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Juan Cole | The First Thing We Do, Let's Kill All the Coal Plants: How Joe Biden Can Save the Planet
Juan Cole, Informed Comment
Cole writes: "My title is from William Shakespeare's Henry the VI. In the original, Dick 'the Butcher' is speaking of ways to overthrow the king and improve the country, and he suggests killing all the lawyers first. Nowadays, carbon dioxide is the thing preventing us from improving the country."
President Biden has already swung into action, with a number of important climate initiatives. I’m urging that closing coal plants be at the top of his agenda.
The United States had 241 coal-fired power plants in 2019, which generated 23% of US electricity, an installed capacity of 236 gigawatts.
It is a scandal, an atrocity.
We desperately need to close these 241 coal plants. Like, yesterday.
We also need to shift from coal to electric arc steel-making fueled by the sun or wind.
Coal is the most polluting fossil fuel, giving off twice as much carbon dioxide as natural gas, and in addition burning it puts out particulate matter that gives people lung disease and mercury, which is a nerve poison.
Coal plants have been closing like crazy because burning coal is increasingly more expensive as a way to make electricity than wind, solar and natural gas, all of which have fallen dramatically in price in the past decade. From 2010 to 2019 some 290 coal plants closed because they just couldn’t make money.
Excel in Minnesota is replacing some coal plants with solar farms.
No new coal plants are being built in the U.S. In fact, Julian Spector at Greentech Media reports that 84% of new power plants to be built in the US in 2021 will depend on wind, solar and other renewables. The other 16% will be natural gas.
Unfortunately, market forces, which in any case depend on the tax and regulatory framework and are not “natural,” will not accomplish this task fast enough to save humanity as they now stand.
President Biden can impel some of this shift away from coal through executive order. The odious Trump had attempted to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from pushing plants to switch away from coal. The courts shot his argument down. So reports Alex Guillen at Politico, who points out that President Biden can use the ruling to reinvigorate President Obama’s Clean Power Plan. That plan put pressure on coal plants to adopt another less polluting fuel instead.
Likewise, executive orders will only go so far. We need to shut down all 241 coal plants in short order, not draw out the big carbon emissions over decades. Michael Mann argues in The New Climate War that only a carbon tax can accomplish this work in the time needed. Some have pushed back against this step because they see carbon taxes as regressive. But taxes are only progressive or regressive depending on how they are designed. Moreover, since the typical coal plant generates electricity at a cost of 5 cents per kilowatt hour, and wind and solar are more like 2 or 3 cents per kilowatt hour, if a carbon tax can shift power generation to renewables, workers and the poor will pay less for their electricity, which is progressive.
To ensure that workers in the coal industry are provided with well-paying jobs in renewables, we also need government training and incentives for them.
Unless we do the work and absorb the pain of closing our own coal plants, we aren’t in a position to pressure coal-dependent countries like China, Poland and India. Biden wants to lead on climate. He has to walk the walk.
Despite a reduction because of all the pandemic lockdowns, the US still put out an estimated 4.543 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2020. The thing that doesn’t seem to be widely understood is that our emissions are cumulative. It is like putting on weight. Let’s say you put on 5 pounds a year for 10 years. You’d abruptly be 50 pounds overweight. Along the way you’d have had to replace all your clothing, several times. Now let’s say you wanted to drop the extra weight and went on a serious diet. Let’s say at the end of the first year of dieting you only had put on another four pounds. You wouldn’t be happy about that. You wanted to take off weight, not put it on. Now you’re 54 pounds overweight after all that dieting, and in danger of having a heart attack.
So US emissions are down from earlier in the decade, what with the Covid slowdown, but we still spewed into the atmosphere 4.543 billion metric tons of an extremely dangerous gas.
Ordinarily when sunlight strikes the earth, it then radiates back in to outer space. But CO2 traps the heat and won’t let it leave. If the heat stays here, the earth gets hotter and hotter. Putting CO2 up there is like blowing up large numbers of atomic bombs above the earth.
We’ve gone from 270 particles per million of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere in 1750 to 415 ppm today because of the Industrial Revolution and our burning of fossil fuels for heat, power and transportation.
