December 16, 2002
On speaking tours, Nick Nichols, author of Corporate Warriors has been warning audiences for some time that the trend toward environmental/animal rights extremism in the United States would lead to violence against people.
In late November, Associated Press filed a story about an anti-corporate environmentalist who posted a letter saying he killed to protest corporations damaging the environment.
A man suspected of killing a police officer in California was arrested after an hours-long standoff in a downtown hotel.
According to AP, "An officer at the scene said Andrew McCrae, suspected of gunning down a Red Bluff, Calif. officer, was arrested without incident at the Holiday Inn." "The FBI had called police and told them McCrae, 23, also known as Andrew Mickel, was staying in a fourth-floor room at the hotel, Lt. George Pangakis said. He did not know how the FBI got the information," said AP.
"A tactical team arrived and the fourth floor of the hotel was evacuated, he said. FBI negotiators talked with McCrae by phone and tried to persuade him to surrender. "The officer at the scene, who declined to give his name, would not say whether the man surrendered or was seized.
"McCrae is accused of shooting Officer David Mobilio once in the head while Mobilio was refueling his cruiser.
"Concord Police Chief Jerry Madden said a man identifying himself as McCrae posted letters about the crime on a San Francisco news Web site, www.sf.indymedia.org. "In one letter, the writer claimed he shot and killed the officer to protest "police-state tactics" and corporate irresponsibility.
"The writer claimed he is immune from prosecution because he incorporated himself. Corporations are shielded from personal liability for a corporation's debts. "'The very concept behind corporations is to protect their owners from taking their responsibility for their actions. This means that directors within corporations can dump waste chemicals in our drinking water, or keep our work environment in fatally dangerous condition, without any personal liability,' the letter said.
"'Corporations murder thousands of people each year this way and are never held accountable. As a statement against this practice, prior to my action in Red Bluff, I formed a corporation under the name Proud and Insolent Youth Incorporated, so that I could use the destructive immunity of corporations and turn it on something that actually should be destroyed.'
"Mobilio, 31, was found dead by a fellow officer after he did not respond to a call from a dispatcher about 1:30 a.m., on Nov. 19.
"Officer John Waelty found Mobilio beside his patrol car. His gun, with the safety off, was about three feet away.
"Mobilio was the first officer killed in the line of duty since Red Bluff was incorporated in 1876.
"'We all feel for the officer,' said Sgt. Dan Kupsky, of the Redding, Calif. police, who worked closely with the Red Bluff department. 'It could happen here. There but for the Grace of God, go I.'"
So earnest was Canada's United Nations-loving Prime Minister Jean Chretien on ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, the country's Agriculture Department seemed preoccupied with animal belching and flatulence.
And Ezra Levant's hot-off-the-press book Fight Kyoto devotes a chapter to it. "Possibly the least popular assignment in Canada's Agriculture Department these days is euphemistically called the "belching and farting" directorate. That's where civil servants spend countless hours--and tax dollars--capturing and analyzing animal burps and farts. To cut down on the giggling, departmental staff, including the Minister, refer to these as "livestock emissions", but there's no getting around it: Our government believes that in order to meet our Kyoto obligations, we have to make cattle and sheep toot less. It's no small thing--according to the government, emissions from animals and their manure make up 20 megatonnes of greenhouse gases each year--fully one twelfth the amount Canada must cut back to meet Kyoto's targets. "To aid in this utopian quest, Ottawa has sponsored many creative initiatives. ManureNet, for example, is an official government website tackling this sensitive subject in both official languages. No word yet as to how many cows have made the site their Internet home page.
“One desperate study, done in Manitoba and posted on ManureNet, suggests that cattle should take drugs to stop farting. According to this study, dairy cows that had an additive called monensin mixed into their diets farted up to 28 percent less, according to scientists, who claim to have actually measured. Trouble is, "the impact has not been (as) long lasting," as scientists had hoped. Other ideas suggested by scientists include pumping cattle full of anti-farting hormones, such as Bovine somatotropin, which cut down on methane emissions by nine percent. But even the most ardent anti-farting scientists on the Kyoto payroll are skeptical about jacking up cattle on hormones, just to make them more polite.
"Ottawa's high-stakes race to solve the problem of musical cattle--reminiscent of the grandeur of John Kennedy's Apollo project, or the search for the polio vaccine--has electrified the country. It has also polarized the electorate, with both pro-and anti-farting factions making themselves heard.
