Anarchist Anti-Tech Wackos Shoot and Bomb Scientists
Nature and New Scientist are reporting a series of recent attacks on nuclear and nanotech scientists in Europe by the Olga Cell of the Informal Anarchist Federation International Revolutionary Front. (It's not funny, but I do wonder if "Informal" isn't a bit redundant in this context?) All levity aside, the group has taken credit for shooting a nuclear scientist in Italy and sending bombs to nanotech research centers in Switzerland. Nature reports:
On 11 May, the cell sent a four-page letter to the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera claiming responsibility for the shooting of Roberto Adinolfi, the chief executive of Ansaldo Nucleare, the nuclear-engineering subsidiary of aerospace and defence giant Finmeccanica. Believed by authorities to be genuine, the letter is riddled with anti-science rhetoric. The group targeted Adinolfi because he is a "sorcerer of the atom", it wrote. "Adinolfi knows well that it is only a matter of time before a European Fukushima kills on our continent."
"Science in centuries past promised us a golden age, but it is pushing us towards self-destruction and total slavery," the letter continues. "With this action of ours, we return to you a tiny part of the suffering that you, man of science, are pouring into this world." The group also threatened to carry out further attacks.
Last year, a related pod of anti-technology nuts, Individuals Tending to Savagery, bombed Mexican nanotech scientists, harming two of them.
The good news is that the three anti-science terrorists who sought to bomb the IBM nanotech facility were convicted last year in Switzerland. The Olga Cell is vowing to strike again.
Science causes suffering? Here is a very short list of the "crimes" committed by the purveyors of science: Doubled life expectancies; vaccines; electricity; automobiles; telephones; tripled crop productivity; organ transplants; airplanes; computers; the World Wide Web; and on and on and on.