Tag Archives: army

A judge rules that rushing approval for the Dakota Access Pipeline violated the law.

U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg issued a ruling Wednesday that deemed the previous environmental review process inadequate. His decision comes in response to a legal challenge filed by Standing Rock Sioux in February, after President Trump greenlit the pipeline shortly after his inauguration.

Specifically, the judge said the Army Corps of Engineers, which must approve pipelines that cross water, “did not adequately consider the impacts of an oil spill on fishing rights, hunting rights, or environmental justice, or the degree to which the pipeline’s effects are likely to be highly controversial.” According to Jan Hasselman, the Earthjustice attorney representing the tribe, the ruling represents possibly the first time that a federal judge has dinged the Army Corps for not considering environmental justice concerns.

The Army Corps must now do additional review. Hasselman is unsure what form that will take. “Do they just try to paper this over with a supplemental or revised environmental assessment, which is likely to lead to more litigation?” he says. “Or do they go back to the environmental impact statement process?”

The tribe has argued for months that the pipeline would endanger their drinking water and ancestral lands. Since oil began flowing in March, the pipeline has already leaked several times. Oil will continue flowing for now, but Standing Rock Sioux Chair Dave Archambault II said the tribe “will ask the Court to shut down the pipeline operations immediately” while it undergoes further environmental review. A ruling could come on that demand in as soon as six weeks.

Related: Read Grist’s investigation of the paramilitary tactics used to track and target pipeline opponents.

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A judge rules that rushing approval for the Dakota Access Pipeline violated the law.

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Trump Continues His Love Affair With the Egyptian President

Mother Jones

Have you noticed that everyone is paying less attention to President Trump’s tweets lately? I suppose it’s finally started to sink in that his tweets are just performance art for his fans, not an indication of any actual policy views. Plus, Trump’s tweets have gotten kind of boring. Maybe he lost his appetite for them after his random ejaculation about Obama wiretapping him—which he apparently intended only to distract the press for a day or two—turned into a massive, multi-month debacle for the entire Republican establishment.

Today, though, we got this:

Um, yeah. I’m sure we can count on that great humanitarian Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to respond effectively and prudently:

Late Sunday night, President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi called for a three-month state of emergency….The army chief-turned-president also dispatched elite troops across the country to protect key installations and accused unidentified countries of fueling instability, saying that “Egyptians have foiled plots and efforts by countries and fascist, terrorist organizations that tried to control Egypt.”

As always, we’re left to wonder why Trump loves el-Sisi so much. Is it because Trump is an unusually brutal foreign policy realist? Because he likes anyone that kicks butt on the Muslim Brotherhood? Because Obama didn’t like el-Sisi? Because Netanyahu does? It’s all a mystery.

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Trump Continues His Love Affair With the Egyptian President

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The Dead Pool – 9 April 2017

Mother Jones

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K.T. McFarland has always been one of President Trump’s odder choices for a senior position on his national security team. She last served in the government during the Reagan administration, and for the past 30 years has done precisely nothing that would make her qualified for even a junior position. Except for one thing: she spent several years as a Fox News commentator, where she regularly savaged Barack Obama and became pals with Eric Trump and Don Jr. Presumably Trump thought that was great experience. Steve Bannon signed on because he doesn’t care about anything except whether someone agrees with him, and former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn is such a loony tune that there’s no telling why he accepted her as his #2.

But then Flynn got fired, and Trump’s first choice to replace him turned down the job when he was told that McFarland had to stay. H.R. McMaster, however, plays a longer game, and took the NSA job even though McFarland came with it. He slowly sidelined her, and now she’s being reassigned to the exciting post of ambassador to Singapore. McMaster has been on the job for six weeks, and in that time he’s gotten Steve Bannon off the National Security Council; exiled McFarland to Singapore; and masterminded the bombing of Syria, which got Trump a ton of fawning coverage. Not bad for a guy who a few years ago was having trouble even getting the Army to promote him to general.

