The Sioux Water Protectors Next Challenge; a General's Personal Courage on display

Here, as far as I can tell, is the latest news on the Dakota Pipeline and the Sioux Water Protectors objections to it.  The Tribe's objections are supported by millions of Americans.  The pipeline is supported by Donald Trump, who stands to personally profit from the its completion.

The Seattle decision to divest three billion dollars in city funds from Wells Fargo, citing the bank’s role as a lender to the Dakota Access project, is a good decision.   If Hawaii has a similar investment in Wells Fargo, it should forthwith emulate Seattle.

A lot depends on the personal courage of Lieutenant General Todd T. Semonite, the commander of the corps of engineers.

General Semonite is a native of  Bellows Falls, Vermont, much injured over time by the corps.

Vermont is home to the Abenaki tribe.  One hopes that General   Semonite remembers his home.  See Historic Iroquois and Wabanaki Beadwork: The Abenaki and the Bellows Falls (VT) Petroglyphs


 We'll be watching to see if the general be man or mouse.


The New Yorker

FOR THE PROTESTERS AT STANDING ROCK, IT’S BACK TO PIPELINE PURGATORY

By Carolyn Kormann   February 3, 2017

In the waning days of the Obama Administration, it seemed that the Dakota Access Pipeline controversy might be over. But Donald Trump has different ideas.

PHOTOGRAPH BY SCOTT OLSON / GETTY

On Tuesday evening, Kevin Cramer, a Republican congressman from North Dakota, announced in a video statement that completion of the Dakota Access Pipeline, which had been indefinitely delayed since December 4th, “now has its final green light.” The Department of the Army had confirmed to him, he said, that it would soon issue the permit required to dig the pipeline’s last segment, under Lake Oahe, on the Missouri River, half a mile upstream from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. Cramer did not mention the tribe, even though the pipeline crosses sacred tribal lands and could, if it ever ruptured, contaminate the reservation’s water supply. Instead, he focussed on his admiration for the President, who signed a directive last week expediting the pipeline’s completion. “I am so, so grateful to Donald Trump,” Cramer said, beaming into the camera, a vanity license plate reading “BAKKEN” perched on the shelf behind him. “He is a man of action.”

Cramer, for all his enthusiasm, got one significant detail wrong. As the Standing Rock Sioux quickly noted in a written response, the Dakota Access permit hasnot been granted. “The congressman jumped the gun,” Jan Hasselman, the attorney representing the tribe, told me. The acting Secretary of the Army, Robert Speer, had only instructed the Army Corps of Engineers to grant the permit, beginning the process outlined in the Presidential directive. “These initial steps do not mean the easement has been approved,” an Army spokesman told the Washington Post. The Corps will now conduct its own analysis to decide whether it can approve the permit “in an expedited manner, to the extent permitted by law and as warranted,” as the directive states. Then it will notify Congress of its decision before actually granting the permit to Energy Transfer Partners, the pipeline’s parent company.

The Army Corps has made a decision on the pipeline once before; less than two months ago, it denied the permit, resolving instead to prepare an environmental-impact statement (E.I.S.) evaluating alternative pipeline routes, potential spill risk, and the tribe’s historical treaty rights. On January 18th, the Corps formally announced the E.I.S. in the Federal Register, beginning a public-comment period that will remain open for another three weeks—unless the Corps reverses itself, as it is pressured to do by the Presidential directive, which states that it should “withdraw” the E.I.S. and consider modifying or rescinding the December 4th decision. “The writing on the wall is that it’s likely to happen,” Hasselman said. If it does, according to a statement released by the tribe, the Standing Rock Sioux will “vigorously pursue legal action” against what they characterize as “corporate interest superseding government procedure and the health and wellbeing of millions of Americans.”

Trump’s support for the Dakota Access Pipeline is of a piece with the G.O.P. platform and his “America First Energy Plan,” with its promise to “embrace the shale oil and gas revolution.” It also may be motivated by his own energy portfolio. As of last summer, according to financial-disclosure records, Trump owned between fifteen and fifty thousand dollars of stock in Energy Transfer Partners. While Trump’s campaign spokeswoman said this fall that he had sold all of his E.T.P. shares, he has provided no documentation of the sale. And whether or not he remains personally financially tied to the company, it has substantial connections to his Administration. Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Energy, Rick Perry, owned more than a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in partnership units in E.T.P. in 2015, and until the end of last year sat on the company’s board of directors. Kelcy Warren, the billionaire C.E.O. of E.T.P., donated more than a hundred thousand dollars to Trump’s campaign after he won the Republican primary. The day after he won the general election, E.T.P.’s shares were up 12.2 per cent.

