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Tribal leaders plan meeting on global warming

Corinne Purtill
The Arizona Republic
Dec. 4, 2006 12:00 AM

As a child reared in New Mexico's Tesuque Pueblo, Louie Hena played in waist-deep snow in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Less than 50 years later, the snow reaches only to his ankles.

Wahleah Johns, 31, grew up without running water or electricity on the Navajo Reservation. After years of worsening drought, her family now must drive even farther to find water for their personal use and livestock. advertisement
Native American communities are witnessing firsthand the effects of a warming planet. Representatives of more than 50 tribes from Alaska to the Mexican border will gather on the Cocopah Reservation near Yuma on Tuesday and Wednesday for what organizers are billing as the first tribal conference on climate change.

They'll share information on the signs of global warming observed on reservations across the continent. Tribal leaders will discuss alternative energy and traditional, sustainable ways of life on their reservations. They also will talk about the effects of U.S. climate-change policy on their land and people.

"Native people have a close relationship to the land, culturally, spiritually, economically," said Tom Goldtooth, executive director of the Minnesota-based Indigenous Environmental Network and a conference speaker. Climate change, he said, "is becoming a human rights issue." For many American Indian tribes, the effects of climate change, the rise in global temperature caused by heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere, are not an abstract possibility. They are happening.

"I've seen whole banks of trees (along the Rio Grande) eroded away from a single flooding in the spring," Hena said. "I've seen birds going south when they should be going north."

Extended drought is shrinking water supplies and hammering wildlife on reservations in the Southwest and Midwest. Traditional ceremonies based on seasonal changes have been disrupted by prolonged summers and delayed rainy seasons.

Melting ice in the Arctic Circle is destroying the foundation of Inuits' homes and threatening entire villages with relocation.

A national climate-change assessment published in 2000 said climate change posed health, environmental and economic risks to the more than 565 recognized tribes and Alaska Native communities in the United States.

Adjusting to the environmental changes wrought by global warming takes money and technology, commodities scarce on many reservations, the government report said.

In addition to comparing problems, conference participants also will discuss renewable-energy and sustainable-living solutions under way on many reservations.

An increasing number of tribes are taking advantage of their reservations' unique geography to invest in solar and wind energy. Tribes can sell the power generated to local utilities and can sell carbon credits to companies or individuals looking to offset their own carbon emissions.

Tribes are also looking to old ways of life for answers to new environmental problems.

In the mid-1990s, Hena started teaching a two-week course on traditional uses of the environment for everything from erosion control to medicine. Native people from across the U.S., Canada and South America have since attended the course.

With climate change threatening native lands, traditional survival methods are all the more relevant, Hena said.

Forming a Native American response to the Bush administration's climate-change policies is one of the conference's goals. North American tribes have started to fight U.S. climate-change policies that they perceive as harmful.

In 2005, an Inuit group filed suit against the U.S. government, claiming that the government's failure to curb greenhouse gases was destroying the Inuits' culture and environment.

Last month's U.N. climate-change conference in Nairobi concluded that the planet's poorest people produce the fewest greenhouse gas-causing emissions but are bearing the brunt of global warming's harms. Indigenous rights groups complained that the conference largely overlooked their concerns.

For a member of the Navajo Nation living without running water or electricity, "their carbon footprint is a lot smaller than someone maybe who lives in Phoenix," said Johns, an environmental activist and conference speaker. "How do you communicate that?"

 

Vilified as ‘Terrorists,’ Eco-activists Face New Offensive by Business

Feb. 7 – In an attempt to shield private property and development from saboteurs, business lobbyists are pushing new laws that would further criminalize the actions of radical ecological activists. Government officials and corporations are applying the rubric of anti-terrorism to penalize those who destroy company or government property when protesting mistreatment of animals and the ecosystem.

Last month, federal grand juries in Oregon and California indicted 14 people on various conspiracy charges for their alleged involvement in the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) or the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) -- underground groups responsible for dozens of acts of property destruction as a strategy for protecting vulnerable species.

While some federal officials and media reports liken the defendants to domestic terrorists, others, including some legal experts and free-speech groups, say the label is an intentional misnomer without legal basis.

The Actions

In Oregon, a 65-count indictment charges 11 defendants with involvement in seventeen arson and property-destruction attacks between 1996 and 2001. The incidents involve meat processing plants, lumber companies and other public and private targets.

Defendants in California are accused of conspiring to use fire and an explosive to damage property of the US Forest Service Institute of Forest Genetics, a fish hatchery, cellular telephone towers, and electric power stations. Though their alleged plot was reportedly foiled by a federal informant, two of the defendants face up to 20 years in prison and $250,000 in fines.

Over the past quarter century, the ELF and ALF have taken responsibility for numerous crimes of arson, vandalism and property destruction against institutions the groups say harm people, animals or the environment.

The FBI says that these and related groups have committed more than 1,100 "criminal acts" since 1976, causing more than $110 million in damage.

In an October 2001 press release, the ALF claimed responsibility for one of the activities listed in the Oregon indictment: releasing 200 horses and setting four timed incendiary devices in Litchfield, California. The group accused the BLM of rounding-up wild horses for slaughter to clear public land for cattle grazing.

Similarly, ALF spokesperson Dr. Jerry Vlasak said the motive behind the arsons of a ski resort expansion in Vail, Colorado in 1998 was to prevent the destruction of land inhabited by the lynx, which was added to threatened species list after the attacks.

After the recent arrests, FBI Director Robert Mueller called animal rights and environmental "extremism" one of the Bureau's highest domestic terrorism priorities.

But the activists say they are on a mission to defend, not terrorize. Vlasak said property destruction is used after other avenues of environmental and animal-rights activism are exhausted.

"There are people working on legislation, there are people working on public education, there are people holding protest signs, but those things alone will not achieve the end result of animal liberation," Vlasak told The NewStandard.. "So people who are willing to break the law to stop animals being exploited are just one part of a liberation movement."

As a policy, the decentralized, anonymous groups do not harm humans during their activities. Rather than directly instilling a sense of fear in individual humans, the ALF and ELF engage in acts of property destruction as a means of raising the costs of doing business until they are a deterrent to conducting practices the activists oppose.

From Buzz-word to Legislation

The groups railing against so-called "eco-terrorism" cite the public interest in their campaigns, yet private interests influence their policy initiatives.

One of the originators of the term "eco-terrorism," Ron Arnold, is the founder of the "wise-use movement," a loose network of groups opposing environmental regulation and pushing for more industrial development on public lands. Arnold, who once told the Toronto Star that he wished to "eradicate the environmental movement," currently serves as vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, a pro-business research organization. He has pushed the concept of the eco-terrorist threat in his published writings, media appearances and congressional testimony.

Another industry-backed advocacy group, the Center for Consumer Freedom, heads the movement for ecological terrorism laws. Heavily funded by restaurant, alcohol and tobacco interests, the organization has pressed the FBI to investigate radical groups, like the ELF and ALF, as well as mainstream organizations like the Humane Society of the United States and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). David Martosko, the Center’s research director, testified at a Senate hearing in May 2005, saying, "The threat from domestic terrorism motivated by environmental and animal rights ideologies is undocumented, unambiguous and growing." Among the Center’s other priorities is fighting against healthy-eating and anti-smoking campaigns.

Business lobbies have also drafted model legislation to addresses radical environmentalist crimes. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a conservative public-policy organization funded by more than 300 corporations, collaborated with the US Sportsmen’s Alliance, an advocacy group for hunters, fishers, and trappers, to write the Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act. If passed into law, the Act would consider arson, property destruction or trespassing acts of domestic terrorism – if committed by animal-rights activists.

The groups also wish to criminalize acts providing "financial support or other resources," including lodging, training or transportation to aid eco-terrorist activities. An online registry of convicted offenders that would include personal information and photographs is another recommendation in the draft bill.

So far, the lobbying effort against eco-terrorism on the federal level has failed. In 2003, Representative Chris Chocola (R-Indiana) introduced the Stop Terrorism of Property Act, which would have codified "eco-terrorism" as a federal crime, but with 54 co-sponsors, the bill died in committee. On the state level, however, lawmakers in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, South Carolina, Arizona, Washington and Hawaii are pushing various versions of the ecological terrorism legislation.

Defining a Terrorist Threat

Though Justice Department officials publicly refer to the ALF and ELF defendants as "terrorists," none is formally charged under terrorist criminal statutes, nor are the terms "eco-terrorism" or "domestic terrorism" in either indictment. Legally, "domestic terrorist" refers to a specific category established in the federal criminal code, USC 2331, as enhanced by the USA PATRIOT Act.

The federal government’s elastic public use of the term "eco-terrorism" has drawn some criticism from the public and officials.

According to William Banks, director of the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism at Syracuse University, the legal framework for terrorist-related crimes as well as public perceptions of domestic terrorism have been redefined since the September 11 terrorist attacks. He noted that prior to the passage of the Patriot Act, what might now be considered "domestic terrorism" cases could be tried under conventional criminal laws – like conspiracy to harm others and conspiracy to commit murder.

But Banks commented that while ELF and ALF activists might be considered protesters and in some cases, criminals, they do not meet his threshold for domestic terrorism because they do not perpetrate violence against civilians in order to instill fear.

There is, however, some legal precedent for categorizing animal-defense groups as "terrorists" in the 1992 federal Animal Enterprise Protection Act, which defines "animal enterprise terrorism" as the "physical disruption to the functioning of an animal enterprise," including research labs, testing facilities, zoos, aquariums, and circuses.

This week, six activists with a group called Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty will be tried under this Act in New Jersey, charged with using their website to incite violence against the animal research company Huntingdon Life Sciences, which reportedly kills about 75,000 animals every year for research.

The Magic Word

Some lawmakers, seeking to put eco-terrorism in perspective, have criticized the targeting of environmental activists as unwarranted.

At a hearing of the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works last May, Senator Barak Obama (D-Illinois) cited the FBI's own assertions that crimes by the ELF and ALF had been decreasing. Obama suggested that the FBI's 2003 statistics showing more than 7,400 hate crimes motivated by race, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation, and 450 environmental crimes  by industries violating clean air and water laws and improperly transporting and disposing of hazardous waste, demonstrated that there were much bigger threats.

