Standing Rock Confusion
Submitted by PriceRip on Fri, 12/02/2016 - 11:29am
I am confused? Again. I have been reading for the past few days about the actions and reactions with respect to a few acres of land in North Dakota.
What would happen if the pipeline company executives decide to reroute the pipeline so as to avoid these sensitive sections of land? Put another way: What is the point of this exercise?
Seriously, What is the point of this exercise?
If this is just another NIMBY issue, why should I care?
Comments
The pipeline has already been NIMBYed once
Bismarck, ND, wouldn't have it near them, so that's why it is where it is now.
I gather the hope is not to just reroute it again, but to put a stop to it altogether, and make people face up to the socialized and unrecognized costs of petroleum.
Though, cynically, I wonder if there are any national wildlife refuges or other "uninhabited" areas they could route it through - no people at all, no problem, they think.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
Thank you for amplifying my point.
If I had been a citizen of Bismarck, ND I would have raised this same point and the other citizens of Bismarck, ND would have hated. I know because I have been making enemies in Kearney, NE for more than 37 years.
I have no problem with individuals supporting the protest per se, I really have a problem with the fact that clones of this company are shoving pipelines through other places.
If this is our "Middlesex County, Massachusetts", I will drop my cynical point of view.
Uh, water
for eighteenMillion people downstream? I'm kinda confused with your confusion. The water could be(but isn't) the least reason for this pipeline not to go through. The effect of fossil fuel use on the ecosystem and the imperative to stop this use has been well documented.
Respect.
peace
Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .
Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .
If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march
Thank you for amplifying my point (redux).
For one watershed, why should I care?
If this is our "Middlesex County, Massachusetts", I will drop my cynical point of view.
On the Government's side...
It's a Message.
That no-one can stop them.
(Sorry, didn't mean to suggest our government is Aliens launching terror attacks on civilians in order to make them surrender... Well, maybe everything BUT the Aliens part.)
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
Not so much the Government as the Corporations
The Government is acting merely as their paid stooges and thugs.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
What is *our* exit strategy ?
Is supporting this protest a tactical move or is it a strategic move. All the chatter suggests short term local goals. I am not seeing the kind of vision needed to sustain this (movement?) to an acceptable conclusion.
If not now, when?
If not now, when?
Is it, as with investigating and redoing elections honestly rather than accepting fraudulent election results 'as a done deal', always to be jam tomorrow and never, ever today?
Are the people of the world to lie down to be trampled into mush forever, until nothing and no-one remains either to fight back or to fight for?
Each pocket of determined resistance to the corporate/billionaire theft of human/citizen rights, land and/or resources is a thumb in the dyke reducing the chances of civilization and global life drowning in the flood of mindless greed overtaking and destroying the planet.
These are people fighting for what little remains to them of their homeland and their lives, for what little still remains to the 99%, before that also is sucked up by those for whom 'almost everything' is never enough, while anything still remains to another.
And Standing Rock is also a symbol and a shining star for our souls.
May we all, each in our own ways, stand as rock against our enemies, and may they break themselves in their very attack upon the human spirit.
The only exit remaining involves the acceptance of the 'inevitable' extinction of the very concept of civilization/democracy and of life on the planet forming the life support system of life itself; there is nowhere to go but here, and we die, sooner or later, either way. We might as well die fighting for life itself, even if we do so peacefully.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
The Standing Rock reservation
is about more than a few acres. Even if it wasn't, we all really should care. If the Feds succeed with this blatant land grab, what do you think might stop them from grabbing your land, too?
They've already
done it, Whitefeild, Maine an entire town, tried to stop an ng pipeline and the gvt eminent domained their ass. They lost in court, also. Not sure what the settlement ended up as.
To your point redux, did you not see the second part of my reply? And yes you take tactical wins towards a strategic goal; and your question is what IS the strategic goal, correct? Hopefully to get TO that second part of my reply more quickly, the imperative to stop burning.
peace
Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .
Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .
If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march
This is no longer about
This is no longer about government having eminent domain, which is supposed to be used only for an overriding public benefit. This is about corporations/billionaires/self-interests having eminent domain, so that they can freely profit from theft and the dispossession of others.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
I didn't go to Việt Nam
I turned 18 as I started my Junior year in High School. In those days an deferment was automatic, so I didn't even think about the process. Two years later I entered Blue Mountain Community College and once again the process was integral to getting registered for classes, so I didn't even think about the process.
