The Kill Step

By Alleen Brown July 18, 2025

In March 2024, a jury ordered the environmental giant Greenpeace to pay $666 million to the companies behind the Dakota Access pipeline.

The companies argued that Greenpeace was responsible for protests near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation nearly a decade ago that drew thousands.

But Indigenous leaders, water protectors, activists, and court records agree: Greenpeace played a bit part in the Standing Rock movement, at best.

“They’re trying to point the finger at Greenpeace,” said Honorata Defender, a Standing Rock Sioux tribal member who helped start the movement.

“Because God forbid some Indians think for themselves and make a decision to stand up for themselves and their water and their land.”

• Chapter 1 “They’re waiting for someone to wink.”
• Chapter 2 “What the hell is this bullshit?”
• Chapter 3 “We’ll stand with you. You’re going to fight this.”
• Chapter 4 “How many of you feel the same way?”
• Chapter 5 “It’s part of the treaty.”
• Chapter 6 “We believed that to be true.”
• Chapter 7 “They’re scumbags.”

Robyn Beck / AFP via Getty Images

They called themselves “water protectors” and began protesting on the side of a highway near where construction was approaching the river. Most were Oceti Sakowin — Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota peoples. It was the early days of the #NoDAPL movement, in August 2016, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had just granted a key permit for the Dakota Access pipeline to go under the Missouri River.

The company behind the pipeline, Energy Transfer, had originally considered building it upstream of the twin cities of Bismarck and Mandan in North Dakota, which are mostly populated by white people. But the Army Corps of Engineers rejected that route, in part because it had the potential to harm the cities’ drinking water supply. Instead, the pipeline was rerouted to cross the river just north of the Standing Rock reservation’s own drinking water intake.

To Dave Archambault, then-chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, this was a case of environmental racism. He and other tribal leaders were worried, too, that culturally important sites located along the pipeline route could be destroyed.

It was also a matter of sovereignty. Two days after the Army Corps issued that key permit to Energy Transfer for the new route, the tribe sued. They argued that the Army Corps should not allow construction to continue without a deeper review of the route and substantial consultation — a cornerstone of federal Indian law that recognizes the nation-to-nation relationship between tribal governments and the United States.

When small protests began, the corps had still not issued an easement, a legal right that would allow Energy Transfer to build under the river on land that belonged to the U.S. government. However, there was nothing stopping Energy Transfer from building on private land. That’s when the trouble started.

Chairman Archambault was one of more than a dozen people arrested that August for attempting to block Dakota Access pipeline construction, but there was little attention paid by journalists. Online, however, in Indigenous digital spaces, protests were becoming very visible, very quickly. Facebook Live had launched that spring, and water protectors were broadcasting their actions on social media in real time for the world to see and attracting Indigenous peoples from around the country to stand with Standing Rock.

As more and more water protectors made their way to North Dakota, Achambault realized he would need help. He put out a public call to action, asking people to stand with Standing Rock. He also called Nick Tilsen, an Oglala Lakota organizer who had helped found a collective called the Indigenous Peoples Power Project, or IP3, which offered nonviolent, direct-action trainings to Indigenous peoples working to protect their communities, including from unwanted industrial development.

“The training that we’re talking about is not some crazy training,” said Tilsen, who saw the protests as an extension of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ‘60s. “Some people think that Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks just one day sat on a bus and launched a movement. But the reality is, they went through training. And that training helped them be disciplined and helped them be effective and helped them change the course of history.”

With protests underway, Tilsen worked with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to develop a set of principles for nonviolent direct action — protest actions and acts of civil disobedience meant to disrupt activities. At times, nonviolent direct action involves trespassing or disregarding police orders. The principles were hand-painted on a sign that hung prominently in the growing camp. Among them: “We are nonviolent,” and “Property damage does not get us closer to our goals.”

Tilsen was close with a Greenpeace employee named Cy Wagoner who is Diné and also a member of IP3, and Tilsen said he invited Wagoner to bring Greenpeace to Standing Rock. “We asked them to help train people,” Tilsen recalled. Around the same time, Tom Goldtooth, who is Diné and Dakota, was also urging Greenpeace to come. The executive director of the nonprofit Indigenous Environmental Network, Goldtooth was watching as tensions between police, private security, and water protectors intensified throughout the month. “I’m afraid of escalation,” recalled Goldtooth. “They’re waiting for someone, you know, to wink.”

Like Tilsen, Goldtooth hoped that Greenpeace would reinforce trainings already in progress, and send support for water protectors, such as a solar trailer that could power laptops and cell phones so that broadcasts could continue across social media.

Wagoner put together a proposal and a budget request for Greenpeace, which was approved: About $15,000 would pay for five people from IP3 to go to Standing Rock for two to three weeks. Greenpeace agreed to pay the cohort $125 a day, plus expenses, to conduct trainings, while Wagoner went on his usual Greenpeace salary. They began arriving around the beginning of September.

Meanwhile, the week before Labor Day, Tim Mentz — Standing Rock’s former tribal historic preservation officer and one of the people responsible for reviewing federal projects that may impact historic areas, burial sites, and religious places — began a survey of an area Energy Transfer planned to bulldoze. He was looking to see if there were culturally important sites along the pipeline path.

Mentz is a highly respected elder, and the first tribal historic preservation officer in the U.S. thanks to his tireless work to amend the National Historic Preservation Act that created the role — one that is now used by over 200 Indigenous nations. 

As part of Standing Rock’s lawsuit against the Army Corps filed in July, Mentz had already submitted a statement to the court saying that “destruction of these sites will eventually destroy generations of family connections to these areas of spiritual power.” He added that protecting those sites wasn’t just about the past: It was about the future of the Oceti Sakowin.

“Steps taken to preserve sites like this are important to the survival and recovery of our spiritual traditions,” he wrote. “These sites still retain the ability to mend our people.” 

On a hot, bright day, with permission from the landowner, Mentz and his team drove onto the privately-owned buffalo ranch that included access to the area where Energy Transfer wanted to drill under the river, and Mentz got to work. Over the course of a few days, they documented 27 burial sites and 82 stone features — arranged in circles and other patterns for ceremonial purposes — all along a 2-mile corridor that Energy Transfer planned to dig up. 

On the Friday before Labor Day, he wrote up what he found, including a cluster of stones shaped like the Big Dipper, with a grave site attached to the cup, indicating an important leader. “This is one of the most significant archaeological finds in North Dakota in many years,” he wrote. The tribe’s attorney, who worked for a nonprofit public interest law organization called Earthjustice, filed the coordinates Mentz identified with a North Dakota Court.

The next morning, the Saturday before Labor Day, bulldozers were spotted at the sites Mentz had identified and that the tribe had filed in court. Water protectors rushed to stop them but private security guards stood waiting, and their dogs lunged at the pipeline opponents.

Despite their attempts, Energy Transfer graded the 2-mile corridor Mentz surveyed, digging a foot deep into the earth. “A significant portion of the site we’d surveyed had been cleared,” Mentz wrote in another declaration to court. “I do not believe that the timing of this construction was an accident or coincidence.”

A judge ruled soon after that he didn’t have the power to stop the company from continuing to build on private land. 

However, the images of security dogs attacking pipeline opponents transformed the movement. Recorded by nonprofit news organization Democracy Now!, the dog attacks were broadcast around the world and quickly went viral. People poured in, mushrooming new resistance camps across the prairie and filling them with Indigenous peoples, longtime environmental organizers, and everyday activists moved by the social feeds coming out of Standing Rock. Church members, community groups, and individuals donated money and supplies to keep the camps afloat. A school opened for families with children and kitchens opened to feed the growing number of water protectors.

Nonprofits began to join the fight too, including Tom Goldtooth’s Indigenous Environmental Network, 350.org, Bold Alliance, and Greenpeace.

The story of Standing Rock is relatively well-known from here: The governor of North Dakota called in the National Guard, which joined law enforcement officers from around the U.S. and private security contractors hired by the pipeline company in an effort to disperse protests. For more than six months, water protectors faced off against military-grade armored vehicles, surveillance drones, at least one sniper, police with semi-automatic rifles, a surface-to-air missile launcher, tear gas, rubber bullets, flash-bang grenades, and water cannons deployed in sub-freezing weather.

While a vast majority of water protectors, including Greenpeace employees, abided by the nonviolent, direct-action principles IP3 and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe posted in camp, not all agreed. Some pipeline opponents set fire to bulldozers and vandalized construction equipment. Some fought back against police, throwing rocks, logs, water bottles, and even Molotov cocktails. 

In February 2017, soon after Donald Trump’s first presidential inauguration, the Army Corps gave the green light for Energy Transfer to begin drilling under the river. By late February, security forces moved in and removed water protectors camped near Standing Rock. Energy Transfer bored a hole underneath the Missouri River for the pipeline to be pushed through, effectively ending the fight.

Robyn Beck / AFP via Getty Images

Chapter 2

“What the hell is this bullshit?”

In February 2017, as security forces prepared to evict water protectors from their camps, TigerSwan — a private security firm contracted by Energy Transfer — began emailing with the law firm Gibson, Dunn, & Crutcher.

The firm had been representing Energy Transfer as it attempted to convince a federal court to dismiss the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s claims against the Army Corps. Gibson, Dunn, & Crutcher would eventually declare victory against Greenpeace in the $666 million lawsuit.

TigerSwan had spent months spying on water protectors by monitoring social media feeds, listening in on radio communications, flying drones, and monitoring camps by helicopter. It sent infiltrators — people pretending to be water protectors — into the anti-pipeline camps to gather information. Founded in 2008 by a former commander of an elite special operations unit known as Delta Force, TigerSwan’s security contractors had cut their teeth during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. At Standing Rock, it brought those “war-on-terror” tactics home.  

Files obtained through a public records request reveal that TigerSwan was not only providing the intelligence it collected to law enforcement, but it was also preparing to provide some of the information it gathered on water protectors to the law firm Gibson Dunn, including a set of spreadsheets listing crowdfunding pages, how much each had raised, and who was involved, as well as spreadsheets matching protest actions with individual water protectors, labeled “named conspirators.” The company asked one of its infiltrators to identify what groups pipeline opponents belonged to. And it asked another contractor to send over the makes and models of vehicles that showed up at certain protests.

That record request also revealed a purpose of the communications between TigerSwan and Gibson Dunn: a RICO lawsuit. Gibson Dunn was considering using the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO — a law originally developed to go after the mafia — to target anti-pipeline activists and organizers, and had turned to Energy Transfer’s mercenary private security firm, TigerSwan, to help. TigerSwan did not respond to a request for comment.

Months later, in August of 2017, Deepa Padmanabha, the senior legal advisor for Greenpeace in the U.S., learned that Energy Transfer was suing the environmental organization in federal court, alleging violations of the RICO Act. “This one came as a very big surprise just because the Greenpeace entities had such little involvement with anything associated with Standing Rock,” she said.

Padmanabha called it a SLAPP suit — a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation — which is designed not necessarily to win, but to drain opponents of resources and discourage them from speaking out. SLAPP suits are meant to set an example, and when successful they can be extremely effective.

Gibson Dunn is known to excel at aggressive lawsuits. The firm also has a history of helping big corporations avoid accountability for harming the environment or undermining Indigenous peoples’ rights — including arguing to gut the Indian Child Welfare Act in 2023.

In 2007, banana workers in Nicaragua won a multimillion-dollar lawsuit in the U.S. against the Dole fruit company for poisoning them with a pesticide called DCBP. To combat the win, Dole hired Gibson Dunn. They alleged a vast conspiracy in which the banana workers’ attorney had recruited fake banana workers to go after the fruit company. There were multiple holes in the story that later came to light, but to the American judge who presided over the conspiracy case, it didn’t matter: The money awarded to the workers was taken back.

Dole’s general counsel at the time gave the strategy a name: the “kill step.”

The kill step worked by not only targeting the plaintiffs, but also going after their lawyers, supporters, and media. It destroyed the story being told and replaced it with a new one. Perhaps the most well-known application of the kill step by the law firm was for Chevron. In Ecuador, the homelands of several tribes, including the Cofan, Secoya, and Kichwa, had been contaminated by abandoned pits of oil waste, and in 2011, they won an $18-billion lawsuit, holding the oil giant Chevron accountable. The settlement was reduced by the Ecuadorean Supreme Court to $9.5 billion in 2013. Chevron, in turn, filed a RICO complaint in the U.S. against the lawyers who argued the case, including attorney Steven Donziger, claiming that they had contaminated witnesses, behaved unethically, and maybe even bribed a judge.

There were a number of issues with Chevron’s case, but the company won. Over the next few years, Chevron and Gibson Dunn kept going after Donziger. He ended up on house arrest for two years and in jail for 45 days for a contempt of court charge. Meanwhile, the oil is still contaminating water in the Ecuadorian Amazon — and, like the banana workers in Nicaragua, the Ecuadorians still haven’t been able to collect the settlement awarded to them.

When Padmanabha got word Greenpeace was being sued, she wasn’t just confused as to why the organization was being sued, she was also confused by the timing. Oil was already flowing through the Dakota Access pipeline — the company had gotten what it wanted. But there was a clue: “We were already dealing with another massive SLAPP suit filed in federal court.”

In 2016, before Standing Rock, a law firm called Kasowitz Benson Torres had filed a RICO suit against Greenpeace on behalf of a timber company called Resolute Forest Products. The lawsuit claimed that Greenpeace Canada’s anti-logging campaign, which targeted Resolute, amounted to racketeering, defamation, and tortious interference. In 2017, the Kasowitz law firm filed a second lawsuit against Greenpeace, this time on behalf of Energy Transfer.

“The complaints looked very similar,” said Padmanabha. “It was the same allegations of a RICO conspiracy, and it was the same attempt to scare us into silence and bankrupt us.”

Ultimately, the RICO suit didn’t live long. A federal judge dismissed it in the winter of 2019, writing: “This is far short of what is needed to establish a RICO enterprise.” But Energy Transfer quickly filed a new version of the lawsuit in North Dakota state court, using local conspiracy law to tie the claims together.

Gibson, Dunn, & Crutcher would eventually take over the case. In a statement, a spokesperson for Kasowitz, Shannon O’Reilly, wrote: “The firm spearheaded Energy Transfer’s suits against those who wrongfully targeted these projects, and we are gratified that Energy Transfer ultimately achieved such a successful result.”

In the North Dakota iteration, the lawsuit’s primary targets were Greenpeace, two individual pipeline opponents named Cody Hall and Krystal Two Bulls, and a group called the Red Warrior Society. All were accused of conspiring together to propel the anti-pipeline movement. The company also alleged that the conspiracy was spread throughout Greenpeace-affiliated organizations, including Greenpeace Inc., which carries out U.S. based campaigns; Greenpeace Fund, also based in the U.S., which raises money for certain Greenpeace efforts; and Amsterdam-based Greenpeace International, which licenses out the Greenpeace name to independently operated nonprofits around the world and coordinates some of their activities.

The lawsuit included three buckets of claims. There were on-the-ground, protest-related damages for things like trespassing and destruction of construction equipment. There were defamation claims, alleging that Greenpeace and the other defendants lied by accusing Energy Transfer of deliberately desecrating sacred sites and putting the pipeline on tribal lands, and accusing police and private security of being violent toward nonviolent water protectors. And finally, Energy Transfer alleged tortious interference — essentially, that those defamatory statements damaged the company’s relationship with banks.

Those accused weren’t the only ones impacted by the lawsuit. Subpoenas went out demanding people and organizations hand over documents or testify in front of lawyers. Energy Transfer subpoenaed Water Protectors Legal Collective, a group that provided legal support to pipeline opponents, and Unicorn Riot, a media collective that broadcast hours of footage of police violence. It also subpoenaed Standing Rock’s former tribal historic preservation officer Tim Mentz. Across the water protector community, fear began to spread that anyone and everyone could be dragged into the lawsuit.

However, two people at the heart of the case — Greenpeace’s alleged co-conspirators Cody Hall and Krystal Two Bulls — never received official notification of the lawsuit. Months went by, then years. In legal filings, Energy Transfer said they’d attempted to serve Hall at a home in South Dakota where his parents lived briefly a decade before, but the knock Hall expected at his door didn’t come. At one point, Hall got so stressed about it he called Energy Transfer. “I said, ‘You guys say you can’t serve me. I’m sitting here at home. Serve my ass. So what the hell is this bullshit?’” A receptionist took his number but he never heard back.

Helen H. Richardson / The Denver Post via Getty Images

Chapter 3

“We’ll stand with you. You’re going to fight this.”

Greenpeace was founded just as the contemporary environmental movement was taking off in the 1970s. What set the organization apart from others at the time was dramatic protest actions at sea: Greenpeace activists zoomed little boats in between whaling ships and harpoons, risking their lives to save whales. From the very beginning, Greenpeace was ardently opposed to any kind of violence. Still, governments and companies began to label its activities as ecoterrorism.

“I don’t think there’s any credible examples of anything remotely like something you could describe as ecoterrorism in Greenpeace’s history,” said Frank Zelko, a historian at the University of Hawai‘i who wrote a book on the organization called Make It a Green Peace!. “Unless you reframe ecoterrorism as a bunch of people just blocking bulldozers or hanging a banner between a couple of chimneys.”

It’s important to note that Greenpeace’s efforts to save wildlife at times took aim at Indigenous peoples and practices. For example, an anti-seal-hunting campaign Greenpeace launched in the 1970s destroyed subsistence living for a number of Indigenous communities and a major income stream for many Indigenous nations. By the 1990s, activities like those began to get pushback. 

“We challenged the white organizations back in the early 1990s with environmental racism,” said Tom Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network. “Greenpeace stepped up.”

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In 2017, when the RICO lawsuit hit Greenpeace, Goldtooth was in touch with the organization again. “We said: ‘Hey man, this is mucked up. We’ll stand with you. You’re going to fight this.’” But by 2024, as the lawsuit looked like it would go to trial, it became less and less clear that Greenpeace actually would fight Energy Transfer.

Management for Greenpeace in the U.S. assessed that they had a 5 percent chance of winning. If this went to trial, they determined that Greenpeace as they knew it might cease to exist.

Then, around the winter of 2024, Gibson, Dunn, & Crutcher reached out to Greenpeace with a settlement proposal: Energy Transfer would drop the lawsuit if the organization put out a statement. Greenpeace would have to indicate that there was violence during the Standing Rock movement, that the pipeline did not pass through the Standing Rock Sioux’s land, and that the company did not deliberately destroy sacred sites. In other words, they’d have to refute the statements that Energy Transfer had claimed as defamation. 

The statement Energy Transfer wanted Greenpeace to make “would have been a lie,” Goldtooth said.

Over the next few months, Greenpeace leadership deliberated over the settlement offer. A worst-case trial scenario could mean the loss of a 50-year legacy and could scuttle Greenpeace’s future impact. It could put up to 135 staff members out of work and risk dismantling the organization’s global network. It could cause reputational damage to the Standing Rock Sioux, allies, and other activists who would be forced to testify, and it could set a legal precedent for suing movement organizations out of existence. The best-case trial scenario: Greenpeace would lose, but would be able to say that it went down fighting. Some in the organization concluded that this trial scenario would be catastrophic. 

A worst-case settlement, on the other hand, didn’t seem quite as bad to some. It could cause a public relations crisis, and Greenpeace might lose a few million dollars a year in funding. Some staff might resign, and Indigenous peoples and nations might stop working with the organization. The statements that Greenpeace would have to sign could also be used by Energy Transfer to go after the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. But Greenpeace would live to fight another day. 

Managing the worst-case scenario of a settlement became the option Ebony Twilley Martin, Greenpeace’s newly appointed executive director, and several senior managers supported.

However, the view was not shared by everyone, and the question of the settlement began to divide the organization. 

Multiple people high up in the organization strongly opposed Energy Transfer’s settlement proposal. For example, Deepa Padmanabha resigned as deputy general counsel because she disagreed with senior management’s position on the settlement, according to sources close to Greenpeace. Staff members who got wind of the possibility of settlement organized a letter to the board, expressing their own concerns. Meanwhile, Twilley Martin met with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe about the possibility of settling.

“It would’ve hurt us, no doubt,” current Standing Rock Chairwoman Janet Alkire said of the settlement. “ We’d have to fight against that too. Again, lies. It’s not true.” However, she said she viewed the decision as Greenpeace’s to make.

Tom Goldtooth also spoke with Twilley Martin on the phone multiple times. He said he knew she was under a lot of pressure, but he was clear in his conversations with her about what it would mean for Greenpeace to accept Energy Transfer’s terms. “This would end our relationship with you, with Greenpeace,” he said he told her. “It was that serious. This is a life and death issue to our Indigenous peoples. This is a life and death issue to life itself, to water, to the river.”

Goldtooth said that Twilley Martin was quiet. “I feel it hit her hard.”

Ultimately, it was up to Greenpeace’s board to decide. “It was clear for us that it was a hell no,” recalled Niria Alicia Garcia, a Greenpeace Inc. board member. To Garcia, the survival of Greenpeace was not the most important thing on the line, but she said it made sense to her that certain people did want to accept the settlement.

“When you’re an eight-figure, big legacy, big green, you are going to have to hire people who know how to keep a 501(c)(3) viable and afloat,” she said, referring to nonprofit organizations that are tax-exempt under Section 501(c)(3). “And at the same time, you’re going to need to hire people who are fully aligned and ready to embody the mission. That is the forever tension in nonprofits that exist to be in service to the movement.”

In the spring of 2024, the board voted to reject the settlement proposal. It came at a cost: Ebony Twilley Martin, the first Black woman to serve as Greenpeace’s executive director, hailed as a “historic first” in the environmental movement, left the organization. Padmanabha ultimately rejoined the U.S. organizations as senior legal adviser.

A spokesperson for Greenpeace in the U.S., Madison Carter, wrote in a statement: “Difficult conversations are a common byproduct of risk assessment exercises, and this case is no different.” She added: “SLAPP lawsuits like the one we are facing from Energy Transfer are intended to divide movements and drain resources, which is why it is paramount that we remain as prepared as possible for any and all outcomes.”

Twilley Martin declined to comment. 

Garcia, the Greenpeace board member, said, “I’m proud that we stuck to our values and decided to stay true to the spirit and the mission and the purpose of why Greenpeace ever came to exist.” She added, “At the end of the day, nonprofits are discardable; they are revocable; they are replaceable — and the movement is not. Relationships are not.”

North Dakota’s Morton County District Court set a date for trial: February 24, 2025.

Michael Nigro / Pacific Press / LightRocket via Getty Images

Chapter 4

“How many of you feel the same way?”

Jury selection began on a chilly morning last February. “I want to congratulate you on being chosen for jury duty,” said Judge James Gion to the pool of potential jurors. “It is one of the highest obligations and privileges of our democratic system.”

Gion, a judge of 10 years, presided over the Stark County District Court in rural western North Dakota, more than 90 miles away from Morton County, where the suit was filed. Every judge in the entire South Central Judicial District of North Dakota, in which Morton County sits, recused themselves from the case due to conflicts of interest.

Over the next two days, two sets of around 30 potential jurors, selected from the local populace, would answer questions from the lawyers. Each side of the lawsuit aimed to select jurors who would be most favorable to their case, and they sought to convince the judge to eliminate people too biased to be fair.

As lawyers questioned the jury pool, a pattern emerged: Multiple potential jurors said that hearing about the Standing Rock protests reminded them of what they called “the disruption in our community.” One woman put it plainly: “I think you’ll have a tough time finding people completely unbiased on that, because it affected everyone.”

Greenpeace’s lawyer, Everett Jack, asked the group: “How many of you feel the same way?”

All but a handful of people raised their hands. 

About five months before jury selection began, an unusual newspaper, Central ND News, began showing up in people’s mailboxes. Sandwiched between articles criticizing then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris and analyzing the dangers of “illegal aliens” were recollections about the Standing Rock protests a decade before. Most were unpleasant. 

One headline read, “Former Dakota Access pipeline protester: ‘We ended up creating a local ecological disaster.’”

Another said, “THIS MONTH IN HISTORY, OCTOBER 2016: Area schools locked down as authorities respond to pipeline protests.”

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Central ND News is part of a company called Metric Media, which includes dozens of locally-oriented media sites that have been labeled as part of a “pay-for-play” network. For a price, that network has allowed corporate executives and political operatives to order up articles and have them distributed to specific audiences. These latest stories were apparently aimed at residents of Morton County, where the Standing Rock protests took place — and from which the jurors were selected. According to court filings, a murky trail of funds connects Energy Transfer’s board chair Kelcy Warren to the newspapers. Metric Media did not respond to a request for comment.

When Jack, Greenpeace’s lawyer, asked about the newspapers, a potential juror pulled out a copy he had brought with him. “I thought it was kinda weird that I got that,” he said. “It brought back memories. I agree with it that what happened down there wasn’t good.”

Greenpeace had already attempted to get the trial moved to another county, arguing that the Morton County jury pool would be too biased to decide the case fairly. In a survey the organization commissioned from the National Jury Project, a consultancy that does jury research, 97 percent of respondents gave answers indicating bias against Greenpeace, or, in a few cases, Energy Transfer.

Many of the potential jurors also had financial links to the fossil fuel industry. One of them, labeled juror 14 by the court for the sake of anonymity, said he didn’t think the case was right for him because he worked in the petroleum industry. He added that he would be uncomfortable ruling against his industry, and that he would be less likely to believe Greenpeace’s witnesses than Energy Transfer’s. Juror 14 also revealed that he had a family member in law enforcement who policed the protests. When Greenpeace’s lawyers asked for him to be removed from the pool, Energy Transfer’s lawyer, Trey Cox, pushed back. 

“If the judge instructs you that the law requires you to only consider the evidence in this courtroom and to treat all the parties fairly, are you able to follow the judge’s instruction and be fair to all parties?”

“Yes, I believe I can be,” the man replied. 

Juror 14 was allowed to stay.

After two days, the jurors were announced: a man who worked at a gasification company; another who oversaw two power facilities and told lawyers that “my job depends on fossil fuels” during the selection process; a woman whose family received royalties for oil on their land; and three women whose husbands had ties to the oil and gas industry. One woman’s husband also worked for a security company hired by Energy Transfer, as well as the contractor that drilled under the Missouri River, though she added that she didn’t think he worked at those places during pipeline construction. 

In the end, seven of the 11 jurors and alternates revealed economic ties to the fossil fuel industry. Nobody on the jury identified themselves as Indigenous. 

Opening arguments began the next day.

Robyn Beck / AFP via Getty Images

Chapter 5

“It’s part of the treaty.”

“Here they are,” explained the Gibson Dunn lawyer, Trey Cox, standing before a flat-screen television. “These are the Greenpeace six. Not a single one of them lives in this community. These people are professionals.”

On the screen flashed headshots of six people, all employees of Greenpeace Inc. 

“They embed in a location, then they escalate,” he said. “They thought they could do it in secret — they thought that we wouldn’t be smart enough to figure out what they did.”

“Today starts the day of reckoning,” he concluded.

Energy Transfer’s first witness was a towering bald man with an American flag pin on the lapel of his suit. Mike Futch was the project manager for the North Dakota section of the Dakota Access pipeline. Cox asked him about violence perpetrated by private security — like the now-infamous dog attacks.

“The only violence was when protesters came onto private property and attacked us,” Futch said. “We were always in retreat.”

According to Futch, the property damage that occurred at construction sites was intentionally violent: Pipeline opponents cut hydraulic hoses, booby-trapped equipment, filled gas tanks with sand and gravel, spray-painted cabin windows, and busted equipment gauges.

His testimony was backed up over the next few days by five law enforcement officers who agreed that the protesters were the violent ones, not security. “Violent” incidents ranged from water protectors blocking a road during a Thanksgiving Day protest in the town of Mandan, to death threats received by the now-deputy chief of the Bismarck Police Department, whose family eventually left home for a few days at the suggestion of the FBI. Captain Brian Steele testified that he got hit in the back with a big rock. Steele’s assessment: “We were probably too nice.”

It was defamation, according to Cox, for Greenpeace to say that police and private security used violence against nonviolent protesters.

On day five, Energy Transfer started playing video depositions from Greenpeace employees. On screen, Davy Khoury, a Greenpeace warehouse worker, explained how he spent hours driving on country back roads following the proposed path of the pipeline. According to his deposition, he was scouting — collecting information about what was happening with construction and passing it back to Indigenous organizers in the camps.

Energy Transfer’s lawyers displayed one of Khoury’s emails, written to another Greenpeace employee in October 2016: “The company has a place where all their toys are stored near in the Bismarck area,” Khoury wrote. He suggested a protest strategy. “If the entrances were blocked, it would be very hard for them to get to the job sites.” 

The other Greenpeace employee responded, “I just sent 30 straight boxes down,” referring to lockboxes — plumbing pipes that protesters use to lock themselves to each other.

Greenpeace lawyers later pointed out that the protest Khoury suggested likely never happened.

In total, six Greenpeace employees visited Standing Rock during the protests — the Greenpeace Six, according to Cox — sometimes staying for a few days, sometimes for a few weeks. They all worked for Greenpeace Inc., and not the other two Greenpeace-affiliated organizations named in the suit — in fact, no one from either of the other Greenpeace groups even visited Standing Rock at all. 

During their time at Standing Rock, those six employees delivered supplies, built structures, and helped the Indigenous Peoples Power Project, or IP3, train people in nonviolent direct action. In his video testimony, Nick Tilsen estimated that IP3 trained somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 people over the course of the Standing Rock protests. Lawyers also showed that Greenpeace employees did directly participate in some protest actions; however, Tilsen stated that no one from Greenpeace led those actions, while acknowledging that his friend from Greenpeace, Cy Wagoner, helped with some planning. Rather, it was people from the area who set the agenda.

Energy Transfer alleged that Greenpeace provided funding for Standing Rock to the tune of $55,000, and that the organization’s executive director at the time, Annie Leonard, helped direct a handful of foundations to donate an additional total of $90,000 to the movement.

The impact of that support, along with a defamatory information campaign, according to Gibson, Dunn, & Crutcher, was huge: Energy Transfer spent $7 million on PR firms to deal with the protests. An additional $8.5 million went toward buying the most controversial land: the ranch where Tim Mentz found the 27 burial sites and 82 stone features. The company paid contractors $14.5 million for changes to construction plans and lost another $96.4 million when Energy Transfer delayed the refinancing of loans associated with the pipeline. The pipeline was supposed to start pumping oil in January 2017 but couldn’t until June, costing the company another $80 million.

As the trial proceeded, none of the law enforcement witnesses or Energy Transfer personnel who had been on the ground seemed to know much about Greenpeace. According to public records and testimony in court, Greenpeace hardly ever appeared in the daily intelligence reports written by the private security firm TigerSwan. Of more than 1,700 pages of police operations briefings during Standing Rock, Energy Transfer’s lawyers pointed to only one that described a Greenpeace employee at a protest. 

According to Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier, up to 10,000 people were in the camps at the height of the protest. In his testimony, Kirchmeier said he believed they showed up to Standing Rock because the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s chairman, Dave Archambault, put out a public call and invited people to the prairie — that the real catalysts were the dog attacks, the explosion of social media coverage, and that people believed the pipeline was located on the tribe’s unceded territory. 

“It’s part of the treaty,” Kirchmeier said.

The tribe’s treaty is a big reason why the pipeline’s operation was delayed from January 2017 to June. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s lawsuit against the Army Corps of Engineers was filed well before the camps began to grow. Under pressure from Standing Rock and other Indigenous nations, the Army Corps denied the easement that December, ordering a deeper environmental review first. In other words, for most of the months in which people protested, August 2016 to February 2017, Energy Transfer did not have permission to drill. That permission didn’t come until after Donald Trump came into office, in February 2017.

Energy Transfer and its lawyers were intimately familiar with this timeline. By November 2016, Gibson Dunn was representing the company as it attempted to push the Army Corps for permissions. And by December, the law firm had helped Energy Transfer draft a memorandum urging President Trump’s transition team to advance an executive order for the Army Corps to grant the easement.

In the end, Energy Transfer’s lobbyist in D.C. even prepared a draft of the executive order, and soon after Trump was inaugurated, he signed and issued it, directing the Army Corps to deliver an easement.

“Y’all were able to start drilling under the lake within minutes of getting that easement, right?” a Greenpeace lawyer asked Energy Transfer’s board president Kelcy Warren during a video deposition.

“Shortly thereafter, yes sir,” said Warren with a laugh.

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe does play a major role in the true story of Energy Transfer’s Dakota Access pipeline easement. In the months after the pipeline was installed under the river, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and other Indigenous nations continued pushing for a federal court to shut the pipeline down. In June 2017, a judge ruled that the Army Corps would have to redo parts of its environmental review. The legal back-and-forth dragged on for years.

Energy Transfer’s banks took note. In court, Energy Transfer alleged that Greenpeace’s divestment campaign, and its defamatory lies, forced the company to delay refinancing a loan, which cost them $96.4. However, meeting minutes from Energy Transfer’s board of directors, described in court, indicate that the company actually decided to hold off on refinancing due to banks’ concerns about the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s ongoing legal battle — not Greenpeace.

“This is all a bunch of bullshit,” said Doug Crow Ghost, the tribe’s head of water resources, of the Greenpeace lawsuit. Crow Ghost noted that the tribe took in $11.7 million in donations related to the pipeline protests. Greenpeace’s $55,000 and $90,000 in foundation funding was meager by comparison.

But no Standing Rock member testified in the Greenpeace trial. As a rule, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe doesn’t go to state court: The state has no jurisdiction over the nation due to federal Indian law.

Robyn Beck / AFP via Getty Images

Chapter 6

“We believed that to be true.”

Up until October 2023, Energy Transfer claimed that Greenpeace also committed defamation when it said the pipeline would poison the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s water and that the pipeline would catastrophically alter the climate. In order to prove those claims, Energy Transfer would have to turn over internal documents to show how safe the pipeline really was.

However, the company sought to avoid handing over the pipeline safety records and dropped the claims. But Greenpeace didn’t drop its requests for the files — and as they continued to fight about it, some documents became public record. 

A report commissioned by Greenpeace, based on field reports and completed in January 2024, found that Energy Transfer’s contractors allowed 1.4 million gallons of drilling mud to disappear into the hole they bored under the riverbed. Drilling mud is a clay and water mixture combined with chemical additives, used to lubricate a drill and carry away fragmented earth. Oil companies usually describe drilling mud as non-toxic, but at times it has been found to include harmful pollutants, and it can hurt delicate ecosystems. The authors, from an engineering firm called Exponent, found that the drilling mud was supposed to flow back out of the tunnel and onto the shore to be stored in an excavated pit. But some of it never did. Enough drilling mud to fill two Olympic-sized swimming pools disappeared into the environment.

Energy Transfer has gotten in trouble in the past for using unapproved additives in its drilling mud. During pipeline construction in Pennsylvania, the company leaked thousands of gallons of drilling mud into wetlands, creating sinkholes and polluting tap water. Energy Transfer’s subsidiary Sunoco pleaded no contest to 14 criminal counts related to the spills. In Ohio, the same year the Dakota Access pipeline was completed, Energy Transfer leaked another 2 million gallons of drilling mud into the environment as it built a different pipeline — some was laced with diesel.

The spill described in the Exponent report was news to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, despite its years of raising questions and concerns about pipeline safety. So in October 2024, when the tribe filed its latest lawsuit against the Army Corps, the lawyers cited the drilling mud report as one of many reasons that the pipeline should finally be shut down. Standing Rock’s lawsuit was dismissed in March, although the tribe has appealed. 

Energy Transfer alleged that Greenpeace committed defamation by accusing the company of deliberately destroying sacred sites. At the heart of that claim is the word “deliberate” and whether or not, on September 3, 2016, the company intended to destroy the sites. Court documents, public records, and testimony at trial paint a hazy picture of just how those sites were handled.

Tim Mentz’s survey began by Tuesday, August 30, and lasted through Thursday, September 1. That same week, Energy Transfer emailed police to inform them that their construction crew was moving east toward the river, according to a record displayed during the trial. Because of the company’s concerns about protests, sharing construction information with police was a routine practice at the time. The company’s schedule, which it outlined in an email, suggested that the bulldozers wouldn’t arrive in the area with the sacred sites until after September 8. 

On September 2, 2016, after Mentz identified the sites, Mike Futch, the project manager for the North Dakota section of the Dakota Access pipeline, sent out his construction manager and a security guy to investigate. “We concluded that the features that Mr. Mentz had identified were outside the limits of the disturbance that we had planned,” Futch said on the stand. 

According to Futch, construction crews were able to avoid any stones on the edge of the right-of-way. That analysis, Futch said, allowed him to sidestep calling in the company’s archaeology specialists. The company saw no reason to call the Standing Rock Sioux, either. 

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Energy Transfer’s bulldozers arrived at the site the next morning — Saturday, September 3, on Labor Day weekend — more than six days earlier than what it had indicated in the schedule sent to police days before. Public records obtained from the Morton County Sheriff’s Office confirm that that morning, the company moved its bulldozers at least 15 miles east to the area that Mentz had been working in. 

That the bulldozers were moved out of order on a holiday weekend is a key reason the tribe and water protectors believe that Energy Transfer deliberately destroyed the sites. So exactly when Energy Transfer decided to bulldoze the area matters. 

“Yes, we did advance and do some out of sequence work,” Futch told the court. Not because of the sacred sites, he said, but only to get ahead of a powwow planned for the area: The crews wanted to be out of way before new people arrived on top of the protesters already present.

Futch said several law enforcement officers, including Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier, were notified of the change in plans — something Kirchmeier denied, saying he was unaware the bulldozers would be in that area. Normally, he added, his office was notified of construction plans, but not this time.