Especially coal? Especially coal.
Scientists have been able to go back and history and tie the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to temperatures, and 415 ppm of carbon dioxide is associated with an earth that is tropical everywhere, including Antarctica, and in which there is no surface ice.
Now, we are not doomed to that fate yet. The oceans are a carbon sink and will absorb the 145 ppm of extra CO2 we put into the atmosphere if we let it. But even the world’s oceans can only absorb so much. If we go on putting, globally, 36 billion metric tons of CO2 up there every year for the next two decades, then we’ll exceed the ability of the oceans to take it in. And then, my friends, we will be well and truly screwed. Emissions were down about 8% in 2020 because of the Covid economic slowdown, but they are expected to bounce right back up in 2020. Remember an 8% drop from your usual excess isn’t that helpful because you still added 92% of last year’s extra emissions. So it is like putting on 4.6 pounds instead of putting on your usual extra 5 pounds a year when you’re trying to lose weight.
Jeffrey Clark, who led the Justice Department's civil division, had been working with President Donald Trump to devise ways to cast doubt on the election results. (photo: Susan Walsh/AP)
Trump and Justice Dept. Lawyer Said to Have Plotted to Oust Acting Attorney General
Katie Benner, The New York Times
Benner writes: "The Justice Department's top leaders listened in stunned silence this month: One of their peers, they were told, had devised a plan with President Donald J. Trump to oust Jeffrey A. Rosen as acting attorney general and wield the department's power to force Georgia state lawmakers to overturn its presidential election results."
Trying to find another avenue to push his baseless election claims, Donald Trump considered installing a loyalist.
The unassuming lawyer who worked on the plan, Jeffrey Clark, had been devising ways to cast doubt on the election results and to bolster Mr. Trump’s continuing legal battles and the pressure on Georgia politicians. Because Mr. Rosen had refused the president’s entreaties to carry out those plans, Mr. Trump was about to decide whether to fire Mr. Rosen and replace him with Mr. Clark.
The department officials, convened on a conference call, then asked each other: What will you do if Mr. Rosen is dismissed?
'At a time when the Supreme Court should have served as a check on the executive branch's zealous pursuit of capital punishment, it instead rubber-stamped the killings.' (photo: NBC)
The Supreme Court Was Complicit in Donald Trump's Execution Spree
Jessica Schulberg, Yahoo! News
Schulberg writes: "At 1:23 a.m. on Saturday, the Trump administration finished its 13th and final execution. Dustin Higgs, a Black man who had been scheduled to die on Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, was put to death while suffering from COVID-19."
Like those who had been executed before him, there were extensive unresolved legal problems with Higgs’ case. But like the previous executions, on the day the federal government wanted Higgs to die, the Supreme Court quickly dispensed with those issues and allowed the killing to proceed, only a few hours behind schedule. The justices didn’t explain why. There was no apparent reason, other than submitting to then-President Donald Trump’s desire to execute as many people as possible before leaving office.
It was an extraordinary and irreversible miscarriage of justice that capped a historically unprecedented six-month killing spree. From the Trump administration’s first executions in July 2020 to the final ones last week, the Supreme Court sided with the government every time, repeatedly allowing the rushed killings of people with outstanding legal claims. Some of those who faced the death penalty had future hearings scheduled before lower courts, wiped away by the Supreme Court so their execution could proceed on schedule before Trump left office.
“This unprecedented rush of federal executions has predictably given rise to many difficult legal disputes,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a fiery dissent last Friday night in Higgs’ case. “Against this backdrop of deep legal uncertainty, the [Department of Justice] did not tread carefully,” Sotomayor continued, detailing the government’s efforts to fast-track the killings “before courts had meaningful opportunities to determine if the executions were legal.”
At a time when the Supreme Court should have served as a check on the executive branch’s zealous pursuit of capital punishment, it instead rubber-stamped the killings, lending a false sense of legitimacy to the process. “Throughout this expedited spree of executions, this Court has consistently rejected inmates’ credible claims for relief. The Court has even intervened to lift stays of execution that lower courts put in place, thereby ensuring those prisoners’ challenges would never receive a meaningful airing,” Sotomayor wrote.
