Peace activist pleads guilty to damaging more than 20 power line towers in four states

Associated Press ^ | 11-19-03 | ANNA OBERTHUR

[Phantom Lord]

He served eight years of a life sentence for attempted murder in the 1970s, the FBI said.

Problem #1

[dighton]

In an agreement with prosecutors, he entered his pleas before U.S. District Judge William Shubb in only two incidents near Anderson, Calif., and Klamath Falls, Ore. In return, prosecutors will recommend a sentence of 27 months, against a maximum of 10 years, and he will not be prosecuted in Idaho or Washington. No sentencing date was set.

Leniency in his case is absolutely nuts.

He served eight years of a life sentence for attempted murder in the 1970s, the FBI said.

[martin_fierro]

Hang him high.

[doug from upland]

Well, no more demonstrations for a few years.

[kentuckyusa]

How does an act like this make him a peace activist? Does peace activist now mean thug, hood, criminal, etc?

[finnman69]

A real peaceful guy. Riiiiiiiiggggggggggghhhhhhtt.

[Calpernia]

Power ping.

[Pro-Bush]

Won't see this story in the headlines...He wasn't a "right-winger".

[RightWhale]

How does an act like this make him a peace activist?

It's not a non-violent demonstration, so it is not an MLK style civil disobedience.

It's not a simple openly illegal civil diobedience, so it isn't a Gandhi act of civil disobedience.

It was a violent act of sabotage and may have endangered someone, so it was not an act of peace.

It appears the act doesn't meet any of the requirements, so it is an act of moral terrorism. Put him in the cage with the Alqaidas.

[Grampa Dave]

Poulin told The Associated Press in a telephone interview before his arrest that he considered his actions necessary to point out how the nation's power system is vulnerable to terrorists.

Poulin says he was preparing to turn himself in when he was arrested Nov. 2 by a California Highway Patrol officer. The officer recognized Poulin from his wanted poster when Poulin asked for directions to the FBI's Sacramento office.

Poulin has been a member of Peace and Justice Action League of Spokane and participated in several anti-war rallies this year.

He served eight years of a life sentence for attempted murder in the 1970s, the FBI said.


The first paragraph is what any criminal tries to say when they are busted. "Hey, I was selling drug because the Narcs asked me to go undercover!"

The rest is the reality behind this left wing Enviral Whack Lunatic.

[GSWarrior]

At what point does trying to draw attention to lax security measures become an actual act of terrorism?

[Free_at_last_-2001]

Bet he votes democrat!

[RightWhale]

A violent act does way more than draw attention, although it certainly does that, too.

[null and void]

No problem. underscoreJim says our grid is immune to a deliberate take down.

[null and void]

Hang him high.

Hang him?

Nope, make the punishment fit the crime.

Electrocute him...

[Calpernia]

I'm sorry. I know he is not popular with some freepers. But he does supply good info for his arguements/views. And when someone like me doesn't understand how the power stuff works, I really appreciate the links he provides for supplemental reading.

I promise N&V, I do cry for Krill ^-^

[_Jim]

our grid is immune to a deliberate take down.

Well, "Prove me wrong."

Whoops.

We don't want you doing that - someone will see you and turn you in like this character ...

WHAT I find surprising is, we've got people on this board that couldn't explain how the series circuit in a flashlight works YET they will contend THEY can see scenarios where 'the grid' could be taken down ...

NEITHER have these people done their homework and studied several of of the BIG historical blackouts we have had for ANY idea on the scope of just WHAT it takes to get a REALLY BIG blackout to occur ...

'The grid' JUST like other facets involving machinery/systems (like the phone system) in our lives have TWO things working constantly in their favor: 1) man in the loop overseeing operations and planning for outages and contingencies and 2) a lot of redundancy in most circumstances that allows the system to tolerate portions of 'the grid' to fail both in terms of generation and transmission -

- with this ONE caveat; that #1 works, and it didn't back on August 14th (FirstEnergy's control facility was 'hosed up' for some reason that day and the operators NEVER made any of the required 'right moves' - like load shedding GIVEN the generation available and the lines they had to work with. It also didn't help that deferred 'right of way' tree-trimming came back to haunt them that day and took important lines out of service) ...

[null and void]

Well, when I was studying EE I was told abruptly taking out (grounding) one phase *could* cause a 3ø generator to pound itself to pieces before it could be stopped. I didn't have the guts to try it.

I do know that a determined foe can figure out an unexpected weakness in any system and exploit it.

I do know that power grids can fail accidently, as has been demonstrated in a surprisingly large number of systems across the world in the past few months. Notably most of these outages affected countries that supported our efforts in Iraq. Perhaps this is only because everyone else doesn't have a grid to down?

I suspect a timed sequential takedown of key links could crowd load onto a known weak link that could then be cut, giving the operators a load sheding problem they may not have enough time to gracefully recover from. IIRC something like this happened accidently causing the '73 blackout.

The human in the loop is only as good as the information s/he has. Cutting communications, or more subtly, presenting normal expected data while the crisis builds renders this the weakest link - bu bye!

That the controls of a reactor are prePC does make the system more robust, but one does not need to take down any single generator to fragment the grid.

If people can design and build it, other people can figure it out and destroy it.

BTW, Do you know the differnce between a mechanical engineer and a civil engineer?