ecology

The relationship between organisms and their environment.

The branch of sociology that is concerned with studying the relationships between
human groups and their physical and social environments.

The study of the detrimental effects of modern civilization on the environment,
with a view toward prevention or reversal through conservation.

The first scientific study of ecology was done by the Greek scholar Theophrastus in 325 BC.

Theophrastus wrote about the relationship between organisms and between organisms and their environment.

conserve

To protect from loss or harm.

To use carefully or sparingly, avoiding waste.

To keep in a safe or sound state; to save; to preserve; to protect.

environment

The circumstances or conditions that surround an organism; surroundings.

The totality of circumstances surrounding an organism or group of organisms.

The combination of external physical conditions that affect
and influence the growth, development, and survival of an organism.

The complex of social and cultural conditions affecting the nature of an individual or community.

“We shall never understand the natural environment until we see it as a living organism.”
- Paul Brooks

"Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he has been given. But up to now man has not been a creator, only a destroyer. Forests keep disappearing, rivers dry up, wild life becomes extinct, the climate is ruined and the land grows poorer and uglier every day."- Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860-1904), Russian

Warning:

The "Gang Green" is attempting to destroy the invisible hand of the free enterprise system of America by publicizing corporate irresponsibility.
This message brought to you by Capital Research Center, run by former members of the Heritage Foundation.

No need to fear industry has solved environmental problems by going green!

The new ecologically friendly smokeblecher industries LLC

Crimes Against Nature
(and each and every human by extrapolation)

"The George W. Bush administration is plagued by more than a dysfunctional management style. It has the arrogance to create a one-party state that elevates politics over governance. It has fostered a government-hating radical ideology that has seen people with contempt for government acting contemptibly in government roles." - Charles Berezin

"The public good is in nothing more essentially interested, than in the protection of every individual's private rights." -Sir William Blackstone

"Each time the message was this: ‘Turn from the evil road you are traveling and from the evil things you are doing.'" - Jeremiah 25:5

Throughout Western history the first acts of tyrants has been attempts to control the commons which include the air we breath and the water we drink.

Ancient Rome had the Code of Justinian which guaranteed to all citizens the use of the public commons
which included air, water, wandering animals, fisheries, wetlands and aquifers.

During the thirteenth century it was a capital offense to burn coal in London.

It has never been legal in any society or culture to pollute or destroy
the common environment upon which all humanity depends for sustenance.

When James Watt took over the Department of the Interior he began selling off America's resources, public lands, water and mineral rights. During a Senate hearing James Watt, a ‘dominion theologist', declared that he was giving away America's heritage because ‘I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns.'

Since the beginning of the environmental movement corporate industrialists have established 'foundations', better known as 'think tanks', to counter the reach of environmental law.

The list of industry sponsored pollution and junk science promoters, entities described as think tanks, include the Heritage Foundation, John M. Olin Foundation, Sarah Scaife Foundation, Castle Rock Foundation, Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, the Reason Foundation, the Federalist Society, the Marshall Institute, the Mercatus Center, Citizens for a Sound economy, the Environmental Conservation Organization, the Evergreen Foundation, Citizens for the Sensible Control of Acid Rain, Mountain States Legal Foundation, the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition and the Sagebrush Rebels.

Ronald Reagan claimed to be a Sagebrush Rebel.

The purpose of industry sponsored think tanks is to run interference for their corporate industrialist funders and act as a counter weight to public interest groups shining a light on the antisocial activity of the destruction of the commons by corporate industrialists.

In August 1988 the Sagebrush Rebels became Wise Use and founder Ron Arnold stated, "It is our goal to destroy, to eradicate the environmental movement. We want you to be able to exploit the environment for private gain, absolutely!"

The Christian Broadcasting Network of Pat Robertson supported Wise Use making anti-environmentalism one of it's main themes.

Wise Use propelled Newt Gingrich to the Speaker's chair.

Wise Use spun off the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, Defenders of Property Rights, Public Lands Council, Property and Environment Research Center and National Legal Center for the Public Interest.

Wise Use help install George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in the White House. George W. Bush install Wise Use radical Gail Norton (2001), and Wise Use leaders, Thomas Sansonetti, and many other Wise Use followers who have taken control of every single federal agency that deals with the environment.

Existing environmental laws are no longer enforced.

Waivers and exemptions to polluters and campaign contributors is the standard.

