Donald Trump paves way for construction of North Dakota Access and Keystone XL oil projects
[Editor’s note: Anyone who still believes that Trump will do anything other than serving the interests of corporate big business and the bankers is simply deluded. One of the high points of 2016 and of recent times in terms of the long-running battle between corporate interests and profits against the masses of the people and the biosphere of the planet itself was the victory of the peaceful protesters against the oil pipeline line that was to scythe through Dakota, regardless of environmental issues and the interests of the local population.
That victory came when President Obama acted to block the pipeline project and marked a historic moment, an all too rare win for the people. However, yesterday, President Chump did as we feared he would and reversed Obama’s noble and rightful decision.
Now the protesters who braved the brutality and violence of the police to stop the pipeline will have to do it all over again only this time they do so with the worrying knowledge that Trump will, if he follows his election campaign rhetoric, support the police in any and all measures they see fit. The gloves will be off, the police will feel they have presidential approval to resort to any and all weapons in their arsenal and the levels of brutality and violence will be greater than before.
Could this pipeline protest become the first in a long series of anti-government, anti-corporate, anti-Trump protests that, in the face of ever increasing police brutality, lead to either a popular uprising or the imposition of a police state to maintain the incumbent regime? Ian]
President Donald Trump signed executive orders allowing the completion of the North Dakota Access and Keystone XL oil pipelines on Tuesday.
During his election campaign, Trump promised to “unleash” the U.S.’s energy potential and indicated he backed the projects.
The $8 billion, 1,900-kilometer (1,180-mile) Keystone XL is intended to carry crude from Canadian tar sands to U.S. refineries on the Gulf Coast project but was vetoed by former President Barack Obama’s three times.
The North Dakota Access pipeline, worth $3.7 billion, would stretch from the oil-rich Bakken formation in North Dakota to carry 470,000 barrels of crude through South Dakota and Iowa to Illinois.
The North Dakota pipeline is opposed by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, which sued the government in July claiming the pipeline threatened water resources and sacred sites. Last month, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers denied a request by the company building the pipeline to tunnel under the Missouri River.
Trump also signed another executive order Tuesday that would expedite the regulatory process to overcome environmental hurdles.
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