This is a security commentary. It points out what i see when talking in the f2f world: There's a view of men's rights as "currently fringe, but becoming mainstream." Interesting.
whome
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http://news.monstersandcritics.com/intelandterror/article_1077279.php/Fringe_terror_poses_real_threatFrom Monsters and Critics.com
Intelligence and Terrorism Features
Fringe terror poses real threat
By Martin Sieff
Jan 19, 2006, 19:00 GMT
WASHINGTON, DC, United States (UPI) -- As if the global calculus of terror was not infernally complicated enough, the bizarre plot to kidnap the five-year-old son of British Prime Minister Tony Blair shows the world cannot afford to ignore another fringe but potentially lethal element -- fanatics for causes that are either bizarrely extreme, or that represent legitimate movements, usually and correctly perceived as harmless, but carried by a handful of fanatics to potentially lethal ends.
The plot busted by the British security services to kidnap Leo Blair had been hatched, according to British press reports, by extreme activists for fathers` rights in Britain. The British police Special Branch unit discovered the plot while investigating former members of the Fathers 4 Justice group. The group, known in Britain as a \'Dads` Rights\' activist body, has already carried out weirdly colorful but harmless stunts to publicize its cause, including having sympathizers dress up as comic book superheroes and climb famous London landmarks like St. Paul`s Cathedral. One of them climbed Buckingham Palace, Queen Elizabeth II`s residence dressed as Batman.
Leaders of the Fathers 4 Justice group have denied all knowledge of the plot and have suggested it was hatched by militants whom they expelled in May 2005. British newspapers reported Wednesday that security around the prime minister`s other three children has now been increased.
The plot was nipped in the bud, but it could have had horrific consequences, raising specters of the notorious Lindbergh baby kidnapping in the 1930s. And it looks likely to inspire a serious debate about the degree to which the already over-stretched and hard-pressed Western security services need to devote their resources to the potential terrorist threat from small fringe groups, or breakaway extremists from law-abiding mainstream bodies campaigning for such legitimate causes as the environment and animal rights.
In parts of the United States, a handful of extremist \'save-the-trees\' type activists have already taken to embedding ceramic implants into tree trunks. If undetected, these could cause power saws to shatter threatening the lives of the loggers who were operating them.
As Alan Caruba reported for AXcess News on Monday, in December Chris McIntosh, an animal rights activist in Seattle, was convicted and sentenced to eight years for burning down a McDonald`s restaurant.
Also in December, the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms announced the arrest of six other animal rights activists in connection with a series of arson attacks. All of them, as Caruba, noted were alleged to have been members of the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front.
The FBI and the ATF have taken the threat posed by such extremists seriously and they have been criticized for doing so by civil rights protection organizations
On Dec. 20, the American Civil Liberties Union released more than 100 pages of FBI files on the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals organization (PETA) it had obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The ACLU said some of the documents suggested that the FBI was actually going to the trouble of infiltrating PETA through its interns and by placing undercover sources at animal rights meetings and conferences.
The release of the files unleashed a wave of criticism at the FBI. \'These documents show the erosion of freedom of association and speech that Americans have taken for granted and which set us apart from oppressive countries,\' PETA general counsel Jeff Kerr said.
The PETA controversy and the Leo Blair kidnap plot present the two extremes of the policy dilemma confronting security services when they deal with small groups of extremists on the fringe of the environmental, animals rights and other mainstream movements.
On the one hand, taking them too seriously can make the security services a laughing stock and weaken their extremely important public credibility. Far worse, tracking such fringe groups can distract and even obsess security services officials so that they divert disproportionate numbers of agents and resources that would be far better employed against Islamist and other serious terrorist groups.
But on the other hand, no responsible security service can afford to ignore such fringe elements entirely, and would do so at their peril. The most obscure and apparently harmless tiny sects have been known to erupt or self-destruct in violent acts of self-immolation that have killed hundreds of people. The efficiency with which the traditionally thorough British Special Branch unit uncovered and foiled the Leo Blair kidnap plot is likely to serve as a model example of the importance of keeping such groups monitored.
About the best rule of thumb, veteran security analysts say, is to take seriously any group, however small or apparently ridiculous, that uses extreme language on a consistent basis. Inflated rhetoric often leads to nothing, but it can almost always be found before fringe groups resort to terrorism and murder.
The Internet has replaced the letters pages of newspapers and the medieval market place as the most important location to monitor such extreme opinions. It has made it far easier for extremist groups, fringe gatherings and sects to organize and meet up with each other to hatch their plots. And it also can greatly amplify the noise that even the smallest number of obscure fanatics can make about their pet cause. That is why it no often seems as if the famous maxim of Karl Von Clausewitz has been reversed: Instead of war being the continuation of politics by other means, terrorism sometimes seems to be the continuation of not just conventional politics but of favorite fads and weird beliefs by other means.
In fact, the amount of violence inflicted by faddists such as the would-be kidnappers of the British prime minister`s son, like that caused by the British suffragettes campaigning for votes for women before World War I, remains tiny by any estimate. The real security threats remain the obvious ones of Islamist terror groups like al-Qaida, national guerilla movements ranging from Kashmir and the Palestinian areas to the Basque territories, organized crime syndicates and all the other usual suspects. But as the Blair family learned this week, no one can afford to get complacent about the nuts either.
Copyright 2006 by United Press International