Anti-terrorism
see eco-terrorism, animal rights, cointelpro
see war on terror
see domestic ctr-terror
see them enemy
note 3 together suppress
https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/customs-and-border-protection/ lawyer mex
pro pub
Taylor Levy couldn't understand why she'd been held for hours by Customs and Border Protection officials when crossing back into El Paso, Texas, after getting dinner with friends in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, in January 2019. And she didn't know why she was being questioned by an agent who'd introduced himself as a counterterrorism specialist.
Levy was part of the legal team representing the father of a girl who'd died the previous month in the custody of the Border Patrol, which is part of CBP. “There was so much hate for immigration lawyers at that time," she recalled. “I thought that somebody had put in an anonymous tip that I was a terrorist."
The truth was more troubling. Newly released records show that Levy was swept up as part of a broader than previously known push by the administration of President Donald Trump to use the federal government's expansive powers at the border to stop and question journalists, lawyers and activists.
The records reveal that Levy and attorney Héctor Ruiz were interrogated by members of CBP's secretive Tactical Terrorism Response Team. The lawyers were suspected of “providing assistance" to the migrant caravan that was then the focus of significant attention by the administration and right-wing media. Officials speculated in later reports that immigration lawyers were seeking to profit by moving migrants through Mexico, and that “Antifa" may have been involved.
The records were provided to ProPublica by the Santa Fe Dreamers Project, a public interest law firm and advocacy group that received them after filing a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit about the stops of Levy and Ruiz at the border in El Paso.
omfg
https://twitter.com/LouDobbs/status/1283531243548741635
portland secret police
ms 13 barbarian jul 15 dobbs miller interviewm finally declared terrorists
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[kpfa watched movies of mass shooters , objected to US support of israel. trump defends?!
https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/trumps-national-security-adviser-pensacola-shooting-appears-to-be-a-terrorist-attack/
trump’s national security adviser: Pensacola shooting ‘appears to be a terrorist attack’
During an appearance on the CBS program “Face the Nation” on Sunday, White House national security adviser Robert O’Brien said that at a shooting at a naval base in Pensacola
... the shooting is to believed to have been perpetrated by Mohammed Alshamrani, 21, a second lieutenant in the Royal Saudi Air Force and student naval flight officer at the Naval Aviation Schools Command. The**shooting left three service members dead**and eight others injured. The fatalities included Airman Mohammed Hathaim, 19, from St. Petersburg, Fla., Ensign Joshua Kaleb Watson, 23, from Coffee, Ala. and Airman Apprentice Cameron Scott Walters, 21, from Richmond Hill, Ga.
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Bringing the GWOT Home
The suddenly popular idea of launching a domestic version of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) — proposed in the wake of mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton — is one of the worst ever, writes James Risen in The Intercept, challenging an op-ed written by two former high-ranking government officials. This time, they want the war on terror to be at home, focused on white supremacist extremists. That would be the wrong answer to the problem of rising violence by white supremacists. It is a serious issue that will require serious thought and action. But simplistic answers like launching a domestic war on terror would certainly lead to unintended consequences that would cascade for decades, and might be worse than those that stemmed from the original global war on terror. They simply raise the notion of turning America into an anti-terror war zone. That kind of vague rhetoric is exactly how the original war on terror got sold to the American people. Expansive new powers were granted to the government to fight this worldwide war, while old rules and regulations that were supposedly anachronistic and in the way of the fight against terrorism were eliminated — or illegally skirted. Eighteen years later, the results are in. The global war on terror has been a catastrophe.
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https://theconversation.com/us-foreign-terrorist-designation-is-more-punishment-than-threat-detector-116049
Trump administration in April designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran, a branch of Iran’s military and intelligence services, as a terrorist group. Any groups designated this way are cut off from potential U.S. funding, communications with Americans, travel to the U.S. and other American “material support.”
The Muslim Brotherhood, an Egyptian political party founded on Islamic ideals, may be next.
The IRGC is the first government agency to receive such a designation, which calls attention to the political purposes that often prompts additions and removals from the list. Since its creation in 1997, the State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organizations list has been used to punish enemies, appease allies and advance discrete U.S. foreign policy interests.
My annotated version of this list exposes the quirks, inconsistencies and strategic logic behind the “terrorist” designation, revealing why it’s hardly a master directory of the militant groups most likely to target Americans.
