The Trump administration closed the border at Tijuana today,the world's busiest crossing, in both directions, stranding vast numbers of people on either side of the border on the busiest day of the holiday week-end.

FOR NO GOOD REASON.

Some Central American migrants, mostly men, tried to breach the border crossing between Tijuana, Mexico and California on Sunday, after pushing past a blockade of Mexican police standing guard near the international border crossing in a bid to pressure the U.S to hear their asylum claims.

In response, U.S. border guards suspended crossings at the the San Ysidro port of entry in California and shot tear gas into Mexico, according to an AP reporter on the scene.

Mexico's Milenio TV showed images of at least a few of the hundreds of migrants at the border tried to jump over the fence separating the two countries.

The migrants carried hand-painted American and Honduran flags and chanted: "We are not criminals! We are international workers!" The group mostly consisted of men, although some women pushed small children ahead in strollers.

U.S. Border Patrol helicopters flew overhead, while U.S. agents held vigil on foot beyond the wire fence in California. The Border Patrol office in San Diego said via Twitter that pedestrian crossings have been suspended at the San Ysidro port of entry at both the East and West facilities.

Migrants were enveloped with tear gas after U.S. agents shot the gas, according to an Associated Press reporter on the scene. Children were screaming and coughing in the mayhem.

Honduran migrant Ana Zuniga, 23, said she saw migrants open a small hole in concertina wire at a gap on the Mexican side of a levee, at which point U.S. agents fired tear gas at them.

"We ran, but when you run the gas asphyxiates you more," she told the AP while cradling her 3-year-old daughter Valery in her arms.

And now we are using tear gas on children --- in a foreign country.

These people want to turn themselves in to the authorities and claim asylum. That's all. They have been held in unsanitary pens in Tijuana, virtually designed to make them sick. They left the detention enter today out of desperation.

It's a horror.

By the way, caravans have come to Tijuana before. The border patrol processed people without all this drama. This is all Trump.

And, by the way, MSNBC and CNN need to think twice before they cover this by showing the same footage of running Latinos on a loop. Maybe they could show the lines of stranded Americans on both sides of the border fuming at Trump's stupidity.

Errors in a recent ocean warming study illustrate global warming's complexity. They also show the depths to which climate science deniers will stoop to dismiss or downplay evidence for human-caused climate change.

The study by researchers from the U.S., China, France and Germany concluded, "ocean warming is at the high end of previous estimates" and global warming might be advancing faster than scientists thought. British researcher Nic Lewis, who has a math and physics background, found discrepancies, which he noted on a skeptic's blog. The scientists acknowledged the errors and offered a correction to the study, published in Nature.

The controversy illustrates how the scientific method works. Studies are often amended or overturned as new information becomes available or as inconsistencies or errors are pointed out.

Study co-author Ralph Keeling, a geosciences professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California, noted, "The overall conclusion that oceans are trapping more and more heat mirrors other studies and is not inaccurate, but the margin of error in the study is larger than originally thought."

Some climate science deniers have seized on the error to imply it discredits the mountains of evidence for human-caused climate change amassed by scientists from around the world for close to 200 years - evidence accepted by every legitimate scientific academy and institution and every government except the current U.S. administration.

Those who understand science haven't taken such a hard line. Even Lewis, who's skeptical about climate models and warming rate predictions, said the study's methodology is "novel, and certainly worthy of publication" and that the errors were "serious (but surely inadvertent)." He criticized Nature for not scrutinizing the study better, and mainstream media for extensive, "unquestioning" coverage.

News media don't always get it right on science-related issues. Journalists aren't always well versed in science, and often lack time to examine issues with the depth they merit. Communicating complex ideas and distilling entire studies into eye-catching headlines and brief stories can lead to misinformation and limited understanding.

Lack of science literacy is a problem in journalism and society in general. Science is a useful tool, but it's not perfect. With the ocean study, the method worked as it should. Scientists raised questions, developed hypotheses, conducted research and presented findings. Then another expert found discrepancies. This led to corrections and a stronger understanding of the methodology and its applications, and of ocean warming.

