The image, above, is a real image. It is not photoshopped. A photographer by the name of Colin McCarthy captured this moment on his Instagram account (@Colinnnnn) and said the following:
Friends at #standingrock please be safe, this man just plowed through a peaceful prayer ceremony waving a gun, injuring 2 people and then proceeded to fire 7 shots into the air. Women, children and elders all running to get out of the way…
So there’s that.
The rich are busy with survivalism, not only buying insanely expensive luxury bunkers, but a whole survivalist community is going up in Texas. (Where else?) Oh, pardon me, they refer to it as a long-term sustainability community, not a survival community. This is a country club based community, with capacity for about 1,600 people. I imagine we’d be talking rich white people here. I’m not in the least rich, and I’m not all the way white, but I’ve had a longstanding interest in sustainability, especially when it comes to Indigenous people having their land stolen over and over, and their ability to sustain themselves ripped away in order to give yet more to people who don’t give one shit about sustainable resources. Now it looks like sustainability and clean energy are really only for those who can afford it, and are allowed into the country club. I’d be willing to bet that every asshole who buys into this place has fought any initiative on climate change and clean energy tooth and fucking nail.
Trident Lakes is a 700-acre, $300 million development that’s billed as a “lavish country-club community” that’ developers say is “part private resort, part safe haven.” Trident Lakes CEO Jim O’Connor and spokesman Richie Whitt said the 400 planned condos will be able to house about 1,600 people total. The condos will range from 900 to 3,600 square feet in size and feature underground floors.
O’Connor understands there may be an inkling to look at Trident Lakes as a “doomsday survival community,” but said he doesn’t view his development in such terms. “We’ve evolved it into long-term sustainability instead of a survival community,” O’Connor said. “The concept is to build a community that will last two centuries or longer. That means we’re looking at designs that include earth structures that won’t be exposed to the elements.” Part of that longevity feature is building most of the condos underground.
O’Connor plans to make the community sustainable by including “off the grid” sources of food, water and energy. Communal greenhouses, an air purification system and even a DNA vault are also planned for the community.
On the upscale side of Trident Lakes, O’Connor plans on adding an equestrian center, polo fields, zip lines and gun ranges. Retail shops, restaurants and a row of helipads are also in the works. O’Connor and Whitt haven’t disclosed a set price to move into the community yet. Whitt said the condos will be comparable to owning a second home.
[…]
“We’re looking into using different energy sources and innovative amenities,” O’Connor said. “This is not only a place to go in an emergency, but also a place people can enjoy living in year round.”
Via Houston Chronicle.
Kali Holloway has an excellent article up at Raw Story: Stop asking me to empathize with the white working class. Here’s just a bit of it:
[…] Trump stoked racial hatred, but he didn’t invent it, so stop acting like he did because it makes you feel good. The irony of this whole thing is that Trump knew better than a lot of “good” white folks—even recognized as well as folks of color did—how much white power and supremacy means to white people. From day one, he bet that it would be enough to get him elected. He ran a brilliant campaign, in a country where a brilliant campaign can almost solely consist of telling white people they might not be on top forever. He called it. Credit where it’s due.
The only surprise to come out of this election is how many, and how quickly, white people want us to empathize with the people who voted against our humanity, our right to exist in this place. Even before the election, the Washington Post actually had the audacity to berate us for not crying for the white working class. In the days since Trump won, the number of articles urging everybody to be cool to Trump’s America, to understand what they are facing, to hear their grievances, has added insult to injury. Bernie Sanders issued a statement saying Trump “tapped into the anger of a declining middle class that is sick and tired of establishment economics, establishment politics and the establishment media.” I read it at least three times and couldn’t find the words “white supremacy” anywhere in it.
Please miss me with all this nonsense. I’m not even going to get into how this is based on an easily refutable economic lie, especially since others have already spent precious time they’ll never get back breaking this down. But even if it was true—and I am well aware of what’s plaguing the white working class, from substance abuse to suicide to a loss of manufacturing jobs—I refuse to take part in the endless privileging of white pain above all others. (Martin Gilens, who has studied this stuff going way back, notes that when the media face of poverty is white, this country suddenly gets a lot more compassionate.) Latinos and African Americans remain worse off than the white working class—which is still the “largest demographic bloc in the workforce”—by pretty much every measurable outcome, from home ownership to life expectancy. Where are these appeals for us when we protest or riot against the systemic inequality we live with? Where are all the calls to recognize and understand our anger?