...
Foreign terrorist watchlist
Additions by US presidential administration
**1997**-2000 - Clinton
Abu Sayyaf Group
Aum Shinrikyo
Basque Fatherland and Liberty
Gama’a al-Islamiyya
HAMAS
Harakat ul-Mujahidin
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
National Liberation Army
Palestine Liberation Front
Palestine Islamic Jihad
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
PFLP-General Command
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party/Front
Shining Path
Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan
2001-2008 - Bush
Real Irish Republican Army
Jaish-e-Mohammed
Lashkar-e Tayyiba (Lashkar-e-Taiba)
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade
Asbat al-Ansar
al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb
Communist Party of the Philippines/New People's Army
Jemaah Islamiya
Lashkar i Jhangvi
Ansar al-Islam
Continuity Irish Republican Army
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
Islamic Jihad Union
Harakat ul-Jihad-i-Islami/Bangladesh
al-Shabaab
Revolutionary Struggle
Kata'ib Hizballah
al-Qa'ida in the Arabian Peninsula
2009-2016 - Obama
Harakat ul-Jihad-i-Islami
Jundallah
Army of Islam
Indian Mujahedeen
Jemaah Anshorut Tauhid
Abdallah Azzam Brigades
Ansar al-Dine
Ansaru
al-Mulathamun Battalion
Ansar al-Shari'a in Benghazi
Ansar al-Shari'a in Darnah
Ansar al-Shari'a in Tunisia
ISIL Sinai Province
al-Nusrah Front
Mujahidin Shura Council in the Environs of Jerusalem
Jaysh Rijal al-Tariq al Naqshabandi
ISIL-Khorasan
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant's Branch in Libya
Al-Qa’ida in the Indian Subcontinent
2017-2019 - Trump
Hizbul Mujahideen
[ISIS-Bangladesh ISIS-Philippines
ISIS-West Africa
ISIS-Greater Sahara](https://genius.com/17113205/Source-us-department-of-state-us-foreign-terrorist-watchlist/Isis-bangladesh-isis-philippines-isis-west-africa-isis-greater-sahara)
al-Ashtar Brigades
Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin
**Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps**
latest white nationalist killing comes after the Department of Homeland Security disbanded its domestic terrorism unit last year,reassigning its analysts to other departments. DHS says the threat of “homegrown extremism” has been significantly reduced, but in a review of 50 murders committed by extremists in 2018, the Anti-Defamation League found 49 came at the hands of right-wing extremists, with white supremacists alone accounting for 39 of the murders.
Topics:
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NBC News is reporting the Trump administration is ending a program that provides grants to groups fighting domestic terrorism. The Countering Violent Extremism grant program is run by the Department of Homeland Security and was established during the Obama administration. It supports organizations fighting hate groups, including white supremacist, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic and racist groups.
http://www.alternet.org/culture/why-are-americans-afraid
In December 2016, at a rally in North Carolina, a 12-year-old girl looked at then candidate Donald Trump, "I'm scared," she said. “What are you going to do to protect this country?”
“You know what, darling?” Trump replied. “You’re not going to be scared anymore. They’re going to be scared.”
Throughout his campaign, Donald Trump played off the rising fear of the American public. His "us vs. them" rhetoric eroded people’s trust in facts, numbers, nuance, government and the news media and augmented the already fragile line of truth. Despite all negatives one can say about Trump, this tactic was clearly successful. He was right to know Americans were afraid and that they would vote accordingly.
But there is a remarkable dissonance between what seems to be and what is. According to Harvard professor, Steven Pinker, “Violence has been in decline over long stretches of time and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species' existence."
In most of the world, the rate of homicide has been sinking. The Great American Crime Decline of the 1990s proceeded right through the recession of 2008 and up to the present. Among 88 countries with reliable data, 67 have seen a decline in homicide in the past 15 years.
“You often hear people saying, on both sides of the political divide, that the world is a mess,” said Joseph Cirincione, President of the Ploughshares Fund, a public grant-making foundation focused on nuclear weapons policy and conflict resolution. “The world is not a mess. It’s just messy.” The collapse of the existing order in the Middle East, Cirincione said, is one manifestation of the world’s messiness. “But the world itself is doing pretty darn good. We do not have major powers in conflict. We have small wars. We do not have major wars.”
