Indy Media Watch

Run for the hills! The informants are coming!!!

Apparently a number of environmental terrorists have been arrested as of late, in what the far-left is calling “the Green Scare”. Wikipedia has a little background on the issue.

“The term has been widely used to describe an early 2006 sweep of arrests, convictions and grand jury indictments of alleged Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front activists on charges relating to acts of property damage, conspiracy, arson and use of destructive devices.

“On January 13, 2006, three individuals were arrested in Auburn, California for allegedly conspiring to damage telephone towers, a dam and Forest Service facilities "by explosive or fire" [21]. Prosecutors allege the FBI recorded one of the suspects suggesting anti-personnel shrapnel be added to the planned bombs [22].
According to the FBI affidavit, evidence against the three came from a paid "confidential source (CS) who is deeply embedded within the subjects' cell. The CS has worked for the FBI since early 2004.”

Uh-oh, sounds like bad news for the three idealistic provocateurs who were arrested. That is, unless they start talking, as two of the Auburn eco-terrorists have agreed to do.

This is seen as the greatest form of treason imaginable by our good ol buddies over at Indybay. Some folks have gone on to say:

-“She is a snitch. There's no two ways about it.”-
-(concerning snitching) “I would die first. Youre wrong when you say we would do the same thing.”-
-“Fuck the "movement"! It's all about getting yours…”-
-“No matter what, happens, Ren will now have to live with the consequences of betraying her friends for the rest of her life. Relocating, taking a new name, college, job won't cut it. The story is out there now and will continue to haunt her. She'll always have to look behind her and wonder.....”-

Strong words, especially coming from a bunch of kids who are not facing 20+ years in prison. Don’t get me wrong, I am all about throwing these guys in prison. What they did was clearly terrorism. They took the law into their own hands and conducted actions meant to scare people into following their orders. In my eyes, the actions that they took are no different than any other extreme organization that uses fear and violence to frighten those around them into following their ideology.

But to be honest, I also have a small amount of sympathy for these eco-terrorists. The reality is that these kids got way in over their heads, and once that they realized that there was going to be major consequences for their actions, they were willing to do talk to lower the severity of their punishment. I presume it was a moment where you realize that playing revolutionary has its costs.

Unfortunately, a young person throwing themselves behind extreme leftist groups and ideas is common around specific universities and communities. A chance to feel powerful and righteous and all of that jazz, has attracted young people to radical causes for hundreds of years. Within these communities, it can all seem like a big game; one where you get to play revolutionary, but return to the comfortable life that the United States provides after a hard day of politicking. Sometimes, people go too far, and don’t recognize that they have crossed the line between radical youthful exuberance, and illegal activity.

I bet these kids hardly considered the fact that targeting dams and forest services with explosives would get them into such trouble. But when faced with the reality that they could spend the next 20 years rotting away in a prison cell, the consequences became very real.

I also don’t blame these kids for “snitching”; I hope the info they give police can stop other individuals from conducting similar exercises. And frankly, radicals that claim they would “never sell out the movement”, have likely never been in a position to test that hypothesis.

The radical leftist community should learn something from all this, but based on most of the comments pertaining to this issue at Indybay, it seems that they will not.

The Watcher adds:The radical left have a history of sending naive recruits to their destruction.