You can leave a comment here through January 21, 2022. Thank you for any input you can muster. FWIW. Below are the comments I submitted.
Now that the horse is out of the barn… y’all are seeking to monitor the damage? This seems par for the course for MPCA. Sad really.
While I understand processes take time and the development of this work is hopeful to understand the problems, my concern is the lack of proactive work in the past, which has led us to this place.
It seems the MPCA is – and HAS BEEN – FAILING to uphold their mission: to protect and improve the environment and human health.
We’ve been hearing for a while now about how impaired our waters are, yet what did MPCA do over recent years?
MPCA approved a 401 Permit for Enbridge’s tar sands pipeline to be installed across all of Northern Minnesota from the NE corner to Lake Superior. This pipeline was unnecessary – as shown by new usage rates, , currently on the decline, and showing Enbridge to be shipping less than they have in previous years.
So WHY DID WE NEED THIS NEW PIPELINE AGAIN? Why did we need to cut down swaths of forest (removing trees that help store and clean the water) and dredge a NEW CORRIDOR through pristine wetlands, risking them to the same degradation from construction that, again, was unnecessary (perhaps except for the applicant… about to lose leases for their pipelines as the Leech Lake Reservation refuses to extend their easements?).
Mainline System Imports vs. Capacity: Q1-2004 through Q3-2021 Still not shipping above the system capacity that existed pre-Line 93 (LR3) Construction
Now, all along the Enbridge corridor, we continue to see brown sludge in the rivers where the Horizontal Directional Drilling (HDD) was done to push the Enbridge pipeline under rivers and experienced frac-outs of their drilling mud. These frac-outs released thousands of gallons of drilling fluid into our environment at rivers like the Red River, Middle River, Snake River, Red Lake River, Clearwater River, Mississippi River – twice, with one crossing at the headwaters and one mid-state near Palisade, Pine River, Willow River, East Savanna River… yet where is MPCA?
No testing is being done to assure there aren’t spills affecting the river health. Except the testing done by citizens, who opposed the project from the start and continue to monitor the after-effects of construction.
MPCA FAILED to do their homework on that project – or heed those who had – and now we are to trust they are doing their homework on PFAS? I think not.
Will we, in another 5 years, see the MPCA looking at measuring river health as deteriorated by the process of installing an unnecessary tar sands pipeline across northern Minnesota? Far too late to prevent the ill-effects of contamination that was known to be likely? Ill-effects that opponents PREDICTED? As the MPCA ignored them?
This PFAS measurement program seems simply a game of accounting for all the damages the MPCA continues to allow to happen to Minnesota’s clean air, land, and water – as they collude with corporations to make as much green – as in money – that they can as everything becomes too poison for humans to survive.
Looking at the IWAV tool, it seems we have a varicose vein situation that is BEYOND REPAIR; RED RIVERS OF CONCERN RUN THROUGHOUT the State.
And where are the most impaired large lakes? Besides Lake Superior, our grandest of lakes, many are on Reservation: Mille Lacs, Leech Lake, Red Lake (Upper and Lower), Winnibigoshish, and Windigo. Ironically, that last one means “winter cannibal monster”. Appropos? Perhaps, as it seems the MPCA allows our state environmental health to continue to degrade, with continued allowances for water quality impairment, and an apparent inability to heed the tribal voices and those of environmental stewards and scientists.
[The meeting to approve the Minnesota 2020 Water Plan was a key example of the Tribal and Scientific voices going unheeded, as the vote following discussion included one lone dissent: from Ben Yawakie, 3rd Congressional District Representative, citizen of the Pueblo of Zuni, and a descendant from Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa.]
These comments seem like just another process where the voice of the citizen is gathered… CHECK! And then the MPCA does as it wishes. 😖
I’ve endured many agency meetings where the people are condescended to and the agency does as it wishes… only to be proven wrong later, when the people who spoke up are, in the end, proven right. 😞
I don’t suppose you’ll truly be listening to us here, though I will continue to ask that Minnesota scientists – unassociated with corporate interests – be included, along with the legally important voice of the Tribal Nations within the bounds of Minnesota. This is not only the smart thing, but the legal thing to do. Though my short experience in the last seven years with Minnesota agencies tells me… they’ll do as they wish… as we continue to watch our state be sold off to the highest bidders… and nature and life are destroyed.
