ELF Knocks Down AM Towers To Save Earth, Intercoms 616
ScentCone writes "The ELF (Earth Liberation Front) has claimed responsibility for destroying the primary AM towers used by radio station KRKO in Washington state. From their statement: 'AM radio waves cause adverse health effects including a higher rate of cancer, harm to wildlife, and that the signals have been interfering with home phone and intercom lines.' The poor intercom performance must have been the last straw."
Stop this now. (Score:1, Insightful)
Idiots. (Score:5, Insightful)
REALLY? (Score:5, Insightful)
No (Score:4, Insightful)
First, damage to property is not violence. The proper response is to seize the assets of anyone connected with the plot, and prosecute the case as a crime.
Second, no one should condone irrational behavior like this. But before you go after the environmentalists with guns, you should probably consider that in the grand scheme of things, the loss of AM towers are the tiniest problems facing the nation right now.
If you want to repeat history, by all means, crack down on the ELF and send them all to prison and beat up anyone in the group. Throw the PATRIOT act in their faces. Within no time at all you will have given their movement the publicity and recruiting tools to really cause problems. And erode public support as more and more people are locked up by guilt from association. Or you can arrest the criminals who participated in the act, force the dissolution of the rest of the group unless they officially renounce property damage as a method of protest, and actually take care of the problem.
Morons! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet another group of ignorant children playing dangerous games in the adult world. Sigh.
This is why we need science education (Score:5, Insightful)
Say it with me:
"This is why we need science education"
"This is why we need science education"
"This is why we need science education"
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why the "treehugging" qualifier?
Because these people don't want to "save" the planet for man... they place the planet above man. They view this not as our home, but view people as inferior, a parasite on their world. We call them treehuggers because these people are essentially a pagan earth cult. They're a Gaia-worshipping Luddite movement.
Re:Citation Needed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Morons! (Score:5, Insightful)
"Almost"? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Y'know, I can almost respect them for torching SUVs "
If you can almost respect them for destroying someone else's property, then you're almost as much as asshole as they are.
Re:Stop this now. (Score:3, Insightful)
don't know what's more funny, this comment, or the fact that it was moderated "Insightful."
It's truly surprising how self-destructive these people are... do they really expect that they will gain support for actions like this? Their movement, and their cause will only suffer for stupidity like this.
Re:No (Score:1, Insightful)
First, damage to property is not violence.
By that logic, one can argue that slavery is also not violence.
If someone were to somehow destroy all of the farm machinery in the world and a million people died of starvation as a result, would you argue that that is not violence?
Re:No (Score:2, Insightful)
Violence is violence. It doesn't have to be against a person to be violence. Unless you think they carefully disassembled these towers, you're wrong that this isn't violence. And when they burnt down buildings at Vail, that was violence too.
Yes, I want to lock these people up. It has nothing to do with whether the US has other problems right now. And making up a freerolling strawman argument to condemn what others want to do isn't helpful either.
Re:Citation Needed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:2, Insightful)
You're lumping a lot of adjectives and terms together, seemingly indiscriminately. I agree that some of the 'treehugger' types sacrifice human potential solely to take actions they (probably falsely) believe will benefit the Earth as a whole, but do be careful with your descriptions! Not all of us Earth-lovers feel the need to spread biological self-hate ;)
Man is a powerful, intelligent animal. With great power comes great responsibility, as they say, and sometimes the need for self-sacrifice, but it *is* silly to violently oppose technology without understanding its effects. A species that truly respects the Earth and wishes to care after the many forms of life on it is not going to weaken itself; a good caretaker is not weak.
[posting anon bc this might be considered OT or flamebait by some mods, sadly -- just wanted to open the floor for discussion! -pax-]
Nobody likes ELF. Not even their "allies." (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to repeat history, by all means, crack down on the ELF and send them all to prison and beat up anyone in the group. Throw the PATRIOT act in their faces. Within no time at all you will have given their movement the publicity and recruiting tools to really cause problems. Within no time at all you will have given their movement the publicity and recruiting tools to really cause problems. And erode public support as more and more people are locked up by guilt from association.
I agree with all of your post except this point. Unlike many Islamic terrorist groups, the ELF rarely if ever takes any sort of positive action "back home" to draw in sympathy (e.g. Hamas and Hezbollah run charity hospitals). Additionally, those organizations have an enemy that is widely reviled by their neighbors and considered a threat to their lives and way of life (i.e. Israel and the US). Sympathy for terrorism only happens when normal people feel there's some sort justification for the terrorists' actions.
