Coming
in October
From AK Press
Today's
Stories
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Leavitt
for EPA Head? He's Much Worse Than You Thought
Recent
Stories
September 17, 2003
Timothy J. Freeman
The
Terrible Truth About Iraq
St. Clair / Cockburn
A
Vain, Pompous Brown-noser:
Meet the Real Wesley Clark
Terry Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Moore on Gen. Wesley Clark
Mitchel Cohen
Don't Be Fooled Again: Gen. Wesley Clark, War Criminal
Norman Madarasz
Targeting Arafat
Richard Forno
High Tech Heroin
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Website of the Day
The Ultimate Palestine Resource Site!
September 16, 2003
Rosemary and Walt Brasch
An
Ill Wind: Hurricane Isabel and the Lack of Homeland Security
Robert Fisk
Powell
in Baghdad
Kurt Nimmo
Imperial Sociopaths
M. Shahid Alam
The Dialectics
of Terror
Ron Jacobs
Exile at Gunpoint
Christopher Brauchli
Bush's War on Wages
Al Krebs
Stop Calling Them "Farm Subsidies"; It's Corporate
Welfare
Patrick Cockburn
The
Iraq Wreck
Website of the Day
From Occupied Palestine
September 15, 2003
Stan Goff
It Was
the Oil; It Is Like Vietnam
Robert Fisk
A Hail of Bullets, a Trail of Dead
Writers Bloc
We
Are Winning: a Report from Cancun
James T. Phillips
Does George Bush Cry?
Elaine Cassel
The Troublesome Bill of Rights
Cynthia McKinney
A Message to the People of New York City
Matthew Behrens
Sunday Morning Coming Down: Reflections on Johnny Cash
Uri Avnery
Assassinating
Arafat
Hammond Guthrie
Celling Out the Alarm
Website of the Day
Arnold and the Egg
September 13 / 14, 2003
Michael Neumann
Anti-Americanism:
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Jeffrey St. Clair
Anatomy of a Swindle
Gary Leupp
The Matrix of Ignorance
Ron Jacobs
Reagan's America
Brian Cloughley
Up to a Point, Lord Rumsfeld
William S. Lind
Making Mesopotamia a Terrorist Magnet
Werther
A Modest Proposal for the Pentagon
Dave Lindorff
Friendly Fire Will Doom the Occupation
Toni Solo
Fiction and Reality in Colombia: The Trial of the Bogota Three
Elaine Cassel
Juries and the Death Penalty
Mickey Z.
A Parable for Cancun
Jeffrey Sommers
Issam Nashashibi: a Life Dedicated to the Palestinian Cause
David Vest
Driving in No Direction (with a Glimpse of Johnny Cash)
Michael Yates
The Minstrel Show
Jesse Walker
Adios, Johnny Cash
Adam Engel
Something Killer
Poets' Basement
Cash, Albert, Curtis, Linhart
Website of the Weekend
Local Harvest
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 12, 2003
Writers Block
Todos
Somos Lee: Protest and Death in Cancun
Laura Carlsen
A Knife to the Heart: WTO Kills Farmers
Dave Lindorff
The Meaning of Sept. 11
Elaine Cassel
Bush at Quantico
Linda S. Heard
British
Entrance Exams
John Chuckman
The First Two Years of Insanity
Doug Giebel
Ending America as We Know It
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Blank Check Military
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Website of the Day
A Woman in Baghdad
September 11, 2003
Robert Fisk
A Grandiose
Folly
Roger Burbach
State Terrorism and 9/11: 1973 and 2001
Jonathan Franklin
The Pinochet Files
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Postcards to the President
Norman Solomon
The Political Capital of 9/11
Saul Landau
The Chilean Coup: the Other, Almost Forgotten 9/11
Stew Albert
What Goes Around
Website of the Day
The Sights and Sounds of a Coup
September 10, 2003
John Ross
Cancun
Reality Show: Will It Turn Into a Tropical Seattle?
Zoltan Grossman
The General Who Would be President: Was Wesley Clark Also Unprepared
for the Postwar Bloodbath?
Tim Llewellyn
At the Gates of Hell
Christopher Brauchli
Turn the Paige: the Bush Education Deception
Lee Sustar
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
Elaine Cassel
McCain-Feingold in Trouble: Scalia Hogs the Debate
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Hammond Guthrie
When All Was Said and Done
Website of the Day
Fact Checking Colin Powell
Hot Stories
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
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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September
18, 2003
Leavitt for Head of
EPA?
Much
Worse Than You Thought
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
As a rule, secretaries of the Interior Department
come from the West and directors of the Environmental Protection
Agency hail from the East. Ronald Reagan breached this cardinal
political tenet by picking Anne Gorsuch Burford of Colorado to
head his EPA department, with disastrous results. Burford resigned
in disgrace and narrowly escaped indictment. Her top aide, the
ridiculous Rita Levelle, wasn't so fortunate. She ended up doing
time in federal prison for lying to congress, a fall girl for
Burford.
