economic terror bak

819 bak<div>
</div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">SEE MAIN</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">AGE OF TRUMP</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">see domestic ctr-terror</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">pivot from eco to econ to nat'l security "critical infrastructure" // BS on tariffs?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</font></div><div>https://yyy.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/23/revealed-how-the-fbi-targeted-environmental-activists-in-domestic-terror-investigations</div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
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</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://yyy.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/25/keystone-xl-protests-pipeline-activism-environment</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx pix</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Keystone XL: police discussed stopping anti-pipeline activists 'by any means'</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This article is more than 7 months old</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Revealed: records show law enforcement has called demonstrators possible ‘domestic terrorism’ threats</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Demonstrators against the Keystone XL pipeline walking to a federal courthouse in in Rapid City, South Dakota, in June.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Demonstrators against the Keystone XL pipeline walking to a federal courthouse in in Rapid City, South Dakota, in June. Photograph: Adam Fondren/AP</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sam Levin and Will Parrish</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Published onMon 25 Nov 2019 06.00 EST</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">US law enforcement officials preparing for fresh Keystone XL pipeline protests have privately discussed tactics to stop activists “by any means” and have labeled demonstrators potential “domestic terrorism” threats, records reveal.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Internal government documents seen by the Guardian show that police and local authorities in Montana and the surrounding region have been preparing a coordinated response in the event of a new wave of protests opposing the controversial Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, which would carry crude oil from Canada to Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Civil rights organizations say the documents raise concerns that law enforcement is preparing to launch an even more brutal and aggressive response than the police tactics utilized during the 2016 Standing Rock movement, which drew thousands of indigenous and environmental activists opposed to the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) to North Dakota.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At Standing Rock, law enforcement organized repeated rounds of mass arrests and filed a wide array of serious charges in local and federal courts against activists. Police also deployed water cannons, teargas grenades, bean bag rounds and other weapons, causing serious injuries to protesters.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The documents are mostly emails from 2017 and 2018 between local and federal authorities discussing possible Keystone protests. They show that police officials are anticipating construction will spark a sustained resistance campaign akin to the one at Standing Rock and that police are considering closing public lands near the pipeline project.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The new records have come to light as the Keystone pipeline project has overcome numerous legal hurdles with help from the Trump administration, and as the project’s owner, TC Energy (formerly TransCanada), is moving forward with initial construction efforts.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Among the major revelations in the documents:</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Officials at a 2017 law enforcement briefing on potential Keystone XL protests said one key tactic would be to “initially deny access to the property by protestors and keep them as far away [from] the contested locations as possible by any means”</b>, according to an email summary from a US army corps of engineers security manager in Nebraska in July 2017.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Officials with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) said in 2017 that the bureau had 10 armed officers in Montana and was prepared to “work with local [law enforcement] to deny access to federal property</b>”. In 2018, army corps officials were also in discussions with the Montana disaster and emergency services department to discuss ways to “close access” to lands near the pipeline route, including areas typically open for hunting and other activities.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>A “joint terrorism task force” involving the US attorney’s office and other agencies, along with federal “counterterrorism” officials, said it was prepared to assist in the response to protests and a “critical incident response team” would be available for “domestic terrorism or threats to critical infrastructure”. </b>Authorities have also pre-emptively discussed specific potential felony charges that protesters could face, noting that a “civil disorder” statute was used to prosecute activists at Standing Rock.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Authorities have been preparing for possible protests in the Fort Peck area, home to a Native American reservation and indigenous people opposing the project.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“There is a lot of muscle behind this effort to make sure that Keystone is constructed,” said Alex Rate, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Montana, which obtained the documents through records act requests and shared them with the Guardian. “There are historically marginalized communities, primarily indigenous folks, who have grave concerns about the impact of this pipeline on their sovereignty, their resources, their religion and culture. They have a first amendment right to assemble and make their viewpoints heard.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Revealed: how the FBI targeted environmental activists in domestic terror investigations</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Read more]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Remi Bald Eagle, intergovernmental affairs coordinator of the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe, which is located along the pipeline route, said the police buildup was part of a long history of armed subjugation of native people in the region.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“This is an experience of the tide of Manifest Destiny still coming at us,</b>” Bald Eagle said, referring to the 19th-century belief that US settlers had the right to expand across the continent.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The files follow repeated revelations that the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have investigated environmental groups and leftwing activists as possible “terrorists”.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Opponents of the Keystone XL oil pipeline are seen demonstrating in sub-freezing temperatures last month in Billings, Montana.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Opponents of the Keystone XL oil pipeline are seen demonstrating in sub-freezing temperatures last month in Billings, Montana. Photograph: Matthew Brown/AP]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Keystone XL was rejected by the Obama administration and then revived by Donald Trump shortly after his inauguration in 2017. The $8bn project has been subject to multiple legal challenges, including over the environmental review process, but pre-construction efforts are now under way.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Opponents of Keystone XL have warned about the environmental and cultural impact of the project for a decade – concerns that came into sharper focus last month after the existing Keystone pipeline, which follows a similar route, leaked 383,000 gallons of tar sands into a swath of North Dakota wetlands.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The new Keystone records, which come from a number of government agencies and were released after a protracted legal battle, also show that officials have specifically met with police involved in the Standing Rock response to discuss “lessons learned”. North Dakota police officials told law enforcement prepping for Keystone that one of their biggest mistakes was their failure to keep activists far away and shut down access to nearby lands.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In one 2018 BLM document, labeled “KEYSTONE XL PIPELINE <b>PUBLIC SAFETY ISSUES</b>”, officials discussed the “available resources” to respond to protests in Montana.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“The FBI will have primary investigative authority for all national security investigations, including but not limited to international terrorism, domestic terrorism, and weapons of mass destruction,” BLM wrote.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">US border patrol would also be available to assist law enforcement around the border and has access to “drone assets”, the document continued. Border patrol also provided a surveillance drone that police used to track Standing Rock protesters.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">BLM also discussed purchasing “riot batons”, helmets and gas masks in advance of possible protests.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mike Glasch, an army corps spokesman, said that the “by any means” comment came from the agency’s security chief, who was “relaying talking points” from police officials in Mandan and Morton County in North Dakota, adding: “Any method that we would employ to protect the safety of our employees and the public, as well as property and equipment, would be within the limits of the law and be the least invasive possible, while still protecting the public’s first amendment rights.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A spokesperson for the Morton county sheriff, Kyle Kirchmeier, said he advises law enforcement that “may be involved with potential pipeline protests to make it their goal to keep protesters off of private property and any areas that may be considered a public hazard, such as ditches or highways”, adding that he “is supportive of people’s right to protest, but they need to do so in a lawful manner”. Kirchmeier said he did not recall the 2017 briefing.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A Mandan police spokesperson declined to comment.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Glasch said the army corps had not closed access to its land around the project, but added: “Since a construction site comes with inherent hazards, options are being analyzed for methods to keep any non-essential personnel away from potential construction sites, while at the same time considering constitutional rights.” He said it was too early to speculate about specific potential closure plans.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A spokesperson for the US attorney’s office did not respond to questions about the “terrorism” references but said the office’s “goal is to provide coordinated assistance to local, tribal and state law enforcement to protect public safety and civil rights, and to protect federal lands, while enforcing federal law”.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The FBI declined to comment.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A border patrol spokesperson said the agency would “assist, upon request, with any law enforcement activities within the border area near the pipeline”.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Spokespeople for BLM and TC Energy did not respond to questions.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Law enforcement are getting ready. They’ve been having meetings behind closed doors,” said Angeline Cheek, an indigenous organizer from the Fort Peck reservation. “We know that they’re preparing … We’ve been preparing for the last three years.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Rate, from the ACLU, said there was no legal justification for the government to pre-emptively shut down lands in an effort to stop protests. </b>He said it was also troubling for law enforcement to prepare a “militarized” response and suggest that activists could pose terrorist or criminal threats before any actions had even begun.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“They are thinking of them as potential ‘domestic terrorists’. There is simply no support for adopting that paradigm,” said Rate. “The public justifiably thinks of BLM as a land management agency and not necessarily in the business of arming themselves and going out and squelching protesters.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Candi Brings Plenty, an Oglala Lakota Sioux activist working with the ACLU of Montana, said they were not surprised to learn that law enforcement was talking about stopping indigenous activists “by any means”.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“That is the type of language that has been spoken to us our whole lives,” they said, adding: “We live these injustices on a daily basis. This is finally being unveiled for what it is.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Brings Plenty, who led a two-spirit camp at Standing Rock, said they would not be intimidated by law enforcement and hoped people would still support the fight against Keystone – instead of just accepting the pipeline.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It’s almost become the norm for folks to look the other way, feeling like there isn’t something they can do, that it’s beyond their grasp,” they said. “I want folks to see these pipelines the way they do the glaciers in the arctic. This is happening right here in their own front yard.”</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>U.S. Senate voted along party lines Thursday night to make Tracy Stone-Manning the first confirmed director of the Bureau of Land Management since the Obama administration.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"><b>The vote, 50-45</b>, ended a contentious confirmation process for Stone-Manning, a senior adviser for conservation policy at the National Wildlife Federation who served as chief of staff to former Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">It also represented a victory for her biggest supporter, U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, a Montana Democrat for whom Stone-Manning once worked as an aide. Senate Republicans fiercely opposed her nomination, most vocally because of her ties to a 1989 plot to drive spikes into hundreds of trees.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republicans maintained their resistance up until the last moments before the vote Thursday evening, with a parade of Western senators coming to the floor to register their opposition.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In a tense exchange, Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee ranking Republican J</span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">ohn Barrasso of Wyoming called her “completely unfit for the job.”</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">“Ms. Stone-Manning lied to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee about her involvement as an <b>eco-terrorist and in the eco-terrorism</b>,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">” Barrasso said, adding that Senate Democrats would be “held personally responsible” for voting to confirm her.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tester told Barrasso he accepted that challenge.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“You’re damn right. Hold me accountable for Tracy Stone-Manning,” he said. “I’ve worked with her. I know what she does. I know she can get the job done. She can bring people together.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tester also seemed to lay blame for the Republican campaign against Stone-Manning on his state’s other senator,<b> Republican Steve Daines, saying it was retribution for Stone-Manning’s support of Bullock’s unsuccessful run for Daines’ Senate seat last year.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I’m going to point out one thing that Tracy Stone-Manning did that was wrong: She actually agreed to be Gov. Bullock’s chief of staff,” Tester said.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“If somebody wants to go in and do an investigation and find out what’s happened over the last three years, with the governor running against a sitting senator in this body and she being the governor’s chief of staff, you will find out why people stand up and make stuff up about Tracy Stone-Manning.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a statement after the vote, Stone-Manning said: “I am grateful for the Senate’s vote of confidence today and look forward to bringing decades of experience — working on the ground and across the aisle— to carry out the critical mission of the Bureau of Land Management. Our public lands are one of America’s finest ideas, and I am ready to get to work alongside a remarkable team to ensure future generations benefit from them like we have.”</font></p><h4 class="editorialSubhed" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 500; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; line-height: 1.2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rebuilding the BLM</font></h4><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stone-Manning will be tasked with rebuilding an agency at the center of President Joe Biden’s climate and energy agenda. The BLM oversees nearly 250 million acres of public lands, including roughly 50 million acres in Nevada, and manages the federal oil and gas leasing program.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Biden temporarily paused that program and ordered a review of federal policy when he took office. A federal judge this summer ordered the program be renewed. The Interior Department, of which the BLM is a part, has said it is working to restart leases.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stone-Manning will oversee the agency’s <a target="blank" href="https://www.nevadacurrent.com/blog/blm-hq-moving-back-to-dc/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; background-image: linear-gradient(transparent 65%, rgb(229, 233, 237) 0px); background-size: 0px 100%; background-repeat: no-repeat; transition: background-size 0.4s ease 0s;">move back to Washington from Grand Junction</a>, Colo. The move reverses a controversial decision during former President Donald Trump’s administration to relocate the agency to the West, where nearly all BLM lands are.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Opponents said the decision hollowed out the agency influence in the nation’s capital and drove out experienced workers. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced this month the headquarters would be relocated back to Washington.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The agency has lacked a Senate-confirmed leader since Neil Kornze stepped down at the end of President Barack Obama’s term in January 2017. Under Trump, anti-public lands attorney William Perry Pendley ran day-to-day operations as the deputy director for policy and programs, but was never confirmed as the director.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The lack of a Senate-confirmed director led to uncertainty in the agency, including a Montana federal judge invalidating some decisions the BLM made during Pendley’s time in office.</font></p><h4 class="editorialSubhed" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 500; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5rem; line-height: 1.2; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tree-spiking incident</font></h4><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Days after Stone-Manning’s<a target="blank" href="https://dailymontanan.com/2021/06/08/public-lands-pick-stone-manning-fends-off-objections-from-senate-republicans/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; background-image: linear-gradient(transparent 65%, rgb(229, 233, 237) 0px); background-size: 0px 100%; background-repeat: no-repeat; transition: background-size 0.4s ease 0s;"> confirmation hearing</a> earlier this year at the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, where Republicans were already skeptical of her political work and opposition to fossil fuel development, the conservative site <b>Daily Caller </b>published a report detailing Stone-Manning’s involvement with a 1989 tree-spiking plot while she was a graduate student at the University of Montana.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Though the episode was already public, it was not well known in Washington and the article intensified Republican opposition.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">Court records and Stone-Manning’s own account show she mailed a letter in 1989 to the U.S. Forest Service threatening that loggers who attempted to cut down a portion of Clearwater National Forest could be hurt by spikes driven into them in an attempt to sabotage a sale—a federal crime.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>She has said, including at her confirmation hearing for a state post in 2013, that the scheme’s organizers approached her and asked her to mail the letter. She said the ringleaders intimidated her and that she wished to warn loggers who may have been in harm’s way. She later testified against two men who were convicted for the tree-spiking.