Posted in Activists Arrested, Legal Issues on Apr 9th, 2010
An FBI affidavit has just been released in the investigation of the 2004 Animal Liberation Front break-in at the University of Iowa. It shows the stream-of-consciousness approach the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force took to the investigation, including surfing MySpace and Facebook and using an informant to identify activists on YouTube.
The affidavit from October, [...]
Posted in Terrorism Definitions on Apr 7th, 2010
Tea Party poster.Tea Party groups and right-wing militias have been plotting attacks on Muslims, throwing bricks through lawmakers’ windows, and issuing death threats, yet the mainstream press and the federal government have not labeled these acts “terrorism.”
By contrast, the “number one domestic terrorism threat,” according to the FBI, is the animal rights and environmental [...]
Posted in Activists Arrested, Legal Issues on Apr 5th, 2010
Photo from Flickr's antonychammond under Creative Commons license.Last week the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a lawsuit on behalf of multiple inmates housed in secretive prison facilities on U.S. soil called Communications Management Units. The suit is in addition to one previously filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, and marks an increased pressure on [...]
Posted in Legal Issues, Police Harassment & Abuse on Mar 15th, 2010
FBI raid of Salt Lake City house of animal rights activists. Photo by Jordan Halliday.FBI agents and law enforcement from multiple agencies have raided a well-known activist group house in Salt Lake City, Utah, today in connection with an investigation of Animal Liberation Front crimes in Iowa.
I just got off the phone with multiple housemates [...]
Posted in Legislation, State Terrorism Laws on Feb 17th, 2010
Fifty years ago this month, four black students sat at a Woolworth’s whites-only lunch counter and refused to move. The following day 25 students did the same. A few days later, more than 300 showed up. The sit-ins quickly spread across the South and were a critical component of the civil rights movement. Decades later, [...]
Posted in Federal Terrorism Laws, Legislation, State Terrorism Laws on Dec 15th, 2009
The National Lawyers Guild has a new report on state-level versions of the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act that have been popping up around the country. As I’ve reported here previously, on laws such as the California Animal Enterprise Protection Act, they use sweeping, overly broad definitions of terrorism that are, in some cases, even worse [...]
Posted in Activists Arrested, Federal Terrorism Laws, Legal Issues, Legislation on Dec 11th, 2009
As a follow up to David Pellow’s guest post, “My Student is a Sociologist, Not a Terrorist,” here is an update from his grad student facing terrorism charges, Scott DeMuth.
DeMuth has been indicted for conspiracy to commit “animal enterprise terrorism” in relation to the unsolved Animal Liberation Front raid at the University of Iowa. The [...]
Posted in Activists Arrested, Legal Issues on Dec 7th, 2009
The following is a guest essay written by David Naguib Pellow, a Professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota and faculty advisor of Scott DeMuth:
On November 17, 2009, Scott DeMuth was jailed for contempt of court, since he refused to answer questions posed to him by a federal grand jury in Davenport, Iowa. They [...]
Posted in Activism & Activists' Response, Activists Arrested, Legal Issues on Dec 1st, 2009
The government filed an emergency motion to keep an activist in jail because he is an “anarchist” and “domestic terrorist” who associates with a “subversive,” but in a response issued Monday, an Iowa district court didn’t buy it. Scott Demuth will be released pending his trial.
Demuth has been indicted on animal enterprise terrorism charges [...]
Posted in Federal Terrorism Laws, Legislation on Nov 30th, 2009
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has been classified as as a “terrorist threat” in a document created by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The USDA created a new “APHIS Facility Security Profile” form to send to animal experimentation facilities. Recipients were asked to answer about their experiences, and return the form to the [...]
The War on Terrorism has come home. Corporations and politicians are labeling activists "eco-terrorists" and national security threats. Think red-baiting, with a green twist. Here you'll find original reporting and analysis of the Green Scare, and history repeating itself.