"While I want these [ELF and ALF] crimes stopped," the senator said, "I do not want people to think that the threat from these organizations is equivalent to other crimes faced by Americans every day."

Free-speech advocates say that aside from misguided crime-fighting priorities, there are serious repercussions of the "eco-terrorism" dragnet, especially in light of the recent evidence of FBI and law enforcement surveillance of protest groups.

Larry Frankel, legislative director of the Pennsylvania branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the language of the bill introduced in his state stigmatizes only certain political viewpoints. For example, he said, under the proposed statue, people who blockade a road to stop old growth logging could potentially be eco-terrorists, "but if an environmental law firm was preparing a brief to go to court, to file an injunction to stop [the logging], and someone came in and trashed their offices so they couldn’t get the brief done, they wouldn’t be guilty of eco-terrorism."

Frankel believes this is a pattern to stifle political activism. "People will not want to come out to engage in protest activity because they’re afraid of being arrested as a terrorist and that the government will use these terrorist fighting tools to impose harsher sentences on people who are merely engaged in protest activity and not terrorist activity."

Betty Ball with the Boulder, Colorado-based Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center agreed, saying her organization has seen membership and donations drop since the FBI called one of their civil disobedience actions at a military base an "act of terrorism."

Stu Sugarman, an attorney in Portland, Oregon, who has represented numerous Earth Liberation Front defendants in the past, said the prevalence of the word "eco-terrorist" is an example of successful government propaganda. And he fears that use of the term by federal officials and the press could affect the judges and juries considering the fates of the current defendants.

He noted that another popular term for groups like the ALF and ELF, "saboteurs" suggests "somebody who’s really not going to cause that much damage; certainly somebody who’s not going to harm people... But a terrorist is somebody who goes out and tries to kill people."

"Terrorism is a magic word," said Sugarman. "It’s like child abuse or drunk driver. It immediately conjures up the image of a really bad person who we want out of society."

Source: TheNewStandard


Arson probe viewed as intimidation tool

By Onell R. Soto
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

One activist is a former health-food store worker who awaits her Navy husband's return from a seven-month deployment. The other is an assistant teacher to children with autism and cerebral palsy. Both are San Diegans passionate about animals and shun meat, dairy products, eggs or any other food linked to animals. And both sit in a downtown San Diego jail, ordered there by a judge until they agree to testify before a federal grand jury.

Prosecutors say Danae Kelley and David Agranoff know about important information needed by the secret panel investigating a massive arson fire and whether a convicted arsonist broke the law during a speech. Kelley and Agranoff, in interviews before they were jailed Tuesday, described themselves as part of a movement they believe is under attack by the federal government. "We're not going to back down. We're not going to give in," Agranoff said. "They're trying to take away the First Amendment."

The Constitution, he said, guarantees him the right to meet with and talk to whomever he pleases, and he's not going to answer investigators' questions about that. The grand jury, he said, is being used to harass and intimidate activists. Kelley compared her decision not to testify with Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her seat on a segregated bus in 1955, which sparked the civil rights movement. "I have no other choice but to uphold my constitutional rights," she said. They have the support of other activists in San Diego. "There is definitely a movement here in San Diego," said Carol Jankhow, head of the Peace Resource Center. "It's a broad spectrum running from animal rights, environmentalists, peace, social justice, gay rights."

Kelley and Agranoff have focused on animal rights rather than open space and the environment, according to people who know them. But Jankhow, whose activism dates to the Vietnam War, said she understands their decision to fight the subpoenas. "These particular activists found themselves on the front lines in terms of protecting the right of free speech and association," she said.

The San Diego U.S. Attorney's Office, along with the FBI and agents with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, is investigating an Aug 1, 2003, arson fire in University City. The fire caused $50 million in damage to the nearly finished La Jolla Crossroads apartment and condominium complex, and authorities have offered a $100,000 reward.

An extremist group, the Earth Liberation Front, or ELF, claimed responsibility through a banner left next to the burning construction site and in an e-mail to The San Diego Union-Tribune. The FBI recently named ELF and two related groups, the Animal Liberation Front and Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, as the top domestic terrorism threat in the country. A spokesman for ELF, Rodney Coronado, said the fire bore the hallmarks of the loosely organized organization that torched a ski resort and car dealerships that sell sport utility vehicles. However, Coronado denies setting the fire or knowing who did. He spoke that evening in Hillcrest several hours after the fire to more than 100 people. His speech also has become a focus for federal authorities.

They are investigating whether he broke a law passed a year after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks making it illegal to distribute bomb-making information intending it to be used to commit a violent crime or knowing it will be used that way. In an interview, Coronado said he had described how he made a device he used to torch an animal-testing laboratory at Michigan State University in 1992 to show how easy it was. Coronado served four years in prison for that arson and is currently under indictment in Arizona, accused of disabling a mountain lion trap. Witnesses who've testified before the grand jury said many questions have centered on what was said at 2003 the speech and who was there. Agranoff and Kelley attended the speech. Federal authorities also have seized at least two videotapes of the speech, but complained to a federal judge last week that both end before Coronado used a jug of what looked like juice to describe the Michigan arson.

The Hillcrest talk was part of Revolution Summer, an effort by activists who came together protesting the war in Iraq to continue working for other causes. It was organized by Compassion for Farm Animals, a group formed, in part, by Agranoff, 31, who is no stranger to the animal rights movement. He's taken parts in protests across the country and been named in a local lawsuit by a company targeted by activists who say it treats animals cruelly.

Compassion for Farm Animals, he said, aims to educate people about how to avoid meat and animal products, posts reviews of restaurants and bakeries on its Web site and distributes tofu ice cream. Kelley, 21, took part in some of that group's activities two years ago, but not much lately. On getting her subpoena last month, she said, "I was shocked because I hadn't been active in a very long time." Dressed in a business suit and wearing fashionable Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses, she stood out among many activists wearing T-shirts, shorts and jeans during a rally outside the federal courthouse a few weeks ago. She said she felt harassed by the investigation. "For five days, the FBI was coming to my house," she said. "They were bothering my neighbors." She has vowed not to cooperate with authorities."I'm not going to speak about that," she said when a reporter asked her if she set the fire or knew who did. Her mother said she is proud of her daughter and her decision to stand for her beliefs, but is surprised she's in jail. "I never expected her to be where she is," said Kim Quaschnick, a bartender. "She didn't do anything wrong. She didn't destroy anybody's property, and yet she's in jail." As a teenager, Kelley loved animals and became a vegetarian, and later a vegan, swearing off all food derived from animals. "She got into it, that was a passion," her mother said. "She's very disciplined," Quaschnick said. "If she says she's going to be vegan, she doesn't cheat, even when no one's looking." But after her involvement in the animal rights movement waned a few years ago, Kelley has spent much of her time on arts and crafts, her mother said. "She's been collecting things for mosaics lately," she said.

Prosecutors granted Kelley and Agranoff immunity from prosecution when they invoked their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination, indicating authorities don't believe they lit the fire. "There's no reason why they wouldn't testify," prosecutor John Parmley said when successfully asking a federal judge to hold them in civil contempt. "The grand jury wants to hear from them. Their testimony would be helpful to an ongoing investigation." The two could be jailed for nearly a year. The grand jury investigating the case is scheduled to be dismissed Dec. 27, but could be extended another six months. Their lawyers are appealing the contempt finding by Chief U.S. District Judge Irma Gonzalez and said they will ask her to reconsider as soon as this week.

If neither activist decides to testify, the lawyers will argue that the imprisonment is punishing them, rather than coercing their testimony. That's what happened in Seattle last year, when a judge released Gina Lynn, an animal rights activist jailed three weeks for refusing to talk to a federal grand jury investigating an ELF-related arson at a timber company. The judge in that case said he was persuaded by about 40 letters on Lynn's behalf, quoting from one that "she will never cooperate with a grand jury," according to The Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

U.S. Attorney Carol Lam said these are the first such contempt jailings since she took office here in 2002. "It's not used that commonly," she said. She declined to say whether putting the two activists in jail was the best use of her office's resources, referring the question to Michael Skerlos, who heads her counterterrorism section. "We went through it," he said. "You can draw whatever conclusions you want from that."

Lawyer Kristen Churchill, who represented a third activist who at first refused to talk to the grand jury but then changed his mind, said the effort to extract testimony from the activists is a waste of time.

"There is a very tenuous connection between these witnesses and the case against Rod Coronado," she said. "I don't know whether they would get any new information from these two particular witnesses."

Source: Union Tribune


FBI: Radical-activist groups are major threat

By John Heilprin, The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Environmental and animal-rights activists who have turned to arson and explosives are the nation's top domestic-terrorism threat, an FBI official told a Senate committee yesterday. Groups such as the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) are "way out in front" in terms of damage and number of crimes, said John Lewis, the FBI's deputy assistant director for counterterrorism. "There is nothing else going on in this country over the last several years that is racking up the high number of violent crimes and terrorist actions," Lewis said. ALF says on its Web site that its small, autonomous groups of people take "direct action" against animal abuse by rescuing animals and causing financial loss to animal exploiters, usually through damage and destruction of property. ELF is an underground movement with no public leadership, membership or spokesman.The British-based SHAC describes itself as a worldwide campaign since 1999 to rescue animals tortured in research labs and shut down the businesses that rely on their use. It says it "does not encourage or incite illegal activity." Lewis said the FBI reached its conclusions after analyzing all types of cases and comparing the groups with "right-wing extremists, KKK, anti-abortion groups and the like." He said most animal-rights and eco-extremists so far have refrained from violence targeting human life, but "the FBI has observed troubling signs that this is changing. We have seen an escalation in violent rhetoric and tactics," he told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. "Attacks are also growing in frequency and size." Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., the panel's chairman, said he hoped to examine more closely how the groups might be getting assistance in fund-raising and communications from "mainstream activists" in tax-exempt organizations. "Just like al-Qaida or any other terrorist organization, ELF and ALF cannot accomplish their goals without money, membership and the media," Inhofe said. The FBI said it has 150 open investigations, with activists claiming responsibility for 1,200 crimes between 1990 and mid-2004.
Investigators cite examples of people using arson, bombings, theft, animal releases, vandalism, harassing phone calls, office takeovers and letters rigged with razor blades. Such tactics have been used in what officials call "direct action" campaigns to disrupt university research labs, restaurants, fur farms and logging operations. Newer targets include sport-utility-vehicle dealerships and new-home developments as signs of urban sprawl. Officials say the incidents have caused more than $110 million in damage. The biggest so far was an arson at a five-story condominium under construction in San Diego in August 2003 that caused $50 million in damage. In the past few years arsons and explosives have been used increasingly, Lewis said.
Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company


US eco-arsonist jailed for eight years for SUV attacks

By Mike Jackson-Daily Herald

"What a talent you have wasted," U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner told William Jensen Cottrell as the 24-year-old grad student was sentenced to eight years in federal prison and $3.5 million in restitution for his November conviction of conspiracy and arson charges. The charges came as the result of an August 2003 vandalism spree that destroyed some 125 SUVs at dealerships and homes in the San Gabriel Valley, east of Los Angeles. During the trial, prosecutors successfully portrayed Cottrell as "arrogant" and possessing a "towering superiority" toward people who didn't share his ecological views. Cottrell, doing himself no favors, had testified that SUV dealers were "evil." Cottrell and his two alleged accomplices, Tyler Johnson and Michie Oe (both former Caltech students who supposedly fled the country), tossed Molotov cocktails in the violent spree. They also spray-painted slogans such as "Fat, Lazy Americans," "polluter," and "ELF" (Earth Liberation Front) on the vehicles. During the investigation, Cottrell had claimed membership in ELF, a radical environmental group. Defense lawyers argued that Cottrell had agreed with two friends to spray-paint vehicles, but was surprised when they began to hurl Molotov cocktails.


