AS CONSTRUCTION NEAR STANDING ROCK RESTARTS, PIPELINE FIGHTS FLARE ACROSS THE U.S.

By Aileen Brown
for The Intercept


UNDER ORDERS FROM President Donald Trump, the Army Corps of Engineers on February 7 approved a final easement allowing Energy Transfer Partners to drill under the Missouri River near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota. Construction has restarted, and lawyers for the company say it could take as little as 30 days for oil to flow through the Dakota Access pipeline.

While the Standing Rock Sioux and neighboring tribes attempt to halt the project in court, other opponents of the pipeline have launched what they’re calling a “last stand,” holding protests and disruptive actions across the U.S. In North Dakota, where it all began, a few hundred people continue to live at camps on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, using them as bases for prayer and for direct actions to block construction. Last week, camps were served eviction notices from Gov. Doug Burgum and from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, demanding that they clear the biggest camp, Oceti Sakowin, by Wednesday and a smaller camp, Sacred Stone, within 10 days.

The fight against DAPL didn’t come from nowhere. It’s a direct descendant of the Keystone XL fight — both pass through the territory of the Oceti Sakowin, or Seven Council Fires, which includes bands of the Lakota, Nakota, and Dakota people. And when Standing Rock tribal members saw that it was time to mobilize, they turned to relatives that had fought the Keystone XL.

In 2014, Joye Braun was living at an anti-Keystone XL camp called Pte Ospaye, on the Cheyenne River reservation, when she first heard about a new pipeline that would pass just outside the border of the Standing Rock reservation, on land leaders say would be tribally controlled if the U.S. government obeyed its treaties. “I went holy crap, here comes another one,” she said. Two years later, she would find herself helping set up Sacred Stone camp, the first anti-Dakota Access pipeline camp.

Now, most of the thousands of people that visited Standing Rock last fall have returned home, and some have taken up long-shot local fights against the oil and gas industry. In Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Tennessee it’s the Diamond pipeline; in Louisiana, the Bayou Bridge. In Wisconsin, the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa actually voted to decommission and remove the Enbridge Line 5 pipeline from their reservation.

Many communities have turned to direct action as a last resort. The city of Lafayette, Colorado, which has long attempted to block fracking in the area, has even proposed a climate bill of rights, enforceable via nonviolent direct action if the legal system fails.

In at least four states, encampments built as bases for pipeline resistance have emerged. They face corporations emboldened by Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress, which have used their first weeks in power to grant fossil fuel industry wishes, overturning environmental protections, appointing Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson as secretary of state, and reviving the halted Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipeline projects.

“Forces arrayed against us are quite wide in my opinion,” said Owl, a member of the Ramapough-Lunaape tribe who helped set up a camp in New Jersey to oppose the Pilgrim pipeline. “They are hell-bent on this infrastructure.”

The Trans-Pecos Pipeline

Nearly all of Texas is webbed with oil and gas pipelines, except for the virtually industry-free Big Bend region, known for its night skies devoid of light pollution. There, another pipeline last stand is underway.

Former President Barack Obama’s administration quietly approved the Trans-Pecos pipeline’s border crossing last May. It is now 96 percent in the ground, set to be complete in March. The 42-inch pipeline would transport 1.4 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas obtained via hydraulic fracturing from the state’s Permian shale basin. It would travel along 148 miles before continuing into Mexico. Although it was commissioned by the Mexican government’s Comisión Federal de Electricidad, the line will have a few taps between the U.S. and Mexico, and has been permitted as a domestic project that benefits the public. This means it gets common carrier status, allowing the company to acquire access to private property via eminent domain, despite landowners’ objections.

With guidance from local indigenous leaders, Frankie Orona and Lori Glover have been helping run a camp called Two Rivers on Glover’s land near the route since January, regularly carrying out direct actions to stop construction. The camp hosts around 10 people during the week, ballooning at times to between 50 or 100 on weekends. Still, the resistance operates on a much smaller scale than Standing Rock. “We don’t have the numbers to do the same kind of direct action, because [police] can wipe us out in one day, and we’re pretty much done,” Orona said.

A second camp called Camp Toyahvale opened soon after Two Rivers in objection to plans by Apache Corporation to use hydraulic fracturing to access newly discovered oil and gas. For now, it is dedicated to education rather than direct action.

30 March 2017: WFTU day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People STOP TO THE SETTLEMENTS!

14 Feb 2017

MIDDLE EAST, PALESTINE

The World Federation of Trade Unions organizes a Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People on 30 of March 2017 and calls on its affiliated trade unions and friends all over the world to be at the forefront by developing specific action!

On the occasion of the WFTU Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People on 30 of March, all workers and ordinary people of the working class worldwide are called upon to give real expression to their solidarity with the people of Palestine against Israeli aggressiveness and occupation, even more intensified after the election of Trump’s government in the U.S.A., as it is obvious from the announcement of the building of 3.000 houses of Jewish settlers in the West Bank, as well as from the recent bill of the Israeli Knesset, legalizing the grab of Palestinian property in the same region.

