Free Republic

Earth First! made headlines with its tree-spiking in the 1980s, but the guy who helped make the anti-logging tactic famous didn't invent it. Mike Roselle even titled one chapter of his new book "Why I Quit Spiking Trees." In it, the co-founder of Earth First!, the Rainforest Action Network and the Ruckus Society described how the practice brought old-growth timber cutting to national awareness, but became a public relations disaster for the protesters. "I think the Wobblies can take credit for it if they want, but it's been around as long as logging," Roselle said, referring to the Industrial Workers...

"Luckily, the effect is expected to be relatively small, and shouldn’t induce any negative feedback in the planet’s climate. It just needs to be taken into account when interpreting shifts in Earth’s axis."

By Megan Sweeney KPIC News Video ROSEBURG, Ore. -- In what is believed to be connected to the logging protest near Reedsport, patrol officers and detectives responded to the Home Depot in Roseburg after 40-50 protesters entered the business. According to police, the group used the store's public address system, moved displays around and put up a banner that said "Dam the Home Depot, Save Chile's Rivers." Several subjects were taken away from the property but no arrests were made. Police believe this protest is connected with the logging protest near Reedsport. Members of the groups Earth First! and Cascadia...

See how we should celebrate at the link

JERUSALEM (Map, News) - An American demonstrator was critically wounded Friday in a clash between protesters and Israeli troops over Israel's West Bank separation barrier. Peace activists with the International Solidarity Movement said Tristan Anderson, of the Oakland, Calif., area, was struck in the head with a tear gas canister fired by Israeli troops. The military and the Tel Aviv hospital where Anderson was taken had no details on how he was hurt. "He's in critical condition, anesthetized and on a ventilator and undergoing imaging tests," said Orly Levi, a spokeswoman at the Tel Hashomer hospital. She described Anderson's condition...

Sarah Palin questions global warming science and favors drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. She also opposed a state initiative that would have banned metal mines in her state from discharging pollution into salmon streams, and dropped a lawsuit intended to prevent polar bears from being listed as a threatened species. Not that any of these things are surprising considering that she’s a Republican, but the party’s questionable pick for VP is governor of Alaska, where the ANWR is located, and the state that has already seen the most dramatic effects of global warming. From the Sydney...

While the remains of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York and Washington, DC's Pentagon are "ground zero" for the horrible destruction wrought by foreign terrorists, the nation's forests, research labs, resorts and housing developments have long been "ground zero" for domestic environmentally-driven "ecoterrorists." There may be diabolical links between the two forces. There is a strong possibility that Animal Liberation Front (ALF) terrorists have come into possession of Anthrax as the result of having invaded laboratories that have been researching the disease. This certainly merits investigation as a source for the Anthrax attacks. The fact ...

Unable to turn a profit from investing in such green technologies as biofuels and reclaiming rubber from old tires, EarthFirst Technologies, based in Tampa, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The company's latest setback comes after months of financial problems. Documents filed in bankruptcy court Friday reveal that EarthFirst owes at least 20 companies hundreds of thousands of dollars. In 2007, EarthFirst generated $18.3-million in revenue, but couldn't overcome setbacks in its biofuel business or surmount millions in operational costs, bringing its year-end net loss to $9.1-million. In January, EarthFirst dodged a big bullet after a lawsuit filed by investment...

<p>Fire officials found three separate “points of origin,� all near the intersection of Silverado Canyon Road and Santiago Canyon Road. Two were on one side of the road, and the third was on the other. “Whoever did this knew what they were doing,” said Kris Concepcion, a fire authority battalion chief. Also, the fire traveled 3 miles in its first 20 minutes when it was ignited about 6 p.m. Sunday, he said.</p>

The Alabama Department of Homeland Security has taken down a Web site it operated that included gay rights and anti-war organizations in a list of groups that could include terrorists. The Web site identified different types of terrorists, and included a list of groups it believed could spawn terrorists. The list also included environmentalists, animal rights advocates and abortion opponents. The director of the department, Jim Walker, said his agency received a number of calls and e-mails from people who said they felt the site unfairly targeted certain people just because of their beliefs. He said he plans to put...

