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Today's
Stories
January
30, 2004
David
Miller
The Hutton Whitewash
January
29, 2004
Patricia
Nelson Limerick
John Ehrlichman, Environmentalist
Ron
Jacobs
Homeland Security and "Legalized"
Immigration
Rahul Mahajan
New Hampshire v. Iraq
Greg
Weiher
Bush Calls for Preemptive Strike on
Moon and Mars
Norman
Solomon
The State of the Media Union
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Does NH Mean Anything?
January
28, 2004
Kathy
Kelly
Bearing Witness Against Teachers of
Torture and Assassination
January
27, 2004
Steve
Philion
Ritter Was Right: My Exchange with
CNN's Aaron Brown
Daniel
Ellsberg
Leak Against This War: Expose the
Lies from the Inside
C.G.
Estabrook
Can George Ever Really be Elected
President?
Josh
Frank
Hot Coals in Vermont: Dean's Smoke
Screens
Greg
Moses
Racism 101 All Over Again
Gilad
Atzmon
Blood, Soil and Art
Mike
Ferner
"We're All Lied To": an
Interview with Bruce Cockburn in Baghdad
Hammond
Guthrie
General Disorders of the Day
January
26, 2004
Sean
Donahue
The Toxic Career of Rand Beers: Kerry's
Drug War Zealot
Gary
Leupp
David Kay's Admission
January
24/5, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
Iraq's Shia: "Our Day Has
Come"
Laura
Flanders
State of the Conservative Union
Simon Helweg-Larsen
Enter Berger: Signs of Hope in
Guatemala
Dave
Lindorff
Ground Control to Maj. George
Susan Davis
The Birdwatcher Menace
Alexander
Cockburn
The Fog of Cop Out: McNamara 10,
Morris 0
January
23, 2004
Yonathan
Shapira
An Israeli Pilot Speaks Out
Standard
Schaefer
Italian Philosopher Giorgio Agamben
Protests US Travel Policy
Josh
Frank
In Defense of Polluters: Howard Dean's
Vermont
William
A. Cook
Rule by the Corrupt and the Capricious
January
22, 2004
Sam
Smith
Howards End?
Patricia
Koyce Wanniski
Lost in Space
Alexander
Lukin
Putin and the Clans
Katherine
van Wormer
Dry Drunk Confirmed: O'Neill's
Revelations and Bush's Mind
Forrest
Hylton
The Prisoner, the President and the
Mafia
January 19, 2004
Justin E. H. Smith
Inside
America's Prisons: From Corrections to Retribution
Richard W. Behan
The GOP, Inc.
Ray McGovern
Bush's
State of the Union: Humility or More Hyperbole?
Werther
SOTUS:
the Stalin Moment of America's Nomenklatura
Phillip Cryan
Media Collusion in Colombia's War
Lee Sustar
A New Strategy to Reverse Labor's Decline?
Arthur Versluis
Great Lakes as Commodity: Privatizing Water
Uri Avnery
Anti-Semitism:
a Practical Manual
Steve Perry
Fresh Crack from Hawkeye State
January 17 / 18, 2004
Fadi Kiblawi and Will
Youmans
The
Use and Abuse of MLK Jr by Israel's Apologists
Joshua Muldavin
and Joseph Nevins
Blaming the Symptoms
Jeffrey St. Clair
Bad Days at Indian Point: Inside America's Most Dangerous Nuclear
Plant
Brian Cloughley
Iron Hammers in Iraq
Saul Landau
Fog of War: Vietnam and Iraq
M. Shahid Alam
Lerner, Said and the Palestinians
Richard Manning
Food Poisoning as Background Noise
Marjorie Cohn
The Guantanamo Concentration Camp
Mike Whitney
Scalia and Opus Dei: Radicals on the Court
Sadik Kassim
Meet Our New Saddam: Islam Karimov
Carol Norris
Arnold
and Bush's Numbers Don't Add Up
Joe Quandt
Suicide
Bombers: The Clash of Absurdities
David Krieger
Imagining MLK Jr at 75
Bruce Jackson
Making War, Making Movies
Ron Jacobs
Revolution in the Air: a review
Richard Edmondson
Rupert Murdoch and My Sister
Richard Forno
Apologizing for Preemption: Evil, Perle and Frum
Poets' Basement
Holt, Mickey Z, Albert & Guthrie
January 16, 2004
Kathy Kelly
A Visit
to Umm Qasr Prison
William S. Lind
More
Thoughts on 4th Generation Warfare
Gillian Russom
So.
