Watermelons in search of titles

They sold their soul for the title of “Council”

President Vladimir Putin triumphed in securing the 2014 Winter Olympic Games for Sochi, but behind Russian national pride is the story of a nasty struggle over possible damage to the Caucasus Mountains.

It began several years ago when Russian companies and government agencies began setting aside environmental norms to clear the way for the Olympics bid. New sports complexes, a press center, hotels and other facilities would have to be constructed around the existing mountain resort of Krasnaya Polyana. Russian prestige was on the line, but there was also the profit motive of keeping Russian millionaires skiing at home rather than at their preferred upscale resorts in Europe.

The obstacle was Sochi National Park and the bordering buffer zone of the Western Caucasus nature reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage site. In 2006, existing laws were nullified by the Russian government to rezone areas of the national park that contained original-growth forest and were home to endangered species.

Forest clear-cutting then began, to prepare the site. New rules were even adopted for development in the buffer zone of the neighboring reserve. All this took place with no public hearing or published environmental-impact assessment.

Local activists formed Environmental Watch on the North Caucasus, with Andrey Rudomakha as their spokesman. WWF-Russia (Worldwide Fund for Nature, formerly World Wildlife Fund) and Greenpeace also protested publicly, and Greenpeace initiated a lawsuit in the Russian courts.

Then, a strange turn of events occurred in Moscow. In late 2006, WWF and Greenpeace announced they were satisfied that construction associated with the Sochi bid would follow green norms, even as Greenpeace lost its lawsuit. The government, rather after the fact, named a “Sochi 2014 Ecological Council,” which included respected academics and representatives from Greenpeace and WWF-Russia.

This turn of events left local environmental activists out in the cold, with Rudomakha commenting that the WWF change of heart seemed “strange and surprising.”

The eco-socialists do have a price that they’ll sell their beliefs for: You have to make them feel important.

And these ones will. Right up until they disagree with Putin and he has them killed.

Which will give you a clue as to why they’re so unhappy with Cheney and have been chasing him around like a pack of rabid weasles for seven years.

When Cheney formed a National Energy Policy Group shortly after he and Bush took office, he spoke to those in the industry that actually produces energy and disregarded the eco-socialists who would prefer that we all eat raw food and have no hot running water.

At 10 a.m. on April 4, 2001, representatives of 13 environmental groups were brought into the Old Executive Office Building for a long-anticipated meeting. Since late January, a task force headed by Vice President Cheney had been busy drawing up a new national energy policy, and the groups were getting their one chance to be heard.

Cheney was not there, but so many environmentalists were in the room that introductions took up “about half the meeting,” recalled Erich Pica of Friends of the Earth. Anna Aurilio of the U.S. Public Interest Group said, “It was clear to us that they were just being nice to us.”

A confidential list prepared by the Bush administration shows that Cheney and his aides had already held at least 40 meetings with interest groups, most of them from energy-producing industries. By the time of the meeting with environmental groups, according to a former White House official who provided the list to The Washington Post, the initial draft of the task force was substantially complete and President Bush had been briefed on its progress.

Please feel free to leave your suggestions for a title that Cheney could have given them that would have made them happy in the comments.