tree huggers as terrorists

[Major Variola (ret)]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/01/08/MN42119.DTL

                 Eco-vandals condemned as
                 domestic terrorists
                 But activists say all groups being
                 tarred with extremist brush

                 Robert Schlesinger, Boston Globe

Tuesday, January 8, 2002



                 Washington -- On Sept. 20, as much of the
                 country was still in shock from the attacks on the
                 Pentagon and the World Trade Center,
                 self-proclaimed members of the Animal Liberation
                 Front firebombed a primate research lab in New
                 Mexico, causing $1 million in damage.

                 In October, a federal land management facility in
                 California was torched, causing $85,000 in damage.
                 Members of the Earth Liberation Front claimed
                 responsibility. The same movement is suspected of
                 planting two homemade bombs in November at a
                 forestry research center at Michigan Tech
                 University.

                 As the Bush administration pursues its war on
                 terrorism at home and abroad, some political
                 leaders, particularly from Western states, want to
                 ensure that extreme environmental and animal rights
                 groups share the focus.

                 While even the harshest critics acknowledge that
                 there is no proportionate comparison between Al
                 Qaeda and groups like the Earth Liberation Front --
                 particularly because these radical environmental and
                 animal rights groups have avoided taking lives --
                 they say that terrorism is terrorism.

                 "The point has come when we need to strip away
                 the Robin Hood mystique from this terrorism in our
                 country," said Rep. Scott McInnis, a Republican
                 from Colorado.

                 McInnis's district includes the famed ski town of
                 Vail. Earth Liberation Front members burned down
                 a ski resort there in 1998, causing $12 million in
                 damage. An estimated $40 million in damage is
                 attributed to these radical groups over the past few
                 years. That figure includes the fires at the Coulston
                 Foundation labs in Alamogordo, N.M., in
                 September and the Bureau of Land Management
                 Wild Horse and Burro Facility in Litchfield (Lassen
                 County), in October.

                 State bomb squad technicians defused the two
                 bombs found outside forestry research buildings at
                 Michigan Tech last month. The Earth Liberation
                 Front has not claimed responsibility for planting the
                 explosives, but self-identified members of the group
                 sent threatening e-mails to the university.

                 FBI REPORT ON TERRORISM

                 The FBI, in its most recent report on terrorism in
                 the United States, identified such groups as among
                 the biggest and fastest-growing domestic threats.

                 "The threat posed by special interest extremism --
                 most notably the extreme fringes of the animal rights
                 and environmental movements -- is also emerging as
                 a significant concern for law enforcement," said the
                 report, issued last year.

                 Group members style themselves as defenders of
                 Earth or animals against rapacious corporations and
                 a complicit government. They ask who the
                 "extremists" really are.

                 "I find that torturing sentient animals, harming
                 animals who would otherwise live a free life in the
                 wild, I find that a bit extreme," said David
                 Barbarash, a spokesman for the Animal Liberation
                 Front, which opposes the often-painful use of
                 animals in medical or product testing. "I don't find
                 torture a normal practice; I think that's an extreme
                 practice."

                 CHARACTERIZATION REJECTED

                 Barbarash dismissed descriptions of his group and
                 the Earth Liberation Front as terrorist organizations,
                 saying that no one has ever been killed by their
                 actions.

                 But there are similarities to terrorist organizations.
                 ALF and ELF are organized in a cell structure, with
                 small groups acting independently and without a
                 central leader. The Internet is used as a tool to
                 spread information and exhortation. ALF's Web site
                 has a "recommended reading" section that includes
                 a document on "Setting Fires With Electrical Timers
                 -- An Earth Liberation Guide."

                 The decentralized set-up is designed to prevent
                 interference with the groups' activities.

                 "This decentralized structure helps keep activists out
                 of jail and free to continue conducting actions," the
                 ELF Web site says. Activists who damage property
                 are rarely identified or caught.

                 Representative Darlene Hooley, a Democrat from
                 Oregon whose district has endured a lot of clashes
                 over the environment, is sponsoring a bill that would
                 set up a national environmental terrorism information
                 clearinghouse and step up federal aid for areas of
                 high activity.

                 "There has been increased activity on ecoterrorism
                 in our state and in the Northwest and in my district,"
                 said Hooley, who added that Oregon has
                 experienced 100 "major acts of terrorism" in the
                 past 20 years -- one-third of them in the last four
                 years.

                 In February, McInnis will chair a hearing of a House
                 Resources subcommittee focusing on ecoterrorism,
                 and he has subpoenaed the former spokesman for
                 ELF.

                 McInnis and a half-dozen other Western
                 Republican legislators have also sent a letter to
                 prominent mainstream environmental groups calling
                 upon them to disavow groups like ELF and ALF.
                 McInnis, who is regularly at odds with these groups
                 on policy matters, likens his effort to the
                 coalition-building the United States has done
                 internationally against terrorism.

                 He hopes to form "coalitions with governments that
                 do not necessarily agree with the U.S. on policy but
                 agree that terrorism is not a way to solve policy
                 differences," McInnis said.

                 Most of the environmental groups -- who had
                 long-standing, vocal positions opposing the radical
                 fringe of their movements -- rolled their eyes at the
                 political posturing while reiterating their positions.

                 "I wonder why seven congressmen are so interested
                 in challenging an organization to disavow
                 ecoterrorism when Greenpeace has a perfect,
                 30-year record of peaceful, nonviolent civil
                 disobedience used to engage corrupt governments
                 and corporations around the world," John
                 Pasacantando, Greenpeace USA's Executive
                 Director, wrote to McInnis. "I wish that you would
                 drop this ruse of trying to link peaceful
                 environmental efforts to terrorism -- just at the
                 moment when the country needs you to actually
                 focus on real issues."