Category: propaganda

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Advertising, Business Ethics, Energy & Sustainability, Green Business, Greenwashing, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, propaganda Tagged with , , , , ,

Someone posted a breathless, gushy letter to potential investors in a new solar technology and asked the members of the discussion group if we thought it was real.

Here’s a piece of this over-the-top marketing letter (don’t try to click the links; I have disabled them and removed all identifying information).

hypey sales letter for investing in new solar tech
hypey sales letter for investing in new solar tech

I thought my answer was worth sharing the relevant parts with you here:

 

Lets look at this as an opportunity to educate ourselves, because these kinds of issues come up regularly. And as climate advocates, we need to have some familiarity…While I agree that the scheme is off-topic, the general idea of where we’re at with solar is quite germane–and so is the need to understand the marketing world. Be sure to read at least to bullet #3.

  1. This is hypey marketing copy promising a ridiculous high return on an investment with an unknown company. That to me is a whole bunch of red flags, and I echo the caution that others have urged.
  2. As someone who makes part of my living writing (non-hypey, fact-based but emotionally driven) marketing copy for green businesses, I can tell you that not all copywriters take the time to thoroughly understand the products they’re hired to write about. I would want to see independent verification of all these claims, and to know whether this is an independent analyst or (as I suspect) someone who either was paid by the company/is earning sales commissions from the people who click–or dipped lavishly into the work of someone who was.
  3. BUT there have been major advances in solar (and other clean energy) technology in the past few years, and we as energy/climate advocates should be at least vaguely aware of them. the stuff that IS real provides major talking points in converting former climate skeptics. As an example, there have been tests of some solar collectors that achieve efficiencies above 40 percent, which is about double the typical collector of today. That makes solar a lot more practical for homeowners (maybe even tenants) and also more profitable as a business venture.
    There’s a lot of hope in using approaches based in biomimicry: studying and imitating nature. Most green leaves are about 90% efficient as solar collectors. Many of these new technologies use something other than silicon. I’m even aware of one research team that’s looking at DNA as the medium for capturing and harnessing energy.
  4. Even today, solar panels are far more efficient and affordable than they were a decade ago. Add innovations like solar roofing tiles that serve both roofing and power generating functions as well as the tremendous breakthroughs in affordable battery storage and solar is suddenly a whole lot more attractive.
    I’ve been using solar for almost all my hot water since 2001, and for about 1/10 of my electricity since 2004. Were I to put the same size arrays up today, I’d be able to get about 1/3 of my electricity, as it’s improved by about a factor of 3–even better if I had collectors that track the sun.
    I live in cloudy, cold Massachusetts. If I can make it work, every building in Arizona that isn’t blocked by a mountain, tall trees, or a taller building ought to be solarized by now. And while gas and oil prices have fallen thanks to fracking, their impact on the environment has worsened. Meanwhile, the price of solar has dropped so much that even with the cheaper fracked gas and oil, it’s often competitive now, and it doesn’t threaten our water supply (something far more precious than petroleum).
Hope this helps!

 

Shel Horowitz – “The Transformpreneur”(sm)
________________________________________________
Watch (and please share) my TEDx Talk,
“Impossible is a Dare: Business for a Better World”
Contact me to bake in profitability while addressing hunger,
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Twitter: @shelhorowitz
* First business ever to be Green America Gold Certified
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Award-winning, best-selling author of 10 books. Latest:
Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (co-authored with Jay Conrad Levinson)
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By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Branding, Copywriting, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Politics, propaganda, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , , ,

There’s one Democratic Party candidate for Congress whose annoying emails just pushed me over the edge. But the Democratic Party is routinely guilty of this, and I’ve gotten off many of the lists of their various front groups. And probably, so are the Republicans (I’m not on their lists).