The people of Palestine have been suffering for many years from the Israeli aggressiveness, from the settlements, the looting of the natural resources and products of their land and from the blockade. Palestinian children are murdered in the streets. Workers are imprisoned every day. Today more than 300 Palestinian children are detained in Israeli prisons!

The fight for the end of aggressiveness and settlements, for the recognition of a free and independent Palestinian state within the borders of 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital, depends first and foremost on the struggle of the peoples, from the struggle of the organized class oriented working class movement, since the workers participating in it are fully aware of the cause that generates imperialist interventions and atrocities against the peoples, which is none other than the insatiable appetite of capitalists for continuous profitability through the exploitation of workers.

Therefore, it is the workers those who can resist, those who can demand and stand up for the end of the destruction of the Palestinian people and land, through the activities and the initiatives of their trade unions. The workers have the power to impose through their struggles their fair demands at the cost of the few and for the benefit of the many. The WFTU was, is and will be on the side of the people of Palestine.

On 30 of March we participate dynamically in the manifestations of WFTU affiliated trade unions and friends in every corner of the world in solidarity with the people of Palestine. In every city, country and sector, organize protests at Embassies and governments which support the policy of Israel, at international organizations which pretend to feel sorry about the crimes against our Palestinian brothers and sisters.

STOP TO THE SETTLEMENTS – RECOGNITION OF AN INDEPENDENT PALESTINIAN STATE!

See What’s at Stake in the Health Care Fight In One Convenient, Shareable Chart

As the debate heats up on the Trump administration/Congressional push to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act, we invite you to see how the plans will affect American families and individuals.

Take a look at this new, clearly outlined, compelling chart. In it, we compared the policies of the Affordable Care Act with a comprehensive alternative system, Medicare for all—the approach favored by nurses and a majority of the public—and then looked at the general direction of replacement ideas being discussed by Republican members of Congress.

After reviewing it, we think you’ll see that a Medicare-for-all system it the only way to go! Check it out, and share away.

Glen Ford Says Democrat-CIA McCarthyism Threatens Planet Earth

The Real News Network  01/25/2017 

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SHARMINI PERIES: It's The Real News Network. I'm Sharmini Peries, coming to you from Baltimore.

This is the first edition of the 2017, Glen Ford Report. So joining us from Plainfield, New Jersey, today is Glen Ford. Glen is the Co-Founder and Executive Editor of The Black Agenda Report and the author of "The Big Lie: Analysis of the U.S. Media Coverage of the Grenada Invasion." Thanks for joining us today, Glen.

GLEN FORD: Thanks for having me on.

SHARMINI PERIES: So, Glen, lots of new developments in Washington. The inauguration of the 45th President of the United States. And there is a very tumultuous situation in Washington now. It's a war between the press and the White House and there are many other potential wars in the air that everyone's concerned about. What are your thoughts as this transition is going on?

GLEN FORD: Well, we should all be most concerned with the possible big war. We saw these huge crowds this weekend in Washington and in cities across the country and most people viewed them as a kind of groundswell of resistance to the new Donald Trump presidency. However, I think that, to the extent that this outpouring of anti-Trump sentiment is also all caught up and all tangled with the Democratic Party's insane and monstrously dangerous pro-war and anti-Russian propaganda campaign, that it is actually poisoning the well for any progressive movement under a Donald Trump presidency.

So I think we should be very clear. There is no such thing as a progressive movement that is also pro-war. And there is no such thing as a progressive movement that is aligned with the CIA. And yet, that is exactly, exactly the position that the Democratic Party is taking, including its black luminaries, such as Congressman John Conyers, and Congresswoman Maxine Waters, and even Congresswoman Barbara Lee, who is considered to be the most left-wing person on Capitol Hill. All of them are busy attacking from the right, the very right-wing president, Donald Trump. And any fool should know that countering right-wing politics with even more right-wing politics can only lead to a disastrous and definitively right-wing result. You cannot create a progressive movement out of a McCarthyite, anti-Russian, pro-war propaganda campaign such as the Democrats are waging now and which they have now enlisted the support of lots of people who call themselves progressive. And even some who consider themselves to be radical.

Any movement that takes its cues from the CIA is a danger, not only to world peace, but it is a danger to itself. It's a danger to the very civil liberties that a progressive movement claims that it's trying to defend from the likes of Donald Trump. And, frankly, it's just plain stupid and it's stupid in a very peculiar and very American imperial kind of way.

It's very sad. But I think this Democrat led movement is very likely to succeed. It will succeed, I think, in stopping any hope of lessening tensions between the United States and Russia. And the reason that it's likely to succeed is not just these so-called progressive people in the streets, the more important reason is that the Democrats have lots of Republicans in Congress who are basically on their side. That is there are plenty of warmongers on the Republican side of the aisle as well as the Democratic side of the aisle.

And we'll know whether the CIA has won its battle against Donald Trump and has declared war on his presidency, and that should be very clear. They've launched a kind of color revolution only domestically. But we'll know if they've been successful if heads do not roll at the CIA. And I mean roll massively and publicly under Donald Trump. If the heads don't roll that means that the CIA has won.

