Breaking news, from the “Style” section of the Washington Post:
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — An 83-year-old Catholic nun and two of her fellow peace activists were found guilty Wednesday of intending to injure the national defense for intruding last July onto the Y-12 National Security Complex, a nuclear weapons production facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
After hearing two days of testimony and arguments, and then deliberating for nearly 2½ hours, the jury also found the defendants guilty of damaging more than $1,000 of government property at the Y-12 site, where they cut through four chain-link fences and spray-painted biblical messages on a building that warehouses an estimated 400 tons of highly enriched uranium, the radioactive material used to fuel a nuclear bomb….
In the pre-dawn hours of July 28, 2012, the three defendants hiked over a wooded ridge and were able to enter the site unimpeded because of a series of deficient security measures, including inoperable security cameras and an alarm system inundated by routine false alarms. The intrusion triggered a two-week shutdown of operations at Y-12 — a Department of Energy site that is overseen by the National Nuclear Security Administration and operated and managed by private contractors — and prompted four congressional hearings on nuclear security and a shake up in the U.S. nuclear security enterprise.
After the verdict the defendants were taken into custody and a hearing was scheduled for Thursday morning to determine the merits of detention. Sentencing will be held at a later date. Together, the two felonies carry a maximum 30 years in prison…
Recommended reading, the Post‘s earlier longform repot on “The Prophets of Oak Ridge”:
… With elbow grease and blind faith, they would make a symbolic incursion to defeat the site’s $150 million-a-year security operation. They would mortify the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, which since 1940 has cost at least $9.8 trillion in 2013 dollars — costlier than all other government expenditures except Social Security and non-nuclear defense programs, according to nuclear weapons policy analyst Stephen Schwartz’s recent update of his 1998 Brookings Institution audit.
pokeyblow
I thought writing Biblical phrases on government property was applauded these days.
liberal
OT: why and how do businesses like Amazon lobby the Federal Reserve?
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
Well, I know I feel safer.
jrg
The nun story was on NPR about two weeks ago.
Alison
OT and a total non-humble brag, because I rarely toot my own horn and I gotta – my tweet was shown on All In with Chris Hayes! FAMOUS FOREVER, lolol. But seriously, it was pretty cool :P
SiubhanDuinne
I need to go off topic because I am So.Fucking.Pissed.
I just want to repeat that last quote. “They were non-life threatening. It was one bullet hole that went through his lower back.”
Oh, well then, that’s okay. Just one fucking bullet hole through the fucking lower back. Never mind the fucking proximity of, oh I dunno, spine, kidneys, spine, intestines, BALLS for heaven’s sake. And spine. Let’s not even think about traumatic flesh wounds. And as for the psychological and emotional fallout for both kids, well, that doesn’t show up physically so I guess it’s not real, or at least nothing to be taken seriously.
And, you know, the mother was somewhere in the house at the time, so no worries about appropriate adult supervision.
FUCK, what the FUCK is wrong with people? I swear I’m embarrassed to be a member of the human race most days lately.
/rant for now
Walker
Security in that area has always been slack. I went to high school in Oak Ridge, and the forest around the fed labs was prime under-age drinking territory. Out of the jurisdiction of the local cops, but never patrolled enough by feds either.
SiubhanDuinne
@Alison:
Very very cool! Grats!!
JPL
@SiubhanDuinne: Your reaction was the same as mine. I will add that their parents must be so proud of their sons.
Baud
@Alison:
Share the tweet!
Yatsuno
@SiubhanDuinne: I kan haz TARDIS naow plz? Kthxbai!
Spaghetti Lee
30 years for tearing up a fence and tagging a building? Zoinks.
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL:
I know. But I can’t really blame the kids. I mean it’s pretty clear that nobody ever told them NOT to climb out out the tub and shoot each other in the lower back (but “just one bullet hole,” mmmkay?)
SiubhanDuinne
@efgoldman:
I didn’t give credit where it was due, but I think I found that story over at Herr Professor Pierce’s place. but truthfully, it could have been anywhere, anytime. These stories are becoming way too frequent. I don’t want to let them become routinized.
Spaghetti Lee
@efgoldman:
Speaking of sportsy disappointments, it looks like my Bulls’ duct-tape-and-chewing-gum roster has run out of magic.
geg6
And this why the only part of the Catholic Church worth saving from the tumbrels is the nuns. They are the only ones who live their faith. But even the new Pope, who even liberals think is just awesome, wants them to sit down and shut up. Why they stay, I cannot fathom.