Then on day in the student commons someone across the room tipped over a chair, BAM! We all turned this a start! Well, almost all of us turned with a start! Not "Jim", he didn't turn with a start!, no not at all . . . we turned back to see him on the floor against the nearby wall (he always sat with his back to a wall) desperately grabbing for is (missing) sidearm with a look of pure terror on his face, · · · so I started thinking about the process.
I mailed my registration card to the local draft board that day with a suggestion of how they might dispose of it and suggested they might want to consider me to be hostile to Nixon's plans in Việt Nam.
During the past 46 years I have put up with assholes telling me I am "a privileged white guy that just didn't want to get his hands dirty supporting our freedom", and worse.
Really, if that had been the case, why do anything at all, (I could have kept my College Deferment all the way to the end. If I wanted to escape the Draft I could have slithered across the border to Canada. Or even easier I just could have walked into the woods of Oregon and Idaho and never been seen again.), see I had options, tactical options.
If #NoDAPL is really only about keeping this particular pipeline out of this particular area, screw it, I really have no interest. If however #NoDAPL represent a strategic move to focus attention on the real problem · · · · then that's a different story, and we should be talking about how to proceed. This part of the conversation seems to be missing. How do we "turn in our draft cards"? How do we create a situation that will motivate a Federal Marshal to show up at our doors? What do we do to become targets without the necessity of traveling to that particular part of the world?
In 1970 I painted on a big target and really pissed off a lot of people, how do we-all do that today?
No time to reroute
They lose serious money if they aren't shipping oil by Jan 1st because all their contracts expire then. I've heard that oil from that region is not cheap to extract and there are already several methods of transport, so having those contracts open to renegotiation would not be good.
Expensive means Technologically Challanging
Like the fracking channel this as well as other modes of extraction are becoming less and less attractive every day. Literally, every day. The extraction industry executives are getting scared, and the transportation tsars are not so happy either. If they can be forced to go back to square one we might have a chance to start lopping off heads, metaphorically speaking.
If the EPA would start doing its job vis-à-vis its RadNet Monitoring Program, I think the Coal channel would dry up.
Yeah - here's more about that.
First:
Legendary Native Activist Exposes DAPL Is a SHAM Duration 8:46
TYT Politics Reporter Jordan Chariton spoke with Native American activist and executive director of Honor The Earth Winona LaDuke, who explained what the Dakota Access Pipeline is really being used for.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHSbCCNPUNQ&t=20s width:400]
And a recent article from November 30:
The Beginning is Near: The Deep North, Evictions and Pipeline Deadlines
Scroll down to the part about January 1 Energy Transfer Deadline
So the long term goal would be to not get the pipeline built at all. But the short term goal should be for us and the protesters to make sure the pipeline is not completed before the January 1, 2017 deadline. That alone has the potential to harm Energy Transfer Partners financially. Hit 'em in their pocketbook so to speak.
No more worries about
No more worries about collapsing oil profits making tar sands and new pipelines unprofitable! Oil profits - not forgetting those profiting from the all-important stock market - will be supplied to Those Who Matter, at all costs to everyone and everything else!
http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/28/investing/oil-surges-after-opec-informal...
And the type of financial pressures which will be relieved by reducing oil sales in the countries producing oil? Exerted by whom, I wonder... but I'm guessing that the American and other publics will be providing this financial relief in more than one way, and undoubtedly paid in some manner for the pressures exerted in order to hike oil prices and keep a dinosaur technology running which is deadly in multiple ways to both human and environmental health, just as we ought - and desperately need - to be switching to greener tech.
This makes fracking the hell out of the planet all down the leaky pipeline worth-while - and will also soon send the price of to-be-privatized non-flammable drinking and washing water through the roof, giving certain stock-holders, no doubt, a boost as well, covering Those Who actually Matter quite nicely. (Sorta like an old joke about dropping a 10 dollar bill down an outhouse hole to make recovering a quarter worth-while, only in this case making somebody else go down to do that and hand the money up, to be left standing hip-deep in doo-doo, awaiting trickle-down.)
http://www.businessinsider.com/oil-prices-after-opec-meeting-2016-9?op=1
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
the goal is to stop all pipelines and protect the planet
This is definitely not a NIMBY issue. Repeatedly, people have said that it's NoDAPL, not MoveDAPL. The only people talking about moving the pipeline are Democratic politicians who don't want to anger their oil and gas donors.