Cal Grocery Strikers Speak Out: "We Need Action!"
Ari Shavit
Survival
of the Fittest? An Interview with Benny Morris
Adi Ophir
Genocide Hides Behind Expulsion: a Response to Benny Morris
Dave Lindorff
The General's Henchman: Michael Moore Smears Kucinich
Steve Perry
Iowa Death Trip 2
January 15, 2004
Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity
Memo
to the President: Your State of the Union Address
John Chuckman
Dry
Hole in the Oval Office: President from Podunk Drilling, Inc
Chris Floyd
Mind Over Matter
Gil-Scott Heron
Whitey on the Moon
Gary Leupp
The
Silk Road: Random Thoughts on the Bam Earthquake and Satan
January 14, 2004
Greg Moses
Happy
Birthday, Dr. King: To Write Off the South is to Surrender to
Bigots
Kurt Nimmo
Bush and the Supremes: Amputating the Bill of Rights
Dave Lindorff
Preview of Iowa? Pennsylvania Straw Poll Spells Trouble for Traditional
Dems (and Dean)
Jason Leopold
O'Neill Claims Backed by Rumsfeld / Wolfowitz War Letters to
Clinton
Alexander Cockburn
Bush,
Oil and Iraq: Some Truth at Last
January 13, 2004
William S. Lind
How 2004
Looks from Potsdam
M. Junaid Alam
Do Iraqis Have a Right to Resist?
Mickey Z
Snipers:
No Nuts in Iraq
Adolfo Gilly
Chonchocoro:
The Prisoner and the Presidents
Steve Perry
You Love God, Right?
January 12, 2004
Ben Tripp
No Stan
for the Kurds
Norman Solomon
The
Dixie Trap: Democrats and the South
Mike Whitney
O'Neill's Revenge
Jason Leopold
From the Very First Instant It Was About Iraq
Uri Avnery
Syria's
Peace Proposal
January 10 / 11, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
as Hitler? Let's Be Fair
Susan Davis
Dangerous Books
Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell
Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past
Daniel Estulin
Destroying History in Iraq
Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety
Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?
Bruce Jackson
Making the Shit List
Christopher Brauchli
Baptizing Hitler's Ghost
Francis A. Boyle
The Deep Scars of War
Lee Ballinger
Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry
Patrick W. Gavin
Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott?
Ramzy Baroud
What Invaders Have in Common
Michael Schwartz
Inside the California Grocery Strike
Gary Johnson
An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page
Dave Zirin
An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball
Mark Hand
A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon
Poets' Basement
Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert
January 9, 2004
David Lindorff
The
Misers of War: Troop Strength and Chintzy Bonuses
Kurt Nimmo
Saddam's Defense: Summon Bush Sr. to the Stand
Mike Whitney
Orange Jumpsuits for the Bush Clan?: The Carnegie Report on Iraq's
Non-existent WMDs
Deb Reich
Palestinians and Israelis: This War is Unwinnable
David Vest
Disabled
Vets Fire Back at Rumsfeld
January 8, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israeli
Refuseniks Sentenced to Jail
Lenni Brenner
Dr.
Dean and the Godhead
Ray McGovern
Bush: Driving Without Breaks
Mark Scaramella
Inside
the DA's Office: Lies, Errors and Tedium
Yves Engler
Bush's Mexican Gambit
James Hollander
Journalists
Under Fire: the Death of José Couso in Baghdad
January 7, 2004
Democracy Now!
Uncharitable
Care: How Hospitals are Gouging and Even Arresting the Uninsured
Greg Weiher
The
Bush Administration's Ongoing Intelligence Problem
Ben Tripp
The Word of the Year, 2003
Dave Lindorff
Dean and His Democratic Detractors
Michael Leon
The NYT Does Chomsky
Bob Boldt
God Talk
Ramon Ryan
Small
Victories and Long Struggles: the 10th Anniversary of the Zapatista
Uprising
January 6, 2004
Dave Lindorff
RNC
Plays the Hitler Card: MoveOn Shouldn't Apologize for Those Ads
Ron Jacobs
Drugs
in Uniform: Hashish and the War on Terrorism
Josh Frank
Coffee and State Authority in Colombia
Doug Giebel
Permanent Bases: Leave Iraq? Hell No, We Won't Go
John Chuckman
Sick Puppies: David Frum's New Neo-Con Manifesto
Rannie Amiri
The Politics of the Iranian Earthquake
John L. Hess
A Record
to Dissent From
Thacher Schmid
A Cheesehead's Musings on the Sunday NYT
David Price
"Like
Slaves": Anthropological Thoughts on Occupation
January 5, 2004
Al Krebs
How
Now Mad Cow!
