PNN - 11/19/17
Lets
Not Pay Attention to TAX PLANS and OIL Spills
1.Dakota
Access Pipeline Company Paid Mercenaries to Build Conspiracy Lawsuit
Against Environmentalists
The
private security firm TigerSwan worked to build a RICO suit accusing
Greenpeace, Earth First, and BankTrack of inciting protests to
increase donations.
The
private security firm TigerSwan, hired by Energy Transfer Partners to
protect the controversial Dakota Access pipeline, was paid to gather
information for what would become a sprawling conspiracy lawsuit
accusing environmentalist groups of inciting the anti-pipeline
protests in an effort to increase donations, three former TigerSwan
contractors told The Intercept. For months, a conference room wall at
TigerSwan’s Apex, North Carolina, headquarters was covered with a
web-like map of funding nodes the firm believed it had uncovered —
linking billionaire backers to nonprofit organizations to pipeline
opponents protesting at Standing Rock. It was a “showpiece” for
board members and ETP executives, according to a former TigerSwan
contractor — part of a project that had little to do with the
pipeline’s physical security.
In
August, the law firm founded by Marc Kasowitz, Donald Trump’s
personal attorney for more than a decade, filed a 187-page
racketeering complaint against Greenpeace, Earth First, and the
divestment group BankTrack in the U.S. District Court of North
Dakota, seeking $300 million in damages on behalf of Energy Transfer
Partners. The NoDAPL movement, the suit claims, was driven by “a
network of putative not-for-profits and rogue eco-terrorist groups
who employ patterns of criminal activity and campaigns of
misinformation to target legitimate companies and industries with
fabricated environmental claims.”
“It
was as if the entire campaign came in a box. And of course it did,”
the suit alleges. “Its objective was not to protect the environment
or Native Americans but to produce as sensational and public a
dispute as possible, and to use that publicity and emotion to drive
fundraising.”
Among
the nonprofit network’s alleged crimes: “perpetrating acts of
terrorism under the U.S. Patriot Act, including destruction of an
energy facility, destruction of hazardous liquid pipeline facility,
arson and bombing of government property risking or causing injury or
death.”
“We
felt compelled to file the lawsuit against Greenpeace and others
because we want the truth to come out about the illegal actions that
took place in North Dakota and the funding of these actions,” ETP
spokesperson Vicki Granado told The Intercept. “In many cases, the
only way the truth comes out is through the legal process.”
The
case was filed under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt
Organizations Act, passed in 1970 to prosecute organized crime —
primarily the mob. Greenpeace says it amounts to a strategic lawsuit
against public participation, or SLAPP, designed to curtail free
speech through expensive, time-consuming litigation.
“It
grossly distorts the law and facts at Standing Rock,” said
Greenpeace general counsel Tom Wetterer. “We’ll win the
lawsuit, but it’s not really what this is about for ETP. What
they’re really trying to do is silence future protests and advocacy
work against the company and other corporations.”
“[The
lawsuit] had some major racist overtones. They were basically saying
that we were not intelligent enough to know for ourselves what the
possibilities were in case the pipeline were to leak. They were
basically saying we were manipulated,” said Linda Black Elk, a
member of the Catawba Nation who lives on the Standing Rock
reservation and organized against the pipeline months before the
protests began. “I think the whole purpose of it is to scare tribes
from further activism when it comes to the fossil fuel industries and
to scare these green groups to keep them from supporting us in those
future fights.”
Short-Lived
Line of Work
TigerSwan,
which got its start working U.S. government contracts in Afghanistan
and Iraq, was hired by Energy Transfer Partners to coordinate the
DAPL operation in September 2016, after dogs handled by private
security officers were caught on film biting pipeline opponents. The
firm began collecting information on the movement’s funding streams
soon afterward, submitting intelligence to ETP via daily situation
reports, more than 100 of which were leaked to The Intercept by a
TigerSwan contractor.
But
the effort to build a lawsuit began in earnest in January. TigerSwan
personnel were tasked directly by lawyers working for ETP with
fulfilling information requests, according to two former contractors.
Situation reports from the beginning of February note that the
company planned to “continue to proceed with the ETP legal team’s
requests.”
In
response to the requests, TigerSwan personnel sent reports on
trespassing incidents and pipeline sabotage, including information
about who was suspected to be involved and monetary damages caused by
the work stoppages. The firm also compiled descriptions of movement
leaders and individuals arrested by law enforcement, and tracked
donations to DAPL-related GoFundMe accounts. Much of the intelligence
collection was carried out via fake social media accounts and
infiltration of protest camps by TigerSwan operatives.
According to the former contractors, the company intended to sell its legal
investigative services to future clients. A PowerPoint presentation
obtained by The Intercept, which a former contractor described as
marketing material to attract a new contract, shows TigerSwan
applying its follow-the-money tactics to a new pipeline fight against
Pennsylvania’s Mariner East 2 project. The presentation traces
nonprofit funds to various “action arms,” which include activist
groups — Lancaster Against Pipelines and Marcellus Shale Earth
First — as well as a member of the press, StateImpact, a regionally
focused public radio project.
“As
concerns StateImpact, the TigerSwan graphic is incorrect,” editor
Scott Blanchard told The Intercept. “StateImpact, which covers
Pennsylvania’s energy economy, is independent of outside influence
and is not aligned with any stakeholders.”
While
TigerSwan eventually landed security work on the Pennsylvania
pipeline, its RICO work for Energy Transfer Partners was
short-lived. By early March, the legal team working for ETP had
pulled the security firm off the lawsuit. Former TigerSwan
contractors speculated the firm’s lack of experience building legal
cases made it ill-equipped for the project.
Michael
Bowe, the Kasowitz attorney representing ETP in the RICO case, told
The Intercept, “We did not retain or work with TigerSwan.” Former
TigerSwan personnel agreed that the ETP lawyers working most closely
with TigerSwan were not with Kasowitz.
ETP
declined to comment on TigerSwan’s work, stating, “We do not
comment on any specifics related to our security programs.” A
TigerSwan spokesperson stated, “We do not discuss the details of
our efforts for any client. We are proud of our work to provide the
very best in consultative risk management services to our clients
around the world.”
Hunting Paid
Protesters
Internal
documents and interviews with the former TigerSwan contractors
display some of the fruits of the firm’s investigation, which
include claims that echo prominent right-wing conspiracy theories.
A
PowerPoint presentation created in the fall of 2016 describes what
TigerSwan dubbed the Billionaire’s Club: “an exclusive group of
wealthy individuals, [which] directs the far-left environmental
movement.” Several slides are dedicated to the anti-pipeline
nonprofit Bold Nebraska, whose parent organization, Bold Alliance, is
named in the ETP suit.
“Underlying
Bold Nebraska’s homespun, grassroots facade is a significant,
growing, well-funded and well-organized financial support network
originating from wealthy far-left environmental interests thousands
of miles away,” one slide states. The language is pulled verbatim
from a 2014 report by the Republican minority staff of the Senate
Committee on Environment and Public Works, titled “Chain of
Environmental Command: How a Club of Billionaires and Their
Foundations Control the Environmental Movement and Obama’s EPA.”
TigerSwan
claimed that among the wealthy interests behind Bold Alliance was
billionaire philanthropist Warren Buffett, whose donations to
foundations that support environmental causes, one slide states,
benefited an oil-by-rail business owned by Buffett’s investment
company Berkshire Hathaway. Buffett also appears at the center of a
TigerSwan links map, obtained by The Intercept, meant to depict
movement funders and influencers.
One
of the theory’s most obvious flaws is that Buffett has a
significant financial stake in the Dakota Access pipeline. Berkshire
Hathaway is the largest investor in the oil and gas firm Phillips 66,
which owns a 25 percent stake in DAPL. Buffett did not respond to a
request for comment.
Jane
Kleeb, founder of Bold Alliance, told The Intercept that the group
raised money for food and shelter at the DAPL resistance camps. They
also had an indigenous staff member on the ground for six months
who was involved in organizing protests.
“We’d
be happy to take Buffett’s millions, but we don’t have any of
that money,” she said, noting the organization relies on thousands
of small donors. “There’s literally never been a foundation or a
major donor that has given us money and said, ‘You have to do XYZ
and target XYZ person.’”
“It’s
remarkable that because we are a nonprofit and because I get paid a
salary, and I pay our organizers a salary, that somehow makes us a
paid protester,” Kleeb added.
Indeed,
according to one of the former TigerSwan contractors, a goal of the
firm’s RICO work was to identify “paid protesters.”