MONTGOMERY, ALA. — The Alabama Department of Homeland Security has taken down a website it operated that included gay-rights and antiwar organizations in a list of groups that could include terrorists. The website identified different types of terrorists and included a list of groups it suggested could spawn terrorists. The list also included environmentalists, animal rights advocates and abortion opponents. Howard Bayliss, chairman of the gay-rights group Equality Alabama, said he didn't understand why gay-rights advocates would be on the list. "Our group has only had peaceful demonstrations. I'm deeply concerned we've been profiled in this discriminatory matter," Bayliss said....

A new worldwide movement backed by celebrities, musicians, politicians and business leaders is aiming to reverse the effects of global warming over the next decade. Global Cool launched in London and LA today and is calling on one billion people to reduce their carbon emissions by just one tonne a year, for the next 10 years

Jennifer Kolar and Lacey Phillabaum seem unlikely criminals. Well-educated young women passionate about environmental causes, they share a love of the outdoors and similar backgrounds. Both grew up in Spokane and attended the same public high school. Those who know Phillabaum call her bright, outspoken, sometimes in-your-face but never dull. She was a skilled debater in high school and college and once worked for a well-regarded non-profit that promotes sustainable agriculture. Kolar Kolar studied under one of the nation's top atmospheric scientists while pursuing a doctoral degree and had the makings of a good scientist, her adviser said, but her...

A federal grand jury in Denver has indicted four people on eight counts of arson for a series of eco-terrorism fires set at the Vail ski area in 1998. Those indicted are: Chelsea Dawn Gerlach, 29, Stanislas Gregory Meyerhoff, 28, Josephine Sunshine Overaker, 31, and Rebecca Jeanette Rubin, 33. Gerlach and Meyerhoff are presently in federal custody in Oregon, facing separate arson charges. The whereabouts of Overaker and Rubin are unknown. The Two Elks Lodge and other structures on Vail Mountain were burned to the ground on Oct. 19, 1998. Damage was estimated at $12 million. A group called the...

LYONS — Adam Durand was sentenced yesterday to six months in jail for trespassing on Wegmans’ Wolcott egg farm while he and other animal rights activists filmed conditions there in 2004. Durand was immediately taken to the Wayne County Jail, but his attorney, who called the sentence excessive, said he may appeal. Judge Dennis Kehoe, who called Durand the mastermind of a blatant and carefully orchestrated crime, fined him $1,500 yesterday and also sentenced him to one year of probation and 100 hours of community service. “You entered your victim’s hen house without permission,” Kehoe told Durand. “You did this...

SAN DIEGO (AP) - Federal prosecutors on Wednesday unsealed an indictment charging an environmental activist with teaching others how to start an arson fire during a 2003 lecture in San Diego, where the costliest act of ecoterrorism in U.S. history had just occurred. Prosecutors said Rodney A. Coronado gave the lecture 15 hours after a $50 million fire destroyed a massive apartment complex in a north San Diego neighborhood. The indictment, however, does not link Coronado to that fire. Coronado, 39, was arrested Wednesday in Tucson, Ariz., on a charge of distribution of information relating to explosives, destructive devices and...

Three environmental activists were cooking up plastic explosives and had planned to test a device the day they were arrested, federal prosecutors alleged Wednesday as they indicted them. The three face five to 20 years in federal prison if they are convicted of conspiring to use fire or explosives to damage property. The suspects planned assaults this spring in the name of the Earth Liberation Front, a 'loosey-goosey, sort of mist-of-the-fog kind of an organization' of environmental activists, U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott said. Eric McDavid, 28, Zachary Jensen, 20, and Lauren Weiner, 20, remain in jail. They could enter a...

