Abstract

Beat the Devil

The article presents news from the U.S. as of February 20, 1995. There's nothing that so horrifies the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (F.C.C.) as freedom of speech, unless backed by the millions now usually required to exercise that right on the airwaves. "This opens up such a can of worms," spluttered an F.C.C. attorney, David Silberman, on January 20, 1995. In late January that one Wilderness Society official was faxing the journal "The Nation," a note saying "we're busting our butts" to protect the environment, another official was scurrying to undo an emergency injunction, recently won by the Wilderness Society, stopping all logging, road building, mining and ranching in six national forests in central Idaho. The injunction had outraged not only right-wingers in Idaho's Congressional delegation but also the Wilderness Society's Idaho representative, Craig Gehrke.