Murder at Standing Rock

Of course the cavalry is torturing indians to death.  That's what they've always done and always will do to people standing in the way of corporate profits.

PZ Myers:

It’s definitely winter up here in the upper Midwest. The temperature is right around freezing, there’s at least 15cm of snow on the ground, and the roads and sidewalks are slick with hard-packed ice. And they’re using water cannons on protesters at Standing Rock.

This is not just cruel — it’s dangerous. I’m sure residents of the Dakotas are just as conscious of the risks of getting wet outside in frigid weather as we are here in the slightly more urban state of Minnesota. You just don’t do that. You can kill people in this weather.

And of course they’re using rubber bullets and tear gas, and roughing up protesters and throwing them in dog kennels.

She told me that they were arrested at a prayer ceremony lead by camp elders, and that she had been slammed to the ground by uniformed officers with shields and helmets that kept her from distinguishing whether they were law enforcement or national guard.

“It was three against one, that’s their strategy,” she said, “there’s tear gas in the air everywhere. They didn’t fire it directly at me, but it’s everywhere.”

I was told that when they were arrested, they weren’t read their rights until after they spent a day in jail.

Her description of the arrest matched my student’s description. She told me they were bussed to a facility where they were kept in dog cages with urine stains on the floor, pictures of dogs hung on the walls. Women were separated from men with chain link fencing and a tarp.

They said their phones and money were confiscated, the money seized and turned into procurement cards and calling cards, allegedly without consent. The balance was not returned upon release, she said.

The state of the jail uniforms made the women feel vulnerable, she said, and the tarp separating the women from the view of the camp’s men exacerbated that feeling. She went on to tell me they were strip-searched.

“It was just turn your head and cough, just spread your cheeks and cough, but they didn’t tell us what they were going to, so when the woman approached me with rubber gloves on, I braced for a body cavity search. It’s worse not knowing, you know?”

America! This is what we’re like before the orange fascist takes power. What’s it going to be like next year?

You can still donate to the Standing Rock Sioux, and they’re going to need it. It takes courage and dedication to confront this kind of oppression.

 Update from Democracy for America:

 Last night, the brave leaders and protesters fighting for Native American rights against the Dakota Access Pipeline came under a brutal and violent attack by local police. We need your help right now to get President Obama to step in and stop these horrible attacks.

Police attacked the protest camp near Standing Rock with tear gas, rubber bullets, concussion grenades, and even water cannons. Using water cannons in below-freezing temperatures puts people at risk of hypothermia. Hundreds of protesters were hospitalized, with several in serious condition.

President Obama has less than 60 days left in office -- that means time is running out to get him to stop these police attacks, and stop the pipeline. People across the country are calling the White House today -- will you join them and call President Obama right now?

YES, I will call President Obama at (202) 456-1111 -- and tell him to step in to stop the attacks on protesters and stop the pipeline. (Click here to report the results of your call)

No, I can't call (or I got a busy signal) -- but I will contribute directly to the Standing Rock Sioux tribe's Dakota Access Pipeline Donation Fund.

The Dakota Access Pipeline is a $3 billion pipeline designed to carry fracked oil from North Dakota to Illinois -- meaning it would cross underneath the Missouri River, the longest river on the continent. A leak in the pipeline would have the potential to destroy the drinking water supply for millions of people who live downstream.

Time and time again, the U.S. government has disrespected and disregarded the treaties it made with native communities. We cannot let them get away with it again. And not only would the Dakota Access Pipeline violate sacred lands, it would open up the entire region to a rapid expansion of fracking activities, with potentially catastrophic results for the indigenous people who live there.

Bold, inspiring protests led by the Standing Rock Sioux and other indigenous communities have managed to successfully stall the pipeline for months. The Obama administration and the Army Corps of Engineers put it on pause for more review. But local police have decided they won't wait, and have unleashed a brutal assault on the protesters, native land and our environment.

Enough is enough. We need to stand with the Standing Rock Sioux and the #NoDAPL protesters until the threat of this pipeline has been completely eliminated. Will you call President Obama?

Reject Them Both

Via Down With Tyranny

Alison Concedes Election to Mitch - Again

Seriously, is there some Mark Penn-wannabee on her staff telling her that the key to winning is to insult and antagonize every Democratic voter in the Commonwealth?

Either Grimes deliberately timed this announcement for after President Obama had already postponed the decision until after November so it would have less effect on anti-Keystone voters, or she's even more criminally stupid/venal than I think she is.

From WKYT:

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes called Wednesday on President Obama to approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline as she tries to defeat an incumbent Republican in the heart of coal country.

Grimes' statement to The Associated Press comes on the day a group committed to blocking the pipeline announced it will spend $500,000 setting up field offices in Kentucky to try to defeat U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell.

What the fuck is she thinking?  There is not one single constituent group in Kentucky - not even coal miners - who will benefit in any way from allowing Canadian companies to pour the most lethal carbon fuel on the plant across America's most delicate and endangered aquifer so they can ship it to Canada.