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The Dead Pool – 9 April 2017

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The Dead Pool – 26 February 2017

Mother Jones

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Man of the people that he is, Donald Trump likes to pick rich guys for high-level positions in his administration. Unfortunately, that poses a problem:

President Donald Trump’s nominee for Navy secretary, investor Philip Bilden, is expected to withdraw from consideration, sources familiar with the decision told Politico, becoming the second Pentagon pick unable to untangle their financial investments in the vetting process….Like billionaire investment banker Vincent Viola, who withdraw his nomination to be secretary of the Army earlier this month, Bilden ran into too many challenges during a review by the Office of Government Ethics to avoid potential conflicts of interest, the sources said.

To become Secretary of State, maybe all this divesting of huge fortunes is worth it. But Navy Secretary? Probably not.

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The Dead Pool – 26 February 2017

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The Dakota Access pipeline will have to find another route.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced on Sunday that it will not grant a permit for the pipeline to cross under Lake Oahe in North Dakota.

That is a small piece of the 1,172-mile pipeline, but it was especially controversial because it would have run just a half-mile from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. Just one spill would’ve done permanent damage to their water supply and ancestral land.

The tribe, along with activists from around the county, set up camps and demonstrations along the pipeline’s route for months leading up to the decision.

Dave Archambault II, chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, applauded the decision in a statement: “We wholeheartedly support the decision of the administration and commend with the utmost gratitude the courage it took on part of President Obama, the Army Corps, the Department of Justice, and the Department of the Interior to take steps to correct the course of history and to do the right thing.”

This is a major feat for Standing Rock, but remember: The next president has a financial stake in seeing the pipeline carry through. Standing Rock hopes Trump’s administration will “respect this decision.”

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The Dakota Access pipeline will have to find another route.

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The Governor of North Dakota Has Ordered the Eviction of Thousands of Anti-Pipeline Protesters

Mother Jones

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North Dakota Governor Jack Dalyrimple has issued an executive order demanding the “mandatory evacuation of all persons” from the main site of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) protests near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. The executive order, issued earlier today, requires all people located on land owned by the Army Corps of Engineers to leave immediately. They are forbidden from returning under penalty of arrest. The order could lead to the mass eviction and possible arrest of thousands of #NoDAPL protesters.

On Friday, the Army Corps of Engineers notified protesters that the agency planned to close the Ocheti Sakowin camp by December 5 due to safety concerns given the increasingly cold temperatures. This weekend, the camp was blanketed in snow and temperatures dropped to 26 degrees Fahrenheit. Two days later, in response to widespread criticism, the Corps backpedaled and said it had “no plans for forcible removal” and was “seeking a peaceful and orderly transition to a safer location.” The Army Corps promised to ticket protesters who refused to leave the Ocheti Sakowin camp.

The Ocheti Sakowin camp, one of three near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, is the only protest camp that on land owned by the Army Corps of Engineers. Hundreds and sometimes thousands of protesters have lived there since August within sight of the DAPL construction site. In anticipation of a possible crackdown, the number of “water protectors” staying in teepees, tents, and RVs at the Ocheti Sakowin camp has swelled to as many as 15,000. Many more, including a caravan of Army veterans known as the Veterans for Standing Rock, were planning on arriving in coming days to show solidarity with the protesters. Protesters are also staying on private land near the pipeline construction site.

Governor Dalyrimple’s executive order claims the mandatory evacuation is a result of concerns about the protesters’ safety due to dropping temperatures and snowstorms. “All of a sudden they are so concerned for our safety?” Jeane LaRance, a supporter of the anti-pipeline protests, said on Monday night. “They weren’t worried while spraying everyone with cold water in freezing weather!”

Last Sunday, Morton County Sheriffs sprayed a crowd of about 400 protesters with a water canon in sub-zero temperatures, drawing criticism from observers. According to Jade Begay, an activist with the Indigenous Environmental Network, 167 protesters were injured, and seven were hospitalized, including a woman whose arm was seriously injured by a “less-lethal” weapon.

