February, 06 2018, 02:15pm EDT
Climate Activist Michael Foster Sentenced To Three Years In Prison (Two Deferred) For Shutting Off Keystone Tar Sands Pipeline In North Dakota
Climate activist Michael Foster is going to jail for shutting off the emergency valve on TransCanada's Keystone 1 tar sands pipeline in North Dakota. This morning in Pembina County Court, Judge Laurie A. Fontaine sentenced Foster to three years in prison, including two years deferred. He has been taken into custody and begins serving his sentence today.
Cavalier, North Dakota
Climate activist Michael Foster is going to jail for shutting off the emergency valve on TransCanada's Keystone 1 tar sands pipeline in North Dakota. This morning in Pembina County Court, Judge Laurie A. Fontaine sentenced Foster to three years in prison, including two years deferred. He has been taken into custody and begins serving his sentence today.
For his act of shutting off the Keystone pipeline, Foster was convicted on October 6th, 2017 of misdemeanor trespass and felony criminal mischief and conspiracy to commit criminal mischief. Those convictions carried a potential maximum penalty of 21 years in prison.
TransCanada and the State of North Dakota had both pushed for a harsh sentence to deter other climate activists (the prosecution recommended five years). Foster's act was part of a simultaneous, coordinated action in four states to shut off all major tar sands crude pipelines entering the United States. Today's sentence comes 16 months after the original October 11, 2016 action, which temporarily stopped the flow of tar sands bitumen into the US -- the equivalent of 15% of daily domestic oil consumption.
A 53-year-old mental health counselor from Seattle, Foster has no prior convictions. He decided to take the action to shut off the Keystone pipeline after spending five years giving presentations on the climate emergency to over 13,000 people, spearheading litigation, and starting multiple climate groups, including Plant-for-the-Planet, which engages children in tree planting.
"I made a decision to commit civil disobedience to defend my family tree and yours, knowing that there is no government, no politician, no corporation on planet right now putting forward a plan to defend life as we know it," Foster said in a pre-sentencing interview. "My kids and yours won't survive this mess if we don't clean up all this."
Reacting to the sentence, Foster said, "It doesn't matter if I'm sitting in jail. What matters is stopping the pollution. If other people don't take action, mine makes no difference. And if they don't, the planet comes apart at the seams.The only way what I did matters is if people are stopping the poison."
Foster's co-defendant Sam Jessup was convicted of conspiracy to commit criminal mischief (a felony) and conspiracy trespass (a misdemeanor) for helping Foster by livestreaming his action. Those convictions carried a total potential maximum of 11 years, but Jessup will not be going to jail. Today he was sentenced to two years in prison with both years deferred and supervised probation.
At trial, Foster and Jessup's legal team petitioned to be allowed to present the "necessity defense," a legal defense which acknowledges that the defendants technically violated the law, but argues that it was permissible because they did so to prevent a much greater harm, in this case the harms that tar sands, the most carbon-intensive form of oil, do to the climate. It would have allowed the defendants to call expert witnesses and introduce testimony about climate change for the jury to consider. But Judge Fontaine refused to permit it.
Dr. James Hansen, the nation's premier climate scientist whose 1988 testimony to Congress alerted the public to climate danger, traveled to North Dakota to testify at the trial, but was barred from doing so by Judge Fontaine. Outside the courtroom, Hansen emphasized that the public is largely unaware of how little time is left before climate change becomes irreversible, and that we are entering "the age of consequences" for burning fossil fuels. He praised Foster for calling attention to it. "Michael Foster isn't a criminal;" Hansen said, "he's a hero."
Ken Ward and Leonard Higgins, Foster's fellow "valve turners" who shut off tar sands pipelines in Montana and Washington state, respectively, also sought to present the necessity defense in their trials, and were similarly denied permission to do so. Both were convicted of felonies. Ward received a sentence of 30 days' community service. Higgins awaits sentencing in Ft. Benton, Montana on March 20.