ELF Blamed For SUV Arson

PITTSBURGH (AP) -- On New Year's Day two years ago, the Earth Liberation Front, a radical environmental group, claimed responsibility for igniting several trucks and sport utility vehicles at an auto dealership - the fourth and last known attack in northwestern Pennsylvania in the preceding year. ELF's lack of structure makes infiltration difficult and it doesn't announce when or where attacks will occur, according to eco-terrorism experts and law enforcement. Members are anonymous, claiming membership by simply carrying out an action under the group's name and guidelines. The group uses the Internet to communicate and broadcast its message, but its Web site has been down for about the past six months, said Kelly Stoner, executive director of Stop Eco-Violence, a Portland, OR, group.


Arson Suspect Denied Release

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- A young Newcastle man accused of planting dangerous devices at three foothills construction sites appeared in federal court in Sacramento for a bail hearing Friday. During the hearing, a request was made that arson suspect Ryan Lewis, 21, be assigned a GPS ankle device and be released to his parents. The answer by the judge was an emphatic "no." In his scathing remarks about Lewis' ties to the Earth Liberation Front, Magistrate Peter Nowinski said: "He's part of a group of ignorant, coward terrorists who represent a distinct threat." And in denying Lewis' bail, he added: "There is no doubt in my mind, he's a risk, a continuing threat to the community." But to Lewis' parents, he's just a passionate kid, with a misguided sense of right and wrong. "He had deep-held beliefs, and he acted on them, not realizing the huge repercussions," said Sherry Lewis, Ryan's mother. The Lewises also believe their son had outside influences that led him to commit the acts of domestic terrorism. "He has always had alternate views politically, and (he) was concerned about the environment, like a lot of us are. "(He), unfortunately, chose some inappropriate ways to act out," said Greg Lewis, Ryan's father. A grand jury has now linked Lewis to three separate attacks, including firebombing attempts in Lincoln and Auburn, and the arson attack on an apartment complex in Sutter Creek. He was originally tied to just one incident. Lewis has confessed to being involved in at least one of the attempted arsons. And in a search of Lewis' Newcastle home, investigators say they found more bomb-making material and a videotape of area construction projects, including the bank in Auburn that was targeted in January. "Ryan now realizes how very devastating all of this i s and how devastating it has been to everybody who loves him. He's very sorry, and he has expressed that to us and his brother," Sherry Lewis said. You just feel agony and loss for what our son's got himself into, and we're kind of helpless to change that," Greg Lewis said. Initially, investigators believed Lewis did not act alone, but, the FBI officials say they are now primarily focusing just on the 21-year-old. Each of the eight federal arson and attempted arson charges carry a five- to 20-year prison sentence, which could mean a minimum of 40 years in prison.

Arsonist about to learn his fate: To be sentenced March 8th.

The Salt Lake Tribune- By Matt Canham and Lisa Rosetta

As firefighters scrambled to snuff out the flames consuming a West Jordan home-improvement store, Justus Ireland took his place among the spectators. He thought they would never catch him. His only lament was he didn't have a camera to capture the pandemonium. Days later, when members of the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force said they wanted to chat, Ireland kept his cool. In fact, he was elated. The same man who displayed speeding tickets in his home, who thrived on sparring with police, was ready to play. Scott McCullough, a state Probation and Parole agent, and FBI Special Agent Matthew Miller met Ireland in the parking lot of a Provo restaurant.
"The first thing he says to us is, 'I know what you want to talk to me about. It's the fire,' " McCullough said. Ireland calmly explained he had recently been fired for not showing up to work at Stock Building Supply but proclaimed his innocence in torching the place. "Red flags were going off all over," Miller said. "But I wouldn't say we walked out of there thinking he was absolutely, unequivocally our guy." The task force would spend the next three months watching Ireland, talking to his friends and relatives and piecing together a case that would ultimately result in a federal conviction. If investigations are like jigsaw puzzles, Miller said, "Our puzzle was pretty darn right." The fire: West Jordan fire investigator Bryan Crump was sound asleep at his station when the sirens blared just before 2 a.m. on June 14. It was the "third alarm" on a business fire, meaning the fire was technically challenging or huge. This one was huge. "As soon as we pulled out of the fire station, you could see it," Crump said. Firetrucks from surrounding cities arrived to battle the conflagration, which tore through a back building at Stock Building, 1333 W. 9000 South. The fire destroyed the structure, loads of lumber and a number of forklifts. Firefighters needed 40 minutes to knock down the blaze, which caused about $1.5 million in damage. A fire marshal walking the perimeter was the first to notice the large forest-green letters spray-painted on the main building: E-L-F. He called the feds immediately. ELF stands for Earth Liberation Front, a loose-knit association of environmental avengers who commit vandalism and arsons to attract attention. Layer by layer, Crump searched the rubble but uncovered no obvious cause for the blaze. Fire dogs never picked up the scent of gasoline or other flammable liquids. Still, the arsonist left clues that helped the task force crack the case. The investigation: Ireland's f irst mistake was trying to torch a delivery truck that had all of the windows rolled up. The high-temperature road flare sputtered out, starved for oxygen. Among the most important clues Ireland left: a can of Sherwood-green spray paint, plucked from a locked cabinet accessible to only four people. Investigators found the discarded can in a garbage pail near the wall marked ELF. The paint led McCullough and Miller to Ireland's door and their encounter in the Provo parking lot five days later. They subsequently called him in for a polygraph. "He didn't do well," McCullough said. "It led us to look at him more and more." Ireland told him that on the night of the fire he had decided to take a late-night drive and happened to travel by his old workplace. Seeing the building in flames he pulled over and watched. The agents didn't buy it, but one piece of evidence had them more than a little puzzled. The day after the arson, a fax sent from the University of Utah's Greenwood Health Clinic in Midvale to KSL Radio accused Stock Building of destroying the ozone and posing a serious health risk. The fax listed other potential targets, including a Hummer dealership and Kennecott Utah Copper Corp. The task force spent more than a day interviewing those at the clinic, looking for links to Ireland, Stock Building or ELF. They came up empty-handed. While the FBI analyzed the fax machine, Miller and Crump took a trip to Arizona, where Ireland has family and where he was once convicted of a sex crime. They talked to his cell mates, his family members, friends and coworkers. Ireland called ahead to tell them he was being investigated but never let on that he started the blaze. He also called McCullough, thinking he was in Arizona and asked about the weather. McCullough hung up and thought: "He knows we know, and now he is daring us to prove it." The arsonist: Even as a young child, Ireland had a fetish for flames. "There was indication after indication he was fascinated with fire, " Miller said. Ireland once loaded a couch into the back of a truck, lit it on fire and paraded it around his neighborhood. Another time, he filled a bucket full of batteries and lit it on fire to see if it would explode. As long as six months before the incident, Ireland was researching ELF Web sites, reading up on incendiary devices and gleaning information from The Anarchist Cookbook. He concocted a plan to set ablaze his former employer's site, an "easy take," he told investigators. Besides, Ireland liked to tango with cops. He once put a radar detector in his car and flew by police officers to see their reaction. He also kept a scanner in his car and prowled for crime and accident scenes. "He loved to chase the lights," Miller said. "Anytime he saw fire trucks or police cars, he gravitated to those." Ireland told investigators he was flattered to be a suspect in the Stock Building fire. His comments kept the FBI glued to him. "He liked the negative interaction with law enforcement," Miller said. "He kind of tried to push the envelope." The confession: With loads of circumstantial evidence, but nothing to tie Ireland directly to the arson, investigators decided to roll the dice, McCullough said. On Sept. 8, Ireland was jailed for allegedly passing a fake $100 bill at a mall. U.S. Attorney's Office prosecutors turned up the heat on him, telling him they would file an arson charge that could net him 30 years in prison unless he admitted to setting the Stock fire. "The more we went back to him, the more uneasy he got," Miller said. "You could almost sense he knew things were winding down, they were getting tighter." Ireland soon caved. He explained how and why he ignited the flares that burned Stock and described his attempts to cover his tracks. "He laid it all out and it matched what we knew," McCullough said. Wearing a green-colored Stock Building Supply cap, a pair of Adidas shoes and blue rubber gloves, Ireland scop ed out the lumber yard for half an hour to make sure he was alone. Locating a hidden key, he unlocked a cabinet and grabbed two cans of spray paint and a pair of bolt cutters, which he used to cut a section of chain link fence to allow for a quick escape. Ireland also created a "smoke screen" to send investigators down the wrong path. He sprayed the letters ELF in different writing styles on a Stock Building Supply truck, a metal garage door and on a cinder-block wall to suggest more than one person was involved. He then placed a lighted road flare under a pallet of cardboard boxes in a storage room, and another one in the cab of a Stock Building Supply truck. As the flames grew, he drove off, making a loop around Salt Lake County before returning to watch the fire he had ignited. The next day, Ireland loaded up his personal fax machine in his backpack and drove around looking for a place to plug it in and fax letters to KSL Radio. He stopped at the Greenwood Clinic and faxed the letters, using an unattended fax machine rather than his own. Later, with the barbecue on his apartment balcony, he burned the hard drives from his mother's computers and the envelope containing KSL fax numbers. Ireland's confession didn't shock investigators. It gave them a sense of relief. "It was a great feeling," Crump said. "This is our guy. No doubt." Sentencing * Justus Ireland, 24, is scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday in U.S. District Court for setting fire to Stock Lumber Supply in West Jordan. He faces five to 20 years in prison and fines of up to $250,000.