For the tribe, the decision the Corps issued on December 4th was the culmination of two years of negotiation, litigation, and, finally, protest. At the time, thousands of Native Americans and their allies from across the country were camped out near the Standing Rock reservation in a show of solidarity. Many had been there for months, despite the freezing weather. Some are still there. In December, however, Dave Archambault II, the tribe’s council chairman, started urging the protesters, who call themselves water protectors, to pack up and return home. He cited the severe weather and the need to begin cleaning the accumulated garbage and detritus left by the tens of thousands of people who had camped across the area since early summer.

Intensifying security measures were also a factor. North Dakota’s senior senator, John Hoeven—who, like his Republican colleague Kevin Cramer, issued a premature statement on Tuesday night, claiming the pipeline was about to receive its final permit—announced that in the coming days and weeks there would be bulked-up security around Standing Rock. He said that he was working to secure additional federal law-enforcement resources, and reported that, in the meantime, twenty additional Bureau of Indian Affairs officers had been dispatched to the protest encampment. His message seemed clear: any upswell in protest would be quashed. And so it went. On Wednesday, after protesters moved onto land owned by E.T.P. and set up a new camp, police and National Guardsmen approached with bulldozers, sound cannons, and military trucks, and made dozens of arrests. Archambault issued a statement scolding the protesters involved, saying that they did not represent his tribe or the water protectors’ original intent. “Yesterday, some took advantage of the impending easement and used it as a call back to camp,” he wrote. “The fight is no longer here, but in the halls and courts of the federal government.”

How long the Corps will deliberate before issuing its next decision is unclear. In the meantime, a new round of pipeline opposition has begun. In Seattle, on Wednesday, the City Council Financial Committee voted unanimously to divest three billion dollars in city funds from Wells Fargo, citing the bank’s role as a lender to the Dakota Access project. And at Standing Rock the protesters remain, with others expected to return. Archambault continues to plead for people to go home. “Those who planned to occupy the new camp are putting all of our work at risk,” he said. “They also put people’s lives at risk. We have seen what brutality law enforcement can inflict with little provocation.”

Women's March in the Middle East: Rojavan Kurds

A lot of information is available on line on the impact Murray Bookchin, a Brooklyn anarchist, has had on Syrian Kurds. Worth a look. 

Whatever else you may think of them, Rojavan Kurds are feminists in the Middle East, where women's rights don't otherwise exist.

For information on the Harvard Political Review see Wikipedia.

Harvard Political Review In Syria, a Battle Between Radical Leftism and Militant Islam - Harvard Political Review 

iddle East | January 22, 2017 at 11:29 pm

In Syria, a Battle Between Radical Leftism and Militant Islam

By Miro Furtado

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Early media reports lauded the “Free Syrian Army” as the secular saviors of Syria: generals committed to overthrowing Assad and instituting an American-style liberal democracy. Five years later, the Free Syrian Army is more myth than reality (if it ever was real). Taking its place as the standard-bearer in the fight against ISIS and the regime are the Rojavan Kurds, a powerful military force conducting a radical political experiment in Northern Syria. In the middle of the war-torn Middle East, these Kurds are carving out a space of gender equality, direct democracy, and political pluralism.

A Troubled History

Understanding the long history of Kurdish nationalism is crucial to exploring modern Kurdish political dynamics in the region. The Kurdish people, today numbering around 30 million, live primarily in the Middle East, where their unique culture and language have often left them ostracized. The struggle for Kurdish autonomy is hardly new—it predates the existence of most states in the region, stretching back as far as the 19th century. Most of the conflict has been concentrated in Iraq, Turkey, and Syria, all states with considerable Kurdish populations. In all three, expression of Kurdish culture has been harshly repressed for fear their separate identity would undermine state unity.

After the Gulf War, in a boon to Kurdish nationalists, the United States and NATO established the autonomous Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq. While granting millions of Kurdish people the right to self-govern, this move also formed a rift in the movement between the internationally recognized, traditionalist Kurdish parties in Iraq, such as the Kurdistan Democratic Party, and more radical, Marxist-Leninist groups in Turkey and Syria, such as the Kurdistan Worker’s Party and the Democratic Union Party (PYD). In Syria, despite decades of political repression, the PYD enjoyed “considerable popular political support among the Kurdish population,” said Robert Lowe, Deputy Director of the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics, in an interview with the HPR.

