AZ Daily Star continues coverage of Jaguar's death

As the Arizona Daily Star continues to cover the death of Arizona Jaguar Macho B, evidence has emerged that researchers from the state Fish and Game Department intended to trap a Jaguar but told the public that Macho B's capture was unintentional.

In a tragic and cruel case of messing with Mother Nature the 12 year old cat was lured with female jaguar poop, captured and apparently injured, then captured again and euthanized by vets at the Phoenix zoo.

The Star has covered the story almost daily. Today's story has video that shows how cruel this capture was. The Star pretty much summed up my feelings about this incident:

Some environmental groups such as the Sky Island Alliance and Center for Biological Diversity have questioned or opposed capture on the grounds that its risks to the rare animal outweighed the benefits.

IMO, scientific study is important in preserving rare species and in measuring the effects of such asinine and destructive things as the giant iron wall BushCo was trying build along the Mexico border. But it's completely stupid to lie about your research and then to bungle it and kill the jaguar you're trying to study.

Arizona losing two important protectors and leaders

I'll quote from today's AZ Daily Star artcle:

Grijalva, an outspoken critic of President Bush on land-use and environmental policy, has introduced several pieces of legislation to protect federal lands, including trying to stop uranium mining on a million acres near the Grand Canyon and to halt future mining claims in the Coronado National Forest.
And just Friday, Politico.com reported Grijalva was "emerging as a top contender" for the post, "according to sources close to the transition."

Raul Grijalva is the kind of Congressman who has the Bush Administration crooks seething mad. Grijalva has constantly spoken out against BushCo wrongs. And Napolitano has kept the right-wing moron dominated State Legislature from ruining Arizona again and again.

First it's Napolitano, for Homeland Security, and now it's Grijalva for Interior Secratary! We were so overjoyed here in So. AZ when Obama won. Big grins all over Tucson the next day. And it's nice that 2 of our best and brightest will most likely answer the call to serve the wider scene on the national level with the Obama administration. But they'll leave a gap behind, that is for sure.

They are throwing us to the wolves here man! At least Gabby Giffords beat that customer of Karl Rove Tim Bee.

Arizona is truly at risk because of the State Legislature, which is half-full of the kind of folks who'd arm every half-wit drunk in the state, allow guns on college campuses, and who feel we can waste the environment cuz it don't matter cuz Jesus is coming. ...and gonna sweep up all them straight-laced, god-fearing, right wing extremist morons, I guess.

Without Napolitano and champion Bush-fighter Raul Grijalva, the rest of us are even more vulnerable to the machinations of folks who think knowledge is a dangerous thing. These folks would gut our State University system and use our tax money to fatten the pockets of the rich. If they had their way dancing would be illegal, there'd be a law saying you have to go to their same church every Sunday, and the cops could stop you and check your citizenship, not to mention your pockets, all day long.

moderation and comments

just in case someone says the rightwing is bitter


sexuality mixed with domination mixed with violence- the unconscious side of the Arizona legislature's gun-mania

I've enabled comments on this blog again- for folks w/ google accounts. I've also enabled moderation. This blog gets only 5-10 hits per day, but my virulent Anti-BushCo posting and my criticism of Arizona State legislature's moronic attempts to arm every half-wit yahoo in the state and allow those arms to be carried w/o permit in schools and college campuses, has caused some real creeps to come outta the woodwork. Like slimy insects eating your food, they post reasonable-sounding but twisted arguments and long, LONG blocks of text full of yet more twisted arguments, designed to give the American rightwing extremist spiel the look of academic legitimacy. For a time I considered a separate, "Moron blog," where I'd offload the crap and comment on what I thought the commenter's perlocutionary intentions were. However it never got that thick.

But I was particularly offended by someone who defended arming school campuses in the wake of a rash of college mass murders, like 5 people are going to pop up and become instant cowboys and prevent the crazy guy w/ 15 guns and an intricate attack plan from carrying out his suicide assault.

My feeling is that regulations and laws are there for a reason. If you can justify getting a carry-permit, fine. However, too many seriously mentally ill folks are ending up w/ arsenals. The latest being the Delos case, which I blogged on below, which could have escalated into something much more serious than a rolling shooting spree across the Northside of Tucson. For crying out loud, it was bad enough- he killed a good police officer, wounded a few others, and shot up his neighbor's front doors! Over barBQ smoke!

The guy's blog or myspace was covered w/ pics of him and his rifles, and he'd scared the shit outta former women friends. And the smug asshole I mentioned above commented w/ the argument that deregulating handguns would prevent such things from happening. The crazy guy had rifles which could kill from a mile off, could hold dozens of bullets. Offended, I was.

Intentions of this guy? A troll. Just doing whatever to uphold the appearance of the rightwing "cause," which includes being stupid as shit, ignorant, and proud of it, and calling on pseudoscience, twisted words, twisted logic, attempts and twisted concepts to win an argument and change minds. That shit's for idiots.

