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‘Eco-terrorism’: A radio discussion
Your Call Radio hosted a discussion on "eco-terrorism" involving John Sellars of the Ruckus Society, Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, and Judith Lewis of L.A. Weekly.
It's really, really good -- an uncommonly hysteria-free discussion of the subject. You can listen to it here.
The SPLC, which has tracked far-right extremist groups for a long time, recently starting tracking "eco-terror" groups (some material here and here). Mark Potok makes no excuses for their behavior, but he makes it very clear that they are nowhere near the "top domestic threat." And Lewis makes some fantastic points, many of which I have made myself in my obsessive blogging on the subject, and provides some interesting historical context.
Recommended.
(via Judith herself!)
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Some predictions
I can't say I'm expecting much of substance from Bush's speech tonight. Is anybody?
I am, however, expecting some soaring rhetoric and empty promises. Let's talk about those.
One issue that Republicans very much want to control is energy independence, which is looming larger and larger in the public mind. They need to preemptively frame it to their advantage. With that in mind -- and a few oblique hints from the interview -- I'm hazarding a prediction: Tonight, Bush will unveil a splashy energy program.
It will have one of his patented Orwellian names: The Energy Strength and Independence Small Farmer 9/11 Protect American Children Act, now with Extra Freedom™!
It will have three parts:
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For five years a ferry was dumping sewage directly into Long Island Sound, and no one noticed?
It's not every day that someone in America goes to jail for an environmental crime. But yesterday, Mark Easter, the operations manager of the Fishers Island (N.Y.) Ferry District got hit with 30 days, for dumping raw sewage into Long Island Sound and the Thames River, in New London, Connecticut. And the federal magistrate in Hartford who is overseeing the case hit him with a $10,000 fine for good measure.
It's hard for me to say whether the punishment fits the crime here. But I have a feeling that someone is being let off the hook, politically if not legally -- and I'm not saying it's Mark Easter.
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The joke makes itself
Two Fox News employees have filed a lawsuit claiming they were sickened by air contaminated with toxic molds and pesticides while working in the building where "The O'Reilly Factor" and "At Large with Geraldo Rivera" are produced.
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DeRosairo, a control booth graphics technician, and Clarke, a makeup artist, said they were made ill while working within the broadcasting complex that produces shows that also include "Hannity and Colmes" and "Dayside." -
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British enviros curb flying to protest airplane emissions A growing number of British enviros are quitting or cutting back on air travel, resisting the siren song of low-fare, no-frills airlines. “I just realized that all my other efforts to be green — recycling, insulating the house, not driving a giant 4×4 — would be totally […]
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Urethra Ranklin’
California plumbers union opposes water-conserving urinals If California plumbers have anything to do with it, you’ll be peeing in water ’til the day you die. (We feel that our whole careers have been leading up to that sentence.) Many public facilities in the water-strapped Golden State have installed no-flush urinals, which use gravity and replaceable […]
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Fine and Randy
Bush admin deal exempts thousands of farms from pollution fines A Bush administration deal announced yesterday will allow thousands of factory farms to evade pollution fines. The U.S. EPA has signed consent agreements with nearly 2,700 companies in the egg, poultry, dairy, and hog industries, exempting them from paying major daily fines for toxic air […]
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Exxon Lax
Exxon posts record-breaking profit, tries to evade Exxon Valdez penalty ExxonMobil has announced that it reaped $36 billion in profits for 2005 — the largest single-year profit ever by any American corporation. In related news, last week Exxon lawyers asked a federal court to effectively waive $5 billion in punitive damages related to the massive […]
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Gosh, they just seemed like normal folk!
The CS Monitor's Brad Knickerbocker has a competent backgrounder on the recently arrested "eco-terrorists." There's not a whole lot new in it, particularly about ELF, which is what I'd most like to see some solid reporting on. He does point out that activists in this extremist community (centered in the Northwest, principally around Eugene, Ore.) deny that the feds have the right people, but I suppose that's to be expected.
This passage, however, jumped out at me:
