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Today's
Stories
May
4, 2004
Kurt
Nimmo
The CIA Privatized Torture
May
3, 2004
Virginia
Tilley
Let the Wall of Silence Fall
May
1 / 2, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
An Army in Disgrace, a Policy
in Tatters, the Real Prospect of Defeat
Robert
Fisk
"Good Guys" Who Can Do No
Wrong
Alexander
Cockburn
Watching Niagara: Stupid Leaders,
Useless Spies, Angry World
Heather
Williams
Gringo, We're Going Home: Latin
American Troops Flee Iraq
Diane
Rejman
An Army Vet on Torture in Iraq:
Abu Ghraib as My Lai?
Diane
Christian
Blood Spilling: Osama, Bush and
Sharon Speak the Same Language
Patrick
Cockburn
Seems Like Old Times in Fallujah
Dave
Lindorff
Bush's Torturous Logic: Shocked,
Shocked, Shocked
Chris
Floyd
Suicide Bomber: Neocons, Nihilists
and Annihilation
April
29 / 30, 2004
Dave
Zirin
A Pawn in Their Game: the Unlonesome
Death of Pat Tillman
Kathy
Kelly
The Warden's Tour
Greg
Weiher
Fallujah and the Warsaw Ghetto: the
Banality of Evil
Michael
S. Ladah
Terrorism and Assassination: the
Ultimate Depception
Patrick
Cockburn
The Fallujah Mutinies
April
28, 2004
April
28, 2004
Christopher
Brauchli
Meet Congressman Know-Nothing:
Tom Tancredo
Wendy
Brinker
The Politics of the Numb
Faisal
Kutty
The Dirty Work of Canadian Intelligence
John
Chuckman
Seeking the Evil One
Mike
Whitney
Flag-Draped Coffins and the Seattle Times
Tom
Mountain
Rwanda and the F***** Word
Graeme
Greenback
The Iraqi Alamo: a CNN/CIA Production
Tracy
McLellan
The War Comes Home
M.
Junaid Alam
We are the Barbarians
William
Loren Katz
Iraq, the US and an Old Lesson
April 27, 2004
James
Davis
The Colombia 3 Acquitted
Dave
Lindorff
Chalabi as Prosecutor
Bruce
Schneier
Terrorist Threats and Political
Gain
Cockburn
/ Sengupta
British Generals Resist Calls for
More Troops to Aid Americans in Iraq
Walt
Brasch
Presidential Letters: The Day I
Was Asked to Feed an Elephant
Saul
Landau
The Empire in Denial and the Denial
of Empire
April 26, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
Crossing the Shia Line: US Troops
Prepare to Enter Najaf
Wayne
Madsen
Trading Places: Will the US Go the Way of the USSR?
Grover
Furr
Protest, Rebellion, Commitment
Elaine
Cassel
Lies About the Patriot Act
Mickey
Z.
Inspired by Pat Tillman?
Greg
Moses
Bremer's De-De-Ba'athjfication Gambit
Gila
Svirsky
Anarchy in Our Souls
Uri
Avnery
Vanunu and the Terrible Secret
April 24 / 25, 2004
William
A. Cook
Tweedledee and Tweedledum: Kerry
and Bush Melt into One
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Stryking Out: a General, GM and the Army's Latest Tank
Brandy
Baker
A Revitalized Women's Movement? Let's Hope So
Robert
Fisk
A Warning to Those Who Dare Criticize Israel in the Land of Free
Speech
Ben
Tripp
October Surmise: a Case of Worst Scenarios
Nelson
Valdés
"Submit or Die": Iraq and the American Borg
Lucson
Pierre-Charles
Haiti's Return to the Future
Kurt
Nimmo
The CIA Killed Pat Tillman
Mark
Scaramella
Does Anybody Know Anything?
Patrick
Cockburn
The Return of Saddam's Generals
Gary
Engler
Welcome to La Paz: a Vacation in Tear Gas
Col.
Dan Smith
Whistling in the Dark: Israel, Palestine and Bush
Greg
Weiher
Iraq is Utterly Unlike Vietnam...
