🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Jul8.162557.7503@pbhya.PacBell.COM> whheydt@PacBell.COM
(Wilson Heydt) writes:

>EarthFirst! has acquired a reputation for being on te fringes of (if
>not actively involved in) 'violent' actions.  Some power line towers
>in Arizona and numerous cases of tree spiking in NW California come to
>mind in this connection.  

The use of quotation marks in the preceding statement
seems to express acknowledgement of EarthFirst!'s
distinction between destruction of property and
violence against people.

>As there is a general trend that when you don't get your own way, to
>escalate the action (look at nearly all wars, rebellions, revolutions,
>and protest sequences), the suspicion that the EF folks were
>transporting an explosive device on their own is *extremely* tempting.
>The conclusion that this is so is nearly inescapable to anyone not an
>EF partisan to start with.

The device in question was very much an antipersonnel weapon,
nails embedded in an explosive compound.  I'd never heard
EarthFirst! even accused of advocating use of such weapons
before the Oakland incident.

>That there is no proof of this one way or
>the other does nothing to remove the logic of the situation (nor to
>make in unjustified).

EarthFirst!'s antagonists in Northern California have not
shied away from violence.  This "logic" fits actions to be
expected from them better than it fits EarthFirst!.
--

    Chuck Karish          karish@mindcraft.com
    (415) 323-9000 x117   karish@forel.stanford.edu