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The Real Eco-Terrorists
by Ken Dahl
Monday, Mar. 06, 2006 at 10:44 PM
Printed in Issue 3 of Upheaval
Arrests nationwide, secret government spying, well-publicized attacks by members of congress… well, it's official: environmentalism has bumped bin Laden from the bullseye on America's War on Terror dartboard.
Last May, in public testimony to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI's Counterterrorism Division John Lewis declared that “special interest extremist movements" like the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), and Stop Huntington Animal Cruelty (SHAC) pose “one of today's most serious domestic terrorism threats.”1
According to Lewis, “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” like the actions of radical environmental groups.2
And, as the Asheville Global Report reported in January,
Federal officials said they had 150 open investigations of 1,200 crimes from 1990 to 2004 in which people they refer to as “ecosaboteurs” had taken responsibility. The FBI identified both the ALF and the ELF as two groups that were “way out front” in association with these crimes.3
Although when prompted the FBI was unable to actually account for the “1,200 crimes” of ecosabotage it claims have swept the nation,4 their threats of prosecution aren't idle. On December 7th, FBI agents began a nationwide roundup of people suspected of carrying out actions affiliated with the ELF/ALF.5 Another three alleged “eco-terrorists” were arrested on January 26th for “conspiring to use fire or explosives to damage property,” although no actual arsons had been carried out.6
It's interesting to note that none of these indictments involve murder, threats of physical harm, or any other form of terroristic threat. Regardless, since prosecutors are attempting to charge the suspects as terrorists, they might be facing sentences as high as life in prison for the crime of vandalism.
And it's not just the FBI — the ATF, NSA, Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF), and many state law-enforcement agencies have all been working overtime lately to slap the scarlet “T” on environmental activists.
At first glance, it may seem as though the government really does believe that “eco-saboteurs” constitute the highest, most immediate threat to American lives. But the truth is, a government and corporate campaign to cast environmentalists as a threat to national security has been gaining momentum for over a decade now, fueled largely by the persistence of a few influential business leaders, lobbyists, and conservative congressional leaders. If one digs a little deeper, past the media hysterics and draconian federal sentences, down toward the foundations of our present eco-panic, a much more complex picture emerges: one where any resistance to the destruction of the planet is deliberately recast as a crime more heinous than murder; where government agencies, members of congress, chemical and lumber corporations, and conservative interest groups have joined forces to ruin their political opponents on the left; an upside-down world where corporate polluters become guardians of the environment and where environmentalism is redefined by its enemies as eco-terrorism.
Dude, where’s my definition of “terrorism”? The War on Terror changed the lives of all Americans — most would say for the worse. Since the World Trade Center blew up, “terrorism” has been a constant presence in the media. Some would say it’s even the defining word of our “post-9/11 era.”
But what does “terrorism” mean, exactly?
You might be sorry you asked. It turns out this is a question that no one can really answer — much less agree on. Even the Terrorism Research Center admits that
There is no single, universally accepted definition of terrorism… Even the U.S. government cannot agree on one single definition. The old adage, “One man’s terrorist is another man's freedom fighter” is still alive and well.7
The US Army concedes that, by 1998, over 100 definitions have already been assigned to the word — none of which have been globally accepted.8
It seems that the only thing everyone can agree on about terrorism is that it’s, well, bad. It has replaced the red menace of the cold war and the Depression-era “yellow scare” as the all-purpose panic button for political strategists, conservative fearmongers, and armchair reactionaries. It has been invoked to wage war, justify government surveillance on US citizens, and indefinitely incarcerate thousands without charges in secret torture camps — all despite the simple fact that the word “terrorism” is meaningless.
Through all the hate and hysteria, the fact remains that the War on Terror lacks any discernable enemy, strategy, or goal. Waging war on terror makes about as much sense as declaring a fatwah on malice.
But that sure hasn’t stopped the US from trying. The present legal definition — Title 18, Part 1, Chapter 113B, Section 2331 of the US Code — defines “terrorism” as activities that
(A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State;
(B) appear to be intended
(i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
(ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
(iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping.9
There’s one small problem, though: according to this definition, the authors of this law are themselves one of the world’s largest terrorist organizations. In fact, this country owes its success and political dominance to a long and well-documented history of “intimidation,” “coercion,” and “criminal acts” in the form of wars, assassinations, coups, arms dealing, and coercive legislation. Indeed, some of these terrorist acts — from the Boston Tea Party, to the Cuban embargo, the Cali Cartel, and the Contras, all the way to the sanctions against and “liberation” of Iraq — are still either widely celebrated or outright ignored by the powers that be.
