Ed Abbey’s classic The Monkey Wrench Gang is being made into a big-budget Hollywood movie starring–wait for it– Matthew McConaughey and John Goodman. And the director of “Twilight” is set to direct. I feel ill.

The Monkey Wrench Gang is Abbey’s classic tale of George Hayduke, an ex-Green Beret, leading a band of outlaws in a campaign of sabotage to defend the environment. Plenty of folks say the novel influenced the formation of Earth First! and later the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front. If you haven’t read it, please do.

What’s most bizarre to me about all this is how, in the hands of someone like Matthew “Just Keep Livin’” McConaughey and the “Twilight” teenage-vampire crew, a story about property destruction is great fodder for a mass-appeal Hollywood film.

But in the hands of activists, the same narrative, in the form of a children’s book, is “eco-terrorism.” For instance, the government said Daniel McGowan was “promoting the criminal activity of others” by linking to the website of The Secret World of Terijian, a children’s story of a pint-sized Monkey Wrench Gang. (The government even included the full text of the children’s book in it’s response to McGowan’s motion for summary judgment.)

Monkeywrenching can be sexy and fun when it’s “just a story” produced by Hollywood. When the same narratives are connected to political struggles, it’s “terrorism.”

Tags: ALF, Direct Action, Earth First!, ELF, Pop Culture

This morning Andy Stepanian and I were on Democracy Now talking about secretive political prisons called Communications Management Units. Stepanian is believed to be the first inmate ever released from one of the secretive facilities; he is one of the SHAC 7, a group of animal rights activists convicted of “animal enterprise terrorism” for running a controversial, and effective, website targeting an animal testing lab called Huntingdon Life Sciences.

I was invited back on the program to talk about my reporting on CMUs, and about the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. [The previous program focused on Daniel McGowan's case and the Earth Liberation Front arrests of Operation Backfire.]

Thanks to Democracy Now for continuing to focus much-needed attention on these secretive prisons. The Obama administration needs to reverse the unconstitutional policies of the Bush administration, and provide accountability and transparency. Secretive political prisons have no place in a democracy.

Tags: ALF, Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, Communication Management Unit, Daniel McGowan, ELF, Green Scare, Prisoner Support, SHAC 7

I sat down with the folks at Infoshop.org to talk about the Green Scare, the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, and this ongoing war on dissent.

[A recent example of this is Hugh Farrell, an environmental activist, being accused of “advocating literature and materials which advocate anarchy.”]

Here’s an excerpt:

J: When I hear about this stuff it just makes me not want to get out of bed in the morning, any advice?

WP: I feel like all the time, just by writing about this every day. But when you don’t know what to do, you have to do something. In a way the more you learn about all this stuff the more the cloud of fear cedes. And it stinks at first, to see it so brutally clear how corrupt our government is and how little respect they have for people’s constitutional rights. But at the same time it can be kind of empowering when you can look past the media spin and the government PR and you can see the picture clearly. It takes some of the mystery out of it. That’s my postivist rationalization on this sort of education, that the more you learn about this the less people retreat into despair and start using their anger for positive change.

Read the full interview at Infoshop.org. Please disregard the goofy photo.

Tags: Anarchist, Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, Green Scare

Hugh Farrell and Gina “Tiga” Wertz have their first court date on July 14th: they’ve been charged with racketeering-–charges originally intended to target the mob–-for allegedly “conspiring” to engage in tree sits, participate in non-violent civil disobedience, and make an inflammatory blog post against the I-69 NAFTA superhighway.

When I reported on their arrest, though, I didn’t catch an interesting bit of information buried in the government’s motion for $20,000 cash bond. Mind you, these activists are not accused of any property destruction or violence, they’re accused of “conspiracy.” So how did the government attempt to justify the high cash bond?

According to Farrell’s motion for bond:

“The defendant has been observed advocating literature and materials which advocate anarchy, property destruction and violence, including ‘Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching’ or ‘Recipes for Disaster: An Anarchist Cookbook.’”

In many ways, this is nothing new: the demonization of anarchists has existed as long as the term itself. But this is dangerous territory for a few reasons:

• It reflects more wasted resources on surveillance of First Amendment activity. Why was Farrell being “observed” by the law enforcement while allegedly “advocating literature” in the first place?
• It is intended to punish people for their political beliefs. Even if it is true that Farrell was observed advocating literature and that the literature advocated “anarchy,” how does this to relate to whether or not he’ll show up for his court date (which is what bail is all about)?
• Criminalizing books has no place in a democracy. Make no mistake, that’s what this is about: criminalizing dissent. The government isn’t burning the books, and it isn’t saying it is illegal to own them, but prosecutors are saying that if you *do* own them or “advocate” them it reflects negatively on your character.

  In that case, I’m guilty as well (and I’m sure I’m in good company with many of you). I own both of these books, and they are both available in countless bookstores and on Amazon.com. “Ecodefense” was a pivotal book in the history of the environmental movement, and includes an introduction by Ed Abbey. “Recipes for Disaster,” published by CrimethInc., isn’t the “anarchist cookbook,” you might expect: It has sections on coalition building and mental health.

As with so many of the cases I write about on this site, this isn’t about threats to public safety, it isn’t about property destruction, it’s about demonizing people because of their political beliefs. Well, in this case, it’s not even about that: It’s about demonizing people because of their books.

