|*|Four Forest Activists Indicted in Firebombing of Log Trucks |*|Yes|*|more info...|*|Yes|*|orgonian.jpg|*|Top|*|Federal authorities arrested two Portland State University students Tuesday and sought two other logging protesters...|*|one of them the well-known forest activist Tre Arrow -- in connection with the firebombing of log trucks during last year's protests of the Eagle Creek timber sale.

A four-count indictment was filed Tuesday in Portland's U.S. District Court against Jacob D.B. Sherman, 20; Angela M. Cesario, 23; Jeremy D. Rosenbloom, 25; and Michael J. Scarpitti, 28, better known as Tre Arrow. They were accused of burning three trucks belonging to Ray A. Schoppert Logging Inc. near Estacada.

"I think this is a major first step in investigating eco-terrorism," said Mike Mosman, the U.S. attorney for Oregon.

SOURCE: Orgonian
08/14/02
BRYAN DENSON


Mosman said investigators found similarities between the Schoppert arson and the Easter 2001 firebombing of three cement trucks at Portland's Ross Island Sand & Gravel. The Earth Liberation Front, an underground group linked to 36 major eco-terrorist crimes in the United States since 1996 -- including a $12 million arson at the Vail, Colo., ski resort -- claimed responsibility for the Ross Island blaze.

But Mosman did not link those named in Tuesday's indictment with the Earth Liberation Front, which targets enterprises it accuses of harming the natural world. He and other officials called on the public's help in solving the Ross Island arson and at least 11 other unsolved eco-terrorist crimes in Oregon.

"We certainly hope that, in part due to today's event, that people will step forward," Mosman said.

The FBI took Portland State students Sherman and Rosenbloom into custody at their Portland homes early Tuesday and asked for the public's help in locating Cesario and Scarpitti.

"They should surrender themselves," said Charles Mathews, special agent in charge of the FBI for Oregon.

The four activists were opponents of the Eagle Creek timber sale, a logging project in the Mount Hood National Forest, authorities said. Activists spent years protesting the sale, sometimes sitting in elaborate tree platforms and taking part in other civil disobedience.

But in the first hours of June 1, 2001, a firebomb ignited under a truck parked at Schoppert Logging along Oregon 224, destroying that vehicle and damaging two others. Five other crude incendiaries -- made of gallon milk jugs and gasoline -- failed to ignite. No one was injured, but damages reached $50,000.

An official with the Cascadia Forest Alliance, which organized protests at Eagle Creek, declared at the time that the group was not involved. Since then, some in the organization have said the arson seemed to be the work of someone trying to discredit their peaceful activism.

"CFA does not engage in these tactics," volunteer Sarah Wald said Tuesday. "We have a long history of peaceful, nonviolent civil disobedience to protect our public lands."

Wald and fellow activist Jessica White said that Sherman, Cesario and Rosenbloom were student forest activists. Wald and White were stunned to learn their friend Tre Arrow had been indicted.

Arrow became a public curiosity in July 2000 when he spent 11 days perched on a ledge outside the U.S. Forest Service headquarters in downtown Portland to call attention to the Eagle Creek cause.

The following November, Arrow captured 15,763 votes in an unsuccessful run against U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore. Last October, he drew headlines again when he suffered multiple fractures after falling out of a towering hemlock during logging protests near Nehalem.

Arrow's acquaintances said they have not seen him in recent months and did not know his whereabouts. They remained skeptical about the indictment.

"We'd like to see a public airing of any evidence," White said.

The Portland FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force gathered evidence in the case for more than a year. But Mosman declined Tuesday to comment on the government's evidence against the four.

The federal government canceled the Eagle Creek timber sale last April.
|*| |*|Eco-Terror Expert Calls For Inquiry of Green Anarchists|*|Yes|*|more info...|*|Yes|*|newindicator.gif|*|Left|*|Ron Arnold calls for FBI investigation of Green Anarchy. According to Arnold, the threat of domestic terrorists cannot be underestimated.|*|By Marc Morano
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer

"I think it is as much a threat as foreign terrorism. These people are going to damage property and kill people," Arnold said.

SOURCE; Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise
http://www.cdfe.org/ecoterror.htm

(CNSNews.com) - An expert on eco-terrorism is calling on the FBI to investigate an organization that is touting a nationwide tour to "destroy civilization" and raise money for convicted eco-terrorists, but a spokesman for the FBI's Domestic Terrorism Program said the agency is taking a hands-off approach for the time being.

The Green Anarchy Tour 2002, currently traveling from Ashland, Ore., to Washington, D.C., advertises its participants as "anarchists," refers to police as "the fascist force we are up against" and calls convicted eco-terrorists "prisoners of war."

Such rhetoric has Ron Arnold concerned. Arnold, vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, said the tour "presents probable cause for investigation."

"You do have people here recommending violence, murder, property damage, everything you can think of," he said.

Arnold is author of several books on the environmental movement including "Ecoterror: The Violent Agenda to Save Nature: The World of the Unabomber."

He believes that with the increasing number of domestic environmental and animal rights terrorist acts in the United States, the FBI should be more proactive in investigating possible threats like the Green Anarchy Tour.

"I would say that law enforcement has an obligation, probable cause to at least look into it," Arnold said. "If they say they are going to destroy civilization, I think we should take them at their word," he added.

FBI Lukewarm to Investigation

The FBI is less concerned than Arnold, at least publicly, saying it won't do anything until and unless the law is broken.

"The FBI is only concerned when there is a violation of the law," said Steven Berry, spokesman for the FBI's Domestic Terrorism Program. "We fully support the rights of any and all groups, no matter what their message or their purpose, to lawfully assemble, protest and march."

When asked about the risks of terrorism from domestic sources, Berry said, "The FBI is only concerned when there is a violation of federal law," adding that eco-terrorism is "the number one investigative priority of the domestic terrorism section."

But Arnold thinks the matter deserves greater attention, noting that the Green Anarchy Tour's support of convicted members of the radical environmental group Earth Liberation Front makes an investigation more necessary.

The group's Internet website says that proceeds from the tour will help convicted arsonists such as Jeffrey "Free" Luers and Craig "Critter" Marshall.

"[Earth Liberation Front] is an FBI declared terrorist organization that they want to be the beneficiary of their proceeds," Arnold said.

Eco-Terrorism on The Rise

According to Arnold, the threat of domestic terrorists cannot be underestimated. "I think it is as much a threat as foreign terrorism. These people are going to damage property and kill people," Arnold said.

Domestic terrorism and violence by environmental and animal 'rights' activists is on the rise, according to Arnold. "We've had 'animal rights' activists beat people with baseball bats causing serious injury. We see that kind of violence growing," Arnold said.

According to the FBI, there have been more than 600 cases of eco-terrorism causing $43 million dollars in property damage over the past decade, prompting Arnold to call the federal response to eco-terrorism "a day late and a dollar short."

Arnold cited the failure of federal law enforcement for the escalating violence. "We probably have got [sic] literally thousands of [eco-terrorists] who ought to be in jail," he said, placing the blame squarely on the FBI for "failing to investigate exactly the kind of things you see on the (Green Anarchy) web site."
|*| |*|State of the Union Address|*|Yes|*|more info...|*|Yes|*|gwb2.jpg|*|Top|*|"Liberty... is God's gift to humanity".
George W. Bush
(tues jan 28)|*|"Free People Will Set The Course Of History"
President George W. Bush
State of the Union Address
Tuesday, January 28, 2003

Mr. Speaker, Vice President Cheney, Members of Congress, distinguished guests, fellow citizens:

Every year, by law and by custom, we meet here to consider the state of the union. This year, we gather in this chamber deeply aware of decisive days that lie ahead.

You and I serve our country in a time of great consequence. During this session of Congress, we have the duty to reform domestic programs vital to our country...and we have the opportunity to save millions of lives abroad from a terrible disease. We will work for a prosperity that is broadly shared...and we will answer every danger and every enemy that threatens the American people.

In all these days of promise and days of reckoning, we can be confident. In a whirlwind of change, and hope, and peril, our faith is sure, our resolve is firm, and our union is strong.

This country has many challenges. We will not deny, we will not ignore, we will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, other presidents, and other generations. We will confront them with focus, and clarity, and courage.

During the last two years, we have seen what can be accomplished when we work together. To lift the standards of our public schools, we achieved historic education reform - which must now be carried out in every school, and every classroom, so that every child in America can read, and learn, and succeed in life. To protect our country, we reorganized our government and created the Department of Homeland Security - which is mobilizing against the threats of a new era. To bring our economy out of recession, we delivered the largest tax relief in a generation. To insist on integrity in American business, we passed tough reforms, and we are holding corporate criminals to account.

