Responses to "unwise branding" Editorial
Here are three letters from the several received by Nature in response to its Editorial of 24 May, Unwise Branding (Nature 447, 353; 2007). All three responses were published in the journal's Correspondence section on 5 July. An online commenting facility was provided at the time of publication of the Editorial. The opportunity to comment is again provided via the comment link below this post.
Terrorists are activists who renounce non-violence
Sarah Reichard, Thomas M. Hinckley & H. D. Bradshaw, Jr
As faculty members whose research was affected severely by a 2001 firebomb attack by the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), we object to the assertion in your Editorial 'Unwise branding' (Nature 447, 353; 2007) that charging ELF arsonists with terrorism could amount to erecting an "unbreachable wall" to dialogue between them and scientists.
The ELF and its sister the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) use violence against civilian targets to further a political viewpoint: this is the definition of terrorism. Calling the ELF and ALF terrorist organizations is a simple statement of fact. There is no need to mince words in a vain effort to placate groups whose members, through a dangerous combination of wilful ignorance and willingness to enforce their world view 'by any means necessary', eschew reason in favour of senseless violence.
Some ELF and ALF apologists believe that 'property damage' (including destruction of research buildings at universities) does not qualify as terrorism. Perhaps the ELF statement from which we quote below will give those apologists a glimpse of the perspective shared by those of us whose names and addresses have been posted on ELF or ALF websites (which link to instructions on firebomb construction and deployment). After the firebombing of a US Forest Service laboratory in Pennsylvania in 2002, the ELF declared: "segments of this global revolutionary movement are no longer limiting their revolutionary potential by adhering to a flawed, inconsistent 'non-violent' ideology. While innocent life will never be harmed in any action we undertake, where it is necessary, we will no longer hesitate to pick up the gun to implement justice, and provide the needed protection for our planet that decades of legal battles, pleading, protest, and economic sabotage have failed so drastically to achieve."
Simply put, ELF and ALF members are anti-science, anti-intellectual, anti-human fundamentalists — certain that they have privileged access to some universal truth, deaf to alternative arguments, blind to evidence and determined to intimidate those who disagree with them. They are self-righteous in firebombing the very institutions (such as ours) that sponsor research and open discourse to understand and improve the state of the Earth for all its inhabitants. ELF and ALF terrorists have built the wall of naive, intolerant fundamentalism between themselves and us — only they can breach it. Rational people are, and always have been, waiting on the other side in the hope of receiving some form of communication other than a bomb or a bullet.
College of Forest Resources and Department of Biology, University of Washington, Seattle.
Activists: arson risks killing innocent people
Mike Fainzilber
Your Editorial 'Unwise branding' (Nature 447, 353; 2007) is against equating animal-rights activism with terrorism. In it you state that "there is no such objective thing as a terrorist". This statement is yet another example of the moral blindness invading public discourse in the United Kingdom.
It is straightforward to define terrorism in an objective and legally egalitarian manner, for example by defining as a terrorist any person who uses violence to further his or her ideology, without taking into consideration the likelihood that innocent people may be injured, maimed or killed by such violent acts. Arson fuelled by ideology would certainly fit this definition of terrorism, and the animal-rights arsonists discussed in your Editorial were apparently not deterred by the possibility that people might be injured or killed in the fires they set.
Your second concern, regarding "who will be willing to publicly break bread with a terrorist, reformed or otherwise", is answered by current reality in Northern Ireland, South Africa and other places around the globe.
Biological Chemistry, Weizmann Institute, Rehovot.
Activists: some walls are not meant to be breached
Beverly E. Barton
Your Editorial 'Unwise branding' (Nature 447, 353; 2007) stated: "We should avoid building an unbreachable wall between criminal activists and their victims." Am I mistaken, then, in the purpose for incarceration of criminals after conviction?
Department of Surgery, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.
