Earthfirst Article

April 20, 2007 at 8:01 pm (environmental)

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Just for streamlining’s sake let me post my article to have all the info on this in one place.  Enjoy:)

        We live in a time that is evolving radically and quickly.  Life is so complex and comes at you so fast that it’s hard to even know where to begin or what direction in which to go.  I have found in my modest 26 years on the planet that living in the now and in the physical present is often the best approach.  You cannot change events halfway around the globe, but you can change events around you and you can change yourself.  The more energy you put into local work, the more inertia you gain and eventually if you stick to the task at hand, you solve the bigger problem that first impelled you to act without necessarily trying.  That being said I write you about my task at hand, the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest (CNNF).
            The “chwam” as it is referred to locally is 1,519,800 acres of old and second growth forest in northern Wisconsin , and is part of the Upper Great lakes Keystone Forest a.k.a., “the Northwoods”.  It is composed of several different ecosystems; uplands, bogs, wetlands, muskegs, rivers, streams, pine savannas, meadow and glacial lakes, black spruce bogs, cedar swamps and alder thickets.  It is home to a plethora of flora and fauna.  In the tree category there are 3 different kinds of maple, 3 different kinds of oak, aspen, beech basswood, sumac, 3 different kinds of birch, 3 different pine, white spruce and balsam fir and the forest is the eastern most range for the eastern hemlock.  Among smaller flora there are blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, cranberries, service berries ferns, mosses, cattails, mushrooms, the list goes on.  Animals that inhabit this area are white tail deer, black bears, foxes, raccoons, rabbits, beavers, otters, squirrels, chipmunks, timber wolves, elk, moose, coyotes, badgers, wolverines and lynx.  Birds that dwell here are pheasants, grouse, wild turkey, northern cardinals, blue jays, American crows, American robins, red tailed hawks, red wing blackbird, owls, ducks, loons, bald eagles, thrush, sparrows and warblers.  Populating the waters of this primeval paradise are brook trout, rainbow trout and brown trout, walleye, small and large mouth bass, crappie, northern pike and several species of pan fish.  Those of you familiar with the endangered species list will recognize a few threatened creatures amongst the ones I have just mentioned.  This forest is amazing. 
The Chwam faces some fundamentally linked critical threats though.  The biggest threat that it faces is logging.  The CNNF is the most heavily logged forest in the country.  It is logged at a rate of 116 million board feet of lumber each year.  Between 1992 to 2001, 188,000 acres were logged.  At the current rate it is being logged it will be gone in 45 years.   This has got to stop, and it has to stop now.  Legally there has been some hope as the Environmental Law and Protection Council contested 3 out the 5 major timber sales by the forestry service and won.  The fact that these sales were stopped does not mean the forest is permanently safe however, pardon the pun, but in no way shape or form are we out of the woods.  They are, however, important victories and are the first steps in a long journey to teaching respect for the forest and the life it gives. 
The most immediate threat to the forest is the encroachment of power lines.  The American Transmission Company (ATC) wants to build a 345,000-volt power line from Duluth to Chicago .  The portion that cuts through the forest is already built.  They used eminent domain to push that part through, the state government against county government, because nobody wanted the line.  Why is the Northwoods being further destroyed to feed further industry, further destruction, further chaos and greed?  There are well-documented negative effects of exposure to power lines, on life in whatever form it comes. ATC gave money to Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle’s campaign and they are members of Forward Wisconsin, a state business group, which Governor Doyle is the chairman of.
Another member of Forward Wisconsin is Xcel energy.  Xcel energy bought the Lake Superior District Power Company, which used to be the power company in the northwestern area of the Northwoods.  The thing is that the power company used to feed to the Navy’s Clam Lake “Project ELF” site, which is right smack dab in the middle of the biggest part of the Chequamegon Nicolet National Forest .
ELF stands for extremely low frequency.  It uses radio waves in the extremely low frequencies of three to thirty megahertz.   The project was undertaken by the U.S. Navy to develop submarine communications from land.  Due to the conductivity and salinity of seawater, higher frequencies cannot penetrate. ELF literally uses the earth as an antenna and it has a very slow data transmission rate.   The Clam Lake WI site and the other ELF site in the Escanaba River State Forest (in the upper peninsula of Michigan and on the other end of the Upper Great Lakes Keystone Forest ) were chosen because of the low conductivity bedrock in the area.  The thing is that the area also sits on a gigantic plate of iron.
 During the operation of the Clam Lake site (until 2004 when it was supposedly shut down) there were reports of people getting shocked in their bathtubs, fences becoming electrified when they weren’t supposed to be, and shocks coming from bathroom fixtures.  If I’m not mistaken, you can magnetize something by exposing it to electricity, and for the last 30 years the government has been sending low frequency electricity through the ground, which under the Upper Great Lakes Keystone Forest is a gigantic magnet.  The area is a hotbed of paranormal activity and electromagnetism figures prominently with such sightings.  Xcel energy now owns, at the very least, the power lines that fed the Clam Lake station if not the station itself.  In the last year I have felt low frequency pressure changes with no explained source and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, both signs of a low frequency field.  This is a very serious threat to the forest. 
            On the subject of the U.S. Navy and water, the water of the forest faces another threat: mining.  I’m not going to go into great depth as to who and what is going on.  Suffice it to say there is a lot of water table contamination that comes with mining.  With a climate that is getting worse every day from CO2 pollution, the water ecosystems of our world are key.  Water is many things.  Water is what we are predominantly made of, what this planet is predominantly covered in, and what naturally washes CO2 out of the atmosphere. Water is also the element of emotion, security, sexuality, and just as the moon rules water and affects the tides on the planet and in people, the condition of our water is manifest in the human psyche.  Water is a living ecosystem as well; too often it is treated as inert. 
As I see it, there is really only one thing to do: destroy these corporations at the root.  I do not agree with the policies and actions of my government and the corporations that run it and if I am a criminal for it, then so be it.  If people do not stand up there will be no world to save, and it will come sooner than you think.  I am not going to be one of the doomsday ranks that believe the world is going to end anyway, so why should I care?  We stand on the brink of either global enlightenment or global annihilation, and it is entirely up to us, which it is.  It is a choice that is as old as the universe itself, has been presented to every generation before us and will be presented to every generation after us.  What you believe is what will happen.  It is the small local battles that are going to decide this and the result depends on whether we can ground ourselves and focus on what we can do and not get overwhelmed by what we can’t.  If everybody who reads this focuses on the local environmental polluters and destroyers in their area, we’ll stop this madness very quickly.  Be the change you wish to see in the world and be not afraid.

