................................. To leave Commie, hyper to http://commie.oy.com/commie_leaving.html .................................
about the Animal Liberation Front and Environment Liberation Front in the USA. they're terrorists, don'tcha know... http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/07/magazine/07ELF.html?pagewanted=all ''Veteran activists only allow a select few to know about their involvement with the E.L.F./A.L.F.,'' instructs a security primer posted on several forest-advocacy Web sites. ''And those few consist of the cell members who they do the actions with AND NO ONE ELSE!'' The E.L.F. is made up of a series of small cells that remain mostly unaware of one another's identities and plans. In ''Igniting the Revolution: An Introduction to the Earth Liberation Front,'' a $10 video sold in Portland's counterculture bookshops, Craig Rosebraugh, then the E.L.F.'s spokesman, urges volunteers to start their own units rather than try to join one. ''There's no realistic chance of becoming active in an already existing cell,'' he says. ''Take initiative; form your own cell.'' Other groups, including the I.R.A., Al Qaeda and right-wing patriot factions, were organized around this leaderless resistance model but never were truly leaderless. Their imagined world ultimately requires a hierarchy. The E.L.F., rooted in a philo- sophy of anarchist primitivism, dreams of peaceful leaderless tribes living in robust ecosystems. ''In a tribe, you take care of each other,'' Critter says. ''There's no need for Big Brother to take care of you.'' This is the conundrum of the E.L.F., and the reason the group is so difficult to track or to stop: there is no membership; there are only acts. Anyone can join -- tonight -- by torching a science lab. Existing cells may applaud your crime but will not contact you. And so law enforcement agencies have found the group impossible to infiltrate. ''They know each other and don't tolerate strangers,'' says Bob Holland, a Eugene, Ore., police detective who has been investigating eco-terror crimes since 1997. ''It's not like infiltrating the Mafia, where you can go to Joe Bonanno and say, 'The goodfellas down the street recommended me.' These people are hanging with people they've known for years, and when they decide to do a direct action, they're the only ones talking about it.'' The elves' weapon of choice remains the firebomb, schematics for which can be downloaded from the E.L.F. Web site. ''On a pound-for-pound basis,'' the anonymous authors explain, ''incendiaries can do more damage than explosives against many type [sic] targets if properly used.'' The 20-page pamphlet includes instructions on creat- ing flake aluminum-sulfur igniters, thermate incendiary devices and homemade napalm. Critter and Free's devices were crude but effective: gallon milk jugs filled with fuel and stopped with sponge wicks.
