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Today's
Stories
March 29, 2004
Kathy Kelly
Crossing Lines
March 27 / 28, 2004
Jennifer Loewenstein
A
Journey to Rafah
Jeffrey St. Clair
Empire of the Locusts
Gary Leupp
The Yassin Assassination: Prelude to an Attack on Syria
William A. Cook
The Yassin Assassination: a Monstrous Insanity Blessed by the
US
Faheem Hussain
Some Thoughts on Waziristan: Once and Always a Colonial Army
Elaine Cassel
Is Playing Paintball Terrorism?
Larry Birns / Jessica
Leight
Disturbing Signals: Kerry and Latin America
John Ross
Bush Tells the World: "Drop Dead"
John Eskow
A Memo to Karl Rove from the Hollywood Caucus
Alan Maass
Who Are the Real Terrorists?
Dave Lindorff
Spineless of US Journalists
Joe Bageant
Howling in the Belly of the Confederacy
Dave Zirin
Reasonable Doubt: Why Barry Bonds is Not on Steroids
Craig Waggoner
Who Would Mel's Jesus Nuke?
The Kerry Quandry
Joel Wendland
Marxists
for Kerry
Josh Frank
Scary,
Scary John Kerry
Matt Vidal
Spoilers, Electability and the Poverty of American Democracy
Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Hamod, Guthrie, Davies and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Say a Little Prayer
March 26, 2004
Christopher Brauchli
There's
a Chill Over the Country
Robert Fisk
The Man Who Knew Too Much: the Ordeal
of Mordechai Vanunu
Joe DeRaymond
Democracy in El Salvador? Think Again
Mike Whitney
Lessons on Apartheid from Ariel Sharon
Mickey Z.
Somalia and Iraq: Looking Back and Ahead
Chris Floyd
The Pentagon Archipelago
CounterPunch Photo Wire
Cheney's Close Shave?
John Breneman
Bush's Comic Bomb
Website of the Day
Dick
is a Killer
March 25, 2004
Lee Sustar
Who
is to Blame for Lost Jobs?
Standard Schaefer
An
Interview with Michael Hudson on Offshore Banking Centers
Roger Burbach
Lula vs. the IMF: Brazil Begins
to Throw Off the Austerity Planners
Jimmer Endres
Elections Without Politics: The Military Budget Is Not an "Issue"
Larry Tuttle
Acting in Your Name: Identity Theft and Public Interest Groups
Toni Solo
Misreporting Venezuela
Dan Bacher
A Memorial Wall for Iraq War's Dead and Wounded
Saul Landau
Is
Venezuela Next?
Website of the Day
The Spiral Railway
March 24, 2004
Gary Leupp
General
Musharraf's IOU
Richard Oxman
Shakespeare
for Kerry
William Lind
The Beginning
of Phase Three: 4G Warfare Hits Iraq
Rep. Ron Paul
Iraq One Year Later
Michael Dempsey
Killing Rachel Corrie Again
Alan Farago
The Bad Math of Mercury: Bush's War on the Unborn
Benjamin Dangl
and April Howard
Media
in Cuba
John L. Hess
No Lie Left Behind: Judy Miller Does Dick Clarke
Greg Weiher
Two Cheers for Dems: "We're Not as Bad as George"
Eva Golinger
An Open Letter to John Kerry on Venezuela
Grayson Childs
Where's Cynthia McKinney?
Steve Niva
Israel's Assassinations will Only
Fuel More Suicide Bombings
Website of the Day
The Bushiad and the Idiossey
March 23, 2004
Phillip Cryan
The
Drug War's Next Casualty: Colombia's National Parks
Ron Jacobs
They Shoot Men in Wheelchairs, Too?
