WWPBlog

I just can’t get the weird imagery of the Boise Divine Strake Meeting out of my mind. You know, the one that Larry Craig and I both attended. See preceding WWPBlog Post "Divine Strake, Idaho Cows and Bush Iran Warmongering". Especially the one handout that replicated a Fearmongering Let’s Go Bomb Iran poster display. For some reason, these did not appear in the "official" inch thick Environmental Assessment.

Here is why people are so worked up over Divine Strake:
http://www.ieer.org/comments/fallout/pr0202.html  because this happened and the divine strake detonation may dislodge the horrible materials left behind at the Nevada Test Site from these tests. That, and it is clear that it is a key step to more Oil Wars.  

Here is what U. S. taxpayers pay Defense Contractors to produce to develop and promote fear — or perhaps to curry favor with the illustrious reader of My Pet Goat.

1) Handout

2) Close-up of Little red-jacketed Robo-Soldier Men from Handout

Note too the Blurry Bug-eyed Underground Machine from the smaller Handout photo. Perhaps they were frightened by Jerusalem crickets metamorphosing, or something?  

Yet nowhere in this propaganda (what do you bet - such artistry and photo-shopping must have cost us at least a few hundred thousand or so???) is there a discussion of that wonderful Neptunium 237 the Salt Lake paper has been writing about. 

Or that wonderful NEW Depleted Uranium with all kinds of neptunium, plutonium and things being thrown around just upwind at Nellis.

So Now, Are You Scared? Are you dialing even the most rightwing of western elected officials, and telling them you don’t want no Gur-durn Divine Strake contaminatin’ that thar Idaho or Nevada public lands-to-feedlot-to-table Ribeye beef steak (Strake?), (not to menton export to Japen beef), or CAFO dairy milk. Or at least not until Congress passes a Universal Health Care Bill or something. You can tell you’ve been in Idaho too long when the first thing that comes to mind is cynicism. Just tell them what you are really most concerned about. That you are not interested in breathing in, or being exposed to the food contaminated by the material potentially released by this whole "experiment".

Comments to the Department of Energy can be e-mailed to: divinestrake@doe.gov  .The gloss-over Draft EA "no worries" is at www.nv.doe.gov .

And as a final encouragement to make noise about this all: Here is an image that shows the direction the winds blow from the planned Strake Detonation Site. A whole lot of North to that wind arc …

Yes indeed, Thank You so much DTRA, Defense Threat Reduction Agency (where did THIS agency come from?) … 

Yours, Zephyr 

Here are portions of my notes from attending the Idaho Fish and Game Press Conference today (1/29/06) at 3:30 pm following the US Fish and Wildlife Service announcement earlier today on the Proposed Gray Wolf de-Listing Rule . I didn’t get it all down, and didn’t write much at the very beginning. It was filmed, too. Portions with actual quotes are verbatim:

The Press Conference was held in IDFG Trophy Room, with various caribou, deer, antelope and fish mounts on the wall.New Director Cal Groen talked at first, then turned it over to Steve Nadeau. They both responded to various questions.

“We want to manage them like lions, bear, elk, deer”. [ I think he said bear, it was kind of blurred] ….If they are de-listed, we’ll have to provide annual reports to FWS … The Commission worked on a license system $26.50 resident, $256,00 non-resident. We’ve begun the planning process. Stakeholders … will be working with FG to develop a plan.

This is a good thing. Since 2002, the delays have been the result of Wyoming. Wyoming still has a window of opportunity with their legislature in session.

Question: If you can’t get the numbers down, will the Commission authorize other things to reduce the population? And also reporter brings up Butch Otter and his statements.

Response: I think they’ll start out with hunting.

The Governor has made clear what he wants.

Are we hoping to draw down … the Governor’s point was 10 packs, 100 wolves … It’s going to be interesting to see how wolves respond to hunting. They also talked about a cushion at some point, and the 15 pack number.

Question was asked about how the management was to occur:

Response: We’re going to … “knock them down in some areas” [actual quote].

There are “high conflict areas”. There are 7 areas with “chronic depredation problems” …. There are livestock problems. It would be nice to reduce this.

Question: What are the chronic conflict areas?

Response: McCall/Cascade, Salmon, East of Boise – Smokies/Danskin, Copper Basin. [This seems, really to be  just 6 -  which Conflict Area is missing? Unless East of Boise is meant to be separate].

How will FWS plan mesh with state plan?

Response: “State Plan sets the boundaries ….”

Question was asked about how the FG management discussion seemed to focus on killing wolves, not taking measures to reduce livestock conflicts, avoid livestoc use of areas.

Response: Our current management includes working with producers.. we’ll use non-lethal techniques, we will be using sport harvest to reduce conflicts … . and they talked more about working with livestock producers. 

WWP attended and filmed the Press Conference. 

TAKE HOME MESSAGE: Their minds are already made up. Any new "stakeholder" planning process will be a joke. The public lands livestock industry dominate wolf management in Idaho when de-listing occurs. Livestock conflict hot spots will drive management. Ranchers that have whined the loudest will see wolves "knocked down". Hunting is becoming an arm of the livestock industry.

Yes, this is the continued stranglehold of the Culture of Death (that is public lands livestock grazing) on our native wildlife in the West.