Kathy Kelly
Squatting
in Baghdad's Bomb Craters
Jordy Cummings
The Dialectic of the Kristol Family: Putting the Neo in the Cons
Fran Shor
Mad Human Disease: Chewing the Fat Down on the Farm
Fidel Castro
"We Shall Overcome": On the 45th Anniversary of the
Cuban Revolution
Gary Leupp
North
Korea for Dummies
January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
January 2, 2004
Stan Cox
Red Alert
2016
Dave Lindorff
Beef, the Meat of Republicans
Jackie Corr
Rule and Ruin: Wall Street and Montana
Norman Solomon
George Will's Ethics: None of Our Business?
David Vest
As the Top Wobbleth
January 1, 2004
Randall Robinson
Honor
Haiti, Honor Ourselves
David Krieger
Looking
Back on 2003
Robert Fisk
War Takes an Inhuman Twist: Roadkill Bombs
Stan Goff
War,
Race and Elections
Hammond Guthrie
2003 Almaniac
Website of the Day
Embody Bags
December 31, 2003
Ray McGovern
Don't
Be Fooled Again: This Isn't an Independent Investigation
Kurt Nimmo
Manufacturing Hysteria
Robert Fisk
The Occupation is Damned
Mike Whitney
Mad Cows and Downer George
Alexander Cockburn
A Great Year Ebbed, Another Ahead
December 30, 2003
Michael Neumann
Criticism
of Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Annie Higgins
When
They Bombed the Hometown of the Virgin Mary
Alan Farago
Bush Bros. Wrecking Co.: Time Runs Out for the Everglades
Dan Bacher
Creatures from the Blacklight Lagoon: From Glofish to Frankenfish
Jeffrey St. Clair
Hard
Time on the Killing Floor: Inside Big Meat
Willie Nelson
Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?
December 29, 2003
Mark Hand
The Washington
Post in the Dock?
David Lindorff
The
Bush Election Strategy
Phillip Cryan
Interested Blindness: Media Omissions in Colombia's War
Richard Trainor
Catellus Development: the Next Octopus?
Uri Avnery
Israel's
Conscientious Objectors
December 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David
Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
December 26, 2003
Gary Leupp
Bush
Doings: Doing the Language
December 25, 2003
Diane Christian
The
Christmas Story
Elaine Cassel
This
Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us
Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock
Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead
Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Alexander Cockburn
The
Magnificient 9
Guthrie / Albert
Another Colorful Season
December 24, 2003
M. Shahid Alam
The Semantics
of Empire
William S. Lind
Marley's
List for Santa in Wartime
Josh Frank
Iraqi
Oil: First Come, First Serve
Cpt. Paul Watson
The
Mad Cowboy Was Right
Robert Lopez
Nuance
and Innuendo in the War on Iraq
December 23, 2003
Brian J. Foley
Duck
and Cover-up
Will Youmans
Sharon's
Ultimatum
Michael Donnelly
Here
They Come Again: Another Big Green Fiasco
Uri Avnery
Sharon's
Speech: the Decoded Version
December 22, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Pray
to Play: Bush's Faith-Based National Parks
Patrick Gavin
What Would Lincoln Do?
Marjorie Cohn
How to
Try Saddam: Searching for a Just Venue
Kathy Kelly
The
Two Troublemakers: "Guilty of Being Palestinians in Iraq"
December 20 / 21, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
How
to Kill Saddam
Saul Landau
Bush Tries Farce as Cuba Policy
Rafael Hernandez
Empire and Resistance: an Interview with Tariq Ali
David Vest
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
Greg Weiher
Lessons from the Israeli School on How to Win Friends in the
Islamic World
Christopher Brauchli
Arrest, Smear, Slink Away: Dr. Lee and Cpt. Yee
Carol Norris
Cheers of a Clown: Saddam and the Gloating Bush
Bruce Jackson
The Nameless and the Detained: Bush's Disappeared
Juliana Fredman
A Sealed Laboratory of Repression
Mickey Z.
