Residents are urged to call the APD if one is sighted
Humboldt Sentinel
12/31/08
By Sentinel Staff
ARCATA -- A mountain lion has been seen walking east through the grassy area located on the southeast side of the Giuntoli Lane near the Hwy. 101 overpass.
Arcata police officers sent there on Wednesday at about 3 a.m. checked the area without locating the mountain lion. The California Department of Fish & Game has been notified of the sighting.
Residents are urged to tell the Arcata Police Department if a mountain lion is seen near a populated area. The department suggests people who encounter a mountain lion to take the following steps to let the lion know you are not prey:
Give the cat a way out without approaching it.
Remain standing and face the animal; do not crouch.
Throw stones, branches, or whatever you can reach without bending down. Look large; raise your arms and yell.
Don’t run. Running may stimulate the lion’s instinct to chase.
Keep pets and children close to you.
Fight back if attacked.
For additional information, please call Sergeant Whetstine or the on-duty watch commander at (707) 822-2428.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Citizen’s Police Academy Applications Open
Seven week educational program to forge stronger public-EPD partnership
Humboldt Sentinel
12/31/08
By Sentinel Staff
EUREKA -- The Eureka Police Department has developed a Citizen’s Police Academy program featuring a variety of topics, demonstrations, tours and hands-on experience to teach the public about EPD policies and procedures.
The program will run for seven weeks on Tuesdays from 6 to 8:30 p.m. starting Feb. 17. Applicants must be at least 18 years old, have no misdemeanor or felony convictions in the last three years and pass a background check by EPD. Applications will be accepted through Jan. 30.
The program is aimed at forging a stronger partnership between the public and EPD, as well as a way for participants and officers to share information and ideas about the law enforcement profession.
EPD is accepting applications for the academy 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, on-line at www.ci.eureka.ca.gov, by calling 707-441-4266 or by mail at the Eureka Police Department Business Office, 604 C Street, Eureka, CA 95501.
For more information call Support Services Manager DeeDee Wilson at 707-441-4266.
Humboldt Sentinel
12/31/08
By Sentinel Staff
EUREKA -- The Eureka Police Department has developed a Citizen’s Police Academy program featuring a variety of topics, demonstrations, tours and hands-on experience to teach the public about EPD policies and procedures.
The program will run for seven weeks on Tuesdays from 6 to 8:30 p.m. starting Feb. 17. Applicants must be at least 18 years old, have no misdemeanor or felony convictions in the last three years and pass a background check by EPD. Applications will be accepted through Jan. 30.
The program is aimed at forging a stronger partnership between the public and EPD, as well as a way for participants and officers to share information and ideas about the law enforcement profession.
EPD is accepting applications for the academy 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, on-line at www.ci.eureka.ca.gov, by calling 707-441-4266 or by mail at the Eureka Police Department Business Office, 604 C Street, Eureka, CA 95501.
For more information call Support Services Manager DeeDee Wilson at 707-441-4266.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Crash Causes Gasoline Spill
Quick action by station staff, EFD minimizes damage
Humboldt Sentinel
12/30/08
By Sentinel Staff
EUREKA -- Local hazardous materials response personnel were deployed to a gas station today after a vehicle impact resulted in a fuel spill.
The Humboldt County Department of Health and Human Services responded to a report this afternoon of a car hitting a fuel dispensing island at a gas station on Highland Street. According to their release, the force and direction of the crash lifted the vehicle as it hit the dispensing island and broke the fuel product piping between the pump and shear valve. This caused the release of an estimated 100 gallons of gasoline onto station property and Highland Street.
No fuel reached Humboldt Bay, however, due to appropriate actions by gas station staff and Eureka Fire Department responders, according to Hazardous Materials Unit supervisor Melissa Martel. A minimal amount of fuel did reach the storm drain, which was met by immediate response and clean-up by a hazardous materials contractor.
Voter-approved Proposition 65 requires local communities to be notified of the release of toxic materials. For more information, call the Environmental Health Division of HHS at (707) 445-6215.
Humboldt Sentinel
12/30/08
By Sentinel Staff
EUREKA -- Local hazardous materials response personnel were deployed to a gas station today after a vehicle impact resulted in a fuel spill.
The Humboldt County Department of Health and Human Services responded to a report this afternoon of a car hitting a fuel dispensing island at a gas station on Highland Street. According to their release, the force and direction of the crash lifted the vehicle as it hit the dispensing island and broke the fuel product piping between the pump and shear valve. This caused the release of an estimated 100 gallons of gasoline onto station property and Highland Street.
No fuel reached Humboldt Bay, however, due to appropriate actions by gas station staff and Eureka Fire Department responders, according to Hazardous Materials Unit supervisor Melissa Martel. A minimal amount of fuel did reach the storm drain, which was met by immediate response and clean-up by a hazardous materials contractor.
Voter-approved Proposition 65 requires local communities to be notified of the release of toxic materials. For more information, call the Environmental Health Division of HHS at (707) 445-6215.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Sheriffs Find Loaded Gun, Drugs During Traffic Stop
Gilbert Bottom, Nancy Herzog-Bottom busted for meth, morphine and more
Humboldt Sentinel
12/29/08
By Sentinel Staff
FORTUNA -- A deputy from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office scored a major bust early this morning during a routine traffic stop.
Shortly before 1 a.m., the deputy pulled over a vehicle on Fortuna Boulevard driven by Gilbert Bottom, 44, of Klamath. According to the release from public information officer Brenda Godsey, the vehicle smelled of marijuana as the deputy approached the vehicle -- a suspicion verified by Bottom, who also admitted to the officer that there was a loaded pistol underneath his seat. The deputy recovered the loaded weapon without incident, and also found a quarter-pound of marijuana underneath the driver’s seat.
A further search uncovered two plastic bags in the trunk containing 31.6 grams and 24.3 grams of marijuana, respectively. At this point, the deputy placed Bottom and his passenger, 57-year-old Nancy Herzog-Bottom of Kneeland, under arrest and searched them both. Bottom had a bag containing 42.2 grams of marijuana in his jacket, according to the report, while Herzog-Bottom allegedly had two bottles of morphine and a bottle of morphine pills, as well as a small amount of methamphetamine.
Both were taken to the county lock-up without incident, where Bottom was booked for possession of a concealed firearm, transportation of marijuana, and the vehicle equipment violation which instigated the traffic stop in the first place. Herzog-Bottom was also booked for possession of a narcotic controlled substance, possession of a controlled substance, and possession of a controlled substance without a prescription. They are expected to be arraigned in Humboldt County Superior Court by Wednesday.
Humboldt Sentinel
12/29/08
By Sentinel Staff
FORTUNA -- A deputy from the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office scored a major bust early this morning during a routine traffic stop.
Shortly before 1 a.m., the deputy pulled over a vehicle on Fortuna Boulevard driven by Gilbert Bottom, 44, of Klamath. According to the release from public information officer Brenda Godsey, the vehicle smelled of marijuana as the deputy approached the vehicle -- a suspicion verified by Bottom, who also admitted to the officer that there was a loaded pistol underneath his seat. The deputy recovered the loaded weapon without incident, and also found a quarter-pound of marijuana underneath the driver’s seat.
A further search uncovered two plastic bags in the trunk containing 31.6 grams and 24.3 grams of marijuana, respectively. At this point, the deputy placed Bottom and his passenger, 57-year-old Nancy Herzog-Bottom of Kneeland, under arrest and searched them both. Bottom had a bag containing 42.2 grams of marijuana in his jacket, according to the report, while Herzog-Bottom allegedly had two bottles of morphine and a bottle of morphine pills, as well as a small amount of methamphetamine.
Both were taken to the county lock-up without incident, where Bottom was booked for possession of a concealed firearm, transportation of marijuana, and the vehicle equipment violation which instigated the traffic stop in the first place. Herzog-Bottom was also booked for possession of a narcotic controlled substance, possession of a controlled substance, and possession of a controlled substance without a prescription. They are expected to be arraigned in Humboldt County Superior Court by Wednesday.
Israel Accused Of Massive War Crime Atrocities
Critics condemn targeting of civilians; Obama and Pelosi express terse approval
InfoWars
12/29/08
By Paul Joseph Watson
FORTUNA -- A new IAF cockpit video shows an air strike targeted against an alleged rocket launching site located between two civilian homes, as UN Professor Richard Falk accused Israel of massive violations of international humanitarian law.
Falk, United Nations Special Investigator for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, listed numerous actions by Israel that clearly break the rules of engagement codified in the Geneva Conventions.
These include; collective punishment of the 1.5 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip for the actions of relatively few militants; the indiscriminate targeting of civilians including school children and university students during air strikes, with hundreds now dead or injured; a disproportionate military response which has destroyed every police and security office of Gaza’s elected government.
Israel has also sealed off entry and exit points to the Gaza Strip, causing severe shortages of medicine, food and fuel and hampering efforts to treat victims of the bombing raid.
“Certainly the rocket attacks against civilian targets in Israel are unlawful. But that illegality does not give Israel any right, neither as the occupying power nor as a sovereign state, to violate international humanitarian law and commit war crimes or crimes against humanity in its response. I note that Israel’s escalating military assaults have not made Israeli civilians safer; on the contrary, the one Israeli killed today after the upsurge of Israeli violence is the first in over a year,” writes Falk.
Reports of civilians being targeted on both sides continue to emerge. Hamas TV broadcast a video showing injured Israeli citizens being evacuated with the words “Let them taste violent death” superimposed over skulls dripping with blood.
But the majority of war crimes have obviously been committed by the might of the Israeli military, with one report accusing the Israelis of targeting school children who were making their way home with air strikes
Meanwhile, President elect Barack Obama’s reaction to Israel’s biggest military assault on Gaza in 20 years was a nonchalant “no comment,” while Democratic leader of the House Nancy Pelosi expressed her support for the carnage by stating “When Israel is attacked, the United States must continue to stand strongly with its friend and democratic ally.”
With at least 285 dead and over 800 injured so far, Obama and Pelosi’s terse approval for the indiscriminate slaughter of innocents reminds us that 2009 is unlikely to offer “change” of any kind but is likely to guarantee more war and bloodshed.
InfoWars
12/29/08
By Paul Joseph Watson
FORTUNA -- A new IAF cockpit video shows an air strike targeted against an alleged rocket launching site located between two civilian homes, as UN Professor Richard Falk accused Israel of massive violations of international humanitarian law.
Falk, United Nations Special Investigator for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, listed numerous actions by Israel that clearly break the rules of engagement codified in the Geneva Conventions.
These include; collective punishment of the 1.5 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip for the actions of relatively few militants; the indiscriminate targeting of civilians including school children and university students during air strikes, with hundreds now dead or injured; a disproportionate military response which has destroyed every police and security office of Gaza’s elected government.
Israel has also sealed off entry and exit points to the Gaza Strip, causing severe shortages of medicine, food and fuel and hampering efforts to treat victims of the bombing raid.
“Certainly the rocket attacks against civilian targets in Israel are unlawful. But that illegality does not give Israel any right, neither as the occupying power nor as a sovereign state, to violate international humanitarian law and commit war crimes or crimes against humanity in its response. I note that Israel’s escalating military assaults have not made Israeli civilians safer; on the contrary, the one Israeli killed today after the upsurge of Israeli violence is the first in over a year,” writes Falk.
Reports of civilians being targeted on both sides continue to emerge. Hamas TV broadcast a video showing injured Israeli citizens being evacuated with the words “Let them taste violent death” superimposed over skulls dripping with blood.
But the majority of war crimes have obviously been committed by the might of the Israeli military, with one report accusing the Israelis of targeting school children who were making their way home with air strikes
Meanwhile, President elect Barack Obama’s reaction to Israel’s biggest military assault on Gaza in 20 years was a nonchalant “no comment,” while Democratic leader of the House Nancy Pelosi expressed her support for the carnage by stating “When Israel is attacked, the United States must continue to stand strongly with its friend and democratic ally.”
With at least 285 dead and over 800 injured so far, Obama and Pelosi’s terse approval for the indiscriminate slaughter of innocents reminds us that 2009 is unlikely to offer “change” of any kind but is likely to guarantee more war and bloodshed.
In Praise Of A Rocky Transition
An era marked by criminality and bankrupt ideology deserves a rough break
Popular Economics
By Naomi Klein
The more details emerge, the clearer it becomes that Washington's handling of the Wall Street bailout is not merely incompetent. It is borderline criminal.
In a moment of high panic in late September, the US Treasury unilaterally pushed through a radical change in how bank mergers are taxed--a change long sought by the industry. Despite the fact that this move will deprive the government of as much as $140 billion in tax revenue, lawmakers found out only after the fact. According to the Washington Post, more than a dozen tax attorneys agree that "Treasury had no authority to issue the [tax change] notice."
Of equally dubious legality are the equity deals Treasury has negotiated with many of the country's banks. According to Congressman Barney Frank, one of the architects of the legislation that enables the deals, "Any use of these funds for any purpose other than lending--for bonuses, for severance pay, for dividends, for acquisitions of other institutions, etc.--is a violation of the act." Yet this is exactly how the funds are being used.
Then there is the nearly $2 trillion the Federal Reserve has handed out in emergency loans. Incredibly, the Fed will not reveal which corporations have received these loans or what it has accepted as collateral. Bloomberg News believes that this secrecy violates the law and has filed a federal suit demanding full disclosure.
Despite all of this potential lawlessness, the Democrats are either openly defending the administration or refusing to intervene. "There is only one president at a time," we hear from Barack Obama. That's true. But every sweetheart deal the lame-duck Bush administration makes threatens to hobble Obama's ability to make good on his promise of change. To cite just one example, that $140 billion in missing tax revenue is almost the same sum as Obama's renewable energy program. Obama owes it to the people who elected him to call this what it is: an attempt to undermine the electoral process by stealth.
Yes, there is only one president at a time, but that president needed the support of powerful Democrats, including Obama, to get the bailout passed. Now that it is clear that the Bush administration is violating the terms to which both parties agreed, the Democrats have not just the right but a grave responsibility to intervene forcefully.
I suspect that the real reason the Democrats are so far failing to act has less to do with presidential protocol than with fear: fear that the stock market, which has the temperament of an overindulged 2-year-old, will throw one of its world-shaking tantrums. Disclosing the truth about who is receiving federal loans, we are told, could cause the cranky market to bet against those banks. Question the legality of equity deals and the same thing will happen. Challenge the $140 billion tax giveaway and mergers could fall through. "None of us wants to be blamed for ruining these mergers and creating a new Great Depression," explained one unnamed Congressional aide.
More than that, the Democrats, including Obama, appear to believe that the need to soothe the market should govern all key economic decisions in the transition period. Which is why, just days after a euphoric victory for "change," the mantra abruptly shifted to "smooth transition" and "continuity."
Take Obama's pick for chief of staff. Despite the Republican braying about his partisanship, Rahm Emanuel, the House Democrat who received the most donations from the financial sector, sends an unmistakably reassuring message to Wall Street. When asked on This Week With George Stephanopoulos whether Obama would be moving quickly to increase taxes on the wealthy, as promised, Emanuel pointedly did not answer the question.
This same market-coddling logic should, we are told, guide Obama's selection of treasury secretary. Fox News's Stuart Varney explained that Larry Summers, who held the post under Clinton, and former Fed chair Paul Volcker would both "give great confidence to the market." We learned from MSNBC's Joe Scarborough that Summers is the man "the Street would like the most."
Let's be clear about why. "The Street" would cheer a Summers appointment for exactly the same reason the rest of us should fear it: because traders will assume that Summers, champion of financial deregulation under Clinton, will offer a transition from Henry Paulson so smooth we will barely know it happened. Someone like FDIC chair Sheila Bair, on the other hand, would spark fear on the Street--for all the right reasons.
One thing we know for certain is that the market will react violently to any signal that there is a new sheriff in town who will impose serious regulation, invest in people and cut off the free money for corporations. In short, the markets can be relied on to vote in precisely the opposite way that Americans have just voted. (A recent USA Today/Gallup poll found that 60 percent of Americans strongly favor "stricter regulations on financial institutions," while just 21 percent support aid to financial companies.)
There is no way to reconcile the public's vote for change with the market's foot-stomping for more of the same. Any and all moves to change course will be met with short-term market shocks. The good news is that once it is clear that the new rules will be applied across the board and with fairness, the market will stabilize and adjust. Furthermore, the timing for this turbulence has never been better. Over the past three months, we've been shocked so frequently that market stability would come as more of a surprise. That gives Obama a window to disregard the calls for a seamless transition and do the hard stuff first. Few will be able to blame him for a crisis that clearly predates him, or fault him for honoring the clearly expressed wishes of the electorate. The longer he waits, however, the more memories fade.
When transferring power from a functional, trustworthy regime, everyone favors a smooth transition. When exiting an era marked by criminality and bankrupt ideology, a little rockiness at the start would be a very good sign.
Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist and the author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise Of Disaster Capitalism. She can be reached at her website, www.naomiklein.org.
Popular Economics
By Naomi Klein
The more details emerge, the clearer it becomes that Washington's handling of the Wall Street bailout is not merely incompetent. It is borderline criminal.
In a moment of high panic in late September, the US Treasury unilaterally pushed through a radical change in how bank mergers are taxed--a change long sought by the industry. Despite the fact that this move will deprive the government of as much as $140 billion in tax revenue, lawmakers found out only after the fact. According to the Washington Post, more than a dozen tax attorneys agree that "Treasury had no authority to issue the [tax change] notice."
Of equally dubious legality are the equity deals Treasury has negotiated with many of the country's banks. According to Congressman Barney Frank, one of the architects of the legislation that enables the deals, "Any use of these funds for any purpose other than lending--for bonuses, for severance pay, for dividends, for acquisitions of other institutions, etc.--is a violation of the act." Yet this is exactly how the funds are being used.
Then there is the nearly $2 trillion the Federal Reserve has handed out in emergency loans. Incredibly, the Fed will not reveal which corporations have received these loans or what it has accepted as collateral. Bloomberg News believes that this secrecy violates the law and has filed a federal suit demanding full disclosure.
Despite all of this potential lawlessness, the Democrats are either openly defending the administration or refusing to intervene. "There is only one president at a time," we hear from Barack Obama. That's true. But every sweetheart deal the lame-duck Bush administration makes threatens to hobble Obama's ability to make good on his promise of change. To cite just one example, that $140 billion in missing tax revenue is almost the same sum as Obama's renewable energy program. Obama owes it to the people who elected him to call this what it is: an attempt to undermine the electoral process by stealth.
Yes, there is only one president at a time, but that president needed the support of powerful Democrats, including Obama, to get the bailout passed. Now that it is clear that the Bush administration is violating the terms to which both parties agreed, the Democrats have not just the right but a grave responsibility to intervene forcefully.
I suspect that the real reason the Democrats are so far failing to act has less to do with presidential protocol than with fear: fear that the stock market, which has the temperament of an overindulged 2-year-old, will throw one of its world-shaking tantrums. Disclosing the truth about who is receiving federal loans, we are told, could cause the cranky market to bet against those banks. Question the legality of equity deals and the same thing will happen. Challenge the $140 billion tax giveaway and mergers could fall through. "None of us wants to be blamed for ruining these mergers and creating a new Great Depression," explained one unnamed Congressional aide.
More than that, the Democrats, including Obama, appear to believe that the need to soothe the market should govern all key economic decisions in the transition period. Which is why, just days after a euphoric victory for "change," the mantra abruptly shifted to "smooth transition" and "continuity."