The dog handlers were surprised, too, according to police reports obtained from the sheriff’s office. The owner of Frost Kennels, Bob Frost, told police that Energy Transfer had asked the company to bring the dogs out around mid-September when a ruling in Standing Rock’s lawsuit against the Army Corps was expected. The security workers anticipated that the dogs would be patrolling a fence around a construction site, and one worker said he thought they’d be joined by two police officers per dog handler. Instead, Bob Frost found out in the middle of Friday night, only hours after Earthjustice filed the coordinates, that they needed to show up with dogs the next morning at 10 a.m. 

While Energy Transfer’s defamation claim focused on the word “deliberate,” the company has also disputed that there were any sacred sites at risk at all. “Apparently a guy named Mentz came up with a story,” the former Energy Transfer Vice President Joey Mahmoud said in an email at the time.

In court, Gibson Dunn lawyers and the company’s witnesses pointed to a report from the chief archaeologist of the North Dakota State Historic Preservation Office, Paul Picha, who concluded that “no cultural material was observed in the expected corridor. No human bone or other evidence of burials was recorded in the inventoried corridor.” 

Picha was deposed by lawyers, but the interview wasn’t shown in court. He said that his assessment didn’t actually mean much about the truth of Mentz’s claims.

“So if the North Dakota State Historic Preservation Society says something isn’t a cultural site, that doesn’t mean it isn’t a cultural site to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, correct?” asked one of the lawyers.

“Yes,” Picha replied.

Energy Transfer’s own archaeology contractor, Gray & Pape, concluded in a separate report, obtained via a public records request, that four of Mentz’s sites were in the path of the pipeline. The archaeologist, Jason Kovacs, reported that those four stones didn’t show signs of being archaeological sites and that there was no ground disturbance there — although one of the stones was covered in dirt.

However, Kovacs clarified what he meant when he was deposed for trial. He told lawyers, “I’m not qualified to assess what is cultural property or not,” and he confirmed that the company had no Indigenous specialists on staff.

“The vast majority of the times, we have no access to the tribal perspective,” said Kovacs. “My assessment of an archaeological site has to be on the archaeology itself, and that’s where I leave it. It may have further significance, but that’s, you know, not archaeological.”

His testimony was never aired for the jury. 

Energy Transfer’s lawyers presented what appeared to be its key evidence that Greenpeace International defamed the corporation. In November 2016, an organization called BankTrack asked banks to divest from the Dakota Access pipeline, noting that the company’s personnel deliberately desecrated documented burial grounds and other important cultural sites. The letter was signed by 500 organizations, including Greenpeace International.

“Does Greenpeace International stand by that?” Trey Cox asked Mads Christenson, Greenpeace International’s executive director.

“We believed that to be true at the time, and we still do,” Christensen replied.

“Wouldn’t you have to talk to Energy Transfer to understand their state of mind?” asked Cox.

“Our understanding was very clear from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and allies that a number of concerns about sacred sites had been pointed out that were later desecrated and destroyed.”

Christensen added, “If you’re aware of the fact and still go ahead, then it must be deliberate.”

Stephen Olson / Getty Images

Chapter 7

“They’re scumbags.”

“Do you have any personal knowledge about anything Greenpeace did at all in relation to the protests?” a lawyer asked.

“No,” said Kelcy Warren, Energy Transfer’s board chair and largest shareholder — who was CEO when the Dakota Access pipeline was constructed.

Warren took the stand on March 13, via a pre-recorded video deposition. It was the final day of testimony.

While the board chair had no recollections about Greenpeace, he did have memories about the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. In 2016, Warren approached Chairman Dave Archambault to make a deal. “I went there with the intention of working out a financial transaction,” Warren said. Long before Greenpeace went to court, before the conspiracy lawsuits began, and before Trump’s executive order greenlighting the pipeline, Energy Transfer tried to pay off the tribe.

At the height of the protests, Warren and Archambault sat down to talk. “I said, ‘David, I’m here to make a deal with you. Let’s go. Do you want cash? What do you want?’” Warren first offered Archambault the ranch the company bought, the one that held the sacred sites identified by Mentz. “We could build you a whole new school on your reservation. Let’s make a deal,’” Warren urged.

“And he says, ‘I can’t do it,’” Warren recalled. “He made it very clear he could not accept any offer from me that involved them backing down.”

“It was clear to me that he had struck a deal with the devil,” Warren said.

“And the devil being Earthjustice?” the lawyer replied.

“Yes,” said Warren.

Earthjustice is a nonprofit public interest law organization that represented the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in the early part of its court fight against the Army Corps of Engineers. It is not connected to Greenpeace: It is not an affiliate, a subsidiary, or even funded by the organization.

“They’re scumbags,” Warren said, of Earthjustice.

“I read between the lines, and I believe that they made a deal, and Archambault couldn’t make a deal with me,” he continued.

In a statement, Archambault explained the meeting. “I was there to discuss safety — not to negotiate an end to the protests.” When Warren asked what it would take to stop the movement, Archambault said, “I explained that it was no longer in my control. The fight against the pipeline had become much bigger than Standing Rock; it was about Indigenous rights and the long history of injustice faced by our people.”

In court, the lawyer asked, “Nothing was said about Greenpeace during that meeting, was it?” 

“Not that I recall,” Warren replied.

In Warren’s understanding, the Standing Rock Sioux were the entity to negotiate with when it came to ending the protests and pushing the pipeline through — not Greenpeace. According to his testimony, the tribe’s refusal to take a deal revealed that Standing Rock had sold out to its law firm, Earthjustice — not Greenpeace Inc., Greenpeace Fund, or Greenpeace International. 

On the next day of court, during closing statements, Cox revealed the true extent of what Energy Transfer was demanding from the Greenpeace organizations. The lawyers said that $266 million would compensate Energy Transfer for their expenses — but they wanted triple that, in order to set an example. 
Two days later, the jury returned its verdict. Greenpeace Inc. was liable for all of the on-the-ground damage claims. Greenpeace Inc. and Greenpeace International were guilty of conspiracy, and all three Greenpeace organizations committed tortious interference, as well as defamation when they made their assertions on police violence, tribal territory, and desecration of sacred sites.

The total damages amounted to over $666 million.

Outside the courtroom, Cox, the Energy Transfer lawyer, posed with a huddle of attorneys from Gibson Dunn. He wore an American flag pin on the lapel of his suit, while his colleagues wore sunglasses. “Greenpeace paid protesters and trained individuals to unlawfully disrupt the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline,” he said. “These are the facts, not the fake news of the Greenpeace propaganda machine.”

He added, “Peaceful protest is an inherent American right; however, violent and destructive protest is unlawful and unacceptable. This verdict clearly conveys that.”

The Greenpeace employees and water protectors looked on, stunned.

Energy Transfer and Gibson Dunn did not provide responses to detailed questions related to the case. Instead, they provided a statement saying that the verdict was a win for North Dakotans who faced disruption and harassment during the protests.

“That the disrupters have been held responsible is a win for all of us,” the spokesperson wrote. “It is also a win for all law-abiding Americans who understand the difference between the right to free speech and breaking the law.”

Greenpeace is preparing to appeal once the court issues a final judgment.

“ What this really is an attempt to do is to destroy the idea of solidarity,” said Deepa Padmanabha, the senior legal advisor for Greenpeace in the U.S., in an interview with Grist and Drilled. “By working together, by uplifting voices, by showing support, by showing up, by communications, you somehow could face hundreds of millions of dollars of lawsuit. Because this idea of a movement, of people working together in solidarity, is actually more powerful than the dollar.”

Asked if the organization regretted not taking the settlement, Padmanabha said, “There was no choice.”

“Is our existence our ultimate mission? Just the existence of an entity?” she asked. “Or is there something in our mission that’s bigger than that?”

The Center for Media and Democracy supported document review for this article.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Standing Rock was an Indigenous-led movement. Why did Greenpeace take the fall? on Jul 18, 2025.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Alleen Brown.

The former head of Human Rights Watch — and son of a Holocaust survivor — says Israel’s military campaign in Gaza will likely meet the legal definition of genocide, citing large-scale killings, the targeting of civilians, and the words of senior Israeli officials.

Speaking on 30′ with Guyon Espiner, Ken Roth agreed Hamas committed “blatant war crimes” in its attack on Israel on October 7 last year, which included the abduction and murder of civilians.

But he said it was a “basic rule” that war crimes by one side do not justify war crimes by the other.

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• Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

There was indisputable evidence Israel had committed war crimes in Gaza and might also be pursuing tactics that fit the international legal standard for genocide, Roth said.

30′ with Guyon Espiner Kenneth Roth    Video: RNZ

“The acts are there — mass killing, destruction of life-sustaining conditions. And there are statements from senior officials that point clearly to intent,” Roth said.

The accusation of genocide is hotly contested. Israel says it is fighting a war of self-defence against Hamas after it killed 1200 people, mostly civilians. It claims it adheres to international law and does its best to protect civilians.

It blames Hamas for embedding itself in civilian areas.

But Roth believes a ruling may ultimately come from the International Court of Justice, especially if a forthcoming judgment on Myanmar sets a precedent.

“It’s very similar to what Myanmar did with the Rohingya,” he said. “Kill about 30,000 to send 730,000 fleeing. It’s not just about mass death. It’s about creating conditions where life becomes impossible.”

‘Apartheid’ alleged in Israel’s West Bank
Roth has been described as the ‘Godfather of Human Rights’, and is credited with vastly expanding the influence of the Human Rights Watch group during a 29-year tenure in charge of the organisation.

In the full interview with Guyon Espiner, Roth defended the group’s 2021 report that accused Israel of enforcing a system of apartheid in the occupied West Bank.

“This was not a historical analogy,” he said, implying it was a mistake to compare it with South Africa’s former apartheid regime.

“It was a legal analysis. We used the UN Convention against Apartheid and the Rome Statute, and laid out over 200 pages of evidence.”

He said the Israeli government was unable to offer a factual rebuttal.

“They called us biased, antisemitic — the usual. But they didn’t contest the facts.”

The ‘cheapening’ of antisemitism charges
Roth, who is Jewish and the son of a Holocaust refugee, said it was disturbing to be accused of antisemitism for criticising a government.

“There is a real rise in antisemitism around the world. But when the term is used to suppress legitimate criticism of Israel, it cheapens the concept, and that ultimately harms Jews everywhere.”

Roth said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had long opposed a two-state solution and was now pursuing a status quo that amounted to permanent subjugation of Palestinians, a situation human rights groups say is illegal.

“The only acceptable outcome is two states, living side by side. Anything else is apartheid, or worse,” Roth said.

While the international legal process around charges of genocide may take years, Roth is convinced the current actions in Gaza will not be forgotten.

“This is not just about war,” he said. “It’s about the deliberate use of starvation, displacement and mass killing to achieve political goals. And the law is very clear — that’s a crime.”

Roth’s criticism of Israel saw him initially denied a fellowship at Harvard University in 2023. The decision was widely seen as politically motivated, and was later reversed after public and academic backlash.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The Boss has never shied away from expressing his political views. 

And he’s not gonna back down now. 

“In America, they are persecuting people for using they right to free speech and voicing their dissent. This is happening now. In my country, they are taking sadistic pleasure in the pain that they inflict on loyal American workers. They’re rolling back historic civil rights legislation that led to a more just and plural society. They’re abandoning our great allies. And siding with dictators.”

“In my home, the America I love. The America I’ve written about. That has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous administration.”

Those were his words at a concert in Europe last month. Donald Trump responded over Truth Social, calling him a “pushy, obnoxious jerk” and a “dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker.”

The president of the United States also posted a fake video of himself golfing on social media appearing to knock Bruce Springsteen over with a golf ball.

How low can you go?

###

In dark times, music and song gives us hope. It can inspire us. The soundtracks to resistance, to change, to standing up for each other, to defending our rights. 

###

Bruce Springsteen, like Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, or Woody Guthrie, is one of those musicians who has often led the way with songs for the downtrodden. Songs for the working class, for hardworking Americans, for immigrants, for justice and freedom…

But not Trump-style freedom.

And right now, others have Bruce Springteen’s back.

“You know, when a hero like Bruce Springsteen brings up issues and make his thoughts be known,”  Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder defended The Boss during a show in May, “and uses his microphone to speak for those who don’t have a voice, sometimes. Certainly not an amplified one. And I just want to point out that he brought up issues. He brought up that residents are being removed off of American streets and being deported without due process of law. And thinking that they’re defunding American universities that won’t bow down to their ideologies, as Bruce said.”

“Now look, I appreciate you listening and I bring it up because the response to all of that and him using the microphone. The response had nothing to do with the issues. They didn’t talk about one of those issues. They didn’t have a conversation about one of those issues. Ddin’t debate any one of those issues. All that we heard were personal attacks and threats that nobody else should even try to use their microphone or use their voice in public or they will be shut down. No that is not allowed in this country that we call America. Am I right or am I right?”

Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello performed before a backdrop covered with huge oversized buttons spelling out the words “FUCK TRUMP.” “FUCK ICE” was written on the back of his guitar. He too spoke out in defense of Bruce Springsteen.

“Alright this next tune, I’m gonna dedicate to my friend Bruce Springsteen. He got in a tussle with the president lately. And you know Bruce is going after Trump. Because Bruce his whole life he’s been about truth, justice, democracy, equality. And Trump’s mad at him cause Bruce draws a much bigger audience. Fuck that guy.” 

This is not the first time Tom Morello has raged against the current US president. And it will not be the last. Almost a decade ago, even before Trump’s first term in office, Morello performed with Ani DiFranco on folk singer Ryan Harvey’s song, “Old Man Trump.”

That song was actually written by Woody Guthrie in 1954, about the racist discriminatory housing practices of his landlord, Fred Trump—Donald Trump’s dad. You just can’t make this stuff up.

Other musicians are also standing up. Folk singer David Rovics is prolific, with new songs each week. And many others have defended Bruce Springsteen.

In his show in Manchester, England, in mid-May, the Boss spoke to the audience. “Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American spirit to rise with us, raise your voices and stand with us against authoritarianism and let freedom ring.”

###

Bruce Springsteen’s powerful words have been included on his latest album, Land of Hope and Dreams.

It was released on May 20. 

You can find it on Spotify or wherever you listen. I’ll add a link in the show notes.

###

Hi folks, thanks for listening. I’m your host Michael Fox. 

I have long been an huge fan of Bruce Springsteen. If you’ve heard my podcast Under the Shadow, you know I grew up in Virginia, but I spent weeks every summer with family at the Jersey Shore, a couple of towns over from where Springsteen grew up. He is an icon, still.

Bruce Springsteen has never shied away from expressing his political views. And he’s not gonna back down now. 

“In my home, the America I love. The America I’ve written about. That has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous administration,” he told a crowd at a concert in Europe, in May.

Donald Trump responded over Truth Social, calling him a “pushy, obnoxious jerk” and a “dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker.”

In dark times, music and song gives us hope. Bruce Springsteen, like Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, or Woody Guthrie is one of those musicians who has often led the way with songs for the downtrodden. Songs for the working class, for hardworking Americans, for immigrants. For justice and freedom. And other famous rock idols have got the Boss’s back.

This is episode 47 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. 

And please consider signing up for the Stories of Resistance podcast feed, either in Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Spreaker, or wherever you listen.

Visit patreon.com/mfox for exclusive pictures, to follow Michael Fox’s reporting and to support his work. 

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

Resources

Clip of Bruce Springsteen criticizing Trump/Bruce Springsteen critica a Trump: “En mi país se ponen del lado de los dictadores”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2bT24hOXcQ

Here is the link to Bruce Springsteen’s latest album, “Land of Hope and Dreams”: https://open.spotify.com/album/1wWm7MPHSIpBX7Wiw8LAAq

“Eddie Denounces Trump’s Policies & Backs Springsteen & Rockin”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxZIVAkrq0Q

Tom Morello – 11 The Ghost of Tom Joad – Boston Calling May 25th 2025: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGkwcO8sZns

Ryan Harvey’s Old Man Trump (ft. Ani DiFranco & Tom Morello): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmZnlGBhwKg

You can hear more from Ryan Harvey here: https://open.spotify.com/artist/1bdxYCSsYEJga10wHzcqeu

You can subscribe to David Rovics’s newsletter and hear his most recent songs at: https://www.davidrovics.com/

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

Resistance….

Sometimes it’s quiet. Even silent. Sometimes it’s sustained over long years… 

And sometimes, it explodes like a corked bottle, and continues for days, or weeks, or much, much longer… 

Pushing back against injustice. Pushing back in defense of people’s lives, and their families, their friends, and their loved ones…

That is what we’re seeing right now in Los Angeles and across California as Donald Trump’s ICE officers have unleashed a crackdown on immigrant communities, and people have taken to the streets to say, “No.”

Despite what you’ve likely heard, most of the protests have been peaceful. Thousands have marched. They’ve chanted. They’ve sang. People have waved the Mexican flag. A sign of resistance. A sign in defense of those who are being ripped from their homes…

ICE has detained and arrested more than 100,000 people since Trump’s inauguration in January. Trump claims to be arresting criminals. In reality, he is detaining hard working family members. In reality, he is destroying families.

Many people who have been detained are in the country legally. Some are being arrested after appearing for scheduled asylum hearings. Parents pulled from their children. Babies taken from their mother’s arms. 

In recent days, the Trump administration has ramped up arrests to 2,000 people a day. ICE agents in armor and military-style camo gear ambush city streets like military operatives in foreign countries, or military police from supposedly bygone days of authoritarian governments who pick people from off the street, throw them into the back of a car, and disappear them…

But people are fighting back. 

After ICE officers detained more than 100 undocumented immigrants in raids across Los Angeles on Friday, protesters took to the streets. They’ve stayed there for days. They’ve shut down highways. They’ve shouted “No.”

Trump has responded, calling in the national guard. 2,000 troops. It’s the first time a president has unilaterally called in the national guard, despite objections from local state officials, in 60 years. 

California Governor Gavin Newsom says he’s suing Trump for illegally deploying federal troops and “flaming the fires.”

“You’re creating the conditions that you say you’re solving and you’re putting real people’s lives at risk.”

Police have arrested dozens in protests in Los Angeles and San Francisco. They’ve hit unarmed protesters in the head with rubber bullets. They’ve shot at journalists at point blank range. And still people have promised to resist. More protests are planned for today…

And there is clearly more on the horizon for Los Angeles and elsewhere, in defense of families, in defense of loved ones. In defense of immigrants across the United States.

###

Hi folks, thanks for listening. I’m your host Michael Fox. 

I don’t always get to do reporting for this series on issues that are happening right now. But this is one of those moments. And it is really important. 

This is Stories of Resistance, a podcast series co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment or leave a review.

If you like what you hear, you can sign up for the specific Stories of Resistance podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts.

As always, you can follow my reporting and support my work and this podcast at patreon.com/mfox.

Thanks for listening. See you next time.

Protester Shot in the Head by LA Riot Police: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/TxTfdRe7oGQ

Australian journalist hit by ‘rubber bullet’ while reporting from LA: https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/c98p008kxn1o

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

Resistance….

Sometimes it’s quiet. Even silent. Sometimes it’s sustained over long years… 

And sometimes, it explodes like a corked bottle, and continues for days, or weeks, or much, much longer… 

Pushing back against injustice. Pushing back in defense of people’s lives, and their families, their friends, and their loved ones…

That is what we’re seeing right now in Los Angeles and across California as Donald Trump’s ICE officers have unleashed a crackdown on immigrant communities, and people have taken to the streets to say, “No.”

Despite what you’ve likely heard, most of the protests have been peaceful. Thousands have marched. They’ve chanted. They’ve sang. People have waved the Mexican flag. A sign of resistance. A sign in defense of those who are being ripped from their homes…

ICE has detained and arrested more than 100,000 people since Trump’s inauguration in January. Trump claims to be arresting criminals. In reality, he is detaining hard working family members. In reality, he is destroying families.

Many people who have been detained are in the country legally. Some are being arrested after appearing for scheduled asylum hearings. Parents pulled from their children. Babies taken from their mother’s arms. 

In recent days, the Trump administration has ramped up arrests to 2,000 people a day. ICE agents in armor and military-style camo gear ambush city streets like military operatives in foreign countries, or military police from supposedly bygone days of authoritarian governments who pick people from off the street, throw them into the back of a car, and disappear them…

But people are fighting back. 

After ICE officers detained more than 100 undocumented immigrants in raids across Los Angeles on Friday, protesters took to the streets. They’ve stayed there for days. They’ve shut down highways. They’ve shouted “No.”

Trump has responded, calling in the national guard. 2,000 troops. It’s the first time a president has unilaterally called in the national guard, despite objections from local state officials, in 60 years. 

California Governor Gavin Newsom says he’s suing Trump for illegally deploying federal troops and “flaming the fires.”

“You’re creating the conditions that you say you’re solving and you’re putting real people’s lives at risk.”

Police have arrested dozens in protests in Los Angeles and San Francisco. They’ve hit unarmed protesters in the head with rubber bullets. They’ve shot at journalists at point blank range. And still people have promised to resist. More protests are planned for today…

And there is clearly more on the horizon for Los Angeles and elsewhere, in defense of families, in defense of loved ones. In defense of immigrants across the United States.

###

Hi folks, thanks for listening. I’m your host Michael Fox. 

I don’t always get to do reporting for this series on issues that are happening right now. But this is one of those moments. And it is really important. 

This is Stories of Resistance, a podcast series co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment or leave a review.

If you like what you hear, you can sign up for the specific Stories of Resistance podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts.

As always, you can follow my reporting and support my work and this podcast at patreon.com/mfox.

Thanks for listening. See you next time.

Protester Shot in the Head by LA Riot Police: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/TxTfdRe7oGQ

Australian journalist hit by ‘rubber bullet’ while reporting from LA: https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/c98p008kxn1o

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

Thousands of fans erupt in the stadium. 

But this is not just a game. And they are rooting for not just any soccer team. This team has an identity. It has a mission. A sporting team that is synonymous with resistance. Synonymous with the struggle for Palestine…

And the Palestinian people.

This is Club Deportivo Palestino, Palestine Sporting Club. A soccer team founded more than a century ago by Palestinian immigrants in Santiago, Chile.

Chile is home to the largest Palestinian community outside of the Middle East: half a million people.

The team wears the country’s colors: white, green and red. In the stands, fans wear them too, as well as keffiyehs, the black-and-white scarves that represent Palestinian identity and resistance. Their slogan is: “More than a team, it is an entire people.”

That slogan breathes true for fans in the stadium.

11-year-old Kamal Haddad is in the crowd with his father and his grandfather. Their family emigrated from Palestine during the First World War. They say this team is a way of keeping their traditions alive.

“This is a team that’s defending a Palestinian identity here in Chile,” says Kamal Haddad. That’s why we use the slogan ‘Gaza resists.’”

His grandfather, beside him, says his father brought him to his first Palestino game 50 years ago. Now he’s there with his son and his grandson. Three generations of one family, cheering on Palestine — the team, the country, and the people.

“This is so important,” he says. “It’s like our identity. and it’s a way of maintaining our traditions. With my family. With my children.”

The team, the players, and the fans have remained outspoken in defense of Palestine. Their history. Their people. And outspoken against the violence in Gaza.

Before a game in May last year, the players walked onto the field wearing black jackets to protest the children killed by Israel in Gaza. The team has taken the field in Palestinian scarves and waved anti-war banners. Among the chants in the crowd is “Gaza resists/Palestine exists.”

And the Palestino Soccer Club is an inspiration abroad, with nearly a million followers on Instagram. Games are televised in refugee camps in the Middle East. 

They are a symbol. An inspiration of resistance, standing in defense of the Palestinian cause even so far away from Palestine, so far away from the violence in Gaza. 

###

Hi folks, thanks for listening. I’m your host Michael Fox. 

I attended a Palestino game last year in Santiago, Chile. You can check out exclusive pictures of the team and the fans on my Patreon. That’s Patreon.com/mfox. There you can also follow my reporting and support my work and this podcast.

This is Stories of Resistance, a podcast series co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment or leave a review.

As always, thanks for listening. See you next time.

Chile’s Club Deportivo Palestino is a soccer team founded more than a century ago by Palestinian immigrants in Santiago, Chile. Chile is home to the largest Palestinian community outside of the Middle East: half a million people.

The team wears the country’s colors: white, green and red. In the stands, fans wear them too, as well as keffiyehs, the black-and-white scarves that represent Palestinian identity and resistance. Their slogan is: “More than a team, it is an entire people.”

The team, the players, and the fans have remained outspoken in defense of Palestine. And outspoken against the violence in Gaza. 

This is episode 40 of Stories of Resistance—a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. 

You can see exclusive pictures of Club Deportivo Palestino in Michael Fox’s Patreon account: patreon.com/posts/chiles-soccer-in-130263594. 

There you can also follow his reporting and support his work at Patreon.com/mfox.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

A closely watched civil trial that began in North Dakota last week could bankrupt Greenpeace and chill environmental activism as the climate crisis continues to deepen. The multimillion-dollar lawsuit by Energy Transfer, the oil corporation behind the Dakota Access Pipeline, claims Greenpeace organized the mass protests and encampment at Standing Rock between 2016 and 2017 aimed at stopping construction of the project. Although the uprising at Standing Rock was led by Indigenous water defenders, Energy Transfer is instead going after Greenpeace for $300 million in damages — an amount that could effectively shutter the group’s U.S. operations. “This case is not just an obvious and blatant erasure of Indigenous leadership, of Indigenous resistance,” says Deepa Padmanabha, a senior legal adviser for Greenpeace USA. “It is an attack on the broader movement and all of our First Amendment rights to free speech and peaceful protest.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

In the Banda Oriental, on the pampas of the gauchos, nestled between the shores of the Southern Atlantic and the Rio Plata… One woman would not be silent.

Collette Spinetti Nuñez would not sit down. She would not stay put.

From Roche to Artigas. From the city to the beaches and the rolling countryside, where farmers harvest the grains and the meat for the nation…

Colette traveled it all. 

She stood up. She spoke out. And helped others to find their voice.

A voice that usually comes in a whisper, if at all. A voice belonging to the most vulnerable. A voice in the highest danger of being silenced forever at far too young an age. 

See, Colette is trans. The average trans man and woman in the region lives to just 35 years of age. They are often humiliated and ridiculed. Rejected and shunned. Forced from school at far too young an age. Forced into prostitution and other dangerous jobs.

But Colette has been fighting to change that. 

She’s a teacher and an activist. A leader in the LGBTQ movement. She helped to battle for the first trans law in Latin America. Uruguay passed it in 2018. It guarantees gender-affirming operations and requires 1% of government jobs for transgender people.

This week marks another milestone: Collette Spinetti Nuñez is the first trans woman, ever, to hold a position in the Uruguayan government.

The new leftist Frente Amplio government took office on March 1. Colette is the country’s new director of human rights.

She’s promised to fight for the vulnerable. And she says her appointment is bigger than Uruguay. “My identity is sending a message to the world,” she says. And in particular, the United States. The land of freedom. The land of the American Dream, where anyone can be anything they want… just as long as they aren’t foreigners, or immigrants, or undocumented, or Black, or trans, or anything in between.

The land where the president says there are boys and girls, and everyone else needs to get with the program. 

The land of the free. But where, today, only some freedoms are approved. Others… are not. 

Collette, even in far away Uruguay, is standing up. She’s speaking out. And as the new secretary of human rights, she plans to help others to find their voice. A voice that usually comes in a whisper, if at all. A voice belonging to the most vulnerable. A voice that powerful people in powerful places are trying to silence. 

And Collette Spinetti Nuñez is not having any of it.

She says she’s going to shout it from the rooftops, keep a finger pointed at Uncle Sam.

And even as freedoms and rights of the LGBTQ community are gutted in the supposed land of the free and the home of the brave, Colette, and so many others, are standing up. Demanding rights. Demanding their voices be heard. And sending their message to the world.

From this tiny corner of South America, in the land of the gauchos, nestled between the shores of the Southern Atlantic and the Rio Plata…

This is the seventh episode of Stories of Resistance. 

Stories of Resistance is a new project, co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.

If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. 

Last week, we hit our target with the Kickstarter campaign. Thank you so much to everyone who supported. If you like what you hear, you can continue to support at www.patreon.com/mfox.

Written and produced by Michael Fox.

Here is some more of Michael’s reporting about the Frente Amplio’s return to power in Uruguay.

This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.

Very early on, I realized I was writing a romance. That was influenced by the way I started looking at cultural representation of divorce. So much of it is about what you need to express, something that goes against what you thought you wanted, or what other people think is best for you. And also maybe something that is dark and tortured, and has the potential to kill you if done correctly. That’s my definition of romance. So it made sense to me to apply the two contradictory emotional experiences together.

There’s a large section at the beginning that’s very research-focused, on the socioeconomics and history of marriage. We don’t really know about your personal experiences until we’ve gone through that. Was that always the structure?

[The book] started as an essay originally. I had pitched to my editor at The New York Times Magazine a letter of recommendation for divorce because I thought that would be really funny. He very wisely was like, “I can’t let you do that. You’re going to get destroyed on the internet.” And I was like, “No, that is why you let me do it, but I respect it.” I was telling that story to my friend Dayna Tortorici, who’s the brilliant editor at n+1. She was like, “Well, why don’t you just write that for me?” Then when she read my first [draft], she was the first person to say to me, “I think this is a book.”

I love that one line you quote from Phyllis Rose’s Parallel Lives, which you did end up writing a letter of recommendation for, about how the most successful marriages are the ones where both people believe the same narrative of their marriage.

Yes, exactly. I had established this very clean, very well-defined structure for my book: there are going to be four parts and it’s going to map the first year of my separation. Right after I signed the book contract, I went over to my friend’s house to have dinner—Jazmine Hughes, another brilliant editor. I told her I had this plan to get through all the chapters as I’d outlined them in the proposal. She was just like, “Okay, well, now that I’ve spoken to Haley the project manager, can I speak to Haley the writer?” Which is a very revealing sentence about my process. That proposal is probably a very funny document of my delusions, about the idea that this was a subject that I could contain that easily. I had to let go of a lot of my assumptions about what the book was going to be when I was writing it.

The decision to start with history and a more social, political, and statistical context was really inspired by the writers who were most important to me. Stephanie Coontz’s Marriage, a History is still probably one of my favorite books. One of the things that I find almost unbelievable about my finished book is that Barbara Ehrenreich is not in it. I’m so indebted to her; she is so masterful at bringing in her personal experience to her political values and analyses.

How did you organize that research on a day-to-day level?

I’ve used Scrivener for a long time, for writing everything. They have a feature where you can upload any sort of PDF or webpage link. I could have the research in one window and the draft in the next. Even when I was paraphrasing, I was always checking because I feel very strongly about properly referencing people as a way to honor the work that’s already been done, and to make it clear that I see any work I do as being a link in a chain. I remember a long time ago, my friend Doreen St. Félix called it having a citational ethic.

Finding one really good source always leads to at least twelve more because everybody has collaborators and communities. It’s just following the thread. I will admit that even now I still have those little moments of being like, “I could have done so much more.” But there’s a huge part of this that is a luxury and a privilege. I remember having days where my job was to finish reading Middlemarch. Even when things would drag on, having those little pockets of purely pleasurable research helped. I think it’s really important to note that, technically, I think this book took me—from that first essay idea to what’s going to be published in February—probably 10 years.

I feel like it’s good to talk about that.

A lot of that time was not spent writing or researching. It was spent trying to find work that would pay my rent. Sometimes I’m wistful, like, “Oh, well, if I had just run myself into the ground a little bit more, maybe I could have squeezed in more about this decade, or more research about this person.” Then I remember that advice I’ll never take, but I do think is true: it’s not done because it’s perfect. It’s done because it’s done.

The book made me think of marriage as a container for fate, or destiny, or something really transcendent. By getting married, you’re making a decision for yourself for the rest of your life, which is a thing that you basically never do otherwise, right? Is thinking about marriage a way of thinking about mortality and infinity?

I could obviously talk about this forever. Okay, bear with me: I took myself to see Nosferatu over holidays. I went to a matinee with what must have been every goth teenage girl in Montreal. I felt so happy to be in there, just knowing that they were all having a formative experience. Surprisingly, Nosferatu proved to be a great example of how I define romance. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, I won’t give away the ending—but with the ending I was like, “Right, yeah, that’s love, baby.”

Oh, my god. I need to watch it and return to this.

You’re going to be like, “What’s wrong with her?” A reason that romance has been such a feminine art form for so long—something that’s directed at women and femmes in pop culture—is because it speaks to this idea of having agency over your lack of power, really living inside of a decision that’s been made for you that you are compelled to follow through on, one that you can’t resist. Joan Acocella has an amazing essay about the Dracula trope called “The Bloodied Nightgown” that talks about the narrative of it beautifully.

I love the way marriage is depicted in that movie because I think it’s one of the rare times I’ve seen somebody demonstrate the way marriage is a talisman. That it’s intended to keep something out as much as it is keeping something in. There is something so beautiful about believing you’re going to feel a certain way forever. Yet marriage is a structure that is stronger than all of us. It’s a political unit, it’s a social unit, it’s a cultural unit that has its own roots in the world that we’re entering into, not the other way around. It doesn’t enter our lives. We enter its life.

There’s this one devastating Lauren Berlant quote you put in the book: “Who is to say whether a love relation is real or really something else, a fantasy, or a trick someone plays on herself or on another in order to sustain a fantasy? This is a psychological question about the reliability of emotional knowledge, but it is also a political question about the ways norms produce attachments to living through certain fantasies. What does it mean about love that its expressions tend to be so conventional, so bound up in institutions like marriage and family, property relations, and stock phrases and plots?”

Absolutely devastated by this idea. And then I love that after that quote, you just write: “Anyway, me and my friends have an obsession with endings.”

Just leaving that there.

It’s perfect but knowing all of the institutional baggage of marriage—and this part of what the book is grappling with—what do you do with all that information on an individual level?

As Lauren Berlant writes about in The Female Complaint, the most devastatingly impossible romances were often written by people who knew better. And especially when you look at melodrama as a genre, many of the people working in that industry were marginalized in so many ways. Because who better than somebody on the outside to show what it looks like on the surface? At the same time, I want to be a product of my culture. I want to feel the influence of the community that I’m a part of, the world that I live in. I want to participate. I don’t want to hold myself apart. And so I guess that is the tension between participating in these structures and critiquing them.

There’s a section in your book where you’re talking with your friends about everyone having epiphanies. You write, “There was no shortage of epiphanies in my world. Everyone was always realizing something.” Then you say that the epiphanies didn’t require anyone to do anything, and “They didn’t even necessarily have to be true.” How are epiphanies a part of your writing process? Is a book a way to make a sequence of epiphanies into something substantial?

I think [epiphanies are] so important as a form of energy, especially for a writer working on a very long project where motivation does not get you very far. It’s not a reliable resource that you can just call up anytime you need it. The work that an epiphany does, I think, is that infusion of a new energy, or a renewed interest in the topic that lets you feel that you haven’t gotten to the bottom of anything.

It’s a reminder that there are still things to be thought. I keep joking, but it’s so serious. I’m like, “I’m not going to write another book because I used up every word I know; I’ve got nothing left.” But that’s not true. It can’t be true. The longer you think about anything, the more it’s possible to surprise yourself.

I love the portion of the book where you’re talking about the documentary The Continuing Story of Carel and Ferd (1972), and their idea that everyone is secretly thinking of their lives as an anecdote they’ll tell on TV. You also write about Gary Indiana, who knew the couple, and who said that when he wrote about Ferd, he released himself from the myths he told himself about their relationship. Were you thinking about those ideas in relation to your experience writing memoir?

The fear that I still have is that there is something about speaking, or describing, or writing, that reifies a narrative in our heads. We’re easily influenced by other people, but we can also be very influenced by ourselves. And it’s dangerous to decide exactly what something means, or what it represents, or what somebody else’s intentions were, because you could live under a mistaken impression for so long. I was thinking about how writing my memories as they occurred to me in the moment of writing would probably have the effect of solidifying something in my mind. And that made me feel very careful about how I wrote, and what I ended up publishing.

Like, while you were actually writing, you were pausing?

Yes. I was really thinking, “Is this a memory that I can describe in a way that will not preclude me from having it challenged, or questioned, or cut off from the fact that the person I’m writing about has their own interpretation?” A rule I made for myself pretty early on that I hope I kept: I wouldn’t ever write anything that assumed what the other person was thinking. I ended up editing out [parts] where I would say, “He must have thought this,” or, “I knew he meant this.” I do think for all memoir writers, it’s really important to protect your own experience and your own way of telling the story and to really commit to it, to stand by it. And the best way to do that is by acknowledging that it is fallible. It can be challenged. It is just yours, and that’s enough. The thing about a book is that it exists forever. You have to stand by it.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Emma Cohen.

Ralph welcomes back Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson to share his view of Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense and to get his take on the military and political situation in the Middle East. Then, from Tel Aviv we are joined by Alon-Lee Green, co-director of the Israeli peace organization “Standing Together” a progressive grassroots movement based in Israel that organizes Jewish and Palestinian citizens against the occupation and the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.

Lawrence Wilkerson is a retired U.S. Army colonel. Over his 31 years of service, Colonel Wilkerson served as Secretary of State Colin Powell's Chief of Staff from 2002 to 2005, and Special Assistant to General Powell when he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1989 to 1993. Colonel Wilkerson also served as Deputy Director and Director of the U.S. Marine Corps War College at Quantico, Virginia, and for fifteen years he was the Distinguished Visiting Professor of Government and Public Policy at the College of William and Mary. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network, senior advisor to the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and co-founder of the All-Volunteer Force Forum.

