Gun Control is Evil Misspelled

– FrontPage Magazine – http://frontpagemag.com –

Posted By Daniel Greenfield On December 16, 2012 @ 12:33 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage

If you’re the biblically minded sort, then the trouble began when a jealous Cain clubbed Abel to death, but if you’re evolutionarily minded, then it’s a “chicken and egg” question. Violence had no beginning, except perhaps in the Big Bang; it was always here, coded into the DNA.

The issue isn’t really guns. Guns are how we misspell evil. Guns are how we avoid talking about the ugly realities of human nature while building sandcastles on the shores of utopia.

The obsession with guns, rather than machetes, stone clubs, crossbows or that impressive weapon of mass death, the longbow (just ask anyone on the French side of the Battle of Agincourt) is really the obsession with human agency. It’s not about the fear of what one motivated maniac can do in a crowded place, but about the precariousness of social control that the killing sprees imply.

Mostly it’s about people who are sheltered from the realities of human nature trying to build a shelter big enough for everyone. A Gun Free Zone where everyone is a target and tries to live under the illusion that they aren’t. A society where everyone is drawing unicorns on colored notepaper while waiting under their desks for the bomb to fall.

After every shooting there are more zero tolerance policies in schools that crack down on everything from eight-year-olds making POW POW gestures with their fingers to honor students who bring pocket knives to school. And then another shooting happens and then another one and they wouldn’t happen if we just had more zero tolerance policies for everyone and everything.

Zero tolerance for the Second Amendment makes sense. If you ban all guns, except for those in the hands of the 708,000 police officers, the 1.5 million members of the armed forces, the countless numbers of security guards, including those who protect banks and armored cars, the bodyguards of celebrities who call for gun control, and any of the other people who need a gun to do their job, then you’re sure to stop all the shootings.

So long as none of those millions of people, or their tens of millions of kids, spouses, parents, grandchildren, girlfriends, boyfriends, roommates and anyone else who has access to them and their living spaces, carries out one of those shootings.

But this isn’t really about stopping shootings; it’s about controlling when they happen. It’s about making sure that everyone who has a gun is in some kind of chain of command. It’s about the belief that the problem isn’t evil, but individual agency, that if we make sure that everyone who has guns is following orders, then control will be asserted and the problem will stop. Or if it doesn’t stop, then at least there will be someone higher up in the chain of command to blame. Either way authority is sanctified, control or the illusion of it, maintained.

We’ll never know the full number of people who were killed by Fast and Furious. We’ll never know how many were killed by Obama’s regime change operation in Libya, with repercussions in Mali and Syria. But everyone involved in that was following orders. There was no individual agency, just agencies. No lone gunman who just decided to go up to a school and shoot kids. There were orders to run guns to Mexico and the cartel gunmen who killed people with those guns had orders to shoot. There was nothing random or unpredictable about it. Or as the Joker put it, “Nobody panics when things go according to plan. Even if the plan is horrifying.”
Gun control is the assertion that the problem is not the guns; it’s the lack of a controlling authority for all those guns. It’s the individual. A few million people with little sleep, taut nerves and PTSD are not a problem so long as there is someone to give them orders. A hundred million people with guns and no orders is a major problem. Historically though it’s the millions of people with guns who follow orders who have been more of a problem than millions of people with guns who do not.
Moral agency is individual. You can’t outsource it to a government and you wouldn’t want to. The bundle of impulses, the codes of character, the concepts of right and wrong, take place at the level of the individual. Organizations do not sanctify this process. They do not lift it above its fallacies, nor do they even do a very good job of keeping sociopaths and murderers from rising high enough to give orders. Organizations are the biggest guns of all, and some men and women who make Lanza look like a man of modestly murderous ambitions have had their fingers on their triggers and still do.

Gun control will not really control guns, but it will give the illusion of controlling people, and even when it fails those in authority will be able to say that they did everything that they could short of giving people the ability to defend themselves.

We live under the rule of organizers, community and otherwise, whose great faith is that the power to control men and their environment will allow them to shape their perfect state into being, and the violent acts of lone madmen are a reminder that such control is fleeting, that utopia has its tigers, and that attempting to control a problem often makes it worse by removing the natural human crowdsourced responses that would otherwise come into play.

The clamor for gun control is the cry of sheltered utopians believing that evil is a substance as finite as guns, and that getting rid of one will also get rid of the other. But evil isn’t finite and guns are as finite as drugs or moonshine whiskey, which is to say that they are as finite as the human interest in having them is. And unlike whiskey or heroin, the only way to stop a man with a gun is with a gun.

People do kill people and the only way to stop people from killing people is by killing them first. To a utopian this is a moral paradox that invalidates everything, but to everyone else, it’s just life in a world where evil is a reality, not just a word.

An armed society spends more time stopping evil than contemplating it. It is the disarmed society that is always contemplating it as a thing beyond its control. Helpless people must find something to think about while waiting for their lords to do something about the killing. Instead of doing something about it themselves, they blame the agency of the killer in being free to kill, rather than their own lack of agency for being unable to stop him.

