It was announced today that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will not be granting an easement for the Dakota Access Pipeline that would have allowed the pipeline to be built under Lake Oahe in southern North Dakota. THE BLACK SNAKE HAS BEEN STOPPED!
Terry
Sunday, December 4, 2016
Wednesday, November 30, 2016
Name of the Day: SNOOPER'S CHARTER
(c) 2010, The Wor(l)d Has Changed
Yet another blow to your privacy, specifically the Internet privacy of British users, was dealt in the United Kingdom yesterday. It is believed to be a precedent that will be followed by other countries. It's been nicknamed the Snooper's Law or the Snooper's Charter and what it allows is terrifying. Tim Berners-Lee has a lot to say about the topic. If his name doesn't ring a bell, Tim Berners-Lee is the man who really did invent the Internet -- sorry, Al Gore -- and is currently head of the World Wide Consortium (W3C), is founder of the Web Foundation, and is co-founder of the Open Data Institute in London, England. Berners-Lee calls the Investigatory Powers Bill, which is the British legislation's official title, a "security nightmare". James Blessing, the Chairman of Internet Service Providers Association, called the bill "a zombie which has been [around] since 2007, [but now] it's alive". Even whistleblower Edward Snowden referred to the bill as the West's most extreme surveillance program ever.
Why all the hub-bub? Well, what the English Parliament did was to require all records from any Internet service provider (ISP) or any messaging service -- yes, that means smartphones, iPhones, etc. -- of sites visited or used by anyone in the United Kingdom to be kept for one year. That's right, all records kept for one year. A petition against the bill was started after the bill passed, but has garnered more than 100,000 signers. That means it will be debated in Parliament, but will likely have no effect on the bill.
How did this happen? A couple of factors played into the result. For one, English politicians are not well-versed in technology, or even just the Internet itself, and therefore had nothing of their own foreknowledge with which to decide. That ignorance also played into a second factor of those same politicians turning a deaf ear to pleas against the bill from the technology industry in general, privacy supporters, and Internet service providers. It was along the lines of thinking I don't know that much, so why learn anything more?
Clearly, those same politicians took no account of what the result of the bill passing would be.
In this upside-down year of 2016, one must also consider a likely third factor: living in a post-Brexit vote world. So much going on can cloud one's (or even a collective's) perception. Not to mention the Investigator Powers Bill being over 500 pages long certainly did not help.
The bill further loosens Internet security in the UK by allowing any entity at all, from the local police all the way up to any government body, to legally request any information whatsoever. As the bill stands, no independent body can "mind the store", as it were, about who is requesting and what is requested. Additionally, new legal punishments are included for "offenders".
In light of what happened yesterday in England, it would seem that the security and liberty destroyers' clarion call of If you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear is still, as 100% logical as it sounds on the surface, an effective persuasion. In a perfect world, that would be certainly true. It may take a lot of terrible things to happen first, but people are slowly beginning to learn that that very persuasion is, in fact, a perversion of the truth.
Terry
Tuesday, November 29, 2016
The Keyboard Commentarian: Phrase of the Day: DEFEND THE SACRED [3RD UPDATE]...
The Keyboard Commentarian: Phrase of the Day: DEFEND THE SACRED [3RD UPDATE]...: The debacle that is currently going on in North Dakota began in 2014 and is fully funded by corporate greed. You don't know to what ...
Thursday, November 10, 2016
Phrase of the Day: PROVE ME WRONG
The 2016 presidential election here in the U.S. is finally over and thank goodness it is! What an aggravating, infuriating, and tiring process it has been! Even though the candidate I thought would win did not win, this election has been nothing short of disgusting. The whole process, from the primaries, to the conventions, to the election itself two days ago, has been a mockery of the American electoral process, nothing shy of a spit in the face of what it should be. While having primaries, conventions, and elections are a part of a democracy, and even though this nation's forefathers knew, all too well, that democracy is messy, the depths of a garbage pit to which this year's election sank are not a pro-democratic process argument.
I have already heard on social media and TV calls for peace and unity. After such a nationally-divisive and political party-destroying process, they are appropriate. However, with emotions running high, there must be a venting and grieving period. No, not a burn-it-all-down mentality -- I am not proposing mass anarchy here -- but those periods must be allowed. Not everyone is satisfied with the election of any President -- that's part of the democracy -- but, let's be honest, the levels of division, hatred, and fear, mandate a venting and grieving period.