Fast forward to 2011 and the Syrian revolution. As the Syrian regime focused on other, more direct threats from government rebels to the south, government forces withdrew from north Syria, leaving the region up for grabs. According to Lowe, “the PYD grasped the opportunity and took advantage of the chaos caused by the war, the vacuum of authority, and moved quickly to assert themselves.” Lowe contended that “the PYD is a more disciplined party than any of the other Kurdish parties in Syria. It has a more powerful, coherent ideology, which perhaps enabled it to be more effective.” By July 2012, the PYD had “established dominance over most Kurdish cities in northern Syria,” said Wladimir van Wilgenburg, a political analyst based in Erbil, Iraq, in an interview with the HPR.

A new political order

The PYD formed a governing coalition known as TEV-DEM, and quickly moved to put their vision of an ideal society—known as Democratic Confederalism—into practice. Democratic Confederalism rose out of the radical leftism of the Kurdistan Workers Party and their leader, Abdullah Öcalan. In a book written while serving a life sentence in Turkey, Öcalan describes his ideal society as “a non-state political administration or a democracy without a state.” Inspired by a little-known Vermont-based anarchist by the name of Murray Bookchin, Öcalan crafted an ideology founded upon direct democracy, gender equality, and autonomy.

“If you read [the PYD’s] ideology taken to its fullest extent, they want to get rid of all state structures, national borders, and reconfigure government and society through a grassroots bottom up approach of local consensual governance,” said Lowe. “That is what they are trying to implement in Northern Syria.”

In what has been termed the “Rojavan Revolution,” this radical rejection of the nation-state has manifested itself in the form of three self governing “cantons” in Syria: Afrin, Jazira, and Kobanî, each further comprised of smaller, municipal councils. In these cantons, decisions are made not by far away party leaders, but by citizens who have to live with the direct consequences.

However, it is the Rojavan commitment to gender equality that has most struck a chord with the West. Enshrined in the Rojavan constitution is the principle that each committee must be co-chaired by one man and one woman. All-female fighting forces like the YPJ quickly became the talk of the world: Media outlets gushed over the “Kurdish Angelina Jolie,” a YPJ fighter killed in clashes with ISIS.

Life on the Ground

Implementation of Democratic Confederalism is really happening, says Lowe. “The structures are there, they have set up the councils, the civil society groups, a huge long list of organizations representing the women, the youth, the seamstresses, the embroiderers. Every aspect of society has been given a place or a role to play in the structure of the PYD reformation of society.”

The Rojavan Revolution has certainly had to reconcile its philosophy with the harsh reality of war. Radical ideology does not fill empty stomachs, provide ammunition desperately needed to fight the Islamic State, or ensure safety and security in the streets. Yet the PYD has proven itself to be highly pragmatic in the face of adversity, becoming one of the United States’ largest allies in the fight against ISIS, despite Rojavan misgivings about both the nation-state and capitalism.

For all its appeal, the system is not without its detractors. The ruling coalition in Rojava has been accused multiple times of failing to respect the political process and taking unilateral action without consulting more conservative opposition parties aligned with Kurdistan Democratic Party in Iraq. “Technically speaking,” the Rojavans should be governed by “a system of bottom up democracy, but in reality its often top-down ruled.” said van Wilgenburg. “Until now there have been no multi-party elections due to the political differences between the Kurdish parties.” Massoud Barzani, head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and president of the Kurdish Regional Government, has accused the PYD of “autocracy,” and said it “suppressed other political parties by gunpoint and secretly sided with Bashar Assad’s regime to make itself a solo de facto military force on the ground.”

In 2014, Human Rights Watch documented the harassment, arbitrary arrest, and disappearance of political rivals of the PYD, including KNC-affiliated agitators, though noting that PYD human rights abuses are “far less egregious and widespread” than elsewhere in Syria. The PYD, for its part, denies holding political prisoners, and states that these men stand accused of bomb attacks, drug trafficking, and other non-political crimes.

A Solution for Syria?

Kurdish YPJ soldiers

The new Rojavan society marks a sharp departure from the authoritarianism that has been all too common in the region. But to what extend can this liberal, pluralistic, ‘confederal’ system serve as a model for the rest of Syria, and perhaps, the Middle East? “It’s certainly the hope of the Kurds,” said Lowe. “They see [Democratic Confederalism] as the solution for themselves and like to claim that [it can be rolled] out across Syria.”

