Community Residents Challenge Maxxam/Pacific Lumber's Smear Campaign
by Repost - BACH press release Tuesday, May. 06, 2003 at 9:22 AM
(510) 548-3113
Timber Company Branding Young Forest Protesters as Terrorists
Humboldt county, California: More than 60 doctors, lawyers, City
Council members, clergy and local residents from this rural community
have called for the cessation of ads broadcast on radio, tv and
newspapers by Maxxam/Pacific Lumber. The ads attack protesters
carrying out acts of civil disobedience against unsustainable logging
as terrorists, accusing them of "terrorizing innocent people",
urging those listening to the ads to "protect our fundamental
freedoms and rights". Their attempts to whip up public sentiment
against those who would oppose their management practices have the
backdrop of an already polarized environment, since PL's over-cutting
has put many people out of work in this timber-dependant community.
But as tree-sitters have been plucked from high altitude perches in
giant old growth redwoods by contract climbers hired by PL to
essentially carry out law enforcement activities, using pain
compliance holds and binding activists' ankles and wrists upwards of
150 feet off the ground in the branches of giant old growth trees,
the activists argue it is their rights at risk. In fact, in an
appeal of a judge's siting of an upcoming jury trial over police use
of pepper spray on protesters staging a sit-in protest in Humboldt
county, lawyers argued a fair trial is impossible in a "hotbed of
prejudice" created by the timber company's smear campaign.
Signers of the letter to PL pres. Robert Manne and Maxxam CEO Charles
Hurwitz also decried the use of images of Martin Luther King Jr. and
Gandhi in their ads as well as rhetoric trivializing the horror of
the Sept. 11 attacks by drawing parallels with non-violent forest
defense. Though civil disobedience actions in the long forest
campaign have remained non-violent, the signers say the protester's
tactics are not at issue-it is the highly-charged propagandistic
language attempting to create ill will toward protesters, and some
fear, incite violence. A letter with 60 signers (and growing) asks
Manne and Hurwitz " stop producing media material" making the "claim
that civil disobedience is an act of terrorism."
Tree-sitters are not alone in challenging PL's practices that are
laying bare steep hillsides, causing floods and degrading water
quality to the point where PL was ordered to truck in drinking water
to residents whose household sources had been rendered non-potable.
Local residents have traveled to water quality agency meetings with
photos of their flooded-out homes, and pointed to huge old growth
redwoods that have lost their footing and come down in protected
parklands downstream from PL's logging operations, threatening the
other principal economic base on California's north coast: tourism.
In addition, major lawsuits are in the courts challenging the tenants
of the Headwaters deal, which netted what PL pres. Manne called
"regulatory certainty", making their logging operations more
difficult to challenge. In a move that stunned the company and
garnered widespread community support, the county's newly elected
District Attorney in February filed a $250 million lawsuit against PL
alleging fraud in eleventh hour negotiations of the Headwaters deal,
yeilding PL a higher rate of harvest than would have been the case if
all pertinent data was taken into account.
PL has reacted to D.A. Paul Gallegos' lawsuit by launching a recall
campaign against him, and to the tree-sitters by flooding media with
smear ads. The tv, radio and print ads can be accessed at
http://htiac.tripod.com, and footage of risky extraction of
tree-sitters by PL contract climbers can be viewed at:
http://www.homepage.mac.com/davidhowitt/menu5.html
Click on "Safety Concerns".
add your comments
more lies
by The Rabbi Tuesday, May. 06, 2003 at 10:07 AM
All of the people that signed this letter have long had it in for thr pacific lumber company. The people listed in the letter are not being drawn togeather for the common good of the community, but rather another frontal assualt on P.L. Ellen taylor has sued P.L. many times, michal evenson is a whack job, tim mckay we all no where he butters his bread, Liz finger go figure, patty don't spray me clary and crazy ken miller and last but not least Mayor Bob I got a water quality violiation at my brewery Ornealas. With all these people's sincerely signed names who needs any enemys. When will you guys learn that you can't hide a sheep in wolfs clothing. See you in round three jerk.
add your comments
Maxxam out
by resident Tuesday, May. 06, 2003 at 10:22 AM
Actually, it was Maxxam that "had it in" for Pacific Lumber, and Hurwitz will be the final victor as he drives this once sustainable company into the ground.
add your comments
Will they?
by Free Thinker Tuesday, May. 06, 2003 at 10:44 AM
Will any of the people who signed that letter also sign a declaration denouncing Rod Coronado for his record of arson and threats, and admonishing demonstrators that nonviolent civil disobedience does not include harrassment and intimidation? It would greatly increase their credibility, but I doubt we'll ever see it. Their agenda is not to bring civility back into the debate, but to enable Earth First.
add your comments
OUCH! That's my neck you're stepping on
by Ox is a goon Tuesday, May. 06, 2003 at 11:28 AM
As you watch the extractions, and see PL's hired climbers kick, step on, constrict circulation, bend back thumbs and fingers, and hang tree-sitters upside down by one leg, you will not be confused as to whom lacks civility.
add your comments
Show me
by Free Thinker Tuesday, May. 06, 2003 at 1:17 PM
On the PL newspaper ad, please show where Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, or Rod Coronado were quoted inaccurately. And what would the Gandhi and King foundations think of their ideals being invoked by a group of "forest defenders"that embraces the likes of Rod Coronado and tactics including assault, intimidation, and sabotage? Are they aware of that? How on Earth can anyone say that "forest defenders" tactics are not at issue? They are simply trying to evade responsibility for their own actions.
add your comments
Gandhi's son
by Santa Rosa man Tuesday, May. 06, 2003 at 1:36 PM
Gandhi's son (may have been nephew) was quoted several years ago in the Press Democrat when David Chain died about the tree sitters/forest defenders tactics. He said that what the tree sitters were doing was not in keeping with the practices of the Mahatma.
add your comments
Ox is a goon
by Same old B.S. Tuesday, May. 06, 2003 at 6:44 PM
Hey goon,
Would it be alright if I came over to your front lawn. I would like to set up camp there to protest the likes of you. better yet, let me build a platform on top of your house or teepee, whatever it is that you live in.
add your comments
Freedom of speech
by Enviro's Off the air Tuesday, May. 06, 2003 at 6:55 PM
It seems that the enviro's can't afford much air time to show the so called smear-ads. I just wanted to see what the enemy had put together. Unfortunately I will have to come back later for they used up their bandwidth time. I wanted to see what the enviro's had as far as video on the so called illegal removal of treesitters. But again, no show. I guess they want to blow smoke to the public just as they always have.
add your comments
Talk to the Residents
by Ox is a goon Tuesday, May. 06, 2003 at 8:00 PM
Does PL pay you people to monitor this site? You can "roof-sit" on my house if I am trashing the water qualilty of the neighboring properties, or creating situations where neighboring houses might be wiped out entirely. Their are people who live downstream from PL who have lost their water quality, have lost their swimming spots, have lost their fishing holes, and are watching their property values plummet because of the degradation of the watershed where they live. They are too old to sit in trees. Do you want to defend PL's liquidation logging to them? When they have two foot high water marks in their living rooms? Maybe it is all some abstract notion to you, but to the residents in Freshwater, or for those in Elk River, where PL has to deliver their agricultural and drinking water because they have completely trashed the water quality it is a very REAL and DAILY issue. Quote your bullshit "scientists" all you want. The people who live here have to live with it daily.
Why don't you get off your computer and go talk to the residents who live in Freshwater and Elk River Watersheds, and see what the REAL experts have to say. Then go update your resume, Jim Bob.
add your comments
"Experts" vs Facts
by Free Thinker Wednesday, May. 07, 2003 at 8:11 AM
So scientists that disagree with Ox are "bullshit." Sounds like somebody doesn't want their precious preconceptions disturbed with facts. Like the legacy of damage done to Freshwater watershed done by the good little eco-groovy pre-Maxxam PALCO with their outdated practices. Check the airphoto record to see what I mean. Or the fact that repairing the legacy damage on an incremental basis is a condition of PALCO getting THPs approved.
If day-to-day experience made us experts, we'd all be urologists.
add your comments
Free Thinker
by Free Tinkler Wednesday, May. 07, 2003 at 2:12 PM
I sure would love to drain my bladder on you.
add your comments
Sorry. Not gonna happen.
by Free Thinker Wednesday, May. 07, 2003 at 2:39 PM
Proposition declined.
add your comments
legacy logging practices
by Scott Wednesday, May. 07, 2003 at 3:47 PM
P.L.'s legacy rationale for the recent trend of increased flooding Freshwater and Elk R. has been thoroughly debunked by the regional board staff, the redwood science lab, the residents of Freshwater and Elk R., and most recently by the independent science review pannel whose membership was agreed upon by P.L. P.L. knew this and dragged it's feet for years by refusing to do meaningfull monitoring of suspended sediments. They know such monitoring will prove what the residents have known for years , that even age harvesting practices on the steep slopes of their watersheds result in the transportation of fine sediments from the hillsides into their homes. This is not from legacy logging, this is from unprecedented canopy removal done recently. Road repair though essential is not enough to bring P.L. into compliance with the clean water act. l
add your comments
Canopy Fallacy
by Free Thinker Wednesday, May. 07, 2003 at 4:48 PM
The canopy argument is based on an incorrect extrapolation of rainfall interception during small storms to rainfall interception during large storms. The conclusion of the UC Team reviewing the Freshwater flooding issue was that canopy loss has a relatively minor effect on peak discharge. They also concluded that skid trails and compacted soils have a much more profound effect on hillslope hydrology and the effect is even greater during larger storms. Unfortunately, much of the recent pre-HCP harvest was also done using tractor yarding, so you can still draw an apparent (but not real) correlation between canopy loss and hydrologic changes. And the legacy effects of the skid trails and abandoned roads will last for decades. Recent independent work on abandoned roads in Redwood National Park (cited by the WQB review panel) shows that abandoned roads 30-50 years old generate from 3 to 10 times more sediment than decommissioned roads. And you want to say that legacy effects are "debunked"?? In case you didn't notice, the WQB review panel also pointed out the fallacy in Leslie Reid's method for calculating sediment yield from on-going logging. Be careful what literature you cite, Scott. Somebody else might actually have read it.
add your comments
legacy logging practices
by Same old B.S. Wednesday, May. 07, 2003 at 5:13 PM
Hey scott,
Number one; the water board staff was hand in hand with the terrorist. They refused to hand over documents that supported P.L. to the water board in Santa Rosa. They (staff) was caught not once but three different times in fibs to the Board members on what was really taking place in Freshwater. Second; The Science panel was onsite for just one stinkin day. And the staff didn't hand over data to the panal from P.L. so it was stacked in favor of eco terrorist. And monitoring, Staff didn't even tell the water board that P.L. was doing 170% of monitoring. Why I can say this, I was there at the meeting when staff made a fool of the water board.
add your comments
WQB terrorists?
by Free Thinker Wednesday, May. 07, 2003 at 5:57 PM
Going a tad far, don't you think?
add your comments
Convergence
by William Blake Thursday, May. 08, 2003 at 8:04 AM
The chasm between the two dogmas expressed here will never be closed. There are too many folks on all sides who rely on the split community for their position in society. Let those who are not so entrenched realize the willful manipulation of others by such people and resist adding to the division of the community.
add your comments
WQB terrorists?
by Same old B.S. Thursday, May. 08, 2003 at 5:17 PM
Not really Free Thinker. At the meeting there was eye winks and pats on the back, hugs with the likes of Wrigley, Miller, Elkins from EPIC with members of the staff. Exchanges of notes between the two was very open. If that's not hand in hand, I don't know what is. Both had the same goal and that was to shut down logging. Miller made that very clear. The Board members in Santa Rosa I feel was left out of the loop with it's staff.
add your comments
Distinctions
by Free Thinker Thursday, May. 08, 2003 at 6:32 PM
What you're describing is certainly a breach of professionalism on the part of the WQ staff. And the people you listed certainly represent the bureaucratic arm of Earth First (EPIC, NEC, Humboldt Watershed Council, etc.). But short of the type of sabotage, threats, assaults, and intimidation that's been going on up on the hill, we don't need to describe what they're doing as terrorism. They will never denounce any of those acts, though, because they want to protect their cronies.
add your comments
WQB terrorists?
by Same old B.S. Thursday, May. 08, 2003 at 8:28 PM
I didn't mean to imply that the staff were terrorist, a little misguided maybe. I was just saying that they were just a little too cozy with the otherside. If you look at the comparison between the WQ staff and Gallegos, I would say that the tatics are similar between the two. Both parties were a little misguided by these people of slick talking on bogus topics.
add your comments
Recall of Gallegos
by concerned Saturday, Jun. 14, 2003 at 6:19 PM
Does anyone know where I can sign the petition to oust Gallegos? After reading the news today about the sentence the two people that shot into 12 houses received, I am convinced we have a soft bellied liberal DA who is not going to be aggresive in halting violent crime. He needs to be sending a clear message that violent crime will not be tolerated in our community and anyone commiting violent crime will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Im sure our law enforcers would agree with me. We need leadership from the DA , not liberal politics!
3.28.2007
Michael Evenson PRESS RELEASE
March 14, 1999
MacGuffin Communications
366 California Ave. #7
Palo Alto, CA 94306
Contact: Adam Miller 650-851-1147
Michael Evenson 707-629-3679
For Immediate Release:
PACIFIC LUMBER LOGGING PLANS THROWN OUT BY COURT
Judge Blasts Department of Forestry for Abuse of Discretion
Following close on the heels of the government's acquisition of the
Headwaters Forest from the Pacific Lumber Company, a Humboldt County
Superior Court Judge ordered the California Department of Forestry (CDF)
to rescind approval of two Pacific Lumber Company timber harvest plans
in Northern California.