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Other accounts, including from<a target="blank" href="https://dailymontanan.com/2021/07/16/conflicting-stories-emerge-as-tracy-stone-mannings-nomination-hangs-in-the-balance/" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration-line: none; background-image: linear-gradient(transparent 65%, rgb(229, 233, 237) 0px); background-size: 0px 100%; background-repeat: no-repeat; transition: background-size 0.4s ease 0s;"> a Forest Service investigator</a>, said she was more involved in planning than she’d indicated. Republican senators also took issue with her response on a pre-hearing questionnaire that she had never been the target of a criminal investigation.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On the Senate floor on Thursday night,<b> Idaho Republican Jim Risch accused Stone-Manning of perjury in a Senate floor speech and said she would have no credibility when she appears before the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee, which oversees the BLM, as director.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>But it was Tester who had the last word before the vote.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Now, we’re going to take a good woman, a good woman who the state of Montana knows well, who, in fact, was vetted in the state of Montana and they said all these accusations have no merit,” he said. “And we’re going to run her through the ringer here. Character assassination like I’ve never seen before.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">The aggressive Republican campaign against Stone-Manning belied the reputation she’d built as a consensus builder on conservation issues. She won bipartisan backing from the Republican-led Montana Senate in a 2013 vote to become the state’s director of environmental quality.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></p></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> = </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/warnings-of-eco-terrorism-mass-casualties-at-new-okla-tenn-oil-pipeline">https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/warnings-of-eco-terrorism-mass-casualties-at-new-okla-tenn-oil-pipeline</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">OPINION: WASHINGTON SECRETS</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Warnings of eco-terrorism, 'mass casualties' at new Okla-Tenn oil pipeline</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">by Paul Bedard</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> | April 18, 2017 02:13 PM</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[odd pix, scary? Dakota Access pipeline opponents burn structures in their main protest camp in southern North Dakota near Cannon Ball, N.D., on Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2017, as authorities prepare to shut down the camp in advance of spring flooding season. (AP Photo/James MacPherson)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Just months removed from the violence and attacks on police by environmental extremists fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline, state and federal officials are warning of similar, potentially catastrophic, attacks against another new pipeline between Oklahoma and Tennessee that enters service in the fall.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A report from the Department of Homeland Security, and Arkansas, Tennessee, and Oklahoma, warns of attacks from eco-terrorists to anti-government militia on the Diamond Pipeline project.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"Law enforcement are assessing what environmental extremists did to disrupt Dakota Access Pipeline – Molotov cocktails, rocks, arson, roadblocks, chaining themselves to equipment, improvised explosive devices, etc – and seeing many of the same activities potentially happening around Diamond pipeline," according to a police representative.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[map pipe route]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The 11-page "field analysis report," stamped "Unclassfied//For Official Use Only," said that there are no pending threats to the $900 million, 440-mile pipeline under construction, but that the potential is very real.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"While the Diamond Pipeline project has not seen the same level of disruption as the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), we are concerned that negative perceptions about enforcement efforts against DAPL opponents could inspire like-minded individuals to seek out reprisal violence against similar targets, including the Diamond Pipeline," said the report, provided to Secrets.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Some peaceful protests have already occurred.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The report revealed that five oil pipelines crossing the U.S.-Canada border were shutdown in October, and it provided photographic evidence of the arson and sabotage of the Dakota Access Pipeline.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Police are keen consumers of the report because it was sheriffs and local cops that felt the brunt of the pressure at Dakota, sometimes getting in violent clashes with protesters.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to the report, "Pipeline construction projects frequently arouse concerns about environmental and land-use issues. While most opposition activity related to pipeline construction remains nonviolent and lawful protest activity, some violent extremists may take advantage of lawful gatherings to attempt to threaten, incite, or commit violent acts against public safety officers or facility staff."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The biggest concerns cited in the report:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">— "DHS and the authoring fusion centers assess the most likely potential domestic terrorist threat to the Diamond Pipeline construction project or associated entities is fromenvironmental rights extremists motivated by resentment over perceived environmental destruction."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">— "We assess that the second most likely potential domestic terrorist threat to the Diamond Pipeline or associated entities—including law enforcement and private contract security guards—is from militia extremists opposed to government enforcement of eminent domain policies."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">— "We assess that potential attacks against the Diamond Pipeline or related entities would most likely be simple and designed to damage physical infrastructure or equipment by sabotage or arson. Previous attacks against pipelines or related targets have included assaults on law enforcement, private contract security guards, or construction personnel."[where? Fallin gun?]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">— "We assess the primary potential threat of violence against the Diamond Pipeline and related entities is from lone offenders who adhere to environmental rights extremist beliefs and believe violence is justified against such projects due to their perceived harm to the environment. Previous incidents involving lone offenders committing violent acts against targets associated with similar energy projects suggest that the pipeline and associated entities could be attractive targets for an attack by lone environmental rights extremists."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">— "Militia extremists have engaged in armed standoffs, threats, and disrupted IED plots targeting law enforcement entities perceived to be enforcers of oppressive government land-use policies, according to media reporting. Although their capabilities vary, some militia extremists have well-rehearsed paramilitary skills, as well as access to and proficiency using firearms and explosives. As a result, successful violent attacks have the potential to cause mass casualties."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner's "Washington Secrets" columnist, can be contacted at pbedard@washingtonexaminer.com</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></div><div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/leaked-audio-shows-oil-lobbyist-bragging-about-success-in-criminalizing-pipeline-protests/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/leaked-audio-shows-oil-lobbyist-bragging-about-success-in-criminalizing-pipeline-protests/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Leaked audio shows oil lobbyist bragging about success in criminalizing pipeline protests</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Jake Johnson / Common Dreams<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>August 20, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As a growing number of states move to pass laws that would criminalize pipeline protests and hit demonstrators with years in prison, an audio recording obtained by The Intercept showed a representative of a powerful oil and gas lobbying group bragging about the industry’s success in crafting anti-protest legislation behind closed doors.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Speaking during a conference in Washington, D.C. in June, Derrick Morgan, senior vice president for federal and regulatory affairs at the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM), touted “model legislation” that states across the nation have passed in recent months.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">AFPM represents a number of major fossil fuel giants, including Chevron, Koch Industries, and ExxonMobil.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“We’ve seen a lot of success at the state level, particularly starting with Oklahoma in 2017,” said Morgan, citing Dakota Access Pipeline protests as the motivation behind the aggressive lobbying effort. “We’re up to nine states that have passed laws that are substantially close to the model policy that you have in your packet.</b>”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Friends of the Earth</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Big Oil is now using its political power to try and criminalize protests of oil & gas infrastructure.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>"This legislation has potential to punish public participation and mischaracterize advocacy protected by the First Amendment</b>."https://theintercept.com/2019/08/19/oil-lobby-pipeline-protests/ …</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Oil Lobbyist Touts Success in Effort to Criminalize Pipeline Protests, Leaked Recording Shows</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In leaked audio obtained by The Intercept, AFPM conceded its behind-the-scenes role in crafting state laws to criminalize oil and gas pipeline protests.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">theintercept.com</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The audio recording comes just months after <b>Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law legislation that would punish anti-pipeline demonstrators with up to 10 years in prison, </b>a move environmentalists condemned as a flagrant attack on free expression.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Big Oil is hijacking our legislative system,” <b>Dallas Goldtooth</b> of the Indigenous Environmental Network said after the Texas Senate passed the bill in May.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As The Intercept‘s Lee Fang reported Monday, the model legislation Morgan cited in his remarks “has been introduced in various forms in 22 states and passed in… Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Missouri, Indiana, Iowa, South Dakota, and North Dakota.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“The AFPM lobbyist also boasted that the template legislation has enjoyed<b> bipartisan support</b>,” according to Fang. “In Louisiana, Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards signed the version of the bill there, which is being challenged by the Center for Constitutional Rights. Even in Illinois, Morgan noted, ‘We almost got that across the finish line in a very Democratic-dominated legislature.’ The bill did not pass as it got pushed aside over time constraints at the end of the legislative session.”</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2x?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">'Protesters as terrorists': growing number of states turn anti-pipeline activism into a crime</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>
</div><div>Conservative lawmakers have put forward laws criminalizing protests in at least 18 states since 2017 that civil liberties advocates say are unconstitutional</div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div>https://yyy.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/08/wave-of-new-laws-aim-to-stifle-anti-pipeline-protests-activists-say</div><div>
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</div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">note drop eco econ and go straight up terror (// iran republican guard):</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div style="font-size: medium;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/dangerous-republican-resolution-suggests-that-all-forms-of-political-dissent-could-soon-be-considered-terrorism/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/dangerous-republican-resolution-suggests-that-all-forms-of-political-dissent-could-soon-be-considered-terrorism/</a></div><div style="font-size: medium;">
</div><div style="font-size: medium;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" /><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">no lnx</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>
</div><div><b>Dangerous Republican resolution suggests that all forms of political dissent could soon be considered terrorism</b></div><div>
</div><div>Written by Urie Dvorozniak / Salon July 23, 2019</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Last week, Republican Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Ted Cruz  of Texas introduced a resolution to designate “antifa,” which the Anti-Defamation League defines as “a loose collection of groups, networks, and individuals who believe in active, aggressive opposition to far right-wing movements,” as a “domestic terrorist organization.”</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In fact, antifa is a constellation of many different activist groupings, with no official leader or clear hierarchy. As the New York Times has noted, its membership count is “impossible to know.” That didn’t stop the two Republican senators from claiming that <b>“Antifa are terrorists, violent masked bullies who ‘fight fascism’ with actual fascism, protected by Liberal privilege.”</b></span></div><div>
</div><div>Senator Ted Cruz</div><div>?</div><div>@SenTedCruz</div><div> Antifa is a terrorist organization composed of hateful, intolerant radicals who pursue their extreme agenda through aggressive violence. Time and time again their actions have demonstrated that their central purpose is to inflict harm on those who oppose their views.</div><div>
</div><div>26.2K</div><div>1:02 PM - Jul 18, 2019</div><div>Twitter Ads info and privacy</div><div>23.5K people are talking about this</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Antifa, short for “anti-fascist,” traces its ideological roots to 1920s and 1930s Germany and supposes that if people had opposed the Nazi Party more aggressively, Adolf Hitler might never have come to power. The ADL reports that many people who act within antifa are anarchist or very left-wing, but that “since Trump’s election, some people with more mainstream political backgrounds have also joined their ranks.”</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In their resolution, Cruz and Cassidy reference the “violent demonstrations” on June 29 in Portland, Oregon, where writer right-wing Alex Ngo was assaulted while covering an antifa protest against the “far-right nationalist” group known as the Proud Boys.</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">After the incident, Cruz called for a federal criminal investigation of Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, a Democrat who is also the police commissioner of the city.</span></div><div>
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</div><div>Ted Cruz</div><div>?</div><div>@tedcruz</div><div> To federal law enforcement:  investigate & bring legal action against a Mayor who has, for political reasons, ordered his police officers to let citizens be attacked by domestic terrorists.  https://tinyurl.com/y2udrv5d  https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1145212511966441473 …</div><div>
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</div><div>Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler Under Fire for Not Stopping Antifa Protests</div><div>Wheeler's hands-off policy when it comes to Antifa came under scrutiny on Saturday after journalist Ngo was assaulted by masked assailants.</div><div>
</div><div><b>breitbart.com</b></div><div>Ted Cruz</div><div>?</div><div>@tedcruz</div><div>To law enforcement:  find & prosecute these violent felons. https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1145212299914952704 …</div><div>
</div><div>39.4K</div><div>11:10 PM - Jun 29, 2019</div><div>Twitter Ads info and privacy</div><div>19K people are talking about this</div><div>
</div><div>Cruz and Cassidy also point to antifa activists occupying the areas outside of Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices, as well as posting the personal information of ICE officials online.</div><div>
</div><div>But the Republican senators’ resolution is little more than a political stunt.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Cruz and Cassidy’s resolution, which is entirely non-binding, won’t actually change U.S. law — because there is no existing law to change. The Patriot Act defines domestic terrorism as criminal activity that appears intended to “intimidate or coerce” civilians or influence government policy using violent methods. But, domestic terrorism is not a specific crime under U.S. law. Labeling a group as domestic terrorists give federal law enforcement broader powers to conduct investigations of other crimes, but does not itself define any criminal activities. criminal make. Furthermore, since antifa isn’t a singular group, as mentioned above, its definition under this resolution is unclear.</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The designation of what “groups” are called terrorist, domestic terrorist or hate groups is extremely loose. For instance, the Pulse Nightclub shooter was charged with terrorism, while the Ku Klux Klan is legally considered a “hate group,” not a domestic terror organization. And while the federal government keeps a list of foreign terrorist groups, there is no public list of domestic terrorist groups.</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>Some outlets have thought it worthy to equate the confrontational tactics of antifa to political violence on the far-right. But as the ADL has pointed out, “To date, there have been no Antifa related murders,” yet “right-wing extremists” have “ murdered hundreds of people in this country over the last ten years alone.”</b></div><div>
</div><div>Just last week, James Alex Fields Jr., an avowed neo-Nazi, was sentenced to life in prison plus 419 years for the violent assault he committed during the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Fields deliberately drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing Heather Heyerand injuring several others.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Free speech activists have expressed concerns that the Cruz-Cassidy resolution could set a precedent for more groups to be labeled domestic terrorist organizations.  As National Observer reporter Caroline Orr noted, Cruz’s resolution uses the terms “antifa” and “left-wing activists” interchangeably. Most dangerously, it suggests that all manner of dissent could be considered terrorism.</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>Cruz’s move looks to be a transparent attempt to saddle congressional Democrats with a divisive political debate, declaring themselves either against antifa or in support of it, invariably alienating some of the party’s supporters ahead of a critical presidential election.</b></div></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">guk no lnx</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>https://yyy.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/08/wave-of-new-laws-aim-to-stifle-anti-pipeline-protests-activists-say</div><div>
</div><div>nice 3 color map</div><div>
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</div><div>'Protesters as terrorists': growing number of states turn anti-pipeline activism into a crime</div><div>Conservative lawmakers have put forward laws criminalizing protests in at least 18 states since 2017 that civil liberties advocates say are unconstitutional</div><div>
</div><div>Susie Cagle in San Francisco</div><div>
</div><div>Mon 8 Jul 2019 11.00 BST Last modified on Mon 8 Jul 2019 11.01 BST</div><div> Seven US states have passed laws that ratchet up the penalties for activists protesting.</div><div> Seven US states have passed laws that ratchet up the penalties for activists protesting. Photograph: Susie Cagle/The Guardian</div><div>From the Standing Rock camps in North Dakota to tree-sits in Texas, activists have attempted to stop pipeline construction with massive shows of civil disobedience. Now they could be forced to change those tactics, or face heavy penalties under a wave of new anti-protest laws that civil liberties advocates say violate the first amendment.</div><div>
</div><div>Conservative lawmakers have put forward laws criminalizing protests that disrupt the construction and operation of pipelines in at least 18 states since 2017.</div><div>