ELF, in contrast, strikes out seemingly randomly at many targets that are not nearly the worst offenders, like the radio station here or by burning an entire car dealership for selling SUVs. Worse for them, the rest of the green movement is generally filled with people who respect principles of nonviolence and wouldn't support such against against even the worst offenders. That's why next to no one has any sympathy for ELF; they're practically green anarchists. I'm about as tree-hugging as you can get, but absolutely NO environmentalist that I know has ANY sympathy for these losers.
Personally, I'd be happy if they were all locked up so that those of us who aren't violent radicals wouldn't have to have them used against us by people on the other side of the debate.
Re:"Almost"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not saying that I support the position of OP, but...well, if you paint it in "destroying property" categories, SUVs also fit nicely, with their pointless (with most owners) waste of resources and greater danger on the road...
Re:Citation Needed (Score:5, Insightful)
if they are middle class they will try and justify it under some 'flavour of the month' banner
Wait... are you saying that if they aren't middle class they'll justify it differently or not at all? What does class have to do with any of this?
Re:No (Score:3, Insightful)
That's an awfully interesting position to take. Nuclear weapons are meant to destroy vast swaths of property, but no one calls them non-violent. Similarly, the primary purpose of destroying an AM radio tower is non-violent, but the corrollary effects can very easily be violent, (such as the destruction of part of the emergency broadcast system). That's not a "what if" scenario... the EBS is used for many things and does save lives.
And that's completely avoiding the idea that "violence" is merely destructive agression. If you walk into a Macy's and start destroying displays with a baseball bat, how many people do you think will describe you as violent? My guess is somewhere close to 100 out of 100.
Going after them with the army is obviously an overreaction, but you shouldn't marginalize the ELF. They fit every definition of "terrorist".
Re:Citation Needed (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder if any of these ELF people understand physics
Oh, there's no need to wonder. The answer is: No, they don't.
Re:No (Score:3, Insightful)
So, if I burned down your house, that wouldn't be an act of violence?
When in war, bombs are dropped on cities, that isn't violent?
When someone with a knife stabs the wall beside your head, that isn't violent either?
You've got a screwy sense of what is and isn't violent.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that many people who agree that humanity is less important than the environment misinterpret that as "Humanity is not important at all" and then feel free to act wantonly. It's a logical failing of stupid people, but it's not the overarching philosophy itself that is stupid.
What is required is a fair dose of pragmatism. It's much easier and more effective to get one person, ten people, a million people, to change their ways or work with you than it is to destroy them. Likewise, you must pick your battles. Saving one whale at all costs will not dramatically help the world - use some of that effort to raise awareness so that the community demands the saving of all whales.
Re:Citation Needed (Score:5, Insightful)
Different classes will justify crime differently:
The poor - "Its the man keeping me down" and "I just get mixed up with the wrong crowd" are both popular.
The middle class - will usually invent some sort of obscure social justice or environmentalist excuse like the one we see here. Generally very little actual thought goes into developing this excuse; and its all over some snake oil that was sold to them by someone else with a grander agenda. In rare cases its an actual problem in that what they say is happening actually is and there are some known negative consequences. In these instances they are just opposed to whatever it is, and don't have any sort of alternative solution; unless involves depopulation on a massive scale and most of use learning to be content with tree bark and wild berries for dinner.
The rich - most of the time won't have any excuse of their own per say but will pay an attorney to invent some exotic legal excuse the rest of use can't really understand even when we try. Most of the time the only thing legal about said excuse is the linguistic style its presented in; still it will be excepted more often than not because few others are really interested and still fewer have the resources or wherewithal to argue the matter.
The political - will find away to blame successful noncriminal members of the middle class. They will go with social justice tack as well but it will be slightly more reasoned than the middle class criminal's excuse. Generally not only will the excuse succeed in getting them off the hook for their crime but will also enable them to pass some sort of self serving public policy.
Re:How strange (Score:5, Insightful)
Y'know, I can almost respect them for torching SUVs - If the government won't tell people "No, you may not drive a vehicle that presents a significant danger* to everyone else on the road, without special training for the appropriate license class", then perhaps fear of having their car burn down one night kept at least a few people driving more realistic vehicles.
So lemme get this straight. You almost respect them for:
- extreme vandalism,
- severely inconveniencing people who rely on their vehicles, which also inconveniences the people who rely on them,
- causing a metric fuckton of air pollution all in one go,
- risking catching something else or someone on fire,
- destroying an SUV that will likely be replaced with ANOTHER SUV, thus INCREASING the demand for them,
because you think the LICENSE BUREAU isn't doing a good job? Would you respect them more or less if you thought they were burning SUVs because the patent office isn't doing a good job?
