Comments on: Should a Group of Radical Environmentalists Be Considered Terrorists?

By: Justin Gardner

Justin Gardner — Fri, 25 May 2007 14:51:57 +0000

I agree, but I think there are certainly different levels of terrorism just like there are other levels of crimes people commit.

And Dos, your comment probably got lost in the shuffle with the spam. My apologies.

By: DosPeros

DosPeros — Thu, 24 May 2007 22:51:52 +0000

wj – I wrote a comment that posed the exact same question, but it somehow got eaten up in the system.

By: wj

wj — Thu, 24 May 2007 21:29:54 +0000

We have laws about vandalism, deliberately damaging property, etc. Are they insufficient to the crimes? Or are we simply expanding the arena in which we ramp up the punishment because of what the perp’s motivation was presumed to be?

All those who are enthused about hate-crimes laws, but object to using terrorism laws in this case (or vis versa!), please explain how the two are different.

By: Jimmy the Dhimmi

Jimmy the Dhimmi — Thu, 24 May 2007 13:34:38 +0000

I think that deliberately targetting unarmed civilians or their property for destruction in order to instill fear or terror in the general populous so as to promote a political or religious agenda, is a an acceptable defenition for terrorism.

Of course targetting human beings is worse than property, so one can surely make a judicial distinction, no one should suggest ELF members be held as enemy combatants in the war on terror. But I don’t have a problem with the ELF being labelled a terrorist organization. Perhaps it has become a question of semantics in a post 911 world, where the bulk of terrorism we are aware of today is infinitely more atrocious.