Oceti Sakowin Camp Closes: But the Struggle Continues

 Water protectors march out of Oceti Sakowin camp

The was a sense of poignancy, defiance and nobility as the last remaining residents of the Oceti Sakowin protest camp in North Dakota departed yesterday in advance of a 2pm deadline-to-vacate order signed by Governor Doug Burgum.

The thousands of native peoples from around the world who joined the protests represented the vanguard of a much broader grassroots protest movement.

Opposition not just to oil, but to the increasingly soul-less coalition of extremist political and social conservatives whose rigid ideology now serves the interests of the massive corporate monarchies that rule over the various fiefdoms of banking, fossil fuel and petrochemical production, agriculture, manufacturing, mining and telecommunications.  

The 150 or so protesters who walked arm-in-arm out of the snow and mud covered grounds of the Oceti Sakowin camp Wednesday afternoon ( under the eyes of over a hundred law enforcement officers from different states) were still singing, chanting and most importantly - standing.

With a federal court having ruled that drilling to run pipelines that will carry crude oil directly beneath a fresh water source the Sioux share with 20 million other people can proceed, this particular battle is done for now.

But the war of non-violent resistance is not over.

Hundreds of other protesters who defiantly stuck out the freezing temperatures of the winter in support of the sovereign rights of the Standing Rock Sioux are reportedly moving on to other protest camps in the area that have been set up on private land where government officials cannot order them off.

New EPA administrator Scott Pruitt

Others will take the next stage of the fight to court rooms and legislative chambers.

Even if many of those too are stacked with conservative Republicans who've shown a willingness to bend the law to the will of the alliance of oil companies, pipeline manufacturers and banks behind the DAPL regardless of the cost to human and environmental health.

Republicans like the climate change denying lackey of the oil industry Scott Pruitt.


After being sworn in last Friday as the administrator of the same federal agency he repeatedly sued as the attorney general of Oklahoma, the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, addressed members of his staff for the first time on Tuesday.

As Rebecca Leber reported for Mother Jones on Tuesday, Pruitt delivered a generic 11-minute speech that was short on policy specifics and gave no indication of what the Trump administration has in mind for the EPA's role in addressing climate change.

As America comes to grip with the reality of a man who denies the existence of climate change heading up the government agency charged with protecting the environment, his confirmation doesn't bode well for grassroots environmental groups opposing oil and natural gas pipeline projects around the nation.

In the same way that an executive order issued by the White House has tasked members of Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) to begin an unprecedented roundup of illegal immigrants in the United States, regardless of how long they've been here or whether they've committed a criminal offense, in the wake of the inauguration on January 20th, efforts to remove the Standing Rock protesters increased in some unsettling ways.

   CLDC attorney Lauren Regan

According to an article posted on The Guardian back on February 10th, Lauren Regan, the executive director of the Civil Liberties Defense Center in Oregon reported that at least three different DAPL protesters were contacted directly by agents from the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) to ask them for information about the Standing Rock protests.

As she told The Guardian, "From the very beginning, law enforcement has attempted to justify it's militarized presence...by making false allegations that somehow these water protectors were violent." 

Rumors about FBI surveillance of Standing Rock protesters had been swirling on social media just days after Trump's inauguration.



An interview on the Tuesday February 7th episode of The Leonard Lopate Show on WNYC with Cora Currier and Trevor Arronson, contributing writers to The Intercept, offered some chilling perspective and insight on the kinds of tactics the FBI likely used in Standing Rock to monitor protesters and undermine demonstrators.

Click the link above if you have a few minutes, it's definitely worth a listen.

Currier's and Arronson's contribution to an Intercept series called 'The FBI's Secret Rules', uncovered some fascinating details on the scope of FBI surveillance.

For example, they noted that in the late 60's and early 70's, the FBI employed approximately 1,600 informants as part of their notorious COINTELPRO program of domestic surveillance of groups they deemed subversive; including Civil Rights activists, Black Panther Party members, Vietnam War protesters, feminist organizations and the KKK.

By the post-911 era when the U.S. government was appropriating billions to anti-terrorism and homeland security efforts, the number of FBI informants had soared to over 15,000 - so it's fair to assume that the FBI had informants in place at the Standing Rock protests.

Oceti Sakowin camp structures burning on Wednesday

Members of local law enforcement were engaged in the same kinds of harassment tactics too.

A Monday February 13th article posted on the Website of
 The Guardian chronicled claims by several members of the veterans activist group VeteransRespond that local police stopped their vehicles simply for having out of state plates and conducted bogus searches.




Flagrantly illegal police searches that turned up small amounts of weed that some of the vets take for medical reasons to alleviate symptoms of PTSD which were used to arrest and detain the protesters.

As my friend James, who lives on the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma, reminded me the other night, Native Americans have been viewed as terrorist suspects by the U.S. government since long before the highly-publicized 1973 occupation of the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota by some 200 Oglala Lakota and members of the American Indian Movement (AIM).

As I write this late Wednesday night, there are reports that at least 50 to 75 protesters remain inside the Standing Rock protest camp, though local law enforcement have made no efforts to forcefully remove them even though the governor's order to evacuate expired at 2pm on Wednesday.

Despite the outcome, the Standing Rock protests brought global attention to both the sovereignty of indigenous peoples as well as the environmental dangers posed by the slew of oil and natural gas  pipeline projects being constructed across the United States, Canada and Mexico.