Todd
@Spaghetti Lee:
Civil disobedience is all about taking the penalty with grace.
Spaghetti Lee
@Todd:
I suppose ’30 years’ looks less ominous when you’re 83.
Dirty Fucking Hippie
Well, they did break THE LAW, after all. The full measure of
the Feds obsequious protection of the Public needs to fall on the Papists, even if of the Jesuit order; in fact double-down on the Jesuits. Let’s all party until the sentencing.
Maybe Pope Francis can visit them in the can; sing some songs and such truck.
Suffern ACE
@Walker: hence the many false alarms! You and your corn shine swilling friends were a greater threat than any al quaeda sleeper cell. If only you’d have been looking for more than a drunken roll in the hay, you could have built your own plutonium stockpile.
Haydnseek
@SiubhanDuinne: Yep. Even when the kid dies, it’s just one of those crazy accidents. Non life threatening? Not even worth a paragraph in the local fish wrap. The parents are really cracking down, though. No rifle for one whole week! That’ll learn ya!
JWL
He won’t, becau$e he i$ who he i$.
But Obama should pardon those people.
Southern Beale
Oh yes, yes I’ve written about this for ages, it’s in my backyard. But Holy Fuckballs, Batman! Check out THIS:
What the hell??? This story will be completely buried because Benghazi and Jodi Arias and those poor young women in Cleveland. But seriously, America makes my head hurt sometimes.
PIGL
@Todd: don’t be an ass. the penalty imposed should bear some relation to the offense. or had u rather they s@et thenselves on fire?
Heliopause
@Southern Beale:
I have an idea; let’s take out the human factor and replace these people with a supercomputer. How about we call it “WOPR”. Just a thought.
MikeJ
@PIGL: The penalty hasn’t been imposed. Yes, they could theoretically get 30 years, but they won’t.
Suffern ACE
@Southern Beale: 17 of 150. So 89% passed. Which I’m guessing is higher percentage of lawyers who could repass the bar exams asked to take it again a few years after successfully passing it the first time.
I’m just glad it’s actually hard to work those things.
SiubhanDuinne
@Heliopause:
How about a nice game of tic-tac-toe?
Weaselone
Shouldn’t we be pinning medals on this these people for exposing weaknesses in the national defense before say terrorists using wire cutters reached a building housing 400 tons of enriched uranium?
Why do we even care about Iran’s enrichment program, if anyone who wants a nuclear weapon can just walk into Oak Ridge and relieve us of some of our weapons grade fissionables?
Suffern ACE
I know we’ve been taught to fear a dirty bomb, and it actually takes less than 20 pounds of plutonium to make an actually bomb, but even if they managed to get inside the building, wouldn’t the equipment they needed to move the plutonium around without killing themselves make breaking in through the woods on foot and stealing plutonium successfully unlikely?
NotMax
@southern Beale
Brought this up on the overnight thread; no response.
There was a quite good documentary on the staff at the silos (PBS?) some years ago, which in no uncertain terms made clear that the guys/gals who sit and man the missile keys are purposely chosen from the shallowest end of the intelligence pool.
Folks with more than a few brain cells to rub together become stultified by the sheer boredom.
Alison
@Baud: It was this one: https://twitter.com/alisonrose711/status/332295136086200321
p.a.
They should have spray painted the 10 commandments. Then work for a redneck jury.
PeakVT
@Southern Beale: There’s not much point to those units, and I suspect most of the members know it. Thus the problems with performance. They should be shut down.
Baud
@Alison: Cool. I’m going to follow you, now that you’re a star.
Suffern ACE
@efgoldman: yes. But what the test these folks failed was the procedure to launch a missile. They would not be able to purposefully launch one. The only way they could accidentally launch one would be very dumb luck. What we don’t want is a procedure where Didi can start pressing buttons and wallah -wwIII begins.
Baud
@Suffern ACE:
I still think it was a bad decision to put the Armageddon button right next to snooze.
Villago Delenda Est
I think I see the problem here. Actually securing the site would cut into profit.
NotMax
Sort of on topic, from the ‘don’t do the crime unless you can do the time, big money excepted’ file (emphasis mine:
PeakVT
and were able to enter the site unimpeded because of a series of deficient security measures, including inoperable security cameras and an alarm system inundated by routine false alarms.
