Re: Mount Rushmore:Greenpeace And Eleven Participants Indicted In Demonstration

Mount Rushmore National Memorial (SD)
Greenpeace And Eleven Participants Indicted In Demonstration

A federal grand jury has returned a four-count indictment charging eleven people and Greenpeace, Inc., a California corporation, with three or more misdemeanor offenses each relating to a July 8th incident in which a protest banner was unfurled on the mountain (click on the link below for the original report). The charges against Greenpeace and the eleven include one count of conspiracy to climb Mount Rushmore as prohibited by law. The indictment contains further specific allegations concerning the conspiracy charge which include the following:

• Greenpeace provided planning and training for the individual co-conspirators.
• Greenpeace caused the individual co-conspirators and their climbing, video, and photographic equipment to be transported to Rapid City, South Dakota, in preparation for climbing Mount Rushmore.
• Greenpeace hired a helicopter to carry its members, agents and employees in order to allow them to observe, photograph and record the actions of individuals who were climbing Mount Rushmore on July 8th
• As part of the conspiracy, certain individuals attempted to impede responding law enforcement officers by placing locks on security gates as well as by chaining themselves to areas where it would be difficult or impossible for responding officers to get around the individuals without risk of personal injury.

Greenpeace, Inc., is also charged with the following offenses:

• Aiding and abetting eleven individuals trespassing in a national park by entering an area not open to the public without permission.
• Aiding and abetting nine individuals with climbing Mount Rushmore as prohibited by law.
• Aiding and abetting six individuals with intentionally interfering with a government employee or officer engaged in an official duty.

Charges against the eleven participants included conspiracy, trespass, illegally climbing the mountain and abetting others in these offenses. The maximum penalty for each of the four counts against Greenpeace is a $10,000 fine and restitution. The maximum penalty for each count naming an individual is six months’ imprisonment, a $5,000 fine and restitution. The investigation is being conducted by the Mount Rushmore rangers and by special agents of the FBI. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant US Attorney Mark Vargo.

They're obviously guilty on all counts. The question is, what will a judge decide for punishment? If it's a slap on the wrist instead of the max...expect more of this at all places of interest. And then worse terrorists will do worse things...

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Vince
They're obviously guilty on all counts. The question is, what will a judge decide for punishment? If it's a slap on the wrist instead of the max...expect more of this at all places of interest. And then worse terrorists will do worse things...

Let's compare the "damage" done to the devastation reeked by the Telegraph Fire of last year.
Hopefully the "punishment" will be proportional to the slap on the wrist which that gun nut moron received.

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szalkowski

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Vince
They're obviously guilty on all counts. The question is, what will a judge decide for punishment? If it's a slap on the wrist instead of the max...expect more of this at all places of interest. And then worse terrorists will do worse things...

Let's compare the "damage" done to the devastation reeked by the Telegraph Fire of last year.
Hopefully the "punishment" will be proportional to the slap on the wrist which that gun nut moron received.

Agreed except for the "gun nut" comment. He was not a gun nut he was just not smart enough to shoot where sparks don't matter. He may just come to your defense when it does matter.

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Vince
Agreed except for the "gun nut" comment. He was not a gun nut he was just not smart enough to shoot where sparks don't matter. He may just come to your defense when it does matter.

1. He had a gun.

2. He wasn't smart.

Q.E.D. He's a gun nut

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Vince

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szalkowski

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Vince
They're obviously guilty on all counts. The question is, what will a judge decide for punishment? If it's a slap on the wrist instead of the max...expect more of this at all places of interest. And then worse terrorists will do worse things...

Let's compare the "damage" done to the devastation reeked by the Telegraph Fire of last year.
Hopefully the "punishment" will be proportional to the slap on the wrist which that gun nut moron received.

Agreed except for the "gun nut" comment. He was not a gun nut he was just not smart enough to shoot where sparks don't matter. He may just come to your defense when it does matter.

I'm way ahead of you. I have gunnuts'r'us on my sat. phone speeddial so I can call them the next time that I feel threatened by a riverbank.