November is usually a time for cards of Thanks though not as many went out this year as I hoped as there are SO MANY for whom I am thankful this year. Good friends, comrades in the work to protect Mother Earth (nimaamaa aki), and so many beings around us that bring joy and beauty to our everyday.
Though my favorites are the Chickadees (gijigijigaaneshiinhyag) who will land in one’s hand to grab a sunflower seed – always a thrill.
The snow (goon) has been present for a while now, and we got another 13″+ the first weekend of December.
Welcome to Winter at the HARN!
It’s that time of year when all I want to do is curl up with a book and read. And we are reading… Unstuck in Time by Gregory Sumner. [Find a subject you feel deeply about and you want others to know about and write about it. Great Idea, Greg!] Another Hoosier out there doing great stuff, Greg’s book walks us through all Kurt’s works chronologically as he gives us great insight to the writer, with whom we have found great resonance. [The book is not connected to the movie Unstuck in Time, though I’m excited to see what that reveals as well.]
I will say I’m LOVING this book and how it helps me better understand Kurt and his books, including how they connect to his personal life and the current events and previous events of US and World History. There is much to learn from this child soldier turned anthropology student turned writer. Really looking forward to reading Breakfast of Champions next… unless we decide to read all his works in order… a big challenge, though one I’m considering. Perhaps when I read the next chapter, that will be the book I want to read next. Hocus Pocus is coming up… and Bluebeard too.
Together Dan & I are reading Howard Zinn’s Failure to Quit: Reflections of an Optimistic Historian. It’s really encouraging and enlightening, though very real… and thus sad at how much remains the same as did when he wrote this in 1993 book. This is perhaps one of the best things I’ve ever read:
Honest Transparency in a Professor… refreshing.
Hoping you all have a lovely end to 2021 and here’s to our 2022 being a time for reconciliation, compassion, and finding our way forward in a way that allows our children to also have a chance at living their lives… as we older folks have been allowed. [I fear us oldsters give far too little consideration of how we can do this… as things continue to look troublesome near term… not to mention the horrors that appear on the horizon.]
And for those reading all the words… I’m learning Ojibwe (Ojibwemowin)! [Yes, I am REALLY EXCITED about it.] I’m finding it intriguing, fun, and edifying. Get in touch if you want to practice speaking!
I’m not saying vaccines are 100% ineffective, I’m simply saying they aren’t 100% safe (at least not as we’re administering them here in the US)… and that they are not our only way forward.
I’m really saying, “It Didn’t Have To Be This Way.” [More on this at the bottom.]
While many would agree with me in saying the vaccines are not 100% effective, it seems that few will agree the vaccines are unsafe. But one thing most of them can agree on is this: Ivermectin Doesn’t Work and Is UNSAFE!
The question is… Why? And maybe more importantly, WHY is there so much disagreement about these ideas. And most importantly perhaps, WHY can we not DISCUSS these matters freely and without such vitriol?
I have really been heartbroken by those who have chosen to attack me for speaking my truth as I share what I feel are valid concerns that require some consideration.
Some simply want to label me “Anti-vaxxer”… and thus conveniently put me into a category of “Stupid” or “Trumpster” as they stand in righteous beliefs regarding their vaccines… and my lack of care.
I’ve been especially frightened by the harsh lashing out from those who have called me a friend.
If I cannot even talk openly with friendly relations about these ideas, then how on earth are we to find truth among the masses?
Nuance is hard for most of us and even harder as truth is becoming more difficult to determine.
All I can say is that I’m working as hard as anyone to understand the world. And I’m listening to what I’m learning and working to put all the pieces together.
Unfortunately, the more I work, the harder it is to find hope that we’re gonna find our way through all this mess.
The harder it is to know what is true, who I can trust, and what I ought do.
I told Dan this past week, if the Abortion Ban and Vaccine Mandates both manage to find a way forward and into our near-term future, then I suspect we’ll be at war by my birthday, just a few months hence. As I discussed with a friend this morning, there are legal ideas… and then there are ethics and logic. It’s seeming more often each day that the legal does not always rest well on logical, scientific, or moral ground.
I’m also concerned that these times are looking quite similar to those that preceded both WWI and WWII. We have economic uncertainty, communication breakdowns, global scapegoating, and system failures that do not bode well for our future being bright. And we wonder why our children are shooting each other in schools and overdosing on opioids? We can look at ourselves for these answers.