Although George W. Bush marketed Gail Norton as a lifelong conservationist Gail Norton advocated an end to enforcement of environmental regulations while working for the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy in 1989. Gail Norton stated, in regard to the end of the enforcement of environmental regulation, "I view that as some thing positive."

In a 1996 speech Gail Norton listed federal incursions into the private domain as atrocities. These included American with Disabilities Act requirements for wheelchair ramps, Environmental Protection Agency requirements to remove asbestos from schools and the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Gail Norton has suggested that no National Park, National Monument or National Forest land should be exempt from mineral extraction, oil extraction, and timber extraction. If rare and endangered species are present it is decreed they do not exist. No endangered plant or animal, no protection problems.

"Gail Norton's five-year tenure as Interior secretary has irreparably damaged our country. Under her leadership employees in the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service have been demoralized into leaving their positions - replaced by people who don't mind giving away our public lands to the energy and timber industries. Our national parks are in their worst shape ever. When Gail Norton next visits her cherished Western mountains. She will find the scenery altered; it now includes drilling rigs, clear-cutting and new roads churned by off-road vehicles. Gail Norton's oil and gas friends will probably take good care of her; they owe her big time." - Crista Worthy

Wise Use ideologues have tried to con-vince us that American government and its laws are illegitimate and that the illegitimacy makes it permissible for them to violate laws. Wise Use ideologues subvert the law, corrupt American democracy, and distort science while breaking promises and deceive those they are appointed to serve.

"The Environmental Protection Agency is no longer a public health agency. With the George W. Bush administration, whether or not environmental laws are enforced depends on who you know." - Former chief enforcement officer of the Environmental Protection Agency Eric Shaeffer

"The George W. Bush administration routinely mismanages scientific information through distortion and omission whenever scientific truth is inconvenient to its industrial allies. It's hard to decide what is more demoralizing about the administration's politicization of the scientific process - its disdain for professional scientists working for American government or its willingness to deceive the American public." - Roger G. Kennedy, former director of the National Park Service.

"The current George W. Bush administration has taken intolerance of science dissent to a new orbit. The repression against internationally renowned professionals and experts in their fields just for exercising the scientific method objectively is unprecedented." - Tom Devine, a Goldwater Republican who monitors the treatment of federal whistleblowers for the nonpartisan Government Accountability Project.

Science, like theology, reveals transcendent truths about a changing Earth. The best scientists are moral individuals whose business is to seek the truth. Corruption of this process undermines not just democracy but civilization itself.

John Graham, a Wise Use member, founded the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis in 1989 and started the junk-science of cost-benefit analysis which claims to be able to compare the monetary cost of the implementation of new laws against that laws benefit to society. In John Graham analysis' if a fish has no commercial value and 10 million die because of toxic pollution the economic cost is zero, as they have no commercial value.

In this type of of cost-benefit analysis it does not matter if the value of the life that is being analyzed is fish or human. People are going to die anyhow. Baby boomer retirees have given all they can give to the economic system and as such in any cost-benefit analysis it is economically better for society if these used up hulks just die as they are no longer producing for the system. (Perhaps if industry developed many different types of chemicals that ultimately cause premature death Social Security costs would fall. Oh wait they already do - in the food - trans fat, high fructose corn syrup and chemicals, like the artificial butter flavoring, diacetyl and melamine - and in the air, earth and water - fluoride, perfluorooctanoic acid, methyl tert-butyl ether, bisphenol A, phthalates, pyrethroids, polybrominated diphenyl ethers, polytetrafluoroethylene, perchlorate, mercury, trichloroethylene, polychlorinated biphenyls, lead, asbestos and organophosphates.

"At the shallowest level cost-benefit analysis' is a cheap deception of the general public. At its worst this approach represents a serious erosion in the way a democracy deals with science. You create high-sounding credentials and talk in tones that appear scientifically sensible, while all the time you are just fronting for a political agenda. If you believe in a rational universe, in enlightenment, in knowledge, and in a search for the truth the George W. Bush White House is an absolute disaster." - Princeton University scientist Michael Oppenheimer.

