Because I knew you needed some more from the unhinged: Eco-terrorism: the non-existent threat we spend millions policing
This is what the head of a police unit set up to monitor domestic extremism said in 2009: “I’ve never said – and we don’t see – that any environmentalist is going to or has committed any violent acts.” That chimes with my experience. Two years ago I searched all the literature I could lay hands on, and couldn’t find a single proven instance of a planned attempt in the UK to harm people in the cause of defending the environment. (That’s in sharp contrast to animal rights campaigning, where there has been plenty of violence.) No one has yet produced a factual challenge to that conclusion. Yet every year a shadowy body spends most of its £5m budget on countering a non-existent threat that officers call eco-terrorism.
Interesting that George divorces the animal rights loons, who are considered eco-terrorists, from the rest, and also makes a distinction as it being an attempt to harm people.Of course, there is the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), and eco-terrorist group, which was founded in Brighton, United Kingdom. You’ve had multiple incidents of people storming buildings and oil platforms, taking over airports, and such, in England the past few years, but, eco-wacko’s. Are those actions “terrorism?” Not in my mind. It’s just criminal behavior. Yet, George pins it down simply to the UK.
Yet, as even Treehugger points out, eco-terrorism is real. They should know. Their parent organization, the Discover Channel, was attacked by an eco-terrorist. ECTs planned to blow up IBM headquarters in Switzerland. And many more actions. There is sometimes a thin line between the paranoid ravings of extremist environmentalists and actually acting them out. Fortunately, most of them rarely stray from the smoking dope bull sessions into action, and, usually then, it is simply mischief or criminal, rather than terrorist.
I will give George one point: Britain does spend a lot on worrying about eco-terrorism, when, instead, they should spend most of the money on investigating and stopping Muslim terrorism.
