BOOM.

Flames shoot into the sky from a gas line explosion in western Shelby County, Alabama, U.S., October 31, 2016. REUTERS/Marvin Gentry.

Flames shoot into the sky from a gas line explosion in western Shelby County, Alabama, U.S., October 31, 2016. REUTERS/Marvin Gentry.

While cops are playing soldier with military equipment, snipers nested in hills, and busy writing numbers on the arms of those arrested, and white Ndakotans are busy yelling slurs, making fun of the dumb Indians, and oil companies continue to insist all this pipeline stuff is just so darn safe…LEAKA LEAKA BOOM LEAKA. Unfortunately, it’s Alabama who sees this explosion, with fatalities, injuries, fires, and of course, gasoline everywhere. Some of us in Ndakota aren’t too keen on this happening here. Oh, and my heart goes out to the family and friends of the person who died. People are doing this work because it’s work, and well paid work in areas which don’t have much of that going on. No one should end up dead because they wanted to make a living wage.

Colonial Pipeline Co shut down its main gasoline and distillates pipelines on Monday after an explosion and fire in Shelby, Alabama, killing a worker and sending five to the hospital – the second time in two months it had to close the crucial supply line to the U.S. East Coast.

A nine-man crew was conducting work on the Colonial pipeline system at the time of the explosion, Alabama Governor Robert Bentley told a briefing. Seven of the crew members were injured, with two evacuated by air.

The explosion occurred when a contract crew hit the gasoline pipeline (Line 1) with a trackhoe, igniting gasoline, Colonial said an e-mailed statement late on Monday.

One worker died at the scene and five individuals were taken to Birmingham-area hospitals for treatment, the company said.

 

[…]

A segment of pipeline was undergoing maintenance on Monday afternoon when it exploded. The fire had been contained as of around 9 p.m. (0100 GMT on Tuesday), according to local media reports.

Crews built a 8-foot (2-meter) tall dirt dam to contain burning fuel, Bentley said on Twitter late on Monday.

The explosion sparked wildfires, burning 32 acres, the governor said.

 

[…]

Bentley’s office said on Twitter the site was about a mile west of a massive leak last month that closed the gasoline pipeline for over 12 days. A 3-mile (4.8-km) area around the site had been evacuated, the governor said. … Colonial was working to restart a section of pipeline damaged after its biggest leak of gasoline in nearly two decades on Sept. 9, which released as much as 8,000 barrels (336,000 gallons) of gasoline in Shelby County. The restart was planned for mid-November after removal of a bypass line installed after the September leak.

[…]

The 5,500-mile (8,850-km) Colonial Pipeline is the largest U.S. refined products pipeline system and transports gasoline, diesel and jet fuel from the U.S. Gulf Coast to the New York Harbor area. The pipelines that shut run from Houston to Greensboro, North Carolina.

It has already had five spills reported in Alabama in 2016, including the one in September, according to PHMSA data.

Gosh, it would be great if people could figure out that pipelines are not safe, they are not just short term destructive, they are long time destructive, they will see this planet dead, and then what? As Mark Trahant has been at pains to point out, decisions could be made right now, which would not only turn things around, make Ndakota a leader in clean energy, but be a large, and permanent economic boost. That isn’t happening because KKKJack is so damn deep in oil’s pockets, he’ll lose everything if he doesn’t push this through, and he’s a known bigot who thinks there would be no loss if all us Indians dropped dead. The Ndakota cops, such as they are, have been sold to DA and ETP, paid thugs for oil, all for the price of getting to play soldier with shiny toys.

That’s really the key in North Dakota — and beyond. Starting the transition by saying that Dakota Access Pipeline represents our past and a mistake. And as part of a managed decline, major fossil fuel infrastructure projects — this pipeline — are no more.

But what about the jobs? What will this do to North Dakota? Actually it could be a great thing. Data from Stanford researchers shows that the transition to clean energy could happen faster than projected — and benefit a state almost immediately. In North Dakota the Solutions Project says an transformation “plan pays for itself in as little as 2 years from air pollution and climate cost savings alone.” Two years? Imagine the intellectual activity, the construction, the jobs, the fresh investment, all that would come together to make that so. It would be mind-blowing.  The Stanford data says such a transition would create 8,574 permanent operations jobs and 21,744 construction jobs.

Doesn’t that sound good? Sounds good to me. But no, better to force this fucking destruction through, and hey, if Ndakota happens to go happily Hitlerian genocidal, well, it’s just a buncha Injuns, right?