"Environmentalists do not view economics as the enemy because cost-benefit analysis is thoroughly unromantic; economics view the environment as invisible because their cost-benefit analysis is fatally flawed. A full cost accounting of industrial practices reveals how much the natural services of ecosystems threatened or destroyed by development and industrial pollution are actually worth in addition to the real value of natural resources consumed and wasted. Environmentalists are simply not in thrall to the church of neo-liberal economics and the priests of predatory corporatism, who are spending our principal and deferring environmental debt like there's no tomorrow."- Andrew Christie

John Graham was appointed by George W. Bush to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in 2001.

John Graham's central role is undermining environmental protection through ‘research' papers based on cost-benefit analysis. John Graham has blocked every rule change that protects the environment including two dozen proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency. Rules John Graham has fought to have rescinded include reduced arsenic levels in drinking water, reduced pollution from coal burning plants and regulation of fecal waste from factory farms.(i.e. Only 50 humans out of a thousand will die prematurely from cancer over the next five years and the cost to save the 200,000 thousand or so people that will die prematurely would require entire industry upgrades costing 200 billion dollars or a million per individual saved from premature death and is therefore not economically feasible. Since American aristocracy can and does chose to live far from toxic polluters their chance of dying from cancer due to toxins approaches zero. Must be nice!)

"Factory farmed animals such as cattle, pigs and chickens, live in unnatural and cruel conditions, which do not allow them to live the way nature intended. Factory farmers treat them as commodities rather than living, breathing, sentient beings that feel pain and suffer, just as we do. It's time to make changes, not just because of the harm to our health and environment but because having respect for all beings will help create a more humane world." - Valerie Belt

Wise Use ideology has engineered the passage of laws in Missouri and Iowa making it a crime to photograph factory farm animals!

Thirteen states have laws making it illegal to criticize produce!

Strip mining was just the start. In Appalachia they do not just strip the Earth for coal seams lying a few feet under the surface they take the entire tops off mountains and dump them in streams! A rule change allowed strip mining waste to be reclassified as ‘fill'. Between 1992 and 2002, twelve hundred miles (1200) of stream bed was 'filled'.

"Mountaintop removal is not only stupid, as the habitat of wildlife is destroyed in the name of profit and greed, it is immoral and shortsighted." - Gail Rubio

In 2004 a judge revoked 11 permits issued by the Army Corps of Engineers under the Nationwide Permit 21 process which allowed 'streamlined permitting'.

In November 2005 'steamlined permitting' for mountaintop removal and streambed filling was reinstated on appeal.

The United States 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that mountaintop removal and streambed filling complied with the Clean Water Act.

"I've been regulating mining since 1966 and this is the most lawless administration I have encountered. They have no regard for protecting miners or the people in mining communities. They are without scruples. The corruption and lawlessness goes all the way to the top." - Jack Spadaro, former superintendent of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (see canary in a coal mine)

The pillage of Appalachia by the coal industry is being made possible by officials who view public service as an opportunity for wholesale plunder.

"The George W. Bush administration and the coal industry have teamed up to wipe Appalachia off the map. This is Appalachia's last stand. When the mountaints go, so goes our culture and our people, and it will be the George W. Bush administration that pushes the stake through our heart." - Judy Bonds

1 in 6 American women have mercury levels in their blood streams that carry levels of mercury dangerous enough to cause neurological damage in their unborn children.

"The science is certain - dangerous levels impact a baby's IQ."
- Dr. David Carpenter of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the State University of New York at Albany
(Of course this is an excellent way to produce mindless human robots for the military-industrial-corporate-entertainment complex!)

Free market capitalism is the best thing that could happen to the American environment and the American economy. True free market capitalism, in which businesses pay all the costs of bringing their products to market, is the most efficient and democratic way of distributing the goods of the land - and the surest way to eliminate pollution. Free markets, when allowed to function properly value raw materials and encourage producers to eliminate waste by reducing, reusing, and recycling.

"At least four aspects of current corporatism are not true to free market theory and result in various forms of overconsumption. First, the current system fails to discourage monopolies and ever-greater concentrations of capital. Second, the system will generally reward a business that imposes costs on others by generating negative externalities. Third, reliable factual information is not easily available to consumers. Fourth, government and business have become inexorably intertwined, with massive subsidies tilting the free market playing field toward some highly consumptive economic activities and away from others." - Donald O. Mayer

In a truly free market economy, when you make yourself wealthy, you enrich your community. Polluters make themselves wealthy by making everybody else poor. They raise the standard of living for themselves by lowering the quality of life for everyone else. Polluters do that by escaping the discipline of the free market.

