Reject the Kauai General Plan update

SUBHEAD: Comment period by the public has been extended to 12/16/16. Stop the suburban oblivion now!  

By Juan Wilson on 30 November 2016 for Island Breath -
(http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2016/11/reject-kauai-general-plan-update.html)


Image above: Detail of the cover of the proposed Kauai General Plan update produced by the Kauai Planning Department and its consultants. From (http://plankauai.com/wp-content/uploads/Nov-2016-Kauai-General-Plan-Discussion-Draft-Online-Version.pdf).

ATTENTION: LAST OPEN HOUSE ON GENERAL PLAN
Last County sponsored public meetings on General Plan update issue are:

Two additional Open Houses Announced! If you missed the first round of open houses, please join us at the following Open Houses to learn about the General Plan Discussion Draft, and share your input:

Waimea Theatre, Monday, December 5, 2016, 6:00pm- 8:00pm
Princeville Library, Tuesday, December 6, 2016, 10:00am- Noon

These events will be open house style, with comments accepted in written form. There will not be a formal presentation. For an ASL interpreter, materials in an alternate format or auxiliary aid support, call at 241-4050 at least five business days before the event.

KAUAI GENERAL PLAN COMMENT DEADLINE UPDATE
Comments on the update of the Kauai General Plan will be taken up to 16 December 2016. This is an extension of the previous date of 12/2/16.

HOW TO COMMENT ON GENERAL PLAN UPDATE
Comments to the draft can be emailed to plankauai@kauai.gov

or snail-mailed to:
Kauai County Planning Department,
Attention: Long Range Division
4444 Rice Street, Suite A473, Līhue, HI 96766.

See more at (http://plankauai.com/)

The PDF file of the proposed update ti the Kauai General Plan can be found at (http://plankauai.com/wp-content/uploads/Nov-2016-Kauai-General-Plan-Discussion-Draft-Online-Version.pdf)

ISLAND BREATH TAKE ON COUNTY GENERAL PLAN UPDATE
As a Kauai resident and architect/planner I've been concerned with the island’s General Plan update process and resulting report. Like many such documents, it turns out to  mostly "eyewash", "boiler plate", "window dressing", and "feel good fluffery" that merely disguise its real purpose... to promote real estate development… specifically, in this case, to get the approval from the public of a plan to convert Agricultural designated land into suburban sprawl with the effect of doubling the population of Kauai in a generation.

The Big Ag companies that used to operate coconut groves, pineapple and sugarcane plantations are at a loss. Companies like Grove Farms and Alexander & Baldwin see no way forward except to convert their property from a State Land Use designation of Agriculture to the State Land Use designation of Urban. I've seen the A&B annual reports identifying all their land from Poipu to Port Allen (some 3,000 plus acres) in their mind being Urban.

But not Urban in the sense of old Koloa, Hanapepe or Waimea Town - really it's (sub)Urban in the sense of Milliani and the suburban sprawl on central Oahu that occurred after the failure of much of the pineapple industry over the last 30 years.   

One thing has been clear since the previous Kauai General Plan was put in play in 2000 (and not followed by the County). The people of Kauai want the island to remain rural in character. But that dream is slipping away with every new big box store and fast food franchise.

I have been working with the Hanapepe-Eleele Neighborhood Association (HENA) on reviewing the currently proposed Kauai General Plan Update. We have been meeting and reviewing and marking up the proposal with comments and suggested changes.

 We have been parsing through the document PDF file (http://plankauai.com/wp-content/uploads/Nov-2016-Kauai-General-Plan-Discussion-Draft-Online-Version.pdf)

The soul of this document is on the first page of the Introduction in bold large colored typeface.

Growth is Happening Whether We Like It or Not

In other words "You don't have a choice about this."  Bullshit!

HENA worked on the Introduction and Goals section and then has concentrated on the Hanapepe-Eleele Section of the document.

My suggestions began with.

INTRODUCTION
Remove headline
“Growth is Happening Whether We Like it or Not”

Replace with
“Growth will happen to the extent the people of Kauai want it."

GOAL: A SUSTAINABLE ISLAND
Remove content
"Sustainability means growing responsibly to meet the needs of current and future generations without depleting important resources."

Replace with
"Sustainability requires a goal of greater self reliance and self sufficiency. Training and supporting careers working in local communities using renewable resources and alternative energy. Providing food, services, and locally made products is a key factor in achieving sustainability."

HANAPEPE-ELEELE
The General Plan proposal for each community around the island provided maps and text explaining unique aspects of growth change in that local. The section on Hanpepe-Eleele spoke of the charm of Old Hanapepe Town with its galleries, and artisan crafts as well as its historical character. It spoke little about Eleele and none about Hanapepe Heights.

These distinct and different places that are separated by the dramatic rift of Hanapepe River Valley running through the center of it all. Even Hanapepe Town is split by the river into a distinct East and West side.

With this in mind, the planners and consultants for the General Plan use a crude set of concentric rings around Hanapepe-Eleele as areas of new development (and this is the case with all the other community area plans in the proposal). The differences in the use and purpose of these development rings are never fully detailed. In a way they appear to be a gradient of lessening density around an urban core.

Under "Permitting Actions and Code Changes the General Plan says 

1. Promote and support appropriately scaled infill development in all towns, with the exception of areas affected by existing and future hazards.
   
2. Allow for a variety of accessory dwellings such as ‘ohana units and “granny flats” within the Neighborhood Center, Neighborhood General and Neighborhood Edge designations.
   
3. Allow additional rental units in all Residential Communities.

Image above: Page 37 from Kauai Plan Closing Workshop on Hanapepe-Eleele showing the expansion of the Urban Neighborhood center, Neighborhood General, Neighborhood Edge and Residential Community "doubling" in area. Note the proposed Lina Ola project is the yellow area in the upper right down through the light orange down to Route 540 about 2/3 down this image. From (http://plankauai.com/wp-content/uploads/2015_1104_HanapepeEleeleClosing-1.pdf).

To get a more specific idea of what impact these areas to be developed would have I used two current projects as metrics for determination. One project is Eleele Iluna and the other is Lima Ola. Both are adjecent to one another and adjacent to existing housing in Eleele.

The Eleele Iluna project for 107 single family homes is under construction. It is being built by Habitat for Humanity as Phase Two after 18 homes were built with sweat equity immediately next door.

The other project, Lima Ola, is for 550 mixed single and multi-family units immediately adjacent to Eleele Iluna that would occupy most of the "Residential Community" designation on the east of Hanapepe Valley. Shown in yellow in plan below.


Image above: Detail of map by IslandBreath.org of Hanapepe-Eleele area used to analyze future density and population of the area. Click to see full enlarged map and explanation.

I recreated the Proposed General Plan Use map from (http://plankauai.com/wp-content/uploads/2015_1104_HanapepeEleeleClosing-1.pdf) and added the existing TMKs (red lines) and building footprints (black) from the Kauai Planning Department. I also created the building footprints and TMKs from the information available about Eleele Iluna and Lima Ola.

With this inormation and the 2010 US Census I made a calculation. US Census counts Hanapepe-Eleele area having 5,028 residents, an average density of 2,465 per square mile or 3.85 per acre. The Proposed Kauai General Plan Update shows four concentric rings of development identified 
Urban Neighborhood Center, Neighborhood General, Neighborhood Edge and Residential Community.

Implications for Hanapepe-Eleele of adopting the Kauai General Plan Update
These new neighborhood areas measure about 616 acres (or 96% of a sq mile). At 2010 census density this would translate to 2,372 new residents totaling a 7,400 head count, an increase of 47%. A difficult adjustment.

Implications for Hanapepe-Eleele  of approving Lima Ola Affordable Housing Project
Lima Ola Affordable Housing is owned  by the County of Kauai and  planned  by the Kauai Division of Housing. Lima Ola Project Area  is 75 acres with 550 units that equal 7.33 units per acre.

Kauai average is 3 people per unit or 1,650 new residents. At that density the new General Plan residential areas would increase Hanapepe-Eleele area population by:

 7.33 units per acre x 616 acres = 4,515 units x 3 people per unit = 13,545 new residents, or an increase of 269% people.

This would have disastrous impacts on Hanapepe-Eleele area traffic, state education and county recreational facilities. This added population would likely require two new elementary schools, one middle school, and one high school.

Implications for Hanapepe-Eleele of Expanded Hazard Area and Sea Rise
As the only fire station, library and community center in the Hanapepe-Eleele area are all in lowland of Hanapepe Valley and in the the newly expanded river flood/hurricane surge/tsunami inundation area, then Hanapepe-Eleele will likely also need 2 new fire stations, 2 new community centers and a relocated library at higher ground.

Also with greatly increased population and increased isolation when hazard strikes a 24/7 medical center with an emergency/trauma capability would be advised.

