Eco-terrorism or justified resistance? Radical environmentalism and the "war on terror"

Politics and Society

Volumn 33, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 425-447

  Vanderheiden, Steve ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA DULUTH   (United States)

Author keywords

Civil disobedience; Eco terrorism; Ecotage; Just war theory; Radical envirommentalism

Indexed keywords

EID: 24944567476     PISSN: 00323292     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0032329205278462     Document Type: Review

References (28)

1. See, for example, Eric Lichtblau, "FBI Scrutinizes Antiwar Rallies," New York Times, online edition, November 23, 2003, http://www.nytimes.com. The story documents the monitoring of antiwar demonstrators as part of the FBI's counterterrorism efforts.
2. Earth Liberation Front, "Frequently Asked Questions about the Earth Liberation Front (ELF)," North American ELF Press Office, 2001, http://www.earthliberationfront .com, 27.
3. Ibid., 31.
4. Noam Chomsky, "Terror and Just Response," in Terrorism and International Justice, ed. James Sterba (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 69.
5. Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars (New York: Basic Books, 1977), 197-206.
6. U.S. Code, sec. 2332b, title 18.
7. U.S. Code, sec. 844i, title 18.
8. Dave Foreman, "Strategic Monkey wrenching," in Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkey wrenching, 3rd ed., ed. Dave Foreman and Bill Haywood (Chico, Calif.: Abbzug Press, 1993), 9.
9. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 1971), 334.
10. See, for example, Jean-Paul Sartre's preface to Franz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington (New York: Grove, 1986), 7-31,
11. in which Sartre defends FLN (National Liberation Front, or Front de Libération Nationale) terrorism in Algeria through the argument from necessity. For a critical reply, see Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 204-6.
12. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 204.
13. Martin Luther King Jr., "Letter from Birmingham Jail," in Martin Luther King Jr., Why We Can't Wait (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), 77-99.
14. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 376.
15. Earth Liberation Front, "Frequently Asked Questions," 20.
16. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 382-83.
17. Ibid., 383.
18. Ibid., 366.
19. See, for example, Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 229-32.
20. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 367.
21. Ibid., 368.
22. Foreman and Haywood, Ecodefense, 10.
23. Anti-spiking legislation was added as a rider to the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988 in a subsection entitled "Hazardous or Injurious Devices on Federal Lands" that prohibits "tree spiking devices including spikes, nails, or other objects hammered, driven, fastened, or otherwise placed into or on any timber" (U.S. Code, sec. 1864, title 18).
24. Foreman and Haywood, Ecodefense, 19.
25. Foreman (in Ecodefense) urges that "anyone spiking trees has a moral obligation to notify the 'proper authorities' that a particular area contains spiked trees and that it would be hazardous to cut those trees" (31), and that the goal is to raise the costs of timber sales and thus to provide a "long term deterrent" against further incursions into federally man-aged wilderness. To this publicity requirement, an additional marker on each spiked tree would provide an additional safeguard against injury.
26. Dave Foreman, Confessions of an Eco-Warrior (New York: Harmony Books, 1991), 118.
27. King, "Letter from Birmingham Jail," 88.
28. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 390-91.