Sounds like some defense contractor made that contract turn a profit. And isn’t that the ultimate purpose of our military these days?
Alison
@Baud: Followed back :)
Helen
@Alison: Don’t be acting all humble. That is braggable.
Baud
@Alison:
Don’t expect much. I mostly read other tweets and very rarely shoot off some stupid reply. I save all my good stuff for Balloon Juice. ;-)
Spaghetti Lee
I’ve had kind of a shitty day myself. I’m getting my undergrad degree in a week and a half, and it’s playing hell with my mind-I just have no idea what the future holds and I’m terrified. School is all I know how to do. So I was talking with someone in my writing class and I said maybe I’d go home and jump off the roof. I don’t know why I said it. I wasn’t seriously considering it, but I wasn’t ‘just joking’ either. Part of why I feel like shit is that I know that suicide threats aren’t something to joke around with-I know that, objectively. But I still said it because, I don’t know, I felt like I needed to prove I could get someone to care about what happened to me. That’s been a big factor with my mental health problems too. Feeling just completely anonymous and unnoticed. Even if I didn’t mean it, I had to say it like I meant it-I had to let something out. In retrospect it was a terrible idea.
Anyway, I told him I didn’t really plan on doing anything, I was just kind of emotionally drained and needed some catharsis. But he was still kind of rattled. So about 7:00 I get a knock on my door and it’s two campus cops. He’d called them and said he was worried about me killing myself. Which is, you know, good. I hope I’d do the same. Better safe than sorry. So they and I had a long talk about how they’re trying to keep people safe and how there were resources if I needed help. By that point I had come back up from my low point earlier that day and I had no intent to do anything. But they made very, very sure that I was absolutely positive I was feeling alright, and told me to call 911 if I started feeling it again. Which is good for them, they’re doing their jobs. I feel shitty because I feel like I’m just acting out and wasting their time. I guess even in a situation like that I don’t like being the center of attention. For the record I’m already seeing a school-employed psychologist. I gave his name to the cops, and I assume they’re going to contact him because why wouldn’t they? I see him next on Friday. I don’t know what to think except that it all feels real shitty.
Yatsuno
@SiubhanDuinne: WOULDN’T. YOU. PREFER. A. GOOD. GAME. OF. CHESS?
Todd
@PIGL:
Meh. They did it in the one country that wouldn’t make them dig their own graves for committing a huge security incursion.
They’d have actually impressed me if they had snuck into the Vatican and painted dicks on the walls,but if you noticed, they didn’t. Nor have they quit, en masse.
TooManyJens
Why the fuck was that in the “Style” section?
Suffern ACE
@TooManyJens: why not. It’s the only section of the paper staffed by competent, knowledgeable journalists. If there’s one thing our press corps knows, it’s where to find good food and how to decorate their homes.
Southern Beale
Well this was interesting:
13 Benghazis That Occurred on Bush’s Watch Without a Peep from Fox News
khead
@Alison:
Someone on my FB feed actually said they were hoping to witness a miracle today.
Helen
@Spaghetti Lee: Please be calm. Your post is kinda freaking me. I’m a bit of a lurker a sometimes commenter, and I read you all the time. That you are feeling this is shocking to me. I am an idiot to assume that you are OK. Please know that there are many many people who care about you; me included. And please do not be concerned about the job situation. You will be OK. I think maybe it is change that is scaring you; not getting a job. The best advice I ever got was “Every kick’s a boost” Please believe that.
David Koch
@khead: well, din’t Izza to turn water into whine?
Redshirt
I twitter too! @Redshirt_Lament
I know I’ll sleep safer tonight, since that nun is off the streets and locked up behind bars, where she belongs.
schrodinger's cat
@Spaghetti Lee: Don’t wait till next week, see the psychologist sooner if you can.
{{{Spaghetti Lee}}}
WA_Dave
@Weaselone: No medals. They don’t want to make a habit of it.
Ash
OT:
This time around the delays have been happening before boarding! This isn’t my fear of flying in any way!
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: All I get is a cool title – no real importance.
Redshirt
@Ash: I’ve been in two commercial jet “crashes” – each time the plane blew engines upon takeoff, skidding off the runway. Once was on Qantas in the middle of Australia and I busted out the Rain Man impression immediately. No fear bro!
