Government Control and the Green Scare Essays - Terrorism

Government Control and the Green Scare In the twenty first century, our greatest war is the War on Terror. For Americans, ever since 9/11 we fear more than ever for our security at home more than abroad. Our security is tighter than ever, sometimes to the point of being ridiculous, and we have been taught to accept government agencies stepping on our rights because it "keeps us safe." We have entered into an age of racial profiling, distrust, and fear that has allowed our government to use bills like the P.A.T.R.I.O.T Act to work around our individual rights. In times of fear, we are more pliable to the influences of those who claim they can protect us. This era of fear leads us into a big issue that is often not discussed or is hushed up: the unlawful arrest of activists in the name of homeland security. And the environmental activists have seen the worst of it. Environmental activists are an easy target for a suspicious government and a willingly submissive public. They are easy to target because they, in general, are outspoken and sometimes violent. Because they try to be so in the public eye, they become easy targets to track down unlike more allusive enemies. Michael Brady Although this violence is very rarely targeted at people, this still gives the government ammunition to detain violent and nonviolent protestors alike. And because the government and the media have become so adapt at making environmental activists look like radical terrorists, the general public lets cases like the SHAC 7 happen unjustly. Even when it is fair for activists to be brought up on charges, they are more often than not given inflated sentences, sometimes being sentenced longer than violent religious terrorists who were out to do harm (Potter). If you go to the website for Terrorism Research and Analysis Consortium' or TRAC', you will find that even within organizations there is some confusion as to the threat of environmental terrorism in our country. The blurb under Environmental Terrorist Groups' reads, "Most Significant Terror Threat to the United States since 1976, environmental terrorists within the United States have carried out over one thousand criminal acts and caused over one hundred and ten million dollars worth of damage. But the image of environmental activists as dangerous, even violent criminals is still jarring to the average American. We do not tend to think of environmental activism as being in the same category as other types of "terrorists" - including militias, jihadists or nationalist activists throughout the world. However, the Federal Bureau of Investigation defines environmental terrorism (or ecoterrorism) as Michael Brady the most significant domestic terror threat facing the United States today. And this threat is seen to have increased significantly in the past twenty years in terms of the types of acts committed, their potential for deadly violence and the numbers of individuals involved in committing these acts." The most significant domestic terror threat facing the US. Yes, you read that correctly. Not white supremacy, not radical extremism, but environmental activism is our nations greatest threat. They even admit the fact that it is very hard for most Americans to image environmental activists as terrorists and yet they are. There has yet to be a single human killed in an action put forward by an environmental rights group, yet they are labeled our most dangerous threat. Here is where the issue starts. With the FBI. Before I discuss the FBI's current issues of attack, lets remind ourselves of the government's past intrusions on our civil liberties, the most famous and most recent case being the Red Scare of the Cold War. Following the end of World War II, the US and the USSR moved into a state of nonviolent war. A power play really. As the world's two great super powers, they both wanted to one up each other constantly. And they were constantly fearing that the others political theory would take over the others. Because of this, the US feel into this constant fear of the Red Scare', a fear that communism would take over. This fear gave government officials like Joseph McCarthy the right to recreate the age-old witch-hunt. For the