Re:No (Score:4, Insightful)
First: I'll just say that these sorts just make me wish to be hanging around with a sniper rifle. Our way of life, our technological civilization is based on massive amounts of infrastructure investments. I get irked at people destroying that in the name of the environment - at least one developer swapped out his building materials with less green ones deliberately after an EFL faction burned part of his development down.
Burning a SUV doesn't do anything but cause the car company to use even more resources to build another one. Same with home building.
First, damage to property is not violence. The proper response is to seize the assets of anyone connected with the plot, and prosecute the case as a crime.
Sure it's violence. Which would cost you more of your life - a day in the hospital, even a week, or $100k of damage?
Insurance isn't a true response either - it's just spreading the pain/cost around. Everybody's premiums go up because of shit like this.
If you want to repeat history, by all means, crack down on the ELF and send them all to prison and beat up anyone in the group. Throw the PATRIOT act in their faces. Within no time at all you will have given their movement the publicity and recruiting tools to really cause problems. And erode public support as more and more people are locked up by guilt from association.
Or the stupid teens will be spending too much time behind bars to get into trouble? The older members will be exposed as the domestic terrorists they are?
What words mean (Score:2, Insightful)
This all started out by someone saying that knocking down the radio tower was not violence, and now you are saying that knocking down the tower is not an official crime of violence.
If one looks at what is defined as a crime of violence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violent_crime [wikipedia.org], you are correct.
However, the OP is quite wrong. The word "violence" in and of itself most certainly covers this act (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/violence).
Re:Citation Needed (Score:3, Insightful)
I want to drive to Seattle and set fire to the ELF's office, plus any other ELF offices I pass along the way, because I think they need to be taught a lesson that losing millions of dollars of property HURTS. Eye-for-an-eye, "walk in your victim's shoes", and all that stuff.
So which category am I in?
Re:Citation Needed (Score:4, Insightful)
Life in America has gotten so easy that most people will grasp at straws so they can be outraged about something. You know... To keep them busy and feel like they are actually doing something important... And to um... Keep themselves out of trouble.
I think these people can do more good other then trying to destroy them and pointless protesting (having done work in Albany, Up in the towers 20th floor where all the big decision makers are located, You can have a huge protest of thousands of people and people up there will have no idea what it is about. Heck they could probably do more good by doing things like say organizing a towns recycling policy and get more people to participate. Help setup a socal network where you can increase car pooling by finding people who go to like locations and work similar hours.
Re:Citation Needed (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:Citation Needed (Score:3, Insightful)
Intercoms are Class B (C?) devices anyway. That means they are required to accept interference from other sources like Radio or TV, and they are required to shutdown if they interfere with radio, television, or other licensed service.
In other words, if the AM was interfering with your intercom - tough luck. Same applies to other devices like FM-transmitting Ipods, or wireless internet-capable TV Band devices. That's the price you pay for using that type of unlicensed device.
Re:Citation Needed (Score:3, Insightful)
I think any such link would be easy to spot unless the effect is so miniscule that it doesn't show up without a very large sample, in which case all kinds of other questions come up: how does it compare to having a cell phone, or really any kind of radio transmitter, or even your neighbor having one... and shouldn't all those things be banned first before we start blowing up radio towers.
Re:Stop this now. (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps it also has to do with calling feeding kids meat child abuse [peta.org].
Maybe it could be with this not so tactful ad [divinecaroline.com].
Or maybe he's offended by PETA's ads that make mothers out to be murderers. [howtonotsuck.com]
Then PETA goes on to say that dad's a psychopathic killer [trueslant.com].
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
I've got plenty of tolerance for extreme greens, extreme vegans and extreme whatevers, so long as they don't bother me with it.
It seems, though, the problem is the extremism, not the underlying stance. Afterall, who cares if they believe the desert snail is more important than humanity, so long as they aren't trying to violently enforce that agenda? People don't hate the ELF because want to save the planet - they hate them because they're violent dipshits.
Re:Citation Needed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:1, Insightful)
On that basis, I think it's worth sacrificing one, ten, a million people, if it saves the ecosystem from irreversible destruction (thus saving the rest of us with it).
I see you are willing to sacrifice others, but not yourself, for your beliefs. How was this marked Insightful?
Re:REALLY? (Score:4, Insightful)
You actually made a very, very good point. Insurance companies know the addresses and medical histories of millions of americans. These are most definitely NOT charity organizations, either- we've all heard stories about coverage being dropped for pre-existing conditions or people being denied important procedures. I know from personal experience how difficult it is to squeeze money out of them. So we have a large body of evidence showing that the agencies will do anything for a buck (or to save a buck).
Now- an organization with the power, knowledge, money, and motivation to deny coverage to people living near broadcast antennae *should already be doing that*.