As I moved a full 100 emails received in the past month from this candidate’s organization or the Democratic Party on behalf of this candidate, I noted once again the in-your-face headlines. Here are just some of the examples from just the past week, in the order I received them (spacing, emoticons, and capitalization in the originals):

  • Special Election RUINED
  • TERRIFYING prediction
  • this just got WORSE (Paul Ryan)
  • ? Paul Ryan = FURIOUS ?
  • please, please, PLEASE
  • HUGE mistake
  • No!!!!!!!
  • R U I N E D

I’m a copywriter. I know what this candidate’s team is doing, and why. I know which hot buttons they are trying to push. But just as too much of the finest food still gives you a bellyache, too much hot-button-pushing makes the mechanism seize up. I’ve received 14 separate messages since Sunday morning (I’m writing this on Tuesday morning). It feels like marketing by assault rifle.

My response mechanism seized up. I put them on the not-giving-any-more-money list and unsubscribed. The form asked for a reason, and here’s what I wrote:

I don’t like your constant-crisis approach. I just deleted 100 emails from you all screaming at me, most unopened. I’m really sick of “the Republicans are out to get us, send us money again.” And also sick of “we’re on the verge of victory, send us more money.” I wish [Candidate name] well and hope he wins, but I want the Dems and especially [Candidate name] to market to me via intelligence and not fear. I am a marketer and have run successful campaigns.

Can’ we be better than this? I want candidates who will tell me what they will do FOR their district and their country, and not just that a powerful opponent hates them.

A citizen votes. Photo by Kristen Price.
A citizen votes. Photo by Kristen Price.

Remember: you are in someone’s email box because of the recipient’s good graces. Don’t abuse the relationship or overstay your welcome. If you annoy, you don’t get read, and eventually, you lose a subscriber. You could even find yourself blacklisted for spam.

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By Posted on Posted in Democracy, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Greenwashing, propaganda, Protests and Crackdowns, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , ,
If you missed Part 1, read it here, and then follow the links to Parts 2, 3, and 4.

Chernobyl and Fukushima

Chernobyl rendered a big swath of Ukraine uninhabitable. While a few more travelers are gaining permission to enter the dead zone, nobody lives there, and nothing you’d want to eat grows there.

After that disaster, the nuclear industry experienced a long series of accidents that could have been very serious, but were contained.

Then came Fukushima.

While it wasn’t nearly as destructive as Chernobyl, it still contaminated a 11,500-square-mile area and required the permanent evacuation of 230 square miles (evicting—and causing massive economic loss to—159,128 people). Much agricultural land had to be abandoned. Japan shut of most of its nukes for several years, causing great economic stress and forcing more intensive use of carbon fuels to replace the lost energy in a hurry.

And the world discovered that nuclear power plants, which are usually located next to water for cooling purposes, are not designed to withstand a significant flood.

I had written my first book about why nuclear power makes no sense, published all the way back in 1980. Following Fukushima, a Japanese publisher tracked me down and asked about bringing it back into print. I researched and wrote ten-page update that convinced me that nuclear power is still an absolutely terrible technology. If you’d like a copy, please download at https://greenandprofitable.com/why-nuclear-still-makes-no-sense/

 

Zombie Nukes are Back from the Dead

The safe energy movement made nuclear energy too expensive economically and politically for many years. But all of a sudden, the zombie power plants are back from the dead.

The two-reactor Watts-Bar plant in Tennessee was permitted back in 1973, but even more than most nukes, it was plagued by delays. Unit 1 took 23 years, going on-grid in 1996. Unit 2 took another 20 years, going online in late 2016. No US nuclear plants went online between those two dates. And meanwhile, these plants use obsolete, unsafe, 1970s design—a frightening specter.

A newer design, the Westinghouse AP1000, was selected for the two double reactors permitted during the George W. Bush years in Georgia and South Carolina. The idea was to prefabricate much of the reactor and thus shave time and costs. Instead, however, the plants have faced delays of many years, massive cost overruns, safety crises, and the resulting bankruptcy of Westinghouse (and near-collapse of parent company Toshiba).

The crazy thing is this: never mind the safety issues, the citizen opposition, or all the other stuff—why would anyone want to tie up billions of dollars for a decade or more constructing an n-plant that will never be economically competitive, uses unproven technology, and generates enormous opposition? There are very good market-based reasons why the US nuclear industry shriveled up after Three Mile Island. It’s hard to imagine any sane company or investors going there.

