climate activist on trial.

[kevbone]

Hero or foe?

[klenke]

Neither.

[billcoe]

Neither.

On the money. It all depends on your personal thoughts and baggage how you feel about this act. Certainly not a hero by common definition of the word. Much like Tre Arrow up on the ledge. Go Tre Go! The folk "hero" was called a "Hero" a lot until he got convicted for burning up logging and cement trucks. http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/06/tre_arrow_says_oregon_halfway.html

The penalty seemed excessive. To like everyone.

However, if it had been your truck he torched, would he still have been a "hero" to you? I can assure you that kind of reasoning could extend to every vehicle on the planet. Even your Prius. Would you then feel he was a Hero? Or only when he was destroying someone else's stuff?

 

I can give you my answer, but let me just say that us old people have different standards than self-centered blowhards like Pat Gallagher, who have very little life experience and thus tend to be a touch screwed up in the head, as his posts usually indicate.

[j_b]

easy on the dubious parallels: the Utah activist didn't destroy any property. Several cases of people making bids they couldn't pay for haven't been prosecuted, which shows the intent of making an example out of him.

[Crux]

Neither.

On the money. It all depends on your personal thoughts and baggage how you feel about this act. Certainly not a hero by common definition of the word. Much like Tre Arrow up on the ledge. Go Tre Go! The folk "hero" was called a "Hero" a lot until he got convicted for burning up logging and cement trucks. http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/06/tre_arrow_says_oregon_halfway.html

The penalty seemed excessive. To like everyone.

However, if it had been your truck he torched, would he still have been a "hero" to you? I can assure you that kind of reasoning could extend to every vehicle on the planet. Even your Prius. Would you then feel he was a Hero? Or only when he was destroying someone else's stuff?

 

I can give you my answer, but let me just say that us old people have different standards than self-centered blowhards like Pat Gallagher, who have very little life experience and thus tend to be a touch screwed up in the head, as his posts usually indicate.

 

Whoa!

[klenke]

This thread did make me wonder, cuz I never wondered before about it, what the penalty is, in general with your more common auctions, for making false bids that you have no intention of paying for should you win. I imagine at ordinary auctions, if you win a bid but then don't pay for the goods you just won, then A) said item gets put back in the auction hopper at the annoyance of those you outbid thus wasting their time, B) you are banned from bidding at that house and possibly other houses that catch wind of your act.

 

Now for this particular bid this guy got busted for, it was a federal auction so I guess they have more stringent laws (the article didn't seem to note what law was actually broken, or did I miss something?).

 

[prole]

[klenke]

Please try to stay on topic, prole.

 

Oh wait, this is Cascadeslimers. Nevermind.

[prole]

Oh sorry, this is about the spread of the Ghadaffi/Sheen/Billcoe Syndrome?

 

 

 

[prole]

Now for this particular bid this guy got busted for, it was a federal auction so I guess they have more stringent laws (the article didn't seem to note what law was actually broken, or did I miss something?).

 

You might have missed the point in the article where the defendant suggests the reason the Feds are pursuing the case so vigorously is because it was a political act.

 

DeChristopher said his attorneys still may argue that point, though he believes U.S. courts tend to penalize defendants who act for political reasons more than those who act for profit. The opposite, he said, is true in the United Kingdom, where a judge recently declined to punish Greenpeace activists who shut down a coal-fired power plant by scaling its smokestack.

 

He fears his political motive also may expose him to a longer prison sentence.

 

Cassell, the U. law professor, agrees that political motives can lead to harsher treatment in court, depending on circumstances. A defendant’s apparent altruism can help his or her case. But when the defendant is defiant, showing no remorse, he said, a judge may exact serious punishment to deter a repeat offense.

[j_b]

Oh sorry, this is about the spread of the Ghadaffi/Sheen/Billcoe Syndrome?

That, or the regressive frontal assault (I know, not too hard to visualize) on environmental protection: Clean Air Act under attack from extremist Tea Partiers backed by big business

[tvashtarkatena]

Oh sorry, this is about the spread of the Ghadaffi/Sheen/Billcoe Syndrome?

 

 

 

Take Billcoe, raise him in a shoebox, then straighten him out with an iron and you've got Klenke.

[tvashtarkatena]

I don't think Klenke does Thai prostitutes, though.

[klenke]

Sigh. Some things never change.

[Off_White]

Trashie, please, do try to not be such an asswipe.

