Libertarian Party Founder David Nolan Calls the Crazy Woman a Shill

What's The Big Deal? Here's Proof that FAUX News is Unbiased Toward Obama

UAF Prof. Rick Steiner, Stabbed in the Back by Gen. Mark Hamilton, May Be Leaving the University

In the first 48 hours of the Exxon Valdez oilspill, a lot of people went nuts. As a former Crowley Maritime mariner, I was called early in the morning and asked if I was available for work. I wasn't.

The guy who called me at 5:00 a.m. then flew over from Anchorage to Valdez on that Good Friday morning to meet with a planning group about the "response." When he got back to Anchorage in the mid afternoon, he called me back. He was in tears. He told me that there was no response.

He also told me that flying with him on the plane over to Valdez were oil company attorneys and three people dressed in flannel shirts and Carrharts who had been hired by one of the oil companies to pose as environmentalists. Their job, as much as my friend could surmise, was to pose as environmentalists. They were going to object to the use of dispersants to deal with the spill, because their employers - the oil companies and Alyeska - didn't have enough to do the job. Not just in Alaska, but anywhere.

Thank God they didn't.

Other people had better plans on how to deal with the oil immediately, even though Alyeska, the State of Alaska, the U.S. Coast Guard and everyone else connected with real responsibility didn't have a fucking clue.

One, Cordova fisher Tom Copland, may have had the best idea of all. He was from the Skagit River valley in Washington, and had connections with the farming community. (He still does. He owns a bamboo farm.) What Tom suggested was that a large number of silage bags be flown up from Washington state. They could be trucked to Bellingham airport and packed onto C-130s and flown into Valdez. Cordova and Valdez-based seiners and tenders could be sent over to Valdez with their fish-sucking pumps. Each bag could hold about 200,000 gallons of oil and water. His idea was to get the stuff isolated and contained quickly, dirtily, before any spring winds would inevitably disburse the oil. Nobody in the response community listened. Copland's ingenious, perhaps brilliant idea perished.

Others in Cordova knew that the currents on Prince William Sound, should an initial response fail, would drive the oil stream straight toward the new fisher-owned hatchery at Sawmill Bay on the Southwest Sound. Perhaps the most influential among those concerned about saving the Sawmill Bay fish was Rick Steiner, who then ran the Cordova Sea Grant program. He led the team that organized and won the "Battle of Sawmill Bay."

They had materials flown into the hatchery complex. They made their own pollution control booms. They manned them for days as he oil slopped itself against, under and over their system. It wasn't perfect, but it worked far better than any other system deployed during the spill as a preventive or mitigating tool.

Rick Steiner continued to be right about just about everything he has done in the Alaska Sea Grant Program in the succeeding 20 years.

Between February 2009 and this week he has received his reward.

The University of Alaska, and - now, his union - have abandoned the fight to have at least one organization associated with him inside of Alaska stand up for his rights in his battle against the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to have their part of the funding for his UA position retained.

As of Friday, Steiner is contemplating resignation:

I just had a call from the faculty union at UA, and they are dropping my case, and not proceeding to arbitration...It seems their Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) with the university is extraordinarily weak on issues of faculty rights.

So, this seems to be the 'end of the road' for me and the university. I pleaded with them at the union's Executive Board meeting today, but this was their decision entirely.

That the faculty union cannot protect faculty from such violations, is an ominous development. Obviously, their CBA is worthless on faculty rights. It is little more than the Alyeska contingency plan prior to Exxon Valdez.

So, I will be resigning from this institution soon. I will not compromise my professional ethics, integrity, nor compromise my work nor free expression to stay in this environment. But what I truly worry about is the cloud this leaves over this institution.

Thursday morning, as I drove to work at UAA, I spotted several work crews in the area between the new Conoco-Phillips Integrated Sciences Building and the library. They were carrying away downed trees, broken tree limbs and other natural debris from one of the open areas of remaining natural forest copses there. The reason was that within a few hours the grand opening of the science building was going to happen. Among the very important people attending would be Gen. Mark Hamilton, the President of the University of Alaska. Back in 2001, Hamilton was the recipient of a national award for his support of freedom of expression on his campuses.

When Gen. Hamilton received the award, he was lauded for his stance. I praised him then, and dedicated The Skies Are Weeping to Hamilton.

The organization that awarded him the honor, the National Association of Scholars, may not be the best org to credit Alaskans for their efforts though. Recently they posted an article called Sustainability is a Waste - 10 Reasons to Oppose the Sustainability Movement on Your Campus.