Full story here.

Making Native Sense of Disney’s ‘Moana’.

The Maui skin-suit.

Anne Keala Kelly has an excellent column up about Disney’s Moana, and the Thanksgiving release date. A brief excerpt:

…If the promotional trailer is anything like the film, Disney’s about to get even richer by exploiting and mocking us in deeply genealogical and spiritual ways—turning Tutu Pele into an ugly lava monster and Maui into a ridiculous, clowning sidekick. The noted psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary and writer Frantz Fanon was so on the mark when he said, “…Colonialism is not satisfied merely with holding a people in its grip and emptying the native’s brain of all form and content. By a kind of perverted logic, it turns to the past of the oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures, and destroys it.”

Disney has reduced us and our world to a cartoon at a time when our political future is hanging in the balance, when Hawaiians absolutely need to be heard and taken seriously, not distracted by or silenced for entertainment. Disney is trying to do to our culture and identity what America is doing to our land and nationhood: we are being carved up, sold off, and drained of our mana.

Since the Maui-Skin-Suit debacle, Disney’s 21st century iteration of the white supremacist ideology that informed people like British Major General Horatio Gordon Robley, a proud collector of Maori heads, and the guy who tried to sell a Hawaiian kupuna skull on eBay, I’ve been thinking in metaphors. I’m looking at what’s happening right now, but looking, too, at the horizon, at what’s coming toward us, imagining what might follow, hoping that whatever it is Hawaiians and all Pacific Islanders can face it together instead of letting it further divide us.

I have no doubt that Disney’s “Moana” will materially and psychologically aid and abet the colonial project of Indigenous erasure and removal. …

Anne Keala Kelly is the Native Hawaiian award-winning filmmaker of “Noho Hewa: The Wrongful Occupation of Hawai’i. She is also a journalist whose work has appeared in The Nation and on Pacifica Network and Al Jazeera. www.annekealakelly.com www.nohohewa.com

The full article is at ICTMN.

Being used as costumes just got worse…

Every year, there’s always a slew of  “Indian” costumes, and plenty of thoughtless, ignorant people to use us and our cultures as a shallow dress up day. Social media on Halloween is especially bad for Indians, as you see one asshole after another, most often white, tweeting or facebooking their oh so cool gonna be an Indian for a day costumes, bristling with defensiveness over their right to appropriation, and how awful us damn Indians are for speaking out about it, that’s just bullying poor white people who aren’t doing anything wrong!

This year sees yet another celebrity who thinks Indian dress up is cool and fun:

Hillary Duff and Boyfriend Jason Walsh Dress as Pilgrim and Native American ‘Chief’ - MICHAEL KOVAC/GETTY IMAGES.

Hillary Duff and Boyfriend Jason Walsh Dress as Pilgrim and Native American ‘Chief’ – MICHAEL KOVAC/GETTY IMAGES.

UPDATE: Apologies proffered by Duff and Walsh. Walsh’s, um, apology, trotted out the standard “I meant no disrespect, I have nothing but admiration!” yada, yada, yada. No, you don’t have admiration, and that’s not wanted anyway. There are, of course, a number of people who are upset any apology was offered, tweets at the link. Some non-native people have also posted photos of themselves dressed up as “Indian” and have posted to #NoDAPL. As for Natives who play dress up, Dr. Keene addresses that at Native Appropriations.

This year, 2016, sees a new twist on the bigotry and appropriation. It seems some people think it’s really cool to depict those NoDAPL water protectors for what they are – lazy, shiftless, drunken injuns living on handouts from all those hard working white people:

protecters

markels-001

These are Ndakotans, people we are surrounded by. I can’t say anything right now, this is one lousy way to start the day. You can read more here.

No DAPL and Indigenous News Roundup.

Unicorn Riot/Vimeo Officers liberally douse water protectors with pepper spray at the front lines of the resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Unicorn Riot/Vimeo
Officers liberally douse water protectors with pepper spray at the front lines of the resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Trigger Warning: Disturbing Video of DAPL Confrontation.

This video, taken directly from the front lines of the October 27 police crackdown on the camp established in the pipeline’s path on treaty-protected indigenous land, contains disturbing images. Police douse protectors with mace as if squirting water from a hose, shoot them with tasers and throw them to the ground, all in the name of building a pipeline. Those against the project say they are there solely to protect the water.