Arizona conservatives try to liberalize gun laws again.

In a further affront to the basic principles of civilization, Arizona Republicans, this time led by Rep. John Kavanagh of Fountain Hills, have come up with a bill that would allow concealed guns in cars- whether a concealed-weapons permit is involved or not. Almost thumbing their noses at another in a series of school campus gun attacks, the great right wing minds of Arizona have now united themselves to not only allow concealed weapons on school campuses, but to allow concealed weapons in cars too. Brilliant. Thanks for endangering more of the public, you fucking morons.

In this article, the AZ Daily Star details the brilliant logical process by which Kavanagh justifies this timely legislative action. It's sad that these great legal minds have a role in protecting the public.

Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, said the current law regulating where someone can have a gun is confusing, not only to individuals but even to police.
"You shouldn't have to have a table of yes-no locations taped to your dashboard so you can figure out where you lay the weapon whether it's legal or not," he said.
Kavanagh said the current law can make a criminal out of an otherwise innocent citizen. For example, he said, a person without a permit might put a weapon on a car seat, where it is visible, only to have a jacket fall over it inadvertently. Or a driver could hit the brakes, causing a formerly visible gun to slide under the seat.

For Christssakes, ya dimwit, Arizona law already allows you to put your six-shooter in the glove compartment or trunk.

Karl Rove consulted in Arizona congressional race

I got a creepy feeling when I heard Republican AZ State Senate president Tim Bee was planning to run for the very fine young Gabrielle Giffords' seat in the U.S. Congress. Giffords, a democrat, won Jim Kolbe's seat, and has been busy doing great things for Arizona and the U.S. ever since. Naturally, Arizona Republican morons, like Tim Bee, apparently, are not happy with such positive events. It was with further distress that I read in this article that Karl "Mr. Dethroned Neocon Asshole" Rove was in Tucson the other day. The scourge of scourges, the worst of the worst, except of course Lord Cheney. Two more things added to my unhappy feeling: One, Bee ran straight to Rove for advice in the upcoming campaign. Rove's advice in such matters would no doubt be some kind of dirty trick, smear campaign, or other form of widespread lying. Two, Arizona Democrats did not like the fact that the scumbag Rove was in Arizona at all, and protested about it. The problem was the Star's gutless way of reporting what happened, using standard Rush Limbaugh/Fox News code words:

Democrats, meanwhile, became completely obsessed with Rove's trip to the Old Pueblo, devoting an ample amount of their week to drumming up all their hatred for him and allowing the brief visit to get them all down-in-the-dumps.

Right, it's just hatred, those bad Liberal commies just like to hate. Forget how pissed most people in the country are about the things Rove and his ilk have done to the wonderful place we call home. It's just hate. No reason. Nope.

So, you can bet Rove was up to no good here in Arizona, something much more insidious than the fundraising dinner reported in the Star. So today, this story in the Star reports that Bee, the very man who ran to consult Rove for advice, is proposing something: a change to the State constitution that would divide the people of Arizona, and support discrimination against gay people. A constitutional amendment to ban same sex marriage will show up on the November ballot- If Arizona Republicans get their way. Who's hating now? Kolbe was gay, you morons.

Now where do you think that divisive idea came from? People like Rove are adept at polarizing people, causing fights and disagreements, problems, trouble, destruction everywhere they go. And Arizona's right-wing morons in the State government are eager to jump on the bandwagon, in denial about the fact that people like Giffords, who work to undo some of the damage caused by the Bush Administration, are getting elected.

Ethnic Studies under attack in Arizona high schools

Tom Horne, Arizona's Superintendent of Public Instruction, citing concerns about "values" and "ethnic chauvinism," is apparently seeking to dismantle a very successful Tucson Unified School District ethnic studies program.

TO HIS CREDIT, Mr. Horne does play a mean classical piano, is taking Spanish classes, and is also entirely pissed at voter-driven tax cuts that harm Arizona school funding.

HOWEVER. The ethnic studies program under attack has resulted in statistically proven success among high school students. The program is designed for Latino, Black, Native American and Asian students. Other students who are interested also take part. Quoting from this article in AZ Daily Star by George B. Sánchez:

TUSD's ethnic studies department was created in 2004 as an umbrella for its black, American Indian, Pan-Asian and raza studies programs.

The ethnic studies programs heighten students' understandings of different cultures, offer a critical perspective of U.S. and world history and bolster cultural identity for some, [Augustin] Romero [coordinator of TUSD's ethnic studies department] said.

Celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, raza studies has significantly expanded during the past five years.

About 900 students are officially enrolled in raza studies classes at four high schools. Teachers who have taken part in raza studies workshops are able to incorporate the department's lesson plans into various classes. Romero estimated that about 1,400 students are served daily by the program.

