Suspect in ecoterrorism fires with ties to Eugene arraigned

GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) — A woman who spent a decade as a fugitive in the largest ecoterrorism investigation in U.S. history is due in federal court in Oregon on conspiracy and arson charges.
Rebecca Rubin, 39, a Canadian citizen, was arraigned Friday afternoon in U.S. District Court in Eugene.
A federal indictment accuses Rubin of being a member of cells of the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front known as The Family based in Eugene.
Investigators blame the cells for 20 fires across the West from 1996 to 2001 that did $40 million damage.
Among the group's targets were a ski resort in Colorado, wild horse corrals in Oregon and Northern California, and lumber mills and U.S. Forest Service offices in Oregon.
Rubin turned herself in at the Canadian border with Washington last November. Two others indicted in the case remain at large. Ten people pleaded guilty in 2007 to conspiracy and arson charges and were sentenced to prison.
Rubin is specifically charged with helping set fire to buildings at the Vail ski resort to prevent expansion into habitat for the threatened Canada lynx, and to U.S. Bureau of Land Management corrals in Eastern Oregon and Northern California holding wild horses rounded up from federal rangelands.
She also is accused of trying to set fire to a lumber mill office in Medford, Ore.
Rubin is not specifically charged with terrorism, but the indictment alleges she and other members of The Family tried to influence businesses and the government and tried to retaliate against the government.
At the time of the fires, the FBI characterized the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front as the top domestic terrorism threats in the nation.
The Family disbanded in 2001, but a federal task force known as Operation Backfire used an informant to pursue them.
By the time they were sentenced, members of The Family expressed regret and frustration that after all their hardships, they had accomplished practically nothing.
A horse slaughterhouse in Redmond, Ore., was never rebuilt, but the ski resort and ranger stations were rebuilt, timber companies stayed in business, and wild horses were still rounded up and removed from federal lands.
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.
ALF? ELF? Sounds like such a sweet harmless acronym for what is evidently no comical cuddly critter from outerspace OR one of Santa's helpers. I think Stalin used the same flowery PR campaign.
I think we will find that this group has/had some secret agenda due to THEIR profit incentive. With the tree spikers it was buying stock in metal detectors. With this lady's group, maybe llama farms and llama breeders. Who knows.
Ironically, some terrorists are funded by their own enemies. Still more terrorists are funded by special interest groups from foreign powers that hate our country. And then there is always the terrorism designed to divert the masses attention away from things that matter the most...like air, water and food w/o radioactive contamination.Â
 @peace tree spikers buying stock in metal detectors? dude you are clueless. and stalin,s flowery campaign was called the bulshavics, or the great purge/ which was genocide, and speaking of terrorist, it was the cia that put binlauden in power to fight the russians during the cold war to keep them from building and controlling an oil pipe line that we want to build and control from kasicstan.
@mannimal ---bravo! Now tell me something I don't know. Clueless? You deny that the sales of metal detectors spiked though the charts back then? Most tree spikers may have been clueless about doing the devils bidding I will admit.
As far as the Afgan saga goes, it was not all about the oil. There is a mother load of lithium (for batteries) and other minerals that both Russia and the US want to control. Fighting terrorism is just a diversion, and explains why we are still there.
But, I am impressed by your spelling of Kazakhstan the way the Russkies spell it.
@mannimal @peace ---that clears a lot of things up for me. Extremely informative. Extremely grateful. I seem to remember quite a few feuds going on with land owners/homesteaders and the BLM. A joke people had in our area of douglas county back in the mid 70s was "Don't step on that freshly planted tree or you'll wipe out 1/2 of our forest reserve".That was not to discredit all of those tree planters that worked so hard planting them elsewhere. My father fed our family doing it back in '69 in Roseburg when pay was mostly piecemeal. Thank God he was a marathon runner in HS. Those Doug Firs are now looking ripe for the plucking. Amazing tree! Our clones (gratis some OSU bio project) have been thriving and growing down in NZ for the last 20-30 years now. So, I guess they can sell the lumber back to us in Roseburg and take away more wood products jobs. I also have a problem with the hoarding of logs that Japan sinks in the ocean off their coastline so they can always use their mill workers instead of ours. I was so sad when those deep ocean critters/worms started munching on their stash of primo logs. Or maybe, I have more of a problem with the way Canada subsidizes their timber industry so much that our timber workers can't compete and be paid a living wage. Lucky for big business, we have all of these Mexicans eager to do it for rock bottom wages. Nothing against those folk either.
