13 December 2001

TERRORISTS ON THE MARCH -- IN AMERICA

Both the items below - the first relating to an article in USA Today - come via Rick Berman's food and tobacco lobby: the GuestChoice network - see
www.guestchoice.com
aka
nannyculture.com

Presumably the next stage of this long-term campaign, given new legs by Sept 11, will involve the assertion that this is an issue not just affecting US property and interests domestically but internationally and hence should draw an appropriate "war on terrorism" response overseas. In that case, presumably, we won't just be seeing attempted media black outs and the military riding shotgun for Monsanto in Indonesia, or watchtowers and armed guards around Monsanto's crops as in the Philippines.

Would biotech proponents baulk at such extremity? Unlikely, at least to judge by the AgBioView crowd.  Some 18 months before Sept 11, Prof Anthony Trewavas FRS advised US biotech proponents to contact the likes of far right US congressman Jesse Helms to sound the alert, "that a subversive organisation directed from europe is attempting to destroy US agriculture and US farming."
[Date: Apr 18 2000
From: "Tony Trewavas" <trewavas@srv0.bio.ed.ac.uk>
Subject: advice to US scientists
http://www.agbioworld.org/listarchive/view.php?id=299]

items shortened:
1. Terrorists On The March -- In America
2. Three Months Later

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http://www.nannyculture.com/headline_detail.cfm?HEADLINE_ID=1158

Terrorists On The March -- In America

As the executive director of the Guest Choice Network writes in an op-ed published in today's USA Today, "The growing wave of domestic terrorism by animal-rights, anti-corporate and anti-biotech extremists has gone beyond vandalism. Property has been destroyed, and lives have been put at risk. The people we need to worry about, though, may not be international terrorists. They could be the middle-class kids down the street."

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Nannyculture.com, December 12 2001

Three Months Later

Yesterday marked three months since the United States was directly attacked for the first time in six decades -- and it was three months ago today that Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR) cautioned that eco-terrorists like the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) pose a threat "no less heinous than what we saw occur yesterday here in Washington and in New York."

As we have been reporting since September 11, the terror of that day has not stopped animal rights and anti-meat zealots from using extreme measures to try to strip away consumers' choices. The Boston Globe reported last week that "there are similarities to Al Qaeda" in such groups. "The groups, like ALF and ELF, are organized in a cell structure; the Internet is used as a tool; ALF's website has a 'recommended reading' section that includes a document on 'Setting Fires With Electrical Timers.'"

Two members of Congress are confronting the threat head-on. Rep. Darlene Hooley (D-OR) is sponsoring a bill that would establish a national eco-terrorism information clearinghouse. Rep. Scott McInnis (R-CO) plans hearings on anti-consumer domestic terror to "strip away the Robin Hood mystique from this terrorism in our country."