(Sorry the Star's links only last a couple weeks.) Our man Horne, however, who also opposes bilingual education and women's studies, is concerned about "ethnic chauvinism."

...concerned about what he calls "ethnic chauvinism," which he described as "teaching people to make their primary personal identity the ethnic group they were born into rather than identifying as an individual in terms of character and ability."

Mr. Horne has a problem with an academically excellent high school program that's not based on his own culture, in other words! Apparently, to him it's "cultural chauvinism" if something the school district is teaching is not based on a certain culture.

The Star's Ernesto Portillo Jr. also rails against Horne and the xenophobic attack on education in this op ed piece. See also this Star editorial against Horne and his attempt to suck-up to Arizona bigots. The Tucson Citizen spanks Horne's ass in this timely editorial. The local Fox station has of course linked the ethnic studies program with protests against local law enforcement's handling of the case of a student who was not only "an illegal," but also (gasp) smoking pot. Link to Fox-twist here.

Phoenix New Times editor and CEO arrested

The arrests appear related to retaliation by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The Phoenix New Times reported that Grand Jury subpoenas were used by Maricopa county to track readers of the Times' stories related to Arpaio, and to scoop up reporter's notes, tapes and publications. The New Times also has had a series of reports on Arpaio's doings in the Phoenix area. Hm.

Apparently the paper is involved in a criminal case for publishing personal contact information about the Sheriff a few years ago. The grand jury subpoenas reek of spying, intimidation, and trampling of the 1st Amendment, so the paper felt obligated to disregard secrecy laws and let the public know about this little facet of life in Phoenix. What is the Press for, right?

Quoting the editor & CEO via a local paper:

“the authorities” probably believe revealing the subpoenas is against the law, “but there are moments when civil disobedience is merely the last option.”

"We're not harboring state secrets, we’re not harboring terrorists, we’re just straight up reporting on issues they don’t want us to report on.”

Read the article here in the East Valley Tribune. I've linked to the Phoenix New Times and recommend reading their articles about the Sheriff and the current tactics Maricopa County is using against the Press.

Welcome to Arizona, everybody!

-->UPDATE 10/19/07 P.M. John Peter Zenger would approve. The Maricopa County Attorney has dropped charges against the Phoenix pressmen and stated publicly that the prosecutors involved in the spurious and insane charges had overstepped their bounds in a major fashion. Quoting from the (Phoenix-area) East Vally Tribune: "Citing “serious missteps” by Dennis Wilenchik that led to the arrests of the paper’s top two executives, Thomas also dumped legal efforts to force New Times editors and reporters to turn over notes, emails and other research related to stories involving county Sheriff Joe Arpaio, as well as information about the alternative newsweekly’s Internet readers. To reiterate, John Peter Zenger would be proud, and is mostly likely SITTING UP in his grave, with his fist raised.

Arizona Sonora Desert Museum takes down Mexican flag after complaints and threats

The Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, a Tucson-area educational and environmental resource that's been around since the 1950s, will no longer fly the Mexican flag, or the U.S. flag, because of complaints and threats by local morons over the Mexican flag.

This article in the Arizona Daily Star states that death threats were actually made against the museum's animals in recent months.

I'm sorry to say it but this represents an accurate picture of the type of person that's receiving equal coverage in the newspaper around here lately.

However, the good news is that smart money says this kind of bullshit represents nothing like a random sampling of public opinion around here. It's highly likely the Star's passively-active dramatic coverage points to the actions of an extremely small, xenophobic, over-reactive group of citizens. In fact if you look at the subtext of the article it appears someone named Kaluzniacki who sits on the museum board was instrumental in the museum's gutless decision. True to form, the Star does nothing to reveal Kaluzniacki's political ties, nor does the Star report on the veracity or sources of the complaints the Desert Museum says it has received.

Of course in typical Star fashion the actions of the fringe are presented as some kind of legitimate occurrence, as if the xenophobic attacks against the Mexican flag should somehow naturally be countered by letters to the Museum in favor of flying the Mexican flag.

-->UPDATE 10/13/07 After hundreds of people called in to complain, both flags are going back up. A museum official said:

"We are going to explain that it is part of the museum's heritage dating back to the early '50s, and the flags are flown in great part to represent the binational conservation and educational endeavors of the museum regarding the Sonoran Desert,"

Rosemont mine PR hatchet-job reported as fact in the Arizona Daily Star

The photograph is a beloved natural area south of Tucson. Rosemont Ranch is at the edge of the area's highest mountain range, the 9200 ft. Santa Rita range. A copper company has claimed the right to create an open pit copper mine to remove Rosemont Ranch, swallow the area whole, and leave a giant pit behind. Copper mines typically release tons of airborne contaminants, and let tons of chemical pollution seep into the aquifer. Opposition to the mine has been widespread in the area. The only voice in favor not obviously associated with the mining company itself has been the Tucson Chamber of commerce which has made such inane statements as this:

"They've got to mine there, because that's where the copper is," [Jack] Camper said. "You can't lock up everything. If you do, you lose your tax base, and we can't afford to live here."

