
for their acts at an Oak Ridge, ..."

They have been convicted, not just charged. The stronger title is justified.

------
gridmaths
TLDR : 80yo nun incarcerated for non-violent protest at nuclear weapons
facility [ fence cut, graffiti sprayed, prayers said ]

Quote, last sentence :

"In ten months, an 82 year old nun and two pacifists had been successfully
transformed by the U.S. government from non-violent anti-nuclear peace
protestors accused of misdemeanor trespassing into felons convicted of violent
crimes of terrorism."

~~~
tterrace
Don't do that please.

------
saosebastiao
Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics.
Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the
role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play.
Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the
most difficult international conflicts. _The vision of a world free from
nuclear arms has powerfully stimulated disarmament and arms control
negotiations._ Thanks to Obama's initiative, the USA is now playing a more
constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is
confronting. Democracy and human rights are to be strengthened.

[http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2009/...](http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2009/press.html)

Related:
[http://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=7...](http://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=7647)

~~~
peeters
That might all be true, but that doesn't mean his Department of Justice is
faithfully serving justice.

The story is equally chilling regardless of how legitimate the protesters'
concerns were.

