Accuracy in Media: "universities can serve as a breeding ground for eco-terrorists"

Via Chaone Mallory on the ISEE list comes a link to this misleading and inflamatory article by Accuracy in Media (the Scaife-funded group that once called Walter Cronkite a "soviet dupe.") The article, written by the head of Accuracy in Media" claims that "universities can serve as a breeding ground for eco-terrorists" and implies that we college professors teach students how to commit arson. The main tactic the article uses is to give the impression that a guy named Dr. Jerry Vlasak of the reprehensible Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) is somehow a mainstream figure in the academic left.

The part of the article that is really disturbing though is the claim, attributed to the Justice Department that ecoterrorists are the leading domestic threat in the US. Perhaps environmentalists will be the next swept into the category "enemy" as a part of the Global War on Anything We Decide to Label Terrorism. The "terrorist" label is already so vague that it has been applied by the government to pacifists and Quakers. If people who take a principled stand against all violence can be terrorists, then really we are all at risk.

Slight tangent: the mention of SHAC reminds me that activists, left and right, don't typically do a good job denouncing people on their own side when those people behave unethically. To help remedy that I would like to say to Ward Churchill: Good riddance to bad rubbish.