America's Greens Rally to Flag, Run for Cover

Hot to present themselves as staunch flag-waggers, some of America's premier environmental organizations have disgracefully ditched their principles.

The Sierra Club, America's oldest green group, has abruptly turned off its campaign against the anti-environmental program of the Bush administration.

We have secured an internal memo in which the club's high command explains to its staff why it's suspending its campaigns. "In response to the attacks on America," the memo goes, "we are shifting our communications strategy for the immediate future. We have taken all of our ads off of the air; halted our phone banks; removed any material from the web that people could perceive as anti-Bush, and we are taking other steps to prevent the Sierra Club from being perceived as controversial during this crisis. For now we are going to stop aggressively pushing our agenda and will cease bashing President Bush."

The memo then instructs club staffers on how to respond to the press: "If you are asked about what this terrorism does to the Sierra Club's agenda, please respond simply by saying that right now the public needs to focus on comforting each other and strengthening our national security to deal with the crisis at hand."

Imagine if this craven posture spreads across the public interest movement.

We could expect First Amendment defenders to say that they were abandoning efforts to protect the Bill of Rights. We could expect groups defending immigrants to say that henceforth the INS should be given free rein.

Fortunately First Amendment defenders and defenders of immigrants have stronger spines and principles than the supposed defenders of the environment at the Sierra Club. Are we now to expect the club to endorse drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve as necessary "for national security?"

Even groups that we here at Nature and Politics have admired are now in pell-mell cowardly retreat.

The Berkeley-based International Rivers network, which has been the main bulwark against the Three Gorges dam project in China, now announces that it is suspending its planned nationwide protest against Morgan Stanley, one of the dam's principle financiers. Morgan Stanley had 50 floors of offices in the World Trade Center. IRN has also announced that "out of respect for the victims of this disaster, with understanding of the strategic difficulties in conveying to a shocked media and public our messages regarding the World Bank and IMF, with concern for the integrity of security systems in Washington DC, and for the safety of all, we will refrain from participating in activities surrounding the planned World Bank/IMF meeting this month. We are also sharing our concerns with the leading organizations responsible for planning and coordinating these activities."

The Ruckus Society, the direct action training group involved in many demonstrations at the World Trade Organization, simultaneously announced that it was canceling its training camp, scheduled as preparation for the World Bank meeting. This camp was to be cosponsored by the Institute for Policy Studies, Jobs with Justice, and Global Exchange. All these organizations have now backed out, saying that now is not the time for such activity.

The Rainforest Action Network, based in San Francisco, describes itself as being in a "wait-and-see mode." "Things are definitely on hold," said RAN's Patrick Reinsborough. But RAN staffers have complained to us that the leadership of the group is adopting a line more similar to that taken by Brent Blackwelder and Friends of the Earth, which has announced that it would not participate in the protests under any circumstances.

Blackwelder, it may be recalled, has made a point of denouncing the robust flavor of recent demonstrations in Genoa and elsewhere. In his zeal to distance himself from the street protesters, Blackwelder made a particularly disgusting comment on the McLaughlin Group, dismissing the horrible death of a Spanish anarchist, as being probably just "an anarchist. And governments have to move forward to deal with anarchists and violent perpetrators."

Let's get this straight. If all resisters to the Bush political program were to follow this shameful exhibition by these green groups, we would see peace groups declining to protest against nuclear attacks on Iraq and armed invasion of Afghanistan. We would see civil rights organizations sitting on their hands as racial and religious profiling is used to persecute people of Middle Eastern descent. Defenders of Palestinian rights would say that for the time being they wouldn't protest the use of US Apache helicopters against civilians in the West Bank towns and villages. What nonsense! Principles are never more important than when it is inconvenient or dangerous to stand up for them.

Chemical War in Manhattan

As the environmentalists are putting themselves into a state of suspended animation, the citizens of Manhattan and thousands of volunteer rescue workers mulling through the rubble at the World Trade Center complex may well be in the whirlwind of a toxic event, which has received little media attention and almost no precautionary aid from FEMA or other federal agencies.

Early reports from the Environmental Protection Agency described the destruction of the World Trade complex as "an environmental catastrophe," the air of Manhattan clotted with asbestos, dioxin, and other poisons. Yet, rescue workers found themselves with little more than surgical masks between their lungs and the poisons emanating from the smoldering ruins.

For years, the Pentagon and other terror pundits had been warning of the vulnerability of American cities to attack by biological and chemical weapons, the so-called asymmetrical warfare. These apocalyptic scenarios held that terrorist groups would unleash anthrax or sarin gas attacks in subways, water supplies, or mega-office buildings like the World Trade Towers. Well, it turns out that the attackers didn't need to pack any chemicals; the buildings themselves proved to be quite toxic enough. The attackers used American planes as missiles and the buildings as chemical weapons.

Built during the height of the asbestos boom, the guts of the World Trade Center may have been one of the world's largest repositories of the carcinogenic fiber, used as insulation in the giant towers.

Underneath the rubble, thousands of tires continue to burn, sending plumes of pitch black smoke down the canyons of Manhattan. This smoke is contaminated with dioxins and assorted other poisons of the petrochemical age.