Shock me that Western states and the feds still don't want to face Colorado River reality

Or, in specific, Glen Canyon Dam reality. (My Photoshopped version of the dam, above.)

High Country News, actually getting back to its roots in some ways, has a good piece on the dam, the Colorado River, and the status of a new Colorado River Compact. Here's the latest:

Indeed, a state of crisis has been building on the Colorado for decades, even as the parties that claim its water argue over how to divide its rapidly diminishing flows. Lately, things have entered a new and perilous phase. Last Nov. 11 was a long-awaited deadline: Either the states involved — California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming — would have to agree on a new management plan, or else the federal government would impose its own, something none of the parties would welcome. Meanwhile, the 30 tribes that also hold claims to the river have historically been and continue to be excluded from these negotiations. 

That deadline came and went, and instead of acting, the government punted, this time to Feb. 14. Nobody was surprised: Unmet deadlines and empty ultimatums have been business as usual on the river for years. Decades of falling reservoir levels and clear warnings from scientists about global warming and drought have prompted much hand-wringing and some temporary conservation measures, but little in the way of permanent change in how water is used in the Colorado River Basin.

That deadline is, of course, just a couple of days ahead. I semi-guarantee you won't lose any money if you bet that the seven states of the Colorado River Basin do nothing by then and the feds kick the deadline down the road. 

After all, in the Biden Administration, BuRec did a head fake about doing anything serious. (There was semi-serious stuff around the edges, and that was that, but it motivated the states to do nothing.) 

That said, as HCN goes on to note, part of the problem is Glen Canyon Dam itself:

The 710-foot-tall dam was designed for a Goldilocks world in which water levels would never be too high or too low, despite the well-known fact that the Colorado is by far the most variable river in North America, prone to prodigious floods and extended droughts. But the Bureau, bursting with Cold War confidence — or hubris — chose to downplay the threat. In the record-breaking El Niño winter of 1983, the Bureau almost lost the dam to overtopping, due to both its mismanagement and its design, because the dam lacks sufficient spillway capacity for big floods. Only sheets of plywood installed across its top and cooler temperatures that slowed the melting of that year’s snowpack saved Glen Canyon Dam.

And yes, it was serious.

Marc Reisner opened his magisterial "Cadillac Desert" with that scene, going into much more detail than HCN's story. 

Of course, Glen Canyon Dam was itself built on a lie, a lie that's inside the visitors' center:

Oops! 

For those who haven't lived out there, there is no good farm land above the surface of Lake Powell, so no irrigation in the immediate area. There are no towns of more than 10,000 in the immediate area, though Utah, pursuing the cancerous idea of growth for growth's sake, continues to talk about pumping water for municipal needs some 250 miles west to St. George.

It has not improved water quality, and has killed fish below the dam.

As for that infrastructure? HCN goes on to note that, already in 2023, it has come close to "minimum power pool."

If Hoover Dam gets that close, the theoretical solution is to open the penstocks at Glen Canyon Dam. For Glen Canyon Dam, Flaming Gorge is further away with less water. There's not much on the main stem of the Colorado, and dams above Black Canyon of the Gunnison would help even less. 

The story notes that is actually above the generators' intake level but that, due to the force of water flow, getting down to that mark would cause cavitation in the dam's penstocks. Some of that happened in 1983 because water had to be released from the dam so fast, and with such a head weight due to the lake being full, that the water pressure caused small boulder size cavitation, if I recall correctly.

HCN's Wade Graham notes the dam has two additional outlets, called river outlet works. But, they're not designed for extended use, and can deteriorate when water levels are low. (I can't recall if they were used in addition to the regular penstocks in 1983.)

That water level is what is known to those of us in the know as "dead pool." But, as Graham notes, that's still 240 feet above the base of the dam. That's 240 feet of fetid, stagnant, algae- and mosquito-breeding water. 

Graham notes that old BuRec head Floyd Dominy, subject of John McPhee's "Encounters with the Archdruid," talked long ago about drilling into the sandstone around the dam with emergency outlet valves.

That's interesting. But, knowing the nature of that sandstone, also discussed by Reisner, if those valves aren't concrete lined, that water migrates. Does any of it "gnaw away" at the base of the dam?

