planet terror
Are you sure it's says KKK? 'Cos if you look close enough, it
could be "E-L-F"!
Paging Orcinus!
Attorneys prosecuting activists accused of setting fires to stop logging and the slaughter of wild horses compared their clients Tuesday to Klansmen who burned churches in the South, drawing the ire of defense lawyers.
``I cannot sit idly by and hear what these defendants did compared to acts of the Ku Klux Klan burning empty churches,'' because the Klan's action also resulted in the deaths of young girls and included lynchings and murders, defense attorney Amanda Lee said.
The exchange came in a hearing at which federal prosecutors asked U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken to declare the string of 20 arsons in five Western states by a cell of the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front to be terrorist acts, qualifying the defendants for longer sentences under federal guidelines.
[snip]
``This is a classic case of terrorism, despite their protests of lofty humane goals,'' Peifer said. ``It was pure luck no one was killed or injured by their actions.''
Defense attorneys replied that the fires do not qualify as terrorism because the defendants took great care to be sure no one was killed or injured.
``If that is the standard, then the Ku Klux Klan did not commit terrorism'' when they burned empty black churches in the South in the 1960s, Peifer said.
Defense lawyers noted that never before has any of the 1,200 fires attributed to the two radical groups nationwide qualified a defendant for extra time in prison because it was considered a terrorist act.
So, using the government's moral calculator, KKK=ELF. Does that mean that mountain resort developers = poor/working class African Americans?
Even if this case ultimately just falls apart when it comes to trial, how they're built and how the framing goes down could set a precedent for years to come.
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