The Supreme Court often made these life-or-death decisions in a matter of hours, with no public explanation of the court’s reasoning. “This is not justice,” Sotomayor wrote. “After waiting almost two decades to resume federal executions, the Government should have proceeded with some measure of restraint to ensure it did so lawfully. When it did not, this Court should have. It has not.”
One-third of the justices on the high court were nominated to their lifetime posts by a president who was elected by a minority of voters and who was impeached twice, most recently for inciting a violent riot against the U.S. Capitol to protest his reelection loss. The views of those justices may have sealed the fate of many of the 13 people put to death since July — and could impact other people on federal death row for decades to come.
The issues the Supreme Court sidestepped in allowing executions to proceed are fundamental to the legality of the death penalty as practiced. There is ongoing litigation about the federal government’s current method of execution, a lethal overdose of pentobarbital. Autopsies show that the process often causes pulmonary edema, a medical condition that induces the sensation of drowning or suffocating. The federal district court in Washington, D.C., has issued multiple preliminary injunctions, including one stating that death row prisoners had demonstrated they were likely to succeed in proving the execution protocol violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. But each time the issue made it to the Supreme Court, the justices allowed the executions to proceed.
“A layperson might say, ‘If you don’t know whether it’s legal, can you go ahead and do it?’ And most people would say, ‘Of course not,’” Robert Dunham, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said in an interview. “But that’s not the path the Supreme Court has taken.”
Wesley Purkey and Lisa Montgomery were killed despite credible evidence that neither of them was mentally competent to be executed. Brandon Bernard was killed without getting the chance to present evidence that the government had secured his death sentence by withholding exculpatory information. Alfred Bourgeois and Corey Johnson were killed despite credible evidence that they had intellectual disabilities that made them ineligible for the death penalty. Johnson and Higgs were killed even though there was credible medical evidence that lung damage from their bouts with COVID-19 could make their executions torturously and unconstitutionally painful.
Perhaps the Supreme Court’s most stunning disregard for due process came on Jan. 15, the Friday night Higgs was scheduled to be executed. Federal law requires executions to be conducted in the manner authorized by the state where the conviction occurred. Higgs was convicted in Maryland, which has since abolished the death penalty. The government had asked a federal district court to allow him to be executed in the manner authorized in Indiana, where Higgs was imprisoned on federal death row. The district court denied the government’s request and the government appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. The appellate court set oral arguments for Jan. 27, one week into the administration of President Joe Biden, who is expected to halt federal executions.
Intent on killing Higgs before leaving office, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to intervene. Late Friday night, the high court acquiesced to the government’s request and allowed Higgs’ execution to go forward. Higgs was pronounced dead a little more than two hours later.
It was an unprecedented move, according to legal experts. “The Court didn’t just lift a lower stay, but issued a summary ruling on the merits of the case even though the court of appeals hadn’t yet done so,” Steve Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law, explained on Twitter. “And all to expedite an execution.”
The move was consistent with the Supreme Court’s refusal to address issues raised in the previous execution cases. “Every contested motion that was filed in the U.S. Supreme Court was decided in favor of execution over the course of 13 cases. The only way that these case outcomes can be reconciled with the rule of law is if you think the rule of law means, ‘If the federal government wants a prisoner dead, the prisoner is dead.’ That’s the only way that you can reconcile what the courts did,” Dunham said.
“It looked like rubber-stamping. It looked like result-orientation,” Dunham continued. “They knew the outcome before the papers ever came to them.”
The Supreme Court’s refusal to delay executions became so clear to those on death row that some stopped looking to it for relief. Before he was killed, Christopher Vialva told anti-death penalty lawyer Ashley Kincaid Eve that he didn’t want her to file a last-minute challenge to his execution, The Intercept reported. Vialva knew that Daniel Lewis Lee, the first person to be executed by the Trump administration, waited on the gurney for four hours while his lawyers fought, unsuccessfully, to save his life. That wasn’t how Vialva wanted to spend his final hours.