 

The Carbon-Friendly Magic Bullet Myth

The last several years, some environmentalists have embraced nuclear because they think it’s a big step forward on the path to a low-carbon planetary diet.

But they’re wearing blinders:

  1. Why do we want to reduce our carbon footprint? To protect the earth! Ask people who used to live near Chernobyl or Fukushima and were forced to evacuate if they think nuclear protects the earth.
  2. It takes over a decade to get a nuclear plant built and generating power—and that’s when everything goes smoothly (which is almost never, as we’ve seen). Climate change is an emergency and we can’t wait decades to solve it.
  3. We can lower that carbon a lot faster by investing in true green solutions. Rocky Mountain Institute’s Amory Lovins notes that dollars invested in conservation and renewables will reduce carbon up to 10 times as effectively and 40 times faster than dollars invested in nuclear. I quote his figures in some depth on Page 10 of the Fukushima update.
  4. Nuclear has quite a bit more carbon impact than most people realize. Every step in the process other than actually running the fuel through the reactor—and there at least eight other steps—adds to the carbon footprint (and consumes fuel, too): mining, milling, transportation, processing, building the reactor and the massive concrete containment vessel, removing the spent fuel, storing it for 250,000 years, etc. (It’s still less than fossil fuel, but it’s far from zero.)

 

The “Gen 4 Will Be Safe” Myth

The thorium and pebble-bed technologies do look better than the old boiling-water or pressurized-water designs, from my non-scientist/informed layperson’s perspective. BUT they are untested. And they will also take at best more than 20 years to come online, if all goes well (and history indicates that I probably won’t).

We know this: the Generation II nukes were supposed to be much safer than the Generation I plants, even though they were rated to generate up to 10 times as much electricity, and thus were built much more massively, with more things to go wrong. Gen II plants failed at Fukushima. A Gen II plant came close to failing several times at Vermont Yankee. Even when that plant was new, its safety report to the federal government was extremely disturbing, going on to document incidents for many pages within the first year.

Cooling tower failure, Vermont Yankee
Vermont Yankee cooling tower fails, 2008. Photo by ISC ALC, Creative Commons license

The European Commission claimed at the time I wrote the update that Generation IV are the first nukes to be built with public safety integrated from the beginning. That creates yet another reason to shut down all the Gen I, II, and III plants (which are aging, going brittle, and increasing the danger to us)—and second, makes me wonder if in 20 years, after some of these plants have gone online and experienced catastrophic failures, if some scientists won’t be spouting similar rhetoric about Generation VI or VIII plants being the first to really be safe. The needle keeps moving on nuclear safety, as each previous reactor technology starts to fail.

Interestingly, the link I used in my post-Fukushima update now redirects to a page that does not make this claim, and in May, 2017, I couldn’t find anything about safety being built in to the new reactor designs anywhere on the organization’s website.

 

Lessons for Today’s Movements

We’d need a whole book to cover all the lessons today’s activists can bring back from the Clamshell experience. Here are a few of my favorites:

  • Don’t just be against things; propose and organize for positive alternatives—and incorporate this in the framing you offer the media, the public, and to your opponents
  • Remember not just your short-term goals but also the ultimate goals. Clam had a short-term goal of stopping the plant and a medium-term goal of stopping nuclear power nationally and globally. But Clamshell also had positive long-term goals. On energy, the goal was not simply to build a non-nuclear power plant but to power society through a variety of clean and renewable technologies—and on process, to move the whole society in a more democratic inclusive direction
  • Organizing works best when you find ways of bringing the issues to the unconvinced—while not neglecting the deeply committed
  • You can find allies where you weren’t expecting to
  • When organizing people through active nonviolence, it will be much easier to win people over to your side; if you switch to violence, you’ll lose much of your natural constituency and your work will be harder
  • Enforcing a rule that participants must be trained for actions with personal risk (such as arrests or physical harm) is a very good idea
  • Agree on a governance structure, and stick to it (unless you get the whole group’s agreement to change it)
  • Perhaps most important of all—understand that whether most of your movement believe you can win or believe you will fail, you’re probably right. Come in with the attitude that you WILL succeed, and the chances of succeeding become much higher. Stress this in all your outreach. Phrase things positively but realistically; don’t promise overnight results you can’t achieve. Emphasize that your fight is a long-term struggle, and publicly celebrate every small victory along the way.
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By Posted on Posted in Activism, censorship, Corporate Social Responsibility, Democracy, Diversity, Ethics: General, language, Marketing Trends/News, Media Ethics, media-general, Politics, propaganda, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , ,

