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August 1, 2002
Alexander Cockburn
Drivel and Squawk:
Angelina Jolie, the NYT
and the Attack on McKinney
July 31, 2002
Amelia Peltz
Inside
Ramallah:
How Can the World Witness Such Suffering and Do Nothing?
M. Shahid Alam
The Academic
Boycott of Israel
Bernard Weiner
20 Things
We've Learned Since 9/11
Philip Cryan
Discourse
and War in Colombia
Neve Gordon
A Feast
of Bombs:
Sharon's Endgame for Palestine
July 30, 2002
Pierre Tristam
Branding September 11
PS Burton
Financial
Journalism:
A Very Small Cog
Tom Stephens
Hypocrites in the House:
Fast Track After Midnight
Dave Marsh
Censorship
Goes Global
July 29, 2002
Linda Belanger
Why Do They Do It?
Alfredo Castro
Colombia's
Disappeared
Anne Brodsky
Inside Pakistan and
Afghanistan with RAWA
Andrew George
The Fires
of Summer:
Don't Blame the Greens
David Vest
A Blind Mule and
a Box of Medals
July 28, 2002
Bob Geary
Our Dinner
with Fidel Castro
July 27, 2002
Ian Daoust
The New
Mahler, Seattle Style
Gavin Keeney
Zizek
and Lenin
Ralph Nader
Citigroup
Heal Thyself
M. Shahid Alam
American
Presidents (Poem)
Mokhiber / Weissman
Push Back: Women Take
on the Corporate Beasts
July 26, 2002
Jerre Skog
American
Dictatorship:
It Couldn't Happen...Could It?
Philip Farruggio
Lie,
Rob and Steal
Rep. Ron Paul
Monitor
Thy Neighbor
Ron Jacobs
Thinking
About the
Weather (Underground)
Walt Brasch
Ashcroft's War on Bookstores
July 25, 2002
Norman Madarasz
Paul
Krugman's Howl:
Populism, War and
the Melting Economy
Gavin Keeney
Van Morrison: In September
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
War
on Terrorism or
Police State?
July 24, 2002
Gary Leupp
An Islam Primer
July 23, 2002
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Battle
for Zuni Salt Lake
Ansar Ahmed
Am I with You, George?
Bill Christison
The
Disastrous Foreign Policies of the US: Oppression Abroad Means
Repression at Home
July 22, 2002
Rick Giombetti
Glaxo Raises White Flag
in Paxil Case
Wayne Madsen
Forbidden
Truth
The Press, Bush, Oil
and the Taliban
July 21. 2002
Francis A. Boyle
The Rogue Elephant
Jennifer Harbury
Why are
the FBI & CIA Targeting Me?
Joan Claybrook
Time
for a Special Prosceutor
for Thomas White
Gloria Bergen
The Struggle
of Workers
in Palestine
Dave Marsh
Mr. Big Stuff:
Alan Lomax, Great White Fraud
James T. Phillips
"I'll
Tell You No Lies"
The Human Rubble of War
July 20, 2002
Gavin Keeney
The Grave
New Urbanism
World Trade Center Burlesque
Jacob Levich
"I
Was Schooled in Hate"
Confessions of a
Summer Camp Terror Tot
Thomas Croft
Augusta,
GA
Growing Up in the Deep South
Alexander Cockburn
The
Market Hogwallow:
Popgun Populism Isn't Enough
July 19, 2002
Abe Bonowitz / SueZann
Bosler
A Discussion
with Jeb Bush on the Death Penalty
Jonathan Power
No Need
for War Against Iraq
Rick Giombetti
Qwest
Death Watch
Kurt Nimmo
Of Mice,
Bullets & Bombs
M. Shahid Alam
Through
Racist Eyes:
Is Eurocentrism Unique?
July 18, 2002
Mokhiber / Weissman
Business
As Usual
Jerre Skog
I Spy: Now
Let's be Fair,
the USA Ain't East Germany
Ralph Nader
The CEO
Crimewave:
Corporate Socialism
Mahbubul Karim (Sohel)
The Rising Tensions
Between Spain and Morocco
Alexander Cockburn
Drivel
and Squawk:
Can the Times' Jeff Gerth
Save the White House?