Many people aren't familiar with the precise definitions of scientific terms, and this can lead to misunderstanding. We see comments that human-caused climate change is just a "theory," so we should question or dismiss it. But in science, a theory is based on one or more tested hypotheses. When research and experiments confirm that the hypotheses accurately describe and predict real-world occurrences, a theory is developed. We have the theory of gravity and the theory of evolution. As science, understanding and technologies evolve, theories are sometimes revised and occasionally disproven or discarded.

Global warming theories are based on a wide range of research and knowledge, from the physics of the greenhouse effect to science regarding ocean currents, the carbon cycle, wind patterns and feedback loops. There may be some uncertainty about warming rates and consequences, but there's no doubt the world is heating because of human activity - mostly through burning fossil fuels and damaging or destroying carbon sinks like forests and wetlands - and that the consequences are already severe and will worsen if we fail to act decisively.

We also know our activities have already locked in a certain amount of unpreventable warming, so we don't have time to delay if we want a healthy future - or a future at all - for our young people and those yet to be born.

Healthy skepticism is good. Criticism of the ocean study led to greater understanding and strengthening of the methodology and analysis. But denying the massive amounts of evidence and even the legitimacy of science leaves us with what? Personal beliefs? Ignoring what's in front of us to maintain the status quo? Practicing "business as usual"?

Those would all put us on a path to disaster.

We must work together to support the science we have to help us learn to live within planetary boundaries.

God help us, we have handed government over to soulless lunatics. From the Washington Post:

A little girl from Honduras stares into the camera, her young features contorted in anguish. She's barefoot, dusty, and clad only in a diaper and T-shirt. And she's just had to run from clouds of choking tear gas fired across the border by U.S. agents. A second photograph, which also circulated widely and rapidly on social media, shows an equally anguished woman frantically trying to drag the same child and a second toddler away from the gas as it spreads.

The three were part of a much larger group, perhaps 70 or 80 men, women and children, pictured in a wider-angle photo fleeing the tear gas. Reuters photographer Kim Kyung-Hoon shot the images, which provoked outrage and seemed at odds with President Trump's portrayal of the caravan migrants as "criminals" and "gang members." Trump officials said that authorities had to respond with force after hundreds of migrants rushed the border near Tijuana on Sunday, some of them throwing "projectiles" at Customs and Border Protection personnel.

The report indicates that the CIA knew contemporaneously about the abuses which were occurring, and did not report on them as it should have even though Honduras was the linchpin of U.S. Central America policy during the Reagan administration. Despite CIA knowledge of Honduran military abuses, more than $1 billion in U.S. taxpayers money flowed to the Honduran military throughout the 1980s.

"The CIA knew there was blood on the hands of the Honduran military but covered it up, providing impunity for rights abusers and misleading the U.S. Congress and public," noted National Security Archive Research Fellow Susan Peacock. She called the release of the IG report "a step toward the disclosure which President Clinton promised vis-a-vis human rights abuses in Latin America." Despite the Clinton Administration's commitment to Congress to release the report to the fullest extent possible, major portions -- including critical sections on CIA involvement in "torture or hostile interrogations" and "possible accountability issues" -- are blacked out.

As the years went by, the United States couldn't quit Honduras. And it was very much a bipartisan bit of business. In 2009, when a military coup deposed President Manuel Zelaya at the insistence of the country's Supreme Court, then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton supported the government that was installed by the coup. While Clinton was running for president, she argued, especially to Democracy Now's Juan Gonzalez, that the coup was at least nominally constitutional, and that supporting the deposing of Zelaya was the least-bad option. That remains debatable, but what does not remain debatable is that Honduras subsequently descended into the present chaos.

For the past several decades, the country's civilian government has been riven with corruption and the country itself has ripped its own entrails out in gang violence. It has become both a de facto and a de jure human rights nightmare, according to Human Rights Watch:

Lawyers and human rights defenders suffer threats, attacks, and killings. In 2016, CONADEH registered 16 violent attacks against lawyers, including 13 killings. The IACHR described Honduras in August 2016 as one of the "most hostile and dangerous countries for human rights defenders" in the Americas.