Some might call this a good record. I call it a good start. Tonight I ask the House and Senate to join me in the next bold steps to serve our fellow citizens.

Our first goal is clear: We must have an economy that grows fast enough to employ every man and woman who seeks a job.

After recession, terrorist attacks, corporate scandals, and stock market declines, our economy is recovering - yet it is not growing fast enough, or strongly enough. With unemployment rising, our Nation needs more small businesses to open, more companies to invest and expand, more employers to put up the sign that says, "Help Wanted."

Jobs are created when the economy grows; the economy grows when Americans have more money to spend and invest; and the best, fairest way to make sure Americans have that money is not to tax it away in the first place.

I am proposing that all the income tax reductions set for 2004 and 2006 be made permanent and effective this year. And under my plan, as soon as I have signed the bill, this extra money will start showing up in workers' paychecks. Instead of gradually reducing the marriage penalty, we should do it now. Instead of slowly raising the child credit to a thousand dollars, we should send the checks to American families now.

This tax relief is for everyone who pays income taxes - and it will help our economy immediately. Ninety-two million Americans will keep - this year - an average of almost 1,100 dollars more of their own money. A family of four with an income of 40,000 dollars
would see their federal income taxes fall from 1,178 dollars to 45 dollars per year. And our plan will improve the bottom line for more than 23 million small businesses.

You, the Congress, have already passed all these reductions, and promised them for future years. If this tax relief is good for Americans three, or five, or seven years from now, it is even better for Americans today.

We also strengthen the economy by treating investors equally in our tax laws. It is fair to tax a company's profits. It is not fair to again tax the shareholder on the same profits. To boost investor confidence, and to help the nearly 10 million seniors who receive dividend income, I ask you to end the unfair double taxation of dividends.

Lower taxes and greater investment will help this economy expand. More jobs mean more taxpayers - and higher revenues to our government. The best way to address the deficit and move toward a balanced budget is to encourage economic growth - and to show some spending discipline in Washington, D.C. We must work together to fund only our most important priorities. I will send you a budget that increases discretionary spending by four percent next year - about as much as the average family's income is expected to grow. And that is a good benchmark for us: Federal spending should not rise any faster than the paychecks of American families.

A growing economy, and a focus on essential priorities, will also be crucial to the future of Social Security. As we continue to work together to keep Social Security sound and reliable, we must offer younger workers a chance to invest in retirement accounts that they will control and they will own.

Our second goal is high quality, affordable health care for all Americans.

The American system of medicine is a model of skill and innovation - with a pace of discovery that is adding good years to our lives. Yet for many people, medical care costs too much - and many have no coverage at all. These problems will not be solved with a nationalized health care system that dictates coverage and rations care. Instead, we must work toward a system in which all Americans have a good insurance policy...choose their own doctors..and seniors and low-income Americans receive the help they need. Instead of bureaucrats, and trial lawyers, and HMOs, we must put doctors, and nurses, and patients back in charge of American medicine.

Health care reform must begin with Medicare, because Medicare is the binding commitment of a caring society. We must renew that commitment by giving seniors access to the preventive medicine and new drugs that are transforming health care in America.

Seniors happy with the current Medicare system should be able to keep their coverage just the way it is. And just like you, the members of Congress, members of your staffs, and other federal employees, all seniors should have the choice of a health care plan that provides prescription drugs. My budget will commit an additional 400 billion dollars over the next decade to reform and strengthen Medicare. Leaders of both political parties have talked for years about strengthening Medicare - I urge the members of this new Congress to act this year.

To improve our health care system, we must address one of the prime causes of higher costs - the constant threat that physicians and hospitals will be unfairly sued. Because of excessive litigation, everybody pays more for health care - and many parts of America are
losing fine doctors. No one has ever been healed by a frivolous lawsuit - and I urge the Congress to pass medical liability reform.

Our third goal is to promote energy independence for our country, while dramatically improving the environment.

I have sent you a comprehensive energy plan to promote energy efficiency and conservation, to develop cleaner technology, and to produce more energy at home. I have sent you Clear Skies legislation that mandates a 70 percent cut in air pollution from power plants over the next 15 years. I have sent you a Healthy Forests Initiative, to help prevent the catastrophic fires that devastate communities, kill wildlife, and burn away millions of acres of treasured forest.

I urge you to pass these measures, for the good of both our environment and our economy. Even more, I ask you to take a crucial step, and protect our environment in ways that generations before us could not have imagined. In this century, the greatest environmental progress will come about, not through endless lawsuits or command and control regulations, but through technology and innovation. Tonight I am proposing 1.2 billion dollars in research funding so that America can lead the world in developing clean,
hydrogen-powered automobiles.

A simple chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen generates energy, which can be used to power a car - producing only water, not exhaust fumes. With a new national commitment, our scientists and engineers will overcome obstacles to taking these cars from laboratory to showroom - so that the first car driven by a child born today could be powered by hydrogen, and pollution-free. Join me in this important innovation - to make our air significantly cleaner, and our country much less dependent on foreign sources of energy.

Our fourth goal is to apply the compassion of America to the deepest problems of America. For so many in our country - the homeless, the fatherless, the addicted - the need is great. Yet there is power - wonder-working power - in the goodness, and idealism, and faith of the American people.

Americans are doing the work of compassion every day - visiting prisoners, providing shelter to battered women, bringing companionship to lonely seniors. These good works deserve our praise...they deserve our personal support...and, when appropriate, they deserve the assistance of our government. I urge you to pass both my faith-based initiative and the Citizen Service Act - to encourage acts of compassion that can transform America, one heart and one soul at a time.

Last year, I called on my fellow citizens to participate in USA Freedom Corps, which is enlisting tens of thousands of new volunteers across America. Tonight I ask Congress and the American people to focus the spirit of service and the resources of government on the
needs of some of our most vulnerable citizens - boys and girls trying to grow up without guidance and attention...and children who have to go through a prison gate to be hugged by their mom or dad. I propose a 450 million dollar initiative to bring mentors to more than a million disadvantaged junior high students and children of prisoners. Government will support the training and recruiting of mentors, yet it is the men and women of America who will fill the need. One mentor, one person, can change a life forever - and I urge you to be that one person.

Another cause of hopelessness is addiction to drugs. Addiction crowds out friendship, ambition, moral conviction, and reduces all the richness of life to a single destructive desire. As a government, we are fighting illegal drugs by cutting off supplies, and reducing demand through anti-drug education programs. Yet for those already addicted, the fight against drugs is a fight for their own lives.

Too many Americans in search of treatment cannot get it. So tonight I propose a new 600 million dollar program to help an additional 300,000 Americans receive treatment over the next three years.

Our Nation is blessed with recovery programs that do amazing work. One of them is found at the Healing Place Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. A man in the program said, "God does miracles in people’s lives, and you never think it could be you." Tonight, let us bring to all Americans who struggle with drug addiction this message of hope: The miracle of recovery is possible, and it could be you.

By caring for children who need mentors, and for addicted men and women who need treatment, we are building a more welcoming society - a culture that values every life. And in this work we must not overlook the weakest among us. I ask you to protect infants at the very hour of birth, and end the practice of partial-birth abortion. And because no human life should be started or ended as the object of an experiment, I ask you to set a high standard for humanity and pass a law against all human cloning.

The qualities of courage and compassion that we strive for in America also determine our conduct abroad. The American flag stands for more than our power and our interests. Our Founders dedicated this country to the cause of human dignity - the rights of every person and the possibilities of every life. This conviction leads us into the world to help the afflicted, and defend the peace, and confound the designs of evil men. In Afghanistan, we helped to liberate an oppressed people...and we will continue helping them secure their country, rebuild their society, and educate all their children - boys and girls. In the Middle East, we will continue to seek peace between a secure Israel and a democratic Palestine. Across the earth, America is feeding the hungry; more than 60 percent of international food aid comes as a gift from the people of the United States.

As our Nation moves troops and builds alliances to make our world safer, we must also remember our calling, as a blessed country, to make this world better. Today, on the continent of Africa, nearly 30 million people have the AIDS virus - including three million children under the age of 15. There are whole countries in Africa where more than one-third of the adult population carries the infection. More than four million require immediate drug treatment. Yet across that continent, only 50,000 AIDS victims - only 50,000 - are receiving the medicine they need.

Because the AIDS diagnosis is considered a death sentence, many do not seek treatment. Almost all who do are turned away. A doctor in rural South Africa describes his frustration. He says, "We have no medicines..many hospitals tell [people], ‘You’ve got AIDS. We can’t help you. Go home and die.’"

In an age of miraculous medicines, no person should have to hear those words. AIDS can be prevented. Anti-retroviral drugs can extend life for many years. And the cost of those drugs has dropped from 12,000 dollars a year to under 300 dollars a year - which places a tremendous possibility within our grasp.