But in a landmark ruling in Minnesota, valve-turners Annette Klapstein and Emily Johnston who shut off Enbridge tar sands lines 4 and 67, were granted their request for a necessity defense. It was the first written opinion allowing climate necessity to be argued in an American court. The ruling came during 2017's record-breaking storms and fires. The State of Minnesota has appealed the ruling. The trial is likely to take place this summer.
The Minnesota ruling was followed a few days later by a similar ruling in Spokane, Washington, permitting a necessity defense for a climate activist who participated in a 2016 coal train blockade. That may be a sign that awareness of climate change and legal precedents are advancing to a point where other courts will entertain necessity defense for citizen climate actions.
"There is no chance the political system will prevent global collapse on its own," said Annette Klapstein. "If the earth is going to remain habitable for our children and grandchildren and all future generations, it will be because people saw the necessity of fighting for their right to survival, and we're going to argue the necessity of fighting for that right in court."
In October 2016 activists under the banner of 'Shut It Down - Climate Direct Action' took the climate future into their own hands by shutting down all the tar sands oil flowing into the US from Canada.
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Critics Warn Manchin-Barrasso Permitting Bill 'Is Taken Straight From Project 2025'
"You thought Project 2025 was just a threat after the election? It's actually happening *right now,*" said one climate campaigner.
Jul 26, 2024
Climate and environmental defenders on this week implored U.S. senators to block a permitting reform bill introduced this week by Sens. Joe Manchin and John Barrasso that one campaigner linked to Project 2025, a conservative coalition's agenda for a far-right overhaul of the federal government.
Common Dreamsreported Monday that Manchin (I-W.Va.) and Barrasso (R-Wyo.)—respectively the chair and ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee—introduced the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) noted that although the proposal "includes several positive reforms for the accelerated development of transmission projects," it also advocates "limiting opportunities for communities to challenge projects, loosening oversight for drilling and mining projects, extending drilling permits and fast-tracking [liquified natural gas] permits, and several other provisions friendly to fossil fuel giants."
"This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
These are nearly identical policies to what's proposed in Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership. The plan, which was spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, calls for "unleashing all of America's energy resources," including by ending federal restrictions on fossil fuel drilling on public lands; limiting investments in renewable energy; and rolling back environmental permitting restrictions for new oil, gas, and coal projects, including power plants.
While Manchin has been trying—and failing—to pass fossil fuel-friendly permitting reform legislation for years, Brett Hartl, director of public affairs at the Center for Biological Diversity, said that his "Frankenstein legislation is taken straight from Project 2025, and it's the biggest giveaway in decades to the fossil fuel industry."
Hartl said the bill "deprives communities of the power to defend themselves and gives that power to Big Oil by making it harder for communities to challenge polluting projects in court," and "prioritizes the profits of coal barons over public health."
"And it mandates oil and gas extraction in our oceans," he continued. "The insignificant crumbs thrown at renewable energy do nothing to address the climate emergency."
"Monday was the hottest day in recorded history," Hartl noted. "It's shocking that as the climate emergency continues to break records around us, the Senate continues to fast-track the fossil fuel expansion that is killing us. This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
Hartl added that "to preserve a livable planet," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) "must squash this legislation now."
Manchin—who has said this will be his last term in office—has been a steadfast supporter of the fossil fuel industry, partly because his family owns a coal company. The senator says his permitting reform bill "will advance American energy once again to bring down prices, create domestic jobs, and allow us to continue in our role as a global energy leader."
However, Allie Rosenbluth, Oil Change International's U.S. manager, warned Thursday that "this bill is yet another dangerous attempt by Sen. Manchin to line the pockets of his fossil fuel donors, sacrificing communities and our climate along the way."
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"Don't be fooled: The Energy Permitting Reform Act is another dirty deal to fast-track fossil fuels above all else."
