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?

Rosebud Lakota to XL Pipeline: You. Shall. Not. Pass.

A: They're Lakota, not "Sioux."

B: They're not fucking around.

The Guardian:

A Native American tribe in South Dakota has called a congressional vote to approve the Keystone XL pipeline an “act of war” and vowed to close the reservation’s borders if the US government tries to install a pipeline there.

The prospective route for the pipeline, which would connect Canadian tar sands fields to the Gulf coast, runs through the 922,759-acre (1,442 sq mi) Rosebud Sioux reservation in south-central South Dakota. The House of Representatives voted 252-161 on Friday to approve the pipeline.

“I pledge my life to stop these people from harming our children and our grandchildren and our way of life and our culture and our religion here,” the tribe president, Cyril Scott, said on Monday. He represents one of nine tribal governments in the state.

Scott said he will close the reservation’s borders if the government goes through with the deal, which is scheduled to come up for a Senate vote on Tuesday.

SNIP

Scott said the creation of the pipeline would violate the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, an agreement between the Sioux and the US government allocating parts of the Dakota territory to the Sioux. He also said he has not been consulted by the US government or TransCanada, the Canadian company behind the 1,700-mile pipeline.

“Did I declare war on our government? No I did not,” said Scott. “Did I declare war on the Keystone XL pipeline? Hell yeah I did.”

The Next Luxury Only the RIch Can Afford is Water

Back in the 1980s, when there were tens of millions fewer people living in the Colorado River Basin, drought in the Midwest at the same time as high water levels in the Great Lakes got people talking about diverting water from the Great Lakes to the Midwest and Southwest.

At the time, Canada (which has equal rights to the Great Lakes) and the then-powerful Congress members of the Great Lakes states thundered "NO!" and that was it.

But today, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York have far less population and power than they did 30 years ago - and far, FAR less than the boom states of California, Arizona, Utah and Colorado.

I seriously doubt a push from the Southwest to steal Great Lakes water could be stopped.

As for Canada, how about this for a deal? Canada grants its Great Lakes water rights to the Southwestern U.S. in return for the right to build a dozen Keystone Pipelines right through anyplace they want.

From Zandar:

The once mighty Colorado River is nothing more than a muddy stream these days as millions of folks in southwestern states depend on it for drinking water. But climate change and population growth have put a critical strain on the river, and water rights are turning into the next great battleground between the states.

The once broad and blue river has in many places dwindled to a murky brown trickle. Reservoirs have shrunk to less than half their capacities, the canyon walls around them ringed with white mineral deposits where water once lapped. Seeking to stretch their allotments of the river, regional water agencies are recycling sewage effluent, offering rebates to tear up grass lawns and subsidizing less thirsty appliances from dishwashers to shower heads.

But many experts believe the current drought is only the harbinger of a new, drier era in which the Colorado’s flow will be substantially and permanently diminished.

Faced with the shortage, federal authorities this year will for the first time decrease the amount of water that flows into Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir, from Lake Powell 180 miles upstream. That will reduce even more the level of Lake Mead, a crucial source of water for cities from Las Vegas to Los Angeles and for millions of acres of farmland.

SNIP

The labyrinthine rules by which the seven Colorado states share the river’s water are rife with potential points of conflict. And while some states have made huge strides in conserving water — and even reducing the amount they consume — they have yet to chart a united path through shortages that could last years or even decades.

“There is no planning for a continuation of the drought we’ve had,” said one expert on the Colorado’s woes, who asked not to be identified to preserve his relationship with state officials. “There’s always been within the current planning an embedded hope that somehow, things would return to something more like normal.”

Massive drought fueled by climate change is the new "normal". Maybe when enough red states in the Mountain West and Midwest are suffering from crippling drought, the GOP legislatures that run them will do something, especially when food prices shoot up across the country as farmland bakes in the sun with no irrigation.

Nope. They'll just steamroll right over the Rust Belt, cut a tar sands deal with Canada and dust off those '80s plans to divert the largest freshwater source in the world to the desert.

Not that that will save them.

"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.

No, Mr. President, This Does Not Give You a Pass to Approve the XL Pipeline ....

.... any more than your remarks about Trayvon Martin give you a pass to put racist, fascist  motherfucker Ray Kelly in charge of Homeland Security.


Erik Loomis:

The US Export-Import Bank has decided not to fund the Thai Binh Two coal-fired power plant in Vietnam. This is a marginally good sign that the Obama Administration’s rejection of coal that he set out in his climate change speech will have real life benefits. However, it’s also a decision that comes at almost no political cost except irritating the Vietnamese government. What happens with the Keystone XL Pipeline and especially the exporting of Powder River Basin coal to Asia will be far more telling.

