I covered environmental radicals and animal rights extremists at the Seattle Times in the late 1990s and have continued to track their escalation. The Christian Science Monitor published a good investigative piece yesterday on the continued eco-thuggery:

The trial of seven animal rights activists under domestic terrorism laws focuses attention on a threat which law enforcement officials say has become greater than that of the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, and right-wing militias.

Defendants in the federal trial in New Jersey, which has just begun and is expected to last into August, are charged with conspiracy and interstate stalking involving the vandalism and harassment of employees of labs that use animals to test drugs and chemicals.

Officials say this is part of a growing trend that in recent years has included more than 1,200 incidents of arson, bombings, theft, animal releases, vandalism, and office takeovers. Targets of what activists call “direct actions” have included laboratories, mink ranches, SUV dealerships, fast-food outlets, and new housing developments. Damages have totaled hundreds of millions of dollars.

“We have seen an escalation in violent rhetoric and tactics,” John Lewis, the FBI’s deputy assistant director for counterterrorism, told a Senate hearing recently. “Attacks are also growing in frequency and size. Harassing phone calls and vandalism now coexist with improvised explosive devices and personal threats to employees.”

Read the whole thing. Apologists for such left-wing destruction have excused ALF/ELF by mewling that no has ever been hurt in the past by their punk actions.

It’s just a matter of time.

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Previous/related:

Eco-terrorists on the loose
Invasion of the anarchists
American eco-terrorists declare war
Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise: ELF chronology