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NYT Term for Eco-Terrorists: 'Anti-Sprawl Activists'
NewsBusters ^ | Mark Finkelstein

Posted on 03/03/2008 1:11:31 PM PST by governsleastgovernsbest

Opening paragraph from the New York Times article on the eco-terrorists who burned three new homes north of Seattle today [emphasis added]:

For people who are anti-sprawl activists — or have baser motives — a new-built house sitting empty in a previously rural area evidently makes a ripe target for an attack by fire.

Consider also the article's headline "House Fires With a Message in the Northwest." Yes, think of it as a bonus. Not just a housefire . . . a housefire with a message!

(Excerpt) Read more at newsbusters.org ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; News/Current Events; US: Washington
KEYWORDS: arson; associatedpress; ecoterrorism; ecoterrorists; elf; newyorktimes; ratcrime; seattle; woodinville

1 posted on 03/03/2008 1:11:32 PM PST by governsleastgovernsbest
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To: Behind Liberal Lines; Miss Marple; an amused spectator; netmilsmom; Diogenesis; YaYa123; MEG33; ...

Have you hugged an eco-terrorist today? The NYT has. Ping to Today show list.


2 posted on 03/03/2008 1:12:26 PM PST by governsleastgovernsbest (Keeping track of the MSM so you don't have to!)
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To: governsleastgovernsbest
I am sure “little pinch” wouldn’t like his sprawling house in Mt. Kisco burned.
3 posted on 03/03/2008 1:18:42 PM PST by razorback-bert (Eco-wackos make love by candlelight, it is the only light they have.)
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To: governsleastgovernsbest

“Anti-sprawl activists?” Where’s the barf alert?

Of course eco-terrorists are so stupid in their actions as burning a house puts toxic carcinogens into the very ecosystem they’re trying to save.

Morons.


4 posted on 03/03/2008 1:20:01 PM PST by Slapshot68
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To: governsleastgovernsbest

The NYT favors what they are doing. They favor middle eastern terroris, so it’s no surprise that they favor these terrorists.


5 posted on 03/03/2008 1:20:55 PM PST by Leftism is Mentally Deranged
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To: governsleastgovernsbest

So then Timothy McVeigh was an “anti-federal-building activist”?


6 posted on 03/03/2008 1:21:26 PM PST by Lancey Howard
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To: Lancey Howard

Yes and rapists are “free sex activists.”

They have a team of people whose job it is to give legitimacy to these groups so they can champion their plight enough to sell copies.


7 posted on 03/03/2008 1:27:08 PM PST by Slapshot68
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To: governsleastgovernsbest

Here’s an earlier thread on the same fires.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1979699/posts?page=24


8 posted on 03/03/2008 1:35:23 PM PST by Dr. Bogus Pachysandra ("Don't touch that thing")
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To: governsleastgovernsbest

The mannerisms and behavior of modern American leftists reminds me of the Mathias cult from “The Omega Man.”


9 posted on 03/03/2008 1:40:36 PM PST by VR-21
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To: governsleastgovernsbest

Hmmmm....doesn’t the NYT kill lots of trees printing their rag? If ELF bombs their building, will they still call them “eco-activists,” or would they call them “eco-terrorists”?


10 posted on 03/03/2008 1:44:28 PM PST by kittymyrib
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To: governsleastgovernsbest
...anti-sprawl activists...

Because, as we all know, highly congested, big cities are much better for the environment.

11 posted on 03/03/2008 1:52:58 PM PST by 3niner (War is one game where the home team always loses.)
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To: governsleastgovernsbest

I wonder how the Times would feel about “eco-terrorists” buring down their publishing plant. Now THAT would help the environment.


12 posted on 03/03/2008 1:55:16 PM PST by 3niner (War is one game where the home team always loses.)
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To: governsleastgovernsbest

I wonder if the builder of those homes torched them for the insurance money, while trying to make it look like eco terrorists did it.


13 posted on 03/03/2008 2:10:49 PM PST by Age of Reason
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To: governsleastgovernsbest

Could this article from the Seattle Post Intelligencer have inspired the eco-terrorism?
_____________________________________________________________

On Architecture: Living in a dream world
They’re billed as eco-friendly, but Street of Dreams homes are really about lavish luxury

By LAWRENCE CHEEK
SPECIAL TO THE P-I

This year, Seattle’s annual Street of Dreams home show is trying to paint itself green, bringing waterfalls indoors to recall a home’s “connection to nature,” and outfitting the mansions with features such as on-demand water heating and recycled paper countertops that resemble stone.

But as a theme, this rings as hollow as a General Motors promise to build energy-efficient SUVs. The smallest house in this year’s collection outside Woodinville is 4,200 square feet, and the showcase dwellings are as lavish as ever in anachronistic pomp and fatuous luxury.
photo
Zoom Grant M. Haller / P-I
The patio area of the Urban Lodge, one of five homes on this year’s Street of Dreams in Woodinville. The smallest house measures a whopping 4,200 square feet.

When this column last slipped into the Street of Dreams two years back, it whacked away at the houses’ rampant irrelevance and suggested the builders turn their efforts to a Street of Reality, which would address the serious issue of increasingly unaffordable housing for the middle class. But forget it; that was a fantasy dream in itself. However it’s approached, affordable housing would mean thinner profits for builders and suppliers, so there’s no incentive for showcasing concepts that might lead that way.

