From: matus [matus@snet.net]
Sent: Wednesday, November 14, 2001 7:44 AM
To: matus@snet.net
Subject: MFD List - Eco-terrorism ... or 'terra-ism'?

(Lost in the foriegn Terrorist threat are the concerns of domestic
terrorism, the larges organized group of domestic terrorists in the united
states are the Earth Liberation front (ELF) and the Animal Liberation Front
(ALF).  The ALF home pages sells books describing how to construct bombs and
timing devices, As Richard Berman says " [what] The people we need to worry
about, though, may not be international terrorists. They could be the
middle-class kids down the street."  Berman warns that our nations food
supply may be at risk.  Among other things is the ALF and ELF serious
misconceptions about science and what actually benefits people in need.  "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 misses the minds of these 'eco
terrorists' is that starving children in third world countries option are
not up between expensive 'organic' food, evil genetically engineered food,
and no food.  There options are between gentically modified foods and NO
food.  'Organic' foods are simply too expensive to percolate to 3rd world
nations, and as a result, the eco terrorist essentialy decide that these
people are better off starving to death then eating genetically modified
food.  Since 1960 the median caloric intake of your average 3rd world nation
member has increased 30%, this is entirely because food has become cheaper
since the large scale mechanization and industrialization of food
manufacturing in post industrialized nations, such as the US.  Not to
mention the increases in production yields from pesticides.  Genetic
modification of foods could increase that yield ten fold, making food cheap
enough for even the poorest people to eat.  Yet, anti globalists and anit
corporate types oppose this.  ALF and ELF, far from damaging only
structures, is responsible for the fire bombing death of a Mcdonalds
employee and kidnapping a British journalis and branding him with a hot iron
containing the letters 'ALF'  His crime?  Making a video critical of the
ALF.  It is a sad state of affairs when people genuinely want to help others
yet choose such misguided means which in fact end up hurting the people they
are trying to help. - Mike)


Eco-terrorism ... or 'terra-ism'?
----------
GCN
   Guest Choice Network questions the motives of animal rights
   advocates. Though Ingrid Newkirk of PETA claims she and her
   followers are "terra-ists" the record is far less clear-cut.
   (11/11/01)

from - http://www.free-market.net/rd/974295732.html

He said, she said
Not long after the Guest Choice Network op-ed appeared in USA Today earlier
this month*1, PETA's Ingrid Newkirk -- who heads a group that has campaigned
against Wendy's, McDonald's, and Burger King -- published a defensive screed
on the Internet, claiming her group's members are "terra-ists," not
terrorists*2.

Really? Anti-PETA journalist Brian Carnell answered Newkirk's op-ed this
morning*3. He notes that PETA's Dan Mathews told a magazine he admires the
man who murdered Gianni Versace "because he got Versace to stop doing fur."
Newkirk said she hopes a group that sent razor blades to medical researchers
"frightens them out of their careers." And Newkirk told a 1997 animal rights
convention, "I wish we all would get up and go into the labs and take the
animals out or burn them down." (That sounds a lot like something PETA's
Bruce Friedrich has said.)

PETA also sent $45,200 to the legal defense fund of ALF terrorist Rodney
Coronado several years ago after he pled guilty to committing arson at a
university animal research facility. And in the latest edition of her book
about ALF, Newkirk has added," ALF members burn down their emptied buildings
and smash their vehicles to smithereens. Perhaps, after reading this book,
you will find that you cannot blame them."

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*1 (op-ed appeared in USA Today earlier this month) Enemies here threaten
food

Published: USA Today
By: Richard Berman


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.''

 Click here to hear the quote by Bruce Friedrich featured in the op-ed.

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.

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--

*2 (her group's members are "terra-ists," not terrorists)

PETA 'Terra-ists'
By Ingrid Newkirk
CNSNews.com Commentary
November 05, 2001

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals' staff members were on the
streets of Manhattan soon after the attack on the World Trade Center. We
arrived with fully equipped rescue vans, introduced ourselves to the
emergency personnel guarding Ground Zero, and put up posters letting people
know how to reach us.

