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Today's
Stories
November
1 / 2, 2003
Saul Landau
Cui
Bono? The Cuba Embargo as Rip Off
October 31, 2003
Lee Ballinger
Making
a Dollar Out of 15 Cents: The Sweatshops of Sean "P. Diddy"
Combs
Wayne
Madsen
The
GOP's Racist Trifecta
Michael Donnelly
Settling for Peanuts: Democrats Trick the Greens, Treat Big Timber
Patrick
Cockburn
Baghdad
Diary: Iraqis are Naming Their New Babies "Saddam"
Elaine
Cassel
Coming
to a State Near You: The Matrix (Interstate Snoops, Not the Movie)
October 30, 2003
Forrest
Hylton
Popular
Insurrection and National Revolution in Bolivia
Eric Ruder
"We Have to Speak Out!": Marching with the Military
Families
Dave Lindorff
Big
Lies and Little Lies: The Meaning of "Mission Accomplished"
Philip
Adams
"Everyone is Running Scared": Denigrating Critics of
Israel
Sean Donahue
Howard Dean: a Hawk in a Dove's Cloak
Robert
Jensen
Big Houses & Global Justice: A Moral Level of Consumption?
Alexander
Cockburn
Paul
Krugman: Part of the Problem
October
29, 2003
Chris
Floyd
Thieves
Like Us: Cheney's Backdoor to Halliburton
Robert Fisk
Iraq Guerrillas Adopt a New Strategy: Copy the Americans
Rick Giombetti
Let
Them Eat Prozac: an Interview with David Healy
The Intelligence
Squad
Dark
Forces? The Military Steps Up Recruiting of Blacks
Elaine
Cassel
Prosecutors
as Therapists, Phantoms as Terrorists
Marie Trigona
Argentina's War on the Unemployed Workers Movement
Gary Leupp
Every
Day, One KIA: On the Iraq War Casualty Figures
October
28, 2003
Rich Gibson
The
Politics of an Inferno: Notes on Hellfire 2003
Uri Avnery
Incident
in Gaza
Diane
Christian
Wishing
Death
Robert
Fisk
Eyewitness
in Iraq: "They're Getting Better"
Toni Solo
Authentic Americans and John Negroponte
Jason
Leopold
Halliburton in Iran
Shrireen Parsons
When T-shirts are Verboten
Chris
White
9/11
in Context: a Marine Veteran's Perspective
October 27, 2003
William
A. Cook
Ministers
of War: Criminals of the Cloth
David
Lindorff
The
Times, Dupes and the Pulitzer
Elaine
Cassel
Antonin
Scalia's Contemptus Mundi
Robert
Fisk
Occupational Schizophrenia
John Chuckman
Banging Your Head into Walls
Seth Sandronsky
Snoops R Us
Bill Kauffman
George
Bush, the Anti-Family President
October
25 / 26, 2003
Robert
Pollin
The
US Economy: Another Path is Possible
Jeffrey St. Clair
Outsourcing US Guided Missile Technology to China
James
Bunn
Plotting
Pre-emptive Strikes
Saul Landau
Should Limbaugh Do Time?
Ted Honderich
Palestinian Terrorism, Morality & Germany
Thomas Nagy
Saving the Army of Peace
Christopher
Brauchli
Between Bush and a Lobotomy: Killing Endangered Species for Profit
Laura Carlsen
Latin America's Archives of Terror
Diane
Christian
Evil Acts & Evil Actors
Muqtedar Khan
Lessons from the Imperial Adventure in Iraq
John Feffer
The Tug of War on the Korea Peninsula
Brian Cloughley
Iraq War Memories are Made of Lies
Benjamin
Dangl
and Kathryn Ledebur
An Uneasy Peace in Bolivia
Karyn
Strickler
Down
with Big Brother's Spying Eyes
Noah Leavitt
Legal Globalization
John Stanton
Hitler's Ghost Haunts America
Mickey
Z.
