default.html Issue 53
Table of Contents

Federal, State Agencies Pass Buck On Investigation

by Nicholas Wilson Despite more than a month of pleas for investigation by various state and federal agencies from the Chain family, Earth First! and other groups and individuals, each agency has excusing itself from jurisdiction, leading to stronger calls for independent investigations by the attorneys representing Earth First! and the family of David Chain


Protesters To Be Charged With Manslaughter?

by Nicholas Wilson Listen to press conference with David "Gypsy" Chain's mother, who was reportedly told by Humboldt Sheriff's investigator Juan Freeman that the seven activists who were near Chain as the Pacific Lumber worker felled the tree killing him will be charged with manslaughter


Logger Not A Suspect, Investigator Says

by Nicholas Wilson While the Sheriff has not demanded that Pacific Lumber reveal results of Ammons' drug tests, the Detective has requested details from Earth First! concerning "activists ... sent on their missions," which observers believe signals that EF! is being investigated for Chain's death


Chain's Family Joins Memorial Ceremony

by Nicholas Wilson Members of Texas family travel to redwoods in N California, driven to meet the people and see the places that David Chain cared so passionately about


Confrontation at Grizzly Creek

Ending the blockade that kept loggers from the remote site where David "Gypsy" Chain was killed in mid-September, Humboldt County and state authorities raided the site. Pepper spray was again used, this time three applications on one woman within 30 minutes; despite the pain that left her screaming, she refused to comply with police orders and release herself from the "lockdown" device


Greenpeace Occupies Cargo Ship With Newsprint for L.A. Papers

To protest the logging of old-growth temperate rainforest on the coast of British Columbia, Canada. Much of the wood chips used to produce this newsprint came from the Great Bear Rainforest, the largest unprotected temperate rainforest in the world


U.S. Again Snubs UN On Debt

by Farhan Haq Officials had hoped Republicans might drop language drafted by conservatives that attached abortion restrictions on U.S. aid to family planning programs worldwide to any repayment of the $1.5 billion in arrears owed


Error 404: Information Missing From Your Daily News

Troubling questions about Amazon.com promotion; NIKE in Indonesia; Pentagon receives windfall; new developments in Europe's greatest postwar scandal


California: Vote YES On Prop 9

by Alexander Cockburn Ever since they were given their concessions back in the early years of the century, the big utilities have feared populist attacks on their predatory monopolies and have spent huge sums to influence lawmakers, regulatory agencies and public interest groups. Their war on Prop. 9 has been no exception


IMF, World Bank Bailouts Finance Corrupt Nations

by Lucy Komisar Whether it is the IMF, promoting fiscal austerity and cuts in social spending, or the World Bank, denouncing the corrosive effects of corruption, they were busy contradicting themselves by announcing big loans to the very countries that have been stealing both institutions blind


Orrin Hatch Tries To Undo 25 Years of Reform

by Tate Hausman While the nation was mesmerized by Monicagate, Senator Hatch and Senator Jeff Sessions smuggled the most punitive juvenile-crime bill of the last 25 years through a badly distracted House of Representatives. Despite its controversial nature -- or maybe because of its controversial nature -- Hatch and Sessions employed a variety of underhanded tactics to sneak S-10 into our law books, instead of opening it up to full congressional debate


Michael Moore's Coup d'Etat

by Donella Meadows Michael Moore's election message is bouncing all over the Internet. "OK, I've had it," says Moore, the maker of the film "Roger and Me" and the show "TV Nation." "I propose a legal act of civil disobedience." Moore apologizes for asking anyone to vote for a Democrat, "the sorry, wishy-washy losers. But this election is not about how we feel about them -- it's about US using THEM to whack the right wing for good. "I can think of a lot of reasons why Clinton should not be president," Moore concludes. "Staining a blue dress from the Gap is not one of them"


James Bond Now Protects Megacorporations

by Pratap Chatterjee Former Soviet and U.S. Cold Warriors now work side- by- side for Defense Systems Limited, a company that protects, "Petrochemical companies, mining or mineral extraction companies and their subsidiaries, multinationals, banks, embassies, non- governmental organizations, national and international organizations -- those people who operate in a very dodgy, hostile type of environment"


Asian Crisis Slows Rainforest Logging

by Kalinga Seneviratne Logging saws are fast becoming idle in the South Pacific islands, as recession-hit Asian logging companies slow down operations in the region and once-rich customers scale back purchases


Journalists Face Off In 'Great Debate' On Media Credibility

by Samuel J. Scott If "journalism is supposed to teach people something," one speaker wondered what Americans were learning from stories of cigars and interns. Comparing modern journalism to World Wrestling Federation wrestling, she dismissed the argument that no one would be interested in uncredible media. Like wrestling, people now watch it for entertainment even though they know that it is fake, she said


In Tough Times, Phillipine Mothers Go Hungry

by Don Hazen While UNICEF and other programs say women have the key role in family nutrition, women are ignored by the government and hardly appear in state health and nutrition statistics, as patriarchal cultures rule that they're the last to be fed


Even Snow-Capped Mountains Polluted

by Danielle Knight A new scientific study shows that even pristine regions of the world are susceptible to the accumulation of toxic industrial pollutants and agricultural pesticides. In surveying the temperate mountains of western Canada, scientists found that the higher they went, the higher the concentration of contaminants