There is no denying that big business and govt. (policy makers/politicians) have mismanaged and corrupted our local timber industry, and the heydays of honest hardworking living wage jobs & big timber revenue may be gone for good. It almost seems as if they have tried to turn Roseburg into a Ghost town of tweekers. Doesn't seem all that better in Eugene, especially with the jail bed shortage. Aloha Bro!
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 @peace my sympathy is not for all of them, jeffery luers "free" should be doing life, his co part /conspearator "mud", paid for all seventeen vechs. plead guilty to arson, got his 2 1/2 years and got out early, by doing the tillamook boot camp. you do the crime you do the time.
  in this day and age after all the regs. of the late 80' and early 90's, there is no need for civil disbediance, if you do not like what is up with the timber sale you can get an injuction. and with all the money all these east coast envirofreaks, they could put there latte' funds together and by the timber unit them selfs.
   were most people do not understand is that it is the forest service"circus" or the blm that chooses were when and how these units are logged, my parents did salvage logging for a time. it still works the same way.
    the big thing about this person is that she was part of a group that targeted the forest service and their underhanded illegal deals. that ski lodge was built on national natural wilderness land that was supposed to be set a side to be untouched, the forest service gave a lease on the legality on an 1866 right away law, after the civil unrest about it congress conveend and amended the right away law to revised statute 2477, in which specificaly states the forest service has no juristiction in right away afairs, any gate you see that the forest service has placed is illegal, and on the same note any permits granting land access is illegal (north west trail pass).
    before the civil unrest that happend back then the forest service was running a muck clear cutting everything, no impact studies, and no clue as to what they were doing, one year you cut down to the water line and clear the stream bed , the next year you are supposed to cut to the water line and then place logs in the bed ever so far, now adays they do repairin zones. back then they were not requiring replanting on public lands
  i was raised that proper farming and harvesting of anything is substainable. oregonians have been doing it since the 1800's if it had not been for the feds intrustion into the timber market, by closing homesteading and then putting up timber units for sale, we would still have a thriving timber market. you will find that a good many family timber and mill comp. are still doing well. they have always been enviromentally friendly because they are thinking of their families future rather than a quick buck.
  i feel if she was involved in burning anything down back then like the feds are claiming, she should go to jail for arson, you do the crime you do the time, a terrorist she is not.Â
 teaching is an honorable job
 P.S. the only r.r. spiking i ever hear about was by private land holders on their boundery lines in hopes it would stop companies like XL timber from over cutting in to their timber lands, the F.S. knew what XL and others was doing and turn a blind eye, telling the victims that it is a civil matter
P.S. the last time Native American horses roamed free was 12,000 years ago. And, it was no urban legend that RR spikes were seen among the ashes in our wood stoves on some mornings. Have fun in Hawaii milkin' Uncle Sam's Tetes.
Just don't drink the milk, they are putting Boron in it too soak up the cesium 137 from Fukushima.
Let's stay in touch somehow. I will be back in Tochigi-prefecture (50k south of FUKU) this year teaching English to a bunch of kids like Krusty the Klown like i have done for the last 20 years. It is a service job. But it is nothing to be ashamed of...especially since I love and pray/chant for them all the time.
Take care HOMEBOY! No hard feelings...just PEACE on me Bro! Â
@mannimal---the copy cat hacks did not use ceramic! They used railroad spikes w/o spray marking the tree as spiked (no fair warning) AND no spike at all marking the tree as spiked OR both. Chain saw workers had to climb 1/4 their way up the tree to hopefully cut where the lazy hippy wannabe would not climb.Â
Glad your salary was so high. The smaller mills where my friends worked could not afford metal detectors or the repair/maintenance of a millwright at that time, neither could the chainsaw folk clearing for the chokesetters or the firewood scavengers. Lots of maim, misery and close calls.
I am sure this explains my preachy militancy on this thread. My sympathy is for the poorest being hurt even more by extremists. Also, my friend almost got killed in his sports car last month by another one of those dam deer every where.
BTW, my spelling (am still looking for a spell check function) comes from being promised a Baseball scholarship at the UFO. Once stuck there in Libtard artsy-fartsy land, Duck baseball got cancelled due to budget cuts (timber revenue way down). With no more mill jobs around I had to join the Army to payoff my student loans (that I should have never had to take out to begin with).
Nice to know that you got into the business as a techy when times were boomin'. Congradulations on your lucrative career path! And, I am sure you pay dearly in taxes from a 6 figure income.
There is no denying that you are an outstanding citizen, despite your sympathy for the ALF/ELF rebels. The horse article was a cheap shot, I must admit too.
