My trusty LexusNexus search turned up a most disturbing article (subscription required) in today's (7/24/04) Economist on the successes of Animal Rights Extremism in the UK. I'll post a link when it's available online, but for the time being I'll just excerpt it at length.
The article makes several points I routinely hammer here: i) terrorism works; ii) the most successful techniques are to target 3rd parties (I want to stop Oxford from building a lab, I target the people building it ...); iii) the British government talks tough, but seems unable or unwilling to act tough.
Most importantly, this article notes - ominously to my mind - that the ARA's terror tactics have been adopted by another agenda-driven group.
Read and weep:
Unreason is on the march, and a lab in Oxford is the latest casualty
DEALING with blackmailers and attempts to kill their staff are not among the core skills of the construction industry in Britain. For the companies contracted to build a new research laboratory at Oxford University, however, threats from thugs now outstrip traditional builders' foes like bad weather and fussy architects. So far, they are losing. Travis Perkins, which supplies building materials, stopped delivering in March. This week Montpellier Group pulled out of the contract to build the laboratory. Another victim is RMC Group, which supplied cement. Its plant at Chertsey was set on fire and its distinctive orange trucks have had their brake pipes and cables cut and their tyres slashed. An anonymous posting on Arkangel, a website for animal-rights fanatics, boasted that another raid, on the company's Bournemouth offices, cost it £250,000.
Animal-rights extremists have used the same tactics on Montpellier and RMC that have worked before on suppliers to Huntingdon Life Sciences, a research laboratory near Cambridge. The victims receive hundreds of phone calls, faxes and e-mails, making it difficult for them to function normally. If this fails, senior managers or directors may receive threatening letters, warning them to pull out of a contract, or else. The "or else" can be pretty nasty: sending forged criminal records to company directors' neighbours, purportedly showing the executives to be paedophiles, for example.
If a company is publicly traded, it can be hit that way. Montpellier's shareholders received bogus letters purporting to be from senior management, urging them to sell before the animal-rights campaign took effect. That made the company's share price crash (see chart).
[ . . . ]
The government has spoken out loudly in Oxford's defence. Lord Sainsbury, the science minister, promised the "fullest support" to make sure the laboratory is completed on time. David Blunkett, the home secretary, called the animal-rights extremists "internal terrorists" and promised an announcement shortly on toughening up existing legislation.
Nice words. But the signs are that the proposals will not bring the kind of big changes to the law that the pharmaceutical industry wants. That may not be a problem, since the police already have powers to deal with extremists. More worrying is the apparent ineffectiveness of the units that already exist to deal with animal-rights extremism: NETCO (the National Extremism Tactical Co-ordination Unit) and Operation Co-ord. NETCO in particular is staffed by junior policemen, rather than tough anti-terrorism specialists. [emphasis added - Ed.]
The success of animal-rights extremists has also inspired other groups to carry out illegal activities, albeit at a lower intensity. Bayer, a multinational biotech firm, says anti-genetic-modification groups have started to hassle its directors, pour paint-stripper on cars and smash windows at plants. This has not shown up on the bottom line yet, but the company says that it makes it "harder to convince executives that Britain is a good place to do business." [emphasis added - Ed.]
A month ago, I wrote that I was very concerned that these tactics might be adopted by other extremist groups:
When you see how successful these tactics are in damaging businesses, which is to say hurting a country's economy, it's a wonder that other, more lethal terrorist organizations - like radical Islamic groups - haven't adapted these tactics to their own ends.
The Economist article continues:
Gloom about the prospects for GM in Britain has also led Syngenta, the last crop-science company with a research and development arm in Britain, to move to America, draining the brains of British geneticists and reducing the pool of funding for university research. "Companies don't move to America and continue to fund PhDs in Norwich," the Agricultural Biotechnology Council says.
In short: a bunch of fanatics and their woolly-minded backers threaten science, business and the rule of law.
The threat that the "wooly-minded" AR terrorists and the radical Eco-breathern pose is indeed a threat to the rule of Western law itself.
The threat derives from the invention and perfection of a disorganized-organization and its ability to recruit and instruct anonymous true believers, and the coincident perfection of novel tactics of third-party intimidation.
Both the organization and the tactics can be readily adapted to the requirements of other radical groups. I see this as being roughly analogous to chemical or biological weapons being readily available - when that happens, all bets are off: any nutcase or extremist group - indeed any group with real or imagined grievances - could use their "tools" in whatever way they want.
Indeed, we're already seeing the "spread" of the AR tactics in the GM example cited above. The fact that the AR people have been so successful at furthering their agenda, and the British government has shown itself to be impotent at stopping them, suggests to me that we're going to see this brand of terrorism spread much further.
I don't think the violent AR- and Eco-extremists can be understood in terms of western concepts of morality or compromise, the primacy of logic and facts in deciding what course of action to take or not take, what goals are worthy or unworthy of pursuit, or respect for the written law of mere humans.
Rather, they're motivated by a profound belief that their cause is righteous. Their thinking combines a dangerous mix of deeply held-religious conviction, acceptance of violence as a legitimate instrument for political change, and a sense that without radical change the world and all its creatures will be doomed.
As an article of faith, the radicals accept that humans are intrinsically evil, and that all that is bad in the world is the product of human self-interest, materialism and arrogance (meaning humans don't accord the world and it's non-human life forms adequate reverence). Only nature uncontrolled and unsullied by humans is pure, and it is their moral imperative to restore nature's purity.
You can't reason with these people - they are religions fanatics (see here, here and here for example). You can't buy them off ... you can't scare them off .... They are doing Gods work.
There aren't very many of these people, but then there doesn't need to be: they're bringing to its knees the entire biomedical research endeavor of a fully modern, first world nation. They are demonstrating to the world their ability to drive companies out of business, stop construction projects and force companies to relocate across the sea, taking with them some of the country's best minds. That should chill everyone with even half a brain - they're making it look just too easy.
I think we're just beginning to see an entirely new way people with real or imagined grievances seek redress.
And that's what's truly frightening about the unwillingness or inability, so far, of the British government to bring their terrorists to justice.
Brian