Christie Todd Whitman, the ditzy director
of the EPA under George W. Bush, announced her resignation in
July to return to New Jersey and mull a run for the senate-a
project almost certainly doomed following recent disclosures
by the EPA's Inspector General that Whitman lied to the people
of the New York City metro area after 9/11, pronouncing the post-blast
air safe to breathe, when, all the while, she knew it was contaminated
with a deadly stew of toxins.
Many DC insiders presumed that Bush might
try to dampen the bellows about his scandalously pro-polluter
policies by tapping a slick fixer for the post, such as William
K. Reilly, who commanded the agency during his father's administration.
But no. Bush the younger, following the flagitious advice of
his political bantam Karl Rove, chose to follow in Reagan's inauspicious
footsteps. He drafted Mike Leavitt, the rightwing governor of
Utah.
Leavitt looked as surprised at the news
of his nomination, which must be approved by the senate, as Dan
Quayle did when got the call from George Bush the first. After
all, Governor Leavitt has never shown much interest in the EPA,
outside of battling to keep its regulatory arms from stifling
the smokestacks of Utah's polluters. As the leader of a renegade
group of western governors, Leavitt sent a memo to the Bush transition
team shortly after the 2000 election urging the new administration
to transfer most of the EPA's regulatory responsibilities to
the states. He even pushed for Bush to back a constitutional
amendment giving states control over federal lands and environmental
issues. Leavitt christened his plan Enlibra, which sounds like
some bizarre apparition from the Book of Mormon but boils down
to the environmental version of welfare reform.
Of course, Enlibra has already been given
a test-drive in Utah with unnerving results. In Leavitt's 12
years as governor, Utah has outpaced nearly every other state
in a dubious category: generation of toxic waste. The Beehive
State, the 37th most populous in the nation, now ranks second
in industrial pollution, trailing only Nevada.
But Utah may soon surpass its neighbor
to the West, especially with Leavitt at the helm of EPA. Already,
Utah boasts the two top polluters in the country Kennecott Copper
Company, located in Magna south of Salt Lake City, and the third
most toxic plant, USMagnesium Corp., whose deadly smelter towers
over the shores of the Great Salt Lake in Rowley, Utah.
It's stiff competition, but USMagnesium
may well rank as the sleaziest corporation in America. As the
sole producer of magnesium in the US, the company is a true monopoly
and acts like one. For years, it's smelter was the most toxic
smokestack in the world, belching chlorine-laden gas into the
skies of the Salt Lake Valley.
USMagnesium is owned by Wall Street raider
Ira Rennert, who refers to himself as "a financial Houdini"-an
appellation he earned by bilking bondholders out of millions
and skating away freely. From his Renco holding company, Rennert
commands a slate of corporations, including lead and coal mines,
a steel factory and AM General, which makes both the military
and SUV versions of the Humvee. In New York, he is known mainly
for building the biggest and gaudiest mansion in the Hamptons,
a 66,000 square foot palace with 29 bedrooms, 30 bathrooms and
two bowling alleys.
When EPA finally slapped USMagnesium,
then called MagCorp, with a lawsuit in 2000, Rennert crashed
the company, filing for bankruptcy instead of paying the fines.
Leavitt, a dutiful recipient of Rennert's campaign contributions,
lambasted the EPA for harassing one of Utah's finest corporate
citizens. The governor has repeatedly cited the bullying of MagCorp
as an example of EPA regulatory overkill.
But Rennert the raider didn't seem too
ruffled by it all. He swiftly reorganized the company, still
under his control, as USMagnesium and seems to have evaded liability
for his environmental crimes, much to the dismay of EPA regulators.
"We thought that bankruptcy might be a trick they would
pull," said EPA attorney Martin Hestmark.
But Rennert's revamped company faces
new charges. The BLM, far from the greenest agency in the government,
claims that USMagnesium has been systematically stealing minerals
from federal lands in the Salt Lake Basin. Meanwhile, the EPA
is attacking USMagnesium on another front, accusing the company
of sluicing toxic waste into unlined ditches feeding into a 400-acre
of pond of chemical sludge. EPA wants the waste treated before
it is disposed. Rennert contends that his company is exempted
from such trifles by 150-year old federal mining laws. Leavitt
apparently agrees.
As governor, Leavitt's pet project was
the Legacy Highway, a $1.9 billion four-lane monstrosity designed
to feed the every-expanding sprawl of Salt Lake City. There was
a problem from the start: the Great Salt Lake and hundreds of
wetlands that form one of the great shorebird nesting grounds
in North America. Leavitt ignored pleas from environmentalists
to avoid the wetlands and began paving them over in 1997, saying
that he was fulfilling the Mormon vision of Brigham Young to
transform the desert into an economic engine. A lawsuit filed
by environmental groups and the mayor of Salt Lake City followed
and last fall the conservative 10th Circuit Court of Appeals
slapped an injunction on Leavitt's highway saying it violated
federal clean water and wetland rules-regulations that the governor
will be responsible for enforcing as head of the EPA.