Yet, A poll, by Gallup, found that concern about crime and violence is at its highest level in 15 years. According to the Chapman University Survey on American Fears some 70 percent of our citizenry is afraid of threats of terrorism, economic collapse, cyber warfare and government corruption.
So how is it that we are living in what is arguably the safest time in history, yet we, as a country, exist in a culture of fear?
Christopher Fettweis, author of The Pathologies of Power: Fear, Honor, Glory, and Hubris in U.S. Foreign Policy, says it is because "our fear is not based on an intellectual conclusion, it's a belief." America's fear has become a framework of belief, surpassing far beyond the plasticity of opinions. And as history has proved time and time again, beliefs are near impossible to change.
The reality is "facts" don't mean much in the way of beliefs. Telling a person, who has the sincerest gut belief, the statistic that more Americans are killed each year by furniture than terrorism becomes somehow unconvincing, or rather disagreeable. Political psychologists call this tendency of people to conform assessments of information to some goal or end extrinsic to accuracy "motivated reasoning." In other words, people believe what they want to believe. This cognitive process infiltrates everything from us convincing ourselves a gluten-free cupcake is healthy to our groundless denial of climate change and gun violence.
So why is this process so crucial in understanding the culture of fear in America?
It perpetuates it. Because humans will dismiss rational thinking for the sake of reconfirming their identity, their fears will eclipse facts. A person, self-identified as a conservative, turns on the news to see a terrorist attack in London. They go on Twitter to see fellow conservatives' rants on building a wall, on protecting our borders. Their fear is legitimized within their cushy network of familiarity. But if this person encountered the statistic, "zero refugees from countries included in the president's travel ban have killed anyone in terrorist attacks on American soil." Well, that does not fit with their worldview. The individual does not conform to adjust his perspective but emerges unconvinced and indignantly dogged. According to psychologist Tom Gilovich, this is because the fundamental questions we ask ourselves in response to particular information conforms to what we want to believe. “For desired conclusions,” he writes, “it is as if we ask ourselves ‘Can I believe this?,’ but for disagreeable conclusions we ask, ‘Must I believe this?’” People do not confront new information looking for truth, but rather looking for their truth and this means facts take a backseat to deeply ingrained fears.
These fears are sustained through media coverage. Every time we switch on the news, a building is in flames, a new virus has swept a new nation, or a man with a gun has wreaked havoc on an elementary school. It seems a string is holding the world together. The overwhelming coverage of terrorist attacks, shootings, and other violent episodes are so entwined in our daily lives that their imminence is inflated. "Your day to day experience is that terrible things are happening and they could happen to you tomorrow," says Cirincione. For those that have not made it beyond the US border, their perceptions of the outside world are shaped solely by this media diet. And what makes news coverage overseas? It is people having bad things happen, doing bad things to each other; it is violence and degradation.
Terrorist attacks carry the powerful quality of uncertainty. They can happen anywhere and you, as an American, will never understand the people behind them. Since 1973, psychologists have argued that political conservatism as an ideological belief system is significantly related to concerns having to do with the psychological management of uncertainty. According to a study done by NYU, we respond to uncertainty as we would respond to a threat-- with fear. As death reminders become more prevalent, society becomes more antagonistic toward those with different beliefs and values; they become more fearful of the other. The common rhetoric turns to that of us vs. them. We feel we have to build a literal wall to separate ourselves from the big, bad existential other. In this world of inflamed rhetoric, Muslims become terrorists, factual probability becomes irrelevant and doing nothing becomes weakness.To the individual, this news coverage is a consistent reminder of our own mortality. A study done by the American Psychological Association presents the phenomenon as follows: when confronted with thoughts of our own mortality people appear to behave more conservatively by shunning and even punishing outsiders and those who threaten the status of their cherished worldviews. Understanding this helps to understand how America's current culture of fear has become synonymous with the fear of terrorism. Despite the fact that the chances of being a victim of terrorism are roughly the same as that of being hit by lightning, a majority of Americans now worry that they or their families will be victims of terrorism, up from a third less than two years ago, according to a survey by the Public Religion Research Institute.