Dave Lindorff
A Spanish Parallel: Scare Tactics and Elections
Mike Whitney
Richard Clarke and Teflon George
Brian McKinlay
Bush's Lil' Buddy in Trouble: John Howard Starts to Wobble
JG
Driving Mr. Koon: "Jim Crow Lives Next Door"
Phyllis Pollack
Gettin' Jigga with Metallica: the Battle Over the Double Black
CD
Ahmed Bouzid
Sharon's One-Way Track
Sean Carter
The G-Word Goes to Court: One Nation Under [Your Logo Here]
M. Shahid Alam
World's Greatest Country: Do the Facts Lie
March 22, 2004
Mazin Qumsiyeh
On Extrajudicial
Executions
Uri Avnery
The
Assassination of Sheikh Yassin is Worse Than a Crime
Gilad Atzmon
Sharon's Rampage
Mike Whitney
Guilty Until Proven Innocent: the Story of Captain James Yee
Jason Leopold
Firm With Ties to Cheney Faces Criminal Indictment in Cal Energy
Scam
Greg Moses
Stop
Walling and Stalling: a Report from Houston's Peace March
Phil Gasper
San Francisco: 25,000 March for an End to the Occupation
Lenni Brenner
Report
from NYC: Old and Young Parade for Peace
Julian Borger
The Clarke Revelations
Steve Perry
Karl Rove's Moment
Website of the Day
Enviros Against War
March 20 / 21, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Gay
Marriage: Sidestep on Freedom's Path
Jeffrey St. Clair
Intolerable Opinions in an Age of Shock and Awe: What Would Lilburne
Do?
Ted Honderich
Tony Blair's Moral Responsibility for Atrocities
Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
The Plot Against Syria: an Irresponsibility Act
Gary Leupp
On Viewing "The Passion of the Christ"
William A. Cook
Fence, Barrier, Wall
Phil Gasper
Bush v. Bush-lite: Chomsky's Lesser Evilism
Ron Jacobs
Fox News and the Masters of War
John Stanton
Which Way John Kerry? The Senator's Inner Nixon
Justin Felux
Kerry and Black America: Just Another Stupid White Man
Mike Whitney
Greenspan's Treason: Swindling Posterity
Augustin Velloso
Avoiding Osama's Abyss
Lawrence Magnuson
Eyes Wide Open: Is Spain Caving in to Terrorism?
Kathy Kelly
Getting Together to Defeat Terrorism
Tracy McLellan
Scalia & Cheney: Happiness is a Warm Gun
Kurt Nimmo
Emma Goldman for President!
Luis J. Rodriguez
The Redemptive Power of Art: It's Not a Frill
Mickey Z
The Michael Moore Diet
Jackie Corr
When Harry Truman Stopped in Butte
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Great Trial of 1922: Gandhi's Vision of Responsibility
Poets' Basement
Stew Albert & JD Curtis
Website of the Weekend
Virtual World Election
March 19, 2004
Jeffrey St. Clair
Zapatero
to Kerry: Back Off, Senator, Our Troops are Coming Home
Ann Harrison
So
Protesters, How Well Do You Know Your Rights?
William MacDougall
Fortress Britain's War on "Economic Migrants"
Greg Moses
Sold American: Cowboy Nation Gets Ready to Vote
Cynthia McKinney
Haiti and the Impotence of Black America: Roll Back This Coup,
Mr. Bush
Norman Solomon
Spinning the Past; Threatening the Future
John L. Hess
"Missing" Evidence and the NYTs
Vicente Navarro
The
End of Aznar, Bush's Best Friend
Website of the War
Naming the Dead
March 18, 2004
Gila Svirsky
Rachel
Corrie, One Year Later: She Never Lost Faith in Decency
Christopher Brauchli
Drilling a Hole in the Sanctions: How Halliburton Made $73 Million
from Saddam
William Kulin
Report from Iraq: Just Another Baghdad Car Bombing
Mike Whitney
Resistance: a Moral Imperative
Rep. Ron Paul
Broadcast Indecency Act: an Indecent Attack on the First Amendment
Josh Frank
The Nader Question
Jack Random
They Lied & They Lost: Madrid and the Lessons of Democracy
Greg Bates
What Makes a Nader Voter Tick? A Survey
Sam Hamod / Alfredo Reyes
Contempt of the World: Hastert, Bush and Cheney on Spain
Gary Leupp
The
Madrid Bombings: the Chickens Come Home to Roost
Website of the Day
Privatizing Armageddon: Buy Your Own Doomsday Key
March 17, 2004
Marjorie Cohn
Spain, the EU and the US: War on
Terror or Civil Liberties?
