Julia Butterfly in Ecuador jail

"The little gringos have been arrested, including the old cockatoo who climbs trees," Ecuadoran President Gustavo Noboa said of Hill

That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen attributed to a country’s president.

He couldn’t possibly have said that, could he?

Not bad looking. Not in to tatoos though. Guess the author was looking and fantasizing at this when he wrote:

...would penetrate a virgin Andean "cloud forest" that teems with rare birds.

Although, coming from the SFChronicle, I would think it would be teeming with not-so-rare stuff.

INT. - PACKED AUDITORIUM - ON STAGE - NIGHT

BUSH: Well Al, I've heard that you intend to place a good number of radical environmentalists in your cabinet. Why don't you tell us the names of some of the people you are considering?

GORE: OK... tell you their names... but, as you know... many of today's environmentalists legally change their names... change their names to reflect their passion... passion over environmental issues... environmental issues... like Julia "Butterfly" Hill, for example... change their names...

BUSH: That's fine Al, but why don't you tell me who you are considering for your cabinet.

GORE: Secretary of the Interior... "Who Will Speak For The Trees" as Secretary of the Interior...

BUSH: That's what I want to find out, who will be Secretary of the Interior?

GORE: "Who Will Speak For The Trees."

BUSH: Are you running for president, Albert?

GORE: Yes.

BUSH: And as President, you're going to appoint a cabinet...?

GORE: Yes.

BUSH: Well then, you should know the name of the person you are going to nominate for Secretary of the Interior?

GORE: Yes.

BUSH: Well, what's the fella's name?

GORE: "Who Will Speak For The Trees."

BUSH: The Secretary of the Interior, I guess.

GORE: Exactly.

BUSH: And his name is...

GORE: "Who Will Speak For The Trees"

BUSH: It's very difficult getting a straight answer out of you Mr. Vice-President! How about your Secretary of Energy? Do you have someone in mind to be Energy Secretary?

GORE: "Solar Heats Best."

BUSH: Solar power may very well be a viable alternate source of power, but do you have anyone in mind to be your Energy Secretary.

GORE: That's the man's name.

BUSH: That's who's name?

GORE: "Solar Heats Best."

BUSH: Will your Energy Secretary have a name, Al?

GORE: That's it.

BUSH: "Solar Heats Best?"

GORE: Yes... "Solar Heats Best"...

BUSH: Listen, are you gonna have a Defense Secretary?

GORE: Certainly...

BUSH: And he will be...

GORE: "Nukes Kill."

BUSH: Well, they are designed to, but nuclear weapons are also used to keep the peace. Why don't you tell us who you will nominate to be your Defense Secretary?

GORE: "Nukes Kill."

BUSH: When you meet with your Defense Secretary, who will you be meeting with?

GORE: "Nukes Kill."

BUSH: All I'm trying to find out is the fella's name who's going to be your Defense Secretary!

GORE: "Nukes Kill."

BUSH: "Nukes Kill?" I ask you the name of the guy who going to be your Defense Secretary and you answer "Nukes Kill."

GORE: That's it.

BUSH: "Nukes Kill?"

GORE: A great guy... excellent Defense Secretary... very knowledgable...

BUSH: The Secretary of Defense often has to sign important agreements and treaties. Your Defense Secretary is going to sign...?

GORE: "Nukes Kill."

BUSH: I give up. How about your Attorney General, Al? Is your Attorney General going to have a name?

GORE: "Have To Take A Leak."

BUSH: Your Attorney General... the top law enforcement official in the land... will he have a name?

GORE: "Have To Take A Leak."

BUSH: Are you telling me that you are going to have an Attorney General who's name is "Have To Take A Leak"?

GORE: No, I'm telling you I have to take a leak!... drank alot of iced tea... need to go to the little boy's ro... uh-oh, too late... have to go to K-Mart... get new briefs... new briefs from K-Mart... K-Mart has dry briefs...

the old cockatoo who climbs trees

Perhaps President Gustavo Noboa is a lurker!

Seems like she's got big hands...

Can't quite make out the tail...opposed thumbs...

I think I like this guy...

"The little gringos have been arrested, including the old cockatoo who climbs trees," Ecuadoran President Gustavo Noboa said of Hill ...

Priceless.

"I thought she fell out of a tree and died?"

You are thinking of Beth O'Brien, who few and died from a sit in the Mt. Hood area up in Oregon.

"Julia "Butterfly" Hill was violently escorted by 10 officials of the Ecuadorean government and thrown on a plan bound for Panama."

(from AP as published on Portland Indymedia.)

Olympia, WA - Activists from the Cascadia Defense Network, a grassroots environmental group, have staged a tree sit in opposition to a proposed natural gas pipeline in Thurston County, WA. The group feels that the 49-mile long gas pipeline project will adversely impact endangered species habitat in the Black River National Wildlife Refuge.

