Dakota Access Pipeline Protests, Pope Francis and Progressive Politics

Pope Francis has apparently offered his unequivocal support to grassroots organisers and activists who are fighting for social justice, migrants, and environmentalism, saying he “reaffirms” their choice to fight against tyranny amid a “gutting of democracies.” The Pope said : “As Christians and all people of good will, it is for us to live and act at this moment. It is a grave responsibility, since certain present realities, unless effectively dealt with, are capable of setting off processes of dehumanisation which would then be hard to reverse.” The pontiff wrote this in a letter that was read to organizers this week. The remarks seem to be an endorsement by the Pope of resistance against 'populist' and 'xenophobic' political movements. While he did not name Donald Trump, and stressed his remarks were not targeted at any individual politician, the letter, read at the opening of the US Regional World Meeting of Popular Movements in Modesto, California, seems to speak directly to protests against President Trump. • In the letter, Pope Francis appeared to back tribal land rights in Dakota Access pipeline fight. Francis wrote : "The direction taken beyond this historic turning point – the ways in which this worsening crisis gets resolved – will depend on people’s involvement and participation and, largely, on yourselves, the popular movements.” The letter was read aloud by a close ally of the Pope, Cardinal Peter Turkson, who attended the Modesto meeting. In the letter, Francis condemned the growth of populist and xenophobic movements around the world, saying they pose a “grave danger for humanity.” He also criticized leaders who rely on “fear, insecurity, quarrels, and even people’s justified indignation, in order to shift the responsibility for all these ills on to a ‘non-neighbour.' Sooner or later, the moral blindness of this indifference comes to light, like when a mirage dissipates. The wounds are there, they are a reality. The unemployment is real, the violence is real, the corruption is real, the identity crisis is real, the gutting of democracies is real.” He offered praise to activists who are organizing in opposition to the threats : “I know that you have committed yourselves to fight for social justice, to defend our Sister Mother Earth and to stand alongside migrants. I want to reaffirm your choice.” • • • THE POPE AND STANDING ROCK. Reuters reports that in remarks made by Pope Francis last Wednesday in Vatican City, he said Americans seeking to halt part of the Dakota Access, as indigenous cultures, have a right to defend “their ancestral relationship to the Earth.” Pope Francis, whose Latin American roots have caused him often to strongly defend indigenous rights since his election in 2013, made his comments on protection of native lands to tribal representative attending the Indigenous Peoples Forum in Rome. He didn't name the pipeline, but he used strong and clear language applicable to the conflict, according to Reuters, saying development had to be reconciled with “the protection of the particular characteristics of indigenous peoples and their territories.” Francis spoke two days after a US federal judge denied a request by tribes to halt construction of the final link of the project that sparked months of protests by activists aimed at stopping the 1,170-mile line. Speaking in Spanish, Francis said the need to protect native territories is “especially clear when planning economic activities which may interfere with indigenous cultures and their ancestral relationship to the Earth.” • The Standing Rock Sioux and Cheyenne River Sioux tribes have argued the project would prevent them from practicing religious ceremonies at a lake they say is surrounded by sacred ground. The Pope seemed to agree : “In this regard, the right to prior and informed consent [of native peoples] should always prevail.” The Pope cited the 1997 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. • • • WHO'S IN CHARGE OF THE DAKOTA ACCESS PROTESTS? Thousands of tribe members, environmentalists and others set up camps last year on US Army Corps of Engineers land in the North Dakota plains as protesters dug in for the long haul. In December, the Obama administration denied the last permit needed by Energy Transfer Partners, which is building the $3.8 billion pipeline, thus halting the pipeline. Then, last week, the Army Corps of Engineers granted a final easement, after President Trump issued an order to advance the project in January. • The FBI is investigating political activists campaigning against the Dakota Access pipeline. The leftist UK Guardian has stated that multiple officers within the FBI’s joint terrorism taskforce have attempted to contact at least three people tied to the Standing Rock water protector movement in North Dakota. "Water Protectors" is the name the protesters have given to their "movement." The purpose of the officers’ inquiries into Standing Rock, and scope of the task force’s work, remains unknown, according to the Guardian, which said agency officials have declined to comment. Lauren Regan, a civil