OVO

New explosives could be more powerful and safer to handle than TNT and other conventional explosives and would also be more environmentally friendly.

Environmentally Friendly Bombs Planned – Yahoo! News

‘His life depends on this decision. This case is about the fundamental question: Who is the bearer of human rights?’ [HUMANS, YOU FOOL!]

European Court agrees to hear chimp’s plea for human rights | Mail Online

A government-sponsored bioethics committee in Switzerland has now decided that plants have rights. I thought this was a joke, but found an English version of the original report.

ex cathedra: You knew it was coming

Plenty to read here. Criticisms of things I support, support for things I criticise. Former Atlas Society and Brandon supporter, now back with Ayn Rand Institute.

Diana Mertz Hsieh: Overworked Graduate Student in Philosophy

Marie Jeanette Mason is accused of spray painting “No Genetically Modified Organisms” on building walls just before the fire. The fire caused $1.1 million damage.

The Enquirer – Eco-arrest surprises neighbors

“If ELF wants to have a positive impact on the environment they should consider suicide. It would be more productive.”

Earth Liberation Front Burns Street of Dreams Development – thedailygreen.com

“It’s almost a last-gasp attempt to show they are still a viable terrorist organization, when in fact they are just pathetic.” She says innocent. This thing eats youth and births jail.

Waters guilty of arson in UW case

The FBI and the Joint Terrorism Task Force are investigating a fire caused by a device left at the front door of a home owned by Edythe London, a UCLA professor of psychiatry and of molecular and medical pharmacology

Animal extremists say ‘liberationists’ responsible for firebomb attack / UCLA Newsroom

The house of a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles was damaged by a firebomb left at the front door early Tuesday in an attack apparently orchestrated by animal-rights extremists

UCLA Professor’s House Is Firebombed – Chronicle.com

Building work is to start on a cow and working oxen protection centre at a Hertfordshire Hindu temple. The unit at the Bhaktivedanta Manor temple near Watford will be dedicated to Gangotri, a 13-year-old cow put down by lethal injection by RSPCA officers. This act sparked outrage and a campaign to change the UK law on animal cruelty.

A temple spokesman said Hindus regard cows as sacred and should be exempted from cruelty laws, but the RSPCA challenges the campaign for change. The RSPCA said the cow had been sick and was suffering. The spokesman for the Hare Krishna temple said that some suffering was part of life and it was a outrage to kill the animal on ground the Hindus regarded as sacred. “Followers of religions such as Islam and Judaism have immunity from the laws because their animals are killed for religious food. Hindus try to preserve life and are vegetarian. We want the same treatment to allow our cows and oxen to die naturally. Our new protection centre is designed to care for the animals from birth to death.”

[Article continues at link. In order to maintain the cow's sacred status, the temple was willing to let it suffer. In order to maintain the cow's quality of life, the RSPCA put it to death. In the real world nothing is sacred, every thing is just what it is. We can remember that if we consider some things more special than other things then it is we, now, who are considering it such. Keeping a sacred cow in a temple is one more way religion does the unthinkable in a socially acceptable way. No one can keep a sacred cow because they really like Dr. Who, or pre-raphaelite paintings, or prime numbers. But if you do it in the name of religion, you can get away with almost anything. You can even petition to have your superstition enfranchised into law. The RSPCA doesn't seem to be as kook-riddled as PETA, but of course the strange contradiction of killing an animal to save it remains. - Trevor Blake]

Maintaining the environment is a critical issue especially as evidence of accelerated global warming mounts and as energy becomes more of an issue than it has in recent past. Unfortunately, many of those who claim to be working for enviornmental improvements lack an understanding of a few basic concepts which are absolutely critical to accomplishing anything.

I often find myself in arguments over economics versus environmentalism. This becomes a very difficult situation because the immediate accusation is that I care only about money and need to realize that sacrifices must be made for the good of the planet. I am also told that wind or solar is the answer and the costs and reduction of energy output is acceptable. These ideas that it is okay or honorable to make such sacrifices are overly simplistic and lack a true understanding of the forces at work. To use a phrase I have come to like, they are “Not even wrong.”

Thus, the top ten list…

[Article continues at link.]

Cockburn goes on to equate global warming fears with religious apocalyptic views, which Trevor Blake expands upon

Global warming and apocaphilia » Technoccult

While the world’s climate is on a warming trend, there is zero evidence that the rise in CO2 levels has anthropogenic origins. For daring to say this I have been treated as if I have committed intellectual blasphemy.

sp!ked review of books | I am an intellectual blasphemer

In magazine articles and essays I have described in fairly considerable detail, with input from the scientist Martin Hertzberg, that you can account for the current warming by a number of well-known factors – to do with the elliptical course of the Earth in its relationship to the sun, the axis of the Earth in the current period, and possibly the influence of solar flares. There have been similar warming cycles in the past, such as the medieval warming period, when the warming levels were considerably higher than they are now.

Yet from left to right, the warming that is occurring today is taken as being man-made, and many have made it into the central plank of their political campaigns. For reasons I find very hard to fathom, the environmental left movement has bought very heavily into the fantasy about anthropogenic global warming and the fantasy that humans can prevent or turn back the warming cycle.

[Article continues at link. I have a suggestion as to why large groups of people are supporting the athropogenic global warming theory, but it is one I read long ago by an author I sadly cannot remember and credit. Ask yourself where the largest environmental movements are, and where the most radical / violent environmentalists are. The answer is, roughly, the USA, Canada, England and Germany. All of these countries are, among other things, largely Protestant countries. Compare the environmental movement in these Protestant countries with the environmental movements in largely Catholic countries, such as Italy or Mexico. Compare it also with the environmental movements in Islamic countries. It seems that Christianity co-occurs with environmentalism more than with Islam, and more with Protestant Christianity than Catholicism. Protestant Christianity is heavy with stories of the original purity of humanity and our harmony with the Earth, but through our wickedness in taking on the powers of God we have brought about great suffering and destruction - including the any-day-now destruction of the entire Earth. Compare this to environmentalism, which is heavy with stories of the original purity of humanity and our harmony with the Earth, but through our wickedness in taking on the powers of God we have brought about great suffering and destruction - including the any-day-now destruction of the entire Earth. Environmentalism is in part an echo of Protestant Christianity, which was relegated to ceremonial reverence as the West adopted secular values. - Trevor Blake]

A chimpanzee cannot be declared a person, Austria’s Supreme Court ruled Tuesday. An animal-rights group had sought to have the chimp declared a person, hoping to gain guardianship of the animal.

Chimps Are Not People, Austrian Court Rules, Group Says

PETA advertises via tombstone.

The PETA Files: Colonel Sanders’ Graveyard Companion

A Dutch council has condemned a campaign of harassment by animal rights protesters which forced a developer to withdraw from a science park project.

BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Protests halt Dutch science park

The two fatty acids being studied — docosahexanoic acid (DHA) and eicosapentanoic acid (EPA) — are found naturally in fish oil, flaxseed and walnuts.

Can Omega-3 Fatty Acids Help Depression?

two white beluga whales wearing Santa hats. But environmentalists are saddened by the sight of what they say is the final humiliation for the whale in a country that hunts them down with harpoons.

Animal activists’ anger after aquarium puts Santa hats on whales | the Daily Mail

None of the bears hurtling skyward seem overly upset over being at the epicenter of a huge detonation of black powder.

Lady, That’s My Skull: Bearpocalypse