Got a Wolf looking cross-eyed at the bleating sheep? Just issue one of those ‘thar Wolf Pelt Tags.  See Previous WWP Blog Post with Photos: "Now Idaho Is Running Away From Its Governor’s Tag to Kill Wolves".   

If Idaho is going to go from 60 packs to 15 packs … it doesn’t take much imagination to understand that a large-scale slaughter of entire packs in McCall, Cascade, Salmon, Smokies,  Danskin, Copper Basin and other areas will be unleased.   

This seems to me to be part of the creeping PRIVATIZATION of the public’s wildlife (and its death). It is not wildlife "management", based on viable populations of wolves in areas with suitable wild prey species. No, no, no. Industry, not science, dictates where wolves can and can not live. 

You know something Big is up with the industrial ag, livestock, and mining power apparatus that runs Idaho when a meeting is held in the Grove Hotel. As I wound my way past the shiny senatorial Lincoln Stampeder gas guzzlers parked by its entry, I recalled that on only one previous occasion had riffraff like me had occasion to enter its portals. That was an event of utmost signficance to the Livestock powers-that-be - a reception held for Kathleen Clarke, and her appointment to head the Bush BLM on its path to more beef, weeds, oil rigs and disdain for the public whose lands she was to be managing.

Divine Strake is, according to the cover of the thick EA stacked on the Grove meeting room tables, a "Large-Scale Open-air Explosive Detonation" at the Nevada Test Site. The Nevada Test site  is northWest of Las Vegas. It is where U. S. nuclear testing released radioactivity into the air in the 1960s and later. The radioactivity, carried north and east by the wind, fell out over much of the then sparsely populated West.  While it is claimed by the government that Divine Strake is not radioactive, it  is greatly feared tha it will jar loose Lord knows what nightmarish radioactive or other elements still contaminating the Nevada Test Site where it will be blasted off.

Why, you might wonder, were the likes of Larry Craig and other political Bigwigs at this meeting? While the cancers caused by this radioactive fallout in Utah are fairly well known, the fact that Idaho received some of the largest amounts of radioactive fallout, especially in fallout "hot spots" like Gem County or Custer County, has received far less notice — until recently when the cancer legacy became undeniable. And it just so happens that relatives of Idaho politicians or their close associates have been some of the undeniable victims of that Nevada bomb testing.

And it is believed that cows were one of the agents of concentrating radioactive substances that were then ingested by people. So if you drank milk, say, from a cow in Emmett, Idaho in 1965, your risk of getting certain cancers may be off the top of the charts. See

http://www.ieer.org/comments/fallout/nastestimboise.html

Or 

http://www.ieer.org/sdafiles/vol_6/6-2/iodine.html 

The keen interest of Larry Craig and others in Divine Strake is likely not just in the past or human health concerns alone. It may also be in the future protection of the agricultural investments of some of their biggest supporters as well. Think where Idaho ag is headed today. Huge mega-dairies, where milk from CAFOs from Idaho may be shipped all over the nation or the world. Plus, contamination of the food chain would also get into beef and other ag products.         

Back to the meeting. I couldn’t find anything in the Statesman on-line yet this morning about this. Here is some info from before the meeting, and from Utah, and Nevada.

I asked one of the Strake Shills - Well, what about other things that are going on near there with radioactive stuff, too, like the increased use of Depleted Uranium at Nellis that might result in increased radioactive materials on the surfaces to be disturbed by the Strake Blast ? See

Notice of Intent To Perform an Environmental Assessment for Increased Depleted Uranium Use at Nevada Test and Training Range, Nevada

http://www.epa.gov/fedrgstr/EPA-IMPACT/2006/January/Day-24/i794.htm

The Strake shill acted like Nellis was on the other side of the universe, … worlds away … not just a few miles upwind from Ground Zero for the Strake Test.  

So - call, write, FAX even the worst members of the western Congressional delegations. Tell them to stop this madness. After all, its not only you, yours, and your organic yogurt, it’s also the things they hold near and dear, including their favorite ag industries and icons.

What would happen if that blue Astroturf at the Boise State football stadium were to set the Geiger counters a’clicking? Or if the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association had to spend time disavowing that eerie red glow to the super market steaks?    

Could the path to stopping Bush from blowing up Teheran lie through the western Congressional delegations? Perhaps only they can bat Dick Cheney back into the crypt - or at least into the confines of the Hayden Aerodome (see preceding WWPBlog Posts about Cheney’s Idaho haunt).    

Yours, Zephyr 

For some reason, my daily e-mail link to the Crooks and Liars Blog arrives at the Inbox after midnight. So, there I was, up way too late thinking about the Fish and Game Commisison Wolf Pelt Tag meeting, and clicked on Jon Stewart trying to relate to Dick Cheney!!!!

Sort of like a biologist, once de-listing occurs, trying to talk sense into the ghoulish Idaho Department of Fish and Game Commissioners. And, sad as they may be, they could actually be a cut above some of the Idaho State legislators, who will ultimately vote on mechanics of wolf hunting and pelting in this state if de-listing occurs. So, in preparation for the smooth talk and slick packaging that any Wolf Proposal will be wrapped in, take a look at the video. Especially the last segment: