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Today's
Stories
March 2, 2005
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Uncle
Bucky Makes a Killing
March 1, 2005
Scott Richard
Lyons
Million
Dollar Bigotry
David Lindorff
Stealing Workers' Pensions
Patrick Cockburn
/ David Enders
Bloodbath in Iraq
Ron Jacobs
The Last Poets Recalled
Tanya Garcia
USA Next: the Industry Front Group to Privatize Social Security
Joseph Pietri
The Drug Trail Ends in Kathmandu: Golden Tar Heroin and the Black
Prince
Kona Lowell
Woody: Broken in Vietnam
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Coming End of the American Superpower
Website of
the Day
Petition: No US Intervention in Iran
Wars
of the Laptop Bombers
February 28,
2005
Gary Leupp
Year
4 in the Five Year Plan: a June Attack on Iran?
Bill Quigley
Haitian Police Open Fire on Nonviolent Marchers
Mickey Z.
The
Million Dollar Interview: Mary Johnson on Clinton Eastwood, Hunter
Thompson and the "Right to Die"
Paul de Rooij
Why
Ted Honderich is Wrong on All Counts About Israel
David Swanson
Basic Income Guarantee Versus the Corp Media
Mario Lamo
Jimenez
Maria
Full of Cultural Contradictions at the Oscars
Emma Perez
The Attacks on Ward Churchill: a Test Case in the Neocons Purge
of Academia
Diana Johnstone
Censorship
and the Empire
Website of the Day
Stop the War Campaign!
February 26
/ 27, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
An
American Jew Laments Decline in Jewish Influence
Noam Chomsky
Nuclear
Terror at Home
Rev. William E. Alberts
Rhetoric in the Air; Reality on the Ground
Fred Gardner
AARP Gets Pot-Baited
Gary Leupp
Bush and Camus on Freedom
Saul Landau
An Interview with Cuban VP Ricardo Alarcon (Part 3): the Miami
Mafia
Robin Philpot
Second Thoughts on the Hotel Rwanda
Yitkhak Laor
In Praise of the Facts
Ben Tripp
Out of Sight; Out of Mind
Justin Taylor
Zizek Seen Over the Handlebars
Jack Random
The Wounds from Wounded Knee
Rafael Renteria
Ward Churchill and White America
Jim B.
Reflections on the Eve of Fatherhood
Seth DeLong
Land Reform in Venezuela: More Like Lincoln Than Lenin
John Chuckman
A Season of Depressing Political Reruns
Alison Weir
Relativity, LA Times Style
Richard Oxman
Political Solitude: From Garcia Marquez to Maria Full of Grace
Dr. Susan Block
It Always Rains in California: All About Female Ejaculation
Poets' Basement
Landau, Lowell, Louise, Davies, Soderstrom, Norris & Albert
February 25,
2005
Roger Burbach
Murder
in the Amazon
Behzad Yaghmaian
Iranian Distrust of America: 50 Years in the Making
Kurt Nimmo
Conclave of the Brats
Joshua Frank
Diagnosing the Green Party
John Farley
How to Stop the War in Iraq: Punish Pro-War Politicians
Lawrence Reichard
The D'Aubuisson Memorial: Flowers of Evil
Pratyush Chandra
The Royal Coup in Nepal and Global Imperialist Designs
David Smith-Ferri
When
the Battlefield has No Borders
Website of
the Day
The 2005 Election in 3-D
February 24,
2005
Omar Waraich
The
Galloway Saga: Smearing an Anti-War Politician
Brian Cloughley
Bribing and Twisting Amerian Journalists: Valerie Plame &
30 Pieces of Silver
Tom Wright
Torture Nation: Abu Ghraib, a Year Later
Sharon Smith
The Anti-War Movement After Kerry: Learning All the Wrong Lessons
Dave Lindorff
Do These Roosting Chickens Have Flu?
Fred Feldman
Lynching Ward Churchill
James Reiss
On Hearing About a Plot to Assassinate President Bush
Diane Christian
Bad
Blood: Ritual & Sexual Torture in Iraq
Website of
the Day
The Gray Line
February 23,
2005
Werther
The
Poisoned Well: What the CIA's Nazi Files Can Tell Us About Iraq
W. John Green
A Salvador Option for Iraq? How Negroponte Changes the Ground
Rules
James Petras
A New Face to Bush Foreign Policy?
Conn Hallinan
Cornering the Dragon: the Return of the China Lobby
Joe Pietri
Cannabis: the Goose that Lays Golden Eggs (For Consumers and
Cops)
Louis Proyect
Hunter Thompson and the "New" Journalism
Alexander Cockburn
Hunter
S. Thompson and Gonzo
Website of
the Day
Did You Make the Blacklist? Why Not?
February 22,
2005
Naseer Aruri
The
Politics of the Hariri Assassination: Remapping the Middle East
Richard Manning
The
Economy of Hunger: Starvation is Part of the Economic Plan
William A.
Cook
Righteous
Racism Running Rampant
Paul Craig Roberts
The Agents of Instability
Ken Krayeske
Dr. Thompson is Out
Dave Zirin
How the Owners Destroyed the NHL
Kirkpatrick
Sale
Imperial
Entropy: the Collapse of the American Empire
February 21,
2005
Hunter S. Thompson
"He
Was A Crook"
John Ross
Mexico:
the Pentagon's Proxy Army in Iraq
Ward Churchill
What Did I Really Say? Why Did
I Say It?
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Military Recruiting on Channel One: Geometry 101, Brought to
You by the US Navy
David Swanson
Fighting for a Living Wage, State by State
Dave Lindorff
All the News That's Fit to Fake
Stew Albert
Fear and Loathing: HST
Michael Neumann
Strategies
in Palestine: a Shrinking Pie in the Sky
February 19
/ 20, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Back
to Salem: Paul Shanley and the Return of "Recovered Memory"
Kathleen Christison
Struggling
for Justice in Palestine
Ted Honderich
On Being Persona Non Grata
Gary Leupp
Self-Hating Gays: Welcome to the White House & Welcome to
Commit Suicide
Don Santina
Reparations for the Blues
Jennifer Roesch
John Negroponte: Dirty Warrior
Scott Richard
Lyons
Ward
Churchill and the Identity Police
Chris Clarke
Ward Churchill and Liberal Outrage
George Beres
Censorship in the Land of Wayne Morse: Gagging W. Churchill in
Oregon
Harry Browne
The Belfast Heist: the Plot Unravels
Manuel García,
Jr.
Who Killed Rafik Hariri?
Mark Scaramella
Lessons from the Hidden Afghan War
Michael Donnelly
Whatever Happened to John Edwards?
John Pilger
First, They Attack the Past
Norman Madarasz
Death Wish for Reform in Brazil?
Surendra Devkota
The Monarchy in Nepal
Deborah Rich
How Anti-GMO Ballot Measures May Miss the Mark
Fred Gardner
When Dr. Tod Met Merle Haggard
CounterPunch
News Service
About King Mswati: Political Developments in Swaziland
Richard Oxman
CounterPunching Arthur Miller
Poets' Basement
Albert, Giebel, Tripp, Engel and Orkin
February 18,
2005
Ben Moxham
In
East Timor, the Nightmare Continues
Dave Lindorff
The
Scum Also Rises: the Bloody Career of John Negroponte
Larry Birns
Negroponte: a Resume of Death Squads, Deceptions and Bribery
Gregory Elich
N, Korea's Phantom Nukes and the US's Subversion of Diplomacy
Samuel Logan / John Meyers
The Future of Colombia's Paramilitary Death Squads
Nicole Colson
Shock and Awe on Civil Liberties: From Lynne Stewart to Ward
Churchill
Suzan Mazur
Whose National Security Are We Talking About?
Mickey Z.
"One
Man Has Stopped Killing"
February 17,
2005
Joshua Frank
Hogtying
of the Deaniacs
Paul Craig
Roberts
Bush's
Willing Sychophants: the Conservative Media
Robert Fisk
Under
the Shadow of Death in Lebanon
Christopher
Brauchli
Where
Time Stands Still: Kinsey and Darwin in Cobb County, GA
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Military
Recruitment TV: Why Send Them to College, When Your Kid Can be
Cannon Fodder?
Alison Weir
Russia, Israel and Media Omissions
Ahrar Ahmad
A Review of Shahid Alam's "Is There an Islamic Problem?"
