Re: Boycott CBS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Chad Irby <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> Dan Clore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>> Jim Dauven wrote:
>> > Roberta Hatch wrote:
>> 
>> > You failed to mention of the dozens of saw mill workers who have been 
>> > grievously injured when the high speed band saws at the mills hit the
>> > spikes and exploded throwing shrapnel all over the place.
>> 
>> No one has ever documented a single case in which this has 
>> occurred.
>
>Except, of course, they have.
>
>A fellow named George Alexander had just this happen to him in 1987.
>

 That's exactly right. It was the one and only documented case I ever
found.

>Damned near decapitated him.

 Not quite.

>It's what made the Northern California chapter of Earth First decide to 
>*not* spike trees, and got them in trouble with the rest of their 
>organization as "traitors."
>

 There's quite a bit more to the story, as I discovered back in May of
1998. Here's my post (from sci.skeptic) on the subject of George Alexander:

 Here's a cite from a 1991 book by Isaac Asimov and Frederick Pohl called
_Our Angry Earth_:

  ...These acts of ecological sabotage--they call it "ecotage" or
"monkeywrenching"--have stopped short of killing anyone, so far, but they
may have come close.  In May 1987, one spiked tree, going through a lumber
mill, shattered the blade of a band saw and nearky cut a mill worker in
half (but Earth First! denies that it had spiked that particular tree).
One EarthFirst! leader, lying on a track before a locomotive, lost both
legs when the engine didn't stop (Page 263).
                     ###End quoted text###

  The incident mentioned, which became known as the "Cloverdale incident,"
happened on May 8, 1987 at 7:50 AM at the Louisiana-Pacific Mill in
Cloverdale California. It didn't nearly cut the man, 23 year-old George
Alexander, in half but did break his jaw and knocked out several teeth. On
May 14, 1987, Louisiana-Pacific offered a $20,000 reward for information
leading to the arrest of the spiker. Investigation by EarthFirst!
(admittedly biased) led some newspapers to issue apologies to EarthFirst!
when it was revealed that the Mendocinao County Sheriff's Department's
primary suspect was a conservative Republican who owned property adjacent
to the site. No charges were ever filed against EarthFirst!. I still need
to corroborate the "prime suspect" thing and the fact that no charges were
filed against EarthFirst!.
  However, an interview done by San Francisco Examiner reporter Eric Brazil
with the injured Alexander revealed that the saw blade was in bad repair
and he had been complaining about it for two weeks prior to the incident.
Alexander said that a blade in good condition would have easily gone
through the metal and that it was not uncommon--he said "four times a
week"--for a saw to go through metal, unrelated to spiking. That in no way
absolves whoever did the spiking but it is interesting, I think.
  Further, we find that injuries totally unrelated to spiking *are* quite
common in the logging industry. "The Fallers' and Buckers' Handbook,"
published by the Workers' Compensation Board of British Columbia (1981)
states that between 1971 and 1980 there were 175 fatalities incurred in
field logging. As yet unconfirmed statistics claim that in 1988 there were
28 fatal accidents in Washington mills. The consensus on the causes of the
growing number of accidents seems to be that it is a consequence of the
logging and timber companies using non-union contractors who are not as
safety-conscious and sometimes borrow money for equipment for a given job,
and then try to do to the job quickly so as to cut costs on the loans or
the leased equipment. I'm still working on this angle as well.
   Anyhow, that's the status of my ongoing research.

*************************
 And that's the rest of the story.

 axel



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