</div><div>Seven states have passed laws that ratchet up the penalties for activists protesting or even planning protests of oil and gas pipelines and other “critical infrastructure”</div><div>At least six more states are considering such laws</div><div>In each case, misdemeanors are elevated to felonies, and criminal and civil punishments are escalated drastically</div><div>The ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights have mounted challenges against such laws in Louisiana and South Dakota.</div><div>“This is a trend that shows no sign of slowing, let alone stopping,” said Elly Page, who has been tracking anti-protest legislation for more than two years as a legal adviser for the International Center for Non-Profit Law.</div><div>
</div><div>The laws purport to only criminalize violence and property damage in service of pipeline safety, but critics say their greater intent appears to be to deter nonviolent civil disobedience by framing it as potentially violent in itself.</div><div>
</div><div>The bills have mostly found fertile legislative ground in places where gas and oil companies already wield significant political and economic power and where anti-fossil fuel protests have been especially successful. But watchdogs say there’s every reason to believe more of these types of laws will be passed, and that they will chill activism otherwise protected by the first amendment.</div><div>
</div><div>“This is a miscasting of protesters as economic terrorists and saboteurs when in fact they’re going out and having their voices heard about why these pipelines are problematic for their communities and the environment,” said Vera Eidelman, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. “Even if folks haven’t been charged, the fact that these laws are on the books can seriously chill people and make them fearful of getting their voices out,” she added.</div><div>
</div><div> Native Americans and activists gathered outside Cannon Ball, North Dakota, to try to halt the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016.</div><div> Native Americans and activists gathered outside Cannon Ball, North Dakota, to try to halt the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016. Photograph: Helen H. Richardson/Denver Post via Getty Images</div><div>A wave picking up speed</div><div>Oklahoma was the first to pass pipeline-protecting legislation in 2017, with a pair of bills that ostensibly protected critical infrastructure from trespass and damage. By the end of the year, the American Legislative Exchange Council, a non-profit coalition of conservative politicians and industry representatives, had developed model Critical Infrastructure Protection legislation based on Oklahoma’s laws. Energy industry groups immediately sent a letter to legislators urging them to adopt the bill in their states.</div><div>
</div><div>That effort has proven fruitful.</div><div>
</div><div>Louisiana passed a version into law in 2018, and the legislative wave picked up speed in 2019. Laws that would increase criminal and civil penalties for protesting against gas and oil pipelines specifically and “critical infrastructure” more broadly have passed this year in Tennessee, Indiana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Texas, and are currently pending in Idaho, Minnesota, Missouri, Illinois, Ohio and Kentucky. In each case, the laws provide for more extreme criminal charges and civil penalties for trespass and vandalism against pipelines.</div><div>
</div><div>Industry representatives insist these harsh penalties are necessary for pipeline security. “The intent of the critical infrastructure bill signed into law last year is to protect the safety of Louisiana’s people, environment and infrastructure,” the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association president and general counsel, Tyler Gray, said in a statement in May. “It is straightforward in its scope and application and does not infringe on an individual’s constitutional rights.”</div><div>
</div><div>When the Texas law goes into effect on 1 September, it will make “impairing or interrupting” pipeline construction a felony, punishable by up to two years in jail and a $10,000 fine. If an activist is alleged to have “intent to damage or destroy” a pipeline facility, they could face a third-degree felony on par with attempted murder, and up to 10 years in prison. And any organization found to be similarly culpable could face a $500,000 fine.</div><div>
</div><div>“It’ll be more difficult to give underrepresented communities a voice now because of this,” said Frankie Orona, executive director of Society of Native Nations, which vigorously opposed the bill.</div><div>
</div><div>Similar measures seem to have support at the federal level. The Trump administration, stacked with former fossil fuel industry lobbyists, attorneys and executives, has come out with its own proposals to protect fossil fuel infrastructure.</div><div>
</div><div>A June proposal of the Department of Transportation for “Protecting our Infrastructure of Pipelines and Enhancing Safety Act” included a provision to expressly strengthen criminal penalties for “impeding, disrupting, or inhibiting the operation of a pipeline facility”. The head of the Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration was formerly a vice-president of one of the country’s largest coal transporters.</div><div>
</div><div>The department’s proposal used “some of the same language and ideas in terms of covering peaceful protest activity”, said Elly Page.</div><div>
</div><div>Shutting down activist resources</div><div>Although the anti-protest laws are highly specific in explicitly or implicitly targeting oil and gas infrastructure, they’re highly vague when it comes to defining what behaviour is prohibited. The laws define “critical infrastructure” as a range of private and public energy facilities, including those that are under construction, but what constitutes imposition, disruption, inhibition or conspiracy is left up to a court’s interpretation, as is what constitutes “intent” to damage property.</div><div>
</div><div>Yet if preserving infrastructure safety and fossil fuel company profits are the goal, there are already a variety of legal tools available to law enforcement. Trespassing and damaging private property are already crimes in every state. “States already criminalize most if not all of the conduct that’s covered by these laws,” said Page. “It seems to be part of a larger effort to stifle certain political speech and environmental groups.”</div><div>
</div><div>The laws appear designed not just to deter individuals from protesting, but also to cut off material support from organizations by levying steep fines on organizations alleged to conspire with activists. South Dakota’s governor, Kristi Noem, admitted as much about the law in her state in March and said that the law was intended in part to “shut down” activist resources – she named George Soros as the top “national offender”.</div><div>
</div><div>By a particularly cruel twist in South Dakota’s law, which flew through the state legislature in just one week, those fines could actually be used toward the construction of the pipelines activists protest against.</div><div>
</div><div>‘An industry-created issue’</div><div>When off-duty police working as private pipeline security pulled Cindy Spoon off her canoe in southern Louisiana last August and handcuffed her, she didn’t yet know she would be one of the first activists in the country charged with a felony under this new spate of legislation.</div><div>
</div><div>Spoon was working with the L’eau Est La Vie camp protesting against the construction of the 163-mile Bayou Bridge pipeline, which carries crude oil through the vast wetlands of the Atchafalaya Basin. She was boating in navigable, public waters – the equivalent of being in the public road. But she was charged with felony trespassing, a little over a week after Louisiana’s protest law went into effect.</div><div>
</div><div>If the district attorney pursues her case, Spoon could face up to five years in prison. Sixteen activists are currently facing felony charges under the Louisiana law for peaceful protest either in public waterways or on private land where they had the owner’s permission to be.</div><div>
</div><div>Spoon remains determined to continue her work. “The risk involved to me personally is far outweighed by inaction,” she said.</div><div>
</div><div>Spoon’s pro bono attorney Bill Quigley and the Center for Constitutional Rights have filed a federal suit challenging the law in Louisiana.</div><div>
</div><div>“This is not a problem that any private citizen has ever filed a complaint about. This is a total industry-created issue,” said Quigley, a law attorney at Loyola University New Orleans. “They are essentially passing these laws to give themselves enhanced protection.” When he attended the state senate comment session for the Louisiana law in 2018, Quigley said, he was joined by nearly two dozen fossil fuel industry representatives. “There were no private citizens.”</div><div>
</div><div>In South Dakota, the ACLU has filed a suit challenging the law in South Dakota.</div><div>
</div><div>Dallas Goldtooth, who is Dakota and Diné, is a named plaintiff in that lawsuit. Goldtooth, a campaign organizer with the Indigenous Environmental Network, has been protesting pipelines since 2013, and using his substantial social media following to boost activist efforts – speech that could now be considered “riot-boosting” in South Dakota.</div><div>
</div><div>Goldtooth is ready to take that chance. But he worries that even if communities on the frontlines whose lands are being carved up by pipeline construction are willing to take on the increased risk of protest, others won’t. “The fear is that our allies are going to be intimidated and too afraid to come out and stand in solidarity,” said Goldtooth. And in sparsely populated rural America, numbers are everything.</div><div>
</div><div>While some communities may successfully push pipeline construction to the next, less-fortunate community over, these projects are rarely if ever shelved. There are few places in America that remain untouched by an oil or gas route. Pipelines touch every state in the US except Hawaii.</div><div>
</div><div>“They’re just picking the low-hanging fruit right now, the places where oil and gas have outsized influence. But oil and gas pipelines are everywhere. It’s not just Louisiana and Oklahoma and South Dakota,” said Quigley.</div><div>
</div><div>“I guarantee a law like this is coming to your state.”</div></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div style="font-size: medium;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/23/politics/fbi-white-supremacist-domestic-terror/index.html"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/23/politics/fbi-white-supremacist-domestic-terror/index.html</font></a></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><div class="elleafmedia elleafmedia--sourced-paragraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box;"><p class="zn-bodyparagraph speakable" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><cite class="el-editorial-source" kern="kern" text-rendering="text-rendering" optimizelegibility="optimizelegibility" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: normal; font-weight: 700;">CNN)</cite></font></p><p class="zn-bodyparagraph speakable" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The FBI has seen a significant rise in the number of white supremacist domestic terrorism cases in recent months,</b> a senior FBI counterterrorism official said Thursday.</font></p></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph speakable" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The official said the FBI has been grappling with the rise of domestic threats while international terror threats have remained constant with the fall of the ISIS caliphate in Syria.</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph speakable" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The domestic terror cases generally include suspects involved in violence related to anti-government views, racial or religious bias,<b> environmental extremism</b> and abortion-related views.</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The FBI wouldn't provide specific numbers to quantify the increase of in the number of white supremacist domestic terrorism cases. Unlike international terrorism investigations, domestic terrorism cases pose thornier issues for the FBI because of First Amendment protections. The US doesn't have a domestic terrorism law and no government agency designates domestic groups as being terrorist organizations. That means many cases the FBI calls domestic terror-related end up with a variety of charges for violations of laws related to guns or even other state charges.</font></div><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In 2017, there were about 150 arrests on charges the FBI classifies as domestic terror, and about 120 in 2018. The official said the FBI is on course to match or exceed those numbers this fiscal year.</font></div><ul class="cn cn-list-hierarchical-xs cn--idx-5 cn-zoneAdContainer" data-layout="list-hierarchical-xs" style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; list-style: none;"><div class="zn-bodyread-all" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><ul class="cn cn-list-hierarchical-xs cn--idx-7 cn-zoneAdContainer" data-layout="list-hierarchical-xs" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; list-style: none;"><div class="zn-bodyparagraph" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Overall, the FBI has about 5,000 terrorism-related investigations open, including 850 related to domestic terrorism, according to the official. About 1,000 are related to ISIS or other affiliated groups, and another 1,000 are for homegrown violent extremism.</b></font></div><div class="zn-body__paragraph" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 15px; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: 1.66667; margin-right: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Reflecting law enforcement concern over the issue, earlier today at a hearing Acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan called "white supremacist extremist violence" a "huge issue" and called it an "an evolving and increasingly concerning threat."</font></div></ul></div></ul></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p></div></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/06/08/white-supremacist-domestic-terrorism-fbi-justice/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://theintercept.com/2019/06/08/white-supremacist-domestic-terrorism-fbi-justice/</font></a></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">harder to track nomenclature cats</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bold; letter-spacing: 0.1em; box-shadow: none; text-transform: uppercase; line-height: 30px;">TUESDAY,</span> during a<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> House subcommittee hearing, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/04/politics/rashida-tlaib-congressman-describes-threats-against-her/index.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">described</a> a death threat she and fellow Muslim Rep. Ilhan Omar had received in the mail. “A good Muslim is a dead one,” the letter had read. The hearing, called “Confronting White Supremacy: Adequacy of the Federal Response,” featured the FBI’s Assistant Director for Counterterrorism Michael McGarrity. </span>Tlaib wondered why threats like the one against her and Omar don’t qualify as domestic terrorism. “We get so many of them, and I keep asking, ‘What happens? What happens to these individuals?’” She asked McGarrity, “How is that not enough to fall under domestic terrorism?”</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In the U.S., there is no criminal charge specifically for “domestic terrorism.”</b> For example, <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">white supremacist James Fields Jr., who killed Heather Heyer with his Dodge Challenger at the “Unite The Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, was described as a domestic terrorist; even racist then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/jeff-sessions-speaks-doj-investigation-charlottesville-attack-49201717" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">said</a> the attack met the definition of “domestic terrorism.” Yet he was convicted for hate crimes, not on terror charges.</span></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Instead of being a legal category, “domestic terrorism” is used by federal law enforcement as a framework to organize and describe cases and investigations. But thanks to a recent shift in how the FBI classifies its domestic terror categories, the answer to Tlaib’s urgent question, “what happens” to white supremacist threats, writ large, is all the harder to discover.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Over the last decade, the FBI classified domestic terrorism cases using 11 categories, including a specific grouping for white supremacists. At the end of April, the FBI and Justice Department revealed to Senate Judiciary Committee staffers that <b>a new classification system was now in place, employing only four categories:</b> racially motivated violent extremism; anti-government and anti-authority extremism; <b>animal rights and environmental extremism;</b> and <b>abortion </b>extremism.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The “racially motivated” category is the most problematic one. Under an administration that has made a point of drawing <a href="https://theintercept.com/2018/10/31/pittsburgh-shooting-anti-semitism-media-bias/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">false equivalences</a> between deadly white supremacist violence and anti-racist dissent, the FBI’s category collapse is as unsurprising as it is disconcerting.</font></p><blockquote class="stylized pull-left" data-shortcode-type="pullquote" data-pull="left" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bold; margin: 2em 0px; padding: 0px 2em 0px 0px; box-shadow: none; line-height: 1.125; float: left; max-width: 60%;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The new nomenclature reflects the Trump administration’s ideological commitment to enabling white supremacists.</font></blockquote><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><a href="https://www.adl.org/news/press-releases/right-wing-extremism-linked-to-every-2018-extremist-murder-in-the-us-adl-finds" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">According</a> to the Anti-Defamation League, between 2009 and 2018, <b>white supremacist and far-right extremists were responsible for 73 percent of extremist murders in the U.S.</b> </span>Yet the distinct and deadly threat of white supremacist violence is now unnamed and merely folded into th<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">e too-broad “racially motivated extremism” category. That category folds in “<a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/03/23/black-identity-extremist-fbi-domestic-terrorism/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">black identity extremism</a>” </span>— an FBI category conjured in 2017 to make the unsubstantiated claim that black organizers fighting against racist police executions were a national security threat.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The new nomenclature reflects the Trump administration’s ideological commitment to <a href="https://www.apnews.com/a36d40133acf40b5a0ddda2fa130736e" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">enabling</a> white supremacists. But the new classifications are more than semantic: They render it impossible for the public, or even elected officials, to know whether the FBI is dedicating resources to investigating the <a href="https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/alt-right-campus-free-speech-adl-splc/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">very real</a> threat of white supremacist terror or if those resources are going toward the <a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/03/23/black-identity-extremist-fbi-domestic-terrorism/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">harassment</a> of Black Lives Matter and civil rights activists. Only the former use of government time and money would be justified, but both cases would fall under “racially motivated extremism.”</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bold; letter-spacing: 0.1em; box-shadow: none; text-transform: uppercase; line-height: 30px;">EARLIER THIS MONTH,</span> <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">the FBI’s inability to distinguish white supremacist, far-right terror cases in its data was made clear during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing</span>. During his testimony, McGarrity, the same FBI official questioned this week by Tlaib, was asked by House members how many current domestic investigations were targeting white supremacists. He couldn’t answer with any specificity, save to say that 50 percent of current investigations related to the “racially motivated” category and that the “majority” of these involved white supremacists. Another 40 percent of investigations, he said, related to “anti-government” extremism, without delineating whether targets were right- or left-wing groups. So, while we can know that 90 percent of current domestic FBI investigations involve supposedly “racially motivated” or “anti-government” cases, we can’t know to what extent the agency is abusing these “terror” categories to persecute anti-racist activism and civil rights struggle — as federal law enforcement has historically done.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87); font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 17px; letter-spacing: 0.3px;">Indigenous land and water protectors in Austin, Texas, briefly disrupted the state legislature on Tuesday when they unfurled two banners in the Texas State House of Representatives and shouted, “Kill the bill! Save the land!” The action was intended to stop the passage of House Bill 3557, which would increase the seriousness of violations that interfere with “critical infrastructure,” such as pipelines, by elevating them from misdemeanors to felonies.</span></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87); font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-size: 17px; letter-spacing: 0.3px;">