Then we went to work, setting up shop at Pier 40, helping reunite bereaved
and shell-shocked people with frightened animals - dogs, and cats, birds and
rabbits, even turtles, locked, without food or water, in structurally
unsound blocks of apartments in the "hot zone." Eight days after the attack,
we were still getting exhausted, dehydrated animals into waiting human arms.


PETA does not condone or commit violent acts, nor do we threaten anybody
with violence, even those who make their livings committing violence against
animals. In fact, our whole reason to exist is to combat violence to
innocents: in the abattoir, the laboratory, on the fur farm, and behind the
Big Top, among other places.

You could call us "terra-ists." We value animal life, and more. We strive to
reduce the sum total of suffering, not only to people but to all other
species, and to the earth. We oppose violence in the broadest sense, not in
some mean, narrow definition of it that excludes everyone who doesn't walk
on two legs. We think eating non-violently and behaving non-violently to
animals benefits humans, spiritually and physically.

Our goal is purely peaceful; we ask people to stop treating animals (and
each other) like objects without feelings. The most "violent" thing we've
ever done was to lob a bit of tofu "cream" pie at a clothing designer who
rips the skins from animals' backs. It was more vaudeville than anything
else.

We are devoted to getting ordinary people to help make a difference, legally
and peacefully, for the animals who cannot defend themselves from the bully
species. We work every day to provide options to students and housewives, to
people in business and to shoppers.

We also work with government agencies and law enforcement to see that animal
protection laws are enforced. We help people understand that the choices we
make - what cosmetics we buy, what we eat for dinner, what we wear and what
amusements we choose - can either help or hurt animals.

So much of what is done to animals occurs out of sight. Most people never
know about it until some brave soul blows the whistle, often by calling
PETA. Once we know where and how animals are suffering, we do whatever we
can, within the bounds of the law, to draw attention to the abuse and stop
it. A few examples:

At a pig breeding farm, workers mercilessly beat and kicked pigs, and even
butchered them alive; at General Motors, pigs were strapped into restraint
devices and their heads were pummeled with powerful hydraulic devices; in
one research laboratory, a "technician" beat rabbits to death with his
fists; at another, experimenters sliced the toes off guinea pigs as a crude
means of identification; at a university, dogs covered with painful sores
were left untreated to die in their cages; on a fur farm, minks were killed
with injections of weed killer.

Of course, this suffering is just the tip of the iceberg, but we did stop
these atrocities, and many more. They were stopped, not by terrorism, but
because PETA filed complaints with authorities, went to court or raised
enough of a fuss that they ended.

Even McDonald's, Burger King and Wendy's have agreed, following PETA's
campaign, to allow laying hens and sows more space, and to pay unannounced
visits to their slaughterhouses. We'd rather these places served only veggie
burgers, and that's all we ask people to buy but, for the animals, any
misery ended is a help.

Who is really violent? The people who imprison animals in laboratories and
deliberately poison, infect, inject, addict and kill them or those who
demand that science be modernized by using more sophisticated, kinder ways
to help people? Those who send animals down slaughterhouse ramps with a
curse and a sharp kick or those who promote a veggie diet? The people who
cage, kill and skin animals for clothes even survivalists don't need any
more or those who say "pleather" beats leather anytime?

Each of us has the power make simple changes in our lives so that we don't
support these cruelties. Sharing this peaceful message is PETA's mission.

Ingrid Newkirk is president of PETA.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

*3 (Brian Carnell answered Newkirk's op-ed this morning)

PETA and Animal Rights Violence
By Brian Carnell
CNSNews.com Commentary
November 12, 2001

In a recent commentary, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
president Ingrid Newkirk defended her organization by claiming that "PETA
does not condone . . . violent acts."

