We’ve told you before about the stunningly inappropriate comments of Gar Smith of the Earth Island Institute (EII) regarding the September 11 terrorist attacks. Now, the Competitive Enterprise Institute has posted the original EII press release “U.S. Responds to Terrorist Attacks with Self-Righteous Arrogance” — which an embarrassed EII pulled from its own website.
Suggesting that the victims were complicit in an evil system, Smith says “the majority of the victims were, unfortunately, working for the Pentagon and various elements of multinational financial empires.” This led National Review to proclaim, “EII sheds a tear for those oppressed peoples who have communicated, in the only way they know how, their anger at the capitalist, globalist society that led them to this… Clearly, we were asking for it.”
Does comedian and New York City everyman Jerry Seinfeld — who will host a Carnegie Hall fundraiser for World Trade Center victims next week — know where his money is going? After all, EII says Seinfeld is its largest individual contributor. EII’s mission is to “promote the conservation, preservation, and restoration of the Earth,” the group’s website says. Too bad that doesn’t include preservation of people.
