is eco-terrorism really terrorism?

Great Debates
61

I’d still call them arsonists and racist as well.

The only rationale I can see for specifically making an act a hate crime is if we wouldn’t have legal recourse otherwise.

If an arsonists also bombs people (as in people not property) I would call them a terrorist but it would have nothing to do with the arson.

Terrorist do a lot of things to further their cause, Hamas gives out food and medical help, some terrorists finance their operations through drug running, but the drug running per se is not the terrorism even though there may be violence associated with it. If that was true then all drug dealers would be terrorists.

I could really care less about the ELF, they have made their bed. But I don’t like the implications of the label that eco-terrorism can carry.

Here’s another example, somebody steals a logging truck full of old growth wood and in there attempted getaway uses a federal highway. They’ve now officially been proclaimed terrorists under the guise of the proposed law.

62

The idea that ELF and Earth First never hurts anyone is false.

http://bari.iww.org/iu120/local/Watson1.html

This website mentions that a couple of sawmill workers were injured by trees spiked by the ELF, but gives no details. I heard that a lumberjack lost an arm when his chainsaw bounced off a spike, but have no cite for the anecdote.

The website above does mention that a couple of Earth First-ers who apparently resisted the tactic of tree spiking were injured when someone bombed their car. It would be difficult to convince me that the group is being so careful not to hurt someone by bombing their car.

the great dalmuti’s latest post is not worthy of a detailed response. It is, I think, clarifying in that it exemplifies the attitude that eco-terrorists use to justify themselves. Such as we, the great unwashed, are too unintelligent and closed-minded to make the effort of justifying their actions worthwhile. Nonetheless, the Enlightened Ones gratify themselves with a drive-by sneer as they go off to overrule us, and attempt to impose thru terror an agenda they cannot defend thru logic.

Just like terrorists everywhere.

–
Regards,
Shodan

63

Apparently, you misunderstood. If you commit arson, and someone dies as a result, you have committed first degree murder. Accordingly, if the jurisdiction imposes the death penalty for first degree murder, you are eligible to be sentenced to death.

The “cause” is utterly irrelevant.

Sua

64

[nitpick]It is not possible to destroy an environment. Chop every tree, divert every river, smother every bunny rabbit under a layer of carbon ash and the environment WILL STILL BE THERE. It will be radically altered, no doubt, but it will still be an envrionment.

I know it sounds kind of overly sensitive, but to say “we’re destroying the environment” is to lend undo credibility to the green movements, since we start the debate by accepting their terms. While I don’t want to see bunnies smothered under carbon ash, neither am I an envrionmentalist by any stretch.

65

Thank you for your post Dalmuti. I agree with basically everything you said, and also know the limits to the GD. I enjoy pushing those limits, however. I understand that my ideology is vastly different from the majority of the population, and as such I am prepared for the ridicule that my posts incur. Thank you for noticing (one of the only people) that I never claimed to be a supporter for the ELF. I simply disagree with the term ‘terrorist’ as it applies to them. That is not to say that what they are doing is not illegal, nor am I saying that they are right in doing what they do. I guess everyone just wanted me to be an apologist for the ELF, and that is what I became.

For your (or everyone else’s) info, I have taken great pains in my lifestyle to ensure that the way I live life is compassionate. How many times have I heard, once I unveiled to people the cruel practices perpetrated upon animals, people say “That is horrible, but I just couldn’t do that. It is too hard to be vegan.” Way too many people are too complacent, too unwilling to make sacrifices in their lives despite the fact that they know those sacrifices would make life a lot easier for many beings.

Although I’m sure that Dalmuti’s post will be slammed, I urge people to back up what they say with actions. Any bit of respect I have for the ELF is in the fact that they take great risks in acting on their convictions. Of course, you can act on your convictions without jeopardizing other people’s lives, however.