War of the Words
Adam Engel
Tractatus Ridiculous
Poets'
Basement
Curtis, Subiet and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Project Last Stand
October
24, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft's
War on Greenpeace
Lenni Brenner
The Demographics of American Jews
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Rockets,
Napalm, Torpedoes and Lies: the Attack on the USS Liberty Revisited
Sarah Weir
Cover-up of the Israeli Attack on the US Liberty
David
Krieger
WMD Found in DC: Bush is the Button
Mohammed Hakki
It's Palestine, Stupid!: Americans and the Middle East
Harry
Browne
Northern
Ireland: the Agreement that Wasn't
October
23, 2003
Diane
Christian
Ruthlessness
Kurt Nimmo
Criticizing Zionism
David Lindorff
A General Theory of Theology
Alan Maass
The Future of the Anti-War Movement
William
Blum
Imperial
Indifference
Stew Albert
A Memo
October
22, 2003
Wayne
Madsen
Religious
Insanity Runs Rampant
Ray McGovern
Holding
Leaders Accountable for Lies
Christopher
Brauchli
There's
No Civilizing the Death Penalty
Elaine
Cassel
Legislators
and Women's Bodies
Bill Glahn
RIAA
Watch: the New Morality of Capitalism
Anthony Arnove
An Interview with Tariq Ali
October 21, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Beilin Agreement
Robert Jensen
The Fundamentalist General
David
Lindorff
War Dispatch from the NYT: God is on Our Side!
William S. Lind
Bremer is Deaf to History
Bridget
Gibson
Fatal Vision
Alan Haber
A Human Chain for Peace in Ann Arbor
Peter
Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Hanging of Thomas Russell
October
20, 2003
Standard
Schaefer
Chile's
Failed Economy: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Chris
Floyd
Circus Maximus: Arnie, Enron and Bush Maul California
Mark Hand
Democrats Seek to Disappear Chomsky
& Nader
John &
Elaine Mellencamp
Peaceful
World
Elaine
Cassel
God's
General Unmuzzled
October
18 / 19, 2003
Robert
Pollin
Clintonomics:
the Hollow Boom
Gary Leupp
Israel, Syria and Stage Four in the Terror War
Saul Landau
Day of the Gropenfuhrer
Bruce Anderson
The California Recall
John Gershman
Bush in Asia: What a Difference a Decade Makes
Nelson P. Valdes
Bush, Electoral Politics and Cuba's "Illicit Sex Trade"
Kurt Nimmo
Shock Therapy and the Israeli Scenario
Tom Gorman
Al Franken and Al-Shifa
Brian
Cloughley
Public Propaganda and the Iraq War
Joanne Mariner
A New Way to Kill Tigers
Denise
Low
The Cancer of Sprawl
Mickey Z.
The Reverend of Doom
John Chuckman
US Missiles for Israeli Nukes?
George Naggiar
A Veto of Public Diplomacy
Alison
Weir
Death Threats in Berkeley
Benjamin Dangl
Bolivian Govt. Falling Apart
Ron Jacobs
The Politics of Bob Dylan
Fidel Castro
A Review of Garcia Marquez's Memoir
Adam Engel
I Hope My Corpse Gives You the Plague
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert, Guthrie and Greeder
October
17, 2003
Stan Goff
Piss
On My Leg: Perception Control and the Stage Management of War
Newton
Garver
Bolivia
in Turmoil
Standard
Schaefer
Grocery Unions Under Attack
Ben Terrall
The Ordeal of the Lockheed 52
Ron Jacobs
First Syria, Then Iran
David
Lindorff
Michael
Moore Proclaims Mumia Guilty
October
16, 2003
Marjorie
Cohn
Bush
Gunning for Regime Change in Cuba
Gary Leupp
"Getting Better" in Iraq
Norman
Solomon
The US Press and Israel: Brand Loyalty and the Absence of Remorse
Rush Limbaugh
The 10 Most Overrated Athletes of All Time
Lenni
Brenner
I
Didn't Meet Huey Newton. He Met Me
Website of the Day
Time Tested Books
October
15, 2003
Sunil
Sharma / Josh Frank
The
General and the Governor: Two Measures of American Desperation
Forrest
Hylton
Dispatch
from the Bolivian War: "Like Animals They Kill Us"
Brian
Cloughley
Those
Phony Letters: How Bush Uses GIs to Spread Propaganda About Iraq
Ahmad
Faruqui
Lessons
of the October War
Uri Avnery
Three
Days as a Living Shield
Website
of the Day
Rank and File: the New Unity Partnership Document
JoAnn
Wypijewski
The
New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor
October 14, 2003
Eric Ridenour
Qibya
& Sharon: Anniversary of a Massacre
Elaine
Cassel
The
Disgrace That is Guantanamo
Robert
Jensen
What the "Fighting Sioux" Tells Us About White People
David Lindorff
Talking Turkey About Iraq
Patrick
Cockburn
US Troops Bulldoze Crops
VIPS
One Person Can Make a Difference
Toni Solo
The CAFTA Thumbscrews
Peter
Linebaugh
"Remember
Orr!"