 

Klenke is engaging in rather civil discourse, and you're just being a jerk to a poster who doesn't in any way deserve it. Bill Coe didn't do much better invoking you though, kind of like inadvertently saying "beetlejuice"

 

[tvashtarkatena]

Our experiences have been different, so we'll agree to disagree on that. In other words, STFU.

[Off_White]

See, there you go again. You were doing alright until the last sentence.

[genepires]

back on topic..............

 

why is that being a political move make this any more "criminal" than if it wasn't political? The eyes of justice should not care of motive but rather the content of the "crime".

 

I see little crime committed here other than not having the funds to pay off commitments. If that is a crime then lock up the majority of american citizens and the entire congress.

[genepires]

I guess justice isn't blind when the crime is offended upon the one who deals the punishment.

[prole]

Burn down an SUV, get ten to twenty. Burn the economy down, get...rich.

[Off_White]

Yeah, in China they'd just shoot those guys. Well, both types I'm thinking...

[112]

He said on Democracy Now that although it wasn't his original intention to actually pay he was able to raise the necessary funds with help from others, but wasn't allowed to make payment.

 

I am curious how long individuals have to pay.

[prole]

 

Meanfuckingwhile...

 

Scientists Try to Determine Whether Life on Earth is Quickly Heading Toward Extinction

 

Life on Earth is hurtling toward extinction levels comparable with those after the dinosaur-deleting asteroid impact of 65 million years ago, propelled forward by human activities, according to scientists from UC Berkeley.

 

This week, scientists announced that if current extinction rates continue unabated, and vulnerable species disappear, Earth could lose three-quarters of its species as soon as three centuries from now.

 

"That's a geological eyeblink," said Nicholas Matzke, a graduate student at UC Berkeley and author of a paper describing the doom-and-gloom scenario. "Once you lose species, you don't get them back. It takes millions of years to rebound from a mass extinction event."

 

This means that not too far in the future, backyards might not be buzzing with bees, bombarded by seagulls or shaded by redwood trees. And while that might seem far off, species already are disappearing on a global scale. In recent history, we've lost the dodo bird and the passenger pigeon, the Javan tiger and the Japanese sea lion, and now, maybe the eastern cougar -- declared extinct by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Wednesday. Amphibians, mammals, plants, fish -- none are immune to going the way of the dinosaurs, courtesy of the human impact on fragile ecosystems.

 

Such enormous losses have only occurred five times in the past half-billion years, during events known as "mass extinctions." The best-known of these events occurred 65 million years ago -- a "really bad day," according to paleontologists -- when an asteroid collided with Earth, sending fiery dust into the atmosphere and rapidly cooling the planet. These "Big Five" events set the extinction bar high: to reach mass-wipeout status, 75 percent of all species need to disappear within a geologically short time frame, meaning that Earth is currently on the brink of the sixth mass extinction.

 

To determine whether current losses could equal these mass extinction rates, scientists compared recent rates with species die-offs during the Big Five, taking into account presently endangered species. They also looked at the number of species lost in recent history and found that while rates are dramatically higher than expected, the percentage of vanishing species is not elevated -- yet. We already are engaged in a seemingly inexorable march toward barren landscapes and empty seas, a procession fueled by human population growth, resource consumption and climate change, according to scientists.

 

"The good news is, we still have most of what we want to save," Berkeley paleobiologist and lead study author Anthony Barnosky said. "But things are clearly going extinct too fast today."

 

The paper, published in this week's issue of Nature, resulted from a graduate seminar Barnosky organized in fall 2009. Together, he and students used fossils to compare extinction rates with more modern data, wanting to answer whether we really are seeing the sixth mass extinction. To make comparisons, scientists used information from well-preserved fossils and modern accounts of disappearing animals, focusing on our milk-bearing relatives: mammals.

 

Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich, who was not involved in the study, said evidence of the sixth extinction is all around. For years, he studied the Bay Checkerspot butterfly on Stanford's campus -- but then, the butterfly disappeared from the campus, more than a decade ago. And, when Ehrlich journeyed to Morocco to sample a different Checkerspot species, he found no butterflies, just "sheep droppings and not one blade of grass."

 

"Anywhere you go around the world," Ehrlich said, "If you're a field biologist, your sites and organisms are disappearing. "

 

One particularly vulnerable group is marine mammals, according to study author and paleobiologist Charles Marshall, who said that while predictions are dire for our swimming relatives, they haven't yet reached the point of no return.

 

"There really is time to reverse habitat destruction or massive overexploitation of resources," Marshall said. "I love sushi, but I just don't eat tuna anymore. I don't want to be part of the decline of that group."