Holiday Spirit at the UN
Ron Jacobs
In the Wake of Rebellion: The Prisoner's Rights Movement and
Latino Prisoners
Josh Frank
Sen. Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler
John L. Hess
Slow Train to the Plane
Adam Engel
Black is Indeed Beautiful
Ben Tripp
The Relevance of Art in Times of Crisis
Michael Neumann
Rhythm and Race
Poets' Basement
Cullen, Engel, Albert & Guthrie
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
January
30, 2004
Bush's Second Front
The
War in the Woods: Resistance is Fertile
By MIICHAEL DONNELLY
"It was strangely like war. They
attacked the forest as if it were an enemy to be pushed back
from the beachheads, driven into the hills, broken into patches,
and wiped out. Many operators thought they were not only making
lumber but liberating the land from the trees."
Murray Morgan,
The Last Wilderness (University of Washington Press 1976)
The Orwellian-named Healthy Forests Initiative
(HFI) sponsored by Senators Wyden (D-OR) and Feinstein (D-CA)
passed the Senate last year by an 80--14 vote, exposing 70 per
cent of our public-owned forests to logging with little or no
environmental oversight.
Positive Congressional protection measures
are nowhere to be found. The National Forest Protection and Restoration
Act (NFPRA) which would end commercial logging on public lands
still languishes without Congressional support, nor much big
green support, seven years after it was first introduced. The
Act to Save America's Forest grassroots plan to also end logging
never had any big green support in the first place and though
it has had more Congressional support, it still goes nowhere.
Spawned by this failure to protect and
the ferocious return of pro-Big Timber governmental chicanery
(not that it ever really left), collusion between the Democrats
and the Bush Administration and the usual inept response from
big green; a renewed effort to defend precious ecosystems at
the very point of attack is underway.
Grassroots forest activists certainly
aren't taking the latest assault on our public forests lying
down. That is unless they're laying there locked to something,
blocking chainsaws from carrying out the terms of the Wyden/Feinstein/Bush
Stealthy Timber Initiative. These folks, many seasoned veteran
activists and many newer fired-up folks with new energy and ideas,
know it's up to the citizenry to voice their displeasure, bring
attention to the issue and try and still the saws in any way
they can creatively think up.
Between Greenpeace, the National Forest
Protection Alliance (NFPA), Forest Guardians, the various Centers
for Biological Diversity, Cascadia Forest Alliance, Heartwood
and others 100% of proposed timber sales are being monitored.
These groups are ready to launch whatever is necessary to defend
our forests -- from education, letter writing campaigns, lawsuits,
to market campaigns (especially in Alaska's case) to Civil Disobedience.
Here's a sampler of what's about to break
loose:
COMING THROUGH IN THE
CLINCH
CONTACT: www.virginiaforestwatch.org
A textbook case of citizen activism is
underway right under the noses of the DC crowd. The administration
of the Jefferson National Forest of Virginia has proposed logging
some 600 acres in the Bark Camp and High Knob areas.
This stunning area has been extensively
logged in the past and has just begun to fully recover. It is
also close to major population centers and is a popular recreation
area -- including lakes, trails and scenic overlooks. The area's
streams drain into the Clinch River, home to the highest concentration
of federally protected aquatic species in Virginia.
Recently, past logging contributed to
landslides in the area which killed one man and devastated the
very heart of the proposed sale area, smothering untold number
of aquatic species in silt. Over 27 slides occurred in just the
Stony Creek drainage alone in 2001.
On December 17, 2003, on behalf of those
species and the Clinch Coalition, the Southern Environmental
Law Center of Asheville, NC has filed the necessary lawsuit,
with the help of the Southern Appalachian Biodiversity Project
and others. The Forest Service (USFS) has 60 days from then to
respond.
Should the legal challenges fail, the
Asheville chapter of EarthFirst! has set up an action camp in
the Bark Camp area and is training for tree sits and blockades.
Activists from all over the region--Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio,
North Carolina and elsewhere have converged on the area to prepare.