</span></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/28032019/pipeline-protest-crackdown-state-law-legislation-south-dakota-conspirators-riot-boosting" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/28032019/pipeline-protest-crackdown-state-law-legislation-south-dakota-conspirators-riot-boosting</a></font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small;"><div class="content" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-items" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This story was updated with a lawsuit filed March 28 over the <b>South Dakota law.</b></font></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Bills to clamp down on pipeline protests have spread to at least nine new states this year, part of an industry-backed push that began two years ago to heighten penalties for activists who try to block fossil fuel infrastructure projects.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Several of the bills also <b>allow prosecutors to go after people or organizations as "conspirators" or "riot boosters" for merely supporting or coordinating with others who violate the law.</b></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Civil liberties advocates argue that these vague and far-reaching provisions risk violating free speech protections under the</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> First Amendment</span><span id="docs-internal-guid-dd3b970d-7fff-fca6-16a3-b6411b0c246b" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit;">, and they have already started launching legal challenges.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span></b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The latest government move came on Wednesday in South Dakota—one of the states the planned Keystone XL pipeline is slated to cross—when<b> Republican Gov. Kristi Noem</b> signed a law that enables state and local governments, as well as "third parties," to seek civil damages from people or organizations that engage in "riot boosting."</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Lawmakers in North Dakota, a hub of oil and gas development, also <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/north-dakota/articles/2019-03-25/north-dakota-legislature-bumps-pipeline-tampering-penalties" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent;">passed a bill</a> this week that stiffens penalties for anyone who interferes with the construction or operation of pipelines and other "critical infrastructure.</b>"<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Once the Senate approves some minor changes, it heads to <b>Republican Gov. Doug Burgum</b>, who has not said whether he will sign it.</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The North Dakota bill was based on a law <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22082018/pipeline-protest-laws-felony-free-speech-arrests-first-amendment-oklahoma-iowa-louisiana" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit;">that was enacted in Oklahoma in 2017</a> and then circulated by the industry-backed American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Versions of that legislation <a href="http://www.icnl.org/usprotestlawtracker/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit;">have now been introduced</a> in at least 15 states, three of which have enacted it: Oklahoma, Louisiana and Iowa. A version of the bill passed the Indiana legislature this week, too, though the Senate there must also approve some amendments before sending it to the governor.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">While the details vary from state to state, the bills generally increase penalties for trespassing on or tampering with a range of facilities, including pipelines, oil storage tanks, railroads and utility infrastructure. Several of them, including North Dakota's, also include language assigning <b>higher penalties—up to $1 million in some cases—for any group found to be a conspirator in violating the law.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The <b>South Dakota law is different. Rather than imposing new penalties for interfering in pipeline construction, the bill enables state or local governments—or a third party working with government—to seek compensation from anyone who engages in "riot boosting," which includes encouraging or directing someone to engage in a riot, defined by the state as the use of force or violence by three or more people acting together.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Someone can qualify as a "riot booster" even if they reside out of state and act indirectly "through any employee, agent or subsidiary." Anyone found liable would be responsible for three times the ordinary penalty.</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The bill was introduced at the end of the legislative session and approved <a href="https://www.argusleader.com/story/news/politics/2019/03/07/keystone-xl-pipeline-protest-bills-pass-south-dakota-senate-house/3090014002/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit;">over the course of four days</a>, with only one hearing.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Environmental and civil liberties advocates, as well as many Native American tribes, say the bills are an attempt to stifle legitimate protest by creating harsh penalties for minor infractions and by trying to scare off advocacy groups. An organization that holds a nonviolence training, for example, might be targeted under the law if attendees are later part of a protest that ends in a clash with private security forces or police.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>"'Riot boosting' is an unusual and new term.</b> You might be asking yourself what that means, and I think protesters will too," said Vera Eidelman, an attorney with the <b>American Civil Liberties Union </b>who has tracked the bills. "I think it poses a unique threat to speech and appears to be targeted at protests<b>. It uses words like 'encouraging' and 'advising' that are very broad and refer to a category of protected speech."</b></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><span id="docs-internal-guid-d9941a62-7fff-3f3a-237b-31269614d12e" style="box-sizing: inherit;">On Thursday, the ACLU </span><a href="https://www.aclusd.org/sites/default/files/field_documents/complaint_0.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit;">sued South Dakota officials</a> in federal court on behalf of indigenous and environmental groups, arguing that the new law and two related statutes<b>violate the Constitution by suppressing free speech and failing to describe what actions could qualify as violations. I</b>n a statement, the group said "such vague and broad language invites arbitrary enforcement, will chill protected speech, and will result in indiscriminate targeting of peaceful organizers."</font></p><h3 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.333;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Industry-Backed Group's 'Model Legislation'</font></h3><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The legislation is part of a wave of state bills introduced across the country since President <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/tags/donald-trump" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit;">Donald Trump</a>'s election in response to high-profile protests like those against the Dakota Access Pipeline on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota in 2016 and 2017.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Oklahoma state Rep. Scott Biggs said he was responding to those protests when he <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22082018/pipeline-protest-laws-felony-free-speech-arrests-first-amendment-oklahoma-iowa-louisiana" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit;">introduced a bill</a> in 2017 to impose harsh penalties on people or groups who interfere with <b>"critical infrastructure.</b>" After ALEC adopted the bill as model legislation, versions quickly spread across several states with active pipeline projects.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The bills' supporters have said they make it easier for prosecutors to go after protesters or vandals who violate the law, and that they do not target free speech.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Advocates have pointed out that the actions in question—<b>trespassing, vandalism—are already covered by existing laws. Instead, they say, the aim of the bills is to intimidate protesters who draw attention to their concerns through civil disobedience,</b> including minor infractions like blocking the gates of construction sites. Advocates say these protests are part of a long tradition of American civil disobedience dating back to the Boston Tea Party.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>"Even where these bills are simply introduced, even if they do not move, even if they do not become law, they have potential to chill free speech and curtail activism," said Maggie Ellinger-Locke, a staff attorney with Greenpeace. "We're hearing from people on the frontlines of activism in these states that these bills frighten them.</b>"</font></p><h3 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.333;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Pipeline Companies Register Their Support</font></h3><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Energy companies and associations have supported the bills and have continued to push the legislation this year, according to documents compiled by Greenpeace.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">TransCanada, the Canadian company behind the Keystone XL pipeline, <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5755007-Missouri-SB-293-Witness-Slips-From-Senate.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit;">registered its support</a> for the bill this year in Missouri along with the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers and other industry groups. <a href="http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/Witnessslip.asp?LegDocId=147293&DocNum=1633&DocTypeID=HB&LegID=116175&GAID=15&SessionID=108&GA=101&WSType=PROP" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit;">In Illinois</a>, TransCanada was joined by Enbridge and Energy Transfer, two other leading pipeline developers, as well as the American Petroleum Institute.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Sen. Janne Myrdal, who sponsored the North Dakota bill this year and is a member of ALEC's energy task force, </b>did not respond to requests for comment. But <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/north-dakota/articles/2019-03-25/north-dakota-legislature-bumps-pipeline-tampering-penalties" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent;">she told the Associated Press</a> that she introduced the bill in response to a protester who in 2016 broke into a control site for the existing Keystone pipeline that cuts through the state and manually closed one of the valves.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"There was frustration from law enforcement and residents that there wasn't enough teeth in current law to go after these people and the organizations that support them," she said.</font><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">[pix]</span></span></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The protester, Michael Foster, was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison, though two of those years were suspended. He ended up serving about half a year.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In South Dakota,<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Gov. Noem's </span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">office did not answer emailed questions about TransCanada's role in drafting the bill, </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">but Noem <a href="https://www.kotatv.com/content/news/Noem-meets-with-TransCanada-officials-505732281.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit;">said in February</a> that she had met with representatives of the company to discuss her legislative package, which also includes a <b>bill that requires pipeline developers to contribute to a fund that would help pay for government costs associated with construction.</b></span></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">"I fully support the freedoms of speech and assembly, but we must also have clear expectations and the rule of law," Noem said in a statement issued Wednesday. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">"My pipeline bills make clear that we will not let<b> rioters control our economic development."</b></span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Terry Cunha, a spokesman for TransCanada, said in an email that "we appreciate the efforts of Governor Noem and her administration to help advance Keystone XL construction and other pipelines," adding that "any legislation that deters unlawful activities and encourages the advancement of critical infrastructure projects is a positive step."</font></p><h3 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.333;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Is It Stifling Dissent?</font></h3><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Some activists say the bills are part of a wider effort by the oil and gas industry and its allies in government—through <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22012019/greenpeace-racketeering-lawsuit-rico-claims-dismissed-federal-court-resolute-forest" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit;">lawsuits</a>, public relations campaigns and legislation—to paint protesters as criminals and even <b><u>terrorists.</u></b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>"All of these things I think incorrectly mischaracterize protesters and respond to a powerful pushback against pipelines and other protests, not by trying to engage on the issues but by trying to stifle dissent," Eidelman said. "I think this is really part of a broader trend."</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Last year, the <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/07092018/protester-surveillance-anti-terrorism-training-keystone-xl-pipeline-aclu-lawsuit-federal-law-enforcement" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit;">ACLU sued the federal government</a>, accusing several agencies of withholding documents detailing preparations for the potential construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. The group had submitted records requests seeking information about the preparations, and the documents that did emerge, mostly from state agencies, showed that law enforcement agencies were conducting trainings for potential protests. The ACLU said the activities risked treating activists as criminals even before protests broke out. State officials have said they are simply doing their jobs.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In January, The Intercept <a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/01/30/enbridge-line-3-pipeline-minnesota/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit;">reported on similar concerns</a> in Minnesota, where police had been preparing for a year and a half for protests against Enbridge's proposed Line 3 pipeline expansion project by identifying groups opposed to construction and monitoring some activists.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: inherit; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The ACLU and other civil liberties groups said they are continuing to evaluate the state bills and considering whether they may challenge them as unconstitutional. So far,<b>Louisiana is the only state where protesters have been</b> <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/24082018/pipeline-protests-new-louisiana-law-activist-arrests-oil-bayou-bridge-energy-transfer-partners" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit;">arrested under the new laws</a>. Bill Quigley, a lawyer who is representing several of the activists, said prosecutors have two years to press charges and have yet to do so.</font></p></div></div></div></div><div class="tagged-with" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; text-transform: uppercase; margin-bottom: 1em;"><label style="box-sizing: inherit; display: block; line-height: 1.2;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">PUBLISHED UNDER:</font></label><div class="field field-name-field-topics field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-items" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div class="field-item even" style="box-sizing: inherit; display: inline-block; padding-right: 0.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/topics/activism" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent;">ACTIVISM</a></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div> <div class="field-item odd" style="box-sizing: inherit; display: inline-block; padding-right: 0.5em;"><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/topics/oil-spillspipelines" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent;">OIL SPILLS/PIPELINES</a></div> <div class="field-item even" style="box-sizing: inherit; display: inline-block; padding-right: 0.5em;"><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/topics/regulation" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent;">REGULATION</a></div></div></div></div></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></div><div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">intercept series</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://theintercept.com/series/the-threat-within/" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">https://theintercept.com/series/the-threat-within/</a></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">green scare </font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/03/23/ecoterrorism-fbi-animal-rights/" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</a></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/03/23/ecoterrorism-fbi-animal-rights/" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">https://theintercept.com/2019/03/23/ecoterrorism-fbi-animal-rights/</a></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><div class="SeriesBlock SeriesBlock--start" style="box-sizing: border-box; position: relative; padding: 30px 20px; margin-right: -240.266px; margin-bottom: 30px; margin-left: -20px; clear: left; border-top: 1px solid rgb(238, 238, 238); border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(238, 238, 238);"><div class="SeriesExcerpt" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: -20px; margin-right: -20px;"><div class="SeriesExcerpt-description" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.2; width: 470.125px; padding-left: 20px; padding-right: 20px; float: left;"><p class="Excerpt" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Behind the scenes, corporate lobbying laid the groundwork for the Justice Department’s aggressive pursuit of so-called eco-terrorists.</font></p><p class="Excerpt" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></p></div></div></div><div class="PostContent" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin-bottom: 80px; line-height: 1.5;"><div style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bold; box-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 1px 0px, rgb(17, 17, 17) 0px 4px 0px;">joe
