[discuss-dan] ELF articles & media propaganda

["Doug Bohm" <doug@denverradio.org>]

These were pretty informative articles for the NY Times.  I didn't know they
still had reporters working there.
A lot of noticeable PR 'easter eggs' hidden in these articles.

My biggest beef is with the comments that are attributed to Rosebraugh in
the first article, particularly this paragraph which I have broke down to
its three sentences & I placed brackets around the key words:

...Rosebraugh said the group does not disclose
information about its [members].

The 'reporter' suggests that ELF is a 'member' organization and implies that
this 'group' does not "disclose information" (i.e. cooperate.)

The group is deliberately decentralized, he said, to prevent the
authorities from [identifying] its [leaders].

The 'reporter' ups the ante by suggesting that ELF has 'leaders' (if it has
leaders it must have members) who cannot be 'identified' by 'authorities'
because the group is "deliberately decentralized" (an ambiguous
contradiction for those in the know.)

He said the ELF press office, in Portland, acts merely as a
conduit between the news media and [members], who
communicate with [it] anonymously and in ways Mr.
Rosebraugh would not [identify].

Beautifully bad sentence structure!  Again, the 'reporter' asserts that ELF
is a 'member' organization.  Also the use of the pronoun 'it' is an
abstraction, which could be read any number of ways. The 'it' could refer to
any number of entities mentioned in the entire paragraph. Of course the
implication is 'members' are communicating with 'Rosebaugh' who will not
'identify' the 'leaders' and/or 'members', which puts a lot of the spotlight
on Rosebaugh as a 'leader' who the reporter implies is uncooperative (the
air of cooperation was established by the 17-year olds plea in the previous
paragraphs).

These three sentences are packed with some good propaganda nuggets.  Twice
the reporter uses 'identity' as a crucial point. That "prevent authorities
from identifying" and  "Rosebraugh would not identify" solidifying Rosebaugh
as uncooperative to authorities.  The most troubling indication of
propaganda in this paragraph appears in every sentence wit the use of the
phrases "Rosebraugh said" in the first sentence & "he said" in the last two,
because the reporter uses absolutely no quotes around any of the words!

The major propaganda points of the articles seems to be:
ELF is a national organization. (This is an attempt to make sympathizers
guilty by association)
ELF members are terrorists. (Would those being 'terrorized', other than
corps & gov, please stand up)
Rosebaugh knows more than he's saying. (By the use of attributing remarks
not in quotes and let's pin him as the leader)

Thanks Jill for bringing these articles to our attention.

 -----Original Message-----
From: 	Jill Dreier [mailto:jcdreier@yahoo.com]
Sent:	Wednesday, February 14, 2001 10:11 AM
To:	discuss-dan@yahoogroups.com
Subject:	[discuss-dan] 2 articles regarding ELF in Long Island