On March 9, Judge W. Bruce Watson ruled that CDF's approval of plans to
clearcut nearly 200 acres of old growth Douglas-fir above Sulphur Creek
in the Mattole River watershed, violate state law. Watson wrote in his
decision "CDF's failure to meaningfully analyze, evaluate, consider, and
use the comments, opinions and recommendations of other public agencies,
experts within their fields, as the law requires is prejudicial abuse of
discretion..."
Serving as his own attorney, Michael Evenson, 53, filed the two lawsuits
in the summer of 1998. Evenson is a rancher who lives at the mouth of
the Mattole River near Petrolia, California (population 100), the
westernmost point in the continental United States.
"It's like David and Goliath," said Bob Martel of the Humboldt Watershed
Council. "A lone citizen, without a lawyer, prevailed in court against
an opponent as menacing as Pacific Lumber's owner, Charles Hurwitz, with
his legendary platoon of lawyers. These THPs would have affected the
entire community downstream. Homes and productive farmland would have
been washed away. This is a victory for everyone."
"Not only did these THPs threaten wildlife habitat, they threatened our
property." said Ellen Taylor of Petrolia, a grandmother of 56, who was
arrested, along with 20 other protesters, in August for blocking Pacific
Lumber's logging in the proposed THPs. "You don't need a Ph.D. to see
what happens when you log steep slopes: you get landslides. These
landslides are why our river is so full of gravel and silt. The salmon
can't spawn and the riverbanks are being undercut, which imperils our
homes."
The Mattole Valley is in the most seismically active terrain in the
country. The exceedingly steep slopes, highly erosive soils, and
rainfall of up to 200 inches make sustainable logging by clearcut
impossible.
In his 18 page ruling, Judge Watson also said the cumulative impacts
assessment in the THPs as approved by CDF appear inadequate. "Both
[THPs] encompass a large portion of a small watershed that has been
seriously degraded, most likely due to cumulative adverse impacts caused
by a variety of land use practices [logging]," wrote Judge Watson.
This information has been known to CDF since at least 1990..." His
ruling confirms CDF does not have the expertise to make biological
decisions, and Watson's decision will likely affect approval of other
timber harvest plans in areas where the risk of landslides is a concern.
The agencies were unanimous in their determinations that the area is
extremely unstable, and that logging on slopes as steep as 80% increased
the likelihood of landslides that would, in turn threaten the dwindling
populations of the endangered coho salmon. Watson cited the objections
raised by state Department of Fish and Game, National Marine Fisheries
Service, North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, Environmental
Protection Agency and US Geological Survey.
Watson wrote "CDF is mandated by law to consider the concerns expressed,
and address those concerns, by either finding they are without
foundation, which appears unlikely given the record, or account for
concerns, which accounting is supported by the record. In [these THPs]
CDF did neither, that failure is an abuse of discretion."
Attorneys for both CDF and for Pacific Lumber claimed that the Habitat
Conservation Plan accepted as a condition of the Headwaters acquisition,
would provide adequate protection for Sulphur Creek, and that it
included higher standards of protection than existing state law
requires.
Judge Watson did not agree. He wrote: "Irrespective of the [HCP]
agreement, however, given the substantial concerns expressed by the
other agencies, CDF would have been remiss in approving [the THPs] in
any event."
Judge Watson ruled in favor of Evenson on all counts, and awarded court
costs.
"After a decade of liquidation logging, Pacific Lumber doesn't have any
old growth forest left to cut that doesn't endanger species and
downstream residents." said Evenson. "There's nothing to cut but the
steepest, most landslide-prone slopes."
"CDF can no longer rubber stamp THPs, disregarding the concerns of the
regulatory agencies." Bob Martel explained. "They should defer to the
determinations of wildlife agencies charged with the protection of
public trust values."
"This decision isn't just a victory for salmon and neighbors." said
Evenson. "It's also a victory for Pacific Lumber employees who's very
future is jeopardized by unsustainable logging practices. Every
hillside they've logged surrounding these THPs is riddled with
landslides. Trees don't grow on landslides. Judge Watson reminded us
that the law has the future of timber workers in mind."
"You can't have sustainable timber jobs without practicing sustainable
forestry." said Evenson.
MacGuffin Communications
366 California Ave. #7
Palo Alto, CA 94306
Contact: Adam Miller 650-851-1147
Michael Evenson 707-629-3679
For Immediate Release:
PACIFIC LUMBER LOGGING PLANS THROWN OUT BY COURT
Judge Blasts Department of Forestry for Abuse of Discretion
Following close on the heels of the government's acquisition of the
Headwaters Forest from the Pacific Lumber Company, a Humboldt County
Superior Court Judge ordered the California Department of Forestry (CDF)
to rescind approval of two Pacific Lumber Company timber harvest plans
in Northern California.
On March 9, Judge W. Bruce Watson ruled that CDF's approval of plans to
clearcut nearly 200 acres of old growth Douglas-fir above Sulphur Creek
in the Mattole River watershed, violate state law. Watson wrote in his
decision "CDF's failure to meaningfully analyze, evaluate, consider, and
use the comments, opinions and recommendations of other public agencies,
experts within their fields, as the law requires is prejudicial abuse of
discretion..."
Serving as his own attorney, Michael Evenson, 53, filed the two lawsuits
in the summer of 1998. Evenson is a rancher who lives at the mouth of
the Mattole River near Petrolia, California (population 100), the
westernmost point in the continental United States.
"It's like David and Goliath," said Bob Martel of the Humboldt Watershed
Council. "A lone citizen, without a lawyer, prevailed in court against
an opponent as menacing as Pacific Lumber's owner, Charles Hurwitz, with
his legendary platoon of lawyers. These THPs would have affected the
entire community downstream. Homes and productive farmland would have
been washed away. This is a victory for everyone."
"Not only did these THPs threaten wildlife habitat, they threatened our
property." said Ellen Taylor of Petrolia, a grandmother of 56, who was
arrested, along with 20 other protesters, in August for blocking Pacific
Lumber's logging in the proposed THPs. "You don't need a Ph.D. to see
what happens when you log steep slopes: you get landslides. These
landslides are why our river is so full of gravel and silt. The salmon
can't spawn and the riverbanks are being undercut, which imperils our
homes."
The Mattole Valley is in the most seismically active terrain in the
country. The exceedingly steep slopes, highly erosive soils, and
rainfall of up to 200 inches make sustainable logging by clearcut
impossible.
In his 18 page ruling, Judge Watson also said the cumulative impacts
assessment in the THPs as approved by CDF appear inadequate. "Both
[THPs] encompass a large portion of a small watershed that has been
seriously degraded, most likely due to cumulative adverse impacts caused
by a variety of land use practices [logging]," wrote Judge Watson.
This information has been known to CDF since at least 1990..." His
ruling confirms CDF does not have the expertise to make biological
decisions, and Watson's decision will likely affect approval of other
timber harvest plans in areas where the risk of landslides is a concern.
The agencies were unanimous in their determinations that the area is
extremely unstable, and that logging on slopes as steep as 80% increased
the likelihood of landslides that would, in turn threaten the dwindling
populations of the endangered coho salmon. Watson cited the objections
raised by state Department of Fish and Game, National Marine Fisheries
Service, North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, Environmental
Protection Agency and US Geological Survey.
Watson wrote "CDF is mandated by law to consider the concerns expressed,
and address those concerns, by either finding they are without
foundation, which appears unlikely given the record, or account for
concerns, which accounting is supported by the record. In [these THPs]
CDF did neither, that failure is an abuse of discretion."
Attorneys for both CDF and for Pacific Lumber claimed that the Habitat
Conservation Plan accepted as a condition of the Headwaters acquisition,
would provide adequate protection for Sulphur Creek, and that it
included higher standards of protection than existing state law
requires.
Judge Watson did not agree. He wrote: "Irrespective of the [HCP]
agreement, however, given the substantial concerns expressed by the
other agencies, CDF would have been remiss in approving [the THPs] in
any event."
Judge Watson ruled in favor of Evenson on all counts, and awarded court
costs.
"After a decade of liquidation logging, Pacific Lumber doesn't have any
old growth forest left to cut that doesn't endanger species and
downstream residents." said Evenson. "There's nothing to cut but the
steepest, most landslide-prone slopes."
"CDF can no longer rubber stamp THPs, disregarding the concerns of the
regulatory agencies." Bob Martel explained. "They should defer to the
determinations of wildlife agencies charged with the protection of
public trust values."
"This decision isn't just a victory for salmon and neighbors." said
Evenson. "It's also a victory for Pacific Lumber employees who's very
future is jeopardized by unsustainable logging practices. Every
hillside they've logged surrounding these THPs is riddled with
landslides. Trees don't grow on landslides. Judge Watson reminded us
that the law has the future of timber workers in mind."
"You can't have sustainable timber jobs without practicing sustainable
forestry." said Evenson.
TS - Board axes Gallegos' request for help in lawsuit (Genesis of a monster)
Board axes Gallegos' request for help in lawsuit
By James Tressler The Times-Standard
March 12, 2003
EUREKA -- Humboldt County District Attorney Paul Gallegos and his assistant Tim Stoen may have to go it alone in their lawsuit against Pacific Lumber Co.
After listening to more than three hours of public debate, the Board of Supervisors Tuesday by a 4-1 vote rejected the district attorney's request to contract a San Francisco Bay area law firm to act as special counsel in the lawsuit.
The board's decision was made before a packed chamber divided between PL employees and contractors, who defended the timber company, and PL critics who are standing by the district attorney's lawsuit.
The district attorney sued the timber giant last month, alleging the company concealed key information during the 1999 Headwaters negotiations that allowed it to cut timber on steep slopes that otherwise would have been off limits. The district attorney alleges PL subsequently harvested more trees than it was allowed under the agreement. The lawsuit seeks tens of millions of dollars in damages.
On Tuesday, Gallegos was asking the board to give him the OK to hire Cotchett, Pitre, Simon and McCarthy, a Burlingame firm with extensive experience in corporate fraud litigation. Although the details of the proposal were still being finalized, the firm would have kept 14.5 percent of any recovered damages. The District Attorney's Office, as was proposed Tuesday, would have paid most of the legal expenses out of its own budget.
The board, in refusing to let him contract with the firm, cited California government code 25203, which gives the board by a two-thirds vote authority to employ or not to employ outside counsel in matters of litigation affecting the county.
The majority of the board members who voted against the proposal said they didn't feel comfortable committing county dollars to the lawsuit in a year when the county faces severe state budget cuts. Also, several board members said they weren't certain the district attorney had made a convincing case against PL -- and in fact, that they had serious questions about the validity of the lawsuit.
Prior to the meeting, the board received copies of a letter the California Department of Fish and Game sent Monday to Stoen. In the letter, department officials said they believe there are factual errors in the facts presented in the lawsuit.
Chairman Jimmy Smith voiced similar doubts. He said that by supporting the outside counsel, the board risked taking a position against state agencies like Fish and Game, which has stood firm behind PL's practices since the Headwaters deal.
"I'm not being critical of the district attorney," Smith said after the meeting. "He has a big job and he makes his decisions and we'll all live by that. But ... in a case of this magnitude, we all needed individually to do what research we could to find if it's a prudent decision. We represent all of the county. The risk is there and it could be substantial."
The controversial proposal put a heavy spotlight on two of the supervisors, Roger Rodoni and Bonnie Neely. Rodoni was asked by some to recuse himself from the vote due to a perceived conflict of interest because Rodoni rents land from the timber company. Rodoni, prior to the vote, displayed comments from the Fair Political Practices Commission, which Rodoni said had no problem with him voting on the matter.
Neely is the wife of former District Attorney Terry Farmer, who Gallegos upset in last year's election. After the board's vote, Neely said her decision was not personal, but made in the interest of the county, which faces a severe budget crisis over the next year. The Fish and Game letter also influenced Neely, who said the letter affirms that the state's regulatory agencies don't appear to support the lawsuit.
"What I'm seeing is that you're standing alone," Neely said, to Gallegos and Stoen.
Neely ended her argument against the proposal by urging the district attorney to get in line behind other departments if it wants any of the county's money to pay for the lawsuit.
"You have to compete along with them in terms of money being allocated," she said.
Third District Supervisor John Woolley cast the lone vote in support of the district attorney's proposal. Before the board's vote, Woolley put forth a motion to continue the discussion for two weeks, to allow the district attorney to bring forth a finalized proposal. Fifth District Supervisor Jill Geist supported that motion, but the rest of the board voted it down.
Woolley argued unsuccessfully that while he had some serious questions himself about the lawsuit, he said the board shouldn't reject the proposal outright until they'd seen the final version.
The board's rejection for special counsel won't stop Gallegos from pursuing his lawsuit using his own budget. Nevertheless, he and Stoen tried to convince the board Tuesday that they need outside counsel to handle some of the workload so that the lawsuit won't drain too much time and resources from other cases.
After the board's vote, Gallegos seemed disappointed but unfazed.
When asked what happens next, he said, "Time for lunch."
Earlier, Gallegos stood by his controversial lawsuit, arguing that the financial cost shouldn't outweigh his responsibility to pursue what he believes are serious charges against PL. Otherwise, companies like PL, backed by high-priced corporate lawyers, would seem to be given a double standard, Gallegos said.
"Do you make decisions to prosecute a wrong based on cost? No," he said. "What is the price of the integrity of our government system?"
PL officials said they were pleased with the board's decision, saying it reinforced other support that the company has received, including from the state Attorney General's Office.
"The facts are on our side," said Jim Branham, PL's director of government relations.
Branham added that the district attorney's failure to present a convincing case to the board Tuesday could prove a telling statement "on their ability to prosecute this case."
Even before the board convened Tuesday, the outside of the courthouse was jammed with log trucks and timber industry workers, who held what they called a "right-to-work" demonstration. Some even held up "Recall the D.A." signs.
"We have to stand up for our rights," said Tony Leonardo, owner of Leonardo Trucking, which contracts with PL. "Besides putting us out of work, this lawsuit is going to cost taxpayers a lot of money whether he wins or loses.
Petrolia resident Ellen Taylor said that while she sympathized with the timber workers, she still supports the lawsuit. Taylor owns a ranch which she maintains suffered from erosion as a result of PL's logging practices.