The Pentagon is now led by one of the least-qualified persons ever to be Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth. He was exposed by the Democrats and the media when he was going through the congressional-confirmation process as ignorant, belligerent, vengeful, a woman-abuser denounced by his own mother, and a financial mismanager of the two groups that he directed. He's now Secretary of Defense.

Ralph Nader

What I'd like to see Hegseth do is try his best to get Trump to help him refuse that money (the $150 billion that Congressional Republicans have proposed adding to the military budget). Gordon Adams—a man for whom I have a lot of respect, who was an OMB-type for a long, long time and knows more about the defense budget than probably anyone alive—said the truth the other day when he said: when Defense gets tons of money, it's polluted, weakened, and turns into a place that can't do its job. When it has periods of scarcity—and the better the scarcity, the deeper the scarcity, the better the Defense Department—it turns out to operate pretty well. So I think that's stupid. I think it's the Congress doing it because the Congress has become a wholly paid subsidiary of the military-industrial complex.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson

Alon-Lee Green is National Co-Director of Standing Together, a progressive Jewish-Arab grassroots movement. Previously, he worked for five years as a political and parliamentary adviser in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, and was involved in the legislative process and the building of citizens’ campaigns that influenced parliamentary decisions. During that time, he was responsible for laws advancing the rights of workers, students, and the LGBT community.

It devastates me to know that I'm part—as an Israeli citizen, as a citizen that wants to take responsibility of the society, the Israeli society, it makes me devastated and sick and so, so, so heartbroken to know that we are a part of and a reason for so many tens of thousands reported people that died… I do not understand how someone can come to us Israelis and tell us that this is in the name of our security. I cannot understand how someone can promise us that this will better our lives or create a good or a reality that is livable. I understand it as just something that promises more death.

Alon-Lee Green

It is a given fact, especially after October 7th, a lot of the soldiers went there and did what they did believing that they're fighting to defend, they're fighting monsters. But a lot of soldiers died there. A lot of mothers lost their sons. A lot of families joined the circle of grief. And this is something that changed people's perspectives and people's opinion about the war. A lot of soldiers came back wounded. A lot of soldiers came back with PTSD. And we are hearing voices right now of soldiers saying, “We will not come back there, even if you call us into reserve duty.” It exists in society. You can hear it. You can hear it also around the question of the hostages, soldiers saying, “I thought I'm fighting for 300 days to release the hostages. And now I realized I'm fighting for the delusional messianic ideas of the right wing to build settlements in Gaza or to forcefully transfer people from there. This is not the reason I went.” And it is a good awakening we see in our society.

Alon-Lee Green

The Israeli media and most of the Israeli parliament and political system celebrated Trump's declaration of forceful transfer from Gaza and the supposed takeover by the US of Gaza. They said things like, “It's a Biblical miracle,” “We live in Biblical times,” things like this. The reaction of Standing Together is the complete opposite, of course. This is not only a delusional, scary, and dangerous plan, it is also something that is not going to happen. Trump can dream until tomorrow to remove two million Palestinians from Gaza. It is not going to happen. But only speaking about it is the problem itself. Thinking that you can remove—I don't know how, but remove two million people from their homeland, fantasizing about somehow making people disappear from the land, it is a dangerous idea.

Alon-Lee Green

This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader.

People get ready
There’s a train a-coming
You don’t need no baggage
You just get on board
All you need is faith
To hear the diesels humming
Don’t need no ticket
You just thank the Lord

Songwriter: Curtis Mayfield

• READ MORE: Trump’s reaction as bishop pleads for protection of minorities

You might have seen Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde’s speech at the National Prayer Service in the United States following Trump’s elevation to the highest worldly position, or perhaps read about it in the news.

It’s well worth watching this short clip of her sermon if you haven’t, as the rest of this newsletter is about that and the reaction to it:

‘May I ask you to have mercy Mr President.’       Video: C-Span

I found the sermon courageous, heartfelt, and, above all, decent. It felt like there was finally an adult in the room again. Predictably, Trump and his vile little Vice-President responded like naughty little boys being reprimanded, reacting with anger at being told off in front of all their little mates.

That response will not have surprised the Bishop. As she prepared to deliver the end of her sermon, you could see her pause to collect her thoughts. She knew she would be criticised for what she was about to say, yet she had the courage to speak it regardless.

What followed was heartfelt and compelling, as the Bishop talked of the fears of LGBT people and immigrants.

She spoke of them as if they were human beings like the rest of us, saying they pay their taxes, are not criminals, and are good neighbours.

The president did not want to hear her message. His anger was building as his snivelling sidekick looked toward him to see how the big chief would respond.

Vented on social media
So, how did the leader of the free world react? Did he take it on the chin, appreciating that he now needed to show leadership for all, or did he call the person asking him to show compassion — “nasty”?

That’s right, it was the second one. I’m afraid there’s no prize for that as you’re all excluded due to inside knowledge of that kind of behaviour from observing David Seymour. The ACT leader responds in pretty much the same way when someone more intelligent and human points out the flaws in his soul.

Donald then went on his own Truth social media platform, which he set up before he’d tamed the Tech Oligarchs, and vented, “The so-called bishop who spoke at the National Prayer Service on Tuesday morning was a radical left hard-line Trump hater”.

Which isn’t very polite, but when you think about it, his response should be seen as a badge of honour. Especially for someone of the Christian faith because all those who follow the teachings of Christ ought to be “radical left hard-line Trump haters”, or else they’ve rather missed the point. Don’t you think?

Certainly, pastor and activist John Pavlovitz thought so, saying, “Christians who voted for him, you should be ashamed of yourselves. Of course, if you were capable of shame, you’d never have voted for him to begin with.”

I thought it was a bit rich for a man who has used the church and the bible in order to sell himself to false Christians who worship money, who has even claimed divine intervention from God, to then complain about the Bishop not staying in her lane.

Speaking out against bigotry
If religious leaders don’t speak out against bigotry, hatred, and threats to peaceful, decent human beings — then what’s the point?

Wow. Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde fearlessly calls out Trump and Vance to their faces. This is heroic. pic.twitter.com/igyKzC8dRo

— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) January 21, 2025

I admired Budde’s bravery. Just quietly, the church hasn’t always had the best record of speaking out against those who’ve said the sort of things that Trump is saying.

If you’re unclear what I mean, I’m talking about Hitler, and it’s nice to see the church, or at least the Bishop, taking the other side this time around. Rather than offering compliance and collaboration, as they did then and as the political establishment in America is doing now.

Aside from all that, it feels like a weird, topsy-turvy world when the church is asking the government to be more compassionate towards the LGBT community.

El Douche hadn’t finished and said, “Apart from her inappropriate statements, the service was a very boring and uninspiring one. She is not very good at her job! She and her church owe the public an apology!”

It’s like he just says the opposite of what is happening, and people are so stupid or full of hate that they accept it, even though it’s obviously false.

So, the Bishop is derided as “nasty” when she is considerate and kind. She is called “Not Smart” when you only have to listen to her to know she is an intelligent, well-spoken person. She is called “Ungracious” when she is polite and respectful.

Willing wretches
As is the case with bullies, there are always wretches willing to support them and act similarly to win favour, even as many see them for what they are.

Mike Collins, a Republican House representative, tweeted, “The person giving this sermon should be added to the deportation list.”

Isn’t that disgusting? An elected politician saying that someone should be deported for daring to challenge the person at the top, even when it is so clearly needed.

Echoing the teachings of Jesus and calling out Trump’s cruelty, ignorance, and bigotry to his face, Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde delivers a sermon for the ages. Bishop Budde stared down authoritarian fascism and said ‘Not today, motherfucker.’ pic.twitter.com/JDBDa5RAgs

— Bill Madden (@maddenifico) January 21, 2025

Fox News host Sean Hannity said, “Instead of offering a benediction for our country, for our president, she goes on the far-left, woke tirade in front of Donald Trump and JD Vance, their families, their young children. She made the service about her very own deranged political beliefs with a disgraceful prayer full of fear-mongering and division.”

Perhaps most despicably, Robert Jeffress, the pastor of Dallas’s First Baptist Church, tweeted this sycophantic garbage:

Attended national prayer service today at the Washington National Cathedral during which Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde insulted rather than encouraged our great president @realDonaldTrump. There was palpable disgust in the audience with her words. @POTUS

— Dr. Robert Jeffress (@robertjeffress) January 21, 2025

Those cronies of Trump seem weak and dishonest to me compared to the words of Bishop Budde herself, who said the following after her sermon:

“I wanted to say there is room for mercy, there’s room for a broader compassion. We don’t need to portray with a broadcloth in the harshest of terms some of the most vulnerable people in our society, who are, in fact, our neighbours, our friends, our children, our friends, children, and so forth.”

The Republican party has made its pact with the Donald, and the Tech Bros have fallen over each other in their desire to kiss his ass; it will be a dark time for many regular people, no doubt, to stand up for what they believe in even as those with power and privilege fall in line behind the tyrant.

In my view Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde is a hero, and she does herself great credit with this courageous, compassionate, Christian stand

First published by Nick’s Kōrero and republished with permission. For more of Nick Rockel’s articles or to subscribe to his blog, click here.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

The Biden administration has tried to project confidence in the early days of the conference, which is known as COP29, given the country’s status as the world’s largest economy and second-largest emitter of planet-warming carbon. At a packed-house presser on the conference’s first day, President Joe Biden’s senior climate advisor, John Podesta, said he expected many of Biden’s clean energy achievements — which are projected to put the U.S. within close reach of its international climate commitments — will endure a second Trump administration. He added that the U.S. will still release a document detailing its updated plan to do its part to limit global warming below the 2 degrees Celsius threshold outlined in the 2015 Paris agreement, as required under that treaty.

“The work to contain climate change is going to continue in the United States with commitment and passion and belief,” he said.

But other signs at the conference suggest that the U.S. has already receded from a starring role in the fight against climate change. Developing countries have long criticized the U.S. as an obstacle to major climate agreements, in particular on the issue of overseas aid to help poor countries fund their energy transitions and protect themselves from climate-fueled natural disasters. Establishing a new global goal for this sort of international aid is the main agenda item for this year’s conference, but the center of gravity in negotiations has clearly shifted away from the U.S. and toward Europe, China, and the dozens of developing countries pushing for a big increase in international assistance.

Even Canada, which just announced a $1.5 billion program to help the world’s most vulnerable countries pursue climate adaptation projects, is beginning to outshine the U.S. on this issue. Likewise, the headline item from the first day of the conference —  an arcane spat over the implications of the agenda structure, which pitted a bloc of developing countries against the European Union over the latter’s carbon tariff system — did not feature the U.S. in a starring role.

Read Next

Here are the 5 issues to watch at COP29

Jake Bittle

In a gaggle with reporters on the second day of the conference, White House climate czar Ali Zaidi seemed to acknowledge a diminished U.S. role in climate talks. He vowed that the Biden administration would continue working toward an ambitious international finance goal, but he admitted that climate-conscious Americans may want to “look for other countries to step up to the plate” during the Trump administration. 

“We may have less to offer in terms of a projection of leadership certainty,” he said.

Perhaps the clearest indication of the diminished U.S. role in the global climate puzzle is the maze of national pavilions that sprawls across the conference venue at the Baku Olympic Stadium. The U.S. national pavilion is one of the most humble in the entire complex: a plain white room with white chairs, white desks, a television screen, and no other decorations save a single potted plant and a few foam-board posters.

The Kazakhstan pavilion next door, by contrast, has a massive light-up display with the country’s name and a stage on risers surrounded by handsome blond wood. The United Kingdom pavilion has a free, full-service cappuccino bar and a full-size model depicting London’s signature red telephone booth. The Brazil pavilion is embowered in tropical foliage and features a display of baskets by traditional artisans. In the home-country pavilion of Azerbaijan, wait staff serve fresh tea on demand.

“You’re not the first person to say this,” said a member of the U.S. delegation when Grist mentioned the apparent lack of effort put into his country’s pavilion. The member said he was “shocked” when he first saw the space, and he added that a more ambitious effort would have helped “show that we care.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline ‘We may have less to offer’: US negotiators confront diminished standing at COP29 on Nov 12, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Jake Bittle.

The Biden administration has tried to project confidence in the early days of the conference, which is known as COP29, given the country’s status as the world’s largest economy and second-largest emitter of planet-warming carbon. At a packed-house presser on the conference’s first day, President Joe Biden’s senior climate advisor, John Podesta, said he expected many of Biden’s clean energy achievements — which are projected to put the U.S. within close reach of its international climate commitments — will endure a second Trump administration. He added that the U.S. will still release a document detailing its updated plan to do its part to limit global warming below the 2 degrees Celsius threshold outlined in the 2015 Paris agreement, as required under that treaty.

“The work to contain climate change is going to continue in the United States with commitment and passion and belief,” he said.

But other signs at the conference suggest that the U.S. has already receded from a starring role in the fight against climate change. Developing countries have long criticized the U.S. as an obstacle to major climate agreements, in particular on the issue of overseas aid to help poor countries fund their energy transitions and protect themselves from climate-fueled natural disasters. Establishing a new global goal for this sort of international aid is the main agenda item for this year’s conference, but the center of gravity in negotiations has clearly shifted away from the U.S. and toward Europe, China, and the dozens of developing countries pushing for a big increase in international assistance.

Even Canada, which just announced a $1.5 billion program to help the world’s most vulnerable countries pursue climate adaptation projects, is beginning to outshine the U.S. on this issue. Likewise, the headline item from the first day of the conference —  an arcane spat over the implications of the agenda structure, which pitted a bloc of developing countries against the European Union over the latter’s carbon tariff system — did not feature the U.S. in a starring role.

Read Next

Here are the 5 issues to watch at COP29

Jake Bittle

In a gaggle with reporters on the second day of the conference, White House climate czar Ali Zaidi seemed to acknowledge a diminished U.S. role in climate talks. He vowed that the Biden administration would continue working toward an ambitious international finance goal, but he admitted that climate-conscious Americans may want to “look for other countries to step up to the plate” during the Trump administration. 

“We may have less to offer in terms of a projection of leadership certainty,” he said.

Perhaps the clearest indication of the diminished U.S. role in the global climate puzzle is the maze of national pavilions that sprawls across the conference venue at the Baku Olympic Stadium. The U.S. national pavilion is one of the most humble in the entire complex: a plain white room with white chairs, white desks, a television screen, and no other decorations save a single potted plant and a few foam-board posters.

The Kazakhstan pavilion next door, by contrast, has a massive light-up display with the country’s name and a stage on risers surrounded by handsome blond wood. The United Kingdom pavilion has a free, full-service cappuccino bar and a full-size model depicting London’s signature red telephone booth. The Brazil pavilion is embowered in tropical foliage and features a display of baskets by traditional artisans. In the home-country pavilion of Azerbaijan, wait staff serve fresh tea on demand.

“You’re not the first person to say this,” said a member of the U.S. delegation when Grist mentioned the apparent lack of effort put into his country’s pavilion. The member said he was “shocked” when he first saw the space, and he added that a more ambitious effort would have helped “show that we care.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline ‘We may have less to offer’: US negotiators confront diminished standing at COP29 on Nov 12, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Jake Bittle.

The United Nations is warning about widespread human rights abuses in Burma as the military regime intensifies the killings and arbitrary arrests of tens of thousands of civilians since seizing power in a coup over three years ago. A new report from the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights says many of those detained by the Burmese military are children taken from their parents, with dozens of minors dying in custody. “What it paints is an extremely disturbing picture of Burma descending into this human rights abyss. If you’re living there, it’s a complete living hell,” says Burmese scholar, dissident and human rights activist Maung Zarni. He also discusses his recent visit with faith leaders to the West Bank and the border of Gaza, drawing parallels between Burma’s and Israel’s human rights abuses. “Israel has taken the practices and policies of genocide to a whole new level,” says Zarni.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

There’s no mention of their duty to the people in the oath of office that members of Congress take. It says they will support and defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic. Maybe, in some regard, defending the Constitution would mean doing their job: representing the people that elected them. But today, the architect of the genocide against the Palestinian people walked in and out of the “people’s house” to a standing ovation. He was given more time with our lawmakers than any of us will ever get in our lifetime and he used it to insist he was a good man that was commanding a moral army — insisting they have not killed anyone who did not deserve to have their life ended in the blink of an eye.

There are one thousand indications that our government has no obligation to us. This moment was just one — but it was one I will never let slip my mind. These people are no different than the settlers that gather in lawn chairs, eat popcorn, and cheer when the Israeli military drops bombs on apartment complexes in Gaza. For as long as they’ve been in office, they’ve had a front row seat to the carnage and all they do is gawk and cheer from the sidelines. Every once in a while, someone they are supposed to work for pesters them about their complacency and we are swatted away like flies.

The majority opinion in the United States is against continued support for Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza. Stories come out every week that push the needle further. Last week, the story of Muhammad Bhar surfaced and was circulated around the world. Muhammad was my age, 24, and had Down Syndrome. The Israeli military raided his home and let their dog attack him, tearing his arm to shreds. They separated him from his family, and left him in a room all by himself. They ordered his family to leave the house and left Muhammad to die — alone, bleeding, and scared. His family found Muhammad starting to decompose in the room the soldiers left him in. He still had a tourniquet on his arm from when theried to stop the bleeding. And they just left him there, like he was nothing.

The Israeli military confirmed this story days later and Netanyahu gets a round of applause for his courage and leadership. They don’t even feel the need to lie to the world about their atrocities anymore — letting babies suffocate to death in incubators months ago was the litmus test for what the United States would let slide. Ordering an attack dog on a man with Down Syndrome and locking him in a room to die without his loved ones there to console him wasn’t the red line — because there will never be one.

They gave a standing ovation.

If a man like Benjamin Netanyahu had walked through their home and mangled their children’s bodies so much that they could never forget the way they looked afterward — I wonder if they would still applaud. I wonder if the screams of their family members burning alive in tents would potentially interrupt the thought that told them to clap, the thought that told them to give the man a standing ovation for his perfectly executed slaughter of thousands of human beings.

Some part of me still wanted to believe that these people may still be completely misled — that perhaps they don’t know about the 15,000 children that have been killed. Maybe they haven’t seen what I’ve seen — the little girl with her face falling off, the boy with a missing head, the child with no legs, the mother unwilling to wash her children’s blood off her hands because it is all that is left of them. Maybe they haven’t seen it at all. As thunderous applause rang out for the murderer, there were thousands of people outside trying to signal to the millions of people in Palestine that their turmoil isn’t being ignored. They were pepper sprayed, beaten, and arrested by cops that were trained in Israel.

When I saw the video of the standing ovation, something sunk in me — this is where I was born. This is where both of my parents were born. I have no nation to be loyal to but a nation tripping over themselves to kill my friends’ families. There is bloodlust in the US Congress — and bloodlust seems like the only thing they are loyal to. If there are “enemies” foreign and domestic, I fear they view us as the latter.

I clap for my friends at their comedy shows. I clap for people after they finish a speech at a community event. I sometimes clap when the plane lands, if someone else does it first. To clap for an executioner of children, mothers, fathers and friends — how much did they sell their souls for?

[Muhammad Bhar |Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un]

• This article was originally published on Danaka’s Substack, Proof That I’m Alive. You can subscribe here!

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Danaka Katovich.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Introduction

Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, a distinguished scholar with dual American and Israeli citizenship who is a resident of California, commands global recognition for her groundbreaking contributions to Palestinian feminist theory and her unwavering commitment to grassroots activism in Jerusalem.

On April 18, 2024, Professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian was subjected to detention and interrogation by Israeli authorities. Despite a subsequent court order for her release, she continues to face the ongoing threat of further arrest and interrogation. It is evident that the line of questioning during these interrogations seeks to discredit her scholarly work by baselessly linking her to acts of violence.

The circumstances surrounding Professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s detention are deeply troubling. She was apprehended on meritless grounds, stemming from a gross distortion of statements made in her scholarly articles and during a podcast hosted by reputable university professors in the United States. During her detention, she endured degrading and dehumanizing treatment, including a humiliating strip search, tight restraints causing physical harm, denial of essential medication, and exposure to inhumane conditions in a cold and insect-infested prison cell.

– Lama Khouri
Co-Founder, of the Palestine-Global Mental Health Network, of which Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian is a member.

Standing with Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian: Upholding Justice, Dignity and Academic Freedom

We, the Palestine-Global Mental Health Network, along with our affiliate Networks, spanning Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, South Africa, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States, stand in solidarity to honor the remarkable scholarship and unwavering commitment to love, justice, and dignity for all demonstrated by our esteemed colleague and dear friend, Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian who was detained on April 18, and although she was released the next day, she was subjected to prolonged interrogation by the Israeli police, and her safety continues to be under threat.

Professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s contributions to academia and activism are unparalleled. As a world-renowned scholar, her work transcends borders and disciplines, shedding light on the hopes of humanity, life and liveability. Her scholarship, based on analysis of processes of colonization, violence and racism, draws upon and enhances Palestinian feminist theory, offering profound insights into the lived experiences of marginalized communities, particularly in the city of Jerusalem where she resides. She has enriched our understanding of the workings of colonial power, including its practices of ‘bio power’ (intrusive control of all stages of human life and death) and through its shaping of discourses. She demonstrates how this contributes to a dehumanizing of Palestinians by constructing them as dangerous ‘others’, who must be subjected to surveillance, control and state violence.

Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s interdisciplinary approach means that she is well placed to simultaneously analyse the ‘macro world’ of power politics and its infiltration of the ‘micro world’ of intimate human relationships and subjectivities. This has produced insights of immense value to clinicians as well as academics.

In her groundbreaking work on children, Nadera Shalhoub Kevorkian expounded and developed her concept of ‘unchilding’ which she defines as the “authorised eviction of children from childhood”. This is enacted through state violence, fear, displacement, the undermining of parental function and the denial of the right to normal physical and psychological development. Her work has influenced paediatricians and child mental health clinicians around the world. ‘Unchilding’ encompasses a range of psychological wounds inflicted on the psyche of the infant, the child and the adolescent. It describes the deliberate denial of Palestinian childrens’ fragility and vulnerability and the depiction of them as either terrorists or potential terrorists. At the same time, and most importantly, Nadera’s work depicts children as active subjects in their social worlds, who scrutinize the techniques of power used upon them and assert their own moral values and desires for hope and freedom. She listens carefully to childrens’ own narratives and uses their testimonies to frame her writing. This process of amplifying childrens’ voices has had a profound effect on the practice of many of us who work with children and families.  Nadera’s passion for the well-being of children permeates her academic work, bringing together the love and anti-violence characterizing the feminist ethos in all her writing.

What also sets Nadera apart is not only her academic prowess but also her tireless dedication to grassroots activism. She is not content to merely theorize; instead, she actively engages with communities, amplifying their voices and advocating for meaningful change. Nadera’s work embodies a steadfast commitment, within the framework of international law, to challenging systemic injustices and striving towards a more equitable world for all.

Those of us who have had the privilege to hear Nadera speaking can attest to the erudition, academic rigour and eloquence which she brings to public debate. We are also aware of what a beacon she has been for her students and fellow academics and how important her voice has been for them.

 It is hard to overstate the deep concern and dismay with which we respond to the recent events surrounding Nadera’s detainment and interrogation by Israeli authorities. Despite her peaceful advocacy and scholarly endeavors, she has faced baseless charges and undue scrutiny, highlighting the oppressive tactics employed to silence dissenting voices. It is a profound insult to her sophisticated scholarship and scrupulous use of theoretical terminology that this work is now the main subject of the police interrogation. Throughout this ordeal, Nadera has remained steadfast in her principles, standing firm in defence of academic freedom and the right to dissent.

Her message remains unwavering: one of love, justice, and dignity for all. Her resilience in the face of adversity serves as a beacon of hope, inspiring countless individuals around the world to continue the fight for a more just and compassionate society.

As we continue to advocate for Nadera’s freedom and the protection of academic freedom worldwide, we celebrate her profound impact on the socio-legal field and feminist studies. Her scholarship serves as a testament to the power of knowledge and the transformative potential of academia in addressing abuses of power.

Join us in calling upon Secretary of State Blinken to protect this renowned scholar and American citizen.

Please follow this link and add your name. 

The post Standing with Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian: Upholding Justice, Dignity and Academic Freedom appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Palestine-Global Mental Health Network.

Israel’s worldwide propaganda mechanism omits the tens of previous illegal and damaging attacks inflicted upon Iran and charges Iran with cruel and threatening behavior that requires a strong reply. Already, members of England’s parliament (MP) obeyed the Zionist call for action with outrageous pleas to assist Israel against “Iran’s genocidal actions,” and “attempt to interrupt the peace.”

One person is injured and that is genocide. Tens of thousands of Gazans killed and no reference to genocide. Mayhem in the Middle East since the first Zionist set foot in Palestine and one relatively harmless attack disturbed the peace. Are these MPs real people or artificial intelligence? How can they run for office and be elected?

A common thread exists in US actions of aggressive behavior toward nations that have not threatened the security of the United States, such as 21^st-century Iraq and Iran. The common thread weaves nations that were or are antagonists of apartheid Israel. All, except Iran, have been subdued by the U.S. What Israel wants, Israel gets, and Israel convinced the United States to eliminate the foes of the Zionist Republic. Americans died and Americans paid for efforts that had scarce benefits to U.S. citizens. Iran is now the last nation standing and Israel is coercing the U.S. to perform its usual duty — get rid of Iran. Look at the record.

Sudan

Deposed Sudan leader, Omar al-Bashir, made it clear. “Israel is our enemy, our number one enemy, and we will continue calling Israel our enemy.” Israel also made its relationship with Bahir clear by destroying a Sudanese arms factory suspected of producing chemical weapons for Hamas. Times of Israel reports that “Over the years, there have been reports of the Israelis continuing to aid South Sudanese rebels during Sudan’s second civil war, which lasted from 1983 to 2005.” Israel’s assistance to the rebels enabled South Sudan to secede and weaken Bashir. The Times of Israel also reports that “Miniature Israeli flags hang from car windshields and flutter at roadside stalls, and at the Juba souk in the city’s downtown, you can buy lapel pins with the Israeli flag alongside its black, red and green South Sudanese counterpart.”

Link of a car bomb at the World Trade Center in New York to Osama bin Laden, who resided in Sudan, prompted the US State Department to add Sudan to its list of state sponsors of terrorism. In October 1997, the U.S. imposed economic, trade, and financial sanctions on Sudan. These sanctions occurred despite none of the extremists engaging in terrorist activities while in Sudan. Bashir offered extradition or interviews of arrested al-Qaeda operatives and allowed access to the extensive files of Sudanese intelligence. According to a CIA source, reported in the Guardian, Sept 30, 2001, “This represents the worst single intelligence failure in this whole terrible business. It is the key to the whole thing right now. It is reasonable to say that had we had this data we may have had a better chance of preventing the attacks.”

The U.S. Congress heightened the insurrection in Sudan’s Darfur province by passing amendment H.Con.Res.467 — 108th Congress (2003-2004), amended 07/22/2004, which “States that Congress declares that the atrocities unfolding in Darfur, Sudan, are genocide, and urges the Administration to refer to such atrocities as genocide.” The amendment gathered world opinion against the Sudanese government. Although the public accepted the figure of 400,000 killings of people in Darfur, this genocide had no verification of the number of killings, no displayed mass graves, and no images of a great number of bodies.

Before he left the U.S. State Department, former US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick stated on ABC News online, November 9, 2005, “It’s a tribal war. And frankly I don’t think foreign forces want to get in the middle of a tribal war of Sudanese.”

A peace agreement ended the second Sudanese civil war in 2005. On July 9, 2011, South Sudan became independent and reduced Sudan to a pipeline for South Sudan oil. After Sudan became a diminished state, barely able to survive, the United States lifted economic and trade sanctions. Independent South Sudan fared worse — involved in its civil war, human rights violations, and social and economic turmoil. Human Rights Watch (HRW) claimed [South Sudan] “Government security forces and armed groups perpetrated serious human rights abuses, including killings, acts of sexual violence, abductions, detention, torture and other ill-treatment, the recruitment and use of children, and destruction of civilian property.” The U.S. government did not criticize the human rights violations of the friend of Israel.

On October 23, 2020, Israel and Sudan agreed to normalize relations
On April 6, 2021, the Sudanese cabinet approved a bill abolishing the 1958 law on boycotting Israel.

The once wealthy Sudan, flowing with minerals and gushing with oil had the possibility of becoming a strong and vibrant African nation. US policies of countering terrorism, assisting South Sudan rebels, and interfering in the Darfur civil war contributed to preventing that outcome and provided Israel with a friendly Sudan that no longer assisted the Palestinians.

Libya

Libya’s leader, Mohammar Qadhafi, has been quoted as saying on April 1, 2002, “Thousands of Libyans are ready to defend the Palestinian people.” In that speech he called for a Pan-Arab war against the state of Israel’s existence and demanded “other Arab leaders open their borders to allow Libyans to march into Palestine, to join the Palestinian uprising.” In the speech, Gaddafi claimed he would not recognize Israel as a state.

The United States used Gadhafi’s support for radical revolutions as a reason to have strained relations with Libya. Sanctions soon followed. In March 1982, the U.S. Government prohibited imports of Libyan crude oil into the United States and expanded the controls on U.S. originated goods intended for export to Libya. Licenses were required for all transactions, except food and medicine. In April 1985, all Export-Import Bank financing was prohibited.

On April 14, 1986, the United States launched air strikes against Libya in retaliation for “Libyan sponsorship of terrorism against American troops and citizens.” Five military targets and “terrorism centers” were hit, including Gadhafi’s headquarters.

After Libya halted its nuclear program, renounced terrorism, accepted responsibility for inappropriate actions by its officials, and paid appropriate compensation to the victims’ families for the bombing of a US commercial airplane over Lockerbie, Scotland, the United Nations (UN) lifted sanctions, the U.S. terminated the applicability of the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act to Libya, and President Bush signed an Executive Order terminating the national emergency, which ended economic sanctions.  All was going well until 2011.

Despite the lack of clarity of the 2011 rebellion against Gadhafi and specious reasons for NATO and US roles to defend the rebels, the U.S. government cut ties with the Gadhafi regime, sanctioned senior regime members, and, together with several European and Arab nations, managed to convince the UN Security Council to authorize intervention in the conflict. The intervention demolished the Gadhafi regime and enabled the rebels to obtain victory, another fallen nation that was an outspoken antagonist of Israel, and, still, in 2024, an embattled nation.

Egypt

On October 6, 1973, Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel to reclaim territories they had lost in the Six-Day War. With Israeli troops seriously outnumbered and facing near-certain defeat at the hands of the Soviet-backed nations, President Nixon ordered an emergency airlift of supplies and materiel. “Send everything that will fly,” Nixon told Henry Kissinger. The American airlift enabled Israel to launch a decisive counterattack that pushed the Egyptians back across the Suez Canal.

In a briefing,  Scuttle Diplomacy: Henry Kissinger and Arab-Israeli Peacemaking, by Salim Yaqub, Woodrow Wilson Center, Dr. Yaqub argued that “Kissinger’s pivotal role as the intermediary allowed him to feign neutrality while secretly supporting the Israelis, and to turn the peace negotiations into a long series of small confidence building steps which would give the appearance of progress that Egypt required to come to an agreement with Israel, but which would allow Israel to keep most of the Syrian and Palestinian land gained after the 1967 Six-Day War.”

Prime Minister of Egypt, Anwar Sadat, signed a peace treaty with Israel, and the U.S. normalized relations with previously combative Egypt. The most populous and leading nation of the Arab world, the principal defender of Arab rights, which had waged several wars with Israel, no longer posed a threat to Israel and became a weakened observer to the hostilities affecting the Middle East.

Syria

Israel and Syria battled from day one of the UN 181 Proclamation that recommended partition of the British Mandate.

The U.S. never favored the Assad regime and cut relations. After the September 11, 2001 attacks on U.S. soil, the Syrian Government tried limited cooperation with the U.S. War on Terror. Syrian intelligence alerted the U.S. of an Al-Qaeda plan to fly a hang glider loaded with explosives into the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain. Syria was also a destination for U.S. captives outside of its borders in its rendition program. According to U.S. officials, as reported by Nicholas Blanford, in a Special to The Christian Science Monitor, May 14, 2002, ”Syrian information was instrumental in catching militant Islamists around the world.”

Syria’s descent into near oblivion started with its civil wars, in which foreign fighters (ISIS and al-Nusra) entered Syria from NATO’s Turkey (no retribution to Turkey for allowing ISIS to enter Syria), and a multitude of insurgents fought with and against one another until Assad, with assistance from Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah, overcame the insurgencies. WikiLeaks, in 2011, released diplomatic cables between the U.S. embassy in Damascus and the State Department, which revealed the U.S. had given financial support to political opposition groups and their related projects through September 2010.

ISIS is defeated and a limping Assad government barely survives as a splintered nation. Bombed almost daily by Israeli missiles and planes, the hopelessly weak Syria cannot retaliate. With assistance from the U.S., Syria’s threat to Israel has been neutralized.

Iraq

Justifying the U.S. invasion of Iraq with a spurious reason that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and needed to be silenced was so absurd that another reason was sought. Security school scholars argued a joint threat of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and links to terrorist groups. Hegemony school scholars argued preservation and extension of U.S. hegemony, including the spread of liberal democratic ideals. When in doubt bring in liberal democratic ideals.

The interventionists conveniently forgot that Saddam Hussein was a restraint to Iran and a deterrent to Radical Islamists. With Hussein removed, Iran lost its restraint. Bordering on Iraq and spiritually attached to Iraq’s Shi’a population, Iran became involved in the commercial, economic, and political future of Iraq, an event that U.S. strategists should have known.

The invasion of Iraq and disposal of a Saddam Hussein regime, which had prevented al-Qaeda elements from establishing themselves, exposed Iraq’s porous borders to Radical Islamic fighters. Founded in October 2004, al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) emerged from a transnational terrorist group created and led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. His cohorts entered through Jordan, while al-Qaeda forced out of Waziristan in Pakistan found a haven in Iraq. Meanwhile, fighters trained in and wandering through the deserts of Saudi Arabia hopped planes to Istanbul and Damascus and worked their way across Syria into Iraq. Disturbed by the U.S. invasion and military tactics, Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim al-Badri al-Samarrai, later known as Al Baghdadi, founder of the Islamic Caliphate, transformed himself from a fun-loving soccer player into a hardened militant and helped found the militant group Jamaat Jaysh Ahl al-Sunnah wa-l-Jamaah (JJASJ), which countered the U.S. military in Iraq.

Spurious reasons and obvious counterproductive results leave doubts that the original explanation and rationales for the invasion were correct. A more valid reason involves the neocons in the Bush administration who were closely identified with Israel in the Pentagon, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, and the office of the vice president, Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby, who aggressively advanced the case for the invasion. Some backups to that theory,

Haaretz, Apr 03, 2003, “White Man’s Burden,” Ari Shavit, “The war in Iraq was conceived by 25 neoconservative intellectuals, most of them Jewish (ED: Avid Israel supporters), who were pushing President Bush to change the course of history.”

In The Road to Iraq: The Making of a Neoconservative War, Muhammad Idrees Ahmad echoes the case.

The road to Iraq was paved with neoconservative intentions. Other factions of the US foreign policy establishment were eventually brought around to supporting the war, but the neocons were its architects and chief proponents.

Ahmad quotes a remark attributed to British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. “It’s a toss-up whether Libby is working for the Israelis or the Americans on any given day.” He also quotes former New Republic editor Andrew Sullivan who contended, “The closer you examine it, the clearer it is that neoconservatism, in large part, is simply about enabling the most irredentist elements in Israel and sustaining a permanent war against anyone or any country who disagrees with the Israeli right.”

A 1996 report, Clean Break, A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, prepared by neoconservatives at the Jerusalem-based think tank, Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, many of whom held vital positions in the George W. Bush administration, lends substance to the charge that the invasion of Iraq served Israel’s interests.

We must distinguish soberly and clearly friend from foe. We must make sure that our friends across the Middle East never doubt the solidity or value of our friendship….Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq — an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right — as a means of foiling Syria’s regional ambitions.

Israel can make a clean break from the past and establish a new vision for the U.S.-Israeli partnership based on self-reliance, maturity and mutuality — not one focused narrowly on territorial disputes. Israel’s new strategy — based on a shared philosophy of peace through strength — reflects continuity with Western values by stressing that Israel is self-reliant, does not need U.S. troops in any capacity to defend it, including on the Golan Heights, and can manage its own affairs. Such self-reliance will grant Israel greater freedom of action and remove a significant lever of pressure used against it in the past.

Participants in the Study Group included Richard Perle, American Enterprise Institute, Study Group Leader, James Colbert, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, Charles Fairbanks, Jr., Johns Hopkins University/SAIS, Douglas Feith, Feith and Zell Associates, Robert Loewenberg, President, Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, Jonathan Torop, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, David Wurmser, Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, and Meyrav Wurmser, Johns Hopkins University.

Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and David Wurmser later served in high positions in the George W. Bush administration at the time of the Iraq invasion. The others were allied with organizations that promoted Israel’s interests.

Two observations:
(1)    Why were Americans prominent in an Israeli Think Tank and why were they advising a foreign nation?
(2)    Note that the thrust of the report is to advise Israel to have a “clean break from the past and establish a new vision for the U.S.-Israeli partnership based on self-reliance, maturity, and mutuality.” This has been the modus operandi of the Netanyahu administrations.

Another ember that warmed the neocon’s heartfelt devotion to Israel; The Project for the New American Century urged an invasion of Iraq throughout the Clinton years. “Bombing Iraq Isn’t enough. Saddam Hussein must go,” William Kristol and Robert Kagan, PNAC neocon directors wrote in the 1998 New York Times.

