You are currently browsing the daily archive for February 11, 2008.
Because the old one below got “stale.” Like the discussion hasn’t been stale for months?
Anyway, hopefully this one can be stretched out until the trial reconvenes a week from Wednesday. Try not to play with matches. Happy bickering.
The Chronicle is upbeat about the potential. Local activists have been very much involved on the process. I was thinking it sounded a bit Utopian early on, but something might actually come of this.
But bankruptcy rules have opened the door to another option: New bidders with offers to snap up the land and Pacific Lumber’s world of mills, a power plant, schools, shops and the small company town of Scotia, built up during 100 years of operation. Selling off these holdings could mean harm to hundreds of families tied to Pacific Lumber, acquired by Maxxam in a junk-bond takeover in 1986.
One outside bid is headed by the Nature Conservancy, a blue-ribbon group that has lined up financial and lumber firms in a team that promises to preserve many of the oldest trees and cut the remaining stands over time. It would make permanent the timber cutting policies forced on Maxxam that now have a 42-year life.
The second bid is brought by the Mendocino Redwood Company, owned by the billionaire Fisher family, which founded the Gap clothing chain. This bid would unite the state’s two biggest redwood companies, and its leaders pledge to follow careful tree-cutting practices.
With either bid, the potential is enormous for maintaining a forest that operates in harmony with environmental groups and timber economics. The bids would keep jobs, taxes, and business flowing in a region where the once-dominant lumber business is in decline. And it wouldn’t call for the costly, unrealistic solutions of a massive government buyout or a logging ban. “Nobody wants a 200,000-acre park,” said Paul Mason, deputy director of the state Sierra Club.
The editorial goes on to praise Gov. Schwarzenegger’s involvement. ISF director John Rogers has been very involved in the process and he seemed optimistic in my last conversation with him.
Stay tuned.
I’m very sorry to see him go. I was raised in his Congressional district and while my family was always at odds with his cold war stances (he was a Hungarian who had survived the Holocaust and escaped Iron Curtain rule), we were always very much behind his domestic agenda.
I may have some more to say later.
While picking up my bagel and coffee at Flavors this morning I opened up the February issue of Greenfuse, which Paul Encimer and Kathy Epling put together out of Redway. This month’s issue contains a December post from an anonymous blogger in Iran identified in the paper as “The Persian – He is a young writer in Iran who is fond of good restaurants and intelligent discussion.”
So as soon as I got to the office I word searched a phrase and located the blog and post. I’m sure the young writer won’t mind if I post the whole piece here.
I’m not quick on the trigger. Especially in blogging about politics. So excuse me if you hear a hot news about Iran and I don’t give any comment on it. Sometimes I find a guilty conscience, like the times leftist and reformist students are imprisoned and tortured and here I write about blue sky of Tehran. But the truth is I’m too lazy and at the same time too frustrated to write about foreign and domestic diplomacy in Iran. Another reason is that security agencies are trying to tighten the cordon around political bloggers (I’m not sure if they have an eye on English blogs). So I must be watchful.
I just try to tell you what really happens in Iran. Good and bad. Not black and not just white. Intellectuals, parties and social groups are struggling for a better life, a better country. Nobody is afraid of shouting and criticizing here, even if they face severe punishments. But the reform process has become too snail-paced in my opinion.
And keep something really important in mind. The Islamic Republic is truely a byzantine regime. The dynamism of power is really complex. There are various centers of power struggling for supremacy, whether reformist, fundamentalist, conservative… Their struggle creates an opening for people to protest. So don’t think of the gamut of statesmen as a bunch of oppressive mullahs trying to crack down every dissident. We have clergymen which are way more open-minded than laymans like Ahmadinejad. Liberal, secular clergymen.
Light is still glimmering at the end of the tunnel.
The more recent posts focus on women’s rights. I’m not clear on the sex of the blogger, but the less that is known by all the safer s/he is.
