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Minn. oil pipeline fight stokes threats, fears of Standing Rock

Many of those same activists, though, are focusing now on Minnesota where Enbridge Energy hopes to build a new pipeline to replace its aging Line 3.

Activists are pressing Minnesota officials now to deny the permit and kill the project. State officials and company executives working to head off a confrontation say they’re doing more than ever to listen to the concerns of those in the pipeline’s potential path.

That may not be enough to stop a confrontation.

“If that permit is issued, you can be sure you will have Standing Rock in Minnesota. I will tell you that,” White Earth tribal member and Honor the Earth executive director Winona LaDuke said prior to one of 22 public meetings state regulators recently held across northern Minnesota.

“We’ve been very clear with the state representatives, and the governor of Minnesota, that if they approve this line, there will be tens of thousands of people in Minnesota.”

The Future of US Education Is Standing Rock

As it stands, Wall Street billionaires, hedge fund managers and corporate think tanks are driving education reform, not out of concern for the environment, but in the interest of profit and — still — land. Indeed, historically, US schools were designed for Native erasure and little has changed.

The dominant narrative about Native American students and tribal schools remains that they are “failing.” The evidence? The so-called achievement gap as measured by standardized test scores. Beyond the specious nature of the tests, Native student “failure” should not be confused with the refusal to trade one’s culture and ways of being for a form of “success” marked by individualist modes of competition and an “American Dream” fundamentally reliant upon property ownership and resource exploitation.

Neither Native peoples nor the planet can afford systems of education that are built upon the reduction of life to transactional relationships, whether for profit or individual advancement. So, without an educational paradigm shift, there will always be a next Standing Rock (see: Bears Ears, Lancaster County, central Florida).

Toward this end, Native education — centered in Indigenous knowledge and decolonial curricula — has much to teach mainstream schools. For example, the Defenders of the Water School, founded by Alayna Eagle Shield at the Oceti Sakowin camp, engaged a curriculum centered on Lakota language, culture and intergenerational knowledge as a practice of Indigenous sovereignty. Students at the school spent their days in song, dance and prayer, as well as learned the history, math and science embedded in their surroundings. Most importantly, however, they witnessed the courageous actions taking place in defense of water and their peoples. And, in so doing, they learned about what it means to be a good relative, to be accountable to each other as well as to the generations to come.

Dakota Access pipeline developer to keep fighting Indian artifacts case

A dispute over whether the Texas-based developer of the Dakota Access oil pipeline improperly reported the discovery of American Indian artifacts in North Dakota will linger into the fall, as the company continues to fight a relatively minor violation and small fine.

Energy Transfer Partners has been battling since November when state regulators filed a complaint and proposed a $15,000 fine, which pales in comparison to the $3.8 billion cost of the pipeline that began moving oil last month.

Kobach Under Fire as Pushback to ‘Repugnant’ Voter Data Demand Swells

As the number of states rejecting a “repugnant” and “alarming” voter data demand from the Trump administration’s so-called Election Integrity Commission swells to 41, one of the officials at the helm of that commission, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, is under fire for allegedly violating federal law.

A civil rights group says that in his role as commission vice chair, Kobach, a Republican who’s been dubbed “the king of voter suppression,” appears to have violated the Hatch Act.

The 1939 law, which applies to Kobach in his role as committee vice chair, bars federal employees from using their “official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election.”

On Monday, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law filed a complaint against Kobach, saying he has done just that, taking advantage of his new position to promote his recently-announced bid for Kansas governor.

In fact, the complaint says, “He has done so in multiple settings—including on his campaign website, on his official campaign social media accounts, and in his public appearances.”

Patriotism in the Trump Era by Katrina vanden Heuvel

In one of his first official acts upon taking office, President Trump designated the day of his inauguration a “National Day of Patriotic Devotion.” While it’s not unusual for incoming presidents to issue symbolic proclamations, Trump’s choice of words reflected the extreme nationalism of a White House that “seriously considered” an inaugural parade with military tanks rolling down the streets of Washington, D.C. “A new national pride stirs the American soul and inspires the American heart,” he proclaimed.

As George Orwell once wrote, however, “Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism.” And nearly six months into Trump’s presidency, it seems especially fitting on this Fourth of July to reflect on the meaning of patriotism and to consider how one can be patriotic during such deeply troubling times for the country.

Throughout our history, American patriotism too commonly has been associated with uniform praise for the military and uncritical support for war, along with a visceral belief in America’s “greatness” that provided the rhetorical foundation for Trump’s campaign. Especially in times of conflict—from the Spanish-American War to Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan — those who dare to dissent have frequently met with public scorn and shouts of disloyalty. Protest, too often, has been deemed unpatriotic.