Have you seen the infamous Pepsi ad that’s been called “tone-deaf” by progressives, and which Pepsi pulled quickly? Before you read the rest of this post, please write your impression of it in the comments.

I watched the part of it shown on this segment of The View.

Protestor calls for unity
Protestor calls for unity

 

 

And I agree with Whoopi: the message is about inclusion.

Yes, it is co-opting the movement. Advertisements have always co-opted cultural memes. If you wear $60 torn jeans, you can thank the hippies and grunge-punks who wore their clothes to rattiness. For that matter, Bud commercials and Wheaties cereal boxes have been co-opting sports culture for decades (it feels like millennia).

I’m old enough to remember when hijab-wearing women and people of color and same-sex couples would not have been allowed anywhere near a commercial. What I see most of all is a message to DT that we are united in our diversity (and that includes the cops, who are actually our allies most of the time–and which the movement made a big mistake in automatically trashing in the 1960s).

I also agree with Whoopi that water is my preferred drink over any kind of soda.

That Pepsi was attacked to the point where they pulled the ad is much more shocking to me than the ad itself.

But I guess I shouldn’t be shocked. Here in the Blue Bubble, behind the “Tofu Curtain” (not a phrase I invented) in Massachusetts’ Hampshire/Franklin Counties—one of the bluest parts of a very liberal state—those accusations of “tone deaf” are all-too-familiar. Two among many examples:

  • A program in which cops in the schools did something sociable with the kids was kiboshed and the very progressive police chief (an out lesbian who was seen at Pride Day marches long before she became chief) was trashed as tone-deaf
  • Two towns over, several years ago, a production of “West Side Story” was canceled because some people thought the whole idea of the play was racist. I don’t know if they read the script or saw the movie, but to me, that movie makes a statement against racism, just like Twain’s Huckleberry Finn (which has also been criticized for racism, because it uses the N-word—even though it was written in the 19th century when that was the term used and the whole premise of the story is to show the absurdity and cruelty of racism)

It reminds me of the days when the left (my teenage self included) would practically canonize any extreme statement that happened to be made by a person of color or one who identified as any shade of LGBTQ, even if that statement incited violence against innocent people who happened to be white and straight. I should have spoken out against those outrages 45 years ago, but I was just as hoodwinked.

I’m not talk about any false unity of sweeping real grievances under the rug. But I am objecting to the shrill side of political correctness that demonizes the Other without even listening, even when the Other is mere steps away on the political spectrum, dividing instead of uniting and leaving us all at risk when the real forces of repression sweep in.

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By Posted on Posted in Democracy, Ethics in Government, media-general, propaganda, Publishing Tagged with , ,

A reality check for Mr. Trump:

If you have a press conference, you have to let the press in to cover it. Otherwise, it’s not a press conference.

Blocking CNN, the New York Times, Politico and the Los Angeles Times from attending only serves to shred the thin slivers of credibility you have remaining. It gives the mainstream media permission to call you out for your totalitarian tendencies—or to not cover you at all. Oh, and don’t think it’s going to get in any serious reporter’s way of covering the event.

New York Times logo
New York Times logo

Here’s the New York Times article on this action, which cites a younger-and-wiser Sean Spicer last December:

In December, he told Politico that the Trump White House would never ban a news outlet. “Conservative, liberal or otherwise, I think that’s what makes a democracy a democracy versus a dictatorship,” he said.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Politics, propaganda, Protests and Crackdowns, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , ,

At almost any protest event these days, you’ll hear the chant, “Tell me what democracy looks like. This is what democracy looks like.”