But Dalmuti makes a great point, not just about GD, but about people in general. Buttress your ‘bitching and moaning’ with tangible action. And, in a place that claims to want to end world ignorance, listen to and understand all the perspectives before making judgements.

colin

66

Oh boo hoo. You’re such a martyr, colin. You have come in here and basically said they shouldn’t be considered terrorists because I agree with their objectives, just not their tactics. You are an apologist for them. Deal.

67

Despite your context, I think the word ‘evil’ is way too ‘black and white.’ Calling ELFers (or virtually anyone else) evil is not noting the ‘grey’ in the situation, the good and the bad. And, I believe, the ‘grey’ encompasses the majority of almost everything in life.

I don’t think that I am smarter than everyone else, nor do I think I’m more moral than everyone else. I think I may be more willing to examine ideology that falls outside of the “acceptable domain.” I think I may be more willing to realize how fucked up things really are. I think I may be more willing to want to make those bad things right. Those are all “I think” 's. I’m not sure why the majority of people are willing to turn a blind eye to injustices. Or note that injustices exist, but are unwilling to do anything about them.

It is hard to advance ‘forward thinking’ movements. It is a struggle. It doesn’t mean one should take the easy way out, and resort to violence. But it is hard. Look at the socialist movement in America (the movement that brought you 8 hour working days, weekends, minimum wage, child labor laws, etc.). Look at the anti-war movements, the environmental movement, the civil rights movement, the suffragist (and feminist) movmements. It is hard to change the status quo. Are you really claiming otherwise?

And, onto your final paragraph. Once again, you call me an ‘apologist’ and claim that I support ELF’s tactics and actions. Please, please, read this next line: I simply don’t buy the ‘terrorist’ label that has been affixed to them. That was the point of the OP. That is all that I have been claiming. Please read more carefully.

colin

68

If the planes were completely empty (including pilots and f.a’s), and the WTC buildings were completely empty, with no chance of debris from impact killing anyone, I would call those actions ‘damage to property.’

Of course, it is unrealistic to aver any of those statements. The Al Qaeda aimed to kill as many people as possible. That is terrorism.

colin

69

Yes it is. But you don’t have to kill anyone to be a terrorist. Terrorism is violent acts meant to influence policy by promoting fear, whether or not people get killed. ELF is a terrorist organization.

70

Interesting, Oh New World denizen. IIRC, last time I torched a failing restaurant here, there was an important distinction between ‘recklessness’ and ‘intention’. But then we don’t have degrees of murder, its either murder or manslaughter.

Someone can be on death row with recklessness ?

71

Well we would also have to evacuate the area around the WTC to protect from falling debris and resultant fires. Block off traffic from all directions too. It’s really a stupendous thing to imagine an act of that magnitude happening without fatalities. OTOH it’s easy to imagine burning down a business at night with no one being inside. There have been several arsons this year in my city and the businesses haven’t had fatalities that I know of.

IOW you’ve asked me to consider a completely unrealistic situation with very little bearing on reality. Your comparison of a commonplace crime with one of the most infamous acts modern times is not warranted.

SuaSponte I was referring to the possible use of the death penalty as a result of the first degree murder charge.

72

Does everyone here think that the preceding factors of the American Revolution (and just about any other revolution in history) were all nice and dandy, sitting down over tea and crumpets discussing issues in distinguished voices while taking careful notes?

Nope. Bombs. Arson. Gunfights. Kidnapping. The rebels were inspiring fear into other colonists, saying “you’re either with us or with the crown.” Sound familiar? Think about who you think were the bad guys then, and who you think the bad guys are now.

People have always done stupid shit in the name of ideology. Most times, people just get hurt (or worse) and those in question thoroughly earn their place in history as wankers.

Other times, however, fruitful advances come as a direct result of their efforts. Some efforts are peaceful, others have been violent. Slavery was abolished. Woman’s rights. Civil rights. Caste systems were abolished. Religious freedom. Etc.