Here are their main points:

1. Sustainability is deceptive.
Sustainability is not just about practicing good stewardship of the environment. It is also a tool to advance progressive politics and ideology. The sustainability movement is a way for people with a hugely unpopular political program to get into positions of influence so that they can advance their cause despite lack of public support. On many campuses sustainability is marketed to students as saving energy and improving the environment, but turns out to involve projects that have nothing to do with the environment.

2. Sustainability is coercive.
Sustainability advocates assume that no one can legitimately disagree with their message. They therefore have no qualms about imposing their politics on students, faculty, and staff. If someone does disagree, they attack that person’s motives and ignore his actual points.

3. Sustainability is closed-minded.
Sustainability advocates put their hands over their ears and refuse to listen to people who point out contrary facts or who have different arguments. Sustainability in this sense is an ideology: it shuts out or explains away whatever doesn’t fit with its premises.

4. Sustainability is a pseudo-religion.
Some sustainability advocates tip over the edge of ideology into apocalyptic religion, complete with end-of-the-world scenarios, calls to repent, a new eco-morality, and worship of the Earth. This is a religion that misappropriates the ideas of “ethics,” ‘justice,” “social mandate,” and “the right thing” to shame people into compliance.

5. Sustainability distorts higher education.
Sustainability advocates don’t want to just add sustainability to the curriculum; they want to make it “thefoundation of all learning and practice in higher education.” How exactly does sustainability help you learn calculus, read Homer, or score well on the LSAT? College is also about preparing for adult responsibilities. How does making sustainability the foundation of higher education prepare you for those aspects of life not encompassed by recycling, green grocery bags, and compact fluorescent light bulbs?

6. Sustainability shrinks freedom.
Sustainability advocates don’t like free markets or personal liberty. They believe markets ignore long-term costs and people typically make bad choices. Instead of liberty, sustainability advocates praise “social justice” and “equitable distribution of resources” as the foundation of a sustainable society. These terms may sound nice but they point to governmental control over everyday life. Ultimately, the sustainability movement is about taking away your right to think and act for yourself.

7. Sustainability tries to program you.
The proponents of sustainability aim to have “all students engaged as effective change agents in our sustainability challenges.” This is another way of narrowing your education. Can’t students simply be students? What if your goal is to learn something about the world before attempting to change it?

8. Sustainability is anti-rational.
Some sustainability advocates—we call them sustainatopians—want to instill in students an emotional way of knowing the world that is “separate from the rational.” Many of them believe the industrial revolution was a mistake and would like to move beyond reason and science in favor of a combination of intuition and empathy. That runs counter to the basic purpose of higher education.

9. Sustainability bypasses the faculty.
Historically, college teachers have made the key decisions about what they teach. The sustainability movement on campus, however, took off when college administrators decided to push it. So far, 650 college presidents have signed a commitment to combat global warming and infuse sustainability into the curriculum.

10. Sustainability is wasteful.
Sustainability advocates pride themselves on taking the long view and minimizing waste. In fact the movement has a long history of extravagant and false predictions about natural resources, environmental perils, and the consequences of human actions. These predictions have resulted in vastly wasteful expenditures and diversions of human time and talent. Convincing college students to squander their opportunity for a real education is only the most recent example.

I love it when the Orwhellians claim to be fighting Owellianism.

The defenders of UA's and his union's refusal to support Steiner's plea to NOAA will probably claim that his salary wasn't reduced and that his office move might have been a cost reduction move, or some other diversionary screed. They'll say that his impending protest resignation is theater, or "guerilla theater."

The reality, though, is that a person who has contributed immensely to Alaska's true wealth and sustainability has been screwed.

Back in 1989, the year that Steiner helped win the Battle of Sawmill Bay, I wrote Sphinx Island Elegy for the Anchorage Symphony Orchestra. It was about the Exxon Valdez spill. The concert at which it premiered in October 1989, was introduced by Don Cornett, Exxon's Alaska head and their chief local liar during the response period. In his introduction, he promised Exxon would fulfill the vow they had made back in March and April to Cordovans in the shocked town's high school gym, to "Make you whole."

What Rick Steiner is now being brought through isn't unique in Alaska or elsewhere. It hasn't been covered well yet by Alaska media or blogs, though. I've wondered why. Rick's case is compelling.

Progressive Alaska and Don Young

The recent disclosure by the U.S. Department of Justice of some of the documents pertaining to the upcoming sentencing of ex-Veco chief, Bill Allen, have named a Representative "A" as being a recipient of a lot of unreported donations from Allen, his subordinate Rick Smith, from Veco and from others connected to Allen.