Take Obama's pick for chief of staff. Despite the Republican braying about his partisanship, Rahm Emanuel, the House Democrat who received the most donations from the financial sector, sends an unmistakably reassuring message to Wall Street. When asked on This Week With George Stephanopoulos whether Obama would be moving quickly to increase taxes on the wealthy, as promised, Emanuel pointedly did not answer the question.
This same market-coddling logic should, we are told, guide Obama's selection of treasury secretary. Fox News's Stuart Varney explained that Larry Summers, who held the post under Clinton, and former Fed chair Paul Volcker would both "give great confidence to the market." We learned from MSNBC's Joe Scarborough that Summers is the man "the Street would like the most."
Let's be clear about why. "The Street" would cheer a Summers appointment for exactly the same reason the rest of us should fear it: because traders will assume that Summers, champion of financial deregulation under Clinton, will offer a transition from Henry Paulson so smooth we will barely know it happened. Someone like FDIC chair Sheila Bair, on the other hand, would spark fear on the Street--for all the right reasons.
One thing we know for certain is that the market will react violently to any signal that there is a new sheriff in town who will impose serious regulation, invest in people and cut off the free money for corporations. In short, the markets can be relied on to vote in precisely the opposite way that Americans have just voted. (A recent USA Today/Gallup poll found that 60 percent of Americans strongly favor "stricter regulations on financial institutions," while just 21 percent support aid to financial companies.)
There is no way to reconcile the public's vote for change with the market's foot-stomping for more of the same. Any and all moves to change course will be met with short-term market shocks. The good news is that once it is clear that the new rules will be applied across the board and with fairness, the market will stabilize and adjust. Furthermore, the timing for this turbulence has never been better. Over the past three months, we've been shocked so frequently that market stability would come as more of a surprise. That gives Obama a window to disregard the calls for a seamless transition and do the hard stuff first. Few will be able to blame him for a crisis that clearly predates him, or fault him for honoring the clearly expressed wishes of the electorate. The longer he waits, however, the more memories fade.
When transferring power from a functional, trustworthy regime, everyone favors a smooth transition. When exiting an era marked by criminality and bankrupt ideology, a little rockiness at the start would be a very good sign.
Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist and the author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise Of Disaster Capitalism. She can be reached at her website, www.naomiklein.org.
One Man’s Bid To Aid The Environment
College student disrupts auction of public lands with only a paddle
Guest Opinion
By Amy Goodman
Tim DeChristopher is an economics student at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. He had just finished his last final exam before winter break. One of the exam questions was: If the oil and gas companies are the only ones who bid on public lands, are the true costs of oil and gas exploitation reflected in the prices paid?
DeChristopher was inspired. He finished the exam, threw on his red parka and went off to the controversial Bureau of Land Management land auction that the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance called “the Bush administration’s last great gift to the oil and gas industry.” Instead of joining the protest outside, he registered as a bidder, then bought 22,000 acres of public land. That is, he successfully bid on the public properties, located near the Arches and Canyonlands National Parks and Dinosaur National Monument, and other pristine areas. The price tag: more than $1.7 million.
He told me: “Once I started buying up every parcel, they understood pretty clearly what was going on ... they stopped the auction, and some federal agents came in and took me out. I guess there was a lot of chaos, and they didn’t really know how to proceed at that point.”
Patrick Shea, a former BLM director, is representing DeChristopher. Shea told the Deseret News: “What Tim did was in the best tradition of civil disobedience, he did this without causing any physical or material harm. His purpose was to draw attention to the illegitimacy and immorality of the process.”
There is a long tradition of disrupting land development in Utah. In his memoir, “Desert Solitaire,” Edward Abbey, the writer and activist, wrote: “Wilderness. The word itself is music. ... We scarcely know what we mean by the term, though the sound of it draws all whose nerves and emotions have not yet been irreparably stunned, deadened, numbed by the caterwauling of commerce, the sweating scramble for profit and domination.”
Abbey’s novel “The Monkey Wrench Gang” inspired a generation of environmental activists to take “direct action,” disrupting “development.” As The Salt Lake Tribune reported on DeChristopher: “He didn’t pour sugar into a bulldozer’s gas tank. He didn’t spike a tree or set a billboard on fire. But wielding only a bidder’s paddle, a University of Utah student just as surely monkey-wrenched a federal oil- and gas-lease sale Friday, ensuring that thousands of acres near two southern Utah national parks won’t be opened to drilling anytime soon.”
Likewise, the late Utah Phillips, folk musician, activist and longtime Utah resident, often invoked the Industrial Workers of the World adage: “Direct action gets the goods.”
More than just scenic beauty will be harmed by these BLM sales. Drilling impacts air and water quality. According to High Country News, “The BLM had not analyzed impacts on ozone levels from some 2,300 wells drilled in the area since 2004 ... nor had it predicted air impacts from the estimated 6,300 new wells approved in the plan.” ProPublica reports that the Colorado River “powers homes for 3 million people, nourishes 15 percent of the nation’s crops and provides drinking water to one in 12 Americans. Now a rush to develop domestic oil, gas and uranium deposits along the river and its tributaries threatens its future.”
After being questioned by federal authorities, DeChristopher was released.
The U.S. attorney is currently weighing charges against the student. DeChristopher reflects: “This has really been emotional and hopeful for me to see the kind of support over the last couple of days ... for all the problems that people can talk about in this country and for all the apathy and the eight years of oppression and the decades of eroding civil liberties, America is still very much the kind of place that when you stand up for what is right, you never stand alone.”
His disruption of the auction has temporarily blocked the Bush-enabled land grab by the oil and gas industries. If DeChristopher can come up with $45,000 by Dec. 29, he can make the first payment on the land, possibly avoiding any claim of fraud. If the BLM opts to re-auction the land, that can’t happen until after the Obama administration takes over.
The outcome of the sales, if they happen at all, will probably be different, thanks to the direct action of an activist, raising his voice, and his bidding paddle, in opposition.
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
Amy Goodman is an author and host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 700 stations in North America.
Guest Opinion
By Amy Goodman
Tim DeChristopher is an economics student at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. He had just finished his last final exam before winter break. One of the exam questions was: If the oil and gas companies are the only ones who bid on public lands, are the true costs of oil and gas exploitation reflected in the prices paid?
DeChristopher was inspired. He finished the exam, threw on his red parka and went off to the controversial Bureau of Land Management land auction that the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance called “the Bush administration’s last great gift to the oil and gas industry.” Instead of joining the protest outside, he registered as a bidder, then bought 22,000 acres of public land. That is, he successfully bid on the public properties, located near the Arches and Canyonlands National Parks and Dinosaur National Monument, and other pristine areas. The price tag: more than $1.7 million.
He told me: “Once I started buying up every parcel, they understood pretty clearly what was going on ... they stopped the auction, and some federal agents came in and took me out. I guess there was a lot of chaos, and they didn’t really know how to proceed at that point.”
Patrick Shea, a former BLM director, is representing DeChristopher. Shea told the Deseret News: “What Tim did was in the best tradition of civil disobedience, he did this without causing any physical or material harm. His purpose was to draw attention to the illegitimacy and immorality of the process.”
There is a long tradition of disrupting land development in Utah. In his memoir, “Desert Solitaire,” Edward Abbey, the writer and activist, wrote: “Wilderness. The word itself is music. ... We scarcely know what we mean by the term, though the sound of it draws all whose nerves and emotions have not yet been irreparably stunned, deadened, numbed by the caterwauling of commerce, the sweating scramble for profit and domination.”
Abbey’s novel “The Monkey Wrench Gang” inspired a generation of environmental activists to take “direct action,” disrupting “development.” As The Salt Lake Tribune reported on DeChristopher: “He didn’t pour sugar into a bulldozer’s gas tank. He didn’t spike a tree or set a billboard on fire. But wielding only a bidder’s paddle, a University of Utah student just as surely monkey-wrenched a federal oil- and gas-lease sale Friday, ensuring that thousands of acres near two southern Utah national parks won’t be opened to drilling anytime soon.”
Likewise, the late Utah Phillips, folk musician, activist and longtime Utah resident, often invoked the Industrial Workers of the World adage: “Direct action gets the goods.”
More than just scenic beauty will be harmed by these BLM sales. Drilling impacts air and water quality. According to High Country News, “The BLM had not analyzed impacts on ozone levels from some 2,300 wells drilled in the area since 2004 ... nor had it predicted air impacts from the estimated 6,300 new wells approved in the plan.” ProPublica reports that the Colorado River “powers homes for 3 million people, nourishes 15 percent of the nation’s crops and provides drinking water to one in 12 Americans. Now a rush to develop domestic oil, gas and uranium deposits along the river and its tributaries threatens its future.”
After being questioned by federal authorities, DeChristopher was released.
The U.S. attorney is currently weighing charges against the student. DeChristopher reflects: “This has really been emotional and hopeful for me to see the kind of support over the last couple of days ... for all the problems that people can talk about in this country and for all the apathy and the eight years of oppression and the decades of eroding civil liberties, America is still very much the kind of place that when you stand up for what is right, you never stand alone.”
His disruption of the auction has temporarily blocked the Bush-enabled land grab by the oil and gas industries. If DeChristopher can come up with $45,000 by Dec. 29, he can make the first payment on the land, possibly avoiding any claim of fraud. If the BLM opts to re-auction the land, that can’t happen until after the Obama administration takes over.
The outcome of the sales, if they happen at all, will probably be different, thanks to the direct action of an activist, raising his voice, and his bidding paddle, in opposition.
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
Amy Goodman is an author and host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 700 stations in North America.
From John Yoo To Chuckie Taylor
Their war criminal goes on trial, ours haunts the halls of UC Berkeley
Perspectives on Globalization
By Paul Craig Roberts
The US government does not have a monopoly on hypocrisy, but no other government can match the hypocrisy of the US government.
It is now well documented and known all over the world that the US government tortured detainees at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and that the US government has had people kidnaped and “renditioned,” that is, transported to third world countries, such as Egypt, to be tortured.
Also documented and well known is the fact that the US Department of Justice provided written memos justifying the torture of detainees. One torture advocate who wrote the DOJ memos that gave the green light to the Bush regime’s use of torture is John Yoo, a South Korean immigrant who secured a US Justice Department appointment and a tenured professorship at the University of California, Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law.
Members of Berkeley’s city council believe that Yoo should be charged with war crimes. The US government has charged lesser offenders than Yoo with war crimes. Yoo helped the DOJ achieve the Bush regime’s goal of finding a way around the torture prohibitions of both US statutory law and the Geneva Conventions.
The way around the law that Yoo provided for the sadistic Bush regime was closed down by the US Supreme Court, which voided Yoo’s arguments, and Yoo’s torture memo was rescinded by the Department of Justice. Nevertheless, Yoo’s obvious constitutional incompetence, which in Yoo’s case is total, has not affected his position as professor of constitutional law at Berkeley. Can you imagine the harm Yoo is doing by teaching future cadres of lawyers and government officials that torture is consistent with the Constitution and the law of the land? How many of us will suffer from this ignorant man’s teachings?
Even as the US government was torturing people, the US government was prosecuting the son of Charles Taylor, the former ruler of Liberia, for torturing political opponents of his father’s government. The US government did not employ the Yoo torture memo to justify Liberia’s use of torture against those who wished to overthrow the Liberian government or commit terror against it. The US government’s position is that Liberia’s government had no right to use torture to defend itself. Only an “indispensable nation” such as the US has the right to torture people who are imagined to threaten it.
I use the word “imagined” because approximately 99 percent of the detainees tortured by America were totally innocent people picked up at random or sold to the Americans by warlords as “terrorists.” (The US government offered rewards for terrorists, like the bounty offered for outlaws in the “wild west.” The result was that warlords in Afghanistan and Pakistan grabbed whoever was not one of them and sold their captives to Americans as “terrorists.”)
According to Carrie Johnson, a Washington Post staff writer, on October 30, 2008, a federal jury in Miami convicted Charles Taylor’s son, Chuckie, of torture. Chuckie will be sentenced by the indispensable Americans in January for torture, conspiracy and firearms violations. He may spend the rest of his life in an American prison.
While Chuckie’s trial was underway, the Bush regime was torturing people.
The Washington Post writes that Chuckie’s conviction is “the first test of an American law that gives prosecutors the power to bring charges for acts of torture committed in foreign lands.” In other words, US law against torture applies to the entire world, to every other country except the United States. The hubris is unimaginable--no country can torture except the US.
Anyone else who tortures gets life, or in the case of Saddam Hussein gets hanged by the neck until dead.
Isn’t it great to be an American! Our laws don’t apply to us, only to every other nation. This is what it means to be the moral light of the world, the unipower, the salt of the earth.
Neither Carrie Johnson nor her editors at the Washington post see the irony or the paradox. Johnson writes in the Washington Post that the US prosecutors “accused Taylor of taking part in atrocities and directing subordinates to torture victims using . . . electrical devices from 1999 to 2002.” That charge practically overlaps in time with Bush’s, or Cheney’s, or Yoo’s, or the DOJ’s, or Rumfeld’s, or whoever’s direction to subordinates to torture people detained by Americans at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and in various CIA rendition sites. By now everyone in the world has seen the photograph of the hooded Iraqi with electrical wires attached standing on that box in Abu Ghraib.
If only American laws applied to the American government. Then the criminals who have been in charge for 8 years could be prosecuted for their extreme violation of United States laws. But, of course, the great moral American government is far above the law. American law only applies to dispensable nations. America is not answerable to law, not to its own law and not to international law. US attorney general Michael Mukasey affirmed that the US government is above all law when he told the Senate Judiciary Committee that there would be no investigation or prosecution of those Bush regime officials who authorized torture and those who carried out the sadistic acts.
The American government, the government of the great indispensable nation, has a free pass. The strong do what they will. The weak suffer what they must.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of "The Tyranny of Good Intentions, and he can be reached at paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com.
Perspectives on Globalization
By Paul Craig Roberts
The US government does not have a monopoly on hypocrisy, but no other government can match the hypocrisy of the US government.
It is now well documented and known all over the world that the US government tortured detainees at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and that the US government has had people kidnaped and “renditioned,” that is, transported to third world countries, such as Egypt, to be tortured.
Also documented and well known is the fact that the US Department of Justice provided written memos justifying the torture of detainees. One torture advocate who wrote the DOJ memos that gave the green light to the Bush regime’s use of torture is John Yoo, a South Korean immigrant who secured a US Justice Department appointment and a tenured professorship at the University of California, Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law.
Members of Berkeley’s city council believe that Yoo should be charged with war crimes. The US government has charged lesser offenders than Yoo with war crimes. Yoo helped the DOJ achieve the Bush regime’s goal of finding a way around the torture prohibitions of both US statutory law and the Geneva Conventions.
The way around the law that Yoo provided for the sadistic Bush regime was closed down by the US Supreme Court, which voided Yoo’s arguments, and Yoo’s torture memo was rescinded by the Department of Justice. Nevertheless, Yoo’s obvious constitutional incompetence, which in Yoo’s case is total, has not affected his position as professor of constitutional law at Berkeley. Can you imagine the harm Yoo is doing by teaching future cadres of lawyers and government officials that torture is consistent with the Constitution and the law of the land? How many of us will suffer from this ignorant man’s teachings?
Even as the US government was torturing people, the US government was prosecuting the son of Charles Taylor, the former ruler of Liberia, for torturing political opponents of his father’s government. The US government did not employ the Yoo torture memo to justify Liberia’s use of torture against those who wished to overthrow the Liberian government or commit terror against it. The US government’s position is that Liberia’s government had no right to use torture to defend itself. Only an “indispensable nation” such as the US has the right to torture people who are imagined to threaten it.
I use the word “imagined” because approximately 99 percent of the detainees tortured by America were totally innocent people picked up at random or sold to the Americans by warlords as “terrorists.” (The US government offered rewards for terrorists, like the bounty offered for outlaws in the “wild west.” The result was that warlords in Afghanistan and Pakistan grabbed whoever was not one of them and sold their captives to Americans as “terrorists.”)
According to Carrie Johnson, a Washington Post staff writer, on October 30, 2008, a federal jury in Miami convicted Charles Taylor’s son, Chuckie, of torture. Chuckie will be sentenced by the indispensable Americans in January for torture, conspiracy and firearms violations. He may spend the rest of his life in an American prison.
While Chuckie’s trial was underway, the Bush regime was torturing people.
The Washington Post writes that Chuckie’s conviction is “the first test of an American law that gives prosecutors the power to bring charges for acts of torture committed in foreign lands.” In other words, US law against torture applies to the entire world, to every other country except the United States. The hubris is unimaginable--no country can torture except the US.
Anyone else who tortures gets life, or in the case of Saddam Hussein gets hanged by the neck until dead.
Isn’t it great to be an American! Our laws don’t apply to us, only to every other nation. This is what it means to be the moral light of the world, the unipower, the salt of the earth.
Neither Carrie Johnson nor her editors at the Washington post see the irony or the paradox. Johnson writes in the Washington Post that the US prosecutors “accused Taylor of taking part in atrocities and directing subordinates to torture victims using . . . electrical devices from 1999 to 2002.” That charge practically overlaps in time with Bush’s, or Cheney’s, or Yoo’s, or the DOJ’s, or Rumfeld’s, or whoever’s direction to subordinates to torture people detained by Americans at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and in various CIA rendition sites. By now everyone in the world has seen the photograph of the hooded Iraqi with electrical wires attached standing on that box in Abu Ghraib.
If only American laws applied to the American government. Then the criminals who have been in charge for 8 years could be prosecuted for their extreme violation of United States laws. But, of course, the great moral American government is far above the law. American law only applies to dispensable nations. America is not answerable to law, not to its own law and not to international law. US attorney general Michael Mukasey affirmed that the US government is above all law when he told the Senate Judiciary Committee that there would be no investigation or prosecution of those Bush regime officials who authorized torture and those who carried out the sadistic acts.
The American government, the government of the great indispensable nation, has a free pass. The strong do what they will. The weak suffer what they must.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of "The Tyranny of Good Intentions, and he can be reached at paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com.
Madam Secretary Clinton and the Middle East
Warmongering Hillary a sure-bet to prop up Israeli aggression
Brick Burner
By Joshua Frank
It’s official.
Barack Obama has chosen Hillary Clinton to be Secretary of State; a choice that confirms US foreign policy is not about to change significantly under the forthcoming Democratic administration. The US will continue to pander to Israel and the War on Terror will still be the rallying cry for our foreign interventions.
In a letter to her constituents in November 2005, Clinton expressed her belief that the war in Iraq shouldn’t be “open-ended,” but was clear that she would never “pull out of Iraq immediately.” She wrote that she wouldn’t accept any timetable for withdrawal and won’t even embrace a “redeployment” of US troops along the lines of Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.).
“I take responsibility for my vote, and I, along with a majority of Americans, expect the president and his administration to take responsibility for the false assurances, faulty evidence and mismanagement of the war,” Clinton wrote in her lengthy letter that amounted to nothing short of denial for her own culpability in the mess.
Clinton soon after reiterated her position to a group of Democrats in Kentucky. “The time has come for the administration to stop serving up platitudes and present a plan for finishing this war with success and honor,” she said. “I reject a rigid timetable that the terrorists can exploit, and I reject an open timetable that has no ending attached to it.”