A BIG TIMBER BOONE
CONTACT: www.kyheartwood.org
In Kentucky, the Forest Service has plans
to "salvage" log over 3000 acres on the Daniel Boone
National Forest. The Moorehead Ice Storm Salvage rampage is the
USFS response to a storm that swept through the forest in 2003,
causing many trees to lose limbs to the weight of the storm's
ice. While these forests have certainly been through many such
events historically and continue to thrive, the Forest Service
has determined that the trees must be cut. The excuse is that
the dreaded gypsy moths may, according to the agency, arrive
"sometime in the next 25 years" and presumably do something
the ice-pruned forest has never seen before.
So, again, over forty people have been
to the area and have trained in tree sitting techniques.
MEANWHILE, BACK IN CASCADIA
OPENING SALVO
CONTACT: www.orwildlife.org
www.cascadiarising.org
While the extreme old growth liquidation
efforts of the USFS in the Pacific Northwest that inspired/outraged
Mikal Jakubal to become the first tree sitter in a protest in
the spectacular Middle Santiam River of Oregon back in 1985 will
likely never again occur, Big Timber is using the HFI to justify
going after the remnant stands they missed or were held out of
in the past.
Clinton's 1994 Old Growth Liquidation
Plan (Option 9) saw scientists compile a list of 590 rare species
that depend on the Westside Cascades Ancient Forest ecosystem
and would likely face extinction if measures were not taken to
assure their survival. So, a system of Survey and Manage (S&M)
was instituted to make sure that agencies monitored for these
species before any further logging could take place.
Immediately, industry (and enviros) saw
the potential and, as a result, got many species dropped from
the list in an unbroken annual purge by both the Clinton and
Bush administrations. Now there are less than half the original
species on the list and Bush announced plans to eliminate the
list, as clever activists have done their own surveys and stopped
many sales accordingly.
Come Feb. 21st, there will be a region-wide
protest at Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management (BLM)
offices coinciding with the release of the new, species-cleansed
list, which will have dropped over 460 of the original endangered
species.
THE WESTERN FIRESTORM
Throughout the West, Big Timber has remade
itself as Big Fire. Sen. Wyden was able to get $1.2 billion put
in the HFI for Oregon-based Big Fire, the privatized fire fighting,
"salvage" logging and "restoration" offshoot
of Big Timber.
Using the excuse that forests burn (startling
news!) as a means of getting at the lucrative trees is Industry's
21st Century Big Lie. Under the terms of the Horizontal Forest
Initiative, industry gets to quadruple dip: first paid for "fuel
reduction" logging, then to fight the inevitable fires,
then to "salvage" the burn areas and finally, to "restore"
the areas, usually by planting nonnative grasses and highly flammable
thickets of small monoculture trees.
Fire is now the excuse for most Western
logging. And, here's the worst example:
BURNT BISCUIT
CONTACT: www.kswild.org
www.cascwild.org
In 2002, the Biscuit fire burned on 500,000
acres in the Siskiyou National Forest. The fire burned hot in
some areas and at low intensity over half the area, leaving large
islands of untouched forest over most of the half-million acres.
As usual, the USFS began planning the
"salvage logging" before the fire was even put out
-- by Mother Nature, as always. The USFS received over 23,000
public comments on the logging plan with over 95% opposed. In
response, the USFS issued a plan to cut 518 million board feet
from 30,000 acres. Large, standing dead trees, known as snags
and large, live trees will be cut and, ironically, replaced with
small far more fire-prone plantations.
The Biscuit Timber Sale will be the largest
in memory. Even Dr. Jerry Franklin, the architect of Option 9
has come out opposed to the "salvage." One of the key
provisions of Option 9 was the network of Late Successional Reserves
(LSR) that were to be set aside to protect the habitat for spotted
owls and the other old growth-dependent species on that S&M
list. The point of the LSR network was to have enough of them
that they could accommodate such natural events as fire and still
provide habitat for species during a "natural recovery."
Of course, the Biscuit plan devastates the area's largest and
most critical LSRs, with over 2/3rds of the proposed logging
in designated LSRs. Franklin has noted that standing snags are
critical over the 100 to 200 years it takes for a mature forest
to grow back.
The Biscuit Fire Salvage is the epicenter
of activist efforts in the NW. Already dozens of activists from
dozens of local groups have educated themselves on the Biscuit
and have made plans to actively oppose the proposed logging.