Agenda 21 Organization Gets New “Republican” CEO

Land chief takes job at non-profit

Ariz. commissioner will join Sonoran Institute as its  CEO

by Craig Harris – Nov. 21, 2012 10:18 PM The Republic | azcentral.com
Arizona Land Commissioner Maria Baier, who has worked for two Republican  governors and served on the Phoenix City Council, will leave state government to  become chief executive of the Sonoran Institute.

“I’m really excited about it,” Baier said of her new job. “They do great  work. They really try very hard to bring diverse interests together on land  issues that affect the western United States.”

Baier’s last day with the state agency, which is responsible for managing  millions of acres of Arizona trust land, is Nov. 29. She becomes the Sonoran  Institute’s CEO on Dec. 3.

“Maria was our top choice, and we are thrilled she has accepted our offer,”  said Bill Mitchell, chairman of the institute’s board. “We are very excited  about the enthusiasm, vitality and vision that she brings to our organization  for the future.”

The Sonoran Institute is a Tucson-based non-profit organization involved in  public-policy decisions affecting land issues in western North America. For the  fiscal year that ended June 30, 2011, the institute reported having 53  employees, nearly $2.1 million in net assets and $6 million in revenue.

Baier will replace Luther Propst, who founded the organization in 1991 and  has led the Sonoran Institute since its inception.

Baier, 51, quipped that Sonoran’s CEO job opens only every two decades and  that it was something she couldn’t turn down.

John Shepard, senior adviser for the institute, said Baier brings expertise  in land management and public policy from her roles in state government and on  the Phoenix council, where she served before becoming land commissioner.

Shepard said the group expects Baier to expand the organization in  intermountain states.

Baier said she will divide her time in her new job between the Sonoran  Institute’s Phoenix and Tucson offices and will travel to other offices in  Montana, Colorado and Mexico.

Shepard declined to disclose Baier’s salary.

Propst was paid $120,640 a year, according to the group’s most recent  financial records.

Baier, who lives in Phoenix, was appointed land commissioner in 2009 by Gov.  Jan Brewer.

During Baier’s tenure at the Arizona State Land Department, the agency earned  $560 million in revenue through leasing and sales of 25,000 acres of trust  land.

Proceeds from the sales and leasing benefit schools.

Baier, who also worked for then-Gov. Fife Symington, said she was proud that  the Land Department had started solar leases and wind farms while she ran the  agency.

“Even in a bad economy, we generated a lot of money for the beneficiaries of  the trust,” she said.

The governor called Baier a “wonderful asset” to her administration.

Brewer must now appoint a new commissioner.

Matthew Benson, a spokesman for the governor, said that if the governor does  not appoint a replacement for Baier by Nov. 29, Deputy Commissioner Vanessa  Hickman will become the acting commissioner.

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/2012/11/20/20121120land-chief-takes-job-non-profit.html

New BLM efforts to guard Arizona desert-Rangers brought in to keep smugglers from trashing the land

by Daniel Gonzalez– May.  8, 2012 11:36  PM The Republic | azcentral.com

Since October, the Bureau of Land Management has expanded its operations at  two national monuments in southern Arizona, trying to crack down on smugglers  and illegal immigrants who trample and trash the pristine desert on their way  north from Mexico.

  BLM efforts to guard against smugglers

The federal agency has brought in more than a dozen law-enforcement rangers  from other states to beef up patrols at the Sonoran Desert National Monument,  south of Phoenix, where towering saguaro cactuses, wide-open valleys and  flat-topped mountains create one of the most iconic vistas in the Sonoran  Desert. The operations also have focused on the Ironwood Forest National  Monument north of Tucson.

Because of their remote locations and ample hiding places, the monuments have  become superhighways for violent smugglers sneaking drugs and illegal immigrants  from the Mexican border into Arizona.

The smugglers have cast off acres of trash and created miles of illegal roads  by plowing through the desert with disregard for the fragile vegetation, often  using stolen vehicles that are driven until they break down and are abandoned,  authorities say.

During seven two-week operations, the agency’s rangers have seized more than  27,000 pounds of marijuana and arrested more than 1,200 illegal immigrants,  according to the BLM. That is in addition to the thousands of pounds of drugs  and thousands of illegal immigrants arrested by law-enforcement authorities.

The agency also has removed 60 abandoned vehicles, 110 bicycles and more than  24 tons of trash, enough to fill 1,239 garbage bags. And the agency has covered  up more than 15 miles of illegal roads.

But some of the agency’s work to protect the pristine desert areas from  smuggling activity has caused concern among conservation groups.

Last year, the agency began erecting long vehicle barriers made of welded  scrap-steel railroad tracks to block smugglers from driving vehicles through  wilderness areas inside the Sonoran Desert National Monument. The barriers have  been highly effective, BLM officials say. Not a single smuggler has driven into  wilderness areas where the barriers have been installed, they say.

Conservation groups say the barriers, although effective, also mar the  landscape. However, they view the barriers as the lesser of two evils.

Monuments under pressure

In 2000, President Bill Clinton created the Sonoran Desert and Ironwood  Forest national monuments to protect them from urban sprawl extending south from  Phoenix and north from Tucson.