And, the author's explainer on that:

In 1997, the former commissioner sketched on a cocktail napkin how new bypass tunnels could be drilled through the soft sandstone around the dam and outfitted with waterproof valves to control the flow of water and sediment. What it prescribes is treating the patient — the Colorado River, now on life support — with open-heart surgery, a full bypass. Dominy’s napkin, which he signed and gave to my colleague Richard Ingebretsen, the founder of Glen Canyon Institute, is effectively a blueprint for a healthier future for the Colorado River and the people and ecosystems that depend on it.

Needs a caveat. 

It would be healthier than dead pool, but not healthier than much other options. Like not building the damned thing. Or else blowing it out. 

(I'm with the Monkey Wrench Gang!) 

To add to the concern, the Upper Colorado Basin Snowpack index is horribly low.  It's far and away the worst in the past decade and well below the 30-year average. Now, as 2023 shows on that graph, sometimes, middle and late spring snow will bail things out. But, one shouldn't hang their hat on that, and even before the big surge, 2023 was well ahead of this year.

Texas Progressives

SocraticGadfly talked about the difference in coverage — including in the "progressive" world, and including right here in Texas, so no need to look outside the state between anti-ICE protestors and pro-Palestinian protestors. 

Off the Kuff interviewed three candidates for HD131 - Erik Wilson, Staci Childs, and Lawrence Allen - plus Danny Norris for HD142.

One of the best things about Taylor Rehmet's win was it telling Mercy Culture — who endorsed Leigh Wambsganss — to essentially fuck off.

Haven't gotten a new voter registration card, even though they were due two months ago? Here's why — a mix of redistricting and state software fuck-ups.

Contra Strangeabbott, and now Kenny Boy's suit to try to shut it down (also not mentioned by Kuff, IIRC), CAIR is not a foreign terrorist organization. 

A 2021 state law barring state investment in companies divesting from fossil fuels is unconstitutional. It will have zero effect on state investments, but will have effect indeed on the Comptroller's office chasing after other business investors. 

A new lawsuit wants Camp Mystic shut down, period. 

And, since fracking has now invaded the Guadalupe River floodplain, albeit more than 100 miles downstream and Tex-ass Rethuglicans (and plenty of Democraps like Beat-0 O'Rourke) are either dismissive of climate change or minimizers, and also since, as the story notes, there is NO state floodplain policy!, it maybe SHOULD be shut down. 

Is the government of China possibly behind all the John Mearsheimer video deepfakes? 

Neil at the Houston Democracy Project reported on ongoing discussion at Houston City Council regarding proposals to lessen HPD interaction with ICE. There was not much progress, but we very much retain the ability to organize ourselves outside conventional political structures.

The TSTA Blog warns us to be ready for the unleashing of the voucher monster.

David DeMatthews wishes the state would focus on helping children learn how to read rather than dictating to them what they must or must not read.

Egberto Willies catches Marjorie Taylor Greene telling the truth.

Pre-early voting Tex-ass political hot takes outside the MSM or #BlueAnon

Let's dig in with the Democrats' hot race. 

Talarico-Crockett

At the Monthly, Allegra Hobbs notes how seminarian James Talarico has backpedaled off Jeebus in his primary with Training Wheels Jasmine Crockett, including paying for a Jesus-free Super Bowl ad.

Hobbs, though touting his "scriptural literacy," does NOT tell you that seminarian James Talarico is either a liar or an idiot about Luke 1 and the Annunciation to Mary having any connection to reproductive choice. That, along with the above, of course makes him a Pander Bear. 

We then go to CD Hooks for his take on Pander Bear the Seminarian vs Training Wheels. He starts with the whole Colin Allred brouhaha. My take? He was mediocre, if even that, as a Senate campaigner. And a ConservaDem as a politician. That said, Training Wheels is a semi-pander bear on Zionism and Seminarian is trying to pretty much avoid the issue. You'll not find Hooks discussing that.

He does indicate Tex-ass Republicans, given the statements by Lois Cockwhore, may fear Talarico more.

He next claims spox for the two candidates misunderstand each other. False, dude. They indeed at least halfway understand each other, which is why they deliberately speak past each other.

