Above Photo: Hickory Point, FL

January 31, 2012
A righteous man is in jail for protecting G-d's Earth, while thieving CEO's and dishonest Politicians are free to continue killing America.
Tim’s Story
Tim DeChristopher came to Utah in his early 20s to work as a wilderness guide for at-risk and troubled youth. Tim was born in West Virginia, where his mother was an early advocate for the cessation of mountaintop removal coal mining. In 2008 as a student of Economics, Tim attended the Stegner Symposium at the University of Utah, where he was greatly moved and galvanized by Dr. Terry Root, a scientist for the International Panel on Climate Change. Dr. Root explained to the audience that elements of the climate crisis were already irreversible. Tim confronted Terry after her presentation and asked her if it were true that many species, natural wonders and bioregions were in imminent peril. Terry put her hand on Tim’s shoulder and said the following: “I am so sorry, but my generation failed yours.” Those words haunted Tim, and dramatically changed his personal worldview.
While Tim was taking his final exams at the University of Utah, advocates for Utah’s wilderness like Robert Redford and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance were attempting to bring attention to a controversial auction of Utah public lands, orchestrated by the outgoing Bush Administration. The auction included parcels adjacent to cherished natural resources like Canyonlands National Park. SUWA and other regional advocates brought a lawsuit against the Bureau of Land Management in efforts to halt the auction pending further review and public comment. Through no fault of SUWA or their allies, the lawsuit could not settle the issue prior to the auction. On December 19th, Tim finished his last final exam and took TRAX to the protest that SUWA and others had organized outside of the auction. On arrival, Tim decided that the protest needed to be moved from outside of the auction to inside, where the action was happening. With no prior plan of action, Tim entered the building where the auction was held and approached the registration desk. When asked if he was there to bid, Tim made a quick decision. He registered as Bidder 70 and entered the auction.
Tim intended to stand up and make a speech or create some other kind of disruption. Once inside, however, Tim recognized the opportunity to stop the auction in a more effective, enduring fashion. He sat quietly with his bidder paddle lowered, until he saw a friend from his church openly weeping at the sterile transfer of beloved red rock lands away from the public trust and into the hands of energy giants. It was then that Tim decided to act.
At first, Tim simply pushed up the parcels’ prices (some starting as low as two dollars per acre, and were ultimately sold for $240 per acre). Once almost half of the parcels had been sold to oil and gas companies, Tim felt he could no longer bear to lose any more public lands. Tim bid on and won every subsequent parcel, until he was recognized as an outlier and escorted from the auction. Once it was revealed that Tim did not have the intent or the means to pay for the parcels he won, the auction erupted in chaos. Because Tim won so many parcels and inflated the prices of so many others, the auction had to be shut down. Due to the requisite thirty-day period between a canceled auction and its rescheduled successor, the incoming administration took office before the auction could be rescheduled. Upon review of the parcels in question, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar dismissed the auction, declaring that the BLM had cut corners and broken many of its own rules, including a crucial statute requiring all federal agencies to take the impacts on our climate into account prior to auctioning off public lands for the purpose of energy development.
Tim’s action garnered a great deal of media and public attention, and catalyzed an overwhelming influx of support and applause for his creative, effective, and nonviolent act of civil disobedience, which ultimately safeguarded thousands of acres of Utah public lands. Tim’s bold act, coupled with his personal charisma and the gravity of his motivation, brought enthusiastic activists out of the Utah woodwork. Together with other activists who were equally concerned about the climate crisis and inspired by the effectiveness of Tim’s action, including current Director Ashley Anderson, Tim founded Peaceful Uprising, a volunteer-based climate action group committed to defending a livable future from the fossil fuel industry.
Tim’s action on December 19th radically changed the course of his life. After the current administration decided to indict Tim, despite the confirmed auction’s illegality, Tim took his message to the widest possible audience to bring attention to the desperate need for effective action to combat the climate crisis. Tim also emphasized the ways in which his action had positively impacted his own life. “Ed Abbey used to say, ‘Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul,’” Tim said, addressing the crowd at 350.org’s 10/24 International Day of Climate Action. “I would take that a little further, and say that principled action is the salvation of the soul. I may have to go to prison, but every day since that auction, I walk a little taller, and I feel a little more free.”
It took the federal government more than two years to convict and sentence Tim. The trial was delayed a total of nine times by the Prosecution. Federal Judge Dee Benson dismissed Tim’s initial defense (the “Necessity Defense,” claiming that Tim’s crime was the lesser of two evils when weighed against the threats posed by the illegal auction). The Defense’s assertion of Selective Prosecution (as no other bidder had ever been indicted for failing to pay for parcels at an auction) was also dismissed. The threat of climate catastrophe that motivated Tim was banned from the courtroom and kept from the ears of the jury, as were the fact that Tim managed to raised adequate funds for initial payments on the parcels after the auction; the fact of the auction’s confirmed illegality; and the dismissal of multiple parcels.
