Environmental extremism

I was just reading this stupid article about how some people who fish are really pissed about their interpretations of potential new fishing regulations. One commentator refers to people who favor these regulations as "environmental extremists."

Wow.

Think about that.

I'm not talking about how fucking crazy right-wing people are, thinking that they live in their god's chosen land and shit like that, or how the country is on the verge of liberal martial law or whatever.

I'm talking about the notion that something like environmental extremism exists.

As though it's possible to take such a position.

The fact is, a concept like that only can exist in a profoundly anthropocentric, destructive culture. As though you can want to protect the environment - trees, air, water, wildlife, soil, mountains - too much. "Environmental extremist" says that the planet is fucking ours. We do what we want with it, what we see fit. It is a fundamentally individualist and arbitrary idea, one where anyone who thinks you need to rein in whatever it is that you are doing is in the extreme. And it's pervasive. I'm sure most people in America can give you some definition of environmental extremism that essentially says that no one should get in the way of human "progress." We think that we can do anything that we want, cause we're people and we are smart. We are advanced. We are the end of evolution.

People might be right about that last part, the end of evolution. Not in the way they intended, that we are perfection incarnate. No, we may be the end of evolution in that the way we've been living, the last few hundred years in particular, there won't be much left when we're done and gone. We've been partying so fucking hard that we're taking everything down with us and don't care. Too wasted on bullshit like iPods and huge televisions.

Trashing the planet to trash the planet

Thankfully, and with a great deal of foresight, Russia is constructing five floating and submersible nuclear power plants in the Arctic, so that they may drill for petroleum. There are no problems that could arise from this decision. Russia has an excellent history of nuclear safety and consideration for the natural world. The world needs the gas and oil deposits they may find, so that we may continue hemorraghing safe, non-toxic fumes and chemicals into the air, water and land. These deposits must be extracted at any cost, and Russia is the country for the job.

Here are some asinine things environmentalists have to say about this glorious achievement:

"It is highly risky. The risk of a nuclear accident on a floating power plant is increased. The plants' potential impact on the fragile Arctic environment through emissions of radioactivity and heat remains a major concern. If there is an accident, it would be impossible to handle," said Igor Kudrik, a spokesman.

Environmentalists also fear that if additional radioactive waste is produced, it will be dumped into the sea. Russia has a long record of polluting the Arctic with radioactive waste. Countries including Britain have had to offer Russia billions of dollars to decommission more than 160 nuclear submarines, but at least 12 nuclear reactors are known to have been dumped, along with more than 5,000 containers of solid and liquid nuclear waste, on the northern coast and on the island of Novaya Zemlya.

They are crazy people who hate progress and worship at the altar of Howard Dean.

22 years in prison for torching a genetic modification seed lab in Michigan

Yesterday, Marie Mason was put away for almost 22 years for torching a lab that was making crops with altered genes, research almost certainly on the behalf of some agribusiness giant like Monsanto. She's an "eco-terrorist" now. Watch out.

It's funny, cause I would say that the people who would unleash this fake food, these doctored seeds unto the world are terrorizing the environment. It scares the fuck out of me. And they get their ways through fear - they say that we're all gonna starve if they don't get to sell their patented superseeds. They tell us that nature's not good enough. They say we need them to live.

As greenisthenewred points out, four white guys who went around Staten Island the evening of November fourth randomly beating black people, or in one case, someone they thought was black, will only be serving up to 10 years, while another gets 12. From the FBI:

At the plea proceeding, Nicoletti admitted that on Nov. 4, 2008, the night of the presidential election, the defendants decided to assault African-Americans in Staten Island after President Obama was declared the winner of the election. The defendants targeted African-Americans believing that they had voted for President Obama. Nicoletti drove the group to the Park Hill section of Staten Island, a predominantly African-American neighborhood, where they came upon an African-American teenager and assaulted him. Nicoletti struck the teenager with a metal pipe and Garaventa hit him with a collapsible police baton.

Nicoletti then drove to the Port Richmond section of Staten Island, where the defendants assaulted an unidentified African-American man. During that assault, Garaventa tripped the victim and pushed him to the ground.

The third assault was against an individual whom the defendants mistakenly believed was African-American. The plan was for Contreras to hit the victim with the police baton as the defendants drove by him. Instead, Nicoletti deliberately drove his car into the victim’s body. The victim was thrown onto the hood of the car and hit the front windshield, smashing it. The victim was seriously injured and remained in a coma for several weeks after the attack...

“The crimes these defendants have now admitted to were violent assaults that in one case nearly killed a man,” said FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge Demarest of the New York Field Office...

You can beat the shit out of people for no reason, you can run people over, you can put someone in a coma, and you will maybe get ten years. You can do things that you believe will likely kill people, you can not care if you kill them, and you won't go away for too long.

Get in the way of corporate earnings and you're through. Especially if you've got principles behind it. The two combined are lethal; they'll punish you so severely for putting principles into practice that legitimately impinge on capital.

These sentences were only three days apart. Pretty good for comparison. Same political climate, both federal crimes.

Also, fuck Mason's ex-husband. That dude ruined so many other people to shave a few years off his own sentence. Yeah, they still put him away. For nine fucking years. Way to go.