He then discusses Talarico taking money from Mirian Adelson, as noted by a pro-Crockett anonymous website, but refuses to use this as an entree to discuss the Z word. (That would be like most members of Texas Pergressuves.)

The Barbed Wire adds the sidebar take of Crockett backers jumping into the land of conspiracy theories. 

That last one is laughable, and will probably get doubled down in a Talarico win.

Cornyn-Paxton

Also at the Monthly Hooks gets out a big can of bromance for "he looks like a senator" John Cornyn. And yeah, Hooks, that's what it is. Deal with it.  Otherwise, see above.

Sid Miller-Nate Sheets

The Trib looks at how and why incumbent Ag Commissioner is in so much trouble, so much trouble that included Gov. Strangeabbott giving his first-ever endorsement of a GOP challenger in an executive branch race, and includes also — contra Miller's bravado— major orgs like Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers breaking for Sheets.

AG race for Dems

This is one of four primaries where the Trib interviewed all candidates. I won't be voting in the Dem primary, in all likelihood, because of small-county primary needs, but would consider Nathan Johnson in the general.

AG race for GOP

Trib interview; Joan Huffman is the only one not a total hack. 

Senate GOP

All three Rethuglicans refused to respond to the Trib. 

Senate Dems

The Trib did ask both Training Wheels and Seminarian Pander Bear about weapons sales to Israel. Crockett wanders beyond Israel. Talarico goes down the road of offensive vs defensive weapons, touts the Israel-killed two-state solution and other things. Neither mentioned pro-Palestinian protestors like Leqaa Kordia. I won't be voting for either in the general and I'm not shocked by this.

To put it more firmly?

I won't be voting for whoever wins this shitshow, mainly because of Zionism, but also, because of Talarico's level of Pander Bear on misinterpreting Luke 1 if he's the winner. That means an undervote in the general, barring an independent write-in candidate, as Greens aren't running anybody.  

It also asked both about oil. Crockett explicitly backs "all of the above" on energy and Talarico does on the down low. Barf and yet more reason I'm not voting for either one. 

==

In the general, I may vote Molison, the Green candidate for Ag Commish. But I'll only do that if he says publicly what's wrong with Proposition 4. If not, forget it.

 

Noam Chomsky in the Epstein files? Not shocked

That's unlike Vijay Prashad at Counterpunch.

Reality is, Chomsky's not such an anti-Zionist as portrayed. More on that and other things below.

A LOT more. Let's dig in. 

That then said, Chris Knight notes, also at Counterpunch, that Noam taught at MIT, which got plenty of military-industrial complex money. 

There were, I believe, always two ‘Noam Chomskys’ – one working for the US military and the other working tirelessly against that same military. This contradiction cannot explain every aspect of Chomsky’s puzzling friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. But it is the underlying contradiction that helps us understand why someone as radical as Chomsky ended up being involved with someone as reactionary as Epstein.

Bingo. Or, sort of. As I note above, I have long seen Chomsky as not being all that radical. And, I've also known for 20 years or more that his linguistic theories are non-scientific and generally overrated. Knight definitely gets into that, below.

Beyond that, Chomsky's association with Epstein has been known since 2023, per a link in Knight's piece. 

But, the details are out now.

Jeff St. Clair notes:

The latest batch is very ugly and, I think, indefensible. It’s especially disgusting that Noam saw it necessary to shame the victims as hysterics. When it was first revealed that Chomsky had some kind of relationship with Epstein, I was surprised, but not terribly shocked. I assumed he was trying to pick Epstein’s very deep pockets for money for his MIT projects. Hell, Noam had taken money from the Pentagon, DIA and other unsavory sources in the past. There’s no such thing as clean money.

And follows with:

It’s also very hard to understand how he could have maintained such close ties to someone who was a hardcore Zionist and, if not an Israeli agent himself, certainly an asset whom Israeli intelligence used frequently. It’s baffling. A couple of years ago, I gave him the benefit of the doubt and wrote off his dismissal of Epstein’s predatory sexual behavior as similar to Nader’s stubborn refusal to endorse gay rights during the 2000 campaign, when there were several gay marriage/rights initiatives on state ballots, by saying, “I don’t do gonadal politics.” But this is much more appalling and inexplicable.