Translation: Clinton is all for an extended American stay in Iraq. She “takes responsibility” for her vote on the war, but won’t admit that it was wrong. And of course, Clinton is still for “winning” this war.
In the same note, Clinton hoped contingents of US soldiers would remain in the region with “quick-strike capabilities…This will help us stabilize that new Iraqi government,” she attested. “It will send a message to Iran that they do not have a free hand in Iraq despite their considerable influence and personal and religious connections there.”
Apparently messages carry more weight when they are delivered at gunpoint. “Watch out Tehran,” Hillary seems to be declaring, “I’ll strike quick.”
As one of the top Democratic recipients of pro-Israel funds for the 2006 election cycle, pocketing over $83,000, Clinton now has Iran in her crosshairs.
The Bush administration’s position on Iran is “disturbing” and “dangerous,” reads a position paper written in late 2005 by American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Two years ago the Bush administration accepted a Russian proposal to allow Iran to continue to develop nuclear energy under Russian supervision. Needless to say, AIPAC wasn’t the least bit happy about the compromise.
In a letter to congressional allies, mostly Democrats, the pro-Israel organization admitted it was “concerned that the decision not to go to the Security Council, combined with the US decision to support the ‘Russian proposal,’ indicates a disturbing shift in the Administration’s policy on Iran and poses a danger to the US and our allies.”
Israel, however, continues to develop a substantial nuclear arsenal. In 2000, the British Broadcasting Corporation reported that Israel has likely produced enough plutonium to make up to 200 nuclear weapons. So it is safe to say that Israel’s bomb-building technologies are light years ahead of Iran’s budding nuclear program. Yet Israel still won’t admit they have capacity to produce such deadly weapons.
Meanwhile, as AIPAC and Israel pressure the US government to force the Iran issue to the UN Security Council, Israel itself stands in violation of numerous UN resolutions dealing with the occupied territories of Palestine, including UN Resolution 1402, which in part calls on Israel to withdraw its military from all Palestinian cities at once.
AIPAC’s hypocrisy is nauseating. The Goliath lobbying organization wants Iran to cease to procure nukes while the crimes of Israel continue to be ignored. So who is propping up AIPAC’s hypocritical position?
During a Hanukkah dinner speech delivered in December 2005, hosted by Yeshiva University, Clinton prattled:
I held a series of meetings with Israeli officials [last summer], including the prime minister and the foreign minister and the head of the [Israel Defense Forces], to discuss such challenges we confront. In each of these meetings, we talked at length about the dire threat posed by the potential of a nuclear-armed Iran, not only to Israel, but also to Europe and Russia. Just this week, the new president of Iran made further outrageous comments that attacked Israel’s right to exist that are simply beyond the pale of international discourse and acceptability. During my meeting with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, I was reminded vividly of the threats that Israel faces every hour of every day. … It became even more clear how important it is for the United States to stand with Israel…
As Clinton embraces Israel’s violence, as well as AIPAC’s fraudulent posture on Iran, she simultaneously ignores the hostilities inflicted upon Palestine, as numerous Palestinians have been killed during the continued shelling of the Gaza Strip over the past year.
Clinton’s silence toward Israel’s brutality implies that Clinton as Secretary of State will continue to support AIPAC’s mission to occupy the whole of the occupied territories, as well as a war on Iran.
AIPAC is correct – even President Bush appears to be a little sheepish when up against the warmongering of Hillary Clinton.
Hillary, along with her husband Bill, paid a visit to Israel in the fall of 2005. The former president was a featured speaker at a mass rally that marked the 10th anniversary of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. It was Hillary’s second visit to Israel since she was elected to office in 2000.
The senator did manage to take time out of her voyage to meet with the then semi-conscious Ariel Sharon to discuss “security matters.” Hillary also made her way to the great apartheid wall, which separates Palestine from Israel. As of now, the barrier is nearing completion, and when all is said and done, the monstrosity will stretch to well over 400 miles in length.
Palestinians rightly criticize the obtrusive wall on the grounds that it cuts them off from occupied land in the West Bank. Thousands have also been cut off from their jobs, schools and essential farmland.
Hillary and her Israeli allies don’t get it. When you put powerless Palestinians behind a jail-like wall where life in any real economic sense is unattainable, you wreak pain and anguish, which in turn leads to more anger and resentment toward Israel’s brutal policies. Indeed, the wall will not prove to be a deterrent to resistance, but an incitement to defiance.
“This is not against the Palestinian people,” Clinton said as she gazed over the massive wall. “This is against the terrorists. The Palestinian people have to help to prevent terrorism. They have to change the attitudes about terrorism.”
The senator’s comments seem as if they were taken word-for-word from an American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) position paper.
They may well have been.
In May 2005, Clinton spoke at an AIPAC conference where she praised the bonds between Israel and the United States. “[O]ur future here in this country is intertwined with the future of Israel and the Middle East,” she said. “Now there is a lot that we could talk about, and obviously much has been discussed. But in the short period that I have been given the honor of addressing you, I want to start by focusing on our deep and lasting bonds between the United States and Israel.”
Clinton went on to address the importance of disarming Iran and Syria, as well as keeping troops in Iraq for as long as “it” takes. It was textbook warmongering, and surprise, surprise — Hillary got a standing ovation for her repertoire.
Joshua Frank is co-editor of Dissident Voice, author of Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush, and along with Jeffrey St. Clair, the editor of the new book Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance in the Heartland. He can be reached at brickburner@gmail.com.
Brick Burner
By Joshua Frank
It’s official.
Barack Obama has chosen Hillary Clinton to be Secretary of State; a choice that confirms US foreign policy is not about to change significantly under the forthcoming Democratic administration. The US will continue to pander to Israel and the War on Terror will still be the rallying cry for our foreign interventions.
In a letter to her constituents in November 2005, Clinton expressed her belief that the war in Iraq shouldn’t be “open-ended,” but was clear that she would never “pull out of Iraq immediately.” She wrote that she wouldn’t accept any timetable for withdrawal and won’t even embrace a “redeployment” of US troops along the lines of Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.).
“I take responsibility for my vote, and I, along with a majority of Americans, expect the president and his administration to take responsibility for the false assurances, faulty evidence and mismanagement of the war,” Clinton wrote in her lengthy letter that amounted to nothing short of denial for her own culpability in the mess.
Clinton soon after reiterated her position to a group of Democrats in Kentucky. “The time has come for the administration to stop serving up platitudes and present a plan for finishing this war with success and honor,” she said. “I reject a rigid timetable that the terrorists can exploit, and I reject an open timetable that has no ending attached to it.”
Translation: Clinton is all for an extended American stay in Iraq. She “takes responsibility” for her vote on the war, but won’t admit that it was wrong. And of course, Clinton is still for “winning” this war.
In the same note, Clinton hoped contingents of US soldiers would remain in the region with “quick-strike capabilities…This will help us stabilize that new Iraqi government,” she attested. “It will send a message to Iran that they do not have a free hand in Iraq despite their considerable influence and personal and religious connections there.”
Apparently messages carry more weight when they are delivered at gunpoint. “Watch out Tehran,” Hillary seems to be declaring, “I’ll strike quick.”
As one of the top Democratic recipients of pro-Israel funds for the 2006 election cycle, pocketing over $83,000, Clinton now has Iran in her crosshairs.
The Bush administration’s position on Iran is “disturbing” and “dangerous,” reads a position paper written in late 2005 by American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Two years ago the Bush administration accepted a Russian proposal to allow Iran to continue to develop nuclear energy under Russian supervision. Needless to say, AIPAC wasn’t the least bit happy about the compromise.
In a letter to congressional allies, mostly Democrats, the pro-Israel organization admitted it was “concerned that the decision not to go to the Security Council, combined with the US decision to support the ‘Russian proposal,’ indicates a disturbing shift in the Administration’s policy on Iran and poses a danger to the US and our allies.”
Israel, however, continues to develop a substantial nuclear arsenal. In 2000, the British Broadcasting Corporation reported that Israel has likely produced enough plutonium to make up to 200 nuclear weapons. So it is safe to say that Israel’s bomb-building technologies are light years ahead of Iran’s budding nuclear program. Yet Israel still won’t admit they have capacity to produce such deadly weapons.
Meanwhile, as AIPAC and Israel pressure the US government to force the Iran issue to the UN Security Council, Israel itself stands in violation of numerous UN resolutions dealing with the occupied territories of Palestine, including UN Resolution 1402, which in part calls on Israel to withdraw its military from all Palestinian cities at once.
AIPAC’s hypocrisy is nauseating. The Goliath lobbying organization wants Iran to cease to procure nukes while the crimes of Israel continue to be ignored. So who is propping up AIPAC’s hypocritical position?
During a Hanukkah dinner speech delivered in December 2005, hosted by Yeshiva University, Clinton prattled:
I held a series of meetings with Israeli officials [last summer], including the prime minister and the foreign minister and the head of the [Israel Defense Forces], to discuss such challenges we confront. In each of these meetings, we talked at length about the dire threat posed by the potential of a nuclear-armed Iran, not only to Israel, but also to Europe and Russia. Just this week, the new president of Iran made further outrageous comments that attacked Israel’s right to exist that are simply beyond the pale of international discourse and acceptability. During my meeting with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, I was reminded vividly of the threats that Israel faces every hour of every day. … It became even more clear how important it is for the United States to stand with Israel…
As Clinton embraces Israel’s violence, as well as AIPAC’s fraudulent posture on Iran, she simultaneously ignores the hostilities inflicted upon Palestine, as numerous Palestinians have been killed during the continued shelling of the Gaza Strip over the past year.
Clinton’s silence toward Israel’s brutality implies that Clinton as Secretary of State will continue to support AIPAC’s mission to occupy the whole of the occupied territories, as well as a war on Iran.
AIPAC is correct – even President Bush appears to be a little sheepish when up against the warmongering of Hillary Clinton.
Hillary, along with her husband Bill, paid a visit to Israel in the fall of 2005. The former president was a featured speaker at a mass rally that marked the 10th anniversary of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. It was Hillary’s second visit to Israel since she was elected to office in 2000.
The senator did manage to take time out of her voyage to meet with the then semi-conscious Ariel Sharon to discuss “security matters.” Hillary also made her way to the great apartheid wall, which separates Palestine from Israel. As of now, the barrier is nearing completion, and when all is said and done, the monstrosity will stretch to well over 400 miles in length.
Palestinians rightly criticize the obtrusive wall on the grounds that it cuts them off from occupied land in the West Bank. Thousands have also been cut off from their jobs, schools and essential farmland.
Hillary and her Israeli allies don’t get it. When you put powerless Palestinians behind a jail-like wall where life in any real economic sense is unattainable, you wreak pain and anguish, which in turn leads to more anger and resentment toward Israel’s brutal policies. Indeed, the wall will not prove to be a deterrent to resistance, but an incitement to defiance.
“This is not against the Palestinian people,” Clinton said as she gazed over the massive wall. “This is against the terrorists. The Palestinian people have to help to prevent terrorism. They have to change the attitudes about terrorism.”
The senator’s comments seem as if they were taken word-for-word from an American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) position paper.
They may well have been.
In May 2005, Clinton spoke at an AIPAC conference where she praised the bonds between Israel and the United States. “[O]ur future here in this country is intertwined with the future of Israel and the Middle East,” she said. “Now there is a lot that we could talk about, and obviously much has been discussed. But in the short period that I have been given the honor of addressing you, I want to start by focusing on our deep and lasting bonds between the United States and Israel.”
Clinton went on to address the importance of disarming Iran and Syria, as well as keeping troops in Iraq for as long as “it” takes. It was textbook warmongering, and surprise, surprise — Hillary got a standing ovation for her repertoire.
Joshua Frank is co-editor of Dissident Voice, author of Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush, and along with Jeffrey St. Clair, the editor of the new book Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance in the Heartland. He can be reached at brickburner@gmail.com.
Tommy Chong, The Unanticipated Warrior
New documentary elevates comedian to folk-hero status
Film In Focus
By Norm Kent
I double dare you to tell me that when you hear the names ‘Cheech and Chong’ you don’t smile, chuckle and recall a funny, hazy moment in your life.
Between 1972 and 1985, the comedy team released nine albums, starred in eight films, and won a Grammy award. They became the Dynamic Duo of Dope, and some of their films, like Nice Dreams and Up in Smoke became celebrated classics.
Tommy and Cheech would often be pressed to talk about their ‘message.’ They would reply simply: “All we can do is be funny and try to make people laugh.” In a lifetime far away, that was their modest and fulfilling goal. That, however, was before a fully armed Department of Justice swat team raided Tommy Chong’s comfortable suburban California home in February of 2003.
Armed with a search warrant, you would think these machine gun toting FBI agents were expecting to find 9-11 terrorists. You would think Tommy was holding hostages. Not close. The feds found Tommy, his wife, his elderly dog and some pot. They found a comedian whose entrepreneurial bent enabled him to become the CEO of business enterprise which sold beautiful and designer glass pipes over the Internet.
Unfortunately, ‘Nice Dreams Enterprises’ was about to become Tommy Chong’s nightmare.
In a different world, maybe Tommy would have been given an award for glass artistry. But in the mind of President George Bush, Tommy Chong was aiding and abetting a culture of ‘terrorists’ who glamorized pot. Said the Chief Assistant United States Attorney from the Western District of Pennsylvania, who would personally handle Tommy Chong’s prosecution, and see him to prison: “The people who sell the accessories are just as bad as those growing the plant.”
On that date, Tommy Chong went from telling jokes and producing glass pipes to starring in a real life documentary which exposes just how transcendentally meaningless the drug war against our citizens is. Like the young man who stood alone before a cannon twenty years ago in Tiananmen Square, Tommy Chong has become the unanticipated warrior whose life experience has exposed the abject foolishness of our government’s drug war.
Tommy Chong has gone from living off the culture of pot to going to prison because of it. He has become the person he joked about. But he never asked to be a hero. He just sought to be funny, to do for pot what Red Skelton used to do for booze. Somewhere along the way someone forgot to tell the feds that Marcus Welby was never really a doctor and Tommy Chong was never really a stoner. Well, maybe a little. But it was not his whole life.
Tommy Chong was a comedic writer, a guitarist, a filmmaker, a humorist, a businessman, and an entertainer. He trivialized law enforcement. He made stoners laughable and humorous. He mimicked those panicked moments when we would stash the stash, or swallow a roach. He made us laugh about being high even when we were not high. He made funny movies and comic albums. Along the way, he became a counter culture hero, and for everyone who ever bogarted a joint, there is a Cheech and Chong moment stored in your memory bank.
Says Tommy today: “I turn 70 this year. And I still smoke pot about as regular as I want to.”
One of Tom’s more unique honors was being given a “Lifetime Achievement Award” at the Cannabis Cup ceremonies in Amsterdam. His tour still involves comedy of course, but in his own words, Tommy gives talks “on how Pot can save the Planet. My life is full of love and adventure thanks to the magical herb.”
Following a path many of us tracked, Tommy grew up, has grown older, got married, got divorced, got married, raised a family, and started a successful business. ‘Nice Dream Enterprises’ sold bongs over the ‘Net. Today, any convenience stores on street corners from San Francisco in California to Saint Petersburg in Florida carry pipes and papers and smoking agents. They are not getting busted and they are not going to jail.
But in 2003, while our nation was still removing bodies from the World Trade Center, 55 defendants got popped for bong-selling on the ‘Net. It was a nationwide operation heralded in a press conference by the Attorney General of the United States. Tommy Chong was the Potboy Centerfold, targeted as the number one offender, with a government hell-bent on sending a message which would make Tommy the example to be burnt at the stake.
After 9-11, selling glass pipes on the Internet became a low priority for the federal government. The law was pretty much ignored. Out of all those eventually charged and found guilty, one man of course, would have to wind up with a sentence longer than any other. That man would be a man in his sixties with no criminal record, a father, a parent, and entrepreneur. That man would be one Tommy Chong, who would go to Taft Prison in California for nine months between 2005 and 2006.
“I tried to look at it as going on location for nine months,” Tommy says in a newly released documentary, A/K/A Tommy Chong. It’s playing now on Showtime, and it is a compelling, commanding feature, produced by Blue Chief Entertainment. Even the title has a double entendre: the federal indictment including the charges which would send Tommy to prison, reads United States of America vs. Thomas B. Kin Chong A/K/A Tommy Chong.
The Josh Gilbert film illustratively reveals the way the government improperly solicited and perhaps unlawfully entrapped ‘Nice Dream Enterprises.’ The revealing evidentiary tapes show that the company originally sought NOT to ship glass pipes into the Western Pennsylvania jurisdiction where a phony paraphernalia store run by feds was pleading for product. But the propositions from the undercovers kept on coming, and the corporation headed by Tommy Chong made a bad call. Then came the feds.
As the film shows, Tommy had little to do with the day to day operations of the company. He was, his son Paris says, too busy “dreaming about creating a million dollar bong with gold and diamonds.” But the indictment named Tommy, and in exchange for the government not adding as co-defendants his wife and son, who were instrumental in the operation of the company, Tommy bit the bullet and took the fall.
To secure a lenient plea deal and possible sentence reduction means your attorney has to plead you guilty swiftly. This sentencing guideline enables you to get credit for ‘early acceptance of responsibility.’ It means you have to waive your right to contest the indictment, file defensive motions, and allege such issues as unlawful entrapment. As his attorneys in the film point out, and as Tommy himself found out, your options are severely limited.
The Prince of Dope Films became the pot prisoner he used to joke about. In the film, drug reformers Ethan Nadelman and Eric Schlosser acknowledge as much: “He convinced the government he was the guy he played in the movies.” And Andy Griffith was really a Sheriff.
In 2008, as he tours North America with Cheech Marin for the first time in 25 years, Tommy recognizes of our government: “They made me a martyr.” How true. Within months of his release, Tommy was on the Tonite Show with Jay Leno. “Too bad he wasn’t a conservative radio talk show host,” Leno would remark in his monologue: “he would be in rehab instead of jail.”
On Bill Maher’s weekly television show, Maher noted with irony that Tommy’s federal sentencing date was on September 11: “Osama may still be running free in caves, but our country will be much safer with a 65 year old Tommy Chong in a prison.”
Now free of prison, but forever an adjudicated felon, Tommy says: “I made a living for thirty years talking about a culture. Today, I stand up for it.” He is truly not just a comedian anymore.
Joshua Gilbert produced, wrote, and directed the film. He had the ingenuity and foresight to create a film which followed Tommy from his indictment to his release from prison. We see Tommy entertaining on stage before his incarceration, and then doing a sobering interview while doing his time. In a lighter moment, he jokes with his new found friends, all inmates at a federal prison. Few actors have better worked the ‘method’ system. Tommy’s was real.
In a later scene, we see Tommy leaving the gates of this deserted and lonely steel prison, walking out of the federal penitentiary on his release date, his wife waiting to meet him. Driving home along an isolated road, Tommy sees a goat entangled in a wire cage. He frees him. “It feels good to be free,” Tommy says. He then arrives home, bends down, and kisses the concrete steps leading up to his house.
The film’s insight reveals that the end of a sentence for a prisoner can also be the beginning of a new one. As a felon, you have to register and report to police stations, half way houses, and you can be subject to post-custodial supervision and random drug testing. The failure to meet these conditions can cause your return to prison. After spending nine months in jail, Tommy had to go to one of those half way houses and endure nine more months of probation. We forget what that can do to the human spirit.