This mentality has cost the US roughly 100's of billions of dollars annually on counter-terrorism, efforts yet terrorism is rising. In 2015, terrorist attacks occurred in almost 100 countries—up from 59 in 2013—according to the University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism Database. In America, the numbers are different. 24 people have died in America from terrorist attacks since 9/11-- in other words, less than two per year. That is not to say that these lives are not important, they are, but so are the nearly 45,000 annual deaths associated with lack of health insurance. And the 37,000annual deaths from road crashes each year. And the over 59,000 of those who die annually due to the opioid epidemic. And the 99,000 who died from preventable healthcare-associated infections. And the list goes on.
Given these statistics, how the government chooses to allocate our resources comes as a shock. To combat the most likely cause of death, heart disease, the government contributes only $2 billion. And just $300 million is devoted to research on the third most likely cause of death, strokes. The US congress funded cancer research through the NCI with just $5.389 billion in 2017. Yet, as Americans we allow this to continue largely because we're too lazy to crosscheck the facts and confront the issue logically. As long as terrorism pervades the media, the government will continue to put money where the fear is, whether logical or not at all.
Telling people do not fear terror in this hyperactive age is like trying to convince a person standing in the rain that it is a sunny day. Their experience, their worldview, their very sense of self says otherwise. This is not to say that Americans do not have the right to be afraid. Being afraid is an instinctive response, but our heightened response should be redirected to lethal fears, the ones that might actually kill us....
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http://www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/self-invention-maajid-nawaz-fact-and-fiction-life-counter-terror-celebrity
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http://www.prwatch.org/node/326
http://www.prwatch.org/files/pdfs/prwatch/prwv8n4.pdf
Terrorism as Pretext by Sheldon Rampton References to Pearl Harbor prevailed during the first days following the terrorist attacks of September 11. President Bush joined a chain of pundits and government officials in warning that the “war on terrorism” would be prolonged and difficult like World War II and would require similar sacrifices. Whatever those sacrifices may entail, however, the public relations industry is determined to ensure that they do not include wartime frugality. “PR Needed to Keep Consumers Spending,” proclaimed a headline in O’Dwyer’s PR Online on September 24. It cited marketing and PR executive Maureen Lippe’s opinion that the “greatest service PR pros can provide in support of the country is to ensure that the consumer continues to buy.” The world’s largest public relations firms all have offices in New York and Washington, D.C., and their employees felt the same shock, horror and confusion as the rest of the country when airplanes slammed into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. Public relations pros joined other volunteers in disaster relief efforts and in raising money for assisting the survivors. America’s home-grown propaganda machine nearly ground to a halt for several days as PR firms advised their clients to hold off for awhile on product launches, news releases and story pitches to reporter...
• U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick used the September 11 tragedy to call for fast-track negotiating authority to help President Bush expand the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA) into a Free Trade Area of the Americas. “Trade is about more than economic efficiency,” he wrote in the Washington Post. “It promotes the values at the heart of this protracted struggle.” In a September 24 speech before th...
The Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) used the terror attacks as a pretext to demand that the U.S. Supreme Court override a Clinton Administration decision blocking drilling for oil and natural gas in Montana. “The terrible tragedy of exactly one month ago and the uncertainty as to the reliability of foreign supplies make clear the importance of the United States developing its domestic natural resources,” said William Perry Pendley of Mountain States Legal Foundation, which represents the IPAA. • The San Diego-based SureBeam Corporation took the opportunity to promote its food irradiation technology as a way to kill anthrax — even though it would take years and untold millions, if not billions, to install irradiation equipment in post offices throughout the United States. Worse yet, “SureBeam has made these claims without any supporting scientific evidence that the company’s ‘electron-beam’ irradiation equipment is capable of killing the anthrax bacteria or its spores,” observed a Public Citizen news release. “In fact, radiation is ineffective against anthrax spores, called ‘endospores,’ which are surrounded by numerous thick layers of material including protein and calcium.” • The Cato Institute, a libertarian, corporate-funded think tank in Washington, DC, used September 11 as... [guns on planes]
another devil term used to access resources and laws// eco-terror: These Cincinnati and New Orleans conferences were the only two ALEC events to be protested prior to the 2011 Scottsdale SNPS. The only instance of any criminal act perpetrated by an “anarchist”-- or by any other individual-- also happened to be the only arrest of any kind associated with either of these two protests-- and, as records show, this arrest (for simple vandalism and resisting arrest) was a far cry from the claims of “violent tactics” reported by Dowhan to her AZDPS superiors at ACTIC on November 17. Nevertheless, records show that these, and related, claims largely laid the foundation for the massive PPD presence (including the 58 off-duty officers employed by ALEC/Kierland and the presence of the “mobile field force”/TRU) set out for Arizona ALEC protestors during the 2011 SNPS. hodad
Iowa Gov. Terry Brandstad (R) signed a law this month, backed by the farm lobby, that makes it a crime to pose as an employee or use other methods of misrepresentation to get access to operations in an attempt to expose animal cruelty. Utah passed a similar bill, nicknamed an “ag-gag” law, on Wednesday. Last month, Victor VanOrden, an activist in his mid-20s, received the maximum sentence of five years in prison under a separate Iowa law for attempting to free minks from one of the state’s fur farms.
