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FBI Blowing Up Environmentalists?

maccy

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I seem to get occasional mailings from the Leeds branch of Earth First! probably because I'm friends with some people who set up a local housing co-op. Anyway, recently this email arrived:
US survivor of FBI bombing speaking in Leeds & Bradford - June 21st, 24th & 25th​

Ramona Africa is the sole adult survivor of the FBI's 1985 bombing of the MOVE organisation's house in Philadelphia. She is touring the UK, speaking and showing a documentary about MOVE.



She will talk about her experiences of the bombing, the beliefs of the MOVE organisation, the MOVE 9 (imprisoned since 1978 following a similar attack on their home), MOVE-supporter Mumia Abu-Jamal (on death row since 1982 for a crime he did not commit) and what they all stand for.

MOVE is a revolutionary organisation started in the USA, which fights to protect all life by spreading information and standing against the systems that harm life. They were strident anti-racism and environmental campaigners long before the mainstream took up the issues.
In their own words, "The word MOVE is not an acronym. It means exactly what it says: MOVE, work, generate, be active. Everything that's alive moves. If it didn't, it would be stagnant, dead. Movement is the principle of Life.”

We are keen to support the MOVE 9, due for probation later this year, and Mumia Abu-Jamal's ongoing legal battle against the death sentence so we will be collecting donations at each event for these funds and to cover Ramona's expenses.

Ramona Africa & the MOVE documentary:
1in12 Club, Albion St, Bradford - Thursday 21st June, 7pm, entry by donation
www.1in12.com
The Common Place, Wharf St, Leeds – 7.30pm, Sunday 24th June, entry by donation
food from 6.30pm, www.thecommonplace.org.uk
Leeds West Indian Centre, Chapeltown - Monday 25th June, 7.30pm
Entry £2, plus donation if you can afford it, food £5/£3 concs from 6.30pm.

More information on the tour - www.onamove2007.org.uk, http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/05/370685.html
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I'm may go along to one of these to investigate, I'm not sure if I'll get into any arguments though.


On the face of it, it all looks ridiculous. However, I thought it would be good to have something other than 9/11 to investigate - as the 9/11 stuff seems to mainly involve showing the willfully ignorant how they are both wrong and still using the same old (wrong) arguments.


I haven't looked into any of this yet, and I'll post again with more information as I find it. The Abu Jamal stuff has been pretty comprehensively done before, though:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=80639
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=70238

I'd never heard of MOVE but I do know there is a similar "the FBI did it" theory about some Earth First! activists:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_First!#Judi_Bari_car_bombing

If anybody knows anything about this, please feel free to post. I'm off to google some MOVE stuff now.
 
maccy said:
I'd never heard of MOVE but I do know there is a similar "the FBI did it" theory about some Earth First! activists:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_First!#Judi_Bari_car_bombing

If anybody knows anything about this, please feel free to post. I'm off to google some MOVE stuff now.
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MOVE was a so-called 'Back-to-nature' group that wasn't. They were really just an excuse for some leftover radicals to try and live like disgusting pigs (they threw their sewage in the streets), make life in the (URBAN) Philadelphia neighborhoods they lived in miserable, and generally acted as if the law did not apply to them.

Sadly, two of the darker incidents in Philadelphia Police history involve them. One was the 70's shootout, which on its own was bad but was MOVE's fault. Trouble is, the Police were heavy-handed and abusive to MOVE members after the fact.

The other incident took place in 1985. MOVE moved into a West Philadelphia neigborhood and started blasting revolutionary gunk and threats from loudspeakers at all hours. The Neighbors begged for intervention, and finally a reluctant Mayor Goode moved into the neighborhood with police and laid a short seige to the MOVE house. A gunfight happened, but no-one was hurt.

On top of the MOVE house, MOVE had built a 'bunker' that police were concerned would be used as a snipers nest if they tried an attack, so after a firehose failed to dislodge it the police borrowed a helicopter to drop a bomb to dislodge the bunker.

To this point there has never been any hint that the FBI was in any way involved, and never was. It is also when everything went downhill.

First, the 'demolitions expert' looked at the low-speed explosive and decided to give it a little more 'kick' by adding C4. This the bomb was a mix of fast and slow explosives.

The bomb was dropped and did take out the bunker, but the C4 spread the low-speed explosive which set multiple fires on the roofs of neighboring houses. The fires spread fast.

Then, just about every wrong decision that could be made by the city's commanders (Mayor, Fire, Police) was made. The fire spread, the ENTIRE neighborhood was destroyed by flames. Most of MOVE was burned up, barring a couple of children and Ramona Africa.

Had it been any other administration by the Goode admin, heads would have been on a platter. As it was, the Goode administration, while not guilty of murder, were certainly risking catastrophe and got one.

There's more to the story, such as the incompetent rebuilding project. But suffice it to say Ramona Africa has taken her surivial story to be carte blanche to self-rightously slander and attack anyone who displeases her or her 'cause'.

