Jennifer Combs was arrested after making claims in a Facebook post that residents had been hospitalized after consuming the water in Trinidad.
Trinidad officials confirmed that the city has been having water issues, but wouldn't say if anyone had been hospitalized.
Combs has since filed a lawsuit against the city and several officials, claiming the arrest was an act of "political retaliation."
29 Comments
morysal@lemmy.world · 132 pts · 99d
The moment governments start treating online criticism like a criminal threat instead of a public complaint, trust usually gets worse, not better.
ChicoSuave@lemmy.world · 22 pts · 99d
And Trump is building $55B in new incinerators too.
certified_expert@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 99d
What is that?
chaogomu@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 99d
There was a substack post that claimed that DHS was building crematoriums, at massively inflated prices.
ramble81@lemmy.zip · 6 pts · 99d
I saw that but was there any corroboration or just a random blog on the internet ?
thanksforallthefish@literature.cafe · 9 pts · 98d
I hadn't heard of it before the above post but a quick
googleduckduckgo search suggests "mostly factual with a bit of extrapolation", links I found hereTL;DR - 55bn in concentration camps is true, it's also true some of those camps have incinerators for bio-waste. Whether that means they're for Auschwitz style mass crematoriums is unknown (and to be realistic it's not something they would explicitly document if it were true).
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/politics/government/critics-modern-nazi-concentration-camp-repurposed-55b-us-navy-contracts-to-build-detention-facilities/ar-AA1W4x70
https://factually.co/fact-checks/politics/detention-centers-warehouses-death-camps-incinerators-claims-a58543
https://healthranger.substack.com/p/blueprint-for-genocide-the-trump
https://migrantinsider.com/p/how-the-pentagon-is-quietly-building
etc
EDIT I use google as a verb, but after their recent changes I think I'd better differentiate
markko@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 98d
To your edit, I just use "search". It's generic and it's shorter
chaogomu@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 99d
Seems it's several blogs and tweets with nothing else.
Entropy_Pyre@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 97d
I ran into this about a year ago.
The company is Matthews Environmental Services. There was a DHS convention with several companies in 2025, including the ones that sold the pop-up concentration camps. Whether or not Matthews received a contract or not, I don’t know, but they were listed on the convention site. They advertised turning biowaste into fuel—but if you look into them more you can find a YouTube video of them advertising cremation and perfect extraction of valuable medical devices and other metals from grandma’s body. It’s also worth mentioning that Curtis Yarvin promoted doing exactly this sort of thing with undesirables, and there are those who seem to venerate him even now.
I think we’d know if anything was happening at scale, but every time a detainee goes missing, I admit I do wonder.
chaogomu@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 97d
I know who Yarvin is, but had not come across Mathews. I can't find anything concrete in a search, but I'll keep an eye open.
certified_expert@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 99d
Crematoriums... like how big are we talking about? That would be an interesting detail
chaogomu@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 99d
There are no details that I can find. Just random social media posts.
certified_expert@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 99d
We gotta check for train tracks going into them...
Flower@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 98d
After that, you know it's only true when the government officials denies it.
SirSamuel@lemmy.world · 58 pts · 99d
magnetosphere@fedia.io · 39 pts · 99d
That is a fantastic closing line.
chilldrivenspade@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 99d
texass loves its freedumb
brewery@feddit.uk · 53 pts · 99d
For fucks sake, include the country unless it's a well known major place.
Zahille7@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 98d
OP definitely should have at least added a [Texas] or something. I remember seeing articles for this story a few days ago.
faerbit@sh.itjust.works · 0 pts · 99d
BillyClark@piefed.social · 43 pts · 99d
Are we going to start arresting people who publish lies on social media as if they're news?
I'm pretty sure that the reason we haven't done so is something called the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which guarantees free speech and freedom of the press.
If they're going to arrest people for lying, the city of Trinidad, Texas, should start with people who lie the most and make the most severe lies, like Donald Trump and many of his top officials.
CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 98d
Don't forget the outrage industry - all of Faux "News", OAN, hate radio, far right social media "influencers", etc...
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world · 33 pts · 99d
Texas
scops@reddthat.com · 2 pts · 99d
ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 98d
The update is that the grand jury no-billed her case yesterday, meaning that they did not find enough evidence to indict her with this criminal charge.
Inasmuch as the city is not denying its water quality problems, plus the amount of effort being put into silencing her, I think it is likely that she did not lie at all and that there really are people who were hospitalized with inexplicable gastrointestinal illnesses that they have chalked up to being related to the water.
The problem is that to prove, legally, that the two are related, both the suspected illness-causing pathogen that hospitalized these people AND the water have to be tested and matched, both for the pathogen and the timing (was it demonstrably in the water at the time they got sick?) AND those interested in proving causation have to have access to all these test results, not just their own medical test results but also those of any water management tests, and this is something the city and its water management people can easily block at every step.
Lawyers know that, citizens don't. And that's how these bright officials of the City of Trinidad, Texas thought they could shut this woman up via legal means: correlation does not prove causation, and she is alleging causation, hence criminal charges. But even a grand jury refused to indict, meaning whatever the city brought against her was weak indeed.
Somewhere in this world, Barbra Streisand is singing. People have their own medical records and everyone there can turn on a tap, so I bet someone proves that shit now.
Triumph@fedia.io · 10 pts · 99d
And there's no reason to believe that she'll win that suit, no matter what the law and facts say.
CapuccinoCoretto@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 99d
Law? This is the USA. They don't know the meaning of the word.
Triumph@fedia.io · 2 pts · 99d
That's what I said.
village604@adultswim.fan · 6 pts · 99d
The city will appeal it to the 5th circuit even if she won.
PriorityMotif@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 98d
CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works · 7 pts · 98d
I watched a news clip about this and he refused to speak to reporters later on too. The mayor did speak but wouldn't pick a side. Either way, this is clearly 1st Amendment speech protected by the constitution as it was just a facebook post and video showing her filling her sink and tub with dirty brown water. Even the woman's lawyer stated that speech doesn't need to be accurate. If we're going to prosecute people for Facebook disinformation, we can go ahead and arrest the entire executive and congressional branch.
Fedizen@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 99d
Is it a data center or oil drilling poisoning people.
SirSamuel@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 98d