"These workers have suffered, but in reality they cut themselves out of a job," Taylor said. "The D.A. is just performing his responsibility. ... It's very brave of him to do this."
TOPICS:Business/Economy; Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Extended News; Government; News/Current Events; US: California; US: Oregon
KEYWORDS:ENVIRALISTS; ENVIRONMENT; GOVERNMENT; LOGGING; PACIFICLUMBERCO; PL; TREES
1 posted on 03/12/2003 1:28:40 PM PST by
To: farmfriend
BTTT!!!!!!
3 posted on 03/12/2003 1:31:04 PM PST by
[Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies ]
To: farmfriend
��5{��������he post...The loggers put on a good show yesterday by turning out to support Jobs in job short Humboldt County. Did you notice that the assistant Da is Tim Stoen of Peoples Temple Koolaid days...Gallegos hired him two months ago from Mendocino County. Stoen ran as a R in the Ca assembly but lost to Rob Brown R whom I supported but he lost to Little Patty Berg the 'rat.
4 posted on 03/12/2003 1:43:59 PM PST by
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To: farmfriend
Wow. Humboldt County just gets weirder and weirder. At least the Board of Supervisors had the sense to reject helping this idiot in his anti-business jihad.
5 posted on 03/12/2003 1:48:32 PM PST by
[Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]
To: farmfriend
Petrolia resident Ellen Taylor said that while she sympathized with the timber workers, she still supports the lawsuit. Taylor owns a ranch which she maintains suffered from erosion as a result of PL's logging practices.
So, from the way this article was written, you'd reckon that Ms. Taylor is just your run-of-the-mill rural landower.
But you'd be wrong:
Earth First Press Release from 1999
"Not only did these THPs threaten wildlife habitat, they threatened our property." said Ellen Taylor of Petrolia, a grandmother of 56, who was arrested, along with 20 other protesters, in August for blocking Pacific Lumber's logging in the proposed THPs. "You don't need a Ph.D. to see what happens when you log steep slopes: you get landslides. These landslides are why our river is so full of gravel and silt. The salmon can't spawn and the riverbanks are being undercut, which imperils our homes."
Typical media bias.
6 posted on 03/12/2003 1:54:05 PM PST by
[Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]
To: tubebender
See what my brain did? I put the source as the Sacramento Bee when it was really the Times-Standard. I've hit abuse on my self. Hope the moderators can change it.
7 posted on 03/12/2003 2:09:04 PM PST by
[Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies ]
To: B Knotts
You are absolutly right about Ellen Taylor and her Marxist traits.She never misses a chance to bash the timber industry. She has had a couple of run ins with the sheriff over pot growing in her area.
8 posted on 03/12/2003 2:23:22 PM PST by
[Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies ]
To: tubebender
She has had a couple of run ins with the sheriff over pot growing in her area
Hers?
BTTT!
9 posted on 03/12/2003 2:58:59 PM PST by
[Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies ]
To: hattend
She couldn't be connected to the "grow". I'll ask my son for more info if you are interested. Now the new DA said he will not prosecute 99 plants or less. That is a lot of pot .
10 posted on 03/12/2003 3:58:07 PM PST by
[Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies ]
To: tubebender
Wow, 99 plants of the size I used to see when I lived in Shingletown, California (Shasta County) would be a nice yearly income for a family of four.
What a great DA! Maybe I need to move back and start a new "business".
11 posted on 03/12/2003 4:15:12 PM PST by
[Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies ]
To: hattend
Wow, 99 plants of the size I used to see when I lived in Shingletown, California (Shasta County) would be a nice yearly income for a family of four.
Double that size for Humboldt County and trippple the potency.
A friend of mine from the 50s owned Uncle Grunts with his wife there in Shingletown.
12 posted on 03/12/2003 4:21:56 PM PST by
[Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies ]
To: *Enviralists
http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/bump-list
13 posted on 03/12/2003 4:43:13 PM PST by
[Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies ]
To: tubebender
Uncle Runt's?
Yeah, used to stop there every now and then when I flew hanggliders at Hat Creek Rim.
Ahhh, the memories! LOL...BTTT
14 posted on 03/12/2003 5:11:37 PM PST by
[Post Reply | Private Reply | To 12 | View Replies ]
To: hattend
Uncle Runt's?
Uncle Runt's / Uncle Grunt's, it's all in how much beer you have consumed...LOL
15 posted on 03/12/2003 5:59:55 PM PST by
[Post Reply | Private Reply | To 14 | View Replies ]
To: farmfriend; Jim Robinson
I've hit abuse on my self.
I know there's gotta be a joke in there somewhere.
16 posted on 03/13/2003 2:59:11 AM PST by
[Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies ]
To: AAABEST
That was the second version of that sentence. The first one was even funnier. Looks like the moderators were able to change my error.
17 posted on 03/13/2003 7:31:23 AM PST by
[Post Reply | Private Reply | To 16 | View Replies ]
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By James Tressler The Times-Standard
March 12, 2003
EUREKA -- Humboldt County District Attorney Paul Gallegos and his assistant Tim Stoen may have to go it alone in their lawsuit against Pacific Lumber Co.
After listening to more than three hours of public debate, the Board of Supervisors Tuesday by a 4-1 vote rejected the district attorney's request to contract a San Francisco Bay area law firm to act as special counsel in the lawsuit.
The board's decision was made before a packed chamber divided between PL employees and contractors, who defended the timber company, and PL critics who are standing by the district attorney's lawsuit.
The district attorney sued the timber giant last month, alleging the company concealed key information during the 1999 Headwaters negotiations that allowed it to cut timber on steep slopes that otherwise would have been off limits. The district attorney alleges PL subsequently harvested more trees than it was allowed under the agreement. The lawsuit seeks tens of millions of dollars in damages.
On Tuesday, Gallegos was asking the board to give him the OK to hire Cotchett, Pitre, Simon and McCarthy, a Burlingame firm with extensive experience in corporate fraud litigation. Although the details of the proposal were still being finalized, the firm would have kept 14.5 percent of any recovered damages. The District Attorney's Office, as was proposed Tuesday, would have paid most of the legal expenses out of its own budget.
The board, in refusing to let him contract with the firm, cited California government code 25203, which gives the board by a two-thirds vote authority to employ or not to employ outside counsel in matters of litigation affecting the county.
The majority of the board members who voted against the proposal said they didn't feel comfortable committing county dollars to the lawsuit in a year when the county faces severe state budget cuts. Also, several board members said they weren't certain the district attorney had made a convincing case against PL -- and in fact, that they had serious questions about the validity of the lawsuit.
Prior to the meeting, the board received copies of a letter the California Department of Fish and Game sent Monday to Stoen. In the letter, department officials said they believe there are factual errors in the facts presented in the lawsuit.
Chairman Jimmy Smith voiced similar doubts. He said that by supporting the outside counsel, the board risked taking a position against state agencies like Fish and Game, which has stood firm behind PL's practices since the Headwaters deal.
"I'm not being critical of the district attorney," Smith said after the meeting. "He has a big job and he makes his decisions and we'll all live by that. But ... in a case of this magnitude, we all needed individually to do what research we could to find if it's a prudent decision. We represent all of the county. The risk is there and it could be substantial."
The controversial proposal put a heavy spotlight on two of the supervisors, Roger Rodoni and Bonnie Neely. Rodoni was asked by some to recuse himself from the vote due to a perceived conflict of interest because Rodoni rents land from the timber company. Rodoni, prior to the vote, displayed comments from the Fair Political Practices Commission, which Rodoni said had no problem with him voting on the matter.
Neely is the wife of former District Attorney Terry Farmer, who Gallegos upset in last year's election. After the board's vote, Neely said her decision was not personal, but made in the interest of the county, which faces a severe budget crisis over the next year. The Fish and Game letter also influenced Neely, who said the letter affirms that the state's regulatory agencies don't appear to support the lawsuit.
"What I'm seeing is that you're standing alone," Neely said, to Gallegos and Stoen.
Neely ended her argument against the proposal by urging the district attorney to get in line behind other departments if it wants any of the county's money to pay for the lawsuit.
"You have to compete along with them in terms of money being allocated," she said.
Third District Supervisor John Woolley cast the lone vote in support of the district attorney's proposal. Before the board's vote, Woolley put forth a motion to continue the discussion for two weeks, to allow the district attorney to bring forth a finalized proposal. Fifth District Supervisor Jill Geist supported that motion, but the rest of the board voted it down.
Woolley argued unsuccessfully that while he had some serious questions himself about the lawsuit, he said the board shouldn't reject the proposal outright until they'd seen the final version.
The board's rejection for special counsel won't stop Gallegos from pursuing his lawsuit using his own budget. Nevertheless, he and Stoen tried to convince the board Tuesday that they need outside counsel to handle some of the workload so that the lawsuit won't drain too much time and resources from other cases.
After the board's vote, Gallegos seemed disappointed but unfazed.
When asked what happens next, he said, "Time for lunch."
Earlier, Gallegos stood by his controversial lawsuit, arguing that the financial cost shouldn't outweigh his responsibility to pursue what he believes are serious charges against PL. Otherwise, companies like PL, backed by high-priced corporate lawyers, would seem to be given a double standard, Gallegos said.
"Do you make decisions to prosecute a wrong based on cost? No," he said. "What is the price of the integrity of our government system?"
PL officials said they were pleased with the board's decision, saying it reinforced other support that the company has received, including from the state Attorney General's Office.
"The facts are on our side," said Jim Branham, PL's director of government relations.
Branham added that the district attorney's failure to present a convincing case to the board Tuesday could prove a telling statement "on their ability to prosecute this case."
Even before the board convened Tuesday, the outside of the courthouse was jammed with log trucks and timber industry workers, who held what they called a "right-to-work" demonstration. Some even held up "Recall the D.A." signs.
"We have to stand up for our rights," said Tony Leonardo, owner of Leonardo Trucking, which contracts with PL. "Besides putting us out of work, this lawsuit is going to cost taxpayers a lot of money whether he wins or loses.
Petrolia resident Ellen Taylor said that while she sympathized with the timber workers, she still supports the lawsuit. Taylor owns a ranch which she maintains suffered from erosion as a result of PL's logging practices.
"These workers have suffered, but in reality they cut themselves out of a job," Taylor said. "The D.A. is just performing his responsibility. ... It's very brave of him to do this."
TOPICS:
KEYWORDS:
To: farmfriend
BTTT!!!!!!
[
To: farmfriend
��5{��������he post...The loggers put on a good show yesterday by turning out to support Jobs in job short Humboldt County. Did you notice that the assistant Da is Tim Stoen of Peoples Temple Koolaid days...Gallegos hired him two months ago from Mendocino County. Stoen ran as a R in the Ca assembly but lost to Rob Brown R whom I supported but he lost to Little Patty Berg the 'rat.
[
To: farmfriend
Wow. Humboldt County just gets weirder and weirder. At least the Board of Supervisors had the sense to reject helping this idiot in his anti-business jihad.
[
To: farmfriend
Petrolia resident Ellen Taylor said that while she sympathized with the timber workers, she still supports the lawsuit. Taylor owns a ranch which she maintains suffered from erosion as a result of PL's logging practices.
So, from the way this article was written, you'd reckon that Ms. Taylor is just your run-of-the-mill rural landower.
But you'd be wrong:
"Not only did these THPs threaten wildlife habitat, they threatened our property." said Ellen Taylor of Petrolia, a grandmother of 56, who was arrested, along with 20 other protesters, in August for blocking Pacific Lumber's logging in the proposed THPs. "You don't need a Ph.D. to see what happens when you log steep slopes: you get landslides. These landslides are why our river is so full of gravel and silt. The salmon can't spawn and the riverbanks are being undercut, which imperils our homes."
Typical media bias.
[
To: tubebender
See what my brain did? I put the source as the Sacramento Bee when it was really the Times-Standard. I've hit abuse on my self. Hope the moderators can change it.
[
To: B Knotts
You are absolutly right about Ellen Taylor and her Marxist traits.She never misses a chance to bash the timber industry. She has had a couple of run ins with the sheriff over pot growing in her area.
[
To: tubebender
She has had a couple of run ins with the sheriff over pot growing in her area
Hers?
BTTT!
[
To: hattend
She couldn't be connected to the "grow". I'll ask my son for more info if you are interested. Now the new DA said he will not prosecute 99 plants or less. That is a lot of pot .
[
To: tubebender
Wow, 99 plants of the size I used to see when I lived in Shingletown, California (Shasta County) would be a nice yearly income for a family of four.
What a great DA! Maybe I need to move back and start a new "business".
[
To: hattend
Wow, 99 plants of the size I used to see when I lived in Shingletown, California (Shasta County) would be a nice yearly income for a family of four.
Double that size for Humboldt County and trippple the potency.
A friend of mine from the 50s owned Uncle Grunts with his wife there in Shingletown.
[
To: *Enviralists
[
To: tubebender
Uncle Runt's?
Yeah, used to stop there every now and then when I flew hanggliders at Hat Creek Rim.
Ahhh, the memories! LOL...BTTT
[
To: hattend
Uncle Runt's?
Uncle Runt's / Uncle Grunt's, it's all in how much beer you have consumed...LOL
[
To: farmfriend; Jim Robinson
I've hit abuse on my self.
I know there's gotta be a joke in there somewhere.
[
To: AAABEST
That was the second version of that sentence. The first one was even funnier. Looks like the moderators were able to change my error.
[
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2003 Robinson-DeFehr Consulting, LLC.
The collected works of Ellen Taylor
MAILBOX / BY NORTH COAST JOURNAL READERS
◼ Ignorant Little Snots
(NOV. 18, 2010)
Editor:
At Mattole School in Petrolia this election season, the 5th through 8th graders spent a couple of weeks discussing the various propositions. According to my grandson, there was strong opposition to Proposition 19, and at the school ballot box it got only three votes (“Prop. 19, R.I.P.” Nov. 11).