Saul Landau
An
Interview with Cuban VP Ricardo Alarcon: "The US Tramples
the Laws It Wrote"
Website of the Day
Petition to Support Ward Churchill
February 16,
2005
Robert Fisk
Lebanon:
a Battlefield for the Wars of Others
Kevin Zeese
Creating a Real Ownership Society: Share the Wealth; Protect
Retirement
Gary Leupp
Meanwhile, in Nepal...
Ron Jacobs
Why the Iranian Opposition Should Not Trust the Bush Administration
Jessica Leight
Oil-Flush Chavez Begins to Strut His Stuff
Greg Moses
Houston, You've Got a Problem: Documenting Voting Irregularities
in Texas
Mark Engler
The Last Porto Alegre
Jack McCarthy
Where's the Outrage About Pat? Buchanan Does a Churchill
Bill Christison
US
Foreign Policy Dangerously Slanted Toward Israel
Website of the Day
The
World is Melting: a Photo Survey by Gary Braasch
February 15,
2005
CounterPunch
News Service
Dean
a "Safe" Moderate, Says NYT Citing CounterPunch
Robert Fisk
The
Killing of Mr. Lebanon
Uri Avnery
"Sharm-al-Sheikh,
We Have Come Back Again"
Stan Cox
Fighting Big Pharma in Little Digwal
Mickey Z.
Radio
Active North of the Border: an Interview with Chris Cook
Dave Zirin
Bashing Bush: Jose Canseco Comes Clean
Nadia Martinez
Ending
World Poverty? Opening at the World Bank, Apply Now
Lila Rajiva
"Little Eichmanns" and the 'Harijan': the Danger of
Magical Thinking in Politics
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
American Job Sell Out
February 14,
2005
Robert Jensen
Ward
Churchill: Right to Speak Out; Right About 9/11
Brian Cloughley
Kuwait's Freedom, Bush-style
Patrick Cockburn
Outcome
of the Iraqi Elections: Shortages, Corruption, Guerrilla War
Gary Leupp
Post-election Iraq: What Next?
Michael Donnelly
Sacred Nature: Just Another Commodity?
Dave Lindorff
When Bush Came to My Neighborhood
Elaine Cassel
The
Lynne Stewart Verdict
February 12
/ 13, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Ward
Churchill's Genes
Saul Landau
Alarcon
Speaks: an Interview with the Vice President of Cuba
Paul Craig
Roberts
Nothing
to Fear But Bush Himself
Patrick Cockburn
Two Years After the Fall of Saddam, the Resistance Controls All
Major Roads into Baghdad
John Feffer
Bush
v. N. Korea: Round Two
Mickey Z.
Right to Remain Silent; Duty to Speak
Kurt Nimmo
Viva la Cucaracha!
Fred Gardner
Waiting for Raich
Dave Zirin
Fighting the New Republic(ans)
John Chuckman
Hiroshima, Mon Amour
Ben Tripp
A Leftist on the Bush Payroll
Carol Norris
"Buddy, Can You Spare a Dwarf?"
Robert Fisk
No Middle East Peace Without Justice
Frank / Chowkwanyun
Muzzled Activist in an Age of Terror: the Case of Sherman Austin
Mike Whitney
Condi's Euro Tour
Deborah Frisch
A Psychologist's Defense of Ward Churchill
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Reading Khomeini in Colorado
Christine TenBarge
What's So Special About Ward?
Ron Jacobs
Curtis Mayfield's Train to Jordan
Dr. Susan Block
Chemistry of Love: a Valentine's Greeting
Poets' Basement
Louise, Smith-Ferri, Ford and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Free Sherman
February 11,
20055
Manuel Garcia,
Jr
The
Eight Percent War
Kurt Nimmo
Ann
Coulter's Racism: Where's Geronimo When You Really Need
Him?
Dave Lindorff
Guckert
or Gannon? The Perfect Plant; He Fit Right In
Larry Birns
War is Peace; Slavery is Freedom: Democracy According to Elliott
Abrams
Bill Quigley
Twenty Questions: a Social Justice Quiz
Tom Barry
Bush's State of Delusion
Jennifer Van
Bergen
Lynne
Stewart's Conviction Hurts Us All
February 10,
2005
Dave Lindorff
What
Academic Freedom?
