The Cost of Oil, Gas, and Frakking? Just Your Children.

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Think Progress has an excellent, in-depth article about the actual cost of all that wonderful oil, and it’s just what all us Natives have been saying. The cost is too much, the sacrifice is unthinkable, for what? Oil? No.

New analysis from the Clean Air Task Force shows that by 2025 America’s children will experience 750,000 asthma attacks each summer that will be directly attributable to the oil and gas industry.

The report, Gasping for Breath, is the first to quantify the effects of smog caused by oil and gas production and distribution.

Report Shows How Many Asthma Attacks Are Caused By The Oil And Gas Industry.

Cop Unions, What Are They Good For?

Colin Kaepernick.

Colin Kaepernick.

Actually, that should be: Cop Unions, What in the Fuck Are They Good For? It would appear that they simply sit around, twiddling their thumbs until someone manages to hurt their collective feelings. “Woe is us” goes the shout, whereupon they start acting like tiny aggrieved children on the brink of a tantrum. They moan. They whine. They spill crocodile tears. They extort.

I’m not one to be terribly surprised by cop behaviour, but I’ll admit to surprise with the blatant move into extortion by cop unions over the tiniest hint that they might not be earth’s mightiest heroes. No, cops, you are not earth’s mightiest heroes. In this particular case, you aren’t San Francisco’s mightiest heroes, either. You might make the cut for San Francisco’s mightiest villains, if that makes you feel better. The SFPD has been exposed as corrupt, and racist as all hells. So, no one at all will be shocked that the SF cop union is issuing threats along with their extortion. (You can read the full letter here, scroll down.)

The union representing Santa Clara police threatened on Friday to boycott San Francisco 49ers games because of Colin Kaepernick’s protest against police brutality, KNTV-TV reported.

“The board of directors of the Santa Clara Police Officer’s Association has a duty to protect its members and work to make all of their workings environments free of harassing behavior,” the group said in a letter to the team, which plays its home games in that city.

If the team does not take action against the quarterback, the letter stated, “It could result in police officers choosing not to work at your facilities.”

So, now it’s harassment and a hostile work environment if one person sits during the anthem, or wears socks cops don’t like. Wow. Who knew a gigantic sportsball stadium could turn completely hostile by the actions of one person in a crowd of, what, thousands? Seems to me that private security could be hired for as much, or possibly less, than cops. Or, perhaps cops who don’t want to work the stadium don’t have to, and those who want to work can do so. Oh, but that would end up with the working cops being subjected to an actual hostile work environment, wouldn’t it? I sincerely hope the cops are given a polite fuck off, with private security hired, so they can go back to twiddling their thumbs while writing racist texts to one another, often about their own co-workers:

However, Kaepernick also took note of the findings regarding San Francisco officers’ tendency to send one another racist text messages. A panel of three judges also determined that the department showed “institutionalized bias” against communities of color.

“The SFPD has had a lot of issues,” Kaepernick said on Thursday, adding that the officers in question were “not only talking about the community, but talking about colleagues that work in the same department.”

Via KNTV and Raw Story.

Bullet Imagery Is Not Violent!

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The GOP leaders, however, are standing by the image, which they hand-delivered to Kirkpatrick’s campaign office and posted online. Matthew Specht with the Arizona Republican Party told the Arizona Daily Star that “no one” connected the poster’s bullet imagery with violence “until the Kirkpatrick campaign tried to use it as a way to distract the media from Ann Kirkpatrick’s absence from the campaign trail.”

Mmmhmm. Those bullet holes are just purely decorative, I’m sure.

Full story at Think Progress.

Trump Tweet Bait.

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto (Screen cap).

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto (Screen cap).

“A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.”

So said Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton during this year’s DNC, and it turns out she was being prophetic.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Donald Trump changed his speech on immigration at the last minute to include references to Mexico paying for his proposed border wall.

The reason that Trump decided to make this change? Because he was apparently furious that Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto just posted a tweet insisting that his country would never, under any circumstances, pay for the wall.

Full story here.

Dakota Access: Stand Up!

(Photo: Melinda Lee)

(Photo: Melinda Lee)

Where Movements Meet: Black Lives Matter Organizers Visit #NoDAPL.

 

UN body says Sioux must have say in pipeline project.

 
Support Sacred Stone Camp. Legal Fund Help. Support Native Youth.  Sign the Petition. Sign urgent petition.

Drinking the Orange Kool-Aid.

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Rebecca Nelson at GQ has a very good article up about the current ‘crazy for Trump’ going on, and Rick Alan Ross, a cult expert and republican was watching this all with distaste, until a bell rang, and rather loudly. What he’s watching is the rise of a cult leader. The article goes through a number of points:

Sign I: His campaign is fueled by charisma.