Implications for Additional Traffic Through Hanapepe-Eleele
Traffic is already a problem at rush hour between Eleele and Kalaheo. This arises between Wahiawa Valley and the 540 Bypass to the Kauai Coffee Plantation. Bumper to bumper is common on the Kaumualii Highway to the light in Kalaheo. Two additional lights are planned on the highway in Eleele for the Lima Ola project.

But even now it is becoming difficult to exit Hanapepe Town at either end of Hanapepe Road or Kona Road at the library and fire station. Those three locations will likely require three more stop lights in town.

It is unfortunate that the State of Hawaii is going to spend a fortune in the next few years rebuilding the Kaumualii Highway bridge over Hanapepe River. Not only creating horrible traffic jams through town for years, it will likely have to be widened to four lanes when two additional lanes are required on highway across the island before this General Plan runs its nightmarish course to suburban oblivion.

Implications for Kauai of adopting the updated General Plan for 2020-2025
Expect the population of Kauai to more than double in the next generation. Expect traffic, crowded beaches, and a reduction int the quality of life.

But worse is the reduction in our ability to cope with economic collapse driven by dwindling worldwide resources and environmental damage due to global warming and population growth.

Sustainability on Kauai, as well as the rest of planet Earth, will be dependent on constraining growth of all kinds. Forget virtual reality, time travel, and alternate universes. If we can't live on Earth we certainly won't live on Mars or anywhere else. There is no option for us to survive while ruining the Earth.

Suggested Action on proposed General Plan Update
Reject the new proposed update to the Kauai General Plan. Ask our Planning Department to go back to the drawing board for a plan to “Keep Kauai Rural”.  The current General Plan still stands until 2020. We have time to look into the likely near future of localization and a need to be more self reliant and resilient.

Again Deadline is December 16th 2016:
Comments to the draft can be emailed to plankauai@kauai.gov

or snail-mailed to:
Kauai County Planning Department,
Attention: Long Range Division
4444 Rice Street, Suite A473, Līhue, HI 96766.

See also:
Ea O Ka Aina: Kauai County "Keep it Rural" 11/17/16
Kauai County General Plan 2000-2020 undated
Ea O Ka Aina: Kauai General Plan Update 9/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Kauai Plan Disappoints 12/9/15
Ea O Ka Aina: Tax Donkey Purgatory - Lima Ola 7/18/14
Ea O Ka Aina: Lihue Loss of Vision 9/5/14
Ea O Ka Aina: Kilauea Development on Agland 4/9/11
Ea O Ka Aina: If a tyrant developed Kauai 3/24/11
Ea O Ka Aina: Potash King's Palace 6/24/10
Ea O Ka Aina: Kauai Farm Worker Housing 7/14/09
Ea O Ka Aina: Let Moloaa farmers farm 4/2/09
Ea O Ka Aina: Kauai General Plan 4/2/09
Ea O Ka Aina: Peak Oil Planning 1/29/09
Island Breath: Kauai Sustainable Land Use Plan 11/1/07
Island Breath: LEGS Sustainability Conference 10/13/07

.

Future feeding of the rest of Wessex

SUBHEAD: With an introduction for explaining the impact of World War Three on the general area.

By Chris Smaje on 23 November 2016 for Small Farm Future -
(http://smallfarmfuture.org.uk/?p=1115)


Image above: Landscape photographer Melvin Nicholson captured this stunning shot of a ghost rainbow, aka white rainbow or fog bow, in Rannoch Moor north of Glasgow, Scotland. From (http://boingboing.net/2016/11/25/a-beautiful-ghost-rainbow.html). See IB Publisher's note at end of article.

Let us beat a retreat from the troubling politics of the real world and pay another visit to the Peasant’s Republic of Wessex, where all is sweet accord. Though in the light of recent events in the UK and the US, it’s tempting to begin with a little story that just might conceivably link the ghost of Wessex present with the ghost of Wessex future.

It goes something like this:

With hindsight, Britain’s exit from the EU turned out to herald its final decline as a major global economic force. Though it had a freer hand to make its own trade deals as an independent country it discovered that 

1. outside the privileged bubble of the EU single market and the wider access to global circuits of capital this made available, it didn’t actually have all that much to trade,
   
2. its most obvious trading partners belonged to large trading blocs with membership benefits it could no longer access, and
   
3. years of public sector underinvestment and private sector asset stripping left it ill-prepared to compete in the global marketplace. 

In fact, a similar fate befell other western powers in Europe and North America, albeit for slightly different reasons. 

But after the brief, transformative Third World War came to an end with the Peace of Beijing brokered through the forceful diplomacy of Russia’s new Tsar, most of the western nations shored up their fragile economies by reinventing themselves essentially as client states to the rising industrial powers of Asia^*. 

Thus, few of them fell quite as far or fast as Britain. Or England to be more precise, in light of the secession of the other UK countries and their integration into the EU. 

Those secessions created a devolutionary impetus in England that saw the emergence of regional assemblies – initially entirely subservient to Westminster, but with the dwindling willingness and ability of the Westminster government to fund or provide services outside the southeast, the regional assemblies increasingly assumed a de facto local sovereignty. 

Some of them courted multinational corporations, turning themselves into maquiladora economies that used the income thus generated to contain, barely, the resulting social tensions. 

For its part, London lost a large proportion of its migrant workers, who sought richer pickings elsewhere – probably just as well, given the increasingly constrained base available for the city to feed itself. 

It retained something of its lustre as a once-great global city, with a still active, if declining, financial and service sector, giving it a kind of seedy grandiloquence reminiscent of, say, Istanbul, only colder and wetter. 

In the southwest, the conditions for either the industrial self-abasement of the maquiladora regions or the stately decline of the southeast were lacking – it had little going for it except its rich farmland and the pleasant landscapes visited by an ever-declining number of tourists. 

But its regional government, building on the example of early-millennium independent Frome, pursued a course of regional agricultural and industrial self-reliance. 

Not by any means an easy course, and one requiring an enormous mobilisation of its people that necessarily rested on a substantial egalitarianism in access to wealth and resources. 

But though a few old men would still get drunk in its bars and sing patriotic songs about the greatness of the country’s illustrious history, much as a few old men now still do in, say, Mongolia, few people had time for such conceits and felt more engaged in the intricate business of forging a livelihood in the challenging times of the present. 

In the context of the post-United Nations fraying of the Westphalian nation-state – what scholars had been calling ‘the new medievalism’ of overlapping sovereignties and autarkic regionalism from as early as the late 20^th century – the Wessexers found that if they kept their heads down, avoided meddling in larger national and international power politics, paid a largely symbolic obeisance to London, and complained bitterly to any foreigner they met (especially Londoners) about how desperately poor they were, they were pretty much left alone to get on with the challenging but not unrewarding business of making a living from the land. 

When, in the late 21^st century, the world was hit with the long-anticipated triple crisis of accelerating climate change, spiralling energy prices and capitalist economic stagnation, Wessex was better placed than most parts of the world (including the other UK regions) to try to ride out the storm.

* We’ll dwell more in another post on the North American side of this story. But in brief, as everyone knows, the USA ignored the warnings about the limits of its military power signalled by Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, and – under pressure from a bellicose Congress – President Kardashian launched a war in three separate theatres that soon backfired spectacularly. 

By way of reparations, at the Peace of Beijing China imposed on the US the migration of millions of Chinese peasant farmers, political troublemakers and other ne’er-do-wells, referred to collectively as ‘non-capitalist roaders’, each to be allocated up to 160 acres of US farmland as determined by the Homestead (Legal Immigrants) Act, 2062. 

The Chinese incomers were received with rank hostility by the local population at first, but their love of American political freedoms, their endearing taste for Hollywood movies and American fashions, and their superb farming skills soon helped to thaw relations once Americans had resigned themselves to their diminished place in world affairs. 

Thus, some 250 years after his death, Thomas Jefferson’s vision of a wholesome US smallholder republic was finally realised, albeit with a greater emphasis on fermented soy products than he’d imagined – an industry with its epicentre in Ohio.

That, clearly, is what is going to happen.

But the question is will this future Wessex be able to feed itself? When we were last there we learned that the enlightened rulers of the satellite republic had determined that 40% of its lowland agricultural holdings should be given over to peasant self-provision for a 20% portion of the population who were thus able to feed themselves comfortably using low impact organic methods.

That leaves the remaining 60% of the farmland available to feed the other 80% of the population, numbering some 4.9 million souls in 2039. Let’s see how this 80% might fare.

Presently, 68% of lowland farmland in Wessex is permanent pasture, while 31% is arable land – leaving the princely total of 1% for horticulture. At those proportions, I’m worried that my wan Wessex urbanites might suffer from a touch of scurvy, so I’m going to adjust the grass/arable/horticulture proportions to 61/32/6%.

In other words, a bit of the permanent pasture becomes cropland. Not all permanent pasture is suitable for cropping, but my guess is that enough of it would be for this adjustment to be feasible.

