Face it, you don’t have to live very long to discover that people with the courage to follow their convictions are a pretty uncommon breed.
You don’t have to look very far either to see that other important species are also becoming equally rare these days, thanks to the unwavering industrialization of the planet and, as a consequence, the steady deterioration of Earth’s vulnerable ecosystems.
Famed fugitive from justice and wildlife researcher, Rebecca J. Rubin, was barely in her twenties when she decided to bravely act on her belief that world corporations and their “puppet” governments were wantonly exploiting global resources and inflicting widespread environmental devastation in their wake.
These are the true eco-terrorists in her opinion, not herself or the Earth Liberation Front, an elusive group of skilled arsonists of which she is a card-carrying member.
Sought for over a decade by the FBI for her and ELF’s anti-corporate misdeeds and methods, Rubin finally surrendered to authorities yesterday at the Canadian border, thus ending her role in a campaign of economic sabotage that is estimated to have inflicted over $40,000,000 worth of losses on the enemy.
A drop in the bucket really, when compared to the billions of dollars of damages derived from just one oil spill, or those wrought this year alone by super-storms, droughts, floods and wildfires, the legacy of environmental plundering and degradation that began in the 19th century during the Industrial Revolution.
Aileen Wuornos
On November 30, 1989, Richard Mallory, a storeowner in Palm Harbor, Florida, is last seen taking a ride with Aileen Wuornos. The following day, his car was found abandoned in a remote area of Ormond Beach. Nearly two weeks later, his body turned up in a Daytona Beach junkyard with three bullets in his chest.
(CBS/AP) KANSAS CITY, Mo. - A defense attorney said Wednesday that the Missouri man who told police he killed the wife of his prayer group leader at the leader's request made up the story and had nothing to do with the woman's death.
Micah Moore, 23, has been charged with murder in the death of 27-year-old Bethany Deaton, whose Oct. 30 death, police said, originally appeared to be a suicide.
Moore told police that he and other members of the prayer group had sexually assaulted Deaton and were afraid she would tell someone, according to a probable cause statement. Moore said that's when Deaton's husband, Tyler, ordered him to kill her.
Melanie Morgan, Moore's lawyer, said Wednesday that her client's confession was "bizarre, nonsensical and most importantly, untrue."
Charles Peace at his murder trial in 1879
Charles Frederick Peace was a notorious English burglar and murderer from Sheffield, whose somewhat remarkable life later spawned dozens of novels and films. Peace is mentioned by name in the Sherlock Holmes short story, The Adventure of the Illustrious Client and in Mark Twain’s Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven. Peace's earliest criminal exploit is said to have been stealing an old gentleman's gold watch, and he soon passed to burglary.
WEYBRIDGE, England/LONDON (Reuters) - A Russian businessman helping Swiss prosecutors uncover a powerful fraud syndicate has died in unexplained circumstances near his mansion in Britain, in a chilling twist to a Russian mafia scandal that has strained Moscow's ties with the West.
Alexander Perepilichny, 44, sought refuge in Britain three years ago and had been helping a Swiss investigation into a Russian money-laundering scheme by providing evidence against corrupt officials, his colleagues and media reports said.
He has also provided evidence against those linked to the 2009 death of anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, a case that caused an international outcry and prompted the United States to push for a bill cracking down on Russian corruption.
Perepilichny, a Russian citizen, collapsed and died not far from his home on an upmarket, heavily protected estate in the county of Surrey, south of London, on November 10.
(CNN) -- The attorney for a Florida man who shot at a car of teens over the weekend, killing one, says the incident bears no resemblance to the Trayvon Martin case.
Her client, Michael Dunn, is no "vigilante" but did feel threatened and shot out of "self defense," the attorney said.
"There are no comparisons to the Trayvon Martin situation," said Robin Lemonidis, Dunn's attorney. "He is devastated and horrified by the death of the teen."
Dunn, 45, was denied bond Monday on a murder charge stemming from the weekend shooting in Jacksonville. The violence was sparked by a confrontation about loud music at a gas station, the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office said.
He heard threats from the teens, Dunn told police, he felt threatened and thought he saw a gun in the teens' car. He grabbed his gun and fired at least eight shots, authorities said.
Jeffrey Dahmer
On November 28, 1994, convicted serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer is beaten to death by a fellow inmate while performing cleaning duty in a bathroom at the Columbia Correctional Institute gymnasium in Portage, Wisconsin. During a 13-year period, Dahmer, who lived primarily in the Midwest, murdered at least 17 men.
On the night of November 29, 1988, near the impoverished Marlborough neighborhood in south Kansas City, an explosion at a construction site killed six of the city’s firefighters. It was a clear case of arson, and five people from Marlborough were duly convicted of the crime. But for veteran crime writer and crusading editor J. Patrick O’Connor, the facts—or a lack of them—didn’t add up. Justice on Fire is OConnor’s detailed account of the terrible explosion that led to the firefighters’ deaths and the terrible injustice that followed. Also available from Amazon