“We don’t expect a forced removal or a sweep of this camp relatively soon,” said Dallas Goldtooth, a leader of the Indigenous Environmental Network, said in a video posted from his yurt at the Ocheti Sakowin camp. “But we as a camp are prepared, are preparing, for any scenario for the protection and safety of our folks.”

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The Governor of North Dakota Has Ordered the Eviction of Thousands of Anti-Pipeline Protesters

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Activists Say Dakota Access Pipeline Could Be Put on Hold for 30 Days

Mother Jones

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Yesterday, Standing Rock Sioux Chairman Dave Archambault II and other tribal authorities met with the US Army Corps of Engineers at the Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Council Building in Fort Yates, North Dakota. According to activists and others in attendance, Colonel John W. Henderson, the head of the Army Corps of Engineers in North Dakota, agreed that the Corps will ask Energy Transfer Partners to halt construction of the Dakota Access pipeline for at least 30 days.

Dakota Access pipeline representatives have said they have between two and five days of work left before the pipeline reaches the Missouri River. Anti-pipeline protesters and “water protectors” say that laying the crude oil pipeline just upstream from the Standing Rock Sioux reservation will threaten its water supply. The pipeline is nearly 90 percent completed.

The company has not yet received an easement permit to dig under the river. According to Kandi Mossett, an organizer with the Indigenous Environmental Network, and others at yesterday’s meeting, Henderson said he would wait at least 30 days until granting such an easement. If the Corps’ Washington, DC, office grants the easement, Henderson reportedly said he would not sign it for 30 days.

A spokeswoman for the Corps said it is in ongoing deliberations with the Standing Rock Sioux and that yesterday’s meeting was part of an ongoing process. She said the Corps will not make any decisions until the Department of the Army completes its own review. Right now, she said, the 30-day stay is only a proposal. (Energy Transfer Partners, Archambault, and the Standing Sioux Rock tribal office have not yet responded to requests for confirmation and further information.)

A delay, if it happens, could be a big win for anti-pipeline activists. “We’re looking at anywhere from a month and a half to two and a half months of nothing. They have to sit there on their thumbs,” says Mossett in a video she recorded today. “It’s huge, this delay. It’s the first glimmer of hope, of good news, that we’ve had out here for weeks—months.”

Earlier this week, President Barack Obama suggested he would urge the Army Corps of Engineers to consider rerouting the Dakota Access pipeline. “We’re monitoring this closely and I think, as a general rule, my view is that there’s a way for us to accommodate sacred lands of Native Americans,” Obama told Now This. “I think right now the Army Corps is examining whether there are ways to reroute this pipeline in a way.”

In her video statement, Mossett said any discussion of rerouting the pipeline away from Native American land could stop the project. “A reroute, to this company, effectively kills the project because they won’t be able to afford it. It will make it obsolete,” she said. The 1,172-mile pipeline, set to run between North Dakota and Illinois, was planned to be completed by the end of this year.

Recounting the latest meeting between the Standing Rock Sioux and the Army Corps of Engineers, Mossett was visibly excited. “The feeling is like, oh my god, are we gonna win?”

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Activists Say Dakota Access Pipeline Could Be Put on Hold for 30 Days

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New Science Tells Us That Men In Politics Are Blowhards

Mother Jones

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A couple of researchers in Switzerland wanted to judge how confident students in different career paths were. First, they split them into groups of 12 and gave each a short test:

  1. In which year was the Nobel Prize in physics awarded to Albert Einstein?
  2. In which year was pope John Paul I (the direct predecessor of John Paul II) elected Pope?
  3. In which year did the reactor accident happen in Chernobyl?
  4. In which year was Elvis Presley born?
  5. In which year did the first flight with the supersonic jet Concorde take place?