I say - tongue in cheek - whatever you do, do NOT allow the French government to provide any suggestions on the appropriate punishment for the Greenpeace activists. Unbeknownst to many, the French can play real rough.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/25/2009 10:55PM by Dearborn.

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Dearborn
Unbeknownst to many, the French can play real rough.

Let them eat cake?

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eeek

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Dearborn
Unbeknownst to many, the French can play real rough.

Let them eat cake?

LOL, good one!

Don't forget, though, the USA might not exist without the French. The two countries chip at each other a lot but they are joined at the hip.

This immediately brings to mind the actor who played the French soilder in the movie "Patriot". "If I am going to die I will die well dressed". As Mel Gibson looks on in an earlier scene he shakes his head muttering, "The French!"

How we love to pick on them.

Jim

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tomdisco
This immediately brings to mind the actor who played the French soilder in the movie "Patriot". "If I am going to die I will die well dressed". As Mel Gibson looks on in an earlier scene he shakes his head muttering, "The French!"

How we love to pick on them.

Jim

And they pick on us. I loved that movie. Mel Gibson is a strange dude but I could have a conversation with him at a campfire and a case of beer. Nowadays, war isn't done like it was back then. Now you shoot at stuff you can't see, or threaten to do so. That includes internet sniping...

Vince,

I don't believe I would want to fight the way they did back then. Line up in straight lines and take turns shooting at each other? Insane! The last time we did that was in the civil war. After 70,000 dead at Gettysburg we began realizing how dumb this was and ceased fighting this way in subsequent wars. Now we can do that many with one bomb.

This brings to mind another old memory, a Bill Cosby routine about tossing a coin before every battle to predetermine the outcome. When the British and the settlers tossed the settlers won the toss. They decided that the settlers could shoot from behind rocks, trees, and everywhere while the British must wear red and march in a straight line.

Jim

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tomdisco
Vince,

I don't believe I would want to fight the way they did back then. Line up in straight lines and take turns shooting at each other? Insane! The last time we did that was in the civil war. After 70,000 dead at Gettysburg we began realizing how dumb this was and ceased fighting this way in subsequent wars. Now we can do that many with one bomb.

This brings to mind another old memory, a Bill Cosby routine about tossing a coin before every battle to predetermine the outcome. When the British and the settlers tossed the settlers won the toss. They decided that the settlers could shoot from behind rocks, trees, and everywhere while the British must wear red and march in a straight line.

Jim

This is true. War, back then, was considered "civil," thus a Civil War, which was anything but that. Six hundred thousand dead fighting over the 10th amendment...nowadays, accounting for percentage of population, that would be Six Million. Small potatoes compared to 9/11

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tomdisco
This immediately brings to mind the actor who played the French soilder in the movie "Patriot". "If I am going to die I will die well dressed". As Mel Gibson looks on in an earlier scene he shakes his head muttering, "The French!"

How we love to pick on them.

Jim

The concept of using élan to confront superior firepower in WWI may have something to do with it.

[By the way, for anyone interested, there is a great book dealing with the military campaigns of the opening days of WWI. To a lesser extent, the circumstances leading up to the conflict are also discussed. Barbara Tuchman won a Pulitzer Prize for the work back in the '60s: "The Guns of August."]



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/26/2009 10:24AM by szalkowski.

My seemingly off-the-wall comment was prompted in part by a vague recollection that French frogmen (no pun intended!) may have planted a mine on a Greenpeace vessel that killed at least one Greenpeace member. As for the French, I believe they're still capable of some startling surprises. A friend used to divide his time between Jackson Hole and the Congo, and he mentioned the growing threat of violence by a guerilla group in the general area. One day, he woke up to discover that the Foreign Legion had paid an overnight visit to the region, and the problem simply no longer existed.

Finally, I delight in pointing out to colleagues that they probably have French ancestry without realizing it. One-fourth of the English people descend from William the Conqueror, who was of Norwegian Viking/French ancestry, and the same can probably be said of many of the Anglo-Norman families that followed him to England.