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Nnanji -> RE: The Sioux Battle Big Oil (11/26/2016 11:00:39 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: vincentML
The Sioux battle for religious freedom and existential water. They claim damage to their burial sites and impending pollution of their drinking water.
There is an epic clash of two cultures — one with a guiding ethic of harmony between people and nature, the other driven by an ethos that encourages the exploitation of both. Yet, for months, our clueless media gave this matchup little coverage.
For the face-off is between Energy Transfer Partners, one of the world’s largest pipeline corporations, and the Standing Rock Lakota Sioux tribe. It’s not merely big news, but the panoramic story of America itself. It’s a real reality show — a cultural, political and moral drama featuring raw greed, grassroots courage, class war, ancient rites, human rights, defenders of the common good, the most nefarious Texas oilman since J. R. Ewing, a historic gathering of Native American tribes and a Bull Connor-style sheriff — all on location near a North Dakota town named Cannon Ball!
The Dakota Access Pipeline is a massive 1,172-mile-long pipeline being constructed by Energy Transfer Partners. It will cut through North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Illinois. This pipeline, owned by oilman Kelcy Warren, crosses 200 rivers and countless farms, and it cuts through the ancestral lands and burial grounds of the tribe.
The pipeline risks economic and environmental disaster. The corporation plans to bury its oil pipeline under the Missouri, beneath the Lakota people’s main source of water for drinking, bathing, irrigation, fishing and recreation. As a Lakota phrase says, water is life — and one rupture could be ruinous. SOURCE
They have been arrested and physically attacked with water cannon on a freezing cold night.
Reuters photographer Stephanie Keith recently traveled to North Dakota to cover the ongoing protest against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), a $3.8 billion oil pipeline meant to carry crude oil from the Bakken oil fields through the Dakotas and Iowa, to Illinois. Protesters from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, hundreds of other Native Americans and their supporters are now encamped near the Backwater Bridge, with law enforcement stationed behind a roadblock on the opposite side. According to Reuters, last night hundreds of protesters made attempts to force their way through the barricades, reportedly setting dozens of fires. They were met with water cannons, pepper spray, tear gas, and rubber bullets, resulting in dozens of injuries. Below are images from last night, and some from the previous several days at the protest site.
SOURCE
Democrats remain quiet. The pipeline is being funded by Big Oil and Wall Street firms, their major political donors.
SOURCE
This is the dark, dirty face of predatory capitalism in America and the failure of money politics.
A shame, innit?
quote:
There is an epic clash of two cultures — one with a guiding ethic of harmony between people and nature, the other driven by an ethos that encourages the exploitation of both. Yet, for months, our clueless media gave this matchup little coverage.
What a story. And that's all it is, a story. I was on an elk hunting trip in Montana, having lunch in a diner, and struck up a conversation with a woman at the next table. She was (and I hate to say this in my story) white and married to a Native American. We talked elk hunting and she told us how her husband's tribe was trying to take away all of his hunting rights because he married a white woman and moved a few miles off the reservation to be close to a job.
People are people. One does not have an entire culture of harmony between people and nature. The other isn't driven only by exploitation.
I know that in the area I live there are literally hundreds of oil and gas pipelines underground. In fact, pretty much anywhere in the U.S. Where there is a military base that doesn't have its own oil refinery is connected to a fuel pipeline. This is not a story of greed so much as keeping Americans warm and in light. I admit that fossil fuel isn't politically correct, but that's no reason to examine this "story" as a case of greed fighting ethics of a better knowing class.
I heard all of these same things when the Alaska oil pipeline was proposed. In between the two pipelines I've participated in lots of Environmental Impact Reports that dealt with this sort of thing, including Native American burial sites. There's usually years of work and compromise between all parties for such things. It's silly to boil all of this down to the small, inaccurate, couple of sentences stated in this article.
As an aside, years ago my dad used to take me dove hunting around a cemetery where all of our relatives were buried. It was way out of town then. We'd usually stop by the family graves on such outings. About five years ago I was in the area and thought to stop in the cemetery only to find that it no longer exists. The area is now covered in apartments and condo's. I thought at the time that some day I'd have to ask to where the cemetery had been moved.
I know VML likes stories like this, but the story is probably much longer and more detailed than the story related here. I'm sure the real story is much less dramatic and actually filled with well meaning people, following well established customs and laws, trying to reach well meaning compromises in order to facilitate the use of resources that are necessary.
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