Yet, there doesn’t seem much impetus to find that middle ground in logic and ethics. Instead, greed seems the biggest motivator in the Vaccine/Covid Treatment game.
Greed motivates the vaccine manufacturers to not share their recipes.
Greed incents a focus on profits rather than outcomes for people.
Greed motivates Merck to downplay it’s own (VERY CHEAP) drug, Ivermectin, and its ability to bring relief from Covid, and instead we find them hawking another unknown off-the-shelf-for-quick-manufacture concoction as a ‘Covid Pill Cure’. All for only $700 a pop, eh? [Meanwhile, Ivermection costs less than a Big Mac. And actually does something. (I hear the new drug is not being found as effective as first touted on announcement, perhaps why it barely passed EUA approval? Time will tell.]
Greed assures the privileged are first (and often the only places) on the list for vaccine distribution.
Greed assures there are no ‘approved’ treatments (hence the ability to continue with EUAs that allow Big Pharma to rack up millions).
Yet the data from India, Japan, and Chiappas show that Ivermectin does work?
Last half 2021 Cases as of 12-5-21. Mexico, India, and Japan appear to be winning!
And the chatter about Ivermectin being a “horse-dewormer” and/or “dangerous” has been shown to be politically driven misinformation for this Nobel Prize Winning drug. [FFS, even the correction opener on this piece is an embarrassing attempt at misguiding the public – though with our poor education system, it has seemingly worked… as I have family members in medicine who poo-poo Ivermectin as HORRIBLY UNSAFE! (I would welcome anyone who has links to articles that DON’T mention Ivermectin… without disparaging it as ‘unhelpful’ for Covid.)]
Perhaps the best written summary can be found in the below quoted article*:
This was not something many people thought possible. But while the world was living the nightmare of the COVID-19 pandemic like a Michael Crichton sci-fi horror production where the planet is facing a plague apocalypse, millions die, and doctors can do nothing as brilliant pharmaceutical scientists race to develop vaccines to save the globe in the final scene, Paul Marik had a different movie in his head. He was startled and appalled that all the national and international public health agencies recommended that the most well-trained, well-equipped doctors in history stand down and wait on big pharma’s lab scientists while the worst pandemic in a century devastated the world. “It’s therapeutic nihilism to say that doctors can do nothing,” Marik said. “Supportive care is no care at all.”
What Marik did was assemble four of his closest friends, who also happen to be four of the top academic critical care doctors in the world. He challenged them to join him in an expert panel to continually review the literature while treating their COVID-19 patients and developing treatment protocols—lowcost generic therapies that countless black and brown and poor people all over the world would need, he saw from the beginning, or face a coming catastrophe without treatments or vaccines. …
ICUs were getting hammered by the new respiratory plague all around the world, but Marik had assembled a group of intensivists with nearly 2,000 peer-reviewed papers and books and over a century of bedside experience in treating multi-organ failure and severe pneumonia-type diseases. If anyone could arrest the coronavirus in a living patient, they could.
And they DID! The MATH+ and I-MASK protocols have saved many. Though the safety of Ivermectin is hard to argue against, we see that many have. And we continue to see no consideration of it by our prescribed Doctor, as he notes the organization’s protocols do not allow Ivermectin prescriptions to be written for Covid treatment, I am left to no other conclusion than this may well be a de-population plan.
We are told here in America that, until you have COVID symptoms that warrant hospitalization, there is no treatment for you. We are not given any guidance for boosting our own immune systems and are even discouraged from taking Vitamin D, or anything… save a jab of vaccine, to help ourselves. Meanwhile, our mortality for 2021 is HIGHER than that of 2020. Even with those highly touted EUA jabs in place? Hmmm.
