VIOLENCE FIRST!

The obvious beneficiaries of the Auckland incident are the Greenpunks themselves, for they will now demand all the sympathy due to a poor, innocent victim of violence. In fact, they are themselves not only politically motivated (freeze, anti-SDI), but also one of the most violence-prone organizations among the sham-environmentalists. Their British branch forcefully obstructs the dumping of low-level nuclear wastes in the sea, approving of the far more radioactive (in total content) coal ash that is dumped in the sea, largely instead of those wastes [AtE Feb 84]; they paint baby seals red, condemning them to a slow death by hypothermia [AtE Dec 82], which is OK with them as long as they are still alive when the TV cameras are on them, for Greenpeace has all the environmental concern of Ralph Nader and David Brower combined. In 1982, their Illinois Chapter staged a night raid with flares, rockets and fireworks on the Zion nuclear power plant [AtE Nov 82].

In short, there are few "environmentalists" who outdo the Greenpunks in hooliganism; but there are some, such as Earth First!, an Arizona-based group of thugs, which in the spring of this year published a sabotage manual Ecodefense. Its advertisement promises "detailed, field-tested hints from experts on tree spiking, stopping off-road vehicles, destroying roads, decommissioning heavy equipment, pulling survey stakes, trashing billboards, leaving no evidence, and much more!"

Much more, indeed. The section on ranching and grazing alone recommends targeting "notorious killers" of predator animals, cutting livestock fences, bashing holes in water troughs for cattle, destroying windmills, spiking roads, moving salt blocks, slashing tire side walls, pouring brine into fuel tanks, and otherwise damaging the livestock industry which has prevented "vast areas of the Great Basin and the Southwest [from being] designated as Wilderness." One of their grudges against fences: they give the land "a private property look."

Precisely. That is what really bothers the "environmentalists;" the thugs as much as the poets.

[More: The book can, of course, be tracked down, but I will do nothing to help anybody find instructions how to vandalize property, destroy livelihoods and often endanger people and domestic animals. For a background of Earth First! and their vandalism, see the July 5 issue of Information Digest.]