The answers are 1921, 1978, 1986, 1935, and 1976. My guesses were 1920, 1979, 1986, 1940,1 and 1973, so I was off by a total of 10 years. How do I think this compared with the rest of my group? I’m going to say I was third best. If it turns out that I was, in fact, only fifth best, I was overconfident by two ranks.

So how did everyone do? The first answer is simple: as you’d expect, men were vastly overconfident in their results and women were vastly underconfident. The chart on the right shows the second answer: political scientists were way overconfident and humanities students were way underconfident. Buck up, history majors! You know more than the budding politicians even if they’re oh-so-sure they know everything.

Bottom line: Science™ says that men in politics are blowhards. Ignore them. Women with English degrees know more than they think. Listen to them. That is all.

1This means that Elvis was drafted into the army at age 23. Doesn’t that seem a little late?

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New Science Tells Us That Men In Politics Are Blowhards

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Military Opens All Combat Jobs to Women

Mother Jones

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Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced on Thursday that the military will open all of its combat jobs, including those in special operations, to women for the first time.

Those combat jobs, including in infantry, artillery, tanks, and other front-line roles, will be open to women after a 30-day waiting period, Carter announced at a press conference. “Today I’m announcing my decision…to proceed with opening all these remaining occupations and positions to women,” he said. “There will be no exceptions.”

Carter cast the decision as a vital tool in recruiting talent and keeping up the military’s capabilities. “Our force of the future must continue to benefit from the best people America has to offer,” he said. “In the 21st century, that includes drawing strength from the broadest possible pool of talent.”

The military opened some indirect combat jobs to women in 1993, including flying combat aircraft and serving on Navy fighting ships, but kept front-line roles closed to female service members. That translated to about 220,000 positions across the military in 2015, Carter said. The change began in 2013, when the Obama administration said the military would have three years to study the role of women in combat and provide any reasons why they should still be barred from jobs such as infantry, artillery, and other direct combat roles. In that time, the military conducted studies and tests in which women participated in grueling combat schools, including Marine infantry officer training and the Army’s Ranger School, which three female officers passed this year. Carter said all the services except the Marine Corps recommended full integration. That includes Special Operations Command, which oversees elite forces like the Navy SEALs and the Army’s Delta Force.

Carter said he was confident that the inclusion of women would not reduce combat effectiveness, and that physical and performance standards would not be altered for women. Some military standards, including the scores on mandatory physical fitness tests, are scaled differently for men and women. “Women will be subject to the same standards and rules that men will,” he said. “Combat effectiveness is why we’re here.”

Carter acknowledged that the transition may be rocky. “While at the end of the day this will make us a better and stronger force, there still will be problems to fix and challenges to overcome,” he said. “We shouldn’t diminish that.” he said.

The Marine Corps was the service most vehemently opposed to integration. It released a study this year saying mixed-gender units performed worse in combat than all-male units, a conclusion that some analysts rejected. Carter said that study, which he called “not definitive,” and other data provided by the Marines were ultimately not enough to convince him that the service should get its own exemption from integrating combat unit. “We are a joint force, and I have decided to make a decision that applies to the entire force,” Carter said, noting that Marine Gen. Joe Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had made the same recommendation. Dunford, however, did not attend the press conference, and reporters pointed out that in his previous job as the Marine Corps’ top general, he opposed full gender integration for the Marines.

Carter said Dunford will work with him as the military integrates all its units, but he seemed to dodge a question about whether Dunford supported the move. “You’ll have to speak to him about that, but he understands what my decision is, and my decision is my decision,” Carter said.

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Military Opens All Combat Jobs to Women

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Israeli military offers a death-free experience — for soldiers’ diets, at least

Israeli military offers a death-free experience — for soldiers’ diets, at least

By on 17 Nov 2015commentsShare

It sounds like the plot of a Portlandia sketch: Vegans have invaded the military and are demanding soy-based meat, leather-free combat boots, and wool-free berets. The scenario is just begging for a three-minute clip of Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen earnestly telling their superior officers why the army would benefit from a violence-free existence. But it turns out, vegans are invading the military — just not ours.

