well it's going to be hard to do that in court i mean the court cases like that are very difficult but yes in the case of the dakota pipeline they're talking about a billion to a billion dollars in damages for these environmental protests and what i think is going to happen this would have a major effect but not necessarily against the actual eco terrorists themselves greenpeace you could argue you know some would argue is a radical environmental group but it's not an eco terror per se they've done civil disobedience so even if the groups themselves lose a court case it may actually have the proverbial effect of inspiring the individual acts or the small cells many of these cells in a liberation group the earth liberation movement they'll drive across country in a car and they pick up radical members that they may have met on social media it's very hard to actually track and find them but you're right big big industry is fighting back on them now and this is going to be. very interesting court case coming up to see how this is decided and the dakota pipeline protests received so

much attention nationwide because of the initial have a handedness of the police why didn't they all companies and this work with environmental activists instead of ignoring their opinion the whole crisis could have been avoided well that's been the case the dakota pipeline what happened they got the native americans and volved and originally they had hearing after hearing and there was really not much interest certainly not among the native americans and the environmentalist allegedly recruited the native americans to get involved which really brought the dakota access to life and i think yeah there were allegations that i think was actually not the police but private security by the to go to access type where they came in and were very rough and with mace and other things when they first got there there's a lot of video footage of that that's always a good question is how does the industry handle that when people are doing that kind of defiance and disobedience also i'm just wondering is it right to use the world were terrorism here terrorism means to instill terror fear in people

i mean blowing up twin towers and terrorism and shooting people in charlie hebdo is terrorism and blowing up london metro is terrorism. but eco activists targeting machinery really terrorists you know that they're getting into semantics what i would say yes it is it's an eco terrorism you don't say terror you say eco terrorism the reason it's that whether they're blowing up in animal rights or torching s.u.v.s in a parking lot. or you know it goes even further when i was in the united states senate environment public works committee i was one of the researchers we actually held a hearing before i got there with one of the animal rights former animal liberation front leaders dr gerry of last week who actually openly said for every scientist experimenting on animals that they can kill they can save untold amounts of animals so they're perfectly willing the leaders this is one of the former leaders of elf and other environmental groups of radical eco terror groups openly calling for

killing scientists experimenting on animals because that will save animals lives in the scientists lives are expendable because you're only talking a few scientists and many countless of animals that would be saved so this is threatening people when when the logging protester puts the spikes in a tree and someone comes by the chain saw the chainsaw breaks when it hits a spike there's been at least several port instance of people being massively injured in disfigured so their people do get hurt it is a form of terror it terrifies the people in the industry doing it in weather right now the target being pipeline protesters exxon mobil you fill in the blank there being told that they're guilty by nasa's former lead scientist by the way of crimes against humanity evoking and. response and tracing can mark when you're saying that it's only semantics i feel like they it's not just semantics the federal government classifies eco activism as terrorism and makes it a very potent legal weapon against

a kid is they will charge with arson in protest against excessive locking in the two thousands were actually facing life in prison they had to agree to plea deal. and served their sentence in terrible conditions i mean they're just kids stay don't be had people they don't shoot people why should they be so tough on them. well i think it's you know this comes down to law enforcement this is you could actually have the same argument with drug laws united states should have marijuana offender who's buying a local deal would have the same kind of automatic jail sentences after a couple times that a cocaine or heroin dealer i think what the federal guidelines are doing here is they're treating what you would call the gateway eco terrorist very seriously so they can nip it in the bud and that's what they're trying to do here and that is an argument for law enforcement i'm not sure the you know what the actual line there is because you do want to distinguish between civil disobedience and again i've referenced nessa's lead global warming scientists james hansen who just retired

a few years ago but he's been he's been arrested at least half a dozen times protesting pipelines in the united states for causing global warming that's not as that's not eco terror but when you go the step further and you get into property destruction and you get into threats and you get into people getting hurt and going after scientists who do experiments and actually gloating about it in congressional testimony as jay last it did the former elf leader then you're going into a different area but you're absolutely right there has to be a very fine line between the civil disobedience and the full blown eco terrorism so in a samus case in the u.k. discovered by the guardian newspaper and government agent infiltrated an eco activist group and then carus them to damage a power plant why are governments provoking activists into radical action to have an added excuse to crack down on them. and this is something you know you see this all the time the government this is why you know when they do mob informants and

