From an piece in The New York Times by Timothy Egan, entitled Fake Cowboys and Real Indians:
The sight of native people shivering in a blizzard, while government authorities threaten to starve them out or forcefully remove them, is a living diorama of so much awful history between the First Americans and those who took everything from them."
Let me say it plain: Cliven Bundy was treated with kid gloves because he had guns with bullets in them. The Native Americans are getting beaten, soaked, shot, and starved because they don't. This is is lesson the Government is teaching us.
Post note: After I put this blog post up, and the very day that over 2,000 U.S. military veterans descended on Standing Rock to stand with the Sioux and between them and the Water Protectors, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers decided to deny a permit to the Dakota Access Pipeline for this particular under-the-lake pipeline crossing. To put a point on it, as soon as weapons-trained military veterans showed up (talking peace, but the hammer clearly implied), the government rolled over. But is it over? Don't count on it. The good news is that this pipeline is predicated on contract oil prices that are higher than current market rates, some contract could be voided or renegotiated by some signers in the next month or so. The now-certain delay in the start of pipeline operations will cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars, and could rise to over $1 billion by 2018. In an energy market quickly rushing to solar, electrical, and battery, and where peak oil demand is probably already here, it's not clear the Dakota Access Pipeline will continue to make long-term economic sense.
3 comments:
Looks like the Native Americans actually won this time.
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/12/04/504354503/army-corps-denies-easement-for-dakota-access-pipeline-says-tribal-organization
Cynical me thinks this has just delayed the inevitable. All the pipeline company needs to do is sue the government on this decision and wait for the next administration, clearly a corp (see Carrier $7M deal to keep approx. 800 jobs) and energy friendly.
You are right that the battle was won, not the war. I expect this pipeline to get connected and completed one way or another. Oil prices are down, but this pipeline has a long build behind it and a long life ahead of it. The tribe should allow construction with a $2 billion insurance policy or bond backed by a company that can pay it and a low-level trigger for the cash.
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