Guest Post by John W. Whitehead
What we’re witnessing at Standing Rock, where activists have gathered to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline construction on Native American land, is just the latest incarnation of the government’s battle plan for stamping out any sparks of resistance and keeping the populace under control: battlefield tactics, military weaponry and a complete suspension of the Constitution.
Militarized police. Riot and camouflage gear. Armored vehicles. Mass arrests. Pepper spray. Tear gas. Batons. Strip searches. Drones. Less-than-lethal weapons unleashed with deadly force. Rubber bullets. Water cannons. Concussion grenades. Arrests of journalists. Intimidation tactics. Brute force.
This is what martial law looks like, when a government disregards constitutional freedoms and imposes its will through military force.
Only this is martial law without any government body having to declare it.
This is martial law packaged as law and order and sold to the public as necessary for keeping the peace.
These overreaching, heavy-handed lessons in how to rule by force have become standard operating procedure for a government that communicates with its citizenry primarily through the language of brutality, intimidation and fear.
What Americans have failed to comprehend is that the police state doesn’t differentiate.
In the eyes of the government—whether that government is helmed by Barack Obama or Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton—there is no difference between Republicans and Democrats, between blacks and whites and every shade in the middle, between Native Americans and a nation of immigrants (no matter how long we’ve been here), between the lower class and the middle and upper classes, between religious and non-religious Americans, between those who march in lockstep with the police state and those who oppose its tactics.
This is all part and parcel of the government’s plan for dealing with widespread domestic unrest, no matter the source.
Divide and conquer.
For too long now, the American people have allowed their personal prejudices and politics to cloud their judgment and render them incapable of seeing that the treatment being doled out by the government’s lethal enforcers has remained consistent, no matter the threat.
The government’s oppressive tactics have not changed.
The same martial law maneuvers and intimidation tactics used to put down protests and muzzle journalists two years ago in Ferguson and Baltimore are being used to flat-line protesters and journalists at Standing Rock this year.
The same infiltration and surveillance of ranch activists opposing the Bureau of Land Management in Oregon and Nevada over the past several years were used against nonviolent anti-war protesters more than a decade ago.
The same brutality that was in full force 20-plus years ago when the government raided the Branch Davidian religious compound near Waco, Texas—targeting residents with loud music, bright lights, bulldozers, flash-bang grenades, tear gas, tanks and gunfire, and leaving 80 individuals, including two dozen children, dead—were on full display more than 50 years ago when government agents unleashed fire hoses and police dogs on civil rights protesters, children included.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
The sticking point is not whether Americans must see eye-to-eye on these varied issues but whether they can agree that no one should be treated in such a fashion by their own government.
Our greatest defense against home-grown tyranny has always been our strength in numbers as a citizenry.
America’s founders hinted at it again and again. The Declaration of Independence refers to “one people.” The preamble to the Constitution opens with those three powerful words: “We the People.” Years later, the Gettysburg Address declared that we are a “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”
Despite these stark reminders that the government exists for our benefit and was intended to serve our needs, “We the People” have yet to marshal our greatest weapon against oppression: our strength lies in our numbers.
Unfortunately, 318 million Americans have yet to agree on anything, especially the source of their oppression.
This is how tyrants come to power and stay in power.
Authoritarian regimes begin with incremental steps. Overcriminalization, surveillance of innocent citizens, imprisonment for nonviolent—victimless—crimes, etc. Slowly, bit by bit, the citizenry finds its freedoms being curtailed and undermined for the sake of national security.
No one speaks up for those being targeted. No one resists these minor acts of oppression. No one recognizes the indoctrination into tyranny for what it is.
As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, historically this failure to speak truth to power has resulted in whole populations being conditioned to tolerate unspoken cruelty toward their fellow human beings, a bystander syndrome in which people remain silent and disengaged—mere onlookers—in the face of abject horrors and injustice.
We can disassociate from such violence. We can convince ourselves that we are somehow different from the victims of government abuse. We can treat news coverage of protests such as Standing Rock and the like as just another channel to flip in our search for better entertainment. We can continue to spout empty campaign rhetoric about how great America is, despite the evidence to the contrary. We can avoid responsibility for holding the government accountable. We can zip our lips and bind our hands and shut our eyes.
In other words, we can continue to exist in a state of denial.
Whatever we do or don’t do, it won’t change the facts: the police state is here.
“There comes a time,” concluded Martin Luther King Jr., “when silence is betrayal.”
The people of Nazi Germany learned this lesson the hard way.
A German pastor who openly opposed Hitler and spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in a concentration camp, Martin Niemoller warned:
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
The people of the American Police State will never have any hope of fighting government tyranny if we’re busy fighting each other.