The lower courts were complicit, too. In November, two men incarcerated at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana — where death row is located — filed a class-action lawsuit to stop the executions until the coronavirus pandemic had ended or until the prisoners had received the vaccine. The two men, Patrick R. Smith and Brandon S. Holm, are not sentenced to die. They’re on track to be released in 2022 and 2023, respectively. But they worried that the executions, which have been linked to COVID-19 outbreaks throughout the prison, put them at unnecessary risk of contracting the potentially fatal disease.
Their litigation revealed that several Bureau of Prison staffers had tested positive for the coronavirus after working executions and that, in an effort to hide the identity of those involved in executions, the government had neglected to do thorough contact tracing.
Chief Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson, who oversees the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, found that Smith and Holm had “presented credible, compelling evidence that they face a substantially increased risk of contracting COVID-19” absent intervention by the court. But the government also had a “substantial legal interest” in carrying out the executions without delay, she said. The judge settled on a compromise: The government could continue its executions as long as it abided by certain precautions, including requiring staff to wear masks, maintaining contact logs, increasing testing, and doing contact tracing.
Last Thursday’s execution of Corey Johnson was the first since those rules were put in place by the court. According to a media witness and Johnson’s spiritual adviser, two executioners removed their masks for at least part of the execution. The next day, Smith and Holm filed an emergency motion, citing evidence that the government had violated the court order. They asked the judge to halt Higgs’ execution, scheduled for later that day, or at least ban the two people who had removed their masks from participating.
In its response, the government admitted that the two individuals had removed their masks, but claimed their action was brief and necessary to communicate clearly. The government argued that the court order hadn’t been violated because the judge, in directing the government to “enforce mask requirements,” did not specifically state that masks had to stay on the whole time.
It was an absurd argument. It is, of course, possible to communicate while wearing a mask, as essential workers throughout the country have done for months. And if the government insists it is not possible, that is an admission that executions cannot be carried out safely during the pandemic.
Nonetheless, the court sided with the government and allowed Higgs’ execution to proceed and for both execution team members to participate.
Earlier this week, a new president was inaugurated, one who says he will work to end the death penalty. Biden is unlikely to schedule more federal executions — although state executions will likely continue, for now — but the judges who failed to use their tremendous power to save lives may remain in their posts for years to come.
“The U.S. Supreme Court has lost legitimacy on this issue,” Dunham said. “Maybe with a new president and a different environment they can come back and be actual judges on these cases. But maybe it means that Congress has to amend the law to limit their ability to disregard it.”
Undocumented immigrants from El Salvador wait to be deported on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation flight bound for San Salvador. (photo: John Moore/Getty Images)
Texas Is Suing to Stop Biden's 100-Day Pause on Deportations
Hamed Aleaziz, BuzzFeed
Aleaziz writes: "Texas has filed a lawsuit seeking to stop President Joe Biden's pause on many deportations by claiming that the Department of Homeland Security violated the terms of an unusual agreement with the previous administration that guaranteed the state a chance to weigh in on immigration policies."
Texas claims the move violates the terms of an unusual agreement with the Trump administration that guaranteed the state a chance to weigh in on immigration policies.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced the lawsuit on Friday.
“I told @DHSgov and @JoeBiden last night to rescind its deportation freeze, which is unconstitutional, illegal, and bad for Texas and the nation. They didn’t budge. So #Texas is bringing them to court,” the attorney general’s office said on Twitter.
In December and January, DHS signed agreements with multiple jurisdictions, including the state of Arizona, Indiana, South Carolina, Alabama, and Texas, that appeared to be an effort to hamstring the Biden administration’s goals to pause deportations, prioritize immigration arrests to only those with serious criminal backgrounds, and increase avenues to asylum.
The agreements, which have raised questions as to their legality, represent a potential challenge for the Biden administration as it proceeds with promised reforms and overhaul of the immigration system after four years of restrictive policies instituted by former president Donald Trump.
The memos stated that the DHS was to provide notice of immigration policy changes and allow the jurisdictions six months to review and submit comments before the agency moves forward with any of the proposed changes, according to documents obtained by BuzzFeed News.
On Jan. 20, the Biden administration issued a pause on deportations for many undocumented immigrants who have final orders of removal. The memo states that the 100-day pause applies to all noncitizens with final deportation orders except those who have engaged in a suspected act of terrorism, people not in the US before Nov. 1, 2020, or those who have voluntarily agreed to waive any right to remain in the US.
