It is a time of freedom and fear, of Gaia and of borders, of many paths and the widening of a universal toll road, emptying country and swelling cities, of the public bought into privacy and the privacy of the public sold into invisible data banks and knowing algorithms. It is the time of the warrior's peace and the miser's charity, when the planting of a seed is an act of conscientious objection.

These are the times when maps fade and direction is lost. Forwards is backwards now, so we glance sideways at the strange lands through which we are all passing, knowing for certain only that our destination has disappeared. We are unready to meet these times, but we proceed nonetheless, adapting as we wander, reshaping the Earth with every tread.

Behind us we have left the old times, the standard times, the high times. Welcome to the irregular times.


 
This story begins with rumors circulating around that George W. Bush had used taxpayer money to hire a public relations firm to somehow help sell the idea that tripling the rate of logging in the Sierra Nevada would be beneficial to the Sierra Nevada.

The Sierra Nevada Forest Protection Campaign, getting wind of such a potential abuse of government funds, filed an official Freedom of Information Act request to find out whether this was true.

Responding to the request as required by law, the Bush Administration avowed that no taxpayer funds were being used for any such public relations effort.

Then the head of the SNFPC got an anonymous package with documents in the mail.

It turns out, as the Bush Administration eventually admitted, that well over a hundred thousand dollars of taxpayer funds were indeed paid to a public relations firm, "OneWorld Communications," for exactly that purpose.

Among the tasks of OneWorld Communications in producing a video and promotional posters:

* Convince the public that triple-logging the Sierra Nevada forest would be good for the Sierra Nevada forest
* Counter "an apparent atmosphere of mistrust and cynicism about the government's real intentions"
* Counter the notion that the Bush Administration was acting "due to some hidden politically motivated agenda"

Mistrust about the government's real intentions? Hidden agendas? Rather than countering such suspicions, Bush's secret plan and illegal denial of its existence have done nothing but to fan those flames.

(Source: Associated Press March 10, 2004)

Posted by James Cook at 12:42 PM. # (permalink)




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