The 487,000-acre Sonoran Desert National Monument is located between Gila  Bend and Casa Grande, off Interstate 8. The area is the most biologically  diverse desert in North America and is known for its abundant forests of  saguaros interspersed with paloverde trees, creosote bushes, sage and ironwood  trees.

The area also contains many archaeological and historic sites, including  remnants of villages that once belonged to the ancestors of the Tohono O’Odham,  Quechan, Maricopa and other Native American tribes.

The smaller Ironwood Forest National Monument encompasses 129,000 acres of  desert west of Interstate 10 and north of Tucson. The area is known for its  concentration of ironwood trees, some more than 800 years old, and its  collection of more than 200 ancient Hohokam sites.

The Sonoran Desert National Monument includes the Vekol Valley, where one man  was killed and another wounded in April 2011 during a shooting involving drug  smugglers.

The smugglers have carved foot trails that spider through the desert and have  left behind acres of plastic water bottles, coats, backpacks and other items  cast off after trekking for days from the U.S.-Mexican border to rendezvous  points 75 miles to the north along I-8, the main highway smugglers use to  transport drugs and illegal immigrants to stash houses in the Phoenix area or to  California.

“There is quite a bit of damage done by smugglers,” said Thom Hulen,  executive director of the Friends of the Sonoran Desert National Monument, a  group that advocates for the monument’s protection. “In addition to all the  damage and all the trash, (the smuggling activity) scares people away. They get  spooked.”

Signs of smuggling

During a tour of the Sonoran Desert National Monument one recent afternoon,  Jon Young, the BLM’s chief ranger in Arizona, pulled his pickup truck off I-8  and stopped next to Mile Marker 157.

He told his passengers to wait in the truck while he got out to make sure  there weren’t any drug smugglers hiding in the brush. Young poked around in the  brush for a few moments and then gave a thumbs up.

The ground was littered with fresh signs of smuggling activity. Young picked  up a boot made of carpeting used by smugglers to conceal their footprints.  Strewn nearby were several burlap sacks, remnants of homemade backpacks used for  hauling marijuana through the desert.

There were also several mud-caked jackets and lots of empty half-gallon  plastic water bottles, colored black to make them less conspicuous in the  sunlight.

Young pointed to the ground beneath the bushes, which had been matted down  from the weight of smugglers. A well-worn path leading south toward the border  also was clearly visible.

Young said smugglers typically hike four or five days through the desert with  backpacks loaded with about 45 pounds of marijuana. They usually travel in  groups of 10 to 15 but sometimes break into smaller groups.

They also are typically accompanied by a scout who, instead of drugs, carries  a backpack full of food, water, radios and cellphones, Young said. Depending on  how far the group is traveling, the smugglers may have several support people  hiking with heavy packs full of food and extra water, he said.

Once they reach I-8, they hide until other members of the smuggling  organization arrive to pick up their loads of drugs. The marijuana is then  loaded into pickup trucks and driven to stash houses in nearby towns or the  Phoenix area, Young said.

Smuggling has become so prevalent, the BLM has posted signs on roads leading  into the monuments that warn the few remaining visitors to travel with caution.  The agency doesn’t track visitors, but rangers and conservation groups have seen  a decline in the number of hikers and campers who use the monuments, and many  now carry guns for protection.

“Smuggling and illegal immigration may be encountered in this area,” the  signs say.

Ranger teams

During operations at the monuments, the BLM transfers about 12 to 16 rangers  from other states to Arizona. They work with the 10 rangers assigned to the  BLM’s Phoenix district, which manages the Sonoran Desert monument, and 12  rangers assigned to the BLM’s Gila district, which oversees the Ironwood  monument.

To combat smuggling inside the two monuments, the BLM rangers work with other  law-enforcement officers who are part of the Alliance to Combat Transnational  Threats, a group of law-enforcement agencies that includes the Border Patrol,  Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Pinal County and Maricopa County  sheriff’s offices.

The most recent operation ended last week, resulting in the collection of 219  bags of trash, the seizure of 6,000 pounds of marijuana and the discovery of the  body of one migrant.

On a recent Saturday, Joe Nardinger, 38, a BLM ranger from the Upper Missouri  Breaks National Monument in Montana, found 46 bundles of marijuana weighing  1,000 pounds while patrolling a wash on the Sonoran Desert National  Monument.

Nardinger, who was sent to Arizona for two weeks, had been following some  fresh tire tracks when he found the marijuana. It was hidden in the bank of the  wash, covered by branches the smugglers had cut from nearby paloverde and  mesquite trees.

“I smelled it before I saw it. I got a whiff, a big dose of it,” Nardinger  said.

Installing barriers

In addition to beefed up patrols, the BLM has been cleaning up trash and  getting rid of illegal roads and foot trails created by smugglers.

Despite the efforts, drug smuggling continues to increase in the area,  although illegal-immigrant traffic is down, Young said.

Their cleanup and restoration work has been applauded by conservation groups.  But conservationists are less enthusiastic about the vehicle barriers the BLM  has been installing inside the Sonoran Desert National Monument.

