Thursday, May 31, 2007

Picket Wire Canyon, fossils and bombs don't mix

This needs to be exposed. Please please please Read this, it describes what is going on in southern Colorado. The army stole an area called Pinon Canyon using eminent domain, they did this telling the locals that there would never be live ammunition used there and that they're would never be further expansion. Now here we are, live ammo having been used and with a possible expansion. What rights do we have when the government of by and for the people can simply lie to the people, bold faced lies to the people that supposedly are the source of power for said government. The truth is that the lies are insignificant. Lies about an expansion of a military base are hardly noticeable when compared to the lies we hear daily coming from Iraq. But I got side tracked there is a very serious issue here.

Here are some news articles. again thanks to Dysfunctional Analysis for finding these.
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_5997322
http://www.csindy.com/csindy/2006-08-10/cover.html
http://www.pinoncanyon.com/


One little problem is that this is not a desolate area that they are turning into a bombing range. Actually to be much fairer than I probably should be under the circumstances we don't know what they will do if the army takes control because they haven't told us and if you've paid attention it doesn't matter what they say they are going to do because they'll turn around and do what ever the fuck they want with it. So the first problem that gets noticed is the fact that there are roughly a dozen towns in the area to be stolen. People who will be uprooted so that the army can have new playground. military industrial complex anyone? fuck the people we can't buy more bombs till we blow these ones up. But honestly even this serious breach of morality is minor because people are people, they can move, they can be paid off and given a hopefully more comfortable life somewhere else. I say more comfortable only because if your government is going to steal your land they should at the very least set you up in something even nicer to pay for the major inconvenience and for the basic idea of leaving your home. So if I consider kicking a dozen towns out of existence a minor issue what else is going on here? Things that cannot be paid off and told to move on.

The Picket Wire Canyonlands contain the largest dinosaur track in all of North America, it contains priceless pieces of American history, from the ruins of the Delores Mission to Native American petroglyphs. This is history and its science its the understanding of the world. And our national priorities say that blowing shit up is more important.

An interesting side note to all of this is the blatant attack against science coming from the right-wing of the US. This can be seen most clearly with things like "the creation museum" and the hushing of climate specialists. There is an assault against reason in this country and how much more clearly can that be shown than to blow up the fossil records. This cannot be allowed to continue, the military has enough shit to blow up, they do not need to destroy absolutely irreplaceable scientific information so that someone doesn't have to travel far to learn how to kill indiscriminately.

This is stolen straight from the site listed originally

Information on the canyon can be found below:
http://www.fs.fed.us/r2/psicc/coma/main/picketwireguide.shtml
http://www.santafetrailscenicandhistoricbyway.org/pwdino.html
http://www.vipgrafx.com/misc/cng1.htm
http://colomtnclimb.freehosting.net/picketwire.htm
http://www.exploresoutheastcolorado.com/picketwire.htm
http://www.geocities.com/mapguygk07/HiPlains/Picketwire/hiplains_picketwire.htm
http://www.lajuntatribunedemocrat.com/articles/2006/06/01/local_news/ne

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