On the arable lands of the PROW about 3% is devoted to hemp and flax for keeping the urbanites in the latest fashions.

On the rest of it, I propose to establish a fairly standard mixed organic rotation comprising 50% grass/clover ley, the remaining 50% being split evenly between winter wheat, winter oats, potatoes, field beans and spring wheat.

The grass/clover ley is used for grazing dairy cows.

The horticulture land is split 75/25 between vegetables and fruit/nuts. The vegetables are grown organically, with 30% down to a ley (also used for livestock) and the rest growing a mixture of vegetables in rotation.

In terms of livestock, I’d propose to keep dairy cows on the arable leys and the permanent pasture.

Some of them would be fed oats (1,100kg/cow/year) and beans (550kg), yielding an assumed 6,200 litres of milk per cow at a stocking density of 1 cow/ha (I’ve lifted these figures from the Organic Farm Management Handbook).

With about 116,000 tonnes of oats produced on about 33,000ha at 3.5 t/ha, and about 83,000 tonnes of beans produced on the same area at 2.5 t/ha, that’ll give us enough feed for about 106,000 cows, with about 25,000 tonnes of beans left over to feed some pigs and laying hens.

But, after subtracting the 106,000ha of intensive-organic dairying, there’s still just under 700,000ha of permanent pasture, so let’s raise more dairy cows extensively in the same manner as the neo-peasants, getting 3,300 litres of milk per cow at a stocking density of 1 cow plus calf per 1.2ha.

We’ll get some beef from the dairy calves at the same rates as the neo-peasants too.

We’ll also keep pigs and laying hens, mostly on the peri-urban market garden/truck farm sites. We’ll split the remaining beans between the pigs and hens 50/50, and also feed them food waste (we’ll assume that 3% of Wessex’s food production is discarded as waste, which is available for the pigs and hens). That should give us about 12,000 tonnes of pig meat and 227 million eggs.

We’ve also got about 83,000ha of rough grazing where we’ll keep sheep, producing around 80kg of sheep meat per hectare per year, if that doesn’t sound too much? And we’ll have the same amount of sea fish as for the neo-peasants – about 20kg per person per year.

And there you have it – the full nutritional spread for our Wessex non-peasants. Let’s take a look at whether it meets the nutritional needs of the population. This is shown in Table 1, which parallels the corresponding table in my analysis for the neo-peasants.

Table 1: Nutrient Productivity for Wessex’s Non-Neo-Peasant Population

x1011	Energy (KJ)	Protein (g)	Vitamin A (mg)	Vitamin C (mg)	Mg (mg)	Fe (mg)
Produced	181	1.93	32.4	3.53	11.5	0.22
Required	168	0.89	14.3	1.43	7.14	0.21
Ratio	1.07	2.16	2.27	2.47	1.61	1.05

Holy cow, we’ve pulled it off again! Maybe it’s a bit tight on the energy, so there’d be a case for trimming back the permanent pasture for cropland a little more – or else suggesting those city slickers get their hands dirty on an allotment and grow a few of their own potatoes. But let’s just take another moment to admire our handiwork.

With only a minor bit of jiggery-pokery around permanent pasture and cropland, we’ve met the entire nutritional needs of a future Wessex population comprising an extra million people over the present using entirely organic farming methods at modest yield assumptions and without expanding beyond the existing agricultural land take. Cue another round of applause.

I’ve got to admit that the non-peasants have a starchier diet than the peasants, as is shown in the pie chart below – a pie which, for my taste, goes a bit overboard on the pastry and skimps a little on the filling. This diet fails proposition Paul, with 17% of its calories coming from protein but only 33% from fat and the rest from carbohydrates, mostly of the simple rather than the complex variety.

I still think it’s not such a bad diet compared with many, but the greater reliance on starchy staples surely sounds a warning note in terms of the capacities of the land. Parson Malthus isn’t quite yet out of his box, but it’s as well to be aware that his coffin lid is rattling.

The last Malthusian crisis in the southwest was in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries – pretty much around the time when the much-derided Reverend (who died here in Somerset) was writing, curiously enough.

The problem was solved on that occasion by mass migration to Australia and the USA – two great migrant nations that command the respect of the world for welcoming the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free to this very day…or so I’ve heard.


Image above: Pie Chart of calorific contribution to the Wessex non-peasant diet by food group. From original article.

But there’s an elephant in the room. And this time it’s not capitalism. Well, maybe it is in view of the difficulties Wessex will have in earning foreign exchange. But the real elephant is energy. If 80% of Wessex’s population are going to be fed from 60% of its farmland without working as producers themselves, then farming on this 60% is going to have to be heavily mechanised. At the moment, this is achieved through copious use of fossil fuels.

But that may not be possible in the Peasant’s Republic of Wessex circa 2039 or thereafter. Fortunately, this problem is easily solved by…Gosh, the low battery alarm on my PV system has started to sound! Well, that’s quite enough for one blog post anyway.

I’ll tell you the answer to the energy conundrum when the sun comes out again and my electricity supply isn’t likely to cut out at any mome...

See aslso:
Ea O Ka Aina: Neo-peasant farm in Wessex 8/30/16

[IB Publisher's note: The Boing Boing article with the Fogbow photo above says:

Like rainbows, fogbows are caused by sunglight reflecting off water drops. However, as NASA explains: The fog itself is not confined to an arch -- the fog is mostly transparent but relatively uniform.The fogbow shape is created by those drops with the best angle to divert sunlight to the observer. The fogbow's relative lack of colors are caused by the relatively smaller water drops. The drops active above are so small that the quantum mechanical wavelength of light becomes important and smears out colors that would be created by larger rainbow water drops acting like small prisms reflecting sunlight.

.

Feds to shutdown NoDAPL camp

SUBHEAD: Obama to let Army Corp to give Water Protectors until December 5th for their own good.

By Michael McGlaughlin on 25 November 2016 for Huffington Post -
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/dakota-access-pipeline-protest-camp_us_5838d7a0e4b09b605600891b)


Image above: From ().

The federal government on Friday revealed plans to shut the largest camp in North Dakota where protesters have gathered for months in opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said in a letter to a Native American tribe leading the opposition against the pipeline that it will close the area on Dec. 5, after a series of clashes between law enforcement and protesters.

“This decision is necessary to protect the general public from the violent confrontations between protestors and law enforcement officials that have occurred in this area, and to prevent death, illness, or serious injury to inhabitants of encampments due to the harsh North Dakota winter conditions...

The necessary emergency, medical, and fire response services, law enforcement, or sustainable facilities to protect people from these conditions on this property cannot be provided.”

The protesters’ presence also interferes with the commercial activities of private individuals who have grazing and haying rights on the land, Henderson wrote.

Anyone staying in the area after the deadline may be subject to prosecution, Henderson warned in the letter. He added that an alternate “free speech zone” for protesters is in place on the other side of the Cannonball River. Police, firefighters and medical professionals can more easily access that area.

The Morton County Sheriff’s Department has arrested more than 500 protesters and alleged that its officers were endangered by activists throwing debris and starting fires. Protesters, meanwhile, claim they’ve been injured by tear gas, rubber bullets, water hoses and other so-called non-lethal weapons used by police.

One woman may have an arm amputated after witnesses said she was hit with a percussion grenade thrown by police during protests Sunday night. Police deny using such a weapon and suggested that other protesters wounded the woman with homemade explosives.

An encampment of Standing Rock Sioux and their allies, sometimes numbering in the thousands, has occupied the area north of the Cannonball River for months.

The Sioux fear the 1,172-mile pipeline could contaminate the drinking water for their nearby reservation and argue that granting a permit to developer Energy Transfer Partners to build beneath Lake Oahe would violate an 1851 treaty.

Archambault expressed disappointment at the Army Corps’ announcement, but didn’t say whether he would obey orders to vacate the land.

“Our Tribe is deeply disappointed in this decision by the United States, but our resolve to protect our water is stronger than ever.

The best way to protect people during the winter, and reduce the risk of conflict between water protectors and militarized police is to deny the easement for the Oahe crossing, and deny it now,” Archambault said in a statement.

The Obama administration said in September that it will withhold the permit for building the pipeline under Lake Oahe while it reviews the tribe’s concerns.

