Free Republic

5/24/2007, 6:59 p.m. PT EUGENE, Ore. (AP) — A federal judge Thursday sentenced Animal Liberation Front arsonist Kevin Tubbs to prison for more than 12 years, rejecting arguments that he was a minor player just trying to save animals and protect the earth. U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken declared that four of the nine fires Tubbs was involved in — a forest ranger station, a police substation, a dealership selling SUVs and a tree farm — were acts of terrorism intended to influence the conduct of the government or retaliate for government acts. "Fear and intimidation can play no part...

Defense attorneys expressed outrage Tuesday when federal prosecutors compared 10 Earth Liberation Front arsonists who are awaiting sentencing to Ku Klux Klan arsonists. The six men and four women, branded eco-terrorists, have pleaded guilty to charges related to 20 fires set in five Western states from 1996 to 2001 that caused $40 million of damage. Targets included the Vail ski resort, wild horse corrals, National Forest ranger stations, meat packing plants, research laboratories, lumber company offices and a tree farm. The 10 are to be sentenced starting next week. Federal prosecutors asked Judge Ann Aiken that a so-called terrorism enhancement...

SEE THE YOUTUBE MOCKING POLITICAL CORRECTNESS Our moral outrage deficit By Dateline D.C. Sunday, April 8, 2007 WASHINGTON Political correctness now is censoring decisions on what was once known and feared across the world as America's moral outrage. Twenty years ago, environmental activists seeking to preserve our forests randomly booby-trapped trees that were to be felled for lumber. How to design and "plant" these and other lethal traps became a book that was publicized on radio and television. The activists, defending their world for their grandchildren and posterity, were lionized. And despite the maiming of sawmill workers, book sales...

When did "Climate Change" replace "Global Warming"?So the Democrats in Congress are taking up "climate change". I must've heard that phrase "climate change" a dozen times in the news reports, but I don't think I heard the phrase "global warming" a single time. Are the liberals so afraid of the reaction to the phrase "global warming" that they are now shying away from it? When did this happen? Did I miss the memo?

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society ship Farley Mowat is now officially a pirate vessel. We are at sea without a flag, in search of illegal whaling operations in hostile and remote waters at the bottom of the world. The Farley Mowat cleared Australian Customs in Hobart, Tasmania on December 29, 2006 only hours before the nation of Belize struck our flag. The Belize registry had only been issued ten days before on December 19, 2006 The Belize registry was sought after Britain pulled the registry in early December the same day it was issued. In October, the Farley Mowat, registered...

Members of the ecoterrorism gang that torched buildings on Vail Mountain in 1998 will be sentenced in April, a federal judge ordered today. At a hearing in U.S. District Court in Eugene, Ore., two key members of the gang formally pleaded guilty to federal arson charges, although they already had admitted their role in the multimillion-dollar fires. They destroyed several mountaintop structures including the popular Two Elk Lodge, a restaurant that has been rebuilt. During the 10-minute hearing, Chelsea Gerlach and Stanislas Meyerhoff, both 29, acknowledged their guilt when asked by Judge Ann Aiken. Gerlach responded "yes," and Meyerhoff said,...

See for example this thread first. Eco-freaks who torched buildings in Vail next Spring will be sent off to Jail They "lodged" their complaint --and now the lodge AIN'T! It's enough to make bleeding hearts wail.

Schumacher Furs & Outerwear, after 111 years of business and one solid year of fervent animal-rights protests, is hanging it up in Portland. Owner Gregg Schumacher, who depicts the city's core as dangerous and not conducive to retailers, said Tuesday that he's moving his shop to the suburbs, though he wouldn't say where. "We're leaving downtown Portland because we feel that it's losing its appeal for people to shop in" said Schumacher, 51, rattling off a list of what he called his customers' complaints. "The panhandling, the musicians on the street, the urination in the parking garages. Yes, the protests....

PORTLAND, Ore.-Four radical environmental activists pleaded guilty Thursday to arson and conspiracy charges for a series of fires that prosecutors called the largest eco-terrorism case in U.S. history.

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...

1998 Fires At Vail Ski Resort Cost $12 Million In Damage. Two people accused of setting the 1998 fire at the Vail ski resort will be sentenced in December on eight counts of arson stemming from the blaze that caused some $12 million in damage. Chelsea Gerlach and Stanislas Meyerhoff, both 29, were arraigned Wednesday in federal court in Eugene. They are to enter pleas and be sentenced on Dec. 14, when they are also to be sentenced for other arson-related crimes to which they pleaded guilty in July. Under plea deals, both agreed to have the Colorado charges transferred...

