----- forwarded message ----- Date: Thu, 01 Feb 2001 14:40:43 -0800 From: radman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [radtimes] # 141 [radtimes] # 141 An informally produced compendium of vital irregularities. "We're living in rad times!" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- How to assist RadTimes--> (See ** at end.) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contents: [non-relevant articles clipped - Will] --Divide and conquer (Hells Angels) [clipped] --GM Criticism Growing Worldwide --[freeradical] MILITANTS & MODERATES [clipped] --Israeli commandos training with US Marines [clipped] --Mad Cow Disease Called International Threat --Invisible eco-warrior `elves' of ELF wage stealth campaign --Caught in the Cold (Davos) [clipped] --When Do Demonstrators Become--Terrorists? [clipped] =================================================================== [Hell's Angels article clipped - not relevant to EcoFem - Will] =================================================================== GM criticism growing worldwide <http://www.abc.net.au/news/science/environment/2001/01/item20010127134854_1.htm> 1/27/01 There are signs that opposition to genetically-modified (GM) foods is growing in different parts of the world. Three large British food retailers have announced moves to ensure that food supplies come from animals fed GM-free diets. The BBC's Barnaby Mason reports that retailer Tesco says it is not against GM products but was responding to consumer demand. A similar stand has been announced by Marks and Spencer and the US owned Aster chain. In southern Brazil 1,000 poor farmers took direct action against genetically modified crops, joined by activists attending the world social forum held to protest against the World Economic Forum in Switzerland. They invaded a Monsanto research centre and pulled up GM maize and soy beans. =================================================================== [other articles clipped - Will] =================================================================== Mad Cow Disease Called International Threat <http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jan2001/2001L-01-29-08.html> ROME, Italy, January 29, 2001 (ENS) - The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization is warning countries around the world - not just those in Western Europe - about the risk of mad cow disease. The Organization recommends adoption of surveillance and monitoring systems to detect the disease in cattle herds, meat industries and animal feed operations. Mad cow disease is officially known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). This disease has been linked to a fatal brain disease in humans called new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (nvCJD). British cattle at feeding time (Photo by Ian Britton, courtesy Freefoto.com) An epidemic of BSE in cattle herds in the United Kingdom has been followed by between 10 to 15 cases of nvCJD occurring each year. Little is known about the actual mechanism for transmission of the disease, but the currently held belief is that the disease agent jumps to humans who eat infected meat products. Alarm about the disease's potential has been largely confined to Western Europe up to now, but the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has issued its warning to all nations. All countries which have imported cattle or meat and bone meal from any Western European countries, particularly the United Kingdom, during and since the 1980s, can be considered at risk, the FAO wrote in a release on Friday. "There is an increasingly grave situation developing in the European Union, with BSE being identified in cattle in several member states of the EU which have, until recently, been regarded as free from the disease," the FAO said. "Confirmed and suspected cases of nvCJD are occurring in people outside the UK, in various member states. More research needs to be conducted into the nature of the agent and its modes of transmission. Much remains unknown about the disease and the infective agent. There is currently no method of diagnosis at early stages of infection and no cure for the disease, neither in animals nor in humans." The FAO said it supports the European Union's actions to control the disease, including the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of animals. Feeding meat and bone meal to cattle, sheep and goats has been banned in the European Union since July 1994, and last November, the EU proposed extending the ban to chicken and hogs. Other animals may also be able spread forms of BSE, the FAO warned, and should not be fed meat and bone meal (Photo courtesy U.S. Agricultural Research Service) "There is an urgent need to refine the risk assessment and to extend it to other countries and regions," the FAO wrote. "Countries at risk should implement effective surveillance for BSE in cattle and controls on the animal feed and meat industries. At present, this means: laboratory testing of samples from slaughtered cattle, and correct disposal of fallen stock and improved processing of offals and byproducts." Within countries, FAO recommended applying the so called Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point system (HACCP) which aims at identifying potential problems and taking corrective measures throughout the food chain. Some of the issues include the production of animal feed, the raw materials used, cross contamination in the feed mill, labeling of manufactured feeds, the feed transport system, as well as monitoring imported live animals, slaughtering methods, the rendering industry and the disposal of waste materials. "Strict controls have been implemented in the United Kingdom and are now being implemented in the rest of the EU," FAO said. "Countries outside the EU should adopt appropriate measures to protect their herds and to ensure the safety of meat and meat products. Legislation to control the industry and its effective implementation is required, including capacity building and the training of operatives and government officials." FAO advised countries to adopt a precautionary approach. As an immediate measure, countries which have imported animals and meat and bone meal from BSE infected trading partners should consider a precautionary ban on the feeding of meat and bone meal to cattle, sheep and goats, or, to reduce the risk of infection even further, to all animals. Attention should be paid to slaughtering procedures and to the processing and use of offal and byproduct parts, FAO said. The rendering industry should be scrutinized and appropriate procedures adopted everywhere, the organization wrote. Since 1994, the European Union has banned the feeding of meat and bone meal to cattle, sheep and goats (Photo by Larry Rana, courtesy U.S. Department of Agriculture) The FAO, together with the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Organisation Internationale des Epizooties (OIE), will hold an expert consultation in the near future to draw up advice for countries, particularly developing countries, to protect their people from nvCJD, their livestock from BSE, and their industries from trade restrictions and their