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tar sands action
Hours Left for KXL Public Comment
XL Dissent: Democracy and the Pipeline
Earlier this morning, I took a break from press calls and preparations for this weekend's big XL Dissent protest in Washington, D.C. to go back and watch some of the original videos we made during Tar Sands Action, the two-weeks of sit-ins in August 2011 that helped turn the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline into the highest profile environmental fight in recent memory.
In a video from the first day of the protests, Gus Speth, a former White House official and co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council, says, "We have to draw a line in the sand somewhere and this is a perfect place to draw it. It's a new, controversial, unconventional fossil resource with tremendous potential to harm the global climate, and for Obama to do something in his own power which doesn't require Congress, that would be electrifying and send a powerful signal around this country and around the world that we are going to act."
The Climate Movement's Pipeline Preoccupation
If KXL Opponents 'Draw The Line,' Will Obama Dare to Cross?
In a coordinated day of action this Saturday, people in the U.S. will gather in their own communities nationwide to deliver what they hope will be a dramatic final public salvo in their multi-year campaign aimed at forcing President Barack Obama to reject the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.
The Flip Side Of Obama's Keystone XL Delay
Civil Disobedience as Law Enforcement
Global Climate Movement Turns Up the Heat
At the beginning of this week, eleven climate activists in Michigan were arrested for blocking construction of an expansion of a tar sands pipeline that just three years ago caused the largest on-land oil spill in US history.
Of the eleven arrested, four now face felony charges and possible two-year prison sentences for chaining themselves to construction equipment at the project which is owned by Canadian pipeline company Enbridge.
Asked if this would or should deter future activists, Lisa Leggio, ones of those facing felony charges, said simply: "Hell, no. We're doing what we have to do."
On Thursday, fourteen people were arrested after bringing a halt to operations at a proposed gas fracking site in Sussex, England. The anti-fracking activists formed a human chain and refused to leave the roadway and police responded by physically separating the individuals by force.
"They just started taking people out one by one," one witness told the Guardian. "Not everyone went voluntarily and there were some struggles. A girl was shouting at one point and seemed to be quite upset and the police seemed to be quite rough. I saw a policeman with his knuckles pressing on the side of a guy's face until he released the man he was holding onto. He was obviously hurting him. Another looked like he was bending someone's little finger back."
Demanding that the State Department's final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) of Keystone XL be fair, balanced, and free from the influence of the fossil fuel industry, the activists surrounded the offices, locked arms, and refused to leave until they were arrested by local police.
So what is all this?
Even if not all formally labelled as such, the actions this week paint a picture of a mid-summer campaign organized by the climate group 350.org called "Summer Heat." Designed as a series of direct actions against the fossil fuel industry, the campaign is the manifestation of an escalation in tactics by the global climate movement that says it is taking its efforts to combat global warming and educate the public about the dangers of climate change to the next level.
Focusing on the impacts of the fossil fuel industry on local "frontline" communities, the activists hope they can show that though the climate emergency is global in scale, every person--no matter where they live--has a role to play in challenging the energy paradigm that is threatening the world's vital ecosystems.
"We've reached a point where every local fight over dirty energy is also a fight for the planet's survival," explained 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben, who said that the SummerHeat campaign shows how frontline groups like the ones in Michigan, Washington, and Essex are "battling for people around the world."
The campaign, which has been ongoing throughout July, is culminating in a series of actions over this weekend nationwide:
Richmond Summer Heat - Bay Area
President Obama -- Keep your Promises - DC
Flotilla to keep New England tar sands free - Maine
2013 Walk for our Grandchildren - Maryland
Shut Down Brayton Point - Massachusetts
Oil and Water Don't Mix: A Rally for the Great Lakes - Michigan
Rally at the Rio! - New Mexico
Ohio vs. Frackers - Ohio
Pacific Northwest stands up to fossil fuel exports - Portland, OR
Utah Tar Sands Action Camp - Utah
Texas Keystone XL Showdown - Texas
Follow the #summerheat hashtag on Twitter:
Tweets about "#SummerHeat #350"
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Non-Violent Keystone XL Activists = 'Eco-Terrorists,' According to TransCanada Documents
Documents recently obtained by Bold Nebraska show that TransCanada - owner of the hotly-contested Keystone XL (KXL) tar sands pipeline - has colluded with an FBI/DHS Fusion Center in Nebraska, labeling non-violent activists as possible candidates for "terrorism" charges and other serious criminal charges.
Further, the language in some of the documents is so vague that it could also ensnare journalists, researchers and academics, as well.
TransCanada also built a roster of names and photos of specific individuals involved in organizing against the pipeline, including 350.org's Rae Breaux, Rainforest Action Network's Scott Parkin and Tar Sands Blockade's Ron Seifert. Further, every activist ever arrested protesting the pipeline's southern half is listed by name with their respective photo shown, along with the date of arrest.
It's PSYOPs-gate and "fracktivists" as "an insurgency" all over again, but this time it's another central battleground that's in play: the northern half of KXL, a proposed border-crossing pipeline whose final fate lies in the hands of President Barack Obama.
The southern half of the pipeline was approved by the Obama Admin. via a March 2013 Executive Order. Together, the two pipeline halves would pump diluted bitumen ("dilbit") south from the Alberta tar sands toward Port Arthur, TX, where it will be refined and shipped to the global export market.