For hundreds of years, white people have controlled everything in this country: the executive office, Congress, the Supreme Court, the criminal justice system, Wall Street, the lending institutions, the history textbook industry, the false narrative that America cares about liberty and justice for all. But I need to understand white feelings of marginalization because a black man was in the White House for eight years? Because political correctness—a general plea for white people not to be as awful as they have been in the past— asked that white people put more effort into being decent than they felt up to? Because white folks didn’t like that feeling when politicians aren’t singularly focused on the hard times and struggles of their communities? Audre Lorde said (I wonder if that woman ever got sick of being right), “oppressors always expect the oppressed to extend to them the understanding so lacking in themselves.” For a people who have shamed black folks for supposedly always wanting a hand out, for being a problem of the entitlement state, I have never seen people who so firmly believe they are owed something.
Let me pass along some advice black folks have been given for a long time: stop being so angry and seeing yourself as a victim, and try pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. That’s really all I have for you right now, this re-gifting of wisdom. […]
I’ll stand with Ms. Holloway here, and I stand by Iris, too. Over at Death to Squirrels, I said that my days of empathizing with cons of any stripe are over, and they are. White people have gone full court whiny now, wanting everyone to pat them on the head and say, yes, yes, you have it so bad, darling. No. Even liberal white people are getting in on the Whine Wagon. “But you have to be nice to them! They’re just misunderstood!” My response to that? The fuck I do, and the fuck they are.
Before I go on, the standard disclaimer: no, all white people aren’t awful. No, all white people aren’t unrepentant bigots. No, all white people are not willfully ignorant assholes. Yes, lots of white people get it.
This nonsense of “you must have empathy for them, you must!” needs to stop, right now. The people who voted Trump into the position of president-elect did so for specific reasons, but the primary one is exactly what Ms. Holloway said: power. White people are all about power, and they love their privilege. Of course they listened to a fucking gold-plated idiot who told them their power as Mighty Whitey was slipping. They’ve already felt that, and yep, they’ve been very upset about it, and grabbed onto Trump with a death grip in order to get firmly ensconced on top of the people pile once more. I have no idea why white liberals have latched onto the tone argument; Trumpoids have no interest in anyone being nice and understanding, they want obeisance and submission. They want to be what they always have been in this country – lords of the manor. They want to be able to spit, sneer, and be in a position of authoritative judgment of all others. White cons have no use whatsoever for white liberals, either, so that makes the tone argument even more inexplicable.
I’ll be 59 in a matter of days. I grew up in the ’60s and ’70s. Tumultuous times, rife with change, change for the better. There was such hope in the ’70s, people had such faith in the future. This is not what we were dreaming about. The 80s saw the serious rise of conservatism once again, especially Christian conservatism. I’ve been around for the whole thing, and decade by decade, cons have gotten worse, more extreme, more hateful, more spiteful, more poisonous. It’s not a surprise the white wall of conservative xianity took their one chance to power, nor is it surprising that white supremacists have wrapped themselves around Trump like a cloak. All that, I understand. I don’t like it at all, but I understand it.
What I don’t understand is this hand-wringing call for sympathy, tea and cookies. No. No, no, no. When have Christian Cons every had empathy for anyone except themselves? When have white supremacists ever had empathy for anyone except themselves? Christian Cons and white supremacists are evil people, perfectly willing commit themselves to evil to gain their goals. We’re dealing with one of those acts of evil right now. They did the proverbial deal with the devil in order to get closer to all the things they want, and what they want, more than anything, is to stomp people into submission, one way or another. They want to stomp all those feminist sluts into the ground, removing any sort of bodily autonomy, unless it happens to be their bodily autonomy on the line, natch. “No More Uppity” might as well be their battle cry, along with the requisite god, guns, and bible business.
I haven’t recovered quite yet, but to anyone who thinks that “you gotta be nice to them” is some sort of strategy or argument, I have one response: Fuck No.
Kali Holloway’s full article is here, highly recommended. Also recommended: https://twitter.com/drskyskull/status/796916965956874241
Credit: NASA.
Trump’s policies would also be creating failed states at America’s doorstep. Here is what a 2015 NASA study projected the normal climate of North America will look like (under the kind of fossil-fuel-intensive growth Trump has promised). The darkest areas have soil moisture comparable to that seen during the 1930s Dust Bowl.
Our poorer neighbors to the south will be engulfed by near-permanent Dust Bowl or severe drought. At the same time, their coastal areas (and ours) will be trying to “adapt” to sea level rise of perhaps 6 or more feet by 2100 (rising as much as a foot a decade after that). For all but the wealthiest, abandonment will be the primary adaptation strategy.