See also:
Ea O Ka Aina: NoDAPL people are going to die 11/23/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Hundreds of vets to join NoDAPL 11/22/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Obama must support Standing Rock 11/21/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Trump's pro oil stance vs NoDaPL 11/15/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Kauai NoDAPL Demonstration 11/12/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Obama to Betray Standing Rock 11/12/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Trump impact on Standing Rock 11/12/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Ann Wright on Standing Rock 11/8/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Turning Point at Standing Rock 11/6/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Jackson Browne vs DAPL owner 11/5/16
Democracy Now: Boycott of DAPL Owner's Music Festival
Ea O Ka Aina: World responds to NoDAPL protests 11/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: NoDAPL victory that was missed 11/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: DAPL hid discovery of Sioux artifacts 11/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Dakota Access Pipeline will leak 11/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Route of the Dakota Access Pipeline 11/4/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Sanders calls for stopping DAPL 11/4/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Obama hints at DAPL rerouting 11/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: New military attack on NODAPL 11/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: How to Support NoDAPL 11/3/16
Unicorn Riot: Tweets from NoDAPL 11/2/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Standing Rock & the Ballot Box 10/31/16
Ea O Ka Aina: NoDAPL reclaim new frontline 10/24/16
Ea O Ka Aina: How far will North Dakota go? 10/23/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Amy Goodman "riot" charge dropped 10/17/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Amy Goodwin to face "Riot Charge" 10/16/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Shutdown of all tar sand pipelines 10/11/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Why Standing Rock is test for Oabama 10/8/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Why we are Singing for Water 10/8/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Labor's Dakota Access Pipeline Crisis 10/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Standing Firm for Standing Rock 10/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Contact bankers behind DAPL 9/29/16
Ea O Ka Aina: NoDAPL demo at Enbridge Inc 9/29/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Militarized Police raid NoDAPL 9/28/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Stop funding of Dakota Access Pipeline 9/27/16
Ea O Ka Aina: UN experts to US, "Stop DAPL Now!" 9/27/16
Ea O Ka Aina: No DAPL solidarity grows 9/21/16
Ea O Ka Aina: This is how we should be living 9/16/16
Ea O Ka Aina: 'Natural Capital' replacing 'Nature' 9/14/16
Ea O Ka Aina: The Big Difference at Standing Rock 9/13/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Jill Stein joins Standing Rock Sioux 9/10/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Pipeline temporarily halted 9/6/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Native Americans attacked with dogs 9/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Mni Wiconi! Water is Life! 9/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Sioux can stop the Pipeline 8/28/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Officials cut water to Sioux 8/23/16   

.

Miles to Go Before We Sleep

SUBHEAD: I have spent half my life trying to stop or slow down that which now comes onrushing like a wave so tall that it blots out the sun.

By William Pitt on 24 November 2016 for Truth Out -
(http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/38515-miles-to-go-before-we-sleep)


Image above: A father and child in a frightening landscape. Viggo Mortensen stars in the 2009 postapocalyptic thriller based on Cormac McCarthy's Pultzer Prize-winning novel "The Road". From (http://adventure.nationalgeographic.com/2009/08/survival/the-road-movie-text).

I took my daughter for a long walk under the low November sun, and it turned into an adventure. We are hedged by deep forest to all points on the compass here in the great granite north, home to deer runs that spider-web the fallen pine needles, ghostly moose like towering mystics in the far field, a family of porcupines, one cat-eating coyote and the occasional ominous bear. Serious stuff.

Before our walk, my daughter was content to contend with the lawn that greens the verge of the dark and deep, but Daddy was with her this day, and that meant pressing the edge.

Over the ancient stone wall we went, into the thicket of pines where she learned to snap off the dead branches lest they claw at her eyes, then deeper, over the moss and the deadfalls laid down by a windstorm and further, into the places where the sun only hints at a kiss, her plowing forward and me always aware of the surround, where true north is, the way back to the house.

She found her favorite place in that secret space: Bifurcated trees. Trees with two, three, four, five full trunks growing up and out of one base like a splayed hand, like a crown. She would find one and crawl into the base, the hollow where all the fingers reached up and out toward the sky.

She stood there timeless, three feet of eternity conducting the energy passing through her, speechless, rigid in bliss. She was in the palm of a living thing, and if she didn't know it, the tree did. I felt it, too. I watched a tree sing to my daughter as she stood in its elder grasp, and she heard it full well.

I am thankful for that.

Thankfulness is a hard dollar to make these days. He Who Shall Not Be Named Here Today hasn't yet taken the oath of office, and already the deep stain of his impending presidency marks us all. It is difficult to locate gratitude in this vortex of shame, confusion, hate and greed, but this is an orderly transition of power, right?

He won, everyone else lost, and never mind the shenanigans from overseas and right down the block. We are in the pipe now, five by five, charging into a future that reeks of the past.

Native Americans are being attacked with "non-lethal" concussion grenades and rubber bullets for protecting their water rights out in North Dakota, all in the lead-up to Thanksgiving -- a holiday which, after all, is about celebrating the United States' "heritage."

A new creature now walks the land, most clearly visible on televisions tuned to "news" networks. No zoologist has labeled it yet, so I just call it the "Yeahbut."

Every time a fascist, a racist or an all-out Nazi is tapped for a Cabinet position in the looming administration, all the apple-polishers on the screen say, "Yeah, but how bad can they really be?" or "Yeah, but that was a long time ago" or "Yeah, but those people don't vote anyway," and we are all a little worse for the wear in the stench of the Yeahbut's passage.

Forgiveness is divine, it is said, but watching the TV people exonerate themselves for the ruin they gleefully foisted upon us in the name of ratings and advertising dollars makes me glad, for their sake, that I am a peaceful man.

I am so tired. I have spent half my life trying to stop or slow down that which now comes onrushing like a wave so tall that it blots out the sun.

Yet I remember my daughter standing in that tree, in her simple glory, and all of it shimmers into shards of purpose, and I am thankful to know I have a few good fights left in me. I am thankful for my good right arm and what I will do within its reach.

I will not be still. I will not be silent. I will volunteer at a food bank to help those who will feel the grind of these coming years most keenly. I will volunteer to be an escort at a women's clinic because my daughter has rights.

I will make it known that my home is a sanctuary for anyone who fears being unjustly thrown out of the country. If they try to run Kobach's registry of Muslims, I will be first in line to sign my name. I will do that, and more.

Through it all, some of me will ever be in the forest with my daughter. I am in a horde of leaves amid the hushed susurrations of wind through evergreens with a little girl who knows nothing of sorrow yet as she stands in a throne of wise bark. I feel the low jolt passing from trunk to her hand to trunk, and I know why I am here.

When next we pass over the ancient stone wall into that sacred shrouded space, I will whisper to her the lines from her favorite bedtime poem:

"The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
but I have promises to keep,
and miles to go before I sleep,
and miles to go before I sleep."

And I will mean it. I am thankful for this small patch upon which I make my stand. This far, no farther, and not one step back. Happy Thanksgiving.

• William Rivers Pitt is a senior editor and lead columnist at Truthout. He is also a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of three books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know, The Greatest Sedition Is Silence and House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America's Ravaged Reputation. His fourth book, The Mass Destruction of Iraq: Why It Is Happening, and Who Is Responsible, co-written with Dahr Jamail, is available now on Amazon. He lives and works in New Hampshire.

---

Stopping by a Woods on a Snowy Evening
by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

.

Solar power one island at a time

SOURCE: Michael Sheehan (hanaleirivermichael@gmail.com)
SUBHEAD: Ta'u Island, in America Somoa, is 100% operating on solar power with 24/7/365 storage.

By Henry Curtis on 24 November 2016 for Ililani Media -
(http://www.ililani.media/2016/11/achieving-100-renewable-energy-one.html)


Image above: Aerial view of the solar power plant on Ta'u Island in America Samoa that is producing 100% of needed energy. From  original article.

Ta'u Island used about 110,000 gallons of diesel last year. Now the island is powered by solar and batteries.

The 1.4 megawatt solar array consists of 5,328 solar panels provided by SolarCity. The battery system consists of 60 Tesla Powerpacks. They provide sufficient storage to provide all the needed electricity for three days. The system can be recharged in seven hours.

The solar microgrid with battery backup was installed and is being operated by the American Samoa Power Authority. Funding was provided by the American Samoa Economic Development Authority, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Interior.

SolarCity market development director Jon Yoshimura stated,

"Before today, every time we turned on the light, turn on the television, turn on maybe the air conditioner, all of the cash registers in China, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia go 'cha-ching,' but not after today …We will keep more of that money here, where it belongs."

Peter Rive, SolarCity co-founder and CTO, style="color: blue;">wrote a blog column about the successful application.

“Ta’u is not a postcard from the future, it’s a snapshot of what is possible right now. Renewable power is an economical, practical solution for a growing number of locations and energy needs, and islands that have traditionally relied on fossil fuels can easily transition to microgrids powered by solar and storage today.”

Eons ago the south side of Ta'u ollapsed, leaving dramatic 1600-foot high cliffs that rise directly from the southern sea.

The island is where the 23-year-old anthropologist Margaret Mead conducted her dissertation research in Samoa in the 1920s, published in 1928 as Coming of Age in Samoa.

Ta‘ū is the largest island in the Manu‘a Group and the easternmost volcanic island of the Samoan Islands. The island is 17 square miles in size and has a population of almost 900 people.

