Eco-terrorism and terrorist-journalism

Course of events:
    a) Animal rights activists are raided by police
    b) Journalist cover the case

Can you guess what's next? Probably not...
    c) Journalist is labelled 'extremist' and persecuted

Can you guess the country? No, not the glorious nation of Kazakhstan. The USA. Get the facts straight for yourself:




Check out Green is the new red blog and/or book which is about the campaign against 'eco-terrorism', apparently a string of creative use of new anti-terror laws to subjugate environmentalist views. I for one subscribed to Will Potter right away!

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Russia: Unknown People in Masks and Police Attack Environmentalists

As seen on Global Voices: Russia: Unknown People in Masks and Police Attack Environmentalists

From 20 to 40 young people in white masks attacked the camp of the defenders of the Khimki forest park [RUS], Igor Podgorny [RUS] and Novaya Gazeta [RUS] reported. The police intervention didn't help – instead several environmentalists and journalists were detained.

Sounds nasty. By now a couple of main stream international media have picked up the story. Like AP: Police detain Moscow forest activists

Russian police on Friday detained two journalists and 15 protesters at a suburban Moscow forest where they have been living to try to protect the woods from destruction. [...] The forest in Khimki has been the focus of controversy for years over plans to chop down much of it for highway construction. Khimki lies on the increasingly jammed route from Moscow to Sheremetyevo International Airport and St. Petersburg, Russia's second-largest city. A local newspaper editor who reported extensively on the issue was severely beaten in 2008 and left wheelchair-bound and brain-damaged. [...] The activists called the police at the break of dawn on Friday when a group of some 100 young men who had covered their faces blocked the campsite, thus allowing the [tree chopping in an alledgedly illegal area] work to resume, Moscow Regional police said in a statement.

An associated protest was similarly cracked down upon reports The Moscow Times: 5 Detained in Bid to Give Khimki Timber to Putin

“The police swooped down on us and detained us, acting in a very rude and harsh fashion and turning a peaceful event into a brawl,” [head of the Left Front group, Sergei] Udaltsov said

Indigenous Peruvians and police in deadly clashes at oil and mining protests

Sometimes researchers are blamed of being alarmists stirring up fears of a fictional dystopia by the business-as-usual crowd. But it seems a forewarning of conflict over oil in Peru is proceeding according to exactly such a warning. The news first...

40+ dead at protest

In extension of free trade agreements the Peruvian government has plans for 'developing' the Amazon homelands of many indigenous communities - opening it for oil, mineral, logging, and agricultural exploitation. Locals have been protesting some of these initiatives claiming they are unconstitutional and in violation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. When police intervened fighting erupted. Body counts wary; one is as high as 81.

President Alan Garcia Perez is claimed to have been behind a massacre on suspects of being Maoist guerrillas in 1986. A former army colonel turned politician is siding with the protesters. An arrest warrant has been issued on protest leader Alberto Pizango who has gone into hiding.

Sources: Upside Down World / 50 Days of Protest and One Massacre in the Peruvian Amazon | Peruanista blog | The New York Times / 9 Hostage Officers Killed at Peruvian Oil Facility | AP / 9 more police killed in Amazon protests in Peru | AP / At least 31 killed in Peru Amazon clashes | Mongobay / Oil or Death in the Amazon

Peer reviewed prophesies

A 2008 paper on PLoS ONE discussed this ongoing and accelerating exploitation in "the most species-rich part of the Amazon". From the paper:

Without improved policies, the increasing scope and magnitude of planned extraction means that environmental and social impacts are likely to intensify. [... We] consider the conflicts where the blocks overlap indigenous peoples' territories.

Oil and gas development in the western Amazon has already caused major environmental and social impacts. Direct impacts include deforestation for access roads, drilling platforms, and pipelines, and contamination from oil spills and wastewater discharges.

In Peru, hydrocarbon blocks now overlap 20 protected areas. Thirteen of these protected areas preceded creation of the oil blocks and lack compatibility studies required by the Protected Areas Law.

the history of oil and gas extraction in the western Amazon is one of massive ecological and social disruption, the future need not repeat the past.

No, it need not. But it just did. Heed the warnings of those who reason with statistics and logic.


Finer, M., Jenkins, C., Pimm, S., Keane, B., & Ross, C. (2008). Oil and Gas Projects in the Western Amazon: Threats to Wilderness, Biodiversity, and Indigenous Peoples PLoS ONE, 3 (8) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0002932



Vis stort kort
The lands of the Incas are endowed with copper, silver, gold, petroleum, timber, fish, iron ore, coal, phosphate, potash, hydropower and natural gas while troubled by deforestation, illegal logging, overgrazing, soil erosion, desertification, air and water pollution (including pollution from mining wastes). (Source: CIA Factbook)

Authorities vs Environmentalism

Full scale warfare isn't necessary for me to take note of a case of 'ecowar'. Far from it - for starters see the crime tag. Large scale covert conflict between states and their conscious populations however is a rather new thing. Or at least something that seems to be increasing.

In the UK authorities have been busted infiltrating legal environmental groups.

Undercover police are running a network of hundreds of informants inside protest organisations who secretly feed them intelligence in return for cash

[...]

"The methods employed are disturbing, and more worrying yet is the lack of any clearly identifiable body responsible for this. These individuals seem to have some kind of police support or at the very least connections with the police – the access to police stations confirms that – but my concern is the lack of accountability and the threat to the individual and her right to protest."

• Police caught on tape trying to recruit Plane Stupid protester as spy
• Police 'pay protester informers'

Basically France delivered an identical story of late...

French media reported that the largely state-owned French electricity company EDF has been caught spying on Greenpeace France.

[...]

spies have apparently infiltrated several anti-nuclear groups in France and reportedly sometimes with the blessing of the French secret services.

• France involved in another major nuclear scandal, accused of spying against Greenpeace

In the USA FBI is investigating suspected 'eco-terrorism'.

Fires gutted four multimillion-dollar model homes in a Seattle suburb on Monday, and authorities found a sign purportedly left by ecoterrorists that mocks claims that the homes were environmentally friendly.

• Seattle-Area Fires May Be Ecoterror, Authorities Say

I suspect a lot more of this type of news in the future. It won't suffice to say that Al-Qaida hasn't helped environmentalism. No doubt anti-terror laws will be utilized against people trying to save the planet now politicians aren't. And some activist cells will radicalise.

Tennessee, USA: Activists Detained For Taking Ash Spill Photographs

Two environmental activists were detained by the Tennessee Valley Authority police for photographing the site of last weeks ash spill. While it does not appear that they will be charged with crimes, they were unable to document the ash spill’s effects on the area and its water supply.