Meanwhile, the FBI also has their own official definition of “terrorism” — and they use it to put people in prison. In the latest string of ELF/ALF-related cases, the FBI has accused US citizens of a new type of “terrorism” that includes the
unlawful use of force or violence, committed by a group of two or more individuals, against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.10
If that doesn’t already sound wacky enough, remember that the FBI now defines “direct action” as any “activity that destroys property or causes economic loss to a targeted company.”11 In other words, according to the feds, damaging an inanimate object is now an act of terrorism. Lowering a corporation’s bottom line: also terrorism. That is, as long as it’s “in the furtherance of political or social objectives” — an action which, one assumes, does not include the execution of death-row inmates to gain political capital on your way to the oval office.
The invention of “eco-terrorism” If you thought the definition of “terrorism” was disappointing, try “eco-terrorism.” The spread of the term is relatively recent, totaly politically motivated, and largely the product of one man: Ron Arnold.
Arnold is the executive vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise (CDFE). The self-described “Darth Vader for the capitalist revolution,” Arnold became famous in the early 1990s as one of the leaders of the pro-business, rabidly anti-environmentalist Wise Use movement. A former consultant for Dow Chemical, he is also the author of EcoTerror: The Violent Agenda to Save Nature: The World of the Unabomber, published by the CDFE’s own Free Enterprise Press. He has served as an “expert” on the subject of “eco-terror” both on the news and in senate subcommittee investigations.
Arnold credits his group with popularizing the term “eco-terrorism.” In fact, he brags about actually planting the link between environmentalism and terrorism within the public consciousness. As Arnold told the New York Times in July of 2004, “We [CDFE] created a sector of public opinion that didn’t used to exist. No one was aware that environmentalism was a problem until we came along.”12
Of course, the sport of trying to peg tree-huggers as terrorists is as old as the environmentalist movement itself — far-right anti-semite Lyndon LaRouche was doing it as early as 1977. But with Arnold, we see a new, more focused and polished campaign emerging — one with a firm grasp on how to manipulate the media to their advantage with an arsenal of provocative soundbites and memorable catchwords.
“Eco-terrorism,” the word Arnold is promoting both in the media and at senate hearings on domestic security, he defines simply as “a crime committed to save nature” — which includes nature-related “civil disobedience” such as sit-ins.13
So who is this asshole, anyway? And why does any sane person listen to him at all, about “eco-terrorism” or anything else?
The curious case of Ron Arnold As it turns out, Arnold is a man who knows quite a bit about the environment — at least when it comes to ways to turn out a profit from it. Although he describes his group as “a non-profit citizen organization” comprised of members “in rural natural resource industries,” the CDFE is actually funded by ExxonMobil, the world’s largest publicly traded oil company.14 Besides being responsible for some of the most stupendous environmental disasters in history, as well as having a hand in supporting brutal governments across the globe to support their oil interests, ExxonMobil has already “spent at least $8 million funding a network of groups to challenge the existence of global warming.”15 In 2002, Arnold and the CDFE went so far as to use their influence to keep Bush from ratifying the Kyoto Protocol — making us, with Australia, one of only two countries worldwide who still refuse to do so.
