e-Claire

Focus on Domestic Terrorists

In wandering about for the previous item, I found some really good news:

Congress is working on legislation that would stiffen penalties and bring such crimes [as "eco-terrorism] under federal racketeering laws. The FBI is deploying more agents to fight "ecoterrorists." Government land managers are stepping up security

Check out ELF's website; instructions for making incendiary devices is on the front page ! "Total" Information "Awareness," indeed . . .

FBI counterterrorism chief James Jarboe told a House Committee this week that the ALF/ELF have committed more than 600 criminal acts in the US since 1996, resulting in more than $43 million in damages

Over the years, no one has been killed in any ecoterrorist "action." But officials reject the claim that ALF/ELF is "nonviolent."

I guess loggers torn up when their chain-saws hit tree-spikes don't count.

And while US western myth and history includes a penchant for independence and freedom from government restriction, that history in recent years has included a growing number of attacks,...[against] the US Forest Service, the US Bureau of Land Management, and other government agencies [and personnel].

The people who do this aren't "rural Westerners." They're pasty-faced city-boys who wouldn't understand land management and conservation of natural resources if it were explained to them by a cranky Griz.

1. I would say that I hardly qualify as a pasty-faced city boy.  My boots touch a lot less asphalt than they do dirt. 

   I haven’t ever spiked a tree or attacked any Forest Service Personnel that I know of, but I gotta say…

   When they start cutting old growth forests and wiping out habitats and cutting roads through public land, I sure think about it.

   Interesting that I just finished reading your post above this one about violence being the last resort of the hopeless.  Do trees have hope?  Or do the pasty faced city boys have to be the ones that speak for them?

   Folks like me that love trees more than entertainment centers and dirt more than parking lots feel pretty helpless when Big Timber starts changing the laws so that they can clearcut public land.  And when the Cattleman’s Association snatches land away from the Sioux so that they can graze it without having to pay a fair price for it, we start thinking about justice, and what real justice is.

   I love this country, and I will fight to defend it.  Sometimes, though, justice’s enemies, and those who fight to conceal the truth, aren’t necessarily the ones that they talk about on TV.

   Posted by patrick  on  08/06/03  at  06:23 PM

2. Patrick,

   As a girl from The Country™, I heartily agree with you about old growth forests and appropriate use of range land.  I also hate the urban sprawl that is lapping at my knees and threatening my business and my way of life.  But I still don’t advocate lining up all these newcomers to The Country™ and shootin’ ‘em; no matter how I *feel* when their presence makes what was a 10 minute trip into an hour long ordeal. 

   And this is the essence of my post and the one above on terrorism.  I am pointing to a methodology which destroys more than it can ever save.  My post is a call to those who do value the land and its creatures, humans among them, to come forward and participate.  It is a call for people of good sense and good intentions to notice the destructiveness that is being carried out in the name of “the Earth” and to stop it. 

   It is a statement of hope that the destructive craziness of these extremists will not forever tarnish the name of the effort to utilize our resources in a reasonable and sustainable way.  As the majority of people, who don’t follow this issue closely, hear about the blowing up of their neighbor’s SUVs and the arson of their cousin’s condo, they develop quite a negative mental picture of people who advocate growth limits and appropriate land use.  It will take a helluva lot of “education” to rid the issue of the taint of the Knit Your Own Yoghurt types already.  The publicity surrounding Miss Butterfly Treesitter turned off many people who might have responded quite positively to a sober appeal on behalf of conservation of the simple beauty of an old growth stand of trees.

   I agree that justice’s enemies aren’t easily visible.  But I am absolutely sure that pasty faced bomb throwers aren’t Justice.

   Zombyboy has more info here:  www.resurrectionsong.com/archives/001166.html#more

   Posted by Claire  on  08/07/03  at  12:02 PM

3. Are these the spoor of the India-based spammers I hear about???

   Posted by  on  11/04/03  at  11:37 AM

<< Back to main