Friends,
This was a historic moment in the anti-nuclear resistance
movement. Let me tell you from personal experience, a good judge is hard
to find.
Kagiso,
Max
In Sentencing Radical Pacifists, Judge
Miles Lord Assailed “Worship of the Bomb”
Posted
By John Laforge On December 21, 2016 @ 1:57 am In
articles 2015 | Comments Disabled
Photo by MAPW
Australia | CC BY 2.0
Federal District
Judge Miles Lord, who died Dec. 10 at age 97, could have given me 10 years
once. Instead, the famously outspoken judge, who was well known for protecting
ordinary people from corporate crime and pollution, used the anti-nuclear case
a group of us argued before him to deliver a remarkably scornful condemnation
of nuclear weapons and of the corruption that protects them.
On August 10,
1984, Barb Katt and I did more than $36,000 damage to launch-control computers
being built for Trident missile-firing submarines by Sperry Univac (now Unysis)
in Eagan, Minnesota. It was the 9th in a series of 100 so-called Plowshares
actions, one we’d planned for two years. After walking into the Sperry plant
dressed in business suits, we used household hammers to smash two of the
company’s missile-guidance computers then under construction. We “named” the
wreckage by pouring blood over it because, as the philosopher Simone Weil said,
“Nuclear weapons kill without being used by forcing people to starve.” We
didn’t run away but waited for the authorities, explaining to workers in the
room that we’d disarmed part of the government’s first-strike nuclear war
machinery. One worker said later as a trial witness, “I’ve heard the word
‘Trident’ but I don’t know what it means.”
We were charged
with felony “depredation” and were convicted by a jury after a three-day trial.
Facing a maximum of 10 years in prison at a Nov. 8 sentencing, Barb and I urged
Judge Lord to boldly denounce US nuclear war preparations that were then common
knowledge. Judge Lord then did exactly that.
With the federal
government today proceeding with a 1-trillion-dollar nuclear weapons
modernization program, much like the one Ronald Reagan was overseeing in 1984,
Judge Lord’s stunning critique of criminal corporate militarism is as relevant
as ever. These are the judge’s sentencing remarks from the bench, as reported
in the official transcript:
It is the
allegation of these young people that they committed the acts here complained
of as a desperate plea to the American people and its government to stop the
military madness which they sincerely believe will destroy us all, friend and
enemy alike.
They have made a
plausible argument that international law prohibits what our country is doing
by way of manufacturing weapons of mass destruction.
As I ponder over
the punishment to be meted out to these two people who were attempting to
unbuild weapons of mass destruction, we must ask ourselves: Can it be that
those of us who build weapons to kill are engaged in a more sanctified endeavor
than those who would by their acts attempt to counsel moderation and mediation
as an alternative method of settling international disputes?
Why are we so
fascinated by a power so great that we cannot comprehend its magnitude? What is
so sacred about a bomb, so romantic about a missile? Why do we condemn and hang
individual killers while extolling the virtues of warmongers? What is that
fatal fascination which attracts us to the thought of mass destruction of our
brethren in another country? Why can we even entertain the thought that all
people on one side of an imaginary line must die and, if we be so ungodly
cynical as to countenance that thought, have we given thought to the fact that
in executing that decree we will also die? Who draws these lines and who has so
decreed?
How many of the
people in this democracy have seriously contemplated the futility of committing
national suicide in order to punish our adversaries? Have we so little faith in
our system of free enterprise, our capitalism and the fundamental concepts that
are taught us in our constitutions and in our several bibles that we must, in order
to protect ourselves from the spread of foreign ideologies, be prepared to die
at our own hands? Such thinking indicates a great deal of lack of faith in our
democracy, our body politic, our people and our institutions.
There are those in
high places that believe Armageddon is soon to be upon us, that Christ will
soon come to earth and take us all back with him to heaven. It would appear
that much of our national effort is being devoted to helping with the process.
