Insane Terrorism Drill: Animal Rights Activists With Hostages

September 17, 2008

Update from Green Is The New Red.com

Posted: 17 Sep 2008 08:00 AM CDT

Animal rights terrorism drill at UC Berkeley.

A terrorism scenario in the nation’s largest homeland security drill involved animal rights activists holding hostages, at gun point.

Seriously.

From The Daily Californian, “Urban Shield Tests Police Ability”:

The atmosphere is surprisingly relaxed, despite the fact that terrorists protesting animal research have taken a hostage in a UC Berkeley building and are threatening to shoot anyone who approaches the scene.

Suddenly, four gunshots are heard inside the building and the officers quickly ascend a four-story fire escape to confront the terrorists.

All this is standard procedure for the San Leandro Police Department tactical team, which was participating in Urban Shield, the nation’s largest homeland security drill.

It’s an interesting choice for a terrorism drill, considering animal rights activists have never taken hostages, and never harmed anyone in this country (not quite the “real world scenario” described on the project’s website, Urban Shield). You might think the government would choose right wing groups for such drills, because they’ve actually murdered people and admittedly created weapons of mass destruction (but they’re not even on DHS lists of national security threats).

Instead, organizers chose to set up this elaborate, illogical scenario of animal rights activists holding hostages. It ain’t an accident, folks.. This was a choice, a carefully crafted and vetted decision by this multi-government-agency program.

Terrorism scenarios like this send a clear message that animal rights activists are to be feared. It instills that fear in law enforcement. And it instills that fear in the general public. It helps legitimize the sweeping government attacks on the animal rights and environmental movements, known as the Green Scare, by mainstreaming unreasonable fears.

Most people who see this news clip, or saw this scenario taking place, don’t know enough to differentiate between fact and scare-mongering government fiction. And that’s the point. This way, if folks hear about more grand juries or FBI raids or infiltrating vegan potlucks, they may brush aside their logical concerns and not worry about the civil liberties of those evil, hostage-taking activists.

Why do all that? Well, there’s a lot at stake. The University of California system has been the target of heated animal rights campaigning, including the recent bombings in Santa Cruz. And the UC system was the chief lobbyist behind the recent “eco-terrorism” legislation. Also, cops in Berkeley recently raided a radical bookstore and community space called the Long Haul Infoshop.

In this political climate, here’s what I think would be a better “training” drill: Militarized police forces, pressured by vested political and corporate interests, attempting to silence political activists, and activists preparing to stand by each other, call attorneys, organize press conferences, know their rights and, most importantly, keep fighting..

Green Scare Flickr Group, and an “Eco-terrorist” Teen Love Story Posted: 17 Sep 2008 07:55 AM CDT

There’s now a GreenIsTheNewRed Flickr account, as well as a Green Scare Flickr group! I’m hoping ya’ll will enjoy them, for a few reasons:

You can easily post these photos to your blogs and websites through Flickr. You can submit your own images to the group: benefit fliers, photos of Green Scare defendants, protest photos, scare-mongering ads, and of course photos of you at work in your “domestic terrorist” aprons. Post them to the group, and we’ll run some here on GreenIsTheNewRed. You might find some articles you haven’t seen. The photo descriptions are full of links to content that, by the nature of the blog, gets burried as time goes on.

To start things off, here’s an image I just uploaded. It’s from Burnout, the graphic novel by Rebecca Donner and Inaki Miranda (which I noted here a while back). It’s a love story about two teenagers who become “eco-terrorists.” I was skeptical, to say the least, of anything that uses the buzzword of “eco-terrorism,” even if it’s just as an idea for a plot. I think the more folks use the word to describe everything from comic books to Law & Order episodes, the more people accept that non-violent activists really are “terrorists.” So I was pleasantly surprised that the book is not only

beautiful, but it felt critical of the “terrorist” rhetoric, and cleverly gives some historical background of radical activism that puts the mainstream media to shame.

What do you think? (About the Flickr accounts, and also about Burnout?)