THE MORMONS STILL SUPPORT BUSH BUT DO YOU WANT TO IRRADIATE THEM?

Everyone who watches SOUTH PARK knows that pretty much everyone goes to Hell, especially Saddam Hussein, except... the Mormons. Yep, that was the right choice, the onlyright choice. And Heaven is pretty boring, gratingly so.

The Mormon's earthly territory, on the other hand, may be grating and boring for some-- especially the ones without scores of young brides-- but it is anything but Heavenly and, unless the Church of the Latter Day Saints and their theocratic state of Utah can do something about it, it's about to get a lot less Heavenly-- and soon.

This is a bizarre story for me to write. It's about Skull Valley, on the other side of the mountains from Salt Lake City, maybe an hour away, and how some corporations are building a nuclear waste storage facility on an Indian reservation there, the Goshutes' land, not one of Abramoff's casino tribes. So it sounds easy, right? Evil Mormon Republican dogs who support Bush-- Bush's highest approval rating in the country is from Utah, one of only 4 states where his positives outweigh his negatives-- screw poor Indians by planting deadly nuclear waste facilities on their land. But that's not the story-- not at all.

This is the story. "Despite fierce protests from the state of Utah, environmental groups, and even some members of the small Goshute tribe, Skull Valley tribal leaders agreed to lease a large chunk of their land to a consortium of eight power companies called PFS. If the company gets its way, rows of cement casks filled with highly radioactive waste will line the Skull Valley desert like 4,000 giant soldiers. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is trying to figure out whether the fighter jets and the aboveground storage facilities are a safe mix. Up to 7,000 F-16s fly over Skull Valley every year. Over the past decade, 140 of them have crashed."


Well, that's part of the story (although, don't look for it to get any better). Historically, Utah has been a big ole toxic dump anyway. "The desert's beauty also harbored dark, deadly secrets— lands contaminated with residue from chemical weapons and nuclear fallout, air sullied with countless tons of pollutants and water swirling a potent brew of toxins." See there's more about Utah you might not like than just crazed Mormons and Bush fanatics (and crazed Mormon Bush fanatics).

According to the April 30 SALT LAKE TRIBUNE, the anti-nuclear waste thing has made some strange bedfellows. "Two rallies-- one in a state office building and another in cyberspace-- gathered together largely left-leaning environmentalists and largely right-leaning politicians Friday against nuclear-waste storage in Utah's Skull Valley. Nancy Marshall of Murray, holding a lunchtime sandwich in a state Capitol auditorium, was one of the few ordinary Utahns who came out for the latest opposition pep talk. Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch and U.S. Reps. Chris Cannon and Jim Matheson exhorted the audience of about 100 to tell the federal Bureau of Land Management why the storage site should be denied a crucial permit. And Marshall took the message to heart, snatching pre-addressed anti-waste form letters to distribute at her office and among her neighbors. 'I'm just a citizen,' she said. 'I do not want this nuclear waste in my state. It threatens my family, my children and their children. It threatens my neighborhood and my city.'"


And it would threaten her family and neighborhood and city-- as do the biological and chemicals weapons testing areas in the same general area! Utah's a real mess. Back in the fall of 2005 when Bush's Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved a license for a nuclear storage facility (for more than half the nation's high level nuclear waste) on the Skull Valley Goshute tribal land some people started asking questions about the federal government's use of the area as a U.S. Army test site for biological and chemical weapons, including nerve gas and anthrax. "There is no gain to our prosperity when there is poison spilled. The radioactive waste would bring harm to our medicine wheel in four areas: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual," said Margene Bullcreek, a Goshute who is founder of the community group Ohngo Gaudadeh Devia Awareness, and who is completely opposed to the toxic dumping. "Indigenous people within this nation have always been victimized to provide national security."

See, that's the normal story I figured I would be writing about. Margene sees it the same way as I do.
But most of the Goshutes don't see it this way at all. They're desperately poor-- like the kids don't go to school 'cause they have no shoes poor-- and they want the money the corporations are offering them for the "use" of their land. And the Mormons... well, they're on my side-- well Margene's and my side. This Mormon blogger has a summary of a scary article about this mess in TIME Magazine and a gross picture of a dead steer. "People say this will destroy the land," says tribal chairman Leon Bear, who brokered the deal. "But how can you poison what is already poisoned?" The Mormon blogger agrees. "The tribal chairman's point about the land already being poisoned is well taken... The twenty or so Goshutes that remain in the valley are surrounded by a chemical and biological testing ground to their West. Bombing grounds to their north. A military chemical depot to their east. Somehow, Skull Valley has become a renoun waste land good for nothing except the very worst that the military can throw at it. And what is the State's best argument against the federal government's power to place nuclear waste two valleys over from metropolitan Salt Lake City? Can we just say no? Apparently not because it's on Goshute land. The State's best argument to prevent the country's largest nuclear waste deposit in our backyard seems to be to raise concern over the bombing sorties to the north about 50 miles."

As the Bush Regime gears up to approve more nuclear power plants, panicking people with high gasoline prices, there's got to be a place to store the waste. We're lucky Bush didn't decide-- he is the decider, you know-- to store it in Central Park or Griffith Park or Golden Gate Park.