Where are the Hurricanes? I blame global warming...http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1155133659.shtml Scott Kirwin Aug 9, 2006 Nearly a year ago the country was being slammed by hurricanes. As Americans suffered some claimed that the ferocity of Katrina and Rita was due to global warming. A search of Dean's World shows that this site is one of the few that argued against that idea over the course of 2005. So here we are, a year later. Where are the hurricanes? Where is the fury of Mother Nature? Where are her righteous swirls of rain and wind that shall smite the evil non-Kyoto Protocol signing...

Three would-be eco-terrorists were arrested in Auburn last January for plotting acts of sabotage for the Earth Liberation Front. But would there have been a conspiracy without the prodding of FBI infiltrator Anna? By Cosmo Garvin The arrest of three alleged eco-terrorists on January 13 was thanks to the work of a mysterious FBI informant who went by the name of Anna. On the morning of January 13, the FBI was keeping a close eye on a cabin in Dutch Flat, about a half-hour north of Auburn. The government had the cabin and its four occupants--two men and two women--under...

Burglars? Maybe. Rioters? Nah. So says a Knox County grand jury in a case that pitted protesters dressed as forest animals and armed with musical instruments and megaphones against coal company executives and a lone defender of homeland security. Earth First! protesters John Edward Johnson, 35, Sequoia McDowell, 20, and William C. Dodson, 22, had been slapped with a slew of charges, including "aggravated riot" and inciting others to riot after the trio and a group of fellow environmentalists showed up at a National Coal Corp. shareholders' meeting at the Holiday Inn on Cedar Bluff in June 2005. A Knox...

LONDON, United Kingdom -- GlaxoSmithKline PLC said Wednesday it has been granted a High Court injunction against animal rights activists who sent threats to the drugmaker's shareholders, barring them from sending more letters or revealing private information about the investors. The company revealed Tuesday that at least 50 of its small shareholders had received letters demanding that they sell their shares in Glaxo within 14 days or have their personal details published on the Internet. Police are investigating the letters, which are believed to have been sent by an animal rights group that targets Huntingdon Life Sciences, a medical research...

Three middle school children band together, sabotage a construction site, gag a land developer and take him hostage. But their criminal conduct, aimed at saving the habitat of burrowing owls from "greedy land developers" isn't reality-based. It's the subject of a new movie that one entertainment reviewer labels "soft core eco-terrorism" for kids. The movie, "Hoot," opens Friday May 5. It features environmentally conscious teenage characters vandalizing heavy machinery by stealing parts off of them and flattening tires in order to hinder a development project.

CROW CANYON - Alameda County Sheriff's deputies are trying to find out who sprayed the initials "ALF," along with some other graffiti, first discovered Saturday at a Castro Valley horse boarding ranch. "ALF" could stand for Animal Liberation Front, a group that goes after organizations and corporations they suspect of animal abuse. ALF has been called a terrorist group by the FBI. But Sheriff's Lt. Bill Gaudinier said neither his office nor the FBI have yet connected group members to the vandalism. Sheriff's investigators also have not ruled out involvement by that group. The first example of graffiti was reported...

Four defendants in an eco-terrorism case were charged Thursday with arson, conspiracy to commit arson and use of a destructive device in the 2001 firebombing of a Bureau of Land Management wild horse corral near Susanville. The three-count indictment by a federal grand jury names Joseph Dibee, 38; Rebecca Rubin, 32; Darren Thurston, 36; and Justin Solondz, 26. Click here for more... Dibee, Rubin and Solondz are all fugitives, said U.S. Attorney McGregor W. Scott and FBI Special Agent in Charge Drew Parenti, who announced the charges Thursday. Thurston is in custody in Oregon. The blaze on Oct. 15, 2001,...

Two and a half years ago, Public Interest Watch, a self-described watchdog of nonprofit groups, wrote to the Internal Revenue Service urging the agency to audit Greenpeace and accusing the environmental group of money laundering and other crimes. Last September, the IRS began a months-long audit of the U.S. arm of Greenpeace... This month, Greenpeace says, it received notice from the IRS that the group "continues to qualify for exemption from federal income tax" as a nonprofit entity. Greenpeace says an IRS auditor told it that the PIW letter triggered the audit. The IRS won't say how it decided to...

Three eco-terrorists were sentenced Friday to federal prison for a series of firebombings that put towns in the Sierra foothills on edge. Ryan Daniel Lewis, 22, the alleged leader of the group, was sentenced to six years, and two sisters - Eva Rose Holland, 26, and Lili Marie Holland, 21 - were each handed two-year prison terms. Prosecutors alleged Lewis recruited the Holland sisters and Jeremiah Dean Colcleasure, 24, on Christmas Eve 2004 to help him burn down two unoccupied upscale homes in Lincoln, a Sacramento suburb, in the name of the Earth Liberation Front. The FBI calls the ELF...