May 2008 Archives

The LA Times printed a heart wrenching page with 492 California war casualties listed on it. This kind of document Legislators should waive in their fists in the Congressional halls tomorrow. When will this madness stop?
Accompanying the list was a story about Riverside National Cemetery, the busiest cemetery in the Country for soldiers who aren't making it back from Iraq and Afghanistan alive. May they rest in peace.
I'd like to encourage some traffic at the site they put together: http://projects.latimes.com/wardead/

Folks at the Center for Biological Diversity are saying the following about the Tejon Ranch Deal:

One of the tragedies on the "deal" is what the environmental groups settled for on Centennial, gave Tejon ranch much more land for development than LA County was willing to give.  The County was requesting that at least 50% of the land be set aside as open space.  This "deal" undercuts the County significantly, when the County was actually TRYING to do some good conservation work.

They recommend the following actions:

1) If you live in LA County write your County Supervisor to oppose the Centennial new city. It is in Mike Antonovich's district and he is still riding the fence about it (he has been on the record opposing other mega-developments within his district to date).
 

2) Another thing you can do is write to the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and tell them not to issue any permits to harm, injure or kill California condors.  The FWS is currently in the process of trying to do that - to give permission to Tejon ranch to kill condors through granting an "incidental take permit".  The letters/postcard can be sent to:

Mary Grim, 

Section 10 Program Coordinator, 

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 

2800 Cottage Way, W-2605, 

Sacramento, CA 95825

 

Something along the lines of:

• Please do not issue any permit to kill, harm or harass California condors. 
• Taxpayers and private individuals have spent tens of millions of dollars over a decade to bring the condor back from the brink of extinction. 
• The condor recovery program has been successful.
• It is unprecedented and wrong to allow one condor to be lost, just to allow just another leap-frog urban sprawl development to be built on Tejon Ranch.

Include your name and address, so that it gets into the record.

 

Trumpeted this past Thursday in the LA Times was a humongous development deal between  Tejon Ranch and a coalition of supposed environmental groups. In this time of  oil and food shortages, the deal establishes a land trade for the right to develop this wildly beautiful and deeply invaluable remote Tejon area. This place is popularly known as the massive intact ecosystem (270,000 acres) reaching far beyond the the I-5 Grapevine.



The LA times (itself a shareholder in the ranch until 1997, and whose former owner, Harry Chandler, currently heads the investment group that currently owns the Ranch) announced this deal with uncritical, almost utopian, fanfare. Bullshit!

Unsurprisingly this deal makes less then everyone happy (the voices of condors, grasses, trees and hillsides have no say in the matter ), and a little digging turns up some fault-lines showing within the Sierra Club, a major deal-broker in this matter. To permit this building,  the Sierra Club National apparently sold out Sierra Club locals- those who will be most affected by this pointless gas chugging chemical spewing sprawl.

The more principled Center for Biological Diversity all but condemns this deal....

Tejon Ranch covers over 270,000 acres of wilderness at the crossroads of Northern and Southern California. The Mojave Desert, the southern Sierra Nevada Mountains, the great central valley and the southern forests all converge on Tejon Ranch -- the only place in California where four ecoregions come together.

"This deal does a disservice to the wildlands and wildlife of Tejon, to the people of Southern California who will suffer the consequences of overdevelopment, and to all Californians, who will pay the price," said Keats. "We can and must demand better. We live in a world too fragile to allow this kind of sacrifice. Now is the time to say enough is enough."

Save the Tejon Ranch! Does southern California need more mega developments? Create a plan that empowers local residents- not one that limits there right to challenge sprawl (as this one does). Groups are calling for the creation of a huge new natural area (state or national) on this critical environmental treasure.
 
Stay current on the issue & folow Sierra Club dissident Jan de Leeuw excellent Californian blog Not In my Back Yard.

For more info check out and support SAVE TEJON RANCH.

Yo it's May Day!

Ports have shut from LA to Um Quasr in opposition to the wars. Workers are in the streets. Philly had its first May Day celebration in years.
I just wanted to share this message from my friend in Basra:

MAY DAY greetings to you , to all workers and labor movement.

Our hops for peace ,social justice, dignity and human rights for all people.

 

Hashmeya M. alsadawe

President of electricity union of Basra