Throughout
the protests, prosecutors and police also took interest in
identifying such protesters, indicating that the oil industry’s
hunt for a conspiracy was taken up by the public sector.
Multiple
TigerSwan situation reports note law enforcement efforts to follow
the money. For example, on March 3, a TigerSwan operative wrote,
“Spoke with FBI Agent Tom Reinwart in reference to funds being
funneled to protesters.” Another report from February 11 describes
the Bureau of Indian Affairs tracking individuals “assessed to be
assisting in the facilitation of moving money and supplies to the
camps.”
Meanwhile,
Lynn Woodall of the Morton County Sheriff’s Department also
regularly forwarded a protester social media activity bulletin from a
Gmail account to an array of law enforcement officials. The bulletins
summarized Facebook and Twitter statements made by DAPL opponents,
tracked the progress of various anti-DAPL fundraising campaigns, and
at times noted posts made by groups named in the lawsuit —
including 350.org, Greenpeace, and Earthjustice — under a category
labeled “Protest Supporters and Amplifiers.” In at least one
case, the bulletin was forwarded to a TigerSwan operative.
A
spokesperson for Morton County told The Intercept that a law
enforcement staff member collected the fundraising information
for “situational awareness.” Neither the FBI nor the Bureau of
Indian Affairs responded to The Intercept’s requests for comment.
State’s
attorneys were also interested in funding linked to media
coverage of the protests, repeatedly singling out Democracy Now, the
news outlet whose footage of private security dogs attacking
protesters attracted widespread criticism of the pipeline project and
galvanized many to join the opposition movement. In a motion filed
last December as part of a criminal case against pipeline opponents,
state’s attorney Ladd Erickson repeated right-wing talking
points. “Some DAPL protester videos are designed for
fundraising, to get actors weeping into cameras,” he said, adding,
“Pretend journalists like Amy Goodman of Democracy Now or The Young
Turks have published manipulated DAPL social media videos with faux
narratives in an attempt to be recognized as a news source by those
who are duped by fake news.”
In
a November 29 email, the acting state’s attorney of McKenzie
County, Todd Schwarz, relayed to a North Dakota State and Local
Intelligence Center officer a secondhand story he’d heard about
someone a colleague sat next to on a flight. “He indicated to
Ron that he is a paid protester, $ 3000/day plus expenses. His check
comes from Democracy Now who receives their money through the DNC
from the Clinton Foundation. I have no way to confirm this but was
asked to pass it to you.” Schwarz noted it was “the first time
I’ve had it confirmed from the person who actually heard it from
the paid protester.” Schwarz did not respond to a request for
comment.
“These
claims are baseless and absurd,” Julie Crosby, general manager
for Democracy Now, told The Intercept. “The Young Turks’ Jordan
Chariton took six trips to Standing Rock, where he conducted
interviews that shined a light on the truth and raced to cover the
front lines of the demonstration,” a spokesperson for
the network told The Intercept, calling the narrative
pushed by ETP “a continuation of right-wing, corporate
intimidation tactics.”
Of
course, as police and prosecutors searched for the
big-money backers of the protest movement, they were receiving their
own share of billionaire support. Throughout the protests,
police used ETP equipment including ATVs, snowmobiles, and a
helicopter. This past October, ETP paid the state of North
Dakota $15 million for law enforcement expenses, and went on a tour
of pipeline counties in Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, and
Illinois, handing out giant checks totaling $1 million — “gifts
without condition,” as one ETP executive put it.
Using
Lawsuits to Chill Free Speech
“When
it was adopted, RICO was thought to be a mafia tool,” Jeffrey
Grell, who teaches courses on RICO at the University of Minnesota
School of Law, told The Intercept. “Now it’s going through a
renaissance,” he added, noting that while federal courts tried to
limit applications of the law, winning the case is often not the
primary motive of those filing charges.
“I
do not think this pipeline claim is a very legitimate use of this
statute … but in legal reality, whether you have a good claim or
not does not matter,” Grell said. “If you are an energy company,
you have a lot more money than some of these protest groups, so
paying a lawyer for two or three years to sue these protesters, who
cares? But I guarantee you, the protest groups, they’re going to
care.”
“If
you have got money in our country, you can use litigation for a lot
of purposes, and many times those purposes are not to win a court
case.”
Marc
Kasowitz’s firm was also behind a RICO suit filed last year against
Greenpeace on behalf of logging company Resolute Forest Products.
That suit was dismissed in October, although Resolute has filed an
amended complaint.
Kasowitz
attorney Michael Bowe told Bloomberg Businessweek that Energy
Transfer Partners and Resolute are not the only companies with an
interest in suing Greenpeace. “When Greenpeace directly attacks a
company’s customers, financing, and business, that company has
little choice but to legally defend itself,” he said. “I know
others who are considering having to do so and would be shocked if
there are not many more.”
Several
states have passed “anti-SLAPP” legislation in an effort to
counter the use of lawsuits for the purpose of chilling free speech,
but North Dakota is not one of them. “There’s no question that
whether it’s a civil damages lawsuit or a criminal prosecution, if
part of what’s motivating it is a desire to suppress speech, that
it’s a First Amendment problem,” Seth Berlin, an attorney who has
defended the First Amendment rights of advocacy groups and political
organizations, told The Intercept.
“It’s
a big threat to the environmental movement,” said Wetterer, the
Greenpeace lawyer. “These baseless lawsuits have to be thrown out
at the initial stage because the longer they go on, the corporations
win.”
https://www.documentcloud.org/search/projectid:33327-TigerSwan
2.
Dakota Access-Style Policing Moves to Pennsylvania’s Mariner East 2
Pipeline
(Intercept)
As
Dakota Access opponents moved to new pipeline fights in other states,
the repressive tactics deployed against the NoDAPL movement migrated
too.
After
months of employing military-style counterinsurgency tactics to
subvert opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota,
Iowa, Illinois, and South Dakota, the private security firm TigerSwan
is monitoring resistance to another project — the controversial
Mariner East 2 pipeline.
Like
DAPL, Mariner East 2 is owned by Energy Transfer Partners. The
pipeline is slated to run for 350 miles, transporting ethane,
butane, and propane through Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia to
a hub near Philadelphia for shipment to both domestic and
international markets. Internal TigerSwan documents reviewed by The
Intercept suggest the company has had a presence in Pennsylvania
since at least April.
On
April 1, the Mariner East 1 pipeline, which runs parallel to the
proposed path of ME2, spilled 20 barrels of ethane and propane near
Morgantown, Pennsylvania. On the day of the incident, an email
provided to The Intercept by a TigerSwan contractor shows the firm
was watching social media for signs the spill would become a rallying
point for pipeline opponents.
“At
this time the incident has NOT gained any public interest,” a
TigerSwan
operative wrote
in the email.
TigerSwan
founder James Reese replied, “We nees [sic] to monitor social media
for blow baxk [sic] on the leak.”
The
company had been monitoring Dakota Access opponents’ social media
for months and analyzing press coverage related to that pipeline
fight, according to more than 100 internal situation reports leaked
to The Intercept. The documents routinely referenced
counterinformation efforts to produce and distribute propaganda
favorable to the pipeline.
TigerSwan
apparently carried at least some of these practices to Pennsylvania.
It would be weeks before the public learned of the leak of highly
explosive natural gas liquids. According to a source with direct
knowledge of TigerSwan’s operation, making sure nobody found out
about the incident was part of TigerSwan’s mission on the project.
Nearby residents were kept in the dark until April 20, when Sunoco,
which recently completed a merger with Energy Transfer Partners,
confirmed to a local media outlet that the leak had occurred.
As
Dakota Access opponents moved to new pipeline fights across the
country, other repressive tactics deployed against the NoDAPL
movement migrated too. TigerSwan’s entry into the ME2 struggle
comes as industry-supported lawmakers in Pennsylvania, a center of
the nation’s fracking boom, are advancing legislative efforts to
increase fines and charges associated with anti-pipeline direct
action protests.
The
TigerSwan situation reports show that as early as February, as state
officials prepared to evacuate the first pipeline resistance camp in
North Dakota, the security firm was monitoring the potential for DAPL
opposition to spill over into grassroots struggles against other
pipeline projects, including ME2 and Energy Transfer Partners’
Rover pipeline in Ohio. “Recently, Illinois activists have begun to
shift their focus in earnest from anti-DAPL to anti-pipeline,” a
situation report dated February 21 reads. “They have started
sharing information on multiple pipeline projects across the country.