Assuming these children reflect their parents it is hard not to feel cynical and sad. The War on Drugs is as destructive as our other wars, a murderously violent security policy intended to create the right environment for resource extraction and corporate exploitation. Domestically it is the modern version of Jim Crow.
These happily oblivious families might as well be voting for war because they work in the armaments business. They’ve evidently forgotten neighbors whose lives were mutilated by brutal arrests and desperate legal proceedings. They need go no farther than Eureka to encounter people who’ve emerged from long prison sentences in debt, blackballed from employment and living in fear of being thrown back in prison again for a trifle.
All arguments against Prop. 19 are casuistry, and its defeat has no silver lining.
Ellen Taylor - Meth Advocate
War on Drugs is war on our own people
Ellen Taylor
03/11/2007
Mike Goldsby, a highly-respected local expert in drug addiction, declared in last week's My Word opinion, “I have nothing good to say about methamphetamines.”
The estimated 1.4 million users in the U.S. would disagree. Productivity-oriented professionals with demanding careers praise the increased alertness afforded by meth. Timber fallers, mill workers, truck drivers, and others in dangerous occupations extol the stamina it provides. The military has always depended upon meth as a source of courage and quick reaction time. Poor people, trapped in multiple low-paying jobs or the exhausting paperwork demands of public assistance, emphasize its empowering and antidepressant effect.
These people agree that, like other drugs, meth can be fatal. But its high morbidity and mortality, they would add, rest in the fact that its use is illegal.
Like marijuana, also a medicine, meth is a multibillion-dollar criminal industry. There is naturally violence where such huge profits are to be made.
As revealed by Gary Webb in his San Jose Mercury News articles on crack cocaine, successful drug networks involve protection and exploitation by government agencies, including law enforcement. Police departments flourish on grants for drug interdiction. The domestic cost of the War on Drugs was $51 billion in 2006.
The penal system, increasingly privatized, prospers as well. The public pays an annual $27,000 for each of 2.5 million prisoners. As a society, we are invested in this industry: Some cities are almost exclusively supported by their prisons.
I recently attended a conference, “Methamphetamine, Hepatitis and HIV,” in Salt Lake City, where drug policy analysts described “set and setting” as determinants of how a drug or medicine will affect an individual.
The law enforcement vendetta against meth, and media use of such slogans as “meth kills,” linking it to deviance, disease and violence, provides a hostile setting, and amounts to a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Public opinion as reflected in Times-Standard op-eds echo the official contempt. One guest opinion praised the policies of MaoTse-tung for summarily executing drug offenders. Another called it “terrorism,” and suggested soliciting Homeland Security money.
The recent killings by the Eureka police were attributed to the victims' use of meth, which is rapidly becoming a license to kill. Even Mike Goldsby, in saluting law enforcement's “vital role in holding addicts accountable,” regretted that “there are not enough police or jails to arrest, convict and incarcerate every addict.”
A declaration of war is an open invitation to ignore the rights of individuals in the name of a more urgent destiny. The War on Drugs is no exception.
Harsher sentences than for murder, illegal searches and seizures, intrusive urine testing, property forfeitures, disenfranchisement, ineligibility for public support, housing, school loans or food stamps, loss of children: Fourth, fifth, eighth and fourteenth amendment protections are widely denied meth users.
Demonization of meth cripples democracy. A minority of our citizens even votes, let alone takes an active role in policy decisions which will affect their and their childrens' lives.
Involvement in illegal and socially-condemned activities has estranged large segments of the population from political life. Paranoia prevents users from exercising their first amendment rights to express their opinions. Thus, in a democracy already handicapped by apathy, a stigmatized class is prevented from defending their own interests.
This has powerful implications. One op-ed reported that 70 percent of children in some Humboldt County schools come from “meth homes.” Urine tests at local clinics confirm wide use.
Paul Gahlinger, M.D., commander of the Davis County Jail in Utah, observed that his inmates, 65 percent meth convicts and one-third female, attribute their incarceration not to meth but to the chaotic problems of poverty. They have no plan to stop using.
It is evident that meth is endemic, a street medicine used to treat endemic conditions of life in the American culture of speed, performance, achievement, self-absorption, alienation, waste and neglect.
The War on Drugs amounts to a war on our own people. It is contrary to the precepts of Christianity and all other religions, and destructive to the foundations of democracy.
We must treat the human conditions which cause suffering, instead of demonizing the medicine that relieves the symptoms, if we wish to restore family and human values to our communities.
Ellen Taylor lives in Petrolia.
This Op-Ed was originally posted at http://www.times-standard.com/fastsearchresults/ci_5418494
***
There was a LETTER TO THE EDITOR in response:
Meth victim's mom: Help stop this killer
Author: My Word by Suzi Fregeau
Date: March 18, 2007
Publication: Times-Standard (Eureka, CA)
I read, with amazement, the recent opinion of Ellen Taylor, “War on Drugs is a war on our own people.” I cannot for one minute understand why any sensible individual would support, in any way, the use of this drug. To imply that this drug is helpful for productivity-oriented professionals with demanding careers, that it is necessary to increase the alertness of truck drivers, timber fallers, mill workers and others in dangerous occupations is ludicrous at best.
Since... (truncated, available from Times Standard paid archives)
***
Discussion at watchpaul
Discussion on Anon.R.mous' Super Happy Fun Blog
***
It is a patriotic duty to reject 'abusive' rulers 5/13/2007
by Ellen Taylor, Petrolia,
“When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary ... .”
So begins our founding document and spiritual wellspring as a nation, the Declaration of Independence. It has inspired oppressed peoples around the world for more than two centuries. With dignity and brilliant clarity, it documents the precise moment of a people’s arrival at the limits of tolerance, and their resolve to repudiate a government that is destructive of the ends of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
As we memorized the preamble in school, our patriotism was nurtured by our forefathers’ principled repudiation of injurious authority. In the Declaration, and in our other founding document, the Constitution, they have bequeathed to us a solemn responsibility: to reject any ruler who is guilty of “usurpations and abuses” if, in the course of human events, it again becomes necessary.
It has.
We have in the White House a president who is as mad as King George III, to whom the Declaration of Independence is addressed. This is borne out in analysis of his statements and public appearances. Determination of how he got that way will someday no doubt be examined by psychiatrists or toxicologists. They will compare George W. Bush’s behavior with that of other mad leaders who created havoc in previous centuries. He must be removed from office, and his vicious political apparatus dismantled.
The high crimes and misdemeanors of the Bush administration are giddying in number, magnitude and audacity. They have been enumerated by retired generals, civil rights organizations and government officials. U.S. Rep. John Conyers, the chairperson of the House Judiciary Committee, introduced a bill with 38 co-sponsors last year to investigate the impeachable offenses of Bush and Dick Cheney. House Resolution 333, presented to the House two weeks ago by presidential candidate and U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, begins the process of impeaching the vice president.
Articles of impeachment listed by these groups and individuals include:
+ waging aggressive war and committing war crimes, crimes against the peace and crimes against humanity;
+ lying to the American people and to Congress, providing a fraudulent rationale for war;
+ violating international treaties and federal laws prohibiting torture;
+ retaliating against witnesses and individuals who oppose administration policy and leaking national security intelligence for political purposes;
+ disseminating fraudulent information with the objective of making war on Iran;
+ illegally threatening Iran with a nuclear blitzkrieg — a country which has not attacked anybody in more than 200 years;
+ endangering our national security by violating the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Article 6, which prohibits the further manufacture of nuclear weapons;
+ allowing the U.S. military to violate the Geneva accords by targeting of civilians and civic infrastructure, by destroying priceless archaeological heritage, failing to protect civilians, using weapons such as land mines and cluster bombs, depleted uranium, napalm and white phosphorus, which target civilians, and failing to investigate those officials responsible for these crimes;
+ conducting illegal electronic surveillance of U.S. citizens and others;
+ appending “signing statements” to legislation passed by Congress, which illegally assert the right to ignore the legislation;
+ displaying criminal negligence regarding the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe, which resulted in more than 1,500 preventable deaths;
+ violation of the 14th Amendment’s equal protection provision in the ongoing neglect of Hurricane Katrina victims;
+ suspending the writ of habeas corpus by ordering the indefinite detention of so-called “enemy combatants”; and
+ corrupting the rule of law in the Department of Justice for political purposes.
Support for impeachment is entering the mainstream. The Vermont Senate passed a resolution recommending it, and it has been proposed in the Illinois Legislature as well. The growing numbers of U.S. soldiers who are dying as a tribute to Bush’s empire is met with increasing horror. As funds for health care, education, national security and environmental protection shrivel, the public increasingly views the 2008 defense budget of $803 billion — larger by far than the rest of the world combined — with hostility.
But many in the country likewise reject the politically hamstrung Democrats, who took impeachment “off the table” and then voted for $125 billion in supplemental appropriations for the war. They regard the Democrats’ vetoed funding resolution as feeble, and for good reasons. It was nonbinding. The president could obtain a waiver for any of its provisions. It did not outlaw an attack on Iran. It did not call for the closure of bases in Iraq. It allowed for the continued presence of 90 percent of the estimated 125,000 foreign mercenaries.
Even after “withdrawal,” the U.S. would have been allowed to keep up to 80,000 troops in Iraq, serving in various capacities. It required the Iraqi government to pass an oil law designed to benefit the international oil conglomerates. It imposed fantastically unrealistic “benchmarks” on a country for whose descent into utter chaos the Bush administration is entirely responsible.
Impeachment of Bush or Cheney must not be viewed as a distraction from the urgent business of ending the war. On the contrary, it may be the only way to end it and dissipate Bush’s insane fiction of permanent war. It is a solemn obligation to law enforcement, and on it rests our reputation with our posterity and with the rest of the world.
Copyright (C) 2005, The Eureka Reporter. All rights reserved.Newspapers should stop trying to mislead in news section
###
9/10/2005
Dear Editor,
For an entire week now, I’ve been stupefied with amazement each morning when I open the papers, to read yet again about Salzman.
What terrible malady has overthrown the minds of our local editors? Why do they kneel so abjectly in the snows of Canossa, vying with each other over who can make the most self-abasing confession? “How gullible we were!” they wail. How foolishly trusting, betrayed by this Machiavellian manipulator and who knows how many other princes and princesses of darkness, at whose motives “we can only guess.”
Whatever those motives were, they had the peculiar consequence of unhinging your reason. Or else a different force is intimidating you into these humiliating postures. It’s clear that poor Mr. Wyatt was intimidated by somebody into bringing all this down on his friend Salzman’s head.
Get a grip, editors. Take a deep breath, Supervisor Geist. Your “I-am-not-a-puppet” speech resonated too well with Nixon’s “I am not a crook.” You don’t want people to start seeing a puppet up there every Tuesday.
And Salzman was not trying to look like an army by getting friends to sign his letters. “Army” is too destructive an image. He was slipping just a little more of his copious analysis of events – an analysis, I might add, welcomed by many readers – into the too-tiny space allowed to each ordinary individual in the newspapers. And now, on this ridiculously irrelevant pretext, that space has snapped shut, like an oyster.
Emperors and others who crawl on their knees to Canossa always want a penance to obtain absolution. So, here’s a penance, echoing to you from R. Trent Williams’ (Richard Salzman’s) last letter to be printed on your pages. Stop editorializing in your news section, especially when the intent is to mislead. You’ll feel a lot better, and you might get up the courage to open your shell again.
Ellen Taylor
Petrolia
***
8/9/04 Useful Information Gleaned
From Nazi-Era Atrocities by Ellen Taylor
(Editor’s note: Because of the length of this column, it was split into two parts. Part one was in last week’s Eureka Reporter.)
A frequently asked question in the years since World War II is how Germans could commit the atrocities they did, and here also we can find information useful to the present.
Studies have been made since the war which selected groups of ordinary German workingmen and investigated their reaction to committing atrocities. There was an overwhelming initial reaction of horror and revulsion.
After a few assignments, however, the men were able successfully to dehumanize their victims and approach their obligations as merely an unpleasant cleanup.
They came to believe they were serving a higher cause, much as our soldiers are told they are saving American lives when they "light up” vehicles filled with passengers, or commit atrocities against prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
Some who obey orders to commit atrocities suffer deep psychic trauma. Others, as was recently admitted by numerous soldiers to the L.A. Times, actually come to enjoy it. And, like the German soldiers, they would all, if confronted with the atrocities they committed, claim that they were just following orders.
Very few have the knowledge or resources to be influenced by Article 8 of the Charter of the Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, which states that “a person acting pursuant to orders from his government or a superior does not release him from responsibility and international law.”
This important piece of our heritage from the Nazis has been allowed to fade into obscurity.
German or American, the techniques employed to bring peoples to wage aggressive war are the same. The culture of irresponsible obedience must change if future holocausts are to be avoided.
The crime of aggressive war killed 60 million people in World War II. The largest fraction of these were Chinese civilians, whose obscure and often horrific extinction was overlooked in your editorial, there being no Holocaust Museums or Wiesenthal Centers to commemorate them.
Millions of soldiers from many nations died, and just because they were of an age and social class which is designated for sacrifice in war does not make their deaths any less horrible. Crimes against the peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity, they all bring about miserable lives and deaths.
These crimes are as prevalent and as virulent as they were 60 years ago.
Life in Samarra or Fallujah, with people murdered and maimed daily, and precious historic culture destroyed, must be similar to many Polish or Rumanian cities during World War II.
There are still enormous holocausts such as Rwanda, Congo, Sudan. Is it not a sort of genocide to allow 25 million impoverished inhabitants of Africa to die of AIDS?
The reason they are impoverished is because colonial and imperialist nations extracted their natural resource wealth and thereby became developed and powerful.
The term Nazi can certainly be trivialized for purposes of propaganda. But the Nazis were humans, and thus no different from ourselves. The better we understand this, the more conscious we are of our own terrible capabilities, the more hope there will be to eradicate from the world the sorts of crimes they committed.
