FREE the Earth Liberation Front

In June 2001, 23 year-old forest defense activist Jeffrey "Free" Luers was sentenced to 22 years and 8 months in prison for the burning of three Sport Utility Vehicles (SUV's) in Eugene, Oregon. To make a statement about global warming, Jeff and his codefendent, Craig 'Critter' Marshall, set fire to 3 Sport Utility Vehicles at a Eugene car dealership. Their stated purpose was to raise awareness about global warming and the role that SUVs play in that process. No one was hurt in this action nor was that the intent. An arson specialist at trial confirmed that the action did not pose any threat to people based on its size and distance from any fuel source. Despite the fact that this action hurt no one, caused only $40,000 in damages and the cars were later resold, Jeff was sent to prison for a sentence considerably longer than those convicted of murder, kidnapping and rape in Oregon state. Jeff is a political prisoner and continues to write and agitate for his release while imprisoned at Oregon State Penitentiary. His appeal was filed in January 2002 and oral arguments before the Oregon Court of Appeals were heard on November 30, 2005. Over a year later,on February 14, 2007 the Court of Appeals just unanimously ruled that Jeff's case will be reversed and remanded back to the Circuit Court for resentencing. A trial date for the resentencing hearing is yet to be set.




The documentary 22/8: The Jeffrey Free Luers Story DVD is now available from AK Press and can be viewed on YouTube!


write to Jeffrey:
Jeffrey Luers, #13797671
Oregon State Penitentiary (OSP)
2605 State Street
Salem, OR 97310

September 6, 2001

INTERVIEW WITH JOHN HANNA

"Q: What prompted you to take this course of action?

A: At the time, I was frustrated. I chose to go underground and employ guerrilla tactics in defense of the earth. I felt conventional methods of civil disobedience were ineffective. I was upset because pesticide use and cancer rates were increasing in spite of the best efforts of the concerned scientific community to point out the hazards and alternatives to pesticides.


Q: So you no longer advocate militancy?

A: Not if it manifests itself in violence. Civil disobedience can be militant in practice or perception. But violence is NEVER civil. Thoreau and Gandhi landed in jail but they never could have accomplished their goals had they resorted to violence. They maintained the high moral ground and inspired support. They showed they were better than their adversaries.

Q: What would you like to say to the ELF today?

A: If I transport myself back to when I was Underground, I don't think I would Have listened to an old fart like me. Most likely a lot of the people who make up today's ELF weren't even born when ELF was founded. So I'm not too optimistic that the current cadre will listen. But here's my request: Stop the violence. It's only a matter of time before someone gets injured or killed. Arson can get out of hand very quickly. Who would want an innocent firefighter to get killed doing his or her job? I'm so thankful no one was hurt during my activities. I couldn't live with myself had that happened.


Q: What's your opinion of the new ELF?


A: My opinion doesn't matter. I can certainly empathize with their frustration and their desire to defend the environment. But their means and methods will lead nowhere. Maybe prison. Some of the actions attributed to the ELF are so dumb it boggles the mind. Torching a used car lot or a luxury home? What the hell is that? That's the kind of crap you would expect from somebody trying to run an insurance scam or a provocateur hoping to discredit the movement. On the other hand, you have people like the Rose Lodge protestors or the young woman that lived up in that old-growth tree for months on end. She really accomplished something positive. Even the loggers had to respect her tenacity and courage. Now that's what I'm talking about. That's the true spirit of civil disobedience. The movement needs more people like them. We don't need more unibombers and idiots like my former ELF persona, running around trying to change the world by coercion and intimidation. That just doesn't get things done."

RIGHT THE FUCK NOW

"Let's get a rush. Join a human chain around a Federal building and then sit down on the pavement. Look up at the mounted policeman stamping his horses hooves inches from your body. Put a real spike in the pucker meter. Ghandi was right. Horses will not walk on people."

~LLwyd deVoid

Freedom of the Press just pushes U.S. one direction

Newspeak http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak

Newspeak is a fictional language in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the novel, it is described as being "the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year." Orwell included an essay about it in the form of an Appendix (in the past tense)^[1], in which the basic principles of the language are explained. Newspeak is closely based on English but has a greatly reduced and simplified vocabulary and grammar (e.g., 'good' means 'to love Big Brother'; 'bad' is deleted from the language because 'ungood' means 'bad'; therefore there is now no literal concept to express the term, 'Big Brother is bad'). This suited the totalitarian regime of the Party, whose aim was to make any alternative thinking ("thoughtcrime") or speech impossible by removing any words or possible constructs which describe the ideas of freedom, rebellion and so on. One character says admiringly of the shrinking volume of the new dictionary: "It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words."

The Newspeak term for the English language is Oldspeak. Oldspeak was intended to have been completely eclipsed by Newspeak before 2050.

The genesis of Orwell's Newspeak can be seen in his earlier essay, "Politics and the English Language," in which he laments the quality of the English of his day, citing examples of dying metaphors, pretentious diction or rhetoric, and meaningless words — all of which contribute to fuzzy ideas and a lack of logical thinking. Towards the end of this essay, having argued his case, Orwell muses:

“

I said earlier that the decadence of our language is probably curable. Those who deny this would argue, if they produced an argument at all, that language merely reflects existing social conditions, and that we cannot influence its development by any direct tinkering with words or constructions.

”

Thus forcing the use of Newspeak, according to Orwell, describes a deliberate intent to exploit this degeneration with the aim of oppressing its speakers.

"The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees …, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. … Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meaning and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meaning whatever." G. Orwell 1984

To control thought

“

By 2050—earlier, probably—all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron—they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like "freedom is slavery" when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.[2]

”

The underlying theory of Newspeak is that if something can't be said, then it can't be thought. One question raised in response to this is whether we are defined by our language, or whether we actively define it. For instance, how can we communicate the need for freedom, or organise an uprising, if we do not have the words for either? "The limits of my language mean the limits to my world." ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

Examples of Newspeak, from the novel, include: "crimethink"; "doubleplusungood"; and "Ingsoc." They mean, respectively: "thought-crime"; "extremely bad"; and "English Socialism," the official political philosophy of the Party. The word "Newspeak" itself also comes from the language. Note that all of these words would be obsolete and should be removed in the "final" version of Newspeak, except for "doubleplusungood" in certain contexts, such as as illustrated in the preceding paragraph.

Generically, Newspeak has come to mean any attempt to restrict disapproved language by a government or other powerful entity.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~ N.B.C. has the BALLS to run a Sunday Morning political talk show called "MEET THE PRESS" that breaks down pre-election polls statistically by RACE...

then wonders if Race will be an issue.

Newspeak not only limits what we can think, it frames what we think about.