Unfortunately, the targets of our protests—the new US federal government that came into power in January—show us almost every day what democracy DOESN’T look like. It’s looking more and more like dictatorship.

Caricature of Donald Trump by DonkeyHotey, Creative Commons License: https://www.flickr.com/photos/donkeyhotey/5471912349/sizes/m/in/photostream/
Caricature of Donald Trump by DonkeyHotey, Creative Commons License: https://www.flickr.com/photos/donkeyhotey/5471912349/sizes/m/in/photostream/

The list of every bad thing the government is doing would be far longer than would fit on a blog, but it’s important to keep the overall “doubleplusungood” (as George Orwell coined it in his antitotalitarian classic 1984) trend in mind. A reminder of a few lowlights:

As I said, I could go on for a long time. The above is not even close to a comprehensive list. Even the right-wing site LearnLiberty sees DT as a serious threat to our liberties.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Business Ethics, Democracy, Ethics in Government, language, Politics, propaganda, Protests and Crackdowns, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , ,

I’m starting this post at 2:30 a.m. on January 21, as I prepare to board a bus to Washington, joining the Women’s March for human rights that will greet the newly sworn in US president on his first full day of office. Hundreds of thousands are expected in Washington, New York, Los Angeles, and many smaller communities. Post-event note: at least 3.3 million to 4.6 million demonstrators came out around the US, plus hundreds of thousands more elsewhere in the world in more than 600 events. I’m finishing it the next day.

Several people have asked me, “Why don’t you give him a chance?” And my father-in-law, a liberal, shocked me with a different question: “He won. Why are you still marching?” Later, someone else asked me the same question on Facebook.

Marching at the Women's March on Washington with my wife and children
Marching at the Women’s March on Washington with my wife and children (from left: son-in-law Bobby, daughter Alana, wife Dina, me, son Rafael)


The Chances DT Has Failed to Take

I have given him not one chance but many, and he has failed to take them. I feel it is my patriotic duty to speak out against his agenda, to remind him that he not only has no sweeping mandate—he lost the popular vote “bigly”—and to remind my fellow Americans that his election was not clean and his behavior has not met any legitimacy tests.

This was already abundantly clear during the campaign. Back in August, I wrote an open letter to DT that called him out for his racism, misogyny, and bullying.

Despite my harsh language, when he eked out his narrow victory, I was still willing to give him lots of chances. But here’s what happened, just to name a few:

I don’t want to make this blog into a book, so I will stop there. I would love to have been wrong on this. I would have deeply delighted in the emergence of a new and different DT, one who really was trying to “make America great.”

My Patriotic Duty
One final reason why I marched: the most important one of all! As a patriotic American who believes this country is already great and that DT’s and/or his surrogates’ policies on the environment, women’s rights, minority rights, education, freedom of the press and other freedoms in the Bill of Rights, and a whole host of other issues are not just the wrong path, but take us down the ugly (and utterly unacceptable) road that Germany and Russia took in the 1930s. I not only refuse to be part of that takedown, I feel it is my duty as someone who cares about my country to stand up and say NO. When my as-yet-unborn grandchildren ask me, decades from now, what I did to protect our country and planet at this critical time, I will be able to stand proudly, as my mother did about her role in the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, and say that I was there. I stood up for what’s right.

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By Posted on Posted in Branding, Business Ethics, Copywriting, Democracy, Ethics in Government, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Politics, propaganda, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with , , , ,

Dear Senator Gillibrand,

I have been a fan of your since you took office. However, after following your Facebook link to the Planned Parenthood funding survey, I have to say I felt tricked, deceived, and betrayed.

I’ve used this blog to call out unethical marketing from various companies over the years. And even though you and I share many political views (including a strong commitment to women’s rights)—I have to call you out on this.

The initial question that led to the dead end
The initial question that led to the dead end

I had no problem with the initial one-question survey. But then I opted in to the follow-up questions.