repercussions. The FAO and WHO are now finalizing work on a 'Code of Practice for Good Animal Feeding' to ensure that animal products do not create risks to consumers. --- More details about BSE and nvSJD are available at: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/diseases/cjd/cjd.htm and http://europa.eu.int/comm/food/fs/bse/bse20_en.html More information about feed safety practices is available at: http://www.fao.org/livestock/AGAP/FRG/Feedsafety/bse.htm =================================================================== Invisible eco-warrior `elves' of ELF wage stealth campaign FRED KAPLAN, BOSTON GLOBE They work by night, with stealth, burning construction sites, dumping sand in bulldozers' gasoline tanks, freeing mink from cages and wild horses from corrals, all -- as one of their manifestoes puts it -- ``to inflict economic sabotage on Earth-rapers.'' They wreak their damage, and release their boastful communiques, in the name of the Earth Liberation Front, and -- playing on the abbreviation ELF -- liken themselves to ``the mischievous elves of lore.'' But what is this Front and who are these elves? Remarkably, after eight years of activity -- including a rash of fires last month in Mount Sinai on Long Island, N.Y. -- nobody knows. The FBI, federal prosecutors, state and local police departments, even more-peaceful environmentalists have been looking, but their search has not resulted in a single indictment, arrest, or even a suspect from two dozen acts of sabotage over the years, causing nearly $40 million in damage. ``We are practically invisible,'' a 1997 ELF communique read. ``We have no command structure, no spokesperson, no office, just many small groups working separately, seeking vulnerable targets and practicing our craft.'' It tells all readers, ``Find your family! And let's dance as we make ruin of the corporate money system.'' Craig Rosebraugh, 27, an animal-rights activist in Portland, Ore., who has served as the group's publicist for the past four years, has said he receives word from ELF members when they take credit for some deed. But even he says, ``I never disclose from where or how they come in, because I don't know.'' Last year, the U.S. attorney's office in Oregon confiscated Rosebraugh's computers and documents, and called him to testify before a grand jury, but still came up empty-handed. ``There is no hierarchy, no physical group that they can see,'' Rosebraugh said last year in an interview with Bear Deluxe magazine in Portland. ``You might have a cell operating, or 57 cells operating, where no one knows each other.'' Until recently, these cells confined their activities to a few states in the West and Midwest. Two years ago, someone claiming affiliation with the ELF committed an action in Boston, but it was so out of character -- a purely symbolic smearing of red paint on the Mexican Consulate, to protest Mexico's treatment of peasants -- that the pranksters probably got the names of their liberation fronts mixed up. Still, in the past couple of months, the elves have come east. On the night of Dec. 30, they broke into four houses that were being built as part of a huge development on a former pumpkin farm on eastern Long Island, and set them on fire -- in protest of suburban sprawl. They left behind a note: ``If you build it, we will burn it.'' The fire followed similar but lesser acts of destruction in Long Island housing projects on Dec. 1, 9 and 19. Lennard Axinn, a partner in Island Estates of Mt. Sinai, the development company building the houses set ablaze most recently, said the tools were fairly primitive -- bottles filled with gasoline, a sponge placed on top of the bottles, candles placed on top of the sponge, causing an explosion when the candles burned down. The cost to repair will be about $60,000, Axinn estimates. This is small stuff in the ELF canon. Their biggest coup took place in October 1998 when they set fire to a ski facility in Colorado, causing $12 million in damage. The motive was to protect what a communique called ``the last, best lynx habitat in the state'' from a ``greedy corporation'' that insisted on ``putting profits ahead of Colorado's wildlife.'' As with all the acts so far, nobody was physically injured. Other big acts have included burning down a U.S. Forest Service station in Oregon (damage: $5.3 million), a U.S. Agriculture Department animal damage control building in Washington state ($2 million), a meatpacking plant in Oregon ($1 million), and an office at Michigan State University involved in genetic-food research ($400,000). Just this month, the group took credit for a Jan. 2 fire in a lumber company's offices in Oregon, causing $400,000 in damage. The ELF was formed in 1992 in Brighton, England, as a splinter group from Earth First!, after the leaders of that militant environmental organization decided to abandon criminal tactics. The following year, ELF issued a joint communique of solidarity with the Animal Liberation Front, a group that takes equally militant actions to oppose business and scientific research that involves capturing or killing animals. The main difference between ELF and ALF, Rosebraugh once said, ``is their names. . . . The main goal is the same -- trying to strike through economic sabotage.'' ELF manifestoes have cited as inspiration the Luddites, who sabotaged factory machinery in 19th-century England. The primary source of ELF's tactics, however, is a 1975 novel by Edward Abbey, called ``The Monkey Wrench Gang.'' Abbey, who died in 1989 at age 62, was a self-described ``desert anarchist'' who often quoted Walt Whitman's dictum, ``Resist much, obey little,'' and deeply resented what he called the ``Californicating'' of the Southwest border states. ``The Monkey Wrench Gang'' was a raucous tale about a motley crew of eco-warriors who burn down billboards, snip barbed-wire fences, pour syrup into gasoline tanks, and ultimately plot to blow up a giant bridge and power dam. Many environmentalists deplore the ELF. A consortium of groups in Wisconsin posted an open letter on the Internet, calling ELF actions ``cowardly'' and warning them, ``Stay out of Wisconsin.'' Richard Amper, head of the Long Island Pine Barren Society, called ELF's recent arson in his territory ``wrongheaded'' and ``meaningless.'' The houses ELF set on fire are part of a development of 49 single-family houses, each selling for $350,000 to $450,000, spread out on a half-abandoned pumpkin farm. In one sense, Amper said, the ELF critique of such developments has a point. However, he noted, ``Everybody knows it. You don't have to make Long Islanders aware of the problem.'' In fact, Long Island over the past decade has spent $300 million -- more than all but five of the states -- to preserve open space from the developers' bulldozers, he said. Robert Wieboldt, head of the Long Island Builders Institute, said the police think the culprits are local. ``That's the way this group works -- local people acting locally,'' he said. However, even Amper has said he has ``not a clue'' of who they might be, and so the myth of the ``invisible elves'' rages on. ===================================================================
