Stepping Up the Attack on Green Activists

"A remorseless rapist in Hamilton County, Ohio is sentenced to 15 years in prison for beating and raping a 57-year-old woman," writes Kelly Hearn. "An environmental activist in California is sentenced to 22 years and 8 months for burning three SUVs at a car dealership after taking precautions to harm no lives. The disparity helps illustrates what animal rights and environmental groups say is an expanding Orwellian attack on American environmentalism being waged under the pretext of eco-terrorism." On CounterPunch, Jeffrey St. Clair writes, "Armed with the bulging array of new police and surveillance powers handed the agency in the wake of 9/11, the FBI is now free to prowl unfettered by even the thinnest strands of constitutional due process through the lives, email and bank accounts of activists trying to stop chemical plants from flushing toxins into their water. ... On FoxNews, blinking eco-terrorist alerts have replaced Tom Ridge's color-coded threat level."