By Nick Cooney 

In case you hadn’t heard, FBI Deputy Assistant Director John Lewis has identified the number one domestic terrorist threat to the U.S. and it’s not radical Muslims. Or right-wing paramilitary types. Or gun-toting pro-lifers. Nope, guess again. It’s animal rights and environmental activists who have never hurt or killed a single person in the U.S. in their 25-year history. 

What they have done is cause millions of dollars in damages and even more in lost profits to the logging, construction, SUV, pharmaceutical, and fur industries—all of which (with the exception of the fur industry) are major lobbying powers in Congress. 

Among the many opportunistic post-9/11 agendas pursued by the outgoing Republican majority is a drastic increase in funds, per- sonnel, and judicial leeway granted to law enforcement agencies like the FBI and the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) for pursuing grassroots animal rights activists. Some cases in point: in 2002, over 100 FBI agents investigated a single animal rights group, Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty USA (SHAC-USA). PATRIOT Act- sanctioned wiretaps of phones and emails of animal activists have become commonplace, as have airport detentions on both domestic and international flights for members of non-profits like Hugs For Puppies and Student Organization for Animal Rights chapters. FBI employees and FBI-backed investigators have engaged in romantic and sexual relationships with activists to try to pry information out of them. Raids on the homes of activists by armed JTTF agents are also a regular occurrence. In November 2006 seven individuals in Santa Monica, California had their homes ransacked by government agents for the “crime” of attending a peaceful demonstration against the POM Juice Company, which funds animal tests. One of these individuals was former child star Pam Ferdin, the voice of Lucy in the classic Peanuts television show. Lucy getting her house raided by the JTTF? It’s enough to make even Snoopy cry. 

But not enough, apparently, for the federal government. In a much-touted case, six volunteers with SHAC-USA were each sentenced in September 2006 to up to six years in federal prison for operating a website and newsletter and organizing protests at the homes of pharmaceutical executives. On November 27, 2006 President Bush signed into law the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA), a bill which labels as terrorists those who engage in sit-ins, civil disobedience, trespass, or any other crime in the name of animal rights. 

To be clear, this bill is not aimed at squeaky clean groups like the Humane Society or even at the controversial People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)— both of which have the financial and legal resources to take on spurious charges. AETA, and the corresponding crackdown, is aimed at grassroots animal activists who lend their weekends and occasional evenings towards speaking out against cruelty to animals. Most have little money, no legal experience, and often belong to informal volunteer organizations. 

The nature of the Bush administration’s war on grassroots animal activists bears similarities to that of the war in Iraq. The first is the use of loaded language and fear- mongering to create an easy to loathe enemy. Iraq was part of an “axis of evil” and supposedly had weapons of mass destruction it planned to use against the U.S. Animal activists are “domestic terrorists” out to end scientific research and attack anyone with a piece of meat on their plate. Second is the violation of the civil liberties of a now-marginalized group. Third, the war against this perceived terror threat is being waged even though a majority of Americans don’t see a need for it and don’t want to pay for it. Ask a dozen people on the street to list their top ten safety concerns and you can be sure “animal rights activists” won’t be making it onto any of those lists. They probably wouldn’t even crack the top 100. 

The final similarity is that the bottom line is corporate profit. The industries targeted by animal activists are wealthy, influential, and, apparently, very vulnerable. Take, for instance, Huntingdon Life Sciences (HL, a major contract animal testing laboratory based in New Jersey and targeted by animal rights groups like SHAC USA after undercover exposes showed a worker punching four-month-old puppies in the face. Focused protest pressure in the U.S. and abroad has left HLS $100 million in debt, kicked off of every stock exchange in the world, and forced to sell all of its property just to stay afloat. Major pharmaceutical companies like Roche, Johnson & Johnson, GlaxoSmithKline, and others have been targeted by activists for contracting experiments at Hunting- don; many have responded by cutting their financial support for HLS. 

visit http://zmagsite.zmag.org/May2007/cooney0507.html

for entire article