This year's presidential race had, at one point, a total of twenty-two candidates: seventeen Republican, three Democrat, and two major third-party. (There were many, many more candidates, as anyone can officially register to be a presidential candidates, but they never gain any national attention.) Twenty-two candidates were whittled down to four (Republican, Democrat, and both major third-party), and most people were not satisfied with the nominees or were just worn out from the lengthy election season. It was reported that sixty percent of eligible voters went ahead and voted this year. While the popular vote is roughly split down the middle, which may make you think that the entire country was split down the middle, in actuality, the split is down the middle of sixty percent, not the entire country. Half of sixty percent is thirty percent, so the largest block of eligible voters passed on voting (30%, 30%, 40%). While Hillary Clinton, as of this writing, is ahead in the popular vote, none of them is, in fact, in the majority.
Donald Trump won the Presidency with roughly seventy percent of the country not voting for him.
The American political primary process is a joke, and that's putting it nicely. First off, it is far, far, FAR too long. Like our perpetual war modality, we are also in a perpetual election modality. (I heard politicians and political pundits talking about the 2016 elections about a month after the 2012 elections were held ... before Obama was even sworn in for his second term!) Canada's political primary process, for example, runs about a month. (Its longest ever was two-and-a-half months, and that was ninety years ago.) In Britain, elections are legally mandated to be no more than approximately three weeks. Italy's elections run about less than two months, and elections in the Netherlands run about two-and-a-half months. The American process truly does not need to be that long, not to mention the way it is now is far too expensive. In his 2013 article for The Daily Beast, titled Too Soon for 2016! How to End Our Endless Presidential Election Season, Political Science professor and author Raymond A. Smith proposed the following:
"The selection of a new U.S. President could be streamlined, yet not unduly
rushed, by holding a single nationwide primary around Independence Day,
party conventions in August, debates in October, and the general election in
November. Adopting this model would dramatically shorten the length and
intensity of the negative campaigning that now turns off so many voters. It
could also reduce the exorbitant expense of our elections; the BBC has
estimated that the 2012 U.S. presidential election costs about 120 times
more than the 2010 U.K. parliamentary election, which works out to some
23 times more per capita."
I would include in the above discussion the political conventions in this country, which have become, over time, mostly bloated summertime TV miniseries.
The verbal bile about opponents that is spewed out on the campaign trail, in interviews, at debates, and during the post-convention race is also a disgrace. I believe in freedom of speech, but the vernacular vomit during this campaign was disgusting. Do they have the freedom to say those things, of course they do. Freedom is not, however, equivocal with requirement, but freedom does include responsibility. Politicians need to be responsible enough (as well as respectful of the process) to simply draw differences and avoid this terrible behavior. Has this bashing, trashing, and mudslinging (although that last word seems quaint in light of modern political campaigns) been introduced in 2016? Of course not. It has, however, been getting worse election cycle after election cycle. People are fed up with "negative campaigns" and politicians talk about not wanting to engage in them, but they continue and intensify over time. One big reason that people have less and less respect for the political process is that those in the forefronts of the process have less and less respect for it.
The worst exception to all of this, however, has occurred during this election cycle. While official positions and intended actions on a number of issues remain paramount to most voters, this year's Republican candidate, Donald Trump, was nominated and elected President after his open displays and comments of racism, xenophobia, bullying, condoned assault of women, and encouraged acts of violence came to light. Not to mention his comments showing an ignorance to how the world and international relations work, which has many people in this country and both leaders and citizens of other countries shaking in their boots. To that extent, he now has to deliver on the bill of goods he sold during his campaign or else all of those who voted for him will feel betrayed. I wholeheartedly do not want to see him do everything he has promised, or even half of it, but if he doesn't follow through, it's a consequence of a political system that has sunk, and continues to sink, deeper and deeper into making the democratic process even more distasteful and divisive (i.e. campaign talk and once-elected talk are two radically different things). I am not the only who is disgusted with that kind of disparity.
