American Grant Barnes, receives sentence of 12 years
Urgent ELP! Bulletin (26th of July 2007)
Dear friends
News has just come in that the American environmentalist, Grant
Barnes, has pleased guilty to arson and been sentenced to 12-years
imprisonment.
Below is a mainstream media report about the sentence. If anyone
knows an address for Grant, where letters of support can be sent to,
please contact ELP urgently.
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5645260,00.html
SUV firebomber gets 12 years
By Rocky Mountain News
July 26, 2007
A man who set firebombs in seven large SUVs last March pleaded guilty
and was sentenced to 12 years in prison Wednesday.
Grant Barnes, 24, pleaded guilty to one count of using an incendiary
device and one count of second-degree arson.
Barnes, suspected of using the methods of the eco-terrorist group
Earth Liberation Front, was arrested March 22 for allegedly setting
off or trying to ignite firebombs under the SUVs over four days from
March 18 to March 21. The targeted cars were parked in the Cherry
Creek and Lowry neighborhoods.
When Barnes was arrested, police found a box of seven of the devices
in the back of his car.
Police said they are replicas of bombs shown on ELF's Web site.
Someone wrote the letters ELF on a Hummer H2 hours after one of the
firebombs went off.
=============
British Earth Liberation Prisoners Support Network
BM Box 2407
London
WC1N 3XX
England
www.spiritoffreedom.org.uk
Belgium ELP Support Network
elp_bel@hotmail.com
North American ELP Support Network
www.ecoprisoners.org
3 comments:
Grant Barnes got what he deserved, and that's all there is to it. Anyone, and I mean anyone who thinks it's okay to go around burning or blowing up other peoples' property, no matter how wasteful said property might be, deserves to spend a very long time in prison, and that's exactly what Mr. Barnes is going to do.
Let's be really clear about something...Grant Barnes is not a "prisoner of conscience," nor is he a "political prisoner"; he is a criminal scumbag and a terrorist, and he's damned lucky he wasn't classed as an enemy combatant and shipped off to Guantanamo Bay, which would have been perfectly legal and justified under Bush's neo-con cronies' latest violations of the Constitution.
Now, before any of you "eco-freaks" go jumping down my throat and calling me a fascist pig or what have you, I would like to point something out to you; although I have chosen to remain anonymous for the purpose of posting this (for reasons of self-preservation, since some of you would no doubt be just as happy to firebomb me for having the nerve to disagree with you) I used to be a major player in the protest movement; in fact, I was one of the original organisers and founding members of the Peace Camp on Canada's Parliament Hill, way back in the early 80s, when we were protesting America testing its cruise missiles in Canada's Far North region. That said, I left the protest movement not long afterwards because of a very disturbing trend I saw eating the protest movement up from within like a rapidly-spreading cancer; as far back as the mid 80s, I watched in utter disbelief as the movement was taken over by a new mind-set, a new set core group of activists who thought it was perfectly alright to use violence to achieve the political aims and goals of the movement. I watched in dismay as the protest movement was co-opted by this violent sub-group, and I realised with awe and amazement that people had learned ABSOLUTELY NOTHING from the American anti-war movement in the 60s and early 70s! The instant you make the shift from peaceful protest to outright acts of violence, you play right into the hands of the legal, political and military establishment!
Make no mistake, people...this is where their strengths lie...they are past masters in the use of force and violence to accomplish their goals, and by taking them on in their own sphere, you invite disaster. Unlike a great many in the protest movement, then and now, I had a classical education and a good understanding of military theory and tactics, thanks to several highly-placed relatives in the military and NDHQ, as well as my own stint in the army. You can not fight these people their way and hope to win, no matter how you try. Haven't any of you studied Sun Tsu or von Clausewitz? When you fight the enemy on ground of their own choosing, you are literally handing them the victory.
Give up the terrorist acts. Turn your back on anyone who would incite you to violence, or who proclaims, "the only way to win is to take up arms!" Half the time, such people turn out to be establishment plants or paid informers...remember what happened to the anti-war movement in the early 70s, when every major group was taken over by advocates of armed struggle, then swiftly collapsed when the police rounded them up and jailed them for very long terms, all because the very people who pushed them to commit violent acts were very often plants whose only reason for being there was to take names preparatory to kicking ass...that's right, they were all "working for the man!"
Hear this, and hear it well; you will NEVER accomplish your goals through violence or terrorist acts. You will only be seen by mainstream society as a lunatic fringe and as enemies of society at large, and you will be playing directly into the hands of the establishment. If you are really serious about wanting to change the world for the better, what makes you think for one second that resorting to violence will accomplish that?
You need to put the violence and the "eco-terrorism" behind you; you need to make yourselves more appealing to mainstream society by means of peaceful persuasion and force of logic, not force of arms. Only when the protest movement is perceived by the general public as decent, ordinary everyday people putting it all on the line for something they believe in will you accomplish ANY of your goals. That's what it all comes down to, and you forget that at your own peril. You need to get Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public on your side, and you will never EVER accomplish that through acts of violence, terror, or through threats and intimidation. It really is just that simple.
Peace, brothers and sisters, peace!
Forgive me if I fail to give a shit about your activist street cred. While you may disagree tactically with the actions mentioned in this article, I wonder how any environmentalist would see the act of burning an SUV, an incredibly violent invention, to be more heinous than the SUV itself. While arson of property may not be pretty, cars emit countless greenhouse gases which are at least partially responsible for the massive die-off of species we are currently witnessing. You need to get your priorities straight.
Violence against property is not violence.
Nobody was hurt and it is therefore justified-in a sense. While I don't agree with more crap being emitted into the air, the life span of those SUV's would have produced more of an impact then burning them, however, I think there could have been a better way to dismantle them permanently without blowing them up.
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