Butterfly Triumphs

I sit here in the jungles of Puna, Hawai'i, writing from a double decker bus, tears streaming down my face after reading this story. I am so touched to see such devotion and courage. Mahalo Julia Butterfly - you are an Angel.

I love the story of her and Luna during the storms and how she gave her all to the cause -- complete surrender. What a powerful Act. And how she stayed to be the voice of the tree and the forests. And stayed and stayed until she was heard clearly and she got her YES!.

This sunrise, my friend Michael Smith, passed on. I know he goes happily knowing this kind of sensitivity exists on the planet now. Let us enter the next Millennium with this new consciousness that together WE can come to balanced solutions for the good of all.

Paradise Newland

I loved reading your story on Julia! She is so beautiful, and very strong for such a young woman. As a mother of four daughters, I hope my daughters make me as proud of them as Julia's parents must be of her. (My daughters, it is to be hoped, will not spend two years in a tree to do it!)

Lisa Staubly

Incredible story, very well told. I always thought the Earth! First people were a little wacky myself. Now I can see that the only difference between them and me is that they have the determination to stand up for their convictions. I admit I'm a sissy and could never have done what Julia did. While the world may think she's crazy, I will know otherwise, and I applaud her for it. It's the Julias of this world who DO make a difference. Thank you for bringing her story and the plight of the old-growth forests to the public.

Jane Kosola

I don't know where this girl gets off. She talks about trees as if they are a god. Nothing in this world is forever, everthing dies. I don't want wastful use of forest, but i won't let an enviromentalist tell me that virgin treesÊare so important that a tree that will die anyway can destroy the earth if it is cut down. What will she do if lightning strikes it and it burns to the ground: kill herself? The things on earth are for mankind to enjoy. We shouldnt be wastful, but neither should we fall into the trap of look but don't touch.

"bbval5"

Thank you so much for the inspiring and moving piece on Julia Butterfly Hill...it gave me renewed inspiration to do more for our Beloved Earth.

Linda Evans

I'm a German exchange student in Canada, but I had already heard Julia's story in Germany. I just thought it's so great what she's doing. Could I e-mail her?

Janina

Julia's e-mail address can be found on our Headwaters information web page.
-- Editor

Alexander Cockburn: Butterfly's Landing

Leave it to people like Cockburn to provide a dim view of everyone else, especially anyone who gets credit for doing some good. Cockburn, like his buddy Bruce Anderson, who ran an expanded version of the same article on page one of his bash weekly, the Anderson Valley Advertiser, is self-appointed lord high judge of one and all.

Cockburn's piece has a lot of errors, most of them included to belittle Julia. Example: "...Pacific Lumber pledges that it won't log the Stafford Giant (which Julia calls 'Luna')...." Cockburn implies that "the Stafford Giant" was a long-established name for the tree, and that calling it "Luna" is just some new-age lunacy by Julia. But the tree was named Luna by the Earth First!ers who found it and established the tree-sit during the full moon of October 1997. It was unknown and unnamed before that. The "Stafford Giant" name was just an alternate that never got wide circulation except in the subtitle of the short video documentary "Luna - The Stafford Giant Tree-Sit." Luna is the name by which millions of people worldwide have come to know the ancient tree, thanks to the wide and prolonged media coverage achieved by Julia and her support team.

But hey, why let facts get in the way of a good put-down? Before he gets up on his high horse to trash Julia, Cockburn should spend two years in a redwood tree.

Charlie Light

Forest Activist "Gypsy" Chain Killed by Logger

Do you have an e-mail of the Humboldt County prosecutor's office, so that i can urge them to prosecute tree-feller Ammons?

George Kassel

Too bad a few more did not get smashed. Those people are real losers.

"Teufelhunden"

Japanese Government Addicted to Tobacco Profits

The Japanese Government is not the only one Addicted to Tobacco Profits. You need to to see what the U.S. Government is making from Tabacco Profits.State and federal governments have collected a total of $118.6 billion in taxes on cigarettes over the past 10 years.

TOTAL CIGARETTE TAXES 1989-1998

$ 51.9 billion in federal taxes
$ 64.8 billion in state taxes
$ 1.9 billion in local taxes
$ 118.6 billion total

Kenneth Morrison

Link Between Cell Phones and Brain Cancer, Researcher Says

You are absolutely correct! Very recently, I had a good friend, who was constantly on a cell phone, develop brain cancer. Within three months, he was dead! I asked his doctor: how do you get brain cancer? He told me he didn't know. My friends wife, also a very heavy cell phone user, had a brain bleed a month after her husband was diagnosed.. She survived, after many brain operations. This is terrible. I thought you and your readers would be interested in this true story. I can put you in touch with my friend's widow, if you are interested.

