#keystone xl pipeline

[probablyasocialecologist]

According to documents obtained by Grist and Type Investigations through a Freedom of Information Act request, the FBI’s Minneapolis office opened a counterterrorism assessment in February 2012, focusing on actions in South Dakota, that continued for at least a year and may have led to the opening of additional investigations. These documents reveal that the FBI was monitoring activists involved in the Keystone XL campaign about a year earlier than previously known.  Their contents suggest that, long before the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines became national flashpoints, the federal government was already developing a sweeping law enforcement strategy to counter any acts of civil disobedience aimed at preventing fossil fuel extraction. And young, Native activists were among its first targets. “The threat emerging … is evolving into one based on opposition to energy exploration related to any extractions from the earth, rather than merely targeting one project and/or one company,” the FBI noted in its description of the Wanblee blockade. The 15-page file, which is heavily redacted, also describes Native American groups as a potentially dangerous threat and likens them to “environmental extremists” whose actions, according to the FBI, could lead to violence. The FBI acknowledged that Native American groups were engaging in constitutionally protected activity, including attending public hearings, but emphasized that this sort of civic participation might spawn criminal activity.  To back up its claims, the FBI cited a 2011 State Department hearing on the pipeline in Pierre, South Dakota, attended by a small group of Native activists. The FBI said the individuals were dressed in camouflage and had covered their faces with red bandanas, “train robber style.” According to the report, they were also carrying walking sticks and shaking sage, claiming to be “Wounded Knee Security of/for Mother Earth.” “The Bureau is uncertain how the NA group(s) will act initially or subsequently if the project is approved,” the agency wrote.  The FBI also singled out the “Native Youth Movement,” which it described as a mix between a “radical militia and a survivalist group.” In doing so, it appeared to conflate a specific activist group originally founded in Canada in the 1990s with the broader array of young Native activists who opposed the pipeline decades later. Young activists would play an important role in the Keystone XL campaign and later on during protests against the Dakota Access pipeline at Standing Rock, but the movement had little in common with militias or survivalists, terms typically used to describe far-right groups or those seeking to disengage from society.  The FBI declined to respond to questions for this story. In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for the Minneapolis field office said the agency does not typically comment on FOIA releases and “lets the information contained in the files speak for itself.”

[...]

Environmental activists and attorneys who reviewed the new documents told Grist and Type Investigations that law enforcement’s approach to the Keystone XL campaign looked like a template for the increasingly militarized response to subsequent environmental and social justice campaigns — from efforts to block the Dakota Access pipeline at Standing Rock to the ongoing protests against the police training center dubbed “Cop City” in Atlanta, Georgia, which would require razing at least 85 acres of urban forest.  The FBI’s working thesis, outlined in the new documents, that “most environmental extremist groups” have historically moved from peaceful protest to violence has served as the basis for subsequent investigations. “It’s astonishing to me how such a broad concept basically paints every activist and protester as a future terrorist,” said Mike German, a former FBI special agent who is now a fellow at the nonprofit Brennan Center for Justice.

#FBI #climate change #fossil fuels #dakota access pipeline #keystone xl pipeline #surveillance

[taylor14firefly]

"Someone needs to explain to me why wanting clean drinking water makes you an activist, and why proposing to destroy water with chemical warfare doesn't make a corporation a terrorist."

—Winona LaDuke, "Canadian Oil Companies Trample on Our Rights" (2013)

#environmentalism #winona laduke #indigenous rights #keystone xl pipeline #canada #south dakota #capitalism

[winwinwinterb]

This happened an hour and a half north of my alma mater. I find it hard to believe that there was "no impact" on the local drinking water. This was the exact thing Indigenous Peoples were fighting to prevent. They knew this was only a matter of time.

