This just happened a
bit north of where I live, up in Riverside. In the last couple of weeks a
couple who raises pheasants for commercial sale to hunters had their farm
broken into by members of the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) who the stole or
released more than a dozen of the prized birds. The theft of the birds and
vandalism of the property is being investigated by the FBI as an act of
terrorism.
That’s
right, terrorism. As far as the FBI is concerned, this break-in performed with
some wire cutters is on par with pressure cooker bombs killing people in Boston
and airliners being flown into skyscrapers.
I
certainly have no patience for ALF. Though I can respect their beliefs about
animals, and sometimes agree with their valuation of the lives of animals, I
think that by taking part in blatantly illegal and destructive activities like
stealing these pheasants they really don’t help anybody and don’t really help
any animals. The people who committed this crime should be prosecuted.
But
is this terrorism? To think so is Big Crazy. As a spokesman for ALF, Dr. Jerry
Vlasak, said, “Terrorism is thrown around a lot these days. It’s disrespectful
to the victims of Boston or New York. Terrorism is flying planes into
buildings, not setting animals free.”
In Maury County, Tennessee yesterday, at a meeting convened to address citizens’ concerns over
the quality of their drinking water, an official of the Tennessee Department of
Environment and Conservation said to residents, “We
take water quality very seriously. Very, very seriously. But you need to make
sure that when you make water quality complaints, you have a basis, because
federally, if there's no water quality issues, that can be considered under
Homeland Security an act of terrorism
[Italics mine].”
Sherwin
Smith is the Deputy Director of the TDEC’s division of water resources, and
what he said to this group of concerned citizens is, in a large sense, true. If
someone were to put poison in the aqueducts that bring Colorado River water to
southern California, threatening the lives of millions, that could most
certainly be considered terrorism. Correspondingly, if someone were to make the
threat of poisoning the aqueducts or to make the false claim that they had done
so, spreading fear and panic, under current law that could be considered
terrorism as well.
Smith,
however, was not speaking to representatives from al Quaida hell bent on
dropping anthrax into the local water tower. He was speaking to the Statewide
Organization for Community eMpowerment, a civic group that had been working
with Maury County residents to address water quality complaints. Some county
residents have complained about cloudy, odd-tasting water for years. In recent
months children have become ill; some say it’s because of bad tap water.
Industry,
some GOP politicians, and right wing rhetors have been quick to label folks
that get in the way of industry as terrorist or eco-terrorists. Examples are
here and here. And the FBI as made it easy to blur the line and label minor offenses as terrorism. This is the first time that I’ve run across a state government
official doing the same. It’s seems to me that it was just his way of telling
this group to shut up, to intimidate the citizens who showed up for this
meeting. In this way, he is using this rhetoric of terrorism just as industry
and right wingers do, as a verbal cudgel.
It’s
difficult enough to make a complaint to government officials. People should not
have to fear that they will somehow be considered in league with Ted Kaczynski
or Osama bin Laden if they call up someone at the water department to say that
their tap water is cloudy and tastes funny. And considering that extractive
industries are quick to attack those who question or criticize practices, it
could be a facile tactic on the part of the oil and gas industry to pick op the
ball from Sherwin Smith and label the folks who say that their wells have been
fouled by fracking as nothing but a bunch of terrorists.
Passed in the Senate today was the National Defense Authorization Act, which contains a provision that would give the government the legal authority to lock up in military custody people it suspects of terrorism. The detentions could be indefinite and without trial. All that is needed is the suspicion of terrorism. There is no exception for American citizens in the provision.
This is, without a doubt, totalitarian. What makes this even scarier is the very loose manner in which terrorism is defined within the United States. Besides the carnage and violence of car bombs and other mass murder, the U.S. includes vandalism and other property crimes in its definition of terrorism. In the past decade the FBI has included such acts as the pouring of sugar in the gas tanks of construction vehicles and the releasing of thousands of minks from a farm as acts of terrorism.[i]
Clearly, we must thwart Al Qaeda and any other terrorists, be they Timothy McVeigh or the Shoe Bomber. But a law that could take a vandal out of the criminal justice system and place him into indefinite detention at Guantanamo Bay is nightmarish beyond the imagination of Kafka.