 

Scientists say habitat destruction, global climate change, introducing invasive species, and population growth are contributing to losses.

 

"Those four things working in concert are kind of a perfect storm that's setting up a recipe for disaster," Barnosky said. "But people are the ones who are driving this extinction, so we can fix it."

 

In addition to prioritizing species preservation, Ehrlich suggested starting with caps on human population growth and limiting resource consumption.

 

"We could do something about it, but I don't see that we have the slightest inclination to," he said.--from here.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

Meanfuckingwhile...

 

Scientists Try to Determine Whether Life on Earth is Quickly Heading Toward Extinction

 

Life on Earth is hurtling toward extinction levels comparable with those after the dinosaur-deleting asteroid impact of 65 million years ago, propelled forward by human activities, according to scientists from UC Berkeley.

 

This week, scientists announced that if current extinction rates continue unabated, and vulnerable species disappear, Earth could lose three-quarters of its species as soon as three centuries from now.

 

"That's a geological eyeblink," said Nicholas Matzke, a graduate student at UC Berkeley and author of a paper describing the doom-and-gloom scenario. "Once you lose species, you don't get them back. It takes millions of years to rebound from a mass extinction event."

 

This means that not too far in the future, backyards might not be buzzing with bees, bombarded by seagulls or shaded by redwood trees. And while that might seem far off, species already are disappearing on a global scale. In recent history, we've lost the dodo bird and the passenger pigeon, the Javan tiger and the Japanese sea lion, and now, maybe the eastern cougar -- declared extinct by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Wednesday. Amphibians, mammals, plants, fish -- none are immune to going the way of the dinosaurs, courtesy of the human impact on fragile ecosystems.

 

Such enormous losses have only occurred five times in the past half-billion years, during events known as "mass extinctions." The best-known of these events occurred 65 million years ago -- a "really bad day," according to paleontologists -- when an asteroid collided with Earth, sending fiery dust into the atmosphere and rapidly cooling the planet. These "Big Five" events set the extinction bar high: to reach mass-wipeout status, 75 percent of all species need to disappear within a geologically short time frame, meaning that Earth is currently on the brink of the sixth mass extinction.

 

To determine whether current losses could equal these mass extinction rates, scientists compared recent rates with species die-offs during the Big Five, taking into account presently endangered species. They also looked at the number of species lost in recent history and found that while rates are dramatically higher than expected, the percentage of vanishing species is not elevated -- yet. We already are engaged in a seemingly inexorable march toward barren landscapes and empty seas, a procession fueled by human population growth, resource consumption and climate change, according to scientists.

 

"The good news is, we still have most of what we want to save," Berkeley paleobiologist and lead study author Anthony Barnosky said. "But things are clearly going extinct too fast today."

 

The paper, published in this week's issue of Nature, resulted from a graduate seminar Barnosky organized in fall 2009. Together, he and students used fossils to compare extinction rates with more modern data, wanting to answer whether we really are seeing the sixth mass extinction. To make comparisons, scientists used information from well-preserved fossils and modern accounts of disappearing animals, focusing on our milk-bearing relatives: mammals.

 

Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich, who was not involved in the study, said evidence of the sixth extinction is all around. For years, he studied the Bay Checkerspot butterfly on Stanford's campus -- but then, the butterfly disappeared from the campus, more than a decade ago. And, when Ehrlich journeyed to Morocco to sample a different Checkerspot species, he found no butterflies, just "sheep droppings and not one blade of grass."

 

"Anywhere you go around the world," Ehrlich said, "If you're a field biologist, your sites and organisms are disappearing. "

 

One particularly vulnerable group is marine mammals, according to study author and paleobiologist Charles Marshall, who said that while predictions are dire for our swimming relatives, they haven't yet reached the point of no return.

 

"There really is time to reverse habitat destruction or massive overexploitation of resources," Marshall said. "I love sushi, but I just don't eat tuna anymore. I don't want to be part of the decline of that group."

 

Scientists say habitat destruction, global climate change, introducing invasive species, and population growth are contributing to losses.

 

"Those four things working in concert are kind of a perfect storm that's setting up a recipe for disaster," Barnosky said. "But people are the ones who are driving this extinction, so we can fix it."

 

In addition to prioritizing species preservation, Ehrlich suggested starting with caps on human population growth and limiting resource consumption.

 

"We could do something about it, but I don't see that we have the slightest inclination to," he said.--from here.

 

THANKS FOR THE UPDATE, CHICKEN LITTLE!!!

[prole]

You'd have probably said the same thing in Germany circa 1936.