In any “cause,” “belief system,” or idology," there are obviously going to be people who go too far. This, however, does not discount the entire cause, as most people seem to be implying here.

Throwing around the term “eco terrorists” is terribly, terribly harmful to groups like Greenpeace and PETA and Sierra Club who undertake nonviolent, and usually constructive campaigns. Can anyone here refute that Greenpeace does not, in fact, have the best intentions?

Just as Sept. 11th was more than just a little bit of bad press for Muslims and people of Arabic descent around the world. Guilty by association, which is completely absurd, but unfortunately widely practiced.

The problem, as I see it, is that governments, businesses, and industries are never really affected by the “guilty through association” thing. Why not?

Aren’t some of these companies doing things undoubtedly worse than blowing up empty buildings?

Granted, blowing up empty buildings is stupid, and those who do it (to repeat myself) should be pursued and brought to justice. But doesn’t that just reinforce the fact that others, who are commiting far more atrocious acts, should similarly be brought to justice?

See my last post, for links on the “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico? And there are many instances of pig waste being accidentally dropped into rivers in North Carolina, instantly killing hundreds of thousands of fish.

Think about the fact that it’s illegal to kick your dog, yet these disasters kill thousands upon thousands of animals, and simply go unpunished.

If we (those who spend their money on goods which companies make) used the “guilty by association” mindset when spending our money, and voicing our discontent with our yen/dollars/etc., we could get a hell of a lot more done, and those who need our money to maintain their businesses could do nothing but respect our wishes.

And FallenAngel, my word, get a hobby. You said “It is not possible to destroy an environment. Chop every tree, divert every river, smother every bunny rabbit under a layer of carbon ash and the environment WILL STILL BE THERE. It will be radically altered, no doubt, but it will still be an envrionment.”

You win! Well, it’s not very easy to destroy anything, is it? Matter usually just takes a smaller, lighter form, so nothing really gets destroyed, just “reshaped.” Yes. That’s a nice word.

Is that the fartherst you can see into the environmental problems we face today? Man. Get off your little logistical cloud and wake the hell up.

So, by your standards, on Sept. 11th, the WTC wasn’t really destroyed, it was just heavily modified. The ancient Buddhist carvings the Taliban blew up aren’t destroyed, just greatly altered. The US didn’t destroy the city of Hiroshima, they merely gave it a dramatic makeover. After all, the city is still there, isn’t it?

:smack:

The environment is a work of art. It’s a beautiful, delicate, precise, and complicated thing. It is resiliant, but not indestructable. And if we don’t change our ways, no, the environment won’t be destroyed, but the possibility of human life existing in the mangled/altered environment will be.

So, hang your nitpick out to dry, plant some vegetables in your back yard, grab a garbage bag, and go pick up some litter. Much more productive than making trivial, trite points.
Best,

The Great Dalmuti

73

Are you justifying terrorism as an American tradition?

74

I can’t speak for the_great_dalmuti, but I can’t resist replying.
When Americans bomb civilians, it’s called war. And it’s a grand tradition going back at least to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

75

**

Why does it look harmful to groups like Greenpeace, PETA, and the Sierra Club? To the best of my knowledge none of those particular groups endorses or encourages their members to engage in arson, sabotage, or any other form of destructive intimidation.

On a side note I find that Greenpeace and PETA does a fine enough job of making themselves look bad without needing help from others. PETA in particular has come out with some truly offensive ad campaigns that are more likely to turn people away from what they’ve got to say then persuade others to join their cause.

**

I agree that it is unfair for Greenpeace to be lumped in with ALF and ELF. However that shouldn’t stop us from calling those organizations what they are, terrorist.

**

I think you’ve got a selective way of looking at things. A lot of people look at Enron and assume all corporations are run exactly the same way. The watermelons in the environmental movement tend to hate just about every company out there.