The coal burning utilities that acidify the Adirondack Lakes, poison our waterways with mercury, provoke 120,000 asthma attacks, and kill 30,000 of our neighbors every year are imposing costs on the rest of us that should, in a truly free market economy, be reflected in the price of the energy when they bring it to the marketplace.

By avoiding these costs, the utilities are able to enrich their shareholders and put their more conscientious and efficient competitors out of business. These costs do not just disappear. The American people pay for them downstream - with poisoned fish, sickened children, a diminished quality of life and a shortened life span.

Every one of America's federal environmental laws is intended to restore true free market capitalism so that the price of bringing a product to market reflects the costs that it imposes on the public.

When polluters cheat, it distorts the entire marketplace, and none of us benefit from free market efficiencies.

Corporatists do not want free markets, they want dependable profits, and their surest route is to crush the competition by controlling the State. The domination of American State by large corporations leads to the elimination of free markets and, ultimately, to the loss of democracy.

Some of the largest federal subsidies are going to western resource industries - grazing, lumber, mining, and agribusiness - that have spawned the most vocal attacks against federal environmental laws. These industries are run by some of the richest and most radical people in the country, men like Richard Mellon Scaife, Charles Hurwitz (Headwaters Forest Reserve rapist), Charles Koch and Joseph Coors. (Joseph Coors founded the Heritage Foundation.)

"Wise Use groups and others, out of duplicity or ignorance, posture as defenders of the free market. But in fact, they often argue for special privileges and protections that cost the environment, consumers and taxpayers dearly." - John A. Baden, Ph.D. and Tim O’Brien

Intense hatred for State regulation is combined with an intense reliance on federal subsidies. Taxpayers gave away at the turn of the 21st century $65 billion every year in subsidies to big oil and more than $35 billion a year in subsidies to the radical owners of western resource industries many of whom are destroying America's public lands and waterways with unsustainable practices.

Conservative Senator John Sununu stated after helping to defeat Dick Cheney's Wise Use energy bill, "As fiscal conservatives we have to stand for some thing. This bill broke the budget caps for 2004 and busted budget caps over a five-year period. The tax provisions were outrageous. The agreement had over $24 billion in tax breaks. There's just no need to provide special consideration to the oil, gas, coal industries or the nuclear power industry. These are healthy, robust, competitive industries, and they don't need special treatment or a special tax break from the federal government."

Subsidies helped create the billionaires who financed the right-wing revolution on Capitol Hill that put George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in the White House. The free market has been all but eliminated in an energy sector dominated by cartels and monopolies and distorted by subsidies to the polluters.

America's once vibrant agricultural markets are now basically controlled by multinational monopolies with no demonstrated loyalty to America, the American people, the American environment or American law.

The fascism that swept Europe in the 1930's taught humanity lessons on how corporate power can undermine democracy.

In Spain, Germany, and Italy industrialists and the aristocracy forged alliances with right-wing radicals and charismatic leaders to win elections in Italy and Germany by embracing a fascist ideology - the term fascist was created by Benito Mussolini. Fascists took over government ministries running them for their own profit, pouring government money into corporate coffers by awarding lucrative contracts to prosecute wars and build infrastructure with little or no State oversight. (Iraq?)

The ideology of American corporatism is very similar to fascism in the following ways:

"The Fascist State lays claim to rule in the economic field." - Benito Mussolini

In American corporatism the State licenses corporations and fulfills corporate lobbyists "wish lists"by insuring corporate profits through State decree, deregulation, bail outs, subsidies and tax relief.

"Anti-individualistic, the Fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with those of the State." - Benito Mussolini

In American corporatism incorporated organizations are designed as wealth producing entities and are not designed to be socially responsible. State entities are designed for social control purposes with the clear intent of conditioning the behavior of the social culture to conform to corporately acceptable norms of consumption - thus keeping the industrial machine humming. The corporate State is concerned with the individual's welfare only when the promotion of an individual's welfare coincides with needs of the State or the corporation.

"Fascism is definitely and absolutely opposed to the doctrines of liberalism, both in the political and the economic sphere." - Benito Mussolini

Fascism is opposed to liberalism because liberalism emphasizes individual rights and equality of opportunity.