Rep. Don Young (AK-AL) is obviously Representative "A."

I've been writing about Don Young since long before Progressive Alaska existed. Just over three years ago, during the 2006 campaign, I wrote a long essay for Down with Tyranny, that attempted to compile the most information under one title yet on Young. It was called Don Young's Connections to Jack Abramoff. Some of the speculation in that article - about probable further arrests of people who were or had at one time been close to Young - came to pass. In early 2008, I again wrote an article for DwT, about Young's abrasive midwinter tour of Alaska.

On November 17, 2007, shortly after the startup of PA, I wrote about disclosures tying Young to Rick Smith of Veco, and about phone conversations between the two, recorded by the FBI, as they were investigating the possibility that Veco was laundering money to Young through golf tournament activities. This was based on an Associated Press report and a Talking Points Memo article.

Here's a listing of many Don Young articles that have appeared at PA since November 2007, and their subject matter. For interested reporters and bloggers, they're all chock full of links to other peoples' work on Young:

1) November 25, 2007: Don Young Bipolar Disorder at the ADN. Compares articles by Erika Bolstad and Wes Loy on Young. Loy reported "on earmarks in the Bering Sea King crab fishery that give distinct advantages to three companies which have donated to Young's campaigns, and penalizes companies that have not donated."

2) December 18, 2008: Locked, Loaded and Looney. Discusses Young's last-minute, illegal changes to the 2005 Transportation Omnibus Bill, Sen. Tom Coburn's request for an investigation of the changes, and Diane Benson's earlier request to the U.S. House for an investigation.

3) December 20, 2007: More Don Young Bipolar Disorder at the ADN? Compares differing versions of Bolstad's story on Coburn's move in the Washington DC McClatchy bureau, and in the ADN, and shows how the ADN quickly hid the story.

4) February 1, 2008: Advice to Don Young's Staff - Start Looking for Work... Discussed the large drop in contributions to Young's campaign in late 2007, in light of more disclosures about his rapidly growing legal fees.

5) February 4, 2008: Don Corleone Young? Discusses and links to Terry Haines' excellent wrap-up of Young's situation, published at The Alaska Report.

6) February 19, 2008: Throwing Rocks at an Obvious Target? Discusses the AK-AL debate between Diane Benson, Ethan Berkowitz and Jake Metcalfe, when they discussed Young's mounting legal problems.

7) February 22, 2008: Don Young, Spineless Corrupt Bastard. Discusses Young's weird, truncated Mat-Su Valley press appearances two days earlier.

8) March 12, 2008: Don Juan Young? Comparison of Robert Dillon fluff piece on Young from DC with the way Young reacted to the press in his February Alaska appearances.
9) March 23, 2008: The New Shape of the AK-AL U.S. House Race. The article looked at the new dynamics in that race, after then-Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell's announcement that he would challenge Young in the 2008 GOP Primary.

10) April 15, 2008: This Couldn't Have Happened without Don Young. Links to material about Young's pivotal role in the creation of the Chinese mob-run slave worker regime in the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas.

11) April 16, 2008: Why Isn't This Man Happy? Compared the wealth of newly emerging material on Young's probable criminal activity.

12) April 20, 2008: Hats Off to Dennis Greenia and Richard Mauer. Discusses the interesting collaboration between ADN reporter Richard Mauer, and DailyKos diarist Dengre.

13) November 3, 2008: Don Young Supporters Can't Avoid Sliming Ethan Berkowitz. Late campaign dirty tricks.

14) November 4, 2008: Alaskans for Clean Elections Respond to Young Campaign Smear. More on Young supporters' dirty tricks.

15) January 3, 2009: Young-Berkowitz Race One of the Ten Biggest 2008 Upsets.

16) January 10, 2009: AK-AL 2010 Democrats Poll Results & Runoff Poll. Matchup of Alaska Democrats for the AK-AL 2010 seat.

17) April 15, 2008: April 15th Wasilla Teabaggers Rally. Nice pictures of Don.

18) April 16, 2008: Don Young on Socialism - From The Alaska Report. Video by Dennis Zaki from the Wasilla Teabaggers Rally.

19) September 12, 2008: How Much Does Don Young Have to Grab Before He'll Accept That His Work for the State of Alaska is Done? Criticizes Young's moves since he was stripped of his GOP House posts. Guest post by Howie Klein.

There were other articles about Don Young at PA, but these are most of the major ones, and a few that add depth to certain issues.