NRDC managing director of government affairs Alexandra Adams said Wednesday that "this bill is a giveaway for the oil and gas industry that will ramp up drilling and environmental destruction at a time when we need to be putting a hard stop to fossil fuels."
"We cannot afford to roll back so many of our bedrock environmental and community legal protections and offer a blank check to the oil and gas industry," she stressed. "We need new solutions for permitting if we are going to meet our clean energy potential and address the climate challenge. But this is not it."
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'Nothing To Eat': War-Torn Sudan Faces Mass Famine as Military Delays Aid
Both parties in Sudan's civil war are to blame for a looming mass famine, experts say, and the military's blocking of U.N. aid at a border crossing with Chad exacerbates the problem.
Jul 26, 2024
Sudan's military is blocking United Nations aid trucks from entering at a key border crossing, causing severe disruptions in aid in a country that experts fear may be on the brink of one of the worst famines the world has seen in decades, The New York Timesreported Friday.
The border city of Adré in eastern Chad is the main international crossing into the Darfur region of Sudan, but the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the state's official military, which is engaged in a civil war with a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has refused to issue permits for U.N. trucks to enter there, as it's an RSF-controlled area.
U.S. and international officials have issued increasingly alarmed calls for steady aid access to help feed the millions of severely malnourished people in Darfur and other areas of Sudan.
Last week, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the United States ambassador to the U.N., said that the SAF's obstruction of the border was "completely unacceptable."
Both warring parties in Sudan continue to perpetrate brazen atrocities, including starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. This piece focuses on the SAF's ongoing obstruction of essential aid. The situation is catastrophic. The policy is criminal. https://t.co/FKhqQh3EI9.
— Tom Dannenbaum (@tomdannenbaum) July 26, 2024
The Sudanese who've made it out of the country and into Adré reported dire and unsafe conditions in their home country.
"We had nothing to eat," Bahja Muhakar, a Sudenese mother of three, told the Times after she crossed into Chad, following a harrowing six-day journey from Al-Fashir, a major city in Darfur. She said the family often had to live off of one shared pancake per day.
Another mother, Dahabaya Ibet, said that her 20-month-old boy had to bear witness to his grandfather being shot and killed in front of his eyes when the family home in Darfur was attacked by gunmen late last year.
Now the mothers and their families are refugees in Adré, where 200,000 Sudanese are living in an overcrowded, under-resourced transit camp.
In addition to those that have made it out of the country, there are 11 million people internally displaced within Sudan, most of whom have become displaced since the civil war began in April 2023.
An unnamed senior American official told the Times that the looming famine in Sudan could be as bad as the 2011 famine in Somalia or even the great Ethiopian famine of the 1980s.
In April, Reutersreported that people in Sudan were eating soil and leaves to survive, and The Washington Postcalled it a nation in "chaos," reporting that World Food Program trucks had been "blocked, hijacked, attacked, looted, and detained."
In late June, a coalition of U.N. agencies, aid groups, and governments warned that 755,000 people in Sudan faced famine in the coming months.
The U.S. last week announced $203 million in additional aid to Sudan—part of a $2.1 billion pledge that world leaders made in April, which some countries have not yet delivered on.
Some officials including Thomas-Greenfield, who has dubbed the situation in Sudan "the worst humanitarian crisis in the world," have called for the U.N. Security Council to allow aid delivery into the country even in the absence of SAF approval; it's believed that Russia would veto such a measure.
Sudan's civil war has seen a great deal of international interference. Amnesty International on Thursday published an investigatory briefing showing that weapons from Russia, China, Serbia, Turkey, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had been identified in the country. And The Guardian on Friday reported that the passports of Emirati citizens had been found among wreckage in Sudan, indicating the UAE may have troops or intelligence officers on the ground, though the UAE denied the accusation.
The International Service for Human Rights on Friday warned that both the SAF and RSF were engaged in wrongful killings and arrests, especially targeted at lawyers, doctors, and activists. The group called for an immediate cease-fire.
