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Cockburn / St. Clair's Scorching New History of a Decade of War Now Available! Today's Stories June 12 / 13, 2004 Peter Linebaugh Remembering the Common Hood: Soweto and Runnymede June 11, 2004 Alexander Cockburn Reagan in Truth and Fiction Ron Jacobs Ray Charles' Legacy of Spirit Chris Floyd Funeral Games Steven Sherman How Reagan Destroyed the Democrats and Paved the Way for Clinton Mokhiber / Weissman Remembering Reagan Norman Solomon Media's Mourning in America Paul Alexander The Kerry Fantasies of Chalmers Johnson CounterPunch Wire The Terror Hour: Miami TV Station Invites Commandoes to Talk About Planned Attacks on Cuba     June 10, 2004 Noam Chomsky The Apotheosis of Reagan : Divinity Through Marketing Gary Leupp Bush, the Religious Scholar Patrick Cockburn The Iraqi Street Has Spoken: New Govt. Made Up of CIA Pawns Saul Landau Force-Feeding Lies About Free Trade Scott Evans Settling for the System: How Punkvoter.com Became Just Another Tool of the Democrats Jacob Levich John Kerry's World of Hurt: Senator Supports Beam Weapons Zeynep Toufe Reagan, Neo-Cons and the "Intelligence Failures" Nico Pitney Reform at Wal-Mart? Dave Zirin Son of a Reagan: What a Sporty 6-Year Old Saw at the Revolution Jack McCarthy Where Were You When Reagan Croaked? Gary Corseri Nouns That Should be Acronyms David Price Reagan and the Black Budget Website of the Day Inequality by the Numbers   June 9, 2004 Mustafa Barghouthi Israel's Common Use of Torture Must be Exposed Mike Whitney Alan Dershowitz, Still Defending Torture John Chuckman Why the CIA will Always be a Costly Flop Jim Tarbell / Roger Burbach Bush's Democratic Charade in Iraq Dave Lindorff Put Reagan on the $3 Bill Miguel D'Escoto Reagan was the Butcher of My People Becky Burgwin The Betrayal of Smarty Jones: Flogging a Natural Born Hero Patrick Cockburn The Rich Have Been Warned to Leave Baghdad   June 8, 2004 Jeffrey St. Clair The Nature of Ronald Reagan: Will the Earth Accept His Corpse? Dave Lindorff The March on Rumsfeld's House: Is the US Anti-War Movement Running Out of Steam? Phillip Cryan Torture, Bombings & the Press in Colombia Mark Zepezauer Getting Reagan Wrong Mickey Z. Reagan, Radicals and Repetitive Reactions John L. Hess Reagan and Bush in Normandy Alex Dawoody Reagan and Saddam: the Unholy Alliance Christopher Fons Reagan in a Word: Mean Niranjan Ramakrishnan Some Tenets are More Important Than Others Ahmed Bouzid Nothing New Under the Israeli Sun Michael Leon Bush the Narcissist   June 7, 2004 Jason Leopold New Enron Docs Show Lay and Skilling Knew of California Trading Schemes Patrick Cockburn The Baghdad Bombings: the Pattern of Attacks is Changing Dennis Hans From Afghanistan to El Salvador: Reagan's Dark Global Legacy Tracy McLellan Nader at the National Press Club: a Glimpse at a Different Kind of Politics Bill Blum The Myth of the Gipper: Reagan Didn't End the Cold War Ben Tripp What I Owe Reagan: the Brylcreemed Bullshitter Susan Davis Reagan, In a Nutshell Phil Gasper Reagan: Goodbye and Good Riddance Website of the Day A Child's ABCs of Terrorism June 5 / 6, 2004 C. Douglas Lummis Toward a Universal Declaration of Human Wrongs Saul Landau Five Cubans in Prison, Victims of Bush's Obsession Dave Lindorff John Walker Lindh, Revisited Brian Cloughley Apologies, Please, From Those Who Got It Wrong Rich Gibson The Grenada 17: the Last Prisoners of the Cold War are Black Elaine Cassel A Sorry FBI Cathrin Schütz On the Ruins of Yugoslavia Ben Tripp Call Me, Mr. Cassandra Kurt Nimmo The Madness of King George Ron Jacobs They Ain't Goin' Nowhere (Unless We Make It So) Laura Flanders The Lynne Cheney Show? Lenni Brenner Renaissance Noir: Caravaggio at the Met Abigail Jones Whatever Happened to Lori Berenson, President Toledo's Trophy Prisoner? Mark Latham Nothing Bush Said Has Changed Our Hopes Gerry Adams I Was Photographed While Tortured, Too Toni Solo Venezuela 2004, Nicaragua's Contra War Reprised Derek Seidman Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old M. Junaid Alam Torture is Just the Symptom Matt