Despite the multiple rescheduled dates, climate activists, organizers, and advocates from all over the country came to Salt Lake City for Tim’s trial to demonstrate their solidarity with a brave young man willing to offer up his own future to fight for the future of our planet. Supporters marched to the federal courthouse, where they remained for the trial’s duration, singing revolutionary songs and never leaving the Courthouse steps despite freezing rain and rough weather. Tim often expresses his own deep faith in the power of song, to unite people and empower them to act without fear. Referring to environmental and climate justice advocates in America, Tim summed up his own perspective: “We will be a movement,” he frequently stated, “when we sing like a movement.”
On March 3, 2011, after hours of jury deliberation, Tim was convicted of two federal felonies: one count of false representation, and one count of violating the Federal Onshore Oil and Gas Leasing Reform Act. Between his conviction and his sentencing hearing, Tim was able to tour the country, speaking to college students, climate activists and progressive audiences in every region. He assured supporters that he was fearless and unremorseful about his actions, and urged activists to be bold and brave in the fight for climate justice. Tim reminded his audiences that all meaningful social change in American history has required nonviolent civil disobedience. Tim urged activists to take the long view, and be ready to go to jail to defend their principles and their cause. “We don’t need to figure out how to keep me out of jail,” Tim explained to a concerned Santa Fe supporter. “We need to figure out how to get more people into jail.”
On July 26th, 2011, Tim was sentenced to two years in federal prison. In the pre-sentencing report, the Prosecution openly admitted that Tim himself was not a threat to society or at risk to reoffend; the stated purpose of the sentence was to deter other activists from taking similar action to further the climate movement. In his final statement to the Judge, Tim said that he understood why the Prosecution saw him as a threat. “[My message] may indeed be threatening to the power structure,” he said. “The message is about recognizing our interconnectedness. The message is that when people stand together, they no longer have to be exploited. Alienation is perhaps the most effective tool of control in America, and every reminder of our real connectedness weakens that tool.”
After his sentence was issued, Tim was removed immediately from the courtroom and taken into the custody of federal agents. 26 people were arrested outside the Salt Lake City courthouse, and 26 solidarity actions happened at federal courthouses throughout the United States. The demonstrations were intended to express supporters’ outrage, and more importantly, to illustrate the climate movement’s undeterred commitment to continued action. Tim’s conclusion to his final statement to the courtroom at his sentencing hearing crystallized his own personal stake in that commitment:
“You can steer my commitment to a healthy and just world if you agree with it, but you can’t kill it. This is not going away. At this point of unimaginable threats on the horizon, this is what hope looks like.  In these times of a morally bankrupt government that has sold out its principles, this is what patriotism looks like.  With countless lives on the line, this is what love looks like, and it will only grow.”
Tim is currently serving his sentence at the Herlong Federal Correctional Institute in Herlong, California.
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July 27, 2011
A Great Woman -
Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard Law School professor whose consumer protection work has made her am favorite among liberal activists, will spend early August assessing whether to try to unseat Senator Scott Brown, an adviser said.
Warren will return to Massachusetts to ponder her political future after President Obama’s decision not to select her as head of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She will spend a few weeks winding down her role in Washington and on a trip with her grandchildren, and then focus on what’s next, according to the adviser.
National liberal activists believe Warren would be able to raise the necessary money and make the strongest case among Democrats seeking to challenge Brown. The adviser spoke on the condition of anonymity because Warren’s plans are emerging.
The White House has said she will return to her teaching job at Harvard, but has not said whether a potential Senate run could interfere with those plans.
Warren told MSNBC yesterday that she plans to take her grandchildren to Legoland and then return to Massachusetts.
“Massachusetts does beckon in the sense that it’s my home and I need to go home,’’ she said. “I’ll do more thinking then, but I need to do that thinking not from Washington; I need to go home.’’
Her plans are being closely watched by state and national Democrats, who have yet to coalesce around a candidate. The declared candidates, with the exception of Alan Khazei, are having trouble raising money.  Warren’s supporters believe her record as a consumer advocate whose early grasp of Wall Street’s role in creating the subprime mortgage crisis makes her an attractive candidate. They have begun online efforts to draft her and raise money on her behalf. But she is untested in campaigns, which bring a different element of public scrutiny and up-close interactions, and she is virtually unknown to large swaths of the electorate.
Warren, 62, had been hoping for an appointment to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency she conceived as a watchdog initiative in the wake of the financial crisis. She has served for 10 months as a special adviser to Obama, but the prospect of Warren serving as head of the new venture was derailed by strong opposition from Republicans and the banking industry, who say her zeal would impede the free market.
Obama instead announced yesterday he is nominating Richard Cordray, former attorney general of Ohio, and vowed to fight Republican efforts to derail Cordray’s nomination and restructure the bureau.
