All I can say is that someone in Memphis should get a bad taste award for that one. Ick.
Affinity
Art, Fun, & Nonsense.
A YouTube video from North Dakota’s new Gov. Doug Burgum. More of the same about Standing Rock.
Damn. Think about what was possible: A governor who is framing his entire administration on innovation just dismissed the most disruptive force in his state’s recent history. That is what Standing Rock is about. Instead of saying, “What can we learn from this? What can we do together?” The new governor relied on the screen saver that was there before; the idea that powerful forces will roll over the tribe and build the Dakota Access Pipeline without interference. Thank you.
Burgum also scratched away at an old story: The Obama administration created this problem.
But his larger message is that the state of North Dakota and its corporate partners are more powerful than any tribal government. Instead of a pause, a moment to engage in a government-to-government dialogue, the new governor emphatically says the pipeline will get built soon. No. Matter. What.
“Make no mistake, this infrastructure is good for our economy,” the governor said in his YouTube video. “And it’s the safest way to transport North Dakota products. Failure to finish it would send a chilling signal to those in any industry who wish invest in our state and play by the rules.”
[…]
The new governor could have reset the law enforcement battle lines too. Nope. “As a result of the Obama administration’s refusal to uphold the rule of law on federally owned land, both our citizens and local and state law enforcement have been put in harm’s way,” he said. “These actions are putting daily demands on the scarce resources of our state and local government.”
Those daily demands are because the state of North Dakota made it so. Pick a word: defuse, de-escalate, negotiate. There were so many better alternatives, ones that were dismissed in favor of sending in the cavalry. I have interviewed many government officials over the years that successfully reduced tension instead of using the police powers of a state. In every test the state failed in this regard and the new governor is following the same path.
I had hopes that Gov. Burgum would see the potential of the Standing Rock story as one that could make North Dakota a beacon. Think about this: This moment in history has brought indigenous people together in a way that’s unprecedented. And the world is paying attention to that. What an amazing opportunity, something that could stir the imagination of investors, entrepreneurs, and governments. Potential partners in a state that found a solution by working with tribes to solve an intractable problem.
The former governor blamed social media for this global perception. But that misses the point that the Standing Rock Tribe owns the story. And that won’t change because the new governor posts a video on his account. The problem is not social media. It’s the message that the State of North Dakota will use the rule of law, the police power of a state, to roll over a tribal nation. It’s a message of brute force instead of inspiration.
Same old tired shit. Same old tired white privilege. Nothing ever changes. Mark Trahant’s full column at ICTMN.
Yesterday, Trump tweeted about how more nuclear weapons are needed, making a lot of people tense and unhappy. Your worries have just doubled down, because Trump has not had a single thought about this, just ran right into things with his brain shut and mouth wide open: now we need an arms race! Gosh, won’t that be fun.
On Friday, MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough said President-elect Donald Trump endorsed a nuclear arms race during a brief phone conversation they had with him earlier that morning.
“Mika asked the president-elect when we had the opportunity what his position was on — trying to clarify the tweet yesterday regarding the nuclear arsenal,” Scarborough said, referring to a tweet Trump published on Thursday calling for the United States to “greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.”
“And the president-elect told you what?” Scarborough said to Brzezinski.
“Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass,” she replied. “And outlast them all.”
Trump’s statement directly contradicts the spin spokesman Jason Miller offered Thursday afternoon in an effort to downplay Thursday’s tweet — spin that interpreted Trump’s comments as merely warning about “the threat of nuclear proliferation.”
[…]
Trump’s comments Friday indicate Miller had it wrong. The president-elect is actually endorsing a nuclear arms race, not warning about the dangers of one, because he’s confident the United States would somehow always win.
Trump’s position represents a break from the nonproliferation efforts the United States has led for decades. As ThinkProgress detailed last spring, international nonproliferation agreements reduced the number of operational warheads in the world from a high of 64,452 in 1986 to 10,315 in 2015. The president-elect’s statements suggest that downward trend will come to an end.
Friday is far from the first time Trump said reckless things about nuclear weapons. During an interview last March with Chris Matthews, Trump said he was open to using nukes if the situation called for it and questioned why we’d make them if we never intended to use them. During a Fox News interview the next day, Trump wouldn’t even rule out the possibility of using nukes in Europe.
“Europe is a big place,” Trump said. “I’m not going to take cards off the table. We have nuclear capability.”