There is no doubt that the confederalist model carries great potential. In a region wracked by ethnic and sectarian conflict, whether Sunni-Shia or Israeli-Palestinian, local democratic self-rule certainly sounds like an appealing solution. The Rojavan model of allowing regions with a unique cultural identity to rule themselves has already gained support in Lebanon, itself a longtime victim of sectarian conflict. And with recent territorial acquisitions against ISIS, the spread of this model may not be far off. “It’s already being expanded to areas under [PYD] control such as Manbij, and other Arab towns like Tal Abyad,” said van Wilgenburg. “Its a multi-ethnic system open to other non-Kurdish ethnic groups.”

But ethnic tension might also prove itself to be the source of the greatest challenges to broader expansion of the ideology. Simply put, the Arab majority, despite some military cooperation, is highly skeptical of Kurdish autonomy and any political ideology that might arise from it. The problem with the ideology is not necessarily what it entails, but its chief proponents: the Kurds. Even the most radical of political ideologies has to face the divisive identity politics that have dominated the Middle East for decades.

Image Source: Flickr/Kurdishstruggle

If the United States and Russia agree, Turkey will not stop Kurdish independence in Syria

This is not a good time for Washington to dither on Syria.
Russian support of an autonomous canton in northern Syrian makes sense as a stop-gap measure and seems doable if Russia and the United States can come to a common understanding.

Together, Turkey will not stand in the way of Kurdish independence.

The time to Act is now!

Al Monitor
Week in Review
Monday, January 30, 2017

Why did Russia offer autonomy for Syria’s Kurds?

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov attends a news conference in Moscow, Jan. 17, 2017. 

Russia seizes diplomatic momentum on Syria

UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura praised the Russian-brokered Syria talks in Astana, Kazakhstan, which ended Jan. 24, as a “concrete step” toward implementation of United Nations Security Council resolutions dealing with Syria, commending Russia, Turkey and Iran for setting up a mechanism to ensure compliance with the cease-fire announced last month.

Russia’s diplomatic blitz did not end in Astana, however. On Jan. 27, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met with Syrian opposition parties in Moscow for further discussion of a Russian draft of a new Syrian Constitution that had been offered in Astana. While representatives of the Saudi-backed High Negotiations Committee of the Syrian opposition and the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces refused to attend, the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), which Turkey had excluded from the Astana talks, participated in the Moscow meeting.

Maxim Suchkov reports that the draft constitution includes restrictions on the power of the Syrian presidency, with most powers deferred to the parliament and a newly created “Assembly of Regions.” Under the draft, the president would serve for seven years with no option for a second consecutive term.

Most controversial in the draft may be the decentralization of government authorities and the empowerment of local councils. “One issue that has stirred debate,” Suchkov writes, "is a provision allowing for 'autonomy of Kurdish regions,' which Russia sees as an adequate compromise for the country’s federalization. A provision stipulating equal rights for Kurds and Arabs on Kurdish territories is also remarkable. Moreover, under the proposed draft, every region in the country should be given the right to legalize the use of a language of the region’s majority — in addition to the state language and in accordance with the law.”

Not surprisingly, Suchkov continues, the draft elicited strong reactions from the parties to the conflict. “So far,” he writes, “the Kurdish issue is the most controversial. Turkey, Damascus and the Arab opposition forces all have their own caveats about the proposed autonomy — and it doesn’t please the Kurds, either, as they want more.”

This is not the first time that Russia has floated the idea of autonomy for Syria’s Kurdish regions. Al-Monitor broke the news of a Russian-mediated effort in September that broached the subject of autonomy, but was dismissed by the Syrian government.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova denied that Russia was backing autonomy for Syrian Kurds, saying, “Only Syrians can uphold their country as an integral, sovereign, multi-ethnic and multi-religious country.”

Lavrov contrasted the Russian draft with the Iraqi Constitution, which he claimed was “forced” on Iraq by the United States. “We have only offered our proposals to the Syrian parties without any intention of forcing them to adopt them,” he said. “Based on the experience of the past five years, we are convinced that practical work can only begin if specific proposals are put on the table. I hope that all Syrians will read our draft while preparing for a meeting in Geneva and that it will provide an impetus for a practical discussion of ways to achieve accord in Syria in keeping with the Geneva Communique.”

Suchkov said, “The expectation in Moscow is that, at the end of the day, the parties will share the view that extreme, uncompromising positions will mean no end to the civil war in the near future, while the proposed formula may be the best possible solution under the current circumstances.”