Butterfly Triumphs

Julia Butterfly's tribute to the Redwoods is utterly beautiful and appropriate.

Pat Kittle (Santa Cruz, CA)

Neely Lyles (Austin)

"Ira" (New York City)

Dave Weaver (Pennsylvania)

Nicholas Wilson

Pepper Spray dangerous?

Do you know of any longlasting effects of pepper spray? I am looking for this information in the case of a crime-victim with lasting irritation of the skin and bronchus after a pepper spray attack.

Decorte Stefaan (Canada)

As noted in a 1998 Montior article:

As many as 35 people have died in California after being pepper-sprayed, according to the ACLU, and there have been over 100 deaths nationwide after police use of pepper spray. Supporters of pepper spray say there's no proof the substance caused the deaths associated with it.

Mark Lappe, Ph.D., of the Center for Ethics and Toxics has written "As a toxicologist, I can report that capsaicin, the active ingredient of capsicum (pepper spray), is among the most noxious chemicals identified to date. It not only produces profound pain at micro-doses, but it enhances the pain produced by later stimuli. Less well known is the fact that capsaicin is a mutagen and a potent chromosome-breaking chemical. Through its activities on the inflammatory system, it can also aggravate the airways in asthmatic patients, accounting for at least two deaths nationwide."

-- Editor

Presidio for Sale

I read the article with great interest. I was contacted by the author of the article several times over 9 months or so and answered many of her questions on past and current issues facing the Presidio of San Francisco.

The present Executive Director, James Meadows will not be in charge of the Presidio for long. His term was just extended last month. A day after his term was extended columnists Matier and Ross from the Chronicle were bold enough to reveal to the public the corruptness that prevails in the Trust. Meadows was given a $54,000 bonus besides the over $150,000 he makes, free house, and BMW sportscar. To date he has done nothing concrete that could not be done by the Army or any other entity. What he has established is an organization that runs the Presidio much like one would run a Correctional Facility. This is true because all his key men are Correctional Officers who followed him from Lowery, his previous hunting grounds.

The Trust offered the Army to do the Presidio of San Francisco toxic clean up over a period of 4 years for 100 million dollars. Nothing has happened since the Army, the Corps of Engineers left the Presidio some four months ago. Today, we have hot spots and large areas of land that should be devoid of toxicity. The Trust has the money from Congress to do the clean up but no one knows where the money is going.

The Presidio of San Francisco, belongs to the Native Americans and was stolen from them. The Muwekma Ohlone have patrimonial jurisdiction over the Presidio. The Muwekma Ohlone exercised their "right of first refusal" way back in 1989 before the Presidio was turned over to the National Park Service in 1994 by the Army. The Muwekma Ohlone were Federally Recognized by the United States until 1927, they were then illegally removed from the Federal Register. The Muwekma Ohlone are on the verge of being put back on the Federal Register and when that happens many factors will change on the Presidio. In the mean time the White men continues to be defiant and greed prevails over fairness and the leader of the pack is James Meadows and the Trust Board.

The Trust thinks that it can hoodwink the people of San Francisco. The people of San Francisco are very tolerant but the time has come to take the Trust to task and right now the Trust is under investigation for corruptness by many Federal Agencies. They have been investigated again and again by Federal Agencies before and again and again they have been warned to do things right. As long as the Trust receives on single dollar from the tax payer or from Congress they are accountable to the public. The Trust does not seem to understand this notion and does most of its operations behind closed doors.

The Trust, talks about sustainability and green and has done nothing, about helping people with housing and has not kept its promise, there is talk about public transportation and it is at its all time worst, only five per cent of the Presidio has been archeologically survey and Native American artifacts and human remains are desecrated, the Presidio is worse off today then it has ever been. Millions of dollars are been siphoned by the Trust headed by James Meadows. Meadows will be in power for a year and after that all hell will be let loose.

The Sale of the Presidio article is just the tip of the iceberg. Many more relevant issues should be addressed so that the public knows the truth.

Francisco Da Costa

More Hooray for Pinochet

In the cold war, it was the right vs. the left.

In Cuba, the left won. In Chile, the right won.

Cuba continues to be under the repressive control of the left, and it is a pariah country, economically speaking.

Chile is an economic powerhouse of Latin America. It gets to elect its government.

History has proven that Pinochet did what was best for his country. God Bless Pinochet.

Raul A Interiano

Pat Buchanan's Populist Brigade

Pat Buchanan speaks for far more individuals, who actually pulled a lever for him, than Ralph Nader. While I prefer Nader, I respect Buchanan's speaking against the WTO and representing a large segment of the American mainstream that is excluded from elite public policy debates on trade. We should try to find common ground, not become purer than thou fanatics. Also, isn't Buchanan the only candidate likely to participate in the fall debates with a critical posture toward the WTO?

Eric Roth

The "Fizzle" of the Martin Luther King Conspiracy Trial

I am outraged by the the 404 report on the King conspiracy trial. You might as well have spit in the King family.

Here are some interesting things that are the logic behind what the King Family did. Martin Luther King was killed by a sniper on April 4, 1968, at 6:01 p.m. as he stepped onto the balcony outside the Motel Lorraine in Memphis, Tennessee. A small-time thief named James Earl Ray shot Martin Luther King from the bathroom of the flophouse across from where King was staying.... According to Loyd Jowers, Frank Liberto, a grocer with alleged mob links, paid him to arrange the assassination...

Eric Lang

It's hard to see how anyone could believe that we have "spit in the King family" -- the topic of this 404 report was the bitter irony of a trial finally taking place more than thirty years later, and allowed to examine only the weakest evidence.

As noted in our report, there's lot in the Jowers story that doesn't hold up, including that friends of his believed that he made up the story in hopes of landing a book or movie deal. In our 1997 feature on the King assassination, it was noted that the 1979 House Select Committee on Assassinations decided King was killed as part of a St. Louis-based racist conspiracy that had no connections to Jowers. This was the more plausable version of events that Ray described in his 1992 book, "Who Killed Martin Luther King?" and in the "secret tapes" interview done shortly before his death in 1998. Ray apparently never mentioned Jowers, Clark, or others in Jowers' scenario.

-- Editor