*AETA puts the general public at risk. Targeting property crimes and other non-violent activity as “terrorism” wastes valuable law enforcement resources. According to *Congressional Quarterly*, the Department of Homeland Security does not list right-wing terrorists on a list of national security threats. Those groups have been responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing, the Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta, violence against doctors, and admittedly creating weapons of mass destruction, but animal rights activists still top the domestic terrorist list.
In 2006, Congress quietly passed the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, a sweeping new law that classified many forms of animal rights campaigning as terrorism. Now the law's critics have taken to the courts to try to kill it. In a case filed last week, five activists argue that AETA violates their rights by criminalizing constitutionally protected actions.
AETA, which replaced an earlier, weaker law called the Animal Enterprise Protection Act (AEPA), prohibits anything done "for the purpose of damaging or interfering with the operations of an animal enterprise" or that "causes the loss of any real or personal property." (The earlier version of the law only covered "physical disruption" to operations.) The law also prohibits "economic damage" to an enterprise, which includes loss of profits and pressure put on any investors or other companies that do business with the animal enterprise. Even the definition of "animal enterprise" is so broad that it could be construed as covering any institution that has a cafeteria selling meat or cheese products, argues Rachel Meeropol, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is backing the plaintiffs in the case filed against Attorney General Eric Holder.
"Basically, the law is saying if you cause an animal enterprise to lose profits, then you've committed a terrorist act," Meeropol says. "The whole point of many protests is to cause a business to lose profits, to convince the public that a certain company doesn't deserve to be patronized."
Faced with the possibility of terrorism charges for engaging in many forms of protest, a number of activists have decided to curb their activity.
http://motherjones.com/environment/2011/12/are-animal-rights-activists-terrorists
see also Green is the New Red:An Insider's Account of a Social Movement Under Siege by Will Potter. Animal rights activists are prosecuted as terrorists.
see also veggie libel laws?
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The bill had three weaknesses: agencies had no minimum time to respond, there were no penalties if an agency failed to comply with the request, and there were no limits set on how much an agency could charge. Watergate provided impetus for amendments in 1974 and 1976. President Clinton signed additional changes in 1996.
Today agencies are supposed to respond in 20 working days. However, agencies don't always comply. An editorial by Jimmy Carter notes that "[a]ccording to the National Security Archives 2003 report, median response times may be as long as 905 working days at the Department of Agriculture and 1,113 working days at the Environmental Protection Agency."
Adding to the maze that is federal information, Carter writes that "the U.S. government uses at least 50 designations to restrict unclassified information and created 81 percent more "secrets" in 2005 than in 2000."
Next: 1996 Amendments, Clinton Statement
Horner CEI attack Hansen and blogger http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/06/28/253240/fox-news-james-hansen/
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http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/aepa/
Even before the SHAC7 conviction, industry groups pushed for expansions of “animal enterprise terrorism” legislation both federally and at the state level. The convictions of Justin Samuel, Peter Young, and now the SHAC defendants, have only whetted their appetites. As David Martosko of the Center for Consumer Freedom, an industry lobby group, said after the conviction: “This is just the starting gun.” (Toronto Star, 3/13/06, “U.S. terror hunt targets animal activists,” Walkom).
Here’s a sample:
- 1996: Congress amended the restitution provisions of the Animal Enterprise Protection Act.
- 1999: The U.S. Senate approved an amendment to the Juvenile Justice Act that would have increased penalties under the Animal Enterprise Protection Act and created a database of “eco-terrorism” crimes. It was introduced by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), but did not become law.