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
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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 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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|
August
1, 2002
Activists
Under Siege
The Chilling Tales of
Scott Wells,
John Blair and Frank Ambrose
by Steven Higgs
BLOOMINGTON. Add Scott Wells' name to the growing list of
Indiana environmental activists to find themselves face to face
with government agents. The Monroe County Councilman last week
was questioned by the FBI and ATF about last month's fire at
Pedigo Bay, an under-construction housing development for the
rich and powerful on the shores of Lake Monroe.
The feds' interest in Wells was spawned
by accusations at this month's council meeting made by a radical
property-rights activist that Wells knew the fire was going to
occur, knew who was going to commit it, and did nothing to prevent
it. But there has been no evidence produced to support the allegation,
whatsoever. And history suggests it's just the latest effort
by wealthy developers and their allies to slow the growing citizen
revolt against developer domination of Monroe County's democratic
institutions.
"I've been talking about the truth,"
Wells said at the Farmers Market on Saturday. "The power
of the truth scares the hell out of them. The truth burns 'em."
The truth Scott Wells has been pursing
for almost a decade now is the real story behind developer efforts
to thwart this community's clear and unambiguous desire to stop
development in the watershed of its only source of drinking water--Lake
Monroe.
"That's my mission," says Wells,
a 47-year-old school teacher who also lives in the watershed,
"to protect our water supply."
***
Wells' mission dates to 1993, when he
opposed the Gentry East development along Ind. 446. Three years
later, in 1996, he won a "Frontline Award" from the
Hoosier Environmental Council for spearheading efforts to pass
a county ordinance that restricts density and implements slope
restrictions on developments in the Lake Monroe and Griffy watersheds.
Throughout these and other fights, Wells
earned the nickname "bulldog" for his tenacity and
determination. He also received death threats. "They've
been trying to silence me all along," he says. "But
they're not going to do it."
In 2000, Wells ran for an at-large county
council seat and received more votes than any of six candidates
running for three seats. He was then appointed to the Monroe
County Plan Commission, where he doggedly pursued environmental
violations at Pedigo Bay, a luxury home development on the southern
shores of Lake Monroe.
Like practically every major development
in this community over the past two decades, engineer Steve Smith's
footprints are all over Pedigo Bay. He owns property adjacent
to the development. Even though Smith only owned a minority interest
in the development, the mailing address for project developer
PB Estates LLC is the Smith Neubecker office. In a May 25th letter
to "community leaders," Smith announced he had assumed
majority control.
That announcement came one day after
Pedigo Bay received the latest in a series of citations and fines
from the county plan department for environmental violations
at the development. To date, the county has fined PB Estates
more than $40,000. Among the infractions are failures to submit
and implement erosion-control plans. Smith is a member of the
county drainage board, which is charged with protecting topsoil
and public waterways from erosion.
On June 27, an arsonist set fire to one
of the homes being built at Pedigo Bay. Smith said the home,
with an estimated value of $725,000, was going to be his.
***
Even before the fire was officially ruled
arson, pro-development forces, news stories and editorials in
the Herald-Times pointed the finger at Wells in particular and
environmentalists in general for "fanning the flames"
that led to the fire.
According to a July 11 Herald-Times editorial,
a reporter was tipped off just before the July 9 council meeting
that "something was going to come out at the meeting that
would turn the place on its ear." County resident Kevin
Shiflet then distributed a legal-looking, signed and notarized
"affidavit" that, according to the Herald-Times, clearly
implied "that Wells knew in advance about the fire and who
was going to set it."
In the document, Shiflet asserts that
Wells told him he knew the fire was "going down" and
that he'd talked to "deep throats number one, two and three"
on the phone about it. Given that the document has absolutely
no legal significance whatsoever and is backed up by no substantive
evidence, the Herald-Times concluded "the most plausible
real purpose of the affidavit was to harm Wells by impugning
his credibility and reputation."
Upon releasing the document, Shiflet
asked Wells, "What did you know and when did you know it?"
That was followed by calls from right-wing extremists like Franklin
Andrew and Leo Hickman for Wells' resignation from the plan commission.
Subsequently, a bumper sticker asking, "What did Scott Wells
know and when did he know it?" was surreptitiously stuck
on the bumper of Wells' vehicle.
