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July 2, 2002
Leah Wells
The Wedding
Was a Bomb
CounterPunch Wire
Trial of
the SOA 37
Edward Hammond
Bombing
the Mind:
The Pentagon's Drug Warfare
Sam Bahour
Ramallah
Occupied:
Uninvited Guests Become Neighbors
July 1, 2002
Norman Madarasz
Brazil's
Triumph
June 28/30, 2002
Kathleen Christison
The True Story of Resolution
242 or How the US Sold Out
the Palestinians
Cockburn / St. Clair
Death,
Juries and Scalia
Tarif Abboushi
Bush's
Double Standard
on Israel
N.D. Jayaprakash
Seething
with Rage:
The Palestinian Saga
Michael Yates
Taking
the Pledge:
Teachers and the Flag
Stephen Zunes
Bush's
Speech a Setback
for Peace
Walt Brasch
The Pledge
v. The Constitution
Cockburn / St. Clair
Strikers
as Terrorists?
Tom Ridge Calls Longshoremen
June 27, 2002
Ralph Nader
Reclaiming
Our Commons
Neve Gordon
Jerusalem
Under Attack
Robert Jensen
Alternative
Futures
David Vest
Darryl Kile's
Great Day
Gary Leupp
The Loya
Jirga Joke
Rahul Mahajan
Arafat
Says US Needs New Leadership; Calls for Fair Elections
June 26, 2002
Robert Fisk
Sharon as
Bush Speechwriter
Mokhiber / Weissman
Brokerman
June 25, 2002
Dave Marsh
The RIAA,
Library of Congress and the Web Pirates
Uri Avnery
Reform
Now!
Bahour / Dahan
Bush:
Off with Arafat's Head
Walt Brasch
Bush:
the Compassionate Exerciser
June 24, 2002
Bernard Weiner
Talkin'
About the F-Word
David Bates
Portland
Gets Dicked:
Cheney Does Oregon
Jo Freeman
Will
the War on Terror Follow the Path of the Cold War?
Tom Gorman
The Only
Thing "Generous" is the Propaganda
Bezhad Yaghmaian
Caught
Between Borders
in a Borderless World
Ben Sonnenberg
Ted
Hughes' Spell
June 22/23, 2002
Douglas Valentine
Sex,
Drugs & the CIA
June 21, 2002
Norman Madarasz
Brazil
Over England:
The Gaucho's Wild Ride
John Borowski
Stossel
and Disney's Crimes Against Nature
Chris Floyd
Southern
Cross: The US Takes Aim at Brazil
David Martin
Of Lies
and Oil: an interview with Rahul Mahajan
James T. Phillips
Serbian
Reservations:
Kosovo 2002
June 20, 2002
Chris Kromm
The South
at War: a Tour of the US Military/Industrial Complex
Jacob Levich
The War
on Terror is
Not a Suicide Pact
Mark Weisbrot
What
are They Doing to Argentina?
Jeffrey St. Clair
and Alexander Cockburn
Fire
Walk With Me:
Terry Lynn Barton and the Flames of Colorado
June 19, 2002
Gary Leupp
Red Targets in Terror War
Lenni Brenner
The Road
Forward for the
Palestinian Movement
Bernard Weiner
Inside
Cheney's Diary:
Cakewalking Through Minefields
Alexander Cockburn
The
Incredible Shrinking President
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
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Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
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and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
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Reviews of Gore:
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July
3, 2002
Bastion
of Ecological Literacy Under Siege Logging
and Mining Industries Target Public Schools
by John Borowski
A Ford Motor Company donation of $1.5 million
dollars to "Provider Pals" epitomizes the quest by
extractive industries and their spawn to conquer society's last,
un-commercialized bastion: our public school system. Provider
Pals is the latest attempt to run the gauntlet and blow wide
open the proverbial doors of fairness, objectivity, and sound
science found in schools and replace it with nothing short of
corporate America's wish list. And that list has a long history
of distortions, half-truths, and bold-faced lies.
Provider Pals, organized by Bruce Vincent,
a mouthpiece for logging, mining and grazing on public lands,
is brilliantly orchestrated with a charismatic, yet simple objective.
Put a face on miners, loggers and ranchers: a very happy face
indeed. Bringing his minstrel show to urban areas, Vincent and
his happy band of "providers" apparently show the "city
kiddies" how wood, meat and other resources are brought
to the market. Central to this theme, is the pretext that no
good American would criticize American icons like the cowboy
and logger. Industry has often used workers as pawns; millions
of dollars were spent on the timber corporation's PR ploy to
pit loggers versus Spotted Owls. Loggers were not the bad guys,
it was the likes of Boise Cascade and Weyerhaeuser who butchered
millions of acres of watersheds, fragmented forests on a scale
never seen before and used "cut and run" techniques
caring little about workers and their communities.
The irony of programs like Provider Pals
is while they tug at our 'heart-strings', and have a valid message
in terms of good, hard working rural folk, the omissions in the
classroom are akin to a corporate commercial. Will the urban
kids be made privy to information about predator control and
vile, toxic substances like Compound 1080 (one of the world's
most lethal chemicals) that are used by grazing interests to
destroy our nation's predators? Will the logger character discuss
the fact that only 4% of our native forests still stand, that
tree farms and massive clear-cutting have lead to our current
fire dangers? Will the miner expose the 1872 Mining Law, which
leads to legal theft of hard-rock minerals, while companies pay
no royalties and the public picks up the cost of abandoned mines?
