posted: November 1, 2007 4:31 EST
Is “Run!” the new strategy against firestorms on California's urban fringe?
By Patrick Range McDonald, Christine Pelisek and Jill Stewart, LA Weekly
LAST WEEK, AS NEARLY ONE-QUARTER of California’s length blazed, the state’s residents were treated to an eerie replay of the October 2003 firestorm that wiped out 3,631 homes and killed 24. From the self-congratulations of big pols to finger pointing over a lack of air support, one of the most troubling aspects of the tragedy — despite the claims of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger — was how little government has changed in response to the lessons of 2003.
With 1,155 homes in cinders on October 24, a cheery Schwarzenegger had gathered with politicians to let Californians know that, “Everything has been, so far, going really well.” In fact, much was not going well. Although communication between agencies appeared to be going more smoothly than during the mishandled Cedar Fire disaster, and lives had clearly been saved by a reverse-911 evacuation system, a political blaze was getting under way.
The New York Times reported the feds had accused Cal Fire, the state’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, of failing in the first critical days to seek federal firefighters and air tankers. Furious San Diego Congressman Duncan Hunter sparred with Cal Fire Chief Ruben Grijalva over the state’s view that “fire spotters” had to accompany military aircraft, and hours passed before the feud was resolved. In Orange County, Fire Chief Chip Prather bitterly pointed to a lack of air support, state Assemblyman Todd Spitzer accused a blue-ribbon commission of punting rather than building up the air fleet, and Congressman Dana Rohrabacher went on KNX News Radio to accuse the Department of Defense of dawdling on adapting C-130 aircraft for fire-fighting.
Yet all week, powerful politicos downplayed the need for more aircraft, including the governor himself. Christine Kehoe of San Diego, the Legislature’s point woman on wildfire response, insisted that a dramatic buildup in air support was not the post-2003 answer to saving vast tracts of wildland-adjacent housing, and accused some critics of “grandstanding.”
“We are spending as much as we possibly can on aircraft,” Kehoe insisted to the L.A. Weekly . Schwarzenegger went even further, complaining, “For someone to complain about aircraft not being available, I think is ridiculous.”
Schwarzenegger, Cal Fire bureaucrats and pilots and many politicians insisted the culprit was not equipment shortages, but the wind. In interview after interview, officials said the Santa Ana winds were often too stiff to use available aircraft, even during the critical “initial attack” phase in which tankers and helicopters can drench fires while the slower-moving ground crews and fire engines race in to respond.
Tension over the issue was extreme.
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posted: August 9, 2007 3:35 EST
Violent radicals aim to kill researchers who test on animals
By Patrick Range McDonald, LA Weekly
The home of Dr. Arthur Rosenbaum isn't hard to find. He lives a few blocks south of Sunset Boulevard, near the UCLA campus, in a white two-story house with a front yard jammed with aspen trees. There is a short driveway on the side of the home, and during the evening, a bright, white light illuminates the carport. If someone wants to sabotage the doctor's car under the cover of night, a flashlight isn't needed.
On Sunday, June 24, just that kind of person struck. Rosenbaum, a highly regarded pediatric ophthalmologist who had been regularly harassed by animal-rights activists for his research work with cats and rhesus monkeys at the Jules Stein Eye Institute at UCLA, noticed a device underneath his luxury sedan. The bomb squad was dispatched to the scene and hauled away a makeshift — but deadly — explosive. A faulty fuse was the only reason it didn't go off.
Three days later, the so-called Animal Liberation Brigade sent a typo-riddled "communiqué" to the North American Animal Liberation Press Office in Los Angeles. It was posted on the NAALPO Web site:
"130am on the twenty forth of june: 1 gallon of fuel was placed and set a light under the right front corner of Arthur Rosenbaums large white shiney BMW.
"He and his wife ..., living at ... in la, are the target of rebellion for the vile and evil things he does to primates at UCLA. We have seen by our own eyes the torture on fully concious primates in his lab. We have heard their whimpers and screeches of pain. Seeing this drove one of us to rush out and vomit. We have seen hell and its in Rosenbaums lab.
"Rosenbaum, you need to watch your back because next time you are in the operating room or walking to your office you just might be facing injections into your eyes like the primates, you sick twisted fuck.
"Demonstrators need to realize that just demonstrating won't stop this kind of evil. Look up Arthur Rosenbaum to find out about his experiment from two thousand four threw two thousand seven. 'animal liberation brigade'"
Rosenbaum wouldn't comment. In an e-mail, he wrote, "I have been asked by law enforcement to not discuss any events surrounding the incident at this time. I look forward to doing so in the future." According to a Bel-Air Patrol guard, though, the doctor's neighbors are "jumpy."
For several years now, Rosenbaum and other faculty members at UCLA Medical Center have been targeted by animal-rights activists outraged by their experiments on primates. The researchers have endured crank phone calls, menacing e-mails and intimidating threats screamed over bullhorns in the middle of the night in front of their homes.
But with the attempted bombing of Rosenbaum, and the attempted Molotov cocktail bombing last year of UCLA researcher Lynn Fairbanks in Bel-Air, activists are no longer content with talking a mean game — they now want blood.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, which closely watches extremist groups of all kinds throughout the world, Los Angeles has become the capital of a more aggressive brand of animal-rights extremism in the United States — with UCLA as ground zero. "Los Angeles, for now, is the epicenter of this movement," says Oren Segal, co-director of ADL's Center on Extremism in New York City. "We've seen a lot of humans targeted overseas, and now it's happening here."
In the past, Segal notes, ragtag groups in the U.S. calling themselves such names as the Animal Liberation Front and the mostly fabled Earth Liberation Front freed animals from university research labs and firebombed empty buildings. The Animal Liberation Front, in fact, claimed to only target inanimate objects for its violent actions. But now, underground groups — perhaps just one or two enraged people, or perhaps organized networks — have no problem making bombs for killing or maiming their human marks. One of those is the Animal Liberation Front, which took responsibility for last year's attempted Fairbanks bombing. "They have been very violent over the years," says Segal, "so going after humans has been inevitable."
Segal surmises that these groups are made up of "lone wolves" who are seeking publicity for the larger animal-rights movement. Segal says the names are interchangeable, so whether it's people claiming to be ALF, ELF or the Animal Liberation Brigade while taking responsibility for a bombing, it doesn't matter. "They're going to rename themselves depending on what actions they're doing," he says. "Everything is interconnected and jumbled."
The prominent mouthpiece for this new extremism, according to Segal, just happens to live in Los Angeles. His name is Jerry Vlasak, a 49-year-old trauma surgeon and resident of Agoura Hills in the West Valley.
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posted: June 7, 2007 9:32 EST
By Patrick Range McDonald, LA Weekly
Before May 1, 2007, life was rolling along somewhat smoothly for Los Angeles Police Department Chief Bill Bratton. The former NYPD official owned a solid-gold reputation as arguably America’s Top Cop, and a day earlier, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa had glowingly endorsed his reappointment for five years. Then, officers of Metropolitan Division shot 146 rounds of less-lethal munitions into a mostly peaceful crowd at MacArthur Park.
Bratton’s world had changed. And so the chief went into personal-survival mode. He raised eyebrows by saying police officers “go out of control faster than any human being in the world.” He demoted respected Deputy Chief Cayler “Lee” Carter — commanding officer of the MacArthur Park Fuckup — essentially ending his 30-year career (Carter took an early retirement). Then Bratton started jabbering about “anarchists” and “agitators,” as if Los Angeles had been sucked into a 1950s time warp, with the Red Menace looming off the horizon.
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