Elaine
Cassel
Life on the Outside: a Review
Vanessa
Jones
Letter from Australia: Why an Independent Won Sydney
Jim
French
Agriculture's Bullied Market
Hammond
Guthrie
Al Aronowitz, Bob Dylan and The Beatles
Poets'
Basement
Jones, Holt, Albert, LaMorticella
April 23, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
The Only Solution is Immediate Withdrawal
Dave
Lindorff
Imagination Deficit Disorder
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Contractors and Mercenaries: the Rising Corporate Military Monster
Norman
Solomon
Country Joe Band, 2004: "What Are We Fighting For?"
Cynthia
McKinney
All Things Are Not Equal: the Perils of Globalization
CounterPunch
Wire
A Bitch Called Wanda
Karyn
Strickler
Sierra Club, Inc.
Hammond
Guthrie
Yellow Caked in the Face
Paul
de Rooij
Graveyard of Justifications: Glossary
of the Iraqi Occupation
April 22, 2004
Patrick
Cockburn
When Terror Came to Basra: "I
Saw a Minibus of Children on Fire"
Tanya
Reinhart
The Wall Behind Disengagement
Lance
Selfa
Why is Kucinich Still in the Race?
Josh
Frank
Street Fighting Man? Kucinich's Pulled Punches
Sen.
Robert Byrd
Bush Owes America Answers on Iraq
William
S. Lind
Why We Get It Wrong
Mickey
Z.
Undoing the Latches
Robert
Jensen
Why They Fast: Remembering the Victims of the World Bank
John
L. Hess
The New York Times from 30,000 Feet
April
21, 2004
Gary
Leupp
Yeats on Iraq
Alfredo
Castro
Colombia's Forgotten Prisoners
Dr.
Susan Block
Bush's Taliban Drug Deal
William
A. Cook
George 1 to George 2
Jack
Random
Iraq and Vietnam
Jean-Guy
Allard
Alarcon Meets the Editors
Mike
Whitney
Charade in the Desert
Bill
Christison
Only Major Policies Changes Can
Help Washington Now
April 20, 2004
Dave
Lindorff
Bush and Kerry Share a Problem
Stan
Cox
Wal-Mart's Magic Numbers
Bruce
Anderson
On Listening to Air America
Joseph
Kalvoda
Czech Mate for Condi
Greg
Moses
Yesterday's Intelligence
Stan
Goff
The Democrats and Iraq
Website
of the Day
Santorum Happens
April 19, 2004
Kurt
Nimmo
The "Central Hand" of the
Resistance
Mike
Whitney
Bob Woodward's Imperial Trifles
Douglas
Valentine
52 Pick-Up and the 100-to-1
Rule
John
Chuckman
The Sharon Annex: Evil Does Often
Triumph
Doug
Giebel
Welcome to the Club
Rahul
Mahajan
Hospital Closings and War Crimes
April
16 / 18, 2004
Robert
Fisk
Bush Legitimizes Terror
Saul
Landau
Subverting Brazil and Cuba
Dave
Lindorff
Paying for War: $2,150 per Family
and Counting
Brandy
Baker
Fallujah's Collateral Damage
Mickey
Z.
The Left Attacks from the Right
Bruce
Jackson
The Bush Press Conference: Gott Mit
Uns
Norman
Solomon
How the "NewsHour" Changed
History
Alexander
Cockburn
Bush, Kerry and Empire
April
15, 2004
Greg
Moses
Follow the Families, Not the Script
Virginia
Tilley
The Carnage According to Gen. Kimmitt:
Just Change the Channel
Ron
Jacobs
They Coulda Been Champions of the
World: Hurricane Carter and Ron Kovic
Michael
Neumann
A Happy Compromise: Hate Crimes
Reporting in the Toronto Globe and Mail
April
14, 2004
Tom
Reeves
Return to Haiti: an American Learning
Zone
Reza
Fiyouzat
Japan and Iraq
Ron
Jacobs
What Bush Really Said
Diane
Christian
The Real Passion
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.
