Whatever kept you wracked with pain in Quebec City, I devoutly hope it has long passed. And good on you for participating where and when it was possible.

Most of all thanks for your support – I wish I could share with you today the hope that I and the Ruckus trainers and so many others in this long war feel. FWIW, I respect that place of no hope – I hope I don’t sound patronizing by wishing for you (and all) access to a different place when the right time comes.

Sure agree with you on the power of MSM – guess that’s why I spend (squander?) so much time on the Lake’s experiment in supplanting them and piercing the veils they place before us all.

Be well!

The Pacific Lumber logger who threatened to murder David “Gypsy” Chain by felling a tree on him:

AE: (Raging) Get the fuck out of here! You’ve got me hot enough now to f***!

Activist: (Apologetically) We don’t want to cause you any problems.

AE: (Angrily) You already have! So get out of here! You c*** suckers! I mean it!

[snip]

AE: (Threateningly) Get outta here! Otherwise I’ll f*****’, I’ll make sure I got a tree comin’ this way!…

AE: (Raging) Ohhhhh, f***! I wish I had my f*****’ pistol! I guess I’m gonna just start packin’ that motherf***er in here. ‘Cause I can only be nice so f***in’ long. Go get my saw, I’m gonna start fallin’ into this f***in’ draw!

The logger who made that homicidal threat – and then felled the tree that killed David “Gypsy” Chain – by aiming the fall towards David “Gypsy” Chain:

That logger is AE Ammons, not AJ Simmons. I apologize to any Pacific Lumber logger named AJ Simmons for my error.

I make no apology to Pacific Lumber – who settled the suit brought by Gypsy’s parents for PALCO’s complicity in their son’s murder .

David Chain v. Goliath Maxxam
Wrongful Death Settlement Reached
By Almond

On October 13, David ”Gypsy” Chain’s family settled a lawsuit out of court against Pacific Lumber (PL) days before the case was to go to trial. The civil lawsuit by Gypsy’s parents, Cindy and David Allsbrooks, alleged that PL and its parent company, Houston-based Maxxam, were reckless and responsible for Gypsy’s murder.

Gypsy was killed on September 17, 1998, while protesting the cut-and-run logging of ancient redwood forests on PL property. He was the first person that Maxxam succeeded in killing.

On September 16, 1998, near Grizzly Creek State Park, Earth First! activists, not including Gypsy, talked at length with PL logger A.E. Ammons about their concerns that marbled murrelets were nesting in trees being felled.

The next day Gypsy and friends confronted Ammons. The logger became enraged, chased the activists away and continued cutting trees again. The last tree that Ammons cut killed 24-year-old Gypsy. No criminal charges were filed against Ammons. No civil trial will sort out those circumstances.

The lawsuit’s financial settlement remains undisclosed, but the remainder of the terms address the tragic story and the desire to prevent future accidents.

The 135-foot tree that struck Gypsy will remain where it fell, and a 100-foot buffer will prevent any nearby logging. A memorial will be erected on PL property, somewhere between the fallen tree and where State Route 36 joins US Highway 101.

Nor do I apologize to the Humboldt County Sherrifs – who sought to have to have the forest protectors who witnessed AE Ammon’s homicidal act charged for involuntary manslaughter:

OUTRAGEOUS, HIDEOUS HUMBOLDT SHERIFF’S DEPT. RECOMMENDATION: “CHARGE ACTIVISTS WITH MANSLAUGHTER!” The Humboldt County Sheriff’s official recommendation had been to charge the Earth First! activists who witnessed David Chain’s death with the involuntary manslaughter of David Chain! They recommended that no charges be brought against the Killer Logger A.E. Ammons.

Forest Defenders don’t call Humboldt County the “Deep North” for nothing.

And yet – today:

1) PALCO is in receivership. Depite the serial corporate looter Charles Hurwitz’s maneuvering of the bankruptcy claim into a Federal Bankruptcy Court in Texas (and the complicity of so many who sit on the Federal Bench in this an other economic crimes against our citizens), the forests which remain PALCO’s last asset will remain under CA’s environmental laws: enforcement forced upon the steroid-addled Gov Gropinator by EPIC and other great attorneys.

