Activist sentenced to 20 years: ELF & ALF direct actions continue

Compiled by Sachie Godwin

June 18, 2001 — Jeffrey Michael “Free” Luers (pictured below), 22, an anarchist affiliated with the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), was sentenced to more than 20 years in prison for torching three vehicles at a Eugene, Oregon truck dealership and causing $400,000 in damage. Luers was sentenced to 272 months -- minus six months for time served while he was awaiting trial.

Luers was convicted on June 6 of arson, criminal mischief and manufacturing and possessing a destructive device for a June 16, 2000 fire at the Romania Truck Center. Luers also was convicted of several charges in the Tyree Oil Inc. attempted arson on May 27, 2000.

Several states have adopted special penalties for “eco-terrorism.” In Oregon this year, crimes against research, livestock and agricultural facilities were made part of the state’s racketeering laws — punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

Though the State insisted on linking the Romania and Tyree Oil Company incidents together, Luers maintains he had no involvement in the attempted arson at Tyree Oil.

Despite the fact that no one was injured in the Romania fire, Lane County Circuit Judge Lyle Velure ruled the arsons could have posed a significant risk to individuals in the neighborhood and to those who discovered and fought the fire.

The stiff sentence for Luers was welcomed by the county district attorney’s office.

“Here’s a guy who was intentionally setting large fires, trying to damage people and property. It’s the type of behavior that warrants this sentence,” said Chief Deputy District Attorney Kent Mortimore.

Another activist implicated in the Romania arson, Craig “Critter” Marshall (pictured below), 28, accepted a plea bargain last November and is serving a five and a half year sentence.

The Romania truck lot was hit again this past March. At least 30 sport utility vehicles were destroyed and $1 million in damages incurred. No suspects have been named in that arson attack, which occurred just days before Luers went on trial.

At his sentencing Luers took responsibility for the first Romania fire, and emphasizing the care he took to ensure no one would be injured:

“It cannot be said that I am unfeeling or uncaring. My heart is filled with love and compassion. I fight to protect life....all life. Not to take it. It’s not an exaggeration to say that we’re experiencing a period of extinction equal to that of the dinosaurs. Forty thousand species go extinct each year, yet we continue to pollute and exploit the natural world... I will not ask this court to grant me leniency. All I ask is that you believe the sincerity of my words, and that you believe that my actions, whether or not you believe them to be misguided, stem from the love I have in my heart.”

But Judge Velure responded by saying that he “never doubted Free’s sincerity.” He stated that Luers’ political beliefs would not influence the sentencing, that he would be sentenced “solely on the severity of the crimes.”

The judge made many comments during the trial that indicated he had already decided his verdict. He was often seen completely ignoring the testimony, typing on his laptop instead of listening. An appeal is already underway, according to Luers’ defense committee.

Stiffer sentencing, FBI investigation

Arrests and convictions of ELF and Animal Liberation Front (ALF) activists have been rare, but there is an increase in legislation that would further criminalize economic sabotage as well as an FBI investigation of the organizations.

Washington state activists Justin C. Samuel and Peter D. Young were convicted for raids on Wisconsin farms in 1997 in which 3,600 mink were released.

The FBI tracked Samuel down in Belgium, where he was arrested in 1999. He pleaded guilty in August 2000 and was sentenced to two years in prison. Young is still a fugitive.

Charlie Mandigo, Seattle FBI chief, believes aggressive prosecution of people for less serious crimes such as releasing mink will deter those who have progressed to more dangerous actions, such as arson.

In Washington, Rep. Kirk Pearson, introduced a bill this session that would define “eco-terrorism” as “criminal sabotage,” carrying a penalty of five years in prison.

In Congress, Rep. George Nethercutt, introduced a bill this month that would provide for a mandatory minimum sentence of five years for “eco-terrorist” arson attacks. The bill also would let prosecutors seek the death penalty should anyone die in such attacks.

Phil Donegan, acting special agent in charge of the FBI’s Portland office, is heading a nationwide investigation that includes local police, the Forest Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. The goal is to take down ELF and ALF.

Earlier this year, a federal grand jury in Portland, Oregon called Craig Rosebraugh, who acts as ELF’s media spokesman, to testify in Luers trial.

Somehow the fact that Rosebraugh has emerged as ELF’s spokesperson suggests to agent Donegan that the ELF has the structure of an international terrorist group.

Direct actions continue

Despite the harsh sentence meted out to Luers, direct actions by the ALF and the ELF continue across the country.

In Moscow, Idaho ELF claimed responsibility for sabotaging the University of Idaho biotechnology building on June 10 in opposition to genetic engineering on. This is the second strike by the ELF at the new biotech building. Among other genetic engineering research projects, the University of Idaho, in partnership with Monsanto’s Naturemark, genetically modifies potatoes to be resistant to various viruses and pests.

