ELFs strike

The Earth Liberation Front took credit for a series of attacks on car dealerships in Los Angeles that targeted SUVs and Hummers causing at least $1 million in damage at one dealership where a parts warehouse and 20 Hummers were burned.

They claimed responsibility recently for a $50-million arson fire that destroyed an apartment construction site in San Diego. This photo from their website shows a Vail fire they did.

In their own words 

The Earth Liberation Front is an international underground organization that uses direct action in the form of economic sabotage to stop the destruction of the natural environment. Since 1997, the ELF in North America has caused over $100 million in damages to entities who profit from the destruction of life and the planet.

The FBI has been trying to catch them for years. However ELF is deeply underground and loosely organized, making them difficult to find. A while back the FBI admitted they don’t even know who ELF members might be, much less having solid leads.

The ELF website and their spokesperson are aboveground. They do not know who the underground people are. This is similar to Northern Ireland when the IRA was underground and Sinn Fein was their aboveground political arm. While Sinn Fein and IRA were able to contact each other through intermediaries, Sinn Fein leaders absolutely did not know who the IRA leaders were (If they did, any number of folks would have happily tortured them to find out). ELF emerged out of the Animal Liberation Front in Britain in the 80’s, so no doubt they took this above/underground structure from the IRA and adopted it for their own purposes.

ELF chooses their targets carefully, never hurts people, and invariably makes worldwide news when they strike.

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Record heatwave closes Mont Blanc to tourists

No new snow, the glaciers are melting, leaving once navigatible trails too dangerous to use, so Mont Blanc is now closed for general use.

Dr Jonathan Bamber, reader in glaciology at Bristol University, said it is likely that, unless global warming unexpectedly goes into reverse, the damage to the Alpine environment and to the tourism that depends upon it can never be repaired.

The melting of the layer of permafrost that holds the peaks together, said to have occurred this year to a depth of seven feet, will make ski facilities, such as lifts and cable-car pylons unstable, costing millions to repair.

Permafrost melting to that depth is beyond unusual. It is a harbinger that something is going very wrong. Yet the current lunatics in D.C. still fight any attempt to do something about global warming.

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Things Not to Do

From Not Genuises

Mike Gordon, bassist for Phish, has very bad decision making ability. Lets give Mike a checklist of things not to do in the future.

1) Do not take a liking to a 9 year old girl backstage at a Dead show.

2) If you must take a liking to a 9 year old girl, ensure that she is not the daughter of a leader of the Hell’s Angels.

3) Do not lure her to a secluded area to take “art photos”.

4) If you must lure her to a secluded area, do not get caught.

5) Especially not by the Hell’s Angels:

“Regardless of whether Gordon has to face a judge next month, law-enforcement sources say unofficial justice was already delivered. The Hell’s Angels, who detained Gordon for police, were not, the sources say, gentle with sensitive areas of the rock star’s body.”

Ouch!

Note: The girl was found utterly unharmed, fully clothed, and Gordon and her parents later released a joint statement saying it was a misunderstanding and they all hoped to put the matter behind them. His record label said,  look, anyone who knows Mike even a little knows he’s not on this planet, and he apologized to the girl and her parents.

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Fox suit against Franken “wholly without merit”

Saying “This is an easy case,” a federal judge ruled Friday against Fox News in its lawsuit asserting that a book by liberal satirist Al Franken violates its trademarked slogan, “fair and balanced.”

Fox was seeking an injunction to halt distribution of “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.”

U.S. District Judge Denny Chin, after listening to about half an hour of oral arguments, said the lawsuit was “wholly without merit, both factually and legally.”

And of course, Fox News, craven slime they are, barely reported the story.

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Alabama’s golden calf

From D.J. Mitchell

Down in Montgomery, they’ve got their own problems.  Chief Justice Roy Moore was suspended for refusing to remove a 5,300-pound monument to the Ten Commandments from the courtyard of a government building.  Moore’s reasoning: to do so would be to “remove God.”

It’s unfortunate that such ignorance rises to the highest levels of (in this case) state government.  After all, one of the things the Ten Commandments tells us is that no monument is God– not even one to the Ten Commandments.  By taking such a position, Judge Moore has desecrated the very commandments he claims to revere.

Judge Moore has been suspended pending resolution of an ethics complaint against him, with the Christian Coalition of Alabama of course bemoaning how horrible it all is.

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Quote of the Day: Arnold Schwarzenegger

From WeLoveArnold.com

On deciding to run for governor:
 
“It’s the most difficult <decision> I’ve made in my entire life, except the one I made in 1978 when I decided to get a bikini wax.”

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