2) The PALCO servant who was DA at the time of Gypsy’s murder was voted out of office and replaced by a progressive.

3) PALCO’s attmept to destroy yet another watershed – Nanning Creek – has foundered: PALCO was too addled to continue the administrative process require to support the destruction. Who says treesitting doesn’t work?

4) And water quality agencies (local and CA) have forced the rapacious and corrupt absentee timber landlords in CA to respect local water quality – effectively ending the corporate liquidation of the last 1% of the old growth redwoods to survive – and neutering the Gropinator’s latest attmetp to hand over California’s environment to the usual bribery lobbyists from Earth Rapers, Inc.

We are everywhere. And – even when some like David are murdered and others like Jungle are missing and feared dead – we ARE winning.

Guess what Kirk, I was at three anti-war demonstrations that took place in Montreal, in january and february of 2003. All were absolutely peaceful and civilised. The third one was attended by more than 200,000 citizens, that’s about a sixth of the larger metropolitan area.

Still, as long as the media is owned by the corporations, the message barely reaches a majority of americans who listen to CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, and FOXNEWS… They ridicule HRC and BO while maveric)king Mister vietnam Legacy…

I want it all to be judiciarised, with corporate law rewritten, but that is an hypothetical future. For the moment, they are still winning, and they will steal or stop the next election [edited by mod]. I so wish I could share your sense of hope, today, I cannot. I absolutely respect your opinion and facts , rest assured of my utmost support in trying to vanquish these ratfuckers.

And the public will not rise against these monsters who are raping them.

You’re all screwed to the wall, and point to the parade of criminals, shaking your head in disapproval.

Well, I’m sorry to say that we’re all getting what we deserve.

The coup is succesfull.

Factually incorrect.

Even under what now seem to be the rosy economic times of 1999, enough Americans and Internationals (including a whole lot of great Canadians) came into the streets to stop the multinationals and their US “elected servants” – including President Stain Clinton – from furher extending WTO rule over the planet.

You know how many that took?

About 60,000.

The next April an even smaller group broke the public image and public power of the IMF/WB. ANd we didn’t even have to shut down the meetings to do it.

As for “we’re all getting what we deserve” – well, I trust that’s a figure of speech, adn I take it on faith you’ve been doing your part, having read your many useful contributins here.

But no – the good people I know in EarthFirst! and Rainforest Action Network and Greenpeace and Ruckus have been working for years – sometimes decades – to force new awareness throug the megacorp media. As have folks like Jane and Christy. Fortunately for the FDL team, none of us have died doing it. Unfortuantely, for the EarthFirst!ers, some have – alog with many others, I was at the site of David “Gypsy” Chain’s murder by the logger AJ Simmons a few days after his death. So were his family. Though no families were there for them, I was also in Seattle to attmept to treat those who lost eyes and lung function form the largest use of chemical weapons in the US (It would be the largest in North America, were it not for the “security services” riot against democarac in Quebec the next year).

And still we have kept coming – and (non-violently) fighting. Depite the chemical weapons and flash bang grenades and pervasive surveillance and permanent injuries to spirit and body suffered by so many.

In this decade, the ideas that were radical when EF! and others pushed them in the 80’s have become the basis for public discourse and public discussion about health and our environment – adn are now forming the basis for fundamental assaults on corporate power and corporate control of national sovereignty. The EU’s embrace of the Precautionary Principle for the basis of regulation is only such example – teh (thus far) successful effor tot deny wiretap immunity here is ye another.

And the vast majority of even Americans are firmly behind progressive values – depsite our excerable media.

After years spent providing services to front-line activists, I unserstand all too well how the ceaseless assualt upon our bodies, our health, our communities, our livelihoods, and our democracies by the megacorps and the suited zombies they fund to “lead” us have brought so many to despair and hopelesness.. Even when – as with today’s DN – the clear facts state the Bushies will never be free of ther threat of prosectution outside our borders after next january, some will hear the opposite message.