 @peace  @mannimal being from that time and a millwright and pipe welder, yes i install, build, repair and maintain mill equiptment, the metal detectors in mills are for the pieces of metal that falls off of their machinery and to detect rocks that trees naturauly pick up, if you knew any thing about tree spiking you would know that they did not use metal spikes, hence you being clueless to knowing what you are spuuuuuuueing about like a fanatic.
 sorry that my spelling is off, but i am smart enough that i did not have to pay someone else to show me how to make a living, and at presently making better than a 100k a year take home, i often wonder why sheeple go so far into debt, so they can spell p.c. and think that just because they can spell they must be smarter than e=mc2 albert whom flunked out of school.
 now as being a millwright, i know from installing things like hugh saws, and coe curve saws and what not,that the present logging trees over 48" like at blue river res. can only be split and then chipped.
 and yes it is a diversion, when it comes to her being arrested for terrorism, they did not harm any one, no phyisical threat, and the ony thing they burnt was buildings and equipt that were participating in illegal activity.
 as far as afgan goes, hallaburton is hiring, fluor, and betchtel. i know what is up i do that kind of work. i am presently i mauii for 3 months repairing a coal fire boiler for hc and s sugar.
 what are you doing? working in the service industery, hoping to pay off your school loans, sometime in your life time.
 p.s. i have been in this industery since the 80's, meaning that i have been in just about most the mills that are left. and i started out in the woods as a choker setter for pete dancer out of camas valley if he is still around,.
 if you do not understand now, i am sorry but all i know of sheeple to try to exspess to you id baaaa, baaa? baaa. mabee you understand that better.
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being someone from that time era and from the area(between mill city and sweet home), i know that if it had not been for what transpired with what people did at the time, it would have never made national news and things would still be going on as they were, the u.s. forest service would still be selling old growth forest for clear cut to the highest bidder, so they can drive new trucks and pay increases, fur farmers would still be raising animals in tiny inhumane cages, it saddens me that wild animals like horses, wolfs and what not no longer roam free even on government land/ our land that is supposed to be held in trust by the government,
  If it were not for the radicals, drawing attention to what was/ or is going on, it would never make news, nobody would know that wrongs have been done, and nothing would or will be done.
 WE ALL SHOULD REMEMBER THAT THIS COUNTRY WAS NOT FOUNDED BY PEACEFUL MOVEMENTS, IT WAS FOUNDED BY UPRISE, AND THAT IS WHAT HAS MADE IT SO GREAT IN THE PAST, IT CAN AGAIN .
@mannimal---Wild animals are roamin free in downtown Roseburg, cougars and deer everywhere. We say they even take the bus to and fro the N&S Umpqua. Pretty soon bears will be drivin' the bus and taxis. All because of the preservationist extremists w/o a plan to cull the population of hazards. When your progeny gets whacked by a horse that escapes from a barn door left open on the same road you drove to spike those redwoods, it will be divine retribution. When that old growth tree goes up like a roman candle in yet 2b harvested Doug Firs planted by the blood sweat n tears of my ancestors and kill your progeny fighting the fire, it will be divine retribution.
And, we the people have not even begun to have an uprising against your brand of terrorism.
Making people submit to your notion of ends justification is INVOLUNTARY SERVITUDE. I don't submit. Because I respect the 13th Am. Nuff said!
 @peace please step away from the crack pipe, or restart your meds.
"it saddens me that wild animals like horses, wolfs and what not no longer roam free even on government land/ our land that is supposed to be held in trust by the government"?>>>http://www.kval.com/outdoors/2-dozen-wild-horses-starving-in-Wheeler-County-187341071.html<<<Smoke some ganja, get the munchies, mellow out and have some BBQ horse meat, whilst I add animal abuse/neglect to your agenda.
@mannimal ---I would not know about that. Let's add defamation to your profile as a terrorist sympathizer.
I say tie her up in a tree and then cut it down if she makes it thru then she's done but I don't think she'll walk away.
It's better than leaving it up to the courts and so called prision system ...ok now bash me because I don't know the difference between jail and prision blah blah blah and so on . The system is BROKE and we all know it but look the other way !!!!!
Dirt bag, enjoy your prison sentence.Â
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That is exactly it, all that protesting, it does nothing.Â
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If you want change, be the change.Â
 @Jason Marks i think what you are saying is peaceful protest for change is OK burning down folks life work is not OK.
Basic elementary school knowledge of sentence punctuation is OK, too.
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