July 1995 MEC Newsletter #19

Here are the articles from the #19 Summer 1995 Issue of the Mendocino Environmental Center newsletter. The focus of this issue is Corporations and how they are affecting are lives. Use the word "corporations" in the topic list under each title to focus in on these special articles.

A Wise Use Decoder's Guide by Ralph Maughan

Keywords: Wise Use Movement

A humorous look at the language used by the wise use movement and what it really means.

Allen Cooperrider Wins Prestigious Award by Betty & Gary Ball

Keywords: preservation

Recently, Comptche resident Dr. Allen Cooperrider, a wildlife biologist and noted expert on biodiversity, and Dr. Reed Noss have been chosen to receive the prestigious Natural Resources Council of America's (NRCA) conservation community award for outstanding achievement in the field of publication for their book Saving Nature's Legacy: Protecting and Restoring Biodiversity.

An Interview With Jean Harmon by Doug Strong

Keywords: activism

"A great place to study government at work," is how Jean Harmon describes the setting for her activities on behalf of environmental causes during the past ten years.

Attacking Corporate Personhood: by Richard Grossman

Keywords: corporations, environmental law

With few exceptions, people come out of law school without having questioned pro-corporate doctrines on property. They accept today's giant corporations as inevitable. They don't seem to wonder how it came to pass that corporations became legal persons with free speech and other constitutional rights, while workers on company turf have no Bill of Rights protections.

Birth of the Corporation by Paul Hawken

Keywords: corporations

An historical look at the origin of corporations in America, excerpted from Paul Hawken's The Ecology of Commerce.

Common Citizens and Corporate Charters by Gary Ball

Keywords: corporations, activism

We could ask: "Are we going further into a world based on corporate control of everything, or are we going to so something about it?" If we choose to do something about it, then just what is there to do? One answer is found in a booklet written by Richard Grossman and Frank Adams titled Taking Care of Business: Citizenship and the Charter of Incorporation.

Conference on Coast Redwood Forest Ecology and Management

Keywords: forestry

Conference on Coast Redwood Forest Ecology and Management Announcement and First Call for Papers June 18-20, 1996 Humboldt State University Arcata, California

Corporate Control by Mackinze James

Keywords: corporations

United States policy has been heavily influenced by corporate interests since the Industrial Revolution, when people with wealth started organizing themselves into structures called corporations and expanding their monetary horizons. But corporations are only part of the system through which the world's resources, including labor and wages, are siphoned up to the super rich.

Corporate Welfare Costs Taxpayers

Keywords: corporations

While considerable political heat is directed at poor welfare recipients receiving taxpayer money, more than three times that amount is paid in welfare to wealthy corporations, according to a new Essential Information study released by Ralph Nader.

Covering The Earth With "Green PR" by Joel Bleifuss

Keywords: corporations

The public relations campaigns of corporations keeps the public fooled into thinking corporations are getting "green".

Expedition to the Channel Islands by Pelagikos

Keywords: environmental study

This July, August and September the Marine Research organization Pelagikos will be conducting studies of the blue whales that have begun to congregate around the Channel Islands off the Southern California Coast.

Forestry Activist Work In Mendo County by Linda Perkins

Keywords: forestry, timber industry

Update on the activities from a Mead Foundation grant to fund meetings and workshops and monitoring of Timber Harvest Plans.

Greens Outgunned by Mark Dowie

Keywords: government

A look at what the 104th Congress is doing to environmental laws and regulations.....Lobbying Washington for a better environment has become an almost futile endeavor. If the 103rd Congress (1992-94) did not prove the point to the environmental movement's leadership, the 104th surely will.

Greenwood: Exemption and THPs by Mary Pjerrou

Keywords: timber industry

In 1993, L-P filed an exemption paper to do 1,380 acres of salvage logging, using mostly helicopter methods, close to town, east of Greenwood Commons. We've seen great abuse of salvage logging exemptions in California.

Groups Sue to Protect Coho Salmon Coastwide by Tryg Sletteland & Mike Sherwood

Keywords: preservation, fishing industry

A coalition of 24 fishing and conservation groups, including the Mendocino Environmental Center, filed suit on June 1, 1995 against the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) for its failure to act in response to a petition by many of the groups to protect coho salmon under the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA).

Headwaters Forest Still Stands! by Judi Bari

Keywords: forestry, timber industry

Mass protest averts logging threat (for now).

Hemp Update by Vicki Oldham

Keywords: hemp industry

As a multi-use wonder crop, the hemp industry is flourishing in Europe. Meanwhile it is failing in the U.S. because of our fears around marijuana and drugs.