Paxton is seeking to block the moratorium by claiming that its immediate implementation violates the agreement the state signed with DHS, along with alleged violations of federal immigration and administrative law.
“DHS issued the January 20 Memorandum without following the notice and consultation requirements contained in the Agreement,” Paxton’s lawsuit states. “The January 20 Memorandum is arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law” and “without observance of procedure required by law.”
Legal experts have questioned the nature of the agreements.
“This is exactly what they are designed to do — cynically gum up Biden’s immigration agenda. But the agreements are unenforceable. Among the other legal flaws, they likely have no statutory authorization and were likely signed by an acting DHS official with no authority to sign them,” said Pratheepan Gulasekaram, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, noting that the former agency official who signed the agreements, Ken Cuccinelli, had been determined to be likely unlawfully appointed to his department roles.
Steve Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law, noted that the lawsuit was filed in a court in Victoria, Texas, in an effort, he believes, to find a friendly judge who would be hostile to the Biden administration.
“It sure would be something if one administration could enter into a contract with a state that barred its successor from exercising any discretion in enforcing the relevant federal laws,” Vladeck said.
The agreement establishes a “binding and enforceable commitment between DHS and Agency” that the local jurisdiction will cooperate with DHS on border security and immigration enforcement in exchange for “DHS’s commitment to consult Agency and consider its views before taking any action, adopting or modifying a policy or procedure, or making any decision that could” reduce or relax immigration enforcement, decrease the number of ICE agents performing enforcement within the jurisdiction’s area, pause deportations, decrease immigration arrests, or expand immigration benefits, among other policies.
The agreement continues by laying out that DHS will “prioritize the protection of the United States” by enforcing immigration laws in a way that prioritizes detention and results in arrests of “removable aliens.”
DHS is required to provide the local jurisdictions with 180 days of written notice of “the proposed action and an opportunity to consult and comment on the proposed action, before taking any such action” listed above. If either of the parties does not “comply” with the obligations, they will be entitled to “injunctive relief,” according to the agreement. Either party can “request in writing” to terminate the agreement, but must provide 180 days of notice.
The state of Texas previously led the charge in federal court to block the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which shields undocumented immigrants who were brought to the country at a young age from deportation. That lawsuit is still pending in federal court.
Flags fly at the Oceti Sakowin Camp near Cannonball, North Dakota. (photo: Lucas Zhao/EarthJustice)
As Pandemic Rips Through Indian Country, Indigenous Communities Work to Save Elders and Languages
Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "We look at the fight to save tribal elders and Native language speakers as the pandemic rips through Indian Country, with Indigenous communities facing woefully inadequate healthcare, lack of governmental support, and the living legacy of centuries of colonialism."
Facing woefully inadequate healthcare, lack of government support, and the living legacy of centuries of colonialism, tribal communities have faced staggering losses as COVID-19 rips through Indian Country. Native Americans have died at at least twice the rate of white people across the United States. Pillars of tribal communities have been lost, along with their knowledge of Native languages. Jason Salsman, a spokesman for the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, told The New York Times the losses were akin to a “cultural book-burning.”
To combat this crisis, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has prioritized elders who speak the Dakota and Lakota languages to receive the COVID vaccine. This is Tribal Health Director Margaret Gates speaking in December.
MARGARET GATES: We had met with Tribal Council, and at the request of leadership, as well, we added in the 65 and older and fluent speakers to be sort of first in line, because usually they will come down in the C, but we’ve bumped them up to the top, because they are our most important asset to our tribe and our people because of the language.
AMY GOODMAN: For more on this critical issue, we’re joined by three guests.
In Bismarck, North Dakota, Jodi Archambault is with us. She’s a citizen of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and the former special assistant to President Obama for Native American affairs for the White House Domestic Policy Council.
In Manderson, South Dakota, Alex White Plume is the former vice president and president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe of Pine Ridge Reservation. He’s a Lakota interpreter.
