June 27, 2004
Disturbing Domestic Tranquility
Last week, six Greenpeace activists were charged with multiple state and federal felonies following a direct action. The activists scaled a Pennsylvania smokestack to hang a banner reading "The Bush Energy Plan Kills – Clean Energy Now!” Charges include burglary, rioting, and interfering with the function of a power plant--which the Greenpeacers did not actually do. Nor did they burgle or riot, needless to say. Greenpeace has always avowed and followed a philosophy of non-violence, including no damage to property.
These arrests follow the recent dismissal of a Justice Department indictment of Greenpeace under an obscure 19th century maritime law.
Apparently the FBI considers "ecoterrorism" (including animal-rights actions) to be the leading domestic terrorist threat in the United States. This is a disturbing announcement, coming as it does on the toes of a summer of intense non-violent activism to protect ancient forests in the Pacific Northwest.
Property destruction as an environmentalist tactic, one often employed by Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front, is easy to reject. The Southern Policy Law Center, a pretty unimpeachable source for good information, reports on the more violent nature of the eco-fringe in Europe, noting that research scientists--people I tend to respect--are particularly worried about their projects and safety.
I don't say that it can't happen here.
However, as things currently stand in the U.S., Earth Island Institute notes that "the sum total of people killed or injured by ALF and ELF is, not to put too fine a point on it, zero," while "[L]iterally hundreds of incidents of violence - or threats of violence - against environmentalists fill police blotters nationwide."
Why doesn't the FBI consider anti-abortionists the most dire domestic terrorist threat? The fringe of that movement includes people who have actually mudered a doctor and a police officer, injured health care workers, and physically harassed private citizens trying to use women's health clinics.
As reported recently by Paul Krugman in the New York Times, the Justice Department seems to be keeping quiet about less politically expedient arrests, such as the foiling of a right-wing domestic terrorist plot in Texas in April 2003.
Independent progressive media group Common Dreams reports on the off-kilter priorities of domestic anti-terrorism efforts, which seem to emphasize surveillance, harassment and curtailing the free speech of dissenters from various Bush administration policies.
Posted by Emily at June 27, 2004 07:42 PM