Siegfried An American Way of War Dave Zirin The Politics of Charles Barkley Poets' Basement Albert, Krieger, St. Clair Website of the Weekend Overnight Sensations   June 4, 2004 Chris Floyd Masked and Anonymous: Inside America's Animal House Cornwell / Penketh Exit Tenet: the Fall of a Fall Guy Wayne Madsen Apprehension & Frustation: Neo-Cons on the Brink Greg Moses Agitating for Workers' Rights in Iraq Yitzak Laor Before Rafah Ghali Hassan Ambassador to Death Squads: Who is Negroponte? Jane Stillwater God, the Rapture and Vera Casey CounterPunch Wire D-Day Reconsidered: Was It Really Worth the Carnage? John Borowski Woo-Wooism v. Meteorites: Why the Dems Are No Match for Bush Mike Griffin Caterpillar's Assault on the UAW Alexander Cockburn Has Bush Gone Over the Edge? Website of the Day Aquae Urbis Romae: Water and Empire     June 3, 2004 Ron Jacobs Iran's Nuclear Dilemma Dr. Susan Block America in tha Hood Michael Donnelly The Bully and the Brahmin John Chuckman Insanity in America: US Ranks Number One in the Deranged Christopher Brauchli The Return of Cardinal Law: Rome on $12,000 a Month Samia Nassar Melki Caravaggio in Iraq Mike Whitney Subverting Justice: Pre-Trial Ruminations in the Padilla Case Diane Rejman Memorial Day Isn't Just About the Dead Scott Morris "WMDs" in Cuba Paul de Rooij Palestinian Misery in Perspective     June 2, 2004 Brian Cloughley The Liars are Winning Ray McGovern How Far Would They Go? Beware "Credible Intelligence" Josh Frank The Anybody But Bush Offensive Mike Whitney The Afghanistan Failure: Bush's Warlord Patriots Jackie Corr Iraq and Ireland: Three Tales from Butte, Montana Robert Jensen The US Lost the Iraq War...and It's a Good Thing, Too Alexander Cockburn "Bye, Bye Boonville!"   June 1, 2004 Gary Leupp Instant Karma: Bush's Sins Catch Up with Him William A. Cook Manufacturers of Fear and Loathing in Rafah Dave Lindorff Will the Times Clean House? Kevin Zeese Inside the Kerry / Nader Meeting: Did the Kerry Campaign Lie About What Was Discussed? Jacob Levich Coming Soon: Return of the Draft, a Bipartisan Production Kathy Kelly Voices in the Wilderness v. the US Government Website of the Day Remind Us     May 29 / 31, 2004 Lee Ballinger / Dave Marsh The Origins of Memorial Day Janine Pommy Vega Memo for Memorial Day Mike Ferner On Their Way to Abu Ghraib Alfred W. McCoy The Cruel Shadow: the Long History of CIA Torture Research Douglas Valentine An Open Letter to the NYT: Questions, Questions, Questions Chris White First to Fight Culture: a Former Marine on the Marine Motto Bruce Anderson The Awful Injustice to Tai Abreu David Vest Get Ready for Kerry's War: the 100 Year Quagmire Saul Landau Torture: the Logical Outcome of Bush's War for Democracy? Kurt Nimmo Abu Hamza al-Mazri, Made in the USA Elaine Cassel The Secrets of Surveillance: Ashcroft, Snoops, and Gag Orders Will Potter The New War on "Terror": Protest the Torture of Chimps; Get Arrested as a "Terrorist" Ben Tripp They Fiddled While Nero Got the Matches Dr. Susan Block Save Abu Ghraib! Kia Kojouri Nukes, the US, Israel and Iran: an Interview with Sasan Fayazmanesh Mickey Z D-Day: 60 Years is Enough! Jon Brown Correcting the Correction at the Times Patrick B. Barr Pre-emptive War Insurance Stephen Gowans Bad Apples in a Bad Barrel Tom Gorman Gore on Bush in Iraq: the Approach May be Exotic, But It's Hardly New Dave Zirin Fighting for Boxers' Rights: an Interview with Eddie Mustafa Muhammad Gregory Weiher Bush to Arabs: "Go Get Yourself Some Democracy" Erik Cummings Jung Meets Bush Poets' Basement Davies, Ford, Kearney, McLellan and Albert   May 28, 2004 Rafael Rodriguez Cruz Curtain of Silence on the Cuban 5 Greg Moses Bush's Misleading Speech on Abu Ghraib Dave Lindorff Dissing Independent Contractors: Those Who Do the Dirty Work Norman Solomon Leaping for Lies at the Times Rep. Bill Delahunt Bush's Cruel New Rules on Cuba Paul McGeough Chalabi Baba and the 40 Thieves Niranjan Ramakrishnan India and Nehru: 40 Years After Alexander Cockburn NYTs: "Maybe We Did Screw Up...a Little"     May 27, 2004 Amy Goodman / David Goodman Fatal Errors: the Lies of Our Times Douglas Valentine Ragging the Dogs of War at the NYTs John L. Hess The Times Confesses...Kind Of Stew Albert Dellinger, the Wrestling Pacifist Dave Dellinger a 1993 Interview Christopher Brauchli Tax Breaks for Scions...to Hell with Poor Kids Rampton / Stauber Banana Republicans: Pumping Irony     May 26, 2004 Ron Jacobs Goodbye, David Dellinger: He Was a Friend of Ours Robert Fisk The Things Bush Didn't Say in His Speech Zeynep Toufe New Draft UN Resolution Permits Perpetual Occupation Conn Hallinan Bush and Sharon: the Oil Connection Tom Stephens 2 + 2 is On My Mind: More Morons and War Crimes Derek Medley Protesting Gov. Bigot CounterPunch Wire FBI Abducts Artist; Seizes Art Andrew Cockburn The Trail to Tehran   May 25, 2004 Joe Bageant The Covert Kingdom: On Earth as It is in Texas Col. Dan Smith A Question of Human Dignity Gary Handschumacher Visiting Lori Berenson: Time to Bring Her Home Toni Solo A Developing War in the Andes Marc Estrin September Song: Disturbing Questions About 9/11 Stephen Banko, III A Vietnam Vet on "Supporting the Troops" Website of the Day The Wizard of Whimsy May 24, 2004 Ron Jacobs Dan Senor is Safe! Kurt Nimmo Dirty Tricks & TortureGate: the Missing Taguba Pages Sam Hamod Gen. Zinni: "Wrong War, Wrong Place, Wrong Time" Mike Whitney The Wedding was a Bomb Stan Goff Open Season on MAMs Image of the Day A Photo from Abu Ghraib We Didn't See on the Front Page of the NYTs     May 22 / 23, 2004 Paul de Rooij Colin Powell, a Political Obituary Jeffrey St. Clair When War is Swell: Bush and the Carlyle Group Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg Her Son Was Told He Wouldn't See Combat; Now He's Dead: an Interview with Sue Niederer Brian Cloughley America is Committing War Crimes in Iraq Saul Landau Democracy in Latin America: Great for Investors; Not So Good for People Brandy Baker Feminists Stand By Their Man: Abortion, Judges and Kerry Randall Robinson Bushwhacked in the Caribbean Uri Avnery The Rape of Rafah Ben Tripp Assume the Worst Bruce Anderson News from Ecotopia: the Truth About the Wine Business Josh Ruebner Why I Burned My Israeli Military Papers Peter Wolson, Ph. D. Exhibitionistic Revenge at Abu Ghraib Chloe Cockburn In Defense of "Troy": What Hector Could Teach Rummy Linda Burnham Sexual Domination in Uniform: an American Value Adrien Rain Burke War of the Necrophiliacs: Spc. Sabrina Harman and Her Corpse David Krieger Charting a New Course for US Nuclear Policy Ron Jacobs Turnaround Poets' Basement Ford, Albert & LaMorticella   May 21, 2004 Ray Close The Canards of the Apologists Christopher Brauchli "The Object of Torture is Torture" Amira Hass Darkness at Noon Jack McCarthy Camilo Mejia: Can the Son of a Sandinista Get a Fair Trial from the US Army? Bill Kauffman Nader v. Bush Omar Barghouti No More Tears for America Ghali Hassan Moral Failure of the "Free World" in Gaza Christopher Reed How the CIA Taught the Portuguese to Torture Website of the Day Eric Idle on the Bush Administration: Fuck You, So Very Much   May 20, 2004 Andrew Cockburn The Truth About Chalabi Kathy Kelly A Visit from the FBI Niranjan Ramakrishnan Brown and Bored of Education in India Tom Stephens & John Philo The War Crimes of Bush, Cheney & Co. Sam Bahour / Michael Dahan Genocide by Public Policy Robert Ovetz Ending the Race for the Last Turtle Billy Wilson The Most Important Thing I Learned at School This Year Website of the Day Rafah Today         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.     Subscribe Online

