Beware of Violent Zealots, No Matter What Uniforms They Wear
WASHINGTON, DC – Two of the world’s activist splinter groups are relying on violent threats to force us away from the 21st century and back into the poverty and ignorance of the 15th century. One of these groups is Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda. One is not.
Two groups of terrorists risk the lives of innocent Americans and destroy major U.S. public facilities to protest such global trends as democracy, personal freedom, longer life spans, and higher living standards. One terrorist group has been headquartered in Afghanistan. The other is headquartered in America.
Two groups of thuggish zealots believe the intensity of their caring should allow them to violate the laws of society and dictate how the rest of us live. One is made up of Moslem terrorists. The other is made up of “eco-terrorists” such as the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), the Animal Liberation Front, and the “anarchists” associated with the anti-globalization movement.
Too many of the eco-terrorists subscribe to the philosophy of Stewart Brand, who once wrote in the Whole Earth Catalog, “We have wished, we eco-freaks, for a disaster or for a social change to come and bomb us into the Stone Age.”
Claiming they are “protecting nature,” these homegrown terrorists have burned down a variety of buildings, ranging from university offices and medical research laboratories to a ski resort. The ELF website offers a video on “Setting Fires With Electrical Timers.” So far, no one has been burned to death.
The Portland Oregonian says ELF has committed at least 33 major crimes in the past five years. A Canadian spokesman for the group recently told the Associated Press that the Sept. 11 attacks have not altered ELF’s commitment to covert violence “to protect life on the earth.”
Opposed to the new branch of science called biotechnology, activists have destroyed test plots around the country that were designed to ensure the safety of biotech crops and twice sabotaged a new biotech building being built at the University of Idaho.
They don’t care that biotechnology has already demonstrated a potential cure for cancer, ways to combat hunger for nearly a billion poor people, and a rice variety that could prevent severe malnutrition for more than a billion Third World women and children. The higher yields from biotech crops could also save millions of acres of wildlands from being plowed to feed the larger, more affluent human population of the 21st century.
These eco-terrorists brag about randomly “spiking” thousands of forest trees, a deliberate threat to the lives and limbs of any loggers using power saws to harvest renewable timber for houses and furniture. Recently, two unexploded bombs were found near a Michigan Tech University laboratory that does research on making forests more productive.
Opposed to trade, that produced more income growth for more poor people in the last 50 years than society achieved in the previous 500 years, the violent activists trashed Seattle’s downtown to protest a World Trade Organization meeting. Last year, at a summit of elected world leaders in Genoa, Italy, “anti-globalization” demonstrators violently attacked police, with widespread injuries on both sides. One activist was killed trying to burn a police car.
To me, the most offensive aspect of both terrorist groups is their contempt for knowledge. The Taliban banned girls from all schooling, and boys from learning anything but religious cant. The eco-terrorists threaten to attack any research institution that carries scientific research beyond the boundaries they wish to dictate.
Both groups of today’s terrorists find shelter within their philosophical movements. Many Moslem leaders echo the extremists’ calls for a return to tradition (poverty and all) and encouraged the extremists’ jihad against the modern world.
The environmental movement also refuses to distance itself from the eco-terrorists in their midst. Too many of the hard-core members agree with biologist David Graber that “Human happiness, and certainly human fecundity, is not as important as a wild and healthy planet. . . . Some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.”
Beware of violent zealots, whether they’re uniformed in camouflage fatigues or blue jeans.
This article was published by Knight Ridder Tribune
Dennis T. Avery is based in Churchville, Va., and is director of global food issues for the Hudson Institute of Indianapolis.