“Once you have been jailed, you are never really free again,” Tommy says. “You no longer feel invincible. You have been humbled. You know what the meaning of ‘doing time’ means.”
In life, sometimes you are called upon to stand naked in front of the cannon, as that young man in Tiananmen Square did years ago. Sometimes, you are called upon to just be funny.
The new tour of Cheech and Chong is taking them to cities in America and Canada. As she has since 1996, Tommy’s wife Shelby opens the show. An entertainer in her own right, she is the prelude for the duo that has now been booked for over 50 dates in 50 cities between now and March of 2009.
One of those dates, on March 07, 2009, is not many miles from the very county in Pennsylvania where Tommy’s bongs arrived in a shipment, in 2002, which would lead to his arrest, prosecution, and incarceration. If he has not already, I suspect on that stage and in that forum, Tommy may find true vindication.
Tommy is not alone turning 70 this year. So are many members of his audience. But the crowds laugh and cry, stare and abide by the Dukes of Dope, now in the autumn of their lives. Maybe they go home to lattes instead of lines, grandkids instead of ganja, but Cheech and Chong are one with the crowd, no more so then the closing moments of the performance, when all join in a joyful, playful, sing-along rendition of ‘Up in Smoke.’
“And we close our show,” says Cheech in a Rolling Stone interview, “with ‘Kumbaya.’ It’s for world peace. It’s for the kids. It’s for the future.”
“I am inspired,” Tommy says now, “not just to tell jokes, but to send a message. My arrest, my sentence is a badge of honor..”
Norm Kent is a Fort Lauderdale criminal defense attorney who serves on the Board of Directors of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). His writings are featured at www.normkent.co.
Film In Focus
By Norm Kent
I double dare you to tell me that when you hear the names ‘Cheech and Chong’ you don’t smile, chuckle and recall a funny, hazy moment in your life.
Between 1972 and 1985, the comedy team released nine albums, starred in eight films, and won a Grammy award. They became the Dynamic Duo of Dope, and some of their films, like Nice Dreams and Up in Smoke became celebrated classics.
Tommy and Cheech would often be pressed to talk about their ‘message.’ They would reply simply: “All we can do is be funny and try to make people laugh.” In a lifetime far away, that was their modest and fulfilling goal. That, however, was before a fully armed Department of Justice swat team raided Tommy Chong’s comfortable suburban California home in February of 2003.
Armed with a search warrant, you would think these machine gun toting FBI agents were expecting to find 9-11 terrorists. You would think Tommy was holding hostages. Not close. The feds found Tommy, his wife, his elderly dog and some pot. They found a comedian whose entrepreneurial bent enabled him to become the CEO of business enterprise which sold beautiful and designer glass pipes over the Internet.
Unfortunately, ‘Nice Dreams Enterprises’ was about to become Tommy Chong’s nightmare.
In a different world, maybe Tommy would have been given an award for glass artistry. But in the mind of President George Bush, Tommy Chong was aiding and abetting a culture of ‘terrorists’ who glamorized pot. Said the Chief Assistant United States Attorney from the Western District of Pennsylvania, who would personally handle Tommy Chong’s prosecution, and see him to prison: “The people who sell the accessories are just as bad as those growing the plant.”
On that date, Tommy Chong went from telling jokes and producing glass pipes to starring in a real life documentary which exposes just how transcendentally meaningless the drug war against our citizens is. Like the young man who stood alone before a cannon twenty years ago in Tiananmen Square, Tommy Chong has become the unanticipated warrior whose life experience has exposed the abject foolishness of our government’s drug war.
Tommy Chong has gone from living off the culture of pot to going to prison because of it. He has become the person he joked about. But he never asked to be a hero. He just sought to be funny, to do for pot what Red Skelton used to do for booze. Somewhere along the way someone forgot to tell the feds that Marcus Welby was never really a doctor and Tommy Chong was never really a stoner. Well, maybe a little. But it was not his whole life.
Tommy Chong was a comedic writer, a guitarist, a filmmaker, a humorist, a businessman, and an entertainer. He trivialized law enforcement. He made stoners laughable and humorous. He mimicked those panicked moments when we would stash the stash, or swallow a roach. He made us laugh about being high even when we were not high. He made funny movies and comic albums. Along the way, he became a counter culture hero, and for everyone who ever bogarted a joint, there is a Cheech and Chong moment stored in your memory bank.
Says Tommy today: “I turn 70 this year. And I still smoke pot about as regular as I want to.”
One of Tom’s more unique honors was being given a “Lifetime Achievement Award” at the Cannabis Cup ceremonies in Amsterdam. His tour still involves comedy of course, but in his own words, Tommy gives talks “on how Pot can save the Planet. My life is full of love and adventure thanks to the magical herb.”
Following a path many of us tracked, Tommy grew up, has grown older, got married, got divorced, got married, raised a family, and started a successful business. ‘Nice Dream Enterprises’ sold bongs over the ‘Net. Today, any convenience stores on street corners from San Francisco in California to Saint Petersburg in Florida carry pipes and papers and smoking agents. They are not getting busted and they are not going to jail.
But in 2003, while our nation was still removing bodies from the World Trade Center, 55 defendants got popped for bong-selling on the ‘Net. It was a nationwide operation heralded in a press conference by the Attorney General of the United States. Tommy Chong was the Potboy Centerfold, targeted as the number one offender, with a government hell-bent on sending a message which would make Tommy the example to be burnt at the stake.
After 9-11, selling glass pipes on the Internet became a low priority for the federal government. The law was pretty much ignored. Out of all those eventually charged and found guilty, one man of course, would have to wind up with a sentence longer than any other. That man would be a man in his sixties with no criminal record, a father, a parent, and entrepreneur. That man would be one Tommy Chong, who would go to Taft Prison in California for nine months between 2005 and 2006.
“I tried to look at it as going on location for nine months,” Tommy says in a newly released documentary, A/K/A Tommy Chong. It’s playing now on Showtime, and it is a compelling, commanding feature, produced by Blue Chief Entertainment. Even the title has a double entendre: the federal indictment including the charges which would send Tommy to prison, reads United States of America vs. Thomas B. Kin Chong A/K/A Tommy Chong.
The Josh Gilbert film illustratively reveals the way the government improperly solicited and perhaps unlawfully entrapped ‘Nice Dream Enterprises.’ The revealing evidentiary tapes show that the company originally sought NOT to ship glass pipes into the Western Pennsylvania jurisdiction where a phony paraphernalia store run by feds was pleading for product. But the propositions from the undercovers kept on coming, and the corporation headed by Tommy Chong made a bad call. Then came the feds.
As the film shows, Tommy had little to do with the day to day operations of the company. He was, his son Paris says, too busy “dreaming about creating a million dollar bong with gold and diamonds.” But the indictment named Tommy, and in exchange for the government not adding as co-defendants his wife and son, who were instrumental in the operation of the company, Tommy bit the bullet and took the fall.
To secure a lenient plea deal and possible sentence reduction means your attorney has to plead you guilty swiftly. This sentencing guideline enables you to get credit for ‘early acceptance of responsibility.’ It means you have to waive your right to contest the indictment, file defensive motions, and allege such issues as unlawful entrapment. As his attorneys in the film point out, and as Tommy himself found out, your options are severely limited.
The Prince of Dope Films became the pot prisoner he used to joke about. In the film, drug reformers Ethan Nadelman and Eric Schlosser acknowledge as much: “He convinced the government he was the guy he played in the movies.” And Andy Griffith was really a Sheriff.
In 2008, as he tours North America with Cheech Marin for the first time in 25 years, Tommy recognizes of our government: “They made me a martyr.” How true. Within months of his release, Tommy was on the Tonite Show with Jay Leno. “Too bad he wasn’t a conservative radio talk show host,” Leno would remark in his monologue: “he would be in rehab instead of jail.”
On Bill Maher’s weekly television show, Maher noted with irony that Tommy’s federal sentencing date was on September 11: “Osama may still be running free in caves, but our country will be much safer with a 65 year old Tommy Chong in a prison.”
Now free of prison, but forever an adjudicated felon, Tommy says: “I made a living for thirty years talking about a culture. Today, I stand up for it.” He is truly not just a comedian anymore.
Joshua Gilbert produced, wrote, and directed the film. He had the ingenuity and foresight to create a film which followed Tommy from his indictment to his release from prison. We see Tommy entertaining on stage before his incarceration, and then doing a sobering interview while doing his time. In a lighter moment, he jokes with his new found friends, all inmates at a federal prison. Few actors have better worked the ‘method’ system. Tommy’s was real.
In a later scene, we see Tommy leaving the gates of this deserted and lonely steel prison, walking out of the federal penitentiary on his release date, his wife waiting to meet him. Driving home along an isolated road, Tommy sees a goat entangled in a wire cage. He frees him. “It feels good to be free,” Tommy says. He then arrives home, bends down, and kisses the concrete steps leading up to his house.
The film’s insight reveals that the end of a sentence for a prisoner can also be the beginning of a new one. As a felon, you have to register and report to police stations, half way houses, and you can be subject to post-custodial supervision and random drug testing. The failure to meet these conditions can cause your return to prison. After spending nine months in jail, Tommy had to go to one of those half way houses and endure nine more months of probation. We forget what that can do to the human spirit.
“Once you have been jailed, you are never really free again,” Tommy says. “You no longer feel invincible. You have been humbled. You know what the meaning of ‘doing time’ means.”
In life, sometimes you are called upon to stand naked in front of the cannon, as that young man in Tiananmen Square did years ago. Sometimes, you are called upon to just be funny.
The new tour of Cheech and Chong is taking them to cities in America and Canada. As she has since 1996, Tommy’s wife Shelby opens the show. An entertainer in her own right, she is the prelude for the duo that has now been booked for over 50 dates in 50 cities between now and March of 2009.
One of those dates, on March 07, 2009, is not many miles from the very county in Pennsylvania where Tommy’s bongs arrived in a shipment, in 2002, which would lead to his arrest, prosecution, and incarceration. If he has not already, I suspect on that stage and in that forum, Tommy may find true vindication.
Tommy is not alone turning 70 this year. So are many members of his audience. But the crowds laugh and cry, stare and abide by the Dukes of Dope, now in the autumn of their lives. Maybe they go home to lattes instead of lines, grandkids instead of ganja, but Cheech and Chong are one with the crowd, no more so then the closing moments of the performance, when all join in a joyful, playful, sing-along rendition of ‘Up in Smoke.’
“And we close our show,” says Cheech in a Rolling Stone interview, “with ‘Kumbaya.’ It’s for world peace. It’s for the kids. It’s for the future.”
“I am inspired,” Tommy says now, “not just to tell jokes, but to send a message. My arrest, my sentence is a badge of honor..”
Norm Kent is a Fort Lauderdale criminal defense attorney who serves on the Board of Directors of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). His writings are featured at www.normkent.co.
Turning Crisis Into Opportunity
Citizen groups must seize the moment to restore the balance of power
Political Independence
By Ralph Nader
In ancient China, the character for ‘crisis’ was associated with ‘opportunity.’ This month Congress will be faced with both challenges from General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, whose CEOS are begging for a very rapid $34 billion in emergency government loans.
The three auto giants have few cards to play other than the domino effect on the economy, should they collapse into bankruptcy and liquidation. Once Congress signals that, on behalf of its sullen taxpayers, going into this abyss will not happen, our national legislature will hold all the cards.
So if Congress and George W. Bush agree to have Uncle Sam bail out the auto bosses and their tanking companies, important reforms and models can emerge from this multi-faceted mega rescue.
Let it be called the coming of a vigorous government capitalism, based on rigorous conventional reciprocity. First, since the government is contributing tax dollars, taxpayers should receive taxpayer warrants and preferred shares held by the Treasury Department, for stock in the companies. Second, since the government would be a senior creditor, it should exercise restructuring powers to remove the top executives and the Boards of Directors along with other functional re-alignments.
Third, since the government is essentially performing as an insurer, basic standards of loss prevention should be applied. In this context, this means stronger fuel efficiency, emission-control and safety standards to enhance sales and increase the pressure on foreign auto companies. This insurance-driven requirement would further long-existing federal statutory missions in three areas of engineering performance.
In the past ten weeks, “government capitalism” has been a patsy, absorbing huge taxpayer dollars and liabilities to save an assortment of Wall Street financial corporations. Washington is guaranteeing a clutch of securitized mortgages and consumer loans and even guaranteeing, for the first time, 4 trillion dollars of money market funds.
The bailout of Citigroup illustrates the paucity of reciprocity. It is a sweetheart deal. With Citigroup’s co-executive. Robert Rubin rushing to Washington to structure the deal to save his bank and his own stock portfolio, the Bush regime took on $20 billion in preferred shares and put taxpayers at risk for over $300 billion in the big bank’s loan portfolio. Earlier in October, taxpayers were compelled to buy $25 billion in Citi preferred shares.
Whereas the Feds earlier took a potential 79% ownership of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to save those companies, for Citi the government only took 7.8% stake and left the management and board of directors intact.
Since these enormous bailouts and revisions of bailouts largely occur over weekends in frantic secret huddles between government officials formerly from Wall Street and their former colleagues from Wall Street, the actual agreements are not disclosed. They are considered official secrets, assuming they even have been finalized beyond mere memoranda of understanding.
Since all these deals, and more seem to be coming from other commercial and industrial pleaders, are general and appear to be open-ended, resourceful government capitalism can advance shareholder rights across the board and compel a variety of corporate reforms and accountabilities long-desired by progressives and conservatives alike.
At least the auto companies are being subjected to public Congressional hearings for this latest bailout round. In contrast, the CEOs of the financial goliaths got private roundtable treatment at the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve for far greater rescue packages, revealed in brief statements on Monday morning.
Let’s have a level playing field here and treat all corporate welfare demanders under equal procedural rules shaped on Capitol Hill. Remember the Constitution. It says all spending bills start with the House of Representatives and then go to the Senate and then to the President. Secret taxpayer bailouts by Executive Branch press releases are not what the framers had in mind when they wrote the Constitution.
With the installation of a new president and a new Congress next month, the process must be reversed and these White House-corporate ?understandings? have to be reconsidered and, if maintained, revised.
This is a rare moment in American economic history. Just as the multinational corporations were about to complete the entrenchment of the corporate state in Washington, D.C., -- what President Franklin Delano Roosevelt described in 1939 as a condition of fascism -- their speculative greed, recklessness, mismanagement and de-regulatory license turned them into massive supplicants at the taxpayers’ trough.
In early October, Washington has Wall Street over a Congressional barrel. Still, Wall Street rolled Washington into a $700 billion bailout barrel and rolled it back to New York City.
With a supposedly reformist Democratically dominated Congress and Obama in the White House, the balance of power for the people of our country can turn. But it will take prompt new exertions by the people, citizen groups, organized investors, taxpayers and workers. Seize the moment.
Ralph Nader is a consumer attorney and author who stood as an independent candidate for President from 1996-2008.
Political Independence
By Ralph Nader
In ancient China, the character for ‘crisis’ was associated with ‘opportunity.’ This month Congress will be faced with both challenges from General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, whose CEOS are begging for a very rapid $34 billion in emergency government loans.
The three auto giants have few cards to play other than the domino effect on the economy, should they collapse into bankruptcy and liquidation. Once Congress signals that, on behalf of its sullen taxpayers, going into this abyss will not happen, our national legislature will hold all the cards.
So if Congress and George W. Bush agree to have Uncle Sam bail out the auto bosses and their tanking companies, important reforms and models can emerge from this multi-faceted mega rescue.
Let it be called the coming of a vigorous government capitalism, based on rigorous conventional reciprocity. First, since the government is contributing tax dollars, taxpayers should receive taxpayer warrants and preferred shares held by the Treasury Department, for stock in the companies. Second, since the government would be a senior creditor, it should exercise restructuring powers to remove the top executives and the Boards of Directors along with other functional re-alignments.
Third, since the government is essentially performing as an insurer, basic standards of loss prevention should be applied. In this context, this means stronger fuel efficiency, emission-control and safety standards to enhance sales and increase the pressure on foreign auto companies. This insurance-driven requirement would further long-existing federal statutory missions in three areas of engineering performance.
In the past ten weeks, “government capitalism” has been a patsy, absorbing huge taxpayer dollars and liabilities to save an assortment of Wall Street financial corporations. Washington is guaranteeing a clutch of securitized mortgages and consumer loans and even guaranteeing, for the first time, 4 trillion dollars of money market funds.
The bailout of Citigroup illustrates the paucity of reciprocity. It is a sweetheart deal. With Citigroup’s co-executive. Robert Rubin rushing to Washington to structure the deal to save his bank and his own stock portfolio, the Bush regime took on $20 billion in preferred shares and put taxpayers at risk for over $300 billion in the big bank’s loan portfolio. Earlier in October, taxpayers were compelled to buy $25 billion in Citi preferred shares.
Whereas the Feds earlier took a potential 79% ownership of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to save those companies, for Citi the government only took 7.8% stake and left the management and board of directors intact.
Since these enormous bailouts and revisions of bailouts largely occur over weekends in frantic secret huddles between government officials formerly from Wall Street and their former colleagues from Wall Street, the actual agreements are not disclosed. They are considered official secrets, assuming they even have been finalized beyond mere memoranda of understanding.
Since all these deals, and more seem to be coming from other commercial and industrial pleaders, are general and appear to be open-ended, resourceful government capitalism can advance shareholder rights across the board and compel a variety of corporate reforms and accountabilities long-desired by progressives and conservatives alike.
At least the auto companies are being subjected to public Congressional hearings for this latest bailout round. In contrast, the CEOs of the financial goliaths got private roundtable treatment at the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve for far greater rescue packages, revealed in brief statements on Monday morning.
Let’s have a level playing field here and treat all corporate welfare demanders under equal procedural rules shaped on Capitol Hill. Remember the Constitution. It says all spending bills start with the House of Representatives and then go to the Senate and then to the President. Secret taxpayer bailouts by Executive Branch press releases are not what the framers had in mind when they wrote the Constitution.
With the installation of a new president and a new Congress next month, the process must be reversed and these White House-corporate ?understandings? have to be reconsidered and, if maintained, revised.
This is a rare moment in American economic history. Just as the multinational corporations were about to complete the entrenchment of the corporate state in Washington, D.C., -- what President Franklin Delano Roosevelt described in 1939 as a condition of fascism -- their speculative greed, recklessness, mismanagement and de-regulatory license turned them into massive supplicants at the taxpayers’ trough.
In early October, Washington has Wall Street over a Congressional barrel. Still, Wall Street rolled Washington into a $700 billion bailout barrel and rolled it back to New York City.
With a supposedly reformist Democratically dominated Congress and Obama in the White House, the balance of power for the people of our country can turn. But it will take prompt new exertions by the people, citizen groups, organized investors, taxpayers and workers. Seize the moment.
Ralph Nader is a consumer attorney and author who stood as an independent candidate for President from 1996-2008.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Woman Saved After Jumping Off Samoa Bridge
Councilmember Larry Glass plays good Samaritan from his kayak
Humboldt Sentinel
12/28/08
By Sentinel Staff
EUREKA -- A City councilman and emergency rescuers teamed up Sunday to save the life of a woman who jumped off the Samoa Bridge.
Answering a 12:20 p.m. call about the woman, Eureka police officers arrived moments later and spotted her in the bay, still moving, beneath the bridge about 50 yards out from a dock.
The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office and the U.S. Coast Guard were called, and were answering with a small boat and a helicopter as Eureka firefighters tried to swim to the woman.