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May
4, 2004
Environmentalists
Against the Environment
The Lost Sierra
Club
By JOSH FRANK
Earth Day came and went as usual this
year, with the renewed hope that our elected politicians and
conservationists are indeed concerned with the environmental
welfare of our planet. George W. Bush boastfully exclaimed
that his administration, if re-selected, "will expand the
wetlands of America." And his presidential opponent John
Kerry, claiming to be greener than Bush, declared that if victorious
in November he, unlike GW, will not allow environmental legislation
to be "written by polluters in exchange for campaign contributions."
This may all sound satisfying,
but in reality Earth Day has turned into the Valentine's Day
of the corporate environmental movement -- where April 22nd
has become the token feel good holiday for oily politicians and
corporate conservationists to tout their commitment and love
for the natural world.
It's no wonder then that Carl
Pope, director of the Sierra Club and the poster boy for the
suited conservation movement, used Earth Day to release his
new book titled, "Strategic Ignorance: Why the Bush Administration
is Recklessly Destroying a Century of Environmental Progress."
In his not so seminal manuscript Pope writes, "This is
what the American people do not know: The Bush administration
is full of officials who believe -- from the bottom of their
hearts, not just their wallets -- that weaker laws on clean
air, less funding to clean up toxic waste dumps, and national
parks and forests run for private profit are actually good for
the country."
Unfortunately Pope has it all
wrong. It's compromising organizations like his that have allowed
Bush and his Democratic brethren to destroy a century's worth
of environmental progress.
Here is a small scale example,
for which there are many.
Wisconsin's Clean Water Action
Council had their own battle with club Sierra just last summer.
The conflict ensued over the "governments' plan to unnecessarily
allow significant public health risks to persist on the Fox
River" near Green Bay. Clean Water Action Council contended
that they had "consistently [stated] over two years that
the sediments must be removed down to .25 ppm PCBs in order
to reach average PCB levels low enough to eliminate the need
for fish consumption warnings."
"However", the group
contended, "the government has chosen to dredge down to
1 ppm PCBs, a level which is 90 times higher than PCB sediment
concentrations that are fully protective of human health. [This]
policy will leave a large mass of PCBs behind in the river,
which will continue to bleed toxic contamination for many decades
into the future. Roughly 40,000 people are currently eating
unsafe quantities of fish from the Fox River and Green Bay.
We must take action to protect these people and future generations."
Despite Fox River Watch's ardent
efforts to clean up their local stream, the Sierra Club undermined
many months worth of discussions. In a statement released by
the Sierra Club following the EPA's announcement they stated,
"the fundamental cleanup plan is solid" and "We
applaud the EPA [for] developing a protective cleanup plan that
is based on good science."
The Clean Water Action Council
was less then thrilled. "The odd thing about the Sierra
Club's news releases is that they are inconsistent with the
Sierra Club's own position on the clean up standard," the
Council wrote following the saga. "Many times over the
past 2 years, the Sierra Club has advocated for the same .25
ppm PCB cleanup target that we support. Their testimony at the
public hearings, their formal written comments to the agencies,
and their action alerts for their members --- all promoted the
.25 ppm standard ... they should be helping us. Instead, the
Sierra Club is squandering its resources and actively working
against the local citizens along the Fox River and Green Bay
who are most damaged by the PCB contamination."
As noted, this story is certainly
not an isolated incident. The Sierra Club's leadership time
and again has undermined grassroots efforts by flexing their
negotiating muscle and compromising positions at crunch time.
Such concessions gave birth to Earth First! in 1979, when a
few radical environmentalists including Dave Foreman and Mike
Roselle (now with the Ruckus Society), out of irritation and
loathing, decided to form an unyielding organization to counter
such enviro stooges.
Regrettably, the Sierra Club
never reverted back to its radical John Muir roots, and instead
became even more skilled at cutting deals under the guise of
stewardship.