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Line and mine connection article-courtesy of SOUL

April 20, 2007 at 7:58 pm (environmental)

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Making The Connections Between Dams, 
Transmission Lines, And Mines
From Midwest Treaty Network/Wolf Watershed Educational Project

BY WINONA LA DUKE
October 2000

” We are right in the middle of that environmental slum Manitoba Hydro has created ” –Kenny Miswaggon, Chair of the Pimicikamak Cree Nation of Cross Lake, Manitoba.

“We have reaffirmed our historic commitment to protecting the lands, waters and people of Wisconsin, We are sending a clear message to our utilities that we oppose the construction of power lines that will bring more harm to the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa in Hayward and the Pimicikamak Cree Nation in
Manitoba.” –Tom Maulson, President of the
Great Lakes Inter-Tribal Council.

A 250-mile, 350,000-volt electric transmission line jointly proposed by the Minnesota Power and the the private utility Public Service Corporation of Wisconsin would bring power from hydroelectric dams in northern Manitoba Cree communities. The line would run from Duluth across the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe reservation to
Wausau, Wisconsin. A smaller ll5,000-volt spur line would run from Rhinelander to the proposed Crandon metallic sulfide mine site next to the Mole Lake Ojibwe Reservation in northeastern
Wisconsin. That line, and increased cooperation and mergers between utilities, has linked Crees from northern Manitoba, with farmers, landowners and Native nations in northern Wisconsin–in a pitched battle to preserve the
Wolf
River,Mole
Lake, and the stunning waterways and boreal forests thousands of miles apart.

For almost two decades Native communities, sportfishers, and environmentalists have together waged successful opposition to the Crandon mine, proposed at first by Exxon and then by Rio Algom, which is being purchased by the South African company
Billiton. The copper/zinc/gold mine is projected to produce 11 million tons of metals over a 28-year mine lifespan, and leave behind 44 million tons of acidic wastes, becoming
Wisconsin’s largest-ever toxic waste dump. Data from the mining company itself indicates that contamination would affect the local groundwater for more than 200,000 years. The proposed mine would use up to 20 tons a month of cyanide, as well as other chemicals for processing the ore. The mine would also pump more up to 1400 gallons a minute out of the mine impacting not only the immediate mine area, but Mole Lake, the precious Ojibwe wild rice beds, and the Wolf River, one of the most pristine rivers in the nation.

