In Defense of All Life - "You cannot control what is wild"
|
|
||||||||
|
 |
Posted on 12/01/2001 7:37:55 AM PST by Phil V.
Fighting eco-terrorism
The green threat?
Nov 29th 2001
From The Economist print edition
Violent environmentalists may soon start feeling the heat
ISLAMIC terrorism may be a distant threat for Shearer Lumber Products, a timber company based in Idaho. But eco-terrorism is a very real one. In November, the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), an underground organisation, gave warning that it had “spiked” trees in the Nez Perce national forest to protest against logging. (Spiking involves hiding metal bars in tree trunks, thereby crippling chain saws and, potentially, hurting people.) More such attacks are expected. How do they fit into America's war on terrorism?
The nation's forests have seen a sharp increase in violent incidents—equipment vandalised, people intimidated—over the past ten years. Shearer now carefully inspects every tree before cutting and has been using metal detectors to check every trunk being processed. Yet Ihor Mereszczak, of the Nez Perce Forest Service, says it has been hard to get the FBI's attention, and investigations have got nowhere.
The ELF is only one thread in a web of underground radical environmentalists. Its aim is to inflict as much financial pain as possible on organisations or people who, by its lights, are exploiting the environment. The ELF, though made up of anonymous cells, nonetheless operates a website offering tips on how to cause fires with electric timers. Until recently, it also had a public spokesman.
Together with the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), which operates along the same lines, the ELF is estimated to be responsible for over $45m-worth of damage in North America over the past few years. In 1998, it caused fires that did $12m-worth of damage in Vail, Colorado, to make the point that the ski resort's expansion was threatening places where lynxes live. Earlier this year, the ELF burned down the offices of a lumber company in Oregon. Since September 11th, the ALF and ELF have claimed responsibility for starting a fire at a primate research centre in New Mexico, releasing mink from an Iowa fur farm, and firebombing a federal corral for wild horses in California.
Are they terrorists? The two groups reject the label, claiming to take all precautions against harming “animals, whether humans or not”. But earlier this year Louis Freeh, the FBI's boss, listed both organisations among the most active domestic terrorist groups. Scott McInnis, the Republican congressman whose district includes Vail, argues it is only a matter of time before somebody gets hurt; he now expects the FBI to put in more resources.
The House subcommittee on forests, which Mr McInnis heads, will hold a hearing on eco-terrorism in February. Craig Rosebraugh, the ELF's spokesman until September, has been subpoenaed, after refusing to testify voluntarily. But Mr McInnis has annoyed some mainstream green groups by asking them to denounce the ELF's and ALF's methods. Greenpeace, for instance, says that its disapproval is self-evident, and resents being asked to express it. Mr McInnis still wants their answer by December 1st, but the war on eco-terrorism is off to a rocky start.
As well they should. Long over-due.
Appears to me that ELF is advocating arson. Among other crimes. Amazing the site is still up.
Fighting eco-terrorism
The green threat?
Nov 29th 2001
From The Economist print edition
Violent environmentalists may soon start feeling the heat
ISLAMIC terrorism may be a distant threat for Shearer Lumber Products, a timber company based in Idaho. But eco-terrorism is a very real one. In November, the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), an underground organisation, gave warning that it had "spiked" trees in the Nez Perce national forest to protest against logging. (Spiking involves hiding metal bars in tree trunks, thereby crippling chain saws and, potentially, hurting people.) More such attacks are expected. How do they fit into America's war on terrorism?
The nation's forests have seen a sharp increase in violent incidents(equipment vandalised, people intimidated) over the past ten years. Shearer now carefully inspects every tree before cutting and has been using metal detectors to check every trunk being processed. Yet Ihor Mereszczak, of the Nez Perce Forest Service, says it has been hard to get the FBI's attention, and investigations have got nowhere.
The ELF is only one thread in a web of underground radical environmentalists. Its aim is to inflict as much financial pain as possible on organisations or people who, by its lights, are exploiting the environment. The ELF, though made up of anonymous cells, nonetheless operates a website offering tips on how to cause fires with electric timers. Until recently, it also had a public spokesman.
Together with the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), which operates along the same lines, the ELF is estimated to be responsible for over $45m-worth of damage in North America over the past few years. In 1998, it caused fires that did $12m-worth of damage in Vail, Colorado, to make the point that the ski resort's expansion was threatening places where lynxes live. Earlier this year, the ELF burned down the offices of a lumber company in Oregon. Since September 11th, the ALF and ELF have claimed responsibility for starting a fire at a primate research centre in New Mexico, releasing mink from an Iowa fur farm, and firebombing a federal corral for wild horses in California.
Are they terrorists? The two groups reject the label, claiming to take all precautions against harming "animals, whether humans or not". But earlier this year Louis Freeh, the FBI's boss, listed both organisations among the most active domestic terrorist groups. Scott McInnis, the Republican congressman whose district includes Vail, argues it is only a matter of time before somebody gets hurt; he now expects the FBI to put in more resources.
The House subcommittee on forests, which Mr McInnis heads, will hold a hearing on eco-terrorism in February. Craig Rosebraugh, the ELF's spokesman until September, has been subpoenaed, after refusing to testify voluntarily. But Mr McInnis has annoyed some mainstream green groups by asking them to denounce the ELF's and ALF's methods. Greenpeace, for instance, says that its disapproval is self-evident, and resents being asked to express it. Mr McInnis still wants their answer by December 1st, but the war on eco-terrorism is off to a rocky start.