#keystone xl pipeline #end fossil fuels #big oil is evil #oil spill #kansas #indigineous people #this was preventable #ad astra per aspera #oil and gas #they want us dead #profits over people #fuck big oil #unacceptable #accountability now

[makingdonalddrumpfagain]

#keystone xl pipeline

[rjzimmerman]

On Waterbear. About the Keystone XL Pipeline. Video is about 28 minutes long.

#People vs Pipeline #Keystone XL pipeline

[eraserdude6226]

#fjb #lgbtpeople #lgb #LGBT #Red Piper Communications #redpipercommunications #society #grooming #DumpDisney #MakeDisneyFamilyFriendlyAgain #CancelDisney+ #CancelDisney #keystone xl pipeline #xl #keystone #elon musk #elon twitter

[amprosite]

Americans know that Biden is old, frail, and unable to effectively communicate. Without oratory skills, Biden cannot lead or inspire Americans. Read more.

#keystone xl pipeline

[overlyemotionalbreakfastcereal]

ok with all the good things biden's administration has been doing or tried to do yall americans BETTER fucking not pull out that same motherfucking 'both sides are equally bad' bullshit when voting comes around.

#trump tried to bring back the keystone xl pipeline and biden nixed it again #so dont fucking even tell me the gop cant do terrible damage and that biden has done nothing at all #i am so so so fucking sick of doomers who think that not participating in the system is the right thing to do #change is not fast! change will never be fast! #even if/when your glorious revolution happens you know how long it will take to build everything up afterwards??? #fucking shut up and go vote #i am so over le epic revolutionists #ESPECIALLY with all the project 2025 bullshit #no politician is perfect #but i would rather have the one that stood on a picket line than the one who STARTED A COUP

[kp777]

By JON QUEALLY

Common Dreams

Sep 09, 2023

"The Corps' covering for the pipeline company's outrageous safety record and the reviewer's serious conflict of interest have now resulted in a failed effort," said Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Chairwoman Janet Alkire. "They need to start over with adult supervision."

Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Chairwoman Janet Alkire is leading a fresh demand that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers throw out an ongoing environmental review process of the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline and start again from scratch alongside a superseding call for the pipeline to be shuttered completely.

Following Friday's release of a revised Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), ordered by a federal court, the tribe said the document reveals the entire process has been a failure and that the pipeline—currently operating across their land without consent in what they consider an "illegal" manner by the Energy Transfer company—should be shut down once and for all.

"We're furious that the Army Corps has addressed none of our major concerns during the review process," Chairwoman Alkire said in a statement.

"The pipeline is an imminent threat to the Missouri River, sensitive habitat, and sacred burial sites along the riverbank," she continued. "The oil company's emergency response plans are inadequate, its safety track record is horrendous, and there's been a stunning lack of transparency with Standing Rock throughout the environmental review process, including inaccurate characterizations of tribal consultation."

The Army Corps did not make any recommendations or indicate preferences among the alternatives presented in the new EIS report, which included keeping it in operation, possible rerouting, removing the pipeline by excavation, or abandoning it in place. The Corps said its final recommendations will accompany a final report once the review process is complete, but the Standing Rock Sioux said the process has been seriously flawed.

The tribe said the draft EIS fails to "account for the existence of criminal charges and a host of fines and serious citations" from regulators faced by Energy Transfer. Alkire accused the Corps of "doing all it can to ignore the company’s poor safety record and the high risk" of the pipeline. According to the statement by the tribe:

the entirety of the environmental review process hasn't been taken seriously and is compromised because the Corps selected a company with a clear conflict of interest to prepare the just-released draft EIS. Environmental Resources Management — which also produced a sparkling environmental review for the Keystone XL pipeline, later shelved due to environmental concerns — is a member of the American Petroleum Institute. That organization previously filed a legal brief in support of DAPL in Standing Rock’s suit against the Army Corps. Moreover, Environmental Resources Management has contracted with at least five separate companies with an ownership interest in DAPL.

The release of the EIS triggers a 45-day public comment period and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe is now requesting public support in opposition of the project.