That's the thing. 

Or not the thing. By the end of his piece, St. Clair goes halfway back in the Chomsky apologetics tank. Jeff, I think you're still giving him too much benefit of the doubt.

So, back to Knight. 

Knight follows with more, showing just how bad this is.

Anyone who reads the correspondence between Chomsky and Epstein in the January 2026 release of the Epstein files, however, will now find it difficult to respect Chomsky’s opinions on Gaza or anything else. 

One email from Chomsky and his second wife Valeria describes the couple’s friendship with Epstein as ‘deep and sincere and everlasting’. Another from Valeria describes Epstein as: ‘our best friend. I mean “the” one.’ Meanwhile other messages – signed only by Chomsky himself – are equally generous to the convicted sex offender, saying, for example, ‘we’re with you all the way’ and ‘you’re constantly with us in spirit and in our thoughts.’ 

Other documents suggest that Chomsky visited Epstein’s properties not only in New York but also in New Mexico and Paris. The files even show that shortly before Epstein’s arrest and death, in July and August 2019, Chomsky was still intending to be interviewed for a documentary that Epstein was making. It seems that Chomsky really was loyal to Epstein until the end. The question is why.

First, that's bad.

But, again, not surprising to me, per my second paragraph above. (Other than the victim-shaming, which is both surprising and disgusting.) 

I'll get back to Knight on his "why" in a minute.

First, my most recent writing about Chomsky, when everybody thought he was dead. 

On Zionism or anti-Zionism? He's been chickenshit on BDS, and also opposes the Right of Return. Also per that piece, he reportedly considered living on a kibbutz in Mandatory Palestine in the 1930s and DID live on one in the 1950s.

He's also long been a sheepdogger for the left hand of the duopoly. 

Now, back to Knight's "why."

First, he notes that Chomsky was in financial straits of some sort several years ago. So, Epstein bribed him? That said, per the Guardian piece Knight links, the financial issue wasn't THAT bad. And, maybe old Noam was a bit more of a capitalist than he admitted. 

On the non-financial side? Knight simply says straight-up he thinks Chomsky had antediluvian views about women in many ways.

He then goes back to the military issue. He says that even Chomsky's once-heralded (but non-scientific and now passé) ideas about linguistics were also focused on military needs. Related? Knight also shows just how non-scientific, if not even pseudoscientific, Chomsky's ideas on language were.

I quote again: 

In Chomsky’s view, to talk of language emerging in our species through Darwinian evolution would be like discussing the evolution of the soul. Like the soul, Chomsky says, language is either present or not present – you cannot have half a soul. So it makes no sense to envisage language evolving by degrees. 

In response to those of us who have asked him how he thinks language really did emerge, Chomsky has offered little more than what he terms a ‘fairy story’: the brain of a single prehistoric human was ‘rewired, perhaps by some slight mutation’. It all happened suddenly and without building on any evolutionary precursor. 

Again like the soul – if we are to believe Chomsky – language has no special connection with communication. It can be used for communication ‘as can anything people do’ but, Chomsky says, ‘language is not properly regarded as a system of communication’. He then adds the still stranger claim that the concepts we use in language, such as ‘book’ or ‘carburettor’, have existed in the human brain since the emergence of our species tens of millennia before real books or carburettors even existed. 

To claim that language did not evolve for communication, or that prehistoric humans were hardwired with such concepts as ‘book’ or ‘carburettor’, simply makes no sense. For this and other reasons, many contemporary linguists have now concluded that Chomsky’s theories are completely unworkable, having reached what the eminent evolutionary psychologist Michael Tomasello calls ‘a final impasse’. But the question remains, why did someone as intelligent as Chomsky so consistently espouse such ideas? 

In my own book on this topic, I argue that by equating language with something like the soul, Chomsky was able to slip unnoticeably from real science to a kind of scientistic theology, insulating his linguistics from any possible military use.

There you are.

It also shows how tenuous of a grasp Chomsky had on the whole idea of evolution by natural descent. Substitute “eyeball” for “language” and a creationist or “Intelligent Design” person would say, and has said, exactly what Chomsky does.