In 1991, an outbreak of whirling disease
struck Utah's trout population, killing thousands of fish, including
rare native cutthroat trout. Whirling disease is the piscine
equivalent of AIDS and now threatens native fish throughout the
Rocky Mountain region, from New Mexico to Montana. The source
of the contamination in Utah was traced back to the Rock Creek
Ranch, a commercial trout hatchery owned by the Leavitt family.
At the time, Mike Leavitt was director of the hatchery that spread
the deadly infection. (He later resigned and turned the daily
operations of the trout factory over to his brother.) The Utah
Department of Wildlife Resources launched an investigation and
found that the Leavitt business was operating without the mandated
inspections and far beyond the scope of their license.
"It must be pointed out that the
inappropriate transfer of live fish from [Road Creek Ranch] facilities
not having the necessary fish health approval resulted in the
transfer of Myxobolus cerebralis to other facilities," the
finding noted. "The other private growers in the area were
checked and found to be negative."
The Attorney General's Office filed charges
against the Leavitt fish enterprise, citing more than 30 violations
of state regulations. Leavitt resigned his position as hatchery
director and his company pleaded "No Contest" to the
charges.
Allegations later surfaced in the media
that someone at the Leavitt operation had intentionally dumped
whirling disease infected trout into six Utah rivers. The motive?
To wipe out native populations of cutthroat and rainbow trout
and have the state replace them by purchasing hatchery fish.
By this time, Leavitt was governor and the head of the DWR felt
uncomfortable in pursuing the matter. "I have not been able
to take some of the actions I would have liked out of fear that
I would do the Governor more harm than good," wrote Ted
Stewart, director of Utah's Department of Natural Resources,
in 1996.
Stewart had ample reasons to be cautious.
In 1994, Leavitt purged 10 biologists in Utah's Department of
Wildlife Resources, who had been holding up mining and logging
plans because of concerns over rare wildlife. "I blame the
political hacks from the governor on down," biologist Craig
Miya told High Country News a few days after being fired. "They've
gutted the agency for doing our jobs too damn well."
According to Todd Wilkinson's excellent
book, Science Under Siege, the replacement biologists were warned
"to refrain from identifying endangered species."
Even some corporations view Leavitt with
contempt. Earlier this year, the Outdoor Recreation Industry
Association threatened to move its annual trade show out of Utah
in protest of Leavitt's secret deal with Interior Secretary Gale
Norton which prevented the BLM from designating any new wilderness
study areas on federal land in Utah. The move opens up 6 million
acres of roadless land to ORVs, mining and oil leasing.
In April, Norton and Leavitt sealed another
backroom deal, which Utah greens dubbed the "pave the parks"
scam. Under this novel agreement, old hiking trails and wagon
roads through national parks, wildlife refuges and forests will
through the magic of bureaucratic redesignation now be considered
"constructed highways" and open to paving and attendant
development. Leavitt loves his roads.
Although the governor frequently attacks
the DC elites, he does enjoy backing from a cadre of longtime
Beltway insiders, headlined by Washington Post columnist David
Broder. The increasingly addled Broder, who lately put George
W. Bush on an intellectual par with FDR, anointed Leavitt as
an energetic middle-grounder, although he admitted that he knew
next to nothing about his environmental record in Utah. Nothing
excites Broder, who describes himself "an unabashed Leavitt
fan", like the middle-ground, even when the middle ground
is chocked with dioxins and PCBs. Broder declined to disclose
the level of cancer deaths he would find acceptable as a judicious
act of political statesmanship.
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 13 / 14, 2003
Michael Neumann
Anti-Americanism:
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Jeffrey St. Clair
Anatomy of a Swindle
Gary Leupp
The Matrix of Ignorance
Ron Jacobs
Reagan's America
Brian Cloughley
Up to a Point, Lord Rumsfeld
William S. Lind
Making Mesopotamia a Terrorist Magnet
Werther
A Modest Proposal for the Pentagon
Dave Lindorff
Friendly Fire Will Doom the Occupation
Toni Solo
Fiction and Reality in Colombia: The Trial of the Bogota Three
Elaine Cassel
Juries and the Death Penalty
Mickey Z.
A Parable for Cancun
Jeffrey Sommers
Issam Nashashibi: a Life Dedicated to the Palestinian Cause
David Vest
Driving in No Direction (with a Glimpse of Johnny Cash)
Michael Yates
The Minstrel Show
Jesse Walker
Adios, Johnny Cash
Adam Engel
Something Killer
Poets' Basement
Cash, Albert, Curtis, Linhart
Website of the Weekend
Local Harvest
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