Other known supporters of the CDFE include:
* The anti-union, anti-gay, anti-minority and anti-woman Coors Brewery, noted not only for funding far-right political groups but also for dumping nuclear waste into the sewers of Denver16
* Clear-cutting lumber company Georgia Pacific, which was recently bought out by the arch-conservative Koch Industries. Koch has the distinction of receiving the EPA’s “largest civil fine ever imposed on a company under any federal environmental law to resolve claims related to more than 300 oil spills from its pipelines and oil facilities in six states”17
* The Louisiana-Pacific Corporation, who has “admitted to committing numerous criminal acts, including conspiring to violate the Clean Air Act and False Statement Act, tampering with the Montrose mill’s air pollution monitor,…[and] lying to the Colorado Department of Health about the number of times the Montrose mill violated the limits of its pollution permits”18
* DuPont’s Agricultural Products Division, which creates chemical herbicides and bioengineered food crops19
* Another old-growth clearcutter, Boise Cascade, whose lawyers have been working to get the IRS to cancel the Rainforest Action Network’s tax-exempt status and to pressure RAN’s funders to cut off the group’s money20
* Old-growth clearcutters MacMillan Bloedel, Seneca Sawmills, Sun Studs, and Pacific Lumber — the last of which recently began clearcutting the last unprotected stand of primeval redwood forest in the world21
* The F.M. Kirby Foundation, which also funds conservative campus propaganda groups.22, 23
With their coffers maintained by some of the world’s largest and most outrageously toxic corporations, Arnold and the CDFE have become tools for a massive corporate backlash campaign against environmentalism in the US — not so much because they differ on moral grounds (which they obviously do), but because the anti-environmentalists have figured out that there’s no defense like a good offense. In short, this is war — and Darth Vader appears to have the federal government firmly on his side.
Despite (or, more likely, because of) the CDFE’s vehement anti-environmental bias, Arnold’s opinions have caught the ears of both the press and federal lawmakers. In June of 1998, Arnold was even invited to testify as an authority on the subject of eco-terrorism before the Crime Subcommittee of the House Judiciary, where he claimed that
There is no region in the United States where I have not received complaints from members about being victimized by eco-terrorists. It is a broad and pervasive crime that is seriously under-reported because the victims are terrorized and fear reprisals, copycat crimes, or in the case of corporations, loss of customer confidence and resulting drops in share prices.24
Whether this is actually true or not (we’re guessing not), Arnold’s desperate conflation of environmentalism with terrorism is eerily reminiscent of the FBI’s own definition — the one that is now persuading grand juries and federal courts to dole out life sentences to vandals. And it’s catching — the chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, James Inhofe (R-OK), has attempted to link the ELF/ALF with bin Laden by sheer force of suggestion: “Just like al Qaeda or any other terrorist organization, ELF and ALF cannot accomplish their goals without money, membership and the media.”25 But if the only way that Inhofe can think of to insinuate terrorism into environmental groups, one has to wonder why the NRA — which also relies on “money, membership and the media” — isn’t being raided by the FBI as well. For that matter, by Inhofe’s standards, even the CDFE better watch its back.
And yet, as the anti-environmentalists continue one of the most transparent disinformation campaigns in political history, no one seems to have the guts to point out that the pundits have no clothes. There is no mention in the press of any conflict of interest in Arnold’s House testimony on eco-terrorism; nor do the Associated Press articles that cite Arnold as an authority on domestic eco-terrorism bother to mention his role as a pro-industry lobbyist with blatant corporate ties. The press and federal government are still taking their cues about “eco-terrorism” from a man who gleefully announced, back in 1991, “We want to destroy environmentalists by taking away their money and their members.”26
It’s almost as if there’s some kind of… hidden agenda at work here.
Meanwhile, back in the Aryan Nation… That’s definitely the feeling you get when you compare the differences in how the government treats environmentalists and white supremacists. In all their over-eagerness to criminalize environmental dissent, federal agencies seem to have forgotten about the vast array of radicals on the right wing — many of whom are famous for committing murder, promoting genocide, and carrying out race-based programs of terror. As Colin Asher noted in the Bay Area Political Review,
though there are at least 615 active right-wing hate groups in the US, and an uncounted number of militia, only three organizations were deemed important enough for mention [in the FBI’s testimony]. The ALF, ELF and the ABCF [an anarchist prison-support group].
Not to be outdone by the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security recently circulated an internal paper titled “Integrated Planning Guidance, Fiscal Years 2005-2011.” In this paper, priority is placed again on the ELF/ALF and no mention is given to the much larger and better-organized groups on the right of the political spectrum.27
Neither have the FBI or DHS made any effort to crack down on groups like the Racial Holy War-waging Aryan Nation; the Planned Parenthood-bombing Army of God; or the ever-popular KKK — the hate group that institutionalized race-based murder in America. Nor has the government directed any attention to other violent, fascist, racist, hardcore right-wing groups such as the National Alliance, White Revolution, the American Nazi Party, White Power Liberation Front, Imperial Klans of America, or World Church of the Creator — all of which seem, at least by the government’s own definition, much more fitting targets for federal prosecution.