The injection of an entity this year, as in many election cycles past, which has no business in doing so, Christians/Conservative Christians/Evangelical Christians, did, and has continued to, disrespect and dismantle what our forefathers intended for this country. (It also showed their hypocrisy.) This country was not founded to be what those who came here were escaping; they wanted something different. This country was founded to be a free nation with some influence of Christian beliefs, not a "Christian" nation with limited freedom of varying beliefs. You want to meet as Christians to talk politics, go ahead. You want to have a major influence (statewide or nationally) as a Christian and not strictly as an interested citizen, well, that is not in the spirit of the founding of this country. Our forefathers never intended for religion to never be mentioned publicly, but they also did not want the new nation to be an as-the-King-goes-so-goes-the-kingdom enterprise, either. We were never intended to be a theocracy or a theo-political demagoguery.
The injection of another entity which has no business in the election process, the FBI, into this election was yet another failure of the system. FBI Director James Comey was under a lot of pressure to look into the thousands of E-mails Hillary Clinton had received and sent on a private server and to proceed with an investigation. When Comey said there was nothing that warranted pursuing prosecution back in July, even though Republicans continued to harp on it, that should have been the end of it. (Yes, sometimes inappropriate and sloppy behavior is not prosecutable behavior.) Under even more pressure than before, Comey comes out eleven days before the election to announce ... nothing (i.e. there may be something there, there may not be). Thus, the reintroduction of what was supposed to have been a dead issue less than two weeks away from the election is highly suspect and could have had some level of impact on voting. (Even the U.S. Department of Justice did not want Comey to come forward with simply a maybe.) Then, his sending a letter to Congress, just two days before the election that there was, after all, nothing new certainly looks equally suspect, as well as just plain ridiculous. Sure, coming out after the election and saying there was something found, if Clinton had been elected, would have made him look partisan ... what he ended up doing still resulted in the same, as well as making himself look like a joke.
Regarding a rigged election, the one thing I equate Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders with Donald Trump is that the election process is rigged. There were a couple of states in the Republican primaries where Trump had won, but another candidate received more delegates. Bernie Sanders pointing out that several hundred delegates were allocated to Hillary Clinton before he even got into the race is not indicative of a free and open system. In addition, the Democratic Party's practice of "superdelegates", which stemmed from the 1968 and 1972 Democratic conventions and respective presidential elections, and began being used at the 1984 Democratic convention, is another mockery of fair and open elections. Superdelegates, in essence, have more power, ultimately, than standard convention delegates, They are unbound delegates, unlike standard delegates, so they can vote for whomever they wish, but they do not pledge their votes until the national convention. Major news outlets were asked to not include superdelegate totals throughout the primaries this year, but many of them did, creating a false sense of distance between Clinton delegates and Sanders delegates. That, too, is not indicative of a fair and open election process. Third-party candidates have complained about this for years. (As a corollary, legislative elections in Romania will be held next month and there will be candidates from fifteen political parties on the ballot -- not just running, but on the ballot.)
I, too, think the entire U.S. election process, in both parties, is rigged, or slanted, or fudged, or skewed.
How someone so distrustful and boorish like Donald Trump can be elected President is not just about voter backlash, although that is a huge part of it. It is also not the reason the system is a disgrace. It is the result of a disgraceful process. In a historical perspective, aside from measuring how the process has deteriorated over the years, look at where this country went from 2008 to 2016. We went from electing and re-electing this country's first black President to electing someone as President who was openly endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups. What a step forward!
Even though no President ever accomplishes everything they promise, all we have to go on is what that candidate has said. I believe that Donald Trump is dangerous for this country, both domestically and internationally. I think his proposed policies and actions are ruinous and will make us more unstable and divided domestically, more hated internationally, and far less safe as a whole, and I am worried about my country's future. I am a big enough boy to eat my words and apologize if I'm wrong, but I voted in this election and that is how I sincerely feel in its aftermath.
As a citizen of this country, Mr. Trump, please prove me wrong.
Terry
I have already heard on social media and TV calls for peace and unity. After such a nationally-divisive and political party-destroying process, they are appropriate. However, with emotions running high, there must be a venting and grieving period. No, not a burn-it-all-down mentality -- I am not proposing mass anarchy here -- but those periods must be allowed. Not everyone is satisfied with the election of any President -- that's part of the democracy -- but, let's be honest, the levels of division, hatred, and fear, mandate a venting and grieving period.
