Category: Corruption

Toxic plume of pollution from military base poisoning groundwater, dairy farm…and more

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Click to enlarge — Don J. Usner/Searchlight New Mexico

Art Schaap and some of 4,000 dairy cows on his farm in Clovis, New Mexico. He has to kill all of them.

❝ For months, Clovis, New Mexico, dairy farmer Art Schaap has been watching his life go down the drain. Instead of selling milk, he is dumping 15,000 gallons a day – enough to provide a carton at lunch to 240,000 children. Instead of working 24/7 to keep his animals healthy, he’s planning to exterminate all 4,000 of his cows, one of the best herds in his county’s booming dairy industry.

The 54-year-old second-generation dairy farmer learned last August that his water, his land, his crops – even the blood in his body – were contaminated with chemicals that migrated to his property from nearby Cannon air force base…

❝ “This has poisoned everything I’ve worked for and everything I care about,” Schaap said. “I can’t sell the milk. I can’t sell beef. I can’t sell the cows. I can’t sell crops or my property. The air force knew they had contamination. What I really wonder is, why didn’t they say something?”

❝ There is plenty the air force could have said. It has for decades been aware that PFAS chemicals are toxic to humans, animals and the environment. By 2000, industry scientists and the Environmental Protection Agency had meticulously documented that they persist in the environment for millennia. They are linked to cancer, liver damage, thyroid disease, lowered immunity and high cholesterol, among other serious health problems.

They have poisoned the groundwater at 121 military bases across the US…

Read the stinking details. Please. The Pentagon, Federal Government, State Governments – have all known about the danger and like all tidy criminals didn’t do a damned thing about it. Civilians, urban and rural alike, have had to sue the military every time this crap comes up to get any compensation.

The ideology of a permanent warfare state demands that civilians matter least, the military and whatever they say they need is the highest priority in these United States.

Is Saudi Arabia about to produce missiles with nuclear warheads?

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Saudi missile launching sites

❝ Satellite images suggest that Saudi Arabia has constructed its first known ballistic missile factory, according to weapons experts and image analysts, a development that raises questions about the kingdom’s increasing military and nuclear ambitions under its 33-year-old crown prince.

If operational, the suspected factory at a missile base in al-Watah, southwest of Riyadh, would allow Saudi Arabia to manufacture its own ballistic missiles, fueling fears of an arms race against its regional rival Iran…

❝ “The possibility that Saudi Arabia is going to build longer-range missiles and seek nuclear weapons — we imagine that they can’t. But we are maybe underestimating their desire and their capabilities,” said Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear weapons expert…who discovered the factory with his team when analyzing satellite images from the region…

❝ Saudi Arabia has been pursuing a nuclear power-plant deal with the United States that would potentially include allowing it to produce nuclear fuel. The kingdom’s insistence on domestic fuel production has raised worries among U.S. officials that the kingdom wants the atomic power project not only for civil use but also for covert weapon-making purposes.

The Fake President says the Saudi rulers are his bubbas and he trusts them. What else does anyone else need to know? That appears to be the only conclusion inside Trump’s little brain.

Someday MAGA hats will be shameful secrets, like Klan robes

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❝ Donald Trump’s values and beliefs may appear incoherent, but they are not a buffet or à la carte meal from which a person can pick and choose from. Rather, they are a nasty, incestuous knot that cannot be easily untangled. Ultimately, to wear Donald Trump’s MAGA hats or his other regalia is to share and endorse his racism, sexism, nativism, bigotry and anti-social behavior. To utter the words “Make America Great Again” with no sense of irony or foreboding is to announce one’s betrayal of human decency and distrust of democracy.

❝ How do Trump’s MAGA hats and other clothing and slogans help to create a sense of political community for his followers? Is “Make America Great Again” an implicit threat against nonwhites, Muslims and others that he and his followers deem to be a type of enemy Other? Does Trumpism represent larger cultural battles in America about the role of academics, teachers, intellectuals and other experts in public life? Should Trump’s supporters be held morally accountable for their political decision-making and the harm that they are causing to American society?

❝ If you look at the reasons that Trump and his movement actually believe (and often explicitly say) that American is not great any longer, it’s because there’s now too many nonwhite immigrants. America for Trump and his supporters is no longer great because black people have too many rights or there are too many women in the workplace.

Trump and his MAGA hats and slogans and policies are also connected to things like the Muslim ban, building the wall, calling Mexicans rapists and saying the terrorists are crossing into the border among these caravans from Guatemala. The obvious conclusion is hard to escape. It takes a certain kind of willful denial and willful ignorance to wear a MAGA hat and assume that you’re not conveying all those values and beliefs.

RTFA if you need reinforcing arguments for the concept. Actually, if you have the habit of reading science-based articles, verifiable material reality – it’s just one more good source to give to your friends who haven’t the habit.

Join in “NOT MY PRESIDENT DAY”

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❝ Donald Trump has declared a #FakeNationalEmergency—an illegal power grab from an unhinged man to push his racist, dangerous policies.

We’re mobilizing rapid-response events on Presidents Day—Monday, 2/18—against Trump’s fake crisis and racist deportation force and to stand with immigrant, Muslim, and Black and brown communities to stop Trump’s dangerous and illegal power grab.

❝ Events will be at noon local time, or a time selected by hosts.

Join a #PresidentsDay protest to fight Trump’s fake crisis and racist deportation force.

Click the link and search for an event near you. Or get online and search for #NOTMYPRESIDENT.

Detained by the Border Patrol in Montana — for speaking Spanish

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He has a badge and a gun — Different incident; but, you get the idea!

❝ Two Montana women are suing US Customs and Border Protection officers for detaining them at a gas station last year because they were speaking Spanish…

Ana Suda and Martha Hernandez were questioned in May by a uniformed officer as they waited in line to buy eggs and milk at a convenience store in Havre, Montana — a tiny town 35 miles from the US border with Canada. The officer then detained the two women, who are American citizens, for 30 to 40 minutes outside by his patrol car.

❝ Suda filmed the heated encounter on her cellphone

❝ Detaining someone solely for speaking Spanish is the same thing as stopping someone solely because of their race — which is illegal.

Not that I would expect everyone with a badge and a gun to know the law or respect the law. I know many who do. I have also confronted some who don’t care about anything but their sense of power – and personal bigotry.