What progressives ought to be doing is fighting for issues, the same issues that existed before Donald Trump assumed the presidency. We need to be fighting for single payer healthcare, we need to be doing it now as Obama care is going out the door. We need to be fighting against the banks and calling for the nationalization and repurposing of those banks. And we need to be fighting for black community control of the police and especially we need to be fighting for peace. But if the Democrats get their way in their fight against a man, this is not about issues, this is about a man and it's about a party and its fortunes, if they get their way we won't even be able to talk about the possibility of sometime in the future maybe having peaceful co-existence among nations. And there's nothing progressive about that situation at all.

SHARMINI PERIES: All right, Glen, why don't you start explaining to us, by giving us a few examples about the Russian hacking. Whether they hacked or whether they didn't hack, we don't know at this point. We don't have any proof from the CIA indicating whether they did the hacking of the DNC emails or not. But at the end of the day it's a moot point, in terms of, you know, it didn't make any difference. But this is the kind of behavior that the U.S. and the Russians and perhaps multiple other people -- we know Australia, for example, hacks and listens to phone calls, and Canadians -- listen to phone calls on behalf of other nations and all of this comes to a head in these specific examples and the climate we are facing now in Washington. Explain some of those motions for us.

GLEN FORD: Well, that's what makes this whole discussion rather crazy in the context of what Americans already know. First of all, Julian Assange and WikiLeaks people say quite clearly that the Russians didn't give it to them. But let's suppose that the Russians did hack John Podesta, the Democratic National Committee official. The documents that they hacked were real. They showed that the Democrats wanted Donald Trump or Cruz or some crazy right-wing Republican to be their opponent in the general election. And those documents show that Podesta and company were instructing the other Democrats to encourage the media to give Trump and Cruz lots of play so that they would be the Pied Piper Republican candidates. Because the Democrats thought they could beat them more handily.

So the Democrats were, at that kind of level, very responsible for us having a President Trump. And certainly, the American people should know that. The American people should have known that the Democrats were rigging or playing dirty tricks during their primary election, which worked to the disadvantage of the Sanders campaign. These things were true. But, more to the point, the United States has intervened in and even overthrown governments scores of times since World War II, and killed tens of millions, I said, tens of millions of people in the process.

This is a country whose name should be "Subversion of Other States 'R' Us". That's what the United States does. And the United States doesn't just subvert other countries, it spies upon its own citizens, all of them, and the CIA Chief told a lie and had to apologize, I think it was the NSA Chief, when he lied and said that they weren't. But the United States spies on the rest of the world, too, not just on the President of Brazil and the President of Germany, but on all the people of Brazil and all the people and everybody in the world who has a computer and a phone. And Americans know this. This is a matter of record.

And to think that the Russians aren't also doing their best with their limited capabilities, their capabilities aren't as great as the United States to spy, doesn't make sense at all. And to think that they wouldn't use some information that they have successfully divined to their advantage, of course they would. What do you gather information for? But the hacking that they are accused of doing actually had beneficial results for the American public. That is, the American public learned the truth about things that it should have learned the truth about. Actually the Russians should be thanked for educating the Americans.

And if it had an effect on the election, that is if Americans or more educated when they went to the voting booth because of whoever disclosed these actions, well, that's all to the good too. Certainly progressives shouldn't be upset about this. They ought to be upset about the tens of millions of people that the United States has killed in the process of intervening with their ability to carry out their own political will, a half million in Syria alone.

SHARMINI PERIES: Right. And so, Glen, given that you've been always very critical of the Democratic Party for very good reasons, what do you make of the new administration coming in and the kind of people that President Trump is now appointing to head up our various agencies in his cabinet?

GLEN FORD: Oh, it's a real horror show. The worst of the worst and the richest of the rich worst. And the only potential saving grace, the only sliver of a silver lining or maybe a copper lining, was the idea that tensions with Russia might be lessened. Because everybody on planet Earth has an interest in not being consumed in a nuclear fireball or dead in a nuclear winter. We are all of solidarity, I would think, about that. And now we have Democrats in league with the CIA taking away even that glimmer of a silver lining, by forcing Trump into a position where any gesture he might make towards Moscow will immediately be attacked as evidence of him being... “a traitor”.

SHARMINI PERIES: All right, Glen, I thank you so much for joining us today.

GLEN FORD: Thank you.

The anti-Trump, anti-DAPL protest in West Palm Beach

By Charles Gannon
12 February 2017

I went with a friend and her activist grandmother along with some of their neighbors to an event in West Palm Beach (WPB) protesting Donald Trump's policies as Trump was leaving from his vacation in the city. The anti-Trump protesters filled one side of the sidewalk (while spilling over in to the next street) while the pro-Trump supporters were across the street, with about 15 people. 

There was one Trump supporter, a skinny kid, who decided to stand behind the anti-Trump protesters, specifically to antagonize and try to cause a provocation. I called him out (along with a few others) for targeting individuals among the crowd, degrading them with reactionary rhetoric based upon the individual's clothing or appearance.The protest was directly in the path of Donald Trump's route back to Air Force One. He deliberately ignored it. He proved to us today that he doesn't represent the majority of Americans. Even people that voted for him didn't vote for this!