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April 25, 2002
Stanton
and Madsen
US
Media Interests:
Champions of Profit, Propaganda and Puffery
Aaron Hawley
Cop a Buzz Day in Vermont:
Education v. Incarceration
David
Vest
Code
Red: Politics and Wordplay at the Vatican
Bernard Weiner
Time Out! A Pause for Longer-Range
Thinking
Rep. Dennis
Kucinich
Standing
with the Peace Movement
April 24, 2002
David Vest
State of Politics in France:
Code Bleu
Jean Fallow
A20
in Seattle:
Cops Get Rough, Again
Kevin Alexander Gray
Help Save the Life of an Innocent Man:
Ask for Clemency for Ricky Johnson
Tanya
Reinhart
Jenin,
the Propaganda Battle
Todd May
Drowning Children, Palestinians and American
Responsibility
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Loneliest Road
Nir Rosen
The Broken Home:
Revisiting Israel
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
A
Big Blow to Big Tobacco
April 23, 2002
Brian Wood
Where Is the Aid for the Victims in
Jenin?
John Chuckman
I,
George:
Gomer as Claudius
Norman Madarasz
French Presidential Elections
Absenteeism and Le Pen
Dr. Susan
Block
Bernard
Parks, Goodbye:
A Farewell to My Chief
Joan Smith
Who Will Rid Us of
These Pedophile Priests?
April 22, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
EPA
Ombudsman Resigns
in Protest
Dave Marsh
DeskScan: What's Playing
at My House This Week
Ron Jacobs
A20
in DC: Taking the
Message to the Beast's Belly
Kathy Kelly
An Open Letter to
Israeli Soldiers
Irit Katriel
Word
Games and Body Bags
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
We Come for Peace
Daniel
Bar-Tal
Is
There a Way Out?
Occupation, Terror
and Understanding
David Wilson
A Week of Coups, But Now
The Freedom Train Hits Town
Shaik
Ubaid
Today
I Was a Palestinian
April 21, 2002
Michelle Campos
Suckered Again in Israel
Mike Leon
200,000
in DC Protest Say:
"We Are All Palestinians Today"
C.G. Estabrook
Sex and Power in Catholicism
Kathy
Kelly
Gimme
Some Truth Now
A Walk Through Jenin
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
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Five
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By Alexander
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Photos by Allan Sekula
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Published March 15, 2002
Read Whiteout and Find Out
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
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
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April 25, 2002
"And the Earth
Wept"
Bush at Saranac Lake
by Adam Federman
Nearly every winter Saranac Lake, New York receives
the honor of being the coldest spot in the nation. It's a small
claim to fame, one that most likely goes unnoticed outside of
this small town of 6,000 in the heart of the Adirondacks. But
growing up I always felt a bit of pride on those mornings,
getting ready for school with my brother and sister, when Saranac
Lake appeared on the weather map with a negative 30 or 40 degree
symbol next to it and the designation of coldest spot in the
nation.
Saranac Lake and more broadly the Adirondack
State Park were back on the map again recently. This time however,
the distinction was a disgrace and not an honor. President Bush
came through for Earth Day and thanked North Country residents
for giving him, "the opportunity to hammer and stack,"
and to "place gravel in a beautiful part of the world."
The president participated in some light trail work and then
delivered an uninspired speech inside the ski lodge at the base
of Whiteface Mountain.
He lauded residents of the Park for cooperating
and told them he was, "most impressed by how--by the discussion
of the beaver dams and the care for not only the trail system,
but for the beavers, themselves. It was an understanding of
the importance of good stewardship."
The President's message belittles not
only the efforts of Park residents but also reveals his naive
understanding of conservation. After invoking TR, who "used
to hang out," as Bush put it, "in this very Park,"
the President said that, "Thousands of acres in the Adirondacks
are unchanged...because people have cared for the acreage."
But the six million-acre State Park established
in the late nineteenth century has undergone enormous changes
and it is a dynamic relationship between the people and the
land that they live on that has given rise to a strong conservation
ethic.
During the early decades of the twentieth-century
much of the Park was logged. The presence of softwood species,
including the prized red spruce, were particularly attractive
to lumbermen who floated the logs or bolts to the mills for
pulp. Clear-cut logging devastated the old growth forests and
left behind a tinder box of slash that led to a number of forest
fires throughout the region.
Three summers ago I worked as a summit
steward on Hadley Mountain in the Southern Adirondacks not far
from Lake George. Hadley still has an old fire tower built from
steel in 1917 on its summit. From Hadley one can see the Catskills
to the south, the Green Mountains of Vermont to the east, the
High Peaks to the north, and the relatively unpopulated expanse
of land that makes up the western Adirondacks.
Aside from the tower, the old observers
cabin, and the exposed rock on the summit it's not easy to discern
the ecological changes that have taken place over the last
century. But as E.H. Ketchledge writes in his short study of
the forests and trees of the Adirondacks, "All sorts of
disturbances have occurred and are occurring in the high peak
region, and in consequence we see a great diversity of forest
conditions: different species, in various stages of health,
vigor, and form, from pure stands of one species to mixed stands
containing many species; tall, lordly trees on fertile, undisturbed
sites to dwarfed, contorted specimens at timberline; different
stages of revegetation reflecting a particular history of use
or abuse."
And disturbances in the Park have not
ceased. The number of visitors has increased significantly.
Much of the alpine vegetation in the High Peaks destroyed during
the 1960s and 1970s has been restored, thanks in large part
to E.H. Ketchledge who spearheaded a revegetation program. On
Hadley there were days I saw over 150 people and wondered if
the Park could possible withstand such numbers.
Acid rain continues to plague the region
affecting its lakes and rivers. And development continues as
well.
The state however has recently acquired
easements on land that was privately owned. Much of it has been
designated forever wild. Wal-Mart has been kept out, at least
for now, from both Saranac Lake and Lake Placid, after spirited
debates within both towns.
It's not surprising that the President
would exploit a place like the Adirondacks to deliver a message
on Earth Day. It would have been more fitting though, if he
went to the proposed Yucca Mountain depository in Nevada or
to the Alaskan Wildlife Refuge. Maybe then statements about
sensible limits on development, respecting the natural world,
and making every day earth day would have been revealed for
what they are, hollow proclomations from an administsration
out of touch with the interests and concerns of the American
people.
Adam Federman
is a native of Saranac Lake, New York. He can be reached at:
afed99@hotmail.com
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