“Europe is a big place.” The sheer idiocy of this man makes me despair. Trump is the compleat ignoramus, an Ignoramus’s Ignoramus. No attention span. No knowledge. No ability to think. No mindfulness. He doesn’t read, at all. No books, no newspapers, nothing. He “skims, glances”. Christ, we are so fucked.
In response to a subsequent question about what steps might stand in the way of Trump using nukes if he becomes president, Hayden said, “The system is designed for speed and decisiveness. It’s not designed to debate the decision.”
That’s reassuring. (For the sarcasm impaired: heavy sarcasm.)
Via Think Progress.
Ann Coulter (Shutterstock)
Ann Coulter attended VDARE’s Christmas Party, piling yet another conservative onto the unapologetically white supremacist platform. We’re going to be seeing more of this, like Bill O’Reilly’s recent adoption of white supremacy. I had thought the normalisation of fascism and the open agenda of white supremacists might take at least a short while, but apparently not. The open embrace of white supremacy should be ringing alarm bells all over the place, but I no longer have even the smallest bit of faith in people hearing those alarms and waking the fuck up.
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) reported Wednesday that Coulter was spotted Dec. 9 at VDARE’s annual gala and even gave an impromptu interview to John Derbyshire — a U.K. expat famous for being too openly racist for the National Review.
[…]
“VDARE’s list of contributors, in fact, is akin to a Rolodex of the most prominent pseudo-intellectual racists and anti-Semites,” wrote the SPLC’s Stephen Piggott. “They include names like Jared Taylor, who once wrote that black people are incapable of sustaining any kind of civilization; Kevin MacDonald, a retired professor who wrote a trilogy claiming that Jews are genetically driven to undermine the Christian societies they often live in; and the late Sam Francis, a white nationalist ideologue who wrote several key racist books.”
This is Coulter’s second star turn at a white nationalist event since the fall, Piggott noted, “In September, she spoke to the annual “Writers Workshop” event put on by the anti-immigrant and white nationalist publishing house The Social Contract Press (TSCP).”
The TSCP is a Michigan-based publishing house that specializes in the writing of white supremacists.
[…]
The election of Donald Trump has emboldened many U.S. racists and spurred them to reveal their true colors.
Via Raw Story.
The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 22, 2016
Trump, and his buddy Putin, are now happily chattering about nuclear weapons. The consensus? We need more of them! Oh good, we’re all gonna die.
The timing of Trump’s tweet is interesting because it came after Russia said this week that it was looking to strengthen its own nuclear capabilities to be able to penetrate missile defense shields.
Via Raw Story.
Alexander Dugin, the leader of the Eurasian Movement (far right) takes part in a Russian nationalists’ rally in support of Serbia in Moscow, Russia, Sunday, April 27, 2008. CREDIT: AP Photo/Mikhail Metzel.
Many Americans, primarily conservative, bigoted ones, are often found across the ‘net, bemoaning globalism. American wannabe nazis don’t have issues with globalism, they embrace it.
Aleksandr Dugin, is a radical, Trump supporting, self-proclaimed philosopher from Russia. Traditionalism and cultural purity are two of his most valued philosophical tenets. And while his influence may be overstated in Russia, his ideology has infiltrated white nationalist circles in the United States and parts of Europe.
One of Dugin’s biggest fans is Richard Spencer, the head of the racist National Policy Institute (NPI) and the man who popularized the term “alt-right.” Dugin’s work has been published on Spencer’s former website Alternate Right. And Spencer’s wife, Nina Spencer (who also goes by the aliases Nina Kouprianova, or Byzantina) has regularly translated Dugin’s work into English on her blog (though the blog gives the disclaimer saying that translated words are not necessarily the views of the translator).
[…]
Spencer’s adherence to Dugin’s ideology was shown as recently as last month when he tweeted a message of Dugin’s, using the same “swamp” metaphor that President-elect Donald Trump has employed when pledging to “drain the swamp.”
Dugin on the "global swamp." pic.twitter.com/hvdbmPFQV3
— Richard ? Spencer (@RichardBSpencer) November 12, 2016
The Swamp is to become the new name for globalist sect, open society adepts, lgbt maniacs, Soros army, posthumanists and so on. Drain the Swamp is not only American categorial imperative. It is global challenge for all of us. Every people now is under power of its own Swamp. We all together should start the fight agains russian Swamp, french Swamp, german Swamp, and so on. We need to purge our societies from the influence of Swamp. So instead of fighting between ourselves let us drain it together. Drainers of the whole world should be united.
So, a purge. A purge of all those undesirable types from all societies everywhere. Does it take three whole guesses to figure out what their solution to all us excess people might be?