These odd oversights are especially troubling considering that none of the right-wing racist hate clubs listed above even pretends to share any of the same commitment to the preservation of human life that is practiced by the ELF and ALF. That’s right: not a single action by the “eco-terrorists” in the ELF/ALF has ever killed or injured a single person, neither intentionally nor accidentally. In fact, the preservation of all life is one of the stated goals of both groups, and they have gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure that no one is harmed during their acts of sabotage against environmentally toxic corporations. As ALF spokesman Rod Coronado told Ed Bradley during a recent 60 Minutes interview, every ALF action requires “nights and nights and weeks and weeks of reconnaissance to make sure that you know in the one hour that you’re going to take action, that there will be absolutely no risk to any living being. The fact that nobody was ever injured in any of the actions that I’ve been accused of is not a coincidence.”28
And that’s a claim not even Vice President Dick “Shotgun” Cheney is able to make.
First they came for the green anarchists, and I said nothing…
FBI spokesman John Miller has given the token assurance that “As a matter of policy, the FBI does not target individuals or organizations for investigation because of any political belief.”29
However, reality has a way of catching up with FBI press releases. Reports are piling up in the press about new, politically based surveillance by government agencies — and the direct-action saboteurs are by no means the only groups targeted. When Colorado’s ACLU used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain records about FBI surveillance in their state, they found that the feds had been keeping tabs on groups as diverse as Food Not Bombs, the Derailer Bicycle Collective, Rocky Mountain Animal Defense, Denver Peace and Justice Committee, Colorado Campaign for Middle East Peace, the American Indian Movement of Colorado, Ancient Forest Rescue, Transform Columbus Day, the Dandelion Center, Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, Revolutionary Anti-War Response, and Copwatch — in short, pretty much the entire spectrum of that state’s left-of-center activism, no matter how tepid or pacifistic.30
Nationally, the ACLU has also recently learned that the FBI has had covert agents planted in the offices of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and Greenpeace:
One highly redacted “Domestic Terrorism Operations Unit” document suggests that the FBI is using PETA’s interns for surveillance, while others describe attempts to locate and interview “several former disgruntled PETA employees.”
Similarly, one cryptic e-mail kept in a Greenpeace file describes a source who “offers a unique opportunity to gain intelligence on activists who show a clear predisposition to violate the law.”31
As John Passacantando, Greenpeace’s executive director, has noted: “If the FBI has taken the time to gather 2,400 pages of information on an organization that has a perfect record of peaceful activity for 34 years, it suggests they’re just attempting to stifle the voices of their critics.”32
The scariest part about this government campaign to snuff environmentalism is, so far, it’s all completely legal. And it doesn’t stop with environmentalists: the latest version of the Patriot Act now goes so far as to criminalize mere “disruptions” such as “interrupting Bush when he is speaking at a press conference or during an interview.” According to the Washington Post,
[t]he bill adds language prohibiting people from “willfully and knowingly” entering a restricted area “where the President or other person protected by the Secret Service is or will be temporarily visiting.” The measure also applies to security breaches “in conjunction with an event designated as a special event of national significance,” according to the bill.
Penalties for such violations would increase from six months to a year in prison.33
As the Daily Kos put it on December 20th:
Everything that many of us consider moral (taking care of the environment, opposition to the war, freedom to speak our minds, to protest, etc.) is on the FBI’s “there might be a terrorist connection” list.34
The FBI’s bizarre, slanted new definitions for vague terms such as “threat,” “violence,” “direct action,” “terrorism,” and “eco-terrorism” — when fortified with public grand-jury witch trials and brutal federal prison sentences — represent nothing less than an attempt to silence the entire environmental debate. In the first years of the 21st century, our “post-9/11 world” itself has been quietly reframed by the authorities as a warzone rife with new hidden threats and dangers; where “terrorism” springs eternal at every spot left vacant by the specter of Communism; where, gosh darnit, we’re just too busy fighting this endless War on Terror to bother with silly luxuries like human rights or edible food or clean air or drinkable water or trees.