The intentional burning of temporary wooden structures at the Oceti Sakowin protest camp by departing protesters yesterday is symbolic.

Protesters claimed the burning of those structures was an "ending prayer", maybe it's meant to symbolize the end of this latest chapter of the ongoing war for Native American sovereignty.

The global support that the Standing Rock Sioux garnered raised awareness of the struggle for the rights of indigenous peoples in America and around the globe - but it also helped to galvanize a much broader protest movement that made its presence known on January 21st.

What happened in Cannon Ball, North Dakota reaffirms the power of peaceful protest, civil disobedience and non-violent resistance at a time when millions of Americans are gearing up to oppose the policies of the Trump administration and the Republican-controlled Congress.

A chapter may have ended in the Sakowin camp with the assistance of the corpratocracy, federal and state entities including the FBI, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, federal courts and local law enforcement from multiple states.

But this story is far from over.

As one of the camp's leaders Phyllis Young noted in an interview, "The camps will continue, freedom is in our DNA, and we have no choice but to continue the struggle."

Dishonorable Dealings In the Dakotas?

The massive Crazy Horse Monument, Black Hills, SD

Even before the Sacred Black Hills territory was stripped away from the Great Sioux Reservation by an Act of Congress passed on February 28, 1877, an act which violated Article 2 of the Treaty of Fort Laramie signed nine years before on April 29, 1868, lawmakers and the federal courts (in conjunction with private interests) have consistently conspired to systematically violate the rights of the Sioux.


In what would become an unfortunate portent of the future, it was the discovery of gold in the Black Hills by European prospectors in 1874 that sparked the decision by the U.S. government to move the Sioux from the same very territory which had been promised to them by said government in perpetuity just over a decade before.

In fact, a 1980 Supreme Court Case decision in United States v. Sioux Nation of Indians ruled that the Sioux had been unfairly stripped of their ownership of the Black Hills territory in 1877.

The high court awarded the Sioux the value of that land in 1877 plus interest, $106 million, but in a testament to their resolve, the Sioux refused to take it; preferring to wait to gain back their rightful ownership of the Black Hills.

That award has been held in trust in the U.S. Treasury and is reportedly worth over a $1 billion today.

In their majority opinion the Supreme Court wrote in part, "A more ripe and rank case of dishonorable dealings will never, in all probability, be found in our history."

Construction continues near a DAPL protest camp  

Could the justices who handed down that decision 37 years ago have predicted the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline in the 21st century?

Probably not - but history often repeats itself.

And construction on that controversial stretch of pipeline slated to carry another valuable natural resource, oil, under yet another stretch of land sacred to the Sioux, began again last Thursday.

Aided by another court decision.

As Nika Knight reported in an article for CommonDreams.org, on Monday U.S. District Judge James Boasberg denied an emergency request by lawyers representing the Standing Rock and Cheyenne River Sioux to halt contruction of the pipeline.

With that ruling, contractors hired by Energy Transfer Partners (the company building the DAPL), can continue to prepare to run a stretch of pipeline directly beneath Lake Oahe - a resevoir near Cannon Ball, North Dakota near the Missouri River.

Once completed, hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil a day will flow through that pipeline underneath a source of fresh water for some 20 million people.

Aside from the obvious environmental danger, lawyers for the Sioux also tried to make the case that the presence of the pipeline is an infringement on their religious rights because the oil will flow next to sacred lands.

But Judge Boasberg played down their concerns, saying in part, "as long as oil isn't flowing through the pipeline, there is no imminent harm to the Cheyenne River and Standing Rock Sioux tribes."

But it's not Judge Boasberg's fresh water supply that will be threatened by an oil pipeline spill.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg 

Judge Boasberg was appointed by President Obama.

But as CounterPunch.org reports, he is, by virtue of his upbringing, a child of privilege and means.

He prepped at St. Albans, one of the most prestigious private schools in the D.C. area, and attended Yale and Oxford.

Clearly he's a learned man with extensive legal experience and a keen intellect.

But it's still fair and reasonable to ask the question: will he follow the law in this case?

Should the disturbing pattern of infringements upon Sioux tribal lands and sovereignty by the U.S. government and private interests motivated by profit in the 19th century be taken into account in the legal challenges to the DAPL?

Or will this scion of the establishment be more swayed by the collective legal muscle of the corporate lawyers working on behalf of Energy Transfer Partners and the group of banks (including JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, HSBC and Goldman Sachs) that backed construction of the project with a $3.75 billion line of credit?

In all fairness to Judge Boasberg, he is scheduled to hear arguments at a hearing on February 27th to rule on the Sioux's request for an injunction against the U.S. Army Corps for their having granted the final easement that allowed ETP's contractors to begin drilling under Lake Oahe.

He also ordered ETP to provide updates to the court on a weekly basis so that all concerned will know exactly when oil will actually being to flow through the pipeline.

But those are all big "if's" considering how the federal government stripped the Sioux of the Black Hills 140 years ago.

And in the meantime, the forces of American of corporatocracy are quietly stirring in the vast open stretches around Cannonball, North Dakota near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation - and beyond.

From Romans to Republicans - Has the GOP Downfall Begun?

English politician Sir John Dalberg-Acton

In a now-famous letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887, the English historian, writer and moralist Lord Acton famously observed:

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

He was essentially paraphrasing an idea previously expressed by other thinkers and writers for centuries, reflecting on the Roman Empire, the Papacy and countless monarchies.