Youths Held in Eco-Terror Are Reported Nearing Plea
New York Times-By AL BAKER
ARDEN CITY, N.Y., Feb. 13 - Lawyers for two young
suspects in an underground campaign of arson and
destruction in Suffolk County are in negotiations with
federal prosecutors that could result in guilty pleas
in Federal District Court as soon as Wednesday, a law
enforcement official said today.
The two suspects, whom the authorities would not
identify, are not the first to enter into plea
negotiations with the federal authorities
investigating
more than two dozen recent acts of violence for which
a radical environmental group, the Earth Liberation
Front, has claimed responsibility.
On Friday, Jared McIntyre, the 17- year-old son of a
New York City police sergeant, pleaded guilty to arson
at a hearing in United States District Court in
Central Islip. The hearing was closed to the public
and its records were sealed.
In the proceedings, Mr. McIntyre agreed to be charged
as an adult rather than as a juvenile; under the deal,
a federal judge can consider a more lenient sentence
than Mr. McIntyre would otherwise have faced.
The other suspects are expected to do the same.
Mr. McIntyre is believed to be the first in the nation
to cooperate with the federal authorities
investigating attacks claimed by the Earth Liberation
Front, said Craig S. Rosebraugh of Portland, Ore., who
acts as spokesman for the group. It opposes urban
sprawl, deforestation and other acts it deems harmful
to the environment.
But it remains unclear whether the suspects are
members of some organized national effort or a band of
local people sympathetic to the national group but
unconnected to any central leadership.
Thomas F. Liotti, the lawyer for one of the suspects,
would not comment on the negotiations today. "This is
very unfortunate," he said. "I think it is being
treated much more seriously by the government than it
should be. I think these kids had the best of
intentions. In no way are they involved in any
organized, national ELF effort."
On Jan. 15, agents of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation and the federal Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms searched Mr. McIntyre's house on
Bristol Downs Street, in Coram. They left with a
computer, cans of red spray paint and other materials
similar to those used in Suffolk County attacks. Those
attacks were carried out over the last several months
against luxury homes and condominiums being built,
construction vehicles, a cornfield used in genetic
research and a McDonald's corporate office.
On Jan. 19, federal agents raided the home of a
16-year-old suspect on Helme Avenue, in the hamlet of
Miller Place.  Mr. McIntyre, a senior at Longwood High
School in Middle Island, was working at the Brookhaven
National Laboratory in Upton, just east of Coram,
researching the effects of increased carbon dioxide on
plants as part of a project dealing with global
warming, Mona Rowe, a spokeswoman for the lab, has
said.
The mother of the 16-year-old said today that her son
was a smart boy. She said the federal government was
being very strict in dealing with him, but she would
not elaborate. "We really weren't given much of a
choice," she said when asked why her son was being
charged as an adult. "There was no choice of being
charged as a juvenile. That was not an option."
Richard J. Kaufman, a lawyer for Mr. McIntyre,
declined to comment today.
When asked about two of the suspects, Elaine D. Close
of Portland, a spokeswoman for the Earth Liberation
Front, said she knew the F.B.I. had raided both of
their houses last month. But she could not say much
else about the teenagers.
"We don't know if they are members of ELF, but anyone
could be," Ms. Close said. "But they have not
identified themselves as such and we have not had
contact with them here in the press office. None of us
know any of them."
Mr. Rosebraugh said the group does not disclose
information about its members. The group is
deliberately decentralized, he said, to prevent the
authorities from identifying its leaders. He said the
ELF press office, in Portland, acts merely as a
conduit between the news media and members, who
communicate with it anonymously and in ways Mr.
Rosebraugh would not identify.
Mr. Rosebraugh said the group had been active around
the United States since 1997, and had claimed
responsibility for attacks causing more than
$37 million in damage.
Mr. Rosebraugh said a plea would not dismantle the
group, which he supports. "The group operates under an
ideology, not a physical membership," he said. "So it
is really impossible to dissolve that ideology."