And in Standing Rock, North Dakota, Nola Taken Alive is a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Council. Both of her parents recently died of COVID-19. Her father, Standing Rock Sioux elder Jesse “Jay” Taken Alive, was a fluent Lakota speaker and an ardent defender of the language, spoken by only 2,000 people. He was just 65.
We welcome all of you to Democracy Now! Nola, our condolences on the loss of both of your parents. If you can talk about them with us, share their life stories?
NOLA TAKEN ALIVE: Good morning. Thank you for having me on. It’s my pleasure to speak about my parents. But, first of all, I want to send my condolences out to those people who have also lost family members and relatives and loved ones to this ugly virus. But it’s my honor, again, to speak about my parents. And I want to say that my parents were very humble people. And to be able to speak about them, I will try to do my best.
My parents — I lost my mother in November of 2020. And about a month later, I lost our father to the virus, as well. They played a very important role not only in my siblings’ and our family’s lives, but also to the entire community of Standing Rock. And, you know, those would also say how important my dad’s role had played in all of Indian Country and all of probably North and South Dakota with his wisdom, his knowledge of the Lakota language, of treaties, of humanity, just the human issues that my dad would bring to the forefront, especially about healing. And my dad was the hugest advocate of not only the importance of being Lakota or understanding who we are as a people and the huge losses that we have suffered since time immemorial, but, you know, he continued to believe, and even to his last breath, people will label him as a spiritual warrior, which he was. Both my parents were. But just adding —
AMY GOODMAN: Nola, I wanted to share the words of your father.
NOLA TAKEN ALIVE: OK.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Jesse Taken Alive speaking directly to young people about preserving the Lakota language.
JESSE TAKEN ALIVE: The language comes from the creator, so it doesn’t belong to one of us. The language belongs to all of us. So my message to all of the young people — the young men, the young women, the boys, the girls — this is your language. When you learn it, you’re going to be able to learn more about this beautiful thing called life, because that comes from Wakan Tanka. The opportunity to share your feelings, to share your thoughts, to express yourself comes with our language. And I ask you to take the courage. [speaking Lakota]. I believe that there will be a day that all of you will talk. [speaking Lakota]. Finally, in closing, I ask you to do this on behalf of all of us who are older than you. Take the courage to learn the language.
AMY GOODMAN: Jesse Taken Alive, who, together with his wife Cheryl, were both — came down with COVID and died in the last months. When was your dad and mom diagnosed, Nola?
NOLA TAKEN ALIVE: I believe it started out in the middle of October. My dad was diagnosed first. And then, about a week and a half later, my mom was diagnosed. And they fought hard, and they tried to stay with us, but, you know, it’s a tough virus, so…
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to bring Jodi Archambault into this conversation. She worked in the Obama White House, also is the sister of the former tribal chair, David Archambault, of the Standing Rock Sioux. She’s speaking to us from Bismarck. You were the special assistant to President Obama for Native American affairs for the White House Domestic Policy Council. Talk about the policy of the Standing Rock Sioux around the issue of elders and keepers of the language.
JODI ARCHAMBAULT: Well, I think that every tribe has the ability to prioritize and make preferences for who receives the virus [sic] first. And knowing that —
AMY GOODMAN: You mean the vaccine first.
JODI ARCHAMBAULT: The vaccine, yeah. The vaccine, sorry. Knowing that there were a lot of elders who were at really, really high risk, this was a concern from the very beginning, from the onset of COVID. And I think that it took the leadership of the chairman, the Tribal Council to understand, from just going over the previous year’s losses and what has happened throughout the time. And I’m just really proud of them, because this is something that is in the decision-making powers of every tribal nation across the country.
AMY GOODMAN: And I wanted to ask Nola Taken Alive first about your name, Taken Alive, your family’s name. If you can talk about the origins of it? And then, you’re a member of the Tribal Council that decided to prioritize the elders who speak the Dakota and Lakota languages. And I’m wondering if you could respond to — you could tell us about the community response to that. But begin with your name, Taken Alive.
NOLA TAKEN ALIVE: Well, I think that there’s a couple of stories that originate back to our last name, Taken Alive, one of those stories being that a long time ago one of our ancestors was what you would call a police officer, or would, you know, take those in who would do such wrongdoings in the community, and, instead of killing them, would take them alive. So, it wasn’t a thing where we held that in honor as far as killing people. So, that was one of the stories.
