Police fundamentalism and Earth First!

The Observer published a "warning" by the police on Sunday 9 November under the headline, "Police warn of growing threat from eco-terrorists". In the article, the writers Mark Townsend and Nick Denning, appear to serve as mouthpieces for a simian authoritarianism. They provide little balance to counter the assertion by a "senior source" in the The National Extremism Tactical Co-ordination Unit (NETCU) that, "... eco-activists are researching a list of target companies which they believe are major polluters or are exacerbating the threat of climate change." Something wrong with that?

The article goes on to suggest there is a "... network of UK climate camps and radical environmental movements under the umbrella of Earth First!, which has claimed responsibility for a series of criminal acts in recent months." As far as I understood it, the umbrella works as much the other way. Climate Camp provides the umbrella and Earth First! sympathisers - and environmentalists of all stripes, including such radical membership organisations as the WI and the National Trust - may from time to time come under it. This is not just dreadful journalism in the manner of the Daily Mail, this is an attempt to shape a national debate in ideological terms with, I suggest, the aim of demonising dissent, driving a wedge into the environmental movement. Why?
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