This year's presidential race had, at one point, a total of twenty-two candidates: seventeen Republican, three Democrat, and two major third-party. (There were many, many more candidates, as anyone can officially register to be a presidential candidates, but they never gain any national attention.) Twenty-two candidates were whittled down to four (Republican, Democrat, and both major third-party), and most people were not satisfied with the nominees or were just worn out from the lengthy election season. It was reported that sixty percent of eligible voters went ahead and voted this year. While the popular vote is roughly split down the middle, which may make you think that the entire country was split down the middle, in actuality, the split is down the middle of sixty percent, not the entire country. Half of sixty percent is thirty percent, so the largest block of eligible voters passed on voting (30%, 30%, 40%). While Hillary Clinton, as of this writing, is ahead in the popular vote, none of them is, in fact, in the majority.
Donald Trump won the Presidency with roughly seventy percent of the country not voting for him.
The American political primary process is a joke, and that's putting it nicely. First off, it is far, far, FAR too long. Like our perpetual war modality, we are also in a perpetual election modality. (I heard politicians and political pundits talking about the 2016 elections about a month after the 2012 elections were held ... before Obama was even sworn in for his second term!) Canada's political primary process, for example, runs about a month. (Its longest ever was two-and-a-half months, and that was ninety years ago.) In Britain, elections are legally mandated to be no more than approximately three weeks. Italy's elections run about less than two months, and elections in the Netherlands run about two-and-a-half months. The American process truly does not need to be that long, not to mention the way it is now is far too expensive. In his 2013 article for The Daily Beast, titled Too Soon for 2016! How to End Our Endless Presidential Election Season, Political Science professor and author Raymond A. Smith proposed the following:
"The selection of a new U.S. President could be streamlined, yet not unduly
rushed, by holding a single nationwide primary around Independence Day,
party conventions in August, debates in October, and the general election in
November. Adopting this model would dramatically shorten the length and
intensity of the negative campaigning that now turns off so many voters. It
could also reduce the exorbitant expense of our elections; the BBC has
estimated that the 2012 U.S. presidential election costs about 120 times
more than the 2010 U.K. parliamentary election, which works out to some
23 times more per capita."
I would include in the above discussion the political conventions in this country, which have become, over time, mostly bloated summertime TV miniseries.
The verbal bile about opponents that is spewed out on the campaign trail, in interviews, at debates, and during the post-convention race is also a disgrace. I believe in freedom of speech, but the vernacular vomit during this campaign was disgusting. Do they have the freedom to say those things, of course they do. Freedom is not, however, equivocal with requirement, but freedom does include responsibility. Politicians need to be responsible enough (as well as respectful of the process) to simply draw differences and avoid this terrible behavior. Has this bashing, trashing, and mudslinging (although that last word seems quaint in light of modern political campaigns) been introduced in 2016? Of course not. It has, however, been getting worse election cycle after election cycle. People are fed up with "negative campaigns" and politicians talk about not wanting to engage in them, but they continue and intensify over time. One big reason that people have less and less respect for the political process is that those in the forefronts of the process have less and less respect for it.
The worst exception to all of this, however, has occurred during this election cycle. While official positions and intended actions on a number of issues remain paramount to most voters, this year's Republican candidate, Donald Trump, was nominated and elected President after his open displays and comments of racism, xenophobia, bullying, condoned assault of women, and encouraged acts of violence came to light. Not to mention his comments showing an ignorance to how the world and international relations work, which has many people in this country and both leaders and citizens of other countries shaking in their boots. To that extent, he now has to deliver on the bill of goods he sold during his campaign or else all of those who voted for him will feel betrayed. I wholeheartedly do not want to see him do everything he has promised, or even half of it, but if he doesn't follow through, it's a consequence of a political system that has sunk, and continues to sink, deeper and deeper into making the democratic process even more distasteful and divisive (i.e. campaign talk and once-elected talk are two radically different things). I am not the only who is disgusted with that kind of disparity.