No “smoking gun” firmly ties the neocons devoted to Israel together with using the United States military to eliminate another Israel antagonist. The argument is based upon it being the best, most factual, and only reason the war could have been wanted.

Iran – Last Nation Standing

The Islamic Republic may not be an exemplary nation, but there is no evidence or reason for the U.S. accusations that Iran is a destabilizing, expansionist nation, or leading sponsor of international terrorism. Why would it be – there are no external resources or land masses that would be helpful to Iran’s economy, Iran has not invaded any nation, and its few sea and drone attacks on others are reactions from a perception that others have colluded in harming the Islamic Republic and its allies. Ayatollah Khomeini’s vision of expanding his social ideology never got anywhere and died with him. Subsequent leaders have been forced to reach out to defend their interests and those of their friends, but none of these leaders has pursued an expansionist philosophy or wants the burden that accompanies the task — enough problems at home.

No matter what Iran does, the US perceives Iran as an enemy and a threat to not only the Middle East but to world order. All this hostility, despite the facts that (1) the Iranians showed willingness to create a new Afghanistan by pledging $560 million worth of assistance, almost equal to the amount that the United States pledged at the Tokyo donors’ conference in January 2002, (2) according to the U.S. envoy to Afghanistan, Richard Dobbins, played a “decisive role in persuading the Northern Alliance delegation to compromise its demands of wanting 60 percent of the portfolios in an interim government,” (3) Iran arrested Al-Qaeda agents on its territory and, because Al-Qaeda linked the Shiite Muslims, represented by Iran and Hezbollah, with Crusaders, Zionists, and Jews as its most bitter enemies, had ample reason to combat terrorist organizations, and (4) Iran has no reason for or capability of attacking the U.S .or its western allies.

Being vilified for inadequate reasons is followed by Iran not being praised for significant reasons. President Trump, in his January 8, 2020 speech, argued the U.S. had been responsible for defeating ISIS and the Islamic Republic should realize that it is in their benefit to work with the United States in making sure ISIS remains defeated. Trade the U.S. with Iran and Trump’s speech would be correct.

The U.S. spent years and billions of dollars in training an Iraqi army that fled Mosul and left it to a small contingent of ISIS forces. Showing no will and expertise to fight, Iraq’s debilitated military permitted ISIS to rapidly expand and conquer Tikrit and other cities. Events energized Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, which, with cooperation from Iran and leadership from its Major General Qasem Soleimani, recaptured Tikrit and Ramadi, pushed ISIS out of Fallujah, and played a leading role in ISIS’ defeat at Mosul. Iran and Soleimani were key elements in the defeat of ISIS.

What reward did Solemani receive for his efforts? When his convoy left Baghdad airport, a drone strike, perpetrated by U.S. military, assassinated Major General Solemani and nine other innocent people on January 3, 2002. UN’s special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, Agnes Callamard, reported the U.S. had not provided sufficient evidence of an imminent threat to life to justify the attack.

As usual, Israel used the U.S. to satisfy its desires. “Israel was going to do this with us, and it was being planned and working on it for months,” President Trump said about the coordination to kill Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Quds Force. “We had everything all set to go, and the night before it happened, I got a call that Israel will not be participating in this attack. I’ll never forget that Bibi Netanyahu let us down. We were disappointed by that. Very disappointed…But we did the job ourselves, with absolute precision … and then Bibi tried to take credit for it.”

Why do these protectors of the realm want Iran destroyed — they fear Iran may act as a deterrent to their future aggression. Iran cannot win a war with a nuclear weapon or any weapons; it can only posture and threaten use of nuclear weapons as a deterrent. Its principal antagonists, Israel, United States, and Saudi Arabia have elements that shield themselves from a nuclear attack by Iran. Israel’s small size makes it likely that fallout from a nuclear weapon will endanger the entire region, especially Iran’s allies. Any nuclear strike on Israel will be countered with a torrent of nuclear missiles that will completely wipe large Iran off the map and without fallout causing harm to neighboring nations. With little to gain and everything to lose, why would Iran engage in nuclear aggression?

Netanyahu’s scenario follows a pattern of using American lives and clout to further Israel’s interests and decimate its adversaries. Survey the record — destruction of Iraq, destruction of Sudan, destruction of Libya, destruction of Egypt, destruction of Syria. and now Iran. Only Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries will be left standing, remaining in that position as long as they show no threat to Israel.

The present confrontations between Iran and Israel have escalated. Those who believe Israel’s few drones over Isfahan concluded retaliation for Iran’s excessive number of missiles and harmless result in the attack on Israel might be mistaken. The drones may have only tested Iranian defensive capability. More, much more provocations may happen.

Due to US aggressive tactics, the antagonists to Israel have fallen and Iran is the last nation standing.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

The FBI also regularly sent agents wearing civilian clothing into the camps, one former agent told Grist in an interview. Meanwhile, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, or BIA, operated undercover narcotics officers out of the reservation’s Prairie Knights Casino, where many pipeline opponents rented rooms, according to one of the depositions. 

The operations were part of a wider surveillance strategy that included drones, social media monitoring, and radio eavesdropping by an array of state, local, and federal agencies, according to attorneys’ interviews with law enforcement. The FBI infiltration fits into a longer history in the region. In the 1970s, the FBI infiltrated the highest levels of the American Indian Movement, or AIM. 

The Indigenous-led uprising against Energy Transfer Partners’ Dakota Access oil pipeline drew thousands of people seeking to protect water, the climate, and Indigenous sovereignty. For seven months, participants protested to stop construction of the pipeline and were met by militarized law enforcement, at times facing tear gas, rubber bullets, and water hoses in below-freezing weather.

Read Next

How the US government began its decade-long campaign against the anti-pipeline movement

Adam Federman

After the pipeline was completed and demonstrators left, North Dakota sued the federal government for more than $38 million — the cost the state claims to have spent on police and other emergency responders, and for property and environmental damage. Central to North Dakota’s complaints are the existence of anti-pipeline camps on federal land managed by the Army Corps of Engineers. The state argues that by failing to enforce trespass laws on that land, the Army Corps allowed the camps to grow to up to 8,000 people and serve as a “safe haven” for those who participated in illegal activity during protests and caused property damage. 

In an effort to prove that the federal government failed to provide sufficient support, attorneys deposed officials leading several law enforcement agencies during the protests. The depositions provide unusually detailed information about the way that federal security agencies intervene in climate and Indigenous movements. 

Until the lawsuit, the existence of only one federal informant in the camps was known: Heath Harmon was working as an FBI informant when he entered into a romantic relationship with water protector Red Fawn Fallis. A judge eventually sentenced Fallis to nearly five years in prison after a gun went off when she was tackled by police during a protest. The gun belonged to Harmon. 

Manape LaMere, a member of the Bdewakantowan Isanti and Ihanktowan bands, who is also Winnebago Ho-chunk and spent months in the camps, said he and others anticipated the presence of FBI agents, because of the agency’s history. Camp security kicked out several suspected infiltrators. “We were already cynical, because we’ve had our heart broke before by our own relatives,” he explained.

“The culture of paranoia and fear created around informants and infiltration is so deleterious to social movements, because these movements for Indigenous people are typically based on kinship networks and forms of relationality,” said Nick Estes, a historian and member of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe who spent time at the Standing Rock resistance camps and has extensively researched the infiltration of the AIM movement by the FBI. Beyond his relationship with Fallis, Harmon had close familial ties with community leaders and had participated in important ceremonies. Infiltration, Estes said, “turns relatives against relatives.”

Less widely known than the FBI’s undercover operations are those of the BIA, which serves as the primary police force on Standing Rock and other reservations. During the NoDAPL movement, the BIA had “a couple” of narcotics officers operating undercover at the Prairie Knights Casino, according to the deposition of Darren Cruzan, a member of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma who was the director of the BIA’s Office of Justice Services at the time.  

It’s not unusual for the BIA to use undercover officers in its drug busts. However, the intelligence collected by the Standing Rock undercovers went beyond narcotics. “It was part of our effort to gather intel on, you know, what was happening within the boundaries of the reservation and if there were any plans to move camps or add camps or those sorts of things,” Cruzan said.

A spokesperson for Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who oversees the BIA, also declined to comment. 

According to the deposition of Jacob O’Connell, the FBI’s supervisor for the western half of North Dakota during the Standing Rock protests, the FBI was infiltrating the NoDAPL movement weeks before the protests gained international media attention and attracted thousands. By August 16, 2016, the FBI had tasked at least one “confidential human source” with gathering information. The FBI eventually had five to 10 informants in the protest camps — “probably closer to 10,” said Bob Perry, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s Minneapolis field office, which oversees operations in the Dakotas, in another deposition. The number of FBI informants at Standing Rock was first reported by the North Dakota Monitor.

According to Perry, FBI agents told recruits what to collect and what not to collect, saying, “We don’t want to know about constitutionally protected activity.” Perry added, “We would give them essentially a list: ‘Violence, potential violence, criminal activity.’ To some point it was health and safety as well, because, you know, we had an informant placed and in position where they could report on that.” 

The deposition of U.S. Marshal Paul Ward said that the FBI also sent agents into the camps undercover. O’Connell denied the claim. “There were no undercover agents used at all, ever.” He confirmed, however, that he and other agents did visit the camps routinely. For the first couple months of the protests, O’Connell himself arrived at the camps soon after dawn most days, wearing outdoorsy clothing from REI or Dick’s Sporting Goods. “Being plainclothes, we could kind of slink around and, you know, do what we had to do,” he said. O’Connell would chat with whomever he ran into. Although he sometimes handed out his card, he didn’t always identify himself as FBI. “If people didn’t ask, I didn’t tell them,” he said.  

He said two of the agents he worked with avoided confrontations with protesters, and Ward’s deposition indicates that the pair raised concerns with the U.S. marshal about the safety of entering the camps without local police knowing. Despite its efforts, the FBI uncovered no widespread criminal activity beyond personal drug use and “misdemeanor-type activity,” O’Connell said in his deposition. 

The U.S. Marshals Service, as well as Ward, declined to comment, citing ongoing litigation. A spokesperson for the FBI said the press office does not comment on litigation.

Infiltration wasn’t the only activity carried out by federal law enforcement. Customs and Border Protection responded to the protests with its MQ-9 Reaper drone, a model best known for remote airstrikes in Iraq and Afghanistan, which was flying above the encampments by August 22, supplying video footage known as the “Bigpipe Feed.” The drone flew nearly 281 hours over six months, costing the agency $1.5 million. Customs and Border Protection declined a request for comment, citing the litigation.

The biggest beneficiary of federal law enforcement’s spending was Energy Transfer Partners. In fact, the company donated $15 million to North Dakota to help foot the bill for the state’s parallel efforts to quell the disruptions. During the protests, the company’s private security contractor, TigerSwan, coordinated with local law enforcement and passed along information collected by its own undercover and eavesdropping operations.

Read Next

After infiltrating Standing Rock, TigerSwan pitched its ‘counterinsurgency’ playbook to other oil companies

Alleen Brown & Naveena Sadasivam

Energy Transfer Partners also sought to influence the FBI. It was the FBI, however, that initiated its relationship with the company. In his deposition, O’Connell said he showed up at Energy Transfer Partners’ office within a day or two of beginning to investigate the movement and was soon meeting and communicating with executive vice president Joey Mahmoud.

At one point, Mahmoud pointed the FBI toward Indigenous activist and actor Dallas Goldtooth, saying that “he’s the ring leader making this violent,” according to an email an attorney described.

Throughout the protests, federal law enforcement officials pushed to obtain more resources to police the anti-pipeline movement. Perry wanted drones that could zoom in on faces and license plates, and O’Connell thought the FBI should investigate crowd-sourced funding, which could have ties to North Korea, he claimed in his deposition. Both requests were denied.

O’Connell clarified that he was more concerned about China or Russia than North Korea, and it was not just state actors that worried him. “If somebody like George Soros or some of these other well-heeled activists are trying to disrupt things in my turf, I want to know what’s going on,” he explained, referring to the billionaire philanthropist, who conspiracists theorize controls progressive causes.

To the federal law enforcement officials working on the ground at Standing Rock, there was no reason they shouldn’t be able to use all the resources at the federal government’s disposal to confront this latest Indigenous uprising.

“That shit should have been crushed like immediately,” O’Connell said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline FBI sent several informants to Standing Rock protests, court documents show on Mar 15, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Alleen Brown.

The FBI also regularly sent agents wearing civilian clothing into the camps, one former agent told Grist in an interview. Meanwhile, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, or BIA, operated undercover narcotics officers out of the reservation’s Prairie Knights Casino, where many pipeline opponents rented rooms, according to one of the depositions. 

The operations were part of a wider surveillance strategy that included drones, social media monitoring, and radio eavesdropping by an array of state, local, and federal agencies, according to attorneys’ interviews with law enforcement. The FBI infiltration fits into a longer history in the region. In the 1970s, the FBI infiltrated the highest levels of the American Indian Movement, or AIM. 

The Indigenous-led uprising against Energy Transfer Partners’ Dakota Access oil pipeline drew thousands of people seeking to protect water, the climate, and Indigenous sovereignty. For seven months, participants protested to stop construction of the pipeline and were met by militarized law enforcement, at times facing tear gas, rubber bullets, and water hoses in below-freezing weather.

Read Next

How the US government began its decade-long campaign against the anti-pipeline movement

Adam Federman

After the pipeline was completed and demonstrators left, North Dakota sued the federal government for more than $38 million — the cost the state claims to have spent on police and other emergency responders, and for property and environmental damage. Central to North Dakota’s complaints are the existence of anti-pipeline camps on federal land managed by the Army Corps of Engineers. The state argues that by failing to enforce trespass laws on that land, the Army Corps allowed the camps to grow to up to 8,000 people and serve as a “safe haven” for those who participated in illegal activity during protests and caused property damage. 

In an effort to prove that the federal government failed to provide sufficient support, attorneys deposed officials leading several law enforcement agencies during the protests. The depositions provide unusually detailed information about the way that federal security agencies intervene in climate and Indigenous movements. 

Until the lawsuit, the existence of only one federal informant in the camps was known: Heath Harmon was working as an FBI informant when he entered into a romantic relationship with water protector Red Fawn Fallis. A judge eventually sentenced Fallis to nearly five years in prison after a gun went off when she was tackled by police during a protest. The gun belonged to Harmon. 

Manape LaMere, a member of the Bdewakantowan Isanti and Ihanktowan bands, who is also Winnebago Ho-chunk and spent months in the camps, said he and others anticipated the presence of FBI agents, because of the agency’s history. Camp security kicked out several suspected infiltrators. “We were already cynical, because we’ve had our heart broke before by our own relatives,” he explained.

“The culture of paranoia and fear created around informants and infiltration is so deleterious to social movements, because these movements for Indigenous people are typically based on kinship networks and forms of relationality,” said Nick Estes, a historian and member of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe who spent time at the Standing Rock resistance camps and has extensively researched the infiltration of the AIM movement by the FBI. Beyond his relationship with Fallis, Harmon had close familial ties with community leaders and had participated in important ceremonies. Infiltration, Estes said, “turns relatives against relatives.”

Less widely known than the FBI’s undercover operations are those of the BIA, which serves as the primary police force on Standing Rock and other reservations. During the NoDAPL movement, the BIA had “a couple” of narcotics officers operating undercover at the Prairie Knights Casino, according to the deposition of Darren Cruzan, a member of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma who was the director of the BIA’s Office of Justice Services at the time.  

It’s not unusual for the BIA to use undercover officers in its drug busts. However, the intelligence collected by the Standing Rock undercovers went beyond narcotics. “It was part of our effort to gather intel on, you know, what was happening within the boundaries of the reservation and if there were any plans to move camps or add camps or those sorts of things,” Cruzan said.

A spokesperson for Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who oversees the BIA, also declined to comment. 

According to the deposition of Jacob O’Connell, the FBI’s supervisor for the western half of North Dakota during the Standing Rock protests, the FBI was infiltrating the NoDAPL movement weeks before the protests gained international media attention and attracted thousands. By August 16, 2016, the FBI had tasked at least one “confidential human source” with gathering information. The FBI eventually had five to 10 informants in the protest camps — “probably closer to 10,” said Bob Perry, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s Minneapolis field office, which oversees operations in the Dakotas, in another deposition. The number of FBI informants at Standing Rock was first reported by the North Dakota Monitor.

According to Perry, FBI agents told recruits what to collect and what not to collect, saying, “We don’t want to know about constitutionally protected activity.” Perry added, “We would give them essentially a list: ‘Violence, potential violence, criminal activity.’ To some point it was health and safety as well, because, you know, we had an informant placed and in position where they could report on that.” 

The deposition of U.S. Marshal Paul Ward said that the FBI also sent agents into the camps undercover. O’Connell denied the claim. “There were no undercover agents used at all, ever.” He confirmed, however, that he and other agents did visit the camps routinely. For the first couple months of the protests, O’Connell himself arrived at the camps soon after dawn most days, wearing outdoorsy clothing from REI or Dick’s Sporting Goods. “Being plainclothes, we could kind of slink around and, you know, do what we had to do,” he said. O’Connell would chat with whomever he ran into. Although he sometimes handed out his card, he didn’t always identify himself as FBI. “If people didn’t ask, I didn’t tell them,” he said.  

He said two of the agents he worked with avoided confrontations with protesters, and Ward’s deposition indicates that the pair raised concerns with the U.S. marshal about the safety of entering the camps without local police knowing. Despite its efforts, the FBI uncovered no widespread criminal activity beyond personal drug use and “misdemeanor-type activity,” O’Connell said in his deposition. 

The U.S. Marshals Service, as well as Ward, declined to comment, citing ongoing litigation. A spokesperson for the FBI said the press office does not comment on litigation.

Infiltration wasn’t the only activity carried out by federal law enforcement. Customs and Border Protection responded to the protests with its MQ-9 Reaper drone, a model best known for remote airstrikes in Iraq and Afghanistan, which was flying above the encampments by August 22, supplying video footage known as the “Bigpipe Feed.” The drone flew nearly 281 hours over six months, costing the agency $1.5 million. Customs and Border Protection declined a request for comment, citing the litigation.

The biggest beneficiary of federal law enforcement’s spending was Energy Transfer Partners. In fact, the company donated $15 million to North Dakota to help foot the bill for the state’s parallel efforts to quell the disruptions. During the protests, the company’s private security contractor, TigerSwan, coordinated with local law enforcement and passed along information collected by its own undercover and eavesdropping operations.

Read Next

After infiltrating Standing Rock, TigerSwan pitched its ‘counterinsurgency’ playbook to other oil companies

Alleen Brown & Naveena Sadasivam

Energy Transfer Partners also sought to influence the FBI. It was the FBI, however, that initiated its relationship with the company. In his deposition, O’Connell said he showed up at Energy Transfer Partners’ office within a day or two of beginning to investigate the movement and was soon meeting and communicating with executive vice president Joey Mahmoud.

At one point, Mahmoud pointed the FBI toward Indigenous activist and actor Dallas Goldtooth, saying that “he’s the ring leader making this violent,” according to an email an attorney described.

Throughout the protests, federal law enforcement officials pushed to obtain more resources to police the anti-pipeline movement. Perry wanted drones that could zoom in on faces and license plates, and O’Connell thought the FBI should investigate crowd-sourced funding, which could have ties to North Korea, he claimed in his deposition. Both requests were denied.

O’Connell clarified that he was more concerned about China or Russia than North Korea, and it was not just state actors that worried him. “If somebody like George Soros or some of these other well-heeled activists are trying to disrupt things in my turf, I want to know what’s going on,” he explained, referring to the billionaire philanthropist, who conspiracists theorize controls progressive causes.

To the federal law enforcement officials working on the ground at Standing Rock, there was no reason they shouldn’t be able to use all the resources at the federal government’s disposal to confront this latest Indigenous uprising.

“That shit should have been crushed like immediately,” O’Connell said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline FBI sent several informants to Standing Rock protests, court documents show on Mar 15, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Alleen Brown.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Deconstructed.

Canadian House Speaker Anthony Rota (Politico, 9/24/23) said of the SS veteran, “He’s a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero, and we thank him for all his service.”

Media coverage of the Canadian Parliament’s standing ovation in September for Yaroslav Hunka, a 98-year-old Ukrainian Canadian who fought for the Nazis in World War II, has included egregious Holocaust revisionism.

On September 22, following Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s address to the Canadian parliament, Canada’s then–Speaker of the House Anthony Rota introduced Hunka:

We have here in the chamber today a Ukrainian-Canadian veteran from the Second World War who fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians and continues to support the troops today.

Rota went on to call Hunka “a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero, and we thank him for all his service” (Politico, 9/24/23). Parliamentarians of all political parties gave Hunka two standing ovations, and Zelenskyy raised his fist to salute the man (Sky News, 9/26/23).

Then the New York–based Forward (9/24/23) pointed out that Hunka had fought for the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division, also known as the Galicia Division, of the SS. (The SS, short for Schutzstaffel, “Protection Squadron,” was the military wing of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party.)

‘A complicated past’

“You have to tread softly on these issues,” said the main expert used by the CBC (9/28/23) to discuss the topic of Ukraine and Nazism.

Covering the subsequent controversy, the CBC (9/28/23) ran the headline, “Speaker’s Honoring of Former Nazi Soldier Reveals a Complicated Past, Say Historians.” In the context of the Holocaust, “complicated” functions as a hand-waving euphemism that gets in the way of holding perpetrators accountable: If a decision is “complicated,” it’s understandable, even if it’s wrong.

Digital reporter/editor Jonathan Migneault, who wrote the piece, soft-pedaled the Galicia Division in other ways too. He said that some of the Ukrainians who joined it did so “for ideological reasons, in opposition to the Soviet Union, in hopes of creating an independent Ukrainian state.”

That’s quite a whitewashing of the ideological package that goes with signing up for the SS, leaving out that this vision for an “independent Ukrainian state” included the extermination of Jewish, LGBTQ, Roma and Polish minorities. As far as the “hopes of creating an independent Ukrainian state” alibi, the Per Anders Rudling (Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 2012) documents that “there is no overt indication that the unit [of Ukrainian Waffen-SS recruits] in any way was dedicated to Ukrainian statehood, let alone independence.”

‘Caught between Hitler and Stalin’

Toronto Star columnist Heather Mallick (9/26/23) mocked Poland for wanting to extradite Hunka, whose unit massacred Poles during World War II, because “Poland has a notorious history of antisemitism.”

Toronto Star columnist Heather Mallick (9/26/23) also used the word “complicated” to diminish Nazi atrocities, and mock the Polish government’s interest in having Hunka extradited for war crimes:

Funny, they’ve had 73 years to ask Canada for him. It’s almost as if Poland has a notorious history of antisemitism but that’s crazy talk….

Rota should have understood how complicated history is, how, post-Holodomor, a Ukrainian caught between Hitler and Stalin made a fatal choice.

We can hate Hunka for that now. I do.

But would every Canadian MP have made immaculate choices inside Stalin’s “Bloodlands” in 1943? Of course you and I would have been heroic, joined the White Rose movement, been executed for our troubles. But everyone?

Mallick refers to Ukraine as “Stalin’s ‘Bloodlands,’” citing the Holodomor, the 1930s famine in the Soviet Union that killed an estimated 3.5 million Ukrainians, as well as millions in other parts of the USSR. Yet her link takes readers to a review of the book Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, which—its own flaws notwithstanding (Jacobin, 9/9/14)—discusses the killings in Ukraine and elsewhere by Stalin and, on a significantly more egregious scale, Hitler. Acknowledging that the phrase she’s borrowing refers to both Soviet crimes and the Nazis’ genocides would have made the choice of joining the Nazis seem rather less sympathetic.

Meanwhile, Mallick’s baffling comments about Poland erase the Nazis’ systematic killing of Polish people. Polish history has indeed been marred by horrific antisemitism, with many Polish people complicit in the Holocaust, as she glibly references; this does not erase the fact that the Nazis also murdered 1.8 million non-Jewish Poles, or negate Poland’s desire to see their killers brought to justice. As Lev Golinkin (Forward, 9/24/23) pointed out, the Galicia Division that Hunka belonged to

was visited by SS head Heinrich Himmler, who spoke of the soldiers’ “willingness to slaughter Poles.” Three months earlier, SS Galichina subunits perpetrated what is known as the Huta Pieniacka massacre, burning 500 to 1,000 Polish villagers alive.

The non-Nazi SS

Keir Giles (Politico, 10/2/23) advances the argument that joining the SS and swearing “absolute obedience to the commander in chief of the German Armed Forces Adolf Hitler” doesn’t make you a Nazi.

An old cliché uses the analogy of gradually boiling a frog to explain how fascism takes hold in societies, but readers of Keir Giles’ intervention (Politico, 10/2/23) will feel like they are eyes-deep in a bubbling cauldron.

Giles, who said the relevant history is “complicated” four times and “complex” twice, wrote an article entitled “Fighting Against the USSR Didn’t Necessarily Make You a Nazi.” That’s a dubious claim in a piece focused on World War II, when the Soviet Union was the main force fighting Nazi Germany, and thus fighting the Soviets made you at least an ally of Nazis.

More to the point, the unit Hunka belonged to was a formal division of the SS, trained and armed by Nazi Germany (Forward, 9/27/23), which “fought exclusively to serve Nazi aims” (National Post, 9/25/23).

Giles, however, opened by writing:

Everybody knows that a lie can make it halfway around the world before the truth has even got its boots on.

And the ongoing turmoil over Canada’s parliament recognizing former SS trooper Yaroslav Hunka highlights one of the most important reasons why.

Something that’s untrue but simple is far more persuasive than a complicated, nuanced truth….

In the case of Hunka, the mass outrage stems from his enlistment with one of the foreign legions of the Waffen-SS, fighting Soviet forces on Germany’s eastern front.

Setting aside that Giles omits “and butchering innocent people” when he describes Waffen-SS activities as “fighting Soviet forces,” his suggestion that calling Hunka a Nazi is a “lie” does not withstand even minimal scrutiny. For instance, Rudling (Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 2012) documents that, from August 29, 1943, onward, Ukrainian Waffen-SS recruits were sworn in with the following oath:

I swear before God this holy oath, that in the battle against Bolshevism, I will give absolute obedience to the commander in chief of the German Armed Forces Adolf Hitler, and as a brave soldier I will always be prepared to lay down my life for this oath.

Vowing “absolute obedience” to Hitler, and swearing that you’re willing to die for him, makes you as root and branch a Nazi as Rudolf Hess or Hermann Göring.

‘Simple narratives’

SS commander Heinrich Himmler inspecting troops from the Galicia Division.

After drawing these bogus distinctions between the Nazis and their units, Giles moved on to genocide denial:

The idea that foreign volunteers and conscripts were being allocated to the Waffen-SS rather than the Wehrmacht on administrative rather than ideological grounds is a hard sell for audiences conditioned to believe the SS’s primary task was genocide….

Repeated exhaustive investigations—including by not only the Nuremberg trials but also the British, Canadian and even Soviet authorities—led to the conclusion that no war crimes or atrocities had been committed by this particular unit.

Giles doesn’t name any investigations by British or Soviet officials, so it’s unclear what he’s talking about on those points, but he’s lying about Nuremberg. The Nuremberg Tribunals did not specifically address the Galicia Division (Guardian, 9/25/23), but found that the combat branch of which they were a part, the Waffen-SS, “was a criminal organization”:

In dealing with the SS, the Tribunal includes all persons who had been officially accepted as members of the SS, including the members of the Allgemeine SS, members of the Waffen-SS, members of the SS Totenkopfverbaende, and the members of any of the different police forces who were members of the SS.

Giles asserted that “simple narratives like ‘everybody in the SS was guilty of war crimes’ are more pervasive because they’re much simpler to grasp”—but everybody in the SS was, quite literally, guilty of war crimes.

Heavily censored report

The Ottawa Citizen (9/27/23), citing B’nai Brith, reported that “the Canadian government’s approach to Nazi war criminals had been marked with ‘intentional harboring of known Nazi war criminals.'”

The Canadian investigation Giles refers to is a 1986 Canadian government report that claims that membership in the Galicia Division did not in and of itself constitute a war crime. This conclusion is highly suspect when read against the Nuremberg tribunal’s judgment, and the report also has to be understood in the broader context of Canadian state investigations into Nazis in the country. As the Ottawa Citizen’s David Pugliese (9/27/23) explained:

The federal government has withheld a second part of a 1986 government commission report about Nazis who settled in Canada. In addition, it has heavily censored another 1986 report examining how Nazis were able to get into Canada. More than 600 pages of that document, obtained by this newspaper and other organizations through the Access to Information law, have been censored.

Neither Giles nor any other member of the public knows what the Canadian government is hiding about its investigation, or why it’s concealing this information, so it’s disingenuous for him to present the fraction of the government’s conclusions to which he has access as if it is the final word on the Galicia Division or anything else.

As to Giles’ jaw-dropping complaint that people are “conditioned to believe the SS’s primary task was genocide,” the Nuremberg Trial concluded that the SS carried out

persecution and extermination of the Jews, brutalities and killings in concentration camps, excesses in the administration of occupied territories, the administration of the slave labor program, and the mistreatment and murder of prisoners.

Perhaps the public is “conditioned to believe the SS’s primary task was genocide” because the SS carried out genocide.

As disconcerting as it is that authors like Giles are writing fascist propaganda—and that Mallick veers perilously close to the same—it’s even more alarming that editors at outlets like the Star, CBC and Politico deem such intellectually and morally bankrupt material worthy of publication.

The post Media Holocaust Revisionism After Canada’s Standing Ovation for an SS Vet appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Gregory Shupak.

Photo: Backbone Campaign.

We shut down the Space Needle yesterday.

Close to 500 stood at the base of the Needle while protesters in shirts saying “NOT IN OUR NAME” and “CEASEFIRE NOW” blocked the doors, arms clasped together, willing to go to jail if necessary. But the cops never showed up over the 3-hour action. The Needle closed down for the day and handed out refunds to ticket holders.

Photo: Patrick Mazza.

Photo: Patrick Mazza.

No one expressed the spirit of the day better than Black Lives Matter activist Nikkita Oliver.

“How can you stand at the top of the Space Needle when children are being genocided? We can’t have fun now.”

The crowd was overwhelmingly young, mostly millennials and Gen Z, with a smattering of us old grayheads throughout the crowd. The event, sponsored by Jewish Voice for Peace in alliance with other local groups, saw Jews and non-Jews come together to demand an immediate ceasefire. We heard speakers from the Jewish, Black, Native and Palestinian communities speak of the common struggle against oppression and racism, and declare that business as usual is done.

We were led in chants and singing over the day. “Free, free Palestine!” “Ceasefire Now!” “Let Gaza live!” I started out the day feeling kind of rocky standing out on a cold drizzly day. But the singing lifted me up. “With hope, with prayer, we find ourselves here. We rise! We rise!” The spirit of the crowd was tremendous.

Photo: Patrick Mazza.

Being there felt like the least I could do, after sitting in on a Thursday webinar with attorneys and plaintiffs in a case charging high U.S. leaders with complicity in genocide in Gaza. Announcement of the case is here.

Nadia Ben-Youssef, advocacy director for the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the group through which the lawsuit was filed, referred to feelings of grief, rage and love as she opened the webinar. Feelings that welled up in me through the hour-long session. She urged people to “do whatever we can” to end the deaths of innocent civilians in Gaza, and noted a shutdown of the Oakland Bay Bridge that was happening even as the webinar was taking place. Bridges in Boston and Montreal were also being shut down.

Sadif Doost, one of the attorneys in the case, called out the “love, rage and brilliance in this complaint.” I later scanned the 89-page filing, an exhaustive day-by-day account of Israel’s attacks on Gaza, and the failure of U.S. officials to not only do what they could to prevent it, as obligated under international law, but also to be actively complicit it in. The filing contains many statements of Israeli officials calling for the destruction of Palestinians. These establish intent to commit genocide as defined under the U.N. treaty and international law. That is a key element in making the case. The plaintiffs ask the court to order defendants Joseph Biden, Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin to stop “providing any further aid, support or assistance to Israel’s genocidal acts.” For those who want to delve into it, the filing is here. For a short summary, go here.

Genocide is not a charge that should be lightly made. It is the crime of crimes. The attorneys who put together the CCR case have made a powerful argument that is hard to refute. If attacks by Hamas on civilians are a war crime, attacks by Israel on an entire civilian population are many times worse. In my view, and that of many others, they will not uproot Hamas. And even if they did, the hatred engendered by these attacks and continued oppression of Palestinians will only spur rise of even more violent opposition.

Meanwhile, Israel’s political support is collapsing around the world. The mad fundamentalists who rule that state and foresee a Greater Israel seem blinded to the threats they are bringing on their own people, as they stir an unprecedented degree of revulsion and opposition around the world. The only real solution to this issue is political, providing justice that allows both Palestinians and Israelis to live together in peace in this land.

Another legal expert making the genocide case is human rights attorney Craig Mokhiber, who resigned as director of the New York office of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights out of his disgust for inaction on Gaza. In this recent 44-minute interview with Breakthrough News he says, “It’s not about defeating Hamas. They know they’re building Hamas. The only way to explain it is wholesale destruction of a people. I had never seen such a classic case of genocide.”

Said Mokhiber, “This is a moment in history that will be talked about for generations, and we will all ask what we did in this moment, and there’s going to be a lot of shame by those who went along with this.”

His resignation letter is here.

The interview is here:

Indeed, we will all ask what we did in this moment. I would have gone to the Needle anyway. But hearing Palestinian-American plaintiffs in the CCR case added to my fire. They underscored that we as U.S. of Americans are guilty of collective evil in facilitating Israel’s attacks.

Basim Elkarra, whose parents were born in Gaza and who lives in California, said, “Bombs that are killing people are made here. My tax dollars are paying to kill my people.”

His own extended family has lost 65. “Every family is losing people,” he said. “There is no business as usual anymore.”

Mohammad Herzallah, whose family originated in Gaza, said, “We are seeing genocide before our eyes. Words cannot express what is going on in our hearts.” He related how people in his Gaza family are being killed. “We will do everything in our power to make this voice heard. Bring it to the streets and the public.”

Waeli Elbhassi, who has been in the U.S. for 30 years, said his family has lost dozens. People in his parents’ generation who were displaced in 1948 have always had a “collective sense of trauma,” he said. “But until this moment I haven’t had this sense of tragedy. That there is another Nakba (the displacement of Palestinians in 1948) going on before us. Literally every family I know has lost someone. This is how we know it is a genocide.”

“This is an all hands on deck moment,” Elbhassi said. “This is a moment when we have to be disruptive, facing a world structure that seems hellbent on finishing the job.”

He added, “This is an incredible moment where an actual global movement is happening. The tide is turning. This is our moment.”

Indeed, a Palestinian cause that had faded into the background has burst into world consciousness in an unprecedented way. The streets are filling around the world, from North America and Europe to Africa, Asia and Latin America. Seas of Palestinian flags are flying, and business as usual is being disrupted, demanding an end to the attacks and siege on Gaza, and justice for the Palestinian people.

Sabrene Odeh, a 29-year old Palestinian-American activist born in Seattle, speaking to the crowd at the Space Needle Sunday, said, “Our voices are heard around the world. Our friends and family in Palestine are hearing, they’re feeling, they’re seeing this. Thank you for being here.”

This movement needs to go on, she said. “A ceasefire is the least we can ask for.”

“Even if the bombing stops, our responsibility is to call for an end to occupation. There are other forms of collective punishment taking place. Keep up the same energy for however long it takes until Palestine is liberated.”

This first appeared on The Raven.

The post Shutting Down the Space Needle, Standing Up for Gaza appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Patrick Mazza.

In the fifth grade, VietNam war smoking,
piling up body bags in jungles out of sight,
I imagined being drafted…and not going.

Training to kill or be killed made no sense.
Now that I know the true reasons for war,
who wages them, at whose expense, all

seems lost. There is simply way too much
money in war—too much power to give up
for the sake of saving a family here or there.

You can blame the colonizers. I do, knowing
open air prisons run in first class to economy.
Thank G?d I was born in Puerto Rico not Gaza.

The post Boricua Standing at Divided Attention appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Andres Castro.

On Monday, Country Garden Holdings Co. failed to pay U.S.$22.5 million in interest due on debt securities with a total value of $1 billion.

“Prices of the two bonds, which were scheduled to mature in 2026 and 2030, plunged to less than 8 cents on the dollar, according to Tradeweb,” said one report. “Such levels indicate that investors are expecting the company to default.”

When bonds trade far below their face value, traders interpret it as meaning the bond holders don’t expect to get all their money back.

Country Garden still has a 30-day grace period to pay its coupons, before its bondholders can call it as in default, but its Hong Kong-listed shares fell 14% on Tuesday amid a broader selloff of China property stock.

A company spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal that the company was unable to make its interest payments due to deteriorating sales and a liquidity crunch.

In late 2021, property developer China Evergrande collapsed under accumulated debts, sending the global economy briefly into a spiral and leading to protests in China by would-be homeowners who claimed to have been defrauded on off-plan homes that were never built or completed.

After a short-lived bounce back early this year, China’s property market, in line with consumer spending in general, has drifted back into the doldrums. Along with Evergrande, major developers such as Sunac China Holdings, have defaulted, sending the entire real estate market into a deep slump. 

Fortunes at stake

The fortune of Yang Huiyan, the chair of Country Garden and formerly the richest woman in Asia, has slumped by 84% since June 2021 – including a tumble of 8.2% on Tuesday alone, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The billionaire’s fortune has been whittled away from a peak of U.S.$28.6 billion to U.S.$5.5 billion today – the “biggest decline among the ultra-rich tracked by Bloomberg’s wealth index over that period.”