To date, eight men have been charged with the murder in March 2016 of environmental and indigenous rights activist Berta Caceres, including an army major and the former environment manager of Desarrollo Energetico S.A. (DESA), the company behind the Agua Zarca dam project that Cáceres was campaigning against at the time of her death. The Mechanism for the Protection of Journalists, Human Rights Defenders and Operators of Justice, created in 2015, suffered from a lack of adequate resources and staffing, according to local activists.

Under a scheme to strengthen Central America launched in 2014 known as the Plan of the Alliance for Prosperity in the Northern Triangle, the United States pledged to put forward a dollar for every four invested by Honduras, Hernandez said. But that commitment has not materialized, he added. "That will obviously have repercussions," he told Reuters. "Because the whole idea of the Alliance for Prosperity ... was to attack the migration problem at the root." Between 2016 and 2018, combined U.S. foreign aid for Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador declined by more than one third to $195 million, according to official U.S. data.

Irish historian Liam Hogan, writing on the electric Twitter machine, unearthed a quote from Congressman James W. Taylor from that time when the United States was turning away Jewish refugees from Europe and sending them back into the maw of what would become the Holocaust. In 1939, shortly before his own death, Taylor said:

"The American people are not going to be deceived by this refugee bunk. This is just another scheme to bring additional thousands here who are not wanted in Europe."

These are people being told through violence that they have to return to the violence that drove them out of their countries in the first place. The ones with longer memories will recall the days when the United States used Honduras to initiate violence in Guatemala and El Salvador for the purpose of initiating it in Nicaragua. The younger ones will simply hate us. The Imperial Prerogative comes with some very heavy dues.

(c) 2018 Charles P. Pierce has been a working journalist since 1976. He is the author of four books, most recently 'Idiot America.' He lives near Boston with his wife but no longer his three children.

The incredibly destructive Woolsey Fire in southern California has burned nearly 100,000 acres in Los Angeles and Ventura counties, killed three people, destroyed more than 400 structures, and at the time of this writing, was finally nearly completely contained.

The fire may also have released large amounts of radiation and toxins into the air after burning through a former rocket engine testing site where a partial nuclear meltdown took place nearly six decades ago.

"The Woolsey Fire has most likely released and spread both radiological and chemical contamination that was in the Santa Susana Field Laboratory's soil and vegetation via smoke and ash," Dr. Bob Dodge, president of Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles (PSR-LA), told Truthout.

The fire has been widely reported to have started "near" the Santa Susana Field Laboratory site (SSFL), but according to PSR-LA, it appears to have started at the site itself.

The contaminated site - a 2,849-acre former rocket engine test site and nuclear research facility - is located just 30 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles.

A press release issued by PSR-LA on November 12 stated:

Cal Fire identifies the fire location as E Street and Alfa Road, a location that is in fact on SSFL. It was recently reported that the "Chatsworth electric substation" experienced a disturbance 2 minutes before the fire was reported, but that substation is in fact on SSFL, near that location. A photograph posted on Twitter from KCAL9's Stu Mundel shows the fire starting Thursday afternoon near the same location [on November 8], which is only about 1,000 yards away from the site of the 1959 partial nuclear meltdown of the Sodium Reactor Experiment (SRE) reactor.

In the aforementioned press release on the crisis, Denise Duffield, the organization's associate director, stated that, "Though we must wait for fire authorities to conclude their investigation, it is ironic that an electrical substation built for a reactor that melted down six decades ago now may now be associated with a catastrophic fire that began on the SSFL site that is still badly contaminated from that accident and numerous other spills and releases."

It is possible that the millions of people who live within a 100-mile radius of the site have been exposed to its radioactive waste and toxic chemicals that are now airborne. There has been great concern about extensive and extremely toxic and radioactive waste at the SSFL for years.

According to Daniel Hirsch, who recently retired as director of the Program on Environmental and Nuclear Policy at the University of California, Santa Cruz, SSFL is "one of the most contaminated sites in the country."

Hirsch is also president of the Committee to Bridge the Gap, a nonprofit organization that provides independent technical assistance to communities near nuclear sites. Students working with him back in 1979, when he was teaching at University of California Los Angeles, uncovered the partial nuclear meltdown that had occurred in 1959 at the SSFL, but that had been kept secret. He has worked ever since to have SSFL cleaned up.