Full story at Think Progress.
UPDATE: Bannon and Dugin, Common Ground.
Bannon referred to Dugin while answering questions at a talk hosted by the religious right wing Human Dignity Institute in the summer of 2014.
“When Vladimir Putin, when you really look at some of the underpinnings of some of his beliefs today, a lot of those come from what I call Eurasianism,” said Bannon. “He’s got an adviser [Dugin] who harkens back to Julius Evola and different writers of the early 20th century who are really the supporters of what’s called the traditionalist movement, which really eventually metastasized into Italian fascism. A lot of people that are traditionalists are attracted to that.”
Bannon is referring to Dugin here. Dugin is a proponent of traditionalism — a philosophy in which all moral and religious truths come from divine revelation and are perpetuated by tradition — and counts Evola, an influential Italian fascist, as one of his influences. This speech took place in 2014, when Dugin’s support for the annexation of Crimea had him prominently in the news.
David M. Friedman, left, with Donald J. Trump and his daughter Ivanka in 2010. Mr. Friedman has said he does not believe it would be illegal for Israel to annex the West Bank. Credit Bradley C. Bower/Bloomberg.
Once again, a Trump pick has proven to be the worst possible choice. David Friedman has been chosen as ambassador to Israel, and he’s considered to hold scarily far right views, even among the far right. I’m sure he has a “good brain” though, and that will make the specter of no peace whatsoever okay.
President-elect Donald Trump named David M. Friedman as ambassador to Israel on Thursday — proving that the Israel-Palestinian peace process is basically screwed for the next four years.
Friedman, a bankruptcy lawyer and previously a Trump campaign adviser on Jewish world issues, has zero diplomatic experience and holds far right views on Israel — even among the far right in Israel. Friedman opposes a two-state solution because he believes that the number of Palestinians in modern-day Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza — currently over 6 million and expected to equal the number of Israeli Jews by the end of 2017 — is exaggerated.
“There are always creative ways to allow people to live in peace,” Friedman told Haaretz in June. “It is not always about the land. We don’t accept the idea it is only about land. Nobody really knows how many Palestinians actually live there.” He also told the publication that Trump doesn’t see a Palestinian state as “an American imperative at all.”
It should come as no surprise, then, that Friedman doesn’t believe Israeli settlements on Palestinian land — which are considered illegal under international law — are an obstacle to peace. In fact, he is president of the American Friends of Bet El; the Bet El settlement was build on private Palestinian land without approval, but Friedman’s group has sent it millions of dollars over the past few years. (Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has donated at least $20,000 to the organization.)
[…]
Friedman has also called for the United States to “veto any United Nations votes that unfairly single out Israel,” labelled the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) Movement as anti-Semitic, and called Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands a “false notion.”
The appointment of Friedman falls in line with Trump’s own views on Israel and Palestine. The president-elect has shown remarkably little interest in helping the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Instead, he has said the construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank should “keep moving forward,” promised to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and pointed to the illegal wall separating Israel and the West Bank — referred to as the “Apartheid Wall” or “Berlin Wall” by Palestinians — as inspiration for what the United States should do on the U.S.-Mexico border.
This morning I had another talk with the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler, and here is the paper which bears his name upon it as well as mine. Some of you, perhaps, have already heard what it contains but I would just like to read it to you: ‘ … We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again.
British PM Neville Chamberlain, 1938
Make no mistake: Donald Trump’s Administration is coming for Indian Country—we’re suddenly big targets on his radar. We haven’t had quite this big of a place on the national and international stage in a long time. It makes sense—Native communities have about 25% of the nation’s on-shore oil and gas reserves and developable resources and this upcoming administration is oil-thirsty.
And they’re coming for what Tribes have; Dakota Access was the warm-up. Trump’s line-up of cabinet nominees tells us that his Administration is coming squarely for Native land and Native natural resources. Rick Perry, who sits on the Board of Directors for the Energy Transfer Partners (the company that owns the Dakota Access Pipeline), was nominated as the Energy Secretary. Trump also nominated Scott Pruitt to be the new head of the EPA; Pruitt said that “hydraulic fracking, a technological innovation that has done more to reduce carbon emissions in this country than any other technological advancement of our time.” No really—that’s what he said. He also wrote a letter to Obama In 2012, Pruitt and Republican Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal wrote a letter to President Obama asking to eliminate a Bureau of Land Management proposal that requires oil companies to disclose the chemicals used in fracking operations on Native American land.