other sorts of infiltration it's always called is the legal word is entrapment and obviously that's could be a case of government overreaching if and. government's going to infiltrate a group that usually should just be for information when they go beyond and they encourage acts so that they can arrest people that becomes problematic in and of itself you know if you go throughout history governments have been the most violent institutions in the world so you hate to give them too much power when they do that however when you're going after groups that are potentially damaging life property . and making these kind of threats you know it makes sense that they infiltrate but they have to draw that a good fine line between egging them on and getting them trap them into doing even more worse things than they would otherwise do you saying that you had to deal with terrorism when you were the communications director for they sentence and violent and public works committee is term pressure on lawmakers groups like past him chamfered a crackdown on extremism are politicians afraid they will look bad going after

those to defend then will rights for instance yeah as i mentioned i was there when i was with the united states senate environment public works we've had multiple hearings on that we supported legislation federal legislation the cap of currently i believe is ten thousand if you do more than ten thousand for the damage it becomes a federal violation of eco terrorism otherwise it's still dealt with on the state and local level in terms of politicians standing up to this you know well it depends on the news cycle and what we're talking about when it's torching s.u.v.s when it's going after logging especially if you're a political leader from a logging area with logging or area with auto industry you do it's generally easy to stand up it's other politicians who aren't directly affected or their constituencies are they generally don't want to get involved in eco terrorism things first of all by the nature of the business it's usually very isolated small doesn't seem to be well coordinated and it's not something that happens like

a daily in the news we'll take a short break right now when we're back we'll continue discussing whether and rand mental activism poses a serious threat ways around former director. of communications for the u.s. senate in wramc amazing stay with us. in the heart of the swiss alps this is a place probably more secretive than the pentagon more mysterious than the cia and better guarded than for knox swiss customs are here permanently all the site is

controlled by them and they impose the opening times square. because it is from the top us the procedures in place of the strictest in all europe must to pieces by artists like pecan so and modigliani i can't boards unsold inside this warehouse that's where the report comes in it covers up deals which are naturally discreet commercially discreet felt but also discreet secrets they concern fraud of some of those paintings are linked to a dark secret scheme nobody knows how many of these secrets they kept inside the geneva freeport social position that you'll never obtain an inventory of all the works in the freeport who knows how many there are three hundred three thousand three hundred thousand is it a matter of confidentiality only is it the world's black box of the art business.

chose seemed wrong. but old rules just don't. let me. get to shape out just because to add to it and in detroit it was betrayal. when so many find themselves worlds apart. just to look for common ground. there you economic war is unfolding in the realm of education the right to education is being supplanted by the right to. education alone higher education is becoming just another product that can be bought and sold but it's not just about education anymore it's also about running a business where you know models of. the good is also the fruit of a little economy. what is the place of students in this business model for college

i was born now and i'm extremely bored by education the new global economic war. and we're back with the mark moran former director of communications for the us senate environment committee discussing radical environmental movements and the threat they pose welcome at wired now animal rights groups are more prone to taking drastic measures to and from mental defenders i wonder why do you have an answer to that well i actually interviewed uncovered a peter singer the princeton bioethicist who actually famous quote was christianity is harmful to animals and the idea. that motivates animal rights activists they

believe that humans and animals are an actual equal playing that humans have no more rights than animals when i interviewed peter singer few years back he actually said that if termites were eating his home that he doesn't know that he could actually kyra exterminator to kill the termites because the termites have equal right to life as he does access to his house this is their ideology so when they see humans essentially acting above our species in their minds that we're you know if we. clear a forest or we use animals for experimentation or read domesticated animals for farming or eat animals that offends their entire world view that animals and humans are on the same plane and i think that is one of the biggest motivators and this is one of the reasons that animal rights activists part of this is one of the. strongest and most activists wing of the eco terrorists eco terrorism like you said earlier some animal rights groups target not just slaughterhouses but also institutions of science like labs where things are tested on animals animal testing

is going out of fashion and it's not cool to do it in cosmetics for instance are scientists is one going to have to give up on testing because of the pressure from the radical green well i don't know that it's pressure here's what happens and it's a free society usually peta for instance and other groups can do a video on how mcdonald's chicken big nugget i don't know if it was peta but another view about how it mcdonald's she can make nugget is made or how animals are treated on the slaughterhouse when people watch a video like that and a lot of times you could say their propaganda shows like they picked the worst possible scenario people are grossed out they're sick they can actually influence public opinion so i would say scientists especially in cosmetics are facing much more public opinion backlash against what at least they would consider is unnecessary or not vital research on animals because public opinion has shifted not because of the acts of eco terror but because of the you know promotion and the