Action Alert:

TREE SITTERS OPPOSE GAS PIPELINE COMPANY

June 24, 2002 Olympia, WA - Activists from the Cascadia Defense Network, a grassroots environmental group, have staged a tree sit in opposition to a proposed natural gas pipeline in Thurston County, WA. The group feels that the 49-mile long gas pipeline project will adversely impact endangered species habitat in the Black River National Wildlife Refuge.

The section of the Black River that the pipeline company (Tulsa based Williams Company) wants to tear up contains 1 of only 3 known Oregon Spotted Frog populations found in the Washington State. This pipeline project violates the Endangered Species Act and NEPA. Williams is using power granted to them by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to circumvent existing environmental and safety laws.

On October 10th, 2001, Duke Energy Corporation of North Carolina broke-ground on a $340 million natural gas-fired power plant in Satsop, WA in the shadow of two failed nuclear reactors. They do not yet have a pipeline to provide the fuel to produce the plant's potential of 650 megawatts. However, Williams Co., the company requesting permission to build 49-miles of 20-inch pipeline to serve the plant, already has a 30 year contract to supply Duke with natural gas. The power produced from the gas generators will be sold on the wholesale market, and will be exported. The Duke Energy plant will only create 27 jobs. From the perspective of those who wish to build a new power plant in Western Washington the contracts have been signed - it's a done deal. We disagree….

There have been recent revelations regarding the role that the nearly bankrupt Williams Company played in the recent California energy crisis. Ironically, FERC, the same Federal Agency that is allowing Williams to disregard existing environmental laws, is at the same time currently investigating the nearly bankrupt Williams Company because Williams manipulated power supplies and inflated prices during the California energy crisis (New York Times, June 12th, 2002). The investigation has put FERC on the verge of revoking the Williams Company’s right to sell power on the wholesale market (Houston Chronicle, June 5th, 2002).

This pipeline company is another Enron, and everybody knows it! Both Tulsa based Williams Co. and North Carolina based Duke Energy are currently being sued by the State of California for price manipulation. The Williams Co. is currently being sued by their stockholders, and employees, for Enron-like financial dealings. Duke Energy is being sued by the Dept. Of Justice for Clean Air Act violations.

We cannot let these crooked companies get away with any of this!
Join us in this fight!

Contact:
Cascadia Defense Network
fightthepipeline@olynetwork.org

I forgot to make note that my last post was about another pipeline in Washington State. It is interesting that pipelines in general are now targets for protest.

Ecudoran President Gustavo Noboa

She's certifiable -- a real nutcase --

Talking to the Trees
An Interview with Julia Butterfly Hill

. . . . . . . . .

By Sam Martin

On December 10, 1997 Julia "Butterfly" Hill scaled "Luna," a 1,000-year-old California redwood tree that was in danger of being included in a massive clear-cut by Pacific Lumber, a division of the Maxam Corporation. And while "tree sits" have become the norm for environmental activists looking for a drastic way to put an end to clear cuts in old growth forests, Hill's determination has been the object of inspiration for environmentalists and frenzied derision for loggers. For over two years (738 days), Hill did not come down from her 180-foot-high perch. She repelled everything from helicopters to El Nino to personal doubt, and her resilience garnered worldwide attention for the preservation of the planet's endangered wood.

Sam Martin forMother:You are amazingly busy these days. How are you adjusting to the new life of a public spokesperson?

Julia Butterfly Hill: Well, nothing has changed since I was in the tree, other than that now I'm going all over the place. I've been a spokesperson(sic) for a long time. The only difference is that instead of being able to do it all from one spot, now I have to go around everywhere.

Mother: What was a typical February or March day for you and Luna?

JBH: Well, the Februarys and Marches I was up there were completely different. One year was El Nino and one was La Nina. One had excessive amounts of wind and rain and the other excessive amounts of snow. They both had a lot of sleet and hail.

Mother: Did you ever get frightened or discouraged because of the weather?

JBH: Well, the first winter frightened me out of my mind-but it wasn't just the weather. I was sitting in an active logging area and the [logging] company was doing everything they could to get me down. (Imagine that!) I was also going through personal dilemmas, (Imagine that!) so the first few months were probably the most brutal and difficult of all. After that I started settling in and learning how to just be. And in that process, which a lot of people spend time in Yoga learning how to do, I was able to handle the next winter and the next hardships a little easier. It never got easy, but I certainly learned ways of breezing through the difficulties. And of course, there were many times I felt discouraged and a lot of times where I was crying, thinking I'm one human being, I can't take anymore, I can't do anymore. But then I would look and see the beauty of the forest and I would see the destruction of the forest, and I would remember why I was up there. (drugs/medication wore off) That kept me going.