</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.1em; box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bold; box-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 1px 0px, rgb(17, 17, 17) 0px 4px 0px; text-transform: uppercase;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">OE DIBEE’S </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">12 YEARS</span></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> on the lam</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> came to an end last August, when </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Cuban authorities detained the 50-year-old environmental activist during a layover in Havana </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">and turned him over to the United States.</span></span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">More than a decade earlier, police and FBI agents had arrested a dozen of Dibee’s associates in the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front within the span of a few months. They were charged with conspiring to burn down factories that slaughtered animals for meat, timber mills that disrupted sensitive ecosystems, government facilities that penned wild horses, and a ski resort perched on a pristine mountaintop. Dibee, a former Microsoft software tester known for his ingenuity, had slipped away in the midst of it all.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>While the arsons, which never hurt or killed anyone, largely took place in the late 1990s, the wave of arrests known as the “Green Scare” came in the post-9/11 era,</b> when terrorism was the FBI’s prevailing obsession. The fur and biomedical industries had spent years lobbying the Justice Department and lawmakers to go after eco-activists, who had damaged their property, held audacious demonstrations decrying their business activities, and cost them millions of dollars. When the planes hit the twin towers, industry groups seized on the opportunity to push legislation, and federal law enforcement ramped up pursuit of radical activists in the name of counterterrorism.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">So-called eco-terrorism became the Justice Department’s No. 1 domestic terror concern — “over the likes of white supremacists, militias, and anti-abortion groups,” as one senator <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-109shrg32209/html/CHRG-109shrg32209.htm" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">pointed out</a> at the time. Operation Backfire, which sent Dibee running, was the climax of the crackdown</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. “There was money, there was administrative support, there was management support,” said Jane Quimby, a retired FBI agent who worked on Backfire. The results were “an affirmation that given the resources that you need, and the support that you need, you can really make these things work.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;" /><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In 2009, when a Department of Homeland Security intelligence report raised alarms about the rising threat of right-wing extremist violence, it provoked a very different response. After outcry from conservative groups, DHS backtracked on the report and later disbanded the domestic terrorism unit that produced it.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Daryl Johnson, a former domestic terrorism analyst at DHS, says there’s a reason law enforcement took a less aggressive approach to right-wing white supremacists and anti-government attackers. In the case of the eco-extremists, the government had a powerful ally: industry</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. “You don’t have a bunch of companies coming forward saying I wish you’d do something about these right-wing extremists,” said Johnson, who left his position in 2010, after his warnings about right-wing violence were dismissed. “If enough people lobbied congresspeople about white nationalists and how it’s affecting their business activity, then I’m sure you’ll get legislation.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Now, in the wake of the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the murder of counterprotester Heather Heyer by white supremacist James Alex Fields, <a href="https://www.lawfareblog.com/criminal-law-should-treat-domestic-terrorism-moral-equivalent-international-terrorism" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">past</a> and <a href="https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/judicial/350569-it-is-time-to-make-domestic-terrorism-a-federal-crime" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">current</a> Justice Department officials have argued that a new domestic terrorism statute is necessary to better respond to far-right violence.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">But law enforcement and federal prosecutors already have powerful counterterrorism authorities at their disposal, and their history of using them to go after radical activists who committed property crimes suggests that any new crackdown is likely to sweep up far more than domestic extremists who pose a lethal threat.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">No new law was required to treat eco-saboteurs as terrorists in the wake of 9/11. Of 70 federal prosecutions of radical environmentalists and animal rights activists <a href="https://github.com/firstlookmedia/the-threat-within-data" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">identified by The Intercept</a>, 52 did not result in charges under anti-terrorism laws. Yet the defendants were repeatedly called terrorists by the Justice Department in public statements and internal communications. The designation opened up additional resources and gave the government powerful leverage in the form of terrorism sentencing enhancements, which prosecutors sought in more than 20 cases.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>Meanwhile, in the remaining 18 cases, prosecutors applied an anti-terrorism law written with the help of industry that was designed exclusively to target animal rights activists.</b> Six cases involved activists releasing mink and vandalizing fur facilities, and six involved individuals accused of encouraging radical acts like sabotage but not participating in any themselves. Four of the cases involved activists protesting outside researchers’ homes and were dismissed because the allegations were too vague.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The story of how years of corporate lobbying ended with Dibee in cuffs contains lessons for those considering how to handle the surge in right-wing violence, as well as for a new generation of environmental activists again facing accusations of eco-terrorism....</font></p><div style="box-sizing: border-box;"><h3 kern="kern" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1; margin: 1em 0px; font-kerning: normal;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Industry Intelligence-Gathering</font></h3><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Joe Dibee grew up camping in the spectacular forests, mountains, and coastal regions of the Pacific Northwest. His parents, members of Syria’s Catholic minority, had immigrated to the U.S. before he was born, settling into Seattle’s middle class. His mother worked at the public library and his father was a finance professor at Seattle University, where Dibee would eventually study civil engineering and general science. Dibee came of age just as law enforcement in the U.S. was beginning to take notice of the budding animal rights movement.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In 1977, when he was 9 years old, a group called the Undersea Railroad released two dolphins from a University of Hawaii marine laboratory — the first known animal liberation in U.S. history<b>.</b></font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b> A countermovement was rapidly launched, led by organizations like the National Association for Biomedical Research,</b> which lobbies for the use of live animals in scientific research.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>NABR and other industry groups were way ahead of law enforcement in gathering intelligence on the animal rights movement,</b> and federal agents were happy to make use of the information. In March 1987, for example, FBI agents met with NABR about four chimpanzees that had been abducted from a research laboratory. The group “maintains a large intelligence file on the activities of most of the significant animal rights groups in the world,” an agent noted after the meeting, and “furnished the FBI with many documents which deal with these groups as well as outline their significant activities dating back to 1976.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The FBI’s account of the meeting is included in documents obtained via public records requests by Ryan Shapiro, executive director of the transparency organization Property of the People</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. The documents show that throughout the 1990s, the FBI and Justice Department collaborated with a range of industry groups including</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5778881-AMP-July-2001.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">Americans for Medical Progress</a>, t</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">he Fur Commission, the <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5778883-DOJ-and-NBFFO-June-1991.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">National Board of Fur Farm Organizations</a>, the <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5778888-FBR-and-AFIA-September-1989.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">Foundation for Biomedical Research</a>, and the American Feed Industry Association.</font></p></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">[doc]</font></p><div style="box-sizing: border-box;"><div style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p class="caption" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.27273; margin: 0px 0px 20px; letter-spacing: 0.01em; word-spacing: -0.25em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="box-sizing: border-box; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); outline: none; display: block; width: 680px; margin-bottom: 20px; max-height: 400px; overflow: hidden; position: relative; letter-spacing: normal;">The Justice Department held a conference on animal rights terrorism in 1998, inviting the director of the Fur Commission to speak, according to an FBI memo.]</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><a class="DocumentPreview" href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5778884-DOJ-Fur-Commission-Terror-Conference-April-1998.html#document/p1" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none; display: block; width: 680px; margin-bottom: 20px; max-height: 400px; overflow: hidden; position: relative; letter-spacing: normal;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Later that year, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on “Acts of Ecoterrorism by Radical Environmental Organizations.” <b>U.S. Rep. Frank Riggs,</b> who had </font></a><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline-color: initial; outline-width: initial;">accepted</span> thousands of dollars in <b>campaign contributions from the forestry industry,</b> described an activist stunt in which a large tree stump was dumped in the middle of his Northern California office. “<b>My office was quite literally assaulted by a group of environmental terrorists,</b>” he said. “Upon responding to the horrific sound, my two female staff members were greeted by the visage of several Earth First! terrorists, one wearing a black ski mask, and another wearing dark goggles and a hood.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"> October 1998, in the midst of renewed focus on their activities, Earth Liberation Front activists raised the stakes. In the name of protecting lynx habitat, they burned down several buildings at a new ski resort near Vail, Colorado, causing $12 million worth of damage. “The environmental groups who have not just claimed credit, but in some cases have been proved to have committed criminal acts, are a very, very serious part of our domestic terrorism focus,” then-FBI Director Louis Freeh </span><a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?119923-1/countering-terrorist-threats-us" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none; letter-spacing: normal;">told Congress</a><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"> a few months later.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;" /><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Fur Commission celebrated. “Over the last year, the people of the fur trade have been key players with other animal and resource-based industries in a concerted effort to push eco and animal rights terrorism up the government’s priority pole,” according to <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/leighton-woodhouse/animal-liberation_b_2012426.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">a March 1999 newsletter</a>. “These efforts have resulted in a strong statement of commitment from the FBI.”</font></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Detective Greg Harvey joined the Eugene Police Department’s special investigations unit in June of that year. For the better part of the next decade, solving the string of ALF and ELF arsons would become his primary task.</font></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Harvey’s work on the team coincided with an intense national tug of war over the meaning of terrorism. Indeed, Harvey had his own taxonomy. Blocking a road and trespassing? Not terrorism. The ALF and ELF arsonists? Not in the same category as international terrorists who kill people, but terrorists just the same. “Their whole intent is to change the way things are done,” Harvey told The Intercept. “They’re trying to close down businesses. Well, that’s terrorism. When the families or the workers are afraid to do something, that’s what I consider terrorism.”</font></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“One of the things we were really trying to focus on was breaking the movement,” he said. Harvey and other law enforcement officials went after the group’s omerta — its staunch refusal to cooperate with authorities. “That was one of the things that we broke.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But it would take a disaster even bigger than the Vail arson to give industry and law enforcement the political capital needed to cripple the movement. “They called us eco-terrorists before 9/11,” said John Sellers, former director of the <b>Ruckus Society</b>, which trains environmental justice organizers in direct action. “But no one really believed them.”</font></span></p><div class="img-wrap align-center width-fixed" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 2em 0px 2.25em; line-height: 1; max-width: none; width: 1024px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><p class="caption" andale="Andale" mono="Mono" monospace="monospace" line-height="line-height" margin="margin" px="px" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" em="em" font-size="font-size" color="color" rgb="rgb" word-spacing="word-spacing" display="display" inline="inline" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Protesters, some proclaiming to be supporters of the Earth Liberation Front, march in Portland, Ore., on Feb. 12, 2002.</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></p>
</span></div><h3 kern="kern" font-size="font-size" em="em" color="color" rgb="rgb" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1; margin: 1em 0px; font-kerning: normal;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">From 9/11 to the Green Scare</font></span></h3><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rescue workers were only beginning to survey the damage when Alaska Republican Rep. Don Young picked up a call from an Anchorage Daily News reporter on September 11, 2001. Few details had emerged about who was behind the attacks, but Young was unfazed. “War has been declared as far as terrorists go,” he told the newspaper. “I’m not sure they’re that dedicated, but eco-terrorists — which are really based in Seattle — there’s a strong possibility that could be one of the groups” behind the assault.</font></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Young’s remarks were prescient: Eco-saboteurs would become one of the U.S. government’s lesser-known war on terror adversaries. September 11 was a crisis perfectly suited to the groundwork industry groups had laid in the 1990s, and corporate actors stood ready to exploit it. It didn’t hurt that the saboteurs aligned themselves against capitalism, which was being defended as critical to America’s suddenly imperiled way of life. With political careers freshly dependent on hammering terrorism, eco-sabotage became an easy target.</font></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The attacks “did not set off the Green Scare,” Shapiro said. Instead, “9/11 was exploited by Green Scare warriors to turn up the volume on their surveillance and suppression of the animal rights and eco movements.”</font></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The Patriot Act’s broad new definition of domestic terrorism, signed into law in October 2001,</b> was another step toward institutionalizing the notion that eco-saboteurs were terrorists. The law targets those who commit criminal acts “dangerous to human life” that “appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population” or influence government policy. It also made it <a href="https://www.aclu.org/other/surveillance-under-usapatriot-act" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">easier</a> for the FBI to wiretap and surveil U.S. citizens. Even though a core tenet of ALF and ELF was to avoid harming living things, the Justice Department considered the movement’s acts of arson and vandalism dangerous enough to count.</font></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;" /><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); letter-spacing: 0.01em;">
At the hearing, representatives from both parties offered anti-ALF and ELF soliloquies. “On the morning of December 28, the employees of U.S. Forest Industries arrived at work to find their offices smoldering. The scene is reminiscent of what we saw of the damaged part of the Pentagon after September 11,” said Oregon Republican Rep. Greg Walden. “It didn’t take a jetliner to destroy this office. An ELF firebomb did the job. And while fortunately there was no loss of life, the destruction was just as severe.”</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;">Less than a week after the law’s passage, Craig Rosebraugh, a spokesperson for ELF and ALF, received a subpoena to testify before members of Congress at a hearing on eco-terrorism. Rosebraugh had been profiled in news articles as the </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1998/12/20/magazine/the-face-of-eco-terrorism.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none; letter-spacing: normal;">face of the movement</a><span style="letter-spacing: normal;">, even though his role was to publish anonymous communiques rather than conduct acts of sabotage.</span></span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;" /><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The domestic terrorism section chief of the FBI, James Jarboe, announced that ALF and ELF were “the No. 1 priority in the domestic terrorism program.”</b></font></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rosebraugh tried to turn the tables on his accusers. “If the U.S. government is truly concerned with eradicating terrorism in the world, then that effort must begin with abolishing U.S. imperialism,” he wrote in prepared remarks. “Members of this governing body, both in the House and Senate as well as those who hold positions in the executive branch, constitute the largest group of terrorists and terrorist representatives currently threatening life on this planet.”</font></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lawmakers at the hearing proposed various legislative fixes, including an Agroterrorism Prevention Act, which would have made activists eligible for the death penalty if someone were to die in one of the arsons. That bill was never passed, but another proposal — an expansion of the Animal Enterprise Protection Act — did become law, with help from industry.</font></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In tandem with politicians’ maneuvers, Quimby and the other law enforcement officers assigned to the arsons were doubling down on capturing the saboteurs. In the summer of 2001, they had met to discuss how they could crack open what had become stubbornly cold cases. “We decided we were going to be much more overt, and we were going to go start knocking on doors,” Quimby said.</font></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Armed with a list of 30 to 40 targets, the lead agent on the case began popping up in coffee shops and neighborhoods where he knew activists would recognize him. “You start to induce a little bit of paranoia,” Quimby explained. The idea was that the activists would start thinking, “Are they on to us? Are they watching me? Are they on my phone? Are they monitoring my email account?” she told The Intercept. “It sewed some seeds of doubt.”</font></span></p><blockquote class="stylized pull-center" data-shortcode-type="pullquote" data-pull="center" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bold; margin: 2em 0px; padding: 0px; box-shadow: none; line-height: 1.125;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“They called us eco-terrorists before 9/11, but no one really believed them.”</font></span></blockquote><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Eugene detective Harvey’s job was to remain unseen. “I lived in the shadows. I basically sat in my car, watching people, buildings,” he said. At one point, he said, he spent hours sitting outside the Castle Superstore where one of the activists worked, in the hopes that Dibee would show up to visit.</font></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The operation zeroed in on<b> Jake Ferguson</b>, who was suspected of being one of the most prolific arsonists. “We were following around Jake Ferguson for months and months,” said Harvey. “You’re looking at a heroin user, which makes him unbelievably paranoid.” Agents from multiple states moved into a shared office in Eugene, where the walls were papered with charts, photos, and timelines.</font></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Quimby doesn’t fully credit 9/11 for the intensified investigation. But “there’s no question that funding that became available as a result of 9/11 may not have been there” if not for the attacks, she said. The ALF and ELF cases “became a priority and a very visible priority.”</font></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">By the end of 2001, however, Dibee and fellow activists had begun to move away from radical protest tactics like arson, according to Lauren Regan, a lawyer who would later represent one of the Backfire defendants. “It was causing division, because there was no way to control who was doing what</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">,” she said. “They felt as if, sooner or later, some wildcard would potentially screw something up and kill themselves or kill someone else.” An October 2001 arson, of a hay barn at a Bureau of Land Management holding facility for wild horses, would be the last fire prosecutors attributed to Dibee and other Backfire defendants.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dibee also had a falling out with one of his closest collaborators in the movement, Jonathan Paul. Paul had participated in the Cavel West arson, and he and Dibee had co-founded an organization called Sea Defense Alliance, which sought to physically disrupt the Makah people’s whale hunt (an action that is hard to imagine in today’s environmental movement, which seeks to follow the lead of Indigenous people).</font></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The two activists sued each other over ownership of the organization’s boat, and at one point, Dibee drove toward Paul’s home with a gun, allegedly planning to confront him, according to law enforcement accounts included in federal court filings. But Dibee got lost and was pulled over by police, and the meeting was averted.</font></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For a time, Dibee appeared to move on with his life, maintaining his adrenaline high by racing cars and flying planes. But the Backfire case was about to break. In 2003, Ferguson, who had a young child to consider, agreed to wear a wire and travel around the U.S., visiting his activist friends and convincing them to talk about the old days.