I dont normally watch television but, I wanted to make you all aware of a rare opportunity for what I believe, based on the first one, will be excellent programming...

Visit a friend with cable or a satellite dish if you have to...
Vanishing Freedoms II: Who Owns America?

Fox News
Friday, May 18, 2001
Saturday, May 19 at 10 p.m.
Sunday, May 20 at 8 p.m. ET.

It has been a popular belief in the last 30 years that the earth must be saved from the ravages of civilization. That humans can't be counted on to preserve the land that gave us birth, that we must be protected from ourselves, no matter what the cost. Fox News examines the stories of Americans who have paid that price with their jobs, their homes and even their lives.

Join host William La Jeunesse as Fox News presents the second installment of Vanishing Freedom: Who Owns America?

We'll investigate:

• A little-known policy called Agenda 21 has the U.N. setting its sights on U.S. property

• Fish vs. farmers in the battle over prime farmland [Some aquaintances of mine are battling the suckers of Klamath Basin]

• The shocking rise in ecoterrorism

• The blame game over California’s energy crunch

-- William in Wi (gnarledmaw@lycos.com), May 18, 2001

Answers

Gosh, William, I don't even friends that have sattelite or cable!

I heard that the Klamath Basin farmers lost the water fight, the suckerfish won and 100 farm families are out of business and out of water. Those suckerfish are UGLY and should've been made extinct 150 years ago.

I live in one of those "World Heritage Sites" that Clinton gave to the UN. I believe the local militia has different plans. I guess it doesn't matter either way. If Sasquatch can live well out of public view my family can do it too.

-- Laura (LadybugWrangler@hotmail.com), May 18, 2001.

Yes theyve lost this battle but not the war...yet.

Please join the virtual BUCKET BRIGADE. Your names will be published in the Pioneer Press in support of the Klamath Basin Farmers at no cost to you. email to: pioneerp@sisqtel.net or fax 1-530468-5356.

Visit http://www.klamathbasincrisis.org

A similar event has begun in Washington on the Columbia...Where will it end?

Alexander Hamilton: "A power over a man's subsistence amounts to a power over his will. Property must be sacred or liberty cannot exist."

James Madison: " Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions", and:

"Government is instituted to protect property of every sort. . . This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own."

"Government is instituted no less for protection of the property than of the persons of individuals."

John Adams: "[t]he moment that idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the Laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.

Daniel Webster: "No other rights are safe where property is not safe."

An eighteenth century judicial opinion best reflects this concept, wherein the Court noted that "the right of acquiring and possessing property, and having it protected, is one of the natural, inherent and inalienable rights of men.... The preservation of property, then, is a primary object of the social compact." Vanhorne's Lessee v. Dorrance, 2 U.S. 310 (1795).

As we know, early American common law descended from English common law. What did the English think of private property?

Magna Carta: No Freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or be disseised [deprived wrongfully of real property] of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any otherwise destroyed; nor will we pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful Judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the Land. 1297

John Locke: "The great chief end therefore, of Mens uniting into Commonwealths, and putting themselves under Government, is the Preservation of their Property." He also said, "Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience..." --2nd Treatise of Government, 1690

William Blackstone: The principal absolute rights which appertain to every Englishman [are] personal security, personal liberty, and private property.

-- William in Wi (gnarledmaw@lycos.com), May 18, 2001.

I don't have friends with satellite, but I do have a friend with cable AND a TV, too!

I believe I read a long time ago that there was a bit of an argument about the clause "life liberty and the pursuit of happiness" versus "life, liberty and property"....It only stands to reason that people will take more care with what they "own" as opposed to what the gubbamint owns, or the corporations, etc. I still have a fundamental problem with thinking that we own land, but if we are talking about a paper ownership, then it's much better to have it be in individuals hands than bureaucrats hands.

-- Doreen (bisquit@here.com), May 19, 2001.

Whith all the stuff out there thats SUPPOSED to be available to farmers, I wish they WOULD give us back our land. However, it was the farmer's who created the "Dust Bowl" etc etc. But, how can they prevent doing it again if the Gov't won't release the available information?? What a way to justify keeping the land in public ownership.

There is a case here, where PRIVATE land was being logged. There was a small 10 acre area which needed to be clear-cut because of disease in the trees. The Fed stopped the logging last year when the fires were burning (near Atlanta, ID). This spring, they said the owner had to rehab the area, but they would allow the cut. HOWEVER, there is about three months worth of work, as indiscrimately cutting would damage healthy trees. The Fed gave them 10 days. Even when they TRY to do something good they screw up.

As for Klamath - no joining ANY bucket brigades here. Besides the suckerfish, there are other concerns that have not been brought to the public's attention, and those causes I support. Despite the need to find common ground, I don't feel a bit for someone who moves into a dry area, uses water from miles away, and then has to stop.

They argue about the heritage of the West - that people came here and bent Nature to their wills, made essentially a vast desert into farmland - and all the rest. Well, to some that may be a history to be proud of.... Rape is not a cause I support - be it women or land. Nor is the extinction of something because it doesn't fit my definition of beauty. Wanna make a living? Locate where you can make that living. Don't F**K with nature just because you think you are God.

There was something on what happened in Britain with their big 'corporate farms' and how they destroyed the land and the health of the livestock. We've been famous for doing that here, too... Guess we will never learn from others' mistakes. Looks like another Dust Bowl. Good. Maybe then SOMEBODY will learn something...

-- Sue Diederich (willow666@rocketmail.com), May 19, 2001.

Is agenda 21 the one that will allow U.N. troops to train in our national forests? We were discussing this at work, seems it would violate the U.S. policies prohibiting foreign military on U.S. soil.

-- Jay Blair in N. AL (jayblair678@yahoo.com), May 19, 2001.

Add miy name to the list. We must stop this from happeing anymore sure some will say rebels but what will they think when the Sewer rat in New Yourk is proteced

-- Jason Herring (herring@mac.com), April 10, 2003.