But his oft-quoted observation, written 130 years ago, could well have been a prescient warning about the state of the Republican Party in 21st century America.

In the wake of the November 8th elections, a number of elated Republicans, from spine-challenged House Speaker Paul Ryan to average conservative Joe's calling into NPR to share their thoughts on the shocking presidential election results, publicly expressed concerns that the GOP, with both houses of Congress, the presidency and a majority of state legislatures in their hands, would end up going too far.

But as we've seen time and again, the collective memory of the Republican establishment is shockingly short when it comes to learning from their past political mistakes.

Ever since 45's shaky first day in office a little over two weeks ago, the new leaders of the executive branch and their reluctant Republican allies in Congress seem almost obsessed with dismantling America's imperfect Democracy and reshaping it to reflect some kind of twisted conservative-Utopian worldview.

By doing so, they are ironically sewing the seeds of an unprecedented nationwide backlash movement that poses a direct threat to their Congressional majority with all 435 seats in the House and 33 seats in the Senate up for reelection in 2018.  

Protestors outside Rep. Chaffetz's town hall in Utah

If this past week is any indicator, the Republican establishment seems almost catastrophically tone deaf to the values and priorities of the vast majority of the American people.

Take Utah Republican Congressman Jason Chaffetz's town hall on Thursday evening for example.

Like other Republican members of the House, Chaffetz was home taking the post-election political temperature directly from his constituents.

It was not a warm reception, and Chaffetz is probably itching to scurry back to the safety of the isolated political bubble in Washington where he and other Republicans are content to dwell in a distorted ideological reality.

The House Oversight Committee Chairman, whose continuing obsession with Hillary Clinton's emails borders on partisan political lunacy, was greeted with a chorus of boos and jeers in Brighton High School in a Salt Lake City suburb as he faced an onslaught of questions from angry members of his Congressional district.  

It was pretty brutal.

A young girl asked him if he believed in science.

In response to expressions of outrage over Republican efforts to allow the extraction of fossil fuels from the nation's National Parks, Chaffetz actually told the crowd that solar energy can harm animals and wildlife.

Between the boos and chants of "Do your job!", others demanded to know why the House Oversight Committee he chairs isn't investigating 45's ties to Russia and the role Putin played in manipulating the November 8th election results - or why the American people haven't yet seen the beleaguered POTUS's tax returns.

A woman questions Tennesse Rep Diane Black at a
packed town hall on Thursday

And this wasn't an isolated incident either, other Republican House members in traditionally conservative-leaning "red" states faced similar questions from their constituents.

Take a couple minutes to watch a woman from Tennessee ask Republican Congresswoman Diane Black about Republican efforts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act.




Things didn't fare much better for the Republican-majority Senate this week either.

Republican Senators had the gall to dredge up the obscure Senate 'Rule 19' to block Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren from reading a letter from Coretta Scott King on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

As Politifact.com reported, Rule 19 was added by the Senate on February 28, 1902 after the junior senator from South Carolina John McLaurin rushed into the Senate chamber, denounced the senior South Carolina senator Ben Tillman as being guilty of a "willful, malicious, and deliberate lie" before getting punched in the jaw by Tillman.

If Republican senators thought that invoking a rule historians suggest has only been invoked twice since 1902 would somehow shield the American public from hearing the truth about newly-appointed Attorney General Jeff Sessions' legacy of opposing voting rights for African-Americans in the south and civil rights, they were way off base.

The recording of Warren reading King's nine-page letter (originally sent to former Republican North Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond, a notorious opponent of civil rights) went viral and was listened to millions of times by people around the globe.

Senator Ted Cruz reads 'Green Eggs & Ham'
on the floor of the U.S. Senate in 2013

As TheHill.com reported, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders took the floor on Wednesday and angrily announced, "The idea that a letter and a statement by Coretta Scott King, the widow of Martin Luther King, Jr...could not be presented and spoken about here on the floor of the Senate, is to me, incomprehensible." 

He then defiantly read the letter in it's entirety as Democratic Senators Tom Udall and Sherrod Brown had done earlier that day.

The episode didn't just reinforce the perception of the Republican Party as contemptuous of women.

This is the same party that cheered as a self-righteous hypocrite like Republican Texas Senator Ted Cruz spent 21 straight hours on the floor of the Senate in opposition of enacting healthcare reform (during which he also read from Dr. Seuss' 'Green Eggs and Ham' and talked about poker) but silenced Senator Warren while she was reading a letter that was sent to the Senate in 1986 by the deceased wife of a civil rights icon.

During Black History Month no less.

With each day, it seems as if the Republican party puts itself further and further out of touch with mainstream American citizens and the values they uphold.

Just days into this new Republican-dominated government, Congress has already moved quickly to eradicate legislation that protects consumers from banks being allowed to charge predatory overdraft fees, permit mining companies to dump toxic coal sludge into rivers and streams, and further curb the right to vote for people of color, the poor, students and legal immigrants.

Protesters block Betsy DeVoss from entering a
Washington, D.C. school on Friday morning

To say nothing of approving a known bigot and opponent of civil rights like Jeff Sessions as the attorney general.

Or  billionaire Betsy DeVos, (who donated money to every Senator who approved her) with no experience working in education, as Secretary of Education.

These kinds of actions have sparked a nationwide grassroots protest movement.

One that began with millions of people around the globe coming out to protest 45 the day after his inauguration, and has since grown exponentially.