We Are Radicals at Heart — Don’t Forget It

Report calls for public inquiry into Gulf funding of British extremism

Foreign funding for extremism in Britain primarily comes from Saudi Arabia, but the UK government should set up a public inquiry into all Gulf funding sources, a report has said.

The report by the Henry Jackson Society also calls for the government to consider requiring UK religious institutions, including mosques, to be required to reveal sources of overseas funding.

The findings come as Theresa May faces pressure to publish the government’s own report into foreign funding of terrorism. The Home Office-led report was completed six months ago, and No 10 says ministers are still deciding whether to publish. MPs nervous of upsetting strategic relations in the Gulf have also decided not to publish a separate Foreign Office strategy paper on the region.

Saudi Arabia is likely to be angered by the findings since its dispute with Qatar has largely been based on the accusation that its Gulf rival is both the primary funder terrorism overseas and harbours terrorists that support the Muslim Brotherhood or Hamas.

The report claims: “Saudi Arabia has, since the 1960s, sponsored a multimillion-dollar effort to export Wahhabi Islam across the Islamic world, including to Muslim communities in the west.

Robot allowed into US for competition, but no visa for Afghan girls who made it

Two Afghan girls refused visas to the United States for a robot-building competition have said they were mystified as the contest’s organisers said teams from Iran and Sudan as well as a de facto Syrian team had gained visas.

The unusual story of the Afghan all-girl team of robotics students emerged as the United States grapples with the legality of President Donald Trump’s order to temporarily ban travel from six Muslim-majority countries.

North Korea missile test new world threat, says US amid show of force

The US has ramped up pressure on North Korea after Tuesday’s successful intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test, making a show of force off the Korean peninsula and warning that any country harbouring North Korean workers was abetting Kim Jong-un’s regime.

Officials in Seoul said the US-South Korean live-fire ballistic missile exercise early on Wednesday was intended as a warning to Pyongyang.

The South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, said it would demonstrate the allies’ determination to counter North Korean provocations with deeds and not just words of condemnation. “We need to clearly show our missile defence readiness to North Korea,” the presidential Blue House said in a statement.

The US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, called for global action to counter an “escalation of the threat” posed by the regime. He warned that any country that hosted North Korean workers, or provided economic or military aid to Pyongyang, or failed to implement United Nations sanctions was “aiding and abetting a dangerous regime”.

Court rejects EPA’s attempt to halt Obama-era methane rule

The Environmental Protection Agency cannot freeze the implementation of a rule requiring oil and gas companies to fix methane leaks in their equipment, a federal appeals court ruled on Monday in a setback for Donald Trump’s push to cut environmental regulations.

The EPA on 5 June announced a stay in the rule, which would have required drillers and transporters to start reporting and fixing any methane leaks they found in wells and transfer stations, after the agency’s administrator, Scott Pruitt, wrote in an 18 April letter that the agency intended to reconsider imposing it. But the US circuit court of appeals for the District of Columbia said the agency did not have the authority to halt the rule during those deliberations.

The EPA’s stay “is essentially an order delaying the rule’s effective date, and this court has held that such orders are tantamount to amending or revoking a rule”, judges David Tatel and Robert Wilkins wrote. The third member of the three-judge panel, Janice Rogers Brown, dissented.

“We are reviewing the opinion and examining our options,” an EPA spokeswoman said in a statement to Reuters.

US still has no path to peace in Afghanistan, bipartisan senators say

After more than 15 years in Afghanistan the US still does not have a strategy for winning peace and is making that goal even more unattainable by hampering diplomacy, a bipartisan group of US senators said in the Afghan capital on Tuesday.

The criticism came as the Trump administration considers the deployment of thousands of additional soldiers, without publicly explaining what they are meant to achieve.

In Kabul, the Republican senator John McCain excoriated 15 years of US efforts in Afghanistan, which, he said, pursued a goal amounting to “don’t lose”, rather than winning.

McCain – accompanied by the Democratic senators Elizabeth Warren and Sheldon Whitehouse, and fellow Republicans Lindsey Graham and David Perdue – said the delegation shared concerns about the worsened security in Afghanistan since the drawdown of coalition troops in 2014.

Democrats: Did Americans help Russia hack the election?

Some Republicans say Democrats are playing a dangerous game by stoking such a charged story line without evidence.

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Booker: I don’t know if I’ll run in 2020

Sen. Cory Booker said Monday that he hasn’t ruled out a presidential bid in 2020.

In an interview with CNN’s “The Axe Files,” Booker said that he has no plans yet to challenge President Trump in the next election, but that he still hasn’t decided against it.

“I don’t know what the future’s going to bring,” Booker told CNN host and former Obama aide David Axelrod. “I’m not making predictions, but I want to unleash the fullness of who I am right now, and I want to call out injustice where I see it.”

