From: matus [matus@snet.net] Sent: Friday, January 11, 2002 7:55 PM To: matus@snet.net Subject: MFD List - Domestic terrorism by any other name Domestic terrorism by any other name ---------- GCN With an overview of recent coverage in major media, including an op-ed in USA Today, Guest Choice Network notes how recent acts of political activism by environmental and animal rights groups have been just as much the work of terrorists as the September 11th attacks. (11/01/01) from - http://www.free-market.net/rd/738307113.html Terrorists On The March -- In America As the executive director of the Guest Choice Network writes in an op-ed published in today's USA Today, "The growing wave of domestic terrorism by animal-rights, anti-corporate and anti-biotech extremists has gone beyond vandalism. Property has been destroyed, and lives have been put at risk... The people we need to worry about, though, may not be international terrorists. They could be the middle-class kids down the street." The terrorist Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and Earth Liberation Front (ELF) took credit for firebombing a Tucson McDonald's on the very day of the terror attacks on New York and Washington. And since September 11, they have continued their violent anti-consumer-choice jihad. ALF -- which as Guest Choice writes has, with ELF, "claimed responsibility for vandalism at New York banks, arsons and firebombings at meat companies, the destruction of homes in several states, and the burning of a feed mill in Wisconsin" -- takes credit for setting a fire at a New Mexico primate-research facility nine days after September 11. Just last week, activists targeted a Little Rock firm with ties to Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), a British crop and animal research firm. HLS, firebombed in August 2000, became so afraid of animal rights terrorists that its directors tried to remove their home addresses from public records out of fear of attacks on their families. The company even changed its name. But that doesn't hold off the radicals -- they're coming here. Shouted one Little Rock demonstrator: "The Battle of Little Rock has begun." The Guest Choice op-ed notes, "Federal agents are investigating a fire and unexploded incendiary devices found Oct. 15 at a government holding pen for wild horses and burros in Nevada -- a site where animal-rights extremists committed arson in 1991." Now, ELF is taking credit for the attack. Said the group in a communiqué: "In the name of all that is wild we will continue to target industries and organizations that seek to profit by destroying the earth." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Enemies here threaten food from - http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/2001-11-01-ncguest1.htm On the same day America was directly attacked for the first time in 6 decades, the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) were taking credit for the burning of a McDonald's in Tucson. "Make no mistake about it," FBI special agent David Szady told 60 Minutes this year, "by any sense or any definition, (ELF) is a true domestic-terrorism group." These homegrown terrorists have not let up since September. Federal agents are investigating a fire and unexploded incendiary devices found Oct. 15 at a government holding pen for wild horses and burros in Nevada - a site where animal-rights extremists committed arson in 1991. And ALF claims to have set fire to the Coulston Foundation primate-research facility 9 days after the terrorist attacks on the United States. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson now has warned that the nation's food supply could be the target of a terrorist attack. The people we need to worry about, though, may not be international terrorists. They could be the middle-class kids down the street. The growing wave of domestic terrorism by animal-rights, anti-corporate and anti-biotech extremists has gone beyond vandalism. Property has been destroyed, and lives have been put at risk. And Americans are the perpetrators. Even the incendiary devices are nothing new. ALF says it was the group that used such devices last March to set fire to two meat trucks in New York. ALF also took credit for setting devices beneath trucks in Canada on Christmas Day 2000. ALF or ELF - or both - have claimed responsibility for vandalism at New York banks, arsons and firebombings at meat companies, the destruction of homes in several states, and the burning of a feed mill in Wisconsin, among many other acts. On New Year's Eve 1999, ELF says it set fire to Michigan State University's Agriculture Hall, causing about $1 million in damages. Its reason: Researcher Catherine Ives' work would "force" developing nations to switch to genetically engineered crops. "I lost basically my entire professional life," Ives told 60 Minutes. She said she was working on disease-resistant crops that would help feed Africans. What will it take for the United States to recognize the clear and present danger that such groups present? The death of a McDonald's employee in a bombing, as occurred in France last year? Perhaps it will require an American Graham Hall. Hall, a British journalist, was kidnapped at gunpoint in October 1999. The letters "ALF," 4 inches high, were burned into his back with a branding iron. An ALF spokesperson's comment: "People who make a living in this way have to expect from time to time to take the consequences of their actions." Hall's "crime": He made a video documentary critical of ALF. Complacency is no option; it will happen here. Just this summer, Bruce Friedrich, vegan campaign coordinator for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), told an animal-rights convention in Virginia, "It would be a great thing if, you know, all of these fast-food outlets and these slaughterhouses and these laboratories and these banks that fund them exploded tomorrow." After the audience's applause died down, he added, according to a tape of his comments, "I think it's perfectly appropriate for people to take bricks and toss them through the windows. ... Hallelujah to the people who are willing to do it." An attack could be more insidious than a brick. In April, PETA co-founder Ingrid Newkirk expressed hope that foot-and-mouth disease, so devastating in Great Britain, would infect the United States. "If that hideousness came here, it wouldn't be any more hideous for the animals. ... I openly hope that it comes here," the anti-meat activist proclaimed. "It will bring economic harm only for those who profit from giving people heart attacks." In 1997, former senator George McGovern wrote prophetically about a "new age in this country" with a fragmentation of society "based on paternalism - what we believe is best for each other." He asked: "Where do we draw the line on dictating to each other? How many of these battles can we stand? Whose values should prevail?" Or, in the words of Walt Kelly's Pogo: "We have met the enemy, and he is us." Richard Berman is executive director of The Guest Choice Network, a coalition of restaurant and tavern operators. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------- Are they terrorists? "This guide is dedicated to the brave men and women of the Animal Liberation Front. In this age of insanity, you may be branded a terrorist, but you will one day be remembered as a selfless warrior who dared to fight for what is right." - The ALF Primer, www.animalliberationfront.com "The ELF is not an ecoterrorist organization or any sort of terrorist organization, but rather one that is working to protect all life on planet Earth. It is amazingly hypocritical for mainstream media and the federal government to label the ELF as a terrorist group, yet at the same time (ignore) the U.S. government and U.S.-based corporations which every day exploit, torture and murder people around the world." - Frequently Asked Questions About the Earth Liberation Front, posted on the ELF Web site (PETA's response to the question, "Don't animal rights activists commit 'terrorist' acts?") "The animal rights movement is nonviolent. One of the central beliefs shared by most animal rights people is rejection of harm to any animal, human or otherwise. However, any large movement is going to have factions that believe in the use of force." - Frequently Asked Questions, PETA-online.org For comments about articles or other topics please visit the MFDList forum at www.delphi.com\MFDList www.matus1976.com