The injection of an entity this year, as in many election cycles past, which has no business in doing so, Christians/Conservative Christians/Evangelical Christians, did, and has continued to, disrespect and dismantle what our forefathers intended for this country. (It also showed their hypocrisy.) This country was not founded to be what those who came here were escaping; they wanted something different. This country was founded to be a free nation with some influence of Christian beliefs, not a "Christian" nation with limited freedom of varying beliefs. You want to meet as Christians to talk politics, go ahead. You want to have a major influence (statewide or nationally) as a Christian and not strictly as an interested citizen, well, that is not in the spirit of the founding of this country. Our forefathers never intended for religion to never be mentioned publicly, but they also did not want the new nation to be an as-the-King-goes-so-goes-the-kingdom enterprise, either. We were never intended to be a theocracy or a theo-political demagoguery.
The injection of another entity which has no business in the election process, the FBI, into this election was yet another failure of the system. FBI Director James Comey was under a lot of pressure to look into the thousands of E-mails Hillary Clinton had received and sent on a private server and to proceed with an investigation. When Comey said there was nothing that warranted pursuing prosecution back in July, even though Republicans continued to harp on it, that should have been the end of it. (Yes, sometimes inappropriate and sloppy behavior is not prosecutable behavior.) Under even more pressure than before, Comey comes out eleven days before the election to announce ... nothing (i.e. there may be something there, there may not be). Thus, the reintroduction of what was supposed to have been a dead issue less than two weeks away from the election is highly suspect and could have had some level of impact on voting. (Even the U.S. Department of Justice did not want Comey to come forward with simply a maybe.) Then, his sending a letter to Congress, just two days before the election that there was, after all, nothing new certainly looks equally suspect, as well as just plain ridiculous. Sure, coming out after the election and saying there was something found, if Clinton had been elected, would have made him look partisan ... what he ended up doing still resulted in the same, as well as making himself look like a joke.
Regarding a rigged election, the one thing I equate Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders with Donald Trump is that the election process is rigged. There were a couple of states in the Republican primaries where Trump had won, but another candidate received more delegates. Bernie Sanders pointing out that several hundred delegates were allocated to Hillary Clinton before he even got into the race is not indicative of a free and open system. In addition, the Democratic Party's practice of "superdelegates", which stemmed from the 1968 and 1972 Democratic conventions and respective presidential elections, and began being used at the 1984 Democratic convention, is another mockery of fair and open elections. Superdelegates, in essence, have more power, ultimately, than standard convention delegates, They are unbound delegates, unlike standard delegates, so they can vote for whomever they wish, but they do not pledge their votes until the national convention. Major news outlets were asked to not include superdelegate totals throughout the primaries this year, but many of them did, creating a false sense of distance between Clinton delegates and Sanders delegates. That, too, is not indicative of a fair and open election process. Third-party candidates have complained about this for years. (As a corollary, legislative elections in Romania will be held next month and there will be candidates from fifteen political parties on the ballot -- not just running, but on the ballot.)
I, too, think the entire U.S. election process, in both parties, is rigged, or slanted, or fudged, or skewed.
How someone so distrustful and boorish like Donald Trump can be elected President is not just about voter backlash, although that is a huge part of it. It is also not the reason the system is a disgrace. It is the result of a disgraceful process. In a historical perspective, aside from measuring how the process has deteriorated over the years, look at where this country went from 2008 to 2016. We went from electing and re-electing this country's first black President to electing someone as President who was openly endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups. What a step forward!
Even though no President ever accomplishes everything they promise, all we have to go on is what that candidate has said. I believe that Donald Trump is dangerous for this country, both domestically and internationally. I think his proposed policies and actions are ruinous and will make us more unstable and divided domestically, more hated internationally, and far less safe as a whole, and I am worried about my country's future. I am a big enough boy to eat my words and apologize if I'm wrong, but I voted in this election and that is how I sincerely feel in its aftermath.
As a citizen of this country, Mr. Trump, please prove me wrong.
Terry
Friday, October 14, 2016
The Keyboard Commentarian: Phrase of the Day: DEFEND THE SACRED [2ND UPDATE]...
The Keyboard Commentarian: Phrase of the Day: DEFEND THE SACRED [2ND UPDATE]...: The debacle that is currently going on in North Dakota began in 2014 and is fully funded by corporate greed. You don't know to what ...