When all is said and done, the only thing we really need to agree on is that we are all Americans.
So if this isn’t your fight—if you believe that authority is more important than liberty—if you don’t agree with a particular group’s position on an issue and by your silence tacitly support the treatment meted out to them—if you think you’re a better citizen or a more patriotic American—if you want to play it safe—and if don’t want to risk getting shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton, thrown to the ground, arrested and/or labeled an extremist—then by all means, remain silent. Stand down. Cower in the face of the police. Turn your eyes away from injustice. Find any excuse to suggest that the so-called victims of the police state deserved what they got.
But remember, when that rifle (or taser, or water cannon, or bully stick) finally gets pointed in your direction—and it will—when there’s no one left to stand up for you or speak up for you, remember that you were warned.
Save your breath, no one is listening.
Who is behind the Standing Rock protests? Mostly upstanding progressives I assume. The evilness of fossil fuels in their quest to save the earth is laughable. The pipeliners equipment is being destroyed, do they have any constitutional rights? Cry me a river!
Just out of curiosity, how many TBPers have CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) at a local station? Why aren’t there more?+
Maggie,
In response, I don’t know. What is propane and how is that made?
Meanwhile, the goings on in the NA lands are shameful to behold.
Propane is a result of refining oil and processing natural gas (along with butane and a few others I don’t recall).
CNG is Methane (natural gas) under high pressure.
LNG is the same compressed or cooled (don’t remember which, maybe both) to a liquefied state for transportation in tankers of various sorts. It is very, very dense compared to gaseous natural gas.
At least that’s the way I understand it from my days working in the oil fields.
Supporting the Standing Rock protestors is simply enabling idiocy. The Indians say they want to protect ‘their’ land and water. The land and water does not ‘belong’ to them; it belongs to earth. We are ALL earth’s children and we must work together for the good of all.
Pipelines will be built, if not there then somewhere else. If the Indians had any sense, instead of opposing the pipeline they would profit from them by working with the pipeline to ensure better standards to prevent spills, greater safety measures, better spill management, containment, clean-up and compensation procedures, and jobs to help alleviate their poverty. We cannot oppose the future, but we can direct it by being part of it, not by protesting it.
The Indians still think they can turn back the hands of time to some mythical golden age five hundred years ago that never existed in the first place. It’s long past time to stop pretending. It was never a paradise because they, too, slaughtered and enslaved other tribes. They are pretend Indians pretending to be Indians. If they don’t drag themselves into the 21st Century, they’ll continue to lose their land, their languages, their culture and their future. And, they’ll continue getting their butts kicked at illegal protests.
Yes, most U.S. treaties have been broken, but had they been more than non-binding promises they would have been upheld by the courts. If the Indians had any sense, they’d make contractual pipeline agreements with the white man, using white mans’ laws and using white mans’ courts when the agreements are broken. Only then, would protests have any effect by bringing attention to substantial contracts instead of promises and dreams.
We don’t change the world by dreaming; we change it by doing. Supporting the Standing Rock protestors is simply enabling idiocy and changing nothing.
I will continue to repeat this message whenever I see a post about Standing Rock
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My Mother lives up that way. She says the pipeline was already moved once at the Natives request. How many times should the oil company move it? Or could it all be about money? https://survivalblog.com/letter-re-what-is-your-hjl-and-jwr-take-on-the-dakota-access-issue/
The Standing Rock thing should be the lightning rod that brings people together.
Minories are watching another get trampled on. Liberals hate oil. Socialists hate corporations. Conservatives hate militarized police.
Too bad its so far out of the way, if this was going on in a more populated area there would be thousands more protestors.
Personally, they need to stop building massive refineries that require piping shit from such a long distance. Talk about a single point of failure. And a goddamned terrorists wet dream.
Refining doesn’t HAVE to be done on a gigantic scale. Make smaller ones and put them closer to where the natural resources come out of the ground for fucks sake.
This is by
Noah B Westfall
We Are Capitalists
1 November at 11:00 ·
THE MISLEADING CLAIM: “Native Americans are again being screwed over by the U.S., as the Dakota Access Pipeline encroaches on ‘sacred land’ belonging to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, absent consent.”
THE REALITY: “Court documents, official land surveys, and pipeline maps, confirm this is almost entirely false.”