Inevitably, over a hundred million people from Mexico and Central America will be trying to find a place to live that isn’t anywhere near as hot and dry, that has enough fresh water and food to go around. They won’t be looking south.
Tragically, Donald Trump combines xenophobia with a vow to be the world’s primary obstacle to preserving a livable climate for our southern neighbors. It’s like we would be setting fire to our neighbor’s house and farm — and then blocking efforts by the fire department to put the fire out AND at the same time condemning any notion that we have an obligation to house and feed them.
Trump would be creating the perfect conditions for failed states and violence in North America.
A world where President Trump succeeds in thwarting or reversing climate action is a world with dozens of Syrias and Darfurs and Pakistani mega-floods, a world with hundreds of millions of climate refugees in the coming decades, all clamoring to move to places that aren’t flooded or Dust-Bowlified, including parts of the United States.
It would be a world where everyone eventually becomes a veteran, a refugee, or a casualty of war. That’s something worth remembering this Veteran’s Day.
That’s just a small excerpt from a very good article taking a look at what climate change has already brought about, and how it’s going to get much worse. Yes, there are things we can do to help avert the worst, but thinking people already know we’re in this very late, and all we can do right now is to mitigate all the damage we have done. That mitigation requires cooperation and change. Two things Trump is incapable of are cooperation and change. He has vowed to go full bore ahead on dirty energy, ripping the earth apart in a quest for more, more, more, without one thought to the very near future. If you have children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, and you voted for that maniac, you have just screwed them, and their future into the ground. Unfortunately, you decided to screw over everyone else, too.
Trump is a silver spoon idiot, a person who can barely think at all, is of little education,* doesn’t read, and doesn’t care about anything except himself. He inherited wealth, and an inflated sense of entitlement. That sense of entitlement is what drives him now, and in that quest, he will ensure he does his damnedest to hasten the death of most life on our planet, that life including yours and that of those you love.
*No, I don’t care if you didn’t go to college. Hell, I don’t care if you didn’t make it through high school. I do care whether or not you have learned throughout your life, whether you have made an effort to learn about things happening in the world. If you haven’t, and you’ve just sat on your ass letting any con man fill your head with shit, you deserve what you’ve brought down, but the rest of us? No, we don’t deserve that.
Full article here. In other climate news: Trump victory puts the chill on international climate talks. Court rules that children can sue the government over climate negligence.
Will Trump go down in history as the man who pulled the plug on a livable climate?
The fate of humanity is in the hands of a denier who pledged to kill domestic and global climate action and all clean energy research.
Courtesy Dr0ne2bewild Shiyé Bidziil/Vimeo.
Energy Transfer Partners has gone so far as to build its drilling pad for tunneling under the Missouri River at Lake Oahe, even though it still awaits the necessary easements.
The U.S. Department of Justice is about to announce next steps on de-escalating the standoff regarding construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, according to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.
“Today, the Department of Justice announced in federal court that it will be announcing the next steps on a ‘path forward’ for the Dakota Access Pipeline crossing at Lake Oahe,” said Standing Rock Sioux Chairman David Archambault II in a statement on November 10.
Energy Transfer Partners is refusing to stand down on its construction plans despite two requests from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that it do so.
The company, builders of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), said on Tuesday November 8 that it planned to begin drilling in two weeks—even though at the moment it does not have the easements necessary for it to tunnel under the river legally.
Full story at ICTMN.
Sarah Palin.
…According to reports, former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is a top contender for secretary of the interior.
Trump mentioned he would like to appoint Palin to a position within his administration when she endorsed him in January 2016.
[…]
It looks like that role might be secretary of the interior, according to Politico. The secretary of the interior leads the Department of the Interior, responsible for the nation’s public lands and natural resources. The department oversees land, water and other natural resources, protects fish and wildlife and preserves the environment and historic places around the country. The department also coordinates relations with tribal communities and island territories.
Palin has developed a political platform based on making the U.S. energy independent.
“Energy is my baby,” she said in an interview with CNN in September 2015. “Oil and gas and minerals – those things that God has dumped on this part of the earth for mankind’s use instead of us relying on unkind foreign nations for us to import their resources.”
[…]
Other contenders for Trump’s secretary of the interior pick include Forrest Lucas, the founder of Lucas Oil, Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin and venture capitalist Robert Grady, among others.
Via Raw Story. The Southern Poverty Law Center has an article up about the Trump Team, and to say it’s a nightmare is an understatement. Every corrupt, hateful person you can think of, they are there. Politico is also covering this.