Website
of the Day
BRIDGES
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.
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Weekend
Edition
November 1 / 2, 2003
Liar, Liar Forests
on Fire
Why Logging Exacerbates Loss
of Lives and Property
By KARYN STRICKLER
and TIMOTHY G. HERMACH
Scores of people are dead, hundreds of thousands
of acres are burned, 2,600 homes destroyed, with tens of thousand
more threatened in California fires, and the toll is rising by
the minute. It's very scary and represents profound loss for
the victims. So, under the guise of fire funding or firefighting,
congressional negotiators quickly allocated $3 billion (the most
ever allocated to a one-time firefighting budget) in the coming
year to fight and prevent fire. Hundreds of millions of dollars
are allocated specifically for suppression, thinning, threat
reduction, and management--all fear-mongering, code words for
cutting down our national forests.
California's Fontana Pass and Grand Prix
Fires have been blamed on arson. Still George W. Bush and those
in the U.S. Congress who benefit from the timber industry's chainsaw
windfall, capitalize on people's fear of fire and proclaim a
need for suppression, thinning, threat reduction and management.
They then grant enormous logging contracts to cut down trees
in national forests where logging is otherwise illegal. The logging
is not done in areas where lives and property would be spared,
thinning small trees around homes, but rather in backcountry,
valuable, old-growth forests.
According to Dr Richard A Minnich, Professor
of Earth Science at the University of California at Riverside,
an expert on the fire ecology of Mediterranean ecosystems in
Southern California, "The Bush Administration's Healthy
Forests Restoration Act (HR 1904) for forest thinning in the
western United States is scheduled for a vote at a time when
southern California is undergoing a massive fire disaster. Yet
this bill will give little benefit for fire and fuel hazard management
in the southern California region . . .The bill is earmarked
for federal lands exclusively."
As forest fires rage, so does the debate
about how best to suppress fire, reduce its threat and manage
our forests. And the answer is -- DON'T! Don't "manage"
our public forests -- and forest fires will be M-I-N-I-M-I-Z-E-D.
Since George W. Bush and the timber hungry in the U.S. Congress
seem incapable of spelling, allow us to spell it out: Stop timbering
our forests and the fires therein will play the role that Mother
Nature and God intended them to play -- a vital role of targeted
renewal and replacement -- not one of total devastation as we
are seeing in the fires raging in southern California today.
There is no forest management plan that does the job as efficiently
or effectively as the great forces of nature.
Fire, just like insects and disease,
are a natural and beneficial part of forest ecosystems and watersheds.
Without these natural processes the forest ecosystems quickly
degrade. Excessive logging removes and reduces cooling shade
adding to the hotter, drier forests along with logging debris
creating a more flammable forest. Current "forest management"
practices, road building and development cause forest fires to
rage for hundreds of miles.
The Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project said
in a report to the U.S. Congress that timber harvests have increased
fire severity more than any other recent human activity. Logging,
especially clear cutting, can change the fire climate so that
fires start more easily, spread faster, further, and burn hotter
causing much more devastation than a fire ignited and burned
under natural conditions. If we stop the logging and stop building
fire prone developments, we minimize the loss of lives and property
suffered by people in fires.
As long as the people of America let
politicians, timber executives, and the Forest Service get away
with it - it will not stop. Those corporations that profit will
continue to lie, cheat and steal to continue to make more money
from our losses. Just like big tobacco.
There has never been an honest and fully-costed
accounting for public land management involving the extraction,
sale, or lease of publicly owned natural resources: land, air,
soil and water, not even for the trees. The Forest Service fails
to give one penny of value in its inventory accounting to the
trees themselves. A $1.00 seedling can grow into a 500-year-old
tree. If you put $1.00 in the bank at 6% interest for 500 years,
that $1.00 would grow with compounding and interest to 4.5 trillion
dollars. A 500-year-old tree is simply not replaceable by five
or six seedlings, the way 4.5 trillion dollars are not replaceable
by five or six $1.00 bills.
The Forest Service gives away our trees
to multinational corporations to liquidate for free, simultaneously
asking taxpayers to subsidize those corporations by paying for
the roads and infrastructure necessary to cut down our trees.
This government give-away to a few, greedy corporations costs
taxpayers billions of dollars annually and destroys the soil,
air and water that only intact forests can provide. In addition,
this may cost citizens and taxpayers trillions of dollars in
lost and damaged publicly owned land and property assets. The
Forest Service does not begin to assess the very real human health
cost of dirty air, soil, and water. It's a shameless shakedown
of the American taxpayer.