These cats want to separate Native people from our lands and mineral resources. It’s westward expansion, manifest destiny!
Again.
Gyasi Ross has an outstanding article up at ICTMN about the current political mess, and what it’s going to mean to Indian Country:
The Thing About Skins: Make no mistake, Donald Trump’s Administration is coming for Indian Country.
In an earlier edition, Marty Two Bulls made his feelings about certain Indians active in the current mess quite clear:
© Marty Two Bulls.
Pastor Dahua, president of the community of Monterrica, on the Marañón River in the Peruvian Amazon, scoops oil from a spill from a Petroperu pipeline on his community’s land. Barbara Fraser.
Hunching his shoulders against a driving rain Pastor Dahua scrambled down a muddy bank and stepped across a pool of blackened water to a makeshift shelter that marked the place where crude oil had spilled from an oil pipeline.
The spill in Monterrico, the community of Kukama and Urarina people of which Dahua is president, is one of 10 that have occurred since January along the pipeline that runs from oil fields in the Peruvian Amazon across the Andes Mountains to a port and refinery on the Pacific coast.
The rain worried Dahua. Between November and May, water levels in Amazonian rivers rise by 30 feet or more, flooding villages and forests. If the spill was not cleaned up by the time the flooding began in earnest, Monterrico’s only water supply—a stream that crossed the pipeline near the end of the oil spill—could be contaminated.
Monterrico is one of dozens of communities affected by recent spills. Even more people are exposed to contamination from 40 years of oil operations that dumped oil and salty, metals-laden water into rivers, streams and lakes in Peru’s oldest Amazonian oil fields.
Government agencies have identified more than 1,000 sites needing cleanup, but have a budget of only about $15 million for testing and remediation. Experts say that is just a fraction of the amount that will be needed.
Anger over the sluggish pace of efforts to address decades of pollution and neglect have come to a head in Saramurillo, on the bank of the Marañón River, a few hours by boat downstream from Monterrico.
Hundreds of people from more than 40 indigenous communities converged there on September 1, blocking boat traffic on the Marañón River, a key transportation route in the northeastern Peruvian region of Loreto, where there are virtually no roads.
Despite an initial meeting with government officials in October, the protest dragged on into December, amid tensions among both the protesters and the travelers and merchants trapped by the blockade.
Indigenous protesters stand watch on bank of Marañón River in Saramurillo, Peru, blocking boats from passing, as they pressure the government to solve problems related to pollution from four decades of oil production in the Peruvian Amazon. Barbara Fraser.
This in depth look at the reality of oil spills, and their impact on Indigenous people is very necessary reading. The impact of such is not at all limited to Indigenous people, and the more Indigenous people fight against having pipelines on their land, the more the impact of spills will spread, further and further out, into a horrible web of contamination.
Everyone needs to stand up against fossil fuels, now more than ever, with the new climate change denying, fossil fuel loving administration poised to take over.
A student protests against Donald Trump’s proposals at Rutgers University on November 16. Albin Lohr-Jones/Sipa USA via AP.
Concerned by the hateful rhetoric that has accompanied President-elect Donald Trump’s transition to the White House, a group of 1,200 historians and other scholars have put out a powerful statement urging Americans to stand guard against civil rights abuses.
“Looking back to history provides copious lessons on what is at stake when we allow hysteria and untruths to trample people’s rights,” the scholars wrote. “We know the consequences, and it is possible, with vigilance and a clear eye on history, to prevent tragedy before it is too late.”
You can read the statement in full at Mother Jones. I keep wondering what in the hell it’s going to take, to wake people up. How about Fashwave?
How about the never-ending incidents of hate?
What is it going to take?
Photo by Tom Jefferson.
There are still people at the Oceti Sakowin camp, a considerably smaller number, around 2,000, who will stay until DA is gone. They are requesting that no one new come into camp right now, as weather conditions are very harsh. Those of us fighting the Black Snake still need help. You can signal boost, get involved in various actions, or donate, all is appreciated, deeply.
Have a look at the Oceti Sakowin Camp site, and see if there is a way to add your voice to the many.
Demonstration mot DAPL! Tillsammans mot statlig repression och dess underminering av demokratiska rättigheter. #noDAPL #VattnaNordea pic.twitter.com/lmS0u8spNQ
— SUF Uppsala ⭕️ (@SUFUppsala) December 10, 2016
Här är demonstrationens officiella affisch! Skriv ut några och ta med hem eller sätt upp på jobbet: pic.twitter.com/D9d8Gqdj1I
— SUF Uppsala ⭕️ (@SUFUppsala) December 13, 2016
Rick Perry speaks to Fox News (screen grab).