"The Corps' covering for the pipeline company's outrageous safety record and the reviewer's serious conflict of interest have now resulted in a failed effort," said Alkire of the current process. "They need to start over with adult supervision."

Amy Mall, senior advocate at NRDC, said her group stands "in solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in opposing this dirty and dangerous pipeline that harms the climate and threatens the primary water source for the Tribe."

"The Army Corps must consider all of the risks of this pipeline, make all significant environmental information available without redactions, and honor the Tribe’s treaty rights," Mall added. "We call on the Corps to shut it down."

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

JON QUEALLY Jon Queally is managing editor of Common Dreams. Full Bio >

#standing rock sioux tribe #dakota access pipeline #u.s. army corps of engineers #fossil fuels #climate crisis #climate change #NRDC

[workingclasshistory]

On this day, 9 June 2021, it was announced that the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline, which would have carried petroleum over 1000 miles from tar sands in Canada to Nebraska, was to be scrapped. First Nations peoples in Canada had resisted oil extraction in the region for years, and were joined by Native Americans in the United States in opposing the pipeline. These included the Sicangu Lakota Oyate, Assiniboine, Aaniiih and Nez Perce peoples. Native American protests also inspired resistance from other environmentalists, who began a campaign of civil disobedience against the project. The pipeline was first scrapped by the administration of Barack Obama, but then resurrected by later president, Donald Trump. Following renewed protests, the project was finally scrapped by the administration of Joe Biden. The campaign was one of many Indigenous struggles over land, sovereignty, and the environment which has contributed significantly to the fight against climate change. One study found that Indigenous resistance in United States and Canada has helped prevent 12% of the combined carbon dioxide equivalent pollution of the countries. Learn more about Native American resistance in this book: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/products/500-years-of-indigenous-resistance-gord-hill To access this hyperlink, click our link in bio then click this photo https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=641244214715464&set=a.602588028581083&type=3

[winwinwinterb]

"The Canadian company said in a statement that it did so for safety reasons. But drone footage of the spill — the largest in the pipeline’s history — was among the only means of seeing the damage as the site is closed to press. Even lawmakers were not allowed there for a briefing."

Nothing to see here, folks. Trust us, the Oil Barons r*ping the environment.

#keystone xl pipeline #end fossil fuels #big oil is evil #fuck big oil #environment #environmental issues #accountability now #profits over people #ad astra per aspera #kansas #free press #journalism #obstruction #oil spill #oil and gas

[1americanconservative]

The real Bidenomics

🔴 Jan 2021 Biden inauguration, cancels the Keystone XL pipeline. Inflation rate 1.4%

🔴 March 2021 Biden signs $1.9 Trillion Covid relief bill Inflation rate 2.6%

🔴 July 2021 Democrats propose $3.9 Trillion budget plan. Inflation rate 5.4%

🔴 November 2021 Biden signs $1 Trillion infrastructure package. Inflation rate 6.8%

🔴 March 2022 Biden delivers his first SOFU. Inflation rate 7.9%

🔴 April 2022 Announces student loan forgiveness. Inflation rate 8.3%

🔴 May 2022 acknowledges baby formula supply problem Inflation rate 8.6%

🔴 June 2022 gas prices surge. Inflation rate 9.1% We can't afford any more "building back better"

[opencommunion]

"Colonialism in the United States was not an episode of history that ended hundreds of years ago. It is an ongoing process and set of institutions that continually infringe on the pre-existing sovereignty of Native people, sovereignty they never relinquished in the many treaties signed with the United States. A recent example is the debates over the Keystone XL and Dakota Access oil pipelines, which the Rosebud Sioux and the Standing Rock Sioux nations have vigorously opposed, the Rosebud Sioux declaring the routing of the pipeline through their territory as an 'act of war.' The structural nature of settler-colonialism means that any discussion of U.S. empire in the twentieth or twenty-first-century needs to acknowledge ongoing colonialism as the precondition for the existence of an expansive and powerful U.S. state. Historians have to avoid what Vine Deloria Jr. calls 'the cameo theory of history' wherein 'indigenous peoples make dramatic entrances, stay briefly on the stage, and then fade out.'"

