Earth Liberation Front

Modeled after the Animal Liberation Front, The Earth Liberation Front is an international underground movement consisting of autonomous groups of people who carry out direct action according to the ELF guidelines:

1.To inflict economic damage on those profitting from the destruction and exploitation of the natural environment.

2.To reveal and educate the public on the atrocities committed against the earth and all species that populate it.

3.To take all necessary precautions against harming any animal, human and non-human.

They are trying to save the planet using property destruction.no living creature has ever been hurt as a result of the ELF. the ELF believes that legal approaches to saving the earth have failed, and we need a more radical way to stop the destruction of our land. Any direct action to halt the destruction of the environment and adhering to the strict nonviolence guidelines can be considered an ELF action. There is no way to contact the ELF in your area. It is up to each committed person to take responsibility for stopping the exploitation of the natural world. No longer can it be assumed that someone else is going to do it. If not you who, if not now when?

On February 16, 2001, Jared McIntyre, a Long Island high school senior, pleaded guilty to arson. He denied any connection to the "Earth Liberation Front", but his attacks had ELF written all over it. Police have found evidence on the crime scenes linking him to the arson of nine Long Island construction sites and the sabotage of onsite construction equipment, as well as the vandalism of a biotech cornfield at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Painted on the scorched wall of one of the houses was "If you build it, we will burn it."

ELF is not a formal organization, instead being a loosely-linked band of radical eco-terrorists, there really is no "ringleader" to act as an idelogical leader, leaving these criminals to intepret the ELF "guidelines" for themselves. And they tend to take a very liberal intepretation of it; many of the construction sites Jared McIntyre torched were in fact modest, middle-class homes, not luxury mansions. Non-profit academic research institutions were destroyed because certain ELF members are idelogically opposed to "gene theft". This makes ELF especially dangerous because there is no leader to restrain the ultra-radical elements. Considering this is already a radical organization, it is no wonder that the FBI declared war on the ELF.

The ELF and the ALF is essentially a single organization, as ELF spokesman Craig Rosebraugh admits, "The main difference between ELF and ALF is their names." ELF and ALF spawned from Earth First!; ELF and ALF apparently thought that Earth First! was not radical enough. ELF, like most radical environmental organizations, relies entirely on rhetoric and does not bother justifying their claims with scientific evidence, their modus operandi seems to be "burn first, ask never".

Sooner or later the ELF's "nonviolent" acts will claim a human life.

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Update: June 2, 2001

The ELF finally claimed responsibility for two fires last month that destroyed the University of Washington's urban horticulture center in Seattle and a similar laboratory in Clatskanie, Oregon, causing over $3 million in structural damage as well as the loss of years of research on wetlands restoration and endangered species protection. The terrorists claimed that "genetic pollution" was the ideological motivation behind the attacks.