Let’s begin with the notion of “sacred land”. Extensive cultural & land surveys were conducted in North Dakota before the pipeline received approval. It marked some land as “sacred.” The pipeline plans were then redrafted as to avoid ALL “sacred” pieces of land. [a] This isn’t just conservative-media opinion, either, it’s confirmed in the U.S. District Court memorandum, stating:
“Where this surveying revealed …historic or cultural resources that might be affected, the company mostly chose to reroute. In North Dakota, for example, the cultural surveys found 149 potentially eligible sites, 91 of which had stone features (considered sacred). The pipeline workspace and route was modified to avoid ALL 91 of these stone features and all but 9 of the other potentially eligible sites. By the time the company finally settled on a construction path, …the pipeline route had been modified 140 times in North Dakota alone to avoid potential cultural resources. Plans had also been put in place to mitigate any effects on the other 9 sites through coordination with the North Dakota SHPO.” [b]
Those modifications convinced the U.S. District Court to rule against the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, citing the tribe’s inability to show how the pipeline would damage the group’s sacred ground. From the court document itself, it states, “if a party makes no showing of irreparable injury, the court may deny the motion… It follows, then, that the Court may deny a motion for preliminary injunction, without further inquiry, upon finding that a plaintiff is unable to show either irreparable injury” [b] “The Tribe has not met its burden to show that DAPL-related work is likely to cause damage.” [b]
In addition to providing no substantive evidence to support their case, the Standing Rock Sioux tribe was offered ample time to consult with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, but refused, instead opting “to boycott the entire consulting process.” [a] This petulance was again confirmed by the court’s review, which showed that, as the Army Corps of Engineers attempted more than a dozen times between 2014 and 2016 to discuss the DAPL route with the Standing Rock, “the tribe either failed to respond to requests for consultation or dragged its feet during the process.” [c] It’s also noteworthy that the company building the pipeline – Energy Transfer Partners – had only originally moved the project near the Standing Rock reservation in the first place because doing so was considered “less impactful on the environment, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.” [d] So any assumption that the company hadn’t gone out of its way to seek consultation and alter its plans in consideration of the environment is absolutely false.
Now that we’ve established that the tribe failed to substantiate its complaints, let’s add this somewhat surprising revelation; THERE’S ALREADY AN EXISTING FUEL PIPELINE IN PLACE, UNDER THE SAME GROUND, WITH NO COMPLAINTS. This – again – was exposed in the court’s review and can be confirmed for yourself via utility pipeline maps. “The area around the permitted activity has been subject to previous surveying for other utility projects. DAPL likewise will run parallel, at a distance of 22 to 300 feet, to an ALREADY-EXISTING natural-gas pipeline under the lake. Dakota Access will also use the less-invasive HDD method to run the pipeline, which will require less disturbance to the land around the drilling and bury the pipeline at a depth that is unlikely to damage cultural resources. [b] One can see this for themselves by viewing side by side maps, one showing the existing pipelines, and the other showing the planned route for the new pipeline. They mirror each other. [f]
Lastly is the issue of land ownership and the presumption that the pipeline encroaches on North Dakotan land owned by indigenous tribes. Wrong again. The truth is, the Dakota Access Pipeline traverses a path on PRIVATE PROPERTY and does not cross into the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s reservation. Literally 100% of affected landowners in North Dakota VOLUNTARILY signed contracts allowing for construction of the pipeline on their property. [g] They were offered a good deal and they took it. The Native American reservation is merely adjacent to affected property, it is not the ACTUAL affected property.
One might ask, “but what if neighboring the reservation still puts it in danger?” Here, too, research suggests otherwise. Per a 2015 Fraser Institute Research Report entitled “Safety in the Transportation of Oil and Gas,” transporting oil and gas by pipeline is actually the safest method. Matter of fact, fuel transported via rail is found to be “over 4.5 times more likely to experience an occurrence” than via pipeline. [e] Additionally, “over 70 percent of pipeline occurrences result in spills of ONLY 1 cubic meter, and only 17 percent of pipeline occurrences take place in the actual pipeline.” [e] Furthermore, the vast majority of spills actually occur inside facilities [e], meaning it’s VERY unlikely that anything substantial will leak from the new pipeline. And for those concerned about the pipeline’s proximity to their water supply, a modern, upgraded water facility, far away, was already built and is now operational. It was constructed via an approximately $30 million grant from the U.S. government. [h] The local water facility that MAY be affected has actually been slated to be decommissioned, so it’s mostly a moot point.
CONCLUSION:
Essentially, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe is complaining that private owners sold the rights to place a fuel pipeline on land that the Tribe does not own, in a way that mirrors existing pipelines, as to transport fuel in the safest and cheapest manner, with designs evolving from countless consultation efforts and professional advice on how to be as environmentally friendly as possible, while specifically redesigning the route an additional 140 times as to avoid offending the tribe, all while the tribe was largely boycotting the consultation efforts and failing to substantiate its complaints in court. What’s happening now, therefore, is nothing more than the political left latching onto the latest controversy as to perpetuate their endless narrative of victimhood.