The summit of the island, called Lata Mountain, is at an elevation of 3,054 feet, making it the highest point in American Samoa. All of the southeastern half of Ta‘ū—including all of the rainforest on top of Lata Mountain and within the caldera—and southern shoreline and associated coral reefs are part of the National Park of American Samoa. The park includes the ancient, sacred site of Saua, considered to be the birthplace of the Polynesian people.

The Teslarati blog noted,

“Diesel in itself is made from chemicals including sulfates, ammonium, nitrates, elemental carbon, condensed organic compounds, and even carcinogenic compounds rich in heavy metals such as arsenic, selenium, cadmium and zinc.

Diesel exhaust poses major health hazards, contributes to climate change, is costly to ship, and can lead to frequent temporary blackouts. With a dramatic decrease on diesel reliance, Ta’u, through the SolarCity renewable microgrid, will experience valuable community life enhancements that can increase local control and community independence.

.

I’m thankful this Thanksgiving that...

SUBHEAD: We can still join with our neighbors to share a meal, a few drinks and a few laughs and then clean up the ensuing mess. 

By Brian Miller on 23 November 2016 for Winged Elm Farm -

(http://www.wingedelmfarm.com/blog/2016/11/23/ten-reasons-im-thankful-this-thaksgiving/)

Image above: "Lord thank you for this turkey" cartoon by Steve Benson in 2015. From (http://theweek.com/cartoons/591095/political-cartoon-donald-trump-thanksgiving-cartoonists).

I’m thankful this Thanksgiving that …

1. The severe drought has made us grateful for the water we have stored in our cisterns and has made us more thoughtful about our usage and plans for conservation.
2. Several years of culling to improve our flock of sheep has paid off. The market wethers are fat and healthy. The ewes are pregnant and lambing season is still a couple of months away.
3. Our hoop house is complete, loaded with greens, and warm on a cold day.
4. Cindy, as my partner, continues to inspire me with her energy, skills, and willingness to share this life.
5. My father, after suffering a stroke this year, is still with us at 89. He continues to find the time to volunteer each week at a local church helping feed the needy.
6. My mother’s eldest sister is still alive and well at 96, the last surviving stalk of that line. She reminds me through her continuing penchant for reading that one’s intellect is a gift to keep and nourish.
7. The Republic still stands even as those on the right and the left trumpet its demise.
8. My blogging friend Clem, with his insufferable positive outlook, reminds me to not herald the end of the world, just yet.
9. My friend Rayna harvested enough pawpaw fruit this year for Cindy to make pawpaw crème brûlée for Thanksgiving dinner.
10. My brothers and I (and a brother-in-law) managed to find the time for a recent get-together. A weekend in the north Louisiana woods eating good food and sitting by a fire is a wonderful tonic for the soul.

See also from our archive:

Ea O Ka Aina: Thanksgiving with Trump & ISIS 11/22/15
Ea O Ka Aina: Thirty things for Thanksgiving 11/26/15

Ea O Ka Aina: Happy Thanksgiving Day 2013! 11/28/13

Ea O Ka Aina: Modernity Bites 11/26/12

Ea O Ka Aina: The Last Black Friday 11/14/12
Ea O Ka Aina: You Must Watch the Empire Bowl 2/9/11

Ea O Ka Aina: Why is the bird a Turkey? 11/24/10
Ea O Ka Aina: Gross All Over 11/22/10
Ea O Ka Aina: TSA Humiliations 11/19/10

Ea O Ka Aina: Wild Thanksgiving Food 11/30/09

Ea O Ka Aina: Giving thanks for our harvest 11/25/09
Ea O Ka Aina: Black Friday & the Walking Dead 11/25/09
Ea O Ka Aina: Courting Convulsion 11/23/09
Ea O Ka Aina: Thanksgiving in Fallujah 11/22/09
Ea O Ka Aina: Carving up Africa 11/17/09
Ea O Ka Aina: Thinking the Unthinkable 11/2/09
Ea O Ka Aina: TGI #19: Holiday Season 12/24/08
Island Breath: Thankfulness and its pathways 11/29/08
Island Breath: TGI Column - The Holiday Season 12/14/07
Thanksgiving Past - Island Breath 11/22/07
Island Breath: Locavores eat local food in T-Day 11/21/06
Island Breath: Don't Mess with Turkeyday 11/24/05
Island Breath: R Crumb Thanksgiving 12/17/04
Grandma's Farm - Island Breath 11/24/99
Turkey recipe - Island Breath 11/24/97
Indian Pudding - Island Breath 11/24/97
Thanksgiving Feasts - Island Breath 11/24/93

Hundreds of vets to join NoDAPL

SUBHEAD: Veterans organizing to go to Standing Rock and protect  the Water Protectors. Over 250 veterans have already committed, but organizers hope to have a group of 500 or more.

By Darey Wedler on 22 November 2016 for Anti Media -
(http://theantimedia.org/veterans-defend-dapl-protesters/)


Image above: Standing Rock Sioux military veterans marching to Save Water on 8/27/16. From (https://mobile.twitter.com/tkaulaity/status/769687091303190528).

As protesters continue to stand against the proposed Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota, facing off against heavily militarized police and their water cannons, rubber bullets, tear gas, and tasers, they have gained broad support.

Celebrities and millions of social media users have raised awareness about the situation in North Dakota, and now, the “water protectors” have earned support from another group: veterans.

According to an article published by Business Insider that first appeared in Task and Purpose, a military-oriented news and culture site, two veterans are leading the charge in a show of dissent against the increasingly aggressive police.

In the last several months, tensions have escalated as Natives and their allies have blocked the pipeline’s construction, citing fears surrounding water will be endangered and sacred burial sites will be destroyed (not to mention the fact their lands were forcibly stolen by the U.S. government over a century ago).

“This country is repressing our people,” says Michael A. Wood Jr., a Marine Corps veteran who recently retired from the Baltimore police force to work toward reforming law enforcement. “If we’re going to be heroes, if we’re really going to be those veterans that this country praises, well, then we need to do the things that we actually said we’re going to do when we took the oath to defend the Constitution from enemies foreign and domestic,” he asserted about his plans to go to Standing Rock.

Woods Jr. is joined by Wes Clark Jr. Clark Jr. is the son of General Wesley Clark, the famous military leader who once warned that shortly after 9/11, the government had its eyes on Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. Clark would later attempt to distance himself from those statements but still managed to convince his son, a member of the Army at the time, to stay away from Iraq.

“I was like, ‘I’m going back in. I’m going to go in there and fuck people up,’”

Clark Jr. recalls of his desire to fight for the military after 9/11. He later changed his mind after his father warned him, as Task and Purpose summarized, “that as a soldier he would be fighting a war that had nothing to do with defeating al Qaeda.”

Now, Wood Jr. and Clark Jr. are attempting to organize a mass, nonviolent protest against police action in North Dakota. Just this past weekend, a female protester was hit with a concussion grenade, causing severe damage to her arm and requiring surgery.

Others have been tear gassed, tased, beaten, and shot with rubber bullets. Anti-Media journalist Derrick Broze was tased by law enforcement immediately after he declared he was a member of the media. Another journalist was shot with a rubber bullet while standing away from a gathering of protesters as she interviewed an attendee.

Police have made over 470 arrests since August, and the Indigenous Environmental Network claims 167 people were injured just this past Sunday when police deployed water cannons in freezing weather.

Clark, a contributor to the Young Turks, explained that aside from the flagrant violations protesters are subject to in North Dakota, Natives are especially deserving of veteran support:

“First Americans have served in the Unites States Military, defending the soil of our homelands, at a greater percentage than any other group of Americans. There is no other people more deserving of veteran support.”

According to a Facebook event the two men created called “Veterans Stand for Standing Rock,” those who join the effort will arrive at the protest site on December 4, where they will stay until December 7, 2016.

The event description reads:

“Come to Standing Rock Indian Reservation and hold the line with Wes Clark jr, Michael Wood Jr, Tulsi Gabbard and hundreds of other veterans in support of the Sioux nation against the DAPL pipeline. Bring Body armor, gas masks, earplugs AND shooting mufflers (we may be facing a sound cannon) but no drugs, alcohol or weapons.”

Clark Jr. was clear he was not looking for violence and that the protest would be unarmed.

“We’re not going out there to get in a fight with anyone,” he said. “They can feel free to beat us up, but we’re 100% nonviolence.”

As Task and Purpose explained:

“With an eye toward the media, old military uniforms will be donned so that if the veterans are brutalized by the police, they are brutalized not as ordinary citizens, but as people who once served the government they are protesting against.”

The event page makes it clear that the group will not tolerate  “hate, violence or divisive behavior of any kind.”

“We’re doing this to support our country,” they advise, “so let’s do it with honor, working together. We can stop this savage injustice being committed right here at home. If not us, who? If not now, when?”