In fact, there is not one single constituent group in the U.S. or the world - outside the owners of Big Fossil Fuel - who will benefit in any way from the Keystone Pipeline.

Grimes' announcement is pure, unadulterated pandering to the ignorant, the desperate and the greedy.

Or she's already on the Koch Brothers' payroll.

Bluegrass Pipeline Eminent Domain Vote This Week - Call Now to Save the Bluegrass

House Bill 31, the bill to prevent fracking waste pipeline promoters from using eminent domain to steal land from Central Kentuckians, is coming up for a vote in the General Assembly this week, possibly as early as today.

From pipeline opponents:

The (legislative) message center has been slammed with calls (last week) from people from all over the state supporting Keystone XL and Bluegrass Pipeline and the jobs it will bring.  They have been told that the Bluegrass Pipeline is part of Keystone XL.  Apparently the telemarketers generating these calls are also telling people that Obama has approved Keystone.  This is getting so ridiculously off base that it’s wasting state time and money:  I had to try to call four times today for my call to go through.

House Bill 31 is scheduled to be voted on by the full House this (week).  Everyone needs to call 1-800-372-7181 and 564-8100 and ask that all House members receive a message that House Bill 31 should be supported without any floor amendments (unless supported by the sponsor) and that this bill is about protecting landowners from the exercise of eminent domain by private companies and is NOT about jobs!

The Real Existential Threat

A trillion dollars down the shitter in Iraq and Afghanistan. If since 2001 we'd spent half that on a renewable energy Manhattan Project, climate change would be a manageable problem instead of unavoidable catastrophe.

Joe Romm at Think Progress: Secretary of State John Kerry gave perhaps his strongest climate speech in Indonesia Sunday. He called climate change the “world’s most fearsome” weapon of mass destruction and said “the science of climate change is leaping out at us like a scene from a 3D movie. It’s warning us; it’s compelling us to act.” At the same time, a must-read new analysis by Oil Change International finds that “all of the scenarios used by the State Department” in their Final Environmental Impact Study (EIS) of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline “result in emissions that put us on a path to 6 degrees C (11°F) of global warming according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).” Talk about mass destruction! IEA Chief Economist Fatih Birol famously said of 11°F warming, “even school children know this will have catastrophic implications for all of us.” Kerry’s Jakarta climate speech, the first in a series on the urgency of action, would appear to be utterly irreconcilable with a decision to construct the Keystone XL pipeline, a decision that rests almost entirely on Kerry’s shoulders. Kerry explained: When 97 percent of scientists agree on anything, we need to listen, and we need to respond. Well, 97 percent of climate scientists have confirmed that climate change is happening and that human activity is responsible. These scientists agree on the causes of these changes and they agree on the potential effects. They agree that the emission of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide contributes heavily to climate change. They agree that the energy sources that we’ve relied on for decades to fuel our cars and to heat our homes or to air condition our homes, to — all the things that provide us electricity like oil and coal — that these are largely responsible for sending those greenhouse gases up into the atmosphere… And they agree that, if we continue to go down the same path that we are going down today, the world as we know it will change — and it will change dramatically for the worse. You can watch the whole speech here. SNIP Kerry needs to show that his words are more than words, that he actually believes climate change is the most fearsome WMD. Kerry must recommend to Obama that Keystone be killed. Kerry started as Secretary with clean hands on climate. But approving Keystone would be like dipping his hands into the dirtiest, stickiest tar imaginable — they could never be cleaned again. Meanwhile, in case you thought it couldn't get any stupider.

"We are actually poised to control our own energy future."

If by that you mean the Keystone Pipeline and widespread fracking, Mr. President, it's an energy future that will kill us, and sooner rather than later.



Full transcript here.

Yeah, I'd say the odds of him approving what Charles Pierce calls the Death Funnel of Canadian tar sands oil just jumped to near-certain.

And the timing of this love note to fossil fuels - while the bodies of thousands of victims of carbon-driving climate change are rotting in the Phillipine sun - is despicable.

All I Want In This World is for Charlie Pierce to Be Wrong About This

Because if he's right in thinking that the Keystone Pipeline is already approved, we're all fucked.

But there are some issues on which it does not pay to be too clever by half, on which there is only one dimension in which the chess should be played. One of them is Social Security and Medicare. Another one is this damn pipeline. It is not possible to be serious about climate change and then green-light this project. This is a pipeline, so it will leak, because it always leaks. TransCanada will then lie about the leak because it is an extraction industry and that's what they do when things leak. The fuel it carries will ludicrously accelerate the pace of global climate change. And, more to the point, every case presented in its favor has turned out to be a lie. The job figures always were science fiction. It will do nothing to the price of gasoline in this country. Why we should put the Oglalla Aquifer at risk with a pipeline that the Canadians don't want to build in their own country just so that the Chinese can continue to pollute the air escapes me. I think these former campaign staffers are right. I think the bag job on this one is nearly complete.