E.A. Crunden at Think Progress writes—Tribe raises stakes in Dakota Access pipeline fight amid surge in Democratic 2020 support:
The Standing Rock Sioux are renewing their battle against the controversial Dakota Access oil pipeline, just as several Democratic presidential contenders are increasingly voicing opposition to fossil fuel projects and seeking to make inroads with Native voters.
Pipeline efforts — including the Dakota Access project, or DAPL — have long garnered support from President Donald Trump, even as indigenous communities and activists have pushed back, arguing that the pipelines will harm human health and the environment. Presidential candidates like Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) have slammed those fossil fuel efforts, indicating that the pipeline wars could become a key electoral issue next year.
On Friday, the Standing Rock Sioux asked a federal court to throw out what the tribe says is a flawed environmental assessment of DAPL’s potential impacts. The Army Corps of Engineers “never engaged with the Tribe or its technical experts, shared critical information, or responded to the Tribe’s concerns,” the 63-page motion reads.
At issue is a key February 2017 environmental easement which enabled the Corps to proceed with DAPL construction. That easement allowed Energy Transfer Partners, which controls the pipeline, to avoid an environmental impact statement, which would have required a thorough review of DAPL’s potential impacts to water and wildlife.
In June 2017, a federal district judge ordered the Army Corps to consider environmental impacts following litigation from the tribe. That ruling yielded no real change, however — the government still allowed the pipeline to go forward. But the Standing Rock Sioux say the Army Corps failed to engage with them over DAPL’s environmental threat, and that they remain at risk of an oil spill. [...]
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“One of the finest things about being an Indian is that people are always interested in you and your ‘plight.’ Other groups have difficulties, predicaments, quandaries, problems, or troubles. Traditionally we Indians have had a ‘plight’.” ~~Vine Deloria, Jr., Custer Died for Your Sins (1969)
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BLAST FROM THE PAST
At Daily Kos on this date in 2006—A Sense of Urgency, Please:
It's difficult to appreciate the magnitude of self-censorship in the American media until you're exposed to how the foreign press reports on a given conflict. Watching the news here in Greece has helped to put things into perspective.
Here, and in nations across the globe, America's dirty little secret is exposed for the entire world to see. It's a difficult transition to make, the one from filtered news dolled up in blazing graphics and theme music to this unadulterated version of reality pouring into television sets around the globe. The anchor will usually preface the segment with a warning ("the images you are about see are disturbing, but we feel we have to show them to you"), and before your heart has a chance to tell your mind to look away, you're looking at Iraq. The camera pans the street. It's strewn with debris, not flowers. The blackened skeleton of some family car is in the foreground. There's a screaming woman on her knees, slapping her hands on the ground (the puddle of blood she's in, the reporter kindly reminds us, is that of her son). And suddenly, you feel that all-too familiar feeling as your eyes begin to sting and tear up for the death of a stranger.
Of course, it's not just the death of this particular Iraqi, this stranger that affects us so. It is the death of thousands who preceded him that weigh like a million anvils on our conscience, and it's the inevitable death of thousands more that make the shame rise so quickly to our cheeks when we're confronted with the consequences of our action (or inaction, as it may be).
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Upheaval at KITM World HQ, so enjoy our 8/21/18 episode: Papadopoulos sentencing looms. Someone found Steve Scalise's baggage! Anti-Antifa trolls trolled. German study finds increase in hate crimes correlates with increase in Facebook usage. Hmm!