Charges against individuals who reportedly formed a ring of ecoterrorists is good news for the Northwest and a validation for the FBI, whose agents persisted over long years to assemble evidence of arson and property destruction. At a news conference Friday, the feds disclosed 65 counts against 11 people for criminal behavior in acts linked to ALF and ELF - the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front. Eight of the eco-11 are in custody. In the bucolic Pacific Northwest, where nature is an icon and tree-hugging is serious, the liberation-fronters perform the role of the Bad Seed. They take environmentalism to the point of dangerous absurdity. The indictments, if proven in court, tell a tale of berserk behavior, of careers and good work damaged, all in the name of the Earth. The Earth is a false god if it means concocting explosive gel with soap shavings as the stabilizer.
Three men and women, all in their 20s, were arrested this month in a Kmart parking lot in Sacramento, Calif., in possession of bleach, glass cleaner and other items useful in preparing a bomb. One of the men also had on him drawings of the U.S. Forest Service's Institute of Forest Genetics in nearby Placerville at the edge of the Eldorado National Forest, according to the Associated Press. Federal agents believe the 11 individuals may be responsible for 17 acts of ecoterrorism across a span of Western states. The damage includes felling high-tension wires, torching lumber-mill offices and a slaughterhouse, and firebombing a ski resort in Vail, Colo., causing a $12 million loss.
Closer to home, the arson of a horticulture center at the University of Washington by ecoterrorists made as much sense as driving long spikes into trees to make them safe. The liberation-fronters, bizarrely believing they do good work, are estimated by the FBI to be the country's No. 1 internal terrorist threat. The FBI said they caused about $100 million in damage since 1997, according to the AP.
They don't target or harm people, is the defense used by the ecoterrorists, but of course they do. They harm families and research, paychecks and public wealth. They stain environmentalism with their unbalanced fervor. The individuals appear as normal as the trees, but with secret lives of destruction - a firefighter, a Southwest bookstore owner and a health-care worker for the disabled are among those found and charged. One committed suicide in jail, others appeared at the courthouse in Eugene, Ore., smiling the smiles of the righteous.
There is a question about ecoterrorism that environmentalists from Eugene to Juneau should ask themselves. Is it not enough to decry the eco-11's violence but silently agree with their goals? Torching a horse slaughterhouse is still arson, and wrecking some SUVs or high tension wires is still about a violent means to an end. The person thought responsible for the Vail fire is also the prime suspect for the 2001 fire at the University of Washington Center for Urban Horticulture. Much is said and written about the fragility of the wild, about the ocean currents and the melting ice. Those caught in California were thought to be targeting fish hatcheries next, and maybe a cell tower. There's a good way to get people of the Northwest on your side - kill fish and cut off cellphones. Ecoterrorism cannot be wrapped in justification any more than terrorism anywhere, for whatever crackpot dreams.
Source
GREENIES ON THE SIDE OF POVERTY AGAIN
Post lifted from Cheat Seeking Missiles
Libs love big social programs that attack poverty (successfully or not), but they hate cars, so this one is going to muddle their clarity:
Portland State grad student Kerri Sullivan has found that car ownership is the key to escaping urban poverty. Her report found:
... car ownership improved the likelihood of being employed by 80 percent. The effect on average weekly wages was approximately $275, and the effect on weeks worked was approximately 8.5 weeks.Brock Yates, writing in Car & Driver, reported more:
Steven Raphael and Michael Stoll of UC Berkeley and LA, respectively, found that "raising minority car ownership -- compared to the white car-ownership rate -- would eliminate 45 percent of the black-white emmployment-rate differential and 17 percent of the comparable Latino-white differential."Yates suggests that big government proponents may want to get together with Detroit's struggling auto makers and devise a "car in every garage" program.
This will be fun. The dying-earth greenies are going to have to once again try to keep their big, fat slice of the pie away from poor blacks and Latinos. Greenies will drive their cars to hearings at which they'll protest government continuing to support gasoline engines, while the poor folks will ride mass transit to the hearing and beg for a break.
