Day: April 9, 2002

Matthew Whyte Releases Statement about His Crimes

Peter Schnell, 21, and Matthew Whyte, 18, plead guilty in October 2001 to possessing unregistered firearms after the duo were caught with 11 gallons of gasoline, matches and other paraphernalia which they planned to use to firebomb dairy trucks in Capitola, California. Schnell received a 24-month sentence while Whyte received a 14-month sentence. No Compromise this month published a statement from Whyte which has to be one of the more pathetic such statements coming from animal rights terrorists.

Whyte writes,

On January 28, 2002, in San Jose Federal Court, Petey [Schnell] and myself were handed sentences of 24 and 14 months, respectively, for pleading guilty to one count of possession of unregistered firearms . . . With rise [sic] in the public’s sympathetic support for the US government’s crusade against terrorism, and with new legislation such as the Patriot Act legalizing the feds’ unwarranted snooping, taping, recording as admissible in court, it should be no surprise that animal/earth liberators are increasingly being watched in their scope. A rise in repression can only account for the rising level of resistance in effect.

This is hilarious. The Patriot Act? These boneheads were arrested on January 23, 2001. The Patriot Act did not pass Congress until October 12, 2001. The reason Schnell and Whyte were caught had nothing to do with any repressive, snooping government but rather with the fact that the two are apparently the keystone kops of animal rights terrorists, who couldn’t do anything right.

The reason these morons were caught would almost be hilarious if the charge were not so serious. Police observed the two standing under a <lamp post in the middle of the night with a cordless drill and 10 plastic milk containers. The drill had been used to punch holes in the containers and candles had been inserted in the holes.

But under a lamppost? Why didn’t these idiots just mail the police an invitation? Maybe after they get out they can go on one of those “dumbest criminal” television shows.

Whyte continues,

Petey and I were in possession of several incendiary devices when we were stopped by the police in Capitola, CA, and after an illegal search of the car, those items were found.

If you’re caught under a lamppost with the makings of a primitive incendiary device, don’t whine and moan that police don’t have probable cause to search your vehicle.

The charges were originally introduced into legislation to criminalize the civilian possession/making of sophisticated military-grade armaments. During the anti-war movement, the statute was broadened in an attempt to break the growing underground resistance, making it a federal crime to have simple, unsophisticated incendiary devices, such as we had.

Translation: as the terrorists become less sophisticated, so do their weapons of choice. The law had to be dumbed down to Whyte’s primitive bomb making skills.

Of course Whyte is just as angry with animal rights activists who think that fire bombing dairy trucks is probably not a good way to spread their message,

It disturbs me when arrogant fucks, who’ve never experienced — directly or not — the hammer of the feds, jump the gun and talk down with their internet-activist circles the choices of those who have worked to get a lower sentence. It’s a waste of breath to try and reason with the federal courts and with this genocidal and oppressive government. I trust a roomful of political reformists as far as I could throw them.

Presumably, if Whyte did try to throw a roomful of political reformists, he would make sure to seek out a lamppost from which to do so. I would really like to see Whyte explain how this “genocidal and oppressive government” nonetheless let him off with just a 14-month sentence. The last time I checked, genocide was not defined as “imprisonment lasting slightly over a year.”

But Whyte ends his ignorant ranting there. What a shame.

If you would like more of this, you could write Whyte in prison and let him know just how much you are thinking of him. His address is,

Matt Whyte
#99477-111
Taft Correctional Institution
PO Box 7001
Taft, CA 93268

(If you do write him, make sure you say hi for me).

Source:

Statement from Matthew Whyte. Matthew Whyte, No Compromise, April 4, 2002.

Winer Celebrates Locking Out Users

Userland is apparently tickled pink at its exclusive deal to syndicate New York Times headlines.

I guess all of that talk about openness, avoiding lockin, yada yada yada is just so much marketing gobbledygook.

Leave it to Winer to spend months railing about standards and RSS and then reach a deal with The Times for proprietary headlines.

What shall we call this? The OneWayWeb?

It is this sort of attitude, more than any of the technical limitations of Radio (I post from four to five different computers on any given day), that will keep me from give Userland my $40 for Radio.

