Updates from a Nazi-ravaged Wasteland Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit Updates from a Nazi-ravaged Wasteland by Wayne Sumstine Warning: Read this when you are not feeling depressed. It contains disturbing information regarding some temporary advances of powerful rogue elements in our society. I just finished reading the local Tucson paper. Usually a mistake, but thought you might be interested in hearing how the corporate-run, corporate-protecting police department (also known as "The Administration" or "The Fourth Reich," depending on whom you speak to) is affecting this little corner of the evilest empire. First, Bisbee area environmental activist Mike Gregory was arrested yesterday by the FBI for arguing with Border Patrol agents who were trespassing on his land. Gregory, Director of the Arizona Toxics Information Projects which monitors environmental chemical contamination in the border area, had what Border agents called "a pretty nasty confrontation and shortly after they parted ways." FBI agents from Sierra Vista subsequently arrested Gregory for confronting the officers. According to a US Border Patrol spokesman, the rule of implementation now is: "within 25 miles of the international boundary, agents can go onto any private property while in performance of their duties, which includes any activities related to tracking." Specifically, if they see litter, human footprints in the dirt, or any other signs whatsoever that human beings may have passed that way, the Greenshirts can now legally violate any place they choose. To argue with them, even while on your own property, constitutes assault, and is a federal offense. Second, the American Recreation Coalition (a consortium of 100 industry organizations including the petroleum corps, Walt Disney, ski-area associations, concessionaires, and recreational vehicle manufacturers) have essentially taken control of what used to be called "public lands." The newly implemented entry fees to public lands (called the Recreation Fee Demonstration Program), which most Americans thought was for maintenance of national forests (but those are actually maintained by tax money) actually go to expand the activities of industrial tourism. This includes the recently enacted five dollar entry fee to drive up the Mt. Lemmon highway. The demonstration fee program was to be a test program until the year 2004. But the Bush and/or Cheney administration, having seen little opposition to the new fees, is convinced that Americans now view themselves as "consumers" rather than "owners" of the public lands. So, the administration is now introducing a bill in Congress to turn control of all public lands over to the ARC corporate interests and make the experimental Recreational Fee Demonstration Program permanent. Third, sixteen more migrants have died in the desert west of Tucson since Thursday (June 6), bringing the total to 40 for this year's official government-sponsored "Mexican Hunting Season." The majority of those dying are being driven by the beefed-up Greenshirt Militia (aka Border Patrol) onto Tohono O'odham reservation land where water is most scarce, and where the church-based Humane Borders water station distribution program cannot operate. For the past six weeks Pastor Mike Wilson, of the Papago United Presbyterian Church in Sells, has been putting out stashes of 1 gallon jugs of water for the survivors on his own, but stopped doing so this week when he received warnings from an assistant attorney general and a police ranger from the Baboquivari District. Wilson, a tribal member born in the O'odham Nation said he felt this was definitely "an effort to intimidate me," and was even warned that legal problems could get him permanently banished from tribal lands. Zieg Heil from Southern Arizona. June 11, 2002 Copyright (c) 2002 by Wayne Sumstine & NY Transfer News. Non-profit redistribution without any alteration is permitted and encouraged. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytenv-06.11.02-15:49:40-24909