Both online and in person.

As CommonDreams.com reported earlier today, protestors chanting "Shame! Shame!" briefly blocked Betsy DeVos from entering Jefferson Academy in Washington, D.C, this morning as protestors hounded her for buying her way into 45's cabinet and chided her for having no experience as an educator.

The other night protesters stood outside the home of Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell protesting his invoking the aforementioned rarely used Senate 'Rule 19' to block Elizabeth Warren from reading Coretta Scott King's letter on the floor of the Senate.

For example, the March for Science scheduled to take place in Washington, D.C. on April 22nd (Earth Day) is already sparking regional marches in cities and communities all over the world in what looks to be a truly global backlash to Republicans who dismiss scientific research on issues like climate change, fuel efficiency standards and the effects of pollution, toxic waste and pesticides on the environment.

These aren't flash-in-the-pan protests as some conservatives have dismissively suggested.

They are parts of a much larger and sustained organized campaign built on a broad coalition that opposes 45 and the current manifestation of the Republican party.

As the nation reacts to the news that 45's national security adviser Michael Flynn had private conversations with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. at least a month before the compulsive authoritarian liar 45 took office - violations of ethics and the law which both Flynn and VP Mike Pence have lied about in front of the press - the protest movement grows.

A movement that could culminate with the 2018 Congressional elections when 468 members of Congress and the Senate will be forced to face the reality of exactly what American voters think about them and the job they've done.

Remarkably, and perhaps predictably, Republican politician's stubborn inability to reach across the aisle, listen to the overwhelming majority of voters who did not vote for 45, or govern outside of a narrow-minded extremist ideology could very well mark the beginning of the downfall of the GOP.

After all, we're not even a month into 45's administration, and as Lord Acton observed, absolute power has already corrupted absolutely.  

The CRA & The Creeping American Corpratocracy

Jett Rink (James Dean) celebrates striking oil
in the classic 1956 film Giant

With growing uncertainty over the future of relations between the U.S. and Iran (both among the world's largest oil producers) under the chaotic and reactionary foreign policy of the Trump administration, oil prices dropped to just over $50 a barrel on Monday.

The high-flying days of 2012 to 2014 when record oil prices averaging around $100 a barrel collectively netted the members of the 12 members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) a record $920 billion from oil exports are in the past.

But you'd hardly know that from the alarming speed with which the Republican-majority Congress and the executive-order-happy Trump administration are moving to boost American fossil fuel production by gutting environmental protection laws.



It's almost as if oil is like some kind of highly addictive narcotic for Republicans, they literally can't get enough of it, will do anything to make their supplier happy and will drive themselves mad being a slave to it like the character Jett Rink (played by actor James Dean) did in the classic 1956 film Giant directed by George Stevens.

On Sunday when I went to put some gas in the tank of my Honda CRV before heading off to a Super Bowl Sunday party, the price was $2.23 per gallon (credit).

That's down significantly for the central New Jersey area ever since the state Assembly and Senate agreed to increase the gas tax back in October  by 23-cents a gallon for the first time in 29 years in order to shore up funds for badly-needed transportation projects around the state.

The November 30th announcement by OPEC that 10 of it's 12 member nations would cut oil production starting in January (it's first production cut in 8 years) sent oil futures, crude prices and the stock prices of American energy companies soaring in December.

But as Reuters reported earlier today, a worldwide glut of oil from overproduction, high levels of U.S. oil reserves and reports showing that America currently has the highest number of oil rigs since 2015 sent oil prices and gasoline futures sliding.

Despite those facts the U.S. Congress, at the behest of American petroleum countries who've spent hundreds of millions of dollars lobying our elected representitives, have moved to strike down or sharply curb an array of environmental laws intended to protect the air, land and water from the harmful effects of the extraction and overproduction of oil and natural gas that has taken place over the past few years.

2008: 525 million gallons of coal slurry broke
through levees into the Tennessee River

Last week Republicans took aim at a host of laws signed by President Obama intended to protect the environment - including the Stream Protection Rule designed to protect American waterways from toxic runoff from coal mine production.

Did they forget when a retaining wall at a Harriman, Tennessee power plant collapsed, sending 525 millions gallons of toxic coal slurry into the Tennessee River destroying 12 homes 2 days before Christmas in 2008?

What kind of Congress votes to undue rules intended to keep toxic substances from leaking into rivers and streams?

The same Congress that voted on Friday to undue the Bureau of Land Management's methane waste prevention rule that regulates the venting and burning off of excess natural gas which helps limit the amount of methane released into the atmosphere.

As Jenny Rowland reported in a ThinkProgress.org article last week, "As a greenhouse gas, methane traps over 86 times more heat than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period."

As she notes, a January 2017 report by Public Citizen's Rick Claypool reveals that groups including the coal mining industry, energy utility companies and railroads collectively spent over $222 million over a 12 month period lobbying members of Congress to deregulate the rules governing mining companies protecting and restoring rivers and streams.

Rick Claypool of Public Citizen

Congress is using a controversial legislative measure known as the Congressional Review Act to undue scores of environmental regulations.

According to Claypool's Public Citizen report:

"Under the CRA Congress has 60 legislative working days to rescind any regulation finalized after June 13, 2016, a timeline that places at risk more than 50 major public protections as well as hundreds more. Additionally, once a rule is rescinded by a CRA vote, the issuing agency is blocked from creating a "substantially similar" rule without Congressional approval."