Liberalistic ideology includes extensive freedom of thought and speech with the right to question the decisions of State authority, limitations on the power of the State through the granting of basic human rights, the rule of law applied equally to all segments of society, the free exchange of ideas, concepts and knowledge which are judged on their merits alone - not on status of the celebrities which support them, a true free market economy - as opposed to a State granted monopolistic economy - and a transparent system of government.

In American corporatism corporate and State entities have the right to free speech (for corporations - hiring lobbyists, lying in marketing campaigns and easy access to mass media; for government - lying to elicit confessions, covering up wrongdoing and modifing public opinion) individual voices are only heard if they conform to the mass media propaganda, freedom of thought is discouraged (accept corporate and government propaganda or become a social outcast), government power has increased exponentially while individual rights guaranteed by the Constitution are trampled, the rule of law applies only to individuals - who are punished with incarceration (corporations break the laws and consider fines a cost of doing business - you can not incarcerate a corporation!), ideas are no longer freely exchanged (but you can buy unimportant ideas from the publisher) and Dick Cheney never wrote e-mails, memos or directives so no one will ever know why the George W. Bush administration took the actions it did.

The elected fascist governments of Spain, Germany, and Italy used the provocation of terrorist attacks, continual wars, and invocations of patriotism and homeland security to privatize the commons, tame the press, muzzle criticism by opponents, and turn government over to corporate control. The easiest thing for a political leaders to do is appeal to our fear, our hatred, our greed, our prejudices.

"It is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, a parliament or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." - Hermann Goering

Communism is, by definition, total government. Socialism is defined as government ownership and/or control over the basic means of production and distribution of goods and services or total government. If you have total government it makes little difference whether you call it communism, socialism, corporatism or fascism. Corporatism is defined as corporate ownership and/or control over the basic means of production and distribution of goods and services, also total government run by corporations. When analyzed this means corporate control over everything, including you. (Just in case we have a privately owned and operated jail cell waiting for you!)

The idea that corporatism is a share-the-wealth program is strictly a con-fidence game to get the populace to surrender their freedom to an all-powerful collectivist corporate monopolies. Sycophants are told they are building a paradise on Earth when actually they are constructing a jail for themselves. Americans have been indoctrinated to believe that corporatism is a share-the-wealth program. If one understands that corporatism is not a share-the-wealth program, but is in reality a method to consolidate and control wealth, then the seeming paradox of super-rich men promoting corporatism, communism, socialism or fascism becomes no paradox at all. Instead corporatism, communism, socialism or fascism become the logical rational tools of power-seeking soulless apostate megalomaniacs.

In The Shame of the Cities, a study of the American political system in 1904, Lincoln Steffens concluded that the corruption and failures of American democracy stemmed largely from a single source - the control of government by businessmen acting in their own self-interest. Lincoln Steffens characterized that formula as a category of treason because "the effect of it is literally to change the form of government from one that is representative of the people to an oligarchy representative of the special interests."

To invoke Christianity to justify the rape of the land violates manifold Christian precepts that require us to be careful stewards of God's creation. Rather than elevating the human spirit "Wise Use" neo-cons embrace intolerance, selfishness, pride, arrogance toward creation, and irresponsibility to the community and future generations.

- adapted from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. , Crimes Against Nature

In 2006 the consequences of Gail Norton's actions as acting head of the Department of the Interior became apparent. In 2002 after a eight year drought water in the Klamath River was in short supply. The farmers in the area sought a redistribution of the water. Ecologists stated that if more water was taken from the Klamath then there was a possibility that the king salmon would go into sharp decline. Federal officials declared a commercial fishery failure along 700 miles of the California and Oregon coast because of extremely low counts of king salmon in August of 2006.

"The Pacific Fishery Management Council voted April 10, 2008 to cancel the chinook fishing season in an effort to reverse the catastrophic disappearance of California's fabled run of the pink fish popularly known as king salmon." - John Koopman

We can all thank Gail Norton for the extermination of California King Salmon. Thanks Gail!

"The George W. Bush administration is totally hostile toward the idea of stewardship of the our public lands." - Sari Reznick

To claim the approach of the rapture, Jesus' return to Earth with a flaming sword of judgement, allows humanity to destroy God's creation because we will not need it in the non-existent future is an evil precept that does not emanate from God but from the minds of evil men with no empathy for life.

government regulation

Government regulation is necessary in our modern complex society for a true free market economy to work correctly and efficiently.

Regulations designed to create a viable, vibrant truly free market by having multiple providers of goods or services compete on a level playing field are desirable.