La Alianza Para Derechos Humanos

Keywords: justice

About the Alliance for Human Rights, an organization to defend everybody's human rights, especially the Latino people.

Legal Update - Headwaters Still Threatened! by Cecelia Lanman and Trach Katelman

Keywords: forestry, timber industry

Challenges to Pacific Lumber's plans to harvest "dead, dying and diseased" trees on more than 185,000 acres are headed to the State Court of Appeals in San Francisco after the Thursday, May 18th, 1995 ruling in Humboldt County Superior Court.

Listen To Your Mother

Keywords: activism

Request for support of the Mendocino Environmental Center, one of the centers of environmental activism in the county.

Mendocino Land Trust

Keywords: preservation

Goals and Purposes of the Mendocino Land Trust.

Mountain Lions by Susan Raphael

Keywords: preservation

Concerning the four mountain lions shot this month on Navarro Ridge: The larger (global) issue is human encroachment on wildlife habitat.

Ocean Sanctuary Action Alert by Sierra Club Coastal Conservation Committee

Keywords: preservation, activism

What you can do to protect our coast from oil drilling.

Press Blackout by Judi Bari

Keywords: forestry, timber industry

Press blackout and hostile journalism by the Santa Rosa Press Democrat about Judy Bari and the Pacific Lumber issue.

Puppets & Puppeteers: by Michael Colby

Keywords: corporations, government

Democratic and Republican elected officials are increasingly no more than mere puppets in what amounts to a legislative folly. Congresspeople, senators, the president, all are beholden to an expensive electoral process that is bankrolled by money from large corporations.

Quote of the Month

Ron Brown's V.I.P. Junkets by Ken Silverstein

Keywords: corporations, government

Through the Commerce Department's efforts to promote exports, American businesses landed foreign deals worth $47 billion last year. But a little cross-referencing of the companies thus helped and of campaign contribution records and internal Democratic Party fundraising memorandums shows that for both corporations and the Administration, to give is truly to receive.

Round Valley Reservation Triple Slayings by Nicholas Wilson

Keywords: justice

A series of three fatal shootings in one day left two Native American men and a deputy sheriff dead, resulting in an intensive police manhunt for the alleged cop killer, while residents of the Round Valley Indian Reservation raised charges of a police cover-up and civil rights violations.

Thanks for the Bombs, Boys! by Jeff DeBonis

Keywords: government

Are the extreme, anti-government rhetoric of the new Congress might be partly responsible for encouraging actions like the bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building. The rhetoric of the right-wing, anti-regulation extremists in Congress is being matched in actions and words by the anti-regulation, anti-government wackos in the "wise-use" and county supremacy movements.

The Economic Aspects of Ecoforestry by Hans Burkhardt

Keywords: forestry, timber industry

A Prescription That Makes Environmental Protection And Monetary Profits Compatible

The Lorax & L-P by Mary Norbert Korte

Keywords: forestry

A poem by Mary Norbert Korte adapted from the Dr. Suess original

The MEC is on the Internet by Dale Glaser

Keywords: online resources

Overview of the Mendocino Ecology Web, an information and contact resource for environmental information in Mendocino County.

The Potter Valley Project by Roger Dixon

Keywords: water

An overview of the Eel River/P.G.&E. diversion issue...There has been much written about the recent controversy on the Eel River; some of it accurate and informative, and some not. In this series of articles Roger Dixon presents some background facts on the issue. This is the first of a multi-part series.

The War Is Over! by Gary Ball

Keywords: corporations

An ironic scenario of how corporations quietly and non-violently took over the world.

Void the Corporate Contract on America - SIN! by Betty Ball

Keywords: activism

The Corporate Agenda in the form of the "Contract with (on) America" is rushing headlong through Congress, attacking people's rights, and the environment. Scientists are warning of serious climate changes and new global diseases. Unrest, fear, discontent and dis-ease are pervasive. So, what to do? What is the antidote to all of this? Activate and organize! SIN (Stop Injustice Now). There are many organizations to join.

Welfare Pests by Patty Clary

Keywords: forestry, corporations

Billions of dollars of corporate welfare is dished out by the U.S. Commerce Department and U.S. government banks that operate within the Commerce Department. One of these, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), has insured a logging venture in Russia that threatens to cause destruction of Northern California forests equal in scope to that caused by U.S. logging in Russian forests.

World Scientists' Warning To Humanity by Union of Concerned Scientists

Keywords: environmental health

The Union of Concerned Scientists issued the Scientists' Warning To Humanity at 10:00 AM on Wednesday, November 18, 1992. The Warning is just as true today as it was then, and it is even more urgent now.