| Activists worry over eco-terror
- Green groups say it won't help
(Note from WB: If the green shoe fits...) (Note: As usual, law 'enforcement' is backpeddling and parroting about how hard it is to catch these lunatic arsonists and bombers ... and now the Sierra Club and others are clamoring to be distanced from such? Riiiiight ... just consider how ominous the quiet is from such groups while America's forests burn and her resource providers are removed by these same groups, bent on the destruction of freedom and private property rights.) October 2, 2003 By Hugh McDiarmid, Jr. Detroit Free Press To submit a Letter to the Editor: letters@freepress.com A time bomb planted near a controversial water bottling plant last month has the state's environmental community racing to distance itself from the sabotage. The bomb was found September 22 at an unmanned pumping station of Nestle Waters' Ice Mountain water bottling plant near Big Rapids. Police disarmed it, and the FBI is investigating. It is the latest in a string of attacks nationwide this year claimed by the radical Earth Liberation Front. ELF took credit for burning four luxury homes under construction in Washtenaw and Macomb counties this summer. For activists working in the Legislature and courts to protect natural resources, the extremism is a public relations disaster. "It does make it hard to do our job," said Anne Woiwode, director of the Sierra Club's Michigan Chapter. "There clearly are efforts on occasion to put legitimate environmental groups in bed with extremists, and this is an opportunity to do that. Instead of dealing with the issues, we're defending ourselves." An Internet discussion for environmentalists crackled with hostility this week when someone suggested that condemnation of the act had not come quickly or vigorously enough. The accusation spurred a flurry of postings doing just that. The uproar illustrates how sensitive groups are about being painted as extremists. "Some will use any excuse to tar environmentalists," said Keith Schneider, founder of the Michigan Land Use Institute. He likened the problem to the one abortion opponents face. They are often lumped together with extremists who bomb clinics or shoot doctors. Nationally, ELF claims responsibility for firebombing gas-guzzling Hummers at California car dealerships and destroying an unfinished apartment complex there. The group claims to have done more than $100 million in damage since it split from the radical environmental group Earth First! in 1998. The goal, according to a web site affiliated with ELF, is "economic sabotage to stop the destruction of the natural environment." It is a difficult group to track, said Michigan State University Police Chief Jim Dunlap, because its members operate in cells of two or three. There is no formal leadership, no membership roster, and no communication between cells. Dunlap said his officers have crisscrossed the country and traveled abroad trying to track the arsonist responsible for a $1 million fire in the college's Agriculture Hall in 1999. The fire was claimed by ELF in the name of stopping research into genetic modification of foods. "Years ago there was a real aversion to labeling these people as terrorists," said Dunlap. "But now, with all that they're done, there isn't." |