Anyone from Utah care to refute this attack?

Crowdog

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Moab Times-Independent
Thursday, January 10, 2002
Letters to the Editor

Dear Sena,

I was both amused and outraged at Jim Bourne's letter last week, in which he defended the practice of "playing" with ATVs and dirt bikes on public lands. "Playing" is the off-road vehicle community's euphemism for driving willy-nilly across the landscape (off of designated roads and trails) and causing a huge mess. We have come to expect that rowdy teenagers will sometimes deface the landscape in this way, but it is sad and pathetic that grown men like Jim Bourne and his comrades at SULU (Southern Utah Land Users, an off-road vehicle advocacy group) still feel the need to "act out" in this way. What Jim characterizes as "play" most of us would label as simple vandalism. How would he like it if his neighbors "played" in his front yard with their dirt bikes?

Motorized vehicles should stay on designated roads and trails. No exceptions. They don't belong off-trail any more than they belong in your front yard or living room.

Mr. Bourne goes on to make a bizarre comparison between SUWA's filing of a lawsuit and the murderous tactics of groups like the Taliban. Say what!? These hysterical exaggerations are even more amusing in light of the fact that SULU officers have been cited and fined by the Forest Service for illegally constructing secret ATV trails in the Abajos.

So here is the "World According to Bourne:" SUWA respects the rule of law and works though the legal system to prevent environmental damage from off-road ATVs and dirt bikes; therefore SUWA is like murderous terrorists. SULU flaunts the law and constructs illegal and destructive ATV trails; therefore SULU members are the true Americans.

If Mr. Bourne intended his letter to be some sort of self-satire or joke, then I apologize for my remarks above. Unfortunately, I think Mr. Bourne was serious.

—Kevin Walker
Moab

http://moabtimes.com/issues/2002/020110/pages/letters.html

Environment Radicals and Terrorism.

Read the following opinion piece on the effects of terrorism, and ask the same questions the author asks, in respect to the effects of legal or illegal environmental protection actions (what some may call acts of terror)?

Compared to the actions of Al Queda, are the effects of the SUWA inquisition real or imagined (I'll help you ask the questions the opinion piece author asks)?

"Have people forgotten that our own home-grown terrorists of the '60s and '70s bombed government buildings and banks?" Anyone know what organization has Dave Foreman of Earth First! sitting on the board of Directors?

"You mean you can't send your daughters to school anymore" because they closed the schools for a lack of FILP funding?

"You can't practice the religion of your choice anymore" including those involving mechanized recreation, roads, or motorized trails?

"You can't walk into an abundantly stocked supermarket anymore" because the stores moved to towns with a more lucrative economy, or the produce that used to be on the shelves is now "sensitive habitat" and cannot be used for agriculture?

"Your dishwashers and washing machines have vanished" or have they merely been restricted to front loading tumble washers and low water consumption models to preserve watershed?

"Your SUVs have all been conscripted by the Army" or have they been simply under threat of banishment by the Sierra Club and their environmental protectionist allies?

"Your swimming pools have gone dry" or should we compare this to water in irrigation canals on the California/Oregon border than is eliminated due to ESA protections for a fish?

"Your electricity no longer runs 24 hours a day" or is this something Californians were simply hallucinating about in a bad trip last winter, because all permits for new power plants in the state were litigated in the prior thirteen years by "environmentalists?"

"You can no longer bank online" without a web based plea for funding from the Heritage Environment/Save the Endangered Species/Wilderness Alliance Campaign?

"Our hospitals are so crowded with the casualties of war that nobody can get a face lift" or is the population in danger of suffering harm because testing on animals is forbidden due to PETA pressure and ALF threats?

"There's fresh powder in Vail and Aspen but the ski lifts have all stopped and you can't get there" because some ELF "activists" illegally burned the lodge down, and then their support groups litigated to close the roads to the old lodge due to the encroachment upon potential Threatened and Endangered species habitat?

Read the balance of the opinion piece and consider the imperceptible encroachment of restriction due to environmental activism (what some call socialism) into our daily lives?

Ask, again, "Have people forgotten that our own home-grown terrorists of the '60s and '70s bombed government buildings and banks?" Where are these "home-grown terrorists" now? Where are their children?

The next time we suffer the fate of another brokered lawsuit stipulation agreement (collusion or failure to fight by our own government's employees), or read about another BLM Office break-in or tree-sitting trespassers, I recommend we read the last line of this opinion piece.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-111001hayes.story

November 10, 2001 COMMENTARY

What 'Way of Life' Actually Was Changed?
By ROSALIND ROLAND HAYES,
Rosalind Roland Hayes, a writer, lives in La Cañada.

My life will not "change forever" at this point if I do not let it. Why in the world did the American people ever imagine we would not eventually be targeted from beyond our borders?Have people forgotten that our own home-grown terrorists of the '60s and '70s bombed government buildings and banks? Or the African American churches that were torched in the South, or the ghastly white-sheeted cowards who tore fathers and sons from their beds in the dead of night to hang them and leave them dangling as examples?

What makes Sept. 11 different?Is it because we watched the planes slam into the World Trade Center again and again on the news, unlike atrocities about which we only read and never witnessed?Perhaps.But I am tired of hearing people say, "Our lives have been forever changed," usually in a deep and solemn voice.I want to reply, "Oh, really? You mean you can't send your daughters to school anymore? You can't practice the religion of your choice anymore? You can't walk into an abundantly stocked supermarket anymore? Your dishwashers and washing machines have vanished? Your SUVs have all been conscripted by the Army? Your swimming pools have gone dry? Your electricity no longer runs 24 hours a day? You can no longer bank online? Our hospitals are so crowded with the casualties of war that nobody can get a face lift? There's fresh powder in Vail and Aspen but the ski lifts have all stopped and you can't get there?"Give me a break.Or do you really mean that egocentric fear cripples your perception of reality? Or, that by acknowledging we are not invincible because we are Americans, our lives have changed?

A loss of thoughtless, narcissistic innocence is not a bad thing. It is not a fluke that our Special Forces have trained for years in desert warfare.If an immediate family member-a mother, father, child, sibling, grandchild or grandparent-died in the World Trade Center atrocity, then your life has been forever changed. Does just knowing that someone-a stranger to you-died, no matter how horrifically, truly change your life forever? Not really.

Do long lines at airport security check points really represent change your life?Knowing that in our civilized country most children who are murdered are killed by family members does not change our lives.More people die because of alcohol-related traffic accidents every year than in terrorist attacks, and we don't hear our nation saying, "Our lives have been forever changed" by the pernicious and promiscuous use of that particular drug. People do not stop driving, do not avoid freeways or cross-country trips.

Fear is the enemy and we have only that to fear. If we knuckle under to threats, then those hate-blinded zealots have been victorious. --