In this article, which is not quite a pro-mining puff-piece, and which does present a watered-down version of opposing arguments in the body of the story, the Arizona Daily Star presents as fact ridiculous arguments created in a "report" authored by a company obviously on the payroll of the mining interest. The journalist does not present much information about the author of the report or his employer. Instead a quote is given from one the many Pima County officials opposed to the blatant environmental destruction:

"It's not an objective report," said county Supervisor Ray Carroll, whose district includes the area where the mine would be developed.
"It's a glowing, rosy report that promotes their interests," he said. "It's almost as if the analysis was put together by the sales department of Augusta Resource."

Ok, so wouldn't it be normal for a journalist to do a little background on "Western Economic Analysis Center?" Well that's not what you get in the Star. What you do get is the following headline:

Long-term impact debated
Proposed Rosemont copper mine would add jobs, revenue, economist reports

For more balanced coverage, and to get a much more realistic picture of what is going on and what kind of company we are dealing with here, please see coverage by Tim Hull and Tim Vanderpool in the Tucson Weekly:

Glass Half-Empty - The company that wants to mine in the Rosemont Valley is promoting water plans that may be all wet By TIM HULL. (08-09-2007)

Fierce Opposition - The controversy over a proposed Pima County mine proves copper is no longer king By TIM VANDERPOOL. (06-14-2007)

Rosemont Rising - Can this mine fight turn a national tide? By TIM VANDERPOOL. (03-08-2007)

Dreams and Duds - Dapper miners with their eyes on Rosemont Valley get thumped by Pima County By TIM VANDERPOOL. (01-25-2007)

University of Arizona Business School involved in U.S. Military project to search the Interent for "...threats"

My point here is the Star's language makes it look like basically the U.S. Military is gearing up to start tracking anybody who opposes Bush and what his administration has done to mess up our country.

There is probably no better time or place to say that those of us who love this country feel it's very important to speak out in opposition to Bush and his policies. The intention is to prevent BushCo-sponsored destruction of the environment, destruction of the infrastructure, destruction of the economy, destruction of the Bill of Rights & Constitution, destruction of healthy and productive foreign relations.

This is a democracy after all, and we are free to exercise our right to free speech as we see fit.

"The possibilities are endless," [Hsinchun] Chen...director of the University of Arizona's Artificial Intelligence Lab... said... The UA is collaborating with various federal intelligence agencies and essentially taking orders for what Dark Web will focus on.

Wow. Taking orders, huh? Focusing on whom? The article at the Arizona Daily Star focuses on actual threats- mass killings committed by extreme fundamentalists against ordinary, unsuspecting, innocent people. But further down the subtext gets scarier.

The various agencies he works with on Dark Web have their own unique uses for the data.

Also, the University of Arizona's Eller College of Management, under which the programs mentioned in the article are operating, is, simply put, the U's business college. Isn't that about profit? Isn't this kind of along the same lines of having a for-profit "private security company" involved in law enforcement? It might be a good time to ask how many private, for-profit interests are involved in so-called Homeland Security.

UPDATE-- 9/27/07-- More information and links are available here at Wired's Danger Room blog. Also, the wonderful Boing Boing's Xeni reported last winter on similar efforts, sticking more closely to the analysis of actual threats.

From the Star:

Terrorists use the Web as a virtual university of how-to videos for making bombs, enticing recruits and plotting attacks — but UA researchers are zeroing in on them.
UA's Dark Web project scours the Internet to listen in on terrorist chat rooms, untangle the vast network of extremist links and spot threats emerging daily.

That gives Tucson the world's largest database of terrorist-generated Web sites, a collection of more than a half billion pages, postings, images and videos — a new tool for the military and U.S. agencies to use in assessing threats.

And now the UA will use a $1.5 million federal grant to look deeper into one pressing danger: how the Web teaches extremists to set up improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, the roadside bombs often used against U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

"Our young soldiers, before they're being deployed, will know the IEDs through the enemies' eyes," said Hsinchun Chen, director of the University of Arizona's Artificial Intelligence Lab, which is three years into its Dark Web work.
UA will now get even "closer to the action," Chen said.

The Army's military intelligence school at Fort Huachuca is also working to gather intelligence on IEDs.

Officials there can't comment specifically on Dark Web, but fort spokeswoman Tanja Linton noted that the Internet makes the job of intelligence officers more challenging.

"As a rule, obviously, having a better understanding of the enemy is always a goal of military intelligence," Linton said. "The better we are at identifying terrorists, the better off we are.