There has not yet been any mention of Mariner East or Rover, but
there is an active effort to continue their momentum in fighting
pipeline construction and operation.”
Public
records also show an increased interest by the company in areas
through which other Energy Transfer Partners projects would pass.
Last
November, TigerSwan obtained business licenses in Pennsylvania, Ohio,
and West Virginia, the three states in the path of ME2. On June
1, TigerSwan also obtained a business license to operate in
Louisiana, where Energy Transfer Partners is building the Bayou
Bridge Pipeline, which would connect to the Dakota Access Pipeline
system and carry Bakken shale oil to Gulf Coast export terminals.
At
a February hearing held by the Louisiana Department of Natural
Resources, TigerSwan advisory board chair James “Spider” Marks, a
retired U.S. Army major general, spoke in favor of building the
pipeline — without revealing his association with TigerSwan. He
also published an op-ed in the Lafayette Daily Advertiser newspaper
decrying the “anti-energy agitators” who oppose the project.
“No
Louisianan wants to live under the conditions that those unsuspecting
North Dakota residents were subject to — with protesters
trespassing, interrupting the local flow of traffic, and generally
injecting elements of fear and the unknown into their daily lives,”
Marks wrote. “A timely approval process of the Bayou Bridge
Pipeline, however, would prevent the possibility of such conditions
arising in this state.”
In
May, Marks wrote another opinion piece that failed to disclose
his TigerSwan affiliation, this time for the
Pennsylvania news site PennLive, warning readers there to “be wary
of professional pipeline protesters” who turned Standing Rock into
a scene of “hapless violence and bloodshed.”
“Many
of the same professional agitators who fomented chaos in North Dakota
are turning their efforts to the Mariner East II Pipeline in
Pennsylvania,” Marks wrote. “These orchestrators make no
qualms about their intent to turn Camp White Pine — a small but
growing protest area in Huntingdon County — into the next national
showdown.”
Energy
Transfer Partners declined to comment, writing in an email to The
Intercept that it does not “discuss details of our security
initiatives, which are designed to ensure the safety of our employees
and the communities in which we live and work.” In an email sent to
The Intercept from a TigerSwan account, an unnamed representative of
the firm declined to answer questions about TigerSwan’s work on
ME2, but commented on its social media monitoring efforts. “Of
course we monitor social media during any type of situation,” the
person wrote. “With the advent of so many bots on twitter and those
organizations who perpetuate defamatory and outrageous slander
against not only American companies but local, state and national law
enforcement on the internet, we wouldn’t be doing our job unless we
did.” Marks did not respond to a request for comment. Last
week, TigerSwan retweeted a comment characterizing his PennLive piece
as a “TigerSwan op-ed.”
Opponents
of the ME2 project say they’ve noticed an increased security
presence around the pipeline’s path in recent months. “They’ve
been making us feel that we’re under constant threat and
observation,” Elise Gerhart told The Intercept.
Elise
and her parents, Ellen and Stephen Gerhart, have campaigned against
ME2 for more than two years and currently host Camp White Pine on
their 27-acre property along the pipeline’s right of way in
Pennsylvania’s Huntingdon County, where they stage tree-sits to
protest the clearing of land for construction. As the pipeline’s
construction moves closer, Elise said unmarked pickup trucks have
parked across the road from their driveway at night, shining their
high beams toward the camp. Helicopters have regularly hovered low
over their land, a tactic familiar to Standing Rock protesters.
According
to StateImpact Pennsylvania, a spokesperson for Sunoco and
Energy Transfer Partners denied that the newly merged company or its
partners had flown helicopters over the Gerhart property.
In
southeastern Pennsylvania’s Delaware County, Eric Friedman,
president of a local homeowner’s association, said that as
resistance to the project has grown more vocal, so has residents’
sense that they are being watched. Friedman’s group is concerned
that the pipeline will move pressurized natural gas liquids through a
densely populated suburban area, in close proximity to schools and a
senior living facility. Last month, one of the schools started
practicing emergency drills to prepare for a possible pipeline
explosion, and a study commissioned by a local coalition for
community safety warned of the worst-case consequences of potential
leaks, including the ignition of “a fireball with a blast radius up
to 1,100 feet.”
In
recent months, administrators of area Facebook groups opposed to the
pipeline reported getting requests from individuals they “have
questions about,” Friedman noted. “I suspect that they’re here
and using the same kinds of tactics,” he told The Intercept,
referring to private security agents. “My sense is that they
escalate their response in accordance to the resistance that they’re
being met with.”
While
the unmarked trucks and strange Facebook requests couldn’t be
definitively traced to a private security contractor, TigerSwan’s
documented efforts on behalf of Energy Transfer Partners to
repress the anti-DAPL movement have raised concerns for ME2
opponents.
“A
year ago, people didn’t realize that the company that was using
these kinds of tactics in North Dakota was the same company that’s
proposing to build this project here. There wasn’t a lot of
awareness,” Friedman said. “Now that’s very much in everybody’s
mind.”
In
Pennsylvania, as in North Dakota, public officials have also played a
role increasing pressure on pipeline opponents.
On
May 4, state Sen. Scott Martin hosted a closed-door forum between
first responders in Lancaster County and officials from North Dakota
who were involved in policing the NoDAPL movement. The next day,
citing costs associated with the North Dakota protests, Martin
distributed a memorandum seeking a co-sponsor for a bill he was
drafting that would hold individuals “civilly liable for response
costs related to a demonstration if the person is convicted for
rioting,” “is a public nuisance,” or “is involved in hosting
the demonstration.”
Martin
represents much of Lancaster County, which is home to the Lancaster
Stand, an action camp located on private property whose organizers
have promised to use the grounds as a base for direct actions against
the Atlantic Sunrise pipeline once construction begins.
This
isn’t the first anti-protester legislation to be pushed in the
state. State Sen. Mike Regan recently introduced a measure
defining a new type of felon: the “critical infrastructure facility
trespasser.” The label could be applied for as little as
“attempt[ing] to enter a critical infrastructure facility, knowing
that the person is not licensed or privileged to do so.” An
individual who succeeded in entering the property with “intent”
to damage or destroy equipment or even simply to impede facility
operations would face up to two years in prison and a minimum $10,000
fine, as would anyone “conspiring” with others to trespass.
Critical infrastructure is defined in the bill as including numerous
types of oil and gas infrastructure. The bill was scheduled for a
judiciary committee vote last month, which was canceled at the last
minute.
As
Pennsylvania’s Raging Chicken Press reported, language in the bill
mirrors that of a recently approved Oklahoma law penalizing oil and
gas industry protesters. And indeed, it’s part of a trend of
anti-protester legislation introduced in more than a dozen states
across the U.S., including bills aimed at oil infrastructure
protesters in Colorado, South Dakota, and North Dakota.
But
even without the new legislation, ME2 opponents have faced stiff
penalties for hindering construction.
In
March 2016, as contractors for Sunoco began cutting down trees,
Huntingdon County sheriff’s deputies arrested Ellen Gerhart on her
own property when she attempted to warn construction crews that
her daughter, Elise, was in a tree dangerously close to where they
were clearing. Two other pipeline opponents were also arrested.
One of them, Alex Lotorto, was detained for three days on a $200,000
bail. Gerhart, a retired special education teacher, was later
arrested a second time on her property, and according to a public
comment she submitted to the state Department of Environmental
Protection, was held in isolation for three days without access to a
lawyer.
Charges
against her were eventually dropped, but Sunoco later requested that
a Pennsylvania judge allow law enforcement to arrest trespassers
on the pipeline easement — even if they happened to own the
easement land. On April 28, in a rare decision, Huntingdon
County Judge George Zanic complied with the request, ordering
what’s known as a “writ of possession” enabling authorities to
arrest the Gerharts for trespassing on their own property.
Meanwhile,
in Delaware County, disputes between property owners and the
pipeline company have also ramped up. In May, after some stakes that
a pipeline survey crew had placed along the project site were removed
overnight, a project manager representing Sunoco emailed an attorney
for the local homeowners association. “Because of this, the survey
will have to be done again and further monitoring of the property
will be requested from the local authorities,” the agent warned in
an email reviewed by The Intercept. The Sunoco agent added that “the
professional survey crew staked within the limits of the project and
did not trespass on anyone’s property.”
