Never would've expected something like this from the NYT editorial board. It's actually very solid. When injustice aligns with cruelty, and heavy weaponry is involved, the results can be shameful and bloody. Witness what happened on Sunday in North Dakota, when law enforcement officers escalated their tactics against unarmed American Indians and allies who have waged months of protests against the Dakota Access oil pipeline.They drenched protesters with water cannons on a frigid night, with temperatures in the 20s. According to protesters and news accounts, the officers also fired rubber bullets, pepper spray, percussion grenades and tear gas. More than 160 people were reportedly injured, with one protester s arm damaged so badly she might lose it.The confrontation happened at Backwater Bridge, on a highway linking the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation and Bismarck, N.D. Burned-out trucks and a police barricade have made the bridge impassable. Protesters say this is a needless threat to public safety ” forcing emergency vehicles to detour about 20 miles ” as well as a spiteful attempt to keep them away from the pipeline construction site. The violence erupted after some of the protesters tried to remove the truck carcasses on Sunday. œWe re just not going to let people or protesters in large groups come in and threaten officers, that s not happening, said the Morton County sheriff, Kyle Kirchmeier. The Sheriff s Department s Facebook page linked to a video of the armed and armored officers, the water cannon drenching the crowd, and a rock flying overhead.The pipeline, all but built, is meant to ship crude oil from North Dakota to Illinois. Built almost entirely on private property, the pipeline crosses ancestral lands of the Standing Rock Sioux, passing less than a mile from the tribal reservation. Tribe members fear contamination of their drinking water and damage to sacred sites. They are trying to persuade the federal government to deny permits allowing the pipeline to cross the Missouri River near their reservation.The department s video was meant to portray the protesters as dangerous troublemakers, but the photos and videos in news reports suggest a more familiar story ” an imbalance of power, where law enforcement fiercely defends property rights against protesters claims of environmental protection and the rights of indigenous people. American Indians have seen this sort of drama unfold for centuries ” native demands meeting brute force against a backdrop of folly ” in this case, the pursuit of fossil fuels at a time of sagging oil demand and global climatic peril.The Army Corps of Engineers has called for more study and input from the tribe before it decides on whether to grant a permit. The pipeline company has asked a federal judge to give it the right to proceed with its plan to lay pipe under the river. There is no firm timeline for either decision.In the meantime, President Obama could step in to protect everyone s safety and pressure the sheriff s officers to stand down. Barring that, resolute protesters, a heavily militarized police force unwilling to budge, a company that refuses to consider an alternate route and an onrushing Great Plains winter ” how can this possibly end well?http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/23/opini ... p=cur&\_r=1

Good reporting on how this Indigenous resistance is wearing down the resources and resolve of the psychotic pigs. There've been more than 500 arrests and the policing bill is closing in on $15 million. This is what an effective frontline against climate change looks like. Since early August, the sheriff s department says that nearly 1,300 officers have come from 24 counties, 16 cities, across nine different states.The northern Great Plains are once again alive with Indian resistance and massive state repression. http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power ... n=20161123

Eleven days ago, when Matt Musselwhite pulled into an encampment at Cannon Ball, North Dakota, in a 5-ton flatbed truck, he had no idea how he would unload the three tiny houses he had just hauled 1,500 miles from southwestern Oregon. Almost immediately volunteers emerged from the throngs of mostly Native Americans. Within hours, teams of 10 people were starting to assemble the first of the 144-square-foot wood structures while circulating free food and coffee. œThis feels like a new America I want to be a part of, said Musselwhite, 41, a carpenter and woodworker based in a rural community tucked into the mountains that cross the Oregon-California border.Musselwhite and his Oregon neighbors understand that with these gifts they have become a very small part of a global social and environmental justice movement launched by the Standing Rock Sioux. œAll we re doing is lending our support to something that already existed and will continue to grow after we leave, he said. œWe wanted these folks ”these brave people ”to know they are not alone, that we re here and in solidarity with their resistance: thousands of people working together, sharing stories, fighting a pipeline with prayer and creativity. http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power ... k-20161123

Different kind of Thanksgiving at Standing Rock since most of the pigs are at home eating turkey. Folks built a makeshift bridge. Love the narration on this live drone video feed made a few minutes ago: https://www.facebook.com/Indigenousrisi ... 680331386/

"Folks"?!