Ladies and gentlemen, seldom has history offered a greater opportunity to do so much for so many. We have confronted, and will continue to confront, HIV/AIDS in our own country. And to meet a severe and urgent crisis abroad, tonight I propose the Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief - a work of mercy beyond all current international efforts to help the people of Africa. This comprehensive plan will prevent seven million new AIDS infections...treat at least two million people with life-extending drugs...and provide humane care for millions of people suffering from AIDS, and for children orphaned by AIDS. I ask the Congress to commit 15 billion dollars over the next five years, including nearly ten billion dollars in new money, to turn the tide against AIDS in the most afflicted nations of Africa and the Caribbean.

This Nation can lead the world in sparing innocent people from a plague of nature. And this Nation is leading the world in confronting and defeating the man-made evil of international terrorism.

There are days when the American people do not hear news about the war on terror. There is never a day when I do not learn of another threat, or receive reports of operations in progress, or give an order in this global war against a scattered network of killers. The war goes on, and we are winning.

To date we have arrested, or otherwise dealt with, many key commanders of al-Qaida. They include a man who directed logistics and funding for the September 11th attacks...the chief of al-Qaida operations in the Persian Gulf who planned the bombings
of our embassies in East Africa and the USS Cole...an al-Qaida operations chief from Southeast Asia...a former director of al-Qaida’s training camps in Afghanistan...a key al-Qaida operative in Europe..and a major al-Qaida leader in Yemen. All told, more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries. And many others have met a different fate. They are no longer a problem for the United States and our friends
and allies.

We are working closely with other nations to prevent further attacks. America and coalition countries have uncovered and stopped terrorist conspiracies targeting the American embassy in Yemen...the American embassy in Singapore...a Saudi military
base...and ships in the straits of Hormuz, and the straits of Gibraltar. We have broken al-Qaida cells in Hamburg, and Milan, and Madrid, and London, and Paris - as well as Buffalo, New York.

We have the terrorists on the run, and we are keeping them on the run. One by one, the terrorists are learning the meaning of American justice.

As we fight this war, we will remember where it began - here, in our own country. This government is taking unprecedented measures to protect our people and defend our homeland. We have intensified security at the borders and ports of entry...posted more than 50,000 newly trained federal screeners in airports...begun inoculating troops and first responders against smallpox...and are deploying the Nation’s first early warning network of sensors to detect biological attack. And this year, for the first time, we are beginning to field a defense to protect this Nation against ballistic missiles.

I thank the Congress for supporting these measures. I ask you tonight to add to our future security with a major research and production effort to guard our people against bio-terrorism, called Project Bioshield. The budget I send you will propose almost six billion dollars to quickly make available effective vaccines and treatments against agents like anthrax, botulinum toxin, Ebola, and plague. We must assume that our enemies would use these diseases as weapons, and we must act before the dangers are upon us.

Since September 11th, our intelligence and law enforcement agencies have worked more closely than ever to track and disrupt the terrorists. The FBI is improving its ability to analyze intelligence, and transforming itself to meet new threats. And tonight, I am instructing the leaders of the FBI, Central Intelligence, Homeland Security, and the Department of Defense to develop a Terrorist Threat Integration Center, to merge and analyze all threat information in a single location. Our government must have the very best information possible, and we will use it to make sure the right people are in the right places to protect our citizens.

Our war against terror is a contest of will, in which perseverance is power. In the ruins of two towers, at the western wall of the Pentagon, on a field in Pennsylvania, this Nation made a pledge, and we renew that pledge tonight: Whatever the duration of this struggle, and whatever the difficulties, we will not permit the triumph of violence in the affairs of men...free people will set the course of history.


Today, the gravest danger in the war on terror...the gravest danger facing America and the world...is outlaw regimes that seek and possess nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. These regimes could use such weapons for blackmail, terror, and mass murder. They could also give or sell those weapons to their terrorist allies, who would use them without the least hesitation.

This threat is new; America’s duty is familiar. Throughout the 20th century, small groups of men seized control of great nations...built armies and arsenals..and set out to dominate the weak and intimidate the world. In each case, their ambitions of cruelty and murder had no limit. In each case, the ambitions of Hitlerism, militarism, and communism were defeated by the will of free peoples, by the strength of great alliances, and by the might of the United States of America. Now, in this century, the ideology of power and domination has appeared again, and seeks to gain the ultimate weapons of terror. Once again, this Nation and our friends are all that stand between a world at peace, and a world of chaos and constant alarm. Once again, we are called to defend the safety of our people, and the hopes of all mankind. And we accept this responsibility.

America is making a broad and determined effort to confront these dangers. We have called on the United Nations to fulfill its charter, and stand by its demand that Iraq disarm. We are strongly supporting the International Atomic Energy Agency in its mission to track and control nuclear materials around the world. We are working with other governments to secure nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union, and to strengthen global treaties banning the production and shipment of missile technologies and weapons of mass destruction.

In all of these efforts, however, America’s purpose is more than to follow a process - it is to achieve a result: the end of terrible threats to the civilized world. All free nations have
a stake in preventing sudden and catastrophic attack. We are asking them to join us, and many are doing so. Yet the course of this Nation does not depend on the decisions of others. Whatever action is required, whenever action is necessary, I will defend the freedom and security of the American people.

Different threats require different strategies. In Iran, we continue to see a government that represses its people, pursues weapons of mass destruction, and supports terror. We
also see Iranian citizens risking intimidation and death as they speak out for liberty, human rights, and democracy. Iranians, like all people, have a right to choose their own
government, and determine their own destiny - and the United States supports their aspirations to live in freedom.

On the Korean peninsula, an oppressive regime rules a people living in fear and starvation. Throughout the 1990s, the United States relied on a negotiated framework to keep North Korea from gaining nuclear weapons. We now know that the regime was deceiving the world, and developing those weapons all along. And today the North Korean regime is using its nuclear program to incite fear and seek concessions. America and the world will not be blackmailed. America is working with the countries of the region - South Korea, Japan, China, and Russia - to find a peaceful solution, and to show the North Korean government that nuclear weapons will bring only isolation, economic stagnation, and continued hardship. The North Korean regime will find respect in the world, and revival for its people, only when it turns away from its nuclear ambitions.

Our Nation and the world must learn the lessons of the Korean peninsula, and not allow an even greater threat to rise up in Iraq. A brutal dictator, with a history of reckless aggression..with ties to terrorism... with great potential wealth...will not be permitted to dominate a vital region and threaten the United States.

Twelve years ago, Saddam Hussein faced the prospect of being the last casualty in a war he had started and lost. To spare himself, he agreed to disarm of all weapons of mass destruction. For the next 12 years, he systematically violated that agreement. He pursued chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons even while inspectors were in his country. Nothing to date has restrained him from his pursuit of these weapons - not economic sanctions, not isolation from the civilized world, not even cruise missile strikes on his military facilities. Almost three months ago, the United Nations Security Council gave Saddam Hussein his final chance to disarm. He has shown instead his utter contempt for the United Nations, and for the opinion of the world.

The 108 UN weapons inspectors were not sent to conduct a scavenger hunt for hidden materials across a country the size of California. The job of the inspectors is to verify that
Iraq’s regime is disarming. It is up to Iraq to show exactly where it is hiding its banned weapons...lay those weapons out for the world to see...and destroy them as directed. Nothing like this has happened.

The United Nations concluded in 1999 that Saddam Hussein had biological weapons materials sufficient to produce over 25,000 liters of anthrax - enough doses to kill several million people. He has not accounted for that material. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed it.

The United Nations concluded that Saddam Hussein had materials sufficient to produce more than 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin - enough to subject millions of people to death by respiratory failure. He has not accounted for that material. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed it.

Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard, and VX nerve agent. In such quantities, these chemical agents also could kill untold thousands. He has not accounted for these materials. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed them.

U.S. intelligence indicates that Saddam Hussein had upwards of 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents. Inspectors recently turned up 16 of them, despite Iraq’s recent declaration denying their existence. Saddam Hussein has not accounted for
the remaining 29,984 of these prohibited munitions. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed them.


From three Iraqi defectors we know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs. These are designed to produce germ warfare agents, and can be moved from place to place to evade inspectors. Saddam Hussein has not disclosed these facilities. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed them.

The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon, and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb. The
British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to
purchase high strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production. Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide.