promoting the cause of it in the mass media and education of our kids kids are indoctrinated very young age that they have to be green that humans have destroyed the earth so kids are growing up many would say brainwashed with this ideology so as we go forward it's going to be harder and harder for scientists to do that now medical research i think is still a lot of that's going to be harder to to stop that but i think with cosmetics and other things. we're people do animal testing even allergies i think they're going to have they're definitely coming back because public opinion isn't there but i really wonder about science was going to happen today u.c.l.a. behavioral science professors home was firebombed and his colleagues were bullied into giving up research in behavioral science of apes in the may two thousand easy to terrorism powerful enough to actually step back scientific progress in these fields not yet but as we said if they get more coordinated and if there's

a projection the next five years eco terrorism is going to come in its own and yes it will in the climate debate scientists who are skeptical of the united nations al gore view have been driven from the field roger poky jr has been intimidated investigated it actually is eleven year old son asked if he was going to jail he left the field of climate research just because of political hassles now if you're actually talking about threatening livelihood it gets that much more intense a few years ago on the mall in d.c. i interviewed pipeline protesters who said by any means necessary they will stop the keystone pipeline any means necessary i asked if that meant violence and they repeated any means necessary well when pipeline workers and their families are starting to get threatened or explosions go off that will have an impact but it and there will also be a backlash lawsuits and more federal crime and law enforcement coming down on them so. the opposition to stem cell research is animal rights extremism coming closer

and position to more conservative and religious way groups i mean can there be an alliance between these two for a common goal that's a good question yes in the united states for instance with the stem cell research we had president george w. bush when he was president did he compromise where you can all because a pro-life groups were very you know did not want the stem cells to be used. to create life to destroy it so it only had to be existing lines of stem cell research . it could be used but yes i don't know that pro-life groups now would align themselves with the eco terrorist groups on that however there would be political kinship between some environmental groups and that but not to say the radical eco terror groups but that's just the kind of stuff again you have labs you have a memory of you and christopher reeve the old actor who played superman who was out there strike and came to d.c. to save the silver spring monkeys because they were doing a research on him and you know that it was not a radical movement at the time but people get so worked up over that that if

research labs are attacked it will have a chilling effect on the scientists that work there and the companies that actually do the research what's european is animal cruelty justified when it's done in the name of science shoot science has been limited by what they can and can't do to anyone says test subjects yes i mean you should have serious guidelines and you should have issues with sentient and with it whether they can if pain issues will kind of pain pills you give them you would want an animal to necessarily suffer and you should also try to reduce animal testing to the absolute minimum that you would be absolutely necessary in a society and i think that's happened public outrage over that and more guidelines and strict adherence and oversight has made we made long strides towards doing that because the public just doesn't like the idea of animals being you know certainly anything involving cruelty. certainly but it's one of those things where you know

it's one person's scientific experiment with with humane treatment is another person's cruelty it's a it's hard to justify some animal rights activists are just upset that we eat meat period which makes no sense by the way because animals eat other animals and we're supposed to be equal with animals but suddenly they don't want to humans eating other animals so in a sense they're saying that animals have the right to eat other animals but humans don't have a right to eat other animals even though they think we're all equal so. so there is a logical inconsistency there still is at the even when you're not talking about radical fringe groups like the earth liberation front and the animal liberation front we have the more mainstream greenpeace and they use direct action as well but avoid the destruction of property not including grammy and ships in open seas why is greenpeace considered more acceptable than those fringe groups terror called terrorists. well you know as you know. they've been jailed i believe a couple countries have tried to declare or have declared greenpeace's activities

terrorism. and it's all again it's all a fine line and greenpeace generally stays within the guidelines of civil disobedience but you have activists like christopher. christopher out in utah who is now being people are trying to declare him a terrorist because he's gone after a lot of the industrial activities through lawsuits in cars and huge amounts of cost huge amounts of money and delays the projects and they're saying it's a form of financial terrorism so you can go through civil disobedience you go to actual physical violence financial implications people have different definitions of terrorism and impacts so it's again i did mention semantics and you can actually go back and forth but i think where we can agree no semantics are involved is when you're affecting physical property and human lives that's where is the full blown eco terrorism and everything else short of that is a little different you know delaying a project blocking access to a project those are time honored traditions of of all groups not just animal rights