</font></span></p><h3 kern="kern" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1; margin: 1em 0px; font-kerning: normal;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Breaking the Movement</font></h3><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Among the earliest casualties of the Green Scare was a group known as the SHAC 7. After reporters and undercover activists obtained <a href="http://arzone.ning.com/video/it-s-a-dog-s-life-undercover-footage-at-huntington-life-sciences" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">disturbing footage</a> from <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1998/03/24/science/tough-tactics-in-one-battle-over-animals-in-the-lab.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">inside the laboratories</a> of the research company Huntingdon Life Sciences, a campaign called Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty emerged to shut it down.</span> The nerve center of the campaign was a website where administrators posted communiques describing protest actions that targeted not just Huntingdon, but any company or individual that supported it — from clients to investment firms to the club where the CEO played golf. In response to persistent disruptions, dozens of companies severed ties with Huntingdon.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In January 2004, the American Legislative Exchange Council, a powerful organization whose members include legislators and corporate lobbyists, released <a href="https://www.alec.org/model-policy/the-animal-and-ecological-terrorism-act-aeta/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">draft legislation</a> meant to strengthen the Animal Enterprise Protection Act to make it even easier to crack down on activist groups like SHAC. Under ALEC’s model, titled the “Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act,” filming an animal facility without the owners’ consent could be prosecuted as terrorism. ALEC’s version would also have created a “terrorist registry” of anyone convicted under the law.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But prosecutors didn’t need ALEC’s draft legislation to go after SHAC. A few months after the proposal was finalized, seven SHAC organizers were arrested and six were later sentenced to prison terms under the original version of AEPA. They were accused of encouraging and publicizing radical tactics, but not participating in acts of sabotage themselves.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Nor did authorities need a new anti-terrorism law to go after the ALF and ELF arsonists. In December 2005, FBI agents carried out <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/09/us/6-arrested-years-after-ecoterrorist-acts.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">simultaneous</a>arrests in five states. Over the next year, 18 alleged ALF and ELF saboteurs would be accused of participating in a domestic terrorism conspiracy. The feds interviewed Dibee. Then he disappeared.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The pressure on the eco-radicals to inform on their friends in exchange for reduced prison time was immense.</b> Hanging over their heads were terrorism sentencing enhancements developed in the wake of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which could <a href="https://www.ussc.gov/guidelines/2015-guidelines-manual/2015-chapter-3" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">increase</a> prison time for a <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2332b" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">specific list</a> of crimes if they were “calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct.” Among the charges that fit the enhancement were arsons of buildings involved in interstate commerce or belonging to the U.S. government.<strong style="box-sizing: border-box;"> </strong></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Given the prison time at stake, with some facing possible life sentences, nearly every activist shared information. “Some named every name they could,” Harvey said, while others “listed involvement without naming names.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Prosecutors declined to negotiate with the handful of defendants who refused to cooperate, according to Regan. But that changed overnight, she said, after defense lawyers issued an extensive motion demanding the government reveal whether the National Security Agency or FBI had used warrantless wiretapping or Patriot Act-authorized surveillance against the activists. When the judge supported the motion, and prosecutors changed their tune. “They said, ‘OK, we’ll do a noncooperating plea deal if you’ll drop this motion,’” Regan recalled.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>A narrower version of ALEC’s law, introduced by Republican Sen. James Inhofe and Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, passed the following November.</b> The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, or AETA, left out much of ALEC’s wish list, limiting the law to animal enterprises rather than actions targeting mining, timber harvesting, and fossil fuel extraction. However, it <a href="http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/aeta-analysis-109th/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">succeeded</a> in criminalizing “interference” in the activities of any entity with a connection to an animal enterprise, a lower bar than AEPA’s “physical disruption.” It also increased the maximum penalty for causing economic damage, from three years in prison to 20, and allowed for up to five years in prison if an action simply caused someone a “reasonable fear of serious bodily injury or death.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The section that would have criminalized filming at animal facilities was picked up by state lawmakers across the U.S. — “ag gag” bills became law in nine states, though they’ve been <a href="https://aldf.org/issue/ag-gag/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">overturned</a> as unconstitutional in three, and legal battles continue.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Twelve of the Backfire defendants received terrorism enhancements. They were sentenced to between one and 12 years in prison. One defendant’s status as a “terrorist” was later used to justify his transfer to a communications management unit, where his contact with friends, family, and the public was severely limited.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But it wasn’t prison time that most deeply undermined the movement. “The level of betrayal that took place during the Green Scare and the number of hardcore activists that basically crumbled under minor pressure by the state to become snitches or informants really shook the foundations of the radical movement,” Regan said. “It was very, very difficult for a lot of people to organize and trust each other in the aftermath of that shakeup.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As for Dibee, the FBI suspected that he sheltered with relatives in Syria. Friends thought he might have died in the violent civil war there. One by one, the other Backfire fugitives were picked up. After 30-year-old New Jersey native Justin Solondz was arrested on drug charges in 2009 in the backpacker community of Dali, China, he <a href="https://fredericacade.wordpress.com/2012/03/20/press-release-justin-solondz-last-defendant-arrested-in-uw-horticulture-center-arson-sentenced-to-prison-student-who-built-fire-bomb-drove-getaway-car-sentenced-to-seven-years-in-prison/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">pleaded guilty</a> in the U.S. to firebombing the University of Washington’s Center for Urban Horticulture. Thirty-nine-year-old Rebecca Rubin, who had been hiding in her home nation of Canada, turned herself in in 2012, exhausted by years when “she was forced to live in what is, in some ways, a prison without walls,” as her lawyer told a Maclean’s reporter. She <a href="https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2013/10/eco-saboteur_rebecca_rubin_ple.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">pleaded guilty</a> to freeing wild horses and helping with the Vail arson.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">While Dibee was on the lam, Obama’s election drove much of the environmental movement’s energy toward legislative change and away from direct action</span>. The Intercept identified only 13 eco-activist cases prosecuted federally after 2008 — all but two charged under AETA. Six of the cases involved activists freeing mink from fur farms — actions that could hardly be considered terrorism even under the Patriot Act’s broad definition. Four more of the cases were dismissed. “The primary purpose of these laws is to try and brand activists as terrorists in order to turn public opinion against their advocacy and their campaigns,” Regan said.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Meanwhile, Democratic leadership failed to deliver any meaningful response to the deepening climate crisis and resulting biodiversity loss. Rising ocean temperatures caused the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, which Dibee had visited as a kid, to bleach and die. Wildfires burned with more intensity through the desiccated Pacific Northwest forests that he’d fought to protect from the timber industry. Orca whale populations shrunk to perilous levels off the coast of Washington state. And Donald Trump was elected president, paving the way to reverse even the minor steps the Obama administration had taken to challenge corporate polluters.</font></p><h3 kern="kern" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1; margin: 1em 0px; font-kerning: normal;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Rising Threat Dismissed</font></h3><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Daryl Johnson started at the Department of Homeland Security as a domestic terrorism analyst when eco-terrorism was still one of its major priorities. He didn’t have a problem with that.<b> “I still believe they’re terroristic threats, because it’s ideologically motivated violence against property,</b>” he said. “But if I had to choose who was the greater threat, I would obviously go with the ones who were killing people.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By 2009, Johnson had come to see right-wing extremism as a severe, rising threat. That April, he became the lead author on an intelligence assessment that found that right-wing movements were using Obama’s election as a recruiting tool. That same month, three police officers in Pittsburgh were ambushed and killed by a man who regularly posted on the white supremacist website Stormfront. <b>“Lone wolves and small terrorist cells embracing violent right-wing extremist ideology are the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States,” the report concluded.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The report was leaked, and the backlash was swift. Conservative groups were particularly offended by its suggestion that veterans might be vulnerable to recruitment by far-right groups. Everyone from Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner to the American Legion released statements deriding it.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>At first, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano defended Johnson’s work.</b> “We must protect the country from terrorism whether foreign or homegrown, and regardless of the ideology that motivates its violence,” she said in a <a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2009/04/napolitano_comments_on_right_w.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">statement</a> a week after the report was published. But after 20 conservative groups put out ads calling for her to resign, she backtracked, <a href="https://www.rollcall.com/news/-34696-1.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">claiming</a>there had been a breakdown in internal review processes and <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2011/inside-dhs-former-top-analyst-says-agency-bowed-political-pressure" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">promising</a>to replace the report.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In contrast to the crackdown on eco-radicals, DHS stepped back from focusing on domestic terrorism altogether. Johnson’s unit was <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/homeland-security-department-curtails-home-grown-terror-analysis/2011/06/02/AGQEaDLH_story.html?utm_term=.0f6b73776d8f" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">gutted</a>, and he left the agency <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2011/inside-dhs-former-top-analyst-says-agency-bowed-political-pressure" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">along</a> with many of his peers.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“It sent a chilling effect in the law enforcement and intelligence community.</b> They saw what happened to me and how my unit was politicized,” he told The Intercept. As a result, “you have 10 years of attacks almost,” said Johnson, who now works as a consultant on domestic extremism. “Lots of people have died. The threat [of far-right groups] is still very active right now, and so it’s thriving.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">According to the Anti-Defamation League, between 2002 and 2018, 80 percent of extremist-related murders in the U.S. were carried out by people linked to right-wing movements. Only 3 percent were linked to left-wing ideologies, and 17 percent to Islamic movements.<b> Every single extremist killing in 2018 — 50 in all — had a link to a right-wing movement.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Journalist and civil liberties advocate Will Potter, whose book “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Green-New-Red-Insiders-Movement/dp/087286538X" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">Green Is the New Red</a>” exposed industry influence over Green Scare-style prosecutions, argues that the federal focus on animal rights activists over right-wing extremists was driven by more than corporate lobbying. “Beliefs that motivate [animal rights] activists were presented as this<b> ideological threat to core concepts that underpin what some people think it means to be an American — defense of capitalism, </b>a religiously aligned state, defense of industry, the belief that humans are exceptional.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In contrast, many of America’s foundational values — Christianity, individualism, gun rights, and white supremacy — align with those of right-wing extremists. As Johnson put it, right-wing groups “operate under some of the same values that [I], an FBI agent, might believe.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Shapiro went even further: “No shit the FBI doesn’t like to go after right-wing groups. They’re on the same team.”</font></p><div style="box-sizing: border-box;"><h3 kern="kern" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1; margin: 1em 0px; font-kerning: normal;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> A New Generation</font></h3><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In October 2016, as thousands of opponents of the Dakota Access pipeline gathered in protest camps in North Dakota</span>, activists simultaneously turned above-ground valves on five tar sands oil pipelines across the U.S., shutting off the oil’s flow in solidarity with the Standing Rock tribe. They livestreamed the actions and stayed on site, awaiting arrest.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Less than a year later, holes burned using welding tools began appearing on valves along the Dakota Access pipeline. Two pipeline activists, Ruby Montoya and Jessica Reznicek, called a press conference to claim responsibility for the sabotage.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In response to the resurgence of direct action tactics, 84 members of Congress, including four Democrats, sent a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions in October 2017 asking whether “the attacks against this nation’s energy infrastructure, which pose a threat to human life, and appear to be intended to intimidate and coerce policy changes,” fell within the Justice Department’s understanding of domestic terrorism.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The American Petroleum Institute praised the letter</b> and told the industry publication <a href="https://www.naturalgasintel.com/articles/112211-group-of-lawmakers-suggests-calling-pipeline-sabotage-domestic-terrorism" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">Natural Gas Intelligence</a> that the group was working with the Trump administration on the issue, including the Justice Department and the FBI. “A key component of securing our nation’s energy infrastructure is ensuring that law enforcement has the tools needed to prosecute those who attack it,” an institute spokesperson said.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As if on cue, ALEC entered the fray. By December 2017, it had introduced a model Critical Infrastructure Protection Act, which would increase penalties for trespassing on or inhibiting the operations of oil and gas pipelines. Under the model, “<b>conspirator” organizations, such as activist groups, would face a fine several times that of the trespasser. Eight states are <a href="https://therealnews.com/columns/bills-criminalizing-pipeline-protest-arise-in-statehouses-nationwide" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">considering</a> versions of the law, and <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/pipeline-environmentalist-terrorism_us_5a85c2ede4b0058d55672250" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">industry groups</a> and oil and gas companies, including Dakota Access parent company <a href="https://theintercept.com/2018/02/02/ohio-iowa-pipeline-protest-critical-infrastructure-bills/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">Energy Transfer Partners</a>, have been lobbying on its behalf.</b></span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.16px;">“It’s the corporate state bringing out the same old tired playbook and repeating the same plays again and again,” said Regan.While legislators’ efforts haven’t yet translated into Green Scare-style prosecutions, their enthusiasm reveals that the anti-eco-terror framework built in the 1990s and strengthened in the wake of 9/11 could easily be deployed again.</span></font></p></div><div style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On August 10, the FBI held a press conference to announce it had captured Dibee. “Just because time passes doesn’t mean the FBI forgets,” FBI agent Tim Suttles, who worked the Operation Backfire case for 14 years, said in a statement. “We are very gratified to have Dibee in custody.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dibee’s lawyer declined to comment. But if his case turns out like those of his co-defendants, he’ll probably negotiate a guilty plea. The judge is likely to consider a terrorism enhancement, and Dibee will be sentenced to years in prison.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Harvey, the Oregon detective who spent years trying to catch Dibee, learned of the arrest from a friend who’s still working on the case. “I was extremely happy,” he told The Intercept.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Quimby, the former FBI agent, was similarly gratified. “When Joe was picked up, it was sort of cool, like one more down, one to go.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But she knows it’s not over. One Backfire defendant, Josephine Overaker, remains missing. “She speaks fluent Spanish and may seek employment as a firefighter, midwife, sheep tender, or masseuse,” the FBI said in its press release announcing Dibee’s capture.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“With Overaker still out there the case isn’t closed,” Quimby said. “It won’t be until she comes into custody.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Source documents used in this reporting were obtained by <b>Property of the People</b> and shared exclusively with The Intercept. You can learn more about Property of the People’s work litigating Freedom of Information Act requests <a href="https://propertyofthepeople.org/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">here</a>.</font></span></p></div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em;" /><div class="img-wrap align-bleed full-bleed width-auto" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 2em 0px; line-height: 1; position: relative; transition: opacity 300ms linear 200ms; opacity: 1; width: auto;"><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">ref AMP opp res intel  by?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5778881-AMP-July-2001.html">https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5778881-AMP-July-2001.html</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://YYY.theguardian.com/environment/2018/sep/20/keystone-pipeline-protest-activism-crackdown-standing-rock</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">will parrish and sam---</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>"Treating protest as terrorism': US plans crackdown on Keystone XL activists</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Documents suggest an aggressive response to possible protests against the oil pipeline amid fears of another Standing Rock</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Will Parrish and Sam Levin</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thu 20 Sep 2018 04.00 EDT Last modified on Thu 20 Sep 2018 11.39 EDT</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Protests at Standing Rock during the resistance to the Dakota Access pipeline. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock]</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Angeline Cheek is preparing for disaster. The indigenous organizer from the Fort Peck reservation in Montana fears that the proposed Keystone XL pipeline could break and spill, destroy her tribe’s water, and desecrate sacred Native American sites.