Progressive Alaska covered Young less in the late summer and fall of 2008, than earlier. Like many in Alaska, I believed the polling that showed Ethan Berkowitz a solid favorite in the race. And since the 2008 U.S. House gains by Democrats and the House GOP move to strip Young of his posts, he has been very marginal. And there has been no lack of other issues to address. I expect he will be back in the news a lot, though. Real soon.

When I first became involved in finding out more about Young, back in July 2006, as I volunteered to help Diane Benson, I told her, "You're one phone call from the FBI away from being our next U.S. Representative."

I thought that call was going to come a long time ago.

I've never stopped thinking that it will eventually come.

image adapted from DZ

UA Prof. Rick Steiner on Democracy Now on His NOAA Program De-funding

More on this soon, but it is truly fitting that Prof. Steiner's long-term, ongoing siege is aired nationally the same day music I dedicated to him 16 years ago, Shadows, is premiered in Spokane, Washington.

Watch the 2009 Alaska Federation of Natives Conference on the Web

Here's the link.

This may be one of the most important AFN gatherings in its history.

Cenk Uygur Hearts John Ziegler?

Well..... not quite. But he raises some interesting points.

Earlier this week, progressive commentator Cenk Uygur, from the talk video/webcast The Young Turks, covered conservative mockumentarian John Ziegler's ejection from the Western Conservative Political Action Caucus convention last Saturday.

Uygur, observes that his program has asked some of the same questions posed by Ziegler to CPAC head, David Keane:



OK. But maybe Cenk should have watched this YouTube, made last May, when Ziegler failed to object to the ejection of Anchorage Press reporter, Brendan Joel Kelley, from the sparsely attended Anchorage showing of Ziegler's propaganda piece, Media Malpractice:


I'll email a link to the Kelley ejection video to Cenk.

Essentially, Ziegler - once again - shows his rank hypocrisy.

Heroic Women Artists - Part Three - Diane Benson's Central Role in Alaska's Future

Thursday at noon, you will be able to watch the movie For the Rights of All: Ending Jim Crow in Alaska on your computer. Or - possibly - on your Alaska cable-connected or satellite-connected TV. It will be shown during the luncheon of the opening day of the 2009 Alaska Federation of Natives Convention, being held at Anchorage's D'enaina Center.

The movie, produced by Jeffrey Silverman, and directed by the late Phil Lucas, centers on two heroic women in Alaska's past - Alberta Schenck Adams and Elizabeth Peratrovich. These two Alaska Natives challenged the territorial civil rights paradigm during World War II that continued to give Alaska Natives second- or third-class citizen status here at the same time our first people were fighting very hard to defeat the enemies of the USA.

Tlingit civil rights activist, political maverick and multi-faceted artist, Diane Benson, created a play eight years ago, based on the story of Elizabeth Peratrovich's winning battle. Benson's play and her research for it serve as important parts of the material incorporated by Silverman into the movie. Benson plays Peratrovich in the film.

Benson's own son's almost fatal injuries in late 2005, while serving as a paratrooper for the U.S. Army in Iraq - after his enlistment had expired - severely curtailed Benson's continuing and maturing artistic creativity, as she crafted two campaigns to unseat Alaska's sole representative in the U.S. House, Don Young.

Although Benson has sometimes been quite outspoken when asserting Alaska Native rights or defending her own tribe, clan and moiety, her longtime work on behalf of victims of sexual abuse and violence remained fairly secret until a now-hidden article by Anchorage Daily News reporter, Lisa Demer, was published on May 1, 2008:

She told the crowd in the Hilton Anchorage ballroom that she was repeatedly sexually abused in Alaska foster care, that when she was a young teenager and went to the police, a Ketchikan officer not only didn't pursue charges but said he wanted to get in on it, and that she was raped three times by age 20. She didn't even try to report those, she said.

[Benson] said she's talked publicly about her experiences for a dozen years at [confidential - see note below] victim conferences around the country, though the rapes might be news to people in Alaska. It's not the kind of thing she'd bring up as a campaign strategy, she said. She talks about the worst times of her life to offer hope to other women, she said.

"If I can be a person who can get out there and do what I do, after this violent, neglectful and abusive kind of history and still demand my dignity, find my self-respect, after all of it, so can somebody else," Benson said.

When Benson opened her 2008 campaign Anchorage office, I watched her dance Tlingit dances for the first time since her son. Latseen, was injured. When a bunch of us held a fundraiser for Celtic Diva and Writing Raven to attend the 2008 Democratic National Convention, I watched and heard Diane sing a Tlingit song for the first time since Latseen was hurt.