David MacMichael
Untruth
and Consequences
Michael Donnelly
Wear the Green, But Skip the Green Beer
Tom Stephens
"Steady Leadership": Let the Buyer Beware
Wayne Madsen
Sen. Kerry, Let Me Help You Out
Karyn Strickler
Who Owns the Sierra Club? Anonymous Donors and Rigged Elections
Peter Linebaugh
Bush:
Blanc Blanc
March 16, 2004
Lenni Brenner
James
Madison: the Anti-Clerical Father of the Bill of Rights
Scott Boehm
Madrid
Diary: How to Change World Order in Four Days
Alexander Lynch
From Franco to Aznar: the History
Behind the Spanish Elections
Sam Hamod and Alfredo
Reyes
The Truth About the Spanish Elections: Aznar Was Going Down Anyway
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
You Wouldn't Do a Dog This Way:
Executing David Clayton Hill
Mike Whitney
The Case for a Nuclear Iran
Robert Fisk
The Bloody Price of the "War
on Terror"
Bill Christison
The
Aftershocks from Madrid
CounterPunch Photo Wire
The Passion of St. Teresa
Website of the Day
Join the War on Art!
March 15, 2004
Harry Browne
Terror Nothing New to Europe
Mike Whitney
Justice
Not Murder: the Tragic Symmetry of Terrorism
Lidice Valenzuela
Haiti: a Coup without Consultation
Greg Moses
Lessons
from the Texas Primaries: Looking for a Coalition with Legs
Mickey Z.
Depraved Indifference: C-Sections, Patriarchy & Women's Health
Asaf Shtull-Trauring
AWOL
in New York: From Refusenik to Organizer
CounterPunch Wire
Gen. Gramajo Executed by Bees!
March 12 / 14, 2004
Gabriel Kolko
The
Coming Elections and the Future of American Global Power
Saul Landau
Oh, Jesus...It's the Movie!
William Blum
Neo-Con(tradictions)
William S. Lind
Why They Throw Rocks
Rahul Mahajan
The Meaning of Madrid: War on "Terrorism" Makes Us
All Less Safe
Neve Gordon
Demographic Wars
Kurt Nimmo
Kerry and the Progressive Interventionists
Mickey Z.
The "New" UN Blames the Poor
Mike Whitney
War Games: the American Media Leads the Charge
Helen Scott and Ashley
Smith
Aristide's Fall: What Led to the Coup?
Justin E.H. Smith
Loïc Wacquant: Against a Sociodicy
of the American Prison
Brandy Baker
Him Again? Al Gore Needs to Move On
Robin Philpot
Nobody Can Call It a "Plane Crash" Now: the Report
on the Assassination of Rwandan President Habyarimana
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Meat Monopoly Takes a Rare Pounding
Dave Zirin
She Turned Her Back on the War: an Interview with Toni Smith
Daniel Wolff
The Lord's Pier
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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March
29, 2004
End Game for Northwest Forests
Oil
or Stilling the Chainsaws?
By MICHAEL DONNELLY
During the dark days of the Reagan and Bush I
regimes, grassroots forest activists forced the DC politicians
and the big green DC groups to take notice of what was happening
to the precious Ancient Forest ecosystems of the Pacific Northwest.
They elevated the fate of these forests to a national concern,
despite being told it couldn't be done. As irreplaceable forests
fell to the saws, the consistent word from DC was that in order
to end Ancient Forest logging, "you have to elect Democrats
to power."
So, come 1993, the issue was "ripe."
An Injunction against logging was in place (gained in 1991 during
Bush I; issued by courageous Reagan-appointee Judge
William Dwyer, the Northern spotted owl was on the cover
of TIME and Democrats controlled the White House, the Senate
and the House of Representatives.
What happened? Under pressure from the
new Clinton administration, the spotted owl plaintiffs first
gave up 84 million board feet (approx..2000 acres of clearcuts)
of "goodwill" sales from the Injunction and the Injunction
itself soon thereafter; they then self-selected themselves to
represent the Ancient Forest movement at Clinton's staged Portland
Forest Summit (April 1993); Ancient Forest logging resumed shortly
thereafter under the terms of Clinton's 1994 Northwest Forest
Plan (Option 9); spotted owls and other dependent species have
been driven to the brink of extinction; hundreds of activists
have been arrested and some have even died protesting the resulting
Option 9 Ancient Forest timber sales of the past decade.
The End Game
March 23, 2004, the Bush II administration
made two major changes to Option 9. The government dropped a
rule requiring forest managers to look for rare plants and animals
before logging, and it changed the rules protecting salmon streams.
The "Survey and Manage" rule
which was added late in the drafting of the Forest Plan required
U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management employees to
survey for about 300 rare plants and animals that were not listed
under the Endangered Species Act before an old growth timber
sale could proceed. This survey and manage change affects 5.5
million acres of Ancient Forests from Washington to Northern
California and is not subject to administrative appeal by citizens.