This struggle is also very much about a sovereign nation being invaded by mercenaries. Again. The US gov't has never once honored a treaty. Dismissal of Native voices, murder, concentration camps (reservations), starvation, eviction, and extreme violence are the norm. Many of us are saying no more.
I don't have the time to google Middlesex, Mass., to understand your repeated reference to that, but what I keep hearing from the water protectors (both indigenous and non-indigenous) is that we must stop extractive industries from destroying the land and water, making this continent uninhabitable. It is clearly time to move to sustainable, cleaner forms of energy. And we should stop allowing private companies to harvest and sell clean water (e.g., Nestle).
I posted this link in my blog today, which shows the damage to life and land that oil and gas companies have perpetrated over the last 30 years. http://www.citylab.com/weather/2016/11/30-years-of-pipeline-accidents-ma...
That is what is being fought here, and similar struggles are happening all over the planet. For example, Native people and allies in AZ are trying to Save Oak Flat from being mined, trying to save the Grand Canyon from developers, trying to Save the Confluence watershed, trying to save Rio Yaqui from pollution, etc. Other people are trying to protect the water and the land where they live.
It's trite but true: we think globally but act locally. You want to know what to do to make this movement larger? Find a struggle where you live (that's how I know what's happening in AZ). I bet there's some group near you that is fighting an incinerator, a nuclear waste dump, pollution, mining, etc. If we all do our part locally, then we can change things.
There is no justice in America, but it is the fight for justice that sustains you.
--Amiri Baraka
Jane Kleeb vs Keystone Pipeline
"think globally but act locally" is not trite.
Here in Nebraska we are fortunate to have Jane Kleeb as
thea public face for this fight.It is hysterical that you would reference "a nuclear waste dump" given that you were (presumably) talking to me.
The situation is worse than even you have suggested.
Please give this a listen/read: The EPA is NOT doing its job.
Source: ASU PhD Physics graduate (AKA me). Specialty: tracking radioisotopes in the environment.
This ^^^
Every word.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
Fair Enough
The American Revolutionary War began with military engagements in Middlesex County.
Well fuck,
if you'd just said Lexington and Concord I'm sure a Lot more of us would have got the reference. Sometimes being Too smaht ain't the way to go!
Could Nodapl be that spark?
We can hope.
peace
Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .
Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .
If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march
My perspective
I have watched many videos in which members of the Standing Rock Soiux Tribe (SRST) have been interviewed. The theme is consistent in every interview. The indigenous people of this country such as the SRST have a very deep and abiding connection to mother earth and feel compelled to protect the earth and its environment based upon their culture and traditions. The long term strategic goal would be to stop all fossil fuel extraction. It is also about protecting the potable water supply of this country which is systematically becoming poisoned by corporations through a lack of environmental stewardship due to such practices as fracking and dumping of toxic waste.
Here is a quote from a Forbes article I recently read. While I do not agree with everything in the article, this paragraph succinctly summarizes the vast differences between the water protectors and the corporations behind this pipeline.
In my humble opinion, this standoff is intended to bring greater focus upon the problems associated with continued fossil fuel extraction in the overwhelming face of rapid climate change. It comes to life itself versus profits. This may be the last stand in this country on this issue and this is part of the reason so many supporters have shown up and provided financial and physical support to the water protectors.
There is also a secondary issue that comes up over and over and that is one of the US government's failure to honor and abide by treaties. The location of the pipeline is in conflict with the treaty between the US government and the SRST. This remains a very sore and contentious issue for all native people.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Yes, exactly
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
Right!
Keep it in the ground!
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
Coming to your neighborhood soon.
The Republicans have plans to re-start the Keystone XL pipeline. It is in the 2016 Republican Platform, and Trump has said he will address the re-start in his first 100 days.
Source: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/01122016/donald-trump-keystone-xl-pip...
From the same article, there is this bit of irony from Obama in addressing the Keystone XL pipeline:
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass
The point will be to show,
to those who understand that sound cannons are not brought out accidentally, that members of some 76 law enforcement agencies are not assembled accidentally, but are utiimately authorized at the highest level.
This is a step farther along the Kent State path, in that if the Sioux are driven off their land and forced to relinquish still more of their history, that act will anchor the actuality that all authority of the Department of Justice has now been fully replaced by decisions made by unaccountable Big Energy and other financial interests.
It is essential to establish that fact in order to think about what can now be done in the face of the death of our world.