The end of the tax year approaches, and mass mailings cram my letterbox, many of them urgently seeking write-off dollars to keep Noah's Ark afloat. In next year's calendars, affecting photographs of endangered species clamor for our attention: black rhinos, elephants, blue whales, gorillas, condors, otters, hairy-nosed wombats, western giant elands. And people do the right thing, hauling out their checkbooks, taking their charitable deductions.

But as the big conservation outfits will tell you, the costs of protecting habitats soar up and up. Reportedly, in Africa, they double every year. The great goal of all conservation is sustainability, but charitable conservation by definition is not sustainable. Noah's Ark is sinking faster than the donors can bale.

In 1996, Mike Korchinsky, 34 years old at the time, sat in an eco-tour campsite in Kenya, looked around him and, as he remembers, concluded that "high-end ecotourism clearly wasn't saving the land I was on."

The following is the transcript from Bob Fitrakis’ speech at the December 4 Voting Rights demonstration at the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus:

Thirty-two days ago, we voted in Ohio, and that election remains uncertified, threatening the core of our democratic system and our commitment to equal protection under our Constitution.

Now we are engaged in a great civil rights struggle, testing whether our nation, or any nation, so dedicated to democracy, can endure such voter suppression and election irregularities. We are gathered in the capitol of a great battleground state. We have come to dedicate ourselves to investigating the vote in all 88 counties, and pledge ourselves to counting every vote. Whatever the results may be. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this, just as the people of the Ukraine.

Global warming isn’t happening, but evil environmentalists are making it look as if it is. That’s the story in Michael Crichton’s new thriller, State of Fear, already a huge best seller.

Reviews in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times made me think of another book, Overload, by Arthur Hailey. Author of Airport, Hotel, and many others, Hailey was extremely popular in the 1970s, and his books were made into successful films.

Aside from Joan Lesko Giardina’s excellent letter to the editor on August 19 and Tom Zeller’s unconscionable attempt (in his Nevember 12 article) to discount the preponderance of “Votergate” elections rigging evidence, virtually nothing has appeared in the “NY Times” that would indicate that the American people are truly indignant over the theft of their votes. The fact is, however, that they are. That is the reason that the people’s votes are about to be recounted in Washington and Ohio. What every true American knows ­ and most every Ukrainian, Canadian, Latin American, African, Asian, and European definitely knows happened ­ is that the US elections were rigged. 80% of America’s votes were counted on machines supplied by ES&S and Diebold, the CEOs of which are strong Republican contributors that possessed the wish of delivering the vote to their pre-selected candidate, G.W. Bush. On November 2, that’s exactly what they did. The always-highly-reliable exit polls declare that the people voted for John Kerry. The villains of “Votergate” placed an unelected candidate in power, thereby committing an act of high treason against the