But
Eric Friedman disputes that and says the stakes were placed by the
pipeline company on the private property of the Andover Homeowners’
Association and private lots within the subdivision. “The very idea
that Sunoco’s agents would call upon law enforcement to protect
their trespass strikes me as completely backwards,” Friedman told
The Intercept.
“I
took that as a threat to use law enforcement against us,” he added.
“It indicated to me that he was at some level in contact with the
Pennsylvania State Police and threatening to activate them against
us.”
Lt.
James Hennigan of the Pennsylvania State Police, which is in charge
of the area where the incident took place, wrote in a statement to
The Intercept that the agency “responds to all calls for service.
Our members take appropriate action if any crime has been committed.”
In
North Dakota and Iowa, TigerSwan regularly shared information with
law enforcement. The Huntingdon County Sheriff’s Office, in the
Gerharts’ county, and the police department in Caernarvon Township,
where the Mariner East 1 leak took place, did not respond to requests
for comments about collaboration with private security.
Friedman
said he hopes local law enforcement will work with residents rather
than pipeline representatives. “We live here, we are your
neighbors, we are the same as you,” he said. “These people are
not, they are outsiders, and you should be working for us. We are
your
constituents.”
3. Dakota Access Pipeline Company Paid Mercenaries to Build Conspiracy Lawsuit Against Environmentalists
The private security firm TigerSwan worked to build a RICO suit accusing Greenpeace, Earth First, and BankTrack of inciting protests to increase donations.
The private security firm TigerSwan, hired by Energy Transfer Partners to protect the controversial Dakota Access pipeline, was paid to gather information for what would become a sprawling conspiracy lawsuit accusing environmentalist groups of inciting the anti-pipeline protests in an effort to increase donations, three former TigerSwan contractors told The Intercept. For months, a conference room wall at TigerSwan’s Apex, North Carolina, headquarters was covered with a web-like map of funding nodes the firm believed it had uncovered — linking billionaire backers to nonprofit organizations to pipeline opponents protesting at Standing Rock. It was a “showpiece” for board members and ETP executives, according to a former TigerSwan contractor — part of a project that had little to do with the pipeline’s physical security.
In August, the law firm founded by Marc Kasowitz, Donald Trump’s personal attorney for more than a decade, filed a 187-page racketeering complaint against Greenpeace, Earth First, and the divestment group BankTrack in the U.S. District Court of North Dakota, seeking $300 million in damages on behalf of Energy Transfer Partners. The NoDAPL movement, the suit claims, was driven by “a network of putative not-for-profits and rogue eco-terrorist groups who employ patterns of criminal activity and campaigns of misinformation to target legitimate companies and industries with fabricated environmental claims.”
“It was as if the entire campaign came in a box. And of course it did,” the suit alleges. “Its objective was not to protect the environment or Native Americans but to produce as sensational and public a dispute as possible, and to use that publicity and emotion to drive fundraising.”
Among the nonprofit network’s alleged crimes: “perpetrating acts of terrorism under the U.S. Patriot Act, including destruction of an energy facility, destruction of hazardous liquid pipeline facility, arson and bombing of government property risking or causing injury or death.”
“We felt compelled to file the lawsuit against Greenpeace and others because we want the truth to come out about the illegal actions that took place in North Dakota and the funding of these actions,” ETP spokesperson Vicki Granado told The Intercept. “In many cases, the only way the truth comes out is through the legal process.”
The case was filed under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, passed in 1970 to prosecute organized crime — primarily the mob. Greenpeace says it amounts to a strategic lawsuit against public participation, or SLAPP, designed to curtail free speech through expensive, time-consuming litigation.
“It grossly distorts the law and facts at Standing Rock,” said Greenpeace general counsel Tom Wetterer. “We’ll win the lawsuit, but it’s not really what this is about for ETP. What they’re really trying to do is silence future protests and advocacy work against the company and other corporations.”
“[The lawsuit] had some major racist overtones. They were basically saying that we were not intelligent enough to know for ourselves what the possibilities were in case the pipeline were to leak. They were basically saying we were manipulated,” said Linda Black Elk, a member of the Catawba Nation who lives on the Standing Rock reservation and organized against the pipeline months before the protests began. “I think the whole purpose of it is to scare tribes from further activism when it comes to the fossil fuel industries and to scare these green groups to keep them from supporting us in those future fights.”
Short-Lived Line of Work
TigerSwan, which got its start working U.S. government contracts in Afghanistan and Iraq, was hired by Energy Transfer Partners to coordinate the DAPL operation in September 2016, after dogs handled by private security officers were caught on film biting pipeline opponents. The firm began collecting information on the movement’s funding streams soon afterward, submitting intelligence to ETP via daily situation reports, more than 100 of which were leaked to The Intercept by a TigerSwan contractor.
But the effort to build a lawsuit began in earnest in January. TigerSwan personnel were tasked directly by lawyers working for ETP with fulfilling information requests, according to two former contractors. Situation reports from the beginning of February note that the company planned to “continue to proceed with the ETP legal team’s requests.”
In response to the requests, TigerSwan personnel sent reports on trespassing incidents and pipeline sabotage, including information about who was suspected to be involved and monetary damages caused by the work stoppages. The firm also compiled descriptions of movement leaders and individuals arrested by law enforcement, and tracked donations to DAPL-related GoFundMe accounts. Much of the intelligence collection was carried out via fake social media accounts and infiltration of protest camps by TigerSwan operatives.
According to the former contractors, the company intended to sell its legal investigative services to future clients. A PowerPoint presentation obtained by The Intercept, which a former contractor described as marketing material to attract a new contract, shows TigerSwan applying its follow-the-money tactics to a new pipeline fight against Pennsylvania’s Mariner East 2 project. The presentation traces nonprofit funds to various “action arms,” which include activist groups — Lancaster Against Pipelines and Marcellus Shale Earth First — as well as a member of the press, StateImpact, a regionally focused public radio project.
“As concerns StateImpact, the TigerSwan graphic is incorrect,” editor Scott Blanchard told The Intercept. “StateImpact, which covers Pennsylvania’s energy economy, is independent of outside influence and is not aligned with any stakeholders.”
While TigerSwan eventually landed security work on the Pennsylvania pipeline, its RICO work for Energy Transfer Partners was short-lived. By early March, the legal team working for ETP had pulled the security firm off the lawsuit. Former TigerSwan contractors speculated the firm’s lack of experience building legal cases made it ill-equipped for the project.
Michael Bowe, the Kasowitz attorney representing ETP in the RICO case, told The Intercept, “We did not retain or work with TigerSwan.” Former TigerSwan personnel agreed that the ETP lawyers working most closely with TigerSwan were not with Kasowitz.
ETP declined to comment on TigerSwan’s work, stating, “We do not comment on any specifics related to our security programs.” A TigerSwan spokesperson stated, “We do not discuss the details of our efforts for any client. We are proud of our work to provide the very best in consultative risk management services to our clients around the world.”
Hunting Paid Protesters Internal documents and interviews with the former TigerSwan contractors display some of the fruits of the firm’s investigation, which include claims that echo prominent right-wing conspiracy theories.
A PowerPoint presentation created in the fall of 2016 describes what TigerSwan dubbed the Billionaire’s Club: “an exclusive group of wealthy individuals, [which] directs the far-left environmental movement.” Several slides are dedicated to the anti-pipeline nonprofit Bold Nebraska, whose parent organization, Bold Alliance, is named in the ETP suit.
“Underlying Bold Nebraska’s homespun, grassroots facade is a significant, growing, well-funded and well-organized financial support network originating from wealthy far-left environmental interests thousands of miles away,” one slide states. The language is pulled verbatim from a 2014 report by the Republican minority staff of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, titled “Chain of Environmental Command: How a Club of Billionaires and Their Foundations Control the Environmental Movement and Obama’s EPA.”
TigerSwan claimed that among the wealthy interests behind Bold Alliance was billionaire philanthropist Warren Buffett, whose donations to foundations that support environmental causes, one slide states, benefited an oil-by-rail business owned by Buffett’s investment company Berkshire Hathaway. Buffett also appears at the center of a TigerSwan links map, obtained by The Intercept, meant to depict movement funders and influencers.
One of the theory’s most obvious flaws is that Buffett has a significant financial stake in the Dakota Access pipeline. Berkshire Hathaway is the largest investor in the oil and gas firm Phillips 66, which owns a 25 percent stake in DAPL. Buffett did not respond to a request for comment.
Jane Kleeb, founder of Bold Alliance, told The Intercept that the group raised money for food and shelter at the DAPL resistance camps. They also had an indigenous staff member on the ground for six months who was involved in organizing protests.