I think of myself as an old fashioned blogger, someone who puts up a few thoughts from time to time without a whole bunch of bells and whistles. But I’ve been intrigued by this video clip for the last few weeks, so I stuck it in this blog. You may have seen it. It was apparently broadcast on the TV news and later made something of a splash on the Internet. It shows President Obama in one of his town hall meetings–an event expected to be attended by supporters–when this couple, identified as members of the T Party, confront him over statements that Vice President Biden was accused of saying. Biden was accused of comparing the T Party to terrorists.
There is no record of Biden making such a statement, and he has denied comparing members of the T Party to terrorists.[i] The gist of the video is hence a moot point. I want to talk about something else in the video. It concerns what the young lady said about 40 seconds into the video clip. Continuing the confrontation with the president, she says, “You do realize that 90 percent of the domestic terrorist attacks are done by left-wing environmental radicals and not people like me.”
Well, OK. I have to agree that she doesn’t seem to have the disposition of being a terrorist of any sort. But 90 percent of domestic terrorist attacks performed by left-wing environmental radicals? Where does that come from?
This young lady, since identified by the press as Stacey Rogers, is confused, but it’s not all her fault. There are many things that make the whole subject of terrorism confusing. Often it is the result of sloppy thinking, at other times, as I’ve pointed out in this blog before, there are people who are trying to obfuscate the issue for political ends.
Before we get to the subject of terrorism, we should clear up one thing: why would she call terrorism identified as environmental as left wing? I’ve written about this in other blogs, Environmental concerns and regulation have traditionally come from conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats. Painting environmentalists into a political corner is a recent phenomenon.[ii] Right-wing folks have been pushing this idea, this misunderstanding, for decades. Rogers seems young. So on the one hand, I want to give her the benefit of the doubt on this; on the other hand, when you’re talking to the President of the United States and leader of the free world, you should at least have some idea of what you’re saying.
OK, on to terrorism. The reason this young lady is confused is because terrorism has different definitions. Not only do different people and organizations define it differently, terrorism will have different definitions from the same organization. The FBI says of international terrorism:
International terrorism involves violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or any state, or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or any state (italics mine).[iii]
While the for domestic terrorism:
Domestic terrorism is the unlawful use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual based and operating entirely within the United States or Puerto Rico without foreign direction committed against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof in furtherance of political or social objectives.[iv]
Note that the phrase “dangerous to human life” does not appear in the definition of domestic terrorism. What we think of as terrorism–car bombs, suicide bombers blowing up cafés and busses–is not needed for an act to be considered terrorist by the FBI if that act is committed within the borders of the United States. So the FBI considers two incidents, men with bombs killing 35 people in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and members of the Earth Liberation Front pouring sugar in the gas tanks of construction vehicles, to be defined and reported as acts of terror.[v]
Now let’s think a moment, no one in his right mind could equate, on any level, a deadly bombing and vandalism of a car. That is, nonetheless, what is happening here. There is something wrong at the FBI that they would do such a thing leading to such confusion. This needs to be corrected. In the meantime people like Rogers get confused.
Furthering the confusion is that the government counts the perpetration of acts it describes as terrorism, and each act is counted equally. Protesters trampled a crop of genetically engineered corn in July of 2000 = one act of terrorism. Mohamed Atta and his cohort fly airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in September of the next year = one act of terrorism.
OK, let’s see further how we muddle the pot when we think about terrorism. Arson committed by ELF is defined as terrorism.[vi] Yet other acts of arson, ones with a clear political message or the intent to cause fear or intimidation are not described as terrorism. In August a federal grand jury indicted Cody Crawford with a hate crime and arson for firebombing a mosque. Nowhere in the FBI’s description of this incident do they call it an act of terrorism.[vii] Last year a father and his son, Dwight Lincoln Hammond, Jr. and Steven Dwight Hammond, both ranchers, were charged with arson and assault for setting fire to BLM land, but their crime was not counted as a terrorist act.[viii]
Please don’t think that I’m condoning vandalism or other property crimes. But to effectively deal with crime or terrorism the severity of the act and intent need to be part of our judgment. That is part of the bedrock of our criminal justice system. Murderers and rapists get longer sentences than petty criminals; repeat offenders get more jail time, too. And if we are truly to make ourselves safer against terrorism, we need to properly understand it. Thinking of vandalism, the destruction of genetically engineered crops or spray painting construction equipment, as the equivalence of pipe bombings and mass killings increases fear and clouds our judgment. It seems obvious that there are politics and involved in how these definitions of terrorism are applied and misapplied. No wonder people like Rogers get confused.