What Will the Climate Speech Mean After Obama Approves Keystone?

Because that's what "significantly increase pollution" means: "Regardless of the facts about the effect of tar sands extraction on global warming, this narrow definition means I can justify approving a pipeline that will mean game over for human civilization."

Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

First, Obama is absolutely correct to simply sidestep Congress here. In the long run, arguably the biggest impact of Congressional dysfunction could be that presidents regardless of party begin to ignore it and we move closer to unilateral rule. Of course, filibuster reform would help with this. Anyway, Obama still has significant power within the Executive Branch to shape policy and it is here he will leave his climate legacy.

Second, increasing carbon emissions standards on power plants is absolutely the best way to go about this, or at least it’s a very good first step. If it is a war on coal, then it is a war on coal. I know the UMWA and coal companies hate him for it, and what we really need is a clear program of green jobs in coal country to replace the jobs lost to environmental regulations, but sometimes you just have to make these hard decisions. 

Of course, the vast majority of coal jobs have already disappeared due to automation and industry disinvestment in Appalachia for new coal seams in Wyoming.

Third, Obama needs to take two steps he doesn’t want to take to show he is serious. First, he needs to not allow the Keystone XL Pipeline. If he lets that be built, it demonstrates that he is unwilling to do what it will actually take to slow climate change. Second, he needs to fight against coal exports to China. The Powder River Basin in Wyoming is now basically an enormous coal mine, mostly to serve an export market. West Coast cities are fighting against having their ports used for coal exports. Obama needs to step in here. I am skeptical on both counts.

Fourth, the plan really needs a more vigorous green jobs program and clean energy subsidies to replace dirty energy subsidies, but without funding from Congress, it’s hard to do too much here.

Fifth, none of this will probably make a molehill’s worth of difference in the ultimate battle against climate change. But a start is a start and you have to do something. Overall, it’s a positive speech, for whatever that’s worth.

As a sidenote, it’s also worth reading this essay by environmental justice scholar Robert Bullard on the need for historically black colleges to take climate change seriously. It’s an environmental justice issue.

Unfortunately, even those affected don’t always see it that way because unlike a toxic waste dump in your backyard, you don’t notice it every day.

….Or as Pierce says, Obama’s bailing the ocean out with a thimble. 

America: Third-World Hellhole for Tar Sands

Yeah, looks like our refusal to join the world's other industrial nations by enacting strong environmental protections against fossil-fuel giants, combined with our historical tendency to dump our unwanted shit on countries whose environmental protections are even weaker than ours, has come back to bite us.

Charles Pierce:

One of the regular complaints we have here about building our old friend, the Keystone XL pipeline, the tube that will bring Canadian death-syrup down the spine of our country, edging across the Ogallala aquifer, until the death-syrup gets to Texas, whence it will be shipped to China, is that the Canadians want to ship the death-syrup through our country because they don't want to ship it through their own. Case in point: over the weekend, the province of British Columbia decided that it wanted no part of another pipeline built by another company because it didn't trust the other company worth a damn.

The B.C. government has officially expressed its opposition to a proposal for the Northern Gateway pipeline project, saying it fails to address the province's environmental concerns..."British Columbia thoroughly reviewed all of the evidence and submissions made to the panel and asked substantive questions about the project, including its route, spill response capacity and financial structure to handle any incidents," said Environment Minister Terry Lake. "Our questions were not satisfactorily answered during these hearings." Lake said the province has carefully reviewed the evidence presented to the panel. "The panel must determine if it is appropriate to grant a certificate for the project as currently proposed on the basis of a promise to do more study and planning after the certificate is granted," Lake said. "Our government does not believe that a certificate should be granted before these important questions are answered."    

And how did British Columbia come to this conclusion, you ask? Well, it decided not to bet on a 90 percent risk.

A new report from Simon Fraser University claims there is at least a 90 percent probability of an oil tanker spill if the Enbridge plan for the Northern Gateway pipeline goes ahead. But the president of the Northern Gateway Pipeline project is dismissing study as flawed, saying it doesn't reflect the new technology proposed for Northern Gateway. The report's lead author is Tom Gunton, director of the resource and environmental planning programme and former deputy environment minister for Mike Harcourt's NDP provincial government. Gunton said his team used a standard model used by the U.S. government for projecting spill risk - and the new numbers are much higher than those used by Enbridge.