“I ‘d like to see my children have everything I had, and I believe the wild rice beds will be contaminated if the mine goes through ” says Roger McGeshick, Mole Lake Sokaogon Ojibwe Tribal Chairman, “A big corporation has all the money, but money doesn’t mean anything to people here. What’s important is their way of life. Water quality is part of their way of life and of ensuring our way of life.”

Zoltan Grossman of the Midwest Treaty Network observes, “The Crandon proposal has already united former adversaries over treaty fishing rights into an alliance to protect the fishery from mining companies. It has not only brought together tribes with sportfishers, but environmentalists with unionists, and rural residents with urban students.” He adds, “Many rural groups, tribes, and townships around Wisconsin that are opposing mining, transmission lines, power plant proposals, and Perrier springwater pumping, are also beginning to come together in a new statewide anti-corporate movement. In the spirit of Wisconsin’s progressive and environmental traditions, they believe in ‘people power, not corporate power’.”

The transmission line itself is expensive: an estimated $200-300 million would be spent on its construction, according to the Wisconsin state agency Public Service Commission (PSC). The line is controversial because high-voltage transmission lines are considered dangerous, and because it would cut a swath through the property of over 7000 Wisconsin residents and diminish farmlands and forests alike. An estimated 50% of the power is lost between the point of origin and the point of use, with increasing concern about the possible health consequences of the electromagnetic fields on human beings, dairy cattle, and wildlife.

Northern States Power (NSP) is the single largest export contract for power from huge dams in northern Manitoba, dams which devastate not only the environment, but the people who live there. At present, NSP and it’s affiliates purchase l000 megawatts of power from Manitoba Hydro moved through immense transmission lines to the south. The proposed 345 kv Arrowhead- Weston Transmission Line, headed from Duluth to Wausau, is being opposed by many human rights, farmers’, environmental and indigenous groups–notably the group that calls itself “SOUL”–Save Our Unique Lands.

That contract, the dams, and proposed transmission lines through northern Minnesota and Wisconsin are ecologically and socially devastating. In the early l970s, Manitoba Hydro put in a series of seven dams on the Nelson and Churchill River systems in northern Manitoba. Lauded as a source of “clean energy ” from the north, Manitoba Hydro joined with neighboring Ontario Hydro and Hydro Quebec in selling that power to the United States, the single largest market for energy in the world. Since that time, things have gone pretty well for Manitoba Hydro ($1 billion in gross revenues in 1999) and Northern States Power, with banner years for profits at both companies, and the appearance to a larger world good choices for ” green energy”, even though the companies have cared little for the people and land devastated by the projects.

Five of the twelve dams are on the Nelson River, the river which runs through Cross Lake on its way to Hudson Bay. The first set of dams have already destroyed 3.3 million acres of land. Rivers have been turned to toxic reservoirs now laced with methylmercury. Fish from the Nelson River, a staple of the Cree, have been contaminated. Pregnant women, elders and children must severely limit their intake or risk dire health consequences . Large tracts of boreal forest have been flooded, displacing and destroying animal habitat. Both of these consequences have made the Cree environmental refugees and paupers in their own lands.

The human consequences are also devastating. Unemployment has reached an estimated 85% in Cross Lake, and with that are all the social and human costs of the environmental destruction. Cross Lake is considered to have among the highest suicide rates in Canada, a community of 4000 has more than l00 residents which attempted suicide in the second half of l999 alone. More than 50 members of the Pimicikamak Cree Nation have been killed directly or indirectly by the megaproject, as many others drowned trying to travel on unstable reservoir ice and water. A Canadian Treaty Court has found Manitoba Hydro legally liable for a number of these deaths. Manitoba Hydro has suggested “compensation” in the form of $l5,000 each for the deaths.

There is a set of simple reasoning for the logic of future development. If new transmission lines are allowed to go through, Manitoba Hydro will have increased access to markets, and thus the potential for more dams in the north. That reasoning does not escape the Cree. “If you’re gonna double the exports, that means you’re gonna double the misery,” said Kenny Miswaggon, tribal leader from the Pimicikamak Cree Nation of Cross Lake, Manitoba.