Rick Perry, the former governor of Texas, whose style of governance was basically “hey, let’s pray!”, has been tapped by Trump to be Secretary of Energy.
CBS is reporting that President elect Donald Trump has chosen former Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) to be his energy secretary.
[…]
According to Major Garrett of CBS, two sources have confirmed Perry will be offered the spot and will accept.
As CBS notes, Perry sits on the boards of two major energy companies, including Energy Transfer Partners which owns a subsidiary Dakota Access LLC, which is attempting to build the Dakota Access Pipeline.
It’s not enough to say all these rich assholes are living in one another’s pockets, they are living in each others rectums. It’s quite the racket Trump is setting up, making sure that all his investments don’t suffer by protecting his fellow investors, all of whom are climate change deniers, and pro-fossil fuels. (See here for the Exxon mess.)
People must get serious about fighting filthy energy, our lives are at stake. When we remove the earth’s ability to sustain us, we’ll die, and not pleasantly so. When we have poisoned all the water, we’ll die. And once again, water systems are not neatly contained puddles. Water flows, it meets other water, it’s an intricate and beautiful network, one which is vital to the health of our earth, and the life residing on it. Everywhere you look, more pipelines are being approved, against public sentiment and wishes. Trudeau, who styled himself a friend to the Indigenous nations of Canada, recently approved two major pipelines. Trump has vowed to okay Keystone XL, and while he won’t be pinned down on DAPL, he says “there will be a fast resolution”. As he’s heavily invested in ETP, I’m sure it doesn’t take much work to figure out which way he will go. The coal industry is also getting much more pushy, pinning their hopes on a Trump presidency. As usual, much of the pipelines and planned coal stations will be on Indigenous land, and treaties will be broken left and right, while colonialists happily destroy the ability of Indigenous people to sustain themselves, and make sure their land and water is always at risk of being poisoned beyond repair.
Does anyone think that the blatant disregard shown by Trump and his appointees won’t matter? Climate change is real, and we are already feeling the effects of it. Sea levels are rising. Water is routinely poisoned by gas and oil. Land which used to yield food is now rendered blasted and useless from fracking. Things will continue to get worse unless we change things right. fucking. now. Trump and his cronies have no interest in that at all. They plan to accelerate all the damage. When great swathes of the U.S. are no longer inhabitable for 3 to 6 months a year, what’s going to happen? Do you have enough money to purchase alternate residences, and the money cushion involved in moving back and forth? Are you going to get out your precious, beloved gun and start shooting people who don’t have resources? What do billionaires care about any of that? The entitlement brought on by having endless amounts of money and power allows them to think they will never, ever be victimized by such things, but planetary climate change doesn’t care about billionaires, and while it might get them last, it will get them.
The most recent pipeline leak here in nDakota, it was not detected by all that supposed early detection equipment, so no more of the same, tired bullshit about how safe pipelines are, and oh, they have detection equipment, because that crap does not work, and pipelines leak, end of story.
People in Arkansas and Oklahoma need help to stop a pipeline.
…More. Right. The orange man is on deck. Trump the troll. His minions. Pipeline lovers. Oil-addicted junkies. Wall builders and bigots. The illegal immigrants in this country are not brown. I’ve said this before. Many times. These gibbed geeks are the descendants of European invaders. But enough of that. Word is the oil-and-gas fat cats at Energy Transfer Partners are pissing and moaning into their whiskeys and ryes. Whiny brats. They said they’ll push on. President Andrew Jackson pushed on, too. The Trail of Tears happened anyway. “Justice Marshall made his decision, now let him enforce it.” Another whiny brat.
There’s little justice in this world, but on December 4, Native Americans got a taste. It’s always a fine feeling when good prevails over evil. And that’s what these pipelines are. Evil. Pure. Unadulterated. How could they not be? The oil oafs and their seedy oligarch asshat homies know pipelines leak. And they know people get sick when they do. Just ask the folks in the gulf who are still suffering from the massive BP oil spill. They agonize from chronic respiratory illnesses and skin diseases. THEY know what happens when pipelines leak and poison the water, sink into the soil. But these paunchy pipeline pricks turn a blind eye in the name of profit. They are gibbed vermin, and they deal in deception. …
Excerpt from Simon Moya-Smith, writing from the Oceti Sakowin Camp.
Standing Rock: No DAPL Roundup.