If a monopolizing interest takes control of a resource then the free market will fail to function as a free market.

If a provider of goods and services is subsidized then the free market will fail to function as a free market.

Government regulation, at some level dependent on the specific industry, is required to assure that multiple providers of goods and services exist and that they compete with each other on a level playing field.

When an industry fails to assure the safety of marketed products or fails to provide a service as marketed then that industry has become egregiously socially irresponsible. The industry forfeits its right to self-policing and must submit to regulation by a government entity if it wishes to retain it's government charter. (In the past when a corporation became egregiously socially irresponsible its charter was revoked!)

Economically it is better for all concerned if industry actually rigorously polices itself. Poorly designed and implemented government regulation may stifle the internal balancing mechanisms of the free market.

On the other hand when an industry is subsidized or monopolized the simple fact is that the free market fails to function correctly and efficiently and that industry will not keep pace with changing conditions and will fall into decline.

The American automotive industry is a good example of an American industry that has continually failed to be socially responsible and has thus fallen into decline.

If the American automotive industry had successfully policed itself then it is not likely that General Motors, the Ford Motor Company and the Chrysler Group, basically a three member cartel, would hold only 48.1 percent of the American new auto - cars and trucks - sales market in July 2007 when foreign auto companies for the first time held more than half the market at 51.9 percent.

"Detroit likes to claim that making cars more efficient is too costly, requires changes that consumers won't accept or would compromise safety, or that the technology isn't here yet. The auto industry opposed shatterproof windshields, seat belts, upholstered dashboards, safety locks, inside trunk locks, air bags, then smart air bags, catalytic converters, emission-control devices, energy-absorbing steering wheels, head restraints, nickel-metal hydride batteries, California zero emission vehicle mandate and changes to the corporate average fuel economy. Only legislation can move Detroit." - John Spradley

Foreign auto companies embraced efficiency and safety above and beyond legislatively set regulation and now those same foreign auto companies hold over half the American domestic market in new car and truck sales. While American automotive companies fought regulation as too expensive foreign auto companies proved that making a better product increases market share regardless of regulation.

"Regulations - such as those that protect the environment from destruction, workers from death and injury, and consumers from faulty and dangerous products and exploitative advertising - require corporations, by law, to be socially and environmentally responsible, rather than trusting and hoping that they will be. They reflect decisions about appropriate standards for corporate behavior that are made by an institution - government - whose sole purpose, unlike the corporation's, is to protect and promote the public interest and reflect the people's will. Government regulation, unlike market-based solutions, combines authority, capacity, and democratic legitimacy to protect citizens from corporate misdeeds. Through it, governments can pursue social values - such as democracy, social justice, citizens' health and welfare, environmental integrity, cultural identity - that lie beyond the narrow goals of self-interest and wealth maximization that dictate the behavior of corporations and markets." - Joe Balkan

canary in a coal mine

Farmington Mine Disaster happened on November 20, 1968, at the Consol No. 9 coal mine near Farmington, West Virginia. 78 miners perished. Laws that were then enacted have largely been abandoned by the new leaner and meaner mine owners of the 21st century.

Thirteen coal miners died as the result of two gas explosions September 23, 2001 at the Jim Walter Resources Blue Creek No. 5 Mine in Brookwood, Alabama.

On January 2, 2006, in the Sago Mine in Sago, West Virginia a blast and ensuing aftermath trapped thirteen miners for nearly two days. Only one miner survived. International Coal Group is the non-union coal operator of the Sago Mine.

On May 20, 2006 five miners at the non-union Kentucky Darby Mine No. 1 in Harlan County, state of Kentucky, died after a methane explosion inside a shaft. On May 24, 2006 a miner underground at International Coal Group's Sycamore II Mine near Jarvisville, state of West Virginia, died when he was struck in the head by a heavy wooden object.

On Jan 13, 2007 two members of a coal mining crew removing pillars in a mine near Cucumber died when a portion of the tunnel collapsed and the men were buried in debris deep underground. The crew was working on a process called retreat mining, a practice that involves cutting away support pillars to extract the last coal deposits by working back toward the entrance while allowing the ceiling to fall in. (see Jack Spadaro)

When Robert Murray acquired a 50 percent ownership in the Crandall Canyon coal mine in August, 2006, his company repeatedly petitioned the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) to allow coal to be extracted from the north and south barriers - thick walls of coal that ran on both sides of the main tunnels left by design to hold up the ceilings.