The magazine cover was included in this post from the archives. The blog dates back to 2002, but it looks like the writing really took off in 2007. There are some interesting links as well.
But hey, the blogs are a bad thing, right? Because someone can call you names anonymously. Wouldn’t the world be a much better place if the whole technology was tossed? I’m sure there are Mullahs who think so.
Thank you Paul and Kathy for bringing our attention to the blog.
MSNBC is calling it for Obama. Maine was supposed to be the one realistic shot Clinton had for a win in February after Super Tuesday. And he won it big.
In Portland, waterlogged Democrats carrying “Obama” and “Hillary” signs waited to get into the citywide caucus at Portland High School in separate lines that snaked nearly three city blocks in opposite directions.
Colin Johnson, an Obama supporter, said the Illinois senator is not a typical politician. “I’m convinced he’s a once-in-a-generation leader,” he said.
The Clinton spin will be that he does well in caucuses, but not as well in primaries outside the south or midwest. Or Connecticut or Delaware. Or Utah.
He’s expected to sweep the Chesapeake Bay primary (Virginia, Maryland, D.C.) on Tuesday with double digit wins in each. The Clinton campaign has been trying to soften the blow with press statements saying they don’t expect to win anything until March 4 in Texas and Ohio. But it’s hard to sell the “it’s-all-going-as-should-be-expected” meme when you’re firing your campaign manager.
After Tuesay, all that’s left in February are the Hawaii caucuses and Wisconsin primary. Hawaii is probably a foregone conclusion given the vaunted Obama caucus advantage (influenced by zealotrous supporters) and the demographics, but Wisconsin should test the Clinton theory that Obama can’t win a big state primary outside of the south absent a huge black population. But they’re already trying to lower expectations. Obama isn’t spinning on expectations anymore. I think his campaign is beyond that. He’s looking to snowball right through Ohio and Texas with wins in each, including inroads into the Hispanic community in Texas. If he does that, even if he doesn’t have the delegates he’ll have some serious selling points to the Super Delegates and DNC bigwigs who’ll be pushing for some closure come April or May.
Addendum: Obama also won a Grammy.
The spread is a little surprising, but I was pretty certain Obama would win when I saw these photos of his rally in Bangor yesterday.
And what the hell happened with the ARG polls?
Clinton meanwhile is desperately playing for a grandstand ace-in-the-hole, but it may even be too late for that.
Second addendum: Another indication of the momentum, on my way home from Arcata listening to the radio tonight, Clinton is still talking about experience and work to be done (to contrast with Obama) while Obama was taking shots at McCain and Bush.
Third addendum: Maryland has a right wing alternative newspaper called the St. Mary Times. I almost never agree with their political positions, but I love the prose. The editor is sort of a right wing Bruce Anderson. In this column the editor endorses Huckabee for his opposition to the IRS, and Clinton because she’s a smart woman and Obama doesn’t hold his hand right during the National Anthem. It’s very straightforward and refreshingly blunt, even if it does kind of ramble along in slightly random train of thought.
She really is a smart operator, but a committed socialist. Obama? Who ever heard of him prior to two years ago and who in the hell wants to vote for a guy that has a problem with putting an American flag in his lapel and doesn’t know to put his hand over his heart when the National Anthem is being played.
He spent one year in the Senate before he thought he would offer himself to SAVE America. From what? Hillary? For all the guff she takes and we love being a contributor, she couldn’t do any worse at running this nation than the 43 men who have already been in the job. Perhaps its time for a woman to be President, but she is just too damn liberal. But she and Obama are the only ones left standing from the primary process and she is heads and shoulders better than him.
Democrats should vote for Hillary, she offers the best shot at winning and she would have no trouble telling everyone what to do and to make sure the whole village raises the idiots. After this is over, Reagan Democrats need to get behind McCain and make sure he wins. It’s a shame to have to deal with the Maryland Republicans as most of them are real bozos, but really, can you imagine who Hillary would appoint to the Supreme Court? God forbid.
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