Weekend Edition June 12 / 13, 2004 A Lightship in the Forest Greenpeace Docks in the Siskiyous By MICHAEL DONNELLY In 2002, a forest fire burned over some 500,000 acres in southern Oregon's Siskiyou Wild Rivers region. The Biscuit Fire burned for weeks, over $150 million was spent as an army of firefighters bulldozed and back-burned huge fire breaks to corral the flames in a perimeter before Mother Nature, as usual, stepped in and doused the embers. Traveling through the burn area this week, I got a feel for the scale and severity of the blaze. Some areas, many those that were back-burned, were burnt to a crisp with little growing back two years later, though here and there plots of spectacular wildflowers gave color to the otherwise gray landscape. Other areas showed a classic mosaic pattern with some trees burned and others right next to the charred stalks thriving as if no fire ever occurred. The Forest Service's (USFS) own post-fire assessment classified approximately 61 percent of lands within the burn perimeter as unburned or low burn severity. Only 16 percent of the fire was classified as high severity, where crown fire consumed foliage. A subsequent assessment found that less than half of the fire area suffered greater than 75 percent tree kill. The Kalmiopsis Wilderness Area's close to 180,000 acres are entirely within the fire perimeter. In fact, almost 73 percent of the fire burned in Wilderness and inventoried Roadless Areas which is why only a handful of dwellings -- just four houses -- burned. Yet, the Forest Service spent all that money and back-burned areas that would not have burned at all -- or might have burned at much less intensity and forest mortality. Real Fire Threat Reduction Can you just imagine if that $150 million had been spent proactively on fuels reduction plans around human settlements? How about a system of shaded fuel breaks? These are known to reduce fuel load and help prevent an area from drying out and becoming more flammable while at the same time providing wildlife habitat. How about zoning more fire resistant materials in building? And how abut addressing the zoning that allows for housing to be built in especially fire prone areas? That certainly affects insurance rates of everyone, not to mention, putting firefighters lives at risk. It's taking insurance companies refusing to cover new dwellings built on floodplains for zoning to catch up to that problem. The forests have always burned. Certainly years of government-funded Smokey the Bear fire suppression successes have intensified the severity of the burns by increasing the fuel loads. This requires dedicated government funding for these proven methods of fire prevention which are more cost efficient and least harmful to the overall environment. The money saved leaving the burned outback alone can be far better spent protecting existing homes while the wild lands heal themselves, again far less expensively than more invasive management. Hazard Trees As I drove the winding road along the Illinois River, salvage logging of "hazard" trees was in full swing. Grit covered men were doing the dirty work of cutting any big dead tree along the road. Apparently the thousands of small diameter trees that are just as dead and just as likely to fall on the road are not "hazards" and are being left behind as the big logs roll to the mills. Huge piles of definitely fire prone logging slash are all over the place. Even "hazard" trees well on the downhill side of the road which couldn't even reach the road should they fall are being cut. Already some 10 million board feet (thousands of trees) have been cut under an emergency Categorical Exclusion clause that allows the logging to go forward without challenge under environmental laws. On June 1st, the Forest Service released the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) on the Biscuit "Salvage" Plan. The FEIS calls for logging an additional 370 million board feet over 19,000 acres of the burn. It mostly prescribes use of existing roads using helicopters, deemed too expensive by many mills, to haul the trees to landings on the already extensive road network. In a last minute plan secretly hatched by the Forest Service, Oregon politicians and unknown others, the FEIS also recommends an additional 60,000 acres be added to the existing Wilderness. Study upon study show that logging after a fire is extremely detrimental to the restoration of the forest and wildlife. It only makes things worse -- compacting soils, removing what little shade remains, introducing exotic plant species that hitchhike on logging equipment, conversion to monoculture tree