Christopher Brauchli
The Love of Slaughter: From Rwanda to Iraq
Patrick Cockburn
In Baghdad, It's Easy to Get Killed
Nicole Colson
Have the Democrats Surrendered on Abortion Rights?
Suzan Mazur
More
on the Assassination of Lumumba from Mr. Garsin of Kinshasha
Michael Donnelly
Salvaging an Opposition
Mike Stark
Driving Ossie Davis: "Give Them a Little Truth, a Little
Hope"
Greg Moses
Taking
Jesus Back from the Hijackers
Website of
the Day
The Missionary Positions
February 9,
2005
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Duck
and Cover Redux: Bunker Busters and City Levellers
Mickey Z.
What Ward Churchill Didn't Say
John Ross
Hecho
en Mexico: the Iraqi Election
Tom Barry
Ambassador of Lies: Elliott Abrams, the Neocon's Neocon
Conn Hallinan
The
Coup in Nepal: Nursing the Pinion
Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Vision for Iraq: Cricket is Fine, But Chess is "Absolutely
Forbidden"
Steen Sohn
Danish PM Says It's OK for Israel to Violate UN Resolutions
Tim Wise
Reflections on Empire and Uppity Indians
Website of
the Day
Support Antiwar.com
February 8,
2005
Patrick Cockburn
Shia/Kurd
Coalition to Dominate New Iraqi Govt.: "It's an Electoral
Pact, Not a Party"
Brian Cloughley
Out
of the Mouths of Generals: "It's Fun to Shoot Some People"
Steve Breyman
Against the Selfishness of the "Ownership Society"
Harry Browne
"Don't
Get on that Plane!": Soldiers Seek Asylum in Ireland
Doug Giebel
"We Love Free Speech in America": the People, the President
and Ward Churchill
Nate Collins
The Censorship of Ward Churchill and Dancehall Reggae: It's the
Same Beast
Dave Lindorff
It's Time for a Labor-Oriented Newspaper
David Smith-Ferri
Sanctions and the Health Crisis in Iraq
February 7,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Bush's
War on Jobs
Carolyn Baker
The New McCarthyism on Campus: Churchill and the Attack on Higher
Ed
Joshua Frank
Marc Cooper's Hit List: First Mumia; Now Ward Churchill
Mickey Z.
Warning: More Hate Speech from W. Churchill
Patrick Cockburn
The
Kidnapping Gangs of Iraq
Mike Whitney
Tom Friedman: Scribe for New Age Imperialism
Stacie Jonas
Pinochet: Fit to be Tried
Dave Zirin
A Miserable Super Sunday: Clinton, Bush and the FBI
Tariq Ali
Imperial
Delusions
February 5
/ 6, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Ward
Churchill and the Mad Dogs
Kurt Nimmo
A Ward Churchill Kind of Day
Joshua Frank
Liberals Trash Ward Churchill
P. Sainath
Mumbai's Man-Made Tsunami
Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Triumph; Allawi's Bust
Laura Carlsen
Bush, Rice and Latin America
Dave Lindorff
How the NYT Killed the Bush Bulge Story
Pamela Olson
West Bank Story
Behzad Yaghmaian
The Future of Sudanese Refugees in the West
Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
A Threatened UN in King George's Court
Roger Burbach
World Social Forum: a Tale of Two Presidents
Robert Fisk
History by Laptop
David Swanson
James Forman and the Liberal-Labor Syndrome
Justin E.H. Smith
Gay Marriage: a Report from Canada
Cacie Hart
The "State" of the Union: More War and a Ban on Love
Ron Jacobs
Chairman Bob Avakian: a Revolutionary Life
Mickey Z.
Viewing America from the Outside
Ben Tripp
Republican Heroes: a New Breed of Good Guy
Ben Sonnenberg
France at the End of the Devil's Decade: Renoir's Rules of the
Game
Poets' Basement
Smith-Ferri, Davies, Collins, & Albert
Website of
the Weekend
John Trudell: How to Earn a 17,000 Page FBI File
February 4,
2005
Brian Cloughley
The
Army Symphonist: "Sometimes the Only Way to Change the Behavior
of Someone Like That is to Kill Them"
Bill Christison
Election
Parallels: Vietnam, 1967; Iraq, 2005
Elaine Cassel
Did Zoloft Make Him Do It?