After a delay of nearly a month, a Flagstaff woman accused of being connected with the 1998 firebombing of a logging company in Oregon has been released from jail. Kendall Tankersley, 28, also known as Sarah Harvey, was released from an Oregon jail Jan. 10 on $150,000 bond. She is back in Flagstaff, ready to begin taking two classes at Northern Arizona University. Tankersley, a former employee at the university, was indicted in November by a federal grand jury in Oregon. She is accused of attempted arson and arson, acting as a lookout, in connection with a fire at U.S....

An employee of Northern Arizona University was arrested and charged Thursday with being a member of an ecoterrorism group and setting fires... Her arrest, one of six across the country and two in Arizona, marks the culmination of a nine-year investigation by the FBI and dozens of other agencies into several arsons in the Pacific Northwest, many of which were claimed to be the work of the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front. Kendall Tankersley, 28, also known as Sarah Kendall Harvey, stood shackled and bound in front of U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Aspey in Flagstaff as a...

Rioting by Muslim youths over the last two weeks that has spread to 300 communities and resulted in the burning of thousands of motor vehicles was hailed by Earth First! as a positive step toward environmental protection. "Privately owned and operated automobiles are a prime source of the greenhouse gases that are leading to catastrophic global warming," said Joshua Greenpants, spokesman for the environmental activist group Earth First!. "The destruction of these vehicles will reduce these dangerous emissions." Greenpants said his organization is exploring options for extending the riots. "Most disturbances like this peter out after a short while," said...

Three members of an environmental activist group face numerous charges after being arrested Tuesday morning for disrupting the National Coal Corp. shareholder's meeting in West Knoxville. The men were arrested near the Holiday Inn off Cedar Bluff Road after about 25 protesters and a Knox County Sheriff's Office deputy engaged in a scuffle, according to court records. John E. Johnson, 35, of Whitwell, Tenn., faces charges that include aggravated assault, incitement to riot, burglary and disrupting a meeting or procession, according to warrants filed by KCSO deputy Thomas Walker. Sequoia McDowell, 20, of Asheville, N.C., is charged with aggravated riot,...

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- Environmental and animal rights activists who have turned to arson and explosives are the nation's top domestic terrorism threat, an FBI official told a Senate committee on Wednesday. Groups such as the Animal Liberation Front, the Earth Liberation Front and Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty are "way out in front" in terms of damage and number of crimes, said John Lewis, the FBI's deputy assistant director for counterterrorism. "There is nothing else going on in this country over the last several years that is racking up the high number of violent crimes and terrorist actions," Lewis said. ALF...

Pepper-sprayed Humboldt activists awarded $1 each by jury By JUSTIN M. NORTON, Associated Press Writer Thursday, April 28, 2005 Humboldt County and Eureka law enforcement officers were found liable Thursday of using excessive force when they swabbed pepper spray on the eyes of nonviolent logging protesters during a 1997 protest. The jury only awarded the eight plaintiffs $1 each in the case. The was the third trial after the first two ended in deadlocked juries in 1998 and 2004. The plaintiffs laughed and hugged in the courthouse hallways after the verdicts were read and applauded when jurors left their chambers....

TOMBSTONE - The self-described "radical environmental" organization Earth First! will hold its winter organizers' conference today through Monday near Middlemarch Road in the Dragoon Mountains. Attendees will begin gathering in their campsites this afternoon, with dinner planned at 6 p.m. Saturday's sessions are devoted to "Alienation and Connection." A trip is planned early Sunday morning to the Willcox Playa to observe sandhill cranes, followed by an afternoon sessions on how to work on environmental campaigns with indigenous groups and "rural folk." The latter session will be conducted by local residents Jean Eisenhower and Asante Riverwind of the Chiracahua-Dragoon Alliance. The...

Kate Coleman knew she'd be opening a can of worms when she wrote a biography of environmental activist Judi Bari, but she didn't know how bad it could get. A lifelong liberal, former Yippie, affirmative action advocate and John Kerry supporter, Coleman is finding herself labeled a "right-wing thug" and "character assassin" by Bari partisans for the book, "The Secret Wars of Judi Bari: A Car Bomb, the Fight for the Redwoods, and the End of Earth First!" (Encounter Books). "She calls herself a leftist. That is a joke," says Darryl Cherney, the man who was riding with Bari in...