What might be useful this time is to probe into a couple of under-the surface questions: Why do these “dream” houses look the way they do? And what’s wrong with how they shape people’s real-world aspirations?

As usual, none of the five ‘07 houses embraces modernism, at least not on the outside. Although each has a stylistic theme — Craftsman, Prairie Style, French Provincial — all could be lumped into the catchall “traditional” with no inaccuracy. Pitched roofs, square corners, porches framed by columns — all these read as the elements of a fundamentally conservative house-design vocabulary.

Why, in a city (or at least on its distant outskirts) that embraces high-tech and generally progressive ideas? You’d expect home design to express conservatism in the suburbs of Indianapolis, but why isn’t Seattle more adventurous?
photo
Zoom Grant M. Haller / P-I
The outdoor covered living space of the Copper Falls home.

The answer is probably that our entire culture of home buying and ownership is structured to be timid and conservative, from sea to shining sea. Would-be homeowners looking for the unusual may find kindred spirits among architects — architecture schools teach and preach modernism, not French Provincial — but not among real estate agents, bankers, builders, insurers, neighborhood associations and friends proffering conventional wisdom.

Underlying this culture is the American concept of viewing the home as a short-term investment, a place to stash the bulk of the family’s net worth for a few short years, then move on. It’s as close to a fail-safe investment as there is, unless it’s in a neighborhood in decline or has characteristics that could make it tough to sell. And everyone will tell you that modernism or eccentricity makes for that tough sell, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Another force at play here is the idea of viewing one’s home as a refuge from the pressures of life in the outside world. Several years ago I wrote a story for another newspaper on the surprising number of young Northwest techies living in log homes, of all things. One 32-year-old Microsoft manager explained: “Some people would see it as a contradiction, but I’m sort of a simplistic guy. The log home represents simplicity. It helps me forget about work. When we’re not in death-march stage on shipping a product, I can come home and completely check out.”

We’re all enmeshed in pressures that can easily seem overwhelming: jobs or technology that are changing too fast to keep up, a world increasingly unbalanced by terrorism, social movements that don’t follow the old rules. When home and neighborhood look like something that could have been built a century ago (but inside secretly harbor all the modern conveniences, such as five bathrooms), they become islands of security and stability — at least symbolically.
photo
Zoom Grant M. Haller / P-I
The Urban Lodge great room, which stretches some 45 feet in length.

Is that so bad? Maybe it is. If architecture shelters us in a world of fantasy, then it becomes easier to duck out on addressing real-world problems. Which is what the Street of Dreams itself does, year after year.

The show’s more pernicious effect may be to set up these grandly scaled houses as ideals, the homes and lifestyles to which we all should aspire. It feeds the relentless American thirst for bigness, and this at a time when any rational reading of environmental signposts argues for a fundamental change in our culture.

The real issue for domestic architecture in our time is how to fulfill Mies van der Rohe’s modernist promise: “Less is more.” Twentieth-century modernism largely failed to deliver because it merely stripped architecture of ornament and character and imagination, and with them evaporated warmth and humanity. In this century, “less is more” needs to be a prescription for building houses, neighborhoods and cities with a lighter footprint on the Earth — and living better because of it.

Some of the grand spaces on parade in the Street of Dreams turn Mies’ aphorism on its head: More, as it turns out, is less.

The great room in the Urban Lodge is a baronial hall some 25 feet wide and 45 feet long. On first acquaintance it’s a breathtaking space, lavishly flooded with light from opposing rows of clerestory windows and embraced by heavy, timber open trusses. But in fact, most of us instinctively feel uncomfortable in a domestic room of this scale except when it’s filled by a party. Suburbs across America are full of McMansions with vast living rooms that rarely find any practical use.
photo
Zoom Grant M. Haller / P-I
A Juliet balcony overlooks the two-story entry to the 4,750-square-foot La Belle Fleur home.

Wander through enough of these Dreams, and you realize they’re really more a collection of self-contained theme parks than homes. This is actually not far from the show’s intent, which is to showcase designer ideas, trends and products that might trickle down into submillionaires’ home-improvement budgets.

But how satisfying can it be to live in a theme park, unless the theme is one you dreamed up yourself? That’s the baseline trouble with the Street of Dreams — it urges us to invest in bits and pieces of someone else’s fantasy, rather than starting with a clean slate and a dream of one’s own.
Lawrence W. Cheek is a freelance writer on architecture and author of “Frank Lloyd Wright in Arizona.” Contact him at escrito48@comcast.net.


14 posted on 03/03/2008 3:38:25 PM PST by Eva (Benedict Arnold was a war hero, too.)
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To: governsleastgovernsbest

I am surprised that the Marxist NYT is still printing. There must be a lot of leftist scum in New York city to keep that barge of baloney afloat.


15 posted on 03/03/2008 3:53:28 PM PST by sergeantdave (Governments hate armed citizens more than armed criminals)
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To: governsleastgovernsbest

Incredible. Just....incredible.


16 posted on 03/03/2008 4:07:37 PM PST by Behind Liberal Lines
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To: Behind Liberal Lines

See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monkey_Wrench_Gang

Know your enemy. This $hit has been around since the 70s.....


17 posted on 03/03/2008 5:36:49 PM PST by ASOC (.)
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