The water proved too cold for them to safely reach her, and Eureka Councilmember Larry Glass, who was kayaking, was also unable to bring her within reach of thrown line because he could not paddle against the strong current while holding on to the woman.
After Deputy Roy Reynolds arrived, he and Glass managed to get the woman into an HCSO boat. Reynolds brought the woman to the boat ramp beneath the bridge, where firefighters and City Ambulance staff moved her on a gurney into an ambulance.
The woman has been taken to St Joseph Hospital for treatment of hypothermia and severe injuries from the fall.
Humboldt Sentinel
12/28/08
By Sentinel Staff
EUREKA -- A City councilman and emergency rescuers teamed up Sunday to save the life of a woman who jumped off the Samoa Bridge.
Answering a 12:20 p.m. call about the woman, Eureka police officers arrived moments later and spotted her in the bay, still moving, beneath the bridge about 50 yards out from a dock.
The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office and the U.S. Coast Guard were called, and were answering with a small boat and a helicopter as Eureka firefighters tried to swim to the woman.
The water proved too cold for them to safely reach her, and Eureka Councilmember Larry Glass, who was kayaking, was also unable to bring her within reach of thrown line because he could not paddle against the strong current while holding on to the woman.
After Deputy Roy Reynolds arrived, he and Glass managed to get the woman into an HCSO boat. Reynolds brought the woman to the boat ramp beneath the bridge, where firefighters and City Ambulance staff moved her on a gurney into an ambulance.
The woman has been taken to St Joseph Hospital for treatment of hypothermia and severe injuries from the fall.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Another Holiday DUI In Fortuna
Traffic collision leads to felony driving under the influence arrest
Humboldt Sentinel
12/27/08
By Sentinel Staff
FORTUNA -- Officers answering a call about a two-vehicle traffic accident near Rohnerville Road and Redwood Way at about 2:30 p.m. Friday busted one of the drivers, Shawn Aaron Wilson, for driving under the influence of alcohol and driving with a suspended license.
Wilson and his passenger, who had minor injuries, were taken to a local hospital before he was transported by Fortuna Police Department officers to Eureka and booked into the Humboldt County Correctional Facility.
Humboldt Sentinel
12/27/08
By Sentinel Staff
FORTUNA -- Officers answering a call about a two-vehicle traffic accident near Rohnerville Road and Redwood Way at about 2:30 p.m. Friday busted one of the drivers, Shawn Aaron Wilson, for driving under the influence of alcohol and driving with a suspended license.
Wilson and his passenger, who had minor injuries, were taken to a local hospital before he was transported by Fortuna Police Department officers to Eureka and booked into the Humboldt County Correctional Facility.
Friday, December 26, 2008
Pulp Mill Returns To The Brink Of Water Shut-Off
Special meeting of Water Board to deal with another round of past due bills
Humboldt Sentinel
12/26/08
By Sentinel Staff
EUREKA -- Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District trustees are in much the same position they were two weeks ago, as the idle Evergreen Pulp Mill is yet again in default on its water bill.
“If the mill fails to pay us for the water, our only remedy is to shut off the water,” Water Board president Bruce Rupp said at their last special meeting on Dec. 8. “Nothing in life is free, if we ship it to the mill, somebody is paying for it.”
A new special meeting is set for 9 a.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 30 at Eureka City Hall, where trustees will consider water service termination and other default remedies -- although their agenda also includes the possible adoption of an interim agreement to temporarily continue water service. Public safety officials from the town of Samoa made it clear to the Water Board earlier this month that they continue to be dependent on the industrial supply of water to Evergreen for their basic fire suppression capacity.
An in-person appearance apparently isn’t the highest priority for one of the five elected Water Board members, as Division One trustee Kaitlin Sopoci-Belknap has instead opted to participate by phone.
Under public meeting law in California, any elected official choosing to participate remotely in a noticed hearing must be in a publicly accessible location, should the public wish to make themselves directly heard to the official. For any local ratepayers looking to make a 1,000 mile trip to the Sopoci-Belknap ancestral abode in New Mexico, she will be phoning in from 1316 Galisteo Parkway in Santa Fe.
Humboldt Sentinel
12/26/08
By Sentinel Staff
EUREKA -- Humboldt Bay Municipal Water District trustees are in much the same position they were two weeks ago, as the idle Evergreen Pulp Mill is yet again in default on its water bill.
“If the mill fails to pay us for the water, our only remedy is to shut off the water,” Water Board president Bruce Rupp said at their last special meeting on Dec. 8. “Nothing in life is free, if we ship it to the mill, somebody is paying for it.”
A new special meeting is set for 9 a.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 30 at Eureka City Hall, where trustees will consider water service termination and other default remedies -- although their agenda also includes the possible adoption of an interim agreement to temporarily continue water service. Public safety officials from the town of Samoa made it clear to the Water Board earlier this month that they continue to be dependent on the industrial supply of water to Evergreen for their basic fire suppression capacity.
An in-person appearance apparently isn’t the highest priority for one of the five elected Water Board members, as Division One trustee Kaitlin Sopoci-Belknap has instead opted to participate by phone.
Under public meeting law in California, any elected official choosing to participate remotely in a noticed hearing must be in a publicly accessible location, should the public wish to make themselves directly heard to the official. For any local ratepayers looking to make a 1,000 mile trip to the Sopoci-Belknap ancestral abode in New Mexico, she will be phoning in from 1316 Galisteo Parkway in Santa Fe.
Arcata Police Shoot Two Rabid Foxes
Normally nocturnal foxes were acting abnormally, according to officer
Humboldt Sentinel
12/26/08
By Sentinel Staff
ARCATA -- Two foxes strongly suspected of rabies infection fell under the gun of the police today.
At about 1 p.m. the Arcata Police Department received word of two foxes acting strange behind a residence on the 800 block of Bayside Road. The officer who responded located both foxes, who were “acting abnormally” according to the APD release, and dispatched them.
This incident may well be connected, according to APD sergeant Sligh, to the Oct. 24 attack on a custodian at Jacoby Creek School by a rabid fox. The school employee was promptly treated for rabies exposure and is recovering.
Police officials warn local residents that animals infected with rabies may exhibit abnormal behavior, such as acting aggressive towards people when they normally shy away from people. They may also be unsteady while walking or running and appear intoxicated. A normally nocturnal animal being out during the day is suspicious and maybe a sign of infection.
If you see an animal acting strange, stay away from the animal and call your local law enforcement agency. The APD can be reached at (707) 822-2428.
Humboldt Sentinel
12/26/08
By Sentinel Staff
ARCATA -- Two foxes strongly suspected of rabies infection fell under the gun of the police today.
At about 1 p.m. the Arcata Police Department received word of two foxes acting strange behind a residence on the 800 block of Bayside Road. The officer who responded located both foxes, who were “acting abnormally” according to the APD release, and dispatched them.
This incident may well be connected, according to APD sergeant Sligh, to the Oct. 24 attack on a custodian at Jacoby Creek School by a rabid fox. The school employee was promptly treated for rabies exposure and is recovering.
Police officials warn local residents that animals infected with rabies may exhibit abnormal behavior, such as acting aggressive towards people when they normally shy away from people. They may also be unsteady while walking or running and appear intoxicated. A normally nocturnal animal being out during the day is suspicious and maybe a sign of infection.
If you see an animal acting strange, stay away from the animal and call your local law enforcement agency. The APD can be reached at (707) 822-2428.
Musicians Step Up To Help Their Own
Benefit at HumBrews tomorrow for folk guitarist Phillip Twitchwell
Humboldt Sentinel
12/26/08
By Charles Douglas
A local group of musicians is coming together Saturday at HumBrews to help a friend in need with a marathon benefit concert dubbed “A Gathering Of The Tribes.”
Phillip Twitchwell, known as “Twitch” to his fans on MySpace and at local cafes and nightspots, was assaulted and had his jaw broken recently after a performance at Brogi’s Boiler Room on the south end of Broadway in Eureka.
“I got beat up for trying to calm down a situation after an all-night gig at the Boiler Room,” Twitchwell stated in an event listing on his MySpace page. “We still haven’t caught the guy but I think with a little help we can get him. Anyway I had to be flown down to San Francisco, and that racked up some bills…”
Twitchwell, a relatively recent transplant to Eureka from small-town Missouri “just to see how far west I can go,” has already made a name for himself at local Open Mic performances such as at Has Beans Café in Old Town on Saturday evenings. His support among other local performers is such that “Musicians 4 Musicians” has lined up a who’s who of local bands to rock the house from 2 p.m. to 2 a.m., along with a raffle, all proceeds benefiting Twitch’s hospital bills and other needs.
“Should be a good time so come on out,” Twitch stated. “God bless, I hope to see you there…love, peace and chicken grease!”
The host of Open Mic at Brogi’s, Kingbee, is a natural for the line-up, along with his backup band, The Buzz. Other local notables include St. John and The Sinners, The Fickle Hillbillies, Sabrina On The Rock, Sour Cream and Them Damn Hippies. Making a special appearance to help their friend Twitch, 4 Star Bravado and the M4M Tribal Jam are set to appear as well, with Cowboy Dale, Dex, A Nodding Unconcious, Skeksis, Skunk’d and The Karma Brothers featuring Tommie Wilson dropping by too.
Twitch also thanks HumBrews, located at 856 Tenth Street in Downtown Arcata, for playing host with their great local beer on tap and delicious food in sore. Cover is on a sliding scale, since it’s a benefit at all, starting at a $5 minimum.
Come show your generosity this holiday season and help a starving artist get back on his feet! You can also pick up a copy of his debut solo album, “A Reach For Honesty” on his website, www.itstwitch.com, and check out his MySpace for the latest on what we hope is a speedy recovery.
Humboldt Sentinel
12/26/08
By Charles Douglas
A local group of musicians is coming together Saturday at HumBrews to help a friend in need with a marathon benefit concert dubbed “A Gathering Of The Tribes.”
Phillip Twitchwell, known as “Twitch” to his fans on MySpace and at local cafes and nightspots, was assaulted and had his jaw broken recently after a performance at Brogi’s Boiler Room on the south end of Broadway in Eureka.
“I got beat up for trying to calm down a situation after an all-night gig at the Boiler Room,” Twitchwell stated in an event listing on his MySpace page. “We still haven’t caught the guy but I think with a little help we can get him. Anyway I had to be flown down to San Francisco, and that racked up some bills…”
Twitchwell, a relatively recent transplant to Eureka from small-town Missouri “just to see how far west I can go,” has already made a name for himself at local Open Mic performances such as at Has Beans Café in Old Town on Saturday evenings. His support among other local performers is such that “Musicians 4 Musicians” has lined up a who’s who of local bands to rock the house from 2 p.m. to 2 a.m., along with a raffle, all proceeds benefiting Twitch’s hospital bills and other needs.
“Should be a good time so come on out,” Twitch stated. “God bless, I hope to see you there…love, peace and chicken grease!”
The host of Open Mic at Brogi’s, Kingbee, is a natural for the line-up, along with his backup band, The Buzz. Other local notables include St. John and The Sinners, The Fickle Hillbillies, Sabrina On The Rock, Sour Cream and Them Damn Hippies. Making a special appearance to help their friend Twitch, 4 Star Bravado and the M4M Tribal Jam are set to appear as well, with Cowboy Dale, Dex, A Nodding Unconcious, Skeksis, Skunk’d and The Karma Brothers featuring Tommie Wilson dropping by too.
Twitch also thanks HumBrews, located at 856 Tenth Street in Downtown Arcata, for playing host with their great local beer on tap and delicious food in sore. Cover is on a sliding scale, since it’s a benefit at all, starting at a $5 minimum.
Come show your generosity this holiday season and help a starving artist get back on his feet! You can also pick up a copy of his debut solo album, “A Reach For Honesty” on his website, www.itstwitch.com, and check out his MySpace for the latest on what we hope is a speedy recovery.
Kids Learn That Killing Is Fun
The Army's lethal new theme park programs kids as young as 13
Humboldt Sentinel
12/26/08
By Penny Coleman
The Army Experience Center, located in the Franklin Mills Mall just north of Philadelphia, bills itself as a "state-of-the-art educational facility that uses interactive simulations and online learning programs to educate visitors about the many careers, training and educational opportunities available in the Army."
Nonsense. The only thing they're teaching here is how to blow shit up. If it's state-of-the-art anything, it's state-of-the-art adolescent boys’ wet dreams.
"Too slow! Do it again!" yells the voice in my earphones as a new sequence of armed figures in camouflage pop up in front of me. I -- the player -- am attached to the foreshortened barrel of an M-16 -- and a little embarrassed by that. It's not my thing, really. And I wasn't expecting the game to involve having to tolerate some dickhead's personal opinion about my marksmanship.
But I didn't come here to get yelled at or to play games. I came because I was curious about the Army's latest marketing strategy. For $12 million, this place has been dressed to kill: 15,000 square feet (about three basketball courts) done up in brushed steel, glass and low-light glam. But what this place is really about is the bling: strings of networked Xbox 360 pods and individual gaming stations. And the crown jewels: a UH-60 Black Hawk, an AH-64 Apache and a Humvee. Simulators. And it's all entirely free.
"Potential recruits are afforded a unique opportunity to learn what it means to be the best-led, best-trained and best-equipped Army in the world by allowing them to virtually experience multiple aspects of the Army," says Pete Geren, Secretary of the Army.
Sir, give me a break, sir! You mean the "Career Navigators," those fancy touch-screen installations where you can see all the different jobs the Army can train you for? No one went near them all day. Most of these kids can't reach them, anyway. It's the shiny toys and virtual adrenaline rush that brings them in.
Behind a glass wall, there are 40 more terminals facing a wall of plasma screens: the Tactical Operations Center, where local educators (principals, superintendents, school counselors and teachers) are given an earful about how misunderstood the military is.
"Accurate information about the military experience is often drowned out, or the information that does get through projects mixed messages or inaccuracies," Lt. Gen. Benjamin C. Freakly recently complained to the Northeast Times. "The Army Experience Center provides hands-on, virtual-reality experiences and simulations for young men and women, their parents and others to see, touch and learn firsthand what it means to be in the Army."
There are no mixed messages at the AEC: being in the Army is about getting to play with boy toys, 24/7. Freakly's tidy version of "what it means to be in the Army" fails to mention what can happen if your Humvee hits an IED, or how it might feel to be splattered with your best friend's insides. Or your own.
As I considered that grim thought, there’s a tap on my shoulder. It's my turn -- my Black Hawk awaits.
Our orders are to protect a convoy as it moves through enemy territory. The video kicks in with a roar of rotors; the chopper lurches and bucks as it turns to follow the trucks on the ground -- the wind, the vibrations, the report of my M-4 and the staccato of incoming rounds make it hard to hear the screamed alerts coming over the intercom: "Enemy on the right!" "Look out, RPGs straight ahead!"
Bad guys are shooting at me from the alleys, the shadows, the rooftops, but I am wasting them. One after another, they get caught in my crosshairs and -- bam! -- their bodies lift and sprawl in haphazard death. We're slammed by an IED and momentarily engulfed in flame. My hand is getting numb from the rifle recoil, but my lizard brain has taken over.
Too soon, we emerge from the bedlam and an inspirationally oversized American flag indicates that we have successfully achieved our destination -- a field hospital where rows of medics attend to ghastly luminous, very slightly breathing shapes, the bloodless bodies of the cyber-wounded.
It's a bizarre curtsy to realism, and almost is lost in the orgy of virtual pyrotechnics as American rockets vaporize a bridge in the background.
I rode the Black Hawk three times and the Humvee twice. My best score: I totally "engaged" 47 percent of the man-shapes that came into my crosshairs. I'm told that 27 percent is average.
And only a few Rules of Engagement infractions -- civilians, the ones without guns who were running away. Didn't notice. Too bad. Mission accomplished.
Paul Boyce, an Army spokesman, "strongly refutes" the notion that any of the Army's initiatives glamorize war, adding that "great care" is taken to avoid portraying violence.
Again, nonsense. The drill instructor who was yelling at me earlier is a character in the Army's official game, "America's Army," available at all of the AEC’s game stations. "America's Army" is unapologetically about realistic, deadly combat -- minus the blood. A hit registers as a puff of red smoke. Four puffs and you are "engaged." Concerned parents can further sanitize the violence with controls that cause dead soldiers to simply sit down.
"We have a 'Teen' rating that allows 13-year-olds to play, and in order to maintain that rating we have to adhere to certain standards," Chris Chambers, a retired Army major who is now the project's deputy director, told the New York Times. "We don't use blood and gore and violence to entertain."
So, in the absence of blood and gore, there is no violence. And kids get that? They get the distinction between fantasy and reality? I found the blurring completely disorienting, and I have consumed decades of both real and virtual violence.
Lt. Col. Dave Grossman has written extensively on the psychology of killing, and he argues that it's not that people can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality, but that these games use virtual experience to systematically desensitize and condition.
Grossman cites hundreds of studies that reveal a direct correlation between exposure to media violence -- especially interactive video games -- and increased childhood aggression. A Stanford University study is particularly compelling: Over a 20-week period, third- and fourth-graders who limited or eliminated TV and video games demonstrated a 50 percent decrease in verbal aggression and a 40 percent decrease in physical aggression.
Grossman warns that Americans ''are reaching that stage of desensitization at which the inflicting of pain and suffering has become a source of entertainment; vicarious pleasure rather than revulsion. We are learning to kill, and we are learning to like it.''
Whose agenda does that serve?
Brian Mackey, a slight kid from Levittown, Pa., is working the front desk. He's wearing a white T-shirt sporting a U.S. Army logo, and although he doesn't have the bulk that comes with basic training (and age), I ask if he is active duty anyway. Brian says no, he plans to go straight from graduation in June into the Army. In the meantime, he has the ideal job for pre-induction skills training.
Brian has a 3.95 grade-point average in high school, but he isn't interested in the differences between policies or politicians or wars. And he isn't interested in any of the Army's fancy careers either. He wants to be in the infantry. When he says, "Sure I might die, but infantry is what I've always wanted," I can't help but wonder how much of his bravado comes from exactly that systematic desensitization and conditioning Grossman talks about.
His T-shirt, by the way, is part of the First Infantry Division apparel collection, the Army's first officially licensed line of clothing, on sale in the AEC and at Sears. Made in China. Available in boys sizes.
Despite the AEC's 13-year-old age limit, underage exiles are welcome to come for the free movies. Or to "Dining Army Style," featuring MRE (Meal, Ready to Eat) smorgasbords. Otherwise, they can watch -- through the center's glass front from the video arcade or the skateboard palace, both directly opposite the AEC -- while their older brothers compete in the Xbox tournaments.
A provision of No Child Left Behind, one of the first pieces of legislation proposed by the Bush administration, forced schools to open their doors to recruiters and provide contact information for students as young as 11.
J.E. McNeil, executive director of the Center on Conscience & War, calls such marketing tactics "an illegal tool in the recruiting arsenal" and a "violation of international law."
The Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, ratified and signed by the U.S. Senate in 2002, categorically forbids the Pentagon, or the militaries of any of the other 124 signatory nations, to attempt to recruit children 13 to 16 years old. The Pentagon simply chooses to ignore it, and Congress has neglected to enforce the treaty. (A meticulous documentation of the Pentagon's recruiting tactics explicitly directed at children can be found in a recent report by the American Civil Liberties Union, Soldiers of Misfortune.)
