LA Weekly's Judith Lewis has written a short but incisive piece on a subject dear to my heart:
When the American Civil Liberties Union this week released a new batch of documents obtained from the FBI verifying that the federal agency has been monitoring domestic environmental- and animal-rights groups, it was only the latest evidence of government working on behalf of the anti-environmentalist industry and property-rights advocates to, as one of those advocates put it in 1992, "destroy the environmental movement." It's an effort that's been under way since the 1980s, using various tactics from intimidation to slander. Only recently have the anti-environmentalists hit upon their most promising idea yet: Linking environmentalism to terrorism.
Lewis goes on to question whether the ELF (Earth Liberation Front) actually exists as an organization at all. Its alleged website is little more than a hook for a bunch of advertising; its alleged spokesmen are self-promoting cranks; the criminals allegedly connected to it deny any such connections.
Indeed, the people who seem to have the most to gain from the ELF existing are Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the leaders of the wise-use movement, and certain industries whose excesses are threatened by environmental activism.
Zealots need enemies, and if those enemies don't exist, zealots will create them.
The documents the FBI has released so far, most of them heavily edited accounts of monitoring activities directed at Greenpeace and PETA, may be just the tip of the surveillance iceberg. "The reason we have the documents on PETA and Greenpeace is because we asked for them," says Ben Wizner, an attorney with the ACLU. "There have also been requests by local environmental groups around the country. They're trickling out. And I expect that because of these revelations there will be more groups that want to see their FBI files," he said.
You could call the FBI surveillance a colossal waste of public resources, but Wizner thinks it's worse than that: Also in the documents obtained by the ACLU is a memo about a source planted within Greenpeace informing the agency that recent law-enforcement efforts have already damaged morale.
As I've said before, the goal here is not just to hurt morale, not just to slander, but more specifically to question the tax-exempt status of certain powerful environmental organizations.
I think it's far past time for the mainstream green movement to speak out about this publicly. They're letting their enemies define the terrain.
Terrorism laws are wrongly being used to round up eco-activists, says author Dean Kuipers
Police spy on climate activist while global warming goes unarrested
Comments
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AmericanErrorist Posted 7:14 am
03 Jan 2006
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UncleMoose Posted 10:36 am
03 Jan 2006
Apparently, in the early eighties, members of Earth First! sometimes sabotaged environmentally damaging projects directly. As time progressed, this became more wide-spread.
However, in the late eighties, the authorities began to catch on. Several Earth First! members were jailed, including EF!'s high profile founder Dave Foreman. Then in the early nineties, Judy Barry was car-bombed and then charged with transporting a bomb.
The bombing was somewhat of a turning point. A consensus emerged among Earth First!ers that, while sabotage was often necessary to protect the environment, those called to committ sabotage should do so outside of and away from Earth First!.
At the same time, a group called the "Earth Liberation Front" started committing acts of sabotage in the UK. Presumably, they were inspired by the example of the Animal Liberation Front, by then well established in Britain.
By the mid-nineties, acts of sabotage were being claimed by the ELF in the United States.
The website alluded to in the above article, http://www.earthliberationfront.com, does not even claim to be affiliated with the ELF. On the News page they explain that, "the owners, management, webmasters, affiliates, or other participants of this website are not spokespersons, members, or affiliates of The Earth Liberation Front in any way;" and further that "The intention of this web site is journalistic in intent: to inform and chronicle issues related to ELF."
They further explain that:
"* The Earth Liberation Front "ELF" is an underground movement with no leadership, membership or official spokesperson.
There is no ELF structure; "it" is non-hierarchical and there is no centralized organization or leadership.
There is no "membership" in the Earth Liberation Front.
Any individuals who committed arson or any other illegal acts under the ELF name are individuals who choose to do so under the banner of ELF and do so only driven by their personal conscience."
It is also important to note that, to date, no one has been physically hurt in an ELF action. If fact, one earlier pro-ELF website proclaimed that one could only claim an action for the ELF if no animals - human or otherwise - were hurt. (Sorry, I don't have the link for this - I think it no longer exists) This is quite a bit different than the practices of most other groups labeled terrorist. Of course, whether a group should be called terrorist depends on your definition of "terrorism."
While it is certainly possible that some ELF actions were committed by the FBI or industry to discredit the environmental movement and create a pretext for oppression, it is doubtful that all of them are. Would the wise-use activists or government agents really set fire to the headquarters of two major logging companies (Superior Lumber and Boise Cascade, if I recall) causing tens of millions of dollars of damage? Doubtful.
No, the reality is that some people are tired of seeing the things they love destroyed, feel the ecological situation to be very dire, and see the current political remedies as ineffective.
They have simply decided to take things into their own hands. "ELF" is just a convenient banner for acts of sabotage that, arguably, have been occuring since North America was colonized. (First by native peoples, then by disgruntled farmers, etc.)
