From Standing Rock, North Dakota to Atenco, Mexico: Imposing Petro Culture by Force Johnny Hazard - CounterPunch
go to original September 13, 2016

Protesters demonstrate against the Dakota crude oil access pipeline near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in Cannon Ball, North Dakota. (Andrew Cullen/Reuters)

Recent occurrences on and near the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota, where goon squads apparently hired by the ominously-named Dakota Access outfit, which is building a pipeline from Canada, have many parallels with the situation in central Mexico, where the federal government is constructing what will be, if completed, one of the largest airports in the world.

In both cases:

• Contractors bring their own security forces, who use old-school weapons to attack and intimidate protesters - attack dogs at Standing Rock, clubs and rocks in Mexico.

• Contractors deny having contracted the aforementioned thugs.

• Indigenous people bear the brunt of the dispossession of their traditional lands and will suffer the bulk of the ecological consequences.

• Contractors, following the lead of Goebbels, repeat ad nauseum that they have the legal right to be there, when the native population offers evidence, suppressed by major media, that that is not the case.

• The hypocrisy of governments that present themselves to the world as leaders in the fight against climate change is manifest, as they continue to promote, condone, or, as is the case in Mexico, initiate mega-projects that perpetuate and expand the reckless use of fossil fuels.

And now, the differences: The U.S. government, as the seat of empire, sometimes makes the repression look lighter; the Mexican government has no such need for reticence. Thus killing protesting teachers and students, killing journalists, and similar shock tactics are the order of the day, especially since the arrival of Enrique Peña Nieto to the presidency in 2012.

Read the rest at CounterPunch

Related: Standing Rock Protests: This Is Only the Beginning (The Guardian)

Related: Oil Pipeline Construction Halted After Native American Protests (New Scientist)

Related: Wall Street’s Destruction of Sacred Sioux Indian Burial Grounds (CounterCurrents.org)

Related: Acciona’s Largest Wind Farm for Client Inaugurated in Mexico (NA WindPower)

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