U.S. Army Corps says Standing Rock camp to be closed by Dec. 5Letter says demonstrators to be moved south to 'free speech zone'http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/indigenous/ ... -1.3868992We'll see what happens. We're talking about a massive camp of hundreds of people that swells to thousands some weekends who are digging in for the winter. I'm not there but I would be surprised if everyone packed up and left because the US government told them to. Good historical overview in this piece: http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/2967-fi ... al-contextLike our ancestors wars of the nineteenth century, our current war is also defensive ” it is to protect water and land from inevitable spoliation in the name of profit. The #NoDAPL movement is explicitly nonviolent, which accounts for its mass appeal to Native and non-Native communities. In spite of this, political violence as a tactic of state repression has emerged against water protectors who engage in nonviolent direct action to disrupt the construction of the pipeline as well as those not engaged in direct actions. Natives at or near camp ” whether involved in direct actions or not ” are also targets for surveillance and repression. The camp and the Standing Rock reservation are under constant surveillance. The reason: Native bodies stand between corporations and their money. Halting the accumulation of capital, which in this context is the exploitation of our river and lands, has piqued settler ire and spite.The prolonged peaceful encampment practices an unsettling counter-sovereignty. It has drawn the support and solidarity of more than 200 Native Nations and countless thousands of allied forces sending a clear message to corporate interests: North Dakota cannot manage its Indians and the œIndian Problem is out of control. After all, controlling the œIndian Problem has always meant maintaining unrestricted access to Native lands and resources and keeping Indians silent, out of view, and factionalized. At Standing Rock, an unarmed, nonviolent prayer camp poses such a serious threat to settler proprietary claims that North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple, who has direct ties to the oil and gas industry, has deployed the full force of the Highway Patrol and the National Guards. These forces are not there to service an impoverished Native community or protect the integrity of the land and river. They are there to carry out the will of DAPL backers Energy Transfer Partners, some of the richest and most powerful people in the world who have used attack dogs against unarmed, nonviolent water protectors. Last night my friends who were at Standing Rock last week were telling me about meeting John Trudell's sister and presenting her with tobacco. phpBB [media]

"The pipeline, all but built, is meant to ship crude oil from North Dakota to Illinois. Built almost entirely on private property, the pipeline crosses ancestral lands of the Standing Rock Sioux, passing less than a mile from the tribal reservation. Tribe members fear contamination of their drinking water and damage to sacred sites. They are trying to persuade the federal government to deny permits allowing the pipeline to cross the Missouri River near their reservation."I wonder if they can take any legal action about this as well as the protest. There is a court case in Oregon at the moment in the Federal Court over government inaction on climate change, the law they are using is the Public Trust Doctrine, which also applies to water like rivers. The Public Trust Doctrine applies to private land as well as public land, and is used this way in the Takings Clause of the Constitution, in that governments can confiscate private land if it isn't meeting the Public Trust obligations of preserving common pool natural assets for the whole public and for future generations.

There has been legal action throughout. http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/ ... s-pipelineI would guess Obama would prefer that one of his final acts as POTUS not be the violent removal of thousands of Indigenous people off their ancestral lands, having already been subjected to attack dogs, water cannons, tear gas, concussion grenades, rubber bullets, and mass arrests. On the other hand, he is an imperial coward who's never stood up for anyone who is oppressed by the government he heads. In the wake of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers setting a Dec. 5 deadline to pipeline protesters to leave its northern-most overflow camp, which is estimated to have at least 3,000 people, Gov. Jack Dalrymple said Saturday the federal government must take the lead in any such eviction.http://bismarcktribune.com/news/state-a ... 10100.htmlphpBB [media]

Update: US Army Corps says there will be no forced removal. http://www.nwo.usace.army.mil/Media/New ... Hw.twitter

The Army Corps of Engineers is seeking a peaceful and orderly transition to a safer location, and has no plans for forcible removal. But those who choose to stay do so at their own risk as emergency, fire, medical, and law enforcement response cannot be adequately provided in these areas. Those who remain will be considered unauthorized and may be subject to citation under federal, state, or local laws.They're criminalizing everyone in the main camp as of Dec 5 but the Army Corps "has no plans for forcible removal." Local law enforcement could decide to go nuts with mass arrests but the Governor said that the feds would have to take the lead on that. And Morton County and the state don't have anywhere near the resources to arrest thousands of people. Maybe it will be more piecemeal with more focus on arrests during confrontations than in recent weeks, where the police strategy has been mass violence instead of arrests. Even just issuing citations on any significant scale is beyond their resources, so I don't know what they'll do.