Nor is this an isolated phenomena. The widely popular French farmer, Jose Bove, and his french farmer's union routinely sabotage GMO crops and multinational corporations, as do farmers' movements in India and other parts of the developing world.
Certainly, the mainstream environmental movement should speak out against government repression, and against the scare mongering of the anti-environmental movement, but we should also understand that groups like ELF are principled political actors pursuing similar ends, not mere criminals.
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JeromeAlicki Posted 7:11 pm
03 Jan 2006
Bill's friends stated that he was a man who treaded lightly on the Earth, "living frugally, respecting simplicity and maintaining harmony in his life", a man who connected with others through his love for wilderness.
Bill Rodgers was found dead in his jail cell with a plastic bag over his head. The FBI said that he was the mastermind behind arsons committed by the ecoterrorist group Earth Liberation Front. Bill Rodgers was 70 years old.
Rodgers was accused of burning the Two Elks Lodge, which included seven synchronized fires in October of 1998 near Vail, Colorado. The lodge was built on a mountaintop, near an area that was home to a federally-protected, threatened species of lynx. Ask yourself how difficult it would have been for a 63 year old man to start seven fires in the snow at that elevation. Bill Rodgers - if he did it - must have been in terrific physical condition, as any other senior citizen would have been gasping for breath in the cold and thin air.
I do not believe in the existence of E.L.F. I did a considerable amount of research in the 1990's on the topic of ecoterrorism and environmental extremism. I never saw any relationship between the groups in the Pacific Northwest that I studied and the supposedly extreme E.L.F. It is my assertion that E.L.F. simply does not, nor has it ever, existed.
I was a student at the University of Oregon in Eugene. Much of the research that I engaged in for my coursework was related to environmental activism in the Pacific Northwest and also the environmental justice movement on the west coast. I traveled extensively throughout the immense Willamette and Umpqua National Forests and the Kalmiopsis Wilderness. I learned of more than a dozen groups. Examples of groups that I came in contact with include "Earth First!" - which maintained an office above the farmers co-op in downtown Eugene - and also "Cascadia Forest Defenders." These groups opposed clearcut logging of Douglas Fir forests in the Pacific Northwest and the California Redwoods. There are still individuals putting their bodies on the line to block logging trucks on Forest Service roads.
I came to believe these were well intentioned individuals. In the face of what they saw as the colossal stupidity of corporate executives forced to decimate the forest to pay for junk bonds, these activists saw no other alternative but to chain themselves to logging equipment in an effort to save what little was left of the forests in Washington, Oregon and California. I had the opportunity to stand close and listen to the words of many of these activists. Many were also students, but many were working folk from the community.
In the years that I was involved in this endeavor in the Pacific Northwest, I never encountered anyone who was affiliated with or had knowledge of the so-called Earth Liberation Front. I never met a single activist who owned a copy of "EcoDefense." If there was an E.L.F. group or cell, certainly word of their presence would have been circulated among the activists who stood against the destruction of the ancient forests.
E.L.F. exists only as a concept, unlike Earth First! which actually had computers, produced a regular journal of its activities and sold t-shirts outside the university bookstore.
The Bush/Cheney Junta's War on Terror has turned against the American people. The War on Terror is a propaganda and public relations campaign that intends for the American people to hide in fear and submit to their militaristic and corrupt government. We have lost our constitutional rights as Americans. We have stupidly handed over our rights to the fascist dictator George Bush and his evil sidekick Dick Cheney, reprehensible fools who wear their Christianity as a shield to hide their deceit and treachery. The death of Bill Rodgers is proof that anyone who stands against this regime and the international energy corporations currently raping our land will be labeled a terrorist and will be imprisoned and killed.
I never met Bill Rodgers. Those who knew him well call him gentle and kind. I will always think of him as another victim of the Bush/Cheney regime. Another soul lost in the folly of poor leadership, bad judgment and sanctimonious platitudes. My heart goes out to those who loved him. I ask that he not be remembered for the crime he allegedly committed, but for his numerous acts of kindness and love.
Jerome Alicki
blackbearspeaks.blogspot.com
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UncleMoose Posted 11:29 pm
03 Jan 2006
The Times story also points out that:
"He was charged in the burning of a federal Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service facility outside Olympia, which caused $1.2 million in damage."
NOT the Vail Arsons.
If I recall, the APHIS facility was doing GMO tree test trials. (GMO trees could be very environmentally damaging if released)
He was listed as a suspect in other acts of sabotage - but not charged. (A clever way for the government to drag his reputation through the mud.) It is also unclear if the government had any real evidence.
It is probably true that the ELF does not exist as a group. The government's claim (also in the times article) that there ever was a meeting of ELF members is probably bunk.
But people ARE sabotaging environmentally damaging operations. Saying they don't exist is ridiculous.
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