Documents on file with the Utah Division of Oil Gas and Mining show Andalex, the prior owner, had previously decided not to mine those barriers, determining it posed a risk to worker safety.

In February and March of 2007, the company did retreat mining in the north barrier. Work in the north barrier progressed until March, when the mine suffered a collapse - the tunnel roof fell in, the tunnel floors heaved and coal exploded from the support pillars due to the pressure of the mountain bearing down. The collapse damaged tunnels over a span of more than 700 feet, and prompted mine operators to abandon retreat mining in the northern barrier.

On June 15, 2007, the company received approval from the Mine Safety and Health Administration to begin cutting away the support pillars of the south barrier. On August 6 six miners - Kerry Allred, Don Erickson, Luis Hernandez, Juan Carlos Payan, Brandon Phillips and Manuel Sanchez - were retreat mining in that south barrier when a 69 acre section collapsed. On August 16 Dale Ray Black, Brandon Kimber and Gary Jensen were killed in another collapse while attempting a rescue. According to 1400 pages of government and congressional records the Crandall Canyon mine was expected to collapse.

Ken Ward Jr. of The Charleston Gazette (W.Va.) analyzed government reports and data and found that 9 out of every 10 coal mining deaths nationwide over the last 10 years could have been avoided if existing safety rules had been followed.

Seth Borenstein, Linda J. Johnson and Lee Mueller of Knight Ridder Newspapers used federal data to find that “since the Bush administration took office in 2001, it has been more lenient toward mining companies facing serious safety violations, issuing fewer and smaller major fines and collecting less than half of the money that violators owed.”

In July 20, 2005 the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection announced it will take up to 60 years and $15 billion to clean up 250,000 acres of land and over 2100 miles of streams contaminated by abandoned coal mines in Pennsylvania.

"It is a sign of progress that America is beginning to face the coal-hard truth about burning black "chunks of solid carbon" to meet our insatiable hunger for electricity. Feeding a ravenous coal-fired power plant requires stripping huge swaths of land each and every year. To feed our energy appetites, we flatten mountains, wrench soil-stabilizing trees from the ground, devour purple mountains majesty and bury streams under toxic tons of rubble." - Linda Nicholas

"People across the country are deciding that coal's multiple bad effects are real, cumulative, permanent and largely ignored in Washington. Coal is the main reason the U.S. is the world's largest source of greenhouse gases. The ready availability and relatively low cost (to the power generator), and the fact that we have always done it this way, gave coal a safe place in the market for 125 years and created a large body of well-financed special-interest groups." - Robert Siebert

refinery on fire

The accuracy of government safety statistics is undermined by the fact that many workers are now hired by or through independent contractors.

Long considered one of the nation's most dangerous industries, oil refining suddenly seemed one of the safest when the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported no refinery deaths in 2002 or 2003. At least nine people were asphyxiated, burned or fell to their deaths at our nation's refineries during those years, according to media accounts, industry statistics and fatal accident reports to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

"They'll show up in the statistics but not as refinery workers. The more dangerous an occupation, the less likely a company would want to hire those people directly - they want to boost their own safety rates and decrease their liability." - retired Bureau of Labor Statistics economist Guy Toscano

The way the U.S. safety statistics are now kept, a work site will not generally get a black mark if contractors from other companies are killed or injured there - only if a permanent employee dies or gets hurt.

"If the site gets picked up, it's going to be almost a fluke." - former OSHA Administrator Patrick Tyson Hazardous industries such as steel, are increasingly contracting out their more dangerous jobs to make the primary corporation look safer.

Terry Brimer fell when a corroded railing gave way at the Indiana refinery in 2004. OSHA fined the company $1,625.

"I have a British Petroleum paper that says we will provide our employees with a safe work environment, but there wasn't one for my husband. I don't feel like a $1,625 fine is enough of a motivator for them." - Naomi Brimer

British Petroleum West Coast Products agreed to fines, health programs and improvements totaling a record $81 million for thousands of pollution violations over the past decade at its Carson, California oil refinery.

"Since British Petroleum failed to identify and inspect as many as half the components in its facility during the last decade, emissions might be as much as double previous totals." - AQMD chief counsel Peter Mieras

The 15 worker deaths at the British Petroleum refinery in Texas City, Texas on March 23, 2005 could have been prevented according to a report by the United Steelworkers.