Activists anticipate yet another Congressional "Rider"
which, like Clinton's infamous 1995 Salvage Rider, will suspend
all relevant protective laws, even the paltry protections of
HFI, in order to abet the logging.
Senator from Big Timber, Gordon Smith
(R-OR) and Mark Rey, former Big Timber lobbyist and now Undersecretary
of Agriculture in charge of the Forest Service held a Public
Forum in Southern Oregon last month. Their efforts to justify
the "salvage" logging and raise the rider threat were
met by local activists and Mike Roselle of Greenpeace, who continued
his group's strategy of dogging Rey wherever he goes. Klamath
Siskiyou Wild's George Sexton was forcibly removed after his
pointed comments.
"Lawless Logging" may return
to the area first impacted by Clinton's Rider. And, as before,
it will be met with a concerted Civil Disobedience effort.
THE BIG WILD and BIG
FIRE
CONTACT: www.wildrockies.org
www.nativeforest.org
The biggest threat to public forests
in the Northern Rockies continues to be massive commercial logging
projects conducted under the guise of the usual Forest Service
buzzwords such as "forest health," "salvage"
and "restoration."
The Northern Rockies are blessed with
some of the best and largest remaining wildlands in the lower
48 states. The sparse human population and wild country is what
makes the Northern Rockies ecosystem so unique, but it also presents
difficult challenges when it comes to organizing grassroots activists.
Often times it's just a handful of dedicated activists who take
a stand against forest destruction. The call is out for all to
come to the Big Wild this summer and do your part to save this
amazing ecosystem.
And your help is needed. Last fall, yet
another "suspend the laws" rider was attached to the
Interior Appropriations by rabid anti-environmental Senator Conrad
Burns (R-MT). This assault will result in the logging of thousands
of acres of majestic old-growth forests on the Kootenai National
Forest and allows post-fire logging projects on the Flathead
National Forest to sidestep the Clean Water Act.
In Idaho, the Nez Perce National Forest
is planning to weaken water quality and soil protection standards
to "get the cut out" in a watershed that's already
hammered by extensive logging and roadbuilding. Meanwhile, the
Clearwater National Forest is planning a logging project under
the term "ecosystem management" that would log right
up to two roadless areas and near the historic trail used by
the Lewis and Clark expedition. Thankfully the Nez Perce tribe
-- who coincidentally rescued Lewis and Clark 200 years ago --
has sued to stop the project. A decision is pending.
But unquestionably the best example of
Forest Service doublespeak has been occurring on the Bitterroot
National Forest since the wildfires of 2000 when the Forest Service
pushed forward a "Burned Area Recovery Plan" for the
Bitterroot that called for logging 180 million board feet of
trees (that's enough to fill log trucks lined up for 300 miles!).
Following a controversial settlement
agreement signed in February 2002--brokered largely by big green
groups, which at the last minute came to the "rescue"
of the very capable local grassroots groups who had been working
for over a year to stop the project--the USFS was able to implement
a "recovery" project allowing them to log 60 million
board feet over 14,700 acres. <http://www.counterpunch.org/bitterroot1.html>
Oh yeah, the "recovery" plan
also did include some bona-fide restoration work such as road
obliteration, tree planting and stream restoration.
But, now, nearly two years into the project
and the logging companies have systematically cut down the largest,
most fire resistant trees while leaving the ground covered with
logging slash. The Forest Service actually admits that the fire
risk on the Bitterroot has been increased for up to 8 years!
And as far as real restoration work goes,
two years into the project only 16% of the road restoration work
has occurred and $18 million set aside for restoration of the
Bitterroot is gone and the Forest Service has no plans to get
that money back. Talk is cheap.
On the nearby Lolo National Forest, the
USFS proposes to log the 250 acre "Mineral Fire Salvage"--located
in the upper Gold Creek drainage northeast of Missoula. This
plan would result in logging within 500 feet of the Rattlesnake
Wilderness Area--an incredibly popular 65,000 acre designated
Wilderness located just a few miles north of Missoula. The project
would also result in logging for 1/3 of a mile along a popular
recreation trail which leads directly into the Wilderness.
ANCIENT FORESTS
CONTACT: www.kswild.org
The intent of that cleansed S&M species
list is to make it easier to go after those remnant groves of
Ancient Forests. Even large healthy trees in Ancient Forest stands
are vulnerable under the current regime. One sale, in particular,
makes no efforts to rationalize Ancient Forest liquidation as
some sort of fireproofing scheme.