Over 250 veterans have already committed, but organizers hope to have a group of 500 or more by the time they head to Standing Rock.

Once there, the  veterans intend to engage in a traditional native healing ceremony with protesters, with whom they have been coordinating, according to the veterans. Then, protective gear like gas masks and body armor will be issued to anyone who needs it. The soldiers will march to bagpipes and Sioux war songs as they head to the banks of the Missouri River to meet police.

“Then, the veterans and their allies — or at least the ones who are brave enough — will lock arms and cross the river in a ‘massive line’ for their ‘first encounter’ with the ‘opposing forces.’”

Though the veterans have adopted a strict policy of nonviolence, they refuse to back down and apparently hope to use their military status to spotlight the egregious behavior of the police.

“We’ll have those people who will recognize that they’re not willing to take a bullet, and those who recognize that they are,” says Wood Jr. “It’s okay if some of them step back, but Wes and I have no intention of doing so.”

Veterans Stand for Standing Rock is accepting donations to cover food, transportation, and supplies for those who travel to North Dakota. You can donate here. You can also donate directly to the water protectors.

See also:
Ea O Ka Aina: Obama must support Standing Rock 11/21/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Trump's pro oil stance vs NoDaPL 11/15/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Kauai NoDAPL Demonstration 11/12/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Obama to Betray Standing Rock 11/12/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Trump impact on Standing Rock 11/12/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Ann Wright on Standing Rock 11/8/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Turning Point at Standing Rock 11/6/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Jackson Browne vs DAPL owner 11/5/16
Democracy Now: Boycott of DAPL Owner's Music Festival
Ea O Ka Aina: World responds to NoDAPL protests 11/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: NoDAPL victory that was missed 11/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: DAPL hid discovery of Sioux artifacts 11/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Dakota Access Pipeline will leak 11/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Route of the Dakota Access Pipeline 11/4/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Sanders calls for stopping DAPL 11/4/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Obama hints at DAPL rerouting 11/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: New military attack on NODAPL 11/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: How to Support NoDAPL 11/3/16
Unicorn Riot: Tweets from NoDAPL 11/2/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Standing Rock & the Ballot Box 10/31/16
Ea O Ka Aina: NoDAPL reclaim new frontline 10/24/16
Ea O Ka Aina: How far will North Dakota go? 10/23/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Amy Goodman "riot" charge dropped 10/17/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Amy Goodwin to face "Riot Charge" 10/16/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Shutdown of all tar sand pipelines 10/11/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Why Standing Rock is test for Oabama 10/8/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Why we are Singing for Water 10/8/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Labor's Dakota Access Pipeline Crisis 10/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Standing Firm for Standing Rock 10/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Contact bankers behind DAPL 9/29/16
Ea O Ka Aina: NoDAPL demo at Enbridge Inc 9/29/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Militarized Police raid NoDAPL 9/28/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Stop funding of Dakota Access Pipeline 9/27/16
Ea O Ka Aina: UN experts to US, "Stop DAPL Now!" 9/27/16
Ea O Ka Aina: No DAPL solidarity grows 9/21/16
Ea O Ka Aina: This is how we should be living 9/16/16
Ea O Ka Aina: 'Natural Capital' replacing 'Nature' 9/14/16
Ea O Ka Aina: The Big Difference at Standing Rock 9/13/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Jill Stein joins Standing Rock Sioux 9/10/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Pipeline temporarily halted 9/6/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Native Americans attacked with dogs 9/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Mni Wiconi! Water is Life! 9/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Sioux can stop the Pipeline 8/28/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Officials cut water to Sioux 8/23/16   


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NoDAPL People are Going to Die

SUBHEAD: The police in Morton County ND are acting with such brutality that eventually someone will be killed, says father of seriously wounded daughter.

By Nika Knight  on 23 November 2016 for Common Dreams -
(http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/11/23/people-are-going-die-father-wounded-dapl-activist-sophia-wilansky-speaks-out)


Image above: Wayne Wilansky is demanding action from the Obama administration on behalf of his daughter, Sophia Wilansky, who is in danger of losing an arm after allegedly being struck by a concussion grenade in North Dakota on Sunday. Screenshot of Democracy Now!. From original article.

Sunday's brutal police assault against peaceful Dakota Access Pipeline activists left one water protector, Sophia Wilansky, at risk of losing an arm, and her distraught father spoke out Tuesday and Wednesday against the shocking show of force and demanded government action.

Wayne Wilansky, a 61-year-old lawyer and yoga teacher from New York City, spoke to a reporter in a Facebook live feed about his daughter's devastating injury, allegedly caused by a concussion grenade.

"This is the wound of someone who's a warrior, who was sent to fight in a war," Wayne said. "It's not supposed to be a war. She's peacefully trying to get people to not destroy the water supply. And they're trying to kill her."

Most of the muscle tissue between Sophia's left elbow and wrist as well as two major arteries were completely destroyed, Wayne said, and doctors pulled shrapnel out of the wound.

The Morton County Sheriff's Department has denied using concussion grenades or any equipment that could cause an injury like Sophia's, despite witness accounts and the shrapnel recovered by surgeons from Sophia's arm.

The police in Morton County, North Dakota are acting with such brutality, Wayne warned, that eventually "people are going to die."

Watch the full interview here:

Wayne's words were echoed on Democracy Now! by Brandi King, a U.S. Army combat veteran and fellow water protector who helped transport Sophia to the hospital.

"[Y]ou don't expect those kind of wounds happening when they're not in combat," King said. "That was just—just felt like it was a combat wound, you know, looked like it was a combat wound. She had shrapnel wounds. She didn't have any burns. Her arm was split open. Her skin, her flesh was ripped off of her arm. Her bones were broke."

A medic with Standing Rock Medic and Healer Council, who was on the scene on Sunday, made similar comparisons in comments to InsideClimate News: "I think of Birmingham, [Alabama], I think of Wounded Knee, it felt like low-grade war," Michael Knudsen said.

"If we hadn't been there on Sunday night, people would have probably died. The use of water canons for eight hours on hundreds and hundreds of demonstrators in 22 degrees [F] is enough to kill someone."

Sophia's prognosis was made far worse by the fact that ambulances couldn't breach the police blockade of a main access road, which water protectors were attempting to clear when they were attacked by the Morton County Sheriff's Department, said Wayne.

Because of the blockade, it took over six hours for Sophia to finally reach the hospital in Minneapolis where she is undergoing multiple surgeries now, her father said. The harrowing delay very likely caused additional harm, Wayne added, because "every minute counts" with an injury as severe as Sophia's.

And Sophia's injury was no accident, Wayne said.

"The police did not do this by—it was an intentional act of throwing it directly at her," he said in a statement released by the Standing Rock Medic and Healer Council. "Additionally police were shooting people in face and groin intending to do the most possible damage."

Sophia fears that the pipeline company, Energy Transfer Partners (ETP), is going to kill her, requesting that her father stay by her hospital bed to protect her, Wayne said.

ETP head Kelcy Warren also told reporters early last week that he had offered to "reimburse" the government of North Dakota and Morton County for the costs of the militarized police force, but government officials denied receiving such an offer.

Wayne reported the attack on his daughter to the FBI and the Justice Department, he said, adding that the Justice Department is investigating. But in his description to Democracy Now!, the FBI appeared to behave as though they were investigating Sophia, rather than her assailants:

Sophia was [...] waiting to go to surgery. And they're basically keeping us prisoner inside her hospital room, waiting for a warrant, which never came. They didn't tell us what they were there for, for many hours. Eventually, I got to speak to a supervisor and learned that what they were looking for was her clothing. And I did eventually consent. I had taken her clothing back to my hotel room the night before, and I did consent to give them the clothing, eventually, after talking to the supervisors. I have an unwritten agreement, but I put it in writing anyway, that they will give me access to those materials so that I can test them, as well, and that they’ll preserve and not destroy that evidence, because I would want to see it, and I would want to have it forensically tested myself.

One FBI agent was wearing a jacket identifying him as a member of the Joint Terrorism Taskforce, the broadcast observed.

And despite the tragic result of the road blockade in Sophia's case, the Morton County Sheriff's Department apparently are now seeking to reinforce it by building a cement wall across the highway, water protectors said Wednesday.

"The police have built a wall between the Standing Rock Sioux reservation and Mandan/Bismarck on a public highway," commented Honor the Earth campaigner Tara Houska on Facebook. "Cutting off direct access to a hospital appears not to [faze] the people responsible for nearly blowing off a young woman's arm a few days ago."

In the wake of what the Indigenous Environmental Network condemned as "crimes against humanity" by the Morton County's Sheriff Department, the global outcry is growing.

A multiracial delegation of over 100 frontline community leaders are traveling to North Dakota and joining the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in their fight; a fundraiser for Sophia's hospital bills has been flooded with donations; and even mainstream outlets such as the editorial board of the New York Times and the hosts of the daytime talk show The View are urging President Barack Obama to take action to reroute the pipeline and protect the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and its supporters.