Eco-porn: Great Sex For A Good Cause

Tommy and Leona are having sex on a tree stump in the middle of a Norwegian clear-cut. Leona, with a mop of brown dreads and a lip ring, looks dreamily across the demolished forest as Tommy, a little shaggy in nothing but a knit hat, works his magic.
A few minutes earlier, Leona and Tommy stood at the same spot lecturing about the evils of industrial forestry. But now they're moaning in feral ecstasy, overcoming the powerful negativity of the place -- the broken branches and dried-out logs -- with the juices of the life force itself. Welcome to(FFF), a porn site with a difference. Along with raw, explicit images and videos with scenes like the one described above, FFF is well stocked with facts about the world's forests. On the Web site, naked sylphs share space with graphs of forest loss over time and exhaustive lists of the benefits tropical rain forests provide to society. It's a novel approach to eco-activism, certainly, but one the duo hopes will help save the planet. Indeed, in its first year of operation, this unlikely project has raised nearly $100,000 for rain forest protection through the sale of paid memberships. "Everyone must try to create something good using what they have," Tommy told me by phone from the apartment the couple shares in Berlin. "We had nothing, just our bodies." With backgrounds in progressive and green theater and teaching troubled teens, Leona Johansson, 21, and Tommy Hol Ellingsen, 28, wanted to do more than just protest the state of the world -- they wanted to make a difference. To them, eco-porn is the obvious choice. "Porn makes really, really a lot of money," Tommy continues in his soft Norwegian accent, "so why not use that money for good?" Easy enough, right? But, so far, the pair's biggest challenge has been giving the money away. It's a conundrum they didn't anticipate when they got their start in their native Norway, where they managed to obtain seed funding from the federal government. "We said we were starting an alternative environmental organization," says Tommy. Most of the material on FFF features the gentle Burning Man-esque couple and/or their friends romping in every imaginable combination. The great outdoors is a favorite setting, of course, but scenes are also set in apartments, photo studios, sex clubs and elsewhere. The sex runs the gamut from couplings involving vegetables used as sex toys to performances by scary-looking shaven-headed German Goths and is unflinchingly graphic. Like those of most porn scenarios, the plots of the video segments are vestigial at best, but in written material and between the scenes, Leona and Tommy share their feelings for the forest with visitors to the site. But even Norway has its limits. In front of 5,000 people at a music festival last summer, the couple delivered a brief talk about human impacts on natural forests. Shedding his clothes, Tommy asked the crowd, "How far are you willing to go to try to save nature?" He and Leona, grinning, then launched into a raunchy live demonstration of precisely how far they'll go for the forest. Front and center on top of a speaker, the pair ground into each other while a local band played a heavy metal dirge called "Go Forth and F--." Leona and Tommy, along with the band, were charged by authorities in Kristiansand, Norway, with staging a public sex show. When Tommy dropped his pants in the courtroom, the couple was fined the equivalent of $1,500 each, but they refused to pay. Instead, they moved to more liberal-minded Berlin, where FFF is now produced. The notoriety has done wonders for FFF. Norwegian news outlets covered the trial with the sort of overblown salaciousness typical of media in quest of cheap ratings. Yoko Ono -- whose 1969 Bed-ins for Peace with John Lennon made international headlines -- reportedly called the whole affair the best art project she had seen in Norway. The site now has more than 1,000 paying members, and its forest fund continues to grow. Even better, FFF is getting help from all over the world -- ranging from detailed ecological data for the site to donations of pornographic videos and other imagery. As the green community still wrings its hands about the "death of environmentalism" in the wake of the re-election of George W. Bush, eco-activism seems to have lost its way. FFF's success in entirely sidestepping the staid mainstream at this moment is a breath of fresh air. "A lot of environmental organizations are too boring, too serious," says Tommy. "It scares people away. It's possible to use irony and play around with this negative information about the state of the world and still get the information out without being too radical or angry. It's important to have fun." And the work he and Leona do on FFF certainly looks like a lot more fun than knocking on doors gathering signatures or writing yet another letter to out-of-touch decision makers. "We have fun when we have sex, and we have fun when we have sex with others," Tommy told me. It's no secret that sex sells do-gooder causes just as well as it sells cars and soda. Long-running campaigns by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals that pair scantily-clad women with heads of lettuce and barnyard animals perennially attract a lot of attention -- attention supporters must defend against accusations of sexism. But FFF's approach is very different. The site features real people, not airbrushed sex objects, and the diary Leona contributes to the site is affecting and sweetly humanizing. "Sex-positive erotic expression and environmentalism naturally go hand-in-hand," says Bay Area writer and cybersex pundit Annalee Newitz. "Both are efforts to show what is beautiful and valuable about the natural world." Other sex-themed sites make donations for green causes: Bay Area-based vegporn.com, for example, which features "a cast of sexy vegans and vegetarians," gives 5 percent of its profits to vegetarian groups each month. But the site's owner, who calls herself Furry Girl, says the site is not designed mainly for this purpose. "Some of us vegans just like looking at naked ve gans," she says. , perhaps the only porn site specifically created to raise money for a cause, boasts a mission-centered approach as far removed from the sleazy and exploitative milieu of the mainstream porn industry as its fund-raising work is distinct from more traditional tactics. "It's good to see environmentalists thinking creatively," continues Newitz, "and acknowledging that we wouldn't have nature without sex." But not everyone shares this enthusiasm for FFF's brand of environmental education. In one session featured on the site, Leona, in a blue wig, starts the lesson by flogging another woman with a huge leek. This unorthodox approach hasn't ingratiated FFF to mainstream environmental organizations, who Leona and Tommy feel are too prudish to embrace the potential of porn -- or even to accept its money. "WWF (formerly known as World Wildlife Fund) Norway didn't want to speak with us -- they pushed us out of the office," says Tommy. "We wrote to WWF in the Netherlands; they said they couldn't take our money, either. After the court case, suddenly, nobody wanted to talk to us at all." Though they're perpetually seeking funds, mainstream environmental organizations seem allergic to money raised through porn. Major Bay Area-based organizations I contacted for this story responded with terse brush-offs. "There are just certain stories that there is no upside to being quoted in," said one staffer at a national environmental organization based in the Bay Area. "What is morality when people are destroying the world?" counters Tommy. "It all started so innocently. We never imagined it would be so much trouble to give away the money -- it's blowing us away how surreal it all is."Because they've had no luck with mainstream groups, Leona and Tommy are instead moving forward on a project in which they will work directly with indigenous communities in Costa Rica and the Brazilian Amazon. "It makes much more sense to just go somewhere and help an Indian tribe directly and avoid the administrative costs," says Tommy. As if being on the lam from the Norwegian courts and getting the cold shoulder from environmental groups isn't enough, FFF's sudden success has swamped Leona and Tommy, who still operate the site themselves. They bear the brunt of not just most of the copulation on the site but also the billing, Web-page creation and other business elements. "The project is too big for us alone -- we're sitting in front of the computer 24 hours a day now," Tommy told me. "We never imagined it would be so big so fast. Now we want it to become more like a community -- we want people to be able to run it and upload content without us." In spite of these growing pains, the site's success has been lucrative. FFF now has $90,000 in the bank earmarked for forest conservation. It's a considerable achievement for a shoestring 1-year-old organization of two people, suggesting that the pair has tapped into an undiscovered fund-raising wellspring. Can porn save the planet? "We wanted to create a trap to capture a lot of people who were never interested in the forest but were interested in sex -- everyone's interested in sex," says Tommy. "Many of these people have never given to the environment before." For Tommy and Leona, however, it's more important that visitors to the site peruse FFF's environmental material than the photos of the two of them in a leather-and-latex flesh pile in a Berlin sex club. "We believe in the spirituality of nature," says Tommy. "[The Web site] is something we really believe in. For us, sexuality is something really natural. We don't do it to provoke -- it is the right thing to do, and it helps connect to spiritual nature. One of the purest acts humans can do is making love to each other." That making love and saving the world can be so natural and yet so troublesome speaks volumes about our culture. But it is clear where Leona and Tommy stand: "We're happier trying to do something against that system than trying to live with it," says Tommy. "Often, it's the same people disrespecting nature who are putting down sexuality. We see the rain forest untouched by humans as the last place on Earth where God is untouched."
Gregory Dicum, author of Window Seat: Reading the Landscape from the Air, writes about the natural world from San Francisco. A forester by training, Gregory has worked at the front lines of some of the world's most urgent environmental crises. For more of his work, see www.dicum.com/list


Arrest Made in One of Three California Arsons

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Investigators said Thursday they have made an arrest in one of three recent alleged eco-terror arsons or attempted arsons east of Sacramento. Ryan D. Lewis, 21, was arrested Wednesday at his home in Newcastle and charged with the Jan. 12 attempted firebombing of a commercial building in the nearby city of Auburn, northeast of Sacramento. The FBI (news - web sites) and U.S. attorney's office said the arson attempt was believed to have been committed on behalf of the Earth Liberation Front, a shadowy environmental extremist group. No arrests have been made in a similar attempted firebombing at a subdivision in nearby Lincoln Dec. 27, or in an arson at an apartment complex in Sutter Creek to the south Feb. 7. The FBI said its Joint Terrorism Task Force is continuing its investigation. The five incendiary devices found at the Auburn commercial complex matched three devices found in homes in the upscale Lincoln subdivision, the FBI has said. < Letters to several newspapers purporting to be from the Earth Liberation Front said the attempted Lincoln arson was a statement against suburban sprawl, while the Auburn office building was targeted as "a statement against work and the horror of the (cubicle)." The letters promised more actions "every few weeks." None of those devices exploded, but seven crude explosive devices at the Sutter Creek apartment complex caused an early morning blaze. Fire sprinklers helped minimize the damage. Nearby graffiti asserted that "We will win - ELF," investigators said. The FBI says ELF has caused more than $100 million in damage since 1996, including an arson at a five-story condominium under construction in San Diego in August 2003 that caused $50 million in damages.


