By Mickey Friedman
September 23, 2016
I’ve stopped posting about Hillary on Facebook because my liberal friends just don’t want to know about the Dark Side of the candidate they so desperately need to be an ethical alternative to The Donald.
And so in this year of the Joker and the Thief, many take determined steps into the unknowing. Hoping for the oft-promised ignorance/bliss.
Still, the darkness creeps inevitably into every aspect of our lives. Terror seeping into the ever-enlarging crevasses of what we like to believe is civilization. The fault lines are everywhere if only we’re willing to see. Religious barbarians slaughtering disbelievers of every shape or creed, young and old, all innocent except to those who glory in the mad slaughter. While all about us, greed routs conscience.
Sometimes your camera captures a double exposure: one image morphed atop another, with no apparent reason other than serendipity.
I see Hillary dancing in the Hamptons with Jon Bon Jovi and Paul McCartney, while joking “I stand between you and the apocalypse.” She’s joyfully raised $146 million this August from the SuperRich. The image superimposed over the unleashed dogs biting the Standing Rock Sioux and their Native American supporters fighting nonviolently to protect their water supply from the pipeline-to-be a mere half-mile from their reservation.
This the Dakota Access Pipeline, bringing Bakken oil from Stanley, North Dakota crossing beneath the Missouri River 1,100 miles to Illinois. This the combustible oil you’ve seen in flames from exploding freight trains. But pick your pipeline: This could be Keystone or the ExxonMobil pipeline which ruptured beneath the Yellowstone River.
More gasoline, more oil to melt more ice. To unleash the floods, the storms, to let loose the vicious dogs of our climate crisis. Our own secular, so very profitable war waged on Mother Earth.
So instead of blessing and celebrating the Sioux who, despite the holocausts we’ve inflicted on them, still steadfastly act in our best interests, we sic Bull Connors’ dogs on them. Fifty years after being displaced yet again for the Oahe Dam, they stand proudly for the greater Us, if not for those who prop up the Joker and The Thief. And, once more, the National Guard. Remember Kent State – because as Gov. Jack Dalrymple tells us: “At some point, there has to be an end game. This can’t be going on for long periods of time.”
But, of course, this Governor means that soon the oil companies must prevail because the oil needs to flow. He certainly doesn’t mean that soon, like our Sioux brothers and sisters, we must hear the weeping of Mother Earth.
I don’t mean to glorify the Sioux, their history as deep a mix of dark and light as the rest of us so terribly flawed humans. But still in spite of every phony trickery named a treaty and the despair of seeing their proud ancestors herded to concentration camps, and its resulting relentless poverty, still the Standing Rock Sioux have roused themselves once again to rally for the land over greed, for drinkable water over more wasted energy. Against an unsustainable life.
So the Joker demeans us all with his guttersnipe hate while Hillary dances for the dough and the Sioux are bitten by the dogs of the energy conglomerate. The dogs of Energy Transfer Partners, the parent company of Dakota Access. But there are many names behind the dogs because they, Marathon, Sunoco Logistics, Phillips 66, Enbridge, following the advice of their well-paid attorneys have pooled their money into opaque syndicates. While Hillary’s friends at Bank of America, HSBC, UBS, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, and JPMorgan Chase have together extended a $3.75 billion credit line to Energy Transfer Partners.
Did you imagine Hillary would fight for the Sioux? And not George Soros and her oil-soaked billionaire funders?
Like our brave President, limping his way to the finish line. He of the “Change You Can Believe In.” When asked in Laos about Standing Rock the President extolled his record then pretended not to know about an issue even a brave Malaysian knew about: “Now, some of these issues are caught up with laws and treaties, and so I can’t give you details on this particular case. I’d have to go back to my staff and find out how are we doing on this one … what I can tell you is, is that we have actually restored more rights among Native Americans to their ancestral lands, sacred sites, waters, hunting grounds …”
But, of course, he knew because his Army Corps of Engineers have fast-tracked these pipelines. Luckily, the world saw the dogs, which is why his Department of Justice hurriedly delivered a temporary reprieve. But this temporary halt applies only to federal land not the private property the pipeline crosses. So the Standing Rock Sioux and those of us who care more for the land than profit have much more work to do.
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Some basic information:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-08-24/dakota-access-“>http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-08-24/dakota-access pipeline
Remarks by President Obama at YSEALI Town Hall
September 07, 2016
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/09/07/remarks-president-obama-yseali-town-hall
Where Has Hillary Clinton Been? Ask the Ultrarich
By AMY CHOZICK and JONATHAN MARTIN SEPT. 3, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/us/politics/hillary-clinton-fundraising.html?
Dakota Access Pipeline Co. Attacks Native Americans with Dogs & Pepper Spray
September 06, 2016
http://www.democracynow.org/2016/9/6/full_exclusive_report_dakota_access_pipeline
Government Pauses Construction on Part of North Dakota Pipeline
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/10/us/judge-approves-construction-of-oil-pipeline-in-north-dakota.html?
New Investigation Names Wall Street Banks Behind $3.8 Billion Dakota Access Pipeline
http://www.democracynow.org/2016/9/6/new_investigation_names_wall_street_banks
Weeks Before Dakota Access Pipeline Protests Intensified, Big Oil Pushed for Expedited Permitting
http://www.desmogblog.com/2016/09/08/dakota-access-pipeline-big-oil-nationwide-permit-12
Hillary Clinton’s Fossil Fuel Financiers
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/04/19/hillary-clintons-fossil-fuel-financiers
“Standing Rock” was first published in the September 15, 2016 edition of the Berkshire Record.