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April 6, 2002
Bill Christison:
A Former CIA Official on
Oil and the Middle East
April 5, 2002
Charmaine
Seitz
In
Ramallah: The Grueling Reoccupation Grinds On
Nancy Stohlman
The Invasion of Bethlehem
and Our Tax Dollars at Work
Beth Daoud
The
Siege of Bethlehem:
"What Do You Mean God Is Punishing Me?"
Fareed Marjaee:
Demonizing Iran
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Philip
Morris to Canada:
"Drop Dead"
Alex Lynch
Tampa Campus Mirrors
Middle East Strife
Alexander
Cockburn
Sharon's
Wars: How the
News Gets Through
April 4, 2002
Ray Hanania
Sharon's Latest Lie About the Church
of the Nativity
Mike Leon
Rightwing
Assault on Madison Progressives Misfires
Tom Turnipseed
Stop the Killing Now!
Nancy
Stohlman
An
American Under Siege in a West Bank Refugee Camp
Christopher Reilly
Kissinger, Chile and Justice
at Long Last?
M. Shahid
Alam
The
Lies of Thomas Friedman
April 3, 2002
Don Henley
Dear Loathsome Trade Hacks
Bernard
Weiner
An
American Jew Talks
About His Shame
David Vest
Sting of Stings
Tzaporah
Ryter
Under
Fire: an American Student in Ramallah
Gabriel Ash
America's Bravest
John Chuckman
Of
War, Islam and Israel
Robert Fisk
The Siege of Bethlehem
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Sins of the Church
April 2, 2002
Uri Avnery
Murdering Arafat?
Jeff Chang
Is
Protest Music Dead?
Lev Grinberg
Israel's State Terrorism
Norman
Madarasz
Bullying
Brazil
Robert Fisk
Farce and Terror
in Ramallah
Steve
Perry
Let's
Roll! ®:
The Marketing of Lisa Beamer
April 1, 2002
Stanton / Madsen
America's War Inc.
Rep. Dennis
Kucinich
Peace
and Nuclear Disarmament: a Call to Action
Bahour / Dahan
Bloodshed in Palestine:
A Way Out
Molly
Secours
Tennessee's
Kangaroo Court
Phyllis Pollack
The Making of Exile
on Main Street
Dave Marsh
DeskScan:
This Week's
Top 10 CDs
Francis Boyle
The Big Lie:
Palestine, Palestinians
and International Law
March 31, 2002
Jordan
Flaherty
Last
Night the Israeli
Military Tried to Kill Me
Kristen Schurr
Live from Bethlehem
Maha Sbitani
The
Israeli Army Took Over My House
Robert Fisk
Lies Leaders Tell When
They Want to Go to War
March 24/30, 2002
Alexander Cockburn
The Year
of the Yellow Notepad:
Plagiarism and History
Rep. Ron Paul
Slavery and the Draft
Fidel
Castro
A
Better World is Possible
Edward Said
What Price Oslo?
José
Saramago
Justice
and Democracy Denied
Azmi Bishara
Talking to Tanks
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Clearcutting
Montana
Alexander Cockburn
50 Years of James Bond
Wilhelm
Reich
Gethsemane
Claud Cockburn
The Horror of It All
Dave Marsh
What's
Playing at My Houe
David Vest
Remembering Tammy Wynette
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Waylon
Jennings:
an Honest Outlaw
Resources:
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How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
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
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by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
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April 6, 2002
Oil Slick George
Bush-Whacking the Environment
By Walt Brasch
George W. Bush says it will take years.
He says there will be many casualties.
He says it will be costly for Americans.
The president was probably referring
to the nation's undeclared war against Afghanistan, but since
he's often confused he could also have been talking about his
administration's war against the environment. No one expected
the Bush-Cheney Oil-Executive-Millionaire ticket to cozy up to
the Sierra Club. But, neither did they think the administration
would roll back the environmental heritage that Progressive Republican
Teddy Roosevelt and a succession of presidents had fought to
create and maintain.
We now know that Secretary of Energy
Spencer Abraham with Vice-President Dick Cheney and the morally-corrupt
Enron Corp. directed the Administration's energy policy. But,
there are others in the Bush administration who believe in tearing
up the environment and disturbing the wildlife to provide for
immediate gratification to the coal, oil, and mining industries.
Secretary of the interior Gale Norton
was a lawyer and lobbyist for numerous clients that favored weaker
governmental controls on environmental protection and stronger
private rights. Norton believes in expanding hunting, mining,
and use of gas-spewing off-road vehicles on federal lands.