As far as prioritizing our elders, we want to make sure — and this is something that dad always talked about, you know, as far as our language, and he’ll always say that our language is spiritual. When we talk about spiritual, we talk about our identity, of who we are. And, you know, it must be known, throughout the world, that Native Americans or American Indians weren’t granted Freedom of Religion Act until 1978. So, if you can think about that, I was only 1 years old, where our ancestors, or my parents, my grandparents, could actually pray and use our ceremonies in the open. Before that, it was outlawed. So, with our ceremonies also was our language. And also, we have to look back at the oppression that has happened to our people for generations, for centuries.
And, you know, you think back, 1 years old, it wasn’t until the late, I want to say, '70s, early ’80s, when my dad actually — you know, he grew up speaking the Lakota language since he was born. It was his first language. But he actually didn't start practicing our ceremonial ways until he was in his mid-twenties, late twenties, because of how that 1978, again, goes back to being able to openly and freely practice who we were or who we are. And so, I just want to reiterate that, because not all of the world understands where we are, that we even belong here or that we even exist. And I think our people have been romanticized, as far as — you know, “Do you still live in teepees? Do you still…?”
But, honestly, you know, my dad, I really am proud of him. My dad was a Lakota language teacher up until his passing, at the McLaughlin School. And he actually taught from his teepee. He actually — you know, he lived in a house, but he set up his teepee outside of his house, and he would set up his laptop and ran his extension cord and made sure that that spirit of the language, through the teepee, through — because he always reiterated that the language is spiritual. So, being in connection with the Earth, being in connection with everything around him, he wanted to make sure that he was teaching, you know, that he was passing his knowledge on to the younger generations. So I’m really proud of that, you know, and that was just up until October, my dad was still teaching from his teepee.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to bring Alex White Plume into this conversation, the former vice president and president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe of Pine Ridge Reservation, speaking to us from South Dakota. He is a Lakota interpreter. If you can talk about the effects of COVID-19 on your community, particularly the elders and keepers of the culture and the language — you are an interpreter — what this means for the Lakota and Dakota languages?
ALEX WHITE PLUME: Sure. Good morning to everybody.
I was really shocked last January when we — first time we heard this COVID. And so, my wife and I decided to isolate. And as we sat here on our land — we live out on our land; we don’t live up in housing or built-up areas — certain things happened. They implemented a curfew. And then, a while later, they introduced a lockdown, where we were like prisoners in our own house.
And me, personally, I served four years in Berlin, Germany, with the U.S. Army. I went to the German museum that they made for the Jews that they killed. And they had to have two forms of ID, one sewed on their jacket and another paper. And a few years ago, United States passed a law where we had to have two forms of ID.
So, I was just sitting here, and the impact on that lockdown, to me, was real frightening. I think it was too extreme. It seemed to me like they could have come up with more testings, bring more doctors, health people in, and go house to house and test everybody, and if someone’s sick, isolate them there. But instead, we were locked down like we were in prison. And psychologically, that really had an impact on a lot of us people, that we really knew we weren’t living free the way we’re supposed to, but we’re living in like a prisoner of war camp. So it really had a negative impact on many of us.
On the Pine Ridge Reservation, about 90% of us can’t find employment, were unemployed. Imagine 17 people living in a house with no food, their electricity is ready to get turned off, and then you’re locked down. And then the tribe never went to pay the electric company’s bill, so lights were being turned off. It was really a negative impact on us.
At the same time, many Lakota speakers were just dying from this new disease. We didn’t know how it came here. We live out in the open on the plains. We’re not close to any built-up cities. But some of our people might have went to the towns and caught it and came home, and that’s how it spread on the reservation. So it was a real scary time for most of us here on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
AMY GOODMAN: Alex White Plume, you’re planning to teach Lakota to children. Can you talk about the importance of teaching Lakota to more members of the tribe, and why you feel this is so critical?