Mother: There's a passage in your book that I particularly like. It had to do with the first winter, and the wind was blowing so hard that you thought you might get blown off your platform. But you eventually stopped fighting it and decided to bend with the storm and the tree. Did you learn some life lessons when you were up in the tree, and do you use them when you face new challenges? (bleh)

JBH: Absolutely. But I knew that was going to be my biggest challenge. One time, before I came down, I was holding Luna and crying and praying and asking myself, how will I hold this heart center when the world is trying to pull me in a billion different directions? How am I going to hold on to the lessons I've learned from this perspective when I'm no longer in this perspective? It's a beautiful challenge, because in the challenge is a continuation of proving to people that it is possible. This heart center is so deep within me that I know it to be true. And it's not something that a teacher has to teach me or a politician has to tell me is legal or scientist has to tell me it's scientifically possible. It is a truth that I know to the very depth of my core. (weed is far more powerful than in the 60's, folks)

Mother: Do you look forward to getting back to a more simple, less publicized way of life?

JBH: Well, I am definitely planning to do next year a little differently than I've done this year. I'm learning as I go. One of the things my book doesn't mention is that I have a business background. I graduated high school when I was 16, then I went straight into college and majored in business. I opened my first business when I was 18, sold it when I was 20 and started setting up systems to run other people's businesses for them. I was totally in that world of money and things and money and things. [The problem was] it was never enough. In the tree I realized that the more stuff we have, the more stuff we need to take care of our stuff. I always use the example of a car because a majority of the people in this country, and even in the world, who have cars take better care of them than they do the earth. And yet to have a car you have to have registration, you have to have a license, you have to have fuel in the car, you have to have fluid in the car, you have to have good tires and good belts, and the screws and bolts all have to be tightened down. Before you know it, a huge portion of your time, energy and money goes into taking care of one thing called a car. So I keep my life simple. I have one mug that I bring with me everywhere I go.

Mother: Do you support any kind of forestry? Selective logging, for instance?

JBH: I absolutely support sustainable forestry. And the reason is that-I'll use my business background here for a moment-everyone in the business world that you talk to knows that a wise long-term investment is one where you put in a strong initial capital, then you only draw off the interest. Now, if you talk to corporations that are in [it] for the short-term, they want to extract it all out and move on to the next one. The earth-in a healthy, natural state-is a very strong capital investment. The reality is, we've been blessed to live on a planet that supplies our needs. But in order to meet those needs, we have to take from the earth. That's part of our symbiotic function. If you see any predator species in the wild, they actually play a symbiotic role. When they get out of control, they go extinct. It's the same thing with us as human beings.

Mother: What was the deal that prompted you to come out of the tree?

JBH: A deal was struck [with Maxam Corporation] on December 17, 1999 after nearly 10 months of negotiation in which they agreed to just protect Luna. They said, "Okay Julia, we'll protect the tree, come down and leave us alone." And I said, "Well the tree's not going to stand in a clear-cut by itself. You need to protect the buffer around it that I've been physically able to protect by being here." That's when I asked for the 200-foot radius. There is a typo in the book that says 20 feet, but it's 200 feet. It was the amount [of surrounding trees] that I was able to physically protect [by sitting in Luna]. So then they said they wanted $50,000 to protect the zone around it, and I asked them to donate it to their workers because their workers had recently been laid off [due to] their horrific logging practices. They ended up donating it to a college.

Mother: It must have been an emotional time for you to touch ground again.

JBH: On December 18 I touched the ground because they'd agreed to protect Luna in that buffer zone forever. Even if governments pass laws, and even if people buy and sell the land, this agreement that we made is basically like a law. The deal is like a conservation easement that runs with the land so no one may ever go in there and cut it again. So no, [coming down] wasn't difficult. In my mind, it wasn't done until it was done. And unfortunately because [the agreement] had been leaked out to the public, everyone was watching. We were going to sign the agreement on the very last minute of the afternoon on that Friday so that it wouldn't go onto public record until Monday. That would have given me the weekend to turn off my phone, turn off my pager and say goodbye. But for some reason they ended up signing it earlier than that and of course the press immediately picked up on it and people were going crazy. I mean, it was a really intense time. I had to come down the very next morning.

Mother: What do you mean "people were going crazy?"

JBH: Well, because of what I've done while I was in the tree, part of the world wanted me to stay up there forever until all of the world's forests were saved, or at least all of the redwoods. And part of the world wanted me to come down, and part of the world wanted me dead. All three components of that just went nuts in their own way. And I didn't want to come down the tree to 2,000 people. I wanted to come down to a group of hand-picked individuals because I knew it would be intense.

Mother: And is that what actually ended up happening?