One of the most obvious inconsistencies in the War on Eco-Terror is the fact that it isn’t assessing new threats so much as it is inventing them — either from whole cloth or from an endless series of hapless scapegoats. And by taking their word for it, we are allowing the government to expand the definition of “terrorism” to include the very idea of dissent — that is, any type of dissent but the kind that violently enforces white supremacy, rampant free enterprise, global capitalism, unchecked environmental exploitation, and fundamentalist Christianity. In short, this “War on Eco-Terror” is just an empty strawman propped up by political strategists on the pro-business right; another bait-and-switch in a war aiming to, in the words of Ron Arnold, “destroy environmentalists.”
The real “eco-terrorists”
That said, it would be a mistake to claim that eco-terrorists flat-out don’t exist. Of course they do, and they’re a clear and present danger. In fact, these eco-terrorists are possibly the single most insidious cabal of destruction and violence that humanity has ever known. They wield a magnitude of power and influence most other terrorists can only dream about, and are fueled by a rabid extremist ideology that accepts no compromise and offers no mercy. These eco-terrorists are working with all the weapons at their disposal to destroy civilization and human life on a scale never before imaginable, and they will stop at nothing to achieve their goals. And today, they seem all but invincible.
These eco-terrorists aren’t just some secret Islamic gun club from the Middle East. Most of them were born, bred and trained right here in the US. In fact, you’re probably even supporting them.
Here’s a list of some of the most violent extremist groups threatening our country and world today:
* Chevron. From 1964 to 1992, a toxic “Rainforest Chernobyl” was unleashed in Ecuador when Texaco (now owned by Chevron) left more than 600 unlined oil pits in pristine northern Amazon rainforest and dumped 18 billion gallons of toxic production water into rivers used for bathing water. The toxic crude oil and formation water seeped into the subsoil, contaminating surrounding freshwater and farmland. As a result, local communities have suffered severe health effects, including cancer, skin lesions, birth defects, and spontaneous abortions.
Chevron is also responsible for the violent repression of nonviolent opposition to oil extraction, with a long history of cooperating with police forces, who have opened fire on peaceful protestors.
* Coca-Cola. In Plachimada, Kerala, Coca-Cola extracted 1.5 million liters of deep well water, which they bottled and sold under the names Dasani and BonAqua. The groundwater was severely depleted, affecting thousands of communities with water shortages and destroying agricultural activity. As a result, the remaining water became contaminated with high chloride and bacteria levels, leading to scabs, eye problems, and stomach aches in the local population.
The company is also guilty of reselling its plants’ industrial waste to farmers as fertilizers, despite its containing hazardous lead and cadmium. Coca-Cola is also recognized as one of the most discriminatory employers in the world, and has had a hand in the murder and torture of union organizers.
* Dow Chemical (formerly known as Union Carbide). The company is best known for its lethal Vietnam War defoliant, Agent Orange, and for developing and perfecting Napalm. In 1988, Dow provided pesticides to Saddam Hussein despite warnings that they could be used to produce chemical weapons.
In 2001, Dow inherited the toxic legacy of the worst peacetime chemical disaster in history when it acquired Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) and its outstanding liabilities in Bhopal, India. As the Students for Bhopal website recounts, “On December 3rd, 1984, thousands of people in Bhopal, India were gassed to death after a catastrophic chemical leak at a UCC pesticide plant. More than 150,000 people were left severely disabled — of whom 22,000 have since died of their injuries — in a disaster now widely acknowledged as the world’s worst ever.”
* Ford Motor Company. Among automakers, Ford Motor Company is the worst. Every year since 1999, the US Environmental Protection Agency has ranked Ford cars, trucks and SUVs as having the worst overall fuel economy of any American automaker. Ford is also in last place when it comes to vehicle greenhouse gas emissions. According to a recent report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, Ford has “the absolute worst heat-trapping gas emissions performance of all the Big Six automakers.” In fact, if Ford were a country, it would be the 10th largest global warming polluter worldwide, behind Italy.
Amazingly, despite the company’s recent greenwashing PR campaign, its record has actually worsened. According to Ford’s own sustainability report, between 2003 and 2004, the company’s US fleet-wide fuel economy decreased and its CO2 emissions went up. Ford is also lobbying to prevent the US and state governments from improving the situation: the company has lobbied against lawmakers’ efforts to increase fuel economy standards at the national level and is also involved in a lawsuit against California’s fuel economy standards.
* Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin is the world’s largest military contractor. In 2003, the year of the Iraq invasion, the company held $21.9 billion in Pentagon contracts. Providing satellites, planes, missiles, and other lethal high-tech items to the Pentagon keeps the profits rolling in. Since 2000, the year Bush was elected, the company’s stock value has tripled.
Lockheed VP Bruce Jackson — who helped draft the Republican foreign policy platform in 2000 — is a key player at the Project for a New American Century, the intellectual incubator of the Iraq war. These war profiteers — the makers of the Trident missile; aircraft like the F-16 Fighting Falcon and the F/A-22 and the C-130 Hercules, as well as high tech space based military components like the DSCS-3 satellite — have a profound and illegitimate influence our country’s international policy decisions.
* Nestlé. In 2001, Save the Children Canada reported that 15,000 children between 9 and 12 years old, many from impoverished Mali, had been tricked or sold into slavery on West African cocoa farms, many for just $30 each. Nestlé is the third largest buyer of cocoa from the Ivory Coast; has processing, storage and export facilities there; and is well aware of the tragically unjust labor practices taking place on the farms with which it continues to do business. Nestlé and other chocolate manufacturers agreed to end the use of abusive and forced child labor on cocoa farms by July 1, 2005, but they failed to do so.
Nestlé is also notorious for its aggressive marketing of infant formula in poor countries, which may have led to the deaths of countless children who did not receive the nutrients that would have been present in breast milk. In Italy in 2005, police seized more than two million liters of Nestlé infant formula that was contaminated with the chemical isopropylthioxanthone (ITX), a component in the packaging’s ink. It turned out the company knew about the contamination for months, but did not recall the formula.
* Philip Morris. According to the World Health Organization, tobacco is the second leading cause of preventable death in the world. Philip Morris (now called Altira) is the world’s largest and most profitable cigarette corporation.
* Suez-Lyonnaise Des Eaux (SLDE). The privatization of water has had a disastrous impact on the human right to clean water, and the French company Suez is the worst perpetrator of this abuse. Suez goes by many names around the world — Ondeo, SITA, and others — to mask its worldwide net of controversial activities. According to Public Citizen, Suez has raised water rates, cut off the water of people unable to pay, refused to extend services to poverty-stricken neighborhoods, and then threatened legal action when contracts are terminated.
In Manila, Philippines, after seven years of water privatization under a Suez company (Maynilad Water) contract, studies showed that water rates increased in some neighborhoods by 400 to 700 percent. These studies also showed that the negligence of the company resulted in cholera and gastroenteritis outbreaks that killed six people and severely sickened 725 in Manila’s Tondo district. In Bolivia, a Suez company (Aguas de Illimani) left 200,000 people without access to water and caused a revolt when it tried to charge between $335 and $445 to connect a private home to the water supply. Countless people were unable to afford this charge in a country whose yearly per capita GDP is $915. Many countries have been required to open up their water supply to private companies as a condition for receiving IMF loans, and the World Bank has approved millions of dollars in loans for the privatization of water systems.35
…and there’s plenty more where they came from — too many for any one article to cover. None of the above organizations have ever been brought up on charges of eco-terrorism. In fact, they’re not even considered criminals. None of their executives have been sentenced to life in prison, or demonized on the nightly news, or labeled a threat to national security by congress. In fact, almost all of them have continued to net astronomical profits — not in spite of, but because of, explicit global campaigns of violence, destruction and ecocide. There’s quite a lot of money to be made from eco-terrorism, as long as you know how to do it right. So where does that leave the few who have the sense and courage to defend what’s left of the natural world? What reward is offered to the individuals who are still standing up against the greed, ignorance, selfishness, unchecked progress, and toxic technology that’s dooming us all?
As this is being written, federal prosecutors are working out strategies to ensure that these people never live to see another day of freedom. As the Stranger recently pointed out,
Typically one has to commit murder or theft on a grand scale to earn a life sentence; to earn the label “terrorist” one has to commit politcally-motivated mass murder. None of the 11 indicted as “ecoterrorists” are charged with those crimes; yet prosecutors are aiming for life sentences for several of the defendants. But if the accused are guilty, they’re guilty of arson, which usually brings a sentence of five years, and of using extreme methods to advance an otherwise honorable cause. That, and really, really bad political timing.36
Punishment is severe for those who have worked to slow the clearcutting of old-growth forests, halt the steamroller of gentrification, stop the needless murder of wild animals, and stem the poison tide of corporate waste and destruction. This is how we reward the few of us who are taking action to change the insane course of ecological doom that businessmen and bureaucrats have charted for the world.