farms, etc. But, just as fear of terrorists is used by the administration to sway opinion, so is our natural fear of fire being used to justify increased logging, again far away from most human settlement. These forests evolved with fire and we'll always have fires -- the timber companies count on it. When I worked in the lumber mills in my youth the saying was "The blacker the trees; the greener the paycheck." The Biscuit Post-fire logging sale is also predicted to be one of the largest money losing timber sales ever. The USFS historically has lost a lot of money dishing out these sales to industry. Some estimates say the timber sale program costs the Treasury over $1 billion per year in direct costs, not even considering the loss of nature's inventory. The proposed 370 million board feet of "salvaged" timber will cost the taxpayers over $40 million to sell. Again, if that kind of subsidy were given to fireproofing residential areas, homeowners and taxpayers, not to mention ecosystems, would all benefit at a much better cost-benefit ratio. With a timber sale this big (largest in memory) it's a given that forest preservation activists will zero in, even with the possible new Wilderness come-on, as the Bush administration has made the Biscuit ground zero in their efforts to increase logging on Public Lands. And Post-fire logging is the mechanism of the new millennium On Your Mark... In a letter dated June 3, Regional Forester Linda Goodman granted emergency status to 11 timber sales comprising 80.4 million board feet that lie within so-called matrix areas designated for logging under the Northwest Forest Plan, and old growth forest reserves where fish and wildlife habitat are the top priorities. The sales are scheduled for auction July 8th. Goodman denied emergency status for 24.6 million board feet lying within inventoried roadless areas. The emergency declaration allows logging to go forward while the regional forester's office considers any administrative appeals from the public. It remains to be seen how the incursion into the Late Successional Reserves (LSRs) will be taken by all parties. The matrix forests were already consigned to sacrifice zone status with the embrace of Clinton's 1994 Northwest Forest Plan. The entire purpose of the LSRs was so that enough of them were set aside so that dependent species could handle such a catastrophic event as this fire and recover naturally. The Local Interests All this cheap timber has the local mill owners salivating. They have been meeting with the USFS, developers, various Wise Use advocates and, of course, one foundation-paid "green" with one eye on the money to be made (subsidized timber AND foundation grants) and the other on the sure-to-come resistance to the logging scheme. The group's sole output has been a shameless "Listen Up, Outsiders" press release, complete with allusions to activist-instigated "violence," which was published in the local papers. It partly reads: "Welcome to our community...Loggers, mill workers, forest service staff, environmentalists and concerned citizens are all neighbors; each represent pieces of the patch-work quilt that is the fabric of our community. Do express yourself while here, but please do not interrupt the dialogue developing among us -- in fact, you might even want to listen in." Of course, this begs the question; who gets to dialogue and who just listens in? As longtime activist Tim Ream noted, "We all know that if National Forest management decisions were left up to those who live closest to the trees that we'd have lost most everything in the country by now." Ultimately, it's not going to be the locals who decide it. As Bob Dole used to say, "I know it. You know it. The American people know it." And these are the public's forests and we all know it. That's the real reason for the preemptive strike by "local' interests. That a foundation sponsored local group presumed to represent all concerned environmentalists and went along with it shows just how bankrupt the foundation strategy has become. They ALL fear real activists weighing in. Resistance at