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JD Vance Doubles Down on Attack on 'Childless Cat Ladies'
Vance "meant no disrespect to cats, but he did mean to demean women and still holds the view in 2024 that they should be punished for not having children."
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After days of condemnation from critics including actress Jennifer Aniston and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, U.S. Sen. JD Vance was given the opportunity on Thursday to clarify his remarks from 2021 in which he said the Democratic Party was run by "childless cat ladies."
Instead, the Ohio Republican and running mate of former President Donald Trump assured SiriusXM host Megyn Kelly on "The Megyn Kelly Show" that while he has "nothing against cats," he meant what he said in terms of "the substance" of his argument.
Vance made it clear, said Aaron Fritschner, deputy chief of staff for Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), "that he meant no disrespect to cats, but he did mean to demean women and still holds the view in 2024 that they should be punished for not having children."
The comments in question were made by Vance to then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson when Vance was running for the Senate.
Calling out Buttigieg—who, the secretary disclosed this week, was struggling at the time to adopt a child with his husband—and Vice President Kamala Harris, a stepmother of two and the Democratic Party's presumptive presidential nominee, Vance said people without biological children "don't really have a direct stake in" the future of the country and therefore shouldn't hold higher office.
In separate remarks that same year, Vance said parents should "have more power" at the voting booth and that "if you don't have as much of an investment in the future of this country, maybe you shouldn't get nearly the same voice."
He also specifically categorized people who don't have children as "bad" in an interview in 2021, saying the government should "reward the things that we think are good" and "punish the things that we think are bad," with people taxed at a lower rate if they have children.
While a spokesperson for Vance told ABC News that the senator's taxation proposal was "basically no different" than the child tax credit supported by the Democratic Party, Democrats who have pushed for the credit have heralded its proven ability to slash child poverty rates and help families afford groceries, childcare, and other essentials, rather than viewing the tax savings as a way to reward people for procreating.
In his interview with Kelly on Thursday, Vance attempted to pivot away from his own comments, saying his point was to criticize "the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-child" and claiming without evidence that the Harris campaign had "come out against the child tax credit"—a signature policy of the Biden-Harris administration.
"I'm proud to stand for parents and I hope that parents out there recognize that I'm a guy who wants to fight for you," said Vance. "The Democrats, in the past five, 10 years, Megyn, they have become anti-family. It's built into their policy, it's built into the way they talk about parents and children. I don't think we should back down from it, I think we should be honest about the problem."
Vance and Kelly went on to lament the anxiety "hardcore environmentalists" and progressive lawmakers such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) have expressed about the damage fossil fuel extraction is doing the planet, accusing them of pushing people to forgo having families—but said nothing about Republican policies that have made child-rearing less accessible.
In recent years, the entire Republican caucus in Congress was joined by conservative then-Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia in blocking the extension of the enhanced child tax credit, which had been credited with cutting the national child poverty rate in half. Republicans also allowed a pandemic-era universal school meal program to expire, while several Democratic-led states have passed state-level programs to ensure all children can have meals at school, regardless of their family's income.
Under Republican abortion bans, numerous stories have cropped up of pregnant people who have been forced to carry pregnancies to term despite finding out that their fetuses had fatal abnormalities and would die soon after birth—as have stories of children who were forced to give birth or had to cross state lines in order to get abortion care.
As with his position that nonparents should be "punished" for not having children, "who else does 'pro-child/family' Vance think should 'face consequences and reality' by way of curtailing choices, rights, and freedoms?" asked writer Alheli Picazo. "Women and girls who become pregnant through rape/incest."
University of North Carolina law professor Carissa Byrne Hessick said that one could test "empirically" Vance's claim that Democratic policies are anti-family.
"But I haven't heard the GOP talk much about things that would help my family and my kids," she said, "like reducing childcare and tuition costs."
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