First, as a survey instrument, the questions were useless. Each had only a yes or no option, written in language that showed a clear bias toward one answer. Yes, you’ll be able to prepare a press release that could cite a number like 95 percent of respondents—but it’s meaningless. You’d be laughed off the page, or worse, publicly shamed, by journalists who bother to look at the source data.

Second, after I checked off my answers and tried to submit, my phone took me to a page demanding money. I say demanding rather than asking, because there was no way out except by giving money. My submit button was refused when I left the field blank and refused again when I put in a zero. And when I exited the page without contributing, it tried to post to my Facebook page that I had just contributed to you. I have no way of knowing if my responses were actually counted—but I can tell you I did not appreciate being trapped and manipulated like this.

I don’t have a problem being asked for money at the end of a survey, when it’s my choice whether to give or not. But this felt like a shakedown, quite frankly. It left a very bad taste.

I would find this unacceptable from any politician and any charity. But since you were “the very first member of Congress to put her official daily schedule, personal financial disclosure and federal earmark requests online” and cited by The New York Times for your commitment to transparency, I find this an especially bitter pill.

As a marketer, I am saddened to see you resorting to Trumpian tactics based in dishonesty and lack of transparency. You’re better than this. In Michelle Obama’s famous line, “When they go low, we go high.”

Sincerely,

Shel Horowitz, marketing strategist and copywriter

Going Beyond Sustainability | Home

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Democracy, Ethics in Government, Ethics-International, Politics, propaganda Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

On Monday, the US Electoral College will be officially deciding whether Donald Trump will be president of the United States.

Caricature of Donald Trump by DonkeyHotey, Creative Commons License: https://www.flickr.com/photos/donkeyhotey/5471912349/sizes/m/in/photostream/
Caricature of Donald Trump by DonkeyHotey, Creative Commons License: https://www.flickr.com/photos/donkeyhotey/5471912349/sizes/m/in/photostream/

Alexander Hamilton had several reasons for proposing this convoluted structure. Some of them were not so noble, like giving more power to slave states. But one is worth noting: providing a check against the office going to someone unfit to hold it.

And just because that body has never found a winner unfit doesn’t mean it can’t. This time, there are a whole bunch of reasons why it might want to exercise that power. Some of them are about his complex financial empire, some about his personal actions—and some about the questionable integrity of this year’s voting process. Any one of these should be enough to say, “Hey, wait a minute, this is not OK.” Here are ten among many.

  1. Refusal to divest of investments that could influence policy
  2. Unlike every major party presidential candidate in decades, refusal to disclose his taxes
  3. Probable intervention by a foreign government (Russia), according to the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency)—and the request by some Electors for a briefing on this
  4. His opponent winning the popular vote by an astounding 2,833,224 votes
  5. Trump has been named in at least 169 separate lawsuits—for fraud, antitrust violations, discrimination, and sexual harassment (among other issues). One is especially worth highlighting: A consolidated fraud case (including two class action suits plus one filed by New York State’s Attorney General that Trump settled for $25 million alleged that his Trump University was a scam
  6. Interference in legitimate recount efforts in three states where exit polls showed a Democratic victory but the state was called for Trump
  7. Refusal to accept intelligence briefings, a daily part of every president’s morning since forever
  8. Threats to the First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech, press, and assembly
  9. Threats and incitements to violence against a vast range of people, from Hillary Clinton to an 18-year-old college student
  10. Insults both to whole classes of Americans and to individuals who disagreed with him

This, unfortunately, isn’t even the whole story. I haven’t discussed the ludicrous lack of government experience among his Cabinet picks…his own inexperience in any government position…the consistent lying…the well-documented cheating of vendors…the lease he has with the federal government for his new Washington, DC hotel which bars any government employee…his insistence on remaining Executive Producer of Apprentice, as if running the country were a side hustle…the extremist agenda he has embraced…his refusal to meaningfully condemn the hundreds of hate crimes in the aftermath of the election…and on and on it goes.

