The Earth Liberation Front (ELF), also known as "Elves" or "The Elves", is the collective name for autonomous individuals or covert cells who, according to the ELF Press Office, use "economic sabotage and guerrilla warfare to stop the exploitation and destruction of the environment".
The ELF was founded in Brighton in the United Kingdom in 1992 and spread to the rest of Europe by 1994. It is now an international movement with actions reported in 17 countries and is widely regarded as descending from Animal Liberation Front because of the relationship and cooperation between the two movements. Using the same leaderless resistance model, as well as similar guidelines to the ALF, sympathizers say that it is an eco-defense group dedicated to taking the profit motive out of environmental destruction by causing economic damage to businesses through the use of property damage.
The ELF was classified as the top "domestic terror" threat in the United States by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in March 2001, and its members are categorized as "eco-terrorists". On the lack of deaths from ELF attacks, the FBI's deputy assistant director for counterterrorism has said, "I think we're lucky. Once you set one of these fires they can go way out of control." The name came to public prominence when they were featured on the television show 60 Minutes in 2005.
Read more about Earth Liberation Front: Structure and Aims, In Popular Culture, Criticism
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“In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one’s self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely; as the pursuits of the simpler nations are still the sports of the more artificial. It is not necessary that a man should earn his living by the sweat of his brow, unless he sweats easier than I do.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—Fred M. Rogers (20th century)