Well, goodness. The phantom Earth Liberation Front strikes again. Universities, Eugene car dealerships, hybrid tree farms — and now logging trucks. The Register-Guard noted on Saturday that no one has been hurt in ELF’s four-year “spree.” Maybe they’ve been up to some “zany antics,” but our trusty Federal Bureau of Investigation has seen fit to label this group a terrorist organization, when really, each word fits neither of those labels.
ELF has no official membership roles, nor is it directed by a centralized leadership. It consists, rather, of small, independent groups; it’s hardly an “organization” as students of the King’s English would define it. As to the “terrorist” moniker, let’s face it: Terrorism, as it is defined by our government and media, is merely something that hurts your stock options. Calling Ezra Pound an “elitist” would have flattered the man, and based on society’s view of “terrorism,” ELF may with gratitude receive the “terrorist” label (although the citizenry of our grand Commonwealth of Morons is surely swayed by such ignorant rhetoric to a negative view of the group).

OK, my bag’s empty and the cat is nowhere to be seen. Insofar as the ELF exists on any tangible level, I applaud what they’re doing. And why not? These folks have gumption, and they’ve saved a lot more trees and made our water that much better to drink in a mere four years than most futile, letter-writing souls could hope to salvage in a decade, or maybe two.
Remember that no one has been hurt over the course of this dastardly “spree” — and I refer, of course, only to physical wounds. A few wallets have been battered to be sure, but then, nothing hits the front pages like a lost dollar. To achieve political change — and I don’t mean petty legislative concessions — a person or group must target some infrastructure, and if they do their job right, no one will be hurt or killed.
Terrorism, as Webster defines it, is simply the use of violence to coerce a particular political outcome. Sounds like most military operations to me, but somehow the United States’ bombings of foreign embassies, for example, always seems to escape the “terrorist” classification. Quite simply, the ELF isn’t doing anything wrong. Rather, the problem is that we — you, me, all of us — have been led to believe that such acts are bad or, heaven forbid, illegal.
Come to think of it, Saturday was a news day of the first order. Directly above the ELF story was the main headline: “Timber firm lays off 235.” Seems Weyerhaeuser didn’t make quite enough profit last year, so it was compelled to distribute the infamous pink slip to, among others, 140 Springfield workers, who only recently returned from an 18-day strike.
All of which has question marks dancing in my head. Weyerhaeuser can wreck our forests and then proceed to wreck the lives of its workers, and yet, the ELF is suddenly the villain because someone destroyed one logging truck? Here’s to “free enterprise” and its meat-grinder realities, I suppose, but I don’t claim to understand such abject idiocy.
Granted, I’m not out there with the ELF — inasmuch as that’s possible for anyone — leveling poplar farms or bombing logging trucks, but may the force nevertheless be with them. That someone was recently able to do $1 million worth of damage to those beastly SUVs at a local dealership deserves a hearty round of applause and drinks on the house. That was no “terrorist story”; that was a wonderfully heartwarming human-interest issue.
After all, it is you, me and our prospective progeny for whom groups like the ELF are working. May we all be able to drink clean water and visit a pristine wilderness area fifty years from now. If we are able to do so, make no mistake about it, we’ll have the ELF and similar “organizations” to thank for it.