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOENIX - Three men have been indicted for allegedly trying to disrupt plans to capture and kill mountain lions near Tucson last spring. A federal indictment charges EarthFirst member Matthew Crozier, 32, of Prescott and Rodney Adam Coronado, 38, of Tucson with conspiracy to impede or injure an officer, which is a felony. They also are charged with trespassing on national forest land, interfering with a forest officer and violation of a special closure order - all misdemeanors. Esquire magazine writer John Hammond Richardson, of Katonah, N.Y., also is charged in the indictment with the same three...

Wed Oct 20, 8:39 PM ET Supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites), D-Mass, walk through signs which have been left behind after a rally at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh Wednesday, Oct. 20, 2004. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian)

Town of Waukesha - Motorcyclist Daniel Buckel was within 10 feet when he saw the potential disaster stretched across a dark and foggy rural road just ahead. Disbelief turned to fear, then anger, as Buckel's 2-year-old motorcycle hit a barrier of kitchen-variety plastic wrap that was wound thickly from traffic pole to traffic pole on opposite sides of Guthrie Road, south of Highway I. The clear plastic trap, which was 3 to 4 feet above the two-lane road south of Waukesha, sent both Buckel and his passenger, girlfriend Theresa Brzykcy, into a bloody slide across the asphalt. "It's appalling, and...

Sure, football is a violence-glorifying testosterone orgy that should be banned. But that doesn't mean that you can't enjoy it when you're not out spiking trees or protesting your local gas station as a pollution- mongering crime against the Earth. But when you're watching 22 steroid- chomping overmuscled monsters (i.e, men) try to beat each other senseless in a series of imperialist land grabs, how do you know who to cheer for? We have the answer: Ranking the entire NFL in terms of What We Know Is Right. Our General Principles: Any animal is better than any human. Endangered animals...

From: "Liberty Matters News Service" Liberty_Matters_News_Service@mail.vresp.com> Subject: FBI Nabs Seven Eco-terrorists Date: Thu, 03 Jun 2004 22:20:19 +0000 FBI Nabs Seven Eco-terrorists The FBI has rounded up seven suspects accused of a variety of terrorist acts aimed at employees of a New Jersey pharmaceutical testing company and six companies doing business with Huntingdon Life Sciences. The suspects, all in their twenties, were indicted on charges of engaging in a conspiracy to violate a federal law that bans terrorism against animal enterprises. If convicted, they face a maximum penalty of three years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Additionally, the president...

Long before John Forbes Kerry was cashing in on his JFK initials for a run at the U.S. presidency, his future wife was beating a path to the front door of the United Nations. In fact, through her Tides Foundation, Teresa Heinz-Kerry gave the United Nations an up-and-running, massive, transnational electronic communications network, the Institute for Global Communications, IGC for short. IGC is one of the Tides Foundation’s largest ongoing projects. IGC and its offshoot, the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) are divisions of the 501©, non-profit, charitable institution, funded by Heinz-Kerry, currency speculator George Soros, journalist Bill Moyers and...

<p>The federal government has quietly agreed to pay $2 million to settle a civil rights lawsuit filed by two leaders of the environmental group Earth First who were arrested and branded eco-terrorists by the FBI after they were injured when a bomb exploded in their car in Oakland 14 years ago.</p>

<p>The two pipe bomb explosions at an Emeryville biotechnology firm last week were part of a surge of extremism by animal rights and environmental militants that activists predict will increase as fringes of the movement grow more frustrated with peaceful protest.</p>

When Aunt Maxine, age 83, fell and broke her hip at the end of June, it was up to niece Sharon Michaels to care for her kitty cat. Jewels the black cat liked the Michaels family's home in the woods deep in the Jacoby Creek watershed - until, a week or so into her stay, the neighbor's dog wandered into the yard. Startled, Jewels did the only sensible thing - something dogs can't - which is to climb way up a handy redwood tree. And there she stayed. Even with the dog's departure, Jewels remained on her lofty limb perch,...