The dictator of Iraq is not disarming. To the contrary, he is deceiving. From intelligence sources, we know, for instance, that thousands of Iraqi security personnel are at work hiding documents and materials from the UN inspectors - sanitizing inspection sites, and monitoring the inspectors themselves. Iraqi officials accompany the inspectors in order to
intimidate witnesses. Iraq is blocking U-2 surveillance flights requested by the United Nations. Iraqi intelligence officers are posing as the scientists inspectors are supposed to
interview. Real scientists have been coached by Iraqi officials on what to say. And intelligence sources indicate that Saddam Hussein has ordered that scientists who cooperate with UN inspectors in disarming Iraq will be killed, along with their families.

Year after year, Saddam Hussein has gone to elaborate lengths, spent enormous sums, taken great risks, to build and keep weapons of mass destruction - but why? The only possible explanation, the only possible use he could have for those weapons, is to dominate, intimidate, or attack. With nuclear arms or a full arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, Saddam Hussein could resume his ambitions of conquest in the Middle East, and create deadly havoc in the region. And this Congress and the American people must recognize another threat. Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by people now in custody, reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al-Qaida. Secretly, and without fingerprints, he could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own.

Before September 11, 2001, many in the world believed that Saddam Hussein could be contained. But chemical agents and lethal viruses and shadowy terrorist networks are not easily contained. Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons, and other plans - this time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would take just one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known. We will do everything in our power to make sure that day never comes.

Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike?
If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.

This dictator, who is assembling the world’s most dangerous weapons, has already used them on whole villages - leaving thousands of his own citizens dead, blind, or disfigured. Iraqi refugees tell us how forced confessions are obtained - by torturing children while their parents are made to watch. International human rights groups have catalogued other methods used in the torture chambers of Iraq: electric shock, burning with hot irons, dripping acid on the skin, mutilation with electric drills, cutting out tongues, and rape.

If this is not evil, then evil has no meaning. And tonight I have a message for the brave and oppressed people of Iraq: Your enemy is not surrounding your country - your enemy is
ruling your country. And the day he and his regime are removed from power will be the day of your liberation.

The world has waited 12 years for Iraq to disarm. America will not accept a serious and mounting threat to our country, our friends, and our allies. The United States will ask the
UN Security Council to convene on February 5th to consider the facts of Iraq’s ongoing defiance of the world. Secretary of State Powell will present information and intelligence about Iraq’s illegal weapons programs; its attempts to hide those weapons from inspectors; and its links to terrorist groups. We will consult, but let there be no misunderstanding: If Saddam Hussein does not fully disarm, for the safety of our people, and for the peace of the world, we will lead a coalition to disarm him.

Tonight I also have a message for the men and women who will keep the peace, members of the American Armed Forces: Many of you are assembling in and near the Middle East, and some crucial hours may lie ahead. In those hours, the success of our cause will depend on you. Your training has prepared you. Your honor will guide you. You believe in America, and America believes in you.

Sending Americans into battle is the most profound decision a president can make. The technologies of war have changed. The risks and suffering of war have not. For the brave
Americans who bear the risk, no victory is free from sorrow. This Nation fights reluctantly, because we know the cost, and we dread the days of mourning that always come.

We seek peace. We strive for peace. And sometimes peace must be defended. A future lived at the mercy of terrible threats is no peace at all. If war is forced upon us, we will fight in a just cause and by just means - sparing, in every way we can, the innocent. And if war is forced upon us, we will fight with the full force and might of the United States military - and we will prevail. And as we and our coalition partners are doing in Afghanistan, we will bring to the Iraqi people food, and medicines, and supplies...and freedom.

Many challenges, abroad and at home, have arrived in a single season. In two years, America has gone from a sense of invulnerability to an awareness of peril...from bitter division in small matters to calm unity in great causes. And we go forward with confidence, because this call of history has come to the right country.

Americans are a resolute people, who have risen to every test of our time. Adversity has revealed the character of our country, to the world, and to ourselves.

America is a strong Nation, and honorable in the use of our strength. We exercise power without conquest, and sacrifice for the liberty of strangers.

Americans are a free people, who know that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America’s gift to the world, it is God’s gift to humanity.

We Americans have faith in ourselves - but not in ourselves alone. We do not claim to know all the ways of Providence, yet we can trust in them, placing our confidence in the
loving God behind all of life, and all of history.

May He guide us now, and may God continue to bless the United States of America.

Thank you.
|*| |*|Feds Delay Berryessa Visitor Plan |*|Yes|*|more information...|*||*||*|Top|*|The Bureau of Reclamation has continued to slip its schedule for completion of the Visitor Services Plan for Lake Berryessa. Their draft may be available for public comment by the Summer of 2003 -- two years later than they originally promised.
|*|These delays have caused tremendous uncertainty, anxiety, and economic hardship for people who own mobile homes at the lake and for the rest of the extended Lake Berryessa community.

Task Force 7 at Lake Berryessa was formed in the spring of 2001 to communicate with the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) and convey to them our concerns regarding the Visitor Services Plan (VSP) process. The VSP will be implemented along with the new concessionaire contracts in 2008/2009. The plan is expected to have a major impact on many aspects of life at the lake. Task Force 7 members realized that some action needed to be taken to raise the awareness of the whole Lake Berryessa community, especially of a plan which would radically change the lake as we know it.

TF7 decided to join the Half Moon Bay Coastside Foundation and the California Watershed Posse to initiate a Coordinated Resource Management Plan (CRMP). This process is recognized by both the state and federal government as a vehicle to bring together all the interested stakeholders in a particular project, thereby arriving (hopefully) at a common consensus of how to manage their resource. Stakeholders consist of any individual or group with an interest in Lake Berryessa and its environs. This includes visitors, permittees, house guests, land owners, anglers, kayakers, campers, businesses, the concessionaires and the BOR, to name a few.

A CRMP is a pro-active process, allowing stakeholders a convenient method to provide their comments on the various elements of a plan using an electronic forum. You can now comment on the alternate Visitor Services Plan (VSP CRMP) that has been created by the Task Force. When the BOR's plan is released, it will be electronically available for public comment. All these comments will then be compiled to determine how the stakeholders would choose to improve the lake. The unique advantage of this type of electronic forum is that everyone can see the comments as they are made and archived. You do not have to wait for the Bureau to publish a summary months after the fact.

For those of you who have computer access, log-on to the Lake Berryessa Visitor Services Plan Task Force Web site at www.LBVSPT.info. Those of you without computer access can reach the Task Force by mail at LBVSPT, P.O. Box 3456, Napa, CA 94558-0345.
Op/Ed Napa Register By Peter Kilkus (Peter Kilkus lives in San Anselmo.)
|*| |*|Don't let Sierra Club take rights|*|Yes|*|read entire op/ed|*||*||*|Top|*|We support Napa Valley Land Stewards Association and have urged them to withhold final judgment on the stream setback ordinance until further study and evaluations can be completed.|*|Dear editor,

We support Napa Valley Land Stewards Association and have urged them to withhold final judgment on the stream setback ordinance until further study and evaluations can be completed. It's imperative they give a fair hearing to the property owners of Napa County before drawing their final conclusions and vote on the matter.

In our view, the stream setback ordinance places far too many restrictions on the individual rights of property owners. It's encouraging to learn, as we talk with many people, thanks to the concerted efforts of the NVLSA, the public is now being made aware of the extreme views taken by radical environmental groups which threaten to deprive every Napa County property owner and their children who will inherit their land, of their basic fundamental rights to enjoy ALL of their property on which we pay taxes.

We have urged the Board of Supervisors to consider our request and have the courage to stand with the property owners of Napa County who pay the bills, against the extremist elements in the Sierra Club whose obvious intention is to take control away from property owners.
Mr. and Mrs. Albert Watson
Angwin

|*| |*|Maybe Napa Supervisor Dillon will nix setback plan!|*|Yes|*|read entire op/ed...|*||*||*|Top|*|I really hate being a contributor to the "let the cat out of the bag club," but someone has to do it.

|*|Dear editor,

I really hate being a contributor to the "let the cat out of the bag club," but someone has to do it.

I wonder if the Farm Bureau, grape growers, vintners, and to some extent, the supervisors thought that we red-faced, buck-toothed, pick-up truck drivin', cousin marryin' types wouldn't possibly find out about their dirty little exemption secrets. Some of us have known for a long time about the back room deals that go down between politicians, the Land Trust, millionaires, title companies, and yes folks, less than honorable judges. (Trust me on this.)

It sure seems to me that the "elites" are running the show. Volker Eisele had the audacity to stand before the Board of Supervisors and say that anyone who opposes the stream set back ordinance is ignorant. Well Volker, I hate to drop a boulder on your already sinking canoe, but those are mighty big words coming from a man who wants to use small property owners as human sacrifices to save your sorry rich behind knowing full well YOU will be exempted. How noble of you. I'm wondering how the emergency moratorium managed to find itself on the books to begin with, when we all know there is no science to back it up. I'm not a Mensa graduate but some of us can smell doo doo when we step in it.