JBH: Yeah, but that's because I came down the very next morning. They posted security guards at the base of the tree because there were threats to my life. There were a lot of people at the base of the hill, but at the bottom of the tree was just the group of people that I chose to be there.

Mother: What was it like coming down? It must have been an incredible moment for you after two years.

JBH: Yes, the moment I touched the ground I literally felt like I was being electrocuted. I was electrocuted when I was a little girl, and I know what it feels like. Part of me was filled with ecstatic joy. I was on the ground again! I could touch it and kiss it, which is the first thing I did. I kneeled and kissed the ground.

Mother: Did you take a hot bath after that?

JBH: Well, I walked barefoot for three miles back down the mountain that I had walked up 738 days before...straight into a press conference with hundreds of television cameras and photographers and radio and newspapers. And then I got in a car, which was really intense [laughs] and I drove to a little cabin out in the woods, where I strategized with my team because we were getting on a plane the next morning to go to New York to do press.

Mother: So what's next for you? Are you planning other projects?

JBH: One of the best things I can do with my time is to share that energy and that spotlight that surrounds me with groups who deserve to have it or who aren't getting it. February 1 [2000] was the formal eviction notice by the government for the Navajo's to leave Big Mountain [in Arizona] and I was there with them standing in solidarity and doing press.

I did a lot of workshops and presentations at colleges to get young people to go down there. I've helped protect two more [tree] groves by doing events that bring in community and raise money. I'm going to Maine in a few days to try and help push through the Maine Woods Initiative, [which is meant to protect] a beautiful area of forest and lakes that's in danger of being privatized and developed. Here in the redwoods I'm continuing to do a lot of things. I helped raise money to make people aware that we're working on a people's initiative to protect the old growth here because our governor and our legislature keeps selling us out. So, you know, I'm just doing, doing, doing, doing.

Mother: I think your biggest accomplishment by sitting in the tree has been to let people know that it's still possible for one person to stand up to huge industries. Do you have any advice for those of us who simply can't live in a tree for two years but want to preserve what we think is important to us?

JBH: Yes. The first thing is living simply. It's all fine and dandy to stomp our feet and point our fingers at corporations, but if we're buying their products and buying into their game then we're helping them continue. The second thing I always ask people when they ask what they can do is `what do you love to do?' Because if you find a way to use what you love to do for the causes you care about, then you last forever. And you find a strength for when the times are hard. An example…say you're an artist. Find other artists who are like-minded and hold gallery events where you highlight a cause of concern to you, whether it's the forest or the nuclear plants or ending genetically modified food and herbicides and pesticides in our food and in our clothing. Do your art show, have speakers, have videos, have stories written by each artist on the wall about why they care. Have addresses to your local representatives there on tables with sample letters so that people can write about this concern, and all of a sudden you're raising community support. These are the kinds of things that spark people's interests and that have longevity. And these are the kind of things that anyone can do.

Seems like she's got big hands...

Wide shoulders, large neck, with muscular arms too. The whole upper torso is not in porportion with the rest of "her".

GORE: OK... tell you their names... but, as you know... many of today's environmentalists legally change their names... change their names to reflect their passion... passion over environmental issues... environmental issues... like Julia "Butterfly" Hill, for example... change their names...

I wonder what was Julia's name before the name change? Is Cali, Oregon, or Washington the home state of Hill?

When she was here speaking at the UO, some angry feminists were going to pie her for the way she bought Luna and the land around that tree to save it.

Some large, beefy aluminum plant workers who got into the political realm of forest defense because of the tie-in of Maxxam's Charles Hurwitz who owns Kaiser Aluminum and Pacific Lumber Company were her security.

She was not pied, and she is alianated from much of the local Eugene, Oregon tree defense scene.

It is interesting that pipelines in general are now targets for protest.

Not a new phenomenon.

The Alaska Oil Pipeline from Prudoe Bay to Valdez set the pattern. Remember the agonized environmentalists' crap about caribou? Turned out the caribou liked the pipeline.

It's amazing how many "endangered species" and "habitats" are discovered as soon as anything pertaining to energy is proposed. Disgraceful, IMHO!

She has big feet too, and a low throaty voice that is startling when you hear it.

She was barefoot most of the time up in Luna, and she generally kept a hand or foot in contact with the large old tree while in it.

"I don't know Why I lie like that, really I don't!"
_{Butterfly McQueen}

Females called 'Butterfly' are not overtly sapient as a subset.

Or maybe about David "Gypsy" Chain, one of the eco-terrorists who was darting about the forest trying to disrupt logging operations. Gypsy zigged when he should have zagged and perpetrated the ultimate tree hug. Wonder just what is the terminal velocity of a 300 foot redwood?

"He ain't no chicken no more . . . ."