**

I seriously doubt humanity is in danger of changing the environment so radically that human life because impossible. The environment is not static and it has changed many times throughout the billions of years before humans were around and will undoubtably keep on changing billions of years after we are gone.
Marc

76

What makes you think that characterizes any of the people in this thread? Is this your example of – what were your words? – “constructively and intelligently debating an important discussion?” Or is it easier to simply imagine the people on the other side of your screen this way, so you can quickly and easily sort them into the “bad, bad people” slot and dismiss them as incorrect?

If you’re going to operate under the premise that no non-vegetarian can be a good person, why should anyone take you seriously? It’s an indefensible premise, not to mention a patently stupid one.

Which is why I let my PETA membership lapse three years ago and refuse to give them another cent until they refute the ELF, the ALF, and their tactics. Unfortunately, Ingrid Newkirk – who is the biggest stumbling block to PETA ever being taken seriously – is on record as advocating the mission and tactics of the ALF.

The acts they are committing are, in all likelihood, not illegal, and your concept of “justice” is, to say the least, at odds with most of the world’s.

I won’t spend a lot of time thinking about it, because it’s patently false. My wife runs a website which deals in large part with animal cruelty cases and their disposition, so I know whence I speak.
Colinito:

How noble. :rolleyes: Has it occurred to you that your posts might incur ridicule because the positions they espouse are ridiculous?

What risks? That they might get caught and go to jail? Big deal. “Taking great risks” isn’t admirable by itself – the KKK can take risks, but their goals are hardly ones that most people would consider worthwhile.

ELF “members” don’t even have the balls to take credit for their work–they do everything anonymously. It never occurs to them – or if it does, they simply ignore away – that by engaging in this destruction, they don’t hurt the people they’re trying to hurt. Burn down a ski resort, and you don’t hurt the resort owner or the developer; they’re insured, and are probably relatively wealthy anyway. But the folks working at the desk, and the folks who clean the rooms, and operate the lifts, and patrol the slopes, are all out of a paycheck. Those are the people who get hurt. But, hey, what’s feeding your family when there are bigger fish to fry, right? You have to get behind the cause, man! Who cares if your bills are paid!

77

Uh-uh. The “grey” here is in the motivations of the ELF. The “black and white” is that the ELF start fires in buildings that don’t belong to them, putting both the firefighters and people potentially inside the buildings at risk of death.
Evil. Evil. Evil.

What a jackass statement. How do you know my ideology? I haven’t discussed my ideology in any way, shape, or form. For all you know, I may very well agree with every… single… goal of the ELF.
I haven’t raised my ideology - nor have I discussed the ELF’s ideology - because they are utterly irrelevant to whether or not the actions of the ELF are evil.

OK, let’s first of all correct your false statement. The socialist movement in America brought about none of the changes you attribute to them. The progessive movement did.
But that’s neither here nor there. Let’s next correct your misapprehension of what I wrote.
Of course it’s hard to effect change in this country. But the very examples you point to demonstrate that you can effect change in this country without violence. Indeed, from a practical point of view, violence has been demonstrated to be a singularly ineffective method of effecting change in this country.
The Black Panthers did not cause the changes in civil rights law in this country; the Southern Christian Leadership Conference did.
The Weathermen did not cause the US to pull out of Vietnam; various non-violent movements did.
No violent organization brought about women’s suffrage; a non-violent political campaign did.
And the ELF and ALF did not bring about what advances was have had in environmental law; such groups as Greenpeace, the Sierra Club and the like did.
Political violence in the US has long been the coin of idiots who don’t want make the effort that Martin Luther King, Jr., Ceasar Chavez, Susan B. Anthony and the like have made. To them, violence is a short-cut, so they don’t have to work as hard. They don’t want to make the sacrifices necessary to effect change; they want to force other people to involuntarily make those sacrifices.
Screw the lazy bastards. You want change, you work for change. You make Gandhi your role model, not Beavis and Butt-head. (“Heh hehh hehh hehh. Let’s burn something.”)

I’m reading you loud and clear. You state that which is evil is not evil, but instead “grey”. That makes you an apologist.
BTW, please read more carefully yourself - I’ve explicitly excluded myself from the debate over the definition of “terrorist.” It is irrelevant to my points.

Sua

78

Most people don’t care. While you are doing whatever it is that fives you enough leisure time to worry about the rainforest, the rest of us are going to work and trying to make money so we can enjoy such luxaries as food and a place to live.

Why is that? Because you happen to agree with their cause?

And having an organized group threaten to ransack or burn down your office does not inspite feelings of fear? These psychos are not trying to coerce companies into changeing their strategies by targeting their facilities for destruction?

Are they breaking the law by tresspassing? Are they risking rescuers lives if they get hung up on some power lines or swamped by a Norweigian whaling boat? They may not be “terrorists” per se, but they are definitely heading into that territory.

Show me a site for this. I did a quick search and could only find some unformated text messages on some environmentalist web sites. Not that it matters to me. I don’t eat McDs hambergers if I can help it because they taste like shit.

Possibly the truest thing said in this thread. Most adults realize the world is more complicated than simple black and white issues of “cutting down rainforests is bad/saving the manatee is good”.

Oh…go hug a tree or something.

Wait…I know this one. Its still terrorism, right?

79

Legality doesn’t equate with morality. Civil rights activists broke Jim Crow Laws. I’m not equating ELF with peaceful Civil rights activists but pointing out that laws can be made to benefit certain people at the expense of others. Thus even if some of these people are not breaking the law, it doesn’t mean their actions are moral.

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by SuaSponte *
The “grey” here is in the motivations of the ELF. The “black and white” is that the ELF start fires in buildings that don’t belong to them, putting both the firefighters and people potentially inside the buildings at risk of death.
Evil. Evil. Evil.

[QUOTE]
So if they owned the buildings would that make a difference? There are thousands of arsons all across the US every year. Are all of those arsonists “Evil. Evil. Evil”? Or is it only Evil when it’s related to activism?

I reserve the word evil for the few sociopaths that actually take a joy in killing and have no guilt about doing it. If the ELF made an effort to ensure that the buildings burned with maximum casualities, I would call them evil.

If someone differentiates between murder and manslaughter, does that mean that they are endorsing manslaughter?

Wow, I wish I could get a job posting at the SDMB!

80

Yep. Also the Mexican War. (This is taken from Zinn’s “A People’s History of the US”- the chapter "We take nothing by conquest- Thank God.’) Basically, we made a deal with Mexico that everything above Nueces River would be US, and everything below would be Mexico. The US decided to put troops into an area south of the NUeces River, near the Rio Grande River, as to try and expand their territory. The troops were, of course, killed by Mexican soldiers for infringing upon their territory.

Then the US bombed civilians on the coast/border of Mexico until Mexico surrendered. When they did, the US gave Mexico a paltry sum for the land between Nueces and Rio Grande, and a US reporter joyously and proudly proclaimed, “We take Nothing by Conquest- Thank God.” The hypocritical nature of US foreign policy and internal policy goes way back.

Ever since the 9/11 bombings, I’ve been wanting to make “We are the Terrorist” t-shirts, with a list of all the countries we’ve fucked up on the back. Very similar to the list tomndebb posted recently.
That is not to take away any blame from Al Qaeda for perpetrating malicious and disgusting acts. But I don’t think we can sit on our high horse, as we have done 100x or more the damage to ‘civilization’ than Al Qaeda has.

And that all links together with “eco-terrorism” too. Sure, give it that negative label. Make everyone hate it. Never mind that the US turns a blind eye to wealthy corporations that shit on our environment day in and day out.

I’m going on vacation, so I will be unable to read the slew of hate-filled replies to this post. Hopefully dalmuti and perspective will keep it real while I’m gone. I’ll catch up in a couple weeks.

Peace
colin