On June 10th in Filer, Idaho, anti-biotech activists destroyed thousands of Round-up Ready peas at Seminis research center. According to the communiqué, “A bunch of us around here doing farming and trucking crops decided to find out anything we could about Seminis. These peas weren’t normal. They had their genes changed to make the plants stay alive when sprayed with glyphosate herbicide (Roundup).”

In Salt Lake City, Utah, on June 12, ALF claimed responsibility for smashing windows at a local branch of New Jersey-based retailer Bed Bath & Beyond for their financial association with Stephens Inc., an investment company also based in New Jersey. Stephens has been targeted by animal rights activists for their financial bailout of Huntington Life Sciences (HLS), Europe’s largest animal testing company.

The action is part of an ongoing campaign to convince Stephens to divest themselves of HLS, “(all) companies that are associated with Stephens in any way will be considered targets,” according to the communique.

The next day in Long Island, NY an anonymous communiqué release jointly by the ALF and ELF take credit for attacks on five Bank of New York buildings on Long Island. Activists glued locks and ATM machines, spray painted slogans on all the branches, and smashed over 25 windows at BNY office in Farmingdale.

These actions were also part of the campaign to encourage divestment and disassociation with HLS.

The Earth Liberation Front is an international underground organization that uses direct action in the form of economic sabotage to stop the destruction of the natural environment.

No one has ever been injured in any ALF/ELF incidents.

Sources: Frontline Information Service: frontline@rocketmail.com, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Associated Press, ELF website: www.earthliberationfront.com

For more information: www.animalliberation.com

College students stand trial for protesting Plan Colombia

June 19-- Six students will stand trial on June 20, 2001 in Washington, DC for a nonviolent demonstration against the Sikorsky Corporation, manufacturer of the Black Hawk helicopter. The six students, all from Oberlin College, locked themselves around a pillar inside the Sikorsky Corporation’s conference at the National Guard Memorial Museum on April 2, 2001 to protest the $221 million profit Sikorsky is making off the “War on Drugs” in Colombia.

In the June 20th trial, two of the students, Sarah Saunders of Lake Orion, MI and Jackie Downing of Topsfield, MA, will testify about the violence and poisoning of food crops in Colombia, both consequences of the US-funded “War on Drugs” that they witnessed while visiting Colombia in January 2001.

The Sikorsky Corporation is supplying 30 Black Hawk helicopters to the Colombian military as part of Plan Colombia. In addition to accompanying fumigation planes, the helicopters are used to fly American and Colombian soldiers into direct combat. “These helicopters are not being used for peaceful purposes, as Sikorsky claims,” said Kate Berrigan. “We believe that helicopters and military aid will not bring an end to the 40-year civil war or the drug trade in Colombia.”

The students remained in the conference room for more than four hours, successfully causing the opening session of the conference to be canceled, while 100 supporters demonstrated outside the museum. At 8pm they voluntarily unlocked themselves and were arrested for unlawful entry. They now face a maximum sentence of 6 months in jail and a $100 fine.

The six students (Jackie Downing, 21, Sarah Bania-Dobyns, 22, Kate Berrigan, 19, Rebecca Johnson, 21, Laurel Paget-Seekins, 21, and Sarah Saunders, 20) will defend themselves, arguing that they acted out of an international tradition of nonviolent civil disobedience to raise public awareness and change policy.

According to Laurel Paget-Seekins, “We are willing to risk jail time to bring attention to the flawed priorities in the US’s war on drugs. US tax dollars should be spent on drug treatment and to rebuild our communities, not to enrich private corporations, build prisons and cause suffering in Latin American countries like Colombia.”

Source: School of the Americas Watch: www.soaw.org

Activists step up Vieques protests

Vieques, Puerto Rico, June 17— Anti-US Navy activists stepped up protests Sunday, with more than 30 demonstrators reportedly invading a firing range on the eve of a new round of bombing exercises on Vieques Island.

Emboldened by President Bush’s announcement last week that the Navy would leave the Puerto Rican island in two years, protesters said they would be satisfied only with the Navy’s immediate withdrawal.

The demonstrators who entered the range hoped their presence would force a delay of bombing runs scheduled for Monday, said Maria Velazquez, a leader of the activist Mount Carmelo community at the edge of government land.

“We helped cut the fence and put them through,” Velazquez said. “They have water, food, flares. They’re prepared to stay for as long as it takes.”

Navy spokeswoman Lt. Cmdr. Katherine Goode said security officers were searching the rugged range for trespassers. Navy jets from the USS Theodore Roosevelt were to begin dropping non-explosive bombs Monday morning, she said.