[Read more…]

Sunday Facepalm.

Grant Stinchfield.

Grant Stinchfield.

NRA TV. There’s something that is unneeded as an extra hole in the head. The host of NRA TV is Grant Stinchfield, pro-Trump, and quite the conspiracy fan. There are times I miss television, and there are times I’m very grateful I decided I could live without it. This is definitely the latter.

Grant Stinchfield, the host of a new venture from the National Rifle Association called NRATV, has written on social media that minorities should be blamed for gun violence and promoted conspiracy theories that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was murdered and that “maybe Israelis” shot down a Russian passenger aircraft.

Launched earlier this month, NRATV plays material from the NRA’s video archive 24 hours a day, with Stinchfield breaking in to give live updates. Many of the updates involve promoting the candidacy of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and are branded with a graphic that says, “ELECTION COUNTDOWN: SAVE THE 2ND.” (Though Stinchfield, a conservative Texas-based radio host and former Republican candidate for Congress, previously authored a column in which he said he regretted voting for Trump during the GOP primary.)

Media Matters has the full story, along with an assortment of Stinchfield’s conspiracy tweets.

NO DAPL: An Urgent Request from Chairman Archambault II.

27

My name is David Archambault II, and I’m the chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, which has long opposed the Dakota Access Pipeline project. This proposed pipeline presents a threat to our lands, our sacred sites, and our water. Current and future generations depend on our rivers and aquifer to live.

Will you stand in solidarity and urge President Obama to reject the Dakota Access Pipeline, once and for all?

Yesterday, militarized law enforcement agencies moved in with tanks and riot gear on water protectors who stand in opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline—a massive pipeline project that would cut through four states, impact the water to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, and violate sacred sites and ancient grounds. While native elders prayed in peace, they were attacked with pepper spray, rubber bullets, as well as sound and concussion cannons. By the end of the day, more than 140 people were arrested.1 Please, add your name and demand that President Obama reject this pipeline once and for all.

[…]

While we engage in the long legal process to curtail construction of the pipeline, Dakota Access is still poised to begin construction. Halting the construction was an unprecedented step in response to our powerful movement—and now President Obama must reject the pipeline’s permit outright.

Current and future generations depend on our rivers and aquifer to live. The Dakota Access pipeline jeopardizes the heath of our water and could affect our people, as well as countless communities who live downstream, as the pipeline would cross four states. The pipeline, as designed, would destroy ancient burial grounds, which is a violation of federal law.

Please, please, sign, and pass this on to as many people as possible. Lila wopila to all you who do so (very great thanks). If enough people do, we can get millions on this petition.

Facebook’s Ethnic Affinities.

fb

You can’t scuff a toe these days without overturning something unsavoury when it comes to Facebook. ProPublica has found FB’s ethnic affinities, and how their advertising service allows you to exclude said ethnic affinities, which are not at all the same thing as race, no, no. As usual, FB dodges and runs away from providing an actual answer, as they habitually do when caught once again with their metaphorical pants around their ankles.

…The ad we purchased was targeted to Facebook members who were house hunting and excluded anyone with an “affinity” for African-American, Asian-American or Hispanic people. (Here’s the ad itself.)

When we showed Facebook’s racial exclusion options to a prominent civil rights lawyer John Relman, he gasped and said, “This is horrifying. This is massively illegal. This is about as blatant a violation of the federal Fair Housing Act as one can find.”

[…]

Facebook says its policies prohibit advertisers from using the targeting options for discrimination, harassment, disparagement or predatory advertising practices.

“We take a strong stand against advertisers misusing our platform: Our policies prohibit using our targeting options to discriminate, and they require compliance with the law,” said Steve Satterfield, privacy and public policy manager at Facebook. “We take prompt enforcement action when we determine that ads violate our policies.”

Satterfield said it’s important for advertisers to have the ability to both include and exclude groups as they test how their marketing performs. For instance, he said, an advertiser “might run one campaign in English that excludes the Hispanic affinity group to see how well the campaign performs against running that ad campaign in Spanish. This is a common practice in the industry.”

He said Facebook began offering the “Ethnic Affinity” categories within the past two years as part of a “multicultural advertising” effort.

Satterfield added that the “Ethnic Affinity” is not the same as race — which Facebook does not ask its members about. Facebook assigns members an “Ethnic Affinity” based on pages and posts they have liked or engaged with on Facebook.