New York Times
January 3, 2001
Anti-Sprawl Group Is Said to Burn New Homes on Long
Island -By AL BAKER
ARDEN CITY, N.Y., Jan. 2 - To its list of targets
across the country, a radical environmental group
opposed to sprawl has added Suffolk County, where it
is claiming responsibility for several fires set in
houses under construction on what used to be farmland.
The Suffolk County police and the Federal Bureau of
Investigation said today that they were jointly
investigating at least three fires in Middle Island,
Miller Place and Mount Sinai believed to have been
set by the group, the Earth Liberation Front, or those
sympathetic to its cause.
Besides setting fires, a tactic the group has used
elsewhere around the country, members are believed
to have committed numerous acts of vandalism in
Suffolk, officials said. Early in December, they
damaged a bulldozer at a construction site in Ridge,
and broke windows and scrawled "Meat Is Murder" in red
paint at a McDonald's corporate office in
Hauppauge, the police said. Last July, members claimed
responsibility for uprooting a cornfield that was part
of a research project at the Cold Spring Harbor
Laboratory.
No one has been injured in more than half a dozen
incidents for which the group has claimed
responsibility in Suffolk. The group, whose spokesman
is based in Portland, Ore., says it is nonviolent,
but local politicians and police and fire officials
say it is only a matter of time before someone is
hurt.
"We have to devote a lot of energy to this thing
because these people are going away," said Detective
Lt. Charles Dohrenwend, commander of the arson squad
of the Suffolk County Police Department. "They are
dangerous."
On Saturday, at the height of the region's first big
snowstorm of the season, crude explosive devices went
off about 6 a.m. in luxury houses under construction
at the Island Estates development in Mount Sinai, the
police and developers said.
Three houses had fire and smoke damage. Another was
marred by graffiti in red paint that said, "If you
build it we will burn it." One of the devices failed
to ignite in a fifth house.
Lennard Axinn, a building partner at the site, said
the devices were crude:  a candle placed next to a
two-liter plastic bottle filled with gasoline.
Damage was estimated at $35,000 to $40,000, said
Lieutenant Dohrenwend.
According to a news advisory the group released the
next day, the fires were set as "an early New Year's
gift to Long Island's environment destroyers." The
release said the group was trying to cost "the rich
sprawl corporations" enough to force them to stop.
The group also struck on Dec. 19, when it set fire to
a house under construction on Sarah Anne Court in
Miller Place, at a site where it had previously
spray-painted graffiti, Lieutenant Dohrenwend said.
And on        Dec. 9, the group set fire to one unit
in a 16-unit condominium complex n Middle Island,
where the damage was $200,000, the police said.
Many community leaders and environmentalists condemned
the group's acts today, but said overdevelopment of
Long Island was still a valid concern, as developers
of new housing projects vie for limited open space on
which to build.
"The reaction of these terrorists is wrong," said
Richard L. Amper Jr., executive director of the Long
Island Pine Barrens Society, a nonprofit group. "But
they are not wrong about the fact of overdevelopment
of
Long Island. Just because they are behaving like
terrorists doesn't mean we are not overbuilt."
The fires have got developers' attention,
especially on the East End of Long Island.
Some builders are hiring private security firms to
patrol project sites, said Robert A. Wieboldt,
executive vice president of the Long Island Builders
Institute, which is working with the police and
offering a $10,000 reward.  Lieutenant Dohrenwend said
the police had no suspects.  Steven Berry, a
supervisory special agent for the F.B.I. in
Washington,
said the Earth Liberation Front, or E.L.F., is one of
a number of "ecoterrorist" groups whose acts the
F.B.I. investigates. Another is the Animal Liberation
Front, which also claimed responsibility for the
damage to the Hauppauge McDonald's headquarters, which
was     discovered on Dec. 8. "It is a group that the
F.B.I. is aware of because of past violent and/ or
criminal activity committed by some of the group's
members," Mr. Berry said of E.L.F.  He would not
comment on the incidents in Suffolk, but Joseph A.
Valiquette, a spokesman for the F.B.I. office in New
York, said his
office had been in touch with the Suffolk County
Police Department, "and we are working with them and
the investigation is ongoing."
The group has been active around the United States
since 1997, and has claimed responsibility for attacks
causing more than $36 million in damage, said Craig S.
Rosebraugh of Portland, who said he is the spokesman
for the group.
Mr. Rosebraugh said he had no idea who the group's
members were, where they were based or how many people
claimed membership. The group is deliberately
decentralized, he said, to prevent the authorities
from identifying its leaders. Mr. Rosebraugh said he
serves merely as a conduit between the news media and
members, who communicate with him anonymously.
"I believe in what they do, and I feel the actions
they take are worthwhile and needed and I hope it
increases and continues," said Mr. Rosebraugh, who
said that his home had been raided by federal agents
and that he had
been subpoenaed to appear before at least two federal
grand juries in the last four years.
The first action for which the group claimed
responsibility was in November 1997, when it said it
burned a federal Bureau of Land Management horse
corral in Burns, Ore., causing $450,000 in damage, Mr.
Rosebraugh said. The group said it was protesting the
rounding up of wild horses for slaughter.
In October 1998, the group claimed responsibility for
burning five unoccupied structures at a ski resort in
Vail, Colo., to protest the proposed 885-acre
expansion of the resort into wilderness. They have
released minks from fur farms, and they say they set
the Christmas Day
1999 fire that destroyed the Oregon offices of the
Boise Cascade Corporation, a paper manufacturer,
because it had "ravaged the forests of the Pacific
Northwest."
"We take inspiration from the Luddites, Levellers,
Diggers, the Autonome squatter movement, ALF, the
Zapatistas, and the little people -those mischievous
elves of lore," said a 1997 Internet communiqué.
"Many elves are moving to the Pacific Northwest and
other sacred areas.  Some elves will leave surprises
as they go. Find your family! And let's dance as we
make ruins of the corporate money system."

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