I hope the Electors in the Electoral College do their patriotic duty, and (in the words made famous by Nancy Reagan) “just say no.”

Note: dozens of petitions to the Electoral College are circulating. Here’s one I like. It allows you to write your own letter (be polite!)

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, censorship, Diversity, Energy & Sustainability, Ethics in Government, Politics, propaganda, Protests and Crackdowns, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , ,

NOTE: You’ll find several action steps at the bottom of this post. If you don’t want to read the whole thing, please scroll down to that section and take action before leaving this page.

Watch this video made by Standing Rock Water Protector Candida Rodriguez Kingbird on November 14.

Read a transcript by clicking this link. She claims that a crop duster was spraying the encampment, and only the encampment. Kingbird’s video, or commentary on it, has appeared on many progressive sites and social media profiles.

We know the level of repression against Standing Rock Water Protectors has been consistently shockingly high. There are numerous reports of the authorities using water cannons, tear gas, and even rubber bullets against this peaceful group of Native people fighting nonviolently to protect their water—from a project that was originally to go very close to Bismark, but was rerouted because of worries about what it would do to the water supply.

The link in the paragraph above is to a Christian Science Monitor story with video. The Monitor is a respected mainstream news outlet known for its good journalism over many decades.

We know that the temperature has been in the 20s (Fahrenheit) at Standing Rock—well below freezing—and we know that both demonstrators and journalists have been injured and are being deliberately soaked: a clear recipe for hypothermia. It’s all-too-reminiscent of the tactics used by police departments in the American South against black nonviolent civil rights marchers in the 1950s and 1960s.

I see no reason to doubt Kingbird’s account.

Although a search for “chemical weapons standing rock” didn’t turn up any video of the spraying or any reportage based on a claim by someone else—or coverage in mainstream media, I find Kingbird’s testimony thoroughly believable. I found her a credible witness, someone clearly not used to being a public figure. I didn’t feel she was acting, just reporting—and speaking from the heart.

Brookings Institution researchers felt the job-creation benefits of the pipeline were only half of what pipeline backers have claimed. Former US Secretary of Labor Robert B. Reich says the entire project is economically unsound and will “go belly-up” (scroll back to his post of November 16, 2016). But Donald Trump stands to gain financially by its completion and is an outspoken advocate of tar sands, fracking, and other highly destructive fossil fuel extraction technologies. If Reich is correct, there is no economic justification for the project. In any case, there’s no excuse for the violence. And even if the project were financially viable, it’s been long-acknowledged that one way to avoid climate catastrophe is to STOP extracting fossil fuels, especially those extracted in the most environmentally destructive ways—like the tar sands at issue in the Dakotas and Western Canada.

There is the (faint, IMHO) hope that Obama will protect the area either by revoking the DAP permit or protecting the land as a National Monument in his final weeks, but I am personally not optimistic that either will happen, or that it will survive a near-certain overturn attempt form the new administration.

Actions You Can Take

Petitions (click the marked text to sign, then share them widely):

Stop the violence (Really American)

Declare the area a National Monument (Bernie Sanders supports this approach)

Of course, personal letters count much more, so if you’re inspired, go for it!

 

Phone Calls (with script)

Call the Morton County, ND Sheriff’s Department to tell them to stop attacking. Call the Army Corps of Engineers to tell them to revoke the construction permits. And call the US Department of Justice demanding an investigation into police violence at Standing Rock. (Single action page for all three, via Daily Kos—be sure to click “Not Dina?” if that text shows up on the right)

 

Donate Moneyor Goods to Standing Rock Water Protectors
These organizations were recommended by a friend who was recently out at Standing Rock.

Standing Rock Healers Council: website and Facebook page

Indigenous Youth Council Facebook page

Postal and Paypal addresses for donations :

PayPal: www.paypal.me/ocetisakowincamp

Checks or cash may be sent to:
Oceti Sakowin Camp
P.O. Box 298
Cannon Ball, ND  58528

List of MATERIALS they are seeking
https://www.ocetisakowincamp.org/donate

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