Make Jose Bove Serve His Time

Demand that Jose Bove serve his full sentence!

Wherease terrorist Jose Bove has, once again, been convicted of criminal acts including property destruction and vandalism, we demand that he serve his full eight month -- while certainly not sufficient -- jail sentence.

If the French won't enforce their laws and keep Bove in prison, they should revoke his passport to prevent him from spreading his violence and destruction as he did in launching the riots and destruction in Seattle during last year's WTO conference.

Josй Bovй is a veteran activist and promoter of violence who poses as a French farmer. His most recent caper involved the destruction of a field trial of biotechnology-improved rice at a test laboratory near Montpellier, in southern France. He had previously been found guilty of the demolition of a half-built McDonalds in Millau.

During his trial he threatened that a guilty verdict would bring even more violence. "It would astonish me greatly if the judge dares to order us to be arrested after the trial," he said. "If so, the state would be making a great mistake, triggering an unprecedented situation. . ."

Bovй claims to be a "family farmer" but how he finds the time to "farm" with all his international travel and activism is beyond any reasonable person's comprehension. He grew up in Berkeley, California where his scientist parents were 'studying' at the University of California for seven years during the Sixties. Not exactly a family farm history. In fact, France's Elle Magazine, noted Bovй as "the man who fooled us most, who perpetuated fraud" in 1999 by pretending to be a farmer. (Dec. 20, 1999 issue).

In 1968, Bovй moved back to France and at the age of 19 started his career as a professional activist protesting against the French military. According to Time Magazine (December 6, 1999), Bovй refused to perform his military service and dropped out of university to immerse himself in various leftist political and ecological movements. In 1975, Bovй moved to Larzac, France with a group of like-minded activists as part of the French "Flower Power" movement to start a farming commune. This commune raised sheep and produced Roquefort cheese (the type he smuggled into the US and illegally distributed in Seattle to protest world trade) with government subsidies. However, Bovй was never a full-time farmer; rather, he spent his time working with a local peasant movement organizing against the planned extension of an army base in southern France. Arrested for "invading" the base during a 1976 protest, Bovй spent three weeks in prison.

Following his prison time, Bovй attended 'direct action' training camp in Libya sponsored by dictator Muammar Quadafi. After this training, in 1987 Bovй founded the radical Confederation Paysanne, a leftist peasant farmers union, and began launching targeted commando actions against the government in support of increased socialism and French peasant-style subsistence agriculture.

In Feburary 1988 he was one of the leaders who organized a protest called "Plowing the Champs Elysees" in Paris against the European set-aside policies. In September 1990 he led protests and hunger strikes demanding more government subsidies for sheep farmers (he must have needed more money to fund his political programs, and was unable to sustain them from his group's unsustainable Roquefort farm).

In September 1991, he picketed the airport of Lazac and prevented French Prime Minister Jospin's plane from landing. In August 1995, he joined Greenpeace on the Rainbow Warrior to protest nuclear trials. Also, in 1995, Bovй led protests in France destroying property and attacking French government offices smashing windows, setting fires and charging local police office gates with tractors.

In 1997, Bovй began mounting his protests against biotechnology crops. Since that time he has been implicated in the destruction of a Novartis seed production facility and the greenhouses of a public research center. Bovй and his group are also credited with hijacking shipments of biotechnology-grown corn. Bovй spent another three weeks in prison in 1999 after he lead activists in the destruction of a McDonalds in Normandy.

Bovй is now the darling of the organic and anti-biotechnology movement. In Seattle he was hosted by Ralph Nader's organization at a rally, conveniently held in front of a local McDonalds. The McDonalds was, of course, vandalized. Bovй has also been the guest of anti-technology, organic farming advocate Mark Ritchie and his IATP group. During the WTO meeting in Seattle, a US farm group sent Nader a letter asking that he disavow the violence started by Bovй and cease sponsoring street rallies in front of such targets as McDonalds. (Nader never responded.) Bovй supports government control of agriculture, high subsidies and tariff barriers to protect his form of agriculture and has called for the creation of an independent world court protect this system.

Well, the French courts have justly seen fit to send him to jail. There he should go (and stay) and serve his full term.