- 2001: Congressman George Nethercutt (R-WA) introduced the Agroterrorism Prevention Act. It would have increased penalties, allowed for the death penalty, and established a National Agroterrorism Incident Clearinghouse, and provided grants to colleges and universities to protect against attacks by animal rights activists. The bill didn’t make it out of subcommittee.
- 2002: Congress increased maximum penalties under the Animal Enterprise Protection Act.
- 2004: On May 18 the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing, “Animal Rights: Activism vs. Criminality,” where FBI Deputy Assistant Director John E. Lewis joined CEOs and researchers to call for stronger legislation. He said law enforcement needed more tools to go after activists, like SHAC member, who focus on “tertiary” targets in order to influence the primary company.
Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) objected to the hearing and said:
“When most Americans think of threats that currently face this country, we do not mean ‘animal and eco-terrorism.’ Indeed, most Americans would not consider the harassment of animal testing facilities to be ‘terrorism,’ any more than they would consider anti-globalization protestors or anti-war protestors or women’s health activists to be terrorists.”
- 2005: Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) introduced the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act to stiffen penalties and expand the original law. It would include “tertiary targets,” with the goal of “prohibiting intentional damage of property belonging to a person or organization with ties to an animal enterprise.” Representative Thomas Petri (R-WI) introduced a similar bill (my testimony before Congress on this legislation can be read here).
The SHAC 7 were convicted on “animal enterprise terrorism” charges for campaigning to shut down a notorious animal testing lab, Huntingdon Life Sciences.
Huntingdon Life Sciences has labs in New Jersey and England, and five undercover investigations have shown workers punching beagle puppies in the face, dissecting live monkeys and falsifying scientific data. Activists with Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, an international organization, set out to close the lab using tactics similar to the anti-apartheid movement: they pressured business associated with the lab to sever ties, in what the government has called “tertiary targeting.”
The “terrorist” campaign of the SHAC 7 didn’t involve anthrax, pipe bombs, or a plot to hijack an airplane. They ran a website. On that website, they posted news about the campaign — legal actions like protests and illegal actions like stealing animals from labs — and unabashedly supported all of it. Since the federal government has largely been unable catch groups like the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front, prosecutors went after lawful activists in the spotlight. (For a detailed look at the case: “The World Takes? How corporations and politicians turned animal rights activists into terrorists.”)
The SHAC 7 is a landmark First Amendment case that will test how far the government can push “terrorism” rhetoric in order to pursue a political agenda and silence speech.. The case was heard before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, and it is now pending before the Supreme Court of the United States.
The activists were convicted under the Animal Enterprise Protection Act. The law has since been expanded into the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act.
Here are some recent articles about the SHAC 7:
http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/tag/shac-7/
intro: (see orig for links)
Welcome to GreenIsTheNewRed.com! This website focuses on how fear of “terrorism” is being exploited to push a political and corporate agenda. Specifically, I focus on how animal rights and environmental advocates are being branded “eco-terrorists” in what many are calling the Green Scare.
Top of the Terrorism List
“The No. 1 domestic terrorism threat,” says John Lewis, a top FBI official, “is the eco-terrorism, animal-rights movement.”
The animal rights and environmental movements, like every other social movement throughout history, have both legal and illegal elements. There are people who leaflet, write letters, and lobby. There are people who protest and engage in non-violent civil disobedience. And there are people, like the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front, who go out at night with black masks and break windows, burn SUVs, and release animals from fur farms.
Animal rights and environmental advocates have not flown planes into buildings, taken hostages, or sent Anthrax through the mail. They have never even injured anyone. In fact, the only act of attempted murder in the history of the U.S. animal rights movement was coordinated by corporate provocateurs. Yet the FBI ranks these activists as the top domestic terrorism threat. And the Department of Homeland Security lists them on its roster of national security threats, while ignoring right-wing extremists who have bombed the Oklahoma City federal building, murdered doctors, and admittedly created weapons of mass destruction.
Defining the Green Scare
This disproportionate, heavy-handed government crackdown on the animal rights and environmental movements, and the reckless use of the word “terrorism,” is often called the Green Scare.
Much like the Red Scare and the communist witch hunts of the 40s and 50s, the Green Scare is using one word—this time, it’s “terrorist”—to push a political agenda, instill fear, and chill dissent. And much like the Red Scare, the Green Scare is operating on three levels: legal, legislative, and what we’ll call extra-legal, or scare-mongering.