Jacob Levich
Chomsky and the Draft
Kanak Mani Dixit
Return of the Royalists in Nepal
Ron Jacobs
The
Downward Spiral in Iraq
February 3,
2005
Ward Churchill
On
the Injustice of Getting Smeared: a Campaign of Fabrications
and Gross Distortions
Sharon Smith
Resisting
Soldiers Need Our Support
Mickey Z.
Leslie
Gelb Asks Iraq: Who's Your Daddy?
Mike Whitney
President of Alienation: a Desperate State of the Union
Jenna Orkin
9/11 the Sequel: the Toxic State of Lower Manhattan
Saul Landau
Elections Won't Prevent Civil War in Iraq
Yitzhak Laor
Strange is the Silence
Dave Lindorff
The
Assault on Social Security: a New Campaign of Lies
February 2,
2005
David Domke
/ Kevin Coe
Bush's
Brand of Christianity
Noam Chomsky
Iraq
After the Elections
M. Shahid Alam
O'Reilly's
Fatwah on "Un-American" Professors: FoxNews Puts Me
in Its Crosshairs
Richard Oxman
Ringing in 1984 with Ward Churchill and Derrick Jensen
Joshua Frank
The Suckering of Howard Dean
Dave Lindorff
A History Lesson from the NYT
Nina Hartley
Feminists for Porn
Website of the Day
War is a Racket
February 1,
2005
Joshua L. Dratel
The
Torture Memos
Patrick Cockburn
New Doubts About Allawi
Robert Fisk
"The Only Decent Food We Get is at Funerals"
Uri Avnery
The Stalemate
Col. Dan Smith
"W" Stands for Withdrawal
Alison Weir
Making America as "Secure" as Israel
Alan Farago
Heaven and Hell in the Everglades
Ray Hanania
Low Voter Turnout of Iraqi Expatriates: Less Than 10% of Qualified
Voters
Paul Craig
Roberts
American
Police State
Website of the Day
Statisticians Refute Official Rationale for Exit Poll Errors
December 22,
2004
James Petras
An
Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre
Historical Amnesia
Omar Barghouti
The Case for Boycotting Israel
Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond
They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit
Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge
Richard Oxman
On the Seventh Column
Kathleen Christison
Imagining
Palestine
Website of the Day
FBI Torture Memos
December 21,
2004
Greg Moses
The
New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV
Dave Lindorff
Losing
It in America: Bunker of the Skittish
Chad Nagle
The View from Donetsk
Dragon Pierces
Truth*
Concrete
Colossus vs. the River Dragon: Dislocation and Three Gorges Dam
Patrick Cockburn
"Things Always Get Worse"
Seth DeLong
Aiding Oppression in Haiti
Ahmad Faruqui
Pakistan and the 9/11 Commission's Report
Paul Craig
Roberts
America
Locked Up: a System of Injustice
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
March 2, 2005
Criminalizing Environmental Protests
The
State of Oregon vs. Mike Roselle
By
MIKE ROSELLE
When it comes to civil liberties, most
people will remember 9/11 and the Patriot Act. But if you are
a treehugger, you will probably remember when the federal government,
and some states, started taking the gloves off back in the mid-eighties.
The commencement was a series of laws passed to target a perceived
eco-terrorist threat, following the widely publicized sawmill
accident in Sonoma County where a young mill worker was injured.
A spike in a tree caused a saw blade to snap and hit the worker.
It was no matter that the spike was placed by an enraged local
landowner and not by any of the activists trying to protect the
last old-growth Redwoods on the Pacific Coast. The national news
media cranked up the story that eco-terrorists were everywhere
planning violence and a series of new laws were passed to deter
them from wreaking havoc on the beleaguered timber industry.
Most of these new laws didn't
distinguish much between property destruction, peaceful protest
and acts of civil disobedience. Within a decade, every western
state would have laws making it an offense, subject to imprisonment,
to halt, impede, hinder, obstruct or delay a timber sale. Some
of these laws, like the notorious Idaho "Earth First! Law,"
made it a felony to conspire to or advocate any of those actions.
