The Green Scare and Civil Liberties
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto 
on 04. 3.08
John Vidal of the Guardian looks at last month's torching of "green" McMansions and asks a lot of questions, like " The Earth Liberation Front was to blame. But was it? Does it even exist? And why is the Bush government intent on casting 'eco-terrorists' as public enemy number one?
He writes "According to the FBI, "eco-terrorism", or "ecotage", is now the number one domestic terrorism threat in the US, greater than that of rightwing extremists, anti-abortion groups and animal rights organisations, and on a par with al-Qaida. The US building industry, rightwing political groups and the mainstream media all leapt to condemn the ELF after the arson....."
Vidal continues:
"But the jury on the McMansions arson is very much out. Instead of striking fear into the heart of middle America, the incident has revealed growing civil liberty fears about the US government's redefinition of terrorism, and a breakdown of trust in the authorities. Although rightwing commentators and libertarian bloggers have used the attack as ammunition in their ideological war against environmentalists and the left, few others think it is so simple. The more anyone looks into the arson, the more they suspect that it has probably got more to do with fraud or political smearing and dirty tricks than with terrorism.
Letter writers to the Seattle press and websites like Treehugger.com and Grist say it is suspicious that the attack on the McMansions should take place in the middle of America's most serious downturn in the housing market in 30 years, with a recession looming and properties almost impossible to sell. People are deliberately setting fire to their own properties to escape mortgage misery, they say, and only one of the houses on the Street of Dreams is said to have been sold."
The article then gets very political.
"The new targeting of environmentalists and what some say is a hysterical exaggeration of the seriousness of eco-terrorism is widely seen as the Bush administration's payback for the humiliation piled on the US and its corporations by environmentalists at the Seattle World Trade Organisation talks in 1999. The national guard had to be called out, the talks were abandoned and, as tear gas drifted around the city, US policies were ridiculed around the world."
A long and fascinating article that would never be found in a mainstream North American paper at ::The Guardian
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Thank you for speaking up about this. I don't condone arson and think many ELF/ALF tactics actually set the movement back (by turning off more mainstream folks). However the conflation of arson and terror is truly scary. Arson, wrong as it is, is mere destruction of property, terror is violence against life. To my knowledge ELF never targets human beings. By calling them terrorists we are defining terror on ideological grounds, not on the basis of action. This could get very orwellian as the targeting of specific ideology is the beginning of incorporating "thought crimes" into our legal code. and those thoughts are green.
Also I believe ELF has been the FBI most wanted for a long time. Many young activist (whether accused wrongly or not of arson) are serving super long jail terms because terror was added to there charges. This depletes the movement of many activists who when they got older (or out of their perhaps deserved but shorter jail times for arson) would get wiser, see the ineffectiveness of arson and participate in more mainstream organizing.
When the arson story first broke, my immediate thought (long before any ELF BS) was insurance fraud. Occam's razor anyone? Or, call me captain obvious. Besides, even though ELF is a bunch of nut jobs, why would they target "green" mcmansions rather than regular ones. Even mischievous kids with matches is more plausible. I think the worst part is that the sleep-walking sheeple have already bought this (probable) fabrication. I wonder what the insurance investigators have uncovered (or been asked to ignore by higher-ups)?
OK, rant over, taking my tinfoil hat off now. hehe
Greenovator:
100% concur. The timing -- economic downturn, housing market implosion, constriction of credit markets -- and the fire is too much. And all those emissions and wasted resources? That's not very ELF-like (yeah, I know, they don't seem to pay attention to their toxic emissions they cause). But still, I agree. More likely is that this is straight-up insurance fraud than an ELF attack.
"Arson, wrong as it is, is mere destruction of property, terror is violence against life. "
Terrorists in the past have gotten their way without killing.
Place a real bomb in the right place and let it get found before it goes off, and you get your point across (and possibly your way) without killing anyone, and even without damaging anything.
It worked for the IRA.
I think it's a bit naive to think that ELF didn't do this! They have been caught red handed burning Hummers before, so why is this an unthinkable crime for them?
Oh wait, easier to blame a builder who easily could have sold a house for a loss.
Does nobody realize that if a house is a total loss, the insurance won't pay 100% of the price? The builder loses anyway....
If the Feds want to wage a war on "ecotage" they are probably behind the arson themselves. That's how they work, isn't it?
Ah, yes! I just love how the British live to jump to conclusions about Americans and spout of so many assumptions they don't know or will ever begin to understand.
I have lived in the PNW all my life until last year and I as well as many other people think ELF is just a bunch of idiotic, hypocritical rich kids. They are terrorists.
These latest fires however, reek of insurance fraud. All the evidence and articles pointed to it. The developer had only one buyer on the hook for this whole development and when the houses burned, only one was spared. How Convenient!
And BTW, many Seattle-lites were horrified of the events of WTO. A bunch of out-of-towner hippies trashed our downtown and then sued our city. Many, if not all Seattle residents did NOT take place in the WTO riots.
The reason this article will never find publication in a mainstream US newspaper is because this article is ripe with FALSE ASSUMPTION!
It's good to know The Guardian will publish anything.
It's arson, not terrorism. There is a difference. People who can't tell the difference should not be making decisions about law enforcement, much less preventing terrorism.
Arson is a crime, and there are plenty of laws available to contend with it. Police and the courts have not been shy about going after arson, and other forms of property destruction.
Besides clouding the issue and wasting resources that should be deployed to fight actual terrorism, this conflation leads to further erosion of our civil right and brings us that much closer to a police state.
I'm no fan of property destruction, because it generally serves to lose the focus on the underlying issue - everyone focuses on the damage done, not the problem that led to the arson. But I can understand that some people get so upset and feel so powerless when all of the lawful things they have done to contend with problems are ignored.
Everyone should remember that there is a vast difference between destroying property and harming people. Real terrorists generally want to kill and injure people, and property destruction is incidental.
Human life is far more precious than property. When property is considered the highest value in society, then the end of that society is truly upon us. And it will rot from within of its own accord. It does not need either arson or terrorism to speed it on its way, only time.
"It's arson, not terrorism. There is a difference. People who can't tell the difference should not be making decisions about law enforcement, much less preventing terrorism."
Think with an open mind for a minute. Arson COULD be a good terrorist weapon, no gun or bomb to get caught with, items available in every country so no need to smuggle anything in.
Fear and financial damage go a long way for terrorists...
Yes, human life is far more important that property, but homes are property which usually contain human life. What happens when a home is set on fire after the parents leave, but the five year old is still quietly sleeping under their Disney comforter? Perhaps out of view from the outside somewhere in this McMansion? When a drifter is caught in someone's blazing summer home? It's not very environmentally friendly to set a home full of toxic chemicals ablaze in the first place. I thought we were supposed to be educating people to make this world a better place for humans, not turning it into a hateful, fearful warzone. If this really is ELF, or any other environment-oriented group, they are just plain stupid.
Thanks for the post. There's also much more information on the corporate war on so-called "eco-terrorism" at GreenIsTheNewRed.com. Best, Will