On all cases, the answer is very doubtful.
The Wood Promotion Network suggests on
their website that the Ford donation is an attempt by the auto
giant to make nice with extractive industries. Or as the website
gleefully notes, "the initiatives are part of Ford's earlier
commitment resulting from an overwhelming response to advertorials
and previous grants by the Ford Fund that damaged the reputation
of wood and the wood industry on product and environmental issues."
A Ford donation to the National Audubon was seen as an immoral
act by those "Wise Use folks" who cannot fathom a rational
discussion on environmental issues, unless it is crafted, tailored
and pigeon holed to fit industry's set of myths about resource
abuse, and their age old denial of being nothing more than shysters.
But if a puppet show doesn't work, Mr.
Vincent can follow the lead of the American Petroleum Institute.
Exposed by the N.Y Times for trying to create"junk science"
curricula, to downplay global warming, and cast the Kyoto Protocol
into the same category as leprosy, API tried the clandestine
route: seek cover from an established charlatan. They helped
fund a module on energy for Project Learning Tree, an educational
program funded by the American Forest Foundation. Project Learning
Tree, fond of ignoring forest issues like clear cutting, monocultures,
short rotation forestry, the track record of multinationals on
public lands, is a powerful player in environmental education
with the backing of the nation's most powerful and ecologically
unsound timber corporations. In the absence of big environmental
organizations providing sound curricula, teachers are being bamboozled
into using PLT materials and its' omission filled agenda.
Sitting on the "panel" for
this illustrious energy packet was the American Coal Foundation,
the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, and the American Petroleum
Institute. API president Red Cavaney sat on the panel himself,
and he is an avid supporter of opening the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge. The American Coal Foundation has been chastised for their
previous foray into science curricula. "Power from Coal"
was cited by educators as commercial and incomplete, downplaying
the effects of carbon dioxide and actually suggested the earth
could "benefit rather than be harmed from increased carbon
dioxide." Lastly, the Alliance of Auto Manufacturers is
fighting California's attempt to regulate emissions from cars
to combat global warming. Now there is nothing like adding rogues
to your existing "Rogues Gallery" to circumvent a fair
and even discussion on pressing environmental issues like energy?
And if all fails, go the "Operation
Greenout" route. Gestated in Oregon, Operation Greenout
uses inflammatory rhetoric to castigate environmental education.
Literacy in environmental issues is depicted as "eco-child
abuse" and "indoctrination". Earth Day is seen
as the unholy celebratory date for druids and the Lorax. Several
times in their literature they coldly warn us, "You cannot
trust the greens." Deeper inspection of their data suggests
that they are nothing more than mouthpieces for the Wise Use
movement. Yes, it is a shrill and transparent approach, yet fear
is a wonderful motivator.
While the fortress of public schools,
have withstood these attacks, the cracks are showing. Growing
state deficits means less funding for curricula. Educators are
being tempted to use corporate curricula that offer a "fast
food approach" to learning: the questions and answers are
the best that industry can cook up, similar to corporate profit
sheets and exaggerated financial gains. Corporate America knows
as long as students have literacy in environmental issues, there
will always be Rachel Carson and Cesar Chavez types in the American
lexicon. And that is not permissible in a corporate run world,
were knowledge is seen as a roadblock to quarterly profits.
Yes, it must be frustrating for certain
corporations. They have unfettered access to the airways, given
their monopoly on the television. Their pockets are deep and
massive sums of money can be afforded to propaganda campaigns.
American culture is increasingly being dictated by our citizens'
dizzying compliance to fulfilling their ego and spiritual satisfaction
through consumption and paying less and less heed to meaningful
dialogue about the consequences. But, there has always been that
outpost of hope, a roadblock if you will, that prevents free
education from becoming "owned and paid for education."
Our public schools offer our youngest
citizens access to scientific information not tainted or presented
with outcomes already determined. Discussion and critical thinking,
in the absence of corporate come-ons, will determine the best
possible road to sustaining resources for eons to come. And if
this bastion gives way to the knaves who would manipulate their
own mothers to generate greater stock options, then, we as a
free and just society will see democracy erode and blow away
as so much dust found in a clearcut, overgrazed prairie or neglected
strip-mine.
John Borowski
has taught high school environmental science for 24 years. his
articles have appeared in the NY Times, "Z" magazine,
and UTNE Reader. He lives in Philomath, Oregon and can be reached
at: jenjill@proaxis.com
Today's
Feature
Norman Madarasz
Brazil,
the Workers' Party and the Financial Times
Leah Wells
The Wedding
Was a Bomb
CounterPunch Wire
Trial of
the SOA 37
Edward Hammond
Bombing
the Mind:
The Pentagon's Drug Warfare
Sam Bahour
Ramallah
Occupied:
Uninvited Guests Become Neighbors
Dave Marsh
John Entwistle's
Heaven and Hell
Norman Madarasz
Brazil's
Triumph
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