Thank you for your (editor’s notebook).
(Ellen Taylor is a Petrolia resident. She was present in Germany during the Nuremburg trials. Her father, the late Brigadier General Telford Taylor, was chief prosecutor during the American trials which followed the international trials referenced above.)
(Editor’s note: The editor’s notebook column was referring to the use of Nazi in American society. It was not a column on other wars of genocide that occurred in China, the Soviet Union and other countries since World War II.)
###
North Coast Journal - May 22, 2003: IN THE NEWS - Mar 28
The complaint against one defendant, Ellen Taylor, was thrown out when the court ... Taylor, a 60-year-old Petrolia resident, did not take part in ...
www.northcoastjournal.com/052203/news0522.html - 46k - Cached - Similar pages
North Coast Journal - April 3, 2003: IN THE NEWS
Pacific Lumber Co. had no grounds to sue Petrolia resident Ellen Taylor for monetary damages it incurred during logging protests two years ago, ...
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The Eureka Reporter - Article
... peace symbols, rainbow — event organizer Ellen Taylor explained that the rally ... and John Brown, a Petrolia resident and veteran of the Vietnam War, ...
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Mattole Valley Historical Society
Best Overall Entry: Ellen Taylor and Michael Evenson, "Rescue of the Misty." Best History Float: Mike Toste, "Trapper." Honorable Mention: Petrolia Store, ...
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300 Enviros call for ESA
Jenny Ross Truckee, CA. Lost Coast League Ellen Taylor Petrolia, CA. Magic David Schromm Palo Alto, CA. Mojave Group, Sierra Club Carol Wiley ...
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Super Happy Fun Blog!: March 2007
Ellen Taylor lives in Petrolia. Ellen Taylor also works in the medical field, should her license be pulled for saying meth is a great and wonderful drug? ...
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Fw: PACIFIC LUMBER LOGGING PLANS THROWN OUT BY COURT
said Ellen Taylor of Petrolia, a grandmother of 56, who was arrested, along with 20 other protesters, in August for blocking Pacific Lumber's logging in the ...
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Mattole Valley Historical Society
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◼ Ignorant Little Snots
(NOV. 18, 2010)
Editor:
At Mattole School in Petrolia this election season, the 5th through 8th graders spent a couple of weeks discussing the various propositions. According to my grandson, there was strong opposition to Proposition 19, and at the school ballot box it got only three votes (“Prop. 19, R.I.P.” Nov. 11).
Assuming these children reflect their parents it is hard not to feel cynical and sad. The War on Drugs is as destructive as our other wars, a murderously violent security policy intended to create the right environment for resource extraction and corporate exploitation. Domestically it is the modern version of Jim Crow.
These happily oblivious families might as well be voting for war because they work in the armaments business. They’ve evidently forgotten neighbors whose lives were mutilated by brutal arrests and desperate legal proceedings. They need go no farther than Eureka to encounter people who’ve emerged from long prison sentences in debt, blackballed from employment and living in fear of being thrown back in prison again for a trifle.
All arguments against Prop. 19 are casuistry, and its defeat has no silver lining.
Ellen Taylor - Meth Advocate
War on Drugs is war on our own people
Ellen Taylor
03/11/2007
Mike Goldsby, a highly-respected local expert in drug addiction, declared in last week's My Word opinion, “I have nothing good to say about methamphetamines.”
The estimated 1.4 million users in the U.S. would disagree. Productivity-oriented professionals with demanding careers praise the increased alertness afforded by meth. Timber fallers, mill workers, truck drivers, and others in dangerous occupations extol the stamina it provides. The military has always depended upon meth as a source of courage and quick reaction time. Poor people, trapped in multiple low-paying jobs or the exhausting paperwork demands of public assistance, emphasize its empowering and antidepressant effect.
These people agree that, like other drugs, meth can be fatal. But its high morbidity and mortality, they would add, rest in the fact that its use is illegal.
Like marijuana, also a medicine, meth is a multibillion-dollar criminal industry. There is naturally violence where such huge profits are to be made.
As revealed by Gary Webb in his San Jose Mercury News articles on crack cocaine, successful drug networks involve protection and exploitation by government agencies, including law enforcement. Police departments flourish on grants for drug interdiction. The domestic cost of the War on Drugs was $51 billion in 2006.
The penal system, increasingly privatized, prospers as well. The public pays an annual $27,000 for each of 2.5 million prisoners. As a society, we are invested in this industry: Some cities are almost exclusively supported by their prisons.
I recently attended a conference, “Methamphetamine, Hepatitis and HIV,” in Salt Lake City, where drug policy analysts described “set and setting” as determinants of how a drug or medicine will affect an individual.
The law enforcement vendetta against meth, and media use of such slogans as “meth kills,” linking it to deviance, disease and violence, provides a hostile setting, and amounts to a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Public opinion as reflected in Times-Standard op-eds echo the official contempt. One guest opinion praised the policies of MaoTse-tung for summarily executing drug offenders. Another called it “terrorism,” and suggested soliciting Homeland Security money.
The recent killings by the Eureka police were attributed to the victims' use of meth, which is rapidly becoming a license to kill. Even Mike Goldsby, in saluting law enforcement's “vital role in holding addicts accountable,” regretted that “there are not enough police or jails to arrest, convict and incarcerate every addict.”
A declaration of war is an open invitation to ignore the rights of individuals in the name of a more urgent destiny. The War on Drugs is no exception.
Harsher sentences than for murder, illegal searches and seizures, intrusive urine testing, property forfeitures, disenfranchisement, ineligibility for public support, housing, school loans or food stamps, loss of children: Fourth, fifth, eighth and fourteenth amendment protections are widely denied meth users.
Demonization of meth cripples democracy. A minority of our citizens even votes, let alone takes an active role in policy decisions which will affect their and their childrens' lives.
Involvement in illegal and socially-condemned activities has estranged large segments of the population from political life. Paranoia prevents users from exercising their first amendment rights to express their opinions. Thus, in a democracy already handicapped by apathy, a stigmatized class is prevented from defending their own interests.
This has powerful implications. One op-ed reported that 70 percent of children in some Humboldt County schools come from “meth homes.” Urine tests at local clinics confirm wide use.
Paul Gahlinger, M.D., commander of the Davis County Jail in Utah, observed that his inmates, 65 percent meth convicts and one-third female, attribute their incarceration not to meth but to the chaotic problems of poverty. They have no plan to stop using.
It is evident that meth is endemic, a street medicine used to treat endemic conditions of life in the American culture of speed, performance, achievement, self-absorption, alienation, waste and neglect.
The War on Drugs amounts to a war on our own people. It is contrary to the precepts of Christianity and all other religions, and destructive to the foundations of democracy.
We must treat the human conditions which cause suffering, instead of demonizing the medicine that relieves the symptoms, if we wish to restore family and human values to our communities.
Ellen Taylor lives in Petrolia.
This Op-Ed was originally posted at http://www.times-standard.com/fastsearchresults/ci_5418494
***
There was a LETTER TO THE EDITOR in response:
Meth victim's mom: Help stop this killer
Author: My Word by Suzi Fregeau
Date: March 18, 2007
Publication: Times-Standard (Eureka, CA)
I read, with amazement, the recent opinion of Ellen Taylor, “War on Drugs is a war on our own people.” I cannot for one minute understand why any sensible individual would support, in any way, the use of this drug. To imply that this drug is helpful for productivity-oriented professionals with demanding careers, that it is necessary to increase the alertness of truck drivers, timber fallers, mill workers and others in dangerous occupations is ludicrous at best.
Since... (truncated, available from Times Standard paid archives)
***
Discussion at watchpaul
Discussion on Anon.R.mous' Super Happy Fun Blog
***
It is a patriotic duty to reject 'abusive' rulers 5/13/2007
by Ellen Taylor, Petrolia,
“When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary ... .”
So begins our founding document and spiritual wellspring as a nation, the Declaration of Independence. It has inspired oppressed peoples around the world for more than two centuries. With dignity and brilliant clarity, it documents the precise moment of a people’s arrival at the limits of tolerance, and their resolve to repudiate a government that is destructive of the ends of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
As we memorized the preamble in school, our patriotism was nurtured by our forefathers’ principled repudiation of injurious authority. In the Declaration, and in our other founding document, the Constitution, they have bequeathed to us a solemn responsibility: to reject any ruler who is guilty of “usurpations and abuses” if, in the course of human events, it again becomes necessary.
It has.
We have in the White House a president who is as mad as King George III, to whom the Declaration of Independence is addressed. This is borne out in analysis of his statements and public appearances. Determination of how he got that way will someday no doubt be examined by psychiatrists or toxicologists. They will compare George W. Bush’s behavior with that of other mad leaders who created havoc in previous centuries. He must be removed from office, and his vicious political apparatus dismantled.
The high crimes and misdemeanors of the Bush administration are giddying in number, magnitude and audacity. They have been enumerated by retired generals, civil rights organizations and government officials. U.S. Rep. John Conyers, the chairperson of the House Judiciary Committee, introduced a bill with 38 co-sponsors last year to investigate the impeachable offenses of Bush and Dick Cheney. House Resolution 333, presented to the House two weeks ago by presidential candidate and U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, begins the process of impeaching the vice president.
Articles of impeachment listed by these groups and individuals include:
+ waging aggressive war and committing war crimes, crimes against the peace and crimes against humanity;
+ lying to the American people and to Congress, providing a fraudulent rationale for war;
+ violating international treaties and federal laws prohibiting torture;
+ retaliating against witnesses and individuals who oppose administration policy and leaking national security intelligence for political purposes;
+ disseminating fraudulent information with the objective of making war on Iran;
+ illegally threatening Iran with a nuclear blitzkrieg — a country which has not attacked anybody in more than 200 years;
+ endangering our national security by violating the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Article 6, which prohibits the further manufacture of nuclear weapons;
+ allowing the U.S. military to violate the Geneva accords by targeting of civilians and civic infrastructure, by destroying priceless archaeological heritage, failing to protect civilians, using weapons such as land mines and cluster bombs, depleted uranium, napalm and white phosphorus, which target civilians, and failing to investigate those officials responsible for these crimes;
+ conducting illegal electronic surveillance of U.S. citizens and others;
+ appending “signing statements” to legislation passed by Congress, which illegally assert the right to ignore the legislation;
+ displaying criminal negligence regarding the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe, which resulted in more than 1,500 preventable deaths;
+ violation of the 14th Amendment’s equal protection provision in the ongoing neglect of Hurricane Katrina victims;
+ suspending the writ of habeas corpus by ordering the indefinite detention of so-called “enemy combatants”; and
+ corrupting the rule of law in the Department of Justice for political purposes.
Support for impeachment is entering the mainstream. The Vermont Senate passed a resolution recommending it, and it has been proposed in the Illinois Legislature as well. The growing numbers of U.S. soldiers who are dying as a tribute to Bush’s empire is met with increasing horror. As funds for health care, education, national security and environmental protection shrivel, the public increasingly views the 2008 defense budget of $803 billion — larger by far than the rest of the world combined — with hostility.
But many in the country likewise reject the politically hamstrung Democrats, who took impeachment “off the table” and then voted for $125 billion in supplemental appropriations for the war. They regard the Democrats’ vetoed funding resolution as feeble, and for good reasons. It was nonbinding. The president could obtain a waiver for any of its provisions. It did not outlaw an attack on Iran. It did not call for the closure of bases in Iraq. It allowed for the continued presence of 90 percent of the estimated 125,000 foreign mercenaries.
Even after “withdrawal,” the U.S. would have been allowed to keep up to 80,000 troops in Iraq, serving in various capacities. It required the Iraqi government to pass an oil law designed to benefit the international oil conglomerates. It imposed fantastically unrealistic “benchmarks” on a country for whose descent into utter chaos the Bush administration is entirely responsible.
Impeachment of Bush or Cheney must not be viewed as a distraction from the urgent business of ending the war. On the contrary, it may be the only way to end it and dissipate Bush’s insane fiction of permanent war. It is a solemn obligation to law enforcement, and on it rests our reputation with our posterity and with the rest of the world.
Copyright (C) 2005, The Eureka Reporter. All rights reserved.Newspapers should stop trying to mislead in news section
###
9/10/2005
Dear Editor,
For an entire week now, I’ve been stupefied with amazement each morning when I open the papers, to read yet again about Salzman.
What terrible malady has overthrown the minds of our local editors? Why do they kneel so abjectly in the snows of Canossa, vying with each other over who can make the most self-abasing confession? “How gullible we were!” they wail. How foolishly trusting, betrayed by this Machiavellian manipulator and who knows how many other princes and princesses of darkness, at whose motives “we can only guess.”
Whatever those motives were, they had the peculiar consequence of unhinging your reason. Or else a different force is intimidating you into these humiliating postures. It’s clear that poor Mr. Wyatt was intimidated by somebody into bringing all this down on his friend Salzman’s head.
Get a grip, editors. Take a deep breath, Supervisor Geist. Your “I-am-not-a-puppet” speech resonated too well with Nixon’s “I am not a crook.” You don’t want people to start seeing a puppet up there every Tuesday.
And Salzman was not trying to look like an army by getting friends to sign his letters. “Army” is too destructive an image. He was slipping just a little more of his copious analysis of events – an analysis, I might add, welcomed by many readers – into the too-tiny space allowed to each ordinary individual in the newspapers. And now, on this ridiculously irrelevant pretext, that space has snapped shut, like an oyster.
Emperors and others who crawl on their knees to Canossa always want a penance to obtain absolution. So, here’s a penance, echoing to you from R. Trent Williams’ (Richard Salzman’s) last letter to be printed on your pages. Stop editorializing in your news section, especially when the intent is to mislead. You’ll feel a lot better, and you might get up the courage to open your shell again.
Ellen Taylor
Petrolia
***
8/9/04 Useful Information Gleaned
From Nazi-Era Atrocities by Ellen Taylor
(Editor’s note: Because of the length of this column, it was split into two parts. Part one was in last week’s Eureka Reporter.)
