Eco-tourism greenwash

To promote ecotourism as green, selfless and a gift to the remote corners of the world is greenwash ["Ecotourism and Ethics," Fall '99 EIJ]. What in the world could an American Ecotourist teach a Mongolian? How to conserve jet fuel?

How many tons of fuel does a 747-200 burn between SFO and Ulaan Baatar? Read the Journal's Summer 1997 cover story, "Oil Spills in the Sky."

I live in Taos County, New Mexico. Ten years ago it was very quiet here. Nowadays the air traffic has increased to nearly intolerable levels.

Eco-tourism is really big here - river rafting, horseback riding, hiking, mountain biking, rock climbing, pueblo visits. It's a real carnival of ecology.

Stephen Bull
El Prado, New Mexico

Tree-free or not tree-free?

On the bottom right corner of the first page of the Fall 1999 Journal is a pinecone containing the words "Tree Free." It is disheartening to realize that Earth Island, a one-time proponent and supporter of alternative (non-tree) fiber sources, has backslid to the point of complete misrepresentation of the term.

By printing the phrase "tree-free" on paper that is made from tree fiber, you are setting the concept back considerably. It is confusing to the public at a time when the existing tree-based industry is conducting misinformation campaigns regarding what is and is not environmentally preferable.

Please take steps to accurately identify the paper you are using.

Tom Rymsza
Vision Paper
Albuquerque, New Mexico

Editor's Note: The summer issue also contained the same error. The contents page was designed by an outside art agency: We should have caught the error after the first issue. We didn't and for that we apologize.

More on Alcoa

We were thrilled with the coverage EIJ gave to the Alcoa deal going down in our part of Texas. ["Aluminum's Hidden Costs," Fall '99 EIJ] Today's Austin Statesman had another great article. Also, the Texas Observer did an in-depth overview of the entire issue in their August 20 edition. Our story made the cover of the Observer! Thanks again for your interest in this story.

Ann Mesrobian and Tom Dureka
Austin, Texas

Ron McD: Nobel Laureate?

The Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention, advanced by New York Times reporter Thomas Friedman, contends that "no two countries that had a McDonald's have ever gone to war with each other."

Friedman has obviously never been to London and Buenos Aires. Or Saigon, Baghdad, Panama City, Teheran, New Delhi or Karachi. Both India and Pakistan now have McDonald's restaurants. Belgrade had no fewer than seven when the NATO bombing began. A company spokesman did point out, however that technically it was NATO that was "at war" with Yugoslavia and that "NATO itself had no McDonald's outlets."

I went to Belgrade during NATO's bombing of Serbia. One of the first things the Serb citizens shut down after NATO's attacks were the McDonald's restaurants. I took a picture of one of them: Instead of the Golden Arches, the building had huge TARGET signs plastered all over its facade.

Bob Djurdjevic, Founder
Truth in Media
Phoenix, Arizona

Federal judiciary for sale

As an experienced environmental lawyer whose practice is limited to federal courts, I am outraged by current legislative proposals from Sen. Frank H. Murkowski (R-AK) and others to split our Appellate Court to make it more sensitive to local and regional political favor.

The reason we have federal courts is to protect individual rights from popular oppression. The reason we have appeals courts is to serve as a check on local federal judges who, by virtue of their standing in the community, may be unduly influenced by local politics.

The timber industry was infuriated when the appellate court upheld the spotted owl injunction in 1993. As the AP points out, the Ninth Circuit Court has been "under attack for decades, largely from Northwest senators unhappy with environmental rulings."

In 1994, the timber industry helped purchase Congress for the Republican party. In return, they were allowed to draft a rider to the Oklahoma City Emergency Relief Act (passed in the aftermath of the Oklahoma Federal Building bombing) that suspended all environmental laws protecting national forests for two years.

The real lasting Reagan legacy was to turn our federal judiciary over to the same special interests that control the other two branches of government, and to turn our once independent media over to giant corporate ownership.

Amazingly, no reporter seems to have connected these green-as-greed dots. Mainstream US journalism has become nothing more than an exercise in navel-gazing, sensational death watches, and corporate cheerleading.

The American Heritage Dictionary de-fines "fascism" as "the merging of state and business leadership, together with an ideology of belligerent nationalism."

Tom Woodbury
Boise, Idaho

Journal going "upscale"

The new, upscale, EIJ makes me nervous. I don't need another "proper" environmental magazine with a moderate number of reasonable articles in it. I do need a stuffed-to-the-gills, shoot-from-the-hip quarterly, with up-to-date news from all over the world on the suffering environment and "environmental justice" issues. I'm going to feel really deprived if this is a permanent change - don't do it!

Beedy Parker
Camden, ME

Fight the Corporatocracy

From reading items after news item about business-driven horrors and outrages all over the world (and even into space), it has become clear that there is one action, above all, that is crucial to stopping the human and environmental terrorism: that is, to reclaim mainstream public TV and radio airwaves from the commercial interests and return them to the public.

As Ben Franklin said on his early flag, "Join or Die." All groups must join, regardless of individual differences, to get their information and opinions on the mainstream airwaves. It is the only possible way to counter the power of the ruling Corporatocracy.

John Jonik
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Corrections:

• Due to an electronic printing glitch, two critical credits disappeared from our Fall 1999 issue. The stunning cover photo was provided by Galen Rowell. The cover and table of contents both were designed by the Public Media Center.
• The Earth Island Annual Report [Fall '99 EIJ] failed to include one very important name. The listing for the International Marine Mammal Project should have included Brenda Killian, the Founder and Executive Director Emeritus of IMMP's International Monitoring Program. She currently is on sabbatical.
• The photograph illustrating Chie Yoshimune's article on quake victims in Kobe, Japan ["Kobe quake victims still displaced," Fall '99 EIJ] was taken by Mr. S. Inagaki.

Want to speak your mind?
Send your letters to the Earth Island Journal, 300 Broadway #28, San Francisco CA 94133 or e-mail them to <journal@earthisland.org>. Letters will be edited.