The Terror of Our Ways

[Guest guest]

prolly see my dad if i watch this..he moved here a couple years ago...

 

http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2005/07/08/kavanagh/index.html?source=daily

 

The Terror of Our Ways

Conflating environmentalists and terrorists is all the rage

By Michael J. Kavanagh

08 Jul 2005

What liberals and their allies in the environmentalist wacko movement fail to

understand is: their message has gotten out. Their anti-capitalist, socialist,

gloom-and-doom, fear-based, lunatic ravings have been amplified -- and Americans

understand exactly who they are, and what they're about. As the " Mr. Big " of the

vast right-wing conspiracy, I am proud, ladies and gentlemen, to play a major

part in the exposé leading to their depression.

- Rush Limbaugh April 25, 2005

 

Currently, about 20 million people tune in to Rush Limbaugh every week. His

lingo is now conservative lingua franca. Limbaugh figured out that if you repeat

your best lines -- e.g., " environmentalist wackos " -- often enough, they become

more than just funny catchphrases; they become a reconfiguration of reality and

a call to arms. In his world (and it's a world in which a lot of people live),

you can't be an environmentalist and escape wacko-ism.

 

In Limbaugh, a large group of Americans who felt their country was being taken

away from them found an emotional outlet. If his facts didn't always ring true,

his anger did. Limbaugh proved that someone with a quick wit and a microphone

could wield tremendous power, and his success spawned a legion of copycat shows

across the country.

 

 

Filmmaker Patrice O'Neill at a community screening of " The Fire Next Time " in

Montana's Flathead Valley.

Photo: Chris Peterson.One of them is hosted by John Stokes of KGEZ in Montana's

Flathead Valley. Stokes is featured in the new PBS film The Fire Next Time,

which premieres Tuesday, July 12. The documentary was made by Patrice O'Neill

and The Working Group, a film company that also works with communities to

overcome intolerance. The film follows several groups in Kalispell, Mont., over

a two-year period in which their community goes up in flames -- figuratively and

literally -- over conflicts about environmental preservation.

 

Everybody in Kalispell cares about trees. Trees feed the timber industry, help

drain the land, attract tourists, and provide habitat for wildlife; and they

also catch fire and endanger homes and lives during the annual forest-fire

season. Talking about trees in Kalispell means talking about livelihoods and

lifestyles, and the valley's different interest groups are like sticks

dangerously rubbing together in its drought-plagued forests.

 

Enter Stokes, radio host and human blowtorch. On environmentalists, Stokes has

this to say: " Eradicate 'em. Their message stinks. They're destroying America.

And it all came out of the Third Reich. You know, the Third Reich was born out

of the environmental community. I don't make it up. It's there. " Stokes attends

town meetings, holds rallies, and burns green swastikas to protest what he sees

as the tyranny of liberals, the U.S. Forest Service, immigrants, the government,

and, of course, the people he refers to as " eco-Nazis " and " green Nazis. "

 

 

John Stokes prepares to burn a swastika to draw attention to " green Nazis. "

Photo: Montana Human Rights Network. " John Stokes came to this valley and all of

the sudden the people had a way of telling the truth, " says one timber worker

featured in the film.

 

Clearly, Stokes and his listeners are angry. They're angry at the Forest Service

and the more uncompromising environmentalists for not letting loggers thin the

forests in a way that will (they think) boost the flagging Montana economy and

prevent fires. They're angry about losing their timber-industry jobs. They're

angry about watching property values soar as millionaires buy weekend ranches in

the valley.

 

During forest-fire season, when the valley's residents are at their most

vulnerable, Stokes' provocations are strongest. " Anybody who's ever written a

check to the Sierra Club, the Nature Conservancy, Audubon, Citizens for a Better

Planet, " he says, " hope you're happy with yourself, 'cause we blame you. " Stokes

warns his listeners to be careful, because " there are eco-arsonist terrorists

out there. " He holds up a copy of an Earth Liberation Front manual and tells the

camera, " They just had a terror training camp in Missoula in June. "

 

It's not true, but it doesn't matter: with his rants, Stokes has placed

environmentalism squarely in the middle of the most charged discourse in

post-9/11 America -- the one revolving around the word " terrorism. " And while

Stokes seems extreme, these days, he's not the only one warning of an alleged

link between environmentalists and terrorists. Joe Friday is too.

 

 

Fed Up

 

 

Hummers: innocent victims?

Photo: FBI.gov.On June 21 of this year, FBI Deputy Assistant Director for

Counterterrorism John Lewis called eco-terrorism one of the top domestic

terrorist threats in the U.S. One month earlier, he'd made similar statements

before a congressional committee. The FBI claims that 1,200 acts of

eco-terrorism have taken place since 1990, causing over $110 million in property

damage. Although ELF has said that it has never and would never target humans,

the FBI is worried that might change. It has decided that ELF and the Animal

Liberation Front pose a threat comparable to militias of the Timothy McVeigh

stripe (whose numbers have fallen but whose threat remains significant [PDF],

especially in Montana), and to white supremacist groups (whose numbers are

rising, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center). Ironically, the Flathead

Valley was home to one of the more notorious militia groups, Project Seven,

which in 2003 was found with a cache of arms and a hit list of government

officials.

 

The FBI says its concern is based on the fact that eco-terrorists are currently

the most active of domestic terrorism groups. But when I spoke with FBI

spokesperson Bill Carter, he was unable to detail the nature of the 1,200

" acts, " how many had occurred in each of the past few years, or how many people

have been involved in committing them (although Lewis' testimony says about 150

cases are currently under investigation). Even the top brass at the FBI seems

confused about the extent of the threat. In February, FBI Director Robert S.

Mueller III testified before the Senate Committee on Intelligence that major

incidents of eco-terror had actually declined in 2004.

 

Meanwhile, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) recently published a policy paper

[PDF] that questioned why a draft of the 2005 terrorism priorities of the

Department of Homeland Security reportedly did not mention right-wing terrorist

groups (such as militias), while eco-terrorism was placed front and center.

Thompson asked to testify before a May congressional panel that discussed

eco-terrorism and threats to the nation's infrastructure, but his request was

denied by the panel's chair, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.). It was only the second

time in history, according to a Democratic spokesperson at the DHS, that a

member of Congress had not been given the privilege of making remarks before a

panel.

 

According to the Associated Press, Inhofe said he hoped to investigate how ELF

and ALF raise money and support from " mainstream activists. " " Just like al-Qaeda

or any other terrorist organization, ELF and ALF cannot accomplish their goals

without money, membership, and the media,'' the AP quoted Inhofe as saying.

 

 

Now what self-respecting terrorist would rescue cute li'l puppies?

Photo: arkangelweb.org.It's not that Thompson -- or anyone, for that matter --

is defending acts of terrorism on behalf of the environment. (Thompson has

denounced ELF and ALF, as has every major environmental group.) It's that they

are trying to figure out how and with what consequences environmentalism and

terrorism got coupled together in the first place. Yes, some expensive and

illegal acts are committed in the name of the environment; and yes, the

framework of terrorism is an easy and useful one for the FBI and the DHS to use

when handling those incidents. (By calling ecological sabotage " terrorism " as

opposed to arson or vandalism, federal officials are given slightly greater

powers in investigating and bringing perpetrators to justice.) But what does it

mean for environmentalism when the whole movement is defined by its margins? And

what does it mean for the nation and the world when language is used so loosely

even as last week's attacks in London make the danger of real terror tragically

plain?

 

For some, broadening the term " terrorist " to include organizations like ELF is

bad for both environmentalists and for our sense of what real terror is. " These

people are not environmentalists, they're arsonists, " says Eric Antebi, a Sierra

Club spokesperson. Antebi also rejects the idea that ELF's actions constitute

real terrorism. " Eco-terrorism is not a legitimate phrase -- it cheapens what

real terrorism is. We have seen in this country the real forms that terrorism

takes, " he says.

 

However atypical ELF and ALF may be of environmentalism, they have come to

characterize the movement for many on the right, in Congress, and in law

enforcement. The backdrop to this development, of course, was September 11,

2001. First of all, 9/11 solidified the power of a government that also happens

to be anti-environmentalist. Second, because of a (perhaps justified) national

state of paranoia, 9/11 complicated the use of a tool that has been always

essential to the environmental movement: direct action.

 

" We used to put banners on bridges, banners on big monuments, " says John

Passacantando, executive director of Greenpeace USA. " When people are worried

about this kind of structure, you don't see us doing that. Our direct actions

always have to be in the tone and the temper of the time. "

 

The FBI insists it distinguishes groups like ELF and ALF from the rest of the

environmental movement, and is committed to the lawful expression of free

speech. But the government has occasionally raised the specter of terrorism to

support its cause, even if it meant darkening the name of mainstream

environmental groups. In a widely publicized 2003 case in which Greenpeace

activists boarded a ship carrying illegal mahogany from the Brazilian Amazon

bound for the U.S., the Department of Justice seemed so bent on prosecuting the

environmental group that it dug up an obscure 1872 law prohibiting

" sailor-mongering. " Greenpeace's Passacantando says that during the trial,

federal prosecutors regularly referred -- directly and indirectly -- to 9/11.

(At one point, he says, federal prosecutors stood a scale model of the ship on

its aft next to two other scale models: a skyscraper that looked like one of the

twin towers, and a 747.) " Even with Greenpeace, a group that's been doing

nonviolent action for 30 years, they tried to make us look like terrorists, " he

says. The case was thrown out of court.

 

Meanwhile, few seem to be paying attention to another kind of eco-terror. For

many environmentalists and politicians, eco-terrorism used to mean blowing up a

nuclear plant or poisoning a water system -- actions that, unlike those of ALF

or ELF, would deliberately put thousands or tens of thousands of lives at risk.

Ironically, the post-9/11 crackdown on terrorism has stifled some of the

organizations that used to draw attention to those threats. " Greenpeace used to

go into nuclear plants, chemical plants, " Passacantando says. " We don't do that

anymore. We could -- the security there is terrible. We put out reports

instead. "

 

 

- - - - - - - - - -

 

Michael J. Kavanagh is a writer and public radio reporter.

 

 

" God was my co-pilot, but we crashed in the Andes and I had to eat him. "

[Guest guest]

I probably shouldn't make a joke of this - but Peter and maybe other

English people will recognise the detective in the Thin Blue Line in

the quoted paragraph :-)

 

Jo

 

> What liberals and their allies in the environmentalist wacko

movement fail to understand is: their message has gotten out. Their

anti-capitalist, socialist, gloom-and-doom, fear-based, lunatic

ravings have been amplified -- and Americans understand exactly who

they are, and what they're about. As the " Mr. Big " of the vast right-

wing conspiracy, I am proud, ladies and gentlemen, to play a major

part in the exposé leading to their depression.

> - Rush Limbaugh April 25, 2005