During debates on the House floor, outraged legislators said
the law was intended to apply to professional radical environmentalists
who recruited innocent kids from college campuses, and sent them
off to block legal-logging operations, and take food out of the
mouths of working families. Imagine!
Back at Cove/Mallard Coalition
International World Headquarters in Dixie, Idaho the response
to the new felony law was predictable. We went to a bunch of
college campuses with Uncle Ramon and Robert Hoyt and other professional
agitators. Robert Hoyt had carefully crafted a song with the
intent of breaking the law (it was vetted by our lawyers). We
intended to recruit a bunch of new students to block, impede,
halt, obstruct, and otherwise obliterate logging in the Cove/Mallard
Timber Sale. We continued to block the road until the U.S. Forest
Service was halted, impeded, blocked and obliterated in Federal
court. It turned out that the logging in Cove/Mallard never was
legal after all.
Oregon, that famed bastion
of civil liberties, has, of course, been at the center of the
efforts to nip this hippie treehugger rebellion in the bud longer
than anywhere else. Whether it's SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against
Public Participation) suits, felony charges, random arrests,
unconstitutional forest closures or just old fashioned police
violence, Oregon has seen it all. We have even seen the Sheriff's
department read us the 1875 Riot Act and arrest everybody on
site, including the press, for a simple sit-in at the Pyramid
Creek Timber Sale in the Cascades. As it turns out, you actually
have to read the riot act before you can make any arrests.
So, with all of this in mind,
about a year and a half ago I went down to Ashland, in Southwest
Oregon to join some local environmentalists from the Mazama Forest
Defense who were protesting an old-growth timber sale on BLM
lands in the Cow Creek watershed. I won't piss off my lawyer
by discussing the facts of the case, but somehow I got arrested
and taken to the Douglas County Jail in Roseburg and charged
with "Interfering With An Agricultural Operation,"
Oregon's latest version of the Earth First! Law.
It's been a year and a half
and I still haven't had a chance to enter a plea, but a lot has
happened since I was arrested. A number of other people have
been arrested at various anti-logging protests since the notorious
"Ag-Ops" law was enacted a couple of years ago. Most
of these defendants later agreed to plead guilty to lesser charges.
But, one case in Curry County, on Oregon's southern coast, did
make it in front of a Superior Court Judge before I was to appear
in court in Roseburg. Lauren Regan, staff attorney for the Civil
Liberties Defense Center (<mailto:cldc@efn.org>cldc@efn.org)
in Eugene, filed a motion to dismiss my charges on the grounds
that the law violated Oregon's constitution. The Judge in this
ultra-conservative, pro-logging county agreed and dismissed the
case.
Right before Christmas, Lauren
gave the Douglas County district attorney a copy of the same
motion she filed in Curry County, and said she intended to file
it in this case as well. Even though the Curry County Judge had
thrown out the charges, it seems that he was getting pressure
from the state attorney general to go ahead with the case. By
default, it seems, the first test of this law was going to be
mine.
Floyd and I flew out to Roseburg
from Alabama for my court appearance in early January. Lauren
was going to introduce a motion that was thicker than my rap
sheet, which was now on the prosecutor's desk. He had to spend
his Christmas vacation poring over it and studying the case law.
He gave a response that was prepared by the state attorney general's
office. After Lauren's presentation, the Judge asked a few technical
questions to which Lauren gave a five-minute response. The Prosecutor
did his best, but admitted he was a bit confused. I was now convinced
that the only person in the room that really understood what
was going on here was Lauren. The rest of us were just trying
to just look like we knew what was going on. But, by the time
I had heard all the arguments, I sure felt like my constitutional
rights had been violated.
The State of Oregon seems to
want to go to trial. Interfering with an agricultural operation
carries a maximum penalty of one year in jail. The rap sheet
that the prosecutor provided the court contained numerous violations,
including about a half dozen arrests for similar offenses in
Oregon over the last twenty years. This probably makes me the
worst possible defendant a lawyer could ever have. The Civil
Liberties Defense Center has been monitoring the Ag-Ops Law since
it was first debated in the State legislature. The Judge will
issue a decision sometime in the near future. I'll keep you posted.