But the real threat, say China-based analysts, is an official default by Country Garden, which could be a further nail in the coffin of a sector that has traditionally driven some 25% of China’s economic activity.

Wide-scale debt default

Wang Guochen, an assistant researcher at the First Research Division of the Chung Hua Institute for Economic Research, told RFA Mandarin in an interview on Tuesday that, according to a review by his institute of 100 real estate companies in China, “all of them are more or less involved in debt default.”

The buzz term, said Wang, is “lack of confidence.” He added that people aren’t buying like they used to due to high levels of unemployment and tightened household incomes.

“How can you talk about buying a house if your household income is reduced and you are worried about unemployment?” he said.  

“As for the developers, they build homes that nobody wants and then find themselves unable to service their debts.”

Widely-read Chinese blogger “Public Relations Circle” wrote that the problem for Country Garden is that the developer is focused on third- and fourth-tier cities, which means it operates on a greater scale than most of its rivals and likely on tighter margins.

“It’s said that Country Garden has more than 3,000 projects, while Evergrande only has around 700, and that means a lot more undelivered properties than even Evergrande is facing,” the blogger wrote.

Wang Guochen compares China’s response to the real estate slump to a “bomb defusal” mission in a movie.

Any slight misstep could prematurely trigger an explosion, which potentially leads to paralysis, said Wang.

“In the case of Evergrande, state-owned enterprises didn’t take over and the government didn’t write off Evergrande’s bad debts. In the meantime, it and other property developers like Country Garden continued making speculative housing investments.”

Real estate accounts for a quarter of China’s GDP, said Wang, adding that it was so important that it was not simply crucial to stimulating the economy but to stabilizing the economy and avoiding widespread public discontent.

“The goal should be to avoid both financial collapse and stabilize housing prices so as to not fan the flames of public discontent,” said Wang.

Edited by Mike Firn and Taejun Kang.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Chris Taylor for RFA and Hwang Chun-mei for RFA Mandarin.

Today I am in Helena to stand in solidarity with the youth plaintiffs of Held v. Montana as they work with their legal team to make the case that the state has violated their constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment. I’m an environmental attorney, but this time, I’m headed to court in a different capacity — as a mom.

None of the plaintiffs in Held v. Montana are my biological children, but they feel like my kids. I’ve known one of the plaintiffs since she was 5 years old, and now she’s borrowing my clothes for depositions. I’ve watched these kids grow up and shared their fear and heartbreak as they’ve seen floods and wildfires wreak havoc on their communities and the beautiful state we call home. But I’ve also been deeply inspired by the way these youth plaintiffs and their peers are turning their lived experience into meaningful action.

Back in January, I traveled to Helena with two students from the Park High Green Initiative for the climate advocacy day at the Capitol. They jumped at a last-minute opportunity to speak, despite the fact that they had tests to study for, and that one of them was celebrating their 16th birthday. They wrote their speeches in the car and delivered them a couple of hours later, pleading with Montana’s leaders to take action on climate. The newly 16-year-old asked: “How many more birthdays will I have where the air is breathable?”

While many of their peers are preparing for school dances and soccer games, they’re preparing to go to court.

I don’t remember what I was doing on my birthday at age 16, but it wasn’t that. Then again, I didn’t turn 16 in a world when 500-year weather events seemed to make headlines a couple times per year. Today’s youth are taking on a lot, but that’s because there’s a lot to take on.

For decades, youth have stepped up to lead in areas where adults have failed to lead. Leaders like Xiuhtezcatl Martinez of Earth Guardians and Greta Thunburg have been outspoken activists from an early age. The Held v. Montana plaintiffs aren’t the first youth to sue their state–they are represented by Our Children’s Trust, a non-profit law firm that has sued state governments on behalf of youth in all 50 states–but this suit does stand apart as the first of their cases to go to trial.

Watching these youth march boldly up the ivory tower of our judicial system, it’s easy to forget that they started this process as kids, tweens, and teens. While many of their peers are preparing for school dances and soccer games, they’re preparing to go to court. They’re sitting in conference rooms, surrounded by attorneys, aware that this process is likely to last years, if not decades. They aren’t doing it for fun, or for media attention, or to fill in a college resume. They’re doing this because they see this as the fight of (and for) their lifetime and they don’t want to be haunted by the question: “How many more birthdays will I have until the air is unbreathable?”

It isn’t fair that they should have to shoulder this burden that they inherited by no fault of their own.

As a mother, I feel an uncomfortable mix of pride, anger, and fear as I support these youth through the legal process. It isn’t fair that they should have to shoulder this burden that they inherited by no fault of their own. My maternal instinct tells me to protect these kids and shelter them from the grueling legal process. But, every time I talk with them, I’m reminded how unfair it would be to stand in their way of speaking truth to power. These kids don’t want to idly wait for the adults in their lives to take action. It’s our job as parents to put opportunities in front of our kids and give them the balance of space and support they need to make their own decisions.

As I prepare to lend my full support to these youth, I’m calling on parents across the nation to summon their support for the courageous youth in their community confronting the climate crisis. The Held v Montana trial is a not-to-miss historic first. It’s why I’ll be there along with a large cheering section of family, friends, students from our Park High Green Initiative and other supporters. When you hear about the crowds gathered on the courthouse steps to cheer on the plaintiffs, you’ll know why.

This op-ed originally appeared in the Billings Gazette.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Michelle Uberuaga.

Their protest encampment razed, the Indigenous-led environmental movement at North Dakota’s Standing Rock reservation was searching for a new tactic. By March 2017, the fight over the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline had been underway for months. Leaders of the movement to defend Indigenous rights on the land — and its waterways — had a new aim: to march on Washington.

Native leaders and activists, calling themselves water protectors, wanted to show the newly elected President Donald Trump that they would continue to fight for their treaty rights to lands including the pipeline route. The march would be called “Native Nations Rise.”

Law enforcement was getting ready too — and discussing plans with Energy Transfer, the parent company of the Dakota Access pipeline. Throughout much of the uprising against the pipeline, the National Sheriffs’ Association talked routinely with TigerSwan, Energy Transfer’s lead security firm on the project, working hand in hand to craft pro-pipeline messaging. A top official with the sheriffs’ PR contractor, Off the Record Strategies, floated a plan to TigerSwan’s lead propagandist, a man named Robert Rice.

An email from Off the Record Strategies, working for the National Sheriffs’ Association to plan information operations to influence the narrative around the Dakota Access pipeline.

Public record via the North Dakota Private Investigation and Security Board

“Thoughts on a crew or a news reporter — or someone pretending to be — with a camera and microphone to report from the main rally on the Friday, ask questions about pipeline and slice together [sic]?” Off the Record CEO Mark Pfeifle suggested over email.

A security firm led by a former member of the U.S. military’s shadowy Special Forces, TigerSwan was no stranger to such deception. The company had, in fact, used fake reporters before — including Rice himself — to spread its message and to spy on pipeline opponents. The National Sheriffs’ Association’s involvement in advocating for a similar disinformation campaign against the anti-pipeline movement has not been previously reported.

The email from the National Sheriffs’ Association PR shop was among the more than 55,000 internal TigerSwan documents obtained by The Intercept and Grist through a public records request. The documents, released by the North Dakota Private Investigation and Security Board, reveal how TigerSwan and the sheriffs’ group worked together to twist the story in the media so that it aligned with the oil company’s interests, seeking to pollute the public’s perception of the water protectors.

The documents also outline details of previously unreported collaborations on the ground between TigerSwan and police forces. During the uprising at Standing Rock, TigerSwan provided law enforcement support with helicopter flights, medics, and security guards. The private security firm pushed for the purchase, by Energy Transfer, of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of radios for the cops. TigerSwan also placed an order for a catalog of so-called less-lethal weapons for police use, including tear gas. The security contractor even planned to facilitate an exchange where Energy Transfer and police could share purported evidence of illegal activity.

Meanwhile, communications firms working for Energy Transfer and the National Sheriffs’ Association worked together to write newsletters, plant pro-pipeline articles in the media, and circulate “wanted”-style posters of particular protesters, the documents show. And the heads of both the National Sheriffs’ Association and TigerSwan engaged in discussions on strategy to counter the anti-pipeline movement, with propaganda becoming a priority for both the police and private security.

“It is extremely dangerous to have private interests dictating and coloring the flow of administrative justice,” said Chase Iron Eyes, director of the media organization Last Real Indians and a member of the Oceti Sakowin people. Iron Eyes was active at Standing Rock and mentioned in TigerSwan’s files. “We learned at Standing Rock, law and order serves capital and property.”

Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier, whose jurisdiction in Morton County, North Dakota, abuts the Standing Rock reservation, said collaboration with pipeline security was limited. “We had a cooperation with them in reference to the pipeline workers’ safety while conducting their business,” he said in an email. “TigerSwan was not to be involved in any law enforcement detail.” (TigerSwan, Energy Transfer, and the National Sheriffs’ Association did not respond to requests for comment.)

Rice, the TigerSwan propagandist, had posed as a news anchor for anti-protester segments posted on a Facebook page he created to sway the local community against the Standing Rock protests. But when Pfeifle, the sheriff group’s PR man, suggested pretending to be a reporter at the Native Nations Rise protest, Rice was unavailable. (Off the Record did not respond to a request for comment.) Pfeifle found another way to tell the pipeline and police’s story: a far-right news website founded by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Pfeifle wrote to Rice: “We did get Daily Caller to cover event yesterday.”

Protesters shield their faces as a line of law enforcement officers holding large canisters with pepper spray shout orders to move back, in Morton County, N.D., on Oct. 27, 2016.

Photo: Mike McCleary/The Bismarck Tribune via AP

Law Enforcement Collaboration

The idea of working with police was baked into Energy Transfer’s arrangement with TigerSwan. The firm’s contract for the Dakota Access pipeline specifically assigned TigerSwan to “take the lead with various law enforcement agencies per state, county, state National Guard and the federal interagency if required.”

Cooperation between Energy Transfer’s security operation and law enforcement agencies, however, began even before TigerSwan arrived on the scene. A PowerPoint presentation from Silverton, another contractor hired by Energy Transfer, described its relationship with law enforcement as a “public private partnership.” The September 2016 presentation said that a private intelligence cell was “coordinating with LE” — law enforcement — “and helping develop Person of Interest packets specifically designed to aid in LE prosecution.”

Multiple documents make clear that part of the purpose of Energy Transfer’s intelligence collection was to support law enforcement prosecutions. A September 2016 document describing TigerSwan’s early priorities said, “Continue to collect information of an evidentiary level in order to further the DAPL Security effort and assist Law Enforcement with information to aid in prosecution.” 

The collaboration extended to materiel. TigerSwan operatives realized soon after they arrived that local law enforcement officials lacked encrypted radios and could not communicate with state or municipal law enforcement agencies — or with Dakota Access pipeline security, according to emails. Energy Transfer purchased 100 radios, for $391,347, with plans to lease a number of them to law enforcement officers.

”We want them to go to LEO as a gift which represents DAPL’s concern for public safety,” wrote Tom Siguaw, a senior director at Energy Transfer, in an email.

During large protest events, TigerSwan and police worked together to keep water protectors from interfering with construction. On one day in late October 2016, the day of the protests’ largest mass arrest, Energy Transfer’s security personnel “held law enforcement’s east flank” and supported sheriffs’ deputies and National Guard members with seven medical personnel and two helicopters, named Valkyrie and Saber.

After the incident, TigerSwan planned to set up a shared drive, where law enforcement officials could upload crime reports and charging documents, and TigerSwan could share photographs and pipeline opponents’ social media. Documents show other instances in which TigerSwan set up online exchanges with law enforcement. In a February 2017 PowerPoint presentation, TigerSwan described plans to use another shared drive to post security personnel’s videos and photographs, taken both aerially and on the ground during a different mass arrest.

A diagram from TigerSwan showing the uses of a drive for law enforcement and Energy Transfer’s security operations to share purported evidence of illegal activity.

Public record via the North Dakota Private Investigation and Security Board

A Dakota Access Pipeline helicopter also supported law enforcement officials during one of the most notorious nights of the crackdown, in November 2016, when police unleashed water hoses on water protectors in below-freezing temperatures. By morning, police were in danger of running out of less-lethal weapons — which can still be deadly but are designed to incapacitate their targets. TigerSwan and Energy Transfer again stepped in.

TigerSwan founder James Reese, a former commander in the elite Army Special Operations unit Delta Force, reached out to a contact at the North Carolina State Highway Patrol. North Carolina had recently used TigerSwan’s GuardianAngel mapping tool to respond to uprisings in Charlotte, in the aftermath of the 2016 police killing of Keith Scott. (A spokesperson from the North Carolina Department of Public Safety said the agency does not currently have a relationship with TigerSwan.)

Reese sent a list of weaponry sought by North Dakota law enforcement to an officer from the Highway Patrol. The list included tear gas, pepper spray, bean bag rounds, and foam rounds. The official referred Reese to a contact at Safariland, which manufactures the gear.

“We will purchase the items, and gift them to LE,” Reese told the Safariland representative. “We need a nation wide push if you can help?”

Meanwhile, another TigerSwan team member sent the Minnesota-based police supply store Streicher’s an even longer list of less-lethal weapons and ammunition. “Please confirm availability of the following price and ship immediately with overnight delivery,” TigerSwan’s Phil Rehak wrote. 

“I would be given an order by either somebody from TigerSwan or maybe even law enforcement, being like, ‘Hey, can you find these supplies?’”

Rehak told The Intercept and Grist that his job was to procure equipment — including for law enforcement. “I would be given an order by either somebody from TigerSwan or maybe even law enforcement, being like, ‘Hey, can you find these supplies?’” He said he doesn’t know if the less-lethal weaponry was ultimately delivered to the sheriffs.

“I am not aware of any radios for Morton County or any less lethal weapons from Tiger Swan,” Kirchmeier, the Morton County sheriff, told The Intercept and Grist in an email. “I dealt with ND DES for resources.” (Two other sheriffs involved with the multiagency law enforcement response did not answer requests for comment. Eric Jensen, a spokesperson for the North Dakota Department of Emergency Services, said the agency had no arrangement with TigerSwan or Energy Transfer to provide less-lethal weapons, and that they wouldn’t have knowledge of any arrangements between law enforcement and the companies.)

The “partnership” went both ways, with TigerSwan sometimes viewing law enforcement weapons as potential assets. In mid-October 2016, as senior Energy Transfer personnel prepared to join state officials for a government archeological survey to examine the pipeline route, three law enforcement “snipers” agreed to be on standby with an air team, according to a memo by another security company, RGT, that was working under TigerSwan’s management. A Predator drone was listed among “friendly assets” in the memo.

TigerSwan routinely shared what it learned about the protest movement with local police, but most of what the documents describe in the way of reciprocal sharing — from law enforcement to TigerSwan — came from the National Sheriffs’ Association.

In March 2017, the sheriffs’ group helped the South Dakota Legislature pass a law to prevent future Standing Rock-style pipeline uprisings, the documents say. To support the effort, the Morton County Sheriff’s Office sent along a “law enforcement sensitive” state operational update from the North Dakota State and Local Intelligence Center. National Sheriffs’ Association head Jonathan Thompson forwarded the document to TigerSwan executive Shawn Sweeney. Thompson recommended Sweeney look at the last page, which included a list of anti-pipeline camps across the U.S.

TigerSwan also recruited at least one law enforcement officer with whom it worked on the ground. In November 2016, Reese requested a phone call with Maj. Chad McGinty of the Ohio State Highway Patrol, who had acted as commander of a team from Ohio sent to assist police in North Dakota. By February 1, McGinty, who declined to comment for this story, was working for TigerSwan as a law enforcement liaison, earning more than $440 a day.

A protester is treated after being pepper sprayed by private security contractors on land being graded for the Dakota Access pipeline, near Cannon Ball, N.D., on Sept. 3, 2016.

Photo: Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images

Spreading Stories

TigerSwan’s contract also mandated that the firm help Energy Transfer with telling its story. The firm was expected “to help turn the page on the story that we are being overwhelmed with over the past few weeks,” according to a document from mid-September 2016.

Energy Transfer’s image was in trouble early on. Critical media coverage of Standing Rock grew dramatically in early September after private security guards hired by the company unleashed guard dogs on protesters. A flood of reporters arrived on the ground to cover the protests. Social media posts routinely went viral. The narrative that took hold portrayed the pipeline company as instigating violence against peaceful protesters.

Energy Transfer recruited third parties to spread its messaging and counter the unfavorable storyline. At least two additional contractors — DCI and MarketLeverage — joined TigerSwan in trying to burnish Energy Transfer’s image. TigerSwan recruited retired Maj. Gen. James “Spider” Marks, who led intelligence efforts for the Army during the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and served on TigerSwan’s advisory board, to write favorable op-eds and deliver commentary. (Marks did not respond to a request for comment.) With its veneer of law enforcement authority, the National Sheriffs’ Association would become Energy Transfer’s most powerful third-party voice.

Together, TigerSwan, the National Sheriffs’ Association, and the public relations contractors formed a powerful public relations machine, monitoring social media closely, convincing outside groups to promote pro-pipeline messaging, and planting stories.

Off the Record Strategies, the public relations firm working for the National Sheriffs’ Association, coordinated with the opposition research firm Delve to track activists’ social media pages, arrest records, and funding sources. The companies sought to paint the protesters as violent, professional, billionaire-funded, out-of-state agitators whose camps represented the true ecological disaster, as well as to identify movement infighting that might be exploited. Both companies were led by Bush administration alumni. (Delve did not respond to a request for comment.)

Framing water protectors as criminals was a key National Sheriffs’ Association strategy. ”Let’s start drumbeat of the worst of the worst this week?” Pfeifle, Off the Record’s CEO, suggested to the head of the sheriffs’ group in one email. “One or two a day? Move them out through social media…The out of state wife beaters, child abusers and thieves first… Mugshot, ND arrest date, rap sheet and other data wrapped in and easy to share?”

The result was “wanted”-style posters — called “Professional Protestors with Dangerous Criminal Histories” — featuring pipeline opponents’ photos and criminal records, which Pfeifle’s team circulated online and routinely shared with TigerSwan. The National Sheriffs’ Association repeatedly asked TigerSwan to help “move” its criminal record research on social media, and TigerSwan repurposed the sheriffs’ group arrest research for its own propaganda products.

Pfeifle also made summary statistics of protesters’ arrest records and a map of where they were from. The color-coded map came with a running tally of the number of protesters. The details collected by Pfeifle then began showing up in blogs and remarks by police to reporters. One piece by KXMB-TV, a television station in Bismarck, North Dakota, repeated almost verbatim statistics summarizing the number of protesters arrested and their criminal histories, noting that “just 8 percent are from North Dakota.”

“They make it harder for people to engage in peaceful protest. People are arrested and they say, ‘See, those people are criminals.’”

Naomi Oreskes, a science historian who has researched the fossil fuel industry’s communications strategies, said the attempt to frame environmental defenders as criminals was consistent with the long trend of attempts to discredit activists. However, it was also “particularly noxious,” she said, because the energy industry has pushed for stronger penalties against trespass and other anti-protest laws. “They make it harder for people to engage in peaceful protest,” said Oreskes. “People are arrested and they say, ‘See, those people are criminals.’”

DCI, which got its start “doing the dirty work of the tobacco industry” and helped found the tea party movement, was also a key player influencing media coverage, placing and distributing op-eds. In one exchange between DCI partner Megan Bloomgren, who would later become a top Trump administration official, and Reese, Bloomgren sent a list of 14 articles “we’ve placed that we’ve been pushing over social media.” The articles ranged from opinion pieces in support of the pipeline in local newspapers to posts on right-wing blogs.

Oreskes said using opinion articles in this way is a common strategy pioneered by the tobacco industry, among others. “You push that out into social media to make it seem as if there’s broad grassroots support for the pipeline,” said Oreskes. ”The reader doesn’t know that this is part of a coordinated strategy by the industry.”

MarketLeverage, another Energy Transfer contractor, also spent a considerable amount of its resources tracking social media and boosting pro-pipeline messages. In the weeks following the dog attacks, for instance, Shane Hackett, a top official with MarketLeverage, suggested highlighting a Facebook post by Archie Fool Bear, a Standing Rock tribal member who was critical of the NoDAPL movement. “We need to exploit that shit immediately while we have a chance,” a TigerSwan operative wrote in response to an email from their colleague Rice, the chief propagandist. (Neither DCI nor Market Leverage responded to requests for comment.)

Hackett suggested creating a graphic out of the tribal member’s post and having “other accounts share his post with the same hashtags.” Rice provided the social media text and hashtags, including, “Respected Tribe Members Call Attention to Standing Rock Leadership Lies and Failures #TribeLiesMatter #NoDAPL #SiouxTruth.” Obscure social media accounts then repeated the exact language.

“These people who are trained to use whatever publicity they can for their advantage, they’re going to do what they want anyway,” Fool Bear told The Intercept and Grist. “They don’t live in my shoes, and they don’t believe in what my beliefs are. If they’re going to take what I say and manipulate it, I can’t stop them.”

Protesters confront police guarding a bridge near Oceti Sakowin Camp on the edge of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation on Nov. 30, 2016, outside Cannon Ball, N.D.

Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images

Sheriffs vs. Indigenous and Environmental Justice

Off the Record Strategies and the National Sheriffs’ Association didn’t just focus on issues of law-breaking. The association parroted some of the same messages that TigerSwan — as well as climate change deniers in Congress — were trafficking. Notable among them was a right-wing conspiracy theory that the environmental movement was “directed and controlled” by a club of billionaires.

The National Sheriffs’ Association also tried to undermine the credibility of well-known advocates Bill McKibben and Jane Kleeb, who founded the environmental organizations 350.org and Bold Alliance, respectively. Pfeifle circulated memos on the two movement leaders. “McKibben is a radical liberal determined to ‘bankrupt’ energy producers,” said one, adding, “McKibben will join any protest because he enjoys the fanfare.” Another memo said, “Kleeb admitted her pipeline opposition was about political organization and opportunity, not the environment.”

Kleeb and McKibben expressed bemusement at TigerSwan and the sheriffs’ association’s fixation on their work. “It’s all pretty creepy,” McKibben, a former Grist board member, said in an email. “I live in a county with a sheriff, and it seems okay if he tracks the speed of my car down Rte 116, but tracking every word I write seems like… not his job.”

The sheriffs’ group also listed the nonprofit organizations Center for Biological Diversity, Rainforest Action Network, and Food & Water Watch as “Extremist Environmental Groups” — a pejorative used by some authoritarian government officials, including from the Trump administration.

“Campaigning against corporations driving our climate crisis and human rights violations is not extremist,” said Rainforest Action Network Executive Director Ginger Cassady. Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said the association’s flyer contained “categorically false” information about the organization — a sentiment repeated by others mentioned throughout TigerSwan’s other records.

“We would urge the Sheriffs’ Association to focus on its own responsibilities instead of attempting to undermine well-meaning organizations like ours,” added Wenonah Hauter, Food & Water Watch’s executive director.

Both the National Sheriffs’ Association and TigerSwan took pride in meddling in tribal affairs. Reese enthusiastically encouraged his personnel to spread a story that the Prairie Knights Casino, run by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, was discharging sewage into the Missouri River watershed. Meanwhile, the sheriffs’ association worked with TigerSwan to push a story about a drop in revenue at the casino. In an email to TigerSwan’s Rice, Pfeifle noted that the issue had been raised at a recent Standing Rock tribal council meeting.

“We moved this story on front page of Sunday Bismarck Tribune and in SAB blog Friday, playing perfectly into the ‘get-out’ narrative going into next week,” Pfeifle wrote to Rice a few days later, referring to the conservative Say Anything Blog. “Please help echo and amplify, if possible.”

Using newsletters and news-like web sites to discredit pipeline opponents’ concerns as “fake news” was a top tactic for both TigerSwan and the National Sheriffs’ Association. The irony of the strategy was not lost on its protagonists.

Over WhatsApp, in June 2017, Rice, the propagandist, chatted with Wesley Fricks, TigerSwan’s director of external affairs, about a possible response to a Facebook video in which an unnamed reporter described recently published news reports on TigerSwan’s tactics. They would post it on one of the astroturf sites Rice created and describe it as “fake news.”

“That will cause a few people’s brains to explode,” Rice wrote in a WhatsApp message. “fake news calling fake news fake which is calling other news fake?”

Frick replied, “One big circle.”

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Alleen Brown.

Their protest encampment razed, the Indigenous-led environmental movement at North Dakota’s Standing Rock reservation was searching for a new tactic. By March 2017, the fight over the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline had been underway for months. Leaders of the movement to defend Indigenous rights on the land — and its waterways — had a new aim: to march on Washington. 

Native leaders and activists, calling themselves water protectors, wanted to show the newly elected President Donald Trump that they would continue to fight for their treaty rights to lands including the pipeline route. The march would be called “Native Nations Rise.”

Law enforcement was getting ready, too — and discussing plans with Energy Transfer, the parent company of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Throughout much of the uprising against the pipeline, the National Sheriffs’ Association talked routinely with TigerSwan, Energy Transfer’s lead security firm on the project, working hand-in-hand to craft pro-pipeline messaging. A top official with the sheriffs’ public relations contractor, Off The Record Strategies, floated a plan to TigerSwan’s lead propagandist, a man named Robert Rice.

“Thoughts on a crew or a news reporter — or someone pretending to be — with a camera and microphone to report from the main rally on the Friday, ask questions about pipeline and slice together [sic]?” Mark Pfeifle suggested over email.

A security firm led by a former member of the U.S. military’s shadowy special forces, TigerSwan was no stranger to such deception. The company had, in fact, used fake reporters before — including Rice himself — to spread its message and to spy on pipeline opponents. The National Sheriffs’ Association’s involvement in advocating for a similar disinformation campaign against the anti-pipeline movement has not been previously reported.

The email from the National Sheriffs’ Association PR shop was among the more than 55,000 internal TigerSwan documents obtained by The Intercept and Grist through a public records request. The documents, released by the North Dakota Private Investigation and Security Board, reveal how TigerSwan and the sheriffs’ group worked together to twist the story in the media so that it aligned with the oil company’s interests — seeking to pollute the public’s perception of the water protectors.

The documents also outline details of previously unreported collaborations on the ground between TigerSwan and police forces. During the uprising at Standing Rock, TigerSwan provided law enforcement support with helicopter flights, medics, and security guards. The private security firm pushed for the purchase by Energy Transfer of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of radios for the cops. TigerSwan also placed an order for a catalog of so-called less-lethal weapons for police use, including tear gas. The security contractor even planned to facilitate an exchange where Energy Transfer and police could share purported evidence of illegal activity.

Meanwhile, communications firms working for Energy Transfer and the National Sheriffs’ Association worked together to write newsletters, plant pro-pipeline articles in the media, and circulate “wanted”-style posters of particular protesters, the documents show. And the heads of both the National Sheriffs’ Association and TigerSwan engaged in discussions on strategy to counter the anti-pipeline movement, with propaganda becoming a priority for both the police and private security. 

“It is extremely dangerous to have private interests dictating and coloring the flow of administrative justice,” said Chase Iron Eyes, director of the media organization Last Real Indians and a member of the Oceti Sakowin people. Iron Eyes was active at Standing Rock and mentioned in TigerSwan’s files. “We learned at Standing Rock, law and order serves capital and property.”

Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier, whose jurisdiction in Morton County, North Dakota, abuts the Standing Rock reservation, said collaboration with pipeline security was limited. “We had a cooperation with them in reference to the pipeline workers’ safety while conducting their business,” he said in an email. “TigerSwan was not to be involved in any law enforcement detail.” (TigerSwan, Energy Transfer, and the National Sheriffs’ Association did not respond to requests for comment.)

Rice, the TigerSwan propagandist, had posed as a news anchor for anti-protester segments posted on a Facebook page he created to sway the local community against the Standing Rock protests. But when Pfeifle, the sheriff group’s PR man, suggested pretending to be a reporter at the Native Nations Rise protest, Rice was unavailable. Pfeifle found another way to tell the pipeline and police’s story: a far-right news website founded by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Pfeifle wrote to Rice: “We did get Daily Caller to cover event yesterday [sic].”

The idea of working with police was baked into Energy Transfer’s arrangement with TigerSwan. The firm’s contract for the Dakota Access Pipeline specifically assigned Tigerswan to “take the lead with various law enforcement agencies per state, county, state National Guard and the federal interagency if required.”

Cooperation between Energy Transfer’s security operation and law enforcement, however, began even before TigerSwan arrived on the scene. A PowerPoint presentation from Silverton, another contractor hired by Energy Transfer, described its relationship with law enforcement as a “public private partnership.” The September 2016 presentation said that a private intelligence cell was “coordinating with LE” — law enforcement — “and helping develop Person of Interest packets specifically designed to aid in LE prosecution.”

Multiple documents make clear that part of the purpose of Energy Transfer’s intelligence collection was to support law enforcement prosecutions. A September 2016 document describing TigerSwan’s early priorities said: “Continue to collect information of an evidentiary level in order to further the DAPL Security effort and assist Law Enforcement with information to aid in prosecution.”  

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The collaboration extended to materiel. TigerSwan operatives realized soon after they arrived that local law enforcement lacked encrypted radios and could not communicate with state or municipal law enforcement — or with Dakota Access Pipeline security, according to emails. Energy Transfer purchased 100 radios, for $391,347, with plans to lease a number of them to law enforcement officers. 

”We want them to go to LEO as a gift which represents DAPL’s concern for public safety,” wrote Tom Siguaw, a senior director at Energy Transfer, in an email. 

During large protest events, TigerSwan and police worked together to keep water protectors from interfering with construction. On one day in late October 2016, the day of the protests’ largest mass arrest, Energy Transfer’s security personnel “held law enforcement’s east flank” and supported sheriffs’ deputies and national guard members with seven medical personnel and two helicopters, named Valkyrie and Saber. 

After the incident, TigerSwan planned to set up a shared drive, where law enforcement could upload crime reports and charging documents and TigerSwan could share photographs and pipeline opponents’ social media. Documents show other instances where TigerSwan set up online exchanges with law enforcement. In a February 2017 PowerPoint presentation, TigerSwan described plans to use another shared drive to post security personnel’s videos and photographs, taken both aerially and on the ground during a different mass arrest. 

A Dakota Access Pipeline helicopter also supported also supported law enforcement officials during one of the most notorious nights of the crackdown, when police unleashed water hoses on water protectors in below-freezing temperatures in November 2016. By morning, police were in danger of running out of less-lethal weapons — which can still be deadly, but are designed to incapacitate their targets. TigerSwan and Energy Transfer again stepped in. 

TigerSwan founder James Reese, a former commander in the elite Army Special Operations unit Delta Force, reached out to a contact at the North Carolina Highway Patrol. North Carolina had recently used TigerSwan’s GuardianAngel mapping tool to respond to uprisings in Charlotte, in the aftermath of the 2016 police killing of Keith Scott. (A spokesperson from the North Carolina Department of Public Safety said the agency does not currently have a relationship with TigerSwan.)

Reese sent a list of weaponry sought by North Dakota law enforcement to an officer from the Highway Patrol. The list included tear gas, pepper spray, bean bag rounds, and foam rounds. The official referred Reese to a contact at Safariland, which manufactures the gear.

“We will purchase the items, and gift them to LE,” Reese told the Safariland representative. “We need a nation wide push if you can help?”

Meanwhile, another TigerSwan team member sent the Minnesota-based police supply store Streicher’s an even longer list of less-lethal weapons and ammunition. “Please confirm availability of the following price and ship immediately with overnight delivery,” TigerSwan’s Phil Rehak wrote. 

Rehak told The Intercept and Grist his job was to procure equipment — including for law enforcement. “I would be given an order by either somebody from TigerSwan or maybe even law enforcement, being like, ‘Hey, can you find these supplies?’” He said he doesn’t know if the less-lethal weaponry was ultimately delivered to the sheriffs.

“I am not aware of any radios for Morton County or any less lethal weapons from Tiger Swan,” Kirchmeier, the Morton County sheriff, told The Intercept and Grist in an email. “I dealt with ND DES for resources.” (Two other sheriffs involved with the multiagency law enforcement response did not answer requests for comment. Eric Jensen, a spokesperson for the North Dakota Department of Emergency Services, said the agency had no arrangement with TigerSwan or Energy Transfer to provide less-lethal weapons, and that they wouldn’t have knowledge of any arrangements between law enforcement and the companies.)

The “partnership” went both ways, with TigerSwan sometimes viewing law enforcement weapons as potential assets. In mid-October 2016, as senior Energy Transfer personnel prepared to join state officials for a government archeological survey to examine the pipeline route, three law enforcement “snipers” agreed to be on standby with an air team, according to a memo by another security company, RGT, that was working under TigerSwan’s management. A Predator drone was listed among “friendly assets” in the memo.

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TigerSwan routinely shared what it learned about the protest movement with local police, but most of what the documents describe in the way of reciprocal sharing — from law enforcement to TigerSwan — came from the National Sheriffs’ Association.

In March 2017, the sheriffs’ group helped the South Dakota legislature pass a law to prevent future Standing Rock-style pipeline uprisings, the documents say. To support the effort, the Morton County Sheriff’s Office sent along a “law enforcement sensitive” state operational update from the North Dakota State & Local Intelligence Center. National Sheriffs’ Association head Jonathan Thompson forwarded the document to TigerSwan executive Shawn Sweeney. Thompson recommended Sweeney look at the last page, which included a list of anti-pipeline camps across the U.S. 

TigerSwan also recruited at least one law enforcement officer with whom it worked on the ground. In November 2016, Reese requested a phone call with Major Chad McGinty of the Ohio State Patrol, who had acted as commander of a team from Ohio sent to assist police in North Dakota. By February 1, McGinty, who declined to comment for this story, was working for TigerSwan as a law enforcement liaison, earning more than $440 a day. 

TigerSwan’s contract also mandated that the firm help Energy Transfer tell its story. The firm was expected “to help turn the page on the story that we are being overwhelmed with over the past few weeks,” according to a document from mid-September 2016.

Energy Transfer’s image was in trouble early on. Critical media coverage of Standing Rock grew dramatically in early September after private security guards hired by the company unleashed guard dogs on protesters. A flood of reporters arrived on the ground to cover the protests. Social media posts routinely went viral. The narrative that took hold portrayed the pipeline company as instigating violence against peaceful protesters. 

Energy Transfer recruited third parties to spread its messaging and counter the unfavorable storyline. At least two additional contractors — DCI and MarketLeverage — joined TigerSwan in trying to burnish Energy Transfer’s image. TigerSwan recruited retired Major General James “Spider” Marks, who led intelligence efforts for the Army during the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and served on TigerSwan’s advisory board, to write favorable op-eds and deliver commentary. (Marks did not respond to a request for comment.) With its veneer of law enforcement authority, the National Sheriffs’ Association would become Energy Transfer’s most powerful third-party voice. Representatives for DCI and MarketLeverage and Marks did not respond to a request for comment.

Together, TigerSwan, the National Sheriffs’ Association, and the public relations contractors formed a powerful public relations machine, monitoring social media closely, convincing outside groups to promote pro-pipeline messaging, and planting stories.

Off the Record Strategies, the public relations firm working for the National Sheriffs’ Association, coordinated with the opposition research firm Delve to track activists’ social media pages, arrest records, and funding sources. The companies sought to paint the protesters as violent, professional, billionaire-funded, out-of-state agitators, whose camps represented the true ecological disaster, as well as to identify movement infighting that might be exploited. Both companies were led by Bush Administration alumni. (Delve did not respond to a request for comment.)

Framing water protectors as criminals was a key National Sheriffs’ Association strategy. ”Let’s start drumbeat of the worst of the worst this week?” Pfeifle, Off the Record’s CEO, suggested to the head of the sheriffs’ group in one email. “One or two a day? Move them out through social media…The out of state wife beaters, child abusers and thieves first… Mugshot, ND arrest date, rap sheet and other data wrapped in and easy to share?”

The result was “wanted”-style posters — called “Professional Protestors with Dangerous Criminal Histories” — featuring pipeline opponents’ photos and criminal records, which Pfeifle’s team circulated online and routinely shared with TigerSwan. The National Sheriffs’ Association repeatedly asked TigerSwan to help “move” its criminal record research on social media, and TigerSwan repurposed the sheriffs’ group arrest research for its own propaganda products.

Pfeifle also made summary statistics of protesters’ arrest records and a map of where they were from. The color-coded map came with a running tally of the number of protesters. The details collected by Pfeifle then began showing up in blogs and remarks by police to reporters. One piece by KXMB-TV, a television station in Bismarck, North Dakota, repeated almost verbatim statistics summarizing the number of protesters arrested and their criminal histories, noting that “just 8 percent are from North Dakota.” Neither Delve nor Pfeifle responded to requests for comment.

Naomi Oreskes, a science historian who has researched the fossil fuel industry’s communications strategies, said the attempt to frame environmental defenders as criminals was consistent with a long trend of attempts to discredit activists. However, it was also “particularly noxious,” she said, because the energy industry has pushed for stronger penalties against trespass and other anti-protest laws. “They make it harder for people to engage in peaceful protest,” said Oreskes. “People are arrested and they say, ‘See, those people are criminals.’”

DCI, which got its start “doing the dirty work of the tobacco industry” and helped found the Tea Party movement, was also a key player influencing media coverage, placing op-eds and distributing them. In one exchange between DCI partner Megan Bloomgren, who would later become a top Trump administration official, and Reese, Bloomgren sent a list of 14 articles “we’ve placed that we’ve been pushing over social media.” The articles ranged from opinion pieces in support of the pipeline in local newspapers to posts on right-wing blogs.

