Thursday, May 16, 2013

Rage against the machine

Where is it?
Officers restrain Eleanor Fairchild, 78, left, and Daryl Hannah in a dust-up
during their protest of the Keystone XL pipeline in Wood County, Texas.
PHOTO: from Future Earth Eco Tribe facebook page

In a confrontation Monday that was barely reported, a 78-year-old woman was arrested in Texas for protesting construction of the Keystone XL pipeline being built to transport the dirtiest imaginable oil from Canada's oil sands site to the Gulf of Mexico for export overseas.

Eleanor Fairchild protested because the construction was on land taken from her by the state of Texas under eminent domain to allow the pipeline to go through.  And then Eleanor along with actress Daryl Hannah ended up in jail.

In other words, an American state government confiscated one of its own citizens' land for the profit of a foreign company.  And that American landowner ended up in jail because of it.

What is particularly telling is in interviews one local TV station in Wood County, Texas, showed people who disagreed with her, thought the government was correct in taking her land and then throwing her in jail when she objected.

While it might be jumping to a conclusion and it is a real danger to judge people, those interviewed reminded me of the same ones interviewed claiming President Obama is a traitor or defending their rights to own assault weapons because there might have to be an armed rebellion against government intrusion into private rights.  This is in a state where supposedly responsible elected officials threatened to secede from the Union after Obama's reelection.

Noticeably absent from Eleanor Fairchild's protest against the government taking her land for the benefit of a foreign corporation were those gun-toting zealots wanting to defend individuals from the tyranny of the state.  Where is the outrage when a little old lady and an actress were trying to block heavy, yellow equipment in an attempt to stop the project?

Oh, yeah, they defend the pipeline, believing the oil industry's total bulldust about how many jobs the pipeline will create, 30 full time once the pipeline is completed according to one report.  And others believing industry bulldust about how they can clean up any spill.  Ask the folks in Arkansas about that one, or in the Gulf of Mexico or in Prince William Sound in Alaska. Incidentally, to build the Alaska pipeline, the government had to settle Native land claims, in the process ceding more than 40 million acres of land and $40 million for the privilege and making the pipeline pay for leases where it crosses Native lands.  Was anything like this offered to Eleanor Fairchild?

Have to ask too, where was the press?  Only one of the first 10 results of a Google search showed a link to any of the established national news outlets other than those strictly on the Web, and that one was a local CBS affiliate in Wood County.

All in all it is a big fail across the board.  Not to advocate violence or armed rebellion, but how is anyone expected to believe the commitment of all those gun-waving patriots when not one of them showed up to defend a great-grandmother against a government that took her land?  Doesn't Ted Nugent live in Texas?  Wonder what would happen if that pipeline crossed his land where he hunts animals confined by fences. All this points to the fact that Nugent and others like him are blowhards, shake a saber, raise an assault rifle and and hide behind a misinterpretation of the second amendment to defy the government to pry their guns from their dead cold fingers, but when it comes to reality, just another bunch of hateful cowards with no backbones.

And, how is anyone expected to trust a press that is more interested in covering manufactured scandals in Washington than it is in protecting people's rights.  Apparently the federal and Texas governments are willing to damn the individual in favor of a foreign company that plans to ship the dirtiest, foulest oil known to man all the way across the country to a port where it can be shipped to overseas markets.  Interesting that Canadians blocked the plan to take the pipeline west to tidewater somewhere along Canada's Pacific coast.

Just have to ask, where is the rage?

CBS affiliate's video report on the arrests.

For more, Google: eleanor fairchild eminent domain
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