Walker
@Suffern ACE:
It is not even clear they were anywhere near a relevant building. Y-12 is a big complex, and not all buildings are high clearance. I went there once with a friend for “take your kid to work day”. His dad was the worker there (physicist working on fusion tech), not mine, but I was allowed to tag along. In the places we were allowed, it was no big deal.
Calouste
@NotMax:
Not just that. The career path in the Air Force is being a pilot. Being assigned to look after the nuclear arsenal pretty much means you’ll never make it to flag officer.
Higgs Boson's Mate
If the peace activists are sentenced at all it will be for exposing the monumentally expensive grift that is our security theater.
Alison
@Baud: Haha no problem. I follow plenty of very gregarious tweeters already.
Ash
@Redshirt:
Was that the incident with the 380? The flight seems to be definitely leaving in an hour.
I plan on posting once I land in France to have a good laugh over my fear of flying!
Omnes Omnibus
@NotMax: I know from back in the day that the guys who got assigned to Pershing missile units in the army were not among the best the Field Artillery had to offer.
SiubhanDuinne
Hey everybody, wonderful news! Allie from Hyperbole and a Half is posting again after a lengthy struggle with crippling depression.
hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com
SiubhanDuinne
@Spaghetti Lee:
{{{HUGS}}} to you. Please don’t hesitate to seek whatever help you need. It’s your life, you’re supposed to be the center of attention in it. And please keep talking to the BJ community; I don’t have to tell you what an extraordinary, supportive group this can be.
Redshirt
@Ash: Nah, they were both smaller planes. A flock of parrots got sucked into the engine and Boom!
Arclite
Sister Megan Rice has more balls than I ever will.
Scamp Dog
@Spaghetti Lee: For all the flaws of policing in this country, I’ve heard a lot of good stuff about campus cops. I wouldn’t feel bad about wasting their time; part of the purpose of visits like that is to demonstrate that you’re connected to the people of the institution.
The economy is starting to show signs of life, and that brand new degree you’re getting is going to give you a leg up on things.
And keep up posted on how you’re doing. All this text on screens does represent a friendly, caring group of people, even if we do get kind of sarcastic and rambunctious at times.
Mr Stagger Lee
I love how peace groups scare the living shit out of those men with guns. And this has been the story of the United States since WWI. Read about what they did to Conscientious Objectors, like the Mennonites and the Quakers in WWI, Guantanamo before Guantanamo, if you catch my drift.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Southern Beale:
I wonder if any of the 17 officers were among the heavy-duty Christians ground out by the Air Force Academy.
Aimai
@Spaghetti Lee: I’m so sorry you are going through this. You are one of my favorite commenters. You matter to people. You matter to me. Keep your chin up and protect yourself. You are tremendously important. Big hugs.
russell
The “Style” section?
The WaPo deserves to die. A swift and painless death is OK, just as long as it freaking crawls in a hole somewhere and dies.
nellcote
@SiubhanDuinne:
That is wonderful news! Her post on depression is about the most accurate description I’ve ever read and I’ve emailed it around to others who found it helpful. That not being alone feeling is so important. Though I have to admit that I was hoping she was working on her book all this time.
russell
Also : spaghetti lee:
You’re not just acting out. You’re anxious about what your future holds and you’re not sure about what to do about it.
Talking about how you’re feeling IS NOT ACTING OUT. It’s talking about how you’re feeling.
You’re not wasting the campus cops time. Making sure you’re safe IS THEIR JOB. If anything, you gave them a chance to help somebody today.
Good for you for telling your friend how you were feeling, and good for you for sharing it with us here. Those are the RIGHT THINGS TO DO.
It’s really scary to have big changes coming in your life, especially when you don’t have a lot of experience with whatever it is that comes next for you.
There is nothing wrong with being afraid. Being afraid is actually the normal reaction.
Things will come together for you. If you feel overwhelmed, reach out, just like you did today, and find somebody to talk to. The most important thing is to talk about what’s worrying you, so that it’s not just bouncing around inside your head.
Things *will* come together for you.
Mike in NC
My last miserable assignment as a contractor at GE involved a lot of time spent dealing with asshole rednecks at a couple of facilities in Oak Ridge, TN. Fuck them all.
Omnes Omnibus
@Spaghetti Lee: Better to be overly careful. People called for help for you because they cared. Graduation is one of life’s stressful moments – it leads to change and change, positive or negative, is stressful. Take advantage of the help that is available to you. Be well.
Debbie(aussie)
Just have to say , again, thi is a wonderful place.