“Bush’s decision shows that our civil disobedience campaigns have been effective,” said Jose Paralitici, spokesman for the group All Puerto Rico With Vieques. “We have to keep it up. You don’t stop rowing a boat when you’re almost to the shore.”

Government drops court order as Independent Media Center prepares a legal challenge

Statement of Independent Media Center

In a case involving internet press freedom, the US government withdrew a previously-issued court order directing the Independent Media Center (IMC) in Seattle to hand over computer server logs. The April 21 order instructed the IMC, a not-for-profit internet-based news organization, to hand over logs and other records pertaining to the IMC’s coverage of anti-globalization protests in Quebec City. The government’s retreat represents a victory for the IMC, where volunteers and a national legal team had been preparing to challenge the order in court.

The IMC is undecided about further legal action. IMC counsel Nancy Chang of the Center for Constitutional Rights comments: “Although the court order has been withdrawn, the IMC’s concerns over the government’s ability to use internet technology for surveillance of political activists continue to linger.”

At the time of the order’s issuance, FBI and Secret Service agents claimed that they needed the server logs to assist in an investigation related to sensitive documents which had been stolen from Canadian police, then posted to the IMC website by an anonymous journalist. The agents also falsely claimed that posted documents contained details of George Bush’s travel itinerary. Bush was at the time attending the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City.

IMC volunteers learned several weeks ago that police in Quebec identified and arrested three suspects in the stolen documents case, without any information provided by the IMC. Still, the US government neither amended nor withdrew its order against the IMC until today, instead allowing the order to continue absorbing the volunteer organization’s personnel and legal resources. The timing of the original order, issued while mass protests were still underway in Quebec City, suggests that the government intended to produce a chilling effect among IMC journalists covering those protests - a suggestion then strengthened by the government’s failure to withdraw its order, even weeks after the Canadian arrests.

The IMC did not comply with the order, which would have involved handing over the individual internet protocol (IP) addresses of over 1.25 million journalists, readers and technical volunteers who accessed the IMC website on April 20 and 21, a much broader sweep than the stated focus of the government’s investigation. According to IMC counsel Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, “This kind of fishing expedition is another in a long line of overbroad and onerous attempts to chill political speech and activism. Back in 1956, Alabama tried to force the NAACP to give up its membership lists — but the Supreme Court stopped them. This order to IMC, even without the ‘gag,’ is a threat to free speech, free association, and privacy.”

The case drew immediate interest from some of the nation’s top First Amendment advocacy organizations. With help from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the Center for Constitutional Rights and others, the IMC prepared to challenge the invasive order in court. However, on the eve of the IMC’s planned court filing, the government suddenly withdrew the order. IMC volunteers speculate that government lawyers realized the likelihood that the order would be struck down on constitutional grounds, and decided to retreat rather than face a court defeat.

“The government owes the IMC, its many users, and the general public an explanation,” said Tien. “Maybe that will prevent this sort of thing from happening again.” With the court order withdrawn, the IMC is denied the immediate opportunity to have the courts rule on several serious constitutional rights concerns, including:

* Under US law, freedom of speech guarantees the right to speak anonymously. This principle has been established repeatedly in the federal courts, and has been found recently to apply to internet speech as well. On April 19, District Judge Thomas Zilly ruled in Seattle that internet firm 2TheMart.com could not compel an internet chat room host to identify anonymous users who had criticized the firm online.

* Freedom of association, particularly anonymous association, is afforded very strong protections under the law. Anonymity in public discourse has been a central theme in the history of American democracy; even the Federalist Papers were published under fictitious names. On the internet, anonymity is particularly important because it enables individuals to disguise their race, gender, class or other indicators which might lead to their marginalization in public space.

* Journalists hold a qualified privilege from compelled disclosure of sources and other work product. The Constitution requires this protection because court-compelled disclosure of newsgathering materials poses a serious threat to the vitality of the newsgathering process and a free press. The government’s order falsely described the IMC as an internet service provider, rather than as a news organization. Independent journalists posting stories or photographs to IMC websites are entitled to the same protections as any other member of the news media.

The IMC was launched in Fall 1999 to provide immediate, authentic, grassroots coverage of protests against the WTO. Just a year and a half later, the IMC network has reached around the world, with dozens of sites scattered across six continents. Each IMC’s news coverage centers upon its open-publishing newswire, an innovative and democratizing system allowing anyone with access to an internet connection to become a journalist. Open publishing enables the IMC to present local and national issues from diverse perspectives, independent of many filters and biases affecting mainstream media coverage.

The IMC’s mission statement reads: “The Independent Media Center is a grassroots organization committed to using media production and distribution as tools promoting social and economic justice. It is our goal to further the self-determination of people under-represented in media production and content, and to illuminate and analyze local and global issues that impact ecosystems, communities and individuals. We seek to generate alternatives to the biases inherent in the corporate media controlled by profit, and to identify and create positive models for a sustainable and equitable society.”

Source: Industrial Workers of the World New Service: iww-news-admin@iww.org

Cuba awards medical scholarships to US students

By David Gonzalez

Havana, Cuba— The brave, the proud, the few. The Marines? Not for Mirtha Arzu, though the lure of scholarship money almost led her to enlist a year ago in the Bronx. Instead, she joined an even more select group of adventurers: the first Americans to study medicine in Cuba courtesy of President Fidel Castro.

Arzu and another student from the Bronx are among eight young people from the United States who received scholarships to the Latin American School of Medical Sciences. They are undergoing a six-year course of study alongside aspiring doctors from 24 Latin American, Caribbean and African nations. Chosen from more than 100 applicants from disadvantaged families, they intend to return to the United States and practice medicine in the same poor communities where they grew up.

The scholarships, which will be extended to another group that is scheduled to arrive in September, are the latest twist in Cuba’s longtime emphasis on not only healing hearts and minds, but also winning them over. Mr. Castro has long sent medical workers overseas to help struggling nations, and Cuba’s own medical system — though beleaguered by shortages— has been praised by some experts as a model for community and preventive medicine, especially in the third world.

Showing up the United States has also been one of Mr. Castro’s passions, which is most likely another reason he suggested the scholarship program last year to members of the Congressional Black Caucus who were visiting Havana.

American students are participating with the permission of the United States government, which recognizes the program as a cultural and educational exchange.

The application and screening process for the program was carried out by members of Pastors for Peace, a group based in the United States that has opposed the trade embargo against Cuba and has itself sponsored caravans to take medicine to the island. Applicants had to be high school graduates, 18 to 25 years old, from disadvantaged backgrounds. While the ability to speak Spanish helped, it was not required.

Arzu’s early experiences with medicine were not exactly auspicious.

“I remember being in Lincoln Hospital with my mother for over six hours and crying because she was in pain,” she said. “She was in the emergency room and nobody saw her. What I noticed is that doctors have forgotten about the people. Yes, there is good money; it can help you survive. But if you are going to take care of others, you have to make sure they are really O.K.”

For the next two and a half years, over 5,000 students enrolled at the school will take basic science and premedical courses at the school’s main campus, which is a seaside complex of laboratories, dormitories and classrooms in what used to be a naval academy. After that, they will begin their formal medical education and work in one of the island’s hospitals.

Administrators at the school, who said the students had adjusted well, are sensitive to criticism that the young people are being indoctrinated.

“This is a medical school with the qualities that we have,” said Dr. Juan Carizo Estevez, the rector. “What it does have is a human goal. We teach with love and humanity and tell the students we work with every day that their hearts will grow more and more when they return to their communities to work. It is a less commercial view of medicine, where they see the patient as a patient, and not as a number on a budget. If that is politics, then everything should be as political. It’s human.”

Source: The New York Times

Oil companies created artificial shortage to boost profits

By H. Josef Hebert

Washington, DC, June 14–– Even as the Bush administration cites a lack of refineries as a cause of energy shortages, oil industry documents show that five years ago companies were looking for ways to cut refinery output to raise profits.

The internal memos involving several major oil companies were released Thursday by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., whose office obtained them from a whistleblower. He said the materials did not necessarily reflect any illegal activities but said some of them “sure look very anti-competitive.”

Because it takes about four years to build a large refinery, planning for a new plant would have had to begin by the mid-1990s, energy experts say. There has not been a new refinery built in the United States in 25 years; in the meantime, dozens of small ones have closed.

The documents obtained by Wyden’s office suggest that in the mid-1990s oil companies had no interest in building refineries because of low profit margins. In fact, companies were discussing the need to curtail refinery output in order to make more money, the documents suggest.

“If the US petroleum industry doesn’t reduce its refining capacity, it will never see any substantial increase in refinery margins (profits),” said an internal Chevron document in November 1995, citing views presented by participants at an American Petroleum Institute conference.

A year later, an official at Texaco, in a memo marked “highly confidential,” called concerns about too much refinery capacity “the most critical factor” facing the refinery industry. Excess capacity is producing “very poor refining financial results,” the memo said.

Wyden said the documents “raise significant questions about whether America’s oil companies tried to pull off a financial triple play – boosting profits by reducing refinery capacity, tagging consumers with higher pump prices and then arguing for environmental rollbacks.”