Dave Slater

Hooray for Pinochet

I am an American Citizen born in Santiago, Chile and I was five years old when the coup to overthrow President Allende was happening. I was too small to understand the state of the country at the time but what I do remember very vividly was that my oldest sister had to get up at five in the morning to go to the bakery to buy bread and to wait in line for hours just to reach the front of the line and be told that there is no more bread. The reason for there not being any bread left is because all of the communist parties would come in and have the first pick of everything in the bakeries and grocery stores. Many people criticize Pinochet for his actions but they forget how horrible it was to live in Chile at the time. People had plenty of money to buy things but if you did not belong to the communist party your money was no good because they would get first pick and leave nothing to everyone else.

Pinochet warned everyone that if you did not follow rules during the coup extreme measures would be taken to ensure that everyone obeyed his law. Granted his methods might not have been the best but look at what he was dealing with and that was the best way to take action. All he wanted to do was to save the country from that terrible man and this is the thanks he gets by being tricked to go to another country to visit and be arrested.

Chile would not be at the point it is now without his efforts, there is nothing that America has that my country does not have already. Technology-wise, we are probably the most advanced Latin American country today and that is thanks to Pinochet. Foreign debt is pretty much nonexistent because of everything he has done during his reign. People enjoy the fruits of his labor but turn the other cheek and accuse him. This makes me sad because even though I was too small to understand what was happening, I appreciate and am proud of my country and I owe it all to President Pinochet. So for all those accusing him get the hell out Chile and go live in Cuba where communism is still alive!

"Hotchileb"

Child Labor issue

Last November 23,1999 16 boys in the Philippines escaped and jumped off the F/V Arnold and swam to safety after months of hard labor at sea as muro ami divers. Muro-ami was banned in 1986 after a national outcry when the bodies of 100 muro-ami victims, mostly children who were tangled in nets after diving were found in a graveyard in Palawan.

A reliable source also said that the fishing boat boarded by the chldren who managed to escape was owned by a prominent politician residing in the island of Cebu and who has long been known for hiring young boys for their fishing vessels.

Cyrus Preglo

As noted in our 1996 feature on child labor, Deep-sea fishing In many Asian countries, especially Myanmar (Burma), Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand, children work in muro-ami fishing, which involves deep-sea diving without the use of protective equipment. Children are used to bang on coral reefs to scare the fish into nets. Each fishing ship employs up to 300 boys between 10 and 15 years old recruited from poor neighbourhoods. Divers reset the nets several times a day, so that the children are often in the water for up to 12 hours. Dozens of children are killed or injured each year from drowning or from decompression illness or other fatal accidents from exposure to high atmospheric pressure. Predatory fish such as sharks, barracudas, and poisonous sea snakes also attack the children.
-- Editor

We love you, we hate you

Thank you for making the truth known. I am so sick of the so called "news" that will report anything but the news and everything for sensationalism and the corporations profits. These vampires of the new world order need to be dragged into the light so they will perish.

Mike Shoemake

Softcore liberal bullshit magazines like yours specialize in only do a disservice to activists, you're so eager to appear harmless to the great unwashed that you neuter movements like Earth First!, if Monitor were the only source on EF! it would give the impression that these are fat hippies in tie-dye's so pacified they can barely move to even Mickey Hart, who makes a fortune exploiting the incineration of Amazonia by manufacturing snow ski's used by yuppies at the newly expanded Vale Colorado casino & luxury resort, using the same politically correct pretext that indigenous groups use to exterminate whales using .50 caliber canons.

This is not the EF! I know, are you aware of this movement's literature? Ecodefense by Dave Foreman, Earthforce by, Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherds, who regularly rams ships engaged in the industrial slaughter of sealife, or the great Edward Abbey's essay Anarchism and the Morality of Violence, this is antithetical to the "I let the goon pig burn out my girlfriend's eyes with pepper spray solution on non-violence principle while a union logger felled a tree on me," which you apparently endorse.

And o.k. if the purpose of tree squatting is to get the attention of the suburban masses by posturing prettily on CNN, reconcile that with its International Paper Inc. advertising.

Also the Ruckus society seems very phony to me. Is orchestrating a "protest" with the mayor and police chief genuine dissent or collaboration? It seems very irresponsible, putting good, decent activists at risk. The after the fact explanation of gee whiz the crooked politician didn't keep his promises is laughable, what did you expect.

"Michael"

I really enjoyed your entry of what was going on at the WTO protests. I feel great sadness with what happened. Thank you for putting such a wonderful thing on the net, and hope to see more to the story.

Lareen