Activists across North America have put up a formidable fight against both halves of the pipeline, ranging from the summer 2011 Tar Sands Action to the ongoing Tar Sands Blockade. Apparently, TransCanada has followed the action closely, given the level of detail in the documents.
Another Piece of the Puzzle
Unhappy with the protest efforts that would ultimately hurt their bottom-line profits, TransCanada has already filed a strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP) against Tar Sands Blockade, which was eventually settled out of court in Jan. 2013. That was just one small piece of the repressive puzzle, though it sent a reverberating message to eco-activists: they're being watched.
In May 2013, Hot Springs School District in South Dakota held a mock bomb drill, with the mock "domestic terrorists" none other than anti-Keystone XL activists.
"The Hot Springs School District practiced a lockdown procedure after pretending to receive a letter from a group that wrote 'things dear to everyone will be destroyed unless continuation of the Keystone pipeline and uranium mining is stopped immediately," explained the Rapid City Journal. "As part of the drill, the district's 800 students locked classroom doors, pulled down window shades and remained quiet."
This latest revelation, then, is a continuation of the troubling trend profiled in investigative journalist Will Potter's book "Green Is the New Red." That is, eco-activists are increasingly being treated as domestic eco-terrorists both by corporations and by law enforcement.
TransCanada Docs: "Attacking Critical Infrastructure" = "Terrorism"
The documents demonstrate a clear fishing expedition by TransCanada. For example, TransCanada's PowerPoint presentation from Dec. 2012 on corporate security allege that Bold Nebraska had "suspicious vehicles/photography" outside of its Omaha office.
That same presentation also says TransCanada has received "aggressive/abusive email and voicemail," vaguely citing an incident in which someone said the words "blow up," with no additional context offered. It also states the Tar Sands Blockade is "well-funded," an ironic statement about a shoe-string operation coming from one of the richest and most powerful industries in human history.
Another portion of TransCanada's PowerPoint presentation discusses the various criminal and anti-terrorism statutes that could be deployed to deter grassroots efforts to stop KXL. The charge options TransCanada presented included criminal trespass, criminal conspiracy, and most prominently and alarmingly: federal and state anti-terrorism statutes.
Journalism Could be Terrorism/Criminal According to FBI/DHS Fusion Center Presentation
An April 2013 presentation given by John McDermott - a Crime Analyst at the Nebraska Information Analysis Center (NIAC), the name of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funded Nebraska-based Fusion Center - details all of the various "suspicious activities" that could allegedly prove a "domestic terrorism" plot in-the-make.
NAIC says its mission is to "[c]ollect, evaluate, analyze, and disseminate information and intelligence data regarding criminal and terrorist activity to federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement agencies, other Fusion Centers and to the public and private entities as appropriate."
Among the "observed behaviors and incidents reasonably indicative of preoperations planning related to terrorism or other criminal activity" is "photography, observation, or surveillance of facilities, buildings, or critical infrastructure and key resources." A slippery slope, to say the least, which could ensnare journalists and photo-journalists out in the field doing their First Amendment-protected work.
Another so-called "suspicious activity" that could easily ensnare journalists, researchers and academics: "Eliciting information beyond curiosity about a facility's or building's purpose, operations, or security."
Melissa Troutman and Joshua Pribanic - producers of the documentary film "Triple Divide" and co-editors of the investigative journalism website Public Herald - are an important case in point. While in the Tioga State Forest (public land) filming a Seneca Resources fracking site in Troy, Pennsylvania, they were detained by a Seneca contractor and later labeled possible "eco-terrorists."
"In discussions between the Seneca Resources and Chief Caldwell, we were made out to be considered 'eco-terrorists' who attempted to trespass and potentially vandalize Seneca's drill sites, even though the audio recording of this incident is clear that we identified ourselves as investigative journalists in conversation with the second truck driver," they explained in a post about the encounter, which can also be heard in their film.
"We were exercising a constitutional right as members of the free press to document and record events of interest to the public on public property when stripped of that right by contractors of Seneca."
Activists protesting against the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) during its April 2013 meeting in Arizona were also labeled as possible "domestic terrorists" by the Arizona FBI/DHS Fusion Center, as detailed in a recent investigation by the Center for Media and Democracy.
"Not Just Empty Rhetoric"
It'd be easy to write off TransCanada and law enforcement's antics as absurd. Will Potter, in an article about the documents, warned against such a mentality.
"This isn't empty rhetoric," he wrote. "In Texas, a terrorism investigation entrapped activists for using similar civil disobedience tactics. And as I reported recently for VICE, Oregon considered legislation to criminalize tree sits. TransCanada has been using similar tactics in [Canada] as well."
And this latest incident is merely the icing on the cake of the recent explosive findings by Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian about the National Security Agency's (NSA) spying on the communcations records of every U.S. citizen.
"Many terrorism investigations (and a great many convictions) are politically contrived to suit the ends of corporations, offering a stark reminder of how the expansion of executive power -- whether in the context of dragnet NSA surveillance, or the FBI treating civil disobedience as terrorism -- poses a threat to democracy," Shahid Buttar, Executive Director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee told DeSmogBlog.
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