It had three now lost requirements: Protect sites where known
rare species lived; Perform regional-level surveys to give an
overview of species protection; Conduct surveys of rare species
before any ground-disturbing activities, such as clearcut logging.
Another key part of Option 9 was also
removed. The agencies will no longer be required to monitor potential
impacts on watersheds under the Aquatic Conservation Strategy
before logging can commence. Instead of monitoring each timber
sale, the agencies will now merely look at impacts over areas
from 10,000 to 100,000 acres in size.
Big Green Responds
A few years into Option 9, spokesman
for the owl plaintiffs, Oregon Natural Resources Council's (ONRC)
Andy Kerr wrote: "If the federal forest agencies don't follow
the plan, they'll end up in court. Or, if they ignore new scientific
information demonstrating the need to revise the present plan,
they'll end up in court. The owl's populations are still declining
(and the rate of decline is increasing) and should be reclassified
from 'threatened' to 'endangered.'"
{Kerr, Andy and Rick Brown. 1997. "The
Bottom Line on Option 9." Wild Earth. Vol. 7, No. 2. Summer.
31-34.}
One assumes we can eagerly look forward
to the ONRC lawsuit and Upgrade Petition for the Spotted Owl.
Here's the response from Carl Pope, Executive
Director of the Sierra Club, another of the plaintiff groups.
Released the same day as the Bush Survey and Manage rollback
was announced, Pope's statement partly reads: "Part of the
Bush administration's so-called 'Healthy Forests Initiative,'
was to re-open Northwest ancient forests to unsustainable logging."
This statement is a triple-play of disinformation:
1) It was Democrat Senators Ron Wyden
(D-OR) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) whose "Healthy"
Forests Initiative was passed last year by the Senate 80--14,
with none of the major Democratic Senator presidential candidates
bothering to vote. Only one Democrat, Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) voted
Nay on the crucial 97--1 vote authorizing the Wyden/Feinstein
version; 2) There is no such thing as "sustainable"
Ancient Forest logging; and, 3) It was the Sierra Club-blessed
Clinton 1994 Northwest Forest Plan which "re-open(ed)"
these precious ecosystems to logging after it had been halted
by Dwyer's Injunction.
No mention is made of how Pope and the
other representatives of big green repeatedly stated that "stopping
the Healthy Forests Initiative is the number one priority of
the movement in 2003" -- a mission they obviously failed
completely and one they're still shamelessly using for fundraising
and Bush-bashing! Similarly, Pope et al. have railed against
the Bush regime's effort to toss out Clinton's last minute Roadless
Area Rule which could possibly provide some protection to large
blocks of unprotected, unroaded areas in the forests. Yet again,
there is no mention made of how it was Pope and the Sierra Club
who first "reopened" logging in Roadless Areas with
their July 2002 Deal on the Black
Hills with yet another of their Democrat friends, Sen. Tom
Daschle (D-SD).
The Grassroots Response
Thankfully, one can count on the real
grassroots of the forest protection movement to take them all
on--Democrats AND Republicans.
A multi-front campaign has been launched
in the NW forests. First, Big Timber's morphing into Big Fire
is being challenged. Undersecretary of Agriculture (in charge
of the Forest Service) Mark Rey believes that the public won't
get too excited about "burnt sticks." He, pro-timber
politicos like Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR), Wyden and Feinstein
count on the Fire bogeyman to ease the road to increased logging.
Since these forests evolved with fire and decades of misguided
fire suppression has led to high fuel build up in the forests,
it's a certainty that more and more fires will occur. So the
entire industry has shifted to "Fire Prevention and Restoration"
which means a quadruple dip in the Treasury trough:
1) Paid (by the taxpayers) to do "fuels
reduction" logging projects; 2) Paid to fight the inevitable
fires; 3) Paid to "salvage log" the post-fire forest;
and. 4) Paid to do "restoration."
The main battleground on Post-Fire Logging
is in the Siskiyou Wild Rivers area of Southern Oregon. The Forest
Service recently put of a Draft EIS calling for the largest timber
sale in history -- some 510 million board feet would be cut in
the Biscuit Fire area under the DEIS.
Politicians like DeFazio and Wyden are
calling for "at least 120 million board feet." The
Final EIS will undoubtedly hit that target, at minimum. The big
greens are negotiating. The grassroots have let it be known that
they will fight for every burnt stick and the green, healthy
trees that are the real goal of the lumbermen.