Last fall, the BLM erected 1.3 miles of vehicle barriers at the southern end  of the Sonoran monument abutting the border of the Tohono O’odham Reservation.  They were intended to prevent smugglers from driving north from the reservation  through the heart of the monument’s designated wilderness area.

Last week, the agency finished erecting about a quarter-mile of vehicle  barriers northwest of the Table Top Mountain Range.

Those barriers are designed to prevent smugglers from driving south from I-8  to rendezvous points inside the monument.

The BLM plans to install more barriers in other parts of the Sonoran  monument, Young said.

Known as Normandy barriers, after the coastal barriers used in Nazi-occupied  France during World War II, the 2-foot-high barriers have proved effective in  preventing smugglers from driving through wilderness areas and creating illegal  roads,Young said.

The Border Patrol has installed miles of barriers along the Arizona border  with Mexico.

But this is the first time Normandy barriers have been used away from the  border, said Matt Skroch, executive director of the Arizona Wilderness  Coalition, a conservation group.

The barriers mar the landscape, and conservationists are concerned that those  being used inside the Sonoran monument will open the door to more in other  pristine desert areas throughout the state, Skroch said.

“We certainly don’t want to see a scenario where we keep installing more and  more vehicle barriers,” he said.

But the group isn’t opposed to the barriers outright, Skroch said, because so  far, they have been effective in stopping smugglers from creating roads and  destroying more of the desert landscape.

“This is the lesser of two evils,” Skroch said.

“But it’s not something we are particularly happy about.”

Read more:  http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2012/05/04/20120504new-blm-efforts-guard-arizona-desert.html#ixzz1ugw0JhJe

Agenda 21 NGO’s of the West

(Note: These groups thrive on the demise of human resource providing, and use ‘endangered species’ as the basis for countless lawsuits that are designed to implement The Wildlands Project and excise humans — except those ‘designated’ to keep tabs on the ‘endangered species’ — from most of this country, and the world.)

Peter Galvin 520-907-1533 Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) http://www.sw-center.org/swcbd/index.html

Bill Marlett 541-330-2638 Oregon Natural Desert Association (Oregon) http://www.onda.org/

Jon Marvel 208-788-2290 Western Watersheds Project (Idaho) http://www.westernwatersheds.org/,

John Horning 505 988 9126 EXT 153 Forest Guardians (New Mexico) http://fguardians.org/

Mark Salvo 503-757-4221 American Lands Alliance (Oregon) http://www.americanlands.org/

Katie Fite 208-429-1679 Committee for the High Desert (Idaho) http://cihd.org/

Charles Watson 775-883 -169 Nevada Outdoor Recreation Association (Nevada)

Erik Molvar 307-742-7978 Biodiversity Conservation Alliance (Wyoming) http://www.biodiversityassociates.org/

http://www.propertyrightsresearch.org/articles2/citizen_groups_sue_forest_servic.htm

Citizen groups sue Forest Service over grazing fee

February 26, 2003

(Note: These groups thrive on the demise of human resource providing, and use ‘endangered species’ as the basis for countless lawsuits that are designed to implement The Wildlands Project and excise humans — except those ‘designated’ to keep tabs on the ‘endangered species’ — from most of this country, and the world.)

Contacts:

Peter Galvin 520-907-1533 Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) http://www.sw-center.org/swcbd/index.html

Bill Marlett 541-330-2638 Oregon Natural Desert Association (Oregon) http://www.onda.org/

Jon Marvel 208-788-2290 Western Watersheds Project (Idaho) http://www.westernwatersheds.org/,

John Horning 505 988 9126 EXT 153 Forest Guardians (New Mexico) http://fguardians.org/

Mark Salvo 503-757-4221 American Lands Alliance (Oregon) http://www.americanlands.org/

Katie Fite 208-429-1679 Committee for the High Desert (Idaho) http://cihd.org/

Charles Watson 775-883 -169 Nevada Outdoor Recreation Association (Nevada)

Erik Molvar 307-742-7978 Biodiversity Conservation Alliance (Wyoming) http://www.biodiversityassociates.org/

Eight citizen groups are suing the U.S. Forest Service for failing to reform the fee charged for grazing livestock on National Forests in the Western US.

The 2003 grazing fee

http://www.blm.gov/nhp/news/releases/pages/2003/pr030206_grazing.htm

of $1.35 per month for a cow and her calf is one-tenth of market rates and is the minimum allowed by regulation. The extremely low grazing fee fails to cover the basic administrative costs of the federal grazing program.

In October 2002 the Center for Biological Diversity released a report

http://www.sw-center.org/swcbd/Programs/grazing/Assessing_the_full_cost.pdf

showing that the federal grazing program costs taxpayers $124 million at a minimum, and likely as much as $1 billion annually in subsidies and other costs after subtracting fee receipts.

Over ten years ago, the US Departments of Agriculture and Interior and the General Accounting Office established that the formula used to calculate the fee is mathematically flawed, as it subtracts increases in the costs of production twice.

As a result the fee has barely risen above the $1.35 minimum, while market rates on equivalent private ranchlands have increased to almost 10 times greater.

The Forest Service proposed to reform the fee formula in 1994, but never announced a final decision on the reform, and kept on using the flawed formula.