"On the anti-farting side proudly stands Environmental Defence Canada, an eco-activist group dedicated to fart-free living. In October 2002, they released a scathing 37-page report called It's Hitting the Fan--pointing out that cattle and pigs nearly outnumber people in Canada, and all of those animals are farting--creating "foul odours", "toxic vapours" and even cause "headaches". Who could argue with that?
“Bob Friesen would, that's who.
"He's the president of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, and his group fired back with their own press release, entitled Environment Group Spreads Manure. "It was the flatulence debate's equivalent of Muhammed Ali versus Joe Frazier.
"'When it comes to harmful bacteria,' argued Friesen, 'a farm of 10,000 hogs produces as much fecal coliform bacteria as a population of 2,300 people.' The subtext of Friesen's riposte was clear: Maybe environmentalists should look after their own farts before pointing fingers at pigs and cattle.
"Friesen then pressed his advantage. He said: 'Animals produce manure, manure is spread on the land to grow crops, and animals eat the crops. It's a perfectly natural and beneficial cycle.'
"After all, without natural manure, farmers would need artificial chemicals. "What Friesen didn't mention was that 150 years ago, while there were fewer cattle and pigs in Canada, 60 million farting, burping buffalo roamed the prairies."
Tree sitting can be a hungry and lonely job in Sacramento, Calif. For 50 days, Susan Moloney is said to have survived on plain H20 and a bit of broth, putting in daytime hours under the peaceful boughs of a towering old redwood beside the state capitol.
When dusk comes, she heads to the warmth of a friend's apartment. On weekends, she hitches a ride home to Garberville to be with family--where she claims to continue her fast.
Moloney has staged her hunger protest at the foot of the door of Gov. Gray Davis, who, when he first ran for public office four years ago, vowed to save California's old-growth forests.
According to Moloney, he reneged.
The Governor isn't having it. Refusing to be budged by the one-woman protest, he counters that he has, in fact, saved many of the old trees.
"Public policy is not made by refusing to eat," said Steve Maviglio, Davis' spokesman. "This sort of thing is a publicity stunt, not an effort for meaningful change."
Another tree sitter joined tree-sitter Moloney with the unlikely name of Julia Butterfly Hill, whose epic two-year vigil in the branches of a Humboldt County redwood ended in 1999 after loggers agreed to sell the tree to a nonprofit organization.
A native of New York, Moloney was a computer programmer until she moved to Humboldt County in the mid-1990s and became an environmental activist. She's now executive director of the Campaign for Old Growth, a grass-roots group trying to put a measure on the state ballot to ban axing all trees more than 152 years old. The group tried to get an initiative on the November ballot, but failed to gather enough signatures.
Any tree sitter on a hunger protest worth her salt can tell you, it's one way to lose weight.
Although one government worker claimed to have caught Moloney chowing down on Cheerios, she insists she survived the first 40 days on only water and herbal tea. After visiting a registered nurse, she added vegetable broth and freshly juiced carrot and apple to her diet.
So the next time you see movement among the tree boughs when you're hiking through the forest, it's not a tree fairy or even Gandhi of the Forests. Chances are it's broth-sipping Susan Moloney or Julia Butterfly Hill still out there at loggerheads over the redwoods.
To legions of average Canadians, even the concept of the Kyoto Protocol is vague. To some, "Kyoto is a city in Japan…isn't it?"
Says Ezra Levant in his recent book Fight Kyoto, "Kyoto could be the future if the grinding, daily propaganda from the Kyoto fundamentalists continues, from the CBC and government-funded environmental groups, such as the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. But if Canadians arm themselves with the facts about Kyoto, there is a chance to fight and win. To tell people that Kyoto isn't just about Alberta, but that every province will be hurt, from offshore rig workers in Newfoundland to auto makers in Windsor, to dairy farmers in Quebec.
"To tell well-intentioned Canadians who care about clean air that Kyoto doesn't deal with pollution at all--it only limits harmless carbon dioxide and methane, leaving smog and other chemicals out. To tell taxpayers that they'll be hit at the gas pump, in their monthly heating bills and their daily parking fees--all to pay for imaginary "credits" from foreign countries."
Levant hits the nail on the head about one irreversible fact about Kyoto: its architect Canadian businessman Maurice Strong... "Maurice Strong: a Dr. Evil-style strategist for the industrial collapse of the world from high in the Swiss Alps. Owner of a 200,000 acre New Age Zen colony. Designer of a proposal to "seriously consider" requiring licenses to have babies. This is the architect of the Kyoto Protocol."
..."(Canadians) should treat environmentalists like they treat politicians instead of treating them like priests and preachers."
--Ecologist and former Greenpeace founding member Patrick Moore.
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