Are Your Grandparents “Eco-terrorists”?

by Will Potter on October 2, 2008

in Terrorism Scare Mongering


Do you know where your grandparents are? Sure, you might think Nana is at home watching Touched by an Angel, and gramps is puttering around the garage, but they might be out waging guerilla warfare in the name of the environment.

Check out this video of a 72-year-old man keying a Hummer in the student parking lot of Carroll High School in Southlake, TX. [I should note that yours truly graduated from this very same high school. Although when I was there, there were more dualies than blinged-out Hummers.] The video was caught by the Hummer’s motion-activated surveillance cameras. I’m not sure why a high school kid in suburban Texas has surveillance cameras on a Hummer. I’d wager that, outside of this incident, they had only filmed kids getting stoned in the parking lot before school, or captured looks of disgust and contempt as this brontosaurus lumbers through town. But I digress.

The culprit is James Andrew Jeppe, 72, who turned himself in after this video made the rounds on the internetz. He admitted carrying out a string of terrorist keyings.

This is serious, folks. The FBI has warned that “eco-terrorists” are the “number one domestic terrorism threat.” But this threat is clearly much greater than we had ever imagined. This video paints a new picture of the enemy, and it ain’t dreadlocks and camo shorts. It’s white hair, khakis, and orthopedic shoes. This might be the tip of the iceberg, revealing a little-known retirement cell of the Earth Liberation Front.

Some news stations have called this mere “vandalism.” And it looks like he might not even receive prison time! Come on, folks, we need to hit these people with outlandish prison sentences! Gramps might not last 23 years in prison like Jeff Luers, or even a half dozen like most of the Operation Backfire defendants. But that doesn’t matter. These Hummers don’t run!

As this Hummer dealership spokesman said, don’t let your guard down: “This guy, he’s an eco-terrorist.”

Drunk woman chases children in cow costumeLaw enforcement needs to crack down on these environmentalists and animal rights activists before things get out of hand. For instance, if the FBI doesn’t crack down on those Peta members wearing animal costumes at protests, they may go off the deep end like this woman who wore a cow costume, chased children and urinated in public. Something must be done!

On a related and more less serious note, it needs to be said that if this SUV had been spray painted “Earth Liberation Front,” or if someone keyed it and then sent out a communiqué about Hummers destroying the environment, I don’t think anyone would be calling it mere “vandalism.” And that, I think, exposes so much hypocrisy of this “War on Terrorism.” The word “terrorism” is only applied to cases when there’s a political motivation to do so.

Hauling this man into court as an “eco-terrorist” just wouldn’t be politically savvy. Hauling this crazy-ass woman into court as a terrorist, though, would be politically hilarious.

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