or environmental activists but going back to the civil rights movement past has another mainstream an organization with a lot of celebrity support today in the its methods are more like intimidation public shaming shock ads can you kids some of extremism me a war they find it when war it's well you know it depends on how far they go one of the interesting things about peta is they set up their own shelters and they gave a lot of money and donations and these shelters i believe us some of the highest kill rates of any animal shelters in other words they take in these animals to try to take care of them and they realize how difficult it is and they end up having to put them down so peta has their own p.r. problem when it comes to that but generally peta does when i was on capitol hill they came out they do things like nude protests where the they paint their bodies and they come out they like to do a lot of. silly and more humorous stuff but they also have you know they've also inspired or been involved i don't say they've been of all but they definitely inspired that kind of strange people getting their fur coats spray painted or mink

coats if you don't like that they've encouraged that kind of activism and certainly earlier on of the maybe they've mellowed in recent years but these groups. have all groups actually have certain elements that are on the fringe and certain members that will be inspired and radicalized beyond the scope of what that group once and i think that is that is what the f.b.i. always looks for those signs of radicalism and we certainly have that you know obviously going back to the unabomber unabomber ted kaczynski was inspired before he sent those letters and actually there was an alice of the unabomber his writings versus al gore's writings and they were actually very similar so you can see where mainstream environmental ism can be corrupted and taken by someone who maybe isn't right like ted kaczynski wasn't mentally right and then radicalized and used to go off on this kind of you know killing people to engine any radical saat stars with

a sharp disappointment in the status quo so with and ran mental activism it is the government's lack of action about pollution wildlife preservation a sadder and making people think radically why isn't congress or the white house doing more on that. well why are they doing more on the issues that would make people upset i mean first of all that you know when you're talking for instance on climate the idea that when hurricane harvey hits and suddenly you have all these main mainstream not fringe groups metal activists including bill nye not just with harvey but before that calling for the jailing and suggesting that climate skeptics should be put in jail for fraud for not going along with you in. that far that's that's of course very extreme and i'm not you're a climate change denier but whatever your thoughts on climate change which i mean house gas emission is a fact coalition is attack urban sprawl i mean we humans do have a quite a desert footprint on the irat and that's a fact so why can't the white house with the senate do something about it well the

white house and what has been doing so the best since one thousand nine hundred seventy in the united states we have radically improved our air and water quality while at the same time increasing economic growth and population and we've done that through technological innovation and smart environmental policy so we've radically improved all of that what i'm telling you i'm not trying to obsess on climate here i'm just saying that climate is going to be the big issue this is where the radicals are this is where they're trying to send people to death call for a number of trials put them in jail and that is a bigger issue that in a habitat destruction even bigger a blow i think is the climate change issue because people look at it as earth do love and times many people view it as end times and that's why that is going to be the driver going forward we can look back and say animal rights has been huge but i think it could be the climate eco terrorism of the future the next five or ten years that we're going to be looking at all right mark thanks for being with us today we're talking to mark moran former director of communications for the u.s.

senate environment and public works committee discussing the same line between activism and terrorism comes when it comes to environmental protest that's it for this latest edition of sophie and cool i'll see you next time. palm oil is one of the most controversial products of odds on the it's a salvage vegetable fats that's very cheap. twenty seventeen production grew to sixty three million tons that rapid growth in international demand for cheap oil

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a gun it will be admission from them. in the heart of the swiss alps this is a place probably more secretive than the pentagon more mysterious than the cia and better guarded than for knox was customs i hear opponents place all the science is controlled by them and they impose the opening time so it was it it was it took these forms all plus the procedures in place of the strictest in all europe monster pieces by artists like pecan so and modigliani i can't boards and sold in the side this warehouse that's where the report comes in it covers up deals which are naturally discreet commercially discreet step but also discreet secrets they concern fraud stuff. some of those paintings are linked to dark secrets nobody

knows how many of these secrets i kept inside the geneva free pool which is a strong position that you'll never obtain an inventory of all the books in the freeport who knows how many there are three hundred three thousand three hundred thousand this is a matter of confidentiality only is it the world's black box of the art business. so what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have it's crazy confrontation let it be an arms race off and spearing dramatic development only closely i'm going to resist i don't see how that strategy will be successful very critical of time time to sit down and talk. a plate for many clubs over the years so i know the game and so i got. the ball

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the. nation. thanks. to be awarded the nobel peace prize. for progress on the korean peninsula. a human rights organization. over the. legs. one week in the intensive care unit and i did think. the british. people.