Deputy Secretary Steve Griles, a strong
advocate of off-shore oil drilling, was a lobbyist for coal and
oil companies. William Myers, Interior's solicitor, a former
employee of a cattleman's  association, advocates the use of public
land for cattle grazing and opposes most environmental measures
in the national parks.
Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman
opposes what she believes are "unnecessary and burdensome"
federal environmental rules.
Mark Rey, her undersecretary, is an advocate
for the timber industry.
Attorney General John Ashcroft, while
a U.S. senator, consistently voted against environmental protections.
Assistant Attorney General Thomas Sansonetti, who had also served
under George Bush the Elder, was a coal company lobbyist.
A year after her appointment to head
the Environmental Protection Agency, former New Jersey Gov. Christine
Todd Whitman joked that she once thought she was on Bush's short
list to be vice-president, but later realized she was on the
short list of Republicans who were environment-friendly. In the
past year she has clashed with Bush several times about his environmental
plans. But, she's still a loyal cabinet appointee. Under a Bush-Cheney
set of directives, EPA has reduced its enforcement mission, favoring
the euphemistic "voluntary compliance" policy, and
has postponed work on Clean Air and Clean Water acts.
One of the first things Bush himself
did after becoming president was to order a comprehensive six-month
review, and hoped-for reversal, of Bill Clinton's proclamations
in June 2000 to designate four national monuments covering 540,000
acres. At the time, Vice-President Al Gore, the administration's
conscience on environmental issues, declared, "We act today
so that years from now Americans will still be able to paddle
free-flowing waters and hike pristine peaks, enjoying these extraordinary
stretches of our national heritage." Bush's belief is that
almost all of the 250 million acres under jurisdiction of the
Bureau of Land Management should be available to be stripped
of their resources.
Bush has now targeted Yellowstone National
Park by ordering a "review" of the Clinton administration's
ban on snowmobiles and non-essential roads. "The presence
of hundreds of snowmobiles at one time has disturbed the wildlife
and upset the balance of nature," says Andrea Lococo, Rocky
Mountain coordinator for Fund for Animals. Affected primarily
are the 4,200 bison which are using the groomed snowmobile roads
to leave the park. Montana officials have slaughtered about 3,000
bison as soon as they left the park's sanctuary, claiming they
fear the spread of brucellosis to cattle. However, there is no
evidence, says Lococo, that bison are infecting cattle. If there
was any possible transmittal of brucellosis, it would come only
from the discarded afterbirth. But, Montana's slaughter-happy
livestock officials, unable to distinguish testes from teats,
are also slaughtering bulls.
Also affected by the Bush policies are
wolves, bears, and park rangers. The return of a small number
of wolves into Yellowstone was vigorously opposed by Montana
and Wyoming ranchers. With fewer bison deaths from natural causes
in the park, wolves and bears now have a diminished food source.
The National Park Service, which had favored a ban on recreational
snowmobiles, is now faced by thousands of snowmobilers illegally
crossing the Park's borders. Snowmobilers, says Lococo, "line
up at the borders, spewing gas fumes that have made the rangers
ill."
In other environmental policies, Bush
reversed himself on a campaign pledge to reduce acceptable levels
of carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants. But,
when he decided that higher levels of arsenic and other toxins
in drinking water was just good public policy, the public outrage
forced him to reverse that judgment. Score: Carbon Dioxide emissions
1; arsenic, after a fight, 0.
Bush eliminated the tax upon the oil
and chemical industries that paid for the clean up of SuperFund
toxic waste sites; the new cost will be borne not by the polluters
but by the public. He has repeatedly shown he favors increased
logging and mining on public lands, and has pushed for oil companies
to be allowed to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
in Alaska.
To justify environmental destruction
and upsetting a balance of nature, Bush claims the drilling of
oil is a national security concern. The 600,000 barrels of oil
a day that might be refined from Alaska is less than five percent
of what the U.S. currently imports. There are no substantial
plans to seek alternative energy sources, except for a policy
to pay for development of clean energy sources only with funds
generated from oil drilling in Alaska. Even the oil companies
don't believe putting rigs and refineries along the Alaskan coast
will be cost-effective. But, there is a gunslinger's mentality
at work in Alaska. Opening up the refuge would require hundreds
of miles of roads to be built, all of them not necessarily for
the transport of equipment and personnel but for hunters to get
that elusive caribou--maybe even to mount a seal.
For more than a decade, Bill Clinton's
venomous critics called him "Slick Willie." Perhaps
Americans will soon realize that the Bush administration legacy
for our environmental heritage was engineered by "Oil Slick
George."
Walt Brasch's
latest book is The Joy of Sax: America During the Bill Clinton
Era.
Brasch, a former newspaper reporter and editor, is professor
of journalism at Bloomsburg University. He can be reached at:
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