Monday, September 12, 2016
Film of the Day: 9/11 EXPOSED - 2ND EDITION
Yesterday, this country marked the fifteenth anniversary of the terrorist attack on September 11th. It was a sad day in this nation's history, to be sure, but here we are, a decade-and-a-half later.
On many pictures and memes on the Internet about that day, you often see wording about always remembering that terrible day. Often times, the phrases "We will/shall never forget" or simply "Never forget", as in the picture at the top of this post, are most notable. Some may argue that keeping this as a yearly reminder serves the elite to keep us afraid. I believe there is some validity to that. Some may argue that we should commemorate a national tragedy every year on its anniversary, with which I wholeheartedly agree.
What I would hope with respect to remembering, in addition to commemorating the anniversary, is to keep the public's interest in this tragedy and spark an even bigger flame of curiosity. Curiosity so big as to inspire more and more inquiries into what really happened that day and what steps led up to it. Some has already come out, and more has yet to be uncovered.
One year ago today, I posted a film looking into what happened on that fateful day, titled 'Anatomy of a Great Deception'. Today, I offer another film on the same subject, '9/11 Exposed: 2nd Edition', which was released last year. (The original documentary was also released last year, with the 2nd Edition being an update.)
As with 'Anatomy of a Great Deception', dismiss this as conspiracy ramblings or give it a serious watch.
Terry
Thursday, September 8, 2016
Phrase of the Day: DEFEND THE SACRED [3RD UPDATE]
The debacle that is currently going on in North Dakota began in 2014 and is fully funded by corporate greed. You don't know to what I am referring? That's not surprising. This story has received very little exposure on the national news. That, too, is not surprising since corporate interests trumping people's rights to clean water and previously set-in-place treaties is what is going on there.
The Sioux Nation's Standing Rock Reservation is the site of the stand-off between Native American tribespeople and both the U.S. government and Energy Transfer Partners, a Texas-based oil company. Land treaties have been in place for centuries, most notably the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux of 1851 and the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868. Not that the treaties were honored up until now. General George Custer -- yes, that General Custer -- led a gold expedition on Sioux land six years after the latter treaty, as well as U.S. troops at the battle of Little Bighorn River. The following year, in 1877, the U.S. government confiscated the land, and the land has remained in dispute ever since.
The Dakota Access Pipeline is going to cross over sacred Native American lands and burial sites. In response to a clearing out of a two-mile-long, 150-foot-wide patch of land last Saturday, former Sioux tribal historical preservation officer of the Standing Rock tribe, Tim Mentz, stated, "I surveyed this land, and we confirmed multiple graves and specific prayers sites. Portions, and possibly complete sites, have been taken out entirely." Tribal chairman David Archambault II also added, "These grounds are the resting places of our ancestors. The ancient cairns and stone prayer rings there cannot be replaced. In one day, our sacred land has been turned into hollow ground."
Crossing sacred lands, several rivers which are valuable drinking water supplies to native peoples, will be in the path of the pipeline. Understandably, since this country's record of pipeline fractures does not instill faith, risking something vital to life itself, water, is beyond troubling. It is a threat to life itself.
It turns out that the government oversight on the project only covered government-owned lands, but not Sioux nation lands. The moving forward is based on supposition. The Dakota Access Pipeline is only part of a larger network of pipelines designed to transfer tar sands oil, the dirtiest kind of oil, down to refineries in the gulf region of Texas.
While it is based in supposition, how is it funded? I think you will find how it is funded simultaneously answers the questions of why it is being pushed and receiving little news coverage nationally.
All of the major recipients of revolving credit lines or loans are all under the Energy Transfer Partners umbrella.
The standoff has been steadfast on both sides. Last Saturday, bulldozing of sacred lands commenced. In addition, the protest by Native American tribespeople and other Americans alike became violent. (Warning: some strong language)
As of today, North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple has activated the state's National Guard to assist police onsite.
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe was successful in getting a temporary restraining order, halting progress on the bulldozing the land pending a judge's decision on a larger lawsuit, expected to come tomorrow. In July, they filed for an injunction against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for giving the green light for the work to proceed. It its filing, Standing Rock wrote the following:
"In the afternoon of Friday, September 2, 2016, the SRST [Standing Rock Sioux
Tribe] further submitted recently discovered evidence of an astonishing
archaeological find. The find concerned historically, culturally, and religiously
important stone features and grave markings to the successors of the Great
Sioux Nation, including graves of chiefs, warriors and Bear Medicine healers.