“We’d be happy to take Buffett’s millions, but we don’t have any of that money,” she said, noting the organization relies on thousands of small donors. “There’s literally never been a foundation or a major donor that has given us money and said, ‘You have to do XYZ and target XYZ person.’”
“It’s remarkable that because we are a nonprofit and because I get paid a salary, and I pay our organizers a salary, that somehow makes us a paid protester,” Kleeb added.
Indeed, according to one of the former TigerSwan contractors, a goal of the firm’s RICO work was to identify “paid protesters.”
Throughout the protests, prosecutors and police also took interest in identifying such protesters, indicating that the oil industry’s hunt for a conspiracy was taken up by the public sector.
Multiple TigerSwan situation reports note law enforcement efforts to follow the money. For example, on March 3, a TigerSwan operative wrote, “Spoke with FBI Agent Tom Reinwart in reference to funds being funneled to protesters.” Another report from February 11 describes the Bureau of Indian Affairs tracking individuals “assessed to be assisting in the facilitation of moving money and supplies to the camps.”
Meanwhile, Lynn Woodall of the Morton County Sheriff’s Department also regularly forwarded a protester social media activity bulletin from a Gmail account to an array of law enforcement officials. The bulletins summarized Facebook and Twitter statements made by DAPL opponents, tracked the progress of various anti-DAPL fundraising campaigns, and at times noted posts made by groups named in the lawsuit — including 350.org, Greenpeace, and Earthjustice — under a category labeled “Protest Supporters and Amplifiers.” In at least one case, the bulletin was forwarded to a TigerSwan operative.
A spokesperson for Morton County told The Intercept that a law enforcement staff member collected the fundraising information for “situational awareness.” Neither the FBI nor the Bureau of Indian Affairs responded to The Intercept’s requests for comment.
State’s attorneys were also interested in funding linked to media coverage of the protests, repeatedly singling out Democracy Now, the news outlet whose footage of private security dogs attacking protesters attracted widespread criticism of the pipeline project and galvanized many to join the opposition movement. In a motion filed last December as part of a criminal case against pipeline opponents, state’s attorney Ladd Erickson repeated right-wing talking points. “Some DAPL protester videos are designed for fundraising, to get actors weeping into cameras,” he said, adding, “Pretend journalists like Amy Goodman of Democracy Now or The Young Turks have published manipulated DAPL social media videos with faux narratives in an attempt to be recognized as a news source by those who are duped by fake news.”
In a November 29 email, the acting state’s attorney of McKenzie County, Todd Schwarz, relayed to a North Dakota State and Local Intelligence Center officer a secondhand story he’d heard about someone a colleague sat next to on a flight. “He indicated to Ron that he is a paid protester, $ 3000/day plus expenses. His check comes from Democracy Now who receives their money through the DNC from the Clinton Foundation. I have no way to confirm this but was asked to pass it to you.” Schwarz noted it was “the first time I’ve had it confirmed from the person who actually heard it from the paid protester.” Schwarz did not respond to a request for comment.
“These claims are baseless and absurd,” Julie Crosby, general manager for Democracy Now, told The Intercept. “The Young Turks’ Jordan Chariton took six trips to Standing Rock, where he conducted interviews that shined a light on the truth and raced to cover the front lines of the demonstration,” a spokesperson for the network told The Intercept, calling the narrative pushed by ETP “a continuation of right-wing, corporate intimidation tactics.”
Of course, as police and prosecutors searched for the big-money backers of the protest movement, they were receiving their own share of billionaire support. Throughout the protests, police used ETP equipment including ATVs, snowmobiles, and a helicopter. This past October, ETP paid the state of North Dakota $15 million for law enforcement expenses, and went on a tour of pipeline counties in Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Illinois, handing out giant checks totaling $1 million — “gifts without condition,” as one ETP executive put it.
Using Lawsuits to Chill Free Speech
“When it was adopted, RICO was thought to be a mafia tool,” Jeffrey Grell, who teaches courses on RICO at the University of Minnesota School of Law, told The Intercept. “Now it’s going through a renaissance,” he added, noting that while federal courts tried to limit applications of the law, winning the case is often not the primary motive of those filing charges.
“I do not think this pipeline claim is a very legitimate use of this statute … but in legal reality, whether you have a good claim or not does not matter,” Grell said. “If you are an energy company, you have a lot more money than some of these protest groups, so paying a lawyer for two or three years to sue these protesters, who cares? But I guarantee you, the protest groups, they’re going to care.”
“If you have got money in our country, you can use litigation for a lot of purposes, and many times those purposes are not to win a court case.”
Marc Kasowitz’s firm was also behind a RICO suit filed last year against Greenpeace on behalf of logging company Resolute Forest Products. That suit was dismissed in October, although Resolute has filed an amended complaint.
Kasowitz attorney Michael Bowe told Bloomberg Businessweek that Energy Transfer Partners and Resolute are not the only companies with an interest in suing Greenpeace. “When Greenpeace directly attacks a company’s customers, financing, and business, that company has little choice but to legally defend itself,” he said. “I know others who are considering having to do so and would be shocked if there are not many more.”
Several states have passed “anti-SLAPP” legislation in an effort to counter the use of lawsuits for the purpose of chilling free speech, but North Dakota is not one of them. “There’s no question that whether it’s a civil damages lawsuit or a criminal prosecution, if part of what’s motivating it is a desire to suppress speech, that it’s a First Amendment problem,” Seth Berlin, an attorney who has defended the First Amendment rights of advocacy groups and political organizations, told The Intercept.
“It’s a big threat to the environmental movement,” said Wetterer, the Greenpeace lawyer. “These baseless lawsuits have to be thrown out at the initial stage because the longer they go on, the corporations win.”
4.Dakota Access-Style Policing Moves to Pennsylvania’s Mariner East 2 Pipeline
(Intercept)
As Dakota Access opponents moved to new pipeline fights in other states, the repressive tactics deployed against the NoDAPL movement migrated too.
After months of employing military-style counterinsurgency tactics to subvert opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota, Iowa, Illinois, and South Dakota, the private security firm TigerSwan is monitoring resistance to another project — the controversial Mariner East 2 pipeline.
Like DAPL, Mariner East 2 is owned by Energy Transfer Partners. The pipeline is slated to run for 350 miles, transporting ethane, butane, and propane through Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia to a hub near Philadelphia for shipment to both domestic and international markets. Internal TigerSwan documents reviewed by The Intercept suggest the company has had a presence in Pennsylvania since at least April.
On April 1, the Mariner East 1 pipeline, which runs parallel to the proposed path of ME2, spilled 20 barrels of ethane and propane near Morgantown, Pennsylvania. On the day of the incident, an email provided to The Intercept by a TigerSwan contractor shows the firm was watching social media for signs the spill would become a rallying point for pipeline opponents.
“At this time the incident has NOT gained any public interest,” a TigerSwan
operative wrote in the email.
“We live here, we are your neighbors, we are the same as you,” he said. “These people are not, they are outsiders, and you should be working for us. We are your constituents.”
3. UPDATE “How Doug Jones could pull off a stunner in Alabama”
[Politico].