ALEX WHITE PLUME: Sure. My wife had a school. She started Ama’s Freedom School. And so, we always taught culture. She taught them how to pick cherries, berries, turnips, how to butcher buffalo meat, how to tan hides. And she was just bringing them up culturally. And the language was really predominant. That’s the one we needed to learn.
And I’ll share a story about how I asked to marry her. I was sitting at the house. And her grandfather’s name was Mark Big Road. And we spoke Lakota. So, we were sitting in the living room and just enjoying a discussion, and she was sitting at the table. So, in Lakota, I ask Uncle Mark, “How do you ask a woman to marry you in Lakota?” And he just laughed and laughed. And she kind of looked up at me with one eye. And he said, “You know, you can’t take a woman and own her. You can’t declare her your wife. Our Lakota women are matriarchs, and they have power that you can’t control. And so I recommend to you that you sing a beautiful song. And if she likes the song, maybe she’ll marry you.” So, at the table, she was sitting there. I looked at her, and I sang a song that I knew. And here, she looked at me. She says, “OK, White Plume, I’ll take you for my man.”
And so, what Uncle Mark described was the description of marriage. It’s called tawicuton. Tawicuton — “ta” means “his”; “wi” is the sun; “cu,” you take part of the sun to create life. That is our definition of married people, two people living together. And that’s so important. It’s so different from the word “married.” You say “my wife” like you own a woman. That’s just contrary to Lakota belief. So, therefore, the Lakota language is real important. It’s a natural language that evolved over millions of years, with many different other species that were existing at the time.
AMY GOODMAN: We have to break, but we’re going to come back to talk about what’s happening with the Dakota Access pipeline, with President Biden stopping the building of the Keystone XL, but not DAPL. And, Alex, I’d like you to stay with us, because I want you to tell us about your late wife, the Lakota water and land defender, Debra White Plume. And also, I’d like to ask Jodi Archambault to stay with us, to understand why now Biden is making a distinction, has separated the Keystone XL from the Dakota Access pipeline. This is Democracy Now! I want to thank, and, once again, our deepest condolences, Nola, on the death of your mother and your father. But clearly their legacy continues and lives on. Nola Taken Alive, speaking to us from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation; Alex White Plume in South Dakota; Jodi Archambault in Bismarck, North Dakota. Stay with us. We’ll be back in 30 seconds.
Demonstrators clash with riot police during a rally in Vladivostok. (photo: Pavel Korolev/AFP)
ALSO SEE: Hundreds Detained as Protests Called by
Putin Foe Navalny Erupt Across Russia
Protests in Support of Jailed Opposition Leader Navalny Sweep Across Russia
Ivana Kottasova and Zahra Ullah, CNN
Excerpt: "Yulia Navalnaya, the wife of the detained Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny, has been detained in Moscow on the sidelines of a protest held in support of her husband on Saturday, according to a video posted on social media."
The video shows Navalnaya being stopped by police at the entrance to a metro station in central Moscow near where protesters ware gathered. She is then shown being escorted to a police van.
Hundreds of people have been arrested at the rallies across Russia that were held in defiance of the authorities and, in some cases, extremely low temperatures. According to OVD-Info, an independent site that monitors arrests, 863 people had been detained by early Saturday afternoon Moscow time.
The demonstrations kicked off in Russia's far east city of Vladivostok and spread to the west as the day progressed. Navalny's supporters said Friday they were planning protest across 90 cities and videos posted on social media showed crowds of people gathered in Vladivostok and a number of cities across Siberia and central Russia.
One video showed a small protest in the city of Yakutsk, where temperatures dropped to -53 degrees Celsius (- 63 Fahrenheit) on Saturday.
By early afternoon, crowds of people started to gather at Pushkin square in central Moscow, where the largest protest was expected to happen. They were met by police in riot gear. Scores of protesters were arrested even before the protest officially started.
Yulia Navalnaya joined the protest in Moscow, sharing a photo of herself at the rally on Instagram. A caption read "So happy you are here. Thank you!" Less than 30 minutes later, Navalnaya shared another photo of herself in what she says is a police car.
Navalny's mother, Lyudmila Ivanovna Navalnaya, also attended the rally in Moscow.
The Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs said about 4,000 people gathered for a protest in