And that's just at the tanker end. Remember that TransCanada wants to build a pipeline through the U.S. because Canada takes its environmental regulations -- and the rights of its indigenous people -- more seriously than we do. They look at the U.S. the way that the oil men in the U.S. look at, oh, Nigeria. (Erik Loomis over at LG&M is really good on this, by the way.) They want to build it here because the Canadians don't want to build it there, and also because of, you know, the Canadian Rockies. So the next time some congresscritter tries to sell you this lemon, remind him that our destiny really shouldn't be as a pipeline colony for Canada.

Congressman Awesomely Fucking Wrong Yarmuth

Are fucking kidding me, John Yarmuth? A passel of Blue Dog, DINO, conservadem pieces of shit - and you?  Why? What possible excuse could you have for voting for the tar sands pipeline that will tip climate catastrophe into too-fucking-late-now-bend-over-and-kill-your-ass-goodbye?

Down with Tyranny:

"If he honestly believes," says Van Jones in the video clip above, "that this pipeline-- which will be a huge part of his legacy-- is a good thing, he should call it the Obama Tar Sands Pipeline." Yes, a huge part of his legacy. The House may have made it easy for him-- whichever decision he makes. Last week they passed H.R. 3, which removes Obama from the decision-making process, despite this being a deal that involves the U.S. border, over which he has constitutional authority. So... he can veto it on that basis alone-- if it passes the Senate (a distinct possibility, since the majority of the whores in that esteemed body have already come out in favor). Of course, if Obama really wants the pipeline to go through and just would rather avoid the stain on his legacy, he could let that go through and say "Congress did it, not me," although only idiots-- so, roughly, half the voters, could possibly buy into that lame excuse.

When the House voted not a single Republican voted NO, although Planet Justin (Amash-R-MI) voted "present." The real horror, though was that 19 Democrats scurried across the aisle to vote with the GOP, not just for the Keystone XL Pipeline, but to remove Obama from the process. And they weren't all just the Blue Dog reactionaries and racists. Here's the whole list:

• John Barrow (Blue Dog/New Dem-GA)

• Sanford Bishop (Blue Dog-GA)

• Cheri Bustos (IL)

• Jim Cooper (Blue Dog/New Dem-TN)

• Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA)

• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)

• Bill Enyart (IL)

• Al Green (TX)

• Gene Green (TX)

• Ruben Hinojosa (TX)

• Sean Maloney (New Dem-NY)

• Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT)

• Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog/New Dem-NC)

• Patrick Murphy (New Dem-FL)

• Bill Owens (New Dem-NY)

• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)

• Terri Sewell (New Dem-AL)

• Filemon Vela (New Dem-TX)

• John Yarmuth (KY)

What Big Dirty Energy Poisons

At the Feb. 14 I Love Mountains protest against Mountaintop Removal Mining, two points of emphasis stood out for me: the deep importance of the mountains as home to people who have lived there for a dozen generations, and the connection between Big Coal's destruction of eastern Kentucky and Big Oil's destruction of Alberta's Tar Sands.

It's the same crime: Big Dirty Energy poisoning landscapes and lives.

Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

I have a piece out today at Alternet detailing the struggle to protect some of the United States’ most beautiful and unique landscapes from the scourge of dirty energy production. Ranging from the Sand Hills of Nebraska to West Virginia, upstate New York, the Louisiana marshlands, and the Powder River Basin of Wyoming, dirty energy production threatens to devastate (and is devastating) some of the this nation’s unique places.

I also focus heavily on the impact of energy production on the human body, particularly exploring east Texas and southern Louisiana:

A polluted ecosystem leads to sick people. This is the case on the Gulf Coast from east Texas into Louisiana, where the oil industry processes its raw material. The people who live near these plants, ranging from roughly Corpus Christi to the Mississippi River, are mostly poor and African American. Petroleum companies have intentionally sited their plants here, assuming that underprivileged people cannot resist a multinational corporation. Local residents have seen high cancer rates, birth defects and congenital health problems. Working conditions in these plants are notoriously poor. A 2005 explosion at a BP refinery in Texas City, Texas killed 17 workers and injured more than 170.

However, locals have fought back. Although environmental organizations have been reluctant to take on their cases, environmental justice movements have demanded protection from exposure to toxic chemicals. Steve Lerner’s book Diamond: A Struggle for Environmental Justice in Louisiana’s Chemical Corridor chronicles how the community of Diamond, Louisiana took on the town’s Royal Dutch Shell complex to stop the headaches, respiratory illnesses and cancers that afflicted residents. After years of organizing, Shell finally agreed to relocate their homes away from the plant.

That’s one limited success story, but thousands of poor people live their lives subjected to the environmental racism of the petroleum industry. Our energy future needs to include processing energy in a way that protects people’s health and spreads the burden of energy production more evenly.