Oreskes said using opinion articles this way is a common strategy pioneered by the tobacco industry, among others. “You push that out into social media to make it seem as if there’s broad, grassroots support for the pipeline,” said Oreskes. ”The reader doesn’t know that this is part of a coordinated strategy by the industry.”

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MarketLeverage, another Energy Transfer contractor, also spent a considerable amount of its resources tracking social media and boosting pro-pipeline messages. In the weeks following the dog attacks, for instance, Shane Hackett, a top official with MarketLeverage, suggested highlighting a Facebook post by Archie Fool Bear, a Standing Rock tribal member who was critical of the NoDAPL movement. (Neither DCI nor MarketLeverage responded to requests for comment.)

“We need to exploit that shit immediately while we have a chance,” a TigerSwan operative wrote in in response to an email from their colleague Rice, the chief propagandist.

Hackett suggested creating creating a graphic out of the tribal member’s post and having “other accounts share his post with the same hashtags.” Rice provided the social media text and hashtags, including, “Respected Tribe Members Call Attention to Standing Rock Leadership Lies and Failures #TribeLiesMatter #NoDAPL #SiouxTruth.” Obscure social media accounts then repeated the exact language.

“These people who are trained to use whatever publicity they can for their advantage 

they’re going to do what they want anyway,” Fool Bear told The Intercept and Grist. “They don’t live in my shoes, and they don’t believe in what my beliefs are. If they’re going to take what I say and manipulate it, I can’t stop them.”

Off the Record Strategies and the National Sheriffs’ Association didn’t just focus on issues of law-breaking. The association parroted some of the same messages that TigerSwan — as well as climate change deniers in Congress — were trafficking. Notable among them was a right-wing conspiracy theory that the environmental movement was “directed and controlled” by a club of billionaires. 

The National Sheriffs’ Association also tried to undermine the credibility of well-known advocates Bill McKibben (a former Grist board member) and Jane Kleeb, who founded the environmental organizations 350.org and Bold Alliance, respectively. Pfeifle circulated memos on the two movement leaders. “McKibben is a radical liberal determined to ‘bankrupt’ energy producers,” said one, adding, “McKibben will join any protest because he enjoys the fanfare.” Another memo said, “Kleeb admitted her pipeline opposition was about political organization and opportunity, not the environment.” 

Kleeb and McKibben expressed bemusement at TigerSwan and the sheriffs’ association’s fixation on their work. “It’s all pretty creepy,” McKibben said in an email. “I live in a county with a sheriff, and it seems okay if he tracks the speed of my car down Rte 116, but tracking every word I write seems like… not his job.” 

The sheriffs’ group also listed the nonprofit organizations Center for Biological Diversity, Rainforest Action Network, and Food & Water Watch as “Extremist Environmental Groups” — a pejorative used by some conservative government officials, including from the Trump administration. 

“Campaigning against corporations driving our climate crisis and human rights violations is not extremist,” said Rainforest Action Network executive director Ginger Cassady. Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said the association’s flyer contained “categorically false” information about the organization — a sentiment repeated by others mentioned throughout TigerSwan’s other records.

“We would urge the Sheriffs’ Association to focus on its own responsibilities instead of attempting to undermine well-meaning organizations like ours,” added Wenonah Hauter, Food & Water Watch’s executive director.

Both the National Sheriffs’ Association and TigerSwan took pride in meddling in tribal affairs. Reese enthusiastically encouraged his personnel his personnel to spread a story that the Prairie Knights Casino, run by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, was discharging sewage into the Missouri River Watershed. Meanwhile, the sheriffs’ association worked with TigerSwan to push a story about a drop in revenue at the casino. In an email to TigerSwan’s Rice, Pfeifle noted that the issue had been raised at a recent Standing Rock tribal council meeting. 

“We moved this story on front page of Sunday Bismarck Tribune and in SAB blog Friday, playing perfectly into the ‘get-out’ narrative going into next week,” Pfeifle wrote to Rice a few days later, referring to the conservative Say Anything Blog. “Please help echo and amplify, if possible.”

Using newsletters and news-like web sites to discredit pipeline opponents’ concerns as “fake news” was a top tactic for both TigerSwan and the National Sheriffs’ Association. The irony of the strategy was not lost on its protagonists.

Over WhatsApp, in June 2017, Rice, the propagandist, chatted with Wesley Fricks, TigerSwan’s director of external affairs, about a possible response to a Facebook video in which an unnamed reporter described recently published news reports on TigerSwan’s tactics. They would post it on one of the astroturf sites Rice created and describe it as “fake news.” 

“That will cause a few people’s brains to explode,” Rice wrote in a WhatsApp message. “fake news calling fake news fake which is calling other news fake?”

Frick replied, “One big circle.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline How an energy giant helped law enforcement quell the Standing Rock protests on May 22, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Alleen Brown.

There are instruments so dangerous to the rights of the nation and which place them so totally at the mercy of their governors that those governors, whether legislative or executive, should be restrained from keeping such instruments on foot but in well-defined cases. Such an instrument is a standing army.

— Thomas Jefferson, 1789

What does it say about the state of our freedoms that there are now more pencil-pushing, bureaucratic (non-military) government agents armed with weapons than U.S. Marines?

Among the agencies being supplied with night-vision equipment, body armor, hollow-point bullets, shotguns, drones, assault rifles and LP gas cannons are the IRS, Smithsonian, U.S. Mint, Health and Human Services, FDA, Small Business Administration, Social Security Administration, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Education Department, Energy Department, Bureau of Engraving and Printing and an assortment of public universities.

Add in the Biden Administration’s plans to swell the ranks of the IRS by 87,000 new employees (some of whom will be authorized to use deadly force) and grow the nation’s police forces by 100,000 more cops, and you’ve got a nation in the throes of martial law.

We’re being frog-marched into tyranny at the end of a loaded gun.

Make that hundreds of thousands of loaded guns.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the number of federal agents armed with guns, ammunition and military-style equipment, authorized to make arrests, and trained in military tactics has nearly tripled over the past several decades.

As Adam Andrzejewski writes for Forbes, “the federal government has become one never-ending gun show.”

While Americans have to jump through an increasing number of hoops in order to own a gun, federal agencies have been placing orders for hundreds of millions of rounds of hollow point bullets and military gear.

For example, the IRS has stockpiled 4,500 guns and five million rounds of ammunition in recent years, including 621 shotguns, 539 long-barrel rifles and 15 submachine guns.

The Veterans Administration purchased 11 million rounds of ammunition (equivalent to 2,800 rounds for each of their officers), along with camouflage uniforms, riot helmets and shields, specialized image enhancement devices and tactical lighting.

The Department of Health and Human Services acquired 4 million rounds of ammunition, in addition to 1,300 guns, including five submachine guns and 189 automatic firearms for its Office of Inspector General.

According to an in-depth report on “The Militarization of the U.S. Executive Agencies,” the Social Security Administration secured 800,000 rounds of ammunition for their special agents, as well as armor and guns.

The Environmental Protection Agency owns 600 guns. The Smithsonian now employs 620-armed “special agents.”

Even agencies such as Amtrak and NASA have their own SWAT teams.

Ask yourselves: why are government agencies being turned into military outposts?

What’s with the buildup of SWAT teams within non-security-related federal agencies? Even the Department of Agriculture, the Railroad Retirement Board, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Office of Personnel Management, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Education Department have their own SWAT teams. Most of those officers are under the command of either the Department of Homeland Security or the Department of Justice.

Why does the Department of Agriculture need .40 caliber semiautomatic submachine guns and hollow point bullets? For that matter, why do its agents need ballistic vests and body armor?

For that matter, why do IRS agents need AR-15 rifles?

Why do local police need armored personnel carriers with gun ports, compact submachine guns with 30-round magazines, precision battlefield sniper rifles, and military-grade assault-style rifles and carbines?

Why is the federal government distributing obscene amounts of military equipment, weapons and ammunition to police departments around the country?

Why is the military partnering with local police to conduct training drills around the country? And what exactly are they training for? The public has been disallowed from obtaining any information about the purpose of these realistic urban training drills, other than that they might be loud and to not be alarmed.

We should be alarmed.

As James Madison warned, “We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.”

Unfortunately, we’re long past the first experiment on our freedoms, and merely taking alarm over this build-up of military might will no longer suffice.

Nothing about this de facto army of bureaucratic, administrative, non-military, paper-pushing, non-traditional law enforcement agencies is necessary for national security.

Moreover, while these weaponized, militarized, civilian forces which are armed with military-style guns, ammunition and equipment; trained in military tactics; and authorized to make arrests and use deadly force—may look and act like the military, they are not the military.

Rather, they are foot soldiers of the police state’s standing army, and they are growing in number at an alarming rate.

This standing army—a.k.a. a national police force—vested with the power to completely disregard the Constitution and rule by force is exactly what America’s founders feared, and its danger cannot be overstated or ignored.

This is exactly 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: Battlefield tactics. 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. Intimidation tactics. Brute force. Laws conveniently discarded when it suits the government’s purpose.

The militarization of America’s police forces in recent decades, which has gone hand in hand with the militarization of America’s bureaucratic agencies, has merely sped up the timeline by which the nation is transformed into an authoritarian regime.

Now we find ourselves struggling to retain some semblance of freedom in the face of administrative, police and law enforcement agencies that look and act like the military with little to no regard for the Fourth Amendment, laws such as the NDAA that allow the military to arrest and indefinitely detain American citizens, and military drills that acclimate the American people to the sight of armored tanks in the streets, military encampments in cities, and combat aircraft patrolling overhead.

This quasi-state of martial law has been helped along by government policies and court rulings that have made it easier for the police to shoot unarmed citizens, for law enforcement agencies to seize cash and other valuable private property under the guise of asset forfeiture, for military weapons and tactics to be deployed on American soil, for government agencies to carry out round-the-clock surveillance, for legislatures to render otherwise lawful activities as extremist if they appear to be anti-government, for profit-driven private prisons to lock up greater numbers of Americans, for homes to be raided and searched under the pretext of national security, for American citizens to be labeled terrorists and stripped of their rights merely on the say-so of a government bureaucrat, and for pre-crime tactics to be adopted nationwide that strip Americans of the right to be assumed innocent until proven guilty and creates a suspect society in which we are all guilty until proven otherwise.

Don’t delude yourself into believing that this thinly-veiled exercise in martial law is anything other than an attempt to bulldoze what remains of the Constitution and reinforce the iron-fisted rule of the police state.

This is no longer about partisan politics or civil unrest or even authoritarian impulses.

This is a turning point.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we are sliding fast down a slippery slope to a Constitution-free America.

If we are to have any hope of salvaging what’s left of our battered freedoms, we’d do well to start by disarming the IRS and the rest of the federal and state bureaucratic agencies, de-militarizing domestic police forces, and dismantling the police state’s standing army.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

The Earth is burning, and our schools are crumbling. Investments in healthy, sustainable, green schools can help solve both problems.

As a result of human-caused greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, generated primarily by the combustion of fossil fuels, the global climate is now about 1°C (nearly 2°F) warmer than the historical climate in which modern civilization emerged. Every amount of GHG emitted into the atmosphere worsens the global climate crisis, leading to real and increasingly measurable risks to human and ecosystem health, to the economy, and to global security. Predominantly Black and Brown communities and economically disadvantaged communities are at the frontlines of the impacts of the crisis.

At the same time, our nation’s public schools are drastically in need of improvements. According to the Aspen Institute, there are nearly 100,000 public schools in the U.S. They are, on average, 50 years old and emit 78 million metric tons of CO2 per year at an energy cost of about $8 billion annually. Investments in school infrastructure and climate mitigation, including the replacement of outdated and ineffective heating and cooling systems, improvements to ventilation and insulation, the installation of rooftop solar, and the remediation of asbestos, lead, and mold will not only improve the school environment for students and staff, but will also address historical injustices along the lines of race and class. These investments will also contribute to stabilizing the Earth’s climate.

That's why this Earth Week (April 17-22), students, educators, parents, school staff, and community members around the U.S. are taking action to demand healthy, green schools now.

Educators in locals like the Chicago Teachers Union, the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, the New Jersey Education Association in Atlantic County, and New York’s United Federation of Teachers passed resolutions demanding action plans from their districts for green, healthy, fully-resourced community schools, prioritizing racial justice and disadvantaged communities. Educators across the country will be taking action during the week in a variety of ways.

This Earth Week, students, educators, parents, school staff, and community members around the U.S. are taking action to demand healthy, green schools now.

In the Seattle Education Association, educators will fight to expand on their recent victory of a nearly $20 million bond levy to make green, healthy retrofits to Seattle public schools, creating good union jobs and pathways to those jobs for students. Minneapolis educators will fight against the nearby Hennepin Energy Recovery Center, which creates large amounts of toxic air pollution and carbon emissions by burning garbage within a low-income community of color. Some educators from the Educators Climate Action Network (ECAN), the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, and United Teachers Los Angeles, will be teaching lessons on the climate crisis and climate justice to their students in the classroom. Members of the Oakland Education Association will be participating in a community cleanup with the Alameda Labor Council.

The Chicago Teachers Union, Climate Justice Committee, launched a multidisciplinary program with educators and community members earlier in the year and has been building momentum and skills to engage in environmental justice action. For example, leading to Earth Day, twenty K-12 educators from all across Chicago enrolled in the Teaching Climate Justice Through Interdisciplinary Learning professional development class co-taught by a Fine Arts teacher and Environmental Science teacher to develop climate justice lesson plans for the Earth Week of Action. On Earth Day, Chicago Teachers Union members, in collaboration with Chicago Bike Grid Now organizers, plan to engage in a Pedal for the Planet event to educate and advocate for collective demands such as safer bike infrastructure and funding for healthy, green, sustainable community schools.

Going beyond the week of action, the United Teachers of Los Angeles have proposed an entire article on healthy green schools during their contract negotiations this year. The demands include climate literacy curricula, a green jobs study, a green school plan, including conversion to electric buses and renewable energy systems, and clean water, free from lead and other toxins. And the Boston Teachers Union has fought hard both to get a Green New Deal for Public Schools on the agenda with the city’s mayor and to ensure a meaningful seat at the table for the union as the plan moves forward.

Taken together, these actions represent a growing movement of educators across the U.S. seizing the moment to realize healthy green schools and make a Green New Deal for Education. We hope you will join us during this Earth Week to demand healthy green schools for our students and communities. You can join the Educators Climate Action Network to learn more and get involved. Together we can save the world, one school at a time.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Todd E. Vachon.

A private security firm that worked with law enforcement to suppress the Indigenous-led movement against the Dakota Access Pipeline targeted peaceful activist groups including the 350.org climate campaign as part of a sweeping surveillance effort, according to a report published Thursday by The Intercept.

Previous reporting by The Intercept's Alleen Brown showed how TigerSwan—which was founded by U.S. special forces veteran James Reese—infiltrated and spied on water protectors during the 2016-2017 #NoDAPL protests at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North and South Dakota.

The new reporting from Brown and Naveena Sadasivam—who received more than 50,000 pages of documents via a public records request—details how "TigerSwan used social media monitoring, aerial surveillance, radio eavesdropping, undercover personnel, and subscription-based records databases to build watchlists and dossiers on Indigenous activists and environmental organizations."

TigerSwan—which did not even have the requisite security license to operate in North Dakota—then tried to sell the intelligence it illegally gleaned to other oil companies.

One of those groups was the nonviolent climate organization 350.org. According to a TigerSwan client document titled Background Investigation: 350.org:

350.org's ability to bring global attention to the DAPL protest via their network of supporters and their media concerns represents a significant concern for TigerSwan and their client. 350.org's ability to mobilize large groups of people is also of significant concern. They are unlikely to remove themselves from the protesters' groups because their goals align perfectly with the Standing Rock Sioux tribe. They have a track record of success and should only be engaged after significant preparation.

Brown and Sadasivam also found that:

TigerSwan also attempted to dig up dirt on legal workers with the Water Protector Legal Collective, which represented pipeline opponents. The security company used the CLEAR database, which is only available to select entities like law enforcement and licensed private security companies, to dig up information on attorney Chad Nodland...

At the same time, the National Sheriffs'Association was building its own profiles and sharing them with TigerSwan. In one instance, a contractor for the sheriffs' group passed along a six-page backgrounder on LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, a prominent Dakota Access pipeline opponent and historian, to TigerSwan. The document included statements Allard made to the press, her public appearances, social media posts, and details about tax liens filed against her and her husband.

"Across the globe we know that thousands of groups have been spied on by government and private security firms that are serving the interests of the fossil fuel industry," 350.org chief executive May Boeve said in a Thursday statement in response to the latest reporting. "This represents an astonishing abuse of power and significant interference with the right to political freedom of thought and the right to protest."

Wasté Win Young, a citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and a plaintiff in a class-action civil rights lawsuit against TigerSwan and local law enforcement, told The Intercept that for pipeline supporters, the surveillance "was an opportunity to help create a narrative against our tribe and our supporters."

Boeve contended that "ultimately, it is a means for those who hold power to preserve the status quo and prevent action on the climate crisis and necessary social change."

"We need to always be very clear that the industry knows what a risk the climate movement is," she told The Intercept. "They're going to keep using these kinds of strategies, but they'll think of other things as well."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

A private security firm that worked with law enforcement to suppress the Indigenous-led movement against the Dakota Access Pipeline targeted peaceful activist groups including the 350.org climate campaign as part of a sweeping surveillance effort, according to a report published Thursday by The Intercept.

Previous reporting by The Intercept's Alleen Brown showed how TigerSwan—which was founded by U.S. special forces veteran James Reese—infiltrated and spied on water protectors during the 2016-2017 #NoDAPL protests at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North and South Dakota.

The new reporting from Brown and Naveena Sadasivam—who received more than 50,000 pages of documents via a public records request—details how "TigerSwan used social media monitoring, aerial surveillance, radio eavesdropping, undercover personnel, and subscription-based records databases to build watchlists and dossiers on Indigenous activists and environmental organizations."

TigerSwan—which did not even have the requisite security license to operate in North Dakota—then tried to sell the intelligence it illegally gleaned to other oil companies.

One of those groups was the nonviolent climate organization 350.org. According to a TigerSwan client document titled Background Investigation: 350.org:

350.org's ability to bring global attention to the DAPL protest via their network of supporters and their media concerns represents a significant concern for TigerSwan and their client. 350.org's ability to mobilize large groups of people is also of significant concern. They are unlikely to remove themselves from the protesters' groups because their goals align perfectly with the Standing Rock Sioux tribe. They have a track record of success and should only be engaged after significant preparation.

Brown and Sadasivam also found that:

TigerSwan also attempted to dig up dirt on legal workers with the Water Protector Legal Collective, which represented pipeline opponents. The security company used the CLEAR database, which is only available to select entities like law enforcement and licensed private security companies, to dig up information on attorney Chad Nodland...

At the same time, the National Sheriffs'Association was building its own profiles and sharing them with TigerSwan. In one instance, a contractor for the sheriffs' group passed along a six-page backgrounder on LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, a prominent Dakota Access pipeline opponent and historian, to TigerSwan. The document included statements Allard made to the press, her public appearances, social media posts, and details about tax liens filed against her and her husband.

"Across the globe we know that thousands of groups have been spied on by government and private security firms that are serving the interests of the fossil fuel industry," 350.org chief executive May Boeve said in a Thursday statement in response to the latest reporting. "This represents an astonishing abuse of power and significant interference with the right to political freedom of thought and the right to protest."

Wasté Win Young, a citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and a plaintiff in a class-action civil rights lawsuit against TigerSwan and local law enforcement, told The Intercept that for pipeline supporters, the surveillance "was an opportunity to help create a narrative against our tribe and our supporters."

Boeve contended that "ultimately, it is a means for those who hold power to preserve the status quo and prevent action on the climate crisis and necessary social change."

"We need to always be very clear that the industry knows what a risk the climate movement is," she told The Intercept. "They're going to keep using these kinds of strategies, but they'll think of other things as well."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

A private security firm that worked with law enforcement to suppress the Indigenous-led movement against the Dakota Access Pipeline targeted peaceful activist groups including the 350.org climate campaign as part of a sweeping surveillance effort, according to a report published Thursday by The Intercept.

Previous reporting by The Intercept's Alleen Brown showed how TigerSwan—which was founded by U.S. special forces veteran James Reese—infiltrated and spied on water protectors during the 2016-2017 #NoDAPL protests at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North and South Dakota.

The new reporting from Brown and Naveena Sadasivam—who received more than 50,000 pages of documents via a public records request—details how "TigerSwan used social media monitoring, aerial surveillance, radio eavesdropping, undercover personnel, and subscription-based records databases to build watchlists and dossiers on Indigenous activists and environmental organizations."

TigerSwan—which did not even have the requisite security license to operate in North Dakota—then tried to sell the intelligence it illegally gleaned to other oil companies.

One of those groups was the nonviolent climate organization 350.org. According to a TigerSwan client document titled Background Investigation: 350.org:

350.org's ability to bring global attention to the DAPL protest via their network of supporters and their media concerns represents a significant concern for TigerSwan and their client. 350.org's ability to mobilize large groups of people is also of significant concern. They are unlikely to remove themselves from the protesters' groups because their goals align perfectly with the Standing Rock Sioux tribe. They have a track record of success and should only be engaged after significant preparation.

Brown and Sadasivam also found that:

TigerSwan also attempted to dig up dirt on legal workers with the Water Protector Legal Collective, which represented pipeline opponents. The security company used the CLEAR database, which is only available to select entities like law enforcement and licensed private security companies, to dig up information on attorney Chad Nodland...

At the same time, the National Sheriffs'Association was building its own profiles and sharing them with TigerSwan. In one instance, a contractor for the sheriffs' group passed along a six-page backgrounder on LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, a prominent Dakota Access pipeline opponent and historian, to TigerSwan. The document included statements Allard made to the press, her public appearances, social media posts, and details about tax liens filed against her and her husband.

"Across the globe we know that thousands of groups have been spied on by government and private security firms that are serving the interests of the fossil fuel industry," 350.org chief executive May Boeve said in a Thursday statement in response to the latest reporting. "This represents an astonishing abuse of power and significant interference with the right to political freedom of thought and the right to protest."

Wasté Win Young, a citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and a plaintiff in a class-action civil rights lawsuit against TigerSwan and local law enforcement, told The Intercept that for pipeline supporters, the surveillance "was an opportunity to help create a narrative against our tribe and our supporters."

Boeve contended that "ultimately, it is a means for those who hold power to preserve the status quo and prevent action on the climate crisis and necessary social change."

"We need to always be very clear that the industry knows what a risk the climate movement is," she told The Intercept. "They're going to keep using these kinds of strategies, but they'll think of other things as well."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

A new business model for breaking down environmental movements was being hatched in real time. On Labor Day weekend in 2016, private security dogs in North Dakota attacked pipeline opponents led by members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe as they approached earth-moving equipment. The tribal members considered the land sacred, and the heavy equipment was breaking ground to build the Dakota Access pipeline. With a major public relations crisis on its hands, the pipeline’s parent company, Energy Transfer, hired the firm TigerSwan to revamp its security strategy.

By October, TigerSwan — founded by James Reese, a retired commander of the elite special operations Army unit Delta Force — had established a military-style pipeline security strategy.

There was one nagging problem that threatened to unravel it all: Reese hadn’t acquired a security license from the North Dakota Private Investigation and Security Board. Although Reese claimed TigerSwan wasn’t conducting security services at all, the state regulator insisted that its operations were unlawful without a license.

TigerSwan turned to Jonathan Thompson, the head of the National Sheriffs’ Association, a trade group representing sheriffs, for help. The security board “has a problem understanding and staying within their charter,” Shawn Sweeney, TigerSwan’s senior vice president, wrote to Thompson. If he could “discuss possible political measures to apply pressure it will assist in the entire project success [sic],” the employee appealed.

Thompson was enthused to work with TigerSwan. “We are keen to be a strong partner where we can help keep the message narrative supportive [sic],” he wrote back. “[C]all if ever need anything.”

Jonathan Thompson, the executive director and CEO of the National Sheriffs’ Association speaks at a press conference at the U.S. Capitol on May 19, 2022, in Washington, D.C.

Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

“For them, it was an opportunity to help create a narrative against our tribe and our supporters.”

Sections of pipe sit near a farm at a construction site for Sunoco and Energy Transfer’s Mariner East 2 pipeline project near Morgantown, Pa., on Aug. 4, 2017.

Photo: Charles Mostoller/Bloomberg via Getty Images

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LaDonna Brave Bull Allard of Cannon Ball, N.D., talks with Maj. Gen. Donald Jackson of the Army Corps of Engineers during a demonstration against the proposed Dakota Access pipeline outside the Corps headquarters on Nov. 15, 2016, in Washington, D.C.

Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

“We need to start going after Tawasi as fast as we can over the next couple weeks so we can show some more stuff to ETP.”

An activist stands alone in silent protest by a police barricade on a bridge near Oceti Sakowin Camp on the edge of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation on Dec. 4, 2016, outside Cannon Ball, N.D.

Photo: Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

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This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Alleen Brown.

A new business model for breaking down environmental movements was being hatched in real time. On Labor Day weekend of 2016, private security dogs in North Dakota attacked pipeline opponents led by members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe as they approached earth-moving equipment. The tribal members considered the land sacred, and the heavy equipment was breaking ground to build the Dakota Access Pipeline. With a major public relations crisis on its hands, the pipeline’s parent company, Energy Transfer, hired the firm TigerSwan to revamp its security strategy. 

By October, TigerSwan, founded by James Reese, a retired commander of the elite special operations Army unit Delta Force, had established a military-style pipeline security strategy. 

There was one nagging problem that threatened to unravel it all: Reese hadn’t acquired a security license from the North Dakota Private Investigation and Security Board. Although Reese claimed TigerSwan wasn’t conducting security services at all, the state regulator insisted that its operations were unlawful without a license. 

TigerSwan turned to Jonathan Thompson, the head of the National Sheriffs’ Association, a trade group representing sheriffs, for help. The security board “has a problem understanding and staying within their charter,” Shawn Sweeney, TigerSwan’s senior vice president, wrote to Thompson. If he could “discuss possible political measures to apply pressure it will assist in the entire project success [sic],” the employee appealed.

Thompson was enthused to work with TigerSwan. “We are keen to be a strong partner where we can help keep the message narrative supportive,” he wrote back. “[C]all if ever need anything.”

Despite Thompson’s offer of assistance, TigerSwan continued to operate in North Dakota with no license for months. The company managed dozens of on-the-ground security guards, surveilled and infiltrated protesters, and passed along profiles of so-called “persons of interest” to one of the largest midstream energy companies in North America.

The revelation of TigerSwan’s close working relationship with the National Sheriffs’ Association is drawn from more than 50,000 pages of documents obtained by The Intercept through a public records request to the North Dakota Private Investigation and Security Board. In 2017, the board sued TigerSwan for providing security services without a license. The state eventually sought a $2 million dollar fine through the administrative process, but Tigerswan negotiated a $175,000 fine instead — well below standard fines for such activities. 

A discovery request filed as part of the case forced thousands of new internal TigerSwan documents into the public record. Energy Transfer’s lawyers fought for nearly two years to keep the documents secret, until North Dakota’s Supreme Court ruled in 2022 that the material falls under the state’s open records statute. Because an arrangement between North Dakota and Energy Transfer allows the fossil fuel company to weigh in on which documents should be redacted, the state has yet to release over 9,000 disputed pages containing material that Energy Transfer is, for now at least, fighting to keep out of the public eye.

The released documents provide startling new details about how TigerSwan used social media monitoring, aerial surveillance, radio eavesdropping, undercover personnel, and subscription-based records databases to build watch lists and dossiers on Indigenous activists and environmental organizations. 

At times the pipeline security company shared this information with law enforcement. In other cases, WhatsApp chats and emails confirm Tigerswan used what it gathered to follow pipeline opponents in their cars and develop propaganda campaigns online. The documents contain records of TigerSwan attempting to help Energy Transfer build a legal case against pipeline opponents, known as water protectors, using the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, a law that was passed to prosecute the mob. 

The Intercept and Grist contacted TigerSwan, Energy Transfer, the National Sheriffs’ Association, as well as Thompson, the group’s executive director. None of them responded to requests for comment.  

To TigerSwan, the emergence of Indigenous-led social movements to keep oil and gas in the ground represented a business opportunity. Reese anticipated new demand from the fossil fuel industry for strategies to undermine the network of activists his company had so carefully gathered information on. In the records, TigerSwan expressed its ambitions to repurpose these detailed records to position themselves as experts in managing pipeline protests. The company created marketing materials pitching work to at least two other energy companies building controversial oil and gas infrastructure, the records show. TigerSwan, which was staffed heavily with former members of military special operations units, branded its tactics as a “counterinsurgency approach,” drawing directly from its leaders’ experiences fighting the so-called War on Terror abroad. 

TigerSwan did not just work in North Dakota. Energy Transfer hired the company to provide security to its Rover Pipeline in Ohio and West Virginia, the documents confirm. By spring 2017, TigerSwan was also assembling intelligence reports on opponents of Energy Transfer and Sunoco’s Mariner East 2 Pipeline in Pennsylvania.

The documents from the North Dakota security board paint a detailed picture of counterinsurgency-style strategies for defeating opponents of oil and gas development, a War-on-Terror security firm’s aspirations to replicate its deceptive tactics far beyond the Northern Great Plains, and the cozy relationship between businesses linked to the fossil fuel industry and one of the largest law enforcement trade associations in the U.S. The impetus for spying was not simply to keep people safe, but to drum up profits from energy clients and to allow fossil fuels to continue flowing, at the expense of the communities fighting for clean water and a healthy climate.   

“For them, it was an opportunity to help create a narrative against our tribe and our supporters,” said Wasté Win Young, a citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and the one of the plaintiffs in a class action civil rights lawsuit against TigerSwan and local law enforcement. Young’s social media posts repeatedly showed up in the documents. “We weren’t motivated by money or payoffs or anything like that. We just wanted to protect our homelands.”

The Intercept published the first detailed descriptions of TigerSwan’s tactics in 2017, based on internal documents leaked by a TigerSwan contractor. Nearly six years later, there have been no public indications that the security company obtained major new fossil fuel company contracts. Meanwhile, corporate lobbyists spurred the passage of so-called “critical infrastructure” laws widely understood to stifle fossil fuel protests in 19 states across the U.S. Collaborations between corporations and law enforcement against environmental defenders have proliferated, from Minnesota’s lake country to the urban forests of Atlanta. 

No significant regulatory reforms have been enacted to prevent firms from repeating counterinsurgency-style tactics. And TigerSwan is far from the only firm to use invasive surveillance strategies. The North Dakota documents show that at least one other private security firm at Standing Rock appears to have utilized similar schemes against pipeline opponents. 

“We need to always be very clear that the industry knows what a risk the climate movement is,” said May Boeve, the executive director of 350.org, a climate nonprofit that was repeatedly mentioned in TigerSwan’s marketing and surveillance material. “They’re going to keep using these kinds of strategies, but they’ll think of other things as well.”

TigerSwan’s aspirations

“Gentlemen, as you are aware there has been a shift in environmentalist and ‘First Nations’ groups regarding the tactics being used to prevent, deter, or interrupt the oil and gas industry,” said a February 2017 email drafted by TigerSwan employees to a regional official at ConocoPhillips, a major oil and gas producer — and a potential Tigerswan client. 

“Recently in our area the situation has become extremely tense with ‘protestors’ using terrorist style tactics which are well beyond simple civil disobedience,” the email continued. “If steps have not already been taken to prevent and plans to mitigate [sic] an event or events like these to Conoco I may be able to suggest some solutions.” 

TigerSwan’s marketing materials read like a playbook for undermining grassroots resistance. ConocoPhillips was just one of the companies the private security firm had in its sights. 

In another case, a PowerPoint presentation drafted for Dominion, which was building the Atlantic Coast natural gas pipeline through three mid-Atlantic states, offered detailed profiles of local anti-pipeline groups and individuals identified as “threat actors.” (The planned pipeline was canceled in 2020.) TigerSwan laid out the types of services it could provide, including a “Law Enforcement Liaison” and access to GuardianAngel, its GPS and mapping tool. (Neither ConocoPhillips nor Dominion responded to questions about whether they hired the security firm.)

In January 2017, a TigerSwan deputy program manager emailed a presentation titled “Pipeline Opposition Model” to Reese and others, explaining that it was meant to serve as a business development tool and a “working concept to discuss the problem.” The presentation claimed external forces had helped drive the Standing Rock movement and pointed to outside tribes, climate nonprofits like 350.org, and even billionaires like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, who had a “vested interest in DAPL failure” because of their investments in the rail industry. 

Water protectors used an elaborate set of social movement theories to advance their cause, another slide hypothesized, including “Lone Wolf terror tactics.” Specifically, TigerSwan speculated that pipeline opponents could be using the “hero cycle” narrative, a storytelling archetype, to recruit new movement members on social media and energize them to take action — a strategy, the presentation said, also used by ISIS recruiters.

Anyone whose work had touched the Standing Rock movement could become a villain in TigerSwan’s sales pitches. One PowerPoint presentation included biographical details about Zahra Hirji, a journalist who worked at the time for Inside Climate News. Another included a photo of a water protector’s former professor and her course list. 

As a remedy, the company offered up a suite of “TigerSwan Solutions.” To the security firm, keeping the fossil fuel industry safe didn’t just mean drones, social media monitoring, HUMINT (short for human intelligence, such as from undercover personnel), and liaising with law enforcement — all included on its list — it also meant local community engagement, counter-protesters, building a “pipeline narrative,” and partnering with university oil and gas programs. 

“Win the populace, and you win the fight,” the presentation stated, repeating a key principle of counterinsurgency strategy. 

Reese approved. “I’d like to have these cleaned up and branded so I can use,” he wrote back.

Reese used similar material to shore up his relationship with existing clients. In December 2016, he requested a copy of a presentation titled “Strategic Overview,” which he hoped to send to Energy Transfer supervisors working on building the Rover natural gas pipeline. The presentation, a version of which The Intercept previously published, draws heavily from a 2014 report by the Republican minority staff of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, claiming that a “club” of billionaires control the environmental movement. 

In a memo called “The Standing Rock Effect,” Tigerswan lays out a set of seven criteria the company had developed for identifying anti-pipeline camps sprouting up across the country. “TigerSwan’s full suite of security offerings offsets the risk these camps pose to a company’s bottom line,” the company concluded.  

Tigerswan utilized its promotional materials to target both energy companies and states with oil and gas resources. In April 2017, the security firm and the National Sheriffs’ Association planned to brief more than 50 state employees in Nebraska, including staffers in the governor’s office, the state Emergency Management Agency, and the State Patrol, on the “lessons learned” from the Dakota Access Pipeline protests. A contractor for the National Sheriffs’ Association wrote that the briefing was in part “to prepare the state of Nebraska for the Keystone Pipeline issues coming in months ahead.” 

Targeting water protectors 

TigerSwan’s obsessive tracking of environmental activists is laid out in detail in the North Dakota documents. Assisted at times by National Sheriffs’ Association personnel, the company targeted little-known water protectors, national non-profits, and even legal workers. 

The first page of a template for intelligence sharing encouraged TigerSwan employees to enter information about any “New Person of Interest.” TigerSwan personnel routinely referred to its targets as “EREs,” short for Environmental Rights Extremists, apparently a version of the Department of Homeland Security’s classification of “Animal Rights/Environmental Violent Extremist” as one of five domestic terrorism threat categories.

A document labeled “Background Investigation: 350.org” helps explain why the company kept tabs on a national environmental organization with little visible presence on the ground at Standing Rock. Using an “Influence Rating Matrix,” TigerSwan ranked 350.org’s “formal position in organization/movement” and its “criminal history” as “0” — but gave its highest rating of “5” to the group’s size, funding, online presence, and history with similar movements. 

TigerSwan also attempted to dig up dirt on legal workers with the Water Protector Legal Collective, which represented pipeline opponents. The security company used the CLEAR database, which is only available to select entities like law enforcement and licensed private security companies, to dig up information on attorney Chad Nodland. The company concluded that Nodland was also representing a regional electric cooperative that generates some of its power through wind — apparently considered a rival energy source to the oil the Dakota Access Pipeline would carry. (Nodland told The Intercept and Grist he never worked for the cooperative.) TigerSwan also put together a whole PowerPoint presentation on Joseph Haythorn, who also worked for the legal collective and submitted bail money for clients to be released.

At the same time, the National Sheriffs’ Association was building its own profiles and sharing them with TigerSwan. In one instance, a contractor for the sheriffs’ group passed along a six-page backgrounder on LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, a prominent Dakota Access Pipeline opponent and historian, to TigerSwan. The document included statements Allard made to the press, her public appearances, social media posts, and details about tax liens filed against her and her husband. 

Targeting individual pipeline opponents like Allard seems to have been part of TigerSwan’s strategy particularly when it needed to have something to show its client, Energy Transfer Partners. In one exchange with employees, Reese suggested digging up more intelligence on a pipeline opponent who goes by the mononym Tawasi. 

“We need to start going after Tawasi as fast as we can over the next couple weeks so we can show some more stuff to ETP,” Reese wrote, using an abbreviation for the company’s old name, Energy Transfer Partners. The documents show that TigerSwan kept close tabs on Tawasi, reporting his movements in daily situation reports, monitoring his social media, and at one point noting that he had gotten a haircut. 