Extradition hearing set for Tre Arrow

VANCOUVER (CP) - An extradition hearing date has been set for a man branded an eco-terrorist in the U.S. The hearing for Tre Arrow, also known as Michael Scarpitti, will begin April 18. He will remain behind bars until then, having been denied bail last month. Arrow, who has applied for refugee status in Canada, was arrested in Victoria last March and was found guilty of shoplifting at a Canadian Tire store. He is wanted by the FBI in Oregon, accused of fire-bombing logging and cement trucks in 2001. Arrow is seeking refugee status in Canada. In September, Arrow was sentenced to two days in jail after pleading guilty to shoplifting and giving a false name to police. He struggled briefly with the officer who held him until police arrived. Officers, however, became suspicious about his identity. Checks ultimately revealed he was on the FBI's most wanted list as an alleged domestic terrorist.


Book published on the Earth Liberation Front

Don't believe what the government and mass media say about the ELF, find out for yourself! (ELF) will soon be hitting the shelves of independent bookstores around the country. 'Earth Liberation Front 1997-2002,' edited by former ELF Spokesperson, Leslie James Pickering, traces the ELF's first five years of activity through communiqués, underground newspapers, interviews, testimonies and releases.
The Earth Liberation Front is an international underground organization that uses direct action to sabotage corporations and government agencies that profit from the systematic destruction of the natural environment. The ELF are considered the #1 domestic terrorist threat by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and have caused over $45 million in damages in the US since their appearance in 1997. Their record includes the $12 million arson at Vail Resorts in October, 1998, the $1 million arson at Boise Cascade's NW Regional Headquarters in December, 1999, the $1 million arson at the United States Forest Service Northeast Research Station in Irvine, Pennsylvania, on August 11, 2002, and over 3 dozen other serious actions.
is the first time a complete and thorough text on the Earth Liberation Front has been made available to the public. The text includes all communiqués released by the ELF between 1997 and 2002, articles from underground newspapers on the ELF, testimonies from the February 12, 2002 House Subcommittee on Ecoterrorism, an interview with an ELF Spokesperson and much more, and is intended to leave the reader with pondering the realization that a revolution is necessary in America.

 


Escape From Halifax

Captain Paul Watson delivered a lecture in a somewhat hostile environment on Tuesday, July 12. He narrowly escaped with his freedom. He arrived at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia to deliver a lecture on the Canadian seal slaughter sponsored by the Animal Rights Collective of Halifax.

Captain Watson did on-camera interviews with the local television stations before beginning his talk. The lecture was attended by about fifty students and members of the public. There were also Department of Fisheries and Oceans officers in the audience and four police officers.

Captain Watson used the opportunity to blast the Department of Fisheries and Oceans for destroying the Atlantic fisheries."It was Canadian government mismanagement and incompetence that destroyed the cod fishery on the East coast and the salmon fishery on the West coast. It is the same incompetence that is presently destroying the snow crab fishery. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans with their hired biostitutes have catered to the interests of corporate greed for decades and they continue to refuse to consider the interests of conservation. They continue to scapegoat the seals. As a result the entire eco-system of the Northwest Atlantic has been irreparably damaged," said Captain Watson.

When questioned about the welfare and the concerns of fishermen, Captain Watson was blunt and to the point. "The fishermen are responsible for the situation they find themselves in. It was their draggers, their trawlers, and their long liners that wiped out the fish. They have no one else but themselves to blame. My sympathy lies with the species they plundered and not with them," he said.

Needless to say this was not the message that the Fisheries officers wanted to hear.

After the talk, some students told Captain Watson that the police had positioned themselves to cover the exits to the room. Captain Watson assumed that this meant he might be arrested or served with a summons, most likely for actions with the ship during the March and April seal campaigns.

Looking out a window of the Student Union Building, Captain Watson could plainly see a parked paddy wagon and police cars. A paddy wagon meant an arrest and jail - this was not a mere summons.

Captain Watson took a back exit but was immediately spied by a plain clothes policeman who called out his name. Captain Watson stepped into a stairwell and ran down three flights of steps. He could hear the man chasing him down the steps. He heard additional footfalls joining the first. He reached the ground floor and ran up a second set of outdoor steps around a couple of corners and entered a pub. He made his way to an upstairs deserted beverage room where he decided to sit down, pull out his laptop, and do some work while he waited for the police officers to grow tired of searching for him.

From the window, he could see the officers scurrying around the Student Union Building. He saw them enter the pub. They looked around and left - apparently unaware of the upstairs beverage room.Inside the Student Union Building, the students who attended the talk were followed to their cars when they left the building.Captain Watson waited in the beverage room for three hours. He could see the plain clothes officers sitting in two cars watching the building.At 6:00 p.m. the pub closed and the manager found Captain Watson in the beverage room. Captain Watson said he was up there because it was a quiet place to work and he needed to finish a report. The manager said he could take his time to pack up. At 6:15 p.m., Captain Watson slipped out a side door and avoided the police by walking through back lanes, a park, and around to his car which was parked only a half a block behind the officers.

Captain Watson stepped off the sidewalk to the back of his car, quickly opened the driver's door, slipped behind the wheel, and drove away, passing the police officers who were intently looking at the building.

He then drove out of Halifax.

Captain Watson was actually in Nova Scotia to attend a joint Board meeting by the Sierra Club of the United States of which he is a Director and the Sierra Club of Canada. The meeting is being held in White Point, Nova Scotia, not far from where the Farley Mowat had been berthed in Liverpool in March earlier this year.The Department of Fisheries and Oceans was aware that Captain Watson would be attending this meeting and was prepared to arrest him at the meeting.Captain Watson decided to leave Nova Scotia instead of attending the meeting.

The question: What were the police intending to arrest him for? Apparently Captain Watson is wanted for conspiracy to disrupt the Canadian seal hunt by bringing his ship to the seal killing grounds without the permission of the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans.

Captain Watson and his crew had all applied for the permits to go to the hunt and they were told they could be issued permits but only on the condition that the ship would dock in the Magdalen Islands and the crew report to the DFO offices to receive the permits. Captain Watson and his crew could not do so because the fishermen of the Magdalen Islands threatened to kill him and his crew if they landed in their community. And this was not an idle threat. In 1995, Captain Watson was beaten severely in the Magdalens and his crew threatened when he attempted to introduce seal-brushing to the sealers (a cruelty free non-lethal form of utilizing seals by gently brushing their molting hairs which could be used in the same way eider down feathers are utilized - the hollow transparent seal hairs have the same insulating qualities as eider down).

During this year's Seal Campaign, eleven Sea Shepherd crew were arrested on the ice in March and charged with violating the "Seal Protection regulations" by approaching within a half nautical mile of a sealer without permission.The Sea Shepherd Eleven are scheduled to appear in court for trial in September in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.Immediately prior to their arrest, some of the Sea Shepherd crew were violently assaulted on the ice by sealers. The brutal attacks were video-taped and clearly show sealers striking the Farley Mowat crew members with sealing clubs.Despite this evidence, no charges have been laid against any of the sealers. Instead the government is using the statements by the assaulted crew members and the videotape as evidence that the crew members are guilty of the crime of photographing a sealer killing a seal.

Captain Watson did express concern at the Dalhousie lecture that this leniency towards allowing the sealers to commit physical assaults against seal defenders is giving the sealers the confidence to escalate their aggression. "When someone is murdered on the ice by a sealer, it will be the Canadian government that is responsible for giving the green light to violence against seal defenders," he said.

Captain Paul Watson is now safely out of Nova Scotia and is safe to return to his ship to prepare for campaigns to oppose poachers in the Galapagos and confronting outlaw Japanese whalers in the Antarctic Whale Sanctuary.

 

SAN FRANCISCO, March 31, 2006 (AFP) - A mother that gives violin lessons will face trial in the northwestern US state of Washington on charges she was an environmental terrorist, prosecutors said on Friday.

Violinist mom charged with being US environmental terrorist

SAN FRANCISCO, March 31, 2006 (AFP) - A mother that gives violin lessons will face trial in the northwestern US state of Washington on charges she was an environmental terrorist, prosecutors said on Friday. Briana Waters, 30, of the famously liberal California city of Berkeley, has pleaded innocent in a Seattle federal court that she that fire bombed a horticulture center in 2001. A US district court judge allowed Waters to remain free pending the start of her trial in June, but ordered that she turn in her passport and have her whereabouts monitored electronically. Waters was the first person charged in connection with an attack that destroyed the Center for Urban Horticulture at the University of Washington in May of 2001, according to Emily Langlie of the US Attorney's Office. The fire was one of a series of arson attacks in the Pacific west that police believe were committed by militant environmental activists linked to the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front. "This is just one step as we attempt to bring to justice those responsible for the UW Urban Horticulture fire," said John McKay, United States Attorney for the Western District of Washington. "As we move toward the five-year anniversary of that devastating blaze, I applaud the investigators who have worked so doggedly and diligently to put the pieces of the puzzle together." Federal prosecutors indicted 13 people last year in connection with arsons branded as "domestic terror." Two of those people were part of "an overarching conspiracy" to fire bomb the horticulture center, prosecutors said. A mother and a self-employed violin teacher, Waters' background included being a "tree-sitter" who perched in branches to save ancient trees from logging. Waters would face a mandatory minimum punishment of 35 years in prison if convicted as charged with arson and using a destructive device to commit a violent crime.

 

Earth Liberation Front Photographs

ELF Fire

A fireman keeps watch at an auto dealership which sold Hummer and Chevrolet vehicles after a fire destroyed several SUVS and a warehouse Friday in West Covina

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A building at the Clatskanie poplar farm was set ablaze by the Earth Liberation Front in this 2001 file photo.

ELF Activists

Genetically Modified crops destroyed by E.L.F. Activists

z

Burning Rage of a Dying Planet: Speaking for the Earth Liberation Front Craig Rosebraugh A personal memoir and complete history of the Earth Liberation Front in North America. Lantern Books.

