Some thoughts from Podunk about the KXL pipeline.

I posted this as a comment in a facebook discussion on the KXL Pipeline running from the tar sands of Alberta to Texas and points east and west that Obama is going to approve. I think this comment I made kind of stands on its own so I am sharing it here. If there are questions feel free to ask away; or take issue with what I have stated:

Here are a few articles on the history of the situation in northern Minnesota where I live:

http://pineislandstateforest.blogspot.com/

http://redlakewalleyefishery.blogspot.com/

http://nativeamericanindianlaborunion12.blogspot.com/

I would note there are several very important issues not being addressed by the environmental or labor movement regarding employment issues.

First of all, Affirmative Action has never been enforced on any of the mining, pipeline or powerline work.

Second; T.E.R.O. has not been enforced in any of the work being done on Indian Reservations and Indian Lands. This will explain T.E.R.O. as few people know what it is let alone understand that it is the law of the land just like Affirmative Action:

http://www.llojibwe.com/services/dev/tero.html

I would call to everyone's attention the interview of Roger Jourdain linked to on the right-hand side of this website. Jourdain was a defender of worker's rights and an environmentalist who was the Chair of the Red Lake Nation for almost thirty years until the Minnesota Indian Gaming Association and the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party engineered his defeat:

http://kickitupanotch1917.blogspot.com/

Employment and the environment are, as is often said, two sides of the same coin.

This thread has opened up a lot of very important information but there is much more which needs to be addressed simply because the ongoing genocide against Native Peoples has become very complex.

Very few people understand the racist "Doctrine of Discovery" and the racist United States Supreme Court decision of "Johnson versus M'Intosh" issued in 1823 which still stands to this day and is used to run all these pipelines, powerlines and mining operations on Indian Lands.

Complicating this even further, is the very legitimate demand being made by many Native American Indian activists, that tribal councils should have the right to tax all the oil, gas, electricity and the fruits of mining from tribal lands.

And to further complicate all of this there is Homeland Security and the FBI and local law enforcement and county prosecutors harassing those who speak up to no end. Greg Paquin, who was the founder of the Native American Indian Labor Union #12 whose blog I posted above, was harassed by the FBI so severely he took his own life last year. And this is not an isolated murder by this method; people living on Indian Reservations can tell this same story over and over again just the names change.

And complicating this even further is the fact that the National, Regional and State Indian Gaming Associations are using environmental issues to wrest concessions from politicians on gaming issues as I documented in my blog posted above where the Red Lake Tribal Council signed off on peat mining in exchange for a new casino in International Falls, Minnesota where they wanted to fleece the workers in the paper mills on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border.

We are at the point where either we need to elect new politicians committed to solving all of these problems in a progressive manner putting people and the environment first; or, we need to go to war against these huge industries whose only intent is to make maximum super profits.

It looks to me like it will take quite a lot of both. And we can't be strengthening the hand of the very politicians like Obama by supporting them when we know full well we will end up having to fight them--- like with KXL pipeline.

And if this earnest effort isn't going to be made to stop KXL, an earnest effort has to be made one way or another to make sure T.E.R.O. and Affirmative Action in employment are enforced--- the two are mutually inclusive; not exclusive but so far the environmental movement is doing no better than organized labor in understanding this... and activists like Greg Paquin who understood this end up getting harassed not only by the FBI and Homeland Security, but by corrupt tribal councils and the leaders of these environmental movements and even the leaders of their own unions. Progressives are going to have to consider the entire big picture here. Not all environmental activists are anti-racist and pro-labor progressives and not all labor leaders are progressive--- some are downright reactionary and racist, too.

There really needs to be a full and open discussion about all of this and how all of these issues and problems need to be considered in finding solutions.

The jobs issue is an important issue; and, if environmentalists are going to address this issue we need to be discussing the kinds of jobs we need in this country and how we will be paying for them--- by peace dividends derived by ending these dirty wars and ending this insanity of militarism.

The energy requirements of this country right now are integrally connected to the needs of Wall Street's imperialist agenda of world domination. One more complex issue part of this entire equation. Where is the peace movement in all of this?

It looks to me like we need to be thinking along the lines of an anti-monopoly coalition all of our organizations and movements need to be plugging into as we proceed in which we declare Wall Street our enemy and the need to take this enemy down simply because our very survival depends on us doing this.