SAN DIEGO, CALIF. – THE TERRORIST-IGNITED FLAMES, 200 FEET HIGH, produced an inferno so hot that in apartments blocks away windows blew out and plastic window shades melted. More than 400 terrified neighbors fled for their lives through a rain of grapefruit-sized fireballs into what moments before had been the peaceful 3 a.m. darkness of University Town Center, a northern suburb of San Diego, early last Friday. “It looked like sunrise,” said San Diego city Fire Chief Jeff Bowman of what he saw while racing northward to the blaze. “An enormous orange glow covered the entire sky.” The quick response...

<p>WASHINGTON TOWNSHIP -- A radical environmental group opposed to sprawl is claiming credit for fires that burned two houses in a Macomb County development.</p> <p>The June 4 fires caused about $700,000 damage to a pair of nearly completed houses in the Willow Ridge development in Macomb's Washington Township.</p>

During its last memorable visit to northeastern Minnesota, the environmental activist group Earth First! protested the cutting of 6,000 red pines at the Little Alfie timber site, blocked logging roads and sparked a 15-month controversy that had to be settled in federal court. So when area lumber companies learned that Earth First! was holding its annual Summer Rendezvous this week along the Caribou Trail, some contractors and loggers virtually boarded up shop -- hiring extra security, meeting with law enforcement officers and, in at least one case, purposely scaling down business to stay as anonymous as possible. Some of the...

<p>A former Santa Cruz County tree-sitter who calls himself ``Rampage'' has been sentenced to three years in state prison for possessing the makings of a Molotov cocktail.</p> <p>Matthew Gordon Lamont, 21, of Long Beach, was arrested last year in La Habra after he drove past a Moose Lodge set to host a meeting of white supremacists celebrating Hitler's birthday.</p>

From Instapundit.com: THE EARTH FIRST! PROTEST AGAINST WAR that I reported below drew a spontaneous counterprotest, described by reader John Jenkins who was kind enough to send along a photo: "Thought you'd be interested - it appears that someone decided to "liberate" a half-dozen or so of the Earth First group's NO WAR IN IRAQ signs that they had out today. A few hours later, they were returned to their original locations, but with a few changes... This was done to the sounds of honking and cheering from many others in vehicles along Kingston Pike and down the ramp to...

One of the great unknowns following the collapse of Northwest timber cutting through the 1990s was what happened to thousands of loggers, sawmill workers and others who lost their jobs. Researchers mining a decade's worth of obscure state employment records have unearthed an answer, and it's not pretty: From Our Advertiser More than half the 60,000 workers who held jobs in the wood products industry at the start of the 1990s had left it by 1998. And almost half of those who left disappeared from work rolls altogether -- probably moving to another state, retiring or going unemployed. Roughly 18,000...

Today I became One of Those People I discussed in yesterday’s Bleat, one of those sad fools who actually thinks he can make a dent in the accepted conventions of the educational establishment. Today at Toddler class the big book of activities had not only information on upcoming Peace Marches, it had literature from the Million Mom March. And there were MMM stickers on the handout table. I’m not saying that material like this should be brutally repressed. No. But either include handouts from other points of view, or - and I’m speaking as a wild idealist here - confine...

JACKSON, Wyoming - Dr. Bruce Hayse doesn't look like a tin-pot dictator. He favors tropical shirts and Western boots, not camo fatigues and a chestful of medals. He drives a muddy truck, not an armored limousine. So why is this middle-aged family physician living on the summit of cowboy chic in Wyoming recruiting his own army 8,000 miles (12,900 kilometers) away in the remote and wretched Central African Republic? "Don't call it an army," Hayse said, wincing. How else to describe 400 soldiers brandishing AK-47s? Militia? Mercenaries? Military? "All of the M-words are bad, too," he admonished. "It's an anti-poaching...