The Forest Isn't the only Wood we love! Sildenafil Citrate with No prescription required at Internet Pharmacy


Federal Complaint Offers Details In Attempted Fire Bomb Case

More details are coming out about a young man and two sisters who were arraigned Monday on charges of attempting to firebomb homes under construction in Lincoln.
KCRA 3 was told that the two families involved are still in shock over what has happened. Lili Holland, 20, and her sister, Eva, 25, were arrested Friday for conspiracy to commit arson. According a family member, both attended Del Oro High School in Loomis. Eva had been working at Lorenzo's Mexican Restaurant in Loomis. The eateries manager said the case is a private, family matter and didn't want to talk to reporters. The FBI (news - web sites) claims the sisters, along with 21-year-old Ryan Lewis and 24-year-old Jeremiah Colcleasure (pictured, below), both from Newcastle, tried to firebomb homes under construction in Lincoln last December. The attack has been tied to the radical environmental group the Earth Liberation Front, or ELF. Lili and Eva's brother told KCRA 3 that the sisters have no criminal history adding: "They are loving girls. We want them back home." But a federal complaint lays out another story. In it, Lili told the FBI that it was during a Christmas Eve party at her family's Newcastle home that Ryan Lewis approached her and her sister Eva to tell them he had "...obtained fuel and buckets and had devices to set them off." The complaint also says that around midnight, the four went to the 12 Bridges development in Lincoln, at first just breaking windows, then -- according to Lili -- it was Ryan Lewis who "unloaded two or three 5-gallon buckets of fuel with lids attached." After placing them inside two homes, the complaint says, Jeremiah Colcleasure told the FBI that it was Lewis who "set the devices on top of trusses and wound the dial on the kitchen timers." And although it was Colcleasure who painted some of the graffiti found by law enforcement, it was Lewis who "spilled paint on the street ... spelling, 'ELF.'" And it was Lili who told investigators a few days after the attempted firebombing that Lewis was "shocked and disappointed" that the devices didn't go off, and hope d the action would still "make a statement." Because federal prosecutors say Colcleasure was a lesser player in the attempted arson, he has been released from jail for the time being. The Holland sisters remain in custody. If convicted, all three suspects could face up to 40 years in federal prison.


Calif. Judge Sides With Conservationists

RENO, Nev. - A judge has sided with conservationists trying to block construction of thousands of homes north of Lake Tahoe, saying a local development plan "builds in opportunities to create environmental mischief" and violates California law. The judge ordered Placer County to suspend all activities under the 2003 Martis Valley Community Plan and set aside the environmental reviews used to approve plans for construction of at least 6,000 homes in the valley southeast of Truckee, Calif."Of particular concern is the impact which the project will have upon traffic and air quality impacts within the Tahoe Basin," California Superior Court Judge James Garbolino wrote in a ruling Thursday in Auburn, Calif. "One must not lose sight of the fragile nature of the area under discussion."It is "a critically important area for wildlife, habitat and water resources," Garbolino wrote in his opinion.Several environmental groups filed a lawsuit in January 2004 to overturn the community plan, arguing it failed to adequately analyze potential impacts on wildlife habitat, water resources, sewer capabilities, traffic congestion and air quality."This is a sweeping legal victory for anyone committed to a better future for the Tahoe-Truckee region," Tom Mooers, executive director of Sierra Watch, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said Friday in a telephone interview.The town of Truckee, League to Save Lake Tahoe, Sierra Club, National Audubon Society, Sierra Nevada Alliance and Defenders of Wildlife are among others who have argued against the plan.They say the area can handle only about 3,000 new homes; the Martis Valley blueprint would allow for up to 19,000.The county and developers maintain zoning ordinances and other restrictions effectively limit construction to about 8,600 new homes, and that the environmental reviews adequately represent the potential impacts of development of that size.But Garbolino said the zoning ordinances can be changed over time and t hat the potential impacts should be analyzed based on maximum development allowed under the community plan.He said the county "left the door open to increases in both residential and commercial development" consistent with the community plan, but "beyond the scope of the development" described in the formal environmental impact review.Placer County "respectfully disagrees with some of the legal and factual conclusions made by Judge Garbolino," said Rick Crabtree, a lawyer representing the county."The county believes that it engaged in an extensive good faith analysis to determine the likely impacts" of the plan, he said. He said the board won't discuss the possibility of an appeal before its next regular meeting May 24.Mooers said conservationists have reached agreement with developers for construction of about 2,000 units in the area that would not harm the environment.


Special-interest extremists are a growing threat, reports FBI

By Lisa Rosetta The Salt Lake Tribune:

Special-interest extremism, promoted by underground groups such as the Earth Liberation Front, has emerged as a serious domestic terrorist threat, according to the FBI. ELF and the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) have committed more than 600 criminal acts since 1996, causing more than $43 million in damage. Between 1993 and 2003, the number of special agents dedicated to the FBI's counterterrorism programs grew by 224 percent to 1,669 - nearly 16 percent of all FBI special agents, said James Jarboe, an FBI domestic terrorism expert. In 1980, disaffected environmentalists formed a radical group called "Earth First!" and staged a series of protests and civil disobedience events, Jarboe said. About 12 years later, the ELF was founded in Brighton, England, by Earth First! members who wanted to use criminal acts as a political tactic. ELF promotes "monkeywrenching," another word for acts of sabotage and property destruction, against industries perceived to be damaging to the environment. Jarboe said arson is the most destructive practice of groups like ALF and ELF, which consistently use improvised incendiary devices equipped with crude but effective timing mechanisms.


Firebombs probed as ecoterrorism

LINCOLN, Calif. -- Inside upscale houses being built in the gold rush foothills of the Sierra Nevada, construction crews last month found three unexploded firebombs investigators say had the potential to kill and destroy. Left behind, too, were threats scrawled in spray paint on windows and walls: ''U will pay" and ''Enjoy the world as is -- as long as you can."


Arrest Made in One of Three Calif. Arsons

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Investigators said Thursday they have made an arrest in one of three recent alleged eco-terror arsons or attempted arsons east of Sacramento. Ryan D. Lewis, 21, was arrested Wednesday at his home in Newcastle and charged with the Jan. 12 attempted firebombing of a commercial building in the nearby city of Auburn, northeast of Sacramento.


Pipe Bomb Dismantled at California DMV Office

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - A pipe bomb was found and safely dismantled at a Department of Motor Vehicles office Tuesday - the latest in what is being investigated as a string of possible ecoterrorist incidents in communities east of Sacramento. In the same community of Auburn, a different type of homemade explosive was found and dismantled Sunday outside the Placer County Courthouse. No one claimed responsibility for either incident, the FBI (news - web sites) said. The FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force is now investigating five incidents. The earliest occurred Dec. 27 and two have been claimed as the work of the Earth Liberation Front, a radical environmental group. "We're certainly not discounting that they all could be related, but we haven't made that leap," said FBI spokeswoman Karen Ernst. Five incendiary devices of still a different design were found before they could explode Jan. 12 at a commercial complex under construction in Auburn.


PETA, Humane Society of the United States Providing Support to ALF, ELF

Center for Consumer Freedom Provides Senate Panel With Hard Evidence of Support From Tax-Exempt Nonprofits to Top Domestic Terror Groups

WASHINGTON, May 18 /PRNewswire/ -- Well known tax-exempt organizations, including People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), and the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) are providing above-ground support to leading domestic terror groups, including the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF). So testified the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) during a hearing conducted by the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. Collectively, the ALF and ELF have claimed responsibility for more than 1,100 terrorist crimes resulting in over $110 million in damage, including arson, assault, and vandalism against American companies and individuals. The FBI has dedicated significant resources to investigating the increasingly violent actions of these groups.
CCF Director of Research David Martosko highlighted multiple examples of support to the ALF/ELF network from several nonprofit organizations, including:

  • In the mid-1990s, PETA paid over $70,000 in grants for the legal defense of arsonist Rodney Coronado, who was convicted of firebombing a Michigan State University research lab. The ALF claimed credit for this violent crime shortly after it was committed. PETA President Ingrid Newkirk was
    implicated in this arson by the case's chief prosecutor for arranging "days before the MSU arson occurred" for Coronado to send her video of the arson and stolen materials from inside the targeted laboratory.

  • In April 2001, PETA made a direct contribution of $1,500 to the North American Earth Liberation Front (ELF) to "support their program activities." Among its long list of crimes, ELF claimed credit for the 1998 firebombing of the Vail Colorado Ski Resort, resulting in $12 million in damage.
  • In 2001, PETA campaign director Bruce Friedrich praised the actions of underground animal rights militants at an animal rights convention saying, "I think it would be great if all of the fast-food utlets, slaughterhouses, these laboratories, and the banks that fund them exploded tomorrow ... Hallelujah to the people who are willing to do it."
  • In 2003, self-appointed ALF spokesman Dr. Jerry Vlasak, while acting as a spokesperson for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), openly endorsed the murder of doctors who use animals in medical research, saying, "For 5 lives, 10 lives, 15 human lives, we could save a million, 2 million, 10 million non-human lives." When a member of his audience objected, comparing Vlasak's approach to that of abortion- clinic bombers, he replied: "Absolutely. I think they had a great strategy going."
  • HSUS has funded the operation of an Internet server called waste.org" - which was then the source of "communiques" issued by the ALF after the commission of arson and other violent crimes.
  • A 1999 issue of the magazine No Compromise, published by and for ALF supporters, printed a list of its benefactors. These included PETA, the Fund for Animals, In Defense of Animals, and the New Jersey Animal Rights Alliance. "Those who start fires, detonate bombs, and stalk and threaten innocent people receive assistance -- both rhetorical and financial -- from many organizations that enjoy tax-exempt status with the federal government," said CCF Director of Research David Martosko. "I urge this committee to fully investigate the connections between individuals who commit crimes in the name of ALF, ELF, or similar phantom groups, and the above-ground individuals and organizations that give them aid and comfort."