It may even be a celebration of sorts. When the bombs go off, Christ won’t have
to come to earth. We will all, believers and nonbelievers alike, meet him
halfway.
The anomaly of
this situation is that I am here called upon to punish two individuals who were
charged with having caused damage to the property of a corporation in the
amount of $36,000. It is this self-same corporation which only a few months ago
was before me accused of having wrongfully embezzled from the U.S. government
the sum of $3.6 million. The employees of this company succeeded in boosting
the corporate profits by wrongfully and feloniously juggling the books. Since
these individuals were all employees of a corporation, it appears that it did
not occur to anyone in the office of the Attorney General of the United States that
the actions of these men constituted a criminal conspiracy for which they might
be punished. The government demanded only that Sperry pay back a mere 10
percent of the amount by which the corporation had been unlawfully enriched.
Could it be that these corporate men who were working to build weapons of mass
destruction received special treatment because of the nature of their work?
I am also called
upon to determine the amount of restitution that is to be required by the two
individuals who have done damage to the property of Sperry. The financial
information obtained by the probation office indicated that neither of the
defendants owes any money to anyone. While Ms. Katt has no assets, Mr. LaForge
is comparatively well endowed. He owns a 1968 Volkswagen, a guitar, a sleeping
bag, and $200 in cash.
The inexorable
pressure which generates from those who are engaged in making a living and a
profit from building military equipment, and the pork barreling that goes on in
the halls of Congress to obtain more such contracts for the individual state,
will in the ultimate consume itself in an atomic holocaust. These same factors
exert a powerful pressure upon a federal judge in my position to go along with
the theory that there is something sacred about a bomb and that those who raise
their voices or their hands against it should be struck down as enemies of the
people, no matter that in their hearts they feel and know that they are friends
of the people.
Now conduct of
this sort cannot be condoned under the guise of free speech. Neither should it
be totally condemned as being subversive, traitorous, or treasonous in the
category of espionage or some other bad things. I would here in this instance
take the sting out of the Bomb, attempt in some way to force the government to
remove the halo with which it seems to embrace any device which can kill and to
place thereon a shroud, the shroud of death, destruction, mutilation, disease
and debilitation.
If there be an
adverse reaction to this sentence, I will anxiously await the protestations of
those who complain of my attempts to correct the imbalance that now exists in a
system that operates in such a manner as to provide one type of justice for the
rich and a lesser type for the poor, one standard for the mighty and another
for the meek, and a system which finds its humanness and objectivity is
sublimated to military madness and the worship of the Bomb.
A judge sitting
here as I do is not called upon to do that which is politically expedient or
popular but is called upon to exercise calm and deliberate judgment in a manner
best suited to accomplish, and accommodate, and vindicate the rights of the people
acting through its government and the rights of those people who are the
subject matter of such actions. The most popular thing to do at this particular
time would be to sentence [Katt and LaForge] to a 10-year period of
imprisonment, and some judges might be disposed to do just that.
[Thereupon, the
sentences were imposed: six months imprisonment, suspended, with six months
unsupervised probation.]
I am also aware of
the thrust of the argument, which would say this would encourage others to do
likewise. If others do likewise, they must be dealt with at that time. I am
also impressed with the argument that this might in some way constitute a
disparity of sentence, that [Katt and LaForge] have not been properly punished
because some others might not be deterred from doing [what they did]. I really
wonder about the constitutionality of sentencing one person for a crime that
may be committed by another person at another time and place.
It is also
difficult for me to equate the sentence I here give you — for destroying
$36,000 worth of property, because you have been charged — with those who stole
$3.6 million worth of property and were not charged, demoted, or in any way
punished. My conscience is clear. We will adjourn the Court.
Article printed from www.counterpunch.org: http://www.counterpunch.org
URL to article: http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/12/21/in-sentencing-radical-pacifists-judge-miles-lord-assailed-worship-of-the-bomb/
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"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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