RT on the FBI Spying on Anti-Fracking Activists as ‘Eco-Terrorists’

This is an interview for RT, in which their presenter, Anya Parampil, talks to Leslie James Pickering, the leader of the anti-fracking group, Keep It In The Ground, about the FBI’s surveillance of anti-fracking activists. The fracking companies in America have recruited the FBI in their attempts to spy on and intimidate their opponents in the Green movement. One company in Anadarko is quoted as saying that they have moved over to using military-style surveillance, and branded anti-fracking activists ‘an insurgency’. The FBI is also using informants, and Pickering admits that this has a chilling effect in putting some people off becoming members. But the effect is limited, he adds. He states that such surveillance is contrary to the First Amendment, which protects freedom of speech, and, despite activists being branded ‘eco-terrorists’, their activities are mostly law-abiding. The most extreme they extend to is damage to property. This is in contrast to the companies, which cut down forests in order to extract the oil and shale gas, wrecking the environment and poisoning the water as they do so. Pickering states that branding mostly peaceful people as ‘terrorists’ is very dangerous, and it is applied indiscriminately to people, who go beyond just standing with a form in their hands signing petitions.

I’m reblogging this, as although it’s another domestic American issues, it also addresses the comparable situation over here. The police have used spies and agents provocateurs to infiltrate the Green Movement in this country, as I recall, and the Tories and the fracking companies are determined to marginalise and close down anti-fracking activism in this country. Channel 4 News broadcast a piece about this a few years ago. As Pickering says, this shows the determination of the authorities to enforce companies working for the bottom line, against the people and the interests of the wider community.

Tags: 'Free Speech, Anadarko, Anya Parampil, Channel 4, Eco-Terrorism, FBI, First Amendment, Fracking, Green Movement, Leslie James Pickering, News, RT, the Police