These formations and grave sites are adjacent to and in the pipeline's proposed
right-of-way approximately 1 to 2 miles away from the Lake Oahe crossing site.
Less than 24 hours after SRST's filing, Dakota Access desecrated and destroyed
the sites described in SRST;s declaration."
Dakota Access LLC has denied the tribe's claims.
There may be people who ask about the importance of burial lands in the first place. We, in this industrialized and materialistic society in which we live, also consider burial grounds sacred. If not sacred in a religious sense, at least in a civilly reverential sense. With that in mind, I wonder if the tables were turned. What if Standing Rock attempted that on non-tribal lands? What if they attempted that on our most nationally sacred of burial sites....??
If you actually try to parse your answer, then maybe you see Native Americans as second-class citizens. (Oh, maybe that has been the case long before the Dakota Access Pipeline.) Maybe you think treaties are not just things that can be dishonored, and have been, but that they should be dishonored. And what does that say about us?
Sacred lands are sacred lands. Greed is greed.
If you are able to go to North Dakota to stand with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, go. Be careful, of course, but go. If you cannot, but want to get involved another way, here are suggestions of things those onsite can use...
The Dakota Access Pipeline must be stopped! Stand in solidarity with indigenous peoples of this land, in person or otherwise. Pass the blog posting around social media. It's up to social media and independent media, like 'Democracy Now!', to get the word out about this travesty!
Terry
UPDATE: September 9, 2016 -- A federal judge has denied the request of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe filed last weekend for a restraining order against to continuation of destroying its lands for the pipeline. The judge stated that the tribe failed to prove "it will suffer injury that would be prevented by any injunction the Court could issue." Hours later, the Obama administration halted work on the pipeline, following the judge's ruling and in response to the protests.
2ND UPDATE: October 11, 2016 -- Yesterday, actress Shailene Woodley (The Fault In Our Stars, Divergent film series) was arrested during a peaceful protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Just the day before, a federal judge had denied a request to stop the pipeline. Ms. Woodley was broadcasting a live stream on Facebook Live, recording the protest and speaking with some of the protesters. She also recorded her being singled out, stopped, and arrested for criminal trespass.
Morton County (ND) Police Department mugshot
3RD UPDATE: November 29, 2016 -- A lot has happened since my last update. The size of the camp for protesters and water protectors has grown to around 10,000 persons. There have been hundreds of arrests of peaceful protesters, both Native American and non-Native American alike. The presence of militarized police, eerily similar to the militarized police presence at the protests in Ferguson and Baltimore protests, and many of the Occupy protests, has increased and intensified. Excessive crowd control measures that are supposed to be for violent, unruly crowds are being used, including LRAD's (Long Range Acoustic Devices) that were originally developed for the military and pepper spray. (Videos below.)
Observers from the United Nations, at the request of tribal chief David Archambault II, have been onsite since late October and have reported multiple violations of international law. The United Nations has formally joined calls to stop the pipeline, with one observers citing "inhuman and degrading conditions" with regard to how those arrested are being treated as well as how they are being treated at protest sites. Amnesty International has been onsite as well and has reported on what they call "disproportionate militarization and use of force by police in violation of the human rights to peaceful protest".
The map below shows the original pipeline path (dotted line) and the currently-proposed pipeline path (solid line). The original path was close to Bismarck, North Dakota's capital, a predominately white city. When the residents of Bismarck complained about the pipeline, the route was changed to go through sacred indigenous lands, including lands protected (or supposed to be protected) by nineteenth century treaties).
The following two videos show what has been happening at the stand-off at Standing Rock.
North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple has ordered people to vacate the area, and the local sheriff's department said that it will carry out that order by blocking access by people and supplies to the protest site beginning today.
Please E-mail Askcrs@usdoj.gov
or Call the DOJ Federal Office at 202-305-2935
or Call the DOJ Regional office at 303-844-2973
and tell them to stop the eviction and phrase your comments as this is a religious and racial issue.
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