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But environmental catastrophe is not the most immediate threat.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The government has characterized pipeline opponents like her as “extremists” and violent criminals and warned of potential “terrorism”, according to recently released records.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[Life on the Keystone XL route: where opponents fear the ‘black snake’</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Read more]</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The documents suggested that police were organizing to launch an aggressive response to possible Keystone protests, echoing the actions against the Standing Rock movement in North Dakota. There, officers engaged in intense surveillance and faced widespread accusations of excessive force and brutality.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“We have to stay one step ahead at all times,” said Cheek, a Hunkpapa and Oglala Lakota activist and teacher. “History is repeating itself.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The proposed TransCanada project would carry a daily load of 830,000 barrels of oil over 1,204 miles – from Alberta, Canada to Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska, linking to the existing Keystone pipeline and Texas refineries. </b>The path of the project, which was revived by Donald Trump last year, would cross dozens of rivers and streams and run near a number of Native American reservations, sparking legal challenges and a judge’s recent order for a full environmental review.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If the pipeline gets final approvals and construction advances in the coming months, some are anticipating massive demonstrations similar to the fight against the Dakota Access pipeline (Dapl). That conflict galvanized a global movement, but also led to FBI monitoring and the prolonged prosecution of hundreds of activists.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Documents obtained by the ACLU of Montana and reviewed by the Guardian have renewed concerns from civil rights advocates about the government’s treatment of indigenous activists known as water protectors.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Treating protest as terrorism is highly problematic</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mike German, former FBI agent</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Notably, one record revealed that<b> authorities hosted a recent “anti-terrorism” training session in Montana. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS)</b> and the<b>Federal Emergency Management Agency</b> also organized a “field force operations” training to teach “mass-arrest procedures”, “riot-control formations” and other “crowd-control methods”.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">A US justice department intelligence specialist told the Guardian the terrorism training was an annual presentation not specific to Keystone. But the ACLU noted that its records request was specifically about the pipeline protests, suggesting that authorities considered the session relevant to Keystone preparation.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The repeated mass arrests at Standing Rock led to a litany of charges, but hundreds were eventually dismissed due to lack of evidence. Police deployed water cannons, teargas grenades, bean bag rounds and a wide array of weapons in North Dakota.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Many of our residents were in Standing Rock, and they saw the level of violence that could be visited on us,” said Remi Bald Eagle, the intergovernmental affairs coordinator of the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe, which is located along the Keystone route. “There’s a level of anxiety and fear because we don’t know what’s going to happen.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> A depot used to store pipes for the planned Keystone XL oil pipeline in North Dakota.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Facebook Twitter Pinterest  A depot used to store pipes for the planned Keystone XL oil pipeline in North Dakota. Photograph: Andrew Cullen/Reuters</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Resistance Now: Sign up for weekly news updates about the movement</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> Read more]</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The ACLU of Montana, which filed a lawsuit this month against the government seeking Keystone records, earlier obtained a DHS report that said pipeline protesters were engaged in “criminal disruptions and violent incidents”. The report included two past cases of alleged “environmental rights extremists” committing violence.</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">But the events in question – a 2012 bombing and a 2015 shootout with police – had no clear links to any environmental protests, said Mike German, a former FBI agent and fellow with the Brennan Center for Justice.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Treating protest as terrorism is highly problematic,” said German, noting that the US government has long labeled activism as “terrorism”, once claiming that filing public records requests was an “extremist” tactic. “It’s an effective way of suppressing protest activity and creating an enormous burden for people who want to go out and express their concerns.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The “terrorist” and “extremist” labels can be used to justify brutality and a militarized operation, said Andrea Carter, an attorney with the Water Protector Legal Collective, a group that has represented Standing Rock defendants.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b> They are instant experts on quashing the indigenous insurgency. It’s very, very concerning</b></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rachel Lederman, civil rights lawyer</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“It’s a really egregious tactic,” she said, noting that the labels also lay the groundwork for prosecutors to turn low-level misdemeanor cases into federal felony trials. “A lot of it has to do with public relations.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Montana documents have also shone a light on the coordination between governments across state lines, raising questions about how extensively law enforcement was devoting resources to Keystone protests before they had materialized. An email from the Montana fish, wildlife and parks department from earlier this year said state officials had conducted “extensive conversations with North Dakota to learn what worked and what didn’t work” when responding to Dapl demonstrations.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Montana authorities have done further training sessions on harnessing social media and have begun monitoring posts of anti-pipeline activists</b>, a sheriff said at one meeting, according to a local news report.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The records also highlighted the existing relationships between law enforcement and TransCanada<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">.</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> A county sheriff included a TransCanada executive on communications about one law enforcement training. In August 2017, the Montana Petroleum Association, a trade group, also hosted a panel on “environmental activism” in the state, featuring three law enforcement officers alongside TransCanada’s senior security adviser<b>. = FASCISM</b></span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rachel Lederman, a civil rights lawyer representing Standing Rock activists in a civil case, said it was alarming to see that law enforcement from North Dakota was giving advice about future pipeline protests: “They are instant experts on quashing the indigenous insurgency. It’s very, very concerning, because what happened at Standing Rock was just a wholesale violation of civil rights.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">John Barnes, a Montana justice department spokesman, defended the preparation efforts, saying in an email to the Guardian that authorities were committed to protecting “the first amendment rights of everyone while also protecting private property and public safety”. He added: “In North Dakota, bad actors associated with the Dakota Access pipeline protests maliciously targeted public officials and law-enforcement personnel online, and so it is important that people be prepared here.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> A protests against the Keystone XL pipeline in Washington.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Facebook Twitter Pinterest  A protests against the Keystone XL pipeline in Washington. Photograph: Gary Cameron/Reuters</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Some activists said the law enforcement tactics would not deter them from Keystone opposition efforts – whether in court or on the ground.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We’ve got a lot against us. We’re the underdog,” said Lance Four Star, the Fort Peck Assiniboine council chairman, who recounted a recent incident of harassment and heckling by a pro-pipeline, pro-Trump group while the tribe was doing a ceremony. “I may never see the results of my efforts in my lifetime, but hopefully our grandchildren will. What we’re protecting now is this water we inherited.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Peck said she was also concerned about a potential increase in violence against indigenous women, stemming from the “man camps” where oil workers live. </b>But the Montana wildlife department appeared to minimize this concern in one of the records, saying, “Although man-camps bring a certain degree of law enforcement challenges, the primary enforcement focus is protest activity.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Organizers have discussed a “variety of strategies” to oppose construction, including “prayer camps” similar to Standing Rock, said Cheyenne River Sioux tribal member Joye Braun, who organized against Dapl and has been involved in Keystone efforts. </font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Clearly, they’re scared of the power of our movement,” she said, adding that she accepted the reality that she may be under surveillance when she travels the pipeline route to meet activists. “We haven’t gone anywhere, and we’re just building momentum.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Native Americans know the risks are immense. But the “terrorism” label would not intimidate them, said Leoyla Cowboy, the wife of Little Feather, who was recently sentenced to three years in federal prison for “civil disorder” at Standing Rock.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“As indigenous people, it’s embedded in our DNA. It’s our obligation to stand up.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no pix</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2018/08/zinke-blamed-environmental-terrorists-for-wildfires-heres-the-crazy-backstory-that-led-to-that/">https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2018/08/zinke-blamed-environmental-terrorists-for-wildfires-heres-the-crazy-backstory-that-led-to-that/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">grist</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">From California to British Columbia, the West is burning up. While fire experts are clear that climate change is <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/08/14/wildfires-have-gotten-bigger-recent-years-trend-is-likely-continue/?utm_term=.c2949290e611" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">a major factor</a> in making wildfires more frequent and more intense, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke <a href="https://twitter.com/weijia/status/1030108898940919809" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">can’t seem to make up his mind</a> about its role. Instead, he has blamed an unusual boogeyman for the fires: environmental terrorists.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We have been held hostage by these environmental terrorist groups that have not allowed public access—that refuse to allow [the] harvest of timber,” he told <a href="https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/08/13/exclusive-zinke-environmental-terrorist-groups-western-us-wildfires/" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">Breitbart</a> earlier this month. The underlying cause of catastrophic blazes, he said, is the “fuel load” of dead and dying timber in our forests. <a href="https://www.npr.org/2017/03/02/518152247/new-interior-secretary-rides-a-horse-to-first-day-on-the-job" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">Whoa there, Zinke</a>!</font></span></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Fire experts do say that there’s <a href="https://www.npr.org/2017/10/17/558390511/how-fire-suppression-techniques-can-change-as-wildfires-get-bigger" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">more fuel in Western forests</a> than there used to be, thanks to decades of aggressive fire suppression—and, well, because the warmer weather has been drying everything up.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Understanding Zinke’s bizarre claim about environmental terrorists requires a short history lesson. The concept came from one of the environmental movement’s biggest foes: <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/ron-arnold" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">libertarian activist Ron Arnold</a>, who <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/19/us/fund-raisers-tap-anti-environmentalism.html?pagewanted=2" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">once told the<em style="box-sizing: inherit;">New York Times</em></a> that he wanted to “destroy environmentalists.”</font></span></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Arnold coined the term “ecoterrorism” in 1983 article and later published the book <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Eco-terror: The Violent Agenda to Save Nature</em>, which attempted to link the environmental movement with the<b> Unabomber</b>.</span> Arnold used “ecoterrorism” to refer to groups like Earth Liberation Front, Animal Liberation Front, and Earth First! that sometimes engaged in property crimes, like vandalism and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1990/03/05/tree-spiking-an-eco-terrorist-tactic/a400944c-a3a0-4c03-ab99-afada6f44e7a/?utm_term=.e74ac6d411b7" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">tree spiking</a>, to combat environmental degradation and animal rights abuses.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Experts who have studied the phenomenon say “ecoterrorism” is not an appropriate term.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“In my research, I found that 90 to 95 percent of all direct actions, or crimes if you will, perpetrated by these groups do not fall anywhere close to the term ‘terrorism,'” says <b><a href="https://fayette.psu.edu/person/donald-liddick" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">Donald Liddick</a>, author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Eco-Terrorism-Radical-Environmental-Liberation-Movements/dp/0275985350/gristmagazine" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url("><em style="box-sizing: inherit;">Eco-Terrorism: Radical Environmental and Animal Liberation Movements</em></a>.</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275083075/download" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">2013 study</a> that surveyed the acceptance of “ecoterrorism” found that “there is no documented evidence of harm coming to humans as a result of actions by radical environmentalists.” The authors suggest that terms like “obstruction,” “vandalism,” and “sabotage” more accurately described actions labeled as “ecoterrorism.”</font></span></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tree spiking, the widely feared practice of boobytrapping trees with metal rods, resulted in only <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1987-05-16/news/mn-9417_1_tree-spiking" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">one serious injury</a>. Tree-spiking groups gave ample warning of their actions—they didn’t want the trees to be cut down, after all.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Liddick points out that Arnold had political motivations when he coined the phrase. Arnold is a policy advisor to the climate-denying think tank The Heartland Institute and the executive vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, which has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding from <a href="http://conservativetransparency.org/recipient/center-for-the-defense-of-free-enterprise/" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">ExxonMobil</a> and the ultra-conservative <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/meet-anti-government-recluse-who-bankrolls-trump-507338" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">Mercer Family Foundation</a>.</font></span></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The term “ecoterrorism” picked up steam through the ’80s and ’90s, and began to appear in the prosecution of environmental and animal activists. Things took a turn for the weird in 2004: The FBI’s top official in charge of domestic terrorism, John Lewis, named ecoterrorism and the animal rights movement “the No. 1 domestic terrorism threat,” over far-right extremism, the KKK, and anti-abortion groups. (Arnold, it turns out, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170728202314/http://www.truth-out.org/archive/component/k2/item/48551:terrorist-tree-huggers" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">had asked the FBI</a> to take a closer look at “ecoterrorists” in 2002.) At the time of the FBI’s declaration, no one had been killed in any attacks by these groups, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/08/24/schuster.column/" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">according to CNN</a>.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">While accusations of “ecoterrorism” have <a href="https://psmag.com/environment/whatever-happened-to-eco-terrorism" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">fallen in recent years</a>, the label has been used against <a href="https://grist.org/article/according-to-this-lawsuit-if-you-opposed-dapl-youre-a-terrorist/" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">activists at Standing Rock</a>, the <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/pipeline-environmentalist-terrorism_us_5a85c2ede4b0058d55672250" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">valve turners</a>, and <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/pipeline-environmentalist-terrorism_us_5a85c2ede4b0058d55672250" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">other pipeline opponents</a>. Zinke’s use of the term didn’t surprise Seymour.</span>“To call something terrorism when it doesn’t actually entail a loss of human life is problematic, to say the least,” says <a href="http://english.fullerton.edu/faculty/profile/n_seymour.aspx" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">Nicole Seymour</a>, assistant professor of English at California State University, Fullerton.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“It’s kind of those boogeymen that the Trump administration and similar folks have been trying to implant in our imagination—these concepts made up to create public panic,” Seymour says.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Seymour sees Zinke’s use of “environmental terrorism” as a sound bite that casts blame off of climate change and onto environmentalists.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Liddick has a different perspective. “Knowing politics as I know politics, I think it’s about lumbering the Sierra,” he says. “Some of the corporate interests want to get the Sierra Nevada softwood and hardwood.”</font></span></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem;"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Thursday, the day after I spoke with Liddick, the Trump administration <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-16/zinke-blames-climate-change-lax-forest-management-for-wildfires" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">announced plans</a> to fight wildfires with more logging and controlled burns on federal land. The timber industry has <a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-logging-wildfire-risk-20180807-story.html" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">long used fire prevention as an excuse to clear forests</a>.</font></b></p><p style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 1rem;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So Zinke’s comments didn’t come out of nowhere. But how is all this connected to ecoterrorists? It all goes back to our old libertarian pal Ron Arnold. In addition to coining “ecoterrorism,” he was also the leading force behind the “Wise Use” movement—an anti-environmentalist approach to managing federal lands that emphasizes extraction. Its agenda, <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1349160-cdfearnold00089.html" wp-content="wp-content" themes="themes" motherjones="motherjones" css="css" img="img" orange-border.png="orange-border.png" background-repeat="background-repeat" repeat-x="repeat-x" text-shadow="text-shadow" rgb="rgb" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; background-position: 0px 90%; background-image: url(">spelled out by Arnold in 1988</a>, includes drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, opening all public lands to mining and oil exploration, and clear-cutting old growth in national forests — partly for wildfire prevention, of course. In other words, this tenuous link between ecoterrorism and logging is 20 years old.