MOVE has about as much in common with 'environmentalists' as the Black Panthers. They were, at one point, offered a house for free in Rural PA to be as disgusting as they pleased. They prefered to be disgusting with neighbors to annoy.

As bad as the mayor was, as bad as every decision made that day was, the FBI had almost nothing to do with it.

And MOVE started it.
 
One more item to add to my list of things that make me hate radical Environmental Activists.

Or, in this case, people or movements that claim to be Environmental Activists but are just annoying anarchists.
 
Thanks Kookbreaker, I'd gathered something similar from the Wikipedia Article (although your account is better). I think that the FBI stuff has been added by whoever sent the email, as I can find no reference to them on this page: http://www.onamove2007.org.uk/.

I've sent the Leeds Earth First! people a mail asking why they've linked this to the FBI.

The Earth First! types certainly have a thing about the FBI because of the car-bomb incident I linked to in the OP. Theres a CT version of events here:

http://www.albionmonitor.com/9905a/jbrevisited.html

This looks like a story worthy of more investigation than the MOVE thing - which pretty much looks like a badly botched operation. If there was really a conspiracy to eliminate them as a group (which I think overestimates their threat to the status quo) you'd have thought it would have been done in a less public way.

There's quite an interesting discussion on the the UK Indymedia page about MOVE, with much wiggling:

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/05/370685.html?c=on

I've just noticed that they repeat the FBI claim in that article, so I've left a comment asking about this. It's rather pathetic if Earth First! activists are trying to spin this tragedy into an anti-FBI CT.

Overall MOVE seems to have been a pretty despicable organisation that supposedly idealistic people are backing simple because they were opposed by the state and there's a couple of tragic events that can be framed as persecution by the state (very similar to the Abu Jamal case - and Ramona Africa is obviously riding on the coattails of this case).

I obviously can't vouch for its accuracy, but there's an anti-MOVE site here:

http://themoveorganization.com/
 
scissorhands said:
Cornerstone housing co-op.
:eek:
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How did you deduce that? Are you local?

I was at University with the guy that founded it. I was going to be one of the founding members, but I decided against moving in (this would have been in 1993 or so). Alex, who set it up has long since gone. I haven't been there for ages - I did rehearse a play in their basement in 1996.

Part of my reason for maybe going to one of the meetings is to see how far I've drifted away from these people since then.

I think they may well be involved in the Leeds events.
 
I've found myself in a few debates over MOVE in the past few years and Kookbreaker pretty much nailed the situation from what I know about the group. Move started it, the neighbors wanted them out, and the police went way overboard and wound up burnning the entire neighborhood down. This is the first I've heard of the FBI being involved.
 
maccy said:
How did you deduce that? Are you local?

I was at University with the guy that founded it. I was going to be one of the founding members, but I decided against moving in (this would have been in 1993 or so). Alex, who set it up has long since gone. I haven't been there for ages - I did rehearse a play in their basement in 1996.

Part of my reason for maybe going to one of the meetings is to see how far I've drifted away from these people since then.

I think they may well be involved in the Leeds events.
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No, Im not local.
Im an ex-member of another small housing co-op associated through RR.
Small world, isnt it?
:D
 
The Judi Bari case is puzzling, I'll admit. If it's true that the bomb was located under the driver's seat, it certainly makes it seem less likely that Bari was transporting the bomb knowingly. I don't give environmentalist wacks like Bari much credit for common sense, but I certainly think the trunk would be more likely for transporting explosives.

On the other hand, the idea that the FBI did it seems risible, and indeed the Judi Bari website promotes not an active FBI involvement in the crime but willful ignoring the possibility of other perpetrators (than Bari and her passenger):

Right away, Judi and Darryl told paramedics and police officers that they had been bombed because of their activism against the timber industry, and both of them separately named the same individuals and a right-wing group that they believed were behind the bombing.
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Mumia still isn't dead? And he's still fighting against his sentence?

Thanks for the info by the way, I hadn't heard about this group before.
 
Even being in the country when the imfamous Operation Satanic took place, I do have to wonder sometimes if blowing up greenies isn't really a good thing.
 
Even being in the country when the imfamous Operation Satanic took place, I do have to wonder sometimes if blowing up greenies isn't really a good thing.
 
MOVE is a revolutionary organisation started in the USA, which fights to protect all life by spreading information and standing against the systems that harm life. They were strident anti-racism and environmental campaigners long before the mainstream took up the issues.
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You mean they campaigned against racism in the 18th Century?

-Gumboot
 
Mobyseven said:
Mumia still isn't dead? And he's still fighting against his sentence?

Thanks for the info by the way, I hadn't heard about this group before.
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I know, posters calling for his immediate release were all over campus back when I was in school. I found them annoying then, and still do, on reflection.

Of course that was one of the least annoying things I had to put up with on campus. The mandatory vegan diet thing was the one that really angered me the most at the time.
 
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