"If the company had taken the union's advice to pipe the atmospheric vent — where the hydrocarbons were released — to the flare system there would have been no fire and if the company had not violated its own policy and issued themselves a variance in order to place the trailer in a dangerous unit there would have been no deaths." - United Steel Workers Region 6 Director Gary Beevers

The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, one of several agencies looking into the blast, has said internal British Petroleum documents show that budget cuts of 25 percent from 1998 through 2000 caused a progressive deterioration of safety at the refinery.

"British Petroleum has admitted they were responsible. The issue is what level of knowledge did they have in advance. Those issues are still out there." - Brent Coon, Eva Rowe's attorney - Eva Rowe's parents, 48-year-old James Rowe and his wife, Linda Rowe, 47, of Hornbeck, La., were two of the 15 killed.

British Petroleum agreed to pay $50 million in fines and plead guilty to a felony for it's role in the refinery fire.

The John M .Olin Foundation closed in November 2005. The New York-based John M. Olin Foundation, grew out of a family manufacturing business (chemical and munitions), funded right-wing think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Manhattan Institute for Public Policy Research.

Defenders of Property Rights were Robert Bork; Larry Craig, US Senator from Idaho; Orrin Hatch, US Senator from Utah; Ed Meese, Attorney General under Reagan, 1985-88; Richard Pombo, Congressman, California 11th; Lamar Smith, Congressman, Texas 21st

Citizens for Sensible Control of Acid Rain (CSCAR) operated between 1983 and 1991 to oppose tightening the Clean Air Act. In a 1986 letter sent to more than 600,000 constituents, CSCAR claimed that the acid rain bill would cost some $110 billion to industry and utilities and increase the electricity rate by 30 percent.

Citizens for Sensible Control of Acid Rain was funded by the coal and electric industry. Specific companies included: American Cyanamid Co., Consolidation Coal Co., Indianapolis Power and Light Co., Jersey Central Power and Light Co., Metropolitan Edison Co., Ohio Edison Co., Pennsylvania Electric Co., Peabody Holding Co., Southern Co., Services Union Electric Co.

The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC) is a now defunct industry funded PR front group run by the APCO Worldwide public relations firm which worked to hang the label of "junk science" on environmentalists. Created in 1993, TASSC began as a front for Philip Morris which was attempting to discredit ETS (Environmental Tobacco Smoke) research as a long-term cause of increased cancer and heart problem rates in the community - especially among office workers and children living with smoking parents. It advanced industry-friendly positions on a wide range of topics, including global warming, smoking, phthalates, and pesticides.

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This website defines a new religious ideology to which its author adheres. The author feels that the falsification of reality outside personal experience has created a populace unable to discern propaganda from reality and that this has been done purposefully by an international corporate cartel through their agents who wish to foist a corrupt version of reality on the human race. Religious intolerance occurs when any group refuses to tolerate religious practices, religious beliefs or persons due to their religious ideology. This web site marks the founding of the religion aptly named The Truth of the Way of Life - a rational religion based on reason which requires no leap of faith, accepts no tithes, has no supreme leader, no church buildings and in which each and every individual is encouraged to develop a personal relation with God through the pursuit of the knowledge of reality in the hope of curing the spiritual corruption that has enveloped the human spirit. The tenets of The Truth of the Way of Life are spelled out in detail on this web site by the author. Violent acts against individuals due to their religious beliefs in America is considered a “hate crime.”

This web site in no way condones violence. To the contrary the intent here is to reduce the violence that is already occurring due to the international corporate cartels desire to control the human race. The international corporate cartel already controls the world central banking system, mass media worldwide, the industrial military complex of America and is responsible for the collapse of morals, the elevation of self-centered behavior and the destruction of global ecosystems. Civilization is based on cooperation. Cooperation does not occur at the point of a gun.

American social mores and values have declined precipitously over the last century as the corrupt international cartel has garnered more and more power. This power rests in the ability to deceive the populace in general through mass media by pressing emotional buttons which have been preprogrammed into the population through prior mass media psychological operations. The results have been the destruction of the family and the destruction of social structures that do not adhere to the corrupt international elites vision of a perfect world. Through distraction and coercion the direction of thought of the bulk of the population has been directed toward solutions proposed by the corrupt international elite that further consolidates their power and which further their purposes.

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