Sadly, as I read the words of Dr. Pierre Kory, I feel the same of my own doctor, who continues to refuse to consider any medical information I present:
Kory never tires of reminding critics that the modern Hippocratic Oath, the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki, makes it abundantly clear that all medical research is secondary to the doctor’s clinical judgement in the moment, whether the patient is dying of COVID-19 or giving birth. The doctor is morally compelled to use their best clinical judgement and the “best available evidence” in that instant, not tomorrow or next year when more data is published. As the WMA puts it: “The health of my patient will be my first consideration.” Clearly the medical establishment is now routinely violating that ancient oath, Kory says, and as a result he “feels estranged from most, but not all, of my colleagues.” …
In the new world of medicine, the COVID world, he says, “Only big randomized controlled trials by big pharma/big academic medical centers are accepted by big journals, while others are rejected,” while only studies in big journals are accepted by big public health agencies for drug recommendations, and only drugs recommended by big public health agencies “escape media/social media censorship.” “This leaves you with a system where the only thing that’s considered to have sufficient evidence or proven efficacy is essentially a big new pharmaceutical drug,” he adds. “If it doesn’t come from the mountaintop, it doesn’t exist,” Kory says. “The people on the ground, we cannot do any more science that’s considered credible. We’re discredited as controversial and as promoting unproven therapies and our Facebook groups are shut down, Twitter accounts are locked, YouTube videos are removed and demonetized. It’s really almost totalitarian what’s happening when we’re just well-meaning scientists trying to do the right thing by our patients.”
Perhaps this censorship is the true problem? Again, this goes back to the beginning where I ask:
Can we not OPENLY DISCUSS the facts and come to the TRUTH?
It seems in today’s regulatory-captured capitalism, we may be SOL for that plan.
Good luck to you all in finding your way.
I’d ask that you consider taking a moment after hearing something you find a bit hard to swallow – perhaps especially from those for whom you hold any love – to ask yourself, “What if they aren’t all wrong?”
Perhaps, if I have not convinced you then a couple last stories from Capuzzo’s piece will inspire?
Dr. Manny Espinoza was dying of COVID-19 in his Texas hospital when his wife, Dr. Erica Espinoza, asked the doctors to try Ivermectin as a last resort, and was refused. Erica hired a life-flight helicopter to take Manny to the Houston hospital of FLCCC co-founder Joseph Varon for the cheap little pill that in four days had her husband sitting up smiling and telling their children about the “miracle” that saved his life. “We see this every day,” Dr. Varon says. “They say it’s a miracle, I say it’s the science, but it’s the truth.” In Atlanta, Georgia, eighty-four-year-old Lou Gossett Jr., the Oscar-winning black star of An Officer and a Gentleman, gravely ill with COVID-19, checked out of a hospital and was three days from his lungs failing, doctors said, when his son connected him with an FLCCC doctor in Florida who gave him Ivermectin. Gossett quickly recovered and made a very short film for the FLCCC doctors that ends: “I’m very grateful to all of you for literally saving my life.” In Cushing, Oklahoma (pop. 7,826), Dr. Randy Grellner saw Kory’s testimony and started giving his patients Ivermectin, which he’d used safely for years for parasites, for COVID-19 because he was “tired of the heartache…tired of the misery…I’ve seen enough death and despair.” In a few weeks the overwhelmed clinic dropped from twenty-five new COVID-19 cases a day to two. “The first thing that surprised me was how fast was the recovery in seventy-five and eight-five-year-old people,” Dr. Grellner said. “I know there’s controversy. I have no political motivation. I don’t have any desire except to put husbands and wives back together. If you’re getting problems from an organization that you work for that says you can’t use it, I would question that organization. If we’re not doing what is best for the patient, then we need to find another occupation.”
…[And what about Judy, with whom all this began?] She was quite amazed to learn from her children that while she was lying unconscious and near death with COVID-19 she became a front-page story in The Buffalo News and a Joan of Arc figure in a new revolution, the grandmother who won the first legal fight in the battle of Ivermectin. It is an unprecedented civil rights uprising of doctors, nurses, scientists, Nobel-Prize winning biologists, billionaire health philanthropists, civil rights activists, and thousands of ordinary people across Europe, Asia, South America, Africa, Canada, and the United States fighting a global, big-data-driven medical establishment. They’re fighting for the lost little things, the little data—the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship, the survival of the Hippocratic Oath, and the most important of civil rights, the right to life.
if you want some info on Omicron, I recommend Dr. John Campbell, who says things are looking good. Still… mask up to protect others? Or is that no longer a thing?
And here’s a long presentation from Heather and Bret on the details, the arguments, and – at about halfway through – information on many of the alternatives.
As I noted above… It didn’t have to be this way. 😞
At 1:22:00, I’m with Heather on her “my doctor” comment. More 😞…
Update later in the day of publish:
this latest from Darkhorse Podcast is truly horrifying. Though timely.
Retired at 45 