Hirsch explained to Truthout that the 1959 partial meltdown had been covered up for years by the Atomic Energy Commission. Meanwhile, at least three other reactors there suffered accidents.

"There were radioactive fires with high-level radioactive waste, releases from a plutonium fuel fabrication facility, and decades of illegal burning of toxic and radioactive wastes in open pits," he said. "Other parts of the facility hosted tens of thousands of tests of missile and rocket engines, often with exotic and very toxic rocket fuels."

While explaining how incredibly toxic the SSFL site is, Hirsch added, "Collectively, the sloppy environmental practices and lax regulatory oversight resulted in widespread radioactive and toxic chemical contamination of soil, surface water and groundwater."

And now, given that most, if not all, of the SSFL site has burned, it is possible that the millions of people who live within a 100-mile radius of the site have been exposed to its radioactive waste and toxic chemicals that are now airborne.

Official Denial

On November 8, Forbes published a story titled, "California's Woolsey Fire Now Burning Malibu Went Through the Site of a Nuclear Meltdown First." Other local media, including the aforementioned KCAL tweet with a photo of the fire starting within the SSFL site, also reported on the fire burning through the area.

In contrast with those reports, however, a November 9 statement from the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), the state regulatory agency responsible for overseeing the cleanup of the site, stated, "Our scientists and toxicologists have reviewed information about the fire's location and do not believe the fire has caused any releases of hazardous materials that would pose a risk to people exposed to the smoke."

Much of the corporate press has obediently parroted California's DTSC's claim of there being "no elevated radiation levels near the ex-nuclear test site," as did CBS News.

But Hirsch takes strong issue with the DTSC's claims of the situation being safe. According to him, in 2010, DTSC entered into agreements for a full cleanup of SSFL, to be completed by 2017. "We are in 2018, and the cleanup not only hasn't been completed, it hasn't even begun," he said. "This is due to the too-cozy relationship between DTSC and the parties responsible for the pollution."

The entities responsible for the contamination are National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Boeing, and the Department of Energy (DOE).

"And now DTSC and the polluters are pushing to leave 98 percent of the contamination not cleaned up," Hirsch told Truthout, adding that incoming California Gov. Gavin Newsom "needs to fix DTSC, and commit to complete and prompt fulfillment of the cleanup agreements, which require cleaning up all detectible contamination."

Dodge was equally critical of how DTSC has handled the situation. "They have continually been trying to undermine the cleanup, as well as proposing leaving over 90 percent of the contamination on site, thus are continuing to put the surrounding communities at risk," he said, adding that the DTSC is even considering "vastly weaker cleanup plans."

Rain has already fallen across much of the Woosley Fire area, including SSFL, to which Dodge expressed concerns of ash and soil from the site washing down to the communities below.

Duffield, who has been working for the full cleanup of nuclear and chemical contamination at the SSFL for more than 30 years, explained that there is widespread contamination at SSFL's soil and vegetation that, when burned, can travel for miles via smoke and ash - especially with high winds speeds as California had during the fire.

"SSFL should have been cleaned up a long time ago - the state signed Administrative Orders on Consent (AOC) agreements with DOE and NASA committing them to clean up all detectable contamination by 2017," Duffield told Truthout. "Boeing refused to sign the agreement, but DTSC said its normal procedures would require them to clean up to a comparable level."

This criticism of the DTSC cannot be taken lightly, given that Physicians for Social Responsibility received the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize, and its international organization, the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, launched the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which received the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize.

"If DTSC had kept its word, we wouldn't worry about SSFL contamination being spread further due to the fire," Duffield said. "Area residents and elected officials should be very concerned and demand the full cleanup to take place now, without delay."

Truthout has made several requests for comment from the DTSC; on November 15, a representative from the agency said it would reply, but at the time of this writing, Truthout has not received a response.

Major Human Health Impacts

There are multiple human health impacts that have been known to stem from the site well before the Woolsey Fire began.

A study prepared by Professor Hal Morgenstern for the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry studied the community surrounding SSFL and found a greater than 60 percent increase in incidence of key cancers associated with proximity to the site.