"Now we're fighting people who don't wear uniforms," making it especially tough to root them out, she added.

Sophisticated analysis
The UA is collaborating with various federal intelligence agencies and essentially taking orders for what Dark Web will focus on. "The possibilities are endless," Chen said.

In cyber-terms, Dark Web is now about at version 2.5 and moving toward version 3.0, Chen said, growing savvier along with its prey.
Its success lies in the sophistication it brings to analyzing social linkages between groups and the ability to identify and track individual authors by their writing styles, Chen said.

That component, called Writeprint, helps combat the Web's anonymity by studying thousands of lingual, structural and semantic features in online postings. With 95 percent certainty, it can attribute multiple postings to a single author.
From there, Dark Web has the ability to track a single person over time as his views become radicalized.

The project analyzes which types of individuals might be more susceptible to recruitment by extremist groups, and which messages or rhetoric are more effective in radicalizing people.

In one study, Chen found terrorist Web sites and U.S. government sites are equally sophisticated on the technical level. But terrorist Web sites are about 10 times richer in multi-media content like pictures and video and also about 10 times more effective in creating a community. Terrorist sites are quick to provide answers and instruction when their users ask questions, he said.

50,000 terror sites on Web
Chen estimates there are now more than 50,000 terrorist-led or terrorism-related Web sites, with new ones cropping up every day, especially in Arabic, but also in many other languages.

At its start, Dark Web had the capability to collect and analyze Internet activity in English, Spanish and Arabic.

It's now branching out into other languages, with German and French already incorporated into the system, and Chinese, Farsi and Dutch among about 10 others in the works.

"We have to increase the sophistication of our language recognition," Chen said.
In the future, Chen envisions Dark Web moving from a research prototype into a tool agencies can use independently.

The various agencies he works with on Dark Web have their own unique uses for the data. One group is looking at which ideas are most effective in recruiting, while another is analyzing the spread of training information.

Deception-detection research
The Dark Web team, made up of about five professors and eight graduate students, isn't the only group of UA researchers bringing computer expertise to the national security effort.

Led by Jay Nunamaker, UA's Center for the Management of Information is using subtle indicators in language use, vocal qualities like pitch or pauses, and an analysis of gestures and motions to build a complex model of how people behave when they're being deceptive.

"We take those three cues and fuse them to get a signal of truth or deception," said Nunamaker, whose team, like Chen's, is within the Management Information Systems Department of UA's Eller College of Management.

The next step is to refine the project so it can adjust for different situations and cultures, Nunamaker said.

"Everybody wants a silver bullet, one super cue that will identify truth or deception, but the problem is far too complex for that," he said. "You have to identify the context you're dealing with."

The UA is expanding on the deception-detection research with three recent grants, starting with $823,000 from the Defense Academy for Credibility Analysis. Researchers also are teaming with three other universities on a $1.2 million grant to study human and social dynamics, and are working with West Virginia University on a $350,000 project to pair biometric indicators with the deception techniques.

"There's no single technique that's going to identify a terrorist," Nunamaker said. "It's with all the technologies taken together that you're going to be able to make some progress."

anti-war protest sign mysteriously emerges

Kudos to the Star for having the guts to report on this. Photo above is by the Star's Kelly Presnell.

At a building being refurbished in downtown Tucson, a large anti-war sign from the Viet Nam era has slowly come to the surface on the building's west side. The sign says "Help End The War By Dec. 31, 1971. Join Common Cause," and is approximately 4 x 7 feet. The building is at Stone and Alameda. The City's Dept. of Transportation is the new tenant. The department, at the urging of the Tucson Museum of Art's Executive Director, will not paint over the sign.

The anti-war movement was strong in Tucson in the late 60s and early 70s. Congressman Morris K. Udall spoke out against the war as early as 1967. This Udall quote is from the sidebar to the AZ Daily Star article about the sign:

"This nation has the brains, the know-how, the courage, the imagination to begin to extricate itself from a war we should never have blundered into,"

Sound familiar? By 1971 protesters in the thousands appeared with some regularity in the University of Arizona area.

These days you're more likely to see well-funded anti-abortion circuses, "Christians" handing out leaflets, psycho mall-preachers, aggressive military recruiters, and gospel bands on the open air stage.

The early 70s anti-war sign, which as it turns out was painted by a wealthy young liberal who owned the building at the time, has obvious historical significance, but also has a timely element. That people started noticing the sign now, and that the sign will be preserved, says a lot about popular sentiment concerning the so-called war. The sign had been painted over years ago, and took its time re-emerging, but it chose now to become noticeable.

As it turns out, the building's owner, one Gene Vinik, who died in 1999, had also painted another sign on the building's east side. This sign, which was painted over years and years ago, will never come back. The sign, which had the building's tenant, a bank, threatening to move out, was a giant peach. It said "Impeach the President."