When we asked why “Ethnic Affinity” was included in the “Demographics” category of its ad-targeting tool if it’s not a representation of demographics, Facebook responded that it plans to move “Ethnic Affinity” to another section.

Facebook declined to answer questions about why our housing-categories ad excluding minority groups was approved 15 minutes after we placed the order.

The full story is at ProPublica.

Those White Nationalist Roots.

Jerry Falwell.

Jerry Falwell.

Most people associate the religious right with issues like abortion and “family values”. Those were latecomers to the religious right’s embrace though. Donald Wildmon started the whole decency campaign business, in the mid 1970s, which was aimed at television, because he thought most television shows were terribly indecent. Shows like M*A*S*H, but not because of the serious subjects like war and death, but hey, sleeping around! Around 1980, Wildmon recruited Jerry Falwell in his crusade against television. They hadn’t yet glommed onto abortion as an issue, but it wouldn’t be long before that became their main banner, and a highly successful tactical move, along with the move of fueling paranoia about all those perverted gays and their satanic agenda. Things hadn’t gone well for them on the television front, they were dismissed and mocked, for the most part, and of course, the shows they railed against gained very large viewerships. I ended up watching a few shows myself just because of the fuss they made. Prior to the attempt to control television, then moving onto controlling the lives of possibly pregnant people, and trying to stuff all queer people down a well, the religious right was very active in keeping things white. Very white. There are a number of evangelical people now citing abortion as a reason for sticking with Trump, even though they freely admit he’s an awful person, but I suspect the main reason is white nationalism, now back and more popular than ever before. Right Wing Watch has a good look at this, and the hope for the good ol’ days which is fueling much of the religious right’s backing of Trump.

Decades before the current paranoia about LGBT and women’s rights somehow contributing to anti-Christian persecution, right-wing activistsemployedrhetoric about religious liberty and government overreach to defend their private segregated academies and deride efforts to “redefine” marriage to include couples of different races.

Evangelists such as Jerry Falwell and Bob Jones explicitly preached racial separation and opposition to the civil rights movement. Falwell opened a segregated school in response to efforts to integrate Virginia’s education system. Jones’ university openly practiced racial discrimination for decades, citing the Bible.

In fact, the modern Religious Right movement emerged as a political force not to fight abortion rights, as many of its supporters routinely claim, but to protect segregated private schools and institutions like Bob Jones University from losing tax-exempt status because of their racist policies, claiming that losing tax-exempt status constituted a government attack on their religious beliefs.

Religious Right favorites like former Gov. Mike Huckabee, Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore and Family Research Council head Tony Perkins courted a well-known segregationist group, and pamphlets such as “Segregation: God’s Plan and God’s Purpose” and “God: The Original Segregationist” portrayed integration as a direct attack on God and biblical commandments.

Trump, much in the tradition of conservative stalwarts like Jesse Helms and George Wallace, has stoked outrage about social progress, and has run a campaign based on the demonization of Latinos and African Americans.

Trump’s warnings about a global conspiracy of powerful bankers, media barons and secret puppet masters seeking to take down his campaign and destroy America resemble past and current conspiracy theories popular on the far Right that are often ridden with anti-Semitic imagery. His remarks about nefarious elites quashing U.S. freedom and sovereignty to create “a world government“ mirror the conspiratorial warnings about a coming “New World Order“ from televangelists such as Pat Robertson and John Hagee.

Those white nationalist roots of the religious right are now close to coming home to roost, and they most seriously want that to happen. They’ve learned to talk only about hot button issues, like abortion, or fueling panic and paranoia about transgender people occasionally having the need to use a public lav, but the initial shared desires have not changed, and they won’t have a much better chance of bringing those roots to bear than with Trump.

Via RRW.

White: Not Guilty. Native, Black, Brown: Guilty.

It really pays to be white. Via here and here.

Meeting with Obama as Cops Mass Near No DAPL Camp.

Courtesy Bucky Harjo Sunset at the new water protectors' camp in the path of the Dakota Access oil pipeline (DAPL).

Courtesy Bucky Harjo
Sunset at the new water protectors’ camp in the path of the Dakota Access oil pipeline (DAPL).

While Cheyenne River Sioux Tribal Chairman Harold Frazier sat down with President Barack Obama at a private roundtable in Los Angeles on Tuesday, October 25, Morton County, N.D. Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier was calling in police reinforcements from six states to enforce Energy Transfer Partners’ demands that “trespassers” be removed from the path of the pipeline.

