On my street there were ten houses.
The parents of my generation, including my mom and dad, bought these houses.
In all but one of those ten houses, at least one of the parents was stricken with cancer.
In most households, both parents battled cancer.
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More dangerous than Osama bin Laden
Chemical pollutants near U.S. military basesby Underground Panther in the Sky, Unknown News
Dec. 18, 2003
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Who knows what lurks in our water? I don't.
There was a scandal a while ago, about our local water being contaminated with perchlorate — an explosive salt used widely by the military in rocket fuel. The news was splashed on the front of the local paper, with stories about chemicals seeping into the water supply, from the nearby Aberdeen Proving Grounds (APG). Now you don't hear a peep about it.
I know that the contaminants in the water haven't gone away. The proving grounds haven't gone away (the Army has been testing weapons and ordnance there since 1917). And the results of the pollution hasn't gone away either ... But the press has gone away from the issue.
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When I was growing up, if friends or relatives came from far away, they'd be warned, "Don't drink the tap water." Why? Because it tasted like shit.
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We don't let little kids play with gasoline and torches, because they might burn the house down. So why do we let groups of insane death-dealers play with toxins and make us all sick and die?
Must we sacrifice our health, our lives in the name of national defense, while they are aware and actively seek to cover up how their experiments endanger the lives of everyone around them?
Are we that misdirected and stupid?
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We had well water, and our water was awful-tasting, worse than the city water out here that tastes like pool water. We always had a fridge pitcher of water, and then when Brita filters came out, we kept a pitcher of filtered water in the fridge. But simple little filters don't remove the likes of perchlorate, heavy metals, toxins or gawd-knows-what the proving grounds might be spewing. Bush has made it harder for people to drink safe water, breathe safe air. He has let this precious military off the hook for polluting civilian land air and waters with their death-creating crap.
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My mom worked at the proving grounds. She jokes about how one day this white powdery fallout was all over the floor in a room there, and she and another lady vacuumed a bunch of it up and tossed the vacuum cleaners into the bay. This was nuclear fallout, mind you, before people knew of its more deadly effects.
On my street there were ten houses. The parents of my generation, including my mom and dad, bought these houses. In all but one of those ten houses, at least one of the parents was stricken with cancer. In most households, both parents battled cancer.
Everyone's water tasted like shit. We all had fridge pitchers and we all warned out-of-towners not to drink from the tap.
Growing up, I had a best friend who lived down the road a ways. He is one of the youngest cases of Grave's disease known.
His water was worse than ours.
The government offered him $1,000 a month for life, for his silence, if he wouldn't sue over his thyroid condition. I saw the paper when they made that offer, because he wanted input on such a difficult decision and I was his best friend. I told him not to sign. I told him it looked like a bribe. And if they're bribing you, now, who knows what more awful shit they may be doing? Your story, I told him, might be important in fixing in the future.
I dunno if he signed it or not.
It's interesting that this issue with him came up in the early '80s, and now we have a suppressed scandal rumbling around Harford County. It's a scandal that should have broken in the news years ago. But nobody talked then. Nobody had the guts to stand up and defend the public safety against pollution from the military. It's as if this was not a public danger, not as "real" as a foreign enemy.
In fact, industrial-grade military pollution like perchlorate is a foreign enemy to our bodies. It's a homegrown enemy our state plays with, so it can kill other people more effectively and make things go boom. You know — boy toys.
These kinds of chemical foreign agents will make us sick. It's silent, but it gives us thyroid disorders, allergies, and cancers, years after we drink the water. Yet no one dares stand up to the APG despite the glaring evidence of their pollution, because GW bush has written on a stupid piece of paper that we as human beings have no right to know what kind of foreign chemical agents are infiltrating our air, land, or water and making us sick. GW blocks us from ever knowing what they do because — why?! Why? Is it because once the investigation gets going there will be even more horrors uncovered, and that might make a bad public relations situation, maybe cause a riotous response?? Would paying reparations and health care for all the hurt people — like my friend, like the children of sick and dead parents in nine houses in my neighborhood cancer cluster, like the residents of Aberdeen, Perryman, Bel Air, and the surrounding areas — would this bankrupt the death-dealing oligarch?
Maybe it would be a good thing if these mad scientists went broke. Maybe it would be good if those who cannot control themselves were told to put away their chemistry sets, now.
We don't let little kids play with gasoline and torches, because they might burn the house down. So why do we let groups of insane death-dealers play with toxins and make us all sick and die?
Must we sacrifice our health, our lives in the name of national defense, while they are aware and actively seek to cover up how their experiments endanger the lives of everyone around them?
Are we that misdirected and stupid?
