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ELF Knocks Down AM Towers To Save Earth, Intercoms
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."
I'm tired of these treehuging illiterate morons. The government should go after them with guns...
What a bunch of fucking idiots.
Oh my God, these ELF guys are dumber than a box of hammers. Put their brains in a matchbox and they'll rattle around like a bunch of bbs in a boxcar. Where the hell is the science that shows an AM tower a mile away from your home is giving you cancer? Or hell, a hundred meters from your home? These retards will believe whatever junk science validates their owned warped view and they never fucking question it, defending it to the death. Fuck 'em. Lock these idiots up.
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.
The electromagnetic spectrum is not a hard concept to grasp. Radio waves are about the most harmless radiation there is. They have a lower frequency than microwaves, infrared, or fucking ordinary visible light. Are they going to blow up the sun next?
Yet another group of ignorant children playing dangerous games in the adult world. Sigh.
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 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.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Not to mention -- how on earth does the method of modulation make a difference?
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
"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.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
You guys are missing the point - when vandals want to vandalise they will, if they are middle class they will try and justify it under some 'flavour of the month' banner, such as the Earth Liberation Front. Whose earth? They ain't liberating MY earth because the one I live on has no relation to one where radio waves cause cancer . . . maybe I'm just hung up on evidence!
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.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
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?
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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I wonder if any of these ELF people understand physics
Oh, there's no need to wonder. The answer is: No, they don't.
Green Monkey
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.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
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?
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, 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).
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?
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
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.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Parent isn't flamebait, mod him up.
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.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
You don't need lots of science to test a specific case like the one in question: "does living near an AM tower increase your risk of cancer?" All you need is some reliable data on cancer rates for people who live near one versus those who live far away from one.
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.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Yes. Did you know that the FCC requires a check on tissue exposure? There is a Maximum Permissable Exposure regulation. There are charts based on studies. It is a serious issue, which is hugely distorted by ELF. The other thing is that the emission of carbon dioxide might not effect global warming in the huge direct corelation, which ELF and others purport. On the radio front there has been huge intake of disappointment due to low solar activity. There has been talk of a new Maraunder Minimum. With decreasing solar activity we might actually have the Earth heated less by the sun. Some have speculated that a Maruander Minimum and the corresponding overall decrease in solar activity could drop the average temperature by 1 degree. The body does absorb RF. The new "cooking" method to eradicate cancer which has been shown on 60 Minutes used HF. Is there a potent danger from the radio station? No. ELF is whacked. These guys talk about scientific models as the basis for destruction of property and physical violence towards human beings. The scientific models are incomplete and very imprecise. It is not rational to murder people over such models. The results of global warming might be better for everyone, too. I know that I am looking forward to beach front property when the coast floods. ;)
That still doesn't make it terrorism.
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?
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.
Get out, or I'll have vice-president Agnew's headless body throw you out!"
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.
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.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
(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.
... and then they built the supercollider.
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!
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!
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
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.
AccountKiller
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.
Reboot macht Frei.
You know, the word ``fascist'' has a specific meaning. Using it to describe anyone you don't like is stupid (and _not_ fascist).
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?
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.