Yet Obama is swiftly running out of time to act, and observers fear that the brutality of the Morton County Sheriff's Department in North Dakota may be a harbinger of what's to come under the looming Donald Trump administration.

"Standing Rock has for months been a frontline in the fights for indigenous sovereignty and against reckless extraction," argued journalist Kate Aronoff. "It may also now be the frontline of Trump's America."

.

Restoring the Kingdom of Hawaii

SUBHEAD: Francis Boyle with the Nation of Hawaii and a presentation on Hawaiian Sovereignty.

By Francis Boyle on 22 November 2016 in Counter Currents -
(http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/11/22/restoring-the-kingdom-of-hawaii-versus-fake-hawaiian-statehood-day/)


Image above: Free Hawaii organization supporting Hawaiian sovereignty. From original article.

Townhall Meeting with the Nation of Hawaii at Waimanalo on 21 August 2016Edited Transcripts of speeches Professor Francis A. Boyle gave in Hawaii August 20 and August 21, 2016. See Counter Culture loink above for full presentation.

NOVEMBER 21st PRESENTATION
Aloha. I’m very happy to be with you here today to talk about the fake state of Hawaii under international law. This is a fake and bogus state of the United States of America and everyone knows it. The United States of America is 2,000 miles that way. I just flew in over the Pacific Ocean the other night.

France tried to do the same thing with Algeria. They invaded Algeria. They annexed Algeria. And then they determined that Algeria was a department of France, like a state or province in France.

No one believed that and certainly the Algerians didn’t believe that — that’s for sure! And today Algeria is a free and independent state and a member state of the United Nations Organization and most of the French have gone home. Some want to live there. That’s fine.

Now I’m not going to review the entire history of the Kingdom of Hawaii and the Kanaka Maoli here. I’ve written a book which you’re free to get. Bumpy has extra copies there, Restoring the Kingdom of Hawaii. And I have a beautiful picture on the back of Pele, drawn by a Kanaka Maoli artist who gave me the permission to put it on the book.

When the U.S. invaded the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1893 it was clearly an illegal invasion. There was a treaty that the U.S. had with the Kingdom of Hawaii guaranteeing peace and amity forever in perpetuity. They paid no attention at all to these solemn commitments, even under the terms of their own U.S. Constitution.

Article 6 guaranteed that treaties are the supreme law of the land. They grossly violated this treaty and perpetrated an act of warfare on the Kingdom of Hawaii and even again in violation of another provision of their own Constitution. Article 1 section 8 says that only Congress can authorize and approve warfare. Congress never approved any warfare against the Kingdom of Hawaii and the Kanaka Maoli.

So nothing could be clearer that today the U.S. is the illegal occupant of the Kingdom of Hawaii and the Kanaka Maoli, and that the bogus state of Hawaii is nothing more than the agent, the instrument, of the illegal, belligerent occupant of the Kingdom of Hawaii known as the U.S. government.

Now, when the U.S. invaded Hawaii in 1893, it became what is known under the international laws of war at that time as the belligerent occupant. The belligerent military occupant of Hawaii. What did that mean?

Number one, the U.S. never gained any sovereignty over Hawaii and the Kingdom of Hawaii. Belligerent occupation cannot transfer sovereignty and the U.S. never got sovereignty here in Hawaii. Second, under the laws of war, sovereignty resides in the hands of the displaced sovereign and in this case, the Kingdom of Hawaii and the Kanaka Maoli.

Indeed, the Kanaka Maoli here in Hawaii have the right of self-determination under international law. Indeed, the Kanaka Maoli are the only people out here in Hawaii that have a right of self-determination under international law. It’s that simple and that is what we are doing here today.

We are exercising our right of self-determination and to denounce the bogus, fake state of Hawaii. And I say “we” because Bumpy Kanahele and the Ohana Council adopted me into the Ohana Council as far back as 1993. So yes, I’m Hanai, and I have a right here to speak on behalf of our Ohana.

So the U.S. and the fake state of Hawaii are nothing more than the belligerent occupation of the state of Hawaii. Now under the laws of war, if the U.S. wants to set up a puppet state and a puppet government to occupy Hawaii by means of belligerent occupation, it can. There’s nothing illegal under the laws of war with setting up a puppet government and a puppet state.

And that’s what this fake state of Hawaii is all about. It’s a puppet state and a puppet government of the U.S. acting here only pursuant to the laws of war. It’s the civilian arm of the U.S. military occupation forces and that’s the way you have to look at it.

The U.S. has paid absolutely no attention to the laws of war and belligerent occupation out here in Hawaii. They’ve tried to conquer, annex, dominate, exterminate you Kanaka Maoli, but you are still here.

You are still in possession of your land and are a People with a right of self-determination exercising power over your own land. This is what sovereignty is all about and that’s why we are here today. As an exercise of sovereignty and self-determination for the Kanaka Maoli and also the Kingdom of Hawaii. We’re here in both causes together.

Now the normal rule when a treaty has been violated so grievously as the U.S. government did by waging illegal warfare against the Kingdom of Hawaii is what is called restitution. They must restore the situation to what it was before the violation and in the case of the Kingdom of Hawaii, as I explain in greater detail in my book, the U.S. government has the obligation to restore the Kingdom of Hawaii and evacuate Hawaii. Leave Hawaii! Lock, stock, and barrel! And allow the Kanaka Maoli to exercise their right of self-determination.

Restore the Kingdom of Hawaii! Terminate this bogus, fake state of Hawaii and move on toward international recognition and membership in the United Nations Organization!

Now you might say: “Oh Professor Boyle, isn’t that a pipe-dream?” Not at all! In 1987, I appeared at the United Nations as a guest of the Palestinians to talk about their future and at that time I said: “The time has now come for you Palestinians to unilaterally create your own state and then move for international recognition and membership in the United Nations Organization!”

And that’s exactly what they did! On November 15, 1988, they adopted their Declaration of Independence and today, the State of Palestine has de jure diplomatic recognition from 136 states in the world.

And Observer State Status at the United Nations Organization in 2012. That took 25 years of hard work and organization, but they did it — and living under a most brutal colonial genocidal military occupation where, today, Palestinians are being shot dead like dogs in the street. And yet they still resist on their own land!

And I have devised the means whereby they can overcome the veto by the United States government [at the Security Council] to join the United Nations Organization as a full-fledged member state.
You Kanaka Maoli can and must do the same thing!

Because the only protection the modern world has developed from genocide and extermination and assimilation and elimination is an independent state of your own: Restoring that Kingdom of Hawaii and then moving for international recognition of that Kingdom and eventually membership in the United Nations Organization. No United Nations member state has ever been destroyed, and we must get to that point. It might take us 25 years like it did for the Palestinians. But if they can do it, we can do it too!

Now, as I said, then, this so-called “statehood” was bogus, completely. It was controlled, dominated, orchestrated by the U.S. government to set up a puppet state under the laws of war with a puppet government and we all know, they over there do whatever the Yankees tell them to do. So fine.

But they’re still a gang of puppets, and they have no validity at all under international law and they know it. They know that this is your land! They know that they stole it from you! They know that they destroyed the Kingdom of Hawaii!

They know you Kanaka Maoli have the right of self-determination! They know they must restore the Kingdom of Hawaii to you as well as your lands and your oceans and your fish and your beaches and all your other natural resources!

But again, they are not going to do it voluntarily. It is up to you, the Kanaka Maoli, to demand it as you’re doing here today. You are demanding your rights under international law. You are denouncing the fake state of Hawaii that has no legality or credibility at all. And you are demanding the Restoration of your Kingdom.

Your Kingdom still exists as a legal entity. It is what we call a “displaced sovereign.” It is up to you the Kanaka Maoli to bring it back to life. From the ground up, to build the Kingdom of Hawaii and to restore it. If the Palestinians can do it, you can certainly do it as well. There’s no doubt in my mind that you can!

Now in addition, however, one of the requirements of an independent state under international law is a government. We have a State and by the way, that puts us ahead of the Palestinians. They did not have a state as of 1988. But now they do and it is recognized de jure by 136 states and the United Nations in 25 years.

But we have a State, the Kingdom of Hawaii, it’s just a displaced sovereign. So we just have to bring it back to life. That’s what we have to do. That’s what you have to do. That’s why I flew all the way out from Chicago to Honolulu Friday night — just to help to restore this Kingdom of Hawaii back to life!

But to do this we’re going to need a government and government structures to guide and direct the process. The Palestinians have their provisional government guiding their State’s establishment until they can have democratic elections in a free unoccupied Palestine. So we need a provisional government out here and a provisional government of national unity.

Now, I’ve been coming out here to Hawaii since 1993. I’ve lectured all over the Islands. I’ve met many people and Kupunas and I know you all have good faith disagreements about how to proceed from here.