Stefan Aune, "American Empire," in At War: The Military and American Culture in the Twentieth Century and Beyond, 2018

#library #imperialism #colonialism #turtle island

[lilithism1848]

Atrocities US committed against NATIVE AMERICANS

In 2016, the US army corp of engineers approved a Energy Transfer Partners’ proposal to build an oil pipeline near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, sparking the Dakota Access Pipeline Protests, evoking a brutal response from North Dakota police aided by the National Guard, private security firms, and other law enforcement agencies from surrounding states. The Standing Rock Sioux tribe believes that the pipeline would put the Missouri River, the water source for the reservation, at risk, pointing out two recent spills, a 2010 pipeline spill into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan, which cost over billion to clean up with significant contamination remaining, and a 2015 Bakken crude oil spill into the Yellowstone River in Montana. Police repression has included dogs attacking protesters, spraying water cannons on protesters in sub-freezing temperatures, >700 arrests of Native Americans and ~200 injuries, a highly militarized police force using armored personnel carriers, concussion grenades, mace, Tasers, batons, rubber bullets, and tear gas. In November 2017, the keystone XL pipeline burst, spilling 210,000 gallons of oil in Amherst, South Dakota. 

In 1975, FBI agents attacked AIM activists on the Pine Ridge Reservation, in the ‘Pine Ridge Shootout’. Two FBI agents, and an AIM activist were killed. In two separate trials, the U.S. prosecuted participants in the firefight for the deaths of the agents. AIM members Robert Robideau and Dino Butler were acquitted after asserting that they had acted in self–defense. Leonard Peltier was extradited from Canada and tried separately because of the delay. He was convicted on two counts of first–degree murder for the deaths of the FBI agents and sentenced to two consecutive terms of life in prison, after a trial which is still contentious. He remains in prison.

In 1973, 200 Oglala Lakota and AIM activists occupied the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Reservation, called the Wounded knee incident. They were protesting the reservation’s corrupt US-backed tribal chairman, Dick Wilson, who controlled a private militia, called Guardians of the Oglala Nation (GOONs), funded by the government. FBI, US marshals, and other law enforcement cordoned off the area and attacked the activists with armored vehicles, automatic rifles, machine guns, grenade launchers, and gas shells, resulting in two killed and 13 wounded. Ray Robinson, a civil rights activist who joined the protesters, disappeared during the events and is believed to have been murdered. As food supplies became short, three planes dropped 1,200 pounds of food, but as people scrambled to gather it up, a government helicopter appeared overhead and fired down on them while groundfire came from all sides. After the siege ended in a truce, 120 occupiers were arrested. Wilson stayed in office and in 1974 was re-elected amid charges of intimidation, voter fraud, and other abuses. The rate of violence climbed on the reservation as conflict opened between political factions in the following three years; residents accused Wilson’s private militia of much of it. 

In Nov. 1969, a group of 89 Native Americans occupied Alcatraz Island for 15 months, to gauge the US’s commitment to the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868), which stated that all abandoned federal land must be returned to native people. Eventually the government cut off all electrical power and all telephone service to the island. In June, a fire of disputed origin destroyed numerous buildings on the island. Left without power, fresh water, and in the face of diminishing public support and sympathy, the number of occupiers began to dwindle. On June 11, 1971, a large force of government officers removed the remaining 15 people from the island.

From its creation in 1968, The American Indian Movement (AIM) has been a target of repression from law enforcement agencies, and surveillance as one of the FBI’s COINTELPRO targets. This includes the wounded knee incident and the pine ridge shootout. 