Legal
The courts are being used to push conventional boundaries of what constitutes “terrorism” and to hit non-violent activists with disproportionate sentences.
A federal court convicted a group of animal advocates of “animal enterprise terrorism” for running a controversial website that supported both legal and illegal activity against a lab called Huntingdon Life Sciences. The site also listed addresses for corporations and corporate executives. The group, dubbed the SHAC 7, were never charged with breaking windows or releasing animals, but they vocally supported those types of activities. For that, they were convicted of “conspiring” to promote “terrorism.” Here’s a closer look at the SHAC 7.
Operation Backfire.
That’s the name the FBI gave to the historic roundup of environmental and animal rights activists for a string of Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front actions, including arson in the name of protecting the environment. Before these defendants ever set foot in the courtroom, they were labeled in the press as “eco-terrorists.” The government successfully pushed for “terrorism enhancement” penalties in many of these cases. As a result, many of these activists are now in prison as “terrorists,” a label that drastically changes their prison life and will follow them long after release. Another result of the “terrorism enhancement” is that the FBI claims these cases as a victory in the “War on Terrorism.”
Government Informants and Infiltrators. Although some of the Operation Backfire defendants—Daniel McGowan, Jonathan Paul, Joyanna Zacher and Nathan Block—refused to become government informants, the others “snitched” in exchange for reduced sentences. In fact, the government has said these arrests wouldn’t have been possible if one of the defendants, Jacob Ferguson, hadn’t agreed to wear a wire and entrap his friends. We’ve seen the same thing take place in other “eco-terrorism” cases. And in the case of Eric McDavid, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for conspiring to destroy cell phone towers and other property, the FBI actually paid a young woman, “Anna,” to pose as an activist: she provided the group with bomb-making recipes; at times financed their transportation, food and housing; strung along McDavid, who had the hopes of a romantic relationship; and poked and prodded the group into action.
Grand juries. In the name of investigating illegal activity, the government has been hauling lawful activists in front of grand juries where they must testify about their political beliefs and political associations, or face prison time. Activists like Jeff Hogg and independent journalist Josh Wolf have refused to cooperate with these witch hunts, and been punished for it. Elsewhere, noncooperation has derailed grand juries.
Legislative
Even with these sweeping, and successful, legal attacks on activists, corporations and the politicians who represent them want even more power.
Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act.
With just six members of Congress in the room, just hours after lawmakers and celebrities were on hand to break ground for the new memorial honoring that terrorist Martin Luther King Jr., the House of Representatives passed the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, a law so vague and broad that the non-violent tactics of MLK and Gandhi are now “terrorism.” The bill expanded the Animal Enterprise Protection Act, the law used to convict the SHAC 7 of “animal enterprise terrorism” just months earlier. In true Orwellian doublespeak, proponents said the law couldn’t be used to convict so-called extremists, and must be expanded. Here is a closer look at the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act.
State-level Legislation. Even after the federal law passed, corporations still want more. There’s been a push for state “eco-terrorism” legislation similar to the federal AETA, including the the California Animal Enterprise Protection Act.
Extra-Legal
Perhaps the most dangerous wing of this Green Scare is the relentless scare-mongering.
Ad Campaigns.
The new McCarthyists have used their deep pocketbooks and PR savvy to place a terrorist in every shadow. They’ve taken out full-page anonymous ads in both The New York Times and The Washington Post labeling animal rights activists as “terrorists” for being a little too successful, and knocking a controversial animal testing laboratory from the New York Stock Exchange.
Public Relations Campaigns. Not even children’s movies are safe from the relentless green baiting and guilt by association. Industry groups labeled Hoot, a bestselling book and popular movie, “soft-core eco-terrorism” because the teenage protagonists try to save an endangered owl from developers. Apparently even E.B. White was an “eco-terrorist”: According to the Center for Consumer Freedom, the movie remake of Charlotte’s Web promotes animal rights extremism.
Surveillance, Harassment and Infiltration. The corporate and government scare-mongering has been used to create a political climate that justifies surveillance and harassment of political advocates. For instance, the FBI is looking for informants to infiltrate vegan potlucks, Joint Terrorism Task Forces are spying on HoneyBaked Ham protestors, and corporations are tracking who activists are dating.