Yet the mere fact of the megacorps’ multi-billion dollar propaganda campaigns (disguised as “public opinion” and “advertising” – and subsidized by tax deductions) stunningly illustrates the megacorps failure: we don’t want their shit, and left to our own devices we won’t accept it. THe ad mavens inicrease the budgets each year – and each year, the effectveness falls.

Christy and Jane and others at the Lake and across the progressive blogosphere have the MSM on defense.

And the economic crash Ian so presciently described here is already dissolving the fiction that We The People are best served by living in want and poverty, while 1 % live in wealth.

The final tool of wealth – the armed forces – are broken. In a massively armed nation, 60,000 Blackwater mercenaries are as impotent and irrelevnat as the Humboldt County Sherrifs were before thousands of forest protectors.

More impotent and irrelevant – EF’s are strictly non-violent.

Today our target in Humboldt County is broken and in receivership – unthinkable in the Redwood Summer of the 80’s. Today the WB is seeking some way to stay afloat fiinancially – and the IMF is increasingly irrelevant to the free economies of much of the developng world. Argentina repaid their debt early, and told them to fuck off.

Unthinkable on a snowy morning in DC in April of 2000, when we stood outside our Convergance Center after the DC police czar had seized it (on the flimsy pretext of fire code violations) in yet another illegal attempt to suppress dissent.

And when – on the basis of medical neccessity – I was the sole demonstrator allowed in the Center – there wer no fire crews in evcidence – but here were dozens of undercover operatives swarming over the place, photographing everything.

And eight years later, the IMF and WB have never recovered.

So that August – when the DNC came to LA – we had greater power, and and honest Fedeal jurist simply enjoined the bastards from shutting down the Convergence Center. And the LAFD worked with us – not against us. I know – I was the liasion with LAFD Captain Peaks, who worked with us to keep our people safe and hydrated during hot AUgust protests on blazig pavements.

I write today not to bore you or others here about my trivial details – but to illustrate why I reject the counsel and perspectives of despair.

We ARE wining – and we are everywhere.

Join us in joyful defiance of the megacorps’ failing grasp over our proud nation and our Constitution. More of us will be injured – and more of us will be imprisoned and die as we succeed. Rachel Corrie, David Gypsy Chain, and Carlo Guiliani will not be the only martyrs we mourn. And Chiapas and New Orleans wil lnot be the last place where Power actively or passively puts those who question it to death and agony.

Yet we are winning – even our sclerosed and feckless legal culture is beig shocked into public awareness and action.

Though I respect the many reasons for despair, I do not share them.

And I scornfully reject the imputation “we are getting what we deserve”.

Even if you did not joing the protests in QUebec CIty, neither you nor the billions of innocent others deserve corporate rule and the destruction of our freedooms and our living world.

None of are so evil – collectively or individaully – to merit global ecocide.

And neither the counsels of despair nor the Kevlar of the ptifully few “security services” who identify with the megacps will make it so.

I hope you can set aside the despair and join those who are working – and succeeding – in fashioning the solutions to come after we break this tottering Empire the megacorps have failed to establish.

But whether you do or not, the work continues.

We are everywhere – and we are winning.

Ask John Yoo’s travel agent in 2010.

For years all us DFH’s were clamoring for an impeachment investigation but those fucking moronic “bipartisan” idiots decided that maintaining personal power and privilege was far more important than the good of the Republic.

Neither of the Democratic candidates, Obama nor HRC have indicated whether or not following up on prosecution for these criminals (yes, I say criminals) is on their agenda because if either of them gets elected then they will start running for their second term approximately the time the words “So help me god” leave their mouths on the inaugural platform.

This John Yoo memo disgusts me beyond belief. I mourn for my country, the America that produced the “Greatest Generation” also produced a generation of Americans afraid of military service and will be remembered as most likely to wet their beds at the name “al qaeda”.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…..741/489455