If there's a more blatant example of the subversion of the will of the individual American voter (aside from Trump winning the election) I'm not sure what it is.

That kind of deceptive overreaching use of legislative power to bend environmental regulations to the will of the corporate interests that pour hundreds of millions of dollars into lobbying members of Congress to put private profits ahead of the interests of American citizens and the environment is dangerous.

It's an affront to the basic principles of Democracy.

And it stands in total contrast to Trump's lofty windbag inauguration rhetoric about "transferring power from Washington, D.C., and giving it back to you the people."

With tools like the Congressional Review Act, power is now being pipelined directly to the entrenched corporate interests who work with the institutional Washington insiders that Trump spent months railing against.

All those working class voters who cheered at his rallies may like the cheaper gas prices in the short run.

But the righteous indignation that drove the "Drill baby, drill !" chants has given way to a disturbing complacency in the face of the creeping American corpratocracy now enveloping the very rights and freedoms they believed Herr Trump would restore.

Perhaps the anti-Muslim bigotry and religious hatred will serve as some kind of salve to numb them to the endless string of lies coming from the White House.

For now anyway.

Polarization In the Pipeline

Opposition to DAPL in Oklahoma on Tuesday

Critics of America's divisive new POTUS have pointed to his unpredictability as one of the numerous flaws in his shaky leadership style.

But on the first Tuesday of this fledgling administration Trump was anything but unpredictable as he signed a slew of executive orders that read like the start of an all-out assault on the environmental protections that keep our air, water and soil safe.



It's probably safe to say that those executive orders were, in part, a reaction to the fact his fragile ego is likely still bruised from all the Women's Marches that took place across America (and the world) on Saturday.

Trump's latest political boasting includes pledges to kickstart the stalled Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines, but if he had even a remote interest in reuniting a country left divided by his toxic presidential campaign, this was clearly not the move. But he did it anyway.

As a brief snapshot-reminder of just how divisive these pipeline projects are, my good friend and former high school classmate James sent me the above photo his wife took yesterday afternoon.

Now some of you may recall that James is a resident of the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma, a state where rampant natural gas fracking has already caused an exponential increase in earthquake activity - and yes, the state where Scott Pruitt, Trump's nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency served as attorney general.

James and his wife were just outside of Ada, Oklahoma on Tuesday when they saw the car pictured above with hand-drawn letters covering the back windshield spelling out the widely-shared Twitter hashtag,  #NoDAPL and the words "Water Is Life."

Major Canadian & U.S. pipelines 

It was encouraging to see that kind of grass roots resistance popping up so quickly after Trump's announcement about moving forward on both controversial pipeline projects.

The White House announcements also sparked quick reactions from environmental groups and politicians in Washington as well.

Including Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

The feisty former Democratic candidate, who made opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline a plank of his presidential campaign, defiantly Tweeted that "I will do everything I can to stop Keystone XL and DAPL."

Native American activists who spent months protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline quickly announced plans to oppose it in court if necessary, but the larger trend is troubling for America's natural, political and ethical environments.

Remember, Trump stands to reap massive personal windfalls as a direct result of his using his executive powers to push to approve these pipelines.

Most reasonable-minded folks would call that conflict of interest...on steroids.

Not only has the unpopular POTUS disclosed large personal investments in some of the major oil companies that have partnered to invest in building the DAPL, as Greenpeace.org reported he's accepted large campaign contributions from the CEO of the largest fracking company in America Harold Hamm.

Kelcy Warren, CEO of Energy Transfer Partners

Kelcy Warren, the CEO of Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the DAPL, donated $100,300 in campaign contributions to Trump's presidential campaign.

Trump is already facing a potential lawsuit filed on Monday by a team of legal and Constitutional scholars and experts who argue that his tangled secretive web of foreign investments represents a clear violation of the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

We should all familiarize ourselves with the Emoluments Clause by the way, the way Trump's transition is going, odds are good that we'll be hearing about it again soon.

The massive grassroots opposition to the DAPL and Keystone XL isn't just about those two specific projects, it's also about the larger threat to America's environmental protections that are now in the hands of a Republican president who thinks climate change is a "hoax" cooked up by the Chinese, and a Republican Congress largely bought and paid for the nations largest oil and gas companies.

There are other large-scale pipeline projects in the works that have received far less national media attention which also pose grave potential threats to the natural environment.

Like the Bayou Bridge Pipeline in Louisiana.

As New Orleans reporter Aviva Shen reported in an article posted on ThinkProgress.org back on January 14th, the Bayou Bridge Pipeline would form the final leg of the Dakota Access Route, forming a "bridge" pipeline that would link to an existing pipeline that stretches from Nederaland, Texas to Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Section of swamp in the Atchafalaya Basin

As Shen notes:

"The Bayou Bridge Pipeline would carry 480,000 barrels of oil a day a final 162 miles across the state to refineries and ports, through eight watersheds and long stretches of fragile wetlands."

That includes parts of the Atchafalaya Basin, a fragile system of rivers, swamps, bayous and wetlands covering 1.4 million acres that stretches 140 miles across central Louisiana.

Not only is it a National Heritage site, it's the largest area of wetlands and swamp in the United States teeming with wildlife where the Atchafalaya River meets the Gulf of Mexico.

The idea of a pipeline that carries 480,000 barrels of crude oil a day rupturing in a remote section of the Atchafalaya Basin is like imagining an environmental crime of incalculable proportions.