How dare they put the nation they've sworn to protect into mortal danger like this. Being shot by some Jihadist or killed by an invading Korean seems much more merciful to me than facing a slow, cancerous, sick death (with no health insurance, mind you) immersed in a chemical legacy that will be heaped upon future generations.
Why is this perchlorate problem coming out now and not 10 or more years ago? They knew what they were doing, as early as 1949. Is it coming to a head now because too many people have been affected by it? Is it because of the area's housing boom, meaning more people than ever before are having thyroid problems, a lot of them kids, all thanks to APG's perchlorate?
It's a growing area, and it seems growth ironically does have an upside. Growth brings APG more victims who get sick and complain. More complaints leave APG less room to hide from those they harm, more people drinking the bad water. Finally, it can't be palmed off as some fluke, and if you bribe enough people someone will talk about it and the whole game is blown.
It's hard to bribe thousands of people who are suffering into silence, and harder when they get to watch their kids suffer.
I hope the people of Harford County get enough guts to disregard pieces of paper signed by chimp boy, and demand the truth of what is in their water, land, and air. Let's find out what's emanating from APG, in the name of the public's own safety and well-being. I hope people will fight APG out of crass self-interest, a desire not to get sick and die a miserable slow death.
If the people of Harford County wuss out and get bribed, then our future has been sold out, and I do fear the residents of Harford have sold out, because the local paper is as quiet as a church mouse. Maybe GW has scared them. He's tried to block their inquiry with a paper tiger.
How much more lying, evasive tactics, bullshit, sickness, death, and suffering will people take until they get it together and despite the intimidation, storm the gates, demand real answers, and shut down the military industrial-complex? More lives are endangered here, than just the enemy of the moment "over there."
The worst of the biological/chemical weapons of mass destruction are made in our own backyards, people. These chemicals are made by and for our military, and they're seeping into the ground around any military base that handles these things.
Thanks to Bush, any regulations about informing the public are constricted by bullshit. They can evade giving answers on how these military escapades of death really contaminate our land, air, and water. The facts have been secreted away from us, and the safety controls on what pollutants and hazards we face have been laxed away.
This is dangerous to our public safety — more dangerous than Osama bin Laden, because it is sickening us and killing many more of us, quietly, than he has. It's killing us, everywhere the military and industry lies.
How many more of our own mothers, fathers, kids, friends, pets ... How many of us have to die and suffer at the hands of these very wealthy, powerful, corrupt-to-the-core systems making all this pollution and contamination, before we get bold enough to not be bribed, to not be sidetracked by bits of Presidential signed litter? When will we get it together, rise up, and demand the death-dealers come clean about the pollution — and about every other dirty little game they play at the expense of the public? When will we all get our heads outta our asses and work together to stop the greedy ones, the authoritarians, and by any means necessary force them to listen to us. "You have taken enough from us, it's time for you to stop."
When will those who have a little see that it's in their own interest to help those who have nothing, instead of feeding the monster above them that can never get enough? Is our cultural pastime of playing "who wants to be a millionaire" worth it, when so few people ever become millionaires even though they try their best to make it? Is this what you want — a chance to be a king, too? Is this "American dream lottery" why you put up with such mistreatment from your current masters — the landlord, the boss, the fashion industry, the government, the banker, the IRS? When will we stop giving more to those who have plenty and continue to take more and cannot stop themselves from taking?
Isn't it time to wake up from your dreams and realize you are addicted to a rigged game, and it's grown toxic once they begin to make you sick?
When will it happen for us? When will we be unable to hide from our own shortsighted apathy, our fear of what others might think, our pattycake games with social Darwinism, our duplicity, stupidity, and cowardice, and our clinging to a million fantasies that hurt us?
What sort of earth-shattering personal event will have to happen to you, for you to wake up from the grindstone and addictive dreams and say you have had it with the powers that be? What awful event will it take to motivate you to stand up for yourself, and for your kids, your family, your neighborhoods? Will it take your child's death, or your town growing very sick? Everyone over 45 in your neighborhood getting cancer? Losing your job for asking the wrong questions? Running out of oil? A red alert? A collapse of the dollar? A case of cancer in you — and no health insurance to get treatment?
How awful do things have to get in your personal life before you get out, before you organize with others who also want out of this game and do something about it, despite the risks, and despite how it might look to others? When is enough abuse, enough passing the buck, enough scams really enough? What will it take to get us as a nation of equal and different people out of this sick relationship with this military-industrial authoritarian state, enough to try something different?
What will it take for us to clean up this fucking mess??
© 2003, by the author.
Comments? newsuneed@yahoo.com
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