In 1989 David Brower, founder
of the Earth Island Institute, Friends of the Earth, and the
first executive director of the Sierra Club wrote Doug Scott,
then acting conservation director of the Club about the role
of dreadful "compromise" within the organization:
"My thesis is that compromise is often necessary but that
it ought not originate with the Sierra Club. We are to hold
fast to what we believe is right, fight for it, and find allies
and adduce all possible arguments for our cause. If we cannot
find enough vigor in us or them to win, then let someone else
propose the compromise. We thereupon work hard to coax it our
way. We become a nucleus around which the strongest force can
build and function."
Brower went on, "The Sierra
Club compromised enough to lose its best antinuclear group.
The club has compromised enough to be of little force or effect
in slowing the arms race. The club was asked to act four years
ago about environmental concerns in Nicaragua, but has remained
silent. The club backed away from saving the California condor
in the wild. The club did not join in the fight to block the
new San Onofre reactors (a failure of which, quite possible,
could make Southern California uninhabitable). The club so misjudges
the arms race that it discourages the San Diego Chapter from
protesting in Nevada, as if such a global problem must be left
exclusively to the Toiyabe Chapter. The national club, and Sierra
Club California, seem to think that the inexcusable charring
of giant sequoias in Sequoia National Park and the terminal
isolation of giant sequoias of Sequoia National Forest, and
the monocultural new plantations being planted around them, is
the province of the Kern-Kaweah chapter and severe damage continues.
The club thinks that stopping the charring of sequoias in Yosemite
is the business of the Tehipite Chapter, and the damage continues
... The Club is so eager to appear reasonable that it goes soft,
undercuts the strong grassroots efforts of chapters, groups,
and other organizations."
And now we have Carl Pope and
John Kerry claiming that all environmental disasters have been
exacerbated by the Bush administration, not taking any of the
blame on themselves. But in fact it's compromises by both of
these men's representative clubs that have failed the natural
environment. It was Kerry's skipped vote on Bush's Forest Plan
and his trade record that give us a good idea of his environmental
posture. Not to mention his support for the Iraq invasion and
chemical fumigation in Colombia.
"In my mountaineering
days," Brower rounding out his letter to Mr. Scott wrote,
"I learned that when one is lost, one must stay calm, retrace
steps to the last known landmark, and proceed from there on
a different course. Has the Club leadership lost its way?"
Indeed a whole generation of
so-called environmentalists has lost its way -- including the
director of the Sierra Club and the Democratic nominee for President.
Josh Frank is a writer living in New York. He
is the co-author with Sunil K. Sharma of an upcoming book on
the rise and fall of Howard Dean to be out this summer, as well
as the author of the forthcoming book Left Out, How Liberals
Helped the Bush Administration, to be published by Common Courage
Press in December. He can be reached at: frank_joshua@hotmail.com
Weekend Edition
Features for April 24 / 25, 2004
William
A. Cook
Tweedledee and Tweedledum: Kerry
and Bush Melt into One
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Stryking Out: a General, GM and the Army's Latest Tank
Brandy
Baker
A Revitalized Women's Movement? Let's Hope So
Robert
Fisk
A Warning to Those Who Dare Criticize Israel in the Land of Free
Speech
Ben
Tripp
October Surmise: a Case of Worst Scenarios
Nelson
Valdés
"Submit or Die": Iraq and the American Borg
Lucson
Pierre-Charles
Haiti's Return to the Future
Kurt
Nimmo
The CIA Killed Pat Tillman
Mark
Scaramella
Does Anybody Know Anything?
Patrick
Cockburn
The Return of Saddam's Generals
Gary
Engler
Welcome to La Paz: a Vacation in Tear Gas
Col.
Dan Smith
Whistling in the Dark: Israel, Palestine and Bush
Greg
Weiher
Iraq is Utterly Unlike Vietnam...
Elaine
Cassel
Life on the Outside: a Review
Vanessa
Jones
Letter from Australia: Why an Independent Won Sydney
Jim
French
Agriculture's Bullied Market
Hammond
Guthrie
Al Aronowitz, Bob Dylan and The Beatles
Poets'
Basement
Jones, Holt, Albert, LaMorticella
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