According to The Atlantic, the Israeli army is, indeed, offering vegan-friendly foods and animal-free clothing to its soldiers. The move came after a group of those soldiers protested last year over the lack of vegan options in the mess halls. Unlike the U.S., Israel has a mandatory military service policy, so trends among its citizens are likely to become trends among its soldiers, and turns out, veganism has become quite the trend over there. Here’s more from The Atlantic:

Veganism has surged in Israel in recent years. According to Israeli news sources, nearly 5 percent of Israelis now forgo meat, dairy, and eggs, making the Jewish state the most vegan nation, per capita, in the world. Vegan activists point to a 2012 visit from Gary Yourofsky, an American animal-rights crusader, as a turning point. One Yourofsky YouTube video with Hebrew subtitles racked up 1 million views, a substantial number in a country of 8 million people. Israeli restaurants soon jumped on the bandwagon, with Tel Aviv brasseries and Domino’s franchises alike rolling out special vegan menus.

Vegan or not, nobody should be eating Domino’s, but it’s still great that a major pizza-peddling chain is willing to offer animal-free products. It’s even more impressive that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has his entire staff observe meatless Mondays:

Support for reduced-cruelty meal plans appears to go all the way to the top. The Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has expressed support for Israel’s “Meatless Monday” movement, adopting a vegetarian day for his staff, security guards, and family at his residence in Jerusalem each week. According to Haaretz, Netanyahu has been reading up on the topic. “[I] understood that animals are more conscious than we thought, which is bothering me and making me think twice,” he said at a cabinet meeting.

If a similar trend infiltrated the U.S. military, it could have a major impact on our country’s eating habits. Earlier this summer, NPR’s The Salt spoke with Anastacia Marx de Salcedo, author of Combat-Ready Kitchen: How The U.S. Military Shapes The Way You Eat, about how much the foods that feed our soldiers influence the foods that the rest of us eat. According to Marx de Salcedo, we have the military to thank for things like the “cheese” in goldfish crackers and Cheetos and the high-pressure cooking technique that brought us preservative-free deli meats. Here’s more from the interview:

I literally realized that everything in my kids’ lunchboxes had military origins or influence — the bread, the sandwich meat, juice pouches, cheesy crackers, goldfish and energy bars. Even if we look at fresh items like grapes and carrots, the Army was involved in developing packaging for fruits and vegetables. In a larger sense, I estimate that 50 percent of items in today’s markets were influenced by the military.

… One thing they’re working on is shelf-stable pizza. What I mean by that is the vision of the future is really a place where we don’t need refrigeration. This pizza could just be left in your pantry for a long time, like as long as you leave [canned goods].

They’re also working on shelf-stable sandwiches, wraps and bagels. In fact, it seems like the military is moving to a system where they want to reduce or eliminate regular hot meals like breakfast, lunch and dinners. Instead, they’d just provide day-long grazing options for soldiers. I think we could definitely see this affect the consumer market in the future.

For a glimpse at the food and atmosphere of early U.S. army mess halls, check out this charming, old-timey video. “The new concept,” the narrator says, “involves preparation of food in a central location, where maximum quality and uniformity can be better ensured.” The design, he says, came out of Natick Labs, an army research complex in Massachusetts that, according to Marx de Salcedo, was responsible for much of today’s army-derived food technology.

Who knows, maybe if our soldiers ate tofu, hummus, and veggie burgers, instead of all that meatloaf, fried chicken, and sausage, we wouldn’t be the complete meatheads that we are today. Regardless, it’s never too late to start feeding our soldiers the healthy, sustainable food that they deserve. It’s also never too late to bring back those cold beer dispensers. What happened to those?

Source:

Big in Israel: Vegan Soldiers

, The Atlantic.

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Israeli military offers a death-free experience — for soldiers’ diets, at least

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