“The Forest Service charges about as much to run a cow on public lands as it costs to feed a pet hamster. The U.S. taxpayer is being fleeced by this bargain basement sale of public resources,” stated Peter Galvin, Conservation Biologist for the Center for Biological Diversity.

Galvin added “Livestock grazing on public lands is one of the major causes of species endangerment in the U.S.”

Joining the Center in this action are American Lands Alliance, Biodiversity Conservation Alliance, Committee for the High Desert, Forest Guardians, Oregon Natural Desert Association, the Nevada Outdoor Recreation Association and Western Watersheds Project.

Bill Marlett, Oregon Natural Desert Association said that: “Low grazing fees coupled with big federal deficits means that monitoring and mitigation of cow-damaged rangelands will go neglected. It’s not just the American taxpayer who gets the shaft, but the streams, soils and wildlife on all of our Western public lands.”

Katie Fite, Conservation Director of the Committee for the High Desert, added: “The livestock industry claims that public lands ranchers have to invest more time and resources on federal lands than on private rangeland. This may be true in some cases, but USDA research in the mid 1990s showed that costs for private land ranchers average about $40 a cow higher than for public lands ranchers — exactly the opposite of what industry claims.”

Charles Watson, of the Nevada Outdoor Recreation Association added that: “The low fee has encouraged overgrazing, massive erosion and invasion by noxious vegetation, leading to the huge fires that have destroyed millions of dollars of private property in the West in recent years. The Forest Service has known about the flaw in the fee formula for years. It’s high time they fixed it.”

The lawsuit, which requires the Forest Service to make a final decision on the reform of the grazing fee formula, was filed in Federal District Court in Washington, D.C., today, Wednesday, February 26, and will be argued by Eric Glitzenstein of Meyer and Glitzenstein.

Center for Biological Diversity: Protecting endangered species and wild places through science, policy, education, and environmental law.

More Information:

Center’s Grazing Program

http://www.sw-center.org/swcbd/Programs/grazing/index.html

Suit

http://www.sw-center.org/swcbd/Programs/grazing/FS_fees_complaint.pdf

Forest Service grazing fee FAQs

http://www.sw-center.org/swcbd/Programs/grazing/Fee_suit_FAQs.html

GAO 1991 study on grazing fee

http://www.sw-center.org/swcbd/Programs/grazing/GAO_1991_on_fees.pdf

Rangeland Reform Draft Environmental Impact Statement 1994 (excerpts on the grazing fee change)

http://www.sw-center.org/swcbd/Programs/grazing/Range_Reform_DEIS_extr.pdf

Cody, B 1996 Grazing fees: an overview. Congressional research Service

http://www.ncseonline.org/NLE/CRSreports/Agriculture/ag-5.cfm

http://www.propertyrightsresearch.org/articles2/citizen_groups_sue_forest_servic.htm