<p>CORRALITOS, Calif.(AP) - A man with the environmental activist group Earth First! has died after a 50-foot fall from a redwood tree in which he'd lived for several weeks.</p> <p>Rescue personnel were called to the scene of a logging operation in the Ramsey Gulch area about 20-miles south of San Jose on Tuesday night after loggers heard moans coming from the area where a group of tree-sitters has been camped since August, the group said. It was unclear how long the injured man had been on the ground.</p>

Here it is folks! It's finally up. In the words of the Steve the BillBoard guy... "This is gonna cause a $hit Storm..." Enjoy EBUCK

Lightning Ignites New Fires in Central Oregon 07/24/2002 By AP and KGW Staff Nearly 1,000 lightning strikes hit central Oregon yesterday afternoon and last night igniting several new fires across the state. Firefighters are now chasing the new wildfires, including one that has prompted the voluntary evacuation of campgrounds on Suttle and Blue lakes northwest of Sisters. Heavy lift helicopters are set to begin attacking the Cache Mountain fire this morning, said David Widmark, spokesman for the Northwest Interagency Coodination Center in Portland. Smoke billows skyward and spreads east near Summer Lake, Ore., Tuesday. (AP Photo) The Cache Mountain fire...

National Guard troops mop up Winter Fire to free experienced crews By JEFF BARNARD The Associated Press PAISLEY, Ore. (AP) -- Their cots lined up 12 inches apart, and olive drab tents tautly pitched in a grassy field, National Guard troops tossed footballs, listened to rock and roll and called home on cell phones as they waited to join the battle against forest fires burning across Oregon. Fresh from training after being called up by Gov. John Kitzhaber, 250 members of the 82nd Armored Cavalry out of Redmond were scheduled to begin mopping up hot spots and smoking stumps in...

Forest defenders in southern Oregon have taken the struggle to save Peak to the next level. People are now occupying treesits to make a stand for some of the last remaining native forests in Oregon. The Mazama Forest Defenders take action to resist the Peak timber sale, the replacement volume program, and the continued destruction of our last native forests. Activists are occupying tree-sits in the Peak timber sale to resist the imminent logging of this ecologically important native forest. The construction of platforms high in the canopy of trees marked for cutting follows a multi-faceted grassroots campaign to end...

U.S. Forest Service law enforcement officers have blocked resupplies of food and water to a woman who climbed a tree in the Willamette National Forest to protest old growth logging. Officers intend to arrest the woman when she comes down and charge her with interfering with an agricultural operation, a Class A misdemeanor under state law, District Ranger Rick Scott said Monday. "It's up to her to decide when she wants to come down," Scott said. The woman, who goes by "Basil," has spent the past two weeks on a platform suspended about 70 feet up a large Douglas fir....

PORTLAND, Ore. – If you are looking for a way to while away those hot summer days, you might be interested in Green Anarchy Tour, coming to "urban hells" throughout the country this summer. The tour begins in Ashland, Ore., Wednesday and travels through California and the Southwest before making it to Washington, D.C., in August. The purpose of the tour, according to its sponsors, is "to destroy civilization on this stolen land." Green Anarchy Tour is a chance for "environmental" activists, animal "rights" activists, anarchists and urban hell-dwellers of all stripes to gather together to enjoy the musical stylings...

BREAKING NEWS: Downtown Portland Building in Lockdown 07/08/2002 By TERESA BELL, kgw.com Staff Protestors with the radical environmental group Earth First! forced the closure of a 19-story office building in downtown Portland. Several police officers are on the scene and the high-rise building at 200 SW Market Street is in lockdown. The activists say they are targeting a bank located in the building that they believe funds old growth timber sales in Oregon. Umpqua Bank is located on the 19th floor. At least nine police cars are on the scene and witnesses say it looks as though they have made...