    Court Hearing in Arson Case

    Leveling a harsh rebuke at a 21-year-old arson suspect, a federal judge Friday refused to allow the defendant to be released pending trial and said he had betrayed his family and was a danger to society. "He's 21 years old and he's never accomplished anything on his own in his life," U.S. Magistrate Judge Peter A. Nowinski said of Ryan Daniel Lewis. "He's 21 and he's still living at home." Nowinski ordered the Newcastle man to remain in the Sacramento County jail pending his trial on attempted arson and arson charges connected to a radical environmental group that is believed to have targeted at least three construction sites in the region since December. Lewis' father, Greg, said he believed his son had fallen prey to some "guru-type influences" and had increasingly espoused anarchist thoughts. At one point, the parents said, they cut off Internet access at the house because of Web sites their son was visiting, but they later restored the service.


    Threat posed by right-wing extremists said ignored

    By Lara Jakes Jordan
    ASSOCIATED PRESS

    WASHINGTON - The Homeland Security Department is focusing on possible terror threats from radical environmental and animal rights activists without also examining risks that might be posed by right-wing extremists, House Democrats said yesterday. A recent internal Homeland Security document lists the Animal Liberation Front, or ALF, and the Earth Liberation Front, or ELF, with a few Islamic groups that potentially could support al-Qaeda as domestic terror threats.

    The document does not address threats posed by white supremacists, violent militiamen, anti-abortion bombers and other extremists that Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, D-Miss., called "right-wing hate groups." ALF and ELF "are the left-leaning groups that they identified," said Thompson, the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee. "But they absolutely left out any of the other groups. "If your responsibility is to protect the homeland from these domestic terrorists, then you have an obligation to identify all of them - not just some of them," he said. A spokesman for Homeland Security, Brian Roehrkasse, said the internal document, which was not meant for public distribution, identifies only general categories of threats and vulnerabilities and is not meant to be a comprehensive list. "Other classified threat and vulnerability assessments that guide our day-to-day operations and planning are more specific and identify more detailed information," Roehrkasse said.

    Thompson said he reminded the Homeland Security secretary, Michael Chertoff, of threats by right-wing groups in a letter sent to the department yesterday - the 10th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. That attack, which killed 168 people, marks the worst act of domestic terrorism on U.S. soil. ALF and ELF are accused by the FBI of committing hundreds of acts of arson or other attacks on property in the United States, causing millions of dollars in damages. None of their attacks, however, have caused human deaths. ELF was cited in a case involving a Caltech physics student who was convicted of helping to firebomb scores of sport utility vehicles. He was sentenced Monday to more than eight years in federal prison and ordered to pay $3.5 million in restitution. William Jensen Cottrell, 24, was convicted in November of conspiracy to commit arson and seven counts of arson for an August 2003 vandalism spree that damaged and destroyed about 125 SUVs. Vandals who targeted dealerships and homes in the San Gabriel Valley east of Los Angeles set the vehicles on fire and used spray-paint to deface them with slogans such as "ELF," "Fat, Lazy Americans," "polluter" and smog machine."

Busted By The Feds?

Back when Napster first came out, I Downloaded thousands of MP3's and software for free and never got busted. It was pretty cool, except a lot of times, the MP3 would have a problem or the software wouldn't load properly. Today you have services like itunes, etc. but why should you have to deal with the corporate bullshit? I use a new service called . It's like the old days of downloading, but even better:Now I download music, software, video games, and full movie downloads without having to worry about the Feds kickin' down my door. Do yourself a favor: get - it will keep you in 'tunes, and out of trouble!


MAKE POVERTY HISTORY: ANARCHIST AMBUSH

Roads chaos as protesters and cops clash
By Allan Caldwell

THE anarchist assault on Stirling and the M9 began at 2.02am. In pouring rain, almost 1500 protesters marched to the gate of Camp Horizon, their temporary 'eco-camp' in the shadow of Stirling Castle.The gates swung open and the mob spewed out, chanting and singing.The anarchists' aim was to breach security and block the main road through central Scotland.Many thought they wouldn't get much further than the camp gate. After all, thousands of police stood between them and their target.But by moving so early, the yobs caught the police sleeping.A witness to the trouble said: 'The protesters were co-ordinated. They moved people to certain areas and they all decided to fight at once to try and stretch the police resources.'

The anarchists got to Springkerse Industrial Estate before facing any serious opposition.Police tried to contain them there as missiles rained down. But just when it looked as if the cops might succeed, a second group of 1000 extremists arrivedThe police faced being sandwiched between the two mobs. Shocked cops looked for a way out as the second wave swept into them.More missiles were thrown and police batons were wielded as anger and frustration grew on both sides.One riot cop said to a colleague: 'We have to sort these b ******* out, otherwise it's going to happen again.'Cops blasted one anarchist with pepper spray as he wrestled with officers, trying to save a pal from arrest.Police hammered another yob repeatedly on the arm as he clung to his friend, who was being arrested. It looked like the arm was broken.The anarchists took out their fury on nearby symbols of big business - branches of McDonald's, Burger King and the Bank of Scotland in Springkerse retail park.More than a dozen windows at Burger King were smashed.Advertising signs were wrecked and a drive-through intercom system was ripped out of the ground.One protester said: 'We all marched into the retail park trying to get on to the motorway.'Various skirmishes happened with police. Everyone was going round in circles getting lost.'The ordinary people of Stirling and Bannockburn felt the anarchists' rage.Two hundred hooligans, mainly Italians, Germans and Spaniards, caused chaos in Stirling's High Street and nearby residential areas.They smashed windows, sprayed graffiti and ripped satellite dishes off walls. Five police were hurt and scores of the protesters returned to the camp to lick their wounds.Stirling railway station was closed for 90 minutes because of the rioting.In Bannockburn, protesters smashed the windscreens of parked cars and threw rocks at police vehicles.

One group linked their arms through inflated tyre inner tubes and charged a line of riot police blocking the road.Several yobs attacked a police van, hitting it with iron rods and kicking its headlights as it reversed away.As the riots raged on, another mob marched out of Camp Horizon. The 300-strong group was led by black-clad Italian anarchists with scarves wrapped around their faces.Again, the badly stretched cops seemed to be caught by surprise. Only one police van stood in the anarchists' way at first and it wasted no time speeding off to look for reinforcements.A thin line of police formed in the mob's path at a roundabout on the way to central Stirling.Missiles began to fly as the anarchists weighed up whether to attack or flee. They began to move back but several vanloads of riot police arrived to block their path.The protesters forced their way through one line of cops, only to be hemmed in again. But many of them were able to escape the police cordon and strike out towards the M9.

They crossed muddy fields and railway lines and struggled through fences and undergrowth.Only a few hundred anarchists made it to the road but that was enough.Shortly after 6.15am, 120 protesters poured down an embankment near junction nine and spilled on to the carriageway.Traffic ground to a halt.A mile away, a group led by the Italians marched north along the southbound carriageway and met another mob coming the other way.By now, police vehicles were the only ones moving on the M9. Groups of anarchists lay down in the road, surrounded by cordons of police.The cops sped up and down trying to contain the protests but the yobs had achieved their goal.They cheered wildly as news of their successes spread. One of the protesters said: 'There are several blockades on the road. As the police open it, another group of protesters close it again.' The police took three hours to win back control of the M9. Sixty-five anarchists were arrested in the morning's mayhem. But back at Camp Horizon later, those who escaped claimed a great victory.

A large map was stuck on the side of a caravan and covered in stickers marking each anarchist triumph.One leading anarchist said: 'They didn't think we could do it but we hit the summit hard. We didn't have a plan but if you don't have a plan it can't go wrong.'The man's fellow protesters applauded loudly as he added: 'Today we destroyed 10,000 of Britain's best police, and they know it.'Five police, two of them female, were taken to hospital. Police claimed 'a group of individuals' at the hospital tried to disrupt the cops' treatment.


Police Scuffle With Protesters Before G-8

EDINBURGH, Scotland - Hundreds of black-clad anarchists and anti-G-8 protesters clashed violently with police in Scotland's capital Monday, as demonstrators sought to keep up pressure on world leaders ahead of a summit of wealthy nations.
Shield-carrying police locked down entire streets, penning in protesters with the help of officers on horseback. Authorities advised businesses to close, describing the protesters' behavior as threatening. Groups of up to 200 demonstrators, some dressed as clowns, roamed Edinburgh, banging drums, blowing whistles and taunting officers. Police said they had arrested nearly 30 protesters.

The protests were aimed at Wednesday's meeting of the Group of Eight industrialized nations at the nearby Gleneagles Hotel, where world leaders will discuss African poverty and ways to deals with global warming.Some demonstrators are demanding that leaders take urgent action on world poverty and the environment, while anarchists don't want the summit itself to go ahead.The protests followed the Live 8 series of concerts around the world, in which rock stars and celebrities urged the G-8 leaders to take decisive steps to end African poverty.


 


Animal Rights Groups and Ecology Militants Make DHS Terrorist List, Right-Wing Vigilantes Omitted