Im-PEACH. Get it? Go Mr. Vinik! A timely fellow, messages and thoughts back from the grave, saying what everybody is thinking right now.

Star article 2 on the story is here.

An aside: links to Star articles are not permanent, as I've discovered going back over some of my old posts. I'll remedy this by quoting more, & going back and trying to replace some of the dead links with links to stories from the Tucson Weekly &tc, whose material stays on the web permanently, and, like an archive should, remain accessible and a matter of historical record.

Pima County tries to prevent mindless destruction of Davidson Caynon

The Arizona State Land department is committed to the mindless rape of pristine desert wilderness on a grand scale. Its latest effort to allow mining in a wilderness area on the flanks of a 9400 ft. mountain range south of Tucson is a good example of the typical AZ state land department way of doing business.

Most of it seems to center around Mark Winkleman, the department's current commissioner. Since he's entered office there has been a strong push for destruction of parcels of land best left alone. Conservation, environment, quality of life & pollution issues have been consistently ignored by the department in recent years.

The latest development (no pun intended) is detailed in small part here in the Arizona Daily Star. Winkleman and crew have crassly stated that the rape of this part of the desert is nobody's business but the land department's, and that the department is above legal challenges, and presumably, the law. Winkleman is allowing an open pit mine in the middle of a natural high desert area that rises up to the Santa Rita mountains, a lush sky island, part of the Coronado National Forest.

With this fucking moron working for the state of Arizona, it won't be long before we are facing the same kind of environmental devastation that folks in West Virgina are facing with so-called mountaintop removal.

State Trust land was purchased many years ago, to be leased to ranchers and eventually sold, and the money diverted to education in Arizona. However, most state land purchases are now in the middle of wilderness areas or national forests, or have become desert outposts in the midst of massive-scale housing developments.

A great example of the latter is the nationally known 3 square mile mountain biking area known as Fantasy Island. Opposition to the blading and grading of this area has resulted in an official OK to keep about 2/3 of it free of development. This is one fight where Republicans and Democrats came out together in force- mountain biking unites us, the desert unites us, the quality of life we share in Arizona unites us.

After all, true Republicans are in favor of sensible stewardship of the land, and conservation of natural resources. It's the new breed of republicans that's so bent on short term profit and the destruction that results. Everyone should realize that this is the only planet we have, and destroying it, does not, to put it in republican terms, make good economic sense.

A line must be drawn somewhere to stop the wholesale destruction of Arizona's deserts. Whether the sale of State Trust land to developers actually benefits education in Arizona has been the subject of a lot of argument around here. Evidence points to Winkleman and crew being heavily under the influence of developers and other industrial interests that have traditionally contributed to the destruction of Arizona's land.

Law in Arizona states that recreational use of State Trust land OK with a nominally priced 1 year permit. Mountain bikers for years went to the little restored house in downtown Tucson, shelled out their 15 bucks, got the permit and headed toward the mountain biking trail on the east side. A couple weeks ago I went downtown to renew my permit, discovered that the office had been closed down. Yesterday I looked up the new State land office, which is on the top floor of a tall downtown building. Inside the office was a richly paneled desk, deep carpet, and a million dollar view. The glizty receptionist apologized and told me the office no longer issues permits. You have to send the form and the money up to Phoenix now. This takes the place of some folks who used to simply sign and stamp the permit.

This kind of service also represents the new tack of the state land department under Winkleman.

Winkleman, get out. You're not serving Arizona in the least.

Mesa city coucilperson threatened for not pledging

Mesa, Arizona city councilperson Tom Rawles received threats after not standing during the pledge of allegiance. He's refusing to stand and pledge until the U.S. backs out of the so-called war in Iraq. The story is relayed in the 1/26/07 Arizona daily star article here.

I guess it's the kind of thing that could happen in any state, but to me it seems like another one of those "welcome to life in Arizona" things. Just a state where stupidity runs wild like the wolf used to. Stupidity and moronism as wild entities in a place where they get plenty of support.

I guess the argument made toward Rawles is that he's some kind of traitor for not buying the BushCo ready-made conceptual distortions lock stock and barrel. Like Rawles is against the United States. A counter argument would be that the military is for our defense, and Iraq was not a threat. Why weaken the military by sending half of it over there? And if the U.S. is all about freedom, what is wrong with people demonstrating that they are sick of the lies and deceptions the Bush Administration has pushed on us? Recruitment is also an important thing in the armed forces, and how are the best and brightest going to choose the service if they get sent overseas for no good reason?

San Manuel smelter towers come crashing down

For many of us in Arizona copper mining is a symbol of environmental destruction and pollution and the rape of the wilderness. At the same time, mines like the one in San Manuel, northwest of the 9000 foot Catalina mountains that tower over Tucson, created a nice town, lots of jobs with decent pay, and a facet of Arizona culture where people came together and did what people are best at doing- being people, working, sharing peace love and family time, and of course, beer. Lots of beer, I'm sure of that.