Warren has said little about whether she plans to run for Senate. And her delay in making a decision has left some party operatives anxious, questioning whether she has the passion for a backbreaking campaign. “Running for statewide office is enormously difficult and one has to have the fire in the belly to be successful, particularly against a well-financed incumbent,’’ said Philip W. Johnston, former state Democratic chairman.
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April 5, 2011
For the past week, journalists stationed in Libya's capital city, Tripoli, have pressed government officials for information on Iman al-Obeidi.
The 29-year-old Libyan woman made international headlines last weekend after she burst into a hotel housing the foreign press corps. Visibly bruised, she alleged that she had been kidnapped and sexually assaulted by 15 members of strongman Muammar Gadhafi's armed forces. Libyan security then whisked her away from the battery of cameras and tape recorders.
After the widely publicized incident, Libyan officials kept mum about al-Obeidi's whereabouts, and the country's state-run media carried out an aggressive smear campaign painting her as a prostitute and madwoman. Her family, however, said that she was a post-graduate law student studying in Tripoli.
But al-Obeidi emerged from seclusion Monday to offer more public testimony about her alleged gang-rape and captivity.
"I showed to the journalists my hands and legs. I was bound and tied up. I was beaten and tortured," she told CNN's Anderson Cooper through a translator in an interview that aired in part on his Monday prime time show, according to a transcript the network provided to The Cutline. "For two days they violated my freedom ... I want to convey to the journalists that the brigades who are supposed to protect people, look what they did to me."
In addition to the Cooper interview, Obeidi recounted the story of her initial detention to NPR and a Libyan opposition satellite channel. Her ordeal began, she said, when soldiers stopped her taxi at a checkpoint in Tripoli.
Once she was detained, she said, the assaults began. "They had my hands tied behind me," she told Cooper, "and they had my legs tied, and they would hit my while I was tied, and bite me on my body, and they would pour alcohol in my eyes so that I would not be able to see, and they would sodomize me with their rifles, and they would not let us go to the bathroom. We were not allowed to eat or drink. This is because I resisted them and tried to stop them from raping me."
During her second imprisonment--after she burst into the hotel lobby full of journalists--al-Obeidi said that she was pressured to recant the rape claims on Libyan state television. She refused, she said, "because the TV station does not tell the truth."
Details of al-Obeidi's release remain sketchy. Her present location is unconfirmed, but she reportedly made a second attempt to speak with journalists at the hotel this past weekend and was again rebuffed.
"There is no safe place for me in Tripoli," she told Cooper. "All my phones are monitored. Even this phone I am speaking on right now is monitored and I am monitored. And yesterday, I was kidnapped by a car and they beat me in the street and then brought me here after they dragged me around. They told me whenever you leave the house we will do this to you, meaning that I was not allowed to leave the house or see the journalists. I had asked to see the journalists. They beat and hit me and sent me back. Tell all the human rights organizations to return me safely to my family."
Also on Monday, a Libyan government spokesman told the Associated Press that al-Obeidi had made a deal with the country's attorney general that prohibited her from speaking with reporters.
"She broke her agreement with the attorney general by trying to speak to the media and was taken away," the spokesman told the newswire, which also spoke with a woman the government claimed was an attorney representing al-Obeidi in the rape case. "She doesn't want to speak to journalists because she said she wants to get justice through the courts," the woman told the AP. "But she is comfortable, living with her sister in Tripoli, and is in good spirits."
Al-Obeidi has come forward with her story at a critical juncture in the efforts of Gadhafi's regime to clamp down on the work of the foreign media. Journalists working out of Tripoli say they are contending with tightly monitored and almost surreal working conditions. Some even fear that their hotel-prepared food is being spiked with sedatives, according to NPR.
"That was why the outburst of Iman al-Obaidi ... was so revelatory," writes Liz Sly in The Washington Post. "In an instant, she crystallized the harsh realities of the Libya the government goes to such lengths to prevent journalists from seeing."
It's also possible that the widespread media exposure saved al-Obeidi's life.
The New York Times' David Kirkpatrick, who is on the ground in Tripoli, notes: "Thanks to the publicity in her first interviews ... she may have gotten off easy. Others in her situation, human rights advocates say, are typically confined for years in so-called rehabilitation facilities, subjected to unscientific virginity tests, deprived of any entertainment or education except lessons in Islam, and subjected to solitary confinement or handcuffs for any sign of resistance to authority."
As for al-Obeidi, she told Cooper she has constant nightmares of death and wishes to leave Tripoli, but is no longer afraid.
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     Some suggested Books (audios avail.)                      (Just a few of many)  Some suggested DVDs
     State of Denial-Bob Woodward                                           The Bush Crimes Commission Hearings
  Towers of Deception-Barrie Zwicker                                                 Iraq for Sale – The War Profiteers
  Crossing the Rubicon-Michael C. Rupert                                         Who Killed the Electric Car
   The Terror Timeline-Paul Thompson                                                  9/11 Press for Truth
         Shock Doctrine – Naomi Klein                                                    Crude Impact Documentary
The Republican Noise Machine – David Brock (avail in audio)
Check out any of these books/DVD’s at  www.amazon.com
Or Google the titles at  www.google.com