In reality? A “partial language” would be of just as much value, relatively, as a planarium’s light-sensor spot is.

Seriously? At this point, I say, not only is Chomsky wrong about language AND not so real a leftist, he’s not so much the genius he has long been anointed as being. Let’s kick him off his pedestal in general.

Knight has a book on the origins of language coming out himself later this year, in a side note. 

Piling on? Chomsky was crafting a psychology-based response to B.F. Skinner and his behaviorism when he created his views on the origins of language. I note above he did no research. 

Let me add this. The suck-ups were out in force on the r/chomsky subreddit. No surprise, from my previous experience there.

And tankies are in other spots. Here's a Chomsky tankie on Instagram, claiming the photo of him with Steve Bannon, as well as Chomsky's emails to Epstein, aren't genuine. Wow; AI framed Chomsky. When I first wrote this, that would have been the lamest excuse, but I'm putting the "mark" in No. 1 now. 

==

NEW SINCE ORIGINAL POST, and I'll eventually do a second one. 

It's gotten worse, like this guy citing Michael Tracey on Shitter as a defense of Chomsky. (Tracey goes on to claim that call-outs of Chomsky are antisemitic.) 

I'm going to quote all of Tracey's original Shit, rather than embed the Shit:

The slander against Noam Chomsky is utterly outrageous. And the refusal of certain people to defend him against this torrent of defamatory slime is sickening cowardice. 

Perversely, it's become one of the most repellent aspects of the entire Epstein saga. 

The man is 97 years old, had a stroke a few years ago, and cannot even defend himself as he's being tarnished as some sort of depraved pedo enabler. 

It's pure, unvarnished Salem Witch Trial-style hysteria. 

Anyone perpetuating it has no standing to chuckle at the feeble-minded townsfolk in Colonial Massachusetts who thought they were being terrorized by literal witches. 

Chomsky did nothing wrong. [Emphasis added.] Epstein helped him with some unfortunate financial problems stemming from his first wife's death. They also occasionally socialized and maintained an email correspondence. 

WHO GIVES A FUCK? The supposedly damning PR advice that Chomsky gave Epstein also happened to be substantively correct. He was right that trying to use antiquated concepts like "reason" and "facts" in the public arena was totally pointless when it comes to hallucinated Pedo Panic theories. 

Most ironic of all, Chomsky has been demonstrably harmed by this fiasco far more than most of the supposed "victims" who took a luxury vacation to the US Virgin Islands in the early 2000s and then years later decided to call it "trafficking" so they could collect millions of tax-free settlement money and proclaim themselves "survivors."

There you are.

But, it gets worse. There's an agreement Shit by a Cheryl Hudson with a respondent that says:

I haven't seen much of this but increasingly this whole saga has such a flavour of antisemitism about it.

And Tracey's agreement. 

Yeah, I noticed...

Yes. So, per Tracey, who's not a leftist or even a librul, but a quasi-Greenwald type, calling out genocide in Gaza would also be antisemitic. 

But, let's get past the first Shit.

The tone-deafness of claiming that Chomsky has been hurt worse by the revelations and how people are handling them than Epstein's victims would be laughable if it were tone-deafness. It's not. It's a deliberate smear campaign.

The rest of it is flat lies. They did more than "occasionally socialize." Chomsky's PR campaign advice was more than throwaway. The handwaving and gaslighting about his stroke tries to hide that the Chomsky-Epstein ties go back more than a decade and also are deeper than previously thought. 

There's other sites that also feature Chomsky tankie-dom. I found two at a place called "Counter Currents." This one is the worse of the two. Justin Brown claims Noam was a "mark." That's the lamest excuse for him yet. 

Let's get into "interesting" stuff. Back to R/Chomsky, here's a commenter claiming Wittgenstein is the antidote to Chomsky. Not really, sir. He was a Platonist, and like Chomsky, a Platonist on linguistics. 

But wait, this gets better! /s 

Aaron Mate has posted in full a statement by Valeria Chomsky on his Substack. I saw it on r/Chomsky. My thought? 

As stated there, and in restacking Aaron's Substack, since he has not limited comments to paid subscribers but has turned them off, period?