And remember that's oil we (Americans) don't actually need - the bulk of the tar sands crude extracted from North Dakota will be transported south to refineries and ports along the Gulf of Mexico where it will be loaded on to tankers and exported to other countries.

In the long term that has little to do with America's "energy independence", it only makes sense to the profit margins of the web of companies that will extract the oil, build the pipelines, refine the oil and ship it overseas to make a profit.

Trans-Pecos Pipeline cuts through Texas 

Profit (for a relative few) that comes at a cost to the environment that will be passed on to human, wildlife and plant life in the form of increased toxins in the soil, more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and contaminated fresh water from pipeline leaks.

There are real consequences to this fury of pipeline expansion, for example an Aljazeera.com article in 2015 reported an 87% increase in pipeline accidents between 2009 and 2014.

Not just oil pipelines either.

With America's untested Twitter-happy POTUS intentionally releasing outlandish headline-grabbing statements via his social media account on a daily basis to distract the media and public from all the real crazy shit Republicans are doing, it's pretty unlikely the words Trans-Pecos Pipeline will splash across the headlines of mainstream media anytime soon.

Since 2014 when it was first announced, local residents who live in the Big Bend region of Texas have been standing in opposition to this project that will transport fracked natural gas 143 miles from Texas to Mexico through a 42-inch diameter pipeline that will transport up to 1.4 million cubic-feet of natural gas per day under 1,400 pounds of pressure per square-inch.

Raise your hand if you'd want to live within a mile of that.

Who won the contract to build this $770 million project designed as a way to export some of the massive glut of natural gas in America (a result of rampant over-production) to a country with the 6th largest natural gas reserves in the world?

As MotherJones.com reported, two multi-billionaires, Mexican businessman Carlos Slim, the 2nd richest man in the world and (drum roll please....) Kelcy Warren, CEO of the aforementioned Energy Transfer Partners.

Same company building the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Same guy who's in business with Trump as you read these words and gave $100,300 to his campaign.

With the profiteering POTUS announcing that his own administration officials will now censor the science presented on the Web pages of the EPA, it's a clear signal that his goal is to allow fossil fuel companies unlimited leeway to encroach on the environment to increase their profits.

It's also clear that this slew of new pipeline construction is going to contribute far more to global warming and political polarization than it will to the long-term prosperity and best interests of the American people.

We're not in Kansas anymore, and we're way beyond "drill baby drill."

In Defiance of the Black Snake

Police using pepper spray on Standing Rock
protesters in North Dakota on Nov 2nd [Reuters]

Throughout modern history images like Nick Ut's Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of a young Kim Phuc fleeing a South Vietnamese village in 1972, after having her clothes burned off her body by Napalm dropped by South Vietnamese planes, have demonstrated the power of visual media to alter public perception and government policy and law on major social issues like the Vietnam War and civil rights.




But it remains to be seen whether images like the one seen above of heavily-armed members of local law enforcement using pepper spray against unarmed protesters trying to cross a stream near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation back in early November will move the Dakota Access Pipeline's principal owner, Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners, to seek an alternate route for the stretch of the pipeline that could potentially threaten the Missouri River - and the fresh water source for the Standing Rock Sioux.

Throughout Sunday night some truly disturbing images of local and state police using high-powered water cannons on unarmed demonstrators trying to cross a bridge were distributed across social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram until mainstream media finally began devoting coverage of the incident.

I watched a short video posted on Twitter of a medic who was treating injured protesters at a make-shift first-aid station at the Standing Rock camp; he said the use of water cannons had caused a number of minor injuries created when people fell trying to get away.

Standing Rock protesters being hosed by
water cannons Sunday night

He also said people were being treated after being shot by rubber bullets.

Drone footage showed some limited ariel shots of the incident, including efforts by police to used the water cannons to take out the drone to prevent footage of the confrontation from being leaked to the media.





Accounts from other medics on the scene reported that up to 200 people were injured from shrapnel from concussion grenades, bean bags fired at point blank range and symptoms of hypothermia from some protesters who were intentionally doused with water while temperatures were in the 20's - causing their clothes to freeze.

Proponents of the DAPL claim that the 1,127 mile pipeline is a safer option than rail cars to transport highly volatile crude oil from the Bakken Shelf in North Dakota down through South Dakota and Iowa to a terminal storage facility in Illinois.

But Energy Transfer Partners have offered little in the way of guarantees that the company would be financially equipped or prepared to deal with the major environmental consequences of a serious pipeline break - as a Wikipedia article reports the state of Iowa only requires pipeline owners to keep a $250,000 surety bond on hold in the event of a major spill.

Think about that.

Ruptured section of the Kalamazoo pipeline 

How far is $250,000 going to go to cover a major underground pipeline break that spills hundreds of thousands of gallons of thick, viscous Bakken crude that could threaten wildlife, farm land and fresh water supplies?

Environmental organizations estimate that at least $1 billion needs to be held in reserve to deal with a major accident.

Remember the pipeline rupture in Kalamazoo, Michigan back in 2010?

The Canadian oil company Enbridge ignored three separate reports about the six-foot section of ruptured section of pipeline that eventually spilled over a million gallons of heavy Tar Sands oil into a section of the Kalamazoo River that spilled 40 miles downstream, drenching animals and 4,435 acres of land along the river bank.

