Date published: 2008/09/04
The BBC says:
Multi-millionaire environmentalist Zac Goldsmith has appeared as a defence witness in the trial of six Greenpeace activists charged with criminal damage.
He is the second high-profile defence witness to appear. US physicist James Hansen gave evidence on Wednesday.
Mr Goldsmith told Maidstone Crown Court an action could be justified if it was to prevent larger crimes taking place.
The protesters are charged with causing £30,000 worth of damage after scaling Kingsnorth power station, in Hoo, Kent.
They claim they were lawfully right to damage the plant because they believed it would prevent further damage around the world from global warming.
The academic middle class (and the filthy rich Goldsmith) taking the piss as usual. With this excuse, one could be forgiven for breaking into the offices of Greenpeace and smashing the computers, which after all use electricity, and so contribute to global warming (not to mention they are made of toxic materials, etc.).
These people have not won the argument through democratic means, so they are using un-democratic vandalism and intimidation to try and achieve their aims. When the working class behave like this, they are called yobs. When the academic middle class behave like this, they often get away with it because the judges are of course also academic middle class and think this is all jolly good fun.
_________________________________________________________
All material not included from other sources is copyright cambridge2000.com.
For further information or questions email: info [at] cambridge2000 [dot] com
(replace "[at]" with "@" and "[dot]" with ".").