</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/04/06/bayou-bridge-protesters-arrested-louisiana-advances-bill-toughening-penalties-pipeline-protests">https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/04/06/bayou-bridge-protesters-arrested-louisiana-advances-bill-toughening-penalties-pipeline-protests</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no linx many</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Bayou Bridge Protesters Arrested as Louisiana Advances Bill Toughening Penalties for Pipeline Protests</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By Julie Dermansky • Friday, April 6, 2018 - 16:29</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Protester chained to a barrel in the road</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Thursday, April 5, opponents of the Bayou Bridge pipeline attempted to shut down its construction by blocking an industrial supply company’s facility in Iowa, Louisiana, just outside of Lake Charles on the same day a bill spelling out harsher penalties for pipeline protesters was advanced to committee during the Louisiana legislative session. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For about two hours starting at 6:30 a.m., roughly 20 protesters blocked the entrance to Yak Mat, an industrial yard that supplies access mats used to create temporary roadways at pipeline construction sites and enable trucks to pass through muddy areas. The site is close to the starting point of the Bayou Bridge pipeline, which spans south Louisiana from Lake Charles, near the Texas border, to St. James, along the Mississippi River. The pipeline is the tail end of Energy Transfer Partners’ Dakota Access pipeline network, which begins in North Dakota.  </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Renate Heurich, locked to a barrel, being rolled out of the entrance to the Yat Mat lot in Iowa, Louisiana, during a protest against the Bayou Bridge pipeline.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Louisiana joins several states, including Wyoming, Iowa, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, in introducing a bill specifically making the types of protests increasingly common at oil and gas pipeline construction sites criminal acts with harsher penalties. </b>This latest proposed legislation parallels an anti-protest law that passed in Oklahoma in May 2017. Protests against the Dakota Access pipeline were cited as the inspiration for these “critical infrastructure” bills, which liken the actions of pipeline protesters to “terrorist activities.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Shortly after police arrived on Thursday, the protesters dispersed, except two New Orleans residents, both educators. Renate Heurich and Susan Prevost chained themselves into barrels fastened to the ground at the entrance to the mat supply yard. Both women started the day in crawfish costumes to emphasis the oil pipeline’s threat to the wild crawfish habitat in the Atchafalaya Basin, a National Heritage Area which the pipeline is being built through, despite an ongoing legal challenge. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Law enforcement at the anti-pipeline protest</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Law enforcement officers waiting to move in on the protesters in Iowa, Louisiana. There were more members of law enforcement at the protest than protesters.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Protester dressed as a crawfish</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of the Bayou Bridge pipeline protesters, dressed as an iconic Louisiana crawfish, in Iowa, Louisiana.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Prevost stressed the importance of protecting Louisiana’s heritage. She worries that an oil spill in the basin will mean that future generations of local Louisianans won’t know the joys of traditional crawfish boils. A spill in the basin could decimate the wild crawfish population. “Can Louisiana really afford the Bayou Bridge pipeline from the company that has the worst record on pipeline accidents?” Prevost asked me the night before the protest.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Heurich, a founding member of 350 New Orleans,</b> believes it is imperative to take a stand against climate change. She believes direct actions against the pipeline are necessary because tremendous public outcry against the permitting of new fossil fuel projects and ongoing legal challenges against the pipeline have not succeeded in stopping its construction. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Six Democratic New Orleans city council members recently voted in favor of a new gas plant and Democratic governor John Bel Edwards still won’t acknowledge man’s role in climate change,” she said, “but they all know humans are responsible for climate change. I don’t believe they’re dumb. It is absolutely about the money.”  </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Anti-pipeline protester Renate Heurich</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Renate Heurich, a retired teacher and member of 350 New Orleans, protesting against the Bayou Bridge pipeline in Iowa, Louisiana.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A large group of law enforcement officers and protesters at the site of the demonstration</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Protesters move back when police move in and tell them to disperse. All but the two who remained in the barrels complied. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Heurich also wants to protect Louisianans from the pollution oil and gas industry sites produce which sicken many people in fenceline communities, like St. James, a small town where the Bayou Bridge pipeline will end. She told me that people she knows are already dying of illnesses associated with toxic emissions from industrial sites in the area, including Keith Hunter, a retired carpenter, whom she met at an anti-pipeline meeting in St. James. Others she met a year ago in St. James have been diagnosed with cancer. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">After sheriff’s deputies managed to move Heurich’s barrel out of the way, operations were able to resume. The deputies offered Heurich and Prevost a deal: If they unlocked themselves on their own, they would be charged with<b> felony trespass, but avoid being taken to jail. </b>Heurich unlocked herself, while Prevost remained in her barrel until noon, deciding to unlock herself after two trucks passed dangerously close to her.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Truck loaded with mats passes next to protester chained to a barrel in the road</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Truck loaded with mats returning to the yard passing dangerously close to Susan Prevost who was locked into a barrel fastened into the ground.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Susan Prevost removes herself from the barrel she chained herself to</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After conferring with a lawyer, Susan Prevost removes herself from a barrel she attached herself to in order to block work on the Bayou Bridge pipeline.  </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Susan Prevost is led away by two police officers</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Susan Prevost being led away by police after her arrest during a protest against the Bayou Bridge pipeline.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cherri Foytlin, one of the founders of the anti-pipeline L’eau Est La Vie Camp (Water Is Life), was also arrested after live-streaming the demonstration for over an hour at the end of the driveway, which she thought was a public road. “I complied with what the officers told me,” she wrote in an email. When the police came after her, others from the camp pleaded with the officers to let her go, explaining she hadn’t heard them tell her to get off the driveway.  </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Another activist who took part in the protest was accused of stealing a car. All were released later the same afternoon but face charges.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cherri Foytlin in the back of a police car</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cherri Foytlin, in the back of a police car being taken to jail for trespassing during a protest against the Bayou Bridge pipeline.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Protester escorted by two officers</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Protester being taken away.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Heurich found it ironic that their direct action took place hours before the state legislature advanced to committee the bill HB 727, which would strengthen punishments against pipeline protesters. She said the attorney for the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, who reportedly helped draft the bill, sat next to its lead sponsor during the session. “The oil and gas industry writes a law to protect its interest, in order to keep Louisiana a sacrifice zone while at the same time taking away our First Amendment right to protest its actions,” she said in dismay, “and our legislators support it.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Louisiana law already prohibits trespassing at sites known as “<b>critical infrastructure,”</b> including power plants, oil refineries, chemical plants, water treatment facilities, and natural gas terminals. House Bill 727 adds pipelines and their construction areas to the list of critical infrastructure sites, a move in reaction to growing pipeline protests nationwide. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">HB 727 is based on a model bill produced by the conservative, corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)</span>. “But it is ALEC-plus” Pam Spees, a lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is representing a coalition of groups against the Bayou Bridge pipeline in a variety of legal challenges, said. “People not involved in an action, who don’t protest, damage, or injure anything or anybody, can still be held accountable for being associated with activists.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The bill increases the penalties for any damage to or interference with pipeline and other critical infrastructure sites. Sentences range from one to 15 years in prison with a $10,000 fine or six to 20 years plus a $25,000 fine if the damage could threaten human life or disrupt site operations. In addition, this state bill criminalizes “conspiracy to commit trespass.” Anyone involved with organizing a protest like the one on April 5 could face a year in prison. And anyone connected to an action that involves damaging the infrastructure could<b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> end up with a prison sentence of 20 years and fines of up to $250,000 if a judge rules that they are part of a conspiracy that threatens life or the operation of critical infrastructure. </b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“The language concerning conspiracy is worrisome,</b>” Spees told me during the protest in Iowa. “The conspiracy provision makes it possible for law enforcement to arrest people before they have actually done anything wrong, even if they are just planning a nonviolent protest.” After Thursday’s protest, Spees traveled to the jail to help make sure everyone arrested during the demonstration was released.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Along with a handful of others, Meg Louge, a member of 350 New Orleans, spoke out against HB 727 at the state capitol in Baton Rouge. Many of them objected to the proposed law because existing trespass laws are already in place. Some argued during Thursday’s legislative session that the new law is meant to quash dissent against oil and gas pipelines. “The representatives who spoke in favor of the bill cited the protests in North Dakota a couple of times and how they don’t want Louisiana to ever have a ‘Standing Rock’ type situation,” Louge said. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Though Louge was not pleased the bill was moved to committee, she said that she was glad that Rep. Valarie Hodges, one of the bill’s sponsors, agreed to amend the conspiracy language during the session, before the bill is voted on in committee.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While Thursday’s pipeline protest didn’t go as planned, Heurich was not discouraged. “Today’s action was a success,” she said during a call. “One of our goals is to get the word out that climate change is a huge issue and that there is real opposition in Louisiana.”</font></div></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
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</font><div><span helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></span></div></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://theintercept.com/2018/03/21/pipeline-protest-necessity-defense-tar-sands/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">https://theintercept.com/2018/03/21/pipeline-protest-necessity-defense-tar-sands/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700; letter-spacing: 0.1em; box-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 1px 0px, rgb(17, 17, 17) 0px 4px 0px; text-transform: uppercase;">AN ACTIVIST IN</span> Montana was sentenced on Tuesday in a case that has become both a touchstone for industry-friendly legislators pushing to increase penalties for pipeline protest and a measure of the U.S. legal system’s ability to recognize the emergency presented by climate change.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">On October 11, 2016, while the Dakota Access pipeline protests were in full force, climate activists approached above-ground valve sites on five tar sands pipelines in Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, and Washington state. After calling the pipeline companies to give warning, they turned the valve wheels in a coordinated attempt to stop the flow of tar sands oil.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tuesday’s sentencing hearing tested a Montana court’s willingness to apply the severe penalties already available for use against pipeline protesters. For halting the flow of oil through Enbridge’s Express pipeline for several hours,<b> Leonard Higgins, a 66-year-old retired information technology manager for the state of Oregon, faced a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a $50,000 fine for charges of misdemeanor trespass and felony criminal mischief. Higgins was sentenced to three years’ probation and $3,755 in restitution to the pipeline company.</b></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I’m relieved and actually a bit bewildered. It’s unexpected to me. I came very much prepared and expecting to do some jail time at least,” Higgins told The Intercept. “This is a case where both in terms of the severity of the charges and the large amount of claimed damages, I think they were using it to chill the possibility that others might do similar protest.”</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Enbridge had initially claimed more than $200,000 in losses, a figure later reduced to $25,630, including $16,000 worth of replacement chains to secure valves along the pipeline against future tampering.</b></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The courts and the juries are not hammering individuals in the way these corporations would like to see, so they attempt to use the restitution process to grossly inflate their damage numbers with hope that threatening the citizen with $200,000 might chill others from committing similar acts,” said Lauren Regan, Higgins’s attorney.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Enbridge respects the court’s decision,” said company spokesperson Michael Barnes. “It is our intention to donate any court-ordered payment in this case to local area first responders. … We believe it’s important to support the people who every day focus on the safety and wellbeing of the community and the environment.”</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Although the sentence is lenient in light of the possible penalties Higgins faced, it does not represent a full win for the activists. Higgins’s legal team had hoped Judge Daniel Boucher would allow them to argue that, given the severity of the climate threat, he had no choice but to act — a strategy known as a<b> necessity defense.</b> But Boucher <a href="https://www.greatfallstribune.com/story/news/2017/11/22/portland-man-found-guilty-damaging-montana-oil-pipeline/889732001/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">said</a> that since Higgins appeared to fear harm to his children and grandchildren, rather than an imminent threat to his own life, the defense could not apply. In his denial, Boucher wrote, “The energy policy of the United States is not on trial, nor will this court allow Higgins to attempt to put it on trial.”</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since a goal of the valve action was to set legal precedent for future climate protesters, Higgins’s legal team plans to appeal the denial, demanding a retrial. The move would not open the door to a more severe sentence. Judges assigned to valve turner cases in North Dakota and Washington also rejected the necessity defense, and the activists’ legal teams are also appealing.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The valve turners’ best chance lies in Minnesota, where a judge has made the unusual decision to allow the necessity defense to be used at trial. Emily Johnston and Annette Klapstein are facing felonies in the state for shutting down Enbridge Lines 4 and 67. Steve Liptay, who filmed their actions, and Ben Joldersma, who provided additional support, also face charges. The four activists have to <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/16102017/climate-change-activists-arrest-pipeline-shutdown-necessity-defense" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">prove</a> that “the harm that would have resulted from obeying the law would have significantly exceeded the harm actually caused by breaking the law, there was no legal alternative to breaking the law, the defendant was in danger of imminent physical harm, and there was a direct causal connection between breaking the law and preventing the harm.” Enbridge is appealing the judge’s decision.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Higgins said that if he had any regret about his effort to disrupt the Montana pipeline, it would be that he failed to anticipate that those filming would face charges alongside those turning the valves. Reed Ingalls, a 23-year-old student at Evergreen College, who livestreamed Higgins’s action, still faces trespassing and criminal mischief charges. “I wish we had not been so naïve as to think the journalists and folks doing the livestreaming would be protected by the First Amendment and would not be arrested,” Higgins said. Sam Jessup, a 32-year-old carpenter from Vermont, recently received a suspended two-year sentence, to be served as probation, for livestreaming the valve action on the Keystone pipeline in North Dakota.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The act itself was out of a sense of desperation that we don’t have time for incremental change,” Higgins told The Intercept. “It’s possible we already squandered the chance we had. We’re walking right along the edge of the cliff.”</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700; letter-spacing: 0.1em; box-shadow: rgb(255, 255, 255) 0px 1px 0px, rgb(17, 17, 17) 0px 4px 0px; text-transform: uppercase;">WHILE THE VALVE</span> turners have asked the justice system to recognize their actions as a rational response to a climate emergency, legislators, law enforcement, and oil and gas industry operatives have used the shutdowns as justification to frame environmental activists as terrorists.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The valve turners were recently mentioned in a letter sent by legislators to<b> Jeff Sessions,</b> <b>asking if pipeline activists could be charged under terrorism laws.</b>Meanwhile, the<b> American Legislative Exchange Council cited the valve turners in urging states to pass the “Criminal Infrastructure Protection Act,”</b> a new model bill that would create harsher penalties for attempts, even if unsuccessful, to inhibit the operation of infrastructure like pipelines. Laws similar to the model have been introduced in Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Ohio, and Wyoming.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s a theme that surfaced in another valve turner’s case in North Dakota. Michael Foster, a 53-year-old mental health counselor and father of two from Seattle, was sentenced to one year imprisonment and two years of probation, for halting the flow of oil through the Keystone pipeline for eight hours. He had faced a maximum sentence of more than 26 years.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In his closing statement, prosecutor Jonathan Byers compared Foster to Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, </b>who justified murdering three people and injuring 24 with a rambling 35,000-word manifesto. “He thought that the industrialization of the U.S. and of modern society was going to create a disaster, so, because of his belief in his cause, he decided to do some of these things. It actually resulted in people’s death,” Byers said.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Byers then moved into a bizarre reflection on Sharia, or Islamic law. </b>“Will we allow people who have a belief in Sharia law to allow people to commit honor killings because they believe that it will save them — is that what our society is going to be that we’re going to redraw the line to allow killing of even your own children?” he asked. Sharia says nothing about honor killings and does not endorse murder. In the U.S., it’s commonly invoked to stoke fears of immigrants and Muslims.</font></p></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">==</font></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>