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Eco Terrorism

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Eco Terrorism
Eco Terrorism
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According to the Shorter Oxford dictionary the term terrorism is define as “the systematic employment of violence to coerce a government or community into acceding to specific political demands”. But this definition can be somewhat misrepresentative of someone or some organization that was been labeled as an eco-terrorist. The reasoning behind this is because in most cases there is little to no actually violence that takes place, and what little there is performed by more radical splinter groups. Some such splinter groups for example are like Sea Shepherd and Earth First!. But what have these group broken away from? Well if you look into their pasts you will notice that both groups can trace their origins to Greenpeace. Who would have thought that the nonviolent methodology of Greenpeace would have given rise to two leading mainstream “eco-terrorist” organizations. We go about our daily lives understanding almost nothing about the natural world around us. We often give little thought to the oceans or trees that surround us and how without them life would be impossible. This is where our story begins; it begins with the people that do recognize the fragileness of environment and aren’t will to sit idly by and watch it fall to shambles. It can be said that the roots of eco-terrorism are embedded in the basic values of democracy; one of the core American values is the freedom to protect against failures of the legal system. In this particular case it is the failure of the government to protect the environment from over exploitation. One way to achieve this is to start a movement. You need to find a common overlooked problem and then develop a way to get that message across. Greenpeace is non-governmental environmental organization that certainly started a movement. They were founded in the 60’s and what made them so appealing is that they were able to capture the very popular “hippy” counterculture of

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