Ah, the elegant hypocrisy.
SOME MORE RESPONSES TO THE LOVELOCK SHRIEK
From Michael Phillips (earthmapping@yahoo.no), Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences Medway School of Science University of Greenwich UK:
In the article on James Lovelock from The Independent, the author writes: "Thirty years ago, the scientist James Lovelock worked out that the Earth possessed a planetary-scale control system which kept the environment fit for life. He called it Gaia, and the theory has become widely accepted"
As far as I am aware, the theory has not become 'widely accepted', certainly not in the world of Biologists and Neo-Darwinists (see Unweaving the Rainbow, Richard Dawkins). I understand also that Lovelock himself always felt he was mis-represented by interpretation of Gaia theory, an idea that is usually misinterpreted by Eco Warrior Fundamentalists and proponents of a living 'Mother Earth'. That was never Lovelock's intention.
From Roy Spencer (spencer@nsstc.uah.edu), The University of Alabama in Huntsville:
"The world has already passed the point of no return for climate change, and civilisation as we know it is now unlikely to survive, according to James Lovelock, the scientist and green guru who conceived the idea of Gaia."
FINALLY! Now we can quit arguing about what should be done, since we are "past the point of no return" anyway!
From Michael Henlon (Michael.Hanlon@dailymail.co.uk) of the Daily Mail:
It strikes me that something should be done about Lovelock. I have read his book, and even I, as a humble f***wit, can pull it to pieces. He is so fundamentally wrong about so many things it is hard to know where to start.
From Allan MacRae (firsst@shaw.ca):
I was ready to dismiss James Lovelock as just another eco-nut/flake but decided to visit his website at http://www.ecolo.org/lovelock/index.htm. Lovelock is on the right track about a few things:
1. Lovelock is correct about wind power - it is a mere enviro-token and is not a viable alternative means of generating significant amounts of electricity. The best proof is the excellent German report (see Fig.7 - Falling Substitution Capacity): "E.On Netz Wind Power Report 2005, Germany" http://www.eon-netz.com/EONNETZ_eng.jsp
2. Lovelock is also correct about nuclear power, but with qualifications - IF you accept that greenhouse gases are causing catastrophic global warming, then one of the few viable current solutions is nuclear. However, the science of global warming suggests that a doubling of atmospheric CO2 will not cause catastrophic global warming, but rather a warming of less than one degree C. An examination of Lower Troposphere (LT) temperature trends as measured since December 1978 by satellites shows no warming trend in LT from 12/1978 to 04/1997, just oscillation around zero - then the huge 1997-98 El Nino spike peaking in 04/1998 which quickly reversed itself; possibly 0.2 degree C warming from 2000 to 2005. The pattern of this data does not support CO2 as a significant driver of warming. LT temperatures are available at: http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/tltglhmam_5.2 So Lovelock's "end of life as we know it by humanmade global warming" scenario seems a bit farfetched. A more probable scenario is another ice age within 5000 years.
The following paragraphs are extracted from: http://www.apegga.org/whatsnew/peggs/WEB11_02/kyoto_pt.htm "During the past two million years, the Earth has been as ice-age cold as it has ever been, experiencing more than 30 glaciations. In the past 800,000 years, the pattern has been approximately 100,000 years of extensive glaciation, interspersed with warmer interglacials of around 15,000 years. By studying climate changes through these previous cycles, we surmise that the next ice age is less than 5,000 years ahead. At that time, large portions of North America will be buried under kilometres of ice." A final note on the relatively minor role that CO2 plays in global warming, also from the above apegga.org report: "Through most of the last 500 million years atmospheric CO2 content has been higher - up to 18 times higher - than at present. Strikingly, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 was more than 10 times higher than today's value during the Ordovician glaciation, around 440 million years ago. CO2 is simply a minor driver in the many factors that influence climate."
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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.
Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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