Within a week of Shiflet's public accusation,
Wells, who adamantly denies the charges, was summarily summoned
to an interview with federal agents to answer what effectively
amounted to variations on that very theme.
"They're trying to take me out permanently;
they're trying to silence me," Wells says, agreeing that
the true objective is to ruin his name. "Your reputation
is all you have. If you don't have your reputation, you don't
have anything."
***
The attacks on Scott Wells are chilling
enough in and of themselves. But when taken in the broader context
of the post-9/11 erosion in civil liberties and sensational pre-9/11
media coverage of "eco-terrorism," they are ominous
indeed.
Consider the case of environmentalist
John Blair, president of the Evansville-based Valley Watch, a
former Pulitzer Prize winning photographer and one of the state's
highest profile environmental leaders for more than a quarter
century.
In the post-9/11 rush to squelch Americans'
freedom of assembly and expression, Blair was jailed in February
for walking down the street in Evansville carrying a sign to
protest Vice President Dick Cheney's energy policy. Cheney was
in Evansville stumping for 8th District Republican Congressman
John Hostettler, one of the House's "Environmental Dirty
Dozen," an obsequious political flack for the fossil-fuel
industry.
"Tonight I was arrested for nothing
more than exercising my rights as a citizen in what I thought
was a free country," Blair wrote on Feb. 6 in
a piece published in CounterPunch. Blair was not part
of any formal protest. He was neither belligerent nor confrontational.
"It is clear that I was singled out only because I had a
sign," he wrote.
The last image many citizens saw on Evansville
television that evening was Blair staring out the window of a
squad car as he was being taken to jail. The disorderly conduct
charges against him were increased at his arraignment the next
day to Resisting Law Enforcement, which carried a maximum sentence
of a year in jail. All charges ultimately were dropped.
"They kept me in jail until Cheney
was gone, then they let me out," Blair said in a recent
interview. "I don't know if it was their intention, but
it certainly appeared that they just wanted to silence protest."
While Blair is preparing to sue the city
of Evansville for violating his constitutional rights, he readily
admits that his recent experience with government authority pales
in comparison with that of former Bloomington activist Frank
Ambrose.
"What they did to Frank, that was
appalling," he said.
***
Almost a year to the day before Blair's
arrest in Evansville, the FBI and state and local authorities
raided Frank Ambrose's Owen County home, seized his computer
and other personal belongings, including family pictures, and
charged the former Purdue University swimmer with spiking trees
in Yellowwood State Forest.
Ambrose had been the face man for a growing,
aggressive, direct-action movement for environmental responsibility
in Bloomington and Monroe County. He spoke out at public meetings.
He helped organize and lead protests in the city and in the woods.
He publicly embarrassed the mayor and other public officials.
Ambrose did all of this at a time when
the Earth Liberation Front claimed responsibility for another
arson on a luxury home under construction in the Lake Monroe
watershed and the Yellowwood tree spiking. To say law enforcement
was under pressure to make an arrest is an understatement of
cosmic proportions. In a public discussion in Bloomington seven
months before Ambrose's arrest, an ELF spokesman from Oregon
claimed the shadowy group was responsible for more than $30 million
in damage nationwide without a single person being caught.
After his arrest, Ambrose was effectively
silenced. He dropped out of public view. His political activities
ceased. In September 2001, prosecutors announced the charges
against him were being dismissed. They offered no explanation
for the decision.
Blair, who publicly defended Ambrose
on environmental discussion lists and through other venues, doesn't
speculate on why the authorities did what they did. But he's
unequivocal on the ultimate result of their actions.
"Nobody wants the FBI to come knocking
on their door," Blair says. "To come down hard on somebody
like they did on him, whether they had any evidence or not, they
get their desired results, which is everybody falling in line.
They completely chilled protest in Indiana through the treatment
they gave him."
Steven Higgs
is the editor of the excellent new weekly, The
Bloomington Alternative. We strongly recommend you subscribe
if you care about what's going on in the heartland of America.
He can be reached at: shiggs809@insightbb.com
Today's Features
Alexander Cockburn
Drivel and Squawk:
Angelina Jolie, the NYT
and the Attack on McKinney
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