In 1942 the federal government took privately held Pine Ridge Indian Reservation land owned by tribal members in order to establish the Badlands Bombing Range of 341,725 acres, evicting 125 families. Among the families evicted was that of Pat Cuny, an Oglala Sioux. He fought in World War II in the Battle of the Bulge after surviving torpedoing of his transport in the English Channel. Dewey Beard, a Miniconjou Sioux survivor of the Wounded Knee Massacre, who supported himself by raising horses on his 908-acre allotment received in 1907 was also evicted. The small federal payments were insufficient to enable such persons to buy new properties. In 1955 the 97-year-old Beard testified of earlier mistreatment at Congressional hearings about this project. He said, for “fifty years I have been kicked around. Today there is a hard winter coming. …I might starve to death.”

In 1890, US soldiers killed 150-300 people (including 65 women and 24 children) at Wounded Knee (19-26 people, including two women and eleven children.) on the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in the U.S. state of South Dakota. Twenty-five soldiers also died, and 39 were wounded (6 of the wounded later died). At least twenty soldiers were awarded the Medal of Honor. The event was driven by local racism towards the practice of Ghost Dancing, which whites found distasteful, and the Native Americans arming up in response to repeated broken treaties, stolen land, and their bison-herds being hunted to near extinction by the whites.

In 1887, the Dawes Act, and Curtis Act, resulted in the loss of 90 million acres of native-alloted land, and the abolition of many native governments. During the ensuing decades, the Five Civilized Tribes lost 90 million acres of former communal lands, which were sold to non-Natives. In addition, many individuals, unfamiliar with land ownership, became the target of speculators and criminals, were stuck with allotments that were too small for profitable farming, and lost their household lands. Tribe members also suffered from the breakdown of the social structure of the tribes.

Starting in the 1870s, The US army, aided by settlers and private hunters, began a widespread policy of slaughtering bufallo and bison, in order to destroy many tribe’s primary food source, and to starve Native Americans into submission. By 1900, they succeeded; the bufallo population dropped from more than 30 million, to a few hundred. The country’s highest generals, politicians, and presidents including Ulysses S. Grant, saw the destruction of buffalo as solution to the country’s “Indian Problem.” By destroying the food supply of the plains natives, they could more easily move them onto reservations.

Starting in 1830-50, The Trail of Tears was a series of forced removals of Native American nations, including Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Seminole, Cherokee people and the African freedmen and slaves who lived among them, from their ancestral homelands in the Southeastern United States to an area west of the Mississippi River that had been designated as Native Territory. The forced relocations were carried out by various government authorities following the passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830. “Marshaled by guards, hustled by agents, harried by contractors,they were being herded on the way to an unknown and unwelcome destination like a flock of sick sheep.” They went on ox wagons, on horses, on foot, then to be ferried across the MississippiRiver. The army was supposed to organize their trek, but it turned over its job to private contractors who charged the government as much as possible, gave the Indians as little as possible. The Cherokee removal in 1838 (the last forced removal east of the Mississippi) was brought on by the discovery of gold near Dahlonega, Georgia in 1828, resulting in the Georgia Gold Rush. Approximately 2,000-6,000 of the 16,543 relocated Cherokee perished along the way.

In 1848, the California Genocide is a term used to describe the drastic decrease in Native American population in California. The population decreased from ~300,000 in 1769, to 16,000 in 1900. 

The Second Seminole War, also known as the Florida War, was a conflict from 1835 to 1842 in Florida between various groups of Native Americans collectively known as Seminoles and the United States, part of a series of conflicts called the Seminole Wars. The Second Seminole War, often referred to as the Seminole War, is regarded as “the longest and most costly of the Indian conflicts of the United States.” ~3000 seminoles were killed, and 4000 were deported to Indian territory elsewhere. 

In 1832, the Black Hawk War, was a brief 1832 conflict between the United States and Native Americans led by Black Hawk, a Sauk leader, in Illinois. The war gave impetus to the US policy of Indian removal, in which Native American tribes were pressured to sell their lands and move west of the Mississippi River and stay there. Over 500 Native Americans were killed in the conflict.