So, if Post-Fire logging is the Bush/Rey-chosen
ideological battleground, the grassroots say "Bring it on"
and will hound Rey wherever he goes and will be on the ground
at the points of attack, defending the forests however they can.
On the Offense
It won't be all defense, however. Another
effort underway is the Greenpeace-led international call for
protection of the endangered North American Temperate Rain Forest
across its range -- from our largest Ancient Forest, the Tongass
National Forest of Alaska to the redwoods of Northern California.
Plans are to establish a system of interconnected
National Parks, Park Additions, Wilderness Areas and Preserves.
Prominent is the reintroduction of the Oregon Volcanic Cascades
National Park (OVCNP) proposal and the proposed Siskiyou Wild
Rivers National Park. The addition of these two new parks and
new Wilderness Areas in Alaska will create a habitat chain from
the Tongass, connecting the established North Cascades, Olympic,
Mt. Rainier, Crater Lake and Redwood National Parks in the Lower
48, British Columbia Provincial Parks and numerous other areas
with differing protection designations. The OVCNP was first proposed
by Sierra Clubbers David Simons, Brock Evans and David Brower
back in 1958. Part of that visionary proposal covering the area
around Mt. Hood is still an active Sierra Club National Park
proposal.
Perhaps in response to the Park Proposals,
on March 25, 2002, Sen. Wyden took a page from the old Sens.
Mark O. Hatfield and Bob Packwood (R-OR) election-year playbook.
Wyden floated a proposal for new additions to the Mt. Hood Wilderness
Area. If he indeed goes forward and secures the additions (a
big if), it would be the first such protective designation for
the area since 1984.
A Collision of Campaigns
So, ONRC and others prepare their lawsuits
in response to the Survey and Manage rollback and a roster of
local, regional and national groups in fight against the Biscuit
Post-Fire logging scheme in Southern Oregon.
Meanwhile others see opportunity in crisis
and are actively taking the offense with new protection proposals.
The DC grassroots representative group Save America's Forests
has reintroduced their Act to Save America's Forests. In the
past, Democratic nominee John Kerry has been a cosponsor of the
Act. Endorsing it again this year could be THE effort that pushes
Kerry into the White House, just as declining to re-sponsor may
once again cost the Democrats the green vote.
For decades, Public Lands policy has
been written behind-the-scenes in Oregon. For many of those years,
it was because of the clout of now-retired Sen. Hatfield who
famously backed Big Timber. A huge (final?) chapter is being
written right now.
The Democrats, increasingly aware that
even the slavish devotion of the big greens and control of the
League of Conservation Voters doesn't deliver the green vote,
have a choice. Get on board the new wave of conservation, back
the park proposals as former Sen. Wayne Morse (D-OR) did the
originals, back the Act to Save America's Forests, end the subsidized
pre and post-fire logging scams or join the forests in going
down in flames.
MICHAEL DONNELLY
is a grassroots forest activist who filed his first Appeal of
a Forest Service decision in 1977. He was a plaintiff is the
first successful Old Growth lawsuit in 1986. He was active in
the successful 20-year campaign to protect the magnificent forests
of Oregon's Opal Creek. He can be reached at pahtoo@aol.com
Weekend
Edition Features for March 20 / 21, 2004
Jennifer Loewenstein
A
Journey to Rafah
Jeffrey St. Clair
Empire of the Locusts
Gary Leupp
The Yassin Assassination: Prelude to an Attack on Syria
William A. Cook
The Yassin Assassination: a Monstrous Insanity Blessed by the
US
Faheem Hussain
Some Thoughts on Waziristan: Once and Always a Colonial Army
Elaine Cassel
Is Playing Paintball Terrorism?
Larry Birns / Jessica
Leight
Disturbing Signals: Kerry and Latin America
John Ross
Bush Tells the World: "Drop Dead"
John Eskow
A Memo to Karl Rove from the Hollywood Caucus
Alan Maass
Who Are the Real Terrorists?
Joe Bageant
Howling in the Belly of the Confederacy
Dave Zirin
Reasonable Doubt: Why Barry Bonds is Not on Steroids
Craig Waggoner
Who Would Mel's Jesus Nuke?
The Kerry Quandry
Joel Wendland
Marxists
for Kerry
Josh Frank
Scary,
Scary John Kerry
Matt Vidal
Spoilers, Electability and the Poverty of American Democracy
Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Hamod, Guthrie, Davies and Albert
Website of the Weekend
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