That man-made disaster cost Enbridge $1.2 billion to clean up, a $177 million settlement, it displaced over 150 families and closed sections of the Kalamazoo River for two years.

Oh and Enbridge is one of the partners in the Dakota Access Pipeline.

It's pretty clear that Energy Transport Partners is basically expecting the American taxpayers to pick up the bill while they reap the profits of this $3.7 billion project; and they'll basically lawyer their way around responsibility if and when there's an accident on the 1,172 miles of the DAPL.

A consortium of 17 different global banks including Citibank, TD Securities, and BNP Paribas provided $2.5 billion in loans to finance the project; the remaining $1.2 billion was raised by ETP selling stakes in the pipeline to Phillips 66, Enbridge and Marathon Oil.

Energy Transfer Partners CEO
Kelcy Warren

The prospects of a Trump presidency aren't good for opponents of the pipeline either.

In addition to the untold number of personal business conflicts of interest presented by the president-elect's global business interests (many of which the public doesn't even know about because of his refusal to release his tax returns), the CEO of Energy Transfer Partners Kelcy Warren personally donated $103,000 to organizations that supported Trump's campaign.

According to an article posted on Democracy Now, Warren has also given thousands of dollars in political contributions to House Speaker Paul Ryan, House Energy Chair Fred Upton and Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chair Lisa Murkowski.

Oh and ETP also has it's own PAC. Really.





So in addition to the over 71,000 miles of oil pipelines around that nation that ETP owns, thanks to the Supreme Court it also has a direct and anonymous unlimited pipeline of cash it can inject directly into a web of other conservative petroleum-friendly PACs that support Republicans who deny the existence of climate change and can't say no to Big Oil.

Trump also has investment ties with Phillips 66, and may have additional financial interests to some of the 17 banks that financed the DAPL.

It's an ethical mess of epic proportions that's going to roll right through four states.

With billions at stake for the pipeline, hundreds of thousands of dollars donated to Congressional Republicans in Washington who control the environmental laws and regulations that allowed it to be built with superficial environmental impact studies, the hundreds of indigenous peoples camped out near the Standing Rock reservation have a steep hill to climb.

As Native American activist Iysukin American Horse eloquently wrote in The Guardian back in August, many of the hundreds of members of different tribes who've gathered near the Standing Rock reservation see this not as a political fight.

But as a spiritual battle to protect their source of water, their land and their way of life.


Increasingly many see this pipeline designed to transport over 400,000 barrels of Bakken crude oil per day as the manifestation of the apocalyptic Native American prophecy of The Black Snake - which their elders foretold would destroy their way of life if not defeated.

Considering the forces behind the pipeline and the growing power of the corporatocracy it represents, The Black Snake is a truly dangerous creature.

And as the brutal attacks by local and state police against hundreds of protesters demonstrated last night, that Snake is already trying to destroy the way of life of the Original Americans.  

Let's hope those horrific images of violent police overreach on behalf of this consortium of pipeline producers, oil companies, banks and politicians continues to turn the powerful tide of public opinion in favor of environmental and human rights, and the basic principle of Democracy on which this nation was founded.

And Justice For Some

Standing Rock protesters confront bulldozers
clearing land for the Dakota Access Pipeline

This morning University of North Dakota faculty member and journalist Mark Trahant and Native American activist Winona LaDuke were interviewed on The Brian Lehrer Show.

They shared updates from the front lines of the ongoing efforts to block the Dakota Access Pipeline from infringing on Native American sovereignty and land - and threatening their fresh water supply.

Something Flint, Michigan residents know a little about.

Despite efforts by the federal government, police and private interests to quash this protest, it's only growing.

This morning dozens of people were on hand inside Grand Central Terminal's cavernous main hall to chant and voice their support for the Standing Rock Sioux's quest to protect their water supply; adding to the already significant social media coverage.

In response to reports that law enforcement officials were trying to track individual protesters on Facebook, more than a million people across the globe have used Facebook's Check-In feature to falsely claim to be at the protest site in North Dakota to confuse online surveillance efforts.

The crackdown by authorities against unarmed people in North Dakota is a far cry from how police and federal agents responded to the heavily-armed militants who occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in a remote area of Oregon last January.  

Ammon Bundy & the six co-defendants
who were acquitted in federal court

As you may have heard just last Thursday a  jury in federal court acquitted anti-government zealot brothers Ammon and Ryan Bundy and five co-defendants of various charges related to their 41-day occupation.

One day later on Friday, about 1,260 miles away near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota, heavily armed police in riot gear arrested at least 142 unarmed protesters demanding a halt to construction of a section of the Dakota Access Oil Pipeline.

The $3.8 billion pipeline is slated to carry crude oil from North Dakota to southern Illinois, and a stretch of the pipeline will pass near a dam directly underneath a section of the Missouri River just half a mile upstream from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation.

An accident or damage to that section of the pipeline could potentially threaten the fresh water supply of not just the Sioux, but to farms and other families all along the Missouri in that part of the state.

Read through Alexander Sammon's brief timeline of the Standing Rock Sioux's efforts to block the pipeline; posted on MotherJones.com back on September 9th.

The Sioux Tribal Chairman in conjunction with the Tribal Historic Preservation Office, followed established procedure in their efforts to demand that the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) conduct an investigation to determine the archaeological significance of the section of Sioux land in question - land which the tribe considers sacred.

