May 7, 2006
IT'S NEVER TERRORISM WHEN YOUR SIDE DOES IT:
Is ecosabotage terrorism? (Hal Bernton, 5/07/06, Seattle Times)
This year, the Bush administration has touted the arrests of terrorists of a different kind — homegrown militants who have embarked on arson attacks to protest treatment of animals and the environment.During the past three years alone, FBI counterterrorism agents have conducted at least 190 investigations into property crimes claimed by the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and the Animal Liberation Front (ALF). None of the crimes injured or killed people.
"Terrorism is terrorism — no matter what the motive," declared FBI director Robert Mueller on Jan. 20, when he announced the indictment of 11 people in an alleged conspiracy that involved 17 attacks. Those include arsons at a ski resort in Vail, Colo., a horse slaughterhouse in Oregon, a federal wildlife research center in Olympia and the University of Washington Center for Urban Horticulture.
More indictments are expected in the months ahead as federal grand juries meet in Seattle, Eugene, Denver, San Francisco and other cities. Most of those indicted earlier this year could face decades in federal prison. A few may face life sentences, if tried and convicted.
Some balk at putting the terrorism label on activists who have targeted property — not people. [...]
"You couple spying on political dissenters with grand jury subpoenas and a series of arrests, it's had a huge effect," said Alejandro Queral, executive director of the Northwest Constitutional Rights Center. "There is a serious danger of chilling dissenting points of view."
The point is to chill those whose views are so transgressive. If anyone was interested in their cause wouldn't need to resort to violence. Posted by Orrin Judd at May 7, 2006 8:10 AM
The whole article is incoherent, listing the reasons to classify the activities it covers as terrorism at the same time as it questions the need to do so.
The writer also slides past the fact that attitudes (and laws) in response to terrorism changed in the US after 9/11. The examples he cites of similar behavior which were not prosecuted as terrorism occurred before that date. He wants post-9/11 domestic terrorism exempted from anti-terror measures because pre-9/11 domestic terrorism wasn't subject to them. It's a 'those guys got away with it, so we should be allowed to' plea.
What this really reflects is that while attitudes and laws in response to terrorism changed after 9/11 in the US generally, they apparently didn't change at all in the Seattle circles this journalist moves in (or at the Southern Poverty Law Center). They want to be able to keep inciting violence and arson, and if it just weren't for these pesky new laws they would be able to.
George Orwell said that leftist politics is like having to watch people play with fire who don't even know that fire is hot. Still true today.
Posted by: ZF at May 7, 2006 10:29 AMGood thing that a plan to destroy property has never gone wrong and injured people.
Posted by: David Cohen at May 7, 2006 11:13 AMWhat the civil libertines never figure out is that some "dissenting points of view" demand to be chilled by their very nature.
Eco-terrorists are religious fanatics, the most dangerous kind. Gaia, the Mikado, Allah: a religious fanatic is a religious fanatic.
Posted by: Lou Gots at May 7, 2006 4:00 PMPerhaps I'm a "civil libertine," but I hope the spying and subpoenas and arrests aren't because of their views, but because of their actions.
Posted by: PapayaSF at May 8, 2006 1:17 AMThey aren't.
Posted by: oj at May 8, 2006 7:16 AM