But they're not. And I have worked for an insurance agency (United Healthcare/uniprise)- EM radiation is simply not a concern. Hell, the facility I worked at was within line-of-sight of our city's antenna farm- I can't find exact specs, but the farm includes basically ALL TV, radio, etc. for the entire city. I can pick up some radio stations from those antennae a good 100 miles away (FM).
-b
Re:"Almost"? (Score:3, Insightful)
>>>SUVs..... their mere existence is also a pointless "destruction of property" in most cases
False.
The person who owns the mine which holds the metal (or rubber or petroleum) sells that property to the carmaker who reshapes it into a vehicle which is then sold to a private citizen. At no point has property been destroyed, but instead transferred, some labor mixed-in with the property, and then transferred again.
If you're trying to say that SUVs emit harmful pollutants, well that's true, but so too does the car you drive. So before you go set fire to someone else's SUV, you should first set fire to your own car. Demonstrate through sacrifice what you truly believe.
And last-but-certainly not least, as "dirty" as an SUV may be, it's minimum LEV qualification means it's emitting about 1/10000th as much as a pre-regulation 1970 van. Even the catalyst-equipped 80s cars were rather dirty. One of today's 2009 SUVs is cleaner than my 1987 Dodge sedan. So while you may look at your SUV neighbor and think "irresponsible" you should be congratulating him for buying a newer, cleaner vehicle rather than driving an old clunker.
Re:Citation Needed (Score:4, Insightful)
That still doesn't make it terrorism.
Re:Stop this now. (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes. They're called "college campuses."
Re:Citation Needed (Score:5, Insightful)
They would have to perform an act with the express intent of causing terror and fear in the general populace, also typically involving idealogical goals (check) and targeting civilians with violence (not check).
I don't think that knocking down a single AM radio tower qualifies, although it is certainly vandalism, destruction of property and other things.
I mean, if I destroyed everyone's wifi devices in my building with a hammer, I'm crazy and have destroyed property in a criminal manner. But am I a terrorist?
Re:Citation Needed (Score:5, Insightful)
You said it yourself. People who deliberately go out of their way not to hurt anyone should not be lumped in with people who crash planes into skyscrapers. They're both criminals, but the latter is in an entirely different league of Evil.
As for the ELF: Come on, guys, if you're going to break the law and destroy stuff, at least base your actions on science, not pseudoscience. I might sympathize somewhat if you all blew up something that was causing *actual* environmental degradation. All you did was annoy AM radio listeners.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
I've got news for you, we could light off every nuke and explosive device ever made, and the "Earth" would be back to normal in a geological blink-of-an-eye. There have been mass extinctions before, much worse than we could accomplish, and the ecosystem recovers quickly. A few million years from now you would have some bipedal-squid geologist studying a 0.5cm layer of radioactive soil in the ground and wondering where it came from. That would be the only record of our brief foray on this planet.
Now, if you want to save environmental resources for your children and grandchildren, or protect choral reefs to they can experience them, then, yes: worry about "irreversible damage." In geological time scales, nothing we can do is irreversible. Heck - we can't even properly sterilize medical equipment -were not going to be able to beat 96% [wikipedia.org] of all marine species.
Re:Citation Needed (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of the effect on human tissue is heating and in the microwave range.
Yeah, people make calculations assuming that the only effect could be thermal, in which case you're right.
But there could be another mechanism, even one we don't know about yet.
I don't believe low-level electromagnetic radiation is dangerous, but there are studies that show cells grown in culture exposed to low-level radiation had more mutations than unexposed cells. (I forget the details, but I read about it in IEEE Spectrum. )
Cell reproduction is pretty complicated. How do you exclude the possibility that EMF may cause a mutation by an unknown mechanism? My first thought would be to duplicate the experiment and hope it turns out differently. But suppose you can duplicate it?
After all, low-level magnetic fields have biological effects -- birds navigate by them.
I don't think it's true. But I can't exclude it.
Re:non-ionizing means no chemical reactions. (Score:5, Insightful)
If inducing a current merely causes "an increase in temperature", please explain how radio communication works...
At the broadest perspective, sure, any energy input is "an increase in temperature". When you set up your crystal radio to receive AM transmissions, yes indeedy, the thing does warm up a bit as it absorbs EM radiation. (Even though some if it is turned into mechanical energy in the earpiece, it's not 100% efficient.) But describing the operation of the radio as "an increase in temperature" is misleading, to put it kindly.
Can non-ionizing EM radiation have an effect on biological systems? You are, quite literally, looking at the answer.