Abortion = 9/11

ABCNews.Com reports that Cardinal Francis Arinze compared abortion and genetic research to the 9/11 terrorist attacks,

He appealed to Buddhists to work against “a culture of death, in which abortion, euthanasia and genetic experiments on human life itself have already obtained or are on the way to obtaining legal recognition.”

In his statement, Arinze said: “How can we not make a correlation between this culture of death in which the most innocent, defenseless, and critically ill human lives are threatened with death, and terrorist attacks, such as those of 11 September, in which thousands of innocent people were slaughtered?”

Even if I agreed with Arinze (and I’m diametrically opposed to him on all three issues), the comparison makes no sense. The last time I checked, the Sept. 11 terrorists were not part of our Western culture of death, but in fact were reactionary Islamists who rejected Western moral and scientific claims as decadent.

I suspect the Sept. 11 terrorists probably agreed with the Cardinal’s low opinion of Western culture.

Steve Denbeste’s comment also summed up my general feeling toward the Catholic Church at the moment,

I’m surprised he didn’t mention the use of birth control pills while he was at it. And child molestation – oh, wait a minute…

Want Lots of Traffic? Get Linked to from CNN

A number of people are talking about traffic figure to weblogs. I’ve been averaging around 300,000 page views a month for awhile. Frankly I’ve never seen a method to distinguish individual users reliable enough to bother with. I just these these metrics to track changes over time rather than as accurate guidelines for how much my web site is being viewed (I measure my success by how often I get attacked on discussion forums hosted by people who disagree with me — on that count, I’m doing just fine.)

One issue is just how important Glenn Reynolds, Andrew Sullivan and others are in sending traffic to web logs. According to Tres Producers,

The need for links from high-volume hubs like Winer, InstaPundit, and Andrew Sullivan has not diminished. As the volume of blogs has ballooned well into six-figures, the need for links from “star” blogs has become an absolute requirement to be noticed.

Maybe they have a large effect on blogs that are receiving little traffic (clearly they do), but I doubt the traffic they generate comes close to what larger sites could offer. I’ll give an example. Instapundit linked to an article I wrote on this site, and that link alone resulted in about 900 page views. Very impressive. A couple years ago, however, the population of the world hit 6 billion and CNN linked to my Overpopulation site. That link generated about 5,000 page views. Same thing happened when India hit 1 billion people — CNN linked and the traffic was tremendous.

Anyway, I don’t think it is true at all that you need to be linked to by one of these folks to get noticed. I was serving almost 400,000 page views a month long before the “warblogging” phenomenon. The bottom line is that if you put up great content — especially content that fits a specific niche — then you’re going to be noticed.

Lets be honest — if you want to start a blog focusing on the war on terrorism or the Middle East, good luck. If you’re a really great writer then you’ve got a chance, but there are already what, hundreds and hundreds of such weblogs. Who’s got the time? On the other hand there is plenty of room to get noticed with more specialized, niche content.

That is assuming, by the way, that you care about the amount of traffic. I like getting lots of traffic, but that is not why I keep writing (I keep writing because the voices in my head keep telling me to, but that’s another story).

Of Norwegian Nurses and Nobel Prizes

Recently a lot of weblogs have been outraged over comments made by Norwegian Hanna Kvanmo who sits on the Nobel Peace Prize committee. Kvanmo expressed regrets that the committee had awarded Israel’s Shimon Peres the award — but, of course, she apparently thinks Yasser Arafat has done a standup job of upholding the prize’s values.

Fredrik Norman fills in the rest. Ms. Kvanmo’s position is a bit easier to understand in light of her activities during World War II.

On April 9, 1940, Nazi Germany invaded Norway and conquered it in about two months. Kvanmo was one of about 1,000 young Norwegian women who joined the German Red Cross and went to work on the eastern front taking care of Nazi soldiers.

While the Nazis were rampaging across Europe, leaving death and destruction in their wake, Kvanmo chose to spend the war helping to treat war criminals (among other things, Kvanmo and others treated the wounds of members of the SS).

At the end of the war, many of these nurses were returned to Norway where they were sentenced to varying terms of prison for aiding the enemy.

Leave it to a woman who aided the Nazi war effort to lecture the rest of the world about peace.