Meanwhile, in another quasi-legal
matter, the House Ways and Means committee is investigating a
number of environmental organizations with ties to civil disobedience,
or as they call it, "illegal activity". Attorneys for
the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) have advised Randy Hayes
and I, among others, to expect a subpoena to appear in front
of the committee sometime in the near future. The committee is
responding to pressure from a few wise-use groups, including
Ron Arnold's Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise that has
convinced some committee members that RAN's famed banner-hangers
are engaging in some sort of tax fraud. This is based on a narrow
definition of civil disobedience, long rejected by advocates
of civil liberty, that only acts that violate unjust laws are
truly civil. Acts against private individuals or corporations,
this reasoning goes, cannot be targets of non-violent direct
action and still be protected as free speech. However, in a world
where corporate power is rapidly eclipsing that of the government's,
and in cases where corporate behavior sometimes violates existing
environmental laws, this narrow definition is in itself a denial
of our basic right to free speech.
Environmental groups often
have no other recourse than to directly intervene in the commission
of a crime in order for either the government to take the necessary
action or for the corporation to change their illegal behavior.
Given the great economic disparity between the environmentalists
and the industrialist developers they oppose, the ability to
generate coverage in the news media (itself controlled by the
same corporations) is difficult. Direct Action is often the only
way smaller public interest groups can level the playing field.
In most cases, any actual damages incurred during a protest are
slight, relative to the business of the company being targeted.
Usually the setbacks are smaller than the disruptions they would
encounter during a labor dispute, an extreme weather event, a
traffic jam or even a post Super Bowl hangover. Simply put, if
we want to halt the destruction of the environment it is not
enough to challenge unjust laws. We also have a civic responsibility
to do everything possible to see that existing environmental
laws are obeyed, especially when the government refuses to do
so.
There is one thing I'm fairly
certain about in this ongoing campaign of government intimidation
toward environmental activists. It is most often the fear of
the law and not the law itself that deters activists. If we are
afraid of exercising our rights to stand up to those who would
profit from the destruction of our planet, then the government
has already succeeded. If more people would have stood up to
Joseph McCarthy during his Red-Scare witch hunts, his little
reign of terror would have been stopped in its tracks before
it began. McCarthy often ignored people who were not afraid of
his House Committee on Un-American Activities and instead he
focused on those who he could easily intimidate. This created
a panic amongst those intimidated, and brought on and era of
self-censorship. We are within our rights to stand up for the
Earth, and to engage in the time-honored tradition of civil disobedience
as pioneered by the late Martin Luther King Jr., Henry David
Thoreau and Mahatma Gandhi, to name only a few. We need to stand
up for our rights and rally behind those who are being singled
out. With the help of people like Lauren Regan and the Civil
Liberties Defense Center, we plan to do just that. United we
stand, divided we fall.
Finally, last month I was in
Knoxville, Tennessee at a meeting on Mountain Justice Summer,
a campaign being planned for the southern Appalachians to address
the ongoing rape of the countryside by coal companies. Several
of the participants of the Mountain Justice meeting were planning
a summer of civil disobedience in the same fashion as Redwood
Summer and, of course, Freedom Summer in Mississippi, the seminal
anti-segregation campaign. An air of paranoia seemed to permeate
the air, and much of the discussion centered on the issue of
security. Safe houses, vouchers, applications and questionnaires,
among other provisions were being suggested to deal with "infiltrators"
and provocateurs. I was getting down right sentimental, this
reminding me of my earlier days with the Yippies! But, infiltrating
the Yippies was like infiltrating a marshmallow, as my old friend
Vinegar Ben used to say. We once had a Federal agent living with
us in Miami during the Republic Convention of 1972 that we kept
around because he had a car. When we had important meetings at
the house, we'd send him out shopping or more often, Dumpster
diving. We didn't really have any secrets, but we would have
been disappointed if we weren't infiltrated. My advice: don't
worry about the infiltrators if they have a car you can use.
Mike Roselle, "Man Without a Bioregion," is
cofounder of Earth First!; the Rainforest Action Network and the
Ruckus Society and has been instrumental in virtually every famous
GreenPeace stunt. "Nagasaki" has lost count of
how many times he has been arrested at nonviolent anti-war and
environmental Civil Disobedience actions in every region of the
country, as well as internationally. His dispatches from the
road can be read on Lowbagger.org.
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