Tawasi, who had a large social media following but was not a prominent leader of the anti-pipeline movement, was bewildered that he had been so closely monitored. “They didn’t have anything at all,” he told The Intercept and Grist. “And they picked me as somebody that they thought they could make something out of.”

“It makes me feel unsafe,” he said, “because the same contractors could be working for a different company, still following me around under a different contract from the next oil company down the line.” 

Prairie McLaughlin, Allard’s daughter, said records of TigerSwan’s activities remain important, even six years later. “It matters because it gives somebody a handbook on what could happen — what might happen.”  

Not a ‘Mercenary Organization’ 

After The Intercept published its first set of leaked TigerSwan documents in 2017, the company attempted to downplay the impact of the revelations. In a memo, TigerSwan shrugged off the story’s importance. “The near-term impact of the article is positive for the company,” TigerSwan claimed. The revelations had caused water protectors to limit their social media activity, rendering them “incapable of effectively recruiting members, raising operational funding, or proselytizing,” TigerSwan wrote. 

The company intended to use “information operations” to maintain the paranoia: “This looking over-their-shoulder behavior will continue for several months because of internal suspicions and targeted information operations.” 

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Internally, the company scrambled to mount a public relations response, calling on help from Chris LaCivita, a Republican political consultant now reportedly being considered for a senior role in Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. A memo emailed to LaCivita by TigerSwan’s external affairs director said that, as a defensive strategy, the company would assert on background that “TigerSwan is not a ‘mercenary organization.’” It was a point that must never be made on the record, the document says, because it “would be like saying ‘no I don’t beat my wife.’” (LaCivita did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

TigerSwan’s offensive strategy primarily consisted of trying to marshal evidence showing that water protectors were violent lawbreakers, professional protesters, un-American, and not even very Indigenous. The document author advised TigerSwan to locate “Any visuals, video of demonstrators waving flags or using insignia of an enemy of the United States.” Another suggested talking point said, “Upon our arrival, we quickly learned that a vast majority of the protestors were not indigenous not [sic] part of the peaceful water movement.”

In a final act of law enforcement collaboration, the memo advised TigerSwan to identify one local and one federal law enforcement source that could defend them — but only off the record. 

Outside the public relations strategy, TigerSwan didn’t dramatically shift its tactics in response to the story, the documents suggest. In an email dated June 20, 2017, nearly a month after The Intercept’s first exposé, an intelligence analyst distributed a list of anti-pipeline camps across South Dakota, where the Keystone XL pipeline was supposed to be built. 

“Maybe your folks can take a look at the list, check the social media for the sites, and figure out if A) you can get in and B) if there’s value to being inside and C) do you have the creds you need to get in. If you figure out that you need to attend some more events to build cred and access we can do that,” he said. “That should feed the beast until the next shiny thing.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline After infiltrating Standing Rock, TigerSwan pitched its ‘counterinsurgency’ playbook to other oil companies on Apr 13, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Alleen Brown.

The result is that Europeans are experiencing an energy crisis, and Germany in particular faces deindustrialisation. The Ukraine situation is not just a NATO proxy war with Russia. It is also a trade and energy war inflicted by the US on Europe.  

Although the impact of the war is acutely felt by Europe, inflation continues to increase across the Western countries, including the US, and their economies are in crisis. 

While the sanctions and war are having an inflationary impact, they serve as convenient cover for the effects of a massive increase in ‘quantitative easing’ that occurred in late 2019 and in 2020. The US Federal Reserve created almost a fifth of all US dollars ever created in 2020. According to economist Professor Richard Werner, central banks around the world also pumped more money into their economies during this period. He concludes that central banks are largely responsible for the inflation we now see. 

Financial markets were collapsing in October 2019, and the crisis reached a head in February 2020 with a massive crash. Prior to COVID and then under cover of this bogus public health crisis, trillions of dollars were pumped into the economy and lockdowns were imposed to prevent an immediate hyperinflation shock. The global economy was shut down.  

Much of the inflation currently being experienced is a result of this. COVID lockdowns were not a cause of economic collapse. They were a symptom of it. A temporary band aid for an imploding neoliberalism that now requires a radical restructuring of economies and societies. 

And that restructuring is brutal. Neoliberalism has been on life support for some time and has resorted to various strategies (expansion consumer credit, speculative finance, debt, etc) to keep it alive. But these strategies have to a large extent run their course.   

In response, we are witnessing a controlled demolition of large parts of the economy and a shift towards authoritarian governance to deal with the growing resentment and dissent that governments fully expect. While lockdowns can be regarded as extraordinary monetary policy measures for addressing short-term inflation risk, they also did much to accelerate the restructuring of economies, not least by closing down small independent businesses.  

The effects of the current sanctions regime on Russia may be regarded as an extension of this restructuring. We must not assume that the people implementing the sanction policies were too ignorant to see what the outcome would be for the Western economies.  

So, for ordinary people, what’s the end game? 

Soaring inflation means your money will lose value. Your savings could evaporate. And rising interest rates will intensify hardship – both for ordinary people and for businesses. Increased interest rates in a debt-ridden economy could well precipitate economic collapse.  

Enter central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). It seems likely that these will eventually be brought in as part of a new monetary system. When people have lost almost everything (the WEF mantra – own nothing and be happy), many might well be desperate enough to want a (programmable) digital universal basic income from the government.  

But this – in the longer term – would lead to a digital prison: your carbon credit score and social credit score linked to your ability to use your digital currency, your freedom of movement and so on. 

The fiat currency system is dying. De-dollarisation is now underway and the US’s longstanding partner – Saudi Arabia – is turning to China and accepting non-dollar payment for oil. 

The world is increasingly trading in currencies other than the US dollar. Global US hegemony rests on the dollar being the world reserve currency. This is coming to an end.   

What CBDCs will base their value on remains to be seen. A return to a gold standard perhaps. But the strategy appears to involve a process of economic restructuring (or demolition) leading to the impoverishment of populations then the rollout of CBDCs.  

COVID was an accelerator that saw entire populations cajoled into submission thanks to a crisis narrative. Integral to the plan is the eventual imposition of digital IDs. 

Whether it is immigration, war, food shortages, fear of pandemics, potential cyberattacks, climate emergency or some other crisis narrative, one way or another, circumstances will be manipulated to engineer the introduction of digital IDs – precursors to CBDC servitude. A servitude linked to ‘smart’ city surveillance technology, net zero ideology and 15-minute de facto lockdown cities. 

Can this be prevented? What can ordinary people do? 

We can, for instance, grow our own food (if we have access to land), use farmer markets, boycott the retail giants and cashless stores, use cash whenever possible, create our own credit unions and so on. But to act in unison, it is essential that we come together and do not feel isolated in a world in which division is encouraged.

Many instinctively knew from the start that there was something seriously amiss with the COVID narrative and the lockdowns. But the vast majority of people – at least at the beginning of the COVID exercise – went along with the narrative. Dissenters tended to feel isolated and came together online. As the weeks passed, they began to attend protests in person. 

At these gatherings – the speeches aside – it felt uplifting simply to be in the company of like-minded people. But after the protests, many returned home and were again surrounded by friends, family and colleagues who still kept faith in the narrative and the relentless media propaganda.  

COVID might have receded into the background at this point, but the end goal is clear. That’s why it remains important to continue to stand together – in person, in solidarity. From small acorns, movements grow.  

With this in mind, Fifi Rose, who helped initiate the A Stand In The Park movement in the UK, describes as a non-hierarchal people’s collective of autonomous groups, tells an inspiring story on a recent edition of the Locked & Loaded podcast with Rick Munn on TNT radio.  

The podcast shows how one man’s resistance – which involved standing alone in a Sydney park for weeks on end – helped create a growing global movement based on face-to-face interaction. 

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Colin Todhunter.

As many Native Americans on Monday marked the 50th anniversary of the militant occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, participants in the 1973 uprising and other activists linked the deadly revolt to modern-day Indigenous resistance, from Standing Rock to the #LandBack movement.

On February 27, 1973 around 300 Oglala Lakota and members of the American Indian Movement (AIM), seething from centuries of injustices ranging from genocide to leniency for whites who committed crimes against Indians, occupied the hamlet of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation for more than two months. The uprising occurred during a period of increased Native American militancy and the rise of AIM, which first drew international attention in 1969 with the 19-month occupation of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay.

"The Native people of this land after Wounded Knee, they had like a surge of new pride in being Native people," Dwain Camp, an 85-year-old Ponca elder who took part in the 1973 revolt, told The Associated Press.

"Anything that goes on, anything we do, even today with the #LandBack issue, all of that is just a continuation."

Camp said the occupation drove previously "unimaginable" changes, including the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act, the Indian Child Welfare Act, the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, and the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act.

"After we left Wounded Knee, it became paramount that protecting Mother Earth was our foremost issue," he explained. "Since that period of time, we've learned that we've got to teach our kids our true history."

Camp said the spirit of Wounded Knee lives on in Indigenous resistance today.

"We're not the subjugated and disenfranchised people that we were," he said. "Wounded Knee was an important beginning of that. And because we're a resilient people, it's something we take a lot of pride in."

Some of the participants in the 1973 uprising had been raised by grandparents who remembered or even survived the 1890 massacre of more than 200 Lakota Lakota men, women, and children by U.S. troops at Wounded Knee.

"That's how close we are to our history," Madonna Thunder Hawk, an 83-year-old elder in the Oohenumpa band of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe who was a frontline participant in the 1973 occupation, toldIndian Country Today. "So anything that goes on, anything we do, even today with the #LandBack issue, all of that is just a continuation. It's nothing new."

Nick Tilsen, an Oglala Lakota who played a prominent role in the 2016-17 protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock, North Dakota and who founded the NDN Collective, toldIndian Country Today that "for me, it's important to acknowledge the generation before us—to acknowledge their risk."

"It's important for us to honor them," said Tilsen, whose parents met at the Wounded Knee occupation. "It's important for us to thank them."

Akim Reinhardt, an associate professor of history at Townson State University in Baltimore, told Indian Country Today that the AIM protests "helped establish a sense of the permanence of Red Power in much the way that Black Power had for African-Americans, a permanent legacy."

"It was the cultural legacy that racism isn't okay and people don't need to be quiet and accept it anymore," he added. "That it's okay to be proud of who you are."

Indian Country Todayreports:

The occupation began on the night of Feb. 27, 1973, when a group of warriors led by Oklahoma AIM leader Carter Camp, Ponca, moved into the small town of Wounded Knee. They took over the trading post and established a base of operations along with AIM leaders Russell Means, Oglala Lakota; Dennis Banks, Ojibwe; and Clyde Bellecourt, White Earth Nation.

Within days, hundreds of activists had joined them for what became a 71-day standoff with the U.S. government and other law enforcement.

On March 16, U.S. Marshal Lloyd Grimm was shot and paralyzed from the waist down. Two Indians were subsequently killed during the standoff. Frank Clearwater, a 47-year-old Cherokee from North Carolina, was shot in the head while resting in an occupied church on April 17 and died a week later. The day after Clearwater's death, Lawrence "Buddy" Lamont, a local Lakota and Vietnam War veteran, was shot through the heart by a sniper during a shootout. He was 31 years old.

Black activist Ray Robinson, who had been working with the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization, went missing during the standoff. In 2014, the FBI confirmed that Robinson died at Wounded Knee, but his body was never recovered.

AIM remains active today. Its members have participated in the fights against the Dakota Access, Keystone XL, and Line 3 pipelines, as well as in the effort to free Leonard Peltier, a former AIM leader who has been imprisoned for over 45 years after a dubious conviction for murdering two FBI agents during a separate 1975 shootout on the Pine Ridge Reservation.

Kevin McKiernan, then a rookie reporter for NPR who was smuggled into Wounded Knee after the Nixon administration banned journalists from covering the standoff, said in an interview with NPR that the #LandBack movement—spearheaded in the U.S. by NDN Collective—is a leading example of the occupation's legacy.

"And I think that there is a collective or a movement like that on every reservation with every tribe," McKiernan said. "They're going to get back, to buy back, to get donated—just do it by inches."

"That's what's going on in every inch of Indian country today," he added.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

As many Native Americans on Monday marked the 50th anniversary of the militant occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, participants in the 1973 uprising and other activists linked the deadly revolt to modern-day Indigenous resistance, from Standing Rock to the #LandBack movement.

On February 27, 1973 around 300 Oglala Lakota and members of the American Indian Movement (AIM), seething from centuries of injustices ranging from genocide to leniency for whites who committed crimes against Indians, occupied the hamlet of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation for more than two months. The uprising occurred during a period of increased Native American militancy and the rise of AIM, which first drew international attention in 1969 with the 19-month occupation of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay.

"The Native people of this land after Wounded Knee, they had like a surge of new pride in being Native people," Dwain Camp, an 85-year-old Ponca elder who took part in the 1973 revolt, told The Associated Press.

"Anything that goes on, anything we do, even today with the #LandBack issue, all of that is just a continuation."

Camp said the occupation drove previously "unimaginable" changes, including the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act, the Indian Child Welfare Act, the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, and the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act.

"After we left Wounded Knee, it became paramount that protecting Mother Earth was our foremost issue," he explained. "Since that period of time, we've learned that we've got to teach our kids our true history."

Camp said the spirit of Wounded Knee lives on in Indigenous resistance today.

"We're not the subjugated and disenfranchised people that we were," he said. "Wounded Knee was an important beginning of that. And because we're a resilient people, it's something we take a lot of pride in."

Some of the participants in the 1973 uprising had been raised by grandparents who remembered or even survived the 1890 massacre of more than 200 Lakota Lakota men, women, and children by U.S. troops at Wounded Knee.

"That's how close we are to our history," Madonna Thunder Hawk, an 83-year-old elder in the Oohenumpa band of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe who was a frontline participant in the 1973 occupation, toldIndian Country Today. "So anything that goes on, anything we do, even today with the #LandBack issue, all of that is just a continuation. It's nothing new."

Nick Tilsen, an Oglala Lakota who played a prominent role in the 2016-17 protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock, North Dakota and who founded the NDN Collective, toldIndian Country Today that "for me, it's important to acknowledge the generation before us—to acknowledge their risk."

"It's important for us to honor them," said Tilsen, whose parents met at the Wounded Knee occupation. "It's important for us to thank them."

Akim Reinhardt, an associate professor of history at Townson State University in Baltimore, told Indian Country Today that the AIM protests "helped establish a sense of the permanence of Red Power in much the way that Black Power had for African-Americans, a permanent legacy."

"It was the cultural legacy that racism isn't okay and people don't need to be quiet and accept it anymore," he added. "That it's okay to be proud of who you are."

Indian Country Todayreports:

The occupation began on the night of Feb. 27, 1973, when a group of warriors led by Oklahoma AIM leader Carter Camp, Ponca, moved into the small town of Wounded Knee. They took over the trading post and established a base of operations along with AIM leaders Russell Means, Oglala Lakota; Dennis Banks, Ojibwe; and Clyde Bellecourt, White Earth Nation.

Within days, hundreds of activists had joined them for what became a 71-day standoff with the U.S. government and other law enforcement.

On March 16, U.S. Marshal Lloyd Grimm was shot and paralyzed from the waist down. Two Indians were subsequently killed during the standoff. Frank Clearwater, a 47-year-old Cherokee from North Carolina, was shot in the head while resting in an occupied church on April 17 and died a week later. The day after Clearwater's death, Lawrence "Buddy" Lamont, a local Lakota and Vietnam War veteran, was shot through the heart by a sniper during a shootout. He was 31 years old.

Black activist Ray Robinson, who had been working with the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization, went missing during the standoff. In 2014, the FBI confirmed that Robinson died at Wounded Knee, but his body was never recovered.

AIM remains active today. Its members have participated in the fights against the Dakota Access, Keystone XL, and Line 3 pipelines, as well as in the effort to free Leonard Peltier, a former AIM leader who has been imprisoned for over 45 years after a dubious conviction for murdering two FBI agents during a separate 1975 shootout on the Pine Ridge Reservation.

Kevin McKiernan, then a rookie reporter for NPR who was smuggled into Wounded Knee after the Nixon administration banned journalists from covering the standoff, said in an interview with NPR that the #LandBack movement—spearheaded in the U.S. by NDN Collective—is a leading example of the occupation's legacy.

"And I think that there is a collective or a movement like that on every reservation with every tribe," McKiernan said. "They're going to get back, to buy back, to get donated—just do it by inches."

"That's what's going on in every inch of Indian country today," he added.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

From the passage of the AUMF to providing Ukraine with tanks, more than two decades of wars have hurtled by since the freezing cold morning when we got up, dressed in our warmest layers and braved the cold to board the bus at Town Hall and travel to New York City joining the millions on the day the world said no to war.

Rallies were held around the world on February 15, 2003 to protest the coming war on Iraq. Eleven million people turned out. Historic numbers of people took to the streets before a war had started, yet were not enough to halt the orchestrated, criminal war on Iraq.

In March of 2003, the world was assaulted by the fireworks spectacle of “Shock and Awe,” while the people of Iraq were assaulted by U.S. bombs and missiles raining down on them, destroying cities, maiming and killing children, women, and men.

Hundreds of thousands of people were killed. Inflicting death and destruction in Iraq and Afghanistan cost the U.S. $8 trillion—and counting—while running up the national debt. More U.S. service members and veterans of the post 9/11 wars have committed suicide than were killed in combat.

There has been zero accountability for the lies, disinformation, propaganda, and documented war crimes committed by the U.S. that include: torture, murders by drone attacks, ravaging of civil society, the wanton destruction of cities, and infrastructure.

Instead of the harsh light of scrutiny being focused on war crimes to hold war criminals accountable, those who put truth into the public arena: Australian journalist Julian Assange and a handful of whistleblowers (Manning, Snowden, Hale) pay a steep price of persecution exile, and imprisonment for doing the right thing. As in the past, anti-war activists who maintained a street presence, calling for the wars to end, were routinely spied upon by the FBI.

The beneficiaries of wars are weapons manufacturers. Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes said to investors in January of 2021: "Look, peace is not going to break out in the Middle East anytime soon. I think it remains an area where we'll continue to see solid growth." By solid growth he means killing will continue.

Hayes forthrightly revealed the deep vested interests that foment manufactured wars rooted in lies and propaganda. The connections between military personnel, politicians, financiers, military contractors, and news outlets maintain the steady flow of wealth (weapons companies got $768 billion in 2021) from public coffers to private hands. These people are hardly policy experts since every war they promote in a cynical sing-song tap dance routine meant to bamboozle and distract is a lost cause; they are just war-profiteers.

Looming fiscal restraint due to reaching the debt ceiling means cutting spending that is not devoted to wars. War dollars will never fall under the harsh ax of budget cuts. We will surely see this play out in Congress in the coming months, even as the U.S. continues to provide Ukraine with billions of dollars of armaments, escalating and prolonging a dangerous conflict that could involve nuclear weapons.

After 20 years of pointless, expensive, unwinnable wars, we might ask some of the following questions of ourselves and our political leaders.

Are we “safer” now than back in 2003?

The Doomsday Clock was at 7 minutes to midnight in 2003, on January 24, 2023 it was moved to 90 seconds to midnight. Nuclear weapons make all human beings and all life on earth expendable, it takes only one hour to destroy our planet. This fact of the atomic age has contributed to a nihilistic, dismissive approach towards the climate crisis.

Every war escalates, every war expands, and many wars involve nuclear-use threats. The U.S. has made nuclear threats, as President Vladimir Putin of Russia has done more recently. The threshold of nuclear use is dangerously low due to new lower-yield nuclear weapons being developed by all the nuclear-armed states.

Why not join the Nuclear Ban Treaty and abolish all nuclear weapons instead?

The climate crisis is upon us, with drought, flood, wildfire, unbearable heat, famine, and disease. In this century, the planet is now expected to heat up 2.7C which will lead to the disappearance of 68% of glaciers. Glacier melt provides drinking and irrigation water to billions of people. Unprecedented global cooperation is needed to face our collective calamity to take steps towards mitigation. Yet, global cooperation is only evident in power alignments around war-making. Nations are joining NATO, aligning with the U.S. sphere in the wake of Russia attacking Ukraine. The U.S. is expanding its involvement aiding Ukraine, while continuing to make reckless threats against China, a nuclear-armed state with more than one billion people. The global arms trade is lethally lucrative. Additional global hotspots are India and Pakistan, Israel and Palestine. India, Pakistan and Israel have nuclear weapons. There are “sideshow” wars: Syria was catapulted into a war on the heels of a severe drought. The war expanded, half a million people were killed and 5.6 million fled. At one point, eleven different countries were bombing Syria! Political conflict over control of Yemen denies even cancer medicine to children. Nearly half a million people have been killed. The Saudi blockade prevents all but inadequate supplies of food and fuel into the country. The U.S. has provided weapons and direct military assistance to Saudi Arabia for this war.

If wars continue to be waged how will the climate crisis ever be addressed?

Why did the U.S. wage a pointless war on Afghanistan?

The Taliban controlled Afghanistan in 2001 and the Taliban controls Afghanistan in 2023.

The Pentagon budget is larger than ever, yet the Pentagon has never passed an audit.

Why isn’t the Pentagon ever held accountable for the trillions it spends and the wars it loses?

An endless barrage of propaganda fuels and justifies wars, militarizing minds and imaginations. After decades of pointless wars, there is fervid energy for waging war on Russia. At a lobbying session a few months back, a Congressional aide in Massachusetts actually said, “…when Russia no longer exists as a state…”

What will it take to challenge and change a mindset that suspends reason and critical thinking?

Most victims in wars are civilians. Globally, more than 100 million people have been displaced due to violence and war with no end in sight.

Every war ends with negotiations, compromises, treaties; no conflict or grievance can be solved with military might, why not start with negotiations so that policies reflect reality?

The peace community within civil society has an excellent track record in forecasting the outcome of the wars (there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the cost will be more than we can afford at the expense of all that we need in our society, we will be less safe, civilians will be killed indiscriminately, our troops will suffer PTSD, wars cannot be ‘won’).

Why are civil society voices the ones so easily dismissed as unrealistic, while warmongers who fantasize publicly about romps to “victory” are taken seriously?

How can we find our way forward given the difficulties?

Life on earth is ever more fragile, our species should learn to hold as our deepest concern the well-being of people, particularly children, not property and power, and end the cruel specter of war that has long plagued humanity.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Thea Paneth.

Subsequently, the issue raised a huge row in the Parliament and the Congress launched a nationwide protest.

In this context, several Facebook users claimed that Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had met Hindenburg founder Nathan Anderson and shared a photo. Some of the posts can be seen in the following slide-show.

Fact Check

On simply reverse searching the image on Yandex, Alt News was able to get hold of several media reports from back in 2018 when Congress Leader Rahul Gandhi had visited Germany.

The Times of India carried the photo with a report of Rahul Gandhi’s meeting with German ministers in Hamburg. The Indian Express and The Tribune India also published similar reports. The image is from August 22, 2018 and the gentleman beside Rahul is identified in all these reports as Neils Annen, a minister of state and member of parliament.

The following is a screenshot of a PTI story carried by The Indian Express.

The official Twitter account of the Indian National Congress had tweeted the image and mentioned in caption that the person standing with Rahul was Neils Annen, one of the German leaders he met to discuss various issues.

Congress President @RahulGandhi met @NielsAnnen, Minister of State & Member of the Bundestag and discussed Indian & German politics, floods in Kerala, GST & Jobs.#WillkommenRahulGandhi pic.twitter.com/xLufHI3zY6

— Congress (@INCIndia) August 22, 2018

Hence, the viral image is not of Rahul Gandhi meeting Nathan Anderson. The image is from August 2018 when Gandhi visited Hamburg to meet German policymakers. The gentleman standing with Rahul is Neils Annen, German minister of state and member of parliament.

Vansh Shah is an intern with Alt News.

The post No, man standing with Rahul Gandhi in viral photo is not Hindenburg’s Nathan Anderson appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Vansh Shah.

The post Americans Want Government-Run Health Care, What’s Standing in the Way? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Sonali Kolhatkar.

This August, we saw the passage of the historic Inflation Reduction Act, which includes more than 100 programs that will invest about $369 billion in climate action, clean energy jobs, and environmental justice. While this marks the single largest investment in climate action by Congress, it does not mean our work to address the climate crisis is over. It marks just the beginning. 

We know that reducing the carbon in our atmosphere is essential if we want a livable planet for all, and while this landmark package could reduce carbon emissions by 40 percent from 2005 levels by 2030, we must use all the tools at our disposal if we are to make real progress to mitigate the worst effects of climate change. One of the most effective, and largely overlooked, ways we can address the interconnected climate and biodiversity crises is a natural one, standing—literally—right in front of us in the form of our mature and old-growth trees and forests.

It's not enough to solely reduce emissions; we must also sequester and store carbon.

Mature and old-growth trees and forests have the greatest potential to sequester and store large amounts of carbon, and to recover carbon that has been released to the atmosphere over the last 200 years. Globally, the biggest trees—those in the top percentile diameter—hold half the carbon stored in the world’s forests, with bigger trees storing up to 300 times more carbon than their younger counterparts. Here in just the U.S., there were 58.7 billion metric tons of carbon stored in forests in 2020. While the IRA allocates $50 million to identify and inventory mature trees and old-growth forests, this must also be paired with a durable, long-lasting rule protecting these trees and forests, so that our climate forests are still standing long after the funding runs out. 

It's not enough to solely reduce emissions; we must also sequester and store carbon. Keeping carbon in the forests is essential to safeguard communities from the future impacts of the climate crisis by reducing the amount of greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere and mitigating future climate disasters, as older trees and forests are more resilient to threats like drought and wildfire. Moreover, our forests are our largest source of drinking water, with National Forests alone being the source of clean water for over 60 million Americans. As we work towards a livable climate and sustainable future, we must put our forests front and center as part of the solution.

This year on Earth Day (April 22), President Biden showed that he, too, understands the value of forests for storing carbon and addressing climate change, and issued an executive order that directs federal agencies to "identify, inventory, and protect" mature and old-growth forests on federally managed lands. This summer, the Forest Service initiated a public comment period focused on defining mature and old-growth forests. Over 125,000 individuals from across the U.S. submitted comments calling for forest protections, and more than 100 climate and conservation organizations, including the Sierra Club, turned in a letter calling for swift administrative action to implement essential climate-related solutions. It's essential that these voices are heard and we start managing our forests for climate.  

We've seen that it is a challenge to get people around the table in consensus on climate solutions, and it's not often we can pass a multi-billion dollar bill to protect our planet. But one thing we can do to provide for clean water, clean air, outdoor recreation, and climate mitigation is to leave these climate forests standing. And while we need more electric vehicles, financing for clean energy projects, and a methane reduction program, we cannot overlook investments in natural solutions. Conserving the lands, waters, and forests that we have—and creating protections for more of our public lands and waters in the future, so nature can work as a carbon sink and natural ecosystems can function as they should—is essential if we are to stave off the many effects of climate change.

Protecting our mature and old-growth trees is one way to move towards our nation's broader goals to conserve 30% of lands and waters by 2030. By taking this simple step forward, we can be the global leaders we aspire to be and stewards of our natural world.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Alex Craven.

Facebook user Manoj Singh uploaded this image with the caption, “पाकिस्तानी जनरल क़मर बाज़वा के साहिबज़ादे सअद बाज़वा और तड़ी-पार मोटा भाई शाह के “तेजबुद्धि” साहिबज़ादे जय बाबा और साथ मे “बुलबुल”..साथ खड़ी महज़बीं के नाम का इल्म नही है तो बुलबुल लिख दिया पूरी इज़्ज़त एहतराम के साथ”.

[English translation of the text: “Pakistani General Qamar Bajwa’s son Saad Bajwa and Mota Bhai Shah’s son Jai Baba along with ‘Bulbul’.”]

The image has been shared widely on Facebook with the same claim.

The image is also viral on Twitter with the same claim. (Archived link)

पाकिस्तानी जनरल क़मर बाज़वा के साहिबज़ादे सआद बाज़वा और अमित शाह के “तेजबुद्धि” साहिबज़ादे जय बाबा
तस्वीर को अवाम के सामने मुज़ाहिरा कर दिया गया..बताया गया है कि जय बाबा और सआद बाज़वा यानि पाकिस्तान की दोस्ती कितनी “मीठी” है.

बुलबुल ने “अपना काम” कर दिया..जय श्री पाकिस्तान.. pic.twitter.com/XLfkPxZKRP

— Jaya Singh हम है कांग्रेसी (@JayaSinghINC) September 1, 2022

The posts became viral close on the heels of a controversy relating to Shah seemingly refusing to hold the Indian Tricolour in a viral video, at the Asian Cup India vs. Pakistan match in Dubai on August 28. According to an article in The Hindu, TMC spokesperson Saket Gokhale said the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had argued that Shah did not hold the Tricolour because he was present at the match as the Asian Cricket Council president, and was following protocol.

Shah was elected as the president of the ACC on January 30, 2021, and shall remain in office till 2024.

Fact-Check

Upon reverse image searching, Alt News found several articles suggesting that the individuals standing alongside Jay Shah are actress Urvashi Rautela and Yashraj Rautela. Upon probing further, we found that Yashraj Rautela is Urvashi Rautela’s brother. Urvashi Rautela tweeted a picture with him in August 2020, on the occasion of Raksha Bandhan. (Archived link)

Happy RakshaBandhan @yashrajrautela
ॐ येन बद्धो बली राजा दानवेन्द्रो महाबल:। तेन त्वामपि बध्नामि रक्षे मा चल मा चल।।*
भाई बहनों के इस पवित्र त्योहार रक्षाबंधन की आपको ढेर सारी हार्दिक शुभकामनाएं स्वस्थ रहें, प्रसन्न रहे।
*༺꧁ Happy Raksha Bandhan ꧂༻ #HappyRakshaBandhan pic.twitter.com/ZAkQjsCRMN

— URVASHI RAUTELA (@UrvashiRautela) August 3, 2020

Taking a cue from this, we looked at Urvashi Rautela’s tagged photos on Instagram and found that several of her fan pages have uploaded the same image.

Moreover, a Hindustan Times article reporting on her presence at the Asia Cup match dated August 29 contains a picture of Rautela where she can be seen wearing the same attire as the viral image.

An India Today article reported how Jay Shah led the cheering team as India beat Pakistan in the thrilling Asia Cup match. The picture along with the report shows Jay Shah wearing the same dark blue shirt as seen in the viral image.

The India Today article also mentions Urvashi Rautela’s presence at the match.

Taking a cue from the several articles (cited at the beginning of the fact-check) that suggest that the man seen alongside Jay Shah is Urvashi Rautela’s brother Yashraj Rautela, we looked up Yashraj Rautela’s verified Instagram page where he had posted an image from the Dubai International Stadium. In the image, he can be seen holding the national flag. The picture was uploaded on the day of the India vs. Pakistan match. The attire seen in both pictures is the same.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by YashrajRautela (@yashrajrautela)

Alt News found an article dated August 17 on the website of Pakistani newspaper The News International on the birth of twins to General Qamar Bajwa’s son, Saad Bajwa, which had the latter’s photograph. Below we have compared the image used by them and the viral image. As is evident, the photographs are of different persons.

Hence it is quite evident that the man seen in the image with the BCCI secretary is not Pakistani General Qamar Bajwa’s son, Saad Bajwa. In reality, the persons in the photo alongside Jay Shah are actress Urvashi Rautela and her brother, Yashraj Rautela.

The post No, Jay Shah is not standing with Pakistani General’s son in viral image from Dubai stadium appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Shinjinee Majumder.

I'm standing at the edge of the Greenland ice sheet, mesmerized by a mind-blowing scene of natural destruction. A milewide section of glacier front has fractured and is collapsing into the ocean, calving an immense iceberg.

The consequences of catastrophic coastal flooding as sea level rises are still unimaginable to the majority of the billion or so people who live in low-lying coastal zones of the planet.

Seracs, giant columns of ice the height of three-story houses, are being tossed around like dice. And the previously submerged portion of this immense block of glacier ice just breached the ocean—a frothing maelstrom flinging ice cubes of several tons high into the air. The resulting tsunami inundates all in its path as it radiates from the glacier's calving front.

Fortunately, I'm watching from a clifftop a couple of miles away. But even here, I can feel the seismic shocks through the ground.

Despite the spectacle, I'm keenly aware that this spells yet more unwelcome news for the world's low-lying coastlines.

As a field glaciologist, I've worked on ice sheets for more than 30 years. In that time, I have witnessed some gobsmacking changes. The past few years in particular have been unnerving for the sheer rate and magnitude of change underway. My revered textbooks taught me that ice sheets respond over millennial time scales, but that's not what we're seeing today.

A study published Aug. 29, 2022, demonstrates—for the first time—that Greenland's ice sheet is now so out of balance with prevailing Arctic climate that it no longer can sustain its current size. It is irreversibly committed to retreat by at least 59,000 square kilometers (22,780 square miles), an area considerably larger than Denmark, Greenland's protectorate state.

Even if all the greenhouse gas emissions driving global warming ceased today, we find that Greenland's ice loss under current temperatures will raise global sea level by at least 10.8 inches (27.4 centimeters). That's more than current models forecast, and it's a highly conservative estimate. If every year were like 2012, when Greenland experienced a heat wave, that irreversible commitment to sea level rise would triple. That's an ominous portent given that these are climate conditions we have already seen, not a hypothetical future scenario.

Our study takes a completely new approach—it is based on observations and glaciological theory rather than sophisticated numerical models. The current generation of coupled climate and ice sheet models used to forecast future sea level rise fail to capture the emerging processes that we see amplifying Greenland's ice loss.

How Greenland got to this point

The Greenland ice sheet is a massive, frozen reservoir that resembles an inverted pudding bowl. The ice is in constant flux, flowing from the interior—where it is over 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) thick, cold and snowy—to its edges, where the ice melts or calves bergs.

In all, the ice sheet locks up enough fresh water to raise global sea level by 24 feet (7.4 meters).

Greenland's terrestrial ice has existed for about 2.6 million years and has expanded and contracted with two dozen or so "ice age" cycles lasting 70,000 or 100,000 years, punctuated by around 10,000-year warm interglacials. Each glacial is driven by shifts in Earth's orbit that modulate how much solar radiation reaches the Earth's surface. These variations are then reinforced by snow reflectivity, or albedo; atmospheric greenhouse gases; and ocean circulation that redistributes that heat around the planet.

We are currently enjoying an interglacial period—the Holocene. For the past 6,000 years Greenland, like the rest of the planet, has benefited from a mild and stable climate with an ice sheet in equilibrium—until recently. Since 1990, as the atmosphere and ocean have warmed under rapidly increasing greenhouse gas emissions, Greenland's mass balance has gone into the red. Ice losses due to enhanced melt, rain, ice flow and calving now far exceed the net gain from snow accumulation.

What does the future hold?

The critical questions are, how fast is Greenland losing its ice, and what does it mean for future sea level rise?

Greenland's ice loss has been contributing about 0.04 inches (1 millimeter) per year to global sea level rise over the past decade.

This net loss is split between surface melt and dynamic processes that accelerate outlet glacier flow and are greatly exacerbated by atmospheric and oceanic warming, respectively. Though complex in its manifestation, the concept is simple: Ice sheets don't like warm weather or baths, and the heat is on.

What the future will bring is trickier to answer.

The models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predict a sea level rise contribution from Greenland of around 4 inches (10 centimeters) by 2100, with a worst-case scenario of 6 inches (15 centimeters).

But that prediction is at odds with what field scientists are witnessing from the ice sheet itself.

According to our findings, Greenland will lose at least 3.3% of its ice, over 100 trillion metric tons. This loss is already committed—ice that must melt and calve icebergs to reestablish Greenland's balance with prevailing climate.

We're observing many emerging processes that the models don't account for that increase the ice sheet's vulnerability. For example:

The issue with models

Part of the problem is that the models used for forecasting are mathematical abstractions that include only processes that are fully understood, quantifiable and deemed important.

Models reduce reality to a set of equations that are solved repeatedly on banks of very fast computers. Anyone into cutting-edge engineering—including me—knows the intrinsic value of models for experimentation and testing of ideas. But they are no substitute for reality and observation. It is apparent that current model forecasts of global sea level rise underestimate its actual threat over the 21st century. Developers are making constant improvements, but it's tricky, and there's a dawning realization that the complex models used for long-term sea level forecasting are not fit for purpose.

There are also "unknown unknowns"—those processes and feedbacks that we don't yet realize and that models can never anticipate. They can be understood only by direct observations and literally drilling into the ice.

That's why, rather than using models, we base our study on proven glaciological theory constrained by two decades of actual measurements from weather stations, satellites and ice geophysics.

It's not too late

It's an understatement that the societal stakes are high, and the risk is tragically real going forward. The consequences of catastrophic coastal flooding as sea level rises are still unimaginable to the majority of the billion or so people who live in low-lying coastal zones of the planet.

Personally, I remain hopeful that we can get on track. I don't believe we've passed any doom-laden tipping point that irreversibly floods the planet's coastlines. Of what I understand of the ice sheet and the insight our new study brings, it's not too late to act.

But fossil fuels and emissions must be curtailed now, because time is short and the water rises—faster than forecast.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Alun Hubbard.

The upcoming feature-length movie, On Sacred Ground, opts for none of these. Rather, it follows the story of a (white) journalist and a (white) oil company executive who “find themselves on opposite sides of the fight” during the construction of the contentious pipeline. As for the Indigenous activists who led the actual protest effort on the North Dakota reservation, their narratives are shunted to the background in order to allow the main characters to plumb the depths of white guilt. 