“[Jones] does have a path. Here’s how it looks, according to interviews with nearly a dozen Democrats within and near Jones’ team since Moore was hit with accusations of pursuing — and in two cases abusing — teenage girls. First, create a permission structure for alienated Republicans who are skeptical of Moore — primarily those who voted against him in the GOP primary — to cross the aisle. At the same time invigorate the base, especially African-Americans, who make up over a quarter of registered voters, according to the Alabama Secretary of State’s office. And finally, keep the national Democratic Party and its despised brand as far out of the picture as possible, while still benefiting from its money.” [Naked Capitalism]
UPDATE “Ballotpedia has had good coverage of the swing districts situation” [bears2267, Reddit] (original). Figures as of November 15: “Currently they have it 49-48 D with 3 races too close to call, officially it sits at 51-49 R with election results certified or ready to be certified. The Virginia Democratic Party is challenging 55 ballots in District 28 (and a potential challenge of 668 votes intended for the 28th that might have been mistakenly cast in the 88th instead). Once those challenges are figured out in the courts, the state board will certify the results and then recounts can begin and the 3 Democrats in the 3 swing districts have all indicted they were request their allowed recount. So a couple of weeks still until we know the final results.” [Naked Capitalism]
UPDATE “Latest 28th District fight focused on Fredericksburg precincts” [Inside NOVA]. “Now that all the votes have been counted, Democrat Josh Cole fell 82 votes short of beating Republican Bob Thomas in the 28th District race to replace retiring House Speaker Bill Howell. Since then, Democrats have been raising challenges to the results, including a pending federal lawsuit, in the hopes of flipping the race and forcing a tie in the House — Republicans are still clinging to a 51-49 majority following a wave election for Democrats on Nov. 7.” [Naked Capitalism]
UPDATE “Rural white voters didn’t show up for Virginia’s election” [Vox]. “What fueled Democrats’ victories on Tuesday? A quick analysis from the New York Times suggests this was a “suburban rebellion,” with moderates shifting from Donald Trump to Democrats. A look at the Virginia vote, however, suggests that votes in the most rural, conservative counties may hold the real story.” Readers will have noticed the “suburban rebellion” strategy pre-positioned by Democrats for whom that is the preferred 2018 and 2020 strategy, so this article is a useful corrective. More: “The analysis above suggests that Democrats did well because white, conservative, rural Republicans, — those who gave Trump his victory last year — simply didn’t show up this time.” So, why would that be? [Naked Capitalism]
UPDATE “Independent upset: Dems crush everywhere—except Charlottesville” [Cville]. “The unprecedented evening continued in Charlottesville, where Nikuyah Walker bucked the Democratic groundswell and became the first independent to win a seat on City Council since 1948. Also unprecedented: It’s the first time two African Americans will serve on council when she joins Vice-Mayor Wes Bellamy on the dais in January…. Walker’s win ‘breaks up the total Democratic control on council,’ says UVA Center for Politics’ Geoffrey Skelley. “It’s meaningful in the aftermath of all the terrible things that happened in Charlottesville” with the monument debate and neo-Nazi invasion, which some put at the feet of City Council. ‘Walker was offering something different,’ he says. ‘It’s a reaction locally when Democrats were crushing it everywhere else. It’s a reaction to local issues that have become national issues.'”
[Naked Capitalism]
4. As US Fuels War Crimes in Yemen, House Says US Involvement is Unauthorized
Posted on November 19, 2017 by Jerri-Lynn Scofield
Jerri-Lynn here: This Real News Network interview with Mike Weisbrot discusses the non-binding resolution the House of Representatives passed last week concerning the unauthorized role of the United States in the war in Yemen. This Saudi war has triggered an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe, including a cholera epidemic and widespread hunger and starvation. No end to the crisis is in sight.
Weisbrot is Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. and author of the book Failed: What the “Experts” Got Wrong About the Global Economy (Oxford University Press, 2015), co-author, with Dean Baker, of Social Security: The Phony Crisis (University of Chicago Press, 2000). He writes a column on economic and policy issues that is distributed to over 550 newspapers by the Tribune Content Agency and his opinion pieces have appeared in The Guardian, New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and Brazil’s largest newspaper, Folha de Sao Paulo. He is also president of Just Foreign Policy.
SHARMINI PERIES: It’s The Real News Network. I’m Sharmini Peries coming to you from Baltimore. The humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen is getting increasingly dire every day. On Thursday, the directors of the World Health Organization, WHO, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the UNICEF, and the World Food Program issued a joint statement urging Saudi Arabia to lift its blockade on Yemen. Last Monday, the House of Representatives passed a non-binding resolution with a vote of 366 to 30 calling attention to the U.S.’s unauthorized role in the war in Yemen. The ongoing Saudi war in Yemen has already killed over 10,000 Yemenis. Another 50,000 children could die before the end of the year from starvation according to the organization Save the Children.
Also, about 20 million Yemenis are in the need of humanitarian assistance and over 900,000 have been infected by cholera, the largest such outbreak the world has seen in decades. Joining me now to discuss the U.S. involvement in the war in Yemen is Mark Weisbrot. Mark is the co-director of the Center for Economic Policy and Research and is the author of Failed What the Experts Got Wrong About the Global Economy. He’s also president of Just Foreign Policy. He joins us today from Washington, D.C. Mark, good to have you back.
MARK WEISBROT: Thanks, Sharmini.
SHARMINI PERIES: Mark, you’ve been closely following the House resolution on U.S. involvement in Yemen. What exactly does this resolution do to stop the U.S. involvement in Yemen?
MARK WEISBROT: Well, it was intended to do that. However, the sponsors of the resolution were unable to do that because the Republicans were able to use the Rules Committee to block them from doing that, so they ended up as a compromise, a non-binding resolution. It doesn’t actually cut off the U.S. role, involvement in the war, which is refueling the Saudi planes and helping them target bombing targets with intelligence and so on. What it did do though was two very important things. One, is that they had a little bit of a debate for the first time in the House, and they had also, they were able to force the U.S. military to admit their role there. Then, the resolution declares that that role is unauthorized.
Those were two really big things, and it was as big step towards cutting off this aid. I think the reason that the Republicans agreed to this … As you mentioned, there was an overwhelming vote, was because they really don’t want a full and open debate. They don’t want this to become a real political and possibly electoral issue, I mean a big issue. That’s what they’re afraid of because it’s completely indefensible. That’s very important I think. The details are kind of important for people to know because there’s a real chance of stopping this terrible war, the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.
SHARMINI PERIES: By adopting this resolution so quickly, which is non-binding from what I understand, this essentially stopped debate and discussion in Congress about this.
MARK WEISBROT: Well, no, because the next step is going to go to the Senate. In the Senate, somebody’s going to introduce a companion resolution, and then they’ll have another fight over this. This has set the stage for that, and that’s very important. The Senate is closer. For example, there was a vote in June on cutting off some of the arms sales through Saudi Arabia and it only failed by a margin of 53 to 47, and there were five Democrats who voted the wrong way. If you could get four of them to switch and you could even pick up, there are Republicans you could pick up like Flake and Corker for example who have been very critical of the Trump administration, extremely vocal. It is possible to have the binding resolution in the Senate.
This is all based on the War Powers Act or the War Powers Resolution as it’s called, which says that a member of Congress when the U.S. is militarily involved somewhere, a member without authorization from Congress, a member of Congress can demand a for vote and get it on this military involvement; a debate and a for vote. That’s the next step in this Senate.
SHARMINI PERIES: Now, Mark, so we sell arms to Saudi Arabia. We are providing logistical support, which is things like on-air fueling of the airplanes that are bombing Yemen. We also assisting them in terms of targeted bombings and creating this enormous humanitarian crisis in Yemen. Why is this resolution non-binding?
MARK WEISBROT: Well, that’s because they didn’t have enough power in this last week to force the binding resolution. I mean, theoretically, they could have come back over and over again. I think that’s what the Republicans were afraid of, so they reached this compromise in order to get something fast so then they could move on to the Senate. Also, to get it on the record that what the U.S. was really doing there, and that is was unauthorized. You do see some media responses. For example, this week the New York Times had an editorial from its Editorial Board saying that the Saudis were trying to starve Yemen into submission, calling it a war crime and specifying that the U.S. was involved in this war crime. This is something I’ve never seen in the New York Times where the New York Times Editorial Board to say, and I’m pretty sure it’s never happened before. That the U.S. was actually involved, militarily involved in the perpetration of wars crimes while it’s actually happening.
There’s a lot of opposition building. There’s opposition in Congress, and I think this is the way this war is going to end. I emphasize it’s not just because I care about this a lot, but also because historically this is pretty much the main way that foreign policy has been changed. In 2013, you remember when the Congress wouldn’t vote for President Obama’s attempt to bomb Syria. You can go back to the 1980s when the Congress cut off aid to the Contras in Nicaragua. These are the times when you can actually change something. This shows, really it’s amazing, because this is a House of Representatives that’s controlled by the Republicans and still they were able to force this vote and force the military through the hearings to admit what they were doing, and then to push it. Now they’re going to push it further in the Senate.
If people contact their members of Congress and especially their senators now, the members of Congress can also and are going to be trying to persuade the senators, so both of them. I think that could really be the beginning of the end of this war. It’s really urgent, you know, because as you mentioned the humanitarian groups, the UN are saying that really millions of people are at risk and people are dying there every day.
SHARMINI PERIES: Now, if the United Nations and so many agencies within the United Nations has come out berating Saudi Arabia for this blockade and not allowing humanitarian aid, stopping the landing of aid, cargo from arriving in Yemen, and if members of Congress are so opposed to the U.S. support for Saudi war in Yemen as the vote we discussed reflects, 366 to 30, why not stop it by invoking the War Powers Act, and how could that unfold in Congress?