[The fact that prosecutors see these books as a threat is all the more reason to get yourself a copy or two. If you order them, please do so through the GreenIsTheNewRed.com Amazon account, below, and support this site at the same time! ]

Tags: Anarchist, Conspiracy, Culture War, Earth First!, Hugh Farrell, RICO, Tiga Wertz

Continuing the theme of the last few weeks, here’s another one for the Blatant Hypocrisy file. Photos surfaced that show Jessica Alba “defacing Oklahoma City property with posters of a great white shark.” The posters were about the declining numbers of the species, and were glued to a downtown bridge and at least one billboard.

Property destruction in the name of the environment. Sounds like what corporations call “eco-terrorism,” right? American Idol star Carrie Underwood was called a terrorist for much less. But no, for Jessica Alba (pictured here in her Earth Liberation Front starter kit, minus the black mask of course) it’s just “vandalism.” And she doesn’t even get a slap on the wrist.

Geez, I’m getting more and more confused by all of this. I think I’m going to come up with some kind of flow chart to determine who gets labeled a terrorist. For instance: “Are you totally hot and famous?–If so, congratulations, you’re not a terrorist!”

UPDATE: To be absolutely clear, I am NOT saying that she should be labeled an “eco-terrorist,” or that anyone should. My reason for making this post is that, to me, this example shows how opportunist the “eco-terrorist” rhetoric is. When it’s useful and convenient, the term is applied (to increase prison sentences, to smear activists, to chill dissent). When it could backfire (labeling a prominent figure that way, and exposing to a wider audience how absurd all of this is) there’s nothing but silence.

Tags: Direct Action, Eco-terrorism, Not Terrorism, Pop Culture

A right-wing Christian group and an anti-gay Michigan church are suing gay activists who “terrorized” the congregation by protesting, distributing leaflets and kissing.

The far-right Alliance Defense Fund is taking on the lawsuit on behalf of Delta Township’s Mount Hope Church, which was “invaded” by queers in November.

Accounts of the day differ, of course, but they go something like this: Continue Reading »

Tags: Civil Disobedience, Conservatives, Culture War, First Amendment, Opposition, Pro Life

A White Supremacist and Holocaust denier, James W Von Brunn, opened fire at the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. this afternoon, wounding at least one person before being shot in the head. That makes the second violent attack by right-wing extremists in about three weeks.

Meanwhile, the “radical” animal rights and environmental movements have not harmed a single human being in their 30-plus years of existence. Yet they are the FBI’s “number one domestic terrorism threat.”

On top of this, the Holocaust Museum–one of D.C.’s most popular tourist destinations–was full of school children. And it’s not the first time Brunn armed himself in the nation’s capital:

In 1981, von Brunn entered the Federal Reserve in Washington with a shotgun to make a citizens arrest, he later said, to protest about high interest rates. He was sentenced to 11 years in jail.

Will the government and the press respond the same way they did in the murder of Dr. Tiller, and not label it “terrorism”?

How do you think the government and the press will respond?

Tags: Not Terrorism, Violence

The Huffington Post has published a letter from Daniel McGowan about his transfer to a Communication Management Unit without notice, without explanation, and without due process for appeal. [Here is some background on Communication Management Units, if you are unfamiliar.]

Here’s an excerpt from Daniel McGowan’s essay on the Huffington Post:

Many of the men here (both Muslim and non) are considered political prisoners in their respective movements and have been engaged in social justice, religious organizations, charities and humanitarian efforts. Another conception of the CMU is that it is a location designed to isolate us from our movements and to act as a deterrent for others from those movements (as in “step outside the line and you too will end up there”). The intended effect of long-term housing of this kind is a profound sense of dislocation and alienation. With your mail, email, phones, and visits monitored and no human touch allowed at the visits, it is difficult to feel a connection to “the streets.” There is historical evidence of the BoP utilizing political prisons — despite the fact that the Department of Justice refuses to acknowledge the concept of political prisoners in US prisons, choosing to call us “criminal” instead.

The Lexington High Security Unit (HSU) was one such example. Having opened its 16-bed facilities in 1988 and housing a number of female political prisoners, the HSU functioned as an isolation unit — underground, bathed in fluorescence, and limited interaction with staff. In the opinion of Dr. Richard Korn, speaking on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union, the unit’s goal was “…to reduce prisoners to a state of submission essential for their ideological conversion. That failing, the next objective is to reduce them as efficient, self-directing antagonists. That failing, the only alternative is to destroy them by making them destroy themselves.”

Tags: Communication Management Unit, Daniel McGowan, ELF

I had a great discussion with Scott Horton of AntiWar Radio about the secretive U.S. prison units being used to house political prisoners. These Communication Management Units are being used to keep people like Daniel McGowan and Rafil Dhafir out of the public spotlight, and deprive them of basic due process rights because of their political beliefs.

Check out the interview about CMUs on AntiWar Radio here.

Tags: Communication Management Unit

We recently looked at why the government and the press (outside of some bloggers and opinion columnists) have not labeled the murder of an abortion provider as “terrorism.” It’s important to remember, though, that this isn’t an isolated incident. The word terrorism is used by the FBI and Department of Justice only when it fits a certain political agenda.

The government has systematically labeled animal rights and environmental activists who have never harmed anyone as “the number one domestic terrorism threat.” Yet the term is not applied to individuals who have committed much more serious (and often violent) crimes either for personal gain or for right-wing motives.

Here are 30 cases that the government has chosen to not label as “terrorism”: Continue Reading »

Tags: ALF, Anthrax, Arson, Bombing, Conservatives, DHS, ELF, FBI, Hate Crimes, Not Terrorism, Pro Life, Violence