In the comments I made yesterday, I didn’t criticize any Kanaka Maoli leaders except OHA. They’re clearly going for an Indian tribe. That’s for sure, and we don’t want to go in that direction. Look what the Americans did to the Indians!

That’s a one way path to extermination! So OHA are Indian tribers, and in my opinion, we cannot rely upon them for any direction at all because they’re moving towards this Indian tribe, this so called federal recognition as an Indian tribe. And that will be the end of us for sure. And OHA knows it because I’ve told them so!

We need alternative leadership! A provisional government of national unity. Now, involving all of your Kupunas and your leaders, and to try to come together and put aside your good faith disagreements and to move forward, to restore the Kingdom of Hawaii, throw out the United States of America and its bogus, fake state of Hawaii. They have to go!

Now, we also have one other example from history of this being done, and that is Mahatma Gandhi in India. As we know, Gandhi applied his strategy and theory of Satyagraha, “truth-force,” non-violent but truth-force. Forcing yourself upon the colonial occupying oppressor and demanding that they leave. And clearly Gandhi was a man of the East, not of the rotten, corrupt, decadent West. Gandhi had it all figured out from his own cultural and religious heritage.

You can read it in his book Satyagraha. That’s what we need here. Satyagraha is consistent with the Spirit of Aloha. They’re the exact same thing and that’s what we need here. Satyagraha and the Spirit of Aloha together along with each and every one of you as self-determining Kanaka Maoli doing whatever you can to force the United States of America and this fake state of Hawaii out of here by means of Aloha and Satyagraha. I believe it can be done!

Gandhi threw the mighty British empire out of the entire Indian subcontinent with Satyagraha! Certainly I think the Kanaka Maoli using Satyagraha and the Spirit of Aloha can throw the mighty American empire out of the Kingdom of Hawaii and take its fake state with it along the way out the door and on the airplane home!

But to do that, to move forward, we’re going to need your leaders and your Kupunas to come together and try to set up this provisional government of national unity where you can all work together on this agenda. It can be done! It will be done! But it is up to you! Thank you. Mahalo.

PART II.
Bumpy asked this question about filing genocide charges against the United States for genocide against the Kanaka Maoli and the answer is yes! I was the lawyer for the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina that filed genocide charges for them against Yugoslavia.

I won two Orders of provisional measures of protection for the Bosnians against Yugoslavia to cease and desist from committing all acts of genocide against them. Now, that’s the first time ever any lawyer has won two Orders in one case since the World Court was founded in 1921.

So my opinion is: yes, we can, but not right away.

Now I had mentioned to you before the work I did with Palestinians starting from 1987 when I first said we should create our state until 2012 when we became an Observer State at the United Nations by vote of the U.N. General Assembly.

So at that point I then advised the Palestinians that we are now in a position to sue Israel for genocide against the Palestinians at the International Court of Justice. This is a matter of public record. The Palestinian leadership – their Provisional Government for the State of Palestine – is considering it as we speak. If and when I get instructions, I’ll file that lawsuit!

That being said, we’re behind the Palestinians in terms of the establishment of our Statehood. We have to get to the point where they are, and then I could file genocide charges against the United States government. So what does that mean? It’s up to all of you to get us to that point, to restore the Kingdom of Hawaii. To set up this provisional government of national unity like the Palestinians did so that I could act to file a genocide lawsuit against the United States.

As a matter of fact, I already argued genocide for the Kanaka Maoli in 1992 at the San Francisco Tribunal where my client and friend, the late Kekuni Blaisdell, showed up with his Ohana. I agreed to represent them and to argue their case before the San Francisco Tribunal, that the Kanaka Maoli were victims of genocide. And I explain this in my book here, if you want to read it, and chapter 1 is entitled “Kanaka Maoli Genocide.”

After my arguments for the Kanaka Maoli, my presentation of the case, the Tribunal of seven international human rights experts ruled as follows:

“The Tribunal further accepts a motion by the Prosecutor for the Native American Peoples to amend the face of the Indictment to include the following allegation which the Tribunal unanimously finds has been sufficiently proved by the evidence it has received:”

Notice it says unanimous. Everyone agreed. The case was so clearcut that the Kanaka Maoli were victims of genocide, as I argued to them. And what was their Ruling? This is their Ruling:
“The Federal Government of the United States of America has perpetrated crimes of genocide against the Kanaka Maoli (the Indigenous Hawaiian People), and has engaged in actions constituting gross violation of their human rights and their right to self-determination. All of which threaten to render the Kanaka Maoli extinct.”

That was unanimous on two points: One, Kanaka Maoli have been a victim of genocide. Two, you have a right of self-determination, which I discussed in my first speech here today. It’s up to you. It’s in your hands. If you want to see any of this done, it’s got to be done by you. We lawyers can’t work miracles, I’ll tell you that.

It’s up to your People to exercise self-determination to restore the Kingdom of Hawaii and toward that end to establish this provisional government of national unity. And then I can sue the United States government for genocide at the International Court of Justice. Thank you.

• Professor Francis A. Boyle is an international law expert and served as Legal Advisor to the Palestine Liberation Organization and Yasser Arafat on the 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence, as well as to the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East Peace Negotiations from 1991 to 1993, where he drafted the Palestinian counter-offer to the now defunct Oslo Agreement. His books include “ Palestine, Palestinians and International Law” (2003), and “ The Palestinian Right of Return under International Law” (2010).

See also:
Island Breath: Time for Provisional Government 12/28/04 Boyle presentation on Kauai
Island Breath: TGI Column - Hawaiian Nation - Part One 4/25/08
Island Breath: TGI Column - Hawaiian Nation - Part Two 4/30/08 
Ea O Ka Aina: Hawaii should be Deoccupied 11/22/15
Ea O Ka Aina: Na'i Aupuni is indefensible 11/18/15
Ea O Ka Aina: Na'i Aupuni critics meeting 11/18/15
Ea O Ka Aina: OHA's bad premise = bad election 11/11/15
Ea O Ka Aina: Guide to Hawaiian secession 11/6/15
Ea O Ka Aina: Hawaiian sovereignty on the line 10/28/15
Ea O Ka Aina: Hawaiian Nation signs removed 9/25/15
Ea O Ka Aina: Hawaiian Independence Day 11/12/14
Ea O Ka Aina: American war crimes in Hawaii 10/7/14
Ea O Ka Aina: State of Hawaiian sovereignty 9/11/14
Ea O Ka Aina: The Kanaka Maoli Tribe 8/31/13
Ea O Ka Aina: Glorious night for Kauai 1/18/13
Ea O Ka Aina: Hawaii - Start of American Empire 2/26/12
Ea O Ka Aina: Feds Threaten Hawaiian Sovereignty 2/2/12
Ea O Ka Aina: Hawaiian Sovereignty Issues 9/17/11
Ea O Ka Aina: Is Hawaii a part of USA? 9/2/11
Ea O Ka Aina: Recognition of Native Hawaiians 4/30/11
Ea O Ka Aina: Case for Hawaiian Sovereignty 12/20/10
Ea O Ka Aina: Hawaiian National Sues Obama 6/8/10
Ea O Ka Aina: Akaka Bill steals sovereignty 3/14/10
Ea O Ka Aina: Akaka Bill revision raises the stakes 12/23/09
Ea O Ka Aina: Hawaiian Sovereignty Panel 9/26/09
Ea O Ka Aina: Hawaii - "Nation Within" 9/24/09
Ea O Ka Aina: Is Hawaii a part of USA? 9/2/11

Ea O Ka Aina: "Conquest of Hawaii" 7/4/09
Ea O Ka Aina: US vs. HI Supreme Court 12/22/08

Island Breath: The State of Hawaii owns no land 11/9/08
Island Breath: Al Jazeera version of Hawaii history 10/17/08
Island Breath: Henry Noa & Kahoolawe Case 5/28/08
Island Breath: Hawaiian Kingdom occupies Iolani Palace 5/1/08
Island Breath: Hawaiian Supreme Court & Apology Bill 3/2/08
Island Breath: Kauai County goes after Kingdom of Atooi 12/7/07

Island Breath: TGI Column - Sustainability & Sovereignty 11/15/07
Island Breath: Kauai's new sense of independence 10/23/07
Island Breath: Hawaiian Sovereignty & Henry Noa 7/30/07
Island Breath: Kauai's new sense of independence 4/11/07
Island Breath: Hawaiian Sovereignty & Apology Bill 5/16/07
Island Breath: US Militarism in Hawaiian Islands 5/17/07

Island Breath: Hawaiian Ahupuaa 4/23/06
Island Breath: Kauai Sovereignty 3/14/06
Island Breath: Stop the Akaka Bill 9/3/05

Island Breath: Hawaiian Sovereignty 9/3/05 Profile of Bumpy Knaehele

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