Staff Sgt. Kevin Haver is a recruiter, a 25-year-old native Philadelphian, pumped up, tightly wrapped in his uniform, and one of a score of active-duty soldiers currently assigned to the AEC. He's taciturn at first. Having ascended to the warrior class, he has learned to despise and distrust all that is not military. Or at least, to act that way.
Haver has completed five deployments (including two to Iraq and one to Afghanistan), and he describes them defiantly as "the most fun I've ever had." My question about stress gets a dismissive snort. He's a "flexible kind of guy." Being home is nice enough, but it's too laid-back. He misses the high energy, the focused activity, and especially, the comradeship.
In fact, here at the center, it is laid-back -- nothing like the heavy-handed recruiting tactics that have caused so much public outrage over the past few years. Soldiers are standing around talking, watching TV. Some of Haver's buddies even jumped on the sims with me, inflating my scores. The place is filled with kids, but they are all playing games, ignoring the soldiers, who ignore them in turn.
"It's not a recruiting center," insists Ed Walters, the Army's first official chief marketing officer.
It is so, Ed.
For the past two years, the Army has proudly claimed to have met its recruitment goals. The economic crisis, unemployment, expanded educational benefits, grossly inflated enlistment bonuses, an array of medical, moral and criminal waivers, and relaxed weight, height, age and education requirements all make that achievement look considerably less impressive. The Army’s efforts have cost more than $4 billion a year, but a recent rash of recruiter suicides in Texas suggests that the ongoing stress of meeting quotas is becoming intolerable for some.
It seems the Army has come up with a unique strategy for the future: automation. For $4 billion, they could build half a dozen experience centers in every state and let the machines desensitize, condition, train and even enlist America's youth.
The Pentagon has been enjoined by both by national lawmakers and international institutions to stop pandering to children. When children's bodies are invaded, we call it statutory rape. Do we have a tidier phrase for the invasion of their minds?
Penny Coleman is the widow of a Vietnam veteran who took his own life after coming home. She is the author of Flashback: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Suicide and the Lessons of War, and can be reached at flashbackhome.com.
Humboldt Sentinel
12/26/08
By Penny Coleman
The Army Experience Center, located in the Franklin Mills Mall just north of Philadelphia, bills itself as a "state-of-the-art educational facility that uses interactive simulations and online learning programs to educate visitors about the many careers, training and educational opportunities available in the Army."
Nonsense. The only thing they're teaching here is how to blow shit up. If it's state-of-the-art anything, it's state-of-the-art adolescent boys’ wet dreams.
"Too slow! Do it again!" yells the voice in my earphones as a new sequence of armed figures in camouflage pop up in front of me. I -- the player -- am attached to the foreshortened barrel of an M-16 -- and a little embarrassed by that. It's not my thing, really. And I wasn't expecting the game to involve having to tolerate some dickhead's personal opinion about my marksmanship.
But I didn't come here to get yelled at or to play games. I came because I was curious about the Army's latest marketing strategy. For $12 million, this place has been dressed to kill: 15,000 square feet (about three basketball courts) done up in brushed steel, glass and low-light glam. But what this place is really about is the bling: strings of networked Xbox 360 pods and individual gaming stations. And the crown jewels: a UH-60 Black Hawk, an AH-64 Apache and a Humvee. Simulators. And it's all entirely free.
"Potential recruits are afforded a unique opportunity to learn what it means to be the best-led, best-trained and best-equipped Army in the world by allowing them to virtually experience multiple aspects of the Army," says Pete Geren, Secretary of the Army.
Sir, give me a break, sir! You mean the "Career Navigators," those fancy touch-screen installations where you can see all the different jobs the Army can train you for? No one went near them all day. Most of these kids can't reach them, anyway. It's the shiny toys and virtual adrenaline rush that brings them in.
Behind a glass wall, there are 40 more terminals facing a wall of plasma screens: the Tactical Operations Center, where local educators (principals, superintendents, school counselors and teachers) are given an earful about how misunderstood the military is.
"Accurate information about the military experience is often drowned out, or the information that does get through projects mixed messages or inaccuracies," Lt. Gen. Benjamin C. Freakly recently complained to the Northeast Times. "The Army Experience Center provides hands-on, virtual-reality experiences and simulations for young men and women, their parents and others to see, touch and learn firsthand what it means to be in the Army."
There are no mixed messages at the AEC: being in the Army is about getting to play with boy toys, 24/7. Freakly's tidy version of "what it means to be in the Army" fails to mention what can happen if your Humvee hits an IED, or how it might feel to be splattered with your best friend's insides. Or your own.
As I considered that grim thought, there’s a tap on my shoulder. It's my turn -- my Black Hawk awaits.
Our orders are to protect a convoy as it moves through enemy territory. The video kicks in with a roar of rotors; the chopper lurches and bucks as it turns to follow the trucks on the ground -- the wind, the vibrations, the report of my M-4 and the staccato of incoming rounds make it hard to hear the screamed alerts coming over the intercom: "Enemy on the right!" "Look out, RPGs straight ahead!"
Bad guys are shooting at me from the alleys, the shadows, the rooftops, but I am wasting them. One after another, they get caught in my crosshairs and -- bam! -- their bodies lift and sprawl in haphazard death. We're slammed by an IED and momentarily engulfed in flame. My hand is getting numb from the rifle recoil, but my lizard brain has taken over.
Too soon, we emerge from the bedlam and an inspirationally oversized American flag indicates that we have successfully achieved our destination -- a field hospital where rows of medics attend to ghastly luminous, very slightly breathing shapes, the bloodless bodies of the cyber-wounded.
It's a bizarre curtsy to realism, and almost is lost in the orgy of virtual pyrotechnics as American rockets vaporize a bridge in the background.
I rode the Black Hawk three times and the Humvee twice. My best score: I totally "engaged" 47 percent of the man-shapes that came into my crosshairs. I'm told that 27 percent is average.
And only a few Rules of Engagement infractions -- civilians, the ones without guns who were running away. Didn't notice. Too bad. Mission accomplished.
Paul Boyce, an Army spokesman, "strongly refutes" the notion that any of the Army's initiatives glamorize war, adding that "great care" is taken to avoid portraying violence.
Again, nonsense. The drill instructor who was yelling at me earlier is a character in the Army's official game, "America's Army," available at all of the AEC’s game stations. "America's Army" is unapologetically about realistic, deadly combat -- minus the blood. A hit registers as a puff of red smoke. Four puffs and you are "engaged." Concerned parents can further sanitize the violence with controls that cause dead soldiers to simply sit down.
"We have a 'Teen' rating that allows 13-year-olds to play, and in order to maintain that rating we have to adhere to certain standards," Chris Chambers, a retired Army major who is now the project's deputy director, told the New York Times. "We don't use blood and gore and violence to entertain."
So, in the absence of blood and gore, there is no violence. And kids get that? They get the distinction between fantasy and reality? I found the blurring completely disorienting, and I have consumed decades of both real and virtual violence.
Lt. Col. Dave Grossman has written extensively on the psychology of killing, and he argues that it's not that people can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality, but that these games use virtual experience to systematically desensitize and condition.
Grossman cites hundreds of studies that reveal a direct correlation between exposure to media violence -- especially interactive video games -- and increased childhood aggression. A Stanford University study is particularly compelling: Over a 20-week period, third- and fourth-graders who limited or eliminated TV and video games demonstrated a 50 percent decrease in verbal aggression and a 40 percent decrease in physical aggression.
Grossman warns that Americans ''are reaching that stage of desensitization at which the inflicting of pain and suffering has become a source of entertainment; vicarious pleasure rather than revulsion. We are learning to kill, and we are learning to like it.''
Whose agenda does that serve?
Brian Mackey, a slight kid from Levittown, Pa., is working the front desk. He's wearing a white T-shirt sporting a U.S. Army logo, and although he doesn't have the bulk that comes with basic training (and age), I ask if he is active duty anyway. Brian says no, he plans to go straight from graduation in June into the Army. In the meantime, he has the ideal job for pre-induction skills training.
Brian has a 3.95 grade-point average in high school, but he isn't interested in the differences between policies or politicians or wars. And he isn't interested in any of the Army's fancy careers either. He wants to be in the infantry. When he says, "Sure I might die, but infantry is what I've always wanted," I can't help but wonder how much of his bravado comes from exactly that systematic desensitization and conditioning Grossman talks about.
His T-shirt, by the way, is part of the First Infantry Division apparel collection, the Army's first officially licensed line of clothing, on sale in the AEC and at Sears. Made in China. Available in boys sizes.
Despite the AEC's 13-year-old age limit, underage exiles are welcome to come for the free movies. Or to "Dining Army Style," featuring MRE (Meal, Ready to Eat) smorgasbords. Otherwise, they can watch -- through the center's glass front from the video arcade or the skateboard palace, both directly opposite the AEC -- while their older brothers compete in the Xbox tournaments.
A provision of No Child Left Behind, one of the first pieces of legislation proposed by the Bush administration, forced schools to open their doors to recruiters and provide contact information for students as young as 11.
J.E. McNeil, executive director of the Center on Conscience & War, calls such marketing tactics "an illegal tool in the recruiting arsenal" and a "violation of international law."
The Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, ratified and signed by the U.S. Senate in 2002, categorically forbids the Pentagon, or the militaries of any of the other 124 signatory nations, to attempt to recruit children 13 to 16 years old. The Pentagon simply chooses to ignore it, and Congress has neglected to enforce the treaty. (A meticulous documentation of the Pentagon's recruiting tactics explicitly directed at children can be found in a recent report by the American Civil Liberties Union, Soldiers of Misfortune.)
Staff Sgt. Kevin Haver is a recruiter, a 25-year-old native Philadelphian, pumped up, tightly wrapped in his uniform, and one of a score of active-duty soldiers currently assigned to the AEC. He's taciturn at first. Having ascended to the warrior class, he has learned to despise and distrust all that is not military. Or at least, to act that way.
Haver has completed five deployments (including two to Iraq and one to Afghanistan), and he describes them defiantly as "the most fun I've ever had." My question about stress gets a dismissive snort. He's a "flexible kind of guy." Being home is nice enough, but it's too laid-back. He misses the high energy, the focused activity, and especially, the comradeship.
In fact, here at the center, it is laid-back -- nothing like the heavy-handed recruiting tactics that have caused so much public outrage over the past few years. Soldiers are standing around talking, watching TV. Some of Haver's buddies even jumped on the sims with me, inflating my scores. The place is filled with kids, but they are all playing games, ignoring the soldiers, who ignore them in turn.
"It's not a recruiting center," insists Ed Walters, the Army's first official chief marketing officer.
It is so, Ed.
For the past two years, the Army has proudly claimed to have met its recruitment goals. The economic crisis, unemployment, expanded educational benefits, grossly inflated enlistment bonuses, an array of medical, moral and criminal waivers, and relaxed weight, height, age and education requirements all make that achievement look considerably less impressive. The Army’s efforts have cost more than $4 billion a year, but a recent rash of recruiter suicides in Texas suggests that the ongoing stress of meeting quotas is becoming intolerable for some.
It seems the Army has come up with a unique strategy for the future: automation. For $4 billion, they could build half a dozen experience centers in every state and let the machines desensitize, condition, train and even enlist America's youth.
The Pentagon has been enjoined by both by national lawmakers and international institutions to stop pandering to children. When children's bodies are invaded, we call it statutory rape. Do we have a tidier phrase for the invasion of their minds?
Penny Coleman is the widow of a Vietnam veteran who took his own life after coming home. She is the author of Flashback: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Suicide and the Lessons of War, and can be reached at flashbackhome.com.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
The Sole Of Christmas
Shoe-thrower shows how "to set at liberty those who are oppressed"
Humboldt Sentinel
12/25/08
By Rev. William E. Alberts
Christians believe that Jesus is the “Prince of Peace” and that a central message of Christmas is “on earth peace, good will toward men.” (Luke 2:14). In fact, belief in “Peace” permeates the Christian’s New Testament: “Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of God” (Matthew 5:9); “For the Kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Let us then pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding” (Romans 14: 17, 19); “It is to peace that God has called you” (I Corinthians 7:15b); “For God is a God not of disorder but of peace” (I Corinthians 14:33); “Live in peace and the God of love and peace will be with you.” (II Corinthians 13:11); “But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruit, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy” (James 3:17); “As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace[italics added].” (Ephesians 6:15)
Iraqi television reporter and journalist Muntader al-Zaidi was ready with the shoes on his feet at a Baghdad news conference: he “proclaim[ed] the gospel of peace” by throwing them at President Bush. He was painfully aware of Bush’s hypocrisy. The “I pray for peace” president hell bent for a falsely based, unjust, illegal, pre-emptive war of choice. As “commander in chief” responsible for the deaths of over one million Iraqi civilians, over four million Iraqi refugees, and for the devastation of the country’s life-sustaining infrastructure. A “war president” who lauds how his administration’s criminal “Operation Iraqi Freedom” has brought “democracy” to Iraq. Yet his “unannounced” visits to Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, including his latest legacy-refurbishing trip, reveal his own keen awareness that he would not be able to duck far more lethal weapons than “size 10 shoes” if he showed his face in public.
Journalist al-Zaidi had the courage to throw the truth at President Bush. First he threw the one shoe with the words, “This is a gift from the Iraqis; this is the farewell kiss, you dog!” Then he hurled his other shoe while speaking more truth: “This is for the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq.” (The New York Times, Dec. 15, 2008). Finally a reporter who dared to speak truth to a murderous tyrant who repeatedly mouths “God” and “freedom” and “democracy.”
Journalist Muntader al-Zaidi leads us to the “sole” of Christmas. Christmas is about throwing truth at falsehood and hyprocrisy in the name of peace and love and justice. That is what Jesus was about. He was much more than a sweet, little, innocent, non-threatening baby in a manger calling for a seasonal adoration. His birth is not a once-a-year sentimental flight into fantasy (however precious fantasy is) but the thrusting into our society’s midst every human being’s right to his and her and their place, identity, belief, fulfillment. His mission was to liberate his Jewish people from Roman occupation, which is why he was crucified. His calling was “to set at liberty those who are oppressed (Luke 4: 18b), not use their oppression as a pretext for coveting their oil and empire-building and self-aggrandizement.
It is time for political and religious leaders and journalists to follow in Muntader al-Zaidi’s footsteps and throw the book of justice at President Bush and torture-authorizing Vice President Cheney. “Peace on earth” depends on justice and justice depends on love and love does whatever justice and peace take. “As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace.”
Journalist Muntader al-Zaidi is Christmas’s peace person of the year. He is to be modeled not mocked. He is to be praised not prosecuted.
Rev. William E. Alberts is a hospital chaplain and both a Unitarian Universalist and United Methodist minister who has written research reports, essays and articles on racism, war, politics and religion. He can be reached at william.alberts@bmc.org.
Humboldt Sentinel
12/25/08
By Rev. William E. Alberts
Christians believe that Jesus is the “Prince of Peace” and that a central message of Christmas is “on earth peace, good will toward men.” (Luke 2:14). In fact, belief in “Peace” permeates the Christian’s New Testament: “Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of God” (Matthew 5:9); “For the Kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Let us then pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding” (Romans 14: 17, 19); “It is to peace that God has called you” (I Corinthians 7:15b); “For God is a God not of disorder but of peace” (I Corinthians 14:33); “Live in peace and the God of love and peace will be with you.” (II Corinthians 13:11); “But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruit, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy” (James 3:17); “As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace[italics added].” (Ephesians 6:15)
Iraqi television reporter and journalist Muntader al-Zaidi was ready with the shoes on his feet at a Baghdad news conference: he “proclaim[ed] the gospel of peace” by throwing them at President Bush. He was painfully aware of Bush’s hypocrisy. The “I pray for peace” president hell bent for a falsely based, unjust, illegal, pre-emptive war of choice. As “commander in chief” responsible for the deaths of over one million Iraqi civilians, over four million Iraqi refugees, and for the devastation of the country’s life-sustaining infrastructure. A “war president” who lauds how his administration’s criminal “Operation Iraqi Freedom” has brought “democracy” to Iraq. Yet his “unannounced” visits to Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, including his latest legacy-refurbishing trip, reveal his own keen awareness that he would not be able to duck far more lethal weapons than “size 10 shoes” if he showed his face in public.
Journalist al-Zaidi had the courage to throw the truth at President Bush. First he threw the one shoe with the words, “This is a gift from the Iraqis; this is the farewell kiss, you dog!” Then he hurled his other shoe while speaking more truth: “This is for the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq.” (The New York Times, Dec. 15, 2008). Finally a reporter who dared to speak truth to a murderous tyrant who repeatedly mouths “God” and “freedom” and “democracy.”
Journalist Muntader al-Zaidi leads us to the “sole” of Christmas. Christmas is about throwing truth at falsehood and hyprocrisy in the name of peace and love and justice. That is what Jesus was about. He was much more than a sweet, little, innocent, non-threatening baby in a manger calling for a seasonal adoration. His birth is not a once-a-year sentimental flight into fantasy (however precious fantasy is) but the thrusting into our society’s midst every human being’s right to his and her and their place, identity, belief, fulfillment. His mission was to liberate his Jewish people from Roman occupation, which is why he was crucified. His calling was “to set at liberty those who are oppressed (Luke 4: 18b), not use their oppression as a pretext for coveting their oil and empire-building and self-aggrandizement.
It is time for political and religious leaders and journalists to follow in Muntader al-Zaidi’s footsteps and throw the book of justice at President Bush and torture-authorizing Vice President Cheney. “Peace on earth” depends on justice and justice depends on love and love does whatever justice and peace take. “As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace.”
Journalist Muntader al-Zaidi is Christmas’s peace person of the year. He is to be modeled not mocked. He is to be praised not prosecuted.
Rev. William E. Alberts is a hospital chaplain and both a Unitarian Universalist and United Methodist minister who has written research reports, essays and articles on racism, war, politics and religion. He can be reached at william.alberts@bmc.org.
Ishi Dube Headlines New Year's Eve Bash
Massagana opening for show in exaltation of gratitude
Humboldt Sentinel
12/25/08
By Sentinel Staff
Ring in the new year with irie vibes at the Red Fox Tavern next Wednesday, as Ishi Dube hits town with “more love, every time.”
Fresh from the Reggae Winter Splash in Berkeley this weekend, Arcata’s Ishi Dube, backed up by the Massagana Band, are coming back to Eureka, bringing rapper Mike Marshall with them as a special guest.
Ishi Dube has a profound love for reggae music, according to the release from promoter Eric Kinnally of Passion Presents. On stage, Dube doesn't miss a beat; he gives a sincere, energetic, and uplifting performance. Not only a singer and songwriter, Dube is also a skilled producer, musician, and sound engineer, he is involved in nearly every process of production from the roots to the fruits. Dube's natural talent and hard work are sure to gain notoriety in the world of reggae music.
Ishi Dube was born in 1980 at the foothills of the Himalaya Mountains in India. Three years later Ishi and his mother relocated to California. It didn't take long for a few Bob Marley, Black Uhuru, and Third World albums to take effect on young Dube; he's said to have made up his own reggae lyrics by the age of three! At age 16, Dube was playing drums in his first band, the Soul Rebels. Over the next decade Dube refined his craft by giving hundreds of live performances which in turn, created a substantial following in Northern California.