Melissa Bumstead is a mother who started a petition after her daughter was diagnosed in 2014 with an incredibly rare and aggressive form of leukemia. "Through her treatment we kept meeting other families, and we were shocked to see we lived so close to each other when childhood cancer is exceptionally rare," she told Truthout. "After we realized we all lived within miles of the Santa Susana Field Lab we started the grassroots group Parents vs. SSFL."

For years Bumstead and others in her group, along with groups such as PSR-LA, have been worried that a fire at the SSFL would be the easiest way for the carcinogenic chemicals and radioactive waste to reach local communities. She and other health advocates also worry that the ash and smoke from the fire at such a contaminated site could travel far and easily reach children, the most vulnerable part of our population.

"The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that children in the United States consume, on average, 200-800 milligrams of dirt per day putting them at the highest risk of ingesting contamination," Bumstead said.

She referred to a statement about abrupt spikes in childhood cancer rates made by Dr. Catherine Metayer, an adjunct professor at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health, who told WebMD that, "When you see an increase [in pediatric cancer rates] like that - that fast - in a short period of time, most likely it is going to be driven by some exposure to environmental factors."

Further, Bumstead pointed out that many of the residents she knows living in the vicinity of the SSFL complain of thyroid issues and autoimmune diseases, in addition to cancer.

Duffield explained that SSFL is contaminated with dangerous radionuclides such as cesium-137, strontium-90, plutonium-239 and tritium, and highly toxic chemicals such as perchlorate, dioxins, polychlorinated biphenyls, heavy metals, and volatile and semi-volatile organic compounds.

"An estimated 500,000 of gallons of the very hazardous trichloroethylene (TCE) were used to flush out rocket test engines and then allowed to seep into the soil and groundwater," she told Truthout. "Exposure to these contaminants can cause cancers and leukemias, developmental disorders, genetic disorders, neurological disorders, immune system disorders, and more."

Duffield explained that SSFL is also located on a hill, and because of this, its contamination migrates off site, even when there is not a fire. In addition to contamination in soil, vegetation and structures, SSFL's groundwater and surface water is contaminated.

"Over 100 exceedances of pollution standards in runoff from SSFL was reported to the LA Regional Water Quality Control Board, resulting in Boeing having to pay more than $1 million in fines," she said. "Federally funded, independently conducted studies show the incidence of key cancers were 60 percent higher in the offsite population near SSFL compared to further away, and that contamination migrates off site over EPA levels of concern. We are currently also very concerned about a cluster of rare pediatric cancers near the site."

Now, due to the wildfire, Hirsch warned of many other major health impacts the contaminated site poses to those breathing in smoke from the fires. "The ... chemicals are by definition toxic to human health, capable of causing cancer and/or other health impacts such as miscarriages, birth defects in one's offspring, neurological or immunological illness,"he said.

Speaking both to the obvious negative health effects from breathing wildfire smoke as well as the toxins from the SSFL site, Dodge added, "All wildfire smoke can be hazardous to health, but if SSFL had been cleaned up long ago as DTSC promised, we'd at least not have to worry about exposure to dangerous radionuclides and chemicals as well."

Fox Guards the Hen House

According to its own website, the DTSC is "the lead regulatory agency overseeing the investigation and cleanup of contaminated soil and groundwater at the SSFL." But there is wide and growing concern that the agency is not only failing to do its job, but is actively working in the other direction.

"DTSC is a classically captured regulatory agency, captured by the polluters it is supposed to regulate," Hirsch said. "The incoming governor needs to undertake a top-to-bottom reform of that dysfunctional agency and to place a high priority [on] getting the cleanup of SSFL back on track."

Hirsch feels strongly about the situation, which, he argued was ultimately caused by the DTSC. "If DTSC, the Department of Energy, NASA and Boeing had lived up to their cleanup obligations, the site would have been cleaned up by last year, and the fire that just happened would have not carried with it any risk of releasing radioactive or toxic chemical contamination," he said.

Dodge feels similarly. He said PSR-LA is demanding independent testing and air monitoring for radiation and chemicals from SSFL. "Why would we believe DTSC's statement that the fire caused no additional risk, when they know they're the ones responsible for SSFL still being contaminated in the first place?" he asked.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (DPH) released a press release on November 13 that claimed there was "no discernable level of radiation" at SSFL as a result of the fire.