Fortunately for us, certain supes have retired giving us a pretty, new face on the testosterone team, Diane Dillon. Nothing would please me more than to see Ms. Dillon bring something unheard of to the political arena: ethics, character, integrity, and a fairness to ALL our citizens, not just millionaires and special interest groups. Who knows, maybe it's going to take this courageous woman to roll up her sleeves, step up to the plate and show the boys how it's done.

Suzanne Langlois

Angwin
|*| |*|Rural Lands "Wise Use" Vs. Urban "Smart Growth " |*|Yes|*|Read Ron Arnolds' insightful essay on America's Urban Envirocults Ideology...|*||*||*|Top|*||*|Overcoming Ideology
by Ron Arnold
From A Wolf in the Garden : The Land Rights Movement and the New Environmental Debate
Edited by Philip D. Brick and R. McGreggor Cawley, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., Lanham, Maryland, 1996 ISBN 0847681858
It was 1964, the year of the Wilderness Act. Historian Leo Marx began his classic, The Machine in the Garden, with the assertion that "The pastoral ideal has been used to define the meaning of America ever since the age of discovery, and it has not yet lost its hold upon the native imagination."

1. A little more than thirty years after, we have the present volume, A Wolf in the Garden, echoing Marx less than tolling a sea-change in American notions of exactly what is meant by the pastoral ideal. Marx saw it as a cultivated rural "middle landscape," not urban, not wild, but embodying what Arthur O. Lovejoy calls "semi-primitivism"; it is located in a middle ground somewhere between the opposing forces of civilization and nature.

2. The pastoral ideal is not simply a location, but also a psychic energy condenser: it stores the charge generated between the polarities of civilization and nature. Ortega y Gasset recognized this as long ago as 1930 in The Revolt of the Masses: "The world is a civilized one, its inhabitant is not: he does not see the civilization of the world around him, but he uses it as if it were a natural force. The new man wants his motor-car, and enjoys it, but he believes that it is the spontaneous fruit of an Edenic tree."

3. There was a certain truth to this blind sight: producers in the middle landscape invisibly yielded the raw materials for the motor-car (and everything else). The labor power of dwellers in America's middle landscape has always been reified as an Edenic tree to be plucked by distant capital and unappreciative consumers, and the dwellers felt it keenly. Since 1964, the rise of environmentalist ideology has pushed the pastoral ideal increasingly toward nature, striving to redefine the meaning of America in fully primitivist terms of the wild. Eco-ideologists have thrust their metaphoric raging Wolf into every rank and row of our civilized Garden to rogue out both the domesticated and the domesticators. The Wolf howls Wild Land, Wild Water, Wild Air. Whether Wild People might have a proper place in Wolf World remains a subject of dispute among eco-ideologists.

4. Public policy debate over the environment and the meaning of America has been clamorous these thirty years. Its terms were succinctly put by Edith Stein:
The environmental movement challenges the dominant Western worldview and its three assumptions:
Unlimited economic growth is possible and beneficial.
Most serious problems can be solved by technology.
Environmental and social problems can be mitigated by a market economy with some state intervention.
Since the 1970s we've heard increasingly about the competing paradigm, wherein:
Growth must be limited.
Science and technology must be restrained.
Nature has finite resources and a delicate balance that humans must observe.5
That fairly delineates the public debate. However, in order to critique an ideology, one needs an accurate statement of that ideology. The environmentalist ideology striving to redefine the meaning of America was expounded most realistically by author Victor B. Scheffer in a Northwest Environmental Journal article, "Environmentalism's Articles of Faith." The five tenets Scheffer proposed appear to be the core of shared beliefs actually held most widely by environmentalists:
1) All things are connected. "[N]ever will we understand completely the spin-off effects of the environmental changes that we create, nor will we measure our own, independent influence in their creation." Scheffer adds, "I use the word nature for the world without humans, a concept which--like the square root of minus one--is unreal, but useful."
2) Earthly goods are limited. "As applied to people, carrying capacity is the number of individuals that the earth can support before a limit is reached beyond which the quality of life must worsen and Homo, the human animal, becomes less human. One reason we humans--unlike animals in the wild--are prone to exceed carrying capacity is that our wants exceed our needs."
3) Nature's way is best. "Woven into the fabric of environmentalism is the belief that natural methods and materials should be favored over artificial and synthetic ones, when there's a clear choice. Witness the vast areas of the globe poisoned or degraded by the technological economy of our century."
4) The survival of humankind depends on natural diversity. "Although species by the billions have vanished through natural extinction or transformation, the present rate of extinction is thought to be at least 400 times faster than at the beginning of the Industrial Age. Humankind's destruction of habitats is overwhelmingly to blame." Scheffer adds, "No one has the moral right, and should not have the legal right, to overtax carrying capacity either by reducing the productivity of the land or by bringing into the world more than his or her 'share' of new lives. Who is to decide that share will perhaps be the most difficult social question for future generations."

5) Environmentalism is radical "in the sense of demanding fundamental change. It calls for changes in present political systems, in the reach of the law, in the methods of agriculture and industry, in the structure of capitalism (the profit system), in international dealings, and in education."

6. One can see the Wolf skulking in each of Scheffer's five tenets of eco-ideology.
Actual organizations and individuals comprising the environmental movement stress different clusters of these tenets. Although the environmental movement's structure is complex and amply textured, three distinctive axes of influence dominate environmental politics in America: 1. Establishment Interventionists - acting to hamper property rights and markets sufficiently to centralize control of many transactions for the benefit of environmentalists and their funders in the foundation community, while leaving the market economy itself operational. They tend to emphasize the need for natural diversity and in some cases to own and manage wildlife preserves. Notable organizations in this sector are the Nature Conservancy, National Wildlife Federation, National Audubon Society. 2. Eco-Socialists - acting to dislodge the market system with public ownership of all resources and production, commanded by environmentalists in an ecological welfare state. They tend to emphasize the limits of earthly goods. Greenpeace, Native Forest Council, Maine Audubon Society are representative groups. 3. Deep Ecologists - acting to reduce or eliminate industrial civilization and human population in varying degrees. They tend to emphasize that nature's way is best and environmentalism is radical. Earth First!, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, Native Forest Network are in this category.

7. The Wolf in these varieties of sheep's clothing is rapacious, not simply protecting nature, but also annihilating the livelihoods of dwellers in the middle landscape.
Today the Wolf is firmly entrenched in Washington, D. C., where important environmental groups have established headquarters or major operating bases. Eco-ideologists have written many laws, tested them in the courts and pressured many administrative agencies into compliance with their ideology. They have, in brief, become the Establishment. The apparatus of environmentalism is no longer represented merely by non-profit organizations, but has grown to encompass American government at all levels.
Since the inception of the Environmental Grantmakers Association (EGA) in 1985, the foundation community has usurped substantial control of the environmental movement. The standard philanthropic model, "non-profit organization submits its proposal to foundation for funding," has given way to "a combine of foundations selects and dictates grant-driven programs to non-profit organization." In the instance of the Ancient Forest campaign in the Pacific Northwest, a cluster of six EGA foundations even went so far as to create their own projects because of dissatisfaction with the capabilities of the Washington, D.C. environmental community. The foundations derive their income from managed investment portfolios representing the power elite of corporate America.

8. As the environmental debate developed during the late 1980s, the "dominant Western worldview" gained an organized constituency and advocacy leadership: the wise use movement. Incipient and gestating more than a decade in the bosom of those who had been most wounded by environmental ideology, the new movement congealed at a conference in Reno, Nevada in 1988. It was centered around a hodgepodge of property rights groups, anti-regulation legal foundations, trade groups of large industries, motorized recreation vehicle clubs, federal land users, farmers, ranchers, fishermen, trappers, small forest holders, mineral prospectors and others who live and work in the middle landscape.

9. It came as a shock to environmentalists. The "competing paradigm" unhappily found itself confronted with a competing paradigm. The free ride was over. A substantial cluster of non-profit grass roots organizations now advocated unlimited economic growth, technological progress and a market economy. They opposed the eco-ideologists' proposals using the tactics of social change movements, such as mobilizing grass roots constituencies, staging media events including protest demonstrations and orchestrating letter-writing campaigns to pressure Congress.

It was a pivotal shift in the debate. No longer were eco-ideologists able to face off against business and industry, pitting greedy for-profit corporations against environmentalism's non-profit moral high ground. Now it was urban environmentalists defending their vision of the pastoral ideal against those who actually lived the pastoral ideal in the middle landscape.
This simple structural rearrangement of the debate went virtually unnoticed, but was crucial: Now it was non-profit against non-profit, one side promoting economic growth, technological progress and a market economy, the other opposing.