Now Ishi Dube is exploding on to the scene, blending messages genuine roots reggae sound with a contemporary dancehall edge to the reggae community everywhere. With lyrical content ranging from political to spiritual to messages of societal change, Ishi's vocal styles range from a sweet and melodic roots sound to a rougher, rhythmic deejay delivery. Dube grasps the attention of his audiences with multiple vocal techniques, accompanied by heavy riddims covering nearly every sub-genre of reggae; from ska, lover's rock and roots, to dub, rockers, and dancehall.
Since the release of his debut album in association with the Massagana Band, Dube has been touring and performing at premier festivals and venues, writing and recording songs with widely respected artists such as Everton Blender, Capleton, Ras Attitude and many more. Dube is currently producing other artists and is now the vice president of Universal Balance Entertainment, an independent record label. Along with fellow artist Jah Sun, Ishi co-founded the strong network of reggae artists called Lioncamp. Hard-working, dependable, and talented, Ishi Dube is an artist on the rise.
Dube's positive message and pleasant demeanor make his performance enjoyable for people from all walks of life. Ishi is a conscious entertainer, an energetic performer, and a serious musician. Dube says that the underlying point behind his music is give thanks for life, live it with compassion, and make the most of it. Check out www.ishidubemusic.com or their MySpace page to catch some of their latest tracks.
Along with the Massagana Band backing them up, special guest rapper Michael Marshall is set to fire up the house. Marshall was the lead singer of the rhythm and blues group Timex Social Club. In 1986, he had taken an offer to join Run DMC's Raising Hell Tour, and in the 1990s he worked with the group called "Mo'fessionals" and made a few songs with them. In 1995, Mike did a feature for a rap group from Oakland called The Luniz and sang the chorus on their hit "I Got 5 On It."
Marshall is the only currently active member of the Timex Social Club group. He completed the album called "K.I.M." with the rapper Equipto 2004. Had an international top 10 hit "Your Body" with DJ Tom Novy 2005. Completed solo album Love, Lies & Life with hit song "So Young" featuring San Quinn 2006. Marshall’s tracks can be heard on his MySpace or at www.michaelmarshallusa.info.
This special New Year’s Eve show for the 21-and-over set at the Red Fox opens at 10:30 p.m., with tickets for $15 or only $13 if purchased in advance at their 415 Fifth Street venue or at www.passionpresents.com.
Humboldt Sentinel
12/25/08
By Sentinel Staff
Ring in the new year with irie vibes at the Red Fox Tavern next Wednesday, as Ishi Dube hits town with “more love, every time.”
Fresh from the Reggae Winter Splash in Berkeley this weekend, Arcata’s Ishi Dube, backed up by the Massagana Band, are coming back to Eureka, bringing rapper Mike Marshall with them as a special guest.
Ishi Dube has a profound love for reggae music, according to the release from promoter Eric Kinnally of Passion Presents. On stage, Dube doesn't miss a beat; he gives a sincere, energetic, and uplifting performance. Not only a singer and songwriter, Dube is also a skilled producer, musician, and sound engineer, he is involved in nearly every process of production from the roots to the fruits. Dube's natural talent and hard work are sure to gain notoriety in the world of reggae music.
Ishi Dube was born in 1980 at the foothills of the Himalaya Mountains in India. Three years later Ishi and his mother relocated to California. It didn't take long for a few Bob Marley, Black Uhuru, and Third World albums to take effect on young Dube; he's said to have made up his own reggae lyrics by the age of three! At age 16, Dube was playing drums in his first band, the Soul Rebels. Over the next decade Dube refined his craft by giving hundreds of live performances which in turn, created a substantial following in Northern California.
Now Ishi Dube is exploding on to the scene, blending messages genuine roots reggae sound with a contemporary dancehall edge to the reggae community everywhere. With lyrical content ranging from political to spiritual to messages of societal change, Ishi's vocal styles range from a sweet and melodic roots sound to a rougher, rhythmic deejay delivery. Dube grasps the attention of his audiences with multiple vocal techniques, accompanied by heavy riddims covering nearly every sub-genre of reggae; from ska, lover's rock and roots, to dub, rockers, and dancehall.
Since the release of his debut album in association with the Massagana Band, Dube has been touring and performing at premier festivals and venues, writing and recording songs with widely respected artists such as Everton Blender, Capleton, Ras Attitude and many more. Dube is currently producing other artists and is now the vice president of Universal Balance Entertainment, an independent record label. Along with fellow artist Jah Sun, Ishi co-founded the strong network of reggae artists called Lioncamp. Hard-working, dependable, and talented, Ishi Dube is an artist on the rise.
Dube's positive message and pleasant demeanor make his performance enjoyable for people from all walks of life. Ishi is a conscious entertainer, an energetic performer, and a serious musician. Dube says that the underlying point behind his music is give thanks for life, live it with compassion, and make the most of it. Check out www.ishidubemusic.com or their MySpace page to catch some of their latest tracks.
Along with the Massagana Band backing them up, special guest rapper Michael Marshall is set to fire up the house. Marshall was the lead singer of the rhythm and blues group Timex Social Club. In 1986, he had taken an offer to join Run DMC's Raising Hell Tour, and in the 1990s he worked with the group called "Mo'fessionals" and made a few songs with them. In 1995, Mike did a feature for a rap group from Oakland called The Luniz and sang the chorus on their hit "I Got 5 On It."
Marshall is the only currently active member of the Timex Social Club group. He completed the album called "K.I.M." with the rapper Equipto 2004. Had an international top 10 hit "Your Body" with DJ Tom Novy 2005. Completed solo album Love, Lies & Life with hit song "So Young" featuring San Quinn 2006. Marshall’s tracks can be heard on his MySpace or at www.michaelmarshallusa.info.
This special New Year’s Eve show for the 21-and-over set at the Red Fox opens at 10:30 p.m., with tickets for $15 or only $13 if purchased in advance at their 415 Fifth Street venue or at www.passionpresents.com.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Arcata Looks For Donations To Add Another K-9 Unit
Holiday gifts welcome for all-volunteer pooch purchasing effort
Humboldt Sentinel
12/24/08
By Sentinel Staff
ARCATA -- Citizen volunteers draw near their goal, this holiday season, of raising enough money to purchase a second patrol service K-9.
The Arcata Police Department is in the final preparation stages to welcome the new K-9 unit in the new year, in time for the 30-day training session that begins on March 1, according to an APD release. Once the money is raised and training completed, the new K-9 team is set to hit the streets in April.
Officer Greg Pope, the new APD handler for the second K-9, announced that the home for the new canine is ready and waiting thanks to the generosity of the community.
The new unit builds on the success of local residents providing the resources necessary to add “Zari” to the force since Aug. 1. The APDs first canine, Zari continues to work 12-hour shifts with sergeant Ron Sligh, and also receives continuous training with monthly professional sessions with the Eureka and Fortuna K-9 units.
“[He] keeps up his end of that team very well,” the release stated. “Zari continues to impress everyone, as he is extremely intelligent, obedient, and is always focused on commands.”
Holiday donations to the K-9 Trust Fund are welcome -- and are tax deductible all year round. They maybe sent care of Arcata City Hall, 736 F St., Arcata, CA 95521.
Humboldt Sentinel
12/24/08
By Sentinel Staff
ARCATA -- Citizen volunteers draw near their goal, this holiday season, of raising enough money to purchase a second patrol service K-9.
The Arcata Police Department is in the final preparation stages to welcome the new K-9 unit in the new year, in time for the 30-day training session that begins on March 1, according to an APD release. Once the money is raised and training completed, the new K-9 team is set to hit the streets in April.
Officer Greg Pope, the new APD handler for the second K-9, announced that the home for the new canine is ready and waiting thanks to the generosity of the community.
The new unit builds on the success of local residents providing the resources necessary to add “Zari” to the force since Aug. 1. The APDs first canine, Zari continues to work 12-hour shifts with sergeant Ron Sligh, and also receives continuous training with monthly professional sessions with the Eureka and Fortuna K-9 units.
“[He] keeps up his end of that team very well,” the release stated. “Zari continues to impress everyone, as he is extremely intelligent, obedient, and is always focused on commands.”
Holiday donations to the K-9 Trust Fund are welcome -- and are tax deductible all year round. They maybe sent care of Arcata City Hall, 736 F St., Arcata, CA 95521.
A $50 Billion Con Job Rocks Wall Street
Bernie Madoff, poster boy for greed and larceny
Humboldt Sentinel
12/24/08
By Danny Schechter
Every era has its bad guy, its high-profile criminal who flames into public view through media circuses and tabloid headlines. In the 1930s, there was Al Capone brought down by the taxman. In the '40s, Willie Sutton was a big bad guy who once said he robs banks because "that's where the money is." In the 1950s, the Mafia seized our attention, while here in New York, we had George Metetsky, the mad bomber. In the '60s -- well, you know the saying: If you can remember that era, you weren't there…
Many of these larger-than-life gangsters were anti-social outlaws robbing banks and the like. Now the banks are robbing us. Until he is outdone, we now have a new poster boy for Wall Street excess and larceny: the bland personage of Bernard Madoff, the consummate Wall Street insider, philanthropist and pillar of the financial community. He has now been credited in this credit crisis for the biggest theft in history.
Madoff seems to have won the gold medal for absconding with the most gold -- to a tune of $50 billion and counting. It was all, he admitted, a Ponzi scheme. He was a perverted Robin Hood: he took from the rich and enriched himself in a lifestyle festooned with many houses, boats and stays at $5,000-a-night hotels.
The Notice
Go to the Madoff.com Web site today and there is this notice that thousands of investors are reading while holding back tears and outrage:
On Dec. 15, 2008, the Honorable Louis L. Stanton, a federal judge in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, appointed Irving Picard as trustee for the liquidation of Bernard L. Madoff Investments Securities LLC (BMIS) pursuant to the Securities Investor Protection Act as set forth in the attached order.
Mr. Picard supersedes Lee S. Richards, the previously appointed receiver for BMIS, and all claims by customers of BMIS will be processed by Mr. Picard as SIPA trustee. Customers and claimants should refer to the Web site of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation for information about the processing of claims: sipc.org.
Mr. Richards continues to serve as receiver for Madoff Securities International Ltd. pursuant to the attached order. The trustee Irving Picard has engaged Lazard Frères & Co. LLC to assist in the sale of the trading operations of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC.
Should you have further questions, please contact the trustee at the following number: (888) 727-8695.
In short: Good Luck at Getting Any of Your Money Back.
Whistle-Blower Rebuffed
Of course, this dry legalistic language doesn't tell the whole story -- the story of the failure of the regulators to act, or about the submission to the SEC on Nov. 7, 2005, of a 19-page, detailed document charging that "The World's Largest Hedge Fund Is a Fraud."
It was written by financial expert Harry Markopolos and sent to the Securities and Exchange Commission with a request for deep confidentiality. He exposed the man now being called "Made-off." The title of his report: "The World's Biggest Hedge Fund Is a Fraud." It projected scenarios including this one:
(Very Likely) in bold, "Madoff Securities is the World's Largest Ponzi Scheme." He believed that "this would be another black eye for the brokerage industry."
Bingo!
Victims We Can Relate To
That black-eye punch was never thrown. Instead, it was three years before Madoff went down. He continued to operate his con game, defrauding customers worldwide. At the same time, the investors he ripped off later became "sympathetic victims" in our media -- like Steven Spielberg -- as opposed to subprime home borrowers, who were often demonized as schemers and told they were naïve and should have known better. A CNBC "documentary" showcased a parade of wealthy Madoff victims.
Madoff was a high-flyer, a part of a clubby and incestuous elite world of golf clubs, resorts and philanthropy with tax benefits. He was a leader of the Wall Street world, at one point the chairman of NASDAQ. Universities invited him to lecture on how markets work. He was admired, considered a role model, a genius. His firm handled l0 percent of all stock exchange trades.
His niece married an SEC regulator. Mary Schapiro, Barack Obama's pick to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission, previously appointed one of his sons to a regulatory body that oversees American securities firms. Madoff himself said he had often visited the SEC, where he complained of over-regulation.
Madoff was in until he was out!
Soon he was wearing an electronic bracelet and under house arrest, a further sign of privileged treatment by the way. Imagine what secrets he could spill. Already the New York Times is reporting that this theft problem went much deeper, with all the Wall Street firms posting phony profit reports and then giving themselves juicy bonuses. A financial blogger wrote that the Times was still obscuring the story because the practice constitutes nothing less than looting, a word they never use.
Unfortunately, Madoff was not unique, not alone and shrewder than the people who trusted him to earn a good return. One financial analyst said that some of his investors assumed he was doing something illegal -- perhaps insider trading -- which is why they wanted him to manage their money. They thought they would make more money that way without taking normal risks.
Funds of Funds
Subprime speculators targeted low- and middle-income people. Madoff marketed to the wealthy. Editor Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post explained that he specialized in "funds of funds" hedge funds:
These are hedge funds that raise money from pension funds, university endowments and wealthy individuals, and, for a fee of 1.5 percent a year, invest it in other hedge funds, which charge even higher fees. In return for paying double fees, these middlemen claim to offer investors access to the best hedge funds, which can be choosy about whose money they accept. They also offer the peace of mind that goes with knowing that the funds have been thoroughly checked out.
Now it turns out that some of these funds of funds had parked billions of dollars of their clients' money with Madoff without asking how he could so consistently produce returns in up market or down, or demanding to know why his books were audited by a three-person firm that nobody ever heard of operating out of a broom closet on Long Island.
It doesn't take a Ph.D. in finance to see the pattern here: Accounting firms and rating agencies are too easily compromised by the fact that they are chosen and paid by the management of the companies whose books they are auditing and securities they are rating. There are simply too many built-in conflicts of interest.
And Madoff took advantage of them. As a result, he had a license to steal, and steal he did.
"Disintermediated" Investors
James Hedges IV of LJH Global Investments, says those that went with Madoff chose faith over evidence.
"You've got people who were disintermediated [i.e., didn't have a professional representative], or unsophisticated, or went in through a personal relationship. That's what a con man is -- a confidence man is somebody that engenders a relationship and then subsequently lures somebody into doing something that they shouldn't do."
In the aftermath, the small gesture speaks volumes. A friend was staking out Madoff's former offices for a major news organization. No one would talk to her, including investors who could be seen through the window on their cell phones moaning about losses. They looked grim. Some were wiped out. When they left the building, some hid their faces, perhaps in shame, like criminals photographed on "perp walks." A philanthropy expert said the consequences will be "catastrophic." An Israeli newspaper said many Jewish organizations will be hurt, some irreparably.
The anthropologist Lionel Tiger writes in Forbes about how incidents like this undermine all respect for the business world: "The invisible hand lurches between clenched fist and begging palm, and the new Greenwich Mean Time is in Connecticut. Suddenly, the only thing taken for granted is a government grant."
You could never make this up, even though Wall Street history is replete with earlier versions of this Sultan of Sleaze. Around the world, it is not just the supercrook Bernie Madoff who is seen as the guilty party, but the whole American system of free-market finance. There will be a reckoning.
Danny Schechter, the “News Dissector,” is a documentary filmmaker, author, and publisher of mediachannel.org.
Humboldt Sentinel
12/24/08
By Danny Schechter
Every era has its bad guy, its high-profile criminal who flames into public view through media circuses and tabloid headlines. In the 1930s, there was Al Capone brought down by the taxman. In the '40s, Willie Sutton was a big bad guy who once said he robs banks because "that's where the money is." In the 1950s, the Mafia seized our attention, while here in New York, we had George Metetsky, the mad bomber. In the '60s -- well, you know the saying: If you can remember that era, you weren't there…
Many of these larger-than-life gangsters were anti-social outlaws robbing banks and the like. Now the banks are robbing us. Until he is outdone, we now have a new poster boy for Wall Street excess and larceny: the bland personage of Bernard Madoff, the consummate Wall Street insider, philanthropist and pillar of the financial community. He has now been credited in this credit crisis for the biggest theft in history.
Madoff seems to have won the gold medal for absconding with the most gold -- to a tune of $50 billion and counting. It was all, he admitted, a Ponzi scheme. He was a perverted Robin Hood: he took from the rich and enriched himself in a lifestyle festooned with many houses, boats and stays at $5,000-a-night hotels.
The Notice
Go to the Madoff.com Web site today and there is this notice that thousands of investors are reading while holding back tears and outrage:
On Dec. 15, 2008, the Honorable Louis L. Stanton, a federal judge in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, appointed Irving Picard as trustee for the liquidation of Bernard L. Madoff Investments Securities LLC (BMIS) pursuant to the Securities Investor Protection Act as set forth in the attached order.
Mr. Picard supersedes Lee S. Richards, the previously appointed receiver for BMIS, and all claims by customers of BMIS will be processed by Mr. Picard as SIPA trustee. Customers and claimants should refer to the Web site of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation for information about the processing of claims: sipc.org.
Mr. Richards continues to serve as receiver for Madoff Securities International Ltd. pursuant to the attached order. The trustee Irving Picard has engaged Lazard Frères & Co. LLC to assist in the sale of the trading operations of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC.
Should you have further questions, please contact the trustee at the following number: (888) 727-8695.
In short: Good Luck at Getting Any of Your Money Back.
Whistle-Blower Rebuffed
Of course, this dry legalistic language doesn't tell the whole story -- the story of the failure of the regulators to act, or about the submission to the SEC on Nov. 7, 2005, of a 19-page, detailed document charging that "The World's Largest Hedge Fund Is a Fraud."
It was written by financial expert Harry Markopolos and sent to the Securities and Exchange Commission with a request for deep confidentiality. He exposed the man now being called "Made-off." The title of his report: "The World's Biggest Hedge Fund Is a Fraud." It projected scenarios including this one:
(Very Likely) in bold, "Madoff Securities is the World's Largest Ponzi Scheme." He believed that "this would be another black eye for the brokerage industry."
Bingo!
Victims We Can Relate To
That black-eye punch was never thrown. Instead, it was three years before Madoff went down. He continued to operate his con game, defrauding customers worldwide. At the same time, the investors he ripped off later became "sympathetic victims" in our media -- like Steven Spielberg -- as opposed to subprime home borrowers, who were often demonized as schemers and told they were naïve and should have known better. A CNBC "documentary" showcased a parade of wealthy Madoff victims.
Madoff was a high-flyer, a part of a clubby and incestuous elite world of golf clubs, resorts and philanthropy with tax benefits. He was a leader of the Wall Street world, at one point the chairman of NASDAQ. Universities invited him to lecture on how markets work. He was admired, considered a role model, a genius. His firm handled l0 percent of all stock exchange trades.
His niece married an SEC regulator. Mary Schapiro, Barack Obama's pick to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission, previously appointed one of his sons to a regulatory body that oversees American securities firms. Madoff himself said he had often visited the SEC, where he complained of over-regulation.
Madoff was in until he was out!
Soon he was wearing an electronic bracelet and under house arrest, a further sign of privileged treatment by the way. Imagine what secrets he could spill. Already the New York Times is reporting that this theft problem went much deeper, with all the Wall Street firms posting phony profit reports and then giving themselves juicy bonuses. A financial blogger wrote that the Times was still obscuring the story because the practice constitutes nothing less than looting, a word they never use.
Unfortunately, Madoff was not unique, not alone and shrewder than the people who trusted him to earn a good return. One financial analyst said that some of his investors assumed he was doing something illegal -- perhaps insider trading -- which is why they wanted him to manage their money. They thought they would make more money that way without taking normal risks.
