editorial in scientific journal Nature protests the use of "terrorism" charges...

[mike_c]

...against environmental activists in Oregon. Here is the editorial:

Nature 447, 353 (24 May 2007) | doi:10.1038/447353a; Published online 23
May 2007

Unwise branding

Equating animal-rights activism with terrorism increases the penalties for offenders and will please many of their victims. But it is not in the interests of science.

Terrorist is not a word you throw around lightly. And it is certainly not a word you apply to anyone with whom you would like to have a civil conversation. A US tendency to apply the label to militant activists who are against animal research or genetic engineering slams shut a door that might be difficult to reopen - to researchers’ cost.

In a courtroom in Eugene, Oregon, last week, federal prosecutors asked for a ‘terrorism enhancement’ on the sentencing of ten environmental activists. The activists have admitted to a string of arson attacks in the western United States in the late 1990s and the start of this decade. They torched places where things were done of which they disapproved, including a lab that they believed was growing genetically engineered poplar trees. If the judge applies the requested enhancement, their sentences could be longer and the conditions of their imprisonment more severe.

They are criminals, to be sure. Their arson cost millions of dollars and destroyed scientific work in progress. But although some of their more knuckleheaded actions could easily have accidentally hurt someone, their ethos was to damage property, never to hurt or kill.

Other extreme activists are also being labeled terrorists. Last November, the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act was signed into law in the United States. It creates tough penalties for damaging property, making threats and conspiring against zoos, animal labs and the like. Leaving aside the merits of this act, its very name enshrines into law the idea that destructive activists are terrorists.

As one of the communities targeted by these activists, scientists may be tempted to embrace this rhetoric. Indeed, many people have personally felt terrified by the actions of the most extreme. But ‘terrorist’ is a word so debased and loaded by political use that, if it has any meaning at all, it is counterproductive. There is no such objective thing as a terrorist. A criminal is a person who has been convicted of a crime. We can examine a person’s records and make an unemotional determination of whether or not they are a criminal. But a terrorist is, in practice, a person who fights for a cause we do not believe in using methods that we do not approve of. Calling someone a terrorist is a value judgement.

It is a value judgement that seems to be increasingly used in the United States since the attacks of 11 September 2001. Indeed, the nation is waging, in official parlance, a “global war on terror”. The term is useful politically exactly because it expresses an absolute rejection of a person and their aims. The terrorist label definitively ends any possibility of dialogue. But if there is any hope of bringing closer together those at the extremes of scientific controversies such as animal research and genetic engineering, the various parties must be able to speak to one another.

Although most activists feel that the actions of the criminal few are unproductive and embarrassing, for every activist saboteur with a lighted match there are hundreds of people who are sympathetic to his or her cause. Label that saboteur a terrorist, and you risk alienating all of them. Efforts to bring together defenders and attackers of animal research, such as those by the UK-based Boyd Group, often do not admit those who espouse criminal acts, and that is appropriate. And it leaves open the possibility that an activist who has renounced criminal actions can come to the table. But who will be willing to publicly break bread with a terrorist, reformed or otherwise?

We should avoid building an unbreachable wall between criminal activists and their victims. The judge in this case should reject the call for ‘terrorism enhancement’. We must all speak more objectively and calmly.

Unfortunately, the judge did not reject that call.

These events have recently been discussed in three threads on DU:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1021032

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1016087

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2866257

[TZ]

1. I'm not a fan of some of these extreme groups like ALF but..

unless they are actually threatening people's lives (there are some that have done that to animal researchers) they should NOT be labelled as "terrorists". Did not the Bush admin try to use the Patriot Act to attack Greenpeace of all people as terrorists. They (ELF and ALF) are criminals and vandals really not terrorists and once you cross that line of freely labelling anyone who goes agaisnt mainstream beliefs as "terrorists" its a long and slippery slope which ends in the severe curtailing of civil liberties.

[mike_c]

2. yup-- I agree....

eom

[mike_c]

3. kick for the night crowd, in case anyone is interested....

:kick:

[Canuckistanian]

4. K&R

This is NOT terrorism, any way you slice it.

[Recursion]

8. Firebombings?

Really? We're talking about firebombings here, aren't we? Even if nobody was in the building a firefighter has to risk his or her life to make sure of that.

A firebombing is violent, and if it's done for an ideological agenda, even a moral and correct ideological agenda, to me it's terrorism.

[originalpckelly]

11. It's not just about having the agenda, and an act of terrorism must comprise three intents:

1. Intent to cause or use a violent act or participate in a criminal conspiracy to do so
2. Intent to create an emotional of state of fear in the target
3. Intent to use the emotional state of fear to intimidate and/or coerce an individual or group into a particular choice or decision or policy

There is a difference between a mere arsonist, a person with the intent to cause a fire, and a terrorist using the method of arson to cause fear in the targeted individual(s).

Terrorism is terrorism irregardless of the goals of a terrorist(s).

[starroute]

12. And does that make it worse than arson-for-profit?

We're not talking about letting people off -- we're talking about whether someone who torches a building because it's being used for morally offensive activities should be hit with additional penalties beyond the person who torches it to collect on an insurance policy.

It's that perverse reversal of values -- where a dedicated individual whose actions and beliefs challenge the existing system of unrestricted free enterprise and private property is treated far worse for the same actions than a common criminal whose actions implicitly endorse that system -- that's so disturbing.

But that distinction is also exactly what defines the word "terrorism." We at DU tend to laugh at the "war on terror" phrase for being so fuzzy and undefined. But in fact, the people who promote it understand it far better than we do. Terrorism, no matter the specific ideology it's attached to, is always an attack on property and privilege. And the "war on terror" (just like the war on communism before it) is a war against whoever and whatever threatens property and privilege.

Are we going to have to wait before they start going after "terrorist sympathizers" and "terrorist fellow travelers" before we get the message?

[Canuckistanian]

13. I object to the word "terrorism"

It's probably the most misused word in the English language right now.

It deals with everything from sick decapitators to Quaker war dissenters.

What's wrong with the traditional sentences of plain-old arson and destruction of property?

No harm was intended to a human being. Ever.

To apply the term "terrorist" to a common criminal is to attribute them a notoriety that is not deserved.

After all, the "detainees" in Guantanamo, Bagram and Abu Ghraib have been accused of nothing less.

[nam78_two]

5. I saw that in Nature last week

I was wondering if that would have been published as an editorial if Nature had been an American journal instead of a British one. Though Britain has been cracking down a lot on the ELF/ALF people.

[IChing]

6. I agree kick and nominated n/t

[depakid]

7. "Terrorism" is whatever the statute defines it as

and whatever prosecutors choose to pursue under the statute (or what judges let them get away with).

While it may reflect a value judgment- and while it may be absurd (law doesn't follow the rule of reason in America) the only way to change unjust outcomes is by waking lawmakers up to the fact that they're acting irrationally and counter productively. Not an easy thing to do when attempting to protect the rights of dissenters or minorities.

[Robbien]

9. A street mugger is a terrorist

A gang member is a terrorist

Really most criminals commit acts designed to spread terror.

The criminal justice system is set up to deal with these acts. Re-defining the acts is illogical. Re-defining the acts because the people who are committing them are environmentalists is a Exxon Justice System.

[depakid]

10. Unfortunately, the same logic extends to hate crimes

As much as anything, it's the people (Dems and Repukes) who frame and twist the statutes beyond their plain and common meaning.