In 1832, the Chickasaw Indians were forced by the US to sell their country in 1832 and move to Indian Territory (Oklahoma) during the era of Indian Removal in the 1830s.

In 1813, the Creek War, was a war between the US, lead by the then notorious indian-hunter Andrew Jackson, and the Creek nation, residing primarily in Alabama. Over 1,500 creeks were killed. The war effectively ended with the Treaty of Fort Jackson, where General Andrew Jackson insisted that the Creek confederacy cede more than 21 million acres of land from southern Georgia and central Alabama. These lands were taken from allied Creek as well as Red Sticks. In 1814, Andrew Jackson became famous for his role in the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, where his side killed more than 800 Creeks. Under Jackson, and the man he chose to succeed him, Martin Van Buren, 70,000 Indians east of the Mississippi were forced westward.

The Red Sticks, a faction of Muscogee Creek people in the American Southeast, led a resistance movement against European-American encroachment and assimilation; tensions culminated in the outbreak of the Creek War in 1813.

From 1785-96, the Northwest Indian War was a war between the US and a confederation of numerous Native American tribes, with support from the British, for control of the Northwest Territory. President George Washington directed the United States Army to enforce U.S. sovereignty over the territory. Over 1,000 Native Americans were killed in the bloody conflict.

In the 1800s, Indian removal was a policy of the United States government whereby Native Americans were forcibly removed from their ancestral homelands in the eastern United States to lands west of the Mississippi River, thereafter known as Indian Territory. That policy has been characterized by some scholars as part of a long-term genocide of Native Americans. 

The Texan-Indian Wars were a series of 19th-century conflicts between settlers in Texas and the Southern Plains Indians. Its hard to approximate the number of deaths from the conflicts, but the Indian population in Texas decreased from 20,000 to 8,000 by 1875.

The Indian Wars is a name given to the collection of over 40 conflicts and wars between Native Americans and US settlers. The US census bureau reports that they have cost the lives of about 19,000 white men, women and children, including those killed in individual combats, and the lives of about 30,000 Indians. The actual number of killed and wounded Indians must be very much higher than the number given… Fifty percent additional would be a safe estimate.

From 1500-1900s, European and later US colonists and authorities displaced and committed genocide on the Native American Population. Ward Churchill characterizes the reduction of the North American Indian population from an estimated 12 million in 1500 to barely 237,000 in 1900 as a “vast genocide.. the most sustained on record.

#anti capitalism #socialism #leftism #anarchy #communism #late stage capitalism #classism #economics #inequality #capitalism #current events #us healthcare #us house of representatives #us history #us hegemony #anti imperialism #imperialism #anti capitalist love notes #tweet #anti capitalists be like #anti capatilism #native american #killers of the flower moon

[eraserdude6226]

Brandon, here's a perfect chance for you to nail more nails into Putin's coffin.

All you have to do is OPEN UP THE OIL TAPS AND FLOOD THE WORLDS MARKETS WITH AMERICAN CRUDE AND NATURAL GAS!!!!

It's really that simple - YOU CAN BE THE SAVIOR OF THE WORLD ENERGY!!

C'mon man, just open them up!!!!

#fjb #lgb #keystone #keystone xl pipeline #open the taps #let the oil flow

[myrddin-wylt]

I'm still laughing about Biden's trip to Canada. It feels like a greentext.

>unilaterally cancel Keystone XL pipeline

>snub Canada for first presidential visit

>go to foreign war zone on the other side of the world before bothering to go a few hours north to Canada

>finally go to Canada halfway thru presidency

>show up to press conference, lowkey imply that maybe Canada should get its ass in gear re: NORAD and mineral mining infrastructure

>show up to parliament, insult their hockey team

>"I applaud China- I MEAN CANADA"

>openly shame conservative MPs mid-speech for not supporting successes in greater diversity in government offices

>leave without further explanation

this is so funny I'm gonna piss. Damn he hates yall