Funds of Funds
Subprime speculators targeted low- and middle-income people. Madoff marketed to the wealthy. Editor Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post explained that he specialized in "funds of funds" hedge funds:
These are hedge funds that raise money from pension funds, university endowments and wealthy individuals, and, for a fee of 1.5 percent a year, invest it in other hedge funds, which charge even higher fees. In return for paying double fees, these middlemen claim to offer investors access to the best hedge funds, which can be choosy about whose money they accept. They also offer the peace of mind that goes with knowing that the funds have been thoroughly checked out.
Now it turns out that some of these funds of funds had parked billions of dollars of their clients' money with Madoff without asking how he could so consistently produce returns in up market or down, or demanding to know why his books were audited by a three-person firm that nobody ever heard of operating out of a broom closet on Long Island.
It doesn't take a Ph.D. in finance to see the pattern here: Accounting firms and rating agencies are too easily compromised by the fact that they are chosen and paid by the management of the companies whose books they are auditing and securities they are rating. There are simply too many built-in conflicts of interest.
And Madoff took advantage of them. As a result, he had a license to steal, and steal he did.
"Disintermediated" Investors
James Hedges IV of LJH Global Investments, says those that went with Madoff chose faith over evidence.
"You've got people who were disintermediated [i.e., didn't have a professional representative], or unsophisticated, or went in through a personal relationship. That's what a con man is -- a confidence man is somebody that engenders a relationship and then subsequently lures somebody into doing something that they shouldn't do."
In the aftermath, the small gesture speaks volumes. A friend was staking out Madoff's former offices for a major news organization. No one would talk to her, including investors who could be seen through the window on their cell phones moaning about losses. They looked grim. Some were wiped out. When they left the building, some hid their faces, perhaps in shame, like criminals photographed on "perp walks." A philanthropy expert said the consequences will be "catastrophic." An Israeli newspaper said many Jewish organizations will be hurt, some irreparably.
The anthropologist Lionel Tiger writes in Forbes about how incidents like this undermine all respect for the business world: "The invisible hand lurches between clenched fist and begging palm, and the new Greenwich Mean Time is in Connecticut. Suddenly, the only thing taken for granted is a government grant."
You could never make this up, even though Wall Street history is replete with earlier versions of this Sultan of Sleaze. Around the world, it is not just the supercrook Bernie Madoff who is seen as the guilty party, but the whole American system of free-market finance. There will be a reckoning.
Danny Schechter, the “News Dissector,” is a documentary filmmaker, author, and publisher of mediachannel.org.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Alleged Robbers End Up Injured, Arrested
Nicholas Wuillmier, Joshua Buchanan charged with attempted robbery
Humboldt Sentinel
12/23/08
By Sentinel Staff
EUREKA -- A pair of alleged robbers wound up with more trouble than they could handle on Saturday night, with both suffering facial injuries according to police officials.
Preliminary investigations suggest that Eureka residents Nicholas Wuillmier, 21, and Joshua Buchanan, 22, attempted to strong-arm an unidentified couple on the 1900 block of C Street. According to the EPD release, two friends of the would-be victims exited their apartment to come to their aid, and after a brief argument, the two suspects, one of them brandishing a knife, attacked members of the group.
EPD officers responded at about 11:56 p.m., and by the time they arrived, Wuillmier was unresponsive with significant facial injuries, and was airlifted to the Bay Area for urgent medical treatment. Buchanan was dazed with some facial injures, and was booked at the Humboldt County Correctional Facility that same evening.
Both men face charges of attempted robbery, although the EPD investigation continues. Anyone with further information about the incident can contact detective Ron Harpham at 441-4305 or rharpham@ci.eureka.ca.gov.
Humboldt Sentinel
12/23/08
By Sentinel Staff
EUREKA -- A pair of alleged robbers wound up with more trouble than they could handle on Saturday night, with both suffering facial injuries according to police officials.
Preliminary investigations suggest that Eureka residents Nicholas Wuillmier, 21, and Joshua Buchanan, 22, attempted to strong-arm an unidentified couple on the 1900 block of C Street. According to the EPD release, two friends of the would-be victims exited their apartment to come to their aid, and after a brief argument, the two suspects, one of them brandishing a knife, attacked members of the group.
EPD officers responded at about 11:56 p.m., and by the time they arrived, Wuillmier was unresponsive with significant facial injuries, and was airlifted to the Bay Area for urgent medical treatment. Buchanan was dazed with some facial injures, and was booked at the Humboldt County Correctional Facility that same evening.
Both men face charges of attempted robbery, although the EPD investigation continues. Anyone with further information about the incident can contact detective Ron Harpham at 441-4305 or rharpham@ci.eureka.ca.gov.
Suspected Drunk Driver Crashes Into House
Natural gas-fed explosion causes serious damage to Fortuna home
Humboldt Sentinel
12/23/08
By Sentinel Staff
FORTUNA -- An alleged incident of drunk driving on Sunday night led to an active natural gas leak and a major car crash into a residential home, as well as the arrest of the driver.
Christine Renee Manprin, 43, of Fortuna, was arrested at the scene of the crash of her 1991 Ford Crown Victoria LTD and charged with two separate violations of the Vehicle Code. According to yesterday’s release from the Fortuna Police Department, she had a blood alcohol content twice the legal limit for drivers.
When they arrived at the intersection of Kenwood Road and Blue Jay Court at approximately 7:09 p.m. that night, FPD officers found the “vehicle versus residence traffic collision” as well as the gas leak. Manprin had already by this time been pulled from the wreckage by a neighboring resident, according to FPD sergeant Eberhardt.
At FPD request, Fortuna Volunteer Fire Department, City Ambulance and Pacific Gas and Electric personnel all responded to the scene. FVFD marshals stopped the natural gas leak, which they determined was a direct cause of the vehicle crash into the residence, which suffered major damage – although it was fortunate that the residents were in a different part of the house at the time.
Humboldt Sentinel
12/23/08
By Sentinel Staff
FORTUNA -- An alleged incident of drunk driving on Sunday night led to an active natural gas leak and a major car crash into a residential home, as well as the arrest of the driver.
Christine Renee Manprin, 43, of Fortuna, was arrested at the scene of the crash of her 1991 Ford Crown Victoria LTD and charged with two separate violations of the Vehicle Code. According to yesterday’s release from the Fortuna Police Department, she had a blood alcohol content twice the legal limit for drivers.
When they arrived at the intersection of Kenwood Road and Blue Jay Court at approximately 7:09 p.m. that night, FPD officers found the “vehicle versus residence traffic collision” as well as the gas leak. Manprin had already by this time been pulled from the wreckage by a neighboring resident, according to FPD sergeant Eberhardt.
At FPD request, Fortuna Volunteer Fire Department, City Ambulance and Pacific Gas and Electric personnel all responded to the scene. FVFD marshals stopped the natural gas leak, which they determined was a direct cause of the vehicle crash into the residence, which suffered major damage – although it was fortunate that the residents were in a different part of the house at the time.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Computer Glitch Hits Vets Benefits
Spouses of deceased wrongfully denied benefits for over a decade
Humboldt Sentinel
12/22/08
By Sentinel Staff
WASHINGTON -- Federal officials came clean today and admitted to a computer error at the Veterans Administration which has wrongfully denied benefits for nearly 12 years to an unknown number of surviving spouses of veterans.
Under a law which went into effect in 1996, the spouse of a deceased veteran is entitled to benefits for the month of the veteran’s death, but instead the VA has been demanding the last month’s payment back from widows and widowers, or simply no sending a check at all, according to a release from Congressman Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena) today.
“It’s outrageous that the spouses of the men and women who have sacrificed so much for our country have been wrongfully denied this last month of payments,” Thompson stated. “I urge all survivors of veterans who died after December 31, 1996 to check with the VA to see if they were affected by this error and make sure the VA has their most current address. If folks encounter a problem they shouldn’t hesitate to contact my office and we’ll work on their behalf to make sure they receive all of the benefits their family member earned by serving our great nation.”
For their part, the VA pledged to work quickly to fix the error and review payment records for veterans who died after Dec. 31, 1996 and left behind a spouse. The VA will begin issuing retroactive payments to eligible surviving spouses at the end of this month.
Surviving spouses can contact the VA’s Survivors’ Call Center at (800) 749-8387. The Call Center is open Monday through Friday from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. Inquiries can also be submitted on the Internet at www.vba.va.gov/survivorsbenefit.htm. Local residents can contact Thompson at (707) 269-9595 or by visiting his district office at 317 Third Street, Suite 1 in Old Town Eureka.
Humboldt Sentinel
12/22/08
By Sentinel Staff
WASHINGTON -- Federal officials came clean today and admitted to a computer error at the Veterans Administration which has wrongfully denied benefits for nearly 12 years to an unknown number of surviving spouses of veterans.
Under a law which went into effect in 1996, the spouse of a deceased veteran is entitled to benefits for the month of the veteran’s death, but instead the VA has been demanding the last month’s payment back from widows and widowers, or simply no sending a check at all, according to a release from Congressman Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena) today.
“It’s outrageous that the spouses of the men and women who have sacrificed so much for our country have been wrongfully denied this last month of payments,” Thompson stated. “I urge all survivors of veterans who died after December 31, 1996 to check with the VA to see if they were affected by this error and make sure the VA has their most current address. If folks encounter a problem they shouldn’t hesitate to contact my office and we’ll work on their behalf to make sure they receive all of the benefits their family member earned by serving our great nation.”
For their part, the VA pledged to work quickly to fix the error and review payment records for veterans who died after Dec. 31, 1996 and left behind a spouse. The VA will begin issuing retroactive payments to eligible surviving spouses at the end of this month.
Surviving spouses can contact the VA’s Survivors’ Call Center at (800) 749-8387. The Call Center is open Monday through Friday from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. Inquiries can also be submitted on the Internet at www.vba.va.gov/survivorsbenefit.htm. Local residents can contact Thompson at (707) 269-9595 or by visiting his district office at 317 Third Street, Suite 1 in Old Town Eureka.
Mountain Lion Spotted Twice On Campus
Overnight sightings around B Street area of apparently healthy young cat
Humboldt Sentinel
12/22/08
By Sentinel Staff
ARCATA -- Two early-morning sightings of a mountain lion on the Humboldt State University campus this week have prompted university police to issue safety reminders to the community on the chance that they encounter a mountain lion in the area.
“If you come across a mountain lion, you want to hold your ground and convince the lion that you are a threat,” UPD chief Tom Dewey stated in a release.
Dewey offered the following tips upon a mountain lion encounter:
Do not approach a mountain lion. Most mountain lions will try to avoid a confrontation. Give it a way out.
Do not run from a mountain lion. Running may stimulate the animal’s instinct to chase. Stand and face the animal, and make eye contact. If you have small children with you, pick them up so they don’t panic and run. Try to pick up children without turning your back to the lion. Try not to crouch or bend over.
Do all you can to appear larger. Raise your arms. Open your shirt or jacket if possible. Throw stones, branches, or whatever is in reach without bending down. Wave your arms slowly and speak in a loud voice.
Fight back if attacked. Convince the animal that you are a danger to it!
Immediately report all encounters with a mountain lion near our campus.
This week’s sightings, Wednesday and Friday at around 3 a.m., were by HSU custodial staff working along the B Street corridor south of Laurel Drive. In one case a lion was spotted crouched under a parked truck and in another instance the lion was seen gazing into a closed glass door. There have been at least two other nighttime sightings in the same area in recent weeks.
In all cases, the animals’ health and behavior appeared to be normal.
Police speculate that the recent sightings are probably the same young lion that has been displaced from higher terrain by inclement weather or other lions. Interviews with witnesses indicate that it appears to be healthy and acting normally, and that it typically either hides or runs away from humans.
“It sounds like this is a young healthy lion who is behaving normally, active at night, trying to avoid people while it is hunting for raccoons and other typical prey,” Dewey stated.
University Police have reported the lion sightings to Arcata City Police and Environmental Services departments, as well as the State Department of Fish and Game.
According to Dewey, there has never been a known attack by a mountain lion on a human in the Arcata-Humboldt State community. Even so, police encourage anyone on campus to immediately report any lion sightings to the UPD. This will allow them to respond, investigate, and confirm that the lion’s behavior does not indicate a threat to safety on campus.
To report a mountain lion sighting, call University Police at (707) 826-5555. More information on California mountain lions can be found at: www.dfg.ca.gov/keepmewild/lion.html
Humboldt Sentinel
12/22/08
By Sentinel Staff
ARCATA -- Two early-morning sightings of a mountain lion on the Humboldt State University campus this week have prompted university police to issue safety reminders to the community on the chance that they encounter a mountain lion in the area.
“If you come across a mountain lion, you want to hold your ground and convince the lion that you are a threat,” UPD chief Tom Dewey stated in a release.
Dewey offered the following tips upon a mountain lion encounter:
Do not approach a mountain lion. Most mountain lions will try to avoid a confrontation. Give it a way out.
Do not run from a mountain lion. Running may stimulate the animal’s instinct to chase. Stand and face the animal, and make eye contact. If you have small children with you, pick them up so they don’t panic and run. Try to pick up children without turning your back to the lion. Try not to crouch or bend over.
Do all you can to appear larger. Raise your arms. Open your shirt or jacket if possible. Throw stones, branches, or whatever is in reach without bending down. Wave your arms slowly and speak in a loud voice.
Fight back if attacked. Convince the animal that you are a danger to it!
Immediately report all encounters with a mountain lion near our campus.
This week’s sightings, Wednesday and Friday at around 3 a.m., were by HSU custodial staff working along the B Street corridor south of Laurel Drive. In one case a lion was spotted crouched under a parked truck and in another instance the lion was seen gazing into a closed glass door. There have been at least two other nighttime sightings in the same area in recent weeks.
In all cases, the animals’ health and behavior appeared to be normal.
Police speculate that the recent sightings are probably the same young lion that has been displaced from higher terrain by inclement weather or other lions. Interviews with witnesses indicate that it appears to be healthy and acting normally, and that it typically either hides or runs away from humans.
“It sounds like this is a young healthy lion who is behaving normally, active at night, trying to avoid people while it is hunting for raccoons and other typical prey,” Dewey stated.
University Police have reported the lion sightings to Arcata City Police and Environmental Services departments, as well as the State Department of Fish and Game.
According to Dewey, there has never been a known attack by a mountain lion on a human in the Arcata-Humboldt State community. Even so, police encourage anyone on campus to immediately report any lion sightings to the UPD. This will allow them to respond, investigate, and confirm that the lion’s behavior does not indicate a threat to safety on campus.
To report a mountain lion sighting, call University Police at (707) 826-5555. More information on California mountain lions can be found at: www.dfg.ca.gov/keepmewild/lion.html
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Drugs Swiped From Fortuna Medical Office
Burglars make early morning forced entry through window
Humboldt Sentinel
12/21/08
By Sentinel Staff
FORTUNA -- Police are looking for suspects this weekend after an early morning robbery hit up a medical office for narcotics.
According to sergeant Jason Kadle of the Fortuna Police Department, officers responded at 6:48 a.m. on Friday morning to Fortuna Family Medical Group at the 800 block of Main Stret, where they found that suspects had forced entry through a window. FPD investigators revealed that the burglars grabbed medical-grade narcotics on site.
The unknown suspect or suspects remain at large, and anyone with any information is asked to contact the FPD at (707) 725-7550.
Humboldt Sentinel
12/21/08
By Sentinel Staff
FORTUNA -- Police are looking for suspects this weekend after an early morning robbery hit up a medical office for narcotics.
According to sergeant Jason Kadle of the Fortuna Police Department, officers responded at 6:48 a.m. on Friday morning to Fortuna Family Medical Group at the 800 block of Main Stret, where they found that suspects had forced entry through a window. FPD investigators revealed that the burglars grabbed medical-grade narcotics on site.
The unknown suspect or suspects remain at large, and anyone with any information is asked to contact the FPD at (707) 725-7550.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Caterpillar Tractors Vanish Off The Lot
Loaders worth nearly $100k roll away over weekend
Humboldt Sentinel
12/20/08
By Sentinel Staff
FORTUNA -- Peterson Tractor in Fortuna is short two loaders since last week, a theft of nearly $100,000 worth of equipment.
The yellow tractors, a Caterpillar 299C Compact Track Loader and a Caterpillar 257B2 Multi Terrain Loader, were last seen parked in front of the business, on the 1700 block of Alamar Way, on Dec. 13. According to lieutenant Bill Dobberstein of the Fortuna Police Department, the loaders were stolen between last Saturday and Wednesday.
The names of potential suspects has not been released at this time, and anyone with any information regarding this theft is asked to contact the FPD at (707) 725-7550.
Humboldt Sentinel
12/20/08
By Sentinel Staff
FORTUNA -- Peterson Tractor in Fortuna is short two loaders since last week, a theft of nearly $100,000 worth of equipment.
The yellow tractors, a Caterpillar 299C Compact Track Loader and a Caterpillar 257B2 Multi Terrain Loader, were last seen parked in front of the business, on the 1700 block of Alamar Way, on Dec. 13. According to lieutenant Bill Dobberstein of the Fortuna Police Department, the loaders were stolen between last Saturday and Wednesday.
The names of potential suspects has not been released at this time, and anyone with any information regarding this theft is asked to contact the FPD at (707) 725-7550.
Friday, December 19, 2008
McKinleyville Credit Union Robber At Large
Coast Central on Central Avenue site of suspect’s cash grab
Humboldt Sentinel
12/19/08
By Sentinel Staff
MCKINLEYVILLE -- Whether he was armed or not, an unidentified man used the threat of having a weapon and a note to steal cash from the Coast Central Credit Union located on Central Avenue yesterday.
Humboldt County Sheriff’s deputies responded to the McKinleyville business, which at about 4:30 p.m. had notified them of the unidentified robber. Deputies arrived to hear a description of a white male in his 40s, approximately 5’5” in height and of medium weight and build, who immediately left the bank after receiving the money. According to witnesses, he used only the note to coerce the robbery and did not display a weapon or speak during the incident.
According to the release by public information officer Brenda Godsey, the man was last seen wearing a black watch cap, under which witnesses could see short, graying hair. He was wearing a black rain jacket that may have something blue in color on it. Additionally, he was wearing black or dark blue pants, white tennis shoes, glasses and may have facial hair.
Nobody was injured during the incident, but the HCSO is on the lookout for the possibly armed suspect. Anybody with information about the robbery should call the HCSO at (707) 445-7251.
Humboldt Sentinel
12/19/08
By Sentinel Staff
MCKINLEYVILLE -- Whether he was armed or not, an unidentified man used the threat of having a weapon and a note to steal cash from the Coast Central Credit Union located on Central Avenue yesterday.
Humboldt County Sheriff’s deputies responded to the McKinleyville business, which at about 4:30 p.m. had notified them of the unidentified robber. Deputies arrived to hear a description of a white male in his 40s, approximately 5’5” in height and of medium weight and build, who immediately left the bank after receiving the money. According to witnesses, he used only the note to coerce the robbery and did not display a weapon or speak during the incident.
According to the release by public information officer Brenda Godsey, the man was last seen wearing a black watch cap, under which witnesses could see short, graying hair. He was wearing a black rain jacket that may have something blue in color on it. Additionally, he was wearing black or dark blue pants, white tennis shoes, glasses and may have facial hair.
Nobody was injured during the incident, but the HCSO is on the lookout for the possibly armed suspect. Anybody with information about the robbery should call the HCSO at (707) 445-7251.
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