Eco-Fanatics Kieran Suckling and Carolyn Campbell

Who runs Tucson? Kieran Suckling. Carolyn Campbell. She works with developers to find common ground, while he fights to save every inch of desert. (Note: I’ve underlined the language deception herein.) January 19, 2001 Joyesha Chesnick jchesnick@azstarnet.com ‘contributed to this report’ Tucson Citizen http://www.tucsoncitizen.com To submit a Letter to the Editor: letters@tucsoncitizen.com   Kieran Suckling (left) and Carolyn Campbell are strong advocates of the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan, a sweeping blueprint for growth management. You could consider them a sort of good cop-bad cop among environmentalists. They’re each working toward the same goal, but their methods are markedly different. Carolyn Campbell is the good cop. Easy-going. Accommodating. She’s the one willing to sit down and negotiate a compromise solution. That makes Kieran Suckling ksuckling@biologicaldiversity.org the bad cop. Angry. Combative. He’s the one willing to slap a lawsuit on any foe who gets in his way. Campbell is the executive director of the Coalition for Sonoran Desert Protection, a consortium of about 40 environmental groups supporting a sweeping blueprint to manage growth throughout vast tracts of Pima County. Suckling is the driving force behind the Center for Biological Diversity, an in-your-face environmental organization that has earned legions of friends and enemies since it set up shop here in the mid-1990s. Between them, Campbell and Suckling define environmentalism in the Old Pueblo. Campbell is a former staffer for Morris K. Udall, the southern Arizona congressman who has a permanent place in the hearts of most Western environmentalists. A 21-year resident of Arizona, she has waged numerous battles on behalf of the Sonoran Desert. This latest one might be the most important. “This is our one big chance,” Campbell says of the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan, which she is working to implement. “This is the largest project anyone has ever undertaken in the country.” The plan essentially will determine where development may occur in the county. The Pima County Board of Supervisors endorsed the concept nearly three years [ago] and it is also supported by U.S. Rep. Jim Kolbe and outgoing Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt. Work on the plan is under way, and final adoption by the supervisors is scheduled for 2002. “That’s a really aggressive schedule,” Campbell says. “But the county has been putting so much effort into it, I think we can pull it off.” As the executive director of a coalition of conservation groups, Campbell balances competing interests and demands of an array of organizations. They range from the mainstream Audubon Society to the aggressive Center for Biological Diversity. “We’ve calmed some of the radical elements, and we’ve aroused some of the more conservative elements,” Campbell says. In Campbell’s view, environmentalists and developers have failed to communicate with each other. The running dispute served no one and may have worked against the environmentalist cause. “We haven’t really tried to work together. We just tried to win,” she says. “There’s been no planning in Arizona because everyone was tugging at their elected officials.” Don’t assume, though, that this greenie is going soft on developers. “Arizona,” she says, “has really been run by the development community.” But through the conservation plan, Campbell says, developers and environmentalists can find common ground. “How we grow, where we grow, I don’t think we should leave that up to chance,” she says. Suckling says the desert conservation plan is an example of what can be done to stem the horrors of uncontrolled sprawl. “There was a crisis begging for a solution, and that solution is the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan,” he says. On a whole host of other issues, though, Suckling’s views are decidedly more edgy. He’s less interested in finding common ground than in preserving ground. “We’re going to fight as hard as we can,” Suckling says. “There’s a lot of aggressiveness there, but there has to be. If you go and battle developers and you’re not in there to win, you’re not going to win.” The center catapulted itself into the headlines a few years ago when it flew to the defense of the cactus ferruginous pygmy owl. Known at the time as the Southwest Center for Biological Diversity, the organization had previously focused attention on grazing, mining and logging issues. The pygmy owl forced it to change gears. In the center’s view, the habitat of the endangered little owl was — and still is — far more important than a new high school the Amphitheater School District wanted to build on the Northwest Side. So it sued to stop construction of the school. “It put us in the public eye in a really big way,” Suckling calls. “We had no choice but to jump in. It was like walking by a burning house. We had no choice but to run in and try to save the kid.” A federal court ultimately allowed the school to be built, though with certain protections. Suckling remains undaunted. “There’s a lot of groups that would not have taken on a school,” he says. “It’s really important that some group wants to be at the vanguard and say things like they are and take aggressive action to protect endangered species. That means you’re going to get criticism as well as praise. If you’re going to change the status quo, that is what’s going to happen. Everybody wants the praise, but a lot of groups are not willing to take the criticism. “Our group is one that has been very willing to accept the criticism,” he continues. “If developers, miners and loggers aren’t mad at you, then you’re not changing the way they do business.” Throughout the mid-1990s, the center filed more than 80 lawsuits on behalf of the environment. Outside magazine not long ago proclaimed it one of the nation’s most effective environmental organizations. Even a member of the Southern Arizona Home Builders Association called the center a “surprisingly clever and effective” group of “zealots.” As the center’s most prominent zealot, Suckling says he and his colleagues are doing what they believe must to be done to protect endangered species and preserve as much of the desert as possible. “This is an art, not a science,” he says. “It’s driven by passion and experience and creativity.” Citizen staff writer Joyesha Chesnick contributed to this report. Copyright 2001, Tucson Citizen. http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/projects/who_runs_tucson/environment_campbell.html   Additional relevant, researched information: Who’s got the Power? September/October 2004 Sierra Magazine Sierra Club Kieran Suckling is the policy director for the Center for Biological Diversity in Tucson, Arizona. The organization has helped obtain Endangered Species Act protection for 329 species and “critical habitat” designation for over 38 million acres. http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200409/suckling.asp Suckling’s Site: http://www.biologicaldiversity.org

http://www.propertyrightsresearch.org/2005/articles02/who_runs_tucson.htm

Center for (Agenda 21) Biological Diversity

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Center for Biological Diversity
Abbreviation	CBD
Formation	1989
Type	NGO
Purpose/focus	Protection of endangered species
Headquarters	Tucson, Arizona
Website	biologicaldiversity.org

The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) based in Tucson, Arizona, is a nonprofit membership organization with approximately 220,000 members and online activists, known for its work protecting endangered species through legal action and scientific petitions. The Center has offices and staff in Arizona, California, New Mexico, Oregon, Montana, Illinois, Minnesota, Alabama, Alaska, Vermont and Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1989 by Kieran Suckling, Peter Galvin, Todd Schulke, and Robin Silver.^[1]

Given a small grant by the Fund for Wild Nature, the organization started in 1989 as a small group by the name of Greater Gila Biodiversity Project, with the objective to protect endangered species and critical habitat in the southwest.^[2] The organization later grew and became the Center for Biological Diversity. Kieran Suckling, Peter Galvin, and Todd Schulke founded the organization in response to what they perceived as a failure on the part of the United States Forest Service to protect the ecosystems in its charge. As surveyors in New Mexico, the three men discovered “a rare Mexican Spotted Owl nest in an old-growth tree”,^[1] but their discovery was overshadowed by Forest Service plans to lease the land to timber companies; Suckling, Galvin, and Schulke believed that it was within the Forest Service’s mission to save sensitive species like the Mexican Spotted Owl from harm, and that the government had shirked its duty in deference to corporate interests.

Suckling, Galvin, and Schulke went to the media to register their outrage; the old-growth tree was allowed to stand, and this success led to the founding of the Center for Biological Diversity.