With at least 75% of Manitoba hydroelectric potential is as yet “untapped”, more proposals are under consideration. Much of this power would head into Minnesota and Wisconsin as export markets–down the high voltage transmission lines, and to U.S. consumers. There are obvious alternatives. Northern State Power’s Buffalo Ridge wind project is a banner energy producer, with additional potential for wind energy in the Midwest estimated to be able to provide up to three quarters of US electrical needs. The recent Midwest Renewable Energy Fair in Madison, drew almost 10,000 people to talk about the potential for alternatives, and the Ojibwe, like other tribes, are clear on the need to prioritize. The Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe recently passed a resolution calling “for greatly increased investments by tribal, local, state and national governments, as well as by individuals and corporate and institutional entities in energy conservation and genuinely renewable energy sources in Wisconsin and the upper Midwest, to displace the ‘need’ to purchase additional environmentally and socially destructive electricity from Manitoba Hydro.”

The electricity from the Duluth-Wausau transmission line, as well as from new proposed electrical generating plants in rural southern Wisconsin, would not be used to provide power to state residents, but rather by used by private utilities to sell power to Chicago and other urban markets. The private utilities threaten to use eminent domain to condemn land for a project that will not even benefit Wisconsin residents. Instead of approving yet another outdated utility transmission line, the Wisconsin PSC could be exploring alternatives that would benefit consumers.

The PSC’s own studies indicate that Wisconsin could reduce energy usage by 35% over 20 years through a variety of measures, including process improvements in manufacturing, lighting efficiency measures in commercial sector, and fuel switching for residential needs. Keith Reopelle, of Wisconsin’s Environmental Decade, points out that utilities have backed away from spending money on their energy efficiency programs. “The Public Service Commission records show that utility programs aimed at reducing household and business energy use and bills have dropped by $94 million or 64% over the past four years. Purchases for instance of high efficiency furnaces snared 90% of the rebate assisted market in l993, as opposed to 20% today.” There are, in short, no absence of alternatives to destructive dam megaprojects, mines, and dangerous transmission lines.

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line and mine connection

April 20, 2007 at 7:57 pm (environmental)

forest-fart.jpgI believe that all things in some way shape or form are related.  There is no such thing as a coincidence.  When I started doing my research on the CNNF, I found the connection of the ELF, and then the Arrowhead Weston line, and then I found the connection of Hurley and then all the supernatural stuff and I knew there was more to this than was apparent.  Hurley is an iron mining town and I said to myself, there’s a connection to what I was working on and the mining.  As I said in my article, the land does not forget and it dooms itself to have the same injustices repeated until someone figures it out and stops it.  I will post the article, but I found the connection.  The Arrowhead Weston line was originally proposed to fuel the Crandon Mine (and as you read it note the mention of suicide).  Coincidence? I think not.  My work continues.

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Explanation of what happened in Hayward

April 11, 2007 at 1:40 am (environmental)

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I altered this post from it’s original form.  It was a simple post announcing the Step it up 2007 rally I held on the 400 block, but I did that rally as a means of gaining support for the Hayward protest I had been planning.  I got up all this inertia for it and then I just seemingly dropped it.  Well I cancelled the protest due to several factors, for one thing even though I was supposed to be part of a group, Pagan Sanctuary of Wausau, I was doing most of the work on this issue and just about every other one the group had been working on.  The other thing is that when I consulted the oracle I follow, the I Ching, it came back with some funny omens about the protest.  Well even though I cancelled the protest, I went to Hayward for the hearing.  Well, turns out I had come two years too late.  The website I had gotten the date off of, the WISPIRG website before it split into WISPIRG and Wisconsin Environment, listed the dates May 16-18, but with no year.  With the amount of work I had on my plate I did not sufficiently do the double checking needed to prevent such an oversight.  I deeply embarrassed myself, and PSW.  I feel to some extent it was not my fault because I was being asked to do too much, but when it comes down to it, it was my responsibilty and it was my fault.  Since then I have begun working on my own.  I have found so many of these groups (pagan and environmental) are not as advertised and fall into the same trap of bureaucracy that have caused the problems in this country I’m trying to fight.  They leave the work to someone else and you cant get anything done because there are 15 different commitees and votes you have to go through so just about everything gets shot down no matter how good it is because someone always has a problem with it.  So that is what happened.  I feel I should have at least some public record of what happened.  For those of you who came to the Step it Up rally I really apprieciate it, and if I let you down I am sorry from the bottom of my heart.  I have continued to write and continued to try, not only to redeem myself but to fufill the implicit promise I made you all that day, hopefully I have, but that is for you to judge, not me.