Progressives Explain Why Centrist Tech Billionaires Won’t Save the Democrats

In a move already being denounced by progressives as “tone-deaf” and “literally the stupidest f—— idea” ever, tech billionaires Mark Pincus and Reid Hoffman have launched an initiative titled Win the Future (WTF) with the goal of bringing the Democratic Party back from the political wilderness.

Recode’s Tony Romm first reported on the billionaires’ plans and lofty objectives, which include pushing Democrats to “rewire their philosophical core” and recruiting candidates to challenge Democratic incumbents. The recruits, according to Romm, will be called “WTF Democrats.”

The tech moguls have “contributed $500,000 to their still-evolving project” so far, Romm notes, and they have been “aided by Jeffrey Katzenberg, a major Democratic donor and former chairman of Disney, as well as venture capitalists Fred Wilson and Sunil Paul.”

Pincus, the co-founder of Zynga, signaled that the WTF platform will be “pro-social [and] pro-planet, but also pro-business and pro-economy.”

“I’m fearful the Democratic Party is already moving too far to the left,” Pincus said. “I want to push the Democratic Party to be more in touch with mainstream America, and on some issues, that’s more left, and on some issues it might be more right.”

Progressives reacted to the project—and to the comments of its founders—with a combination of scorn and dismay, portraying the effort as just the latest in a series of misguided attempts to push the Democratic Party rightward.

Billionaires dream of immortality. The rest of us worry about healthcare

last week, as the Senate was still trying to deny healthcare to 22 million fellow Americans, a friend asked me whether I would choose to live forever if I could. We were discussing Silicon Valley billionaires and their investments in new biotechnologies that they hope will enable them to do what no human has ever done: cheat death. The technology includes some dubious treatments, such as being pumped with the blood of much younger people.

Both of us agreed we do not wish for immortality, though we are both extremely happy with our lives and healthy. Wanting to live forever is fundamentally selfish. It’s obvious why immortality appeals to billionaires such as Peter Thiel. It obviously wouldn’t to the millions in the US who won’t have health insurance if the Republicans pull out the vote on their bill.

Peter Thiel, the PayPal founder who is a friend of Trump, is one of the Immortalists. Lucky that he will never run out of money, especially since the Senate’s version of repeal-and-replace Obamacare is such a generous giveaway to the billionaire class.

The only reason it’s getting any Republican votes is that, as the New York Times reported a few days ago: “The bill’s largest benefits go to the wealthiest Americans, who have the most comfortable health care arrangements, and its biggest losses fall to poorer Americans who rely on government support.”

Lawmakers demand stronger Trump response after North Korean missile test

Republican and Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday called on President Donald Trump to increase pressure on North Korea and China, after Pyongyang announced its first-ever test of an intercontinental ballistic missile that could reach the United States.

Trump said little about the latest international provocation that will further complicate his meetings with world leaders later this week at the G-20 in Hamburg, Germany. He started the Fourth of July in his comfort zone, at the Trump National Golf Club.

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“North Korea has just launched another missile,” the president wrote on Twitter. “Does this guy have anything better to do with his life? Hard to believe that South Korea and Japan will put up with this much longer. Perhaps China will put a heavy move on North Korea and end this nonsense once and for all!”

But that response didn’t cut it for lawmakers of both parties, as well as experts in the region, who on Tuesday demanded a more forceful reaction from the White House, and a real strategy related to both China and North Korea, to deal with the ICBM test.

“Instead of vague Twitter bluster, President Trump should answer North Korea’s dangerous test with a coherent strategy of direct diplomacy with Pyongyang and increased economic sanctions pressure from China,” said Sen. Edward Markey, who is the top Democrat on the East Asia Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “Each additional test will bring North Korea closer to the capability of delivering a nuclear weapon to American cities.”

US forces conduct ‘collective self-defense strike’ in Somalia

U.S. forces conducted a “collective self-defense strike” against al Qaeda affiliated al Shabaab in Somalia on Tuesday night, U.S. Africa Command (Africom) said Wednesday.

“Al Shabaab has publicly committed to planning and conducting attacks against the US and our allies,” Africom said in a statement. “We continue to work in coordination with our Somali partners and allies to systematically dismantle al Shabaab, and help achieve stability and security throughout the region.”

The latest strike happened 300 miles southwest of Somali capital Mogadishu at about 6:30 p.m. Tuesday. It targeted “an al Shabaab troop concentration” and was the result of U.S. forces “working from actionable intelligence,” Africom said.

I enabled a ‘like’ button at the bottom of posts, how well it will work and if I can tie it into a ‘top posts’ list of sorts I do not yet know but I’ll keep trying!