This doesn't talk about Noam's PR advice to Epstein and other things. At a minimum, it looks like a degree of whataboutism or hand-waving. In maximum, it walks, talks and quacks in the neighborhood of gaslighting. And shock me that Aaron has disabled comments on his Substack.

Gack.

That said, some specifics of the "gack."

First:

As is widely known, one of Noam’s characteristics is to believe in the good faith of people. Noam’s overly trust[ing] nature, in this specific case, led to severe poor judgment on both our parts.

Really? The author of "Manufacturing Consent" was too trusting?

And this:

Epstein began to encircle Noam, sending gifts and creating opportunities for interesting discussions in areas Noam has been working on extensively. We regret that we did not perceive this as a strategy to ensnare us and to try to undermine the causes Noam stands for.

Valeria, you yourself called Epstein "the one." In 2017.

Then, some possible selective amnesia, or handwaving further, or more gaslighting, with this:

Noam and I were introduced to Epstein at the same time, during one of Noam’s professional events in 2015, when Epstein’s 2008 conviction in the State of Florida was known by very few people, while most of the public – including Noam and I – was unaware of it. That only changed after the November 2018 report by Miami Herald.

In reality, a quick teh Google shows the Daily Mail published an interview with Virginia Giuffre in 2011. Gawker published his "little black book" in 2015. (Sidebar: The Peter Thiel-funded lawsuits against Gawker hit the fan a year later.)

As for the insinuation that the Chomskys cut their ties and their losses after that 2018 reportage? A late 2025 piece from the same Miami Herald begs to differ:

With Jeffrey Epstein’s reputation in tatters following a 2018 Miami Herald investigation into his sex crimes – and how he evaded serious consequences – the financier hit on a plan: He would produce a documentary to present himself in a favorable light. He had several ideas about who could appear on it and provide favorable testimonies, emails and phone messages show. And one of the first friends to allegedly give Epstein the thumbs up was famed left-wing academic Noam Chomsky. “Spoke to Chomsky, he’s all in,” Epstein wrote in a text message to an undisclosed associate.

Pretty straightforward. If that's not enough? This:

[T]he Herald’s findings reveal that Chomsky continued to correspond with him at least until the summer of 2019, even after the Herald’s series led to widespread outcry and the Justice Department publicly announced a fresh probe.

Straightforward.

In reality, per Chris Knight's piece, Chomsky surely knew that the oleaginous Alan Dershowitz negotiated getting 2006 charges against Epstein dropped, as far as the Chomskys taking the issues seriously. And, Epstein also met Dersh at Harvard as well as Chomsky. At the same time, as Harvard Crimson admits, the university refused to return Epstein's money in 2006.

So, this idea that Noam would assume that because Epstein had "done his time," he was rehabilitated, is also bullshit. That's bullshit on his part, though, not Valeria's. As for the rich and powerful's ability to get matters criminal squashed, Noam is, once again, a fake leftist if he doesn't take that into account and hasn't done so before. 

As for Valéria’s insinuation that she and Noam are all alone in the darkness?

She was quick and hot to react two years ago when certain leftists like Yanis Varoufakis were rushing like good little online-world tribalists to be “first” or nearly so to talk about Noam’s alleged death and how close they were to him.

Let's get back to Noam being a squish on Zionism. Multiple meetings with Epstein also included former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak. Yes, Barak has had some mild callouts of Bibi Netanyahu on how Israel responded to Oct. 7, 2023. But, that's been around the edges. In addition, Barak went to Little Saint James, per Wiki.

=== 

I want to wrap up by going back to Counterpunch, though.

First a detour, via a piece I wrote a month ago. Counterpunch had its own resident tankie, Michael Albert, do the hand-waving back then. Among other things, he says Chomsky would abhor systems but try to look graciously at individuals. Got it. So. Epstein's system wasn't created by Epstein. Like Nazism wasn't created by Adolf Hitler, but just evolved in a system from the Dolstochgestabbe. Got it.

Now, back to the February, current, Counterpunch. 