Sign II: He’s a raging narcissist.

Sign III: What he says is always right. Even when it’s not.

Drinking the Orange Kool-Aid.

What has long bothered (and scared) me is that no one who follows Trump is remotely interested in seeing him subject to the same things the other candidates are, it’s always “different” in Trump’s case. That did not, and does not read like enthusiastic political support. This is more “alright, we can finally set up a dictatorship and start killing all the ___! Yes!”

The final note from the GQ article:

Trump doesn’t consider all women his spiritual wives, like the Branch Davidians’ David Koresh. And we can reasonably assume that he does not have plans to kill his supporters by giving them cyanide-laced Kool-Aid, as the Rev. Jim Jones did at his Guyana compound in 1978. Still, his ascendency could very well start a nuclear war. “We’re not talking about a compound with a thousand people,” Ross says. “We’re talking about a nation with over 300 million people. So the consequences of Trumpism could affect us in a way Jim Jones never did.”

Especially if you don’t drink the Trump Kool-Aid™.

Full story here.

Books.

Ethno

A while back, I posted about this book. At that time, I didn’t have the book yet. I have it now, and it is a wonderful read, filled with great information. Some of it made me very homesick, like the entry for Hairy Manzanita (Arctostaphylos columbiana). The manzanita that grew in Idyllwild, Ca., is a different Arctostaphylos, but those differences are minor, and manzanita has always been used by Indigenous peoples in various ways. I love every single thing about manzanitas, and it makes me ache a little, just thinking about them. Patricia’s book includes a whole lot of plants I was not familiar with, and was not at all familiar with Indigenous uses of them. I learned a lot, and was delighted over and over again, like when I was viewing a photo of an older Indian woman wearing a pine nut apron.

The writing flows like water, and this isn’t just a story told, this is a text which provides learning, and a reference to all the wonders around us. You can order the book here, and I highly recommend it.

A Crocheted Statement.

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Artist Olek reveals an entire two-story house covered roof to floorboards in pink crochet. This new yarn-bombed installation currently stands in Kerava, Finland where Olek worked with a team of assistants to stitch together huge panels of crochet that envelop every inch of this 100-year-old house. Olek shares:

Originally, this building, built in the early 1900s, was the home of Karl Jacob Svensk (1883-1968). During the Winter War 1939-1940, the family fled to evade bombs falling into the yard, but they didn’t have to move out permanently. In 2015, more than 21 million people were forced to leave their homes in order to flee from conflicts. The pink house, our pink house is a symbol of a bright future filled with hope; is a symbol us coming together as a community.

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Isn’t that grand! I love this. I love the statement, the vibrancy, the life, the love, and the community of it. From Olek’s site:

A loop after a loop. Hour after hour my madness becomes crochet. Life and art are inseparable. The movies I watch while crocheting influence my work, and my work dictates the films I select. I crochet everything that enters my space. Sometimes it’s a text message, a medical report, found objects. There is the unraveling, the ephemeral part of my work that never lets me forget about the limited life of the art object and art concept. What do I intend to reveal? You have to pull the end of the yarn and unravel the story behind the crochet.

My work changes from place to place. I studied the science of culture. With a miner’s work ethic, I long to delve deeper and deeper into my investigations. My art was a development that took me away from industrial, close-minded Silesia, Poland. It has always sought to bring color and life, energy, and surprise to the living space. My goal is to produce new work and share it with the public. I intend to take advantage of living in NYC with various neighborhoods and, with my actions, create a feedback to the economic and social reality in our community.

Via Colossal Art. –  Olek’s site.

And Now For Something Completely Different…

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Turnip Fries! Bet you weren’t expecting that. Courtesy of Wozupi Tribal Gardens:

Ingredients

  • Turnip wedges
  • 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
  • grated Parmesan cheese
  • 1 teaspoon garlic salt
  • 1 teaspoon paprika
  • 1 teaspoon onion powder

 

Directions

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C). Line a baking sheet with a piece of aluminum foil and lightly grease. Peel the turnips, and cut into French fry-sized sticks, about 1/3 by 4 inches. Place into a large bowl, and toss with the vegetable oil to coat. Place the Parmesan cheese, garlic salt, paprika, onion powder in a resealable plastic bag, and shake to mix. Place the oiled turnips into the bag, and shake until evenly coated with the spices. Spread out onto the prepared baking sheet.Bake in preheated oven until the outside is crispy, and the inside is tender, about 20 minutes. Serve immediately.