—————
Sources:
[a]
http://dailycaller.com/…/anti-frackers-keep-falsely-sugges…/
[b]
http://mwalliancenow.org/wp-conte…/…/2016/09/Document-39.pdf
[c]
http://dailycaller.com/…/the-govt-actually-tried-several-t…/
[d]
http://www.reuters.com/…/us-usa-pipeline-nativeamericans-re…
[e]
https://www.fraserinstitute.org/…/safety-in-the-transportat…
[f]
https://www.sayanythingblog.com/…/dakota-access-pipeline-f…/
[g]
https://mwalliancenow.org/…/dakota-access-easements-95-per…/
[h]
http://www.usbr.gov/…/p…/GP-StandingRockRuralWaterSystem.pdf
If it was a mosque and they were muslim the gov’mint would be leaving them alone I bet.
The pipeline does not cross any reservation property. Look it up.
Chicken shit Obama dare not upset his owners by pointing out that the whole pipeline is illegal. Its backers have avoided an environmental review by calling the big pipeline lots of little segments, small enough to not require the review. Whatever it takes to facilitate the selling off of North American resources to benefit the few. It’s important to understand that the rightwingers who think they can shit all over the environment with impunity are just another branch of the Free Shit Army. They just get their free lunch from unsustainable practices that threaten the environment. Another family of welfare royalty, just as bad as any other, but more dangerous because they are MUCH better armed. I’m sick and tired of flag waving “patriots” who think it’s their right to turn the landscape of America into a shit hole. They’re as bad as all the folks dependent on free money and as stupid as that Darwin award winner who won the bet that he wouldn’t pull the trigger knowing there were four bullets in the chamber. Any society that destroys its commons, the shared environment, first descends into slavery then into cannibalism. America as Easter Island. God bless the protestors,
You really need to do quite a bit more research. There are many areas where the gov. is incredibly over-bearing (such as the Hammonds in Harney County, Oregon) but this ain’t one of them. There is ZERO Tribal Lands involved, and the tribe had years of opportunity to address the line. Lies come from all sides and, as a tip for you to do your research, follow the money. Check out who’s store is profiting from all the protesters. Check out the exhaustive process that the entire project went through. And that laughable video of ‘wild buffalo showing up from no-where’, for crying out loud, you can see the pick-ups and riders pushing the herd that way. All bullshit, lies and agenda from everybody involved on both sides. Now I am no lover of ANY gov., and certainly not our present tyrannical unconstitutional power-mongering Dumb & Dumber Dog & Pony Show, but I AM a lover of Truth. Generally speaking, I have very little regard for most tribal governments; they seem to be about as trust-worthy as the Feds. People are people, and most are intensely self-serving. The protesters are invading private land, the route was changed several times due to concerns by other parties and the tribe turned down earlier proposals because it didn’t pay enough. AND they, through the leadership of the STORE owner, ignored all opportunities for input. There is way more to this than I can write here. There is an incredible amount of raw info, unfiltered through anybody, available.
If you want to run your ‘mouth’, at least adhere to the standard you profess to demand of others. All you look like to me is one more person using the very tactics you decry in others. ‘Nuf said. I have more important things to go do. And I get the feeling I’m shouting into an empty well, and not even hearing an echo back. Well, after 40+ yrs of beating the drum about where we were going, here we are; I no longer have any false expectations about anybody actually connecting the dots. There’s a WAY bigger picture here, and you are just one symptom of what’s coming. All knee-jerk reaction and no understanding, almost like you’ve memorized your lines.
After posting this, I read some of the other excellent posts. Good job, All, especially Gerold.
That pipe was rerouted several times during planning to satisfy the Indians and when the final plans were done they were repeatedly asked for final approval input and just failed to respond or show up for hearings.
They wait till it is well under way to protest it instead of at least saying something while the route was being finalized.
Whitehead needs to do a bit of actual research before writing about it.
For all you organic chemist wanna-be’s and chemical engineering rejects (myself included):
One atom of carbon plus 4 hydrogen = methane (the main component of “natural gas”
Two carbon plus eight six hydrogen = ethane
Three carbon plus eight hydrogen = propane (LPG)
Four carbon plus ten hydrogen = butane (lighter fuel)
Five carbon plus 12 hydrogen = pentane
Six carbon plus 14 hydrogen = hexane
Cn + H2n+2 = alkane Cn
From hexane on up you are entering gasoline territory.
Don’t try this at home, unless you are making biodiesel and have a disposal for the alkaline waste the usual process generates!
I read this article and thought it was a crock of shit bereft of any facts. Just rhetoric and kumbayah bullshit. Then I read the comments and thought, “Damn, (most of) TBP visitors REALLY ARE a smart crowd of well informed citizens.”
Starting with Gerold who posted a must read comment, hat tip to you all. And you know who you are.