But in fact, PETA or its representatives have often rationalized or
celebrated violence. Consider just a few examples:

* In the December/January 2000 issue of 'Genre', PETA's Dan Mathews was
asked to name men of the 20th century he admired. Mathews told the magazine
he admired serial killer Andrew Cunanan, "because he got Versace to stop
doing fur."

* In 1999, an animal rights terrorist group calling itself the Justice
Department sent letters booby-trapped with razor blades to medical
researchers and fur farms in the United States and Canada. When asked about
the letters, Newkirk said, "I hope it frightens them [the researchers] out
of their careers. If experimenters feel afraid now, that's nothing compared
with the fear, harm and death they have inflicted on their victims."

* In a new author's note in her book about the Animal Liberation Front,
'Free the Animals', Newkirk writes, "Determined to cause economic injury to
the exploiters, ALF members burn down their emptied buildings and smash
their vehicles to smithereens. Perhaps, after reading this book, you will
find that you cannot blame them."

* In 1994, PETA donated $42,500 to the Rodney Coronado Support Committee.
Coronado is an animal rights terrorist who in 1995 pleaded guilty to
firebombing a medical research facility at Michigan State University.

* In fact, Newkirk herself has expressed a wish to carry out arson. At a
1997 animal rights convention she said, "I wish we all would get up and go
into the labs and take the animals out or burn them down." In 1999 she
expanded on that sentiment, telling the 'Chronicle of Higher Education', "I
find it small wonder that the laboratories aren't all burning to the ground.
If I had more guts, I'd light a match."

When Newkirk claims that PETA does not condone violent acts, what she really
means is that it is more convenient at the moment to pretend that PETA
doesn't condone criminal acts. This is a pretty common animal rights tactic
- never let principles or the truth get in the way.

But why do PETA and other groups sympathize with and celebrate violence?
Because they're losing their war against animal use, and they know it.

Don't take my word for it. That's the conclusion of PETA's Bruce Friedrich.
In 1998 animal rights activist Freeman Wicklund wrote an article for
'Animal's Agenda' arguing that the animal rights movement should adopt a
non-violent approach modeled on Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Friedrich responded with an essay calling Wicklund's views "obscene."
According to Friedrich, there are so few animal rights activists and such
concerted opposition to the movement's goals that a nonviolent strategy will
never work.

Instead, "Direct action which utilizes a broader range of tactics, including
secrecy and sabotage, is far more challenging, and, consequently, more
effective... Considering the power of our opposition, can you imagine where
we would be without surprise direct actions and the secrecy required for so
much of what we do?"

When it first arrived on the scene, PETA and other animal rights groups were
new and exotic and received press coverage far disproportionate to their
numbers and usually very sympathetic.

As the 1990s wore on, however, the protests started receiving less attention
and reporters began to view the animal rights movement more critically.

At the same time, it became apparent that while many Americans were rightly
concerned about issues related to animal welfare, for the most part, people
were unwilling to take that concern to the extremes demanded by some in the
animal rights movement.

Even PETA's own celebrity spokespeople can't stay on message. Mary Tyler
Moore shows up to oppose fur but then turns around and lobbies Congress for
money to fund research on juvenile diabetes - research which will inevitably
include animal experiments.

Like many political movements that have seen their progress thwarted, many
in the animal rights movement now see violent acts as a legitimate and
necessary tactic to further their agenda.

Even relatively successful groups such as PETA feel the need to rationalize,
if not support or defend, such violence. And it matters not whether people
suffer physical injury in such assaults. To debate the meaning of violence
is akin to debating the meaning of 'is.'

Newkirk may have devoted much time and money to saving pets in the wake of
the World Trade Center attack, but she seems to have little, if any, regard
for the medical researchers, farmers and others whose lives and livelihood
are threatened by animal rights violence.

Brian Carnell is publisher of AnimalRights.Net

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