Comparisons of Joshua Yeidel’s tightly crafted letter “Superficial editorial” (about 3 column inches) and Henry Johnston’s flat-earth rant, “An ‘asinine exercise in pure stupidity’ ” (about 20 column inches), on the Aug. 30 Daily News Opinion page, clearly show that “less can be more.” Though unintended, the latter also clearly demonstrates an “asinine exercise in pure stupidity.” Continue reading
I am writing in reply to the editorial in the weekend Daily News (August 27 & 28), “Protestors fighting the wrong fight in Moscow.”
It is a brave endeavor, apparently, to actually speak out in support of keeping Moscow and many other towns and cities along the megaload route undamaged. There is a reason those megaloads are being driven through town after midnight. Exxon/Mobile is very aware that what they are doing has a negative impact on the people and the land they travel through as well as their destination. They are ignoring citizens’ rights to deny access to their property by an entity that is damaging to that property as well as other roads and highways. The citizens have a right to refuse to enable that negative impact. Continue reading
MOSCOW – Amid a police presence of nearly 30 officers, an estimated 200 demonstrators lined both sides of Washington Street here just after midnight Thursday as an Imperial Oil/Exxon Mobil megaload slipped through the gauntlet with ease.
Police Chief David Duke reported no arrests. “We had four that were warned, but they complied.”
Last week, six demonstrators were arrested and jailed after a megaload was forced to a stop. Continue reading
20-year climate activist and WIRT co-founder Rob Briggs
Normally, I would feel mortified learning that my arrest and incarceration had made front-page news in my local paper (Daily News, August 23). But last Tuesday, I looked forward to telling my mother, who agrees that global warming is worth going to jail over.
My charge was failure to leave the “postcard area” in front of the White House until the Park Police agreed to arrest me. I was guilty as a dog and prepared to admit it. After two days in jail, I was released without charge. Continue reading
ImperialOil/ExxonMobil’s ninth megaload on Highway 95, the second largest shipment to date, measuring 24 feet wide, 14 feet high, and 193 feet long and weighing 323,000 pounds, rolled through Moscow around midnight. But ensuing events were radically different from the previous protest on August 25-26, which resulted in six arrests. Moscow police constrained expressions of free speech and assembly by not allowing protesters to step into the street and not giving any second warnings before making arrests for which they were over-prepared.
(Video and heavily edited text provided by a megaload proponent)
I couldn’t disagree more with the weekend Daily Newseditorial (Opinion, Aug. 27 & 28). Megaload protesters are fighting the right fight. If global warming isn’t stopped, it’s the end of this planet as we know it.
The editorial board thinks the protests should move to D.C., but the deck is stacked against people working for positive change there, too. After a week of arrests, National Public Radio has yet to do a story on those peaceful protests, and the White House hasn’t commented on them either. Even if the D.C. action proves productive, most people can’t afford to go there or risk days in jail. Continue reading
This weekend’s editorial (Daily News, Aug. 27 & 28) about the megaload protests in Moscow is amazingly superficial for professed journalists. By removing all context, you trivialize the protest as a futile attempt to stop an oil company truck.
Of course, the protest was much more than that. It was a signal to all those who are passionately concerned about the Earth, our only home, that they are not alone in their passion or their concern. And it was a signal to those who are unaware of the brutal rape of Alberta, giant tar sands exploitation, that they have something to learn (search “tar sands action” on Facebook or “tar sands invasion” on Google). Continue reading
In my June 7 column I predicted Moscow’s hippies would dig out their
“leather vests, put on their Birkenstocks and re-adjust their graying
ponytails” in response to the movement of ExxonMobil’s megaloads up U.S.
Highway 95. Now, imagine the belly laugh I enjoyed when I woke up Friday
morning and saw on DNews.com a photo, taken by Daily News photographer Dean Hare, of my exact prophecy.
Two protesters of the Imperial Oil/ExxonMobil megaload that began its trip from Lewiston late Thursday were arrested outside Coeur d’Alene on U.S. Highway 95 while monitoring the shipment’s progress early Saturday morning.
Helen Yost said she and another woman had been part of a group that was monitoring the load early Saturday when they were arrested by an Idaho State Police trooper.
They were later charged with obstruction and failure to wear seatbelts. Continue reading
UPDATED: Saturday, August 27, 5:00 pm Idaho State Police told Citydesk that two more mega-load protesters were arrested Saturday morning in Coeur d’Alene. That brings to eight the number of persons taken into custody, expressing their displeasure of the oversized rigs heading for the Kearl Oil Sands Project in Alberta, Canada.
ORIGINAL POST: Friday, August 26 Six people were arrested early today, protesting mega-loads as the huge rigs rolled through their Latah County community. The six, members of Wild Idaho Rising Tide, took part in a larger protest which saw several people lie down in the middle of Washington Street in Moscow, as scaled-down ExxonMobil mega-loads rolled on Highway 95 toward Coeur d’Alene before heading east on I-90 and north to the Kearl Oil Sands Project in Alberta, Canada.
Read more: Update: More Mega-Load Protesters Arrested
(By George Prentice, Boise Weekly)
Wild Idaho Rising Tide 