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| 1 |
ID:
052518
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| Publication |
2003.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The Earth Liberation Front (ELF) is radical environmentalist group that has in the past engaged in profile acts of arson, thus far without causing casualties. In order to determine the correct level of official response, it is necessary to examine the potential for the ELF and other radical environmentalist groups to engage in various levels of violence against human beings. Using empirically-based threat assessment, this study investigates the motivational and capability-related attributes of the ELF and concludes that there is a moderate-high threat of an escalation to internationally targeting people, a moderate probability that its members will at some point seek to inflict mass casualties and a low potential for ELF attacks using unconventional weapons. The assessment also identifies several factors indicating that the threat of all three types of violence is increasing, although determining the magnitude of this increase requires further study. Recommendations are given for law enforcement strategies with respect to the ELF and similarly-oriented radical groups.
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| 2 |
ID:
052514
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| Publication |
2003.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and its sister organization the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) are believed responsible for some 600 criminal acts between 1996 and 2002 and some $43 million in damages. Committed to direct action and revolutionary violence, ELF relies on a leaderless resistance model of operations. They have no discernible organizational structure and rely on members who understand the organization's goals and orientation to take action on their own initiative, making identification and prosecution of perpetrators very difficult. ELF favors rollback of industrial civilization to preserve the environment. ELF is media saavy and unlike Islamist terrorists, generally "want a lot of people watching, not a lot of people dead." Their tactics emphasize attacks on property not people and include arson, sabotage, and vandalism designed to cause significant economic damage. Targets have included research laboratories, multi-national corporations, and the logging industry. ELF poses an immediate and direct threat to research facilities and labs involved in or seen as involved in research on genetically modified organisms, but could easily shift to nuclear industry targets.
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| 3 |
ID:
056222
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| 4 |
ID:
080345
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| Publication |
2007.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Leaderless resistance is a strategy of opposition that allows for and encourages individuals or small cells to engage in acts of political violence entirely independent of any hierarchy of leadership or network of support. This article examines the development of the leaderless resistance strategy by the radical right and more recently by the radical environmentalist movement. While both movements use leaderless resistance to avoid detection, infiltration, and prosecution by the state, environmental groups like the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) benefit additionally because of the ideological inclusiveness that leaderless resistance fosters. Historically, ideological cleavages have rendered radical environmental groups such as Earth First! less effective than they would have been otherwise. Using leaderless resistance, however, the ELF eliminates all ideology extraneous to the specific cause of halting the degradation of nature. This elimination enables the ELF to mobilize a greater number of "direct actions
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