MARK WEISBROT: Well, I think the next place it could unfold is in the Senate, it will be the same strategy, using the War Powers Resolution to force a debate and vote. That’s a debate where in the Senate it’s closer as I mentioned. It could be cut off. I think it’s become much more urgent in the last couple weeks, even more. It was always terribly urgent because as you mentioned, 900,000 people have gotten cholera and now you’re … they’re cutting off, in the last two weeks, they’re cutting off supplies again. Hodeida, which is the port that gets something like 80% of the imports is now blockaded by the Saudi-led coalition again with U.S. help. Food is running short, medicine, supplies. Food prices have skyrocketed because of the cut off in supplies. More people are being malnourished and pushed to the brink of starvation. There’s 7 million people according to the UN that are on the brink of famine right now.
SHARMINI PERIES: Right. Mark, this issue just begs the question: Why isn’t Senate acting more quickly on this? And if they did invoke their powers and act on this, that just means that they will stop providing logistical support, not necessarily stop selling arms to the Saudis. I imagine the military industrial lobby in Congress is pretty heavy, has a lot to do with why this resolution isn’t binding, has a lot to do with why Congress isn’t invoking the War Powers Act.
MARK WEISBROT: Well, a lot of it is even more than the arms industry. It’s the Trump administration and their geostrategic holds in the region. They’re saying that the people that they’re bombing are the insurgents they’re trying to defeats. The Houthis are aligned with Iran, and they are … so of course they’re getting aid from Iran, so they’re portraying and they’re going to do that when it comes to the Senate as a fight against Iran and Irani interference even thought it’s an indigenous group. For them, it’s a power struggle, and for the Saudis too. The Saudis want the U.S. to intervene, to reassert the dominance of Israel and Saudi Arabia in the Middle East against Iran. That’s the real power struggle going on, and that’s why there really has to be a negotiated solution. I think if the U.S. does cut off its refueling and targeting aid, the Saudis could be forced to the negotiating table.
SHARMINI PERIES: If it is what you say, which is partly to prop up Saudi Arabia in the region as the region of power as opposed to Iran, does the administration have the right to go about doing that at the cost of this kind of humanitarian disaster?
MARK WEISBROT: Of course, there’s no right to do any of this stuff. These are, as the New York Times said, these are actual war crimes. They are literally starving the whole population to force the people that they’re opposing to give in. Of course, it’s illegal under international law, but it’s horrific. As I said, it’s the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, and this is one of the ways we can stop it. Unfortunately, it hasn’t gotten the attention that it deserves in the U.S., in the media overall internationally, but it’s getting a lot more. Again, if people, all these groups, you know there’s a lot of groups been working on this. The peace groups, the anti-war groups, the humanitarian groups. Groups like Code Pink, Win Without War, the Friends Committee on National Legislation. People can contact any of these groups and in terms of how they influence their members of Congress. This is I think the best hope of putting an end to this war before thousands and potentially hundreds of thousands and millions of people die as a result.
SHARMINI PERIES: Mark, thank you so much for joining us and bringing us this resolution to light for discussion.
MARK WEISBROT: Thank you.
SHARMINI PERIES: Thank you for joining us here The Real News Network.
As
US Fuels War Crimes in Yemen, House Says US Involvement is
Unauthorized
Posted
on November 19, 2017 by Jerri-Lynn Scofield
Jerri-Lynn
here: This Real News Network interview with Mike Weisbrot discusses
the non-binding resolution the House of Representatives passed last
week concerning the unauthorized role of the United States in the war
in Yemen. This Saudi war has triggered an unprecedented humanitarian
catastrophe, including a cholera epidemic and widespread hunger and
starvation. No end to the crisis is in sight.
Weisbrot
is Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in
Washington, D.C. and author of the book Failed: What the
“Experts” Got Wrong About the Global Economy (Oxford University
Press, 2015), co-author, with Dean Baker, of Social Security: The
Phony Crisis (University of Chicago Press, 2000). He writes a column
on economic and policy issues that is distributed to over 550
newspapers by the Tribune Content Agency and his opinion pieces have
appeared in The Guardian, New York Times, the Washington Post, the
Los Angeles Times and Brazil’s largest newspaper, Folha de Sao
Paulo. He is also president of Just Foreign Policy.
SHARMINI
PERIES: It’s The Real News Network. I’m Sharmini Peries coming to
you from Baltimore. The humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen is getting
increasingly dire every day. On Thursday, the directors of the World
Health Organization, WHO, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the
UNICEF, and the World Food Program issued a joint statement urging
Saudi Arabia to lift its blockade on Yemen. Last Monday, the House of
Representatives passed a non-binding resolution with a vote of 366 to
30 calling attention to the U.S.’s unauthorized role in the war in
Yemen. The ongoing Saudi war in Yemen has already killed over 10,000
Yemenis. Another 50,000 children could die before the end of the year
from starvation according to the organization Save the Children.
Also,
about 20 million Yemenis are in the need of humanitarian assistance
and over 900,000 have been infected by cholera, the largest such
outbreak the world has seen in decades. Joining me now to discuss the
U.S. involvement in the war in Yemen is Mark Weisbrot. Mark is the
co-director of the Center for Economic Policy and Research and is the
author of Failed What the Experts Got Wrong About the Global Economy.
He’s also president of Just Foreign Policy. He joins us today from
Washington, D.C. Mark, good to have you back.
MARK
WEISBROT: Thanks, Sharmini.
SHARMINI
PERIES: Mark, you’ve been closely following the House resolution on
U.S. involvement in Yemen. What exactly does this resolution do to
stop the U.S. involvement in Yemen?
MARK
WEISBROT: Well, it was intended to do that. However, the sponsors of
the resolution were unable to do that because the Republicans were
able to use the Rules Committee to block them from doing that, so
they ended up as a compromise, a non-binding resolution. It doesn’t
actually cut off the U.S. role, involvement in the war, which is
refueling the Saudi planes and helping them target bombing targets
with intelligence and so on. What it did do though was two very
important things. One, is that they had a little bit of a debate for
the first time in the House, and they had also, they were able to
force the U.S. military to admit their role there. Then, the
resolution declares that that role is unauthorized.
Those
were two really big things, and it was as big step towards cutting
off this aid. I think the reason that the Republicans agreed to this
… As you mentioned, there was an overwhelming vote, was because
they really don’t want a full and open debate. They don’t want
this to become a real political and possibly electoral issue, I mean
a big issue. That’s what they’re afraid of because it’s
completely indefensible. That’s very important I think. The details
are kind of important for people to know because there’s a real
chance of stopping this terrible war, the worst humanitarian crisis
in the world.
SHARMINI
PERIES: By adopting this resolution so quickly, which is non-binding
from what I understand, this essentially stopped debate and
discussion in Congress about this.
MARK
WEISBROT: Well, no, because the next step is going to go to the
Senate. In the Senate, somebody’s going to introduce a companion
resolution, and then they’ll have another fight over this. This has
set the stage for that, and that’s very important. The Senate is
closer. For example, there was a vote in June on cutting off some of
the arms sales through Saudi Arabia and it only failed by a margin of
53 to 47, and there were five Democrats who voted the wrong way. If
you could get four of them to switch and you could even pick up,
there are Republicans you could pick up like Flake and Corker for
example who have been very critical of the Trump administration,
extremely vocal. It is possible to have the binding resolution in the
Senate.
This
is all based on the War Powers Act or the War Powers Resolution as
it’s called, which says that a member of Congress when the U.S. is
militarily involved somewhere, a member without authorization from
Congress, a member of Congress can demand a for vote and get it on
this military involvement; a debate and a for vote. That’s the next
step in this Senate.
SHARMINI
PERIES: Now, Mark, so we sell arms to Saudi Arabia. We are providing
logistical support, which is things like on-air fueling of the
airplanes that are bombing Yemen. We also assisting them in terms of
targeted bombings and creating this enormous humanitarian crisis in
Yemen. Why is this resolution non-binding?
MARK
WEISBROT: Well, that’s because they didn’t have enough power in
this last week to force the binding resolution. I mean,
theoretically, they could have come back over and over again. I think
that’s what the Republicans were afraid of, so they reached this
compromise in order to get something fast so then they could move on
to the Senate. Also, to get it on the record that what the U.S. was
really doing there, and that is was unauthorized. You do see some
media responses. For example, this week the New York Times had an
editorial from its Editorial Board saying that the Saudis were trying
to starve Yemen into submission, calling it a war crime and
specifying that the U.S. was involved in this war crime. This is
something I’ve never seen in the New York Times where the New York
Times Editorial Board to say, and I’m pretty sure it’s never
happened before. That the U.S. was actually involved, militarily
involved in the perpetration of wars crimes while it’s actually
happening.