Kelsey-Whiskey And, indeed, the activists have shown up. Greenpeace has docked, joining local group KS Wild in defending the nearby forests. Driving the back roads along the spectacular Wild Rogue River, I stopped at many lookouts and gazed over the non-burned forest there. A diverse forest, luminescent with new growth, stretched all along the steep canyons. Pure white water pools, riffles and falls roared below. Fir, madrone, incense cedar, tan oaks, chinquapin and a variety of pines populate the region. The staggering beauty has been the backdrop for numerous movies -- notably Rooster Cogburn and The River Wild. Soon, the road became gravel and left the Rogue and ascended up the ridges and through a sea of clearcuts and plantations in an area managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). After the long climb, a turn down a side road brings one to the Greenpeace Forest Rescue Station, the first in North America. There activists have set up camp for the duration -- planning to stop the Biscuit "Salvage" and the BLM's massive Kelsey-Whiskey Timber Sale which would cut around the 46,464-acre Zane Grey Roadless Area, the BLM's largest forested roadless area nationwide. It's nothing but wild lands from the ridgetop all the way down Kelsey Creek to the Rogue River and on to the Pacific Ocean. The Rescue Station is on road right on the edge of an ancient forest that is scheduled to be cut as part of the Kelsey-Whiskey TS. Here the trees aren't burned, so the reason for logging is instead given as the trees are old, decadent and dying and need to be cut and replaced with new young trees in what they euphemistically call a Regeneration Harvest. The plan here is to "Regeneration Harvest" 9 million board feet over 500 acres with an additional 1100 impacted by "thinning" and road construction and reconstruction. The first thing one sees upon arrival at the Rescue Station is a fluorescent green dome, a recycled leftover once used at a Mars Candy Co. garden party unveiling new M&Ms that color. (Rumors flying through the larger community had it that rapper Eminem donated the dome and another blue one that serves as the main kitchen. Kinda makes one wish he would plug in.) The dome serves as the information center, complete with photos, literature and an area for educational trainings. Next to the dome is a fully equipped baby blue fire truck complete with enough hose to reach the entire encampment. A satellite communications truck sits nearby. Bright red hard-shelled "apple domes" and large Quonset-style tents sit behind -- recycled from past Arctic campaigns, complete with Save the Arctic logos. The apple domes serve for splendid bear-proof food storage. One Quonset is used as HQ. Solar panels provide the power to run the off-grid camp. Tireless campaigner Ginger Cassady runs an urban interface office set up in nearby Grants Pass, Oregon, allowing for easier access for media and communications. Off to the side, just inside the boundaries of the proposed Kelsey-Whiskey sale, are two large platforms suspended some 100 feet up in the ancient trees. This being Greenpeace, a Zodiac inflatable boat serves as elevator between the ground and the platforms. The platforms are painted in Greenpeace colors -- yellow with Forest Rescue Station lettered on the sides. Groups of folks train in climbing techniques and other small groups go on botanical ID hikes through the forest. I take in the hike with Hazel and Rain, two women quite knowledgeable of the flora and the politics of the area. The BLM has marked the few trees that won't be cut with orange paint, claiming "this isn't a clearcut." It appears to me that they've painted about two to three trees per acre! Recruitment Pitch The entire show is run as a Greenpeace ship complete with crew. "It took two days for the basic infrastructure to get set up and it's been evolving ever since," reports Bill Richardson, Greenpeace's longtime Campaigns Director. The purpose of the state-of-the-art encampment is to educate and empower the hundreds of forest defenders who have begun to arrive. Longtime