Ecoterrorism and the War on Dissent

On May 18, 2005, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (EPWC) met to discuss the burning topic of “ecoterrorism.” This hearing was prompted by the fact that the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and Earth Liberation Front (ELF) are increasingly active and effective in their efforts to attack the property and profits of corporations who exploit animals and the earth.

The committee assembled also to discuss the alleged relations between the illegal underground activities of the ALF and ELF and legal aboveground organizations such as the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM). It met, in other words, as one offensive in the overall war waged by the corporate-state complex on any and all facets of resistance to its pogrom on the natural world, whether these forces operate through illegal or legal means, with Molotov cocktails or mass mailing campaigns.

John Lewis, deputy assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and David Martosko, director of research for the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF), were among the “witnesses” called to advise the committee on the growing dangers of “extremism” in the animal and environmental activist movements. I myself was “invited” to “submit” to an interview by the Committee–coercive requests they punitively forwarded to the president of my university (University of Texas-El Paso) and to the entire University of Texas Board of Regents–but as I was about to leave the country, I impolitely declined.

To be continued