Catholic Social Teaching in Action is Considered Violent Terrorism in the United Snakes

Read this short article, How the US Turned Three Pacifists into Violent Terrorists, by Fran Quigley.
https://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/05/15-7

In summary, three dedicated non-violent Catholic peace activists (quite easily) broke into a major nuclear weapons facility. Essentially, they cut some fences, hung up their peace banners, and spray-painted peace slogans on the Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility (HEUMF).  They prayed and sang songs.  It took security a VERY long time to ever arrive, and when they did, the three activists surrendered peacefully and were jailed.

One of the activists, an 82 YEAR OLD Catholic nun answered reporters asking WHY they did what they did, “We had to — we were doing it because we had to reveal the truth of the criminality which is there, that’s our obligation,” Rice said. She also challenged the entire nuclear weapons industry: “We have the power, and the love, and the strength and the courage to end it and transform the whole project, for which has been expended more than 7.2 trillion dollars,” she said. “The truth will heal us and heal our planet, heal our diseases, which result from the disharmony of our planet caused by the worst weapons in the history of mankind, which should not exist.  For this we give our lives — for the truth about the terrible existence of these weapons.”

Overzealous prosecutors and the tyrannical government they represent didn’t like that very much.  The charges immediately escalated from the original misdemeanor trespass charge.  Because the three activists refused to plea guilty to at least one felony charge, they now faced a new charge of sabotage.  3000 people signed a petition to U.S. Attorney General Holder requesting he not allow such an abomination of the justice system.  He didn’t bother to acknowledge the petition and the sabotage charge stuck.  Defendants were charged with intending to injure, interfere with, or obstruct the national defense of the United States and willful damage of national security premises in violation of 18 US Code 2155, punishable with up to 20 years in prison.  Counts two and three were the previous felony property damage charges, with potential prison terms of up to fifteen more years in prison.

As the incident played out in court, the justice system was (as usual) manipulated and perverted by the mockery of what it has become since September 11, 2001.  The three defendants were not given a fair trial:

“The government also successfully moved to strip the three from presenting any defenses or testimony about the harmful effects of nuclear weapons.   The U.S. Attorney’s office filed a document they called “Motion to Preclude Defendants from Introducing Evidence in Support of Certain Justification Defenses.”  In this motion, the U.S. asked the court to bar the peace protestors from being allowed to put on any evidence regarding the illegality of nuclear weapons, the immorality of nuclear weapons, international law, or religious, moral or political beliefs regarding nuclear weapons, the Nuremberg principles developed after WWII, First Amendment protections, necessity or US policy regarding nuclear weapons.

The three were immediately jailed.  In its decision affirming their incarceration pending their sentencing, the court ruled that both the sabotage and the damage to property convictions were defined by Congress as federal crimes of terrorism.  Since the charges carry potential sentences of ten years or more, the Court ruled there was a strong presumption in favor of incarceration which was not outweighed by any unique circumstances that warranted their release pending sentencing.

These non-violent peace activists now sit in jail as federal prisoners, awaiting their sentencing on September 23, 2013.

In ten months, an 82 year old nun and two pacifists had been successfully transformed by the U.S. government from non-violent anti-nuclear peace protestors accused of misdemeanor trespassing into felons convicted of violent crimes of terrorism."

This is what the "war on terror" has brought us to: empowering the government to apply the term "terrorism", "sabotage" or "espionage" to cases of whistle-blowing or civil disobedience, allowing it to convict dissidents of crimes they didn't commit in an effort to suppress all forms of organized opposition.