The BLM is usually associated with cattle
and mining. Throughout the West, the BLM got the non-forest lands
and the USFS got the trees. However, in Southern Oregon, the
BLM has forests to "manage," as well.
In the Klamath/Siskiyou Mountains, the
BLM oversees the 46,464-acre Zane Grey roadless area, the largest
BLM roadless area in the nation. The Zane Grey is home to many
of the aforementioned S&M species. It straddles the Wild
and Scenic Rogue River for 24 miles and is adjacent to the Wild
Rogue Wilderness Area.
The BLM has hatched a plan to cut some
1700 of those acres in the Kelsey-Whisky Timber Sale--an old-style
old growth sale of centuries-old trees. Again, the vast majority
of public comments asked the BLM to reconsider. The agency's
response? The BLM actually increased the volume to be cut in
this larger-than-usual remnant gem.
This has resulted in the usual activist
response -- letter writing, legal challenges and CD preparation.
THE MT. HOOD NF: "AN
AGGREGATE PLANTATION OF UNIFORM AGE TREES"
CONTACT: www.bark-out.org
The Mt. Hood National Forest is one of
the few spotted owl forests to have a USFS designation as a "Recreation
Forest" as it's within easy reach of over half of Oregon's
population. It's also the drinking water source for that half
of the state's population -- over 1.27 million water users. That
hasn't stopped the chainsaw juggernaut, however. Plans call for
over 48 timber sales on the Mt. Hood NF with most of them old
growth logging -- many old growth clear-cutting.
Recently, a grassroots lawsuit derailed
the Solo Timber Sale, one of eight sales targeting the remaining
Ancient Forests of the stunning Oak Grove Watershed -- "an
aggregate plantation of uniform age trees" is the stated
management goal.
The Solo Timber Sale was defeated by
a combination of direct action, citizen surveys for rare species,
market campaigns, and litigation. Tree-sitters lived at Solo
for over a year between when the sale was sold and notice of
the cancellation received. Their tree, Horehound, was named after
Beth O'Brien, who died in a fall from a tree-sit at Eagle Creek
days before the final paper work canceling the sale was signed.
The Juncrock, Bear Knoll, and Hilynx
Timber sales combine to log 2165 acres in the White River Watershed.
Hilynx has already been auctioned, some roads built, and logging
is imminent. Juncrock's Environmental Impact Statement (EIS)
came out earlier this year, but the Record of Decision has not
yet been released. With nearly 500 public comments received opposing
the sale before the decision has even been finalized, Juncrock
is poised to one of the next big public fights in the Mt. Hood.
These sales target old growth hemlocks
by pretending to eradicate "disease" without mentioning
that the diseases they target are endemic. The eradication of
these diseases would require the eradication of entire old growth
western hemlock forest ecosystems.
Hmmm?
THE BIG PICTURE
CONTACT: www.greenpeace.org
While the above efforts are all classic
examples of the oft-successful "Name It and Save It,"
place-based method of protecting local favorite areas, the larger
view calls for a Chainsaw Moratorium across the entire scope
of public forests.
Name It and Save It has succeeded in
protecting some stunning islands of precious forests. And, it
will continue to be the most effective way to sell a community
on local protection. Yet, as Mike Roselle said, "It can
no longer just be about Dinky Creek up the Whatchamacallit River."
So, Roselle, Greenpeace, NFPA and others
plan a multi-front response using all the tools in the box. More
CD trainings will happen. Serious safety concerns are being addressed.
NORTH AMERICA'S LAST
GREAT RAINFOREST
The primary front is in Alaska. The Bush
Administration has swept aside the last-minute tissue paper barrier
of Clinton's "Roadless Rule" and pushed forward with
plans to log and build roads into 300,000 roadless acres of the
Tongass National Forest, our largest Ancient Forest.
Not at all gulled by Clinton's Maginot
Line of protection, Greenpeace and their local allies anticipated
this assault and have plans to bring CD to Alaska for the first
time. In a preview, last month dozens of folks from Greenpeace
and the Alaska Rainforest Coalition went to Mark Rey's DC office
and sodded over the parking lot with grass. This clever tactic
resulted in media attention and a meeting with Rey himself.
