Wednesday, May 16, 2012

NON-VIOLENT PROTESTS ARE VIOLENT!

The much repeated claim by anti-logging and other activists that their actions are non-violent needs to be challenged.

Activists pretend that actions such as throwing rancid butter into an bureaucrat's office, putting sand into the engines of logging machinery, pouring glue into locks and immobilising machinery by locking people onto them are harmless and innocent. They do this by defining non-violence to mean that no physical pain is suffered by the victims of these actions.

However, emotional and psychological pain is real, capable of being inflicted on innocent victims with extreme results.

The cessation of old growth forest logging is believed to have led to suicides in affected communities. On-going anti-logging protest action is causing genuine albeit non-physical pain to contractors, public servants and timber mill employees. The financial pain suffered by third parties such as logging contractors can also be significant, with one former contractor still despairing of some $150,000 lost due to the actions of logging protesters against his business in the early 1990s.

Green activists who inflict so-called non-violent actions against their perceived opponents have blood on their hands and should be held fully accountable for the financial, psychological and emotional results of their actions.

As the US military has found in relation to its Guantanamo Bay prisoners, it is now illegal in the USA to subject people to sleep deprivation, water boarding and similar 'non-violent' torture. Confessions and evidence gained as a result of such torture is inadmissible in a court of law.

It is just a short step from Guantanamo Bay to WA's forests where the 'non-violent' actions of forest protestors have caused and continue to result in serious, long-lasting but largely hidden pain felt by affected people and communities.

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