Tim Hermach, co-author of this article,
was recently trapped in a forest fire that jeopardized his life
and the lives of his wife, parents, and two young sons. He knows
the gut-wrenching fear that fire can evoke. A raging forest fire
came within 50 yards of his family's campsite at Davis Lake,
Oregon. For the past forty years Tim has been making the same
camping trip, an earlier time when this forest did not have hundreds
of miles of roads channeling winds through an ever hotter and
drier forest. Years of clear cutting, logging, and fire suppression
have opened vast acreages to the hot sun and cut out the big,
thick, fire-resistant Ponderosa pine, leaving the ecosystem in
chaos.
Tim strongly opposes forest "thinning,"
because both the logging industry and the Forest Service have
a long, dishonest, track record. His opposition is strong even
after a fire spoiled his family's summer vacation and put their
lives at risk. The Davis Lake fire burned in a national forest
that had already been heavily logged. Rampant cutting and decades
of fire suppression have turned this area, and much of the Deschutes
National Forest, into a tinderbox of smaller trees and coarse
woody debris. Go to our Web site (<www.forestcouncil.org>
) and see aerial photographs of the Deschutes and other national
forests today. They are a patchwork of clear cuts and usually
look like a war zone.
Those who claim to protect national forests
like this by "managing" them, have turned paradise
into Pandora's box -- make that Pandora's tinderbox. Put simply:
Logging does not stop fire, as a group of scientists recently
confirmed in a study that looked at the impact of "thinning"
on 250 forest fires. Logging increases the risk and occurrence
of forest fires. Yet more logging is exactly what timber corporations,
President Bush and the Forest Service claim will stop forest
fires.
Logging called for in the Bush administration's
laughably named Healthy Forests Restoration Act (HR 1904) is
the same dishonest logging that created the conditions that made
the Davis Lake fire and others across the nation so frightening.
They call it thinning, fire-risk reduction, meadow restoration,
or good management, but it all adds up to the same old theft
and destruction of America's most precious natural treasures
and life-support system: our national forests and watersheds.
Thanks to the Bush administration's Healthy Forests Restoration
Act, American taxpayers will continue to subsidize the destruction
of what little is left of our nation's forests, even those that
are publicly owned.
It is the same old dirty formula that
has made corporate robber barons and their political lackeys
rich for more than a hundred years. The only difference is that,
today, they hide behind their clever rhetoric and exploit the
myth of Smokey Bear and our fear of fire. If the intent is to
seek the most environmentally sound and cost effective means
to reduce the fuel hazard and fire risk they created, then the
Forest Service should be instructed, fully funded, and closely
monitored. They should implement prescribed burning and manual,
intensive labor in underbrush removal, without commercial logging.
They should be enabled, funded, and watched while assisting homeowners
in the removal of small trees in residential areas. The long-term
goal for forests should be full restoration of ecological processes,
including fire -- Mother Nature style.
Timothy G. Hermach is the President of the Native
Forest Council in Eugene, Oregon. Karyn Strickler
is a writer and political activist.
They can be reached at: zerocut1@forestcouncil.org
Copyright Timothy G. Hermach and Karyn
Strickler.
Weekend
Edition Features for Oct. 25 / 26, 2003
Robert
Pollin
The
US Economy: Another Path is Possible
Jeffrey St. Clair
Outsourcing US Guided Missile Technology to China
James
Bunn
Plotting
Pre-emptive Strikes
Saul Landau
Should Limbaugh Do Time?
Ted Honderich
Palestinian Terrorism, Morality & Germany
Thomas Nagy
Saving the Army of Peace
Christopher
Brauchli
Between Bush and a Lobotomy: Killing Endangered Species for Profit
Laura Carlsen
Latin America's Archives of Terror
Diane
Christian
Evil Acts & Evil Actors
Muqtedar Khan
Lessons from the Imperial Adventure in Iraq
John Feffer
The Tug of War on the Korea Peninsula
Brian Cloughley
Iraq War Memories are Made of Lies
Benjamin
Dangl
and Kathryn Ledebur
An Uneasy Peace in Bolivia
Karyn
Strickler
Down
with Big Brother's Spying Eyes
Noah Leavitt
Legal Globalization
John Stanton
Hitler's Ghost Haunts America
Mickey
Z.
War of the Words
Adam Engel
Tractatus Ridiculous
Poets'
Basement
Curtis, Subiet and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Project Last Stand
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