Duffield said DPH's statement strains credulity. "Every place on the planet has some level of background radiation related to natural elements, the cosmos or atmospheric nuclear weapons testing during the Cold War. There is no excuse for such a misleading statement." She added that their statement "does not inspire confidence in the agency."

PSR-LA has ongoing concerns about what it sees is the DTSC's failure to properly deal with the cleanup at SSFL. "DTSC needs to stop misleading the public about the impact of SSFL's contamination and enforce the 2010 cleanup agreements, and keep its word that Boeing must clean up according to local governments' land use plans and zoning decisions, which for SSFL allow agricultural and rural residential uses, which would be sufficiently protective to the offsite population," Duffield said.

She argued that the DTSC must now "stand up" to Boeing, which she said has been pushing a "massive greenwashing campaign" that claims Boeing should only have to clean the site up to recreational standards, which "amount to almost no cleanup at all."

However, instead of doing the right thing and forcing the polluters to clean up their mess, Duffield said DTSC is in "major damage control."

"It knows that its own foot-dragging on the cleanup has resulted in heightened risk to exposure to SSFL contamination from the fire, so it is doing all that it can to deny the fire could have caused additional harm," she told Truthout.

Duffield added that the agency's statements that the site remains safe "defy logic" and "have not yet been backed up by any data."

"They don't even have samples back from the lab yet, and it is unconscionable for them to release statements denying risk without also revealing the data and methodology that would justify such statements," she said. "Nearly every time we are able to see the data and methodology, we find problems, always in the interest of minimizing health impacts."

Duffield is skeptical that the DTSC will do any of this without direct intervention from Governor-Elect Gavin Newsom, because he is the only one with the power to make it right. "Newsom must order that the SSFL cleanup agreements are enforced, and a top-to-bottom reform of the entire agency," Duffield said. "As DTSC has also failed to protect numerous communities in California. DTSC must be fully overhauled so that it will protect people, not polluters."

Bumstead shared similar sentiments.

"Our petition asking Gavin Newsom for the complete cleanup once he becomes governor is nearly at 500,000 signatures," she said. "We know that our community has already suffered so much in the last two weeks, between the shooting and the fires, and we're outraged that during this tragedy we have the fears of nuclear waste on top of rebuilding our lives."

Bumstead called California's DTSC a "disgrace to democracy," and added, "Once the full extent of their negligence is revealed, from the last 15 years and the Woolsey fire, we will soon see resignations of top DTSC officials, as well as resignations at Boeing, NASA and Department of Energy."

Eyewitness Juarez: There's no "You break it, you buy it" policy here "Oops, here comes the Americans! Hide all the breakables! Quick!" Sorry. Too late.

Like a bull in a china shop, rampaging American industrialists have systematically shattered the infrastructure, culture and well-being of almost every single country on the planet in the past 100 years -- including even America itself. From Afghanistan to Zaire, whenever American industrialists come knocking at the door, a cry of warning immediately goes out. "Hide the good silver! Bury the Wedgwood! Sell the Spode! The Americans are here!"

Unlike what happens at Crate & Barrel and Pottery Barn, however, when American industrialists get done smashing everything in sight, there is no "You break it, you buy it" policy for Wall Street and War Street. They just walk out the door scot-free -- leaving incredible chaos in their wake.

But I digress here. A little bit.

And yet even after our bulls-on-steroids American industrialists have systematically, deliberately and viciously broken all the Royal Doulton china in Honduras for decades on end, US citizens actually seem surprised, outraged and amazed that Hondurans are coming up here in search of what is left of their broken treasures.

Even in the face of this hard truth, Americans have actually started whining when they are being asked to pick up all the shards that they themselves broke. "We didn't do it!" Americans cry. "Somebody else did it! Not me." Yeah right.

And here in Juarez, I can clearly see the tragic results of all these many decades of bully-ish American behavior in Honduras. Over a hundred asylum seekers have lined up here at the US-Mexico border, patiently waiting to get access to what had been originally their good china before America broke it.