Most people will probably still insist that there’s never a justification for damaging other people’s (or corporations’) property. If environmentalists want to protest environmental destruction so bad, why can’t they use the normal legal channels — the voting booth, letters to their senators, marches, and fundraisers?
Well, they have. ALF spokesperson Dr. Jerry Vlasak points out that there are also
people working on legislation, there are people working on public education, there are people holding protest signs...37
The problem is, none of this has actually stopped corporate or government ecocide. In fact, environmental destruction today is better business than ever. You can’t vote against the free market. And when pro-business lobbies are buying your senator new yachts, it’s hard to believe that writing a letter will change much. Hell, you can’t even heckle a member of the Bush administration anymore without going to jail. And in this postmodern era, letting the facts speak for themselves no longer cuts the mustard — as Ron Arnold put it to Outside magazine back in 1991, “Facts don’t matter; in politics, perception is reality.”
So what more can we do?
We can do what disadvantaged, silenced, ignored, persecuted, and unrepresented people have always done, whenever the self-serving greedy bastards have gotten out of hand: revolt. Even in the truth-deficient spin zone of the post-9/11 United States, one timeless truth still remains: direct action gets the goods.
The days of sitting in circles chanting “give peace a chance” are over. The time has come to let our consciences guide us to act in self-defense of our ecosystem. That’s no longer an extremist’s exaggeration. This isn’t just about a few spotted owls; it’s about the survival of all life on earth as we know it. The consequences of clinging to our complacency, apathy, willful ignorance and business as usual have beome too great to excuse.
It’s time for all of us to join the struggle, and show our support for the ELF, ALF, and other groups slandered and prosecuted as “eco-terrorists.” We can start by pointing out the obvious — that global warming isn’t just a “theory” but a reality; that it’s the corporations themselves that are the real “eco-terrorists”; that the War on Eco-Terrorism is a fearmongering lie, an agenda to bring more of us over to the dark side of the war on the environment, a specious corporate distraction from the real threats facing our species and the planet today.
If that’s not enough to motivate you, consider these facts. The world’s richest 16% use 80% of its resources.38 While 98% of the world has no access to the internet and only a small minority drives a car, we in the privileged US are taught that cellphones, cars, cable TVs and computers are not only our right, but necessities.39 10,000 people die every day of starvation, but we’ll still waste 1.2 pounds of grain and 100 gallons of water just to make one quarter-pound American hamburger.40 With just 4% of the global population, the US pumps out the world’s largest share of carbon dioxide — more than than China, India and Japan combined.41 Record increases in heat waves, droughts, hurricances, wildfires, dust storms, floods, snowless winters and melting ice shelves have caused massive destruction over the past ten years, and yet our government still insists that global warming is just part of the earth’s “natural ecological cycles.”42 And that’s just the tip of the melting iceberg.
Still, we keep buying, consuming, and wasting, as if that’s all we’ve ever known how to do — and somehow, someone else always seems to pick up the tab. As long as we can be kept complacent with gluttony at home and fear abroad, we’ll never notice — or care — that the world is burning right outside our windows.
It’s 2006, fifteen years after the government’s latest, largest war on the environment began, and we’re still letting the real terrorists define environmentalism and “eco-terrorism” for the rest of us. Bush is now cutting the Environmental Protection Agency's 2007 budget by 4% to fund the War on Terror.43 The FBI has teamed up with the Building Industry Association of Washington to offer $100,000 rewards for information on earth and animal liberation cases.44
And the world continues to wait for us to fight back.
Reading list
If you’re looking for more information on the issues discussed in this article, the following books are great places to start:
l The Monkey Wrench Gang by Ed Abbey (1975)
l Banana Republicans by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber (2004)
l Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins (2004)
l The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents From the FBI’s Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States by Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall (2002)
l The Price of Dissent: Testimonies to Political Repression in America edited by Bud & Ruth Schultz (2001)
l The Long Road to Recovery: Community responses to industrial disaster, edited by James K. Mitchell (1996)
l Ishmael by Daniel Quinn (1991)
Notes:
1From congressional testimony, found at