Initially, the CBD focused on issues specific to the Southwestern United States, but today its mission encompasses far-reaching problems such as global threats to biological diversity and climate change. The CBD employs a group of paid and pro bono attorneys to use litigation to effect change, and claims a 93 percent success rate for their lawsuits.^[1]

On 13 June 2007, the CBD spoke out against a Bush administration proposal to reduce the protected area for spotted owls in the United States Pacific Northwest. According to Noah Greenwald, the group’s representative in the Northwest, the proposed habitat cut is “typical of an administration that is looking to reduce protections for endangered species at every turn.” Greenwald said that the rollback is part of a series of “sweetheart deals,” in which the administration settles an environmental lawsuit out of court and, “at the industry’s wishes, reduces the critical habitat.” According to the Center, the move conforms to a broad trend that includes at least 25 earlier Bush administration decisions on habitat protections for endangered species. In those cases, the protected areas were reduced an average of 36 percent.^[3]

On 16 December 2008, the CBD announced intent to sue the United States government for introducing “regulations… that would eviscerate our nation’s most successful wildlife law by exempting thousands of federal activities, including those that generate greenhouse gases, from review under the Endangered Species Act.” The lawsuit, which is critical of U.S. Interior Department Secretary Dirk Kempthorne and President George W. Bush, was filed in the Northern District of California by the CBD, Greenpeace and Defenders of Wildlife. According to the CBD, “The lawsuit argues that the regulations violate the Endangered Species Act and did not go through the required public review process. The regulations, first proposed on August 11th, were rushed by the Bush administration through an abbreviated process in which more than 300,000 comments from the public were reviewed in 2-3 weeks, and environmental impacts were analyzed in a short and cursory environmental assessment, rather than a fuller environmental impact statement.”^[4]

August 26, 2009 letter with 300+ Groups Ask Senate for Stronger Climate Bill, included the Center

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Biological_Diversity

Federal Land Grab In The Works

Federal Land Grab in the Works

The Federal Government owns millions of acres, most of it in western states and Alaska. Here’s the breakdown:

1. Nevada : 84.5%
2. Alaska: 69.1%
3. Utah: 57.4%
4. Oregon: 53.1%
5. Idaho: 50.2%
6. Arizona: 48.1%
7. California: 45.3%
8. Wyoming: 42.3%
9. New Mexico: 41.8%
10. Colorado: 36.6%

If this weren’t enough, plans have been in the making for even more land to be designated as federal land. Here’s part of a report from Sen. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican, who is chairman of the U.S. Senate Steering Committee. To my chagrin, I have not known about this:

A secret administration memo has surfaced revealing plans for the federal government to seize more than 10 million acres from Montana to New Mexico, halting job-creating activities like ranching, forestry, mining and energy development. Worse, this land grab would dry up tax revenue that’s essential for funding schools, firehouses and community centers.

President Obama could enact the plans in this memo with just the stroke of a pen, without any input from the communities affected by it.

Administration officials claim the document is merely the product of a brainstorming session, but anyone who reads this memo can see that it is a wish list for the environmentalist left. It discusses, in detail, what kinds of animal populations would benefit from limiting human activity in those areas.

 

The 21-page document, marked “Internal Draft-NOT FOR RELEASE,”names 14 different lands Mr. Obama could completely close for development by unilaterally designating them as “monuments” under the 1906 Antiquities Act.

This is a story that hasn’t gotten much attention. I suspect that it hasn’t been acted on because the president is in a tough election fight. If he gets re-elected, a real possibility, don’t be surprised if more of America comes under the control of the federal government.

To show you what we’re up against, DeMint sponsored an amendment to block Mr. Obama from declaring any of the 14 lands listed in the memo as “monuments.” The Senate, because it is a Democrat majority, rejected it by a vote of 58–38. This means that some Republicans voted with the Democrats.

Read more: Federal Land Grab in the Works | Godfather Politics http://godfatherpolitics.com/2399/federal-land-grab-in-the-works/#ixzz1fimCRdp6

U.N. Climate Conference’s Goal? One-World Gov’t

IBD Editorial By PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY 11-29-11

THE NEW TOTALITARIANISM = “collaborative consensus building”