There’s
a lot of opposition building. There’s opposition in Congress, and I
think this is the way this war is going to end. I emphasize it’s
not just because I care about this a lot, but also because
historically this is pretty much the main way that foreign policy has
been changed. In 2013, you remember when the Congress wouldn’t vote
for President Obama’s attempt to bomb Syria. You can go back to the
1980s when the Congress cut off aid to the Contras in Nicaragua.
These are the times when you can actually change something. This
shows, really it’s amazing, because this is a House of
Representatives that’s controlled by the Republicans and still they
were able to force this vote and force the military through the
hearings to admit what they were doing, and then to push it. Now
they’re going to push it further in the Senate.
If
people contact their members of Congress and especially their
senators now, the members of Congress can also and are going to be
trying to persuade the senators, so both of them. I think that could
really be the beginning of the end of this war. It’s really urgent,
you know, because as you mentioned the humanitarian groups, the UN
are saying that really millions of people are at risk and people are
dying there every day.
SHARMINI
PERIES: Now, if the United Nations and so many agencies within the
United Nations has come out berating Saudi Arabia for this blockade
and not allowing humanitarian aid, stopping the landing of aid, cargo
from arriving in Yemen, and if members of Congress are so opposed to
the U.S. support for Saudi war in Yemen as the vote we discussed
reflects, 366 to 30, why not stop it by invoking the War Powers Act,
and how could that unfold in Congress?
MARK
WEISBROT: Well, I think the next place it could unfold is in the
Senate, it will be the same strategy, using the War Powers Resolution
to force a debate and vote. That’s a debate where in the Senate
it’s closer as I mentioned. It could be cut off. I think it’s
become much more urgent in the last couple weeks, even more. It was
always terribly urgent because as you mentioned, 900,000 people have
gotten cholera and now you’re … they’re cutting off, in the
last two weeks, they’re cutting off supplies again. Hodeida, which
is the port that gets something like 80% of the imports is now
blockaded by the Saudi-led coalition again with U.S. help. Food is
running short, medicine, supplies. Food prices have skyrocketed
because of the cut off in supplies. More people are being
malnourished and pushed to the brink of starvation. There’s 7
million people according to the UN that are on the brink of famine
right now.
SHARMINI
PERIES: Right. Mark, this issue just begs the question: Why isn’t
Senate acting more quickly on this? And if they did invoke their
powers and act on this, that just means that they will stop providing
logistical support, not necessarily stop selling arms to the Saudis.
I imagine the military industrial lobby in Congress is pretty heavy,
has a lot to do with why this resolution isn’t binding, has a lot
to do with why Congress isn’t invoking the War Powers Act.
MARK
WEISBROT: Well, a lot of it is even more than the arms industry. It’s
the Trump administration and their geostrategic holds in the region.
They’re saying that the people that they’re bombing are the
insurgents they’re trying to defeats. The Houthis are aligned with
Iran, and they are … so of course they’re getting aid from Iran,
so they’re portraying and they’re going to do that when it comes
to the Senate as a fight against Iran and Irani interference even
thought it’s an indigenous group. For them, it’s a power
struggle, and for the Saudis too. The Saudis want the U.S. to
intervene, to reassert the dominance of Israel and Saudi Arabia in
the Middle East against Iran. That’s the real power struggle going
on, and that’s why there really has to be a negotiated solution. I
think if the U.S. does cut off its refueling and targeting aid, the
Saudis could be forced to the negotiating table.
SHARMINI
PERIES: If it is what you say, which is partly to prop up Saudi
Arabia in the region as the region of power as opposed to Iran, does
the administration have the right to go about doing that at the cost
of this kind of humanitarian disaster?
MARK
WEISBROT: Of course, there’s no right to do any of this stuff.
These are, as the New York Times said, these are actual war crimes.
They are literally starving the whole population to force the people
that they’re opposing to give in. Of course, it’s illegal under
international law, but it’s horrific. As I said, it’s the worst
humanitarian crisis in the world, and this is one of the ways we can
stop it. Unfortunately, it hasn’t gotten the attention that it
deserves in the U.S., in the media overall internationally, but it’s
getting a lot more. Again, if people, all these groups, you know
there’s a lot of groups been working on this. The peace groups, the
anti-war groups, the humanitarian groups. Groups like Code Pink, Win
Without War, the Friends Committee on National Legislation. People
can contact any of these groups and in terms of how they influence
their members of Congress. This is I think the best hope of putting
an end to this war before thousands and potentially hundreds of
thousands and millions of people die as a result.
SHARMINI
PERIES: Mark, thank you so much for joining us and bringing us this
resolution to light for discussion.
MARK
WEISBROT: Thank you.
SHARMINI
PERIES: Thank you for joining us here The Real News Network.
5.
Mass Turnout at Hillsborough School Board Meeting
Imagine
a thousand people turning out for a school board meeting. People are
stirred up. They have reason to be. Read League member Pat Hall’s
testimony at the November 14th meeting. by Pat Hall
Thirteen
hundred teachers, children and others attended this meeting, more
than ever in the history of Hillsborough County! Salary negotiations
have broken down, promises made and not kept, the budget is strained
and nerves are frayed. I spoke because four more charter schools were
on the agenda for school board approval adding 4404 students in the
next 5 years. We’ve asked for an estimate of FTE (full time
equivalent) dollars; approximately $7,178 per student per school year
that will fly to these four charters as well as PECO (public
education capital outlay) dollars lost to traditional schools by the
addition of four more charters.
My
goal in this statement was to wake up parents and the public to this
boondoggle. “The management company for SLAM (Sports Leadership
Management Academy) – proposed to teach 2750 children in two
buildings is Academica. Academica is under multiple year federal
investigation the last I checked. Eric Fresen was Chair of the
Education Committee of the Florida Legislature for 8 years. Fresen is
the brother-in-law of Academica owner Fernando Zulueta. Fresen is now
in jail for fraud and tax evasion. He did not file returns the 8
years he was in the Legislature. Newpoint Company (for-profit
management charter co.) has been indicted in Escambia County on fraud
charges including Pinellas, Duval and the closing of Newpoint High in
Hillsborough County in 2013.
The
charter friendly atmosphere here changed immediately after the firing
of Mrs. Elia. Tom Gonzales and Jenna Hodgens (H.C. Director of
Charter Schools) had a strong case against Kids Community Charter
school in Brandon and it was dropped at the request of Mr. Eakins and
the Board (chaired by Susan Valdes in 2015).
Statewide
2.7 million traditional students attend public schools. Hillsborough
County has 215,000 students including 22,500 in charters. Charter
schools represent 10 to 11 % of school aged children in Florida but
have grabbed the lion’s share of PECO funds for years. Most for
profit charters have been built in the last seven years. The average
age of individual schools in Hillsborough County is fifty years. The
dramatic shift to charter schools was orchestrated in the legislature
by convicted felon Eric Fresen and his very wealthy pals –Jon Hage,
owner Charter Schools USA and F. Zulueta, owner of Academica.
Research done by Noah Pransky of WTSP, CBS Channel 10 in August, 2014
proved millions of dollars had been stuffed in the pockets of
legislators to influence their votes. Governor Scott took $50,000 in
2014 from Hage. In 2014 and 2016 in election contributions we
documented, at least three current school board members have taken
money from numerous for profit charter school owners, developers and
real estate affiliated companies.
One
board member took a five day long trip to Miami to visit SLAM there
at taxpayer expense of over $1,200. Why 5 days? Why no limits on
school board travel when the budget is so tight? This board member
collected $13,000 from charter school operators.
Large
for profit managed charters receive millions of FTE dollars as do
traditional schools based on enrollment. While 86% of traditional
school money is spent on instruction, our investigation has proven
that large for profit managed charters spend 45 to 48% of FTE on
classroom instruction and teachers. The owners take 42-50% of our
taxpayer dollars for management fees and real estate leases and rent
fees.
When
these schools close or go out of business –these buildings we have
paid for remain the property of the charter school owners! In
Hillsborough County we have authorized 123 schools since 1997 (under
Jeb Bush, Governor). We now have 51 open-7 consolidated like Pepin
Academy- but 65 never opened or have closed. What are taxpayers
choices?
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