D
|
|
||||||||
|
|
I don't think the ELF has a purpose other than the destruction of the US.
Well, need I say more, they are confused as well. What has the abolition of the "profit motive" done for the world? Simple question that morons like these will never answer...this supports my thesis that they seek destruction in a nihilistic sense. ANd I bet they have wealthy parents.
. . . they have wealthy sustainable parents.
Spikes are there to damage the 'head-rig' at the local saw mill. The head-rig is a high tensile steel band about 3 feet across and 20 or so feet long (in a band) that spins at many feet per second. Hitting a spike with the head-rig is like setting off a small frag bomb, steel and carbide bits fly all over and many workers can be injured or even killed.
Just getting the facts straight.
Genocide is the word for exterminating a group of people; ELF is the word for exterminating all the people.
PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. FRANK RIGGS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIAChairman McCollum, Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to testify on the serious matter of ecoterrorism and its effect on the people, local economies and communities of this nation.
I am the Representative of the First Congressional District of California. The First District stretches from the Napa Valley in the south, along 350 miles of California's North Coast to the Oregon border. To put that in perspective, the district is twenty percent larger than the State of Massachusetts. The North Coast is known for its abundance of Redwood and Douglas Fir forests. Today, as in generations past, men and women come to this place to make a living as foresters and loggers and mill workers. These environmental stewards manage the forests with love for the environment and rational science to provide wood for our nation and a future for their children.
Unfortunately, times have changed and the work has become dangerous due to the radical philosophies of so-called environmentalists. These extremists do not only target loggers; they target any one who expresses a different opinion or philosophy than they do.
On October 16, 1997, my Eureka, California District Office was rocked by what sounded like a thunderous explosion. In fact, the sound was that of a 500–pound tree stump being dumped off a truck onto the office foyer floor. Upon responding to the horrific sound, my two female staff members were greeted by the visage of several Earth First! terrorists, one wearing a black ski mask, and another wearing dark goggles and a hood.
The masked marauders—wearing combat boots and dressed in black from head to toe—and their cohorts, after the initial ''stump drop,''then dumped four large garbage bags of sawdust, pine needles and leaves all over the congressional office, over computers, desks and the floor. All the while, one of them videotaped the attack with a handheld video camera, making a point to get right into the faces of each of the two staff members for ''close-up'' shots.
After the invasion, the maurders, via walkie-talkie, called in the ''peaceful'' protesters: four harmless looking women who would—once the masked men left—be the ''public face'' of the ''protest,'' left behind for the media to cover. For the next two hours, these women would then sit around the tree stump with their arms locked in a metal device designed for the sole purpose of resisting arrest.
And why was my office targeted? The trespassers were protesting the acquisition of the Headwaters Forest, a 3500–acre tract of old growth Redwood forest. A private company, Pacific Lumber, which has logged in Humboldt County, California for over 100 years, currently owns the parcel. In exchange for their land, the Federal government and the State of California, in a bipartisan pact, agreed to compensate Pacific Lumber $380 million in taxpayer funds to forever preserve 7,500 acres of the precious forest and some surrounding land. I had a hand in crafting the deal, as did Senator Diane Feinstein, and that made me a target.
The environmentalists, specifically Earth First!, wanted 60,000 acres preserved: a amount that would end all logging in Humboldt County, and leave over 1,000 people out of work in an already depressed area where unemployment hovers over 10%. But Earth First! wanted more and they were determined to terrorize any one who opposed them.
I believe the incident in my District Office is not a small isolated incident. It is the tip of the iceberg and endemic of Earth First!: an organization the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has characterized as a ''militant environmental group.''
Earth First! is an organization which, while purporting to practice nonviolence, outwardly advertises ''monkeywrenching'' on the Earth First! web site. Monkeywrenching, also euphemistically called ''ecotage,'' is the practice of sabotaging logging equipment. The web site also refers to such destruction of private property as ''unauthorized heavy equipment maintenance.'' Earth First! also advocates tree spiking, the act of driving a metal spike into a tree to damage a saw, or outright vandalism. The results of monkeywrenching vary. Most of the time it causes the cessation of logging activities. Often times it causes property damage.
In Ukiah, California, which is in my Congressional District, it killed a logger. Too many times these activities have caused grave injury and even the loss of life. Many a rigger, logger and treefeller have suffered injury because of a severed hydraulic line or tree spike. Yet the Earth First! website and the Earth First! Journal actually advertise and sell Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching.
Earth First! members are not simply backwoods vigilantes or merry pranksters. They are members of a highly organized, nationwide movement bent on the destruction of the entire natural resource industry and the families and communities bound to that livelihood. Earth First! has put the''rights'' of the tree and the insect before the rights of the humans.
Full congressional testimony HERE
Corner all these little rats and we may all find our paychecks going further. If they want to accomplish something, let them go out and discuss their positions and see if they can get others to agree. If they agree, they can change the laws, if they don't agree, maybe these guys ought to rethink their positions.
Actually, I suspect that the watermelon terrorists would settle for either case---injuring the one guy with the chainsaw, or many at the sawmill. In one case the eco-radical wins, in the other, he wins bigger--but for him it is a "win-win" situation. For the logging industry, of course, it is "lose-lose".
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
