[Andrew Mandelbaum]

If you facebook, this is a good site for getting direct news from reasonable folks out there:

https://www.facebook.com/IndigenousR...WSFEED&fref=nf

[Jennifer Reeser]

Since Clinton has come up...

The Nation published this yesterday:

https://www.thenation.com/article/hi...political-one/

" Hillary Clinton’s Silence on Standing Rock Is a Moral Mistake—and a Political One
One way Clinton could convince Bernie Sanders's supporters she deserves their vote: stand with Standing Rock."

[Tim Murphy]

Pipelines are twenty times safer than trains, 40 times safer than truck tankers. Nine pipelines already cross the Missouri without mishap. Look at the 50 fatalities when that train exploded, wiping out a village in Quebec! A train exploded three miles from Casselton this year, Gov. Dalrymple's home town. 90 percent of North Dakotans support Dakota Access. More than 90 percent of the First Nation, Fort Berthold Reservation, which owns much of the Bakken, probably support it. This small band from Standing Rock and tribes all over the country are tools of out-of-state, rich, flat earth environmentalists. The mistake my friends Dalrymple and Stenehjem made was not nipping this in the bud. I drive Hwy 1806 every fall in South Dakota on my way to the Rosebud Reservation, your Poet Lariat Emeritus and North Dakota's sole Spherean.

[Jennifer Reeser]

A dear family member -- a right-wing, pro-big-business Republican -- was explaining my deep concern on this, and my strong disagreements with him.

He said, "Understand, with her, it only goes blood-deep."

I could not have said it better myself

J

[Andrew Mandelbaum]

Originally Posted by Tim Murphy

Pipelines are twenty times safer than trains, 40 times safer than truck tankers. Nine pipelines already cross the Missouri without mishap. Look at the 50 fatalities when that train exploded, wiping out a village in Quebec! A train exploded three miles from Casselton this year, Gov. Dalrymple's home town. 90 percent of North Dakotans support Dakota Access. More than 90 percent of the First Nation, Fort Berthold Reservation, which owns much of the Bakken, probably support it. This small band from Standing Rock and tribes all over the country are tools of out-of-state, rich, flat earth environmentalists. The mistake my friends Dalrymple and Stenehjem made was not nipping this in the bud. I drive Hwy 1806 every fall in South Dakota on my way to the Rosebud Reservation, your Poet Lariat Emeritus and North Dakota's sole Spherean.

Great white man say um tribes not smart enough to do own research on climate change, petrol chemicals, and global environmental tipping point. Thanks, great white man, for removing silly little Indians as actors on their own land. Indigenous peoples from all over the world wait upon your great knowledge to "nip things in the bud."

[Jennifer Reeser]

I used to live in Oklahoma. I met my husband in Tulsa. My first child was born there. I learned to speak Cherokee from the tribe. Some of my family still live there, enrolled in the Cherokee Nation. My brother-in-law's great grandmother walked the Trail of Tears. His relative, Joe Byrd, was Cherokee Nation Principal Chief in the '90's.

This is not self-indulgent posing. I am going somewhere with this. A few weeks ago, my sister, the one married to Chief Byrd's cousin, woke me with the news that there had been an earthquake. Earthquakes are becoming commonplace in Oklahoma, for specific man-made, environmental reasons, which I will not go into here.

There are legitimate concerns on that score, and the natives are restless.

J

[Jennifer Reeser]

The Nation just released this yesterday:

https://www.thenation.com/article/ho...standing-rock/

It gives actual telephone numbers, for the Army Corps, as well as a direct email address:

 "HERE’S HOW YOU CAN HELP:
—Contact the Army Corps of Engineers to demand that they reverse the permit sanctioning the Dakota Access Pipeline. Call the regulatory complaint line at (202) 761-5903, or contact Jo-Ellen Darcy, the assistant secretary of the Corps, directly at (703) 697-8986 or joellen.darcy@us.army.mil "

[Gregory Palmerino]

Things are heating up in the Northeast as well.

[Jennifer Reeser]

The Trump transition team has officially "blessed" the pipeline. This is not comforting to me, to say the least -- but neither does it come as a shock. I have been bracing myself for it. We act as best we can, according to our consciences, but in the end, have to resign, "Not my will, but Thine be done, O God." Here's an article, at PBS:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/...-oil-pipeline/

[Andrew Mandelbaum]

I think the vacuum that is at work here is the motor of greed and the lack of enough human will to do what it takes to make the will to plunder too costly to pursue. Calling the vacuum the will of God seems odd. As a member of the French Resistance Camus spoke to the Church about this type of "optimism":

I shall not, as far as I am concerned, try to pass myself off as a Christian in your presence. I share with you the same revulsion from evil. But I do not share your hope, and I continue to struggle against this universe in which children suffer and die.
[snip]...
Between the forces of terror and the forces of dialogue, a great unequal battle has begun. I have nothing but reasonable illusions as to the outcome of that battle. But I believe it must be fought, and I know that certain men at least have resolved to do so. I merely fear that they will occasionally feel somewhat alone, that they are in fact alone, and that after an interval of two thousand years we may see a sacrifice of Socrates repeated several times. The program for the future is either a permanent dialogue or the solemn and significant putting to death of any who have experienced dialogue. After having contributed my reply, the question that I ask Christians is this: “Will Socrates still be alone and is there nothing in him and in your doctrine that urges you to join us?”

It may be, I am well aware, that Christianity will answer negatively. Oh, not by your mouths, I am convinced. But it may be, and this is even more probable, that Christianity will insist on maintaining a compromise or else on giving its condemnations the obscure form of the encyclical. Possibly it will insist on losing once and for all the virtue of revolt and indignation that belonged to it long ago. In that case Christians will live and Christianity will die. In that case the others will in fact pay for the sacrifice. In any case such a future is not within my province to decide, despite all the hope and anguish it awakens in me. And what I know – which sometimes creates a deep longing in me – is that if Christians made up their minds to it, millions of voices – millions, I say – throughout the world would be added to the appeal of a handful of isolated individuals who, without any sort of affiliation, today intercede almost everywhere and ceaselessly for children and for men.



Forgive the gender exclusive language of the original.