But repeated written requests were ignored and the USACE basically fast-tracked the permitting process for construction of the pipeline to proceed with virtually no significant environmental impact study - as Sammon reported "Permit 12" covers some 200 different sites covering four states over which the pipeline will pass.

A dog handler confronts protectors
on the weekend of Sept. 3rd

The efforts to block construction of the pipeline that began last summer eventually drew hundreds of members of indigenous tribes from all over the world, as well as thousands of people outraged over the federal government colluding with a private energy company in what some called the largest organized Native American protest in U.S. history.

They began calling themselves "protectors" instead of protestors in light of the fact that they were there to protect the drinking water supply.

But the peaceful opposition reached a violent head on the weekend of September 3rd when Dakota Access, LLC, the company building the pipeline, brought in private security contractors to protect bulldozers clearing land.

Cameras captured inexperienced handlers releasing attack dogs directly into crowds of unarmed people; a number of protectors were bitten, including a child.


The private security personnel also used mace on protesters who were upset over the bulldozers having plowed up swaths of what tribal members claim is a Sioux burial ground.

That scene was repeated last week when large numbers of police in body armor and helmets holding shields wielding long batons, supported by police in armored vehicles, helicopters and ATV's began trying to clear Native Americans from a large campground area; some of whom were on horseback.

Over the course of the Standing Rock protests over 400 people have been arrested.

Hundreds of unarmed indigenous people
engaged in non-violent opposition

Now if you compare the protests by the unarmed members of the Standing Rock Sioux and their indigenous brethren trying to block an oil pipeline from infringing on a natural water supply with Ammon Bundy's group of heavily armed militia members occupation of a federal wildlife refuge facility, there are some similarities.

Both groups were seeking rulings from the federal government related to the oversight of land.


The Sioux initially followed established legal procedure in their written response to the Corps of Engineers and requests for an independent environmental impact study and an investigation to determine if sections of land slated for pipeline construction were burial grounds.

Bundy and his heavily-armed posse of sovereign citizen militia members (most of whom don't even live in the remote Oregon community they occupied) took over a federal wildlife refuge based on a separate court case that had nothing to do with them, their own anti-government grievances and obscure interpretations of law and federal jurisdiction.

But the way in which law enforcement officials responded to the protests by both groups is a troubling example of the inherent bias within the the U.S. justice system based on race and ethnicity.

Ammon Bundy addresses the press during the
Oregon occupation 

Ammon Bundy, a hero of the sovereign citizen movement, has a history of violent confrontation with the federal government stretching back to his father's anti-government confrontations.

Nevada Rancher Cliven Bundy's years of refusal to pay the government grazing fees for the large numbers of his cattle that he kept on federally owned land culminated in a standoff in April, 2014 that garnered national media attention.

In a move that reinforces the old adage "like father like son", on January 2, 2016 after speaking at a rally held in a Safeway parking lot in Burns, Oregon in support of Dwight and Steven Hammond, two men convicted and jailed for setting fire to federal land, Ammon Bundy and a group of armed militants drove to the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and occupied a collection of buildings.

Their goal was to try to force the federal government to release the Hammonds from jail and also turn over the 187,757 acres of the wildlife refuge established by President Teddy Roosevelt in 1908 to private citizens for "logging and recreational activities".

By the way the Hammonds had accepted their federal sentences for arson and voluntarily showed up to serve their time in jail - they also told the Bundys they didn't want their militia using their court case to justify the illegal occupation of the Malheur Refuge, but that didn't deter the Bundys.

One of Bundy's armed followers during the 
January occupation in Oregon

Their standoff generated global media attention and lasted for 41 days until Bundy and his brother were stopped by Oregon State Police while driving to speak at a local senior center and taken into custody.

But not before one of their followers, Robert "LaVoy" Finicum was shot and killed by police while reaching for a pistol after trying to flee the police stop.




So again, you compare the Bundy's occupation with the peaceful protests by the Sioux and the thousands of followers who've traveled to North Dakota to join them.

One group was heavily armed, the other brandish only signs in a show of nonviolence resistance.

Not only did Bundy's followers openly brandish their weapons in a manner that could be interpreted as threatening and hostile, they actually invited more people to bring their weapons and travel there to join them in an illegal occupation of a federal wildlife facility.

Bundy and his armed posse not only occupied federal property with demands that it be turned over to private citizens, they openly used language suggesting they were prepared for some kind of apocalyptic shoot-out with federal agents and also called for other armed individuals from around the country to bring weapons to the site and join the armed siege.

What did law enforcement do to move Bundy off the wildlife refuge?

Nothing.

Native American activist Winona LaDuke

They never stormed the buildings, they even let Bundy and some of his followers come and go as they pleased for much of the siege.

Meanwhile in North Dakota, unarmed protesters (including old women and children) have been maced, had attack dogs set on them, been beaten with batons, shot at with bean bag guns and been subjected to deafening noise designed to disperse crowds.


Over 400 have been arrested and jailed - some of them held in cages in a parking lot.

As Winona LaDuke said this morning during her interview, the efforts to protect the fresh water supply and prevent a large company from laying a crude oil pipeline over land granted to the Standing Rock Sioux by federal treaty isn't over.

Bundy and his armed followers have been acquitted of all charges, reinforcing the widely-held belief that the way law enforcement deals with Americans who occupy land depends less on whether they're armed and acting legally, or unarmed and acting peacefully - and more on their race and ethnicity.

In America some get justice, some get the business end of the stick.