rights attorney who has provided legal support to demonstrators who were contacted by representatives of the FBI, told the Guardian : “The idea that the government would attempt to construe this indigenous-led non-violent movement into some kind of domestic terrorism investigation is unfathomable to me. It’s outrageous, it’s unwarranted...and it’s unconstitutional.” Regan says that since last summer, law enforcement officials have made roughly 700 arrests, in some cases leading to serious felony charges and possible lengthy state prison sentences. And, after recent indictments, at least six activists are now facing charges in federal court. But, from the beginning, local law enforcement has justified its presence at the protest site because they fear the Water Protectors could become violent. • Dave Archambault II, the Standing Rock Sioux chairman, says the movement now seems to be imploding. Archambault has become the face of the battle to stop the pipeline, but he told the Guardian that the oil pipeline company and the federal government are no longer his only enemies. Some of the most dedicated activists opposing the project now see Archambault as an adversary, a leader who has weakened and divided Water Protectors and threatened the resistance. His angriest Native American critics attack him for urging demonstrators to go home. Archambault says that with the tribe’s legal battle against the project still active and with spring flooding coming soon, he has insisted that people leave. But many have returned following Trump’s fast-track approvals, despite Archambault fears and warnings that the flooding could endanger people’s safety. • The GOVERNMENT VIEW OF STANDING ROCK. Blake Nicholson of the Associated Press wrote last Friday that the US Army has formally ended environmental studies of the Dakota Access oil pipeline's disputed crossing beneath a Missouri River reservoir in southern North Dakota. The Corps launched the study on January 18 in light of concerns from the Standing Rock Sioux and other Native American tribes that a pipeline leak beneath Lake Oahe would pollute drinking water. Pipeline opponents have continued to call for more study despite the fact that the pipeline company has said the $3.8 billion pipeline to move North Dakota oil to a shipping point in Illinois could be operating as early as next month. More than 100,000 comments had already been submitted for the study, according to the Indigenous Environmental Network. The Army published notice Friday in the Federal Register that it was terminating the study. • The Standing Rock and Cheyenne River Sioux also are fighting the pipeline work in court, with the next hearing set for February 28. In the meantime, Nicholson says, hundreds of pipeline opponents have continued to occupy a camp near the drilling site in North Dakota. State and federal authorities have told the few hundred people remaining in the camp to leave by Wednesday. Authorities want the area cleaned and closed before spring floodwaters wash tons of trash and debris into nearby rivers, including the Missouri River, and cause an environmental disaster. The Army Corps of Engineers branch continued efforts to accelerate cleanup of mounds of garbage at a protest camp near the drilling site that's threatened by spring flooding. The tribe launched a cleanup effort in late January, and according to Corps Captain Ryan Hignight and Mike Nowatzki, spokesman for Governor Doug Burgum, state and Corps officials were continuing last Friday to try to line up additional contractors to speed up the work. Hignight told Nicholson : "We're running out of time. We need to ensure that the land is remediated as soon as possible." Some in camp think the flood fears are overblown and that authorities are trying to turn public sentiment against them. The latest spring flood outlook from the National Weather Service, issued last Thursday, calls for minor flooding in the area, but the outlook doesn't include flood risks associated with river ice jams that can't be predicted. • • • THE OPPOSING FORCES. The Standing Rock impasse between Indian tribes and the federal government is an amalgam of old animosities, the general Indian sense of injustice and indifference toward their cultures, and the ability of modern engineering to protect the environment. The current standoff is being fed by social media and by outsiders -- veterans (some with PTDS -- are they being manipulated?), civil rights lawyers, and leftist protesters -- who are using Standing Rock as a battleground for attacking President Trump. • There are real and longstanding grievances of Native Americans against the federal government that in the 19th and early 20th centuries grabbed their land and has left them relegated them to subsistence-level reservation life unless they choose to abandon their tribal culture for modern society. Native Americans are in many ways a face of the Progressive welfare state that nobody talks or cares about. Leftist environmental groups often side with the federal government in opposition to Native Americans, and the media is sympathetic only when the story fits their Progressive agenda. For an excellent