The New Right, a documentary  by Chris Matthews on MSNBC                                June 16, 2010

This is a brief report with personal commentary.  "Know thy enemy, especially now", Hinda.

The New Right uses our American Revolution symbol of a coiled rattlesnake, "Don't Tread on Me." (1773)
Their group,  known as The Tea Party, have called Pres. Obama a radical Communist, a Socialist, and a Nazi.
They like to emphasize that Pres. Obama's middle name is Hussein to keep him in the American mind set as somehow related to the past dictator of Iraq.

                                Some History:
The Christian Crusade was started by Billy James Hargis, a fundamentalist Protestant Christian & evangelist.  He was the forerunner of the Christian Right.  At the height of his popularity in the 1950's & 1960's, his Christian Crusade ministry was broad cast on more than 500 radio stations and 250 TV stations.  Interesting that he was disgraced after accusations of sexual misconduct from students at his American Christian College!

The John Birch Society was founded in 1958 and says it is anti-totalitarian, particularly anti-socialist and anti-communist.  It seeks to limit the powers of government and defends the original intention of the constitution, which it sees as based on Christian principles.
They supported Barry Goldwater for Pres., though Johnson won overwhelmingly.

Phyllis Schlafly is a conservative political activist & constitutional attorney known for her opposition to feminism and the Equal Right Amendment.  (in the 1960's...she was a popular enemy among my fellow hippies!)

Heritage Foundation is a conservative think tank based in D.C.  They have had a significant influence (since Ronald Reagan) in policy making, and is considered one of the most influential conservative research organizations in the United States.  Their stated mission is to "formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.  They may sound good in some respects, but look deeper.

                        Current New Threats:
Oath Keepers is a non-profit organization that advocates that its members (current and former U.S. military and law enforcement) uphold the Constitution should they be ordered to violate it.  The Oath Keepers' motto is "Not On Our Watch!", and their stated objective is to resist, non-violently, those actions taken by the government that it believes oversteps Constitutional boundaries.  They were founded in March 2009 by a former U.S.Army paratrooper and a former staffer of Congressman Ron Paul.  Estimates of membership in many states vary from 10,000 to 200,000 registered members.

Freedom Works is an organization that helps to train & organize the Tea Party.
They believe that our President, Congress and others in the government do not know & respect our constitution, even though Pres. Obama is an expert in constitutional law.

Alex Jones is a talk radio host & filmmaker.  The Alex Jones Show is based in Austin, Texas
web sites: Infowars.com & PrisonPlanet.com
Mainsteam media refers to him as right wing, conservative and a conspiracy theorist.  However, he sees himself as a Libertarian and a "aggressive constitutionalist; he rejects being described as a right winger.

The New Right is understandably concerned with financial problems, but talk of secession.  Now that they are involved with elections, they must be looked at as a serious threat to any logical minded person.
i.e. Rand Paul won the Republican primary for U.S. Senate in Kentucky.

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann echos the McCarthy era.  As of late, she has defended B.P. *From Emily's List on June 18 :Putting big business before American families, Bachmann went to bat for BP this week, saying the company shouldn't be "fleeced" by the government and claiming mandated relief funds are just a "redistribution of wealth."

You may recall that during and after the health care bill, there were threats of violence by this group.  Indeed, Sarah E.(Evil) Palin identified on her web site those politicians who voted for the bill to stir up violent behavior.  Palin's web site also told how the elderly would face death camps.

Please be aware of a very dangerous person, Orly Taitz, a leading figure in the "birther" movement.  If you check her biography and learn she was born a Russian Jewish, please note that I quite regret this fact and hope you do not hold this against Jews that are sane.(like me!)

There is a rise in private militia groups, i.e. www.mishiganmilitia.com
They say they want to be ready for such events as national disaster, tyranny and terrorism.  They consider the Obama administration to be a circumstance of tyranny.
            
"What‘s scary today is the language being thrown about.  Words have consequences.  You can not call a president‘s policies un-American as Sarah Palin has done, or refer to the elected government as a regime as Rush Limbaugh persists in doing, or the president as a foreign usurper as the birthers do, without giving license on some day to real trouble. "
                                                                                 Chris Matthews