The Government-Run Deportee Airlines

by Jill R. Yesko Immigration attorneys say that giving the INS the power to deport people who may have lived in the United States for decades without committing a crime violates the tenets of the Geneva Convention


Power Companies Halt Energy-Saving Programs

by Danielle Knight Based on documents that utilities must file with the United States Department of Energy, U.S. utilities cut their combined investment in energy saving programs by 45 percent, or $736 million between 1993 and "This means that the actual spending on energy efficiency in 1997 was well less than half of one percent of the $276 billion in revenues reported by the utilities," the report said


Biotech Firms Hint Africa May Be Used For Banned Research

by Thomas Hirenee Atenga European Union rules limiting the range of biotechnological activity appear to be prompting some biotech firms to look for new locations where they can operate more freely. Biotech industrialists and researchers have reportedly started hinting about relocating, possibly to Africa, so as to circumvent strict EU regulations prohibiting some activities


China Continues Heavy Use of Asbestos

by Antoaneta Bezlova While most of the world is trying to avoid using asbestos, China not only continues to use and produce huge amounts of the harmful mineral but imports it to meet industrial needs


Children Inhale Higher Percentage Of Pollution

by David L. Williamson Children inhale more airborne particles for their size than either adolescents or adults, according to a new study sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency


Drug Corps. Patent Sri Lanka Traditional Medicines

by Feizal Samath The ancient formulations of the "ayurveda" system of medicine were zealously guarded and passed on from one generation to the next in families that could trace back their ancestry for many centuries. Now giant global pharmaceutical drug companies, aware of the therapeutical qualities of medicinal plants, are virtually stealing this ancient wisdom by extracting chemicals from local plants and patenting it abroad, particularly in the United States


Secretive European Commission Endangers Forests, Native Peoples, Group Says

by Dipankar De Sarkar According to a report by the Rainforest Foundation, Third World projects funded under the European Union's aid program and administered by the European Commission are wrecking the environment of developing countries, including threatening globally important tropical rainforests and destroying local communities


Russian Rockets Leave Toxic Legacy

by Andrei Ivanov and Judith Perera The process of disarming the world of its thousands of surplus nuclear missiles has thrown up a new and dangerous environmental problem for the Russian communities who live near Soviet-era military rocket sites


Blame Big Media For Campaign Finance Failure

by J. Bonasia When the Shays-Meehan and McCain-Feingold bills were introduced last year, both contained provisions for cheap airtime as an effective way to slash the exhorbitant costs of big-league campaigning. Media conglomerates quickly annulled the prospect of broadcasters offering free or reduced-fee airtime for office seekers. Of course the cash flows in both directions. Big media helped to fend off campaign reform because big money was at stake


Time For Capital Punishment for Corporations?

by David Morris Today a corporation found guilty of the most heinous crime usually pleads nolo contendere, which means it admits no guilt, pays a trivial fine and promises not to commit the crime again. If only the President could incorporate himself, he'd be home free


Gutsy Reporters and Cowardly Editors

by Randolph T. Holhut Steven Brill's magazine isn't bad, but like all the other dissections of the press that have been done over the past few months, it goes after the easy targets. Then again, the press is guilty of that, too. It is far easier and far safer to have a brigade of reporters checking up on the president's sex life than to take on the powerful institutions in our society that will destroy the reputation of any journalist that dares to take them on


Ban Boxing, Not Tyson

by Bill Peterson Boxing is the most perverse and exploitative enterprise on the sporting calendar. Poor kids, usually from inner cities, usually African-American, see in boxing a legal possibility for escape, a possibility that is, in reality, miniscule. Those who make it are served up as entertainment for the wealthy in spectacles tantamount to human cock fighting


Big Media And The Internet

by Norman Solomon More than ever, a visit to the opening screens of America Online or CompuServe indicates just how tightly the biggest on- line services are interwoven with the nation's largest TV networks, weekly magazines, daily papers, wire services and the like. The medium of the Internet is new, but its main "content providers" are mostly providing the same old content


The Dictator's Arrest

by Norman Solomon Newspaper coverage of the arrest of Gen. Augusto Pinochet has grotesquely understated the horrors of his regime. The first sentence of the front- page New York Times report on Pinochet's arrest declared that he "came to symbolize the excesses of military rule in Latin America." Mass murder and widespread torture are merely "excesses?"


Letters

The fight for Headwaters Forest and the death of David "Gypsy" Chain, ethics of Henry Hyde, Americans who make land mines, the IMF, Dark Alliance


The Conscience Industry

by Alexander Cockburn There's nothing wrong with rewarding businesses for decent behavior. The trouble is that the hucksterism so rarely gets questioned, and the good behavior consists in promising to mug two old ladies instead of three


Different Rules of Law

by Alexander Cockburn Although a federal administrative law judge found the company guilty of more than a hundred unfair labor practices, imposed $3 million in fines and ordered the reinstatement of 28 workers fired for union activities, efforts by the owners of Avondale to deny the rule of law has resulted in the largest case in the history of the National Labor Relations Board, founded in 1935


Who Killed David "Gypsy" Chain?

by Alexander Cockburn Logger A.E. Ammons felled the tree, but also responsible were Charles Hurwitz, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the California legislature -- and the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society



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