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The power of belief

April 6, 2007 at 3:07 am (magic, philosophy, shamanism)

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When people are growing up it is common for kids to have imaginary friends or stuff of the like.  What if they aren’t really imaginary?  What if what is brushed off as childhood fantasy is really reality?  You see, I be willing to wager that in just about every case of this, the child’s parents told them, when they felt the child should have grown out of it,  that it didn’t exist and told them to stop talking about it.  I think that what a person believes is what becomes a reality, and if a child is shamed or ridiculed enough, they will stop believing and therefore literally stop seeing.  What if Peter Pan was right to some extent?  Suppose there are such things as fairies angels and demons, they just manifest in ways that people don’t expect them too.  And that is really what children and their innocent eyes are seeing when they have an “imaginary” friend.  Food for thought.

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Chaos farms

April 5, 2007 at 3:46 am (magic, shamanism)

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So I’m shooting for a blog a day, and to make this successful, I should make them short.  So I have about 3 minutes until my ramen noodles are done so here it goes.  I have a little metaphysical theory I thought I’d share today.  Take an enclosed area, whether it be a closet, a trunk, a drawer whatever.  Put stuff in it of the nature you want to materialize, say for simplicity’s sake money.  Do not know how much it in there, that is key.  Leave it for awhile.  The longer you leave it, the better this works, you can add stuff to it, or take a way, but you NEVER find out exactly how much is in there.  you will find, and this is tricky to master, it requires visualization abilities and the ability to direct chi (life energy) towards an end, that you can create an inexaustable source of whatever it is you put in your “chaos farm”.  I call it that because it to an extent operates on chaos theory and limits (as in calculus).  Try it, its quite fun.  Ramen’s done:)

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Protest reconissance

April 4, 2007 at 5:22 am (environmental)

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So today I went driving all over northern wisconsin to get a lay of the land and a general feel for the climate/situation.  The actual Arrowhead-Weston line is not quite as bad as I thought it was going to be.    The worst spots were as you got closer to Superior and the actual Weston 4 powerplant construction where I live.  There it is pretty bad. I also found out that after Weston 4 in online, ATC plans on building a Weston 5 and a Weston 6.  So in the end there are going to be three more of these unholy abominations blighting the countryside.  Which kinda further reinforced my thoughts as I was following the line up from wausau today.  Such things never come in one large easily recognizable blow, they come slowly and gradually, gaining inertia as they go.  They do come though and it’s better to face a smaller weaker enemy than a large strong one.  With the amount of radical upheaval that has come to Wausau in the last 2 years, I don’t think anybody who lives here has any problem seeing the point I’m making.  It’s easier to stop a train when it’s going slower than when it’s gotten up to full speed.  The lines have to be drawn somewhere.  I got lots of pictures that I’ll probably upload tomorrow.  The recon on the ELF station was a bit of a let down though as we couldn’t find the joint and we got caught in a nasty snowstorm with no heat in the car we were driving.  I got severe frostbite on my feet.  I’ll tell you though, that area is perfect for hiding something like that.  The woods are so deep that you can only really see in maybe 5o feet from the road, and the access roads back there twist and turn so much it’s easy to lose your bearings.  that and Clam lake is smack dab in the center of the largest parcel of the CNNF.  Another trip is being planned to be exclusively for the ELF/paranormal/Hurley side of this story, and I think we will be going to both ELF sites.  There was one small glimmer of success on that front though.  As we were leaving the area in which the ELF was supposed to be, an ATC worktruck passed us.  As I said in the article, I have seen to much to believe in coincidence anymore.

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trees

April 2, 2007 at 8:23 pm (environmental)

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Today I spent looking at options for planting trees and trying the natural way to combat global warming. Not only do they eat carbon dioxide, but they are a perfect study on fractals.  Did you know that the Arbor Day foundation has a $10 membership, you recieve 10 free trees with your membership. If you want to purchase trees they offer an impressive variety of trees for $2 a piece if your a member (3 if your not).  Being green-minded isn’t as hard as you think.  Flat shipping is 4.95.  You could have yourself a small forest for $50.  So is sneaking into a place in the middle of the night and planting a bunch of trees considered vandalism?  I may just have to find out:)

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Info on protest updates

April 2, 2007 at 8:15 pm (environmental)

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This is a general post to let those of you know who visit that you are indeed in the right spot for the up dates on the Northwoods story and CNNF/Arrowhead-Weston protests.  There will be not updates for a few days as I have had enough of staring at computer screens after writing the article that directed y’all here.  So feel free to poke around, google my screenname or whatever:)

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