article, see : http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/06/the_modern_enemies_of_native_americans.html • • • FACTS, ANYONE? Having lost both scientifically and politically with the Keystone XL pipeline, deemed safe by Hillary Clinton’s State Department and approved by President Trump as part of his campaign promise to develop American energy, opponents of fossil fuels have found one last rallying cry -- Native American Indians. Opponents are claiming that the Dakota Access Pipeline which, like Keystone XL, will bring oil from the rich Bakken oil field in North Dakota to American markets, will violate and pollute sacred tribal lands. They are standing on quicksand factually. The Heritage Foundation reports that the 1,172-mile Dakota Access pipeline will deliver as many as 570,000 barrels of oil a day from northwestern North Dakota through South Dakota and Iowa to connect to existing pipelines in Illinois. It will do this job far more safely than the current method of transporting it by 750 rail cars a day. The protesters say they object to the pipeline’s being close to the water intake of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. However, this should be of no concern as it will sit approximately 92 feet below the riverbed, with increased pipe thickness and control valves at both ends of the crossing to reduce the risk of an incident, which is already low. • As a result of the fracking revolution and shale oil boom, oil train shipments have increased, particularly on a railroad shipping oil from North Dakota’s Bakken formation owned by billionaire and friend of Obama, Warren Buffett. So too have the risks of oil train derailments, fires, and explosions that qctually have damaged the environment and risked human lives. One such incident occurred in Illinois early last March when two cars of a 105-car derailed oil train operated by Buffet’s BNSF Railroad and carrying oil from North Dakota caught fire and sent flames and smoke into the skies over Galena, Illinois, a small town of 3,300 people. In July 2013, a 72-car oil train carrying North Dakota crude, a train similar to those criss-crossing the United States, derailed near the town of Lac-Megantic, Quebec, erupting in a series of explosions, killing 13. • As Investor’s Business Daily has noted, pipelines are much safer than railroads, yet President Obama and the Democrats refused to permit their construction. Pipelines carrying Bakken oil would link up to a completed Keystone XL pipeline, creating American jobs and protecting American from oil train accidents. Since the State Department's multiple reviews point out that the Keystone XL pipeline itself poses no serious risk to the environment, no more than the tens of thousands of miles of pipeline that already criss-cross the US, including one from Canada, all operating safely, why should the tiny link of the Dakota Access pipeline at Standing Rock be a greater environmental threat?? Keystone XL was and is a much bigger project yet, as noted, Hillary Clinton’s State Department gave it an environmental clean bill of health. The State Department also found it "very unlikely" that the pipeline would affect water quality in any of the four aquifers through which it crossed. It also concluded that along one part of the proposed route, in the case of a large-scale oil spill, "these impacts would typically be limited to within several hundred feet of the release source, and would not affect groundwater." Keystone XL also met 57 specific pipeline safety standard requirements created by the State Department and the Department of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA)." • • • DEAR READERS, the intervention of Pope Francis is just one more voice added to the cacophony that surrounds Standing Rock. He obviously cannot be steeped in the details of the long fight, and he has no way of judging that the pipeline supporters suffer from "moral blindness," any more than he can possibly know that those protestig the Dakota Access pipeline at Standing Rock are part of a "popular movement" and not a Progressive environmentalist-led attack on fossil fuel usage anywhere and anytime for any purpose. Pope Francis would perhaps benefit from visiting Kentucky and West Virginia's coal felds and their blighted towns to investigate the terrible harm done to communities by Progressive attacks on all fossil fuels -- although that could shake his determined belief that Americans are bad people -- we remember his saying on the plane taking him back to Rome after his visit to America :"I was surprised by the people’s warmth – they were so friendly, it was beautiful –" • It is a source of sadness for Christians that Pope Francis -- whose heart is obviously close to all people and especially the poor -- should attack the Dakota Access situation from such a one-sided Progressive political viewpoint. That makes it just one more example of what appears to be his frantic effort to smear every aspect of American and all other western democracies. But, it is what we have come to expect from a Pope for whom religious leadership often seems just an excuse for practicing Progressive politics.