How Dead Fish Float

oil spill photo
Photo by Green Fire Productions cc

My knowledgeable colleague has written about the deadly blows that Bechtel delivers to the residents of California and elsewhere courtesy of Stanford University previously, but I believe the latest scandal connected to that unconscionable corporation in Washington State deserves special attention right now, since there are many (Hanford) counterparts in the Golden State that beg for our focus immediately. I’m talking about nuclear-related dangers that are totally ignored in the so-called institutions of higher education in the most powerful political entity of the most influential country on earth.

See what Joshua Frank has uncovered today for starters. Then wend your way with me, if you will, down a road that gets down with every toxic nook and cranny throughout the most populous state in the so-called exceptional Union.

For example, I just noticed yet another Craig’s List call for a counselor to work with youth on Treasure Island (preparing them to land high tech gigs), smack dab in the main waterway overlooking San Francisco Bay. Good pay and great benefits, but oblivious to the fact that everything going on on Treasure Island has a hazardous waste foundation, a highly troubling underpinning that should keep folks away, everyone… the youth, the counselors et alia. The closed Treasure Island Naval Stations head the list under the umbrella of Super Fund sites which are on both the National Priority List of the EPA and the (supposedly) safer category of non-NPL abominations.

But don’t get stuck in the Bay there. Wherever there’s water there’s more to abhor. You can note the spoils of Big Oil off the formerly pristine coast of the so-called Golden State. Four hundred violations by the Oil and Gas Industry in only three years… courtesy of oil rigs planted off the California coast. Where’s environmentally-conscious Gov. Jerry Brown?

Apparently, it doesn’t matter to the Governor of California that a new study demonstrates definitively that the cancer risk for those living near oil and gas rigs is eight times higher than elsewhere, most places. Most folks are dumb about the dynamic described here. Why? Let’s return to our so-called institutions of higher education to play the Blame Game.

But why play games at all? Why not call the spade a spade that’s being used to bury us with, that we’re using to bury ourselves and the future of our kids and all of Mother Earth’s lovely creatures (currently dying off at a rate not seen since the dinosaurs disappeared). The Blame Game has another name, The Relentless March Toward Environmental Destruction.

Bechtel is a bad guy. Ditto for prestigious Stanford University which houses them. And everyone involved in encouraging youngsters to blindly embrace tracks onto college campuses which are likely to lead them into less than ideal careers, unquestioning careers devoted to — truth be told — boldly making our horrid momentum worse by the day.

I ask educators, parents and youngsters to do due diligence and not dummy up. For, short of that, we’re going to go belly up.

That phrase, by the way, refers to how dead fish float.

Please learned and concerned citizens, let’s do something new together, something that’s real. Really new. For it’s not good enough to simply prepare students to get into colleges and universities. And it’s a very bad thing if their main focus is on making as much money as possible, as that outlook is making the world uninhabitable. [Pause.] Too many kids are now gloating about their happy high tech prospects… oblivious (with their unmindful mentors) to exactly what they are bringing about with their attraction to incessant extraction, etc.

In fact, that’s how it’s possible for so many dead fish to be floating about.

Marcel Duchamp Oxman can be reached at [email protected]. He’s been an educator for many decades, and he would welcome a discussion of viable options; he has a “game plan” to recommend for California… which might send positive ripples worldwide if implemented. He wants readers to understand that too many high tech employees are embracing work that is doing irreparable harm, and the documentation to support that claim is available, upon request.

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