A frequently asked question in the years since World War II is how Germans could commit the atrocities they did, and here also we can find information useful to the present.
Studies have been made since the war which selected groups of ordinary German workingmen and investigated their reaction to committing atrocities. There was an overwhelming initial reaction of horror and revulsion.
After a few assignments, however, the men were able successfully to dehumanize their victims and approach their obligations as merely an unpleasant cleanup.
They came to believe they were serving a higher cause, much as our soldiers are told they are saving American lives when they "light up” vehicles filled with passengers, or commit atrocities against prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
Some who obey orders to commit atrocities suffer deep psychic trauma. Others, as was recently admitted by numerous soldiers to the L.A. Times, actually come to enjoy it. And, like the German soldiers, they would all, if confronted with the atrocities they committed, claim that they were just following orders.
Very few have the knowledge or resources to be influenced by Article 8 of the Charter of the Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, which states that “a person acting pursuant to orders from his government or a superior does not release him from responsibility and international law.”
This important piece of our heritage from the Nazis has been allowed to fade into obscurity.
German or American, the techniques employed to bring peoples to wage aggressive war are the same. The culture of irresponsible obedience must change if future holocausts are to be avoided.
The crime of aggressive war killed 60 million people in World War II. The largest fraction of these were Chinese civilians, whose obscure and often horrific extinction was overlooked in your editorial, there being no Holocaust Museums or Wiesenthal Centers to commemorate them.
Millions of soldiers from many nations died, and just because they were of an age and social class which is designated for sacrifice in war does not make their deaths any less horrible. Crimes against the peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity, they all bring about miserable lives and deaths.
These crimes are as prevalent and as virulent as they were 60 years ago.
Life in Samarra or Fallujah, with people murdered and maimed daily, and precious historic culture destroyed, must be similar to many Polish or Rumanian cities during World War II.
There are still enormous holocausts such as Rwanda, Congo, Sudan. Is it not a sort of genocide to allow 25 million impoverished inhabitants of Africa to die of AIDS?
The reason they are impoverished is because colonial and imperialist nations extracted their natural resource wealth and thereby became developed and powerful.
The term Nazi can certainly be trivialized for purposes of propaganda. But the Nazis were humans, and thus no different from ourselves. The better we understand this, the more conscious we are of our own terrible capabilities, the more hope there will be to eradicate from the world the sorts of crimes they committed.
Thank you for your (editor’s notebook).
(Ellen Taylor is a Petrolia resident. She was present in Germany during the Nuremburg trials. Her father, the late Brigadier General Telford Taylor, was chief prosecutor during the American trials which followed the international trials referenced above.)
(Editor’s note: The editor’s notebook column was referring to the use of Nazi in American society. It was not a column on other wars of genocide that occurred in China, the Soviet Union and other countries since World War II.)
###
North Coast Journal - May 22, 2003: IN THE NEWS - Mar 28
The complaint against one defendant, Ellen Taylor, was thrown out when the court ... Taylor, a 60-year-old Petrolia resident, did not take part in ...
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North Coast Journal - April 3, 2003: IN THE NEWS
Pacific Lumber Co. had no grounds to sue Petrolia resident Ellen Taylor for monetary damages it incurred during logging protests two years ago, ...
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[ More results from www.northcoastjournal.com ]
The Eureka Reporter - Article
... peace symbols, rainbow — event organizer Ellen Taylor explained that the rally ... and John Brown, a Petrolia resident and veteran of the Vietnam War, ...
www.eurekareporter.com/ ArticleDisplay.aspx?ArticleID=13839 - 36k - Cached - Similar pages
Mattole Valley Historical Society
Best Overall Entry: Ellen Taylor and Michael Evenson, "Rescue of the Misty." Best History Float: Mike Toste, "Trapper." Honorable Mention: Petrolia Store, ...
www.mattolehistory.org/ ProjectsAndActivities/Sesquicentennial.htm - 18k - Cached - Similar pages
300 Enviros call for ESA
Jenny Ross Truckee, CA. Lost Coast League Ellen Taylor Petrolia, CA. Magic David Schromm Palo Alto, CA. Mojave Group, Sierra Club Carol Wiley ...
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Fasting for the Forest - Behind Bars
A crowd of activists and supporters organized by Petrolia resident Ellen Taylor had gathered along with local Rabbi Lester Scharnberg to celebrate Passover ...
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Super Happy Fun Blog!: March 2007
Ellen Taylor lives in Petrolia. Ellen Taylor also works in the medical field, should her license be pulled for saying meth is a great and wonderful drug? ...
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Fw: PACIFIC LUMBER LOGGING PLANS THROWN OUT BY COURT
said Ellen Taylor of Petrolia, a grandmother of 56, who was arrested, along with 20 other protesters, in August for blocking Pacific Lumber's logging in the ...
www.metla.fi/archive/forest/1999/03/msg00103.html - 10k - Cached - Similar pages
DrugSense: Drug Law Reform - Weekly Newsletter
War On Drugs Is A War On Our Own People / Ellen Taylor; * Quote of the Week: Ralph Waldo Emerson ... Note:, Ellen Taylor lives in Petrolia. ...
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Mattole Valley Historical Society
Ellen Taylor. Margot Wells. Ken Young. Projects & Activities · Mattole History · Items Available For Purchase. Snail Mail: PO Box 144, Petrolia, ...
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Free the Cuban Five - New York
Ellen Taylor, Treasurer, Lost Coast League*, Petrolia, CA Robert Taylor, Member, Bus Riders Union/labor Community Strategy Center, Los Angeles, CA ...
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Stoen's past (re Barbageleta)
These two ran in the Northcoast Journal... Stoen responded, as you'll see. Very, very weird.
*********
Stoen's past:
I'm sure Tim Stoen would like to bury the past. ("Standing in the Shadows of Jonestown", Sept. 25) He lost his son to Jim Jones' madness. It's hard to imagine a worse punishment for being a fool, and I pity him.
That he would later seek political office, however tells me he has not honestly faced his past, for he was party to one of the most blatant election frauds in San Francisco history. Consider this sentence in your report:
"When George Moscone, whom the Temple had supported, was elected mayor of San Francisco, he repaid Jones with a seat on the city's Housing Authority."
That appointment was no small deal. It would be the equivalent, on the national stage, of nabbing the job of Ambassador to Paris. In other words, Jones did not merely endorse Moscone, he delivered the margin of victory. I know; I was then administrative aide to Supervisor John Barbageleta, the man Moscone beat in the run-off election.
How Stoen and Jones did this was simplicity itself. The run-off election meant the city needed a new batch of poll-watchers, and the People's temple supplied them, one or two for each precinct.
At the time, voters signed in sequentially. After the election, which Moscone narrowly won, we examined those sign-in sheets. On each, the last 10 or 12 signatures were in the same hand, with the same pen or pencil. In other words, after everyone voted, the poll-watchers cast ballots on behalf of the no-shows.
We protested, but the court ruled that even if there had been fraud, there was no way to prove for whom, these fraudulent votes had been cast. Cook County could not have done it more neatly.
As Stoen himself is quoted in your report, "I went along with Jones' end-justifies-the-means' philosophy."
Indeed.
Lee Wakefield, Arcata
North Coast Journal, Thursday, Oct. 2, 2003
*********
Interestingly, Stoen saw fit to respond this week:
Stoen responds:
Since he knew how to reach me, it would have been a gracious act for Lee Wakefield ("Stoen's past", Oct 2) to have confronted me personally before making the stunningly serious charge - a false charge, for which he has zero evidence - that I was "a party" to an election fraud whereby his boss, John Barbagelata narrowly lost to George Moscone for San Francisco mayor in 1975. Had he done so, he would have been surprised to learn that John Barbagelata himself came to disbelieve that charge so totally that he, a man characterized in San Francisco as Mr. Integrity as well as Mr. Conservative, made me his personal lawyer for the last five years of his life.
In October 1987 - nine years after Jonestown - I happened to read in the San Francisco Chronicle that John Barbagelata was, indeed, blaming me as the gray eminence behind Jim Jones for his loss to Moscone. Breaking my normal pattern of disregarding attacks, I wrote John a letter to the following effect: "I know you have strong feelings about my role in the People's temple. I consider you to be a just and upright man. If you would like to confront me about it, consider this an overture. Bring any witness you like."
John, in his gruff voice, called me up at my Mendocino office and said, "Tim Stoen, confession will be good for the soul." I said, "John, you won't get anything juicy from me, but I will tell you the truth." He said, "Gotta talk to you, gotta talk to you." He invited me for dinner at his home in St. Francis Wood.
I met John around 6 o'clock at his West Portal office. At the door of his home, I was met by his patrician wife, Angela, who had a delicious meal spread out for me, with a fire burning in the fireplace. Their many children were present as well. Around 9 p.m. I said, "John, I want you to look me in the face. I know of no People's Temple wrongdoing in your election, or in any election." John said, "I believe you." Angela said, "After all these years." When we parted around midnight, Angela said, "Aren't you glad you wrote that letter?"
A few months later I invited my former wife Grace and her husband Walter to dinner at the Inn at the Opera for Grace's birthday, together with John and Angela Barbagelata, who afterwards came over to my apartment. Next day, Angela called me to say John had come home and said, "Tim Stoen and i once were enemies, and now we're friends. And that Grace - why she's from the Middle Ages!" When I called Grace and told her, she said "That's so sweet."
One day in the spring of 1989 I was in my office in Sacramento when a call came in from John Barbagelata. He asked if I would become his personal lawyer. I told him it would be an honor. For the next five years, until his death in 1994, I represented John Barbagelata in numerous matters. I conducted a full-blown trial for him in the case of Barbagelata v. Donohoe (San Francisco Municipal Court, Case No 029477_ I represented him before city officials on a ballot measure. My last case for him involved a dispute with the Olympic Club.
During the course of my being his lawyer, John Barbagelata became my best friend in California. When I had to stay in San Francisco overnight, John and Angela insisted I stay in their home. When John got sick he asked me to visit him at the hospital, which I did. I was at his funeral.
In sum, John Barbagelata and I bonded, which could not have happened if John had even the slightest conscious or sub-conscious belief of my being implicated in his mayoral loss. The real reason for our mutual respect was probably a matter of temperament: Each saw the other as willing to "go to the wall" for his beliefs. I look back on this friendship as one of the high points of my life.
Tim Stoen,
Assistant District Attorney, Humboldt County
North Coast Journal, Thursday, Oct. 9, 2003
Related:
See the EDITOR'S COLUMN (intro)
Standing in the Shadows of Jonestown
*********
Stoen's past:
I'm sure Tim Stoen would like to bury the past. ("Standing in the Shadows of Jonestown", Sept. 25) He lost his son to Jim Jones' madness. It's hard to imagine a worse punishment for being a fool, and I pity him.
That he would later seek political office, however tells me he has not honestly faced his past, for he was party to one of the most blatant election frauds in San Francisco history. Consider this sentence in your report:
"When George Moscone, whom the Temple had supported, was elected mayor of San Francisco, he repaid Jones with a seat on the city's Housing Authority."
That appointment was no small deal. It would be the equivalent, on the national stage, of nabbing the job of Ambassador to Paris. In other words, Jones did not merely endorse Moscone, he delivered the margin of victory. I know; I was then administrative aide to Supervisor John Barbageleta, the man Moscone beat in the run-off election.
How Stoen and Jones did this was simplicity itself. The run-off election meant the city needed a new batch of poll-watchers, and the People's temple supplied them, one or two for each precinct.
At the time, voters signed in sequentially. After the election, which Moscone narrowly won, we examined those sign-in sheets. On each, the last 10 or 12 signatures were in the same hand, with the same pen or pencil. In other words, after everyone voted, the poll-watchers cast ballots on behalf of the no-shows.
We protested, but the court ruled that even if there had been fraud, there was no way to prove for whom, these fraudulent votes had been cast. Cook County could not have done it more neatly.
As Stoen himself is quoted in your report, "I went along with Jones' end-justifies-the-means' philosophy."
Indeed.
Lee Wakefield, Arcata
North Coast Journal, Thursday, Oct. 2, 2003
*********
Interestingly, Stoen saw fit to respond this week:
Stoen responds:
Since he knew how to reach me, it would have been a gracious act for Lee Wakefield ("Stoen's past", Oct 2) to have confronted me personally before making the stunningly serious charge - a false charge, for which he has zero evidence - that I was "a party" to an election fraud whereby his boss, John Barbagelata narrowly lost to George Moscone for San Francisco mayor in 1975. Had he done so, he would have been surprised to learn that John Barbagelata himself came to disbelieve that charge so totally that he, a man characterized in San Francisco as Mr. Integrity as well as Mr. Conservative, made me his personal lawyer for the last five years of his life.
In October 1987 - nine years after Jonestown - I happened to read in the San Francisco Chronicle that John Barbagelata was, indeed, blaming me as the gray eminence behind Jim Jones for his loss to Moscone. Breaking my normal pattern of disregarding attacks, I wrote John a letter to the following effect: "I know you have strong feelings about my role in the People's temple. I consider you to be a just and upright man. If you would like to confront me about it, consider this an overture. Bring any witness you like."
John, in his gruff voice, called me up at my Mendocino office and said, "Tim Stoen, confession will be good for the soul." I said, "John, you won't get anything juicy from me, but I will tell you the truth." He said, "Gotta talk to you, gotta talk to you." He invited me for dinner at his home in St. Francis Wood.
I met John around 6 o'clock at his West Portal office. At the door of his home, I was met by his patrician wife, Angela, who had a delicious meal spread out for me, with a fire burning in the fireplace. Their many children were present as well. Around 9 p.m. I said, "John, I want you to look me in the face. I know of no People's Temple wrongdoing in your election, or in any election." John said, "I believe you." Angela said, "After all these years." When we parted around midnight, Angela said, "Aren't you glad you wrote that letter?"