Can EM radiation in the radio range at low intensity have an effect on biological systems? I dunno. Consider the hot and cold spots that arise as you microwave your burrito. Could very mild but uneven heating have an effect?
If something "gets a little warmer", chemical reactions are affected. If you don't understand this last sentence then please go take a chemistry class and come back.
The scientific way of answering the question "does EM radiation effect biological systems" is to observe biological systems that have been exposed to various sorts of EM radiation and see if there are any effects. Saying "our models don't allow for such effects, therefore they cannot exist" is faith-based reasoning, not science.
Re:Stop this now. (Score:2, Insightful)
I do find it very odd, to say the least!, that PETA has so many animals put down. However, I am not an American, PETA dont run animals shelters where I live. If I believe in pet ownership and wanted a pet, I guess I would prefer to have one from an animal shelter. Do you have pets? Did you get them from a shelter? Are they "rescues"? If American people dont take animals from American animal shelters, then what is meant to happen to them? Animals cannot be put into suspended hibernation, not yet! They basically will end up being "put down".
Also, a source from the NRA? Yeah, as if thats going to be a bias free source! When I think of the NRA, I sure think of Animal Rights
Re:Citation Needed (Score:3, Insightful)
(Calling it "terrorism" is, of course, ridiculous.)
Why? It's clearly terrorism. And I say that as an environmentalist, but one with no sympathy for the ELF's beliefs or tactics. Their actions fit the definition perfectly.
Re:non-ionizing means no chemical reactions. (Score:5, Insightful)
Can non-ionizing EM radiation have an effect on biological systems? You are, quite literally, looking at the answer.
Excellent example - you beat me to it :) In case the OP is a bit slow (likely!): a photon in the visible light spectrum is non-ionizing, yet it is able to excite photoreceptor cells in the retina by causing a molecule (appropriately named retinal) to isomerize, which catalyzes a whole chain of chemical reactions.
For that matter... if you really wanted to rub it in you could have even pointed out that heat receptors do roughly the same thing, so "an increase in temperature" directly causes chemical reactions in your skin!
Why is it always the people with the fewest facts who are the most arrogant, and start throwing around insults first? ;)
Of course, that being said, I'm sure we all agree that the ELF is a bunch of wackos, and your body absorbs thousands of times more radiation standing outside for a few minutes than it ever would from an AM antenna. We better be careful, their next terrorist act may be to destroy the sun!
Re:Demand a Tuition Refund! (Score:3, Insightful)
Tongue in cheek, I know, but giving them knowledge of Arts and Sciences is not the same as teaching them judgment. I mean look at most James Bond villians!
Re:non-ionizing means no chemical reactions. (Score:5, Insightful)
Your entire post could be summed up as "I understand a little about radio and microwaves and its effects on animals and humans, and assume nobody else has ever studied this completely new phenomenon".
The truth is people HAVE studied radio and microwaves and its effects on animals/humans for many many years. They've also studied the 50/60 HZ radiation produced by power lines. The conclusions are that it's not harmful. Speculating about what it COULD do and coming up with pet theories about just how it MIGHT harm someone is not science, it's nonsense.
Your own ignorance is not other peoples ignorance. People like yourself who are willfully ignorant and who sit around speculating about how the unobserved harmful effect just MIGHT work are the reason I see stupid marketing on floor heating product about how their amazing technology cancels the EM radiation. Next I'll see marketing on bricks about how their amazing brick technology cancels all the virtual particles created in the empty space within atoms in the bricks. This makes it so the bricks don't gain mass over time.
Re:Citation Needed (Score:3, Insightful)
But there could be another mechanism, even one we don't know about yet.
That's not how science works. First you determine that there is some sort of effect, then go looking for a mechanism. Go find an effect and we'll look for the reason why.
How do you exclude the possibility that EMF may cause a mutation by an unknown mechanism?
It's not ionizing, so that's pretty simple. Cells are fairly resilient - a small amount of heat isn't that big a deal.
Re:Citation Needed (Score:3, Insightful)
You know, the word ``fascist'' has a specific meaning. Using it to describe anyone you don't like is stupid (and _not_ fascist).
Please, stop using that racist word. (Score:3, Insightful)
The Vandals did more than just sack cities you know. When someone steals something, do you still say they 'gyped' you?, when someone is unwilling to spend freely, do you call them a jew? Still make polish jokes implying they are stupid?
Re:Citation Needed (Score:2, Insightful)
Birds have little magnets in their heads, they use the MAGNETIC field of the Earth to navigate, not the ELECTROMAGNETIC field, except when they use their eyes.
Oh, and we haven't just CALCULATED that the only effect is thermal; we've SHOWN it, in many scientific experiments.