Does Gibson guitars knock on illegal wood ?

Things are getting heated up again around Gibson guitars...After being raid in 2009 for alledgely importing illegally endangered and rare ebony woods from Madagascar, a case still not closed, 20 armed (!) Feds raided again several Gibson offices a few months ago on the wings of a rather "only-in-America" retroactive law called the Lacey Act which prohibits the commerce of wood and wood products that were taken or sold in violation of any law meant to address illegal logging or species conservation, be them american laws or international laws... This year, the NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) also sees protests by several organisations and individuals against the NAMM supports to the Relief Act, which could, they say, seriously impact on the regulations over rare woods.

Now, everyone knows the famous Gibson Rosewood but not everbody knows its rare wood came from the Brazilian rain forests until 2003 even tho Gibson promessed the Rain Forest Alliance never to use its woods anymore. And where this story takes a complete new turn is how the politics get into it: Gibson's boss is a known republican (altho he also gives donation to the Dems...) and his side of the story is now being heralded by the Tea Party as a proof to one of the zillion things they seem to think is wrong in the US. In the strangest way, US laws would accept the importation of such wood if it had been transformed by local workers: in this case, importing rare woods from India would no longer be illegal if Indian workers had finished the rosewood fingerboards themselves...But the case goes deeper: the Feds say they have internal Gibson emails prooving they were looking for ways to get round wood tight export laws in Madagascar and to even look in the grey market...

But where it gets totally crazy is how users of a rosewood Gibson guitar could be fined 250$ if Gibson is found guilty... Knock on wood, CEO Juszkiewicz, knock on wood...

what NPR has to say: http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2011/08/31/140090116/why-gibson-guita...
what some environmentalist have to say http://blogs.ocweekly.com/heardmentality/2012/01/environmentalists_and_m...
this is what Gibson has to say: http://www.gibson.com/en-us/Lifestyle/News/gibson-0825-2011/