A few months later I invited my former wife Grace and her husband Walter to dinner at the Inn at the Opera for Grace's birthday, together with John and Angela Barbagelata, who afterwards came over to my apartment. Next day, Angela called me to say John had come home and said, "Tim Stoen and i once were enemies, and now we're friends. And that Grace - why she's from the Middle Ages!" When I called Grace and told her, she said "That's so sweet."
One day in the spring of 1989 I was in my office in Sacramento when a call came in from John Barbagelata. He asked if I would become his personal lawyer. I told him it would be an honor. For the next five years, until his death in 1994, I represented John Barbagelata in numerous matters. I conducted a full-blown trial for him in the case of Barbagelata v. Donohoe (San Francisco Municipal Court, Case No 029477_ I represented him before city officials on a ballot measure. My last case for him involved a dispute with the Olympic Club.
During the course of my being his lawyer, John Barbagelata became my best friend in California. When I had to stay in San Francisco overnight, John and Angela insisted I stay in their home. When John got sick he asked me to visit him at the hospital, which I did. I was at his funeral.
In sum, John Barbagelata and I bonded, which could not have happened if John had even the slightest conscious or sub-conscious belief of my being implicated in his mayoral loss. The real reason for our mutual respect was probably a matter of temperament: Each saw the other as willing to "go to the wall" for his beliefs. I look back on this friendship as one of the high points of my life.
Tim Stoen,
Assistant District Attorney, Humboldt County
North Coast Journal, Thursday, Oct. 9, 2003
Related:
See the EDITOR'S COLUMN (intro)
Standing in the Shadows of Jonestown
3.27.2007
FRANKLIN JONES in Trinidad (not People's Temple)
THE GUY IN TRINIDAD IS NOT RELATED TO JIM JONES - BUT HIS NAME IS FRANKLIN JONES...Dan Hamburg's new life
Ex-congressman to talk about politics, spirituality
by HANK SIMS
Former Congressman Dan Hamburg [photo at right] will be coming to Arcata Tuesday to give a presentation about religion and politics, and about his relationship with his guru, Ruchira Avitar Adi Da Samraj. [photo below left]
Hamburg, who since leaving Congress in 1994 has been an environmental activist and a Green Party candidate for governor, said in a telephone interview from his Ukiah home that he was scared and also a little excited about the upcoming event. He looked forward to introducing others to a spiritual practice that attempts to "heal the world from its crazy death wish."
"I've been a devotee for two years," he said. "I'm not an expert, I'm not there as a missionary. I was asked by [Adi Da adherents] in Humboldt to come up and talk about my own experience."
Adi Da, whose "Adidam" organization owns land in Trinidad, was given the name "Franklin Jones" upon his birth in Long Island, N.Y., in 1939. During the `60s, he gained some notoriety as "Da Free John," an author of spiritual books. Today, the Adidam Web site bills him as the "promised God-man" who has the power to "perfectly fulfill the deepest longings of the human heart." Adi Da is currently residing on a small island he owns near Fiji. (see "Adidam comes to the North Coast," Journal, Jan. 14, 1999)
Hamburg said that he and his wife learned of Adi Da through an Arcata friend who had supported his congressional campaign. At first he struggled with Adi Da's writings, he said, and he continues to question his own devotion to the guru's rigorous spiritual program. But over time, his background as a student of religion -- he holds a master's degree in the subject from the California Institute of Integral Studies, a San Francisco alternative school -- helped show him the way.
"As a politician I've always been interested in the nexus between politics and spirituality," he said "Like a lot of people of my generation, [the Rev.] Martin Luther King was a huge inspiration."
As a practicing devotee, Hamburg said that he does daily meditation sessions and sends about 10 percent of his income to Adi Da. Despite the apparent similarities, Hamburg said that he didn't think it was fair to compare Adidam to a cult. For one thing, people are free to come and go from the organization without fear of anything worse than griping from former co-worshippers.
"When I quit the Democratic party, a lot of people dumped shit on my head," he said. "If you break the code, there's a price to pay. But in Adidam, the only price is maybe some people think you're a quitter, or that you don't get it. That's it."
Hamburg's speech will take place at 7 p.m. on May 18 in the Hotel Arcata. For more information, call 677-3584.
ADIDAM COMES TOTHE NORTHCOAST
by SCOTT R. GOURLEY
and ROSEMARY EDMISTON
I do not simply recommend or turn men and women to Truth.
I Am Truth. I Draw men and women to My Self.
I Stand always Present in the Place and Form of Real God.
I accept the qualities of all who turn to Me,
dissolving those qualities in Real God, so that Only God becomes
the Condition, Destiny, Intelligence, and Work of My devotees.
I am waiting for you. I have been waiting for you eternally.
Where are you?
-- AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ
THE GURU DIDN'T COME HERE BECAUSE HE wanted to change it," says devotee Jim Calladine. "He was drawn here because of what was here. At least that's my personal interpretation."
Seated in a sun-drenched living room overlooking Trinidad Harbor, Calladine is the antithesis of many preconceived notions surrounding the followers of the religious leader Adi Da. From the Timex Indiglo watch on his wrist to the Maxima and Saab parked in the driveway of the rented house, the 60-something Calladine projects the image of someone who fits well in the city of Trinidad.
That's just the point.
Beginning in the fall, the followers of Avatar Adi Da Samraj entered the community with the stated intention of being good neighbors. And they are expanding their presence as these pages reach readers' hands.
During a New Year's Eve day interview, Calladine said the religious group was closing escrow on a Stagecoach Road home and had just had its offer accepted to purchase the Shadow Lodge. Prior to September, few area residents had heard of the religion known as Adidam or its leader, Adi Da.
News of the religious group's arrival has led some residents to question if the organization is a cult, while others are concerned about increased traffic in their quiet neighborhood. Calladine emphatically argues against the notion Adidam is anything like a cult, and says traffic concerns are being addressed.
But in 1985 Adi Da was the target of a lawsuit accusing him of leading a cult marked by sexual abuse, humiliation and greed. The accusations were false, church leaders contend, and the lawsuit was later dropped.
In a series of articles in April 1985, the San Francisco Chronicle reported on Adi Da's alleged exploits during the 1970s in the San Francisco Bay area and in a "hermitage" on the remote Fijian island of Naitauba, quoting former members, one of whom sued leaders of the religious group on charges of sexual abuse. At the same time, a half dozen angry defectors accused the religious group of false imprisonment, brainwashing, sexual abuse, assault and involuntary servitude. High-ranking members of Adidam, then known as Johannine Daist Communion, responded with a lawsuit of their own, accusing the disgruntled former followers of extortion.
At the time, Adi Da was known as Da Free John and his commune was based in the Marin County city of San Rafael. Thirteen years ago, the Chronicle wrote, Free John's empire built primarily on the earnings of followers was worth an estimated $5 million.
The Chronicle covered the story almost daily over several weeks in 1985, at which time followers of Free John's admitted to "sexual experimentation," but denied abusing anyone. They also said that their spiritual leader, who once had nine "wives," was now living a life of solitude and contemplation.
Both of the lawsuits were eventually dropped, said Michael Wood, Adidam's attorney and a member since 1973. He recalled 1985 as a difficult time for the church and said the accusations all stemmed from a bitter divorce between a member and former member.
"The bottom line is it's all about things that were 25, 30 years ago," he said. Today the group does not attempt to hide its history, and has just released a book chronicling the movement's activities since its inception in 1972.
That book, Promised God Man by church member Carolyn Lee, Ph.D., addresses some of Adidam's more controversial periods, which included sexual exploration. Without reading the book, Wood fears, outsiders will not understand his religion. He nevertheless offered explanation.
"An unexpected life that is tending to self-suppression we don't believe is a base upon which one can truly grow in spiritual terms," he said during a telephone interview from Adidam's sanctuary in Lake County. "We think you need to inspect and understand who you are, what moves you, what you truly value. And on that basis there's a possibility of your growth and real happiness."
Following that doctrine, Wood said, the church in the '70s spent many years experimenting with everything from food to work, worship, exercise, money and sexuality. "Obviously sexuality would be a part of that. Why wouldn't it be?" he said.
And as for Adi Da's wives, he said, the spiritual leader "had a circle of ladies around him that served him intimately."
Claiming some 1,800 members worldwide today, the devotees and students (as they prefer to be called) of Adi Da follow a religion described as being similar to Hinduism and Buddhism which includes among its ranks the former members of the rock bands Pearl Jam and Live, one follower said. The church is no longer involved in sexual experimentation, Wood said.
Adi Da's journey to Trinidad began in Queens County, N.Y., on Nov. 3, 1939, when Franklin Albert Jones entered the world at 11:21 a.m. Devotees believe that as an infant Jones experienced his first spiritual awakening.
Today, followers of Adi Da are extremely protective of their "teacher," as they refer to him, refusing a reporter's request to interview or meet the man. And devotee Calladine went further, asking that a reporter not even drive by the Stagecoach Road house. Followers are also restricted access to the religious leader, and are required to be a part of the group for a period of weeks before meeting Adi Da.
Jones' story can be gleaned, however, from devotees and former followers, Jones' autobiography, the newspaper articles and several Internet websites adidam.org or religioncults.com, a cult-watch website.
Jones' early religious experiences took place in a Lutheran church on Long Island, N.Y., where he later served as an acolyte during adolescence before entering Columbia College in September 1957. According to Adi Da's autobiography, The Knee of Listening, it was six months later when he returned to his old pastor to express doubts about some of his earlier Lutheran studies. His spiritual introspection continued during the next few years through his graduation in June 1961.
Following a summer job as a hotel waiter, during which time he experimented with peyote, Jones entered graduate school at Stanford University where he focused his undergraduate philosophy background toward a master's degree in English.
During this time, his autobiography states, Jones took "large doses" of cough medicine and was a poorly paid subject for hallucinogenic drug trials which included mescaline, LSD and psilocybin that were being conducted at the local Veterans Administration hospital.
Responding to what he called a vision, Jones prepared to leave California in June 1964 in search of a spiritual teacher in New York City. Shortly before his departure, as he stood on the ocean-front cliff outside a small cabin where he had been living above Tunitas Beach, he experienced what he calls "a Divine storm, a revelation of Truth, a transformative Blessing, a Spiritual Initiation! It was the most magnificent thing I had ever seen. It was a tangible Divine Vision. ..."
Settling in Greenwich Village, Jones continued his studies of the world's philosophical, mystical and spiritual literature. While studying under the Yogic teachings of Swami Rudrananda (also known as Albert Rudolph), Jones entered a Protestant seminary for a year of biblical Greek study that was required for entry into Philadelphia's Lutheran Theological Seminary.
April 1968 included a brief trip to Swami Muktananda's Ashram in India, an introductory journey that served as the precursor to a month-long visit the following year. The next spiritual milestone seems to have occurred in May 1970 when Jones, his companion of many years and a third friend gave away their material belongings and returned to India for what they believed to be an indefinite period, according to the autobiography. The period lasted just three weeks before Jones reported visions of the Virgin Mary that directed him to take a pilgrimage to Christian holy places in the Middle East and Europe.
That pilgrimage lasted through early summer 1970 and ended with resettlement in Los Angeles in August. It was there, in September 1970, that Jones reported a "Great Event" of personal re-awakening; an event which eventually led to his 1972 self-offering as "The True Heart Master" to any who would respond.
In late 1973 Jones directed his growing number of devotees that he should now be addressed as Bubba Free John, a name based on a childhood nickname for "friend" combined with the essential meaning of Franklin Jones. Free John declared himself "the Divine Lord in human Form" in January 1974 and shortly thereafter the group obtained an aging hot springs resort near the Lake County town of Cobb. It was at this former resort, which Free John renamed "Persimmon," that he began instructing devotees in the practice of "worshipping the Divine through images."
Over the past 20 years, Adi Da's name changes included not only Da Free John but Dau Loloma, Da Love-Ananda, Da Avadhoota, Da Kalki, Da Avabhasa, Adi Da, Adi Da Samraj and Adi Da Love-Ananda Samraj. In addition, the same two decades were marked by property expansion beyond the Adidam's 1,000-acre sanctuary and meditation retreat near Cobb to include additional sanctuary locations in Fiji and on the Hawaiian island of Kaui, according to Adi Da's autobiography. In fact, Adidam's members are located around the U.S., Canada, United Kingdom, Holland, Germany, Australia and New Zealand.
Calladine responded to the cult accusations recently over breakfast at the Seascape Restaurant in Trinidad.
"If you went back and checked in literature to see who has written about cults, Adi Da has probably written more about cults than anybody," he said. "What's meant by a cult? (Adi Da) basically says, `What's the test of a cult and are we a cult?' When we actually don't function in the way he calls on us to do as part of his teaching, then, he says, `You are functioning like a cult does,' as a criticism of us.
"As far as a cult is concerned, his definition is that a cult is easy to get into and hard to get out of. We don't meet that test because it's hard to get into our church and easy to get out of it."
And those that wish to join must first have a clear understanding of the philosophy. "Otherwise, why would you want to be involved?" asked Calladine. "That kind of behavior is not what you would find in a typical cult."
It was the redwoods that ultimately drew Adi Da and his followers to Humboldt County. Calladine cites writings by the man he calls his "teacher" which represent the trees as non-human examples of a "great process" that includes all living things.
It was 1997 when Adi Da first began talking about visiting this area. As the former operator of 75 Canadian travel agency offices, Calladine was assigned the job of making the trip arrangements and conducted research visits with his wife as far north as Brookings, Ore. An excursion into Oregon and possibly Canada was planned for fall 1998.
"That trip started in the middle of September and the first stop was here in Trinidad," Calladine said. "We had a rented house called Abalone Cove which was down on Patricks Point Drive. We were there for a couple of nights and (Adi Da) loved it. And, in fact, the first thing he said was, `I want to stay longer here.'"
They stayed an additional night in Trinidad before continuing to Portland, where Adidam's leader announced he wanted to return to Trinidad.