The emergent wise use movement held up a mirror to the embarrassing questions posed by the "competing paradigm": Just who will limit our economic growth? Who will restrain America's science and technology? Who will decide what "delicate balance humans must observe"? The answer was clear: only environmental ideologists, and not those who create economic growth, science, technology or the market economy.
Asserting such onerous control over others was not attractive and clarified the environmental movement as just another special interest protecting its selfish economic status. Economics is not about money, it is about the allocation of scarce resources. The wise use movement bared the environmental movement's ambition to be resource allocator for the world.

10. Environmentalism's efforts to turn America's pastoral ideal wild stood out in sharp contrast to the wise use movement's actual stewardship of the land, the water and the air. Wise users were not perfect, to be sure, but they were down to earth, real, and necessary. They created economic growth, employed science and technology, and drove the market economy.

Environmentalism, by contrast, appeared in the same light as pastoral literature in critic William Empson's Some Versions of Pastoral: "about the people but not by or for them."

11. Environmentalism, like pastoral literature, was about those pastoral rural dwellers who produced dinner, dress and domicile for everyone, but was generated by the educated elite, not by those who lived the pastoral ideal. Environmentalism's ideology was promulgated for the ruling elite, not for the farmer or rancher or family forest owner or mineral prospector.
When the wise use movement arose to demystify eco-fetishism, the environmental movement lost its grip on the debate. It was as if history had played a huge joke on environmental ideology.
The environmental movement was not amused.
The first environmentalist reaction to the emergence of the wise use movement was passive denial--ignore it and it will go away. That lasted from 1988 to early 1992. The present phase of active denial began with a study of the wise use movement by the W. Alton Jones Foundation dated February, 1992, portraying the rising social force as a mere front for industry, created by industry, paid for by industry, controlled by industry. The fact that foundation analysts sincerely believed this assessment points up how unprepared the environmental movement was to lose its favored "non-profit versus for-profit" moral high ground in the debate. Industry had to be the opponent. The wise use movement had to be a mere front. So that's what they saw.

12.
This humbuggery lasted only half a year. Further research, sponsored by The Wilderness Society and conducted by the Boston-area media strategy firm MacWilliams Cosgrove Snider, disclosed a disturbing truth: "What we're finding is that wise use is really a local movement driven by primarily local concerns and not national issues.... And, in fact, the more we dig into it, having put together over a number of months a fifty state fairly comprehensive survey of what's going on, we have come to the conclusion that this is pretty much generally a grass roots movement, which is a problem, because it means there's no silver bullet."

The words are those of Debra Callahan, then director of W. Alton Jones Foundation's Environmental Grass Roots Program, at the 1992 Environmental Grantmakers Association annual fall retreat. Her session, titled "The Wise Use Movement: Threats and Opportunities," capped off the three day convocation of foundation executives.

13. Callahan's source, the MacWilliams Cosgrove Snider report, titled "The Wise Use Movement: Strategic Analysis and Fifty State Review," affirmed that the wise use movement was the greatest threat the environmental movement had ever faced.

14. "What people fundamentally want, what people fundamentally believe about environmental protection," Callahan said polls revealed, "is that no, it's not just jobs. And no, it's not just environment. Why can't we have both?
"The high ground is capturing that message, okay? The wise use movement is trying to capture that message. What they're saying out there is that 'We are the real environmentalists. We are the stewards of the land. We're the farmers who have tilled that land and we know how to manage this land because we've done it here for generations. We're the miners and we're the ones who depend for our livelihood on this land. These environmentalists, they're elitists. They live in glass towers in New York City. They're not environmentalists. They're part of the problem. And they're aligned with big government. And they're out of touch. So we're the real environmentalists.'

"And if that's the message that the wise use movement is able to capture, we are suddenly really unpopular. The minute the wise use people capture that high ground, we almost have not got a winning message left in our quiver."
Judy Donald of the Washington, D.C.-based Beldon Fund, and Callahan's co-presenter, took the conclusion another step. "There are, as Deb has made clear, ordinary people, grass roots organizations, who obviously feel their needs are being addressed by this movement,; said Donald. "We have to have a strategy that also is addressing those concerns. And that cannot come simply from environmentalists. It can't come just from us. That's the dilemma here. It's not simply that people don't get it, it's that they do get it. They're losing their jobs."
Barbara Dudley, then executive of the Veatch Fund, now head of Greenpeace, stated: "This is a class issue. There is no question about it. It is true that the environmental movement is, has been, traditionally ... an upper class conservation, white movement. We have to face that fact. It's true. They're not wrong that we are rich and they are up against us. We are the enemy as long as we behave in that fashion."
These commanders of environmentalism had acknowledged they were destroying jobs and hurting those who produce our material goods. They admitted themselves the enemy. This moment of self-comprehension was a tremendous opportunity to repent and reach out to wise users, dwellers in the middle landscape who felt betrayed by big government and big business.
Instead, the foundations and their environmental cohort deliberately fell back on their stereotype, portraying wise use as a front for corporations, and risking a frontal assault against wise use with new tactics: "Attack Wise Use.... Find divisions between Wise Use and Wise Use and exploit them.... We need to ... talk about the Wise Use agenda. We need to expose the links between Wise Use and other extremists...."
In other words, a smear campaign would be mounted to tie wise users to unpopular extremists such as the John Birch Society, the Unification Church, Lyndon LaRouche, and to violent factions such as the militias. They knew they couldn't shoot the message, so they settled for shooting the messenger.

To implement the smear campaign, W. Alton Jones Foundation helped found the Clearinghouse on Environmental Advocacy and Research (CLEAR) in 1993 with two grants totaling $145,000. In the same year Jones gave numerous grants in the $20,000 to $30,000 range to small local organizations that agreed to conduct smears against wise use.

15. The Sierra Club engaged private investigator David Helvarg to write an anti-wise use tirade titled The War Against the Greens claiming a conspiracy of violence by wise users against environmentalists. Helvarg's sponsors also funded a road show for him to tie wise use to an alleged far-right terrorist network.

16. The EGA foundations and their grant-driven environmentalist dependents spent millions on related media saturation projects designed to identify the words "wise use" with "violence" in the public mind. Reliance on The Big Lie revealed grant-driven environmentalists as intellectually and morally bankrupt, and the technique backfired, just as EGA members Donald and Dudley foresaw.

Grass roots environmentalists saw that big-money foundations controlled the "mainstream" environmental movement, which they felt had sold out true reform for pallid incrementalism. They deserted by the hundred thousand, preferring to form scattered local and regional groups of their own. The Wilderness Society and Sierra Club were hit particularly hard, losing 125,000 members and 130,000 members, respectively, in 1994.17
Most devastating for the foundations, an icon of the Left, author and syndicated columnist Alexander Cockburn, aired their dirty laundry in the progressive flagship, The Nation. "For years now," wrote Cockburn in August 1995, "David Helvarg has been backed by environmental groups such as the Sierra Club to investigate and smear the Wise Use movement by any means necessary.

This goes back to the early 1990s when the Environmental Grantmakers Association offered a de facto bounty for material discrediting Wise Users as (a) a front for corporations or (b) part of a far-right terrorist network."
Cockburn--an equal opportunity critic who routinely berates the wise use movement for its failings--deplored the smear tactic. He wrote, "And so we have the unlovely sight of Helvarg behaving like an F.B.I. agent. He prowls across literature tables at Wise Use meetings and ties all the names on the pamphlets, letterheads and books into his 'terror network.' The trouble is, he never makes his case. Helvarg never comes up with the terrorist conspiracy he proclaims, because there hasn't been one."

18. Indeed. What there has been, and what environmentalists cannot confront, is a potent movement subversive of environmentalism's articles of faith. That is why they resort to a hoax rather than lively debate on the issues.
Although it would be rash to propose wise use's articles of faith--it is a diverse movement--some of the following principles would probably find wide agreement among those who provide the material goods to all of humanity:
1) Humans, like all organisms, must use natural resources to survive. This fundamental verity is never addressed by environmental ideology. The simple fact that humans must get their food, clothing and shelter from the environment is either ignored or obliquely deplored in quasi-suicidal plaints such as, "I would rather see a blank space where I am--at least I wouldn't be harming anything."

If environmentalism were to acknowledge our necessary use of the earth, the ideology would lose its meaning. To grant legitimacy to the human use of the environment would be to accept the unavoidable environmental damage that is the price of our survival. Once that price is acceptable, the moral framework of environmental ideology becomes irrelevant and the issues become technical and economic.

