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."

Comments

Re:Stop this now.

[jack2000]

Because they hide behind this agenda of "defending nature" when everything they do is politically and financially motivated. Green peace, peta, these "elf" too.. Green peace are BigOil's puppets, don't even get me started on peta...

Re:REALLY? [interference]

[Tablizer]

But they are right about the interference issue. I live a little more than a mile away from AM towers, and they cause all kinds of goofy stuff. Anything with speakers or headphones is an AM radio here. I had to buy new equipment to get rid of the interference via trial and error with my wallet. I used to dismiss the Brady Bunch episode where Jan's braces picked up a radio station. But now it seems plausible.

However, I assure you I have no plans to bomb it. Although, I'd like give them a 20-foot finger.
       

Re:REALLY?

[cusco]

We set up access control and video monitoring not long ago for an antenna farm on top of Cougar Mountain, near Seattle. At that one facility there are seven major towers and probably at least a dozen smaller ones. A single major tower can support half a dozen 50,000-400,000 watt radio stations, one or two 400,000-550,000 watt television stations, cell phone antennas, police and other governmental radios, and some private short wave antennas. There are at least twenty houses within a half mile, which have been there since the '60s and '70s. This is only one of half a dozen similar facilities ringing the Seattle metro area.

Why is it that none of the "radio waves are going to kill us all" crowd seems to have done a single epidemiological study of people living in this intense, continual, long-term bath of radiation? Instead pretty much all I see are collections of anecdotal accounts with no controls. "They put a cell tower next door last week and today I have cancer" is not what I would consider a definitive study.

Epidemiological studies are not that expensive in the US, once consent forms have been gathered it comes down to statistical analysis of already-computerized data. It's more of a job for insurance analysts, who are actually very well equipped for this sort of task.

Doubt it was ELF

[Nethead]

Disclaimers: I live a few houses down from the station owner, so I've followed this for a while. I was a broadcast engineer in a past life (even did some contracting at a former iteration of this station.)

Here is the story from the local paper: http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20090905/NEWS01/709059909&news01ad=1 (good set of pictures)

From the Seattle Times version: "Andy Skotdal, general manager of the family-owned sports-radio station, isn't convinced ELF is responsible, even though the group's North American press office in Washington, D.C., issued a news release and posted an item on its national Web site Friday saying it was.

He suspects disgruntled locals who have long opposed the siting of the towers on 40 acres of farmland may have taken matters into their own hands after losing a key ruling in King County Superior Court a few weeks ago.

"My suspicion is, it's somebody local," Skotdal, whose family has owned the station for 20 years, said by phone Friday as he watched dozens of sheriff's detectives and FBI agents comb the property for evidence. "It could be somebody painting ELF on a banner to throw off suspicion."

In the same story, the FBI sees a few things that point to ELF but they are only a day into the investigation. I'd lay away from making a call right now on who is responsible.

Either way, stealing a excavator, driving it through a muddy field and pulling down two towers has to leave a good amount of evidence. I'm also thinking that the guy wires must have been cut too, just to keep from kill the machine operator on the first tower.

A possibly related event on the East Coast

[dtmos]

A tower outside of Allentown, PA was deliberately felled the same night. As it was a guyed tower, the vandals cut the guys to bring it down.

Re:And, appearently they induce criminal behavior

[jamstar7]

Vandalism of what amounts to a public resource for political ends is either civil disobedience or domestic terrorism. If it's the latter, they deserve prison time. If it's the former, they should demand to go to jail and wear their prison garb as a badge of honor. As long as the individuals who did this stay in hiding they are nothing but cowards.

Ah, but if the 'leaders' of these 'ecowarriors' go to jail, who will lead the 'troops'? You send the 'troops' to jail, but keep the 'leaders' free to inspire more and more violent actions in the name of ELF, etc.

ELF, btw, is 'descended' from an outfit called Earth First!, who include people like convicted arsonist Rod Coronado as sterling examples of the 'best' that they offer. No wonder PETA likes nutjobs like him, they make PETA look 'moderate'.

I was talking with an ecofreak once who told me that the 'carrying capacity' of Earth for humans is on the order of 500 million tops. So, with about 7 billion people on the planet at the moment, seems 13 of 14 need to die & join the compost heap. I'd asked the ecofreak if he was volunteering to be one of the first into the compost heap. He told me 'Of course not, they need me to show them the way'. Seems I hear similar things from any of the econutters out there; they're the only ones who can save us from ourselves as long as we do what they say.

I say, compost 'em first.