The 500 foot twin towers of the San Manuel mine were blown up yesterday January 17 2007, as the mine up there finally was shut down by its Aussie parent company. You can watch the video here at the Arizona Daily Star and see a thousand linear feet of smoke belching industrial equipment hit the dirt. I'd post it to uTube but I don't have Quicktime Pro.

I don't have data on the weight of the pollutants this mine and these towers put into the air. I don't have data on the extent of the mine's effort to clean and scrub the material that went into the air. I do not have data on the toxics that can be found underneath the tailings ponds of the mine.

I can tell you that in the late 70s and early 80s when local miners were on strike the air around Tucson was crystal clear and it looked like a whole different town. I can tell you that as some of the major mines have shut down the air has become clearer and clearer, but in the past 5 or so years more and more filled with auto exhaust. I can tell you that today mining companies continue to do everything they can, here and in northern Mexico, to get at their copper, to leave a wasteland behind, and pay their public relations folks pretty good salaries. I have also heard that precious stones are their real income, while copper is just their gravy, but that is only a rumor.

The venerable Arizona Daily Star published this nostalgic public relations puff-piece, which looks like it could have been written by copper company pr-types, the other day. The piece, which is factual but leaves out lots, also includes some great photos from the Star archives, some of which look like they were shot by Jack Sheaffer, a Star photographer who worked at the Star for around 30 years and whose photos did a nice job of capturing the essence around here somehow.

Arizona restaurant gets fined $5000 for dancing

Dale Bell, the owner of a Phoenix area bar and grill, said he'll take it step by step.

Read the story published in the Arizona Daily Star here.

The gist is that this guy was fined 5000 dollars because people were dancing at his restaurant. Welcome to Arizona, everybody! You can really see the dark ages in motion here, folks. Come to Arizona for your own history lesson!! I'm sure the Phoenix chamber of commerce is jumping all over this.

The restauranteur has enlisted the help of the Arizona chapter of the libertarian Institute for Justice. Hear hear. The Institute's main page states "IJ Litigates nationwide on behalf of individuals whose rights are being violated by government."

Tucson police accidentally leave explosives under elementary school desk

Here's another post about the t*rr*rism mentality gone wild, and local law enforcement getting emboldened & overstepping its bounds.

According to this article in the Arizona Daily Star, Tucson police were conducting bomb-search training at an elementary school. Not only is this stupid and insane, but they left explosives under a student's desk! Now that's crazy and whoever even had the idea about exposing an elementary school to bomb-search training, bringing in live explosives, euphamistically referred to as a "training aid" in the article, should not be in that line of work.

It just reeks of paranoia, and police overrunning the state, gone mad trying to root out imaginary terrorists hiding behind every tree.

Men with guns at the Polls in Arizona

See this AZ Daily Star article for a kid-gloves treatment of what is happening here on the Southside, the side of Tucson where most people speak (gasp) Spanish. We would be doing pretty good if this were the only incident of voter intimidation around here, and we would be doing better if we had a way to prove that there was no cheating, particularly in the Diebold-infested "voting machines." Yes, they are voting machines, and they do mechanically cast a whole lot of votes, but do they cast your vote or do they just respond to somebody's keyboard punches? Ask the Dieblold higher-up, who told the whole fucking nation a couple years ago he'd do whatever it took to make sure Bush won.

I have seen men with guns at the polls before. The last time was when we supposedly elected Fuhrer Bush. I was coming home from work, having voted at 7 that morning. I was walking by my polling place, and there stood a man with a short hair cut, and an obvious firearm at his side. He was about 10 feet from the door of the polling place. The firearm was covered in a holster, but you could tell what it was and you could tell the guy was putting on a very good "cop" act, w/o the badge, to the disgrace of all true cops, who are there to help folks, serve the public. The guy looked at me like he wanted to kick my ass. I was just walking by. I thought he was going to follow me or something.

In the Daily Star article I link above, the reporter describes a man with a gun, who is named but not described. An accompanying man with a camera, and a known anti-Hispanic/anti-immigration person with the armed man are described.

Rove: Trying to be a game-changer

In this 5/16/06 op-ed piece in the Washington Post, writer E.J. Dionne Jr. says you can tell by the way Rove lies that BushCo is running scared. Not in so many words. But the writer prints a few of Rove's choice Republican lies and handily and in plain language rips the lies to shreds.

The title of the piece is Rove vs. Reality. More like BushCo vs. reality. Rumsfeld teetering on the brink, Rove likely to get charged in the Plame leak, DeLay over the brink, the Ambramoff corruption scandal on and on.

What next?

Next it's going to be envirionmental crimes- see the story re: the closing of EPA libraries here in the Washington Post.