I barely have words here. It doesn’t really matter who is appointed, whoever it is will go full scale rapacious, ensuring we have land which cannot support life, and water that is poisoned. Congratulations, all you fucking Trumpidiots,* you’ve signed the beginning of our death warrant.
* Yes, if you voted for a third party, wrote someone in, or abstained, you are a Trumpidiot. No, I’m not letting you off the hook. This was a binary choice, that was blindingly obvious, and no one can honestly deny that. Rather than do the right thing, you made a conscious decision to do the wrong thing. Your little act of rebelliousness may have given you satisfaction at the time, but I hope with all my heart it has been slammed home to you what you have done, the immense wrong you have helped to perpetrate against millions of people; against our planet, and all the life on it.
When Mosha, an elephant, was two years old, she lost her leg in a landmine injury along the Thai-Burmese border. Luckily, an orthopedic surgeon was able to fit her with the first prosthetic leg ever designed for an elephant. As she’s grown, she’s needed to be fitted for new ones. But she’s never forgotten the doctor who changed her life.
All together now…aaaaaawwwwwww.
Via Great Big Story.
Happy Native American Heritage Month #NoDAPL pic.twitter.com/CTfxayT2tC
— Joe D. Horse Capture (@NativeCurator) November 7, 2016
Speaking of, Alysa Landry has an excellent article up at ICTMN, about spending the last forty-five weeks writing about all the U.S. presidents, and their impact on Indigenous peoples: Indians Are Invisible: What I Learned Researching US Presidents. Highly recommended reading. The whitewash goes deeper than anyone thought.
We’re at the Red Line. If you can come to Standing Rock, now is the time. Please, if you can make it, please, please come. If you can come, please pledge. We need you.
Yeah, I know, everyone is tired of cops. So are we, but they aren’t going away. Towards the end, some people drove up with a truck full of wood, and people were busy grabbing pieces and throwing it into the river, if not to build another bridge that day, to block the cops. The last shots are facing towards camp, as a lot of us were returning to rest and recoup. Click for full size.
© C. Ford, all rights reserved.
Iconic musicians Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt,will perform a benefit concert along with Native performers on November 27 for the Water Protectors on the front line at Standing Rock. Courtesy Photos Jackson Browne / Bonnie Raitt.
Iconic musicians Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt, along with performers Joel Rafael, and Bad Dog, will perform a benefit concert on Sunday, November 27 for the Water Protectors on the front line at Standing Rock. Storyteller Ladonna Brave Bull Allard, founder of the Standing Rock Sioux Camp at Sacred Stone, will speak at the concert. Other performers will be announced as they are confirmed.
The concert will be on Sunday, November 27, 2016 at 6:30 pm at the Prairie Knights Pavilion in Fort Yates, ND, which is seven miles from the Oceti Sakowin Camp. Tickets go on sale to the general public on Saturday at 10 am central; The link to purchase tickets is HERE.
“Just as we give thanks for our good fortune and the bounty of our lives as Americans, let us thank the Native people who are gathered here at Standing Rock to protect the natural world and defend our place in it,” said Jackson Browne in a statement submitted to ICTMN.
Bonnie Raitt also expressed solidarity with Standing Rock in the statement.
The kayakers were able to get in and out quickly, avoiding the cops while dropping supplies to those on the front line, such as bottles of apple cider vinegar, to help counter the near constant clouds of pepper spray. They never stopped spraying, just took a break from it now and then. The irony may have been lost on the cops, but it certainly wasn’t lost on the protectors when cops started carting water down the hill, and it was being passed out among the cops. There were more than a few offers to replace that water with cans of oil. Many of the cops happily took a break, sucking down clean water, chatting, telling jokes, and laughing. Then it was back to gassing and shooting unarmed people. Click for full size.
Driving by back home to pick up more firewood. We arrived at camp in time to hear a call for all women with children and the elderly to get to the school across the Cannonball River, word was the camp (Oceti Sakowin) was going to be raided. It wasn’t, but that’s because they were busy a bit to the northeast of camp, what was being called Turtle Island by all those at camp. More on this later, when I have more time. The unnecessary, cowardly actions taken by cops was very ugly to see. Protectors were being gassed and shot by cops who were mere feet away from them. (Rubber bullets, but one young man has already been hospitalized with bleeding from the lungs, thanks to one of those harmless bullets). It was a terrible shock to hear and see one of the cops raise his gun and fire into the protectors. Over one hundred cops were there, including snipers. Okay, off again, back home tomorrow. Click photos for full size.
All photos © C. Ford, all rights reserved.