St. Clair's piece looks like he hoped, a month ago, that the initial Chomsky-Epstein news would be it and this would go away, or even get swept under the rug. Maybe he's a bit of a tankie himself. Per his new piece, I think he's definitely a tankie for Ralph Nader, welcoming him to write more for Counterpunch in 2024 even when, or maybe I should say especially when, he started sheepdogging for the left hand of the duopoly. 

As for Knight's "two Chomsky" angle? Maybe the one was simply a "public facing" Chomsky, at least in part. Something he was surfing like a wave after getting all the kudos for apparently hauling down language origin theories of the generally illiberal behavioralism.

Many leftists who had "pedestaled" Chomsky need to de-pedestal him. 

Hagerman NWR is turning 80 in a week, and I'm not going to the celebration

Why not?

Because, as with a year ago with a special presentation by the Friends of Hagerman support group, the national wildlife refuge is whoring itself out to the world of oil and gas. 

Indeed, the Feb. 14 presentation of Hagerman's history sounds very much like what the Friends group did last year, per its monthly e-newsletter from a year ago. (Scroll not quite halfway down.) Then, it was Mary Maddux, then a regional oil and gas specialist with US Fish and Wildlife. I can't find her listed as that in the past year with teh Google. Maybe she retired or got pushed out with Trump's cuts across Department of Interior in general and USFWS in general.

That said, next week is providing essentially the same person:

Step back in time with Mary Istre, Acting Deputy Refuge Manager, as she explores 80 years of conservation at Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge. Using historic photographs and engaging stories, Mary will bring to life the people, decisions, and defining moments that shaped the refuge’s landscapes and wildlife. You’ll also discover how lessons from the past continue to guide conservation efforts today—and why this history matters more than ever. 

Mary Istre has spent 15 years with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, serving as the Southwest Region’s regional oil and gas specialist. She is currently the Acting Deputy Refuge Manager at Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge, bringing extensive experience in energy, conservation, and collaborative resource management.

Hard pass. 

Her predecessor lied about how little or how much oil pumpjacks might have damaged Lake Texoma and the refuge in 2015 flooding, and Istre will probably tell the same lies if asked about last year's flooding.

(Not that I suspect anybody in attendance will.) 

Texas "Progressives" — active on ICE and Hispanics, silent on Gaza

I pulled part of this week's Texas "Progressives" items from the normal weekly Roundup put together by Charles Kuffner of Off the Kuff for just that reason.

We start with something I picked up, as, contra former member of the Texas Progressives Alliance Brains, I have long done my own additions (and subtractions) to Kuff's material.

Kuff will surely talk somewhere about Texas public school ICE protest walkouts, even as he remains radio silent on collegiate pro-Palestine protests. Ditto for Neil Aquino, the hypocrites.   

And now, to all of last week's roundup as organized by Kuff. 

The Current catches Greg Abbott trying to squirm out of his ICE fetishism.  

José R. Ralat gave his account of being accosted by ICE.

G. Elliott Morris shows why immigration as an issue has hit a tipping point in public opinion.

Isaiah Martin cheers on the athletes who have called out Alex Pretti's murder by ICE. 

Deceleration gives ten rules of resistance against ICE. Finally, as a public service, the two major immigrant-run organizations who are resisting ICE in Minnesota are Unidos MN and Monarca.

For more specific places to donate to, Stand With Minnesota is a clearinghouse for ways to help.

And now, to Gaza. And the United States ties with the Zionism that continues to kill Gazans. 

Even as Israel continues to break the cease-fire in Gaza, even as Israel and Trump's Peace Force or whatever he calls it plan biometric-controlled gated communities in Gaza that will surely come back to Merikkka, even as Jeffrey Epstein's connection to Mossad in particular and the Zionists running Israel in general becomes ever more clear, even as, as late as the end of last month, people continue to demand the release from ICE detention of Leqaa Kordia — held HERE IN TEXAS — Kuff, Neil Aquino etc remain silent. Maybe it's because the Biden Administration's complicity in genocide becomes ever more clear.

Texas Democrats — including elected ones! — are demanding Kordia's release. Where are Texas "progressives"? 

That's The Barbed Wire. Elsewhere, I have linked to the Texas Observer. Kuff uses both in the Roundup, which means he deliberately refuses to talk about her. That's anti-anti-Zionism, which is Zionism on the down low.