Meanwhile here in Tucson the biggest environmental crime to hit the news is the reclassification of the Pygmy Owl as not endangered, so that thousands upon thousands of acres of unspoiled Sonoran Desert can now be bladed and graded and replaced with shitty cookie-cutter houses. There are only 12 of these owls left in the Tucson area. Hopefully the lawsuit filed by the Center for Biological Diversity and the Defenders of Wildlife will succeed. Of course there's no mention of protecting this desert for what it is. Details are here in the Star.

Fantasy Island in Tucson

Unidentified dork out at the Tucson Mountains, opposite side of Tucson from Fantasy Island

One of my favorite mountain bike trails is Fantasy Island, about 10 miles from my house, located to the east of Davis Monthan AFB's "bone yard." Fantasy Island is full of cactuses and steep washes and rocks and lizards and old jack rabbits with gray muzzles. There's about 18 miles of trail there. The land was going to be developed, naturally, which around here means they scrape the desert bare- our Sonoran desert, a unique ecosystem, and one of the things us desert rats truly love- and put up ticky tacky houses. Local bikers and other community members fought back, joining up, writing letters, going to meetings, working with the city government and trying to work with the State Land Dept. The latest news, according to this AZ Daily Star article, which looks very encouraging, is that the state legislature has passed a resolution calling for Fantasy Island's preservation. The article quotes a Republican from Tucson, a Tom Paton, as saying it's important for the government to listen to and respresent the people. Way to go Mr. Paton. Right you are. The protest against ruining this huge strech of desert, which I put at about 3 square miles, was apparently quite large.

Republicans mountain bike too, and true Republicans are all for the preservation of nature. In this case a Republican argument can be made that having the Fantasy Island area preserved increases property value all around.

The State's resolution is non-binding, however, and the southern part of the mountain biking area (encompassing the Bunny Trail and the Snake Dance Loop) is supposedly going to be developed anyway, but the City of Tucson is behind the preservation measure, and has been working with Tucsonans on the issue for quite some time. The real snake is the State Land Dept, which has been somewhat secretive. They are the ones to watch out for- to many of us the State Trust Land situation is a slimey one, with a PR face and millions of dollars going somewhere but not where they'd like you to believe.

More about protesting against Republican policy in Tucson

Update, 4/20/06: the fuckin idiot who burned the Mexican Flag was arrested, according to the Star. They just mentioned it in passing and did not say why. Apparently 20 or so people attended a meeting and spoke out against the local police using pepper spray and etc, and that was the subject of the article.

It seems to particularly rile the state's backwards right wing legislators that youth have become interested in speaking out against Republican immigration policy. State Representative Jonathan Patton of Tucson is up in arms over local school district's use of buses to take kids back to school from protests. Patton is also busily working up the hocus-pocus machine against U.S. Representative Raúl Grijalva- one of the few Democrats not afraid to speak out against Bush and Company- for giving a speech to students at Tucson High School about the current immigration legislation and Grijalva's role in it. The speech was after Monday's protests. So a congressman with an Hispanic surname giving a speech to students in his district is enough to get the congressman on our good local Republican Jonathan Patton's shitlist! Wow. I can't think of a better illustration of stupidity and racism and attacking freedom of speech than this. I can't think of a better illustration of current trends in "Nuevo Republicanism" - stamp out debate and opposition, create a fuss like there's something wrong with it, divert attention away from the issue at hand, etc. etc.

The story in the Star I refer to above is here.

The Arizona Daily Wildcat, the University's daily, ran a couple stories about the Monday round of protesting- one about the local side of things and the other about state angle. 100,000 to 200,000 people turned out in Phoenix, by the way, depending on who ya talk to.

One of the stories included an excellent picture of what is apparently a pair of fools or professional troublemakers burning a Mexican flag in the middle of the protest. Just trying to get people pissed off and make everyone else look like fools, give the protest a dangerous, violent, unruly subtext.

According to one of the Wildcat stories the current Republican bill, HR 4437, would "require church and humanitarian aid organizations to check the citizenship of parishioners before they provide any assistance." So if you're a U.S. citizen, or anybody at all, and you go to a church and ask for help, you have to prove your citizenship. There you have current Republican philosophy in a nutshell- no ethics, no presumtion of privacy, no attempt to mind their own business.

But the Republicans in government, as many "real" Republicans will tell you, are actually supposed to represent us the people!! Not xenophobes, people who think everyone has to join their church "or else," or other whackos, but those of us who are a part of civil society, who acknowledge that we all want the same things in life from the government, etc. The protests over immigration seem to say a lot of people's voices are not being properly represented in the current round of Republican domination. One student put it succintly:

"I think that there needs to be a counter voice to the conservative right that has been pretty outspoken," said Brett Lovick, a Latin American studies graduate student. "I think that (conservatives) are a minority, but I think that they have had a much louder voice."