It brought tears to my eyes as I walked by the asylum seekers each day, huddled masses yearning to breathe free, day after day, on my way back to El Paso. "How long have you been waiting," I asked one man at the head of the line. "Over a week."

"But where do you go to the bathroom," I wondered.

"There is a restroom back there...." And then a Mexican priest walked by pushing a small cart, offering the asylum seekers water and bologna sandwiches. Women and children waited patiently for their turn. I tried not to cry.

"Is anyone at all being let through?" I asked next.

"13 people were allowed into the United States last night." And yet, once they get inside our allegorical "mighty woman with a torch," asylum seekers are then jailed, their children are kidnapped and they are treated like dirt -- like they, not the Americans, had rampaged the Honduran china shop. And yet, perhaps even this brutal concentration-camp life in the US might be better than the infernal Hell that American industrialists have gleefully created in Honduras. Wall Street and War Street -- hope they never come to my home town too.

One American Border Patrol guy actually told me, "These people have no skills and we don't even know what kind of people they are. They could be gangsters and crooks for all we know."

I of course couldn't manage to keep my mouth shut and replied, "These are highly skilled people. They know how to build homes, fix cars and take care of our children. Plus Trump is always bragging about all the new jobs he has created and how we need lots of new employees to do these jobs -- so jobs are not a problem according to the prez himself. But even more important, how can these people possibly be bigger crooks than we now have in Washington DC!" And then I scooted past him just as fast as I could because I didn't want to end up in a concentration camp too. Whew.

The fourth time I crossed over into Juarez, however, I planned to visit the big mercado at the cathedral plaza and buy dozens of oranges to give to the refugees. But they were all gone! Oh no! "Where did they go!"

"The Federales came and got them," said my new shopkeeper friend after I had bought a couple of his T-shirts. Oh dear. "They came for them with buses and took them to a nearby auditorium." That's bad. "No, that's good. The Federales fed them and cared for them and helped them and worried about them -- because tonight it is supposed to be very very cold." Now why can't good "Christian" Americans do that too?

Isn't it ironic that Mexico, feral Mexico, is currently gaining a Good Samaritan reputation for helping people out (as strongly recommended by Jesus) -- whereas "Christian" America's reputation as the world's "Great Satan" just keeps growing and growing and growing.

PS: I attended a recent book talk by journalist Peter Phillips. His new book, Giants, lists the names and info of the 389 people who run this world. Nothing happens on this planet without their consent. And they are all greedy and heartless capitalists -- running a Ponzi scheme on the rest of us.

"Almost the only way they can earn interest on their money these days is to continuously instigate small wars," said Phillips. Not big ones. Big "wars" would murder too many consumers. So only small "wars" will do (hopefully). Does this mean that all those women and children slaughtered in Syria and Iraq and Yemen and Afghanistan and Libya -- and Honduras -- are just smoke-and-mirror tricks to keep stock markets afloat? And have no value to American industrialists as consumers?

These 387 men (and two women) who now own us -- lock, stock, crate and barrel? They are morally rotten. And the rest of us appear to be morally rotten too --or else morally screwed. Is this truly how we want the human race to be remembered?

Dear Unter Fuhrer Faught

Congratulations, you have just been awarded the "Vidkun Quisling Award!" Your name will now live throughout history with such past award winners as Marcus Junius Brutus, Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, George Stephanopoulos, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Prescott Bush, Sam Bush, Fredo Bush, Kate Bush, Kyle Busch, Anheuser Busch, Vidkun Quisling, and last year's winner Volksjudge John (the enforcer) Roberts.

Without your lock step calling for the repeal of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, your statement you're voting against abortion in cases of rape or incest because it's gods will, Yemen, Syria, Iran and those many other profitable oil wars to come would have been impossible! With the help of our mutual friends, the other "Rethuglican Whores" you have made it possible for all of us to goose-step off to a brave new bank account!

Along with this award you will be given the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, with Golden Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds presented by our glorious Fuhrer, Herr Trump at a gala celebration at "der Fuhrer Bunker,"formally the "White House,"on 01-05-2019. We salute you frau Faught, Sieg Heil!

Signed by,
Vice Fuhrer Pence