FBI tying Environmentalism to "Terrorism"

[villager]

in light of the recent arrests in Oregon, this becomes even more important...

LA Weekly
Earth to ELF: Come In, Please
Does the radical environmental group really exist?
By JUDITH LEWIS

Thursday, December 22, 2005

When the American Civil Liberties Union this week released a new batch
of documents obtained from the FBI verifying that the federal agency
has been monitoring domestic environmental- and animal-rights groups,
it was only the latest evidence of government working on behalf of the
anti-environmentalist industry and property-rights advocates to, as one
of those advocates put it in 1992, "destroy the environmental
movement." It's an effort that's been under way since the 1980s, using
various tactics from intimidation to slander. Only recently have the
anti-environmentalists hit upon their most promising idea yet: Linking
environmentalism to terrorism.

One of the FBI documents contains a complaint from the People for the
Ethical Treatment of Animals about a speech given by FBI agents at a
meatpackers' convention claiming it is "commonly believed" that PETA
funneled money to the Earth Liberation Front; another contains an FBI
memo instructing its agents not to use phrases like "it is commonly
believed' in that context. Another memo seems to accuse Greenpeace of
"Suspicious Activity with a Nexus to International Terrorism," but
nearly everything else in the document has been blacked out.

This peculiar new brand of anti-environmentalist propaganda dates back
several years, but it got a significant media boost on May 18, 2005,
when John Lewis, FBI deputy assistant director for counterterrorism,
told the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works about
environmentalists working in underground "cells" whose vandalism has
caused more than $100 million in property damage since a Vail
restaurant went up in flames in 1998. "There is nothing else going on
in this country... that is racking up the high number of violent crimes
and terrorist actions," Lewis asserted.

A little more insight into Lewis' comments can be gained by looking
closely at who invited him — the chair of that Senate committee, James
Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who coasted into office more than a
decade ago on petroleum, real estate and agribusiness largesse. A year
earlier, Inhofe had submitted to Congress a 30-page report on the
"incestuous" political operations of groups like the League of
Conservation Voters; this time, he asked his fellow legislators to
investigate even further: Isn't it likely that these groups, the Animal
Liberation Front, the Earth Liberation Front and Stop Huntingdon Animal
Cruelty, have been bankrolled by more prominent organizations, many of
them enjoying tax-exempt status?


<snip>

Many incidents tied to the mysterious ELF ultimately unravel to be
nothing of the kind. Law enforcement quickly attributed a Maryland fire
last December that destroyed a housing development near a sensitive
wetland to the ELF, but it turned out to be the work of a disgruntled
security guard grieving the loss of one of his twin sons. Three high
schoolers in Virginia, described in news accounts as "self-identified"
ELF members, were recently convicted of conspiring to burn some cars.
Their affiliation with the ELF? One of them read about it on the Web
site www.earthliberationfront.com — a blatant front for advertising,
owned by Andrew Riegle of eMailmachine.net ("Real People. Real Deals.")
with click-through ads for Viagra and repossessed cars. No one pretends
it has anything to do with any real-life organization — except Inhofe,
who refers to the site in his Senate speeches as evidence that
advertisers contribute to ELF's activities.

http://www.laweekly.com/index.php?option=com_lawcontent&task=view&id=20&Itemid=2

[lvx35]

1. I always thought ELF was fictional sounding

They are one of those things that sounds better in a novel than in reality. A convenient scapegoat for when development company #1 wants to slap down development company #2.

[villager]

2. or when they want to slap down environmentalists...

...just light a fire in the middle of the night, and blame the "terrorists..."

[quinnox]

3. Great, just great, now environmentalists are the new targets

Sample conversation:

"Time to round up all those enviro-nuts, Jim, and we can treat them as terrorists now"

"Sounds good to me Slim, never did like those F'kn tree huggers anyway"

[gordontron]

4. they aren't going to get me without a fight nt

[villager]

6. "Don't tread on me," eh?

Why, we oughtta make a flag saying that...!

[villager]

5. Enviros were targets back in the Reagan/Bush 80's

Few liberals in cities knew about it, since there was no internet in those days. But those of us in the enviro movement in those days saw the hate-speech, the psyops operations, the arrests, etc...

But, "they didn't come for the environmentalists," then, and here we are, two stolen elections later...