2) The earth and its life are tough and resilient, not fragile and delicate. Environmentalists tend to be catastrophists, seeing any human use of the earth as damage and massive human use of the earth as a catastrophe. An environmentalist motto is "We all live downstream," the viewpoint of hapless victims.
Wise users, on the other hand, tend to be cornucopians, seeing themselves as stewarding and nurturing the bountiful earth as it stewards and nurtures them. A wise use motto is "We all live upstream," the viewpoint of responsible individuals.

The difference in sense of life is striking. Environmentalism by its very nature promotes feelings of guilt for existing, which naturally degenerate into pessimism, self-loathing and depression.

Wise use by its very nature promotes feelings of competence to live in the world, generating curiosity, learning, and optimism toward improving the earth for the massive use of future generations.

The glory of the "dominant Western worldview" so scorned by environmental ideologists is its metaphor of progress: the starburst, an insatiable and interminable outreach after a perpetually flying goal. Environmentalists call humanity a cancer on the earth; wise users call us a joy.

If there is a single, tight expression of the wise use sense of life, it has to be the final stanza of Shelley's Prometheus Unbound. I think wise users will recognize themselves in these lines:
To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seem omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope itself creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan! is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory!

19. 3) We only learn about the world through trial and error. The universe did not come with a set of instructions, nor did our minds. We cannot see the future. Thus, the only way we humans can learn about our surroundings is through trial and error. Even the most sophisticated science is systematized trial and error. Environmental ideology fetishizes nature to the point that we cannot permit ourselves errors with the environment, ending in no trials and no learning.
There will always be abusers who do not learn. People of good will tend to deal with abuse by education, incentive, clear rules and administering appropriate penalties for incorrigibles.

4) Our limitless imaginations can break through natural limits to make earthly goods and carrying capacity virtually infinite. Just as settled agriculture increased earthly goods and carrying capacity vastly beyond hunting and gathering, so our imaginations can find ways to increase total productivity by superseding one level of technology after another. Taught by the lessons learned from systematic trial and error, we can close the loops in our productive systems and find innumerable ways to do more with less.

5) Man's reworking of the earth is revolutionary, problematic and ultimately benevolent. Of the tenets of wise use, this is the most oracular. Humanity is itself revolutionary and problematic. Danger is our symbiote. Yet even the timid are part of the human adventure, which has barely begun.
Humanity may ultimately prove to be a force of nature forwarding some cosmic teleology of which we are yet unaware. Or not. Humanity may be the universe awakening and becoming conscious of itself. Or not. Our reworking of the earth may be of the utmost evolutionary benevolence and importance. Or not. We don't know. The only way to see the future is to be there.
As the environmental debate advances to maturity, the environmental movement must accept and incorporate many of these wise use precepts if it is to survive as a social and political force.
Establishment Interventionism, as represented by the large foundation and their grant-driven client organizations, must find practical ways to accommodate private property rights and entrepreneurial economic growth.
Eco-socialism's collectivist program must find practical ways to accommodate individual economic liberties in its bureaucratic command-and-control approach.
Deep Ecology's biocentrism must find practical ways to accommodate anthropocentrism and technological progress.
To accomplish this necessary reform, environmentalists of all persuasions will have to face their ideological blind spots and see their own belief systems as wise users see them, i.e., in a critical and practical light.
This is a most difficult change for ideological environmentalists. Failure to reform environmentalism from within will invite regulation from without or doom the movement to irrelevancy as the wise use movement lives the pastoral ideal in the middle landscape, defining the meaning of America.

1. Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America, Oxford University Press, New York, 1964, p. 3.
2. Arthur O. Lovejoy, et al., A Documentary History of Primitivism and Related Ideas, Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1935, p. 369.
3. José Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses, trans. anon., (first published in Spanish, 1930), reissued 1993 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, p. 82.
4. Bill Devall and George Sessions, eds., Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered, Peregrine Smith Books, Salt Lake City, 1985, passim.
5. Edith C. Stein, The Environmental Sourcebook, Lyons & Burford, New York, 1992, p. 6. Victor B. Scheffer, "Environmentalism's Articles of Faith," Northwest Environmental Journal, Vol. 5:1, Spring/Summer 1989, pp. 99-108.
7. Ron Arnold and Alan Gottlieb, Trashing the Economy: How Runaway Environmentalism is Wrecking America, Free Enterprise Press, Bellevue, Washington, 2nd ed., 1994, pp. 57-67 et passim.
8. Taped sessions of the Environmental Grantmakers Association 1992 Annual Fall Retreat, Conference Recording Service, Berkeley, California, 1992. Session 2: "North American Forests: Coping With Multiple Use and Abuse;" Session 19: "Environmental Legislation: Opportunity for Impact and Change;" Session 23: "Media Strategies for Environmental Protection."
9. Alan M. Gottlieb, ed., The Wise Use Agenda, Free Enterprise Press, Bellevue, Washington, 1989. This document was the result of the 1988 Wise Use Strategy Conference and consists of recommendations for natural resource use from 125 of the 250 conference participants.
10. Michael Kelley, "The Road to Paranoia," The New Yorker, Vol. LXXI, No. 17, June 19, 1995, p. 60. 11. William Empson, Some Versions of Pastoral, New Directions, New York, 1974, p. 6 et passim.
12. W. Alton Jones Foundation, The Wise Use Movement, Charlottesville, Virginia, 1992. 13. Taped session of the Environmental Grantmakers Association 1992 Annual Fall Retreat, Conference Recording Service, Berkeley, California, 1992. Session 26: "The Wise Use Movement: Threats and Opportunities."
14. The Wilderness Society, The Wise Use Movement: Strategic Analysis and Fifty State Review, prepared by MacWilliams Cosgrove Snider, Boston, 1992. Distributed by Clearinghouse on Environmental Advocacy and Research, Washington, D.C.
15. W. Alton Jones Foundation, Form 990 Annual Report to the Internal Revenue Service, 1993, Page 10, Part XV, Line 3a, Grants and Contributions Paid this Year. Anti-wise use grant recipients included Environmental Defense Fund ($75,000); Idaho Conservation League ($30,000); Kentucky Coalition ($30,000); Maine Audubon Society ($26,250); Missouri Coalition for the Environment Foundation ($20,000); Pennsylvania Environmental Council ($30,000); Piedmont Environmental Council ($25,000); Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests ($26,250); Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance ($30,000); Vermont Natural Resources Council ($26,250); Western States Center ($20,000);
16. David Helvarg, The War Against the Greens: The "Wise Use" Movement, the New Right, and Anti-Environmental Violence, Sierra Club Books, San Francisco, 1994.
17. Keith Schneider, "Big Environment Hits the Recession," New York Times, January 1, 1995, p. F4. See also, Stephen Greene, "Environmental Groups Advised to Slim Down," Chronicle of Philanthropy, January 12, 1995, p. 29.
18. Alexander Cockburn, "Exchange," The Nation, Vol. 261, No. 5, August 14 / 21, 1995, p. 150.
19. Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Prometheus Unbound" in The Works of Percy Bysshe Shelly (Roslyn, N.Y.: Black's Reader Service, 1951), 180.
We invite your comments on these ideas.

|*| |*|5th Column POST sells 1,300 acres to MROSD |*|Yes|*|more information....|*||*||*|Top|*|Peninsula district buys scenic Summit-area parcels $4 million purchase offers chance to link Santa Clara Valley with Monterey Bay
By Paul Rogers, Mercury News

|*|The Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District, a public agency based in Los Altos, has closed a deal to purchase 1,320 acres of the area for $4 million.

The land, made up of two adjacent properties whose acreage represents the largest purchase for the agency in a decade, is home to evergreen forests, rolling ridgetops and the headwaters of steelhead trout streams.

Most important, said Craig Britton, general manager of the open space district, the acquisition provides the opportunity to eventually link existing parklands around Mount Umunhum south of San Jose, over the summit of the Santa Cruz Mountains. That would allow hikers, bicyclists and horseback riders to connect with the Soquel Demonstration State Forest and Forest of Nisene Marks State Park in Santa Cruz County.

``These properties are incredible,'' said Britton, hiking through them Tuesday. ``What you could do is one day connect the Santa Clara Valley to the ocean.''

The district, supported by property taxes, closed escrow on the lands several weeks ago. Since it was created by voters in 1972, the district has preserved 48,000 acres of open space from Belmont to Los Gatos.

The lands in the most recent deal will remain closed to the public and patrolled by district rangers until the district can complete a planning process for them, Britton said. Public meetings will be held this spring, he said, and the lands will be added to the district's existing Sierra Azul Open Space Preserve.

On Tuesday, Britton stood along Loma Prieta Road, which bisects the two parcels, gazing at Moss Landing, the Pajaro Valley and the waves of Monterey Bay in the distance.