By Justin Rood, CQ Staff

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does not list right-wing domestic terrorists and terrorist groups on a document that appears to be an internal list of threats to the nation's security. According to the list - part of a draft planning document obtained by CQ Homeland Security - between now and 2011 DHS expects to contend primarily with adversaries such as al Qaeda and other foreign entities affiliated with the Islamic Jihad movement, as well as domestic radical Islamist groups. It also lists left-wing domestic groups, such as the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), as terrorist threats, but it does not mention anti-government groups, white supremacists and other radical right-wing movements, which have staged numerous terrorist attacks that have killed scores of Americans. Recent attacks on cars, businesses and property in Virginia, Oregon and California have been attributed to ELF. DHS did not respond to repeated requests for comment or confirmation of the document's authenticity.
The conspirators behind the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, which killed 168 people and wounded more than 500, were inspired by radical right-wing movements. Eric Rudolph, the man charged with carrying out the 1996 Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta, which killed one woman and injured more than 100, was a member of the radical anti-abortion group Army of God. Initially, Rudolph was the object of a massive North Carolina manhunt in connection with a Birmingham, Ala., abortion-clinic bombing that killed a police officer and seriously maimed a nurse.Another Army of God member, James Kopp, was convicted in the 1998 shooting of a doctor who performed abortions.Individuals affiliated with such groups have also been involved in many smaller terrorist acts, including mailing hundreds of bogus anthrax letters to abortion clinics, and in plots to obtain and use conventional, chemical and nuclear weapons against civilians. In 2003, for instance, a Texas man prosecutors say was a white supremacist and anti-government radical pleaded guilty to charges of possessing a weapon of mass destruction. Authorities had discovered enough sodium cyanide bombs to kill hundreds of people; machine guns and several hundred thousand rounds of ammunition; 60 pipe bombs; and remote-control explosive devices disguised as briefcases in a storage space he rented. The man, William J. Krar, was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison.
Domestic terror experts were surprised the department did not include right-wing groups on their list of adversaries. "They are still a threat, and they will continue to be a threat," said Mike German, a 16-year undercover agent for the FBI who spent most of his career infiltrating radical right-wing groups. "If for some reason the government no longer considers them a threat, I think they will regret that," said German, who left the FBI last year. "Hopefully it's an oversight." James O. Ellis III, a senior terror researcher for the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT), said in a telephone interview Friday that whereas left-wing groups, which have been more active recently, have focused mainly on the destruction of property, right-wing groups have a much deadlier and more violent record and should be on the list. "The nature of the history of terrorism is that you will see acts in the name of [right-wing] causes in the future. "Focusing on Left-Wing Movements Last year, following arson and vandalism sprees on both coasts attributed to radical left-wing groups such as ALF and ELF, the FBI made those movements its top domestic terror priority. But right-wing groups remained a concern, according to one FBI official. "That doesn't de--emphasize our interest in other domestic terror groups," stressed the official, who would not be named discussing the bureau's counterterror strategy, during a phone interview Friday. "For us, the right-wing patriot movement remains a continuing threat." (The FBI considers militias, tax protesters, and anti-government groups part of the right-wing movement, the official said; the bureau considers violent anti-abortion extremists a separate movement.) The DHS document, entitled "Integrated Planning Guidance, Fiscal Years 2005-2011," is dated January 2005. Its pages are marked "Sensitive - Do Not Distribute Outside the Department of Homeland Security - Draft." Each paragraph in the document is marked "(U/FOUO)," which typical ly indicates it has been reviewed by a government censor and determined to be unclassified, but "for official use only."Under a section marked "Threat and Vulnerability Assessment," the document asks and answers the question "Who are the adversaries?"First and foremost, the draft document says, are al Qaeda and its affiliates. Second are new radical Islamist groups that arise overseas amid the rubble of the old al Qaeda organization. These organizations "could try to supplant" al Qaeda and "would see a Homeland attack as a way to attain that goal," the document states. Domestic radical Islamic groups concern the department, because of their potential to support al Qaeda operations within the country, or to serve as a "recruiting pool" for the movement. "However," the document reads, "we are not convinced that any of these organizations acting alone would pursue a major attack against the Homeland.
"As a final item, the list notes the threat of eco-terrorists, who "will continue to focus their attacks on property damage in an effort to change policy." The document notes that although "publicly ALF and ELF promote nonviolence toward human life . . . some members may escalate their attacks."


Dead Meat
This time it just might be Mark "the Shark" Quartiano who ends up being filleted


BY TRISTRAM KORTEN

In one of the photos that charter-fishing captain Mark Quartiano distributed two weeks ago publicizing his latest catch, he is sprawled across a heap of very large dead sharks. He grins lasciviously at the camera and splays his legs while one hand caresses a fin and the other holds a shark's mouth agape. The tableau is reminiscent of an orgy at a sleazy porno shoot -- Quartiano indulging his bloodlust a little too literally. Adding to the aura of obscenity is the fact that among the dead is one species of shark so rare it is federally protected. Quartiano knows this but simply doesn't care.
Amid the carnival of excess that relentlessly threatens to swamp South Florida in its tawdriness and gluttony, Quartiano serves as ringmaster. Having dubbed himself "Mark the Shark" (complete with registered trademark), he embraces all that is repugnant in South Florida's tourist-based charter-fishing industry, which has helped push our offshore fishery to the edge of crisis. Speaking by phone from his boat, Quartiano scoffs at the suggestion he took the big shark illegally. "You're wrong!" he bellows. "Call me back when you get your facts straight." Click. Quartiano is a crazed self-promotion machine, spewing a continual torrent of blathering prose from his Website, newsletter, and so-called press releases boasting of the carnage he inflicts on local marine life. A Website boast: "Charter Legend, Captain 'Mark The Shark'® has been credited for capturing more sharks on rod and reel than any human being on the planet!" In his world, everything is "monster" size -- monster sharks, monster fishing, monster catches, and he is the monster killer. His hubris has paid off. He's hoodwinked all manner of media into hyping his sea-life butchery. The Discovery Channel, network news, MTV, the Dating Show, and former Miami Herald funnyman Dave Barry have all used him as bait to hook our attention-deficit brains and keep us from flipping the channel or turning the page. In turn this has lured celebrities onto the deck of his 50-foot Hatteras -- actor Will Smith, America's Most Wanted host John Walsh, Aerosmith's Joey Kramer, a pack of Atlanta Falcons players in town for the Super Bowl, and more. Quartiano has successfully packaged an illusion of angling that has nothing to do with nature and everything to do with bloody spectacle. (See "Hooked on Death," Miami New Times, April 11, 2002.) Not surprising, his disgusting approach to making a living from the sea has earned him a reputation as oily and rank as a chum line. In 2003 WSVN-TV (Channel 7) sailed off with Quartiano to shoot one of those mindless-fluff segments with weathergirl Jackie Johnson. After airing a promo for the piece, however, the station received hundreds of calls and e-mails from viewers complaining that Quartiano was scum at the bottom of the bait barrel. "In all my years in the business, I've never seen a reaction like this," Alice Jacobs, WSVN's vice president for news, told New Times Broward-Palm Beach. "There was an outcry from our viewers that Mark the Shark was an unethical sportfisherman." The station canceled the segment. That outcry isn't solely a response to his macho beer-and-babes marketing style, but also to his notorious practice of slaughtering depleted and endangered fish and defying state and federal laws meant to protect them. At a time when conscientious sport anglers promote the catch-and-release ethic (especially for billfish) as the only hope for the future of our overfished waters, Quartiano's response, cynically displayed on a menacing skull-and-crossbones Website banner, is this: "Fillet and release." Last year state officials cited him for not having a license to operate his charter boat, but prosecutors dropped the charge. In 1995 Quartiano was snagged selling six sailfish to an undercover Florida Marine Patrol officer in two separate transactions. Although sailfish can be caught recreationally, they cannot be bought or sold. Most true sportsmen release sailfish, which are not considered edible. Quartiano claimed he'd never before sold sailfish and was in a vulnerable situation after the clients who caught the fish refused to pay his full $500 fee. "I feel I was definitely entrapped," he whined to the Herald. "We haven't sold any [sailfish] ever, except to one overzealous Marine Patrol guy." He pleaded guilty and ended up paying a $6600 federal fine and performing 100 hours of community service. Neither penalty made much of an impression on Quartiano. Last we ek he merrily circulated his self-proclaimed press release touting his slaughter of a 668-pound, federally protected bigeye thresher shark, along with a hammerhead shark and what appears to be a blue shark. Several species of hammerhead have been recommended for protection status by conservation groups because their numbers have dwindled dramatically. "First ever grand slam of Killer Sharks caught off Miami Beach by Mark the Shark!" shouts the prose that accompanies the photos. Never mind that these are deep-water sharks and don't come into contact with humans unless we go looking for them. "These are not sharks regularly implicated in any interaction with humans," says Sonja Fordham, international fish conservation program manager at the Ocean Conservancy in Washington, D.C. I forwarded Quartiano's pictures to Fordham, who in turn took them to biologist colleagues. "I conferred with several people and it's definitely a bigeye thresher. You can tell from the grooves in the head, the big eyes, the coloration, and the shape of the tail," Fordham reports. "He's breaking the rules." The rules, in this case, being the National Marine Fisheries Service "highly migratory species management plan," which prohibits killing this shark or possessing it after its death. If a bigeye thresher is inadvertently hooked at sea, the angler must not take it out of the water and must release it with a "minimum of injury." Penalties include fines and possible revocation of a captain's commercial charter permit. Those prohibitions apply only to bigeye threshers caught in federal waters, which on Florida's east coast begin three miles from the beach. Quartiano claims he was only two miles off Miami Beach when he hooked the shark. Experts I spoke to were skeptical, saying the thresher is a deep-water animal, particularly one this big, and in all likelihood would only be caught far beyond the It doesn't matter. This is not about arbitrary lines in the w ater. It's about having the common sense not to kill animals whose numbers are dwindling, especially for nothing more than mounting as a trophy (it would be illegal for Quartiano to sell the meat). I made sure Marine Fisheries law-enforcement officials received the photo of Mark the Shark posing with the thresher. "We're aware of potential violations this individual may have committed," responds Mark Oswell cryptically when asked for comment. Oswell, national spokesman for the law-enforcement division of the fisheries service, will neither confirm nor deny the existence of an investigation. "If this is his livelihood," says the Ocean Conservancy's Fordham, "he should be aware of these rules." Regarding the dead hammerhead in the photo, she adds, "I can't tell exactly what kind of hammerhead it is, but there are two or three hammerhead species in this region that the World Conservation Union has proposed to classify as endangered due to evidence of their depletion. So you have him sitting on one prohibited species and one proposed endangered species. It's discouraging to see this at a time when all types of fishermen are waking up to the fact that sharks are really more vulnerable than other marine animals and are being seriously overfished." Quartiano is a pariah not only to conservationists and regulators but also within the sportfishing world. "I'm at the absolute opposite end of the spectrum [from Quartiano]," says Miami Beach charter-boat captain Bouncer Smith. "Whether [the bigeye thresher] was protected or not, I wouldn't kill it. We don't kill a fish to hang it on a scale. The only time we kill a fish is when the client adamantly wants to eat it. We're in tune with the future of fisheries." Endangered fisheries are also of great concern to Ellen Peel, president of the Billfish Foundation in Fort Lauderdale. The foundation and its members preach and practice catch-and-release for billfish, sailfish in particular. Quartiano's Website, under his "fillet and release" banner, is a veritable necropolis of sailfish, which drives Peel nuts. "It is a pathetic self-commentary for one who makes a living on the ocean and its creatures to recklessly destroy that upon which he depends," Peel says with barely contained restraint. "Maybe it screams a need for attention. Most charter-boat captains are more protective of their resources." When it comes to monsters of the deep, Quartiano's insatiable greed and ego are far, far scarier than the sharks he stalks.


miaminewtimes.com | originally published: May 5, 2005