Authorities implied they may forcibly remove the water protectors from the new camp, which is on land recently purchased by Dakota Access LLC, the subsidiary that is building the pipeline.

“We have the resources. We could go down there at any time,” Cass County Sheriff Paul Laney said, according to the Associated Press. “We’re trying not to.”

“We are here to enforce the law as needed,” Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier said. “It’s private property.”

The so-called trespassers are Lakota citizens and their allies determined to stand their ground to prevent further destruction of burial grounds and cultural sites, and to protect their water supply from the pipeline. As DAPL moves forward with aggressive construction even on weekends and at night, water protectors took the bold action to declare eminent domain over their homelands last week and set up a new camp directly in the pipeline’s path.

What began with prayers and a single tipi alongside Highway 1806 quickly grew to more than a dozen tipis surrounded by tents, buses, cars and hundreds of water protectors. Some are calling it the “1851 Treaty Camp” to acknowledge their Treaty rights.

Across the road is the encroaching pipeline and a heavily militarized police force with armored vehicles, helicopters, planes, ATVs and busloads of officers. Tensions are growing as unarmed citizens worry that police will use unnecessarily harsh tactics.

In recent weeks, nearly 300 unarmed water protectors who were arrested have been subjected to pepper spray, strip-searches, delayed bail, exaggerated charges and physical violence, according to interviews with several who were taken into custody. The ACLU and National Lawyers Guild recently sent attorneys to Standing Rock to help the Red Owl Collective, a team of volunteer lawyers headed by attorney Bruce Ellison, who are representing many of those arrested.

On Wednesday, October 26, civil rights leader and Rainbow PUSH Coalition founder the Rev. Jesse Jackson arrived in Standing Rock to speak out against the multiple human and civil rights violations being perpetrated against water protectors.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson speaks to water protectors standing against the Dakota Access oil pipeline on Wednesday October 26. (Photo: Courtesy KILI Radio)

The Rev. Jesse Jackson speaks to water protectors standing against the Dakota Access oil pipeline on Wednesday October 26. (Photo: Courtesy KILI Radio)

“When will the taking stop? When will we start treating the first peoples of these lands with the respect and honor they deserve?”

The decision to change the pipeline route from north of Bismarck to its current route is “the ripest case of environmental racism I’ve seen in a long time,” Jackson said. “Bismarck residents don’t want their water threatened, so why is it okay for North Dakota to react with guns and tanks when Native Americans ask for the same right?”

Full story at ICTMN. Related news:

Mark Ruffalo in Standing Rock; Leo DiCaprio, Jesse Jackson Head to Standing Rock.

Fighting for Our Lives: #NoDAPL in Historical Context.

DAPL: Former Vice President Al Gore Supports the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

Oh, just fuckin’ great.

donald-trump-now-supports-nations-worst-anti-lgbt-lawx750

Donald Trump’s close financial ties to Energy Transfer Partners, operators of the controversial Dakota Access oil pipeline, have been laid bare, with the presidential candidate invested in the company and receiving more than $100,000 in campaign contributions from its chief executive.

Trump’s financial disclosure forms show the Republican nominee has between $500,000 and $1m invested in Energy Transfer Partners, with a further $500,000 to $1m holding in Phillips 66, which will have a 25% stake in the Dakota Access project once completed. The information was disclosed in Trump’s monthly filings to the Federal Election Commission, which requires candidates to disclose their campaign finance information on a regular basis.

The financial relationship runs both ways. Kelcy Warren, chief executive of Energy Transfer Partners, has given $103,000 to elect Trump and handed over a further $66,800 to the Republican National Committee since the property developer secured the GOP’s presidential nomination.

On 29 June, Warren made $3,000in donations to Trump’s presidential campaign. The limit for individual contributions to a candidate is $2,700 per election and it’s unclear whether Trump returned $300 to Warren. Trump’s campaign was contacted for comment.

Warren made a further $100,000 donation to the Trump Victory Fund, a joint fundraising committee among Trump’s campaign, the RNC and 11 state parties, on 29 June. A day earlier, the Energy Transfer Partners chief executive doled out $66,800 in two separatedonations to the RNC.

Full story at the Guardian. All I have right now is a lot of fucking cussing, and feeling like I’m going to vomit. Crispy fuckin’ Christ onna stick. I’m going back to work.