``It can get hot up here in the summer,'' he said. ``But it is very quiet. It's beautiful.''

Under the deal, the district bought two parcels.

It paid $3 million for the 827-acre CHY property (pronounced ``chai''), which lies mostly in Santa Clara County on the northern side of Loma Prieta Road. The previous owner, CHY, a subsidiary of Setzer Forest Products in Sacramento, will retain about 36 acres atop Mount Loma Prieta, a site it rents for radio, TV and other communications towers.

CHY bought 5,200 acres of timberlands in the area in 1959 from Monterey Bay Redwood. It logged some and sold about 4,000 acres in the late 1970s to Palo Alto real estate developer Charles ``Chop'' Keenan and his Pelican Timber.

``We are primarily interested in the communications facility on top of the mountain now,'' said Keith Chambers, manager of forestry and lands for CHY. ``So when the district asked us if we could sell, we realized the rest of the property wasn't producing income, and the offer caught our attention.''

Under rural zoning, up to four houses would have been allowed on the lands.

The other property, the 493-acre Loma Prieta Ranch, lies to the south, primarily in Santa Cruz County, along Highland Way. Much more forested than the CHY ranch, it includes the headwaters of Soquel Creek and habitat of steelhead trout, along with waterfalls, some redwood and Douglas fir. It was part of Keenan's purchase from CHY in the late 1970s.

The ranch gained notoriety in 1993 after the Mercury News published a story detailing a bizarre shooting gallery there. Trespassers with high-powered handguns, assault rifles and shotguns were dragging debris there, often in the middle of the night, and shooting it to bits.

``Anything they could blow up with a gun -- TVs, computers, everything -- was strewn about,'' Keenan said. ``It cost us 50 grand to clean that thing up. It was a pain in the neck. But we're glad it is becoming a park now. Anything that Craig Britton touches turns to Shangri-La.''

In 1994, Keenan conducted a small timber harvest on the land and built fences to keep out the vandals. He sold the property to the non-profit Peninsula Open Space Trust, which then sold it last month to the open space district for $1 million.

On Tuesday, sun shone through the third-growth redwoods, water rushed through steep streams and millions of ladybugs covered branches, leaves and twigs. Occasional debris remained: a shotgun shell here or there, and a final junk car that still will need to be hauled away.

``It's a real transformation,'' Britton said. ``I'm surprised at the resilience of nature. Things got out of hand, but now it's mostly restored. This shows it wasn't hopeless.''


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Contact Paul Rogers at progers@sjmercury.com or (408) 920-5045
|*| |*|DOES THE DUE PROCESS CLAUSE PROTECT PROPERTY?|*|Yes|*|This month's |*||*||*|Top|*|Dear Friend,I thought that as a friend of Mountain States Legal Foundation, you would enjoy reading my monthly column,"Summary Judgment". I welcome your comments and suggestions. Sincerely,William Perry Pendley

|*|DOES THE DUE PROCESS CLAUSE PROTECT PROPERTY?

In 1985, Montana's Legislature enacted a Stream Access Law that opened private property to public entry for the undefined, but broadly-inclusive purpose of "recreation."

Specifically, the Act declared that although the land beneath and adjacent to non-navigable streams is private property, any member of the public desiring to recreate on such streams could go onto private property to do so.

The abuses of these "no-man's lands" by the public are now well-known. Scenic river banks were befouled with trash, garbage, and human waste. Carefully maintained riparian areas, once lush habitat for livestock and wildlife, were
trampled. Trickling streams near urban areas became hangouts for drunks and drug addicts--one elderly woman feared approaching the brook on her lot where her grandchildren
played; they play there no more!

Perhaps the most outrageous abuse occurred during the horrific wildfires of 2000, when hundreds of thousands of acres were in flames. The fire danger was so extreme throughout Montana, that all federally- and state-owned recreational lands were closed--every park and every forest.
Remarkably, newspapers across the state told their readers that wanted to recreate to use privately owned land. Under the Stream Access Law, the media advised, landowners could
not stop them.

In May 2000, several Montana landowners, some direct descendants of the men and women who settled Montana in the 1800's, challenged the Stream Access Law's constitutionality. They did not seek "just compensation" for the taking of their property--the time for that had long since expired--but sought instead invalidation of the law as contrary to the Due Process Clause. They argued that the "due process of law," without which they could not "be deprived of life, liberty, or property," required that Montana demonstrate a rational basis or even, given that
property is a fundamental right, a compelling governmental interest for denying them the most basic right of every landowner: the right to exclude others. No reason cited by Montana or environmental groups met either test.

In January 2001, the Montana federal district court granted the motions filed by Montana officials and a host of environmental groups, which had lobbied for the "right" of all citizens to access whatever stream they desired. Relying
on a ruling by the Ninth Circuit, the district court held that the landowners'only constitutional remedy was to seek "just compensation" for a "taking" of their property for "public use." Their case was dismissed.

On December 23, 2002, the Ninth Circuit, relying on one of its earlier rulings, upheld the district court's decision. The Ninth Circuit held that because the Fifth Amendment grants property owners the specific right to "just
compensation" if their property is taken by governments, the more general protections afforded "life, liberty, [and] property" by the Due Process Clause are null and void. The Ninth Circuit's ruling means that no property owner may
challenge the authority of a unit of government to regulate or seize his property as a violation of the Due Process Clause; the owner may seek only just compensation. Thus, the Ninth Circuit has read the words "property" and "public use"
out of the Due Process Clause.

These brave landowners who had the courage to expose themselves to the vitriolic attack leveled against them by opponents of private property, leftists in the media, and the environmental movement, believe that the Ninth Circuit's ruling is wrong. They intend to seek Supreme Court review. However, the Supreme Court's pronouncements on the relationship between the Takings Clause and the Due Process Clause have not been the epitome of clarity. Nonetheless,
not even the curious and often convoluted rulings of the Supreme Court on this subject lend any support to the Ninth Circuit's evisceration of the Due Process Clause.

Today the Ninth Circuit is famous as the most frequently and consistently overturned of the federal appellate courts, often with unanimous Supreme Court rulings. Its ruling on Montana's infamous Stream Access Law could be next.

If you would like to support Mountain States Legal
Foundation, click below. MSLF's sole source of support is the tax-deductible contributions it receives from people like you.|*| |*|January 8, 2003 Pombo Elected Resource Committe Chairman|*|Yes|*|As the incoming Chairman.....|*||*||*|Top|*|The House Republican Steering Committee has selected Congressman Richard Pombo as the new Chairman of the House Resources Committee. Pombo is taking over from outgoing chairman James Hansen of Utah, who retired at the end of the 107th Congress.|*|Pombo stressed his expertise on resource issues, willingness to reach across party lines to find common-sense solutions and unparalleled record of visiting Congressional Districts throughout the country to learn more about local resource issues.

“As the incoming Chairman, I will work with all of my colleagues on the Resources Committee to enact legislation of which we can all be proud,” said Pombo. “There are too many areas of agreement for us to get bogged down in partisan battles.”
|*| |*|Congressman Richard Pombo Stands Up for Rural Lands California|*|Yes|*|Read More.....|*||*||*|Top|*|Private property rights are a cornerstone of our society. The Framers of the Constitution clearly recognized this right as they laid out the foundations of our Republic.

|*|Welcome to my Private Property Rights Page
November 29, 2001

Private property rights are a cornerstone of our society. The Framers of the Constitution clearly recognized this right as they laid out the foundations of our Republic, and it has been reinforced time and time again in the courts. Our nation's third Chief Justice, John Marshall, wrote that "The right of acquiring and possessing property and having it protected is one of the natural, inherent and inalienable rights of man..." The important element of Justice Marshall's statement -- embodied in the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment -- is that such a right includes the guarantee of a reasonable amount of autonomy in exercising the use of one's land.

I am a strong advocate for the protection and the preservation of private property. As a fourth generation rancher, my life has been shaped by the traditions and values associated with proper stewardship of the land. Lately, however, this tradition is being threatened by ever-increasing and more stringent restrictions associated with federal environmental and land use regulations.

In a host of federal laws, government agencies are increasingly controlling the use of private land for public purposes, and refusing to pay the just compensation that our Constitution requires. Federal agencies have been abusing laws that were intended to preserve the environment and instead has used them to limit and regulate the use of private land. This is inherently wrong and has greatly upset the necessary balance between the Constitutional rights of Americans and the desire to protect the environment.

As part of my effort to restore that balance, I have taken the lead in Congress to introduce and support legislative proposals that center on restoring the rights of private landowners. I strongly believe that the federal government should be required to compensate people when regulations deprive them of the ability to earn a living on their land. Furthermore, the federal government should be required to review the costs of regulations and take those costs into account when issuing rules and regulations.


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