Bears hugs to [{Spaghetti Lee}]
JD Rhoades
@Southern Beale:
To quote Robert Duvall’s character in The Great Santini: “Being a warrior without a war has certain problems.”
Mnemosyne
@Spaghetti Lee:
Dude, if you want to talk about wasting the campus emergency services’ time, I’ll tell you my story about calling them because I thought I was having a serious asthma attack when I was just hyperventilating. That was embarrassing.
Also, I will tell you that for years I was too embarrassed to take medication for my depression because it “wasn’t that bad.” I ended up losing about a decade of my life to something that “wasn’t that bad” because I didn’t deal with it in a timely way. So if you’re feeling like you want to jump off a building, even in a jokey way, NOW is the time to deal with that rather than letting it eat at you.
LongHairedWeirdo
How the fuck does spray painting “injure national security”?
Even if it does – let me just grant that some idiotic shithead can make the argument that it does, and repeat it long and loud enough to be believed – how does one form *intent* when any rational person can’t imagine how an action would injure national security?
dmbeaster
@Southern Beale: Basic fact – ICBM duty is the bottom rung for career air force. They get the dregs, and the reason is obvious. You never do anything nor expect to.
Ruckus
@Spaghetti Lee:
I’m going to tell you a little story about myself, to maybe help you get a little perspective.
But first as several have said, when feeling down get help. There are many places as it seems you know. Call your guy and see if you can get in sooner. If nothing else maybe he can just talk on the phone. Every little bit helps.
Now the story. I’m obviously older than you but the concept is the same. At a crossroads without being able to see how any road goes. A little over a year ago I had to admit that my business that I started to get me to retirement age had failed. I had no money, no real or imagined job prospects and not even a place to live. A friend rescued me and let me stay at his house for a year. I had no direction, no idea how I was going to even survive. But I have the luxury of experience. I lost a previous business to a natural disaster almost 20 yrs ago and obviously survived. I figured I could do it again. A year later I have a small place to live and a job, that I actually enjoy. I know that many others are/have not been so lucky but I’ve been major down twice in the last 20 years and I’m still here. It can seem overwhelming at times but look at it as a character building exercise. It’s worked for me, I’ve got character out the ass now.
BTW, the month I closed my business my mom died. Not a good year. And yet… here I am.
Debbie(aussie)
@Ruckus:
Thank you for sharing, it often helps to hear others stories. Puts ones own life/problems in perspective. (How on earth do empathy deprived wingers survive:)?)
Mnemosyne
@Ruckus:
I am still traumatized by what a sucky year 2012 was. Just overall filled with suckitude from beginning to end.
Another Halocene Human
@Spaghetti Lee: You can call those suicide prevention lines any time when you need somebody to talk to.
Even when you’re suicidal, you have that self-preservation instinct. Follow that instinct.
Ruckus
Another thing that helps me is to think of people with less than me or who have had things a lot worse. My aunt died of congenital heart failure in her early forties, leaving 4 kids, one of them about a year old and their father to raise them. A friend had her mother die when she was nine and was raised with her sister by her heroin addict, alcoholic father. And these weren’t people living in mud huts getting by on the equivalent of $200-400/ year. And they turned out to be pretty good people. Yes there are problems but they are all better humans than GWB, who seemed to have a whole lot of advantages(most, OK all of which were wasted on his dumb ass).
What I’m taking way too many words to say is perspective is important. We tend to look around and see ourselves as a center. Not necessarily the center but a center. So when our lives are being shit upon for whatever reason, it looks like the whole world is being shit upon giving the impression there is nothing to look forward to. But there always is. Sort of a Monty Python combined sketch – peasants tolling away in the shit and one of them gets crucified for some stupid non reason. OK he’s up on a cross with nails in his wrists and ankles, at least he’s out of the shit.
Perspective. Of course he is getting a wicked sunburn.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Southern Beale: Boy, between this and incompetent security at Oak Ridge, the American taxpayer is really getting a deal. It’s amazing how much incompetence you can buy with $9.8 trillion.
central texas
@Spaghetti Lee:
No. 30 years for embarrassing a collection of lazy, over-paid, incompetent assholes whose major qualification for the job was how much the contributed to some political compaign.
central texas
@Suffern ACE:
Well maybe. In the article I read, the whole outfit was rated the equivalent of a “D”. And, by the by, do get back to me when one gets to launch WWIII after passing the bar.