The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa, opening on Nov. 28, called COP-17, is one of a series of U.N. meetings working toward a specific goal. Advertising for this meeting features a long list of celebrities, including Angelina Jolie, U2’s Bono, Ted Turner, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Al Gore and Michael Bloomberg. The U.N. goal is to move the United States into a global government by environmental regulations and a vast network of taxes. These newly imposed taxes will give the U.N. a tremendous stream of money in addition to U.S. dues and congressional appropriations. The plan for taxes was launched at the 1992 U.N. meeting in Rio de Janeiro, known as the Earth Summit, where Conference Secretary-General Maurice Strong produced a 300-page document with 40 proposals called Agenda 21. The tax-seeking route then proceeded through U.N. meetings in Cancun in 2010, in Durban this November and will be finalized next year at what is called Rio+20 (i.e., Rio de Janeiro after 20 years). Agenda 21 is a comprehensive master plan to reshape and control the U.S. while locking us into the clutches of the U.N. under the innocuous phrase “sustainable development.” Along with 178 countries, President George H.W. Bush accepted Agenda 21 as “soft law.” It was adopted by a new tactic called collaborative consensus building, instead of by treaty. Bush popularized the term “new world order,” but left it for others to define. Mikhail Gorbachev said the threat of an environmental crisis will be the international key to unlocking the new world order, and former President Bill Clinton issued an executive order in 1993 creating the President’s Council on Sustainable Development. Advocates of Agenda 21 talk about the three E’s of sustainable development: economy, equity and environment. Equity means replacing our American constitutional system with central planning and social justice, which is a code word for redistribution of wealth, abolition of private property rights and giving favored corporations tax breaks, grants, and use of eminent domain. Economy means shifting from a private enterprise system to government, private-corporation partnerships. That would be a giant step toward total government and U.N. control of our economy, with the ability to redistribute our goods and services to foreign countries. Environment means giving animals and plants more rights or equal rights with humans. It also promotes worship of nature and mother Earth. To talk about Agenda 21, you will have to get used to a new vocabulary: green jobs, green building codes, going green, regional planning, smart growth, biodiversity, sustainable farming, growth management, resilient cities, sustainable communities, redistribution, urban growth boundaries, redevelopment districts and consensus. Agenda 21 wants to herd people into crowded communities with limited housing space and limited parking spaces. This will promote the green goal of reducing our use of automobiles, allowing only electric cars that can’t go very fast or very far, so people will have to walk, use bicycles and mass transit. Agenda 21 supports the Wildlands Project, which seeks to re-wild 50% of our nation and turn it into a pre-Columbian wilderness where animals roam freely and humans are crowded into limited spaces. Already, we find that rural roads are not being repaired or maintained. Agenda 21 has started its attacks on rural and small-town property rights. Six hundred U.S. cities and counties have signed on to the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives putting themselves indirectly under supervision of U.N. regulations and restrictions. Advocates of Agenda 21 believe the earth is overcrowded. They demand an 85% reduction in human population. It’s a major goal of Agenda 21 to lower the U.S. standard of living by cutting our use of energy. Agenda 21 plans to use smart meters, smart grids and smart growth so that our nation’s use of electricity can be controlled, limited and redistributed. Schools and universities are important to Agenda 21’s goals. The plan is make them indoctrination institutions, where kids are taught “green” propaganda, as well as global education to make them citizens of the world. When you get down to the nitty-gritty, what these U.N. climate conferences are all about is getting the U.N. to impose taxes that will give it an immense flow of money, so it doesn’t have to worry about Congress cutting off appropriations. This means imposing U.N. taxes on currency transfers, fossil energy production including oil, natural gas and coal, the commercial use of oceans, international airplane tickets and all foreign exchange transactions. Taxes of this magnitude would give the U.N. so much power that it would become a de facto world government. Tell your members of Congress to pledge that the day the U.N. adopts this nonsense will be the day we say goodbye to the U.N.

Kansas City sets Curfew After Flashmob Shooting

 KANSAS CITY, Mo (Reuters) – The weekend shooting of three teenagers at a large late-night “flash mob” gathering prompted local authorities to pass an ordinance on Thursday that sets curfews as early as 9 p.m. for people under age 18.

At the urging of Mayor Sly James, the Kansas City Council passed the ordinance 13-0, allowing police to issue citations to parents whose children violate the curfew. Parents can be fined up to $500 per violation.

Three youths aged 13 to 16 were injured by apparently random gunshots at about 11:30 p.m. on Saturday night in an upscale shopping and restaurant district called Country Club Plaza.

James was nearby when the shots rang out and says his bodyguards shoved him down into a flower bed to keep him safe.

There have been other so-called “flash mob” gatherings of youngsters in Kansas City in recent years, but the weekend shootings pushed the issue to the top of the council’s agenda.

No arrests have been made in Saturday’s incident and the shooting victims are recovering.

While the proposed curfew may not be popular, James said his message to youths is clear.

“I care enough about you that I want you to be safe,” he said.

James noted that local police were present in the area both on foot and horseback on Saturday when shots were fired. James also said he had been present in the area that night specifically to observe the gatherings.

Local community leaders have been critical of parents who allow children as young as 10 years old to roam around late at night. James said he spoke Saturday night with one 13-year-old girl he described as well-spoken and bright.

“She had no idea when her mother was going to pick her up,” James said.

Passage of an ordinance so quickly is unusual, but council members said they had feared a repeat of potentially dangerous gatherings this weekend.

“It’s important we send a swift and bold message to parents that your kids should be home,” said City Councilwoman Cindy Circo.

A curfew of 9 p.m. will apply from late May through September in five Kansas City entertainment areas. Elsewhere in the city, the curfew will be 10 p.m. for children 15 and under and 11 p.m. for those 16 and 17.

At other times of the year, the curfew will be 11 p.m. on weeknights and midnight on weekends for everyone under age 18.

(Editing by Peter Bohan)

http://news.yahoo.com/kansas-city-sets-youth-curfew-weekend-shooting-025521638.html