At the meeting Rey attempted to justify
the Tongass incursion. When it was pointed out that over 60,000
public comments -- from religious groups, recreationists, hunting
and fishing clubs -- opposed the plan, Rey noted, "I don't
count votes." To which one wag responded, "We notice
that seems to be this administration's operating principle."
ASHCROFT'S PREEMPTIVE
STRIKE
Perhaps anticipating Greenpeace's committed
involvement in North American forest issues,
the Justice Department filed criminal charges against the group
in Miami court last July, under terms of an obscure 19th
Century law aimed at ending the practice of "sailor mongering."
The "sailor mongering" law, used but twice in the 19th
Century, was aimed at pimps who boarded incoming ships, plied
the sailors with booze and arranged for their various pleasures
upon docking.
It's also payback, as Greenpeace was
the first group to protest at Bush's Texas ranch shortly after
his inauguration, hanging a banner reading "Bush: the Toxic
Texan. Don't Mess With the Earth.'"
In April 2002, Greenpeace activists boarded
a ship full of illegally cut and exported mahogany from Brazil.
They tried to hang a banner saying, "President Bush, Stop
Illegal Logging." Arrests were made and all minor charges
against the activists were settled. No violence or property damage
occurred. Yet, the Justice Department has brought these criminal
charges against the entire organization in a chilling attempt
to silence dissent. Greenpeace would lose its tax exempt status
and have to report to the government on all its activities should
Ashcroft succeed -- which he won't.
"This prosecution is unprecedented
in American history," noted John Passacantando, executive
director of Greenpeace in the United States. "Never before
has our government criminally prosecuted an entire organization
for the free speech activities of its supporters. If this prosecution
succeeds, then peaceful protest -- an essential American tradition
from the Boston Tea Party through the modern civil rights movement
-- may become yet another casualty of Attorney General Ashcroft's
attack on civil liberties."
Uncowed, Greenpeace plans to step up
its forest fight, not only on the Tongass, but all across the
48 states, as well. As Roselle put it, "After 9-11, the
president said to go back to normal. Well, normal for us is to
board ships. Normal for us is blockading timber sales. We raise
funds based on that. It'd be fraud if we did otherwise."
(A healthy sentiment the entire environmental movement could
use more of.)
States also have Draconian laws they
can use to suppress dissent. For example, in Oregon, a specious
law aimed at intimidating FarmWorker's Union organizers is now
being exclusively used against forest protesters. The "Interfering
with an Agricultural Operations Act" passed the Oregon Senate
by a unanimous 30-0 vote in 1999. This Class A Misdemeanor is
being used by the USFS and local authorities against any nonviolent
protesters and its use is expected to increase. To date, however,
once the arrests have been made and citations issued, that appears
to be it; as the authorities have always dropped the charges
rather than have their shifty little tool face Constitutional
review in Court.
CHAINSAW MORATORIUM
All the pieces are in place for a spirited
and successful defense -- local activists and groups, supported
by a large national coalition like NFPA and an experienced international
group like Greenpeace.
Twenty-one years after the first North
American blockade at the still threatened Siskiyou ecosystem's
Bald Mountain, two decades after the first tree sit protest,
ten years after Clinton supposedly "saved the Ancient Forests"
we come to the end game. It's now or never for many of these
public-owned forests and the species dependent upon them.
The time is long overdue for a moratorium
on any logging on public lands. It's way overdue for Congress
to live up to the usual election year green rhetoric and pass
protection legislation.
The people are speaking. They're putting
their bodies on the line. It's 2004 -- time to count the votes.
(Thanks to all the activists who contributed
to this article and who are doing the necessary, courageous work
to still the saws and save this precious heritage.)
Weekend
Edition Features for January 10 / 11, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
as Hitler? Let's Be Fair
Susan Davis
Dangerous Books
Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell
Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past
Daniel Estulin
Destroying History in Iraq
Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety
Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?
Bruce Jackson
Making the Shit List
Christopher Brauchli
Baptizing Hitler's Ghost
Francis A. Boyle
The Deep Scars of War
Lee Ballinger
Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry
Patrick W. Gavin
Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott?
Ramzy Baroud
What Invaders Have in Common
Michael Schwartz
Inside the California Grocery Strike
Gary Johnson
An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page
Dave Zirin
An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball
Mark Hand
A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon
Poets' Basement
Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert
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