Greenpeacer (and Earth First! cofounder) Mike Roselle can be found in the blue M&M dome where he runs the kitchen. Together with another veteran activist, Joe Keating of the Sierra Club and Back to the WALL (witness against lawless logging) and a crew of younger activists, Mike puts out a fine meal this misty day. At the end of it, sitting around the fire barrel, Mike notes, "I'm here until it's over. Until they cancel the sales. In fact, I see this as liberated land we need to reclaim from wrongdoers under Mother Nature's Eco Act. All this gear here belongs to the people. Anyone who wants to come and help is welcome. Male, female, Democrat, Republican, Anarchist, old, young...you name it. All are welcome." And, one can help not just by showing up at the Rescue Station - though that's highly recommended -- but, also by checking in on the website and/or donating to the cause. You can contact Ginger and crew through the website for all the info you'll need. Bill Richardson takes it further and explains that this is just the first Rescue Station and that the 300,000 member group has plans for two more for North America. One will be in the George Washington National Forest in Virginia and the other in our largest Ancient rainforest - Alaska's threatened Tongass National Forest. The Greenpeace ship, Arctic Sunrise, is on the way and will dock in Portland July 2nd for a support rally. (The Sunrise, an icebreaker, is a former sealing ship that Greenpeace once protested upon, but later bought and refitted.) It's all part of a larger strategy to save the remnants of the North American Rain Forests. The Rescue Station is an excellent movement building skill/building exercise and it truly is a national campaign. As Roselle has noted, "It's no longer just about Dinky Creek up the Whatamacallit River. It's way past time to end Ancient Forest logging on ALL Public Lands. These are our lands. They don't belong to the timber beasts; they belong to themselves and the species that live here." On my way back to my home bioregion, I pass through Grants Pass. I notice a plethora of new colorfully painted, full-sized bear sculptures adorning the city's downtown sidewalks. I then notice a sculpture of eagles and salmon on the railings of the Rogue River Bridge. A few years ago, forest activist and Presidential Point of Light award winner, Jeremy Hall and I came up with the Donnelly-Hall dictum; "The more endangered a species becomes, the more artistic renderings of said species become popular." (Think pandas and whales.) Forest and freedom loving Greenpeace activists and others are on the scene making sure that the real versions continue to live wild on our wondrous planet. MICHAEL DONNELLY can be reached at pahtoo@aol.com Weekend Edition Features for June 5 / 6, 2004 C. Douglas Lummis Toward a Universal Declaration of Human Wrongs Saul Landau Five Cubans in Prison, Victims of Bush's Obsession Dave Lindorff John Walker Lindh, Revisited Brian Cloughley Apologies, Please, From Those Who Got It Wrong Rich Gibson The Grenada 17: the Last Prisoners of the Cold War are Black Elaine Cassel A Sorry FBI Cathrin Schütz On the Ruins of Yugoslavia Ben Tripp Call Me, Mr. Cassandra Kurt Nimmo The Madness of King George Ron Jacobs They Ain't Goin' Nowhere (Unless We Make It So) Laura Flanders The Lynne Cheney Show? Lenni Brenner Renaissance Noir: Caravaggio at the Met Abigail Jones Whatever Happened to Lori Berenson, President Toledo's Trophy Prisoner? Mark Latham Nothing Bush Said Has Changed Our Hopes Gerry Adams I Was Photographed While Tortured, Too Toni Solo Venezuela 2004, Nicaragua's Contra War Reprised Derek Seidman Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old M. Junaid Alam Torture is Just the Symptom Matt Siegfried An American Way of War Dave Zirin The Politics of Charles Barkley Poets' Basement Albert, Krieger, St. Clair Website of the Weekend Overnight Sensations WWW http://www.counterpunch.org   Keep CounterPunch Alive: Make a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online! home / subscribe / about us / books / archives / search / links /