Thursday I won't be able to be there and watch Diane play the role of Elizabeth Peratrovich on the screen, in front of hundreds of her Alaska Native brothers and sisters. I'll be teaching at UAA.

But I'll be there, the next day and the next, to help Diane carry forth her vision of Alaska's sustainable future.

Heroic Women Artists - Part Two - Deborah Fink Vindicated

British human rights activist and soprano, Deborah Fink, was cleared of London Police charges last week, in the matter of her arrest and detainment last May, during a protest against a visit there by Israeli Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman.

Debbie's arsenal has a lot of weapons: the music of cabaret songs (which she sings, with her own anti-war lyrics), a visit to Israel and the occupied territories, where she has worked in the olive groves, and the poetry of University of Alaska professor, Linda McCarriston (set to my music).

In the May 12 episode, however, she was arrested at a bagel throwing incident:

The Israeli minister's visit had been kept quiet right up to the last minute, and no communique was to be issued after the talks. But on the Tuesday evening, hearing that he had been invited to a reception with heads of the Jewish National Fund (JNF),the main Zionist fundraising outfit, Jewish peace activists managed to trace the Hampstead venue and turn up to demonstrate. The JNF,described in the Guardian as a "humnitarian and environmental charity", was founded to assist Jewish settlement in Palestine, and been kept going since the Israeli state was established 61 years ago, not only as a means of raising funds but because it could exclude Arab farmers and workers from its land, and eradicate trace of former villages, while the State and governments denied official discrimination. Lieberman would be less hypocritical. But Gordon Brown meanwhile is a registered patron of the JNF,which is a registered British charity.

As guests arrived at the home of JNF chairman Samuel Hayek, some demonstrators threw bagels (stale I hope) at them. Protesters denounced Lieberman as a racist, and compared him with the fascist BNP. Lieberman’s security guards delayed his arrival until the demonstration had been dispersed by police.

Deborah resisted:

Demonstrators who refused to move away sat down, but police waded in and forcibly dragged them away. Debbie Fink, who had remained standing with the banner of Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods was arrested, and taken away in handcuffs. Debbie, an operatic singer and music teacher was held overnight at Holborn police station, before being released on bail. I understand she may be charged with assaulting two police officers.

She was charged with assaulting one of them. On October 6th, Debbie was exonerated:

A Jewish peace activist was today found not guilty of using threatening and abusive words and behaviour and of assaulting a police officer.

Deborah Fink, a founder of Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods was arrested on May 12th while protesting against the visit of Avigdor Lieberman, the right wing former nightclub bouncer, now foreign minister of Israel.

About 15 mainly Jewish protesters, between the ages of 25 and 70, had gathered outside a house in a residential street in South Hampstead where Lieberman was due to attend a garden party organised by the Jewish National Fund. Claiming that the demonstration posed a security risk, police officers demanded that the protestors move. When they refused, the police lifted and dragged protestors to a cordoned area largely out of sight of the venue.

Fink was vocal in her objections and put up a strong physical resistance when the police tried to move her, whereupon she was arrested. Fink, who is 5 foot 3, was later accused of assaulting one of the 6 foot tall officers.

However, dismissing the charges, District Judge Baker ruled that in the circumstances, the police had no power to require the protestors to move and certainly not to move them by force. The demonstrators were protesting peacefully and posed no threat to public order. They had taken advantage of Mr Lieberman’s visit to express their support for Palestinian human rights and disapproval of events in Gaza but had not sought to stop anyone from attending the garden party. In preventing Fink and her fellow protestors from exercising their fundamental right to protest, the police had not been acting in the execution of their duty.

Deborah has been singing parts of my cantata, The Skies are Weeping, to raise money to rebuild the Al Ahli Hospital in Gaza. It was destroyed, along with every other Gaza hospital, in Operation Cast Lead last winter. Although materials for rebuilding of this Christian hospital have been procured, the Israelis are not letting them into Gaza.

At those fundraisers, Deborah has sung the song I set to this poem by Linda McCarriston:

God the Synecdote in His Holy Land i.m. Rachel Corrie

Around you the father gods war. This
Father. That father. The other father.

What more dangerous place could
A woman stand, upright, than on that sand, as if
She were still antiphon to that voice, the other
Mind of that power. The very idea!

Crush her back in to her mother!
Crush her. Crush her. Consensus. War.

Here is a recording of Deborah Fink singing the song.

Sen. Begich This Morning on Health Care Reform & Economic Recovery