"And so I headed back down here while everybody else was still up there to find a place where we could stay," Calladine recalled. The ideal home would be available for extended stays or possible purchase.
"It's not that we have hundreds of places around. We don't," Calladine said. "But that's always an eventuality. He might want to do that. So we always have to look; is it a place that possibly could be purchased if that's what turns out?"
Adi Da himself was not part of the process. In fact, his followers take care of nearly every detail of their spiritual leader's life.
The group obtained a lease with option to buy for an unoccupied 2,700-square-foot home on Stagecoach Drive. Since Adi Da had already left Portland, Calladine videotaped the home and drove the tape up to Brookings for a midnight showing to his teacher. Returning at 2 a.m. with Adi Da's approval, Calladine arranged for a furious top-to-bottom cleaning of the home with the help of teams who rushed up from the Lake County sanctuary.
Adi Da arrived in Trinidad later that day. A month later, in October, it was decided the group would purchase the property. When news of Adidam's arrival spread, homeowners from the North Stagecoach Road Association worried aloud that the group might convert the house into a church, changing the character of the rural neighborhood.
"That was not our intention then, or now, or ever will be because this place will actually be used by my teacher only for certain times of the year; probably for two or three months of the year," Calladine said. "It's used as a residence. However, in addition to being used as a residence, people do come over, small groups of people at a time probably 10, 12, perhaps 15 maximum when he is around, not on any kind of predictable schedule."
Along with Adi Da, two other people will stay in the house. And several followers have rented homes around the city of Trinidad, including a "serving staff" that cooks and delivers meals to the house as well as the rental that Calladine and his wife share with Bill Dunkelberger, a former Marine Corps lieutenant colonel with Vietnam combat experience, and his wife, who maintains a daily journal of the group's activities in Trinidad.
"Wherever Adi Da goes, a lot of other things also take place," Calladine explained. "For example, he's constantly writing, so we have editorial staff who are there to deal with it. He is constantly in communication with people all over the world via an e-mail system that we have. He's constantly asking about people all over the place and so there's communication going back and forth. He functions on about 50 channels at the same time so he generates a prodigious amount of activity that has to go on in association with him."
Calladine's own spiritual journey began in Canada's Anglican Church and led him as an adult to a self-declared "God-man" named Meher Baba before he discovered the writings of Adi Da more than a dozen years ago.
Adi Da's writings include approximately 50 published books with 18 additional volumes awaiting publication.
In explaining Adidam's religious doctrine, Calladine acknowledged "some similarities to Hindu as well as considerable similarities to Buddhism as well." The religion is based on a sequence of beliefs in a building-block process that begins with the premise: There is nothing but the Divine.
Based on the conviction that humans are no exception to that rule, the beliefs then focus on the point that not all humans have the divine experience. Rather, Calladine identifies everyone's experiences as "being separate beings," a state that Adi Da attributes to an individual activity that he calls "self-contraction."
"The process, therefore, of God realization, he says is fundamentally not a matter of adding anything. In other words, if there's nothing but the Divine, what is there to add?"
Using the analogy of a closed fist (self-contraction) transforming into an open hand (realization), Calladine says that the process can't be accomplished by the individual alone. It requires a teacher.
Following an additional religious principle that "you become what you meditate on," Adidam followers meditate on Adi Da.
Adidam adherents generally follow a vegetarian diet focused on raw rather than cooked food. The exception is between early-December and mid-January, a time of celebration that includes parties where activities like drinking and smoking are permitted.
In Calladine's sparsely furnished rental was a small Christmas tree with three potted poinsettias, an incongruity that he attributed to the general celebration period as well as the Christian background of many church members. Later that day he was planning to drive down to a New Year's celebration at the Lake County sanctuary where the group was to be entertained by a live band of church members which includes the former drummer from Pearl Jam as well as the former lead singer from Live.
The new year should also see the completion of Adidam's purchase of Trinidad's Shadow Lodge, which will likely house seven to eight couples year-round, with additional members staying there on retreat when their leader is in town.
As for the Stagecoach Road neighbors, the religious group recently met with some two dozen neighborhood residents.
"They had various concerns including: Are we a cult? And, what are we doing there?" Calladine said. "We aired everything and we said to the neighbors, `Look, your complaints about traffic are completely right. There's been way too much traffic and that will change.' And it has. Because we were just disorganized. There was quite a bit of traffic and it was annoying to the neighbors. And quite properly. ...
"So we discussed everything with them and subsequently we heard from many of them, almost all of them, saying that they understand our situation and they've kind of relaxed about it now that they know where we're at and where we're coming from."
Calladine also reassures concerned residents that Adi Da's followers are not evangelical and do not go door-to-door.
"We want to be good neighbors," he said, adding "We are active and much more is going to be seen of us over the next couple of years."
3.25.2007
McK Press - Gallegos: Dismissal of Palco fraud case will be appealed
here's McK Press story (it'll also be in the Independent)
Pg 2:
Gallegos: Dismissal of Palco fraud case will be appealed
Sept 20, 2005
by Daniel Mintz
Press Staff Writer
District Attorney Paul Gallegos has announced that his office will appeal the ruling that put an end - temporarily, perhaps - to movement toward a trial on the lawsuit that symbolizes his political identity.
Gallegos' fraud lawsuit against pacific Lumber Company fell like a bomb when it was filed three years ago as the DA began his first term in office. An aggressively fought attempt to Recall Gallegos followed, mainly funded by the company. But the lawsuit that defined Gallegos as an ally of environmentalists was dismissed last spring, when a Lake County judge assigned to the case ruled that state and federal laws shield the company from liability related to information exchanged during government agency reviews.
The case focuses on a landslide study the company submitted to the state's Department of Forestry during reviews that led to the 1998 Headwaters Deal. The information on it was wrong, and Gallegos alleges that the error was intentional, devised to mislead regulators into allowing an additional $40 million worth of additional annual logging.
Judge Richard Freeborn has ruled that a constitutional liability shield known as the Noerr-Pennington Doctrine protects participants in government processes from being sued or prosecuted for the content of their exchanges. But Gallegos will appeal the ruling based on his belief that Freeborn mistakenly interpreted the law as being relevant to permit applications.
DA to argue appeal himself
With the appeal, the focus of debate on the lawsuit shifts from whether Pacific Lumber committed fraud to whether the Noerr-Pennington Doctrine and similar laws provide liability protection. "I do not believe the Judge's ruling in the PALCO (Pacific Lumber) case is an accurate statement of the law." said Gallegos in an email interview. "IF it is, I think the law should be changed. I also think that if it is the law, the people of this community and the State of California are entitled to an appellate and or Supreme Court decision telling them that so they also can decide whether the law needs to be changed."
Gallegos clarified that he is "not opposed, philosophically, with the idea behind the Noerr-Pennington Doctrine" but rejects Freeborn's determination that PALCO's submission of information to environmental agencies can be defined as "lobbying" for changes in government policy.
Tim Stoen, once Gallegos' assistant and the case's lead prosecutor, has left Humboldt for work at the Mendocino County District Attorney's office. Stoen is considered the architect of the lawsuit complaint - and by some, he's viewed as the root of political problems for Gallegos.
Stoen will probably not be returning to work on the case. Asked who would argue the appeal and the case itself if it succeeds, Gallegos said that "right now, the case is assigned to me" and added that "there is a good likelihood that it will stay that way."
The DA also said that challenging Freeborn's ruling is chancy, as it risks what Gallegos considers to be a troubling precedent etched in appellate law. :I have and I am carefully considering the possible impact of an adverse appellate decision on my brethren, the other 57 district attorney's in the State of California, because the court's decision affects all of us in our efforts to make this a safer and more just place to live," Gallegos said.
but he has also weighed his responsibilities as a DA. "My greatest obligation is to the people of Humboldt County," he explained. "Therefore, I believe it is better to risk an adverse decision and deal with the consequences of that, than to conceded that the law allows a corporation to deceive the public for monetary gain."
"A successful appeal will put that allegation to a courtroom test."
"Politically charged"
Essential to the lawsuit is its claim that Palco tried to bureaucratically bury a corrected study by delivering it to local offices of the California Department of Forestry (CDF) and the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board instead of the CDF's main office in Sacramento. Freeborn, however, ruled that the point is moot because state law guarantees "the utmost freedoms of access" to judicial and quasi-judicial reviews :without the fear of being harassed by derivative (legal) actions."
The Noerr-Pennington Doctrine also provides an immunity shield, Freeborn ruled. Application of the terms "lobbying" will be one thrust of the appeal's argumentation, as the law protects parties who lobby government agencies on policy issues. Gallegos disagrees that Palco's Headwaters participation amounts to lobbying, but Freeborn noted in his ruling that the word was used to describe the company's activities in the lawsuit itself.
But he went beyond those questions, saying that the incorrect study the lawsuit hinges on comprises " a single act" in a process that involved a huge volume of studies and environmental analyses. Freeborn didn't believe that the study allowed the financial advantage the DA alleges, and the judge indicated that if Palco truly intended to commit fraud, the company would have fudged data in several instances during the Headwaters process and not just one.
Though in suspension until the appeal is adjudicated, the lawsuit has been alternately cited as evidence of Palco's corporate opportunism and Gallegos' pandering to special interest groups. The DA advises the case's observers to leave judgement to judges.
"I regret the media attention that filing the appeal will bring because the case should be tried in the courts and not in the press," said Gallegos. "However, I understand the role of the media and that, because Palco is the defendant, it is a politically charged case."
Pg 2:
Gallegos: Dismissal of Palco fraud case will be appealed
Sept 20, 2005
by Daniel Mintz
Press Staff Writer
District Attorney Paul Gallegos has announced that his office will appeal the ruling that put an end - temporarily, perhaps - to movement toward a trial on the lawsuit that symbolizes his political identity.
Gallegos' fraud lawsuit against pacific Lumber Company fell like a bomb when it was filed three years ago as the DA began his first term in office. An aggressively fought attempt to Recall Gallegos followed, mainly funded by the company. But the lawsuit that defined Gallegos as an ally of environmentalists was dismissed last spring, when a Lake County judge assigned to the case ruled that state and federal laws shield the company from liability related to information exchanged during government agency reviews.
The case focuses on a landslide study the company submitted to the state's Department of Forestry during reviews that led to the 1998 Headwaters Deal. The information on it was wrong, and Gallegos alleges that the error was intentional, devised to mislead regulators into allowing an additional $40 million worth of additional annual logging.
Judge Richard Freeborn has ruled that a constitutional liability shield known as the Noerr-Pennington Doctrine protects participants in government processes from being sued or prosecuted for the content of their exchanges. But Gallegos will appeal the ruling based on his belief that Freeborn mistakenly interpreted the law as being relevant to permit applications.
DA to argue appeal himself
With the appeal, the focus of debate on the lawsuit shifts from whether Pacific Lumber committed fraud to whether the Noerr-Pennington Doctrine and similar laws provide liability protection. "I do not believe the Judge's ruling in the PALCO (Pacific Lumber) case is an accurate statement of the law." said Gallegos in an email interview. "IF it is, I think the law should be changed. I also think that if it is the law, the people of this community and the State of California are entitled to an appellate and or Supreme Court decision telling them that so they also can decide whether the law needs to be changed."
Gallegos clarified that he is "not opposed, philosophically, with the idea behind the Noerr-Pennington Doctrine" but rejects Freeborn's determination that PALCO's submission of information to environmental agencies can be defined as "lobbying" for changes in government policy.
Tim Stoen, once Gallegos' assistant and the case's lead prosecutor, has left Humboldt for work at the Mendocino County District Attorney's office. Stoen is considered the architect of the lawsuit complaint - and by some, he's viewed as the root of political problems for Gallegos.
Stoen will probably not be returning to work on the case. Asked who would argue the appeal and the case itself if it succeeds, Gallegos said that "right now, the case is assigned to me" and added that "there is a good likelihood that it will stay that way."
The DA also said that challenging Freeborn's ruling is chancy, as it risks what Gallegos considers to be a troubling precedent etched in appellate law. :I have and I am carefully considering the possible impact of an adverse appellate decision on my brethren, the other 57 district attorney's in the State of California, because the court's decision affects all of us in our efforts to make this a safer and more just place to live," Gallegos said.
but he has also weighed his responsibilities as a DA. "My greatest obligation is to the people of Humboldt County," he explained. "Therefore, I believe it is better to risk an adverse decision and deal with the consequences of that, than to conceded that the law allows a corporation to deceive the public for monetary gain."
"A successful appeal will put that allegation to a courtroom test."
"Politically charged"
Essential to the lawsuit is its claim that Palco tried to bureaucratically bury a corrected study by delivering it to local offices of the California Department of Forestry (CDF) and the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board instead of the CDF's main office in Sacramento. Freeborn, however, ruled that the point is moot because state law guarantees "the utmost freedoms of access" to judicial and quasi-judicial reviews :without the fear of being harassed by derivative (legal) actions."
The Noerr-Pennington Doctrine also provides an immunity shield, Freeborn ruled. Application of the terms "lobbying" will be one thrust of the appeal's argumentation, as the law protects parties who lobby government agencies on policy issues. Gallegos disagrees that Palco's Headwaters participation amounts to lobbying, but Freeborn noted in his ruling that the word was used to describe the company's activities in the lawsuit itself.
But he went beyond those questions, saying that the incorrect study the lawsuit hinges on comprises " a single act" in a process that involved a huge volume of studies and environmental analyses. Freeborn didn't believe that the study allowed the financial advantage the DA alleges, and the judge indicated that if Palco truly intended to commit fraud, the company would have fudged data in several instances during the Headwaters process and not just one.
Though in suspension until the appeal is adjudicated, the lawsuit has been alternately cited as evidence of Palco's corporate opportunism and Gallegos' pandering to special interest groups. The DA advises the case's observers to leave judgement to judges.
"I regret the media attention that filing the appeal will bring because the case should be tried in the courts and not in the press," said Gallegos. "However, I understand the role of the media and that, because Palco is the defendant, it is a politically charged case."