Secretive Political Prisons — Communications Management Units
The label of “terrorist” is applied to activists before they even enter a courtroom and, for those convicted, it follows them into the prison system. The government has acknowledged using secretive prison facilities on U.S. soil, called Communications Management Units, to house inmates labeled “domestic terrorists.”
The CMUs radically restrict prisoner communications with the outside world to levels that rival, or exceed, the most restrictive facilities in the country, including the “Supermax,” ADX-Florence. [For more information on CMUs and who is housed there: "Secretive U.S. Prison Units Used to House Muslim, Animal Rights and Environmental Activists."]
Inmates and guards at the CMUs call them “Little Guantanamo.” They have also been described as prisons for “second-tier” terrorists.
According the Bureau of Prisons, these inmates “do not rise to the same degree of potential risk to national security” as other terrorism inmates. So who is imprisoned there?
The CMUs overwhelmingly include Muslim inmates, and have housed at least two animal rights and environmental activists: Andy Stepanian, who has been released, and Daniel McGowan, who is currently imprisoned at the CMU in Marion, Illinois.
Little information is available about the secretive facilities and the prisoners housed there. However, through interviews with attorneys, family members, and a current prisoner, it is clear that these units have been created not for violent and dangerous “terrorists,” but for political cases that the government would like to keep out of the public spotlight and out of the press.
So Why is This Happening?
Leaked State Department presentation about activists.
The government and corporations haven’t tried to hide the fact that this is all meant to protect corporate profits. The Department of Homeland Security, in a bulletin to law enforcement agencies, warned: “Attacks against corporations by animal rights extremists and eco-terrorists are costly to the targeted company and, over time, can undermine confidence in the economy.”
And in a leaked PowerPoint presentation given by the State Department to corporations, we learn: “Although incidents related to terrorism are most likely to make the front-page news, animal rights extremism is what’s most likely to affect your day-to-day business operations.”
Underground activists like the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front directly threaten corporate profits by doing things like burning bulldozers or sabotaging animal research equipment. But they’re not the only ones.
The entire animal rights and environmental movements, perhaps more than any other social movements, directly threaten corporate profits. They do it every day. Every time activists encourage people to go vegan, every time they encourage people to stop driving, every time they encourage people to consume fewer resources and live simply. Those boycotts are permanent, and these industries know it. In many ways, the Green Scare, like the Red Scare, can be seen as a culture war, a war of values.
What Effect Has This Had?
The point of all this, according to the government, is to crack down on underground activists. But underground activists already know what they’re doing is illegal, and it hasn’t stopped them. In fact, it may have added fuel to the fire. For instance, the same day the SHAC 7 were convicted of “animal enterprise terrorism” for running a website that posted news of both legal and illegal actions, underground activists rescued animals from a vivisection lab and named them Jake, Lauren, Kevin, Andy, Josh, and Darius, after the defendants.
This is from the communiqué:
“And while the SHAC-7 will soon go to jail for simply speaking out on behalf of animals, those of us who have done all the nasty stuff talked about in the courts and in the media will still be free. So to those who still work with HLS and to all who abuse animals: we’re coming for you, motherfuckers.”
What Now?
So if outlandish prison sentences and “eco-terrorism” rhetoric aren’t deterring crimes or solving crimes, what’s the point?
Activists protest
Activists protest eco-terror legislation, and get results.
Fear. It’s all about fear. The point is to protect corporate profits by instilling fear in the mainstream animal rights and environmental movements—and every other social movement paying attention—and make people think twice about using their First Amendment rights.
Industry groups say “this is just the starting gun” for the Green Scare. But this could be the starting gun for activists as well. I’ve talked with hundreds of activists around the country over the years. There’s a lot of fear. But there’s also a lot of rage. And that’s a very good thing.
Because today’s repression may mimic many of the tactics of the Red Scare, but today’s response cannot. It’s not enough to cowardly distance ourselves from anyone branded a communist, I mean, terrorist. Naming names and making loyalty oaths didn’t protect activists then, and it won’t protect activists now.
The only way activists, and the First Amendment, are going to get through this is by coming out and confronting it head-on. That means reaching out to mainstream Americans and telling them that labeling activists as terrorists wastes valuable anti-terrorism resources and is an insult to everyone who died in the twin towers. That means reaching out to other activists and saying loud and clear that these activists are just the canaries in the mine.
Together, we can stop they cycle of history repeating itself.