On Sacred Ground is hardly the first film to focus on Standing Rock. There have been some documentaries on the protests: Awake: A Dream from Standing Rock, co-directed by Myron Dewey, for example. The 2017 Vice television series, Rise, included two full-length episodes, Sacred Water and Red Power, End of the Line: The Women of Standing Rock. There was also Black Snake Killaz: A #NoDAPL Story. But to date, there have been surprisingly few “major” works on the subject, and arguably little self-reflection as a nation. This, despite an ever-growing chorus of voices demanding clean water, Indigenous stewardship of natural resources, and climate action — all central themes of the climate crisis, magnified through the actions of Indigenous people at Standing Rock.

On Sacred Ground touches on these ideas, but because the story is told from the white perspective, the needs of white characters and narratives inevitably supersede those of Indigenous stakeholders. How does one even begin to understand the lessons of NODAPL in a film set during the 2016 protests when the main protagonists are white people? Given the explosion of Indigenous-made television and film production occurring at multiple levels of the entertainment industry, On Sacred Ground decision’s to stick with a colonial-first gaze is, at best, puzzling, and, at worst, insulting.  One must ask why filmmakers did not read the room.

The set-up is this: Daniel, is a burnt-out journalist dealing with a bad case of post-traumatic stress disorder due to his experience as a reporter covering the war in Iraq. He sleepwalks through his days in Lancaster, Ohio, struggling to fit in with those around him. Played lethargically by William Mapother, Daniel is distant, and inattentive to his wife, Julie, who is expecting a baby. He drives a beat-up Ford and lives in a modest house (because he’s a journalist, it’s safe to say he’s not drowning in riches). 

Then comes a phone call from a fancy editor in Houston, played by Frances Fisher. She tells him she spotted his talent based on his previous work and wants to assign him to a story on the Standing Rock for the (fictional) Houston Daily. In reality, Fisher has scouted and recruited Daniel based on his low credit score (438), the knowledge that his last car was repossessed, and the fact that he is a Republican. The paper has oil and gas funding and a deep research budget, and Fisher figures that she can pressure Daniel to write an oil-friendly piece on the anti-pipeline protests. 

Thankful for the employment, Daniel throws himself into his new assignment at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. He’s doing it for the money, to be sure, but it’s clear he’s also seeking some sort of clarity in his life – what exactly that might be, he doesn’t appear to know. 

Once at Standing Rock, the plot gets pretty predictable. Daniel meets a sleazy intermediary tasked with guiding him to write that big, oil-friendly story. Somehow, Mariel Hemingway gets mixed into the narrative as a frontline activist, as does Irene Bedard, who plays a matriarchal-type activist named Mary Singing Crow. Daniel gets a crash course on how to act at the makeshift camp and becomes gradually aware of the significance of the story he’s writing and the nuance it demands. Needless to say, the story he discovers is not as oil-friendly as his employer’s funders would have him believe.

Films like On Sacred Ground mean well, and they’ve meant well for a while. I’m reminded of the well-intentioned 2017 film Neither Wolf Nor Dog, where the white protagonist spends the entire run time grimacing after learning the “real” story of how America has treated Indigenous people — a revelation that, when presented to Indigenous viewers or individuals with even a modicum of education, elicits a reaction of “duh?” Here, William Mapother’s Daniel does much of the same, standing in for white America, carrying a look of confusion and pain throughout nearly the entirety of the movie. 

Characters like Daniel are designed as stand-ins for WHITE GUILT. Ostensibly, they shoulder some of the heavy weight of America’s historic and ongoing human rights abuses and responsibility for the crushing climate crisis, but that form of atonement leaves little space for nuance when the narrative favors didacticism over true representation. Many viewers may be on board with the idea that the United States has an unhealthy love for oil, but do we need another film about how white people feel guilty about it — especially one set at one of the most important Indigenous events in recent history, at a place where the images of resistance are still seared into our collective memory? Can a film about Standing Rock without Indigenous people at the forefront succeed on any level? And perhaps most importantly, can white people make films like this and not make it about themselves? Of course not. 

While co-writers and directors Joshua and Rebecca Harrel Tickell have crafted a story about the price we pay for oil, it unfortunately relies on tired tropes of white guilt and white redemption, retreading that old story we’ve seen so many times before where a white guy is thrown into an “exotic” situation and with the help of ancient Indigenous teachings, goes “off the reservation,” has an epiphany, and finds his truth. In fact, at one point of the film, Frances Fisher’s character actually yells to David Arquette’s Elliot: “He’s gone off the reservation!” The line was so predictable, I was able to say it at the same time she did even on first viewing. I may or may not have howled in amusement. 

In the end, the film leans back on the historical record: The Indian activists get arrested, their teepees are burned down, and a lone tear falls down an Indian’s face as they watch the destruction happen. Daniel, meanwhile, watches sadly on his laptop from the comfort of his own home, thus ending his journey. It feels condescending to see the Indians fight valiantly and get punished for it while Daniel gets to go back to his family, file a story about it, and cash a check.

I know I’d rather see other takes on the Dakota Access Pipeline and all the things that occurred there: the love, the loss, the challenges, the inspiration. But I want to see Indigenous people, the ones who took the journey there, tell these stories. I personally know plenty of people who went to Standing Rock in the fight for clean water. And unlike Daniel, once I close my laptop, I know they still exist. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In ‘On Sacred Ground,’ the sound of white guilt drowns out the drama of Standing Rock on Aug 25, 2022.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Jason Asenap.

The upcoming feature-length movie, On Sacred Ground, opts for none of these. Rather, it follows the story of a (white) journalist and a (white) oil company executive who “find themselves on opposite sides of the fight” during the construction of the contentious pipeline. As for the Indigenous activists who led the actual protest effort on the North Dakota reservation, their narratives are shunted to the background in order to allow the main characters to plumb the depths of white guilt. 

On Sacred Ground is hardly the first film to focus on Standing Rock. There have been some documentaries on the protests: Awake: A Dream from Standing Rock, co-directed by Myron Dewey, for example. The 2017 Vice television series, Rise, included two full-length episodes, Sacred Water and Red Power, End of the Line: The Women of Standing Rock. There was also Black Snake Killaz: A #NoDAPL Story. But to date, there have been surprisingly few “major” works on the subject, and arguably little self-reflection as a nation. This, despite an ever-growing chorus of voices demanding clean water, Indigenous stewardship of natural resources, and climate action — all central themes of the climate crisis, magnified through the actions of Indigenous people at Standing Rock.

On Sacred Ground touches on these ideas, but because the story is told from the white perspective, the needs of white characters and narratives inevitably supersede those of Indigenous stakeholders. How does one even begin to understand the lessons of NODAPL in a film set during the 2016 protests when the main protagonists are white people? Given the explosion of Indigenous-made television and film production occurring at multiple levels of the entertainment industry, On Sacred Ground decision’s to stick with a colonial-first gaze is, at best, puzzling, and, at worst, insulting.  One must ask why filmmakers did not read the room.

The set-up is this: Daniel, is a burnt-out journalist dealing with a bad case of post-traumatic stress disorder due to his experience as a reporter covering the war in Iraq. He sleepwalks through his days in Lancaster, Ohio, struggling to fit in with those around him. Played lethargically by William Mapother, Daniel is distant, and inattentive to his wife, Julie, who is expecting a baby. He drives a beat-up Ford and lives in a modest house (because he’s a journalist, it’s safe to say he’s not drowning in riches). 

Then comes a phone call from a fancy editor in Houston, played by Frances Fisher. She tells him she spotted his talent based on his previous work and wants to assign him to a story on the Standing Rock for the (fictional) Houston Daily. In reality, Fisher has scouted and recruited Daniel based on his low credit score (438), the knowledge that his last car was repossessed, and the fact that he is a Republican. The paper has oil and gas funding and a deep research budget, and Fisher figures that she can pressure Daniel to write an oil-friendly piece on the anti-pipeline protests. 

Thankful for the employment, Daniel throws himself into his new assignment at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. He’s doing it for the money, to be sure, but it’s clear he’s also seeking some sort of clarity in his life – what exactly that might be, he doesn’t appear to know. 

Once at Standing Rock, the plot gets pretty predictable. Daniel meets a sleazy intermediary tasked with guiding him to write that big, oil-friendly story. Somehow, Mariel Hemingway gets mixed into the narrative as a frontline activist, as does Irene Bedard, who plays a matriarchal-type activist named Mary Singing Crow. Daniel gets a crash course on how to act at the makeshift camp and becomes gradually aware of the significance of the story he’s writing and the nuance it demands. Needless to say, the story he discovers is not as oil-friendly as his employer’s funders would have him believe.

Films like On Sacred Ground mean well, and they’ve meant well for a while. I’m reminded of the well-intentioned 2017 film Neither Wolf Nor Dog, where the white protagonist spends the entire run time grimacing after learning the “real” story of how America has treated Indigenous people — a revelation that, when presented to Indigenous viewers or individuals with even a modicum of education, elicits a reaction of “duh?” Here, William Mapother’s Daniel does much of the same, standing in for white America, carrying a look of confusion and pain throughout nearly the entirety of the movie. 

Characters like Daniel are designed as stand-ins for WHITE GUILT. Ostensibly, they shoulder some of the heavy weight of America’s historic and ongoing human rights abuses and responsibility for the crushing climate crisis, but that form of atonement leaves little space for nuance when the narrative favors didacticism over true representation. Many viewers may be on board with the idea that the United States has an unhealthy love for oil, but do we need another film about how white people feel guilty about it — especially one set at one of the most important Indigenous events in recent history, at a place where the images of resistance are still seared into our collective memory? Can a film about Standing Rock without Indigenous people at the forefront succeed on any level? And perhaps most importantly, can white people make films like this and not make it about themselves? Of course not. 

While co-writers and directors Joshua and Rebecca Harrel Tickell have crafted a story about the price we pay for oil, it unfortunately relies on tired tropes of white guilt and white redemption, retreading that old story we’ve seen so many times before where a white guy is thrown into an “exotic” situation and with the help of ancient Indigenous teachings, goes “off the reservation,” has an epiphany, and finds his truth. In fact, at one point of the film, Frances Fisher’s character actually yells to David Arquette’s Elliot: “He’s gone off the reservation!” The line was so predictable, I was able to say it at the same time she did even on first viewing. I may or may not have howled in amusement. 

In the end, the film leans back on the historical record: The Indian activists get arrested, their teepees are burned down, and a lone tear falls down an Indian’s face as they watch the destruction happen. Daniel, meanwhile, watches sadly on his laptop from the comfort of his own home, thus ending his journey. It feels condescending to see the Indians fight valiantly and get punished for it while Daniel gets to go back to his family, file a story about it, and cash a check.

I know I’d rather see other takes on the Dakota Access Pipeline and all the things that occurred there: the love, the loss, the challenges, the inspiration. But I want to see Indigenous people, the ones who took the journey there, tell these stories. I personally know plenty of people who went to Standing Rock in the fight for clean water. And unlike Daniel, once I close my laptop, I know they still exist. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In ‘On Sacred Ground,’ the sound of white guilt drowns out the drama of Standing Rock on Aug 25, 2022.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Jason Asenap.

The upcoming feature-length movie, On Sacred Ground, opts for none of these. Rather, it follows the story of a (white) journalist and a (white) oil company executive who “find themselves on opposite sides of the fight” during the construction of the contentious pipeline. As for the Indigenous activists who led the actual protest effort on the North Dakota reservation, their narratives are shunted to the background in order to allow the main characters to plumb the depths of white guilt. 

On Sacred Ground is hardly the first film to focus on Standing Rock. There have been some documentaries on the protests: Awake: A Dream from Standing Rock, co-directed by Myron Dewey, for example. The 2017 Vice television series, Rise, included two full-length episodes, Sacred Water and Red Power, End of the Line: The Women of Standing Rock. There was also Black Snake Killaz: A #NoDAPL Story. But to date, there have been surprisingly few “major” works on the subject, and arguably little self-reflection as a nation. This, despite an ever-growing chorus of voices demanding clean water, Indigenous stewardship of natural resources, and climate action — all central themes of the climate crisis, magnified through the actions of Indigenous people at Standing Rock.

On Sacred Ground touches on these ideas, but because the story is told from the white perspective, the needs of white characters and narratives inevitably supersede those of Indigenous stakeholders. How does one even begin to understand the lessons of NODAPL in a film set during the 2016 protests when the main protagonists are white people? Given the explosion of Indigenous-made television and film production occurring at multiple levels of the entertainment industry, On Sacred Ground decision’s to stick with a colonial-first gaze is, at best, puzzling, and, at worst, insulting.  One must ask why filmmakers did not read the room.

The set-up is this: Daniel, is a burnt-out journalist dealing with a bad case of post-traumatic stress disorder due to his experience as a reporter covering the war in Iraq. He sleepwalks through his days in Lancaster, Ohio, struggling to fit in with those around him. Played lethargically by William Mapother, Daniel is distant, and inattentive to his wife, Julie, who is expecting a baby. He drives a beat-up Ford and lives in a modest house (because he’s a journalist, it’s safe to say he’s not drowning in riches). 

Then comes a phone call from a fancy editor in Houston, played by Frances Fisher. She tells him she spotted his talent based on his previous work and wants to assign him to a story on the Standing Rock for the (fictional) Houston Daily. In reality, Fisher has scouted and recruited Daniel based on his low credit score (438), the knowledge that his last car was repossessed, and the fact that he is a Republican. The paper has oil and gas funding and a deep research budget, and Fisher figures that she can pressure Daniel to write an oil-friendly piece on the anti-pipeline protests. 

Thankful for the employment, Daniel throws himself into his new assignment at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. He’s doing it for the money, to be sure, but it’s clear he’s also seeking some sort of clarity in his life – what exactly that might be, he doesn’t appear to know. 

Once at Standing Rock, the plot gets pretty predictable. Daniel meets a sleazy intermediary tasked with guiding him to write that big, oil-friendly story. Somehow, Mariel Hemingway gets mixed into the narrative as a frontline activist, as does Irene Bedard, who plays a matriarchal-type activist named Mary Singing Crow. Daniel gets a crash course on how to act at the makeshift camp and becomes gradually aware of the significance of the story he’s writing and the nuance it demands. Needless to say, the story he discovers is not as oil-friendly as his employer’s funders would have him believe.

Films like On Sacred Ground mean well, and they’ve meant well for a while. I’m reminded of the well-intentioned 2017 film Neither Wolf Nor Dog, where the white protagonist spends the entire run time grimacing after learning the “real” story of how America has treated Indigenous people — a revelation that, when presented to Indigenous viewers or individuals with even a modicum of education, elicits a reaction of “duh?” Here, William Mapother’s Daniel does much of the same, standing in for white America, carrying a look of confusion and pain throughout nearly the entirety of the movie. 

Characters like Daniel are designed as stand-ins for WHITE GUILT. Ostensibly, they shoulder some of the heavy weight of America’s historic and ongoing human rights abuses and responsibility for the crushing climate crisis, but that form of atonement leaves little space for nuance when the narrative favors didacticism over true representation. Many viewers may be on board with the idea that the United States has an unhealthy love for oil, but do we need another film about how white people feel guilty about it — especially one set at one of the most important Indigenous events in recent history, at a place where the images of resistance are still seared into our collective memory? Can a film about Standing Rock without Indigenous people at the forefront succeed on any level? And perhaps most importantly, can white people make films like this and not make it about themselves? Of course not. 

While co-writers and directors Joshua and Rebecca Harrel Tickell have crafted a story about the price we pay for oil, it unfortunately relies on tired tropes of white guilt and white redemption, retreading that old story we’ve seen so many times before where a white guy is thrown into an “exotic” situation and with the help of ancient Indigenous teachings, goes “off the reservation,” has an epiphany, and finds his truth. In fact, at one point of the film, Frances Fisher’s character actually yells to David Arquette’s Elliot: “He’s gone off the reservation!” The line was so predictable, I was able to say it at the same time she did even on first viewing. I may or may not have howled in amusement. 

In the end, the film leans back on the historical record: The Indian activists get arrested, their teepees are burned down, and a lone tear falls down an Indian’s face as they watch the destruction happen. Daniel, meanwhile, watches sadly on his laptop from the comfort of his own home, thus ending his journey. It feels condescending to see the Indians fight valiantly and get punished for it while Daniel gets to go back to his family, file a story about it, and cash a check.

I know I’d rather see other takes on the Dakota Access Pipeline and all the things that occurred there: the love, the loss, the challenges, the inspiration. But I want to see Indigenous people, the ones who took the journey there, tell these stories. I personally know plenty of people who went to Standing Rock in the fight for clean water. And unlike Daniel, once I close my laptop, I know they still exist. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline In ‘On Sacred Ground,’ the sound of white guilt drowns out the drama of Standing Rock on Aug 25, 2022.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Jason Asenap.

We look at the outcome of Tuesday’s primaries for opponents of former President Trump. In Wyoming, Liz Cheney, Trump’s chief House Republican foe, lost her primary to a Trump-backed challenger. In Alaska, Senator Lisa Murkowski, another Republican Trump critic, will move forward to the general election alongside a Trump challenger who also advanced under the state’s ranked-choice voting system. The races “show a clear signal: Standing up to Donald Trump in the Republican Party, by and large, leads to your defeat,” says John Nichols, national affairs correspondent for The Nation. Despite Cheney’s defeat, Nichols says she is an “extreme right-wing conservative” who is “signaling an openness to running for president of the United States.” Nichols also discusses how former Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin is projected to advance in the race for Alaska’s at-large congressional seat.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

The post “Public Justice” – Standing Forty Years Against Brutish Corporate Power appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Ralph Nader.

That is just what happened following my address in June 1980 to the Michigan Trial Lawyers Association. I spoke of a gap in trial practice which needed to be filled. There was a pressing need to bring cases against the many corporate abuses, which included non-enforcement of regulatory laws. Without the prospect of a contingent fee after a successful outcome, trial lawyers were unlikely to take on these uncertain cases or structural reform cases on behalf of tenants, farm workers, or cruel prison conditions.

I noted the assault of corporations on “the biosphere, personal injury law from trauma to toxics.” The corporate lobby was blocking legislative proposals to strengthen consumer class action rights, digging deeper for unconscionable corporate welfare payments and funding corporatist politicians. To challenge these damaging corporate power plays, I suggested a full-time core of public interest attorneys supported by a sabbatical program for trial lawyers who wanted to take a year off from their regular practice and come to Washington, D.C. to advance justice and refresh themselves.

It turned out that there were some leading trial lawyers – Scottie Baldwin, J.D. Lee, Bill Colson and Dean Robb – who were dissatisfied with the slow pace of the American Trial Lawyers Association (ATLA), then controlled by a small clique of smug members. They took this proposal to the ATLA convention and convened a meeting of like-minded attorneys. With the determined assistance of Joan B. Claybrook, who was with Public Citizen, the nonprofit Trial Lawyers for Public Justice (TLPJ) was born.

In the ensuing forty years, TLPJ renamed Public Justice (PJ) in 2007 has shown that there are opportunities for widespread justice successes so long as the peoples’ advocates are on the field of action.

Public Justice has taken on a wide range of cases from going up against mountain-top removal and the coal industry’s poisoning of fresh water in West Virginia, to industrial agricultures’ toxic contaminations, to making sure Title IX is enforced to open wide the doors for women participating in intercollegiate athletics.

Today, led by Paul Bland, Public Justice is celebrating its fortieth anniversary. The firm has a $7 million annual budget (which is about three and a half weeks’ pay for the miserly Tim Cook, CEO of Apple), 23 staff on its legal team and a total staff size of 46.

Look at Public Justice’s docket of lawsuits. They have challenged court secrecy, fought compulsory arbitration and federal pre-emption of good state laws and the weakening of class actions. Students subjected to harassment and discrimination have found a champion in Public Justice, as have consumers cheated in so many ways by devious commercial thieves.

Special is Public Justice’s stand against what it calls the “Debtor’s Prison Project.” Here governments try to cash in by imposing fees on charged defendants trapping them in cycles of poverty, with PJ arguing that “no one should lose their freedom because they lack the means to pay a fine.”

A large vacuum is filled by Public Justice in its Worker Justice Project. Giant agri-business, Public Justice asserts with abundant evidence, “has always capitalized on the exploitation of workers, since its origins in plantation agriculture that relied on the forced labor of enslaved Africans. Today, meatpacking workers are subject to some of the most brutal working conditions in the labor market.”

When Covid-19 viruses came to America, Public Justice went to the defense of food-system workers who were not given protection and care and therefore their industry facilities “quickly became epicenters of outbreaks.”

Paul Bland and his colleagues teamed up with other public interest groups on some cases, including Toward Justice and the Heartland Center for Jobs and Freedom.

Within today’s right-wing, corporatist judicial system, Public Justice still wins cases, deters wrongdoing because companies know it is on watch, and even raises the visibility of issues when they lose.

Like any forty-year-old institution, it must remain alert to becoming too settled, too risk-averse and instead continue to be a pioneering organization and break new ground with bold causes of action as if there is no tomorrow. Hear that younger attorneys? Your burden is to keep your unique law firm as fresh as a cool mountain breeze caressing a gushing mountain brook. For more information visit the Public Justice website.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Ralph Nader.

The University of the South Pacific’s latest international ranking is a “testament to the excellence” that pervades the university, says USP vice-chancellor and president Professor Pal Ahluwalia.

He said this in a statement confirming USP had been ranked 401-600 out of 1406 institutions, with an overall score of 70 out of 100 in The Times Higher Education (THE) impact ranking for 2022.

“It is recognition of the sheer hard work and determination of our researchers,” Professor Ahluwalia said.

• READ MORE: Other USP reports

“It reaffirms USP’s standing as the premier education institution in the region and this ranking is a testament to the excellence that pervades our university.”

The impact ranking is the only global performance table that assesses universities against the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) where indicators are carefully calibrated to provide comprehensive and balanced comparisons across four broad areas — research, stewardship, outreach and teaching.

USP scored over 50 (out of 100) in research for SDGs 4, 13, 14, 16 and 17, reflecting the quality and relevance of its publications to the SDGs.

Under SDG four, USP scored highly at over 80 on Lifelong Learning Measures, which highlights lifelong learning opportunities through the provision of public resources, public events, vocational training events, education outreach activities beyond campus, and the existence of policy to ensure access to lifelong learning.

Environmental measures
Under SDG seven, USP scored high, over 70 on Energy Use Density, which is the energy used per floor space of university buildings in 2019.

Under SDG 13, USP scored 100 for Environmental Education Measures that demonstrate activities around local education projects and collaborations on climate change impacts, mitigation and adaptation, including disaster planning reflecting the engagement and collaboration by the university on climate change action locally, regionally and internationally.

USP scored highly at 75 under SDG 14 for Supporting Aquatic Ecosystems Through Action, which includes work on maintaining ecosystems and their biodiversity and over 85 for Local Ecosystem Maintenance.

For University Governance Measures, Working with Government, such as the provision of expert advice to government and participation in government research, and Percentage of Graduates in Law and Civil Enforcement-related courses under SDG 16, USP scored almost 80, 85 and over 75, respectively.

Finally, under SDG 17, which is considered the mandatory SDG, USP scored 100 percent for Relationships to Support the Goals, reflecting USP’s relationships with regional NGOs and international collaborations for SDGs.

The timeframe for data collection for the impact ranking 2022 spanned from January to December 2020 and in some cases, 2019, due to disruptions caused by the covid-19 pandemic.

Wata Shaw is a Fiji Times reporter. Republished with permission.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

Wearing glasses or getting a runny nose is enough to qualify for a mask exemption under current New Zealand’s Ministry of Health criteria — and a doctor says its time for tougher rules.

Hearing aids, hayfever or a tendency to get dry eyes are also reasons to request the legally binding card that says you do not need to wear a mask when normally required to under covid-19 rules.

Some doctors say the reasons are far too loose, with people simply needing to tick just one of the symptoms on the ministry’s website list to get an exemption card sent to them.

• LISTEN TO RNZ MORNING REPORT: ‘I want masks to be legitimate and used and trusted’ — Medicine specialist Dr Gary Payinda
• ‘It’s very clear that masks work and it’s very clear you can get sufficient fresh air through them’ – Covid-19 modeller Dr Dion O’Neale
• Facemask exemption criteria

Northland medicine specialist Dr Gary Payinda said the card was a great idea for people who had legitimate reasons for not wearing a mask.

But the current list of criteria was so wide it was absurd — almost everyone in the country would qualify, he said.

“If we’ve made it so easy that literally anyone can click a box and say I have a ‘condition’ … we really have to ask is it still a public health measure.”

With so many other measures relaxed, masks were one of the last lines of defence against the virus, and so everyone who could wear one, should be, he said.

Compromising public health measures
He told RNZ Morning Report that compromising one of the most effective public health measures was not doing the community a good service.

“We want the right people to be protected by this law and we want masks to still be a meaningful way of reducing the burden of covid in the community.”

“If we make an exemption process so easy to get that it’s meaningless, we’re shooting ourselves in the foot.

“I want masks to be legitimate and used and trusted, and that won’t be the case if anyone can literally tick the box and say, ‘face coverings give me a runny nose’ and that’s enough to get a mask exemption.”

The criteria have come under scrutiny as the government changes the process for getting a mask exemption card.

Until now, cards were issued by the Disabled Persons Assembly but the new ones are issued by the Ministry of Health and have legal standing.

They are intended for people to show to shops or other businesses so they do not have to explain potentially sensitive reasons why they may have an exemption.

The ministry said it had tried to make the process for applying for a card uncomplicated to avoid marginalising vulnerable communities.

Small minority misuses system
The vast majority of New Zealanders had shown they wanted to do the right thing to protect their communities and only a small minority had tried to misuse the system, it said.

A spokesperson indicated the criteria may be changed as the new card comes into effect but was not able to respond with more details before RNZ’s deadline.

Existing cards, issued with the current criteria, can still be used when the new ones come into effect.

The Disabled Persons Assembly welcomed the new card system, telling Midday Report the old system had been causing distress for some in the disabled community.

Prudence Walker said people had not been believed, refused service or had the police called on them.

She hoped the new card would improve things.

Dr Payinda said there were many good reasons — because of both physical and mental health — that people could not wear masks and he supported them doing that but the current list was open to abuse.

Current criteria wideranging
The current criteria for requesting a card according to the Ministry of Health website include having the following conditions if they make wearing a mask difficult: asthma; sensitive skin or a skin condition like eczema; wearing hearing aids; getting migraines, having glasses, dry eyes or contact lenses; hay fever; difficulty breathing; dizziness, headaches, nausea or tiredness; a runny nose from wearing a face covering; a physical or mental illness, condition or disability.

Needing to communicate with someone who is deaf or hard of hearing is also one of the criteria.

Covid-19 modeller Dr Dion O’Neale said attempting to force those who were adamantly opposed to masks to wear one wouldn’t be effective.

“If they want to be difficult about it they’ll manage to tick the box and say I’m wearing it, and wear it badly.”

Most people did want to protect themselves and those around them, so it was important to keep the messaging clear on how masks work and when to wear them, he told Morning Report.

“It’s physics. The mask, if it’s well fitted, it’s going to be filtering out small particles. If those particles are viruses you’re not going to be infected by them, or if you’re breathing in a much smaller number of those particles you’re going to have a much lower exposure dose, so your infection risk is much lower.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

My question to these upstanding, er … these people standing up, is: When have you stood up for, in no particular order:

This is, of course, an inexhaustive list. What follows is an analysis of what NATO types standing up for signifies for the first six listed countries above, along with two unlisted countries.

Palestine

According to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, 10,165 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli security forces since the beginning of the second intifada in September 2000, and an additional 82 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli civilians. This disregard for the life of the non-Jew is ingrained in many Talmudic Jews, as Holocaust survivor and chemistry professor Israel Shahak detailed in his book Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight Of Three Thousand Years. If anyone needs convincing of this Jewish discrimination and racism towards non-Jews, then peruse the statistics at the B’Tselem website on home demolitions, who can and cannot use roads in the West Bank, the water crisis, and settler crimes against Palestinians.

On 10 April, Ghadeer Sabatin, a 45-yr-old unarmed Palestinian widow and mother of six, was shot by Israeli soldiers near Bethlehem and left to bleed out and die. Will any of the politicians standing up for Ukraine also stand up for Palestine? Image Source

Many of these Stand up for Ukraine types have been been glued to their seats during the slow-motion genocide by Zionist Jews against Palestinians.

Are Palestinians a lesser people than Ukrainians?

Syria

These Stand up for Ukraine types in their spiffy business attire have also been seated while backing Islamist terrorists in Syria. Americans later invaded and still occupy the northeastern corner of Syria, stealing the oil and wheat crops.

The UN Human Rights chief Michelle Bachelet reported that more than 350,000 people have been killed in 10 years of warring in Syria, adding that this figure was an undercount.

Are Syrians a lesser people than Ukrainians?

Libya

In February 2020, Yacoub El Hillo, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Libya, called the impact of the NATO-led war on civilians “incalculable.”

Are Libyans a lesser people than Ukrainians?

Iraq

I have a vivid memory of a crowd of students gathered around a TV screen in the University of Victoria to cheer on the start of Shock and Awe in Iraq. The US-led war on Iraq was based on the pretext that Iraq had weapons-of-mass-destruction although the head UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter had found Iraq to be “fundamentally disarmed.”

Chemistry professor professor Gideon Polya was critical of how the western monopoly media “resolutely ignore the crucial epidemiological concept of non-violent avoidable deaths (excess deaths, avoidable mortality, excess mortality, deaths that should not have happened) associated with war-imposed deprivation.” Polya cites 2.7 million Iraqi deaths from violence (1.5 million) or from violently-imposed deprivation (1.2 million).

Abdul Haq al-Ani, PhD in international law, and Tarik al-Ani, a researcher of Arab/Islamic issues, wrote a legal tour de force, Genocide in Iraq: The Case against the UN Security Council and Member States, that makes the case for myriad US war crimes that amount to a genocide.

Nonetheless, US troops are still stationed in Iraq despite being told to leave by the Iraqi government.

Are Iraqis a lesser people than Ukrainians?

Afghanistan

The Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University estimates 241,000 people have been killed in the Afghanistan and Pakistan war zone since 2001. The institute’s key findings are:

• As of April 2021, more than 71,000 Afghan and Pakistani civilians are estimated to have died as a direct result of the war.
• The United States military in 2017 relaxed its rules of engagement for airstrikes in Afghanistan, which resulted in a massive increase in civilian casualties.

• The CIA has armed and funded Afghan militia groups who have been implicated in grave human rights abuses and killings of civilians.

• Afghan land is contaminated with unexploded ordnance, which kills and injures tens of thousands of Afghans, especially children, as they travel and go about their daily chores.

• The war has exacerbated the effects of poverty, malnutrition, poor sanitation, lack of access to health care, and environmental degradation on Afghans’ health.

Are Afghans a lesser people than Ukrainians?

Yemen

In November 2021, the UN Development Programme published “Assessing the Impact of War in Yemen: Pathways for Recovery” (available here) in which it was estimated that by the end of 2021, there would be 377,000 deaths in Yemen. Tragically, “In 2021, a Yemeni child under the age of five dies every nine minutes because of the conflict.” (p 12)

The Yemeni economy is being destroyed and has forced 15.6 million people into extreme immiseration along with 8.6 million people being malnourished. Worse is predicted to come: “If war in Yemen continues through 2030, we estimate that 1.3 million people will die as a result…” (p 12)

Countries such as Canada, the US, UK, France, Spain, South Africa, China, India, and Turkey that supply arms to Saudi Arabia and the UAE are complicit in the war on the Yemeni people.

Are Yemenis a lesser people than Ukrainians?

One could continue on through the above list of countries “invaded” and arrive at the same conclusions. The predominantly white faces of western heads-of-government in their suits and ties or matching jackets and skirts did not stand up for the brown-skinned people killed in the countries adumbrated. Most of these countries were, in fact, directly attacked by NATO countries or by countries that were supported by NATO. What does that imply for the Standing up for Ukraine bunch?

The Donbass Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk

And lastly, most telling, is just how many of these people stood up for Donbass when it was being shelled by Ukraine?

If France and Germany, guarantors for the Minsk Agreements that Ukraine signed, had not only guaranteed but also enforced Ukraine’s compliance, then, very arguably, no Russian recognition of the independence of the republics of Donetsk and Lugansk would have been forthcoming and there would have been no Russian military response. But France and Germany did not stand up for their roles as guarantors of the Minsk Agreements.

Consequently, for all these politicians to contradict their previous insouciance and suddenly get off their posteriors and pose as virtuous anti-war types standing up for Ukraine is nigh impossible to swallow. Given that the historical evidence belies the integrity of this Stand up for Ukraine bunch, they ought better to have striven for some consistency and remained seated.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Kim Petersen.

The soul of humanity cries out from the crowded streets of Moscow, from steps near the Kremlin, as a man — an artist in the deepest sense — brings the slaughter of civilians in Bucha back to the home country . . . not by killing a bunch of Russians, but by posing, publicly, as dead himself, with his hands tied behind his back.

Let this man’s spirit flow across the whole planet.

War is hell, and when we wage it — when we dehumanize an enemy, thus allowing ourselves to commit mass murder — we dehumanize ourselves. This unknown Russian man, in posing as someone killed in Ukraine, is bringing awareness home: Look what we’re doing! Let us reclaim our humanity.

Such awareness is an affront to those in power. In Russia, under Putin, it’s illegal. Thousands of Russians have been arrested for protesting the Ukraine invasion. I believe this matters with an enormity well beyond the scope of conventional reporting, especially war reporting. War is about much more than strategy and tactics, winning and losing. To wage war is to be infinitely less than who we truly are, yet this is how the world has organized itself.

To wage war is to destroy the planet.

So the question here is how should the Western world, including NATO, respond to Russia’s Ukraine invasion, which, if addressed solely with the impulse to wage war back, could result in the onset of World War III: Mutually Assured Destruction, a.k.a., MAD, could come to life! If the West merely keeps shipping weapons to Ukraine, but stays out of the conflict otherwise, the bloody conflict will just go on, the slaughter will continue.

Ramzy Baroud, noting the total failure of the wars that NATO–led, of course, by the U.S.–has perpetrated in the last three quarters of a century — from Korea to Vietnam to Afghanistan, to Iraq, to Libya, etc., etc. — ponders the West’s hypocrisy in condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Not only have they lost all their wars, but they have ravaged the countries they attacked, killed millions, displaced millions more…

“Yet,” he writes,

“enthusiasm for war remains high, as if over seventy years of failed military interventions have not taught us any meaningful lessons… Billions of dollars have already been allocated by Western countries to contribute to the war in Ukraine.

“In contrast, very little has been done to offer platforms for diplomatic, nonviolent solutions.”

Perhaps even more unsettling is the West’s:

“eagerness to fund war and the lack of enthusiasm to help countries rebuild.

After 21 years of U.S. war and invasion of Afghanistan, resulting in a humanitarian and refugee crisis, Kabul is now largely left on its own. Last September, the UN refugee agency warned that ‘a major humanitarian crisis is looming in Afghanistan,’ yet nothing has been done to address this ‘looming’ crisis, which has greatly worsened since then.”

This paradox has not been addressed. War remains a whoop and a whistle. Onward, Christian soldiers. The consequences are somebody else’s problem — and more to the point, from a journalistic perspective, they aren’t that interesting. Or they’re too complex. Unless Russia does it.

It’s so easy to get corralled into the notion that there’s only one choice: Kill back.

To counter this notion, I begin by quoting from the manifesto written of an organization called Defend the Sacred. It was written by LaDonna Brave Bull Allard, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and one of the founders of the movement to resist construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, a movement that became global.

“Humans,” the manifesto states,

“have begun to separate themselves from nature, and to stand as a dominant species that is trying to control the natural world, unleashing global devastation. The result of this fundamental separation is an environmental crisis and an inner crisis, violence against the Earth and interpersonal violence, which are two sides of the same coin. We now unite as a planetary community to stand together for the sacred; to midwife a transition to a world in which humanity will no longer dominate but cooperate with all life.”

We now unite as a planetary community to stand together for the sacred…

Is this not the heart of the matter, the opposite of killing and killing back? Ending the Ukraine invasion is a global hope, a global cry; and nonviolent resistance to the weapons of war is a larger part of the process than is usually acknowledged or understood. This means diplomacy, of course, but it also means courageous non-cooperation on the part of as much of the public — Russians, Ukrainians, global citizens everywhere — as possible.

We do not truly know how powerful this sort of opposition can be, but ask yourself: Why did the Russian parliament recently pass a law prohibiting protest against the war? Why have thousands of protesters been arrested, possibly brutalized, and may face consequences as dire as 15 years in prison? Because the leadership is scared. Public compliance is crucial to the waging of war. The power we commoners wield is enormous, if only we knew it.

As Gene Sharp has written: “Ultimately, therefore, freedom is not something which a ruler ‘gives’ his subjects.” Freedom is claimed, though often at a cost.

The global war machine is berserk. Power and profit think they rule, and too often those who stand in the way know only one choice: weaponize, fire back, feed the God of War. This usually has an opposite effect, prolonging the war, expanding the death toll. Many fear the West’s shipment of weapons to Ukraine will have this result and simply leave another country in ruins.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Robert Koehler.

To begin our coverage of day two of the historic nomination hearings for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, we discuss the attacks by Republicans on her work defending suspects at Guantánamo Bay prison. Given that Jackson was one of hundreds of legal professionals in a project that exposed the lies and brutality undergirding Guantánamo, “to criticize her work in that project is nonsensical to me,” says Baher Azmy, legal director of the Center of Constitutional Rights, who has represented people held at Guantánamo and defended their rights. “Her work should be valorized.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

This content originally appeared on Ralph Nader Radio Hour and was authored by Ralph Nader Radio Hour.