--- Steven Bissell <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Re: Violence, terrorism, and ee, Re: U of WashingtonJust a thought. If
> all
> environmentalists are painted with the same brush because of ELF, why
> isn't
> the VFW indicted along with Timothy McVeigh?
Well Steven, I'd take a guess that the Editors of the WSJ probably view
all environmentalists, rightly or wrongly, as nutjobs. Also they view
McVeigh as a nutjob, but not the VFW.
I think Jim does a valid point though. He is talking about perceptions
which don't always correspond to reality, unfortunately. For many people
out there the differences between ELF, EarthFirst! and Greenpeace are
nill. As such perhaps it is wise for the more moderate groups to put some
distance between themselves and the more radical groups.
Steve
> Steven
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Discussion forum for environmental ethics.
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Jim Tantillo
> Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2001 5:18 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Violence, terrorism, and ee, Re: U of Washington
> firebombing
>
>
> Hi John, hi everybody,
>
>
> Well, I thought I'd stay away from the Timothy McVeigh topic, but . .
> .
>
>
> JF wrote:
> Timothy McVeigh is violent, not deep ecologists.
>
>
> The lead editorial of the Wall Street Journal today lumps Timothy
> McVeigh
> in together with "the Earth First arsonists who blow up biotech labs."
> Here's the excerpt:
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------
>
>
> "Political fanatics, such as Timothy McVeigh or the
> abortion-clinic bombers or the Earth First arsonists who blow up biotech
> labs, have no patience with the complications of representative
> politics.
> But so many more people do in fact revere and respect what went into the
> slow construction of a system of politics. We in the United States are
> the
> fortunate ones to have it, as today are virtually all of the millions
> who
> live in Europe, and a world away, those who have joined this same
> political
> community--Japan and such quickly emerging nations as South Korea and
> Taiwan. When a Timothy McVeigh emerges in systems such as these, he
> attracts as much attention as this homicidal twerp has received the past
> few
> days because he is _not the norm_. He is a freak."
> ("McVeigh's Politics," editorial, p. A22, June 12, 2001)
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------
>
>
> There you have it. I'm not sure that it is ANY environmentalist's
> interest--or in the interest of the environment, for that matter--to
> have
> Earth First mentioned in the same breath with Timothy McVeigh. Skeptics
> on
> the list will immediately object to the inaccuracy of the WSJ editorial:
> after all, EarthFirst!ers are not the ones blowing up biotech labs. But
> that inaccuracy is precisely my point. The Wall Street Journal doesn't
> know
> EarthFirst! from the Earth Liberation Front from Greenpeace. All
> environmentalists are hurt when any environmentalists are categorized as
> "homicidal twerps" and "freaks" like McVeigh.
>
>
> As a pragmatic or prudential matter, the activities of Earth
> Liberators or
> deep ecologists who resort to violence reflect poorly on ALL
> environmentalists. The characterizations of such environmentalists in
> the
> media (whether accurate or inaccurate) hurt ALL environmentalists. The
> phenomenon of ecoterror makes EVERY environmentalist's job that much
> more
> difficult.
>
>
> And ecoterror likely accomplishes nothing. As the WSJ editorial
> comments,
> ". . . in a country of some 260 million people, virtually every last one
> of
> them believes that Timothy McVeigh's act of political protest
> accomplished
> absolutely nothing."
>
>
> And anyone searching for some theoretical underpinning to what is
> essentially a prudentialist argument *against* ecoterror would do well
> to
> look at what is currently being done under the guise of "environmental
> pragmatism," e.g. the kind of stuff seen in Light's and Katz's volume of
> the
> same name. (fwiw . . . "Environmental pragmatism, as a coherent
> philosophical position, connects the methodology of classical American
> pragmatist thought to the explanation, solution and discussion of real
> issues," from the Routledge Press web catalogue.)
>
>
> Jim T.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Does it take a PhD to write
> that "all deep ecologists were violet", may be they should have
> PhD's
> squared, as in PHD[+2] and so on. I think the acronym means piled
> higher
> and
> deeper. So if you have a PhD, then you are 'deeper' and the Dr. of
> Science
> in Ecology would by definition be a Deep Ecologist....a Dr. of Dirt
> is
> Deep....
>
> "I have been paddling at the shallow end of the pool all my life.
> The
> sun
> shines there just as much as at the deep end of the pool." Bill
> Richardson,
> CBC radio, the Goat. "Richardson's Roundup"
>
> jmf
>
> Clearcut, BC
> Canada
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Steven Bissell <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2001 7:55 AM
> Subject: Re: Violence, terrorism, and ee, Re: U of Washington
> firebombing
>
>
> > I thought you said "all deep ecologists were violet." Imagine my
> confusion.
> > Steven
> >
> > In the final analysis one should think only
> > of one single science: the science of man,
> > or, more exactly expressed, social science,
> > of which our own existence constitutes at
> > once the principle and the purpose and in
> > which the rational study of the external
> > world naturally comes to merge, for this
> > double reason that the science of nature is
> > a necessary constituent of and a basic
> > preamble to social science.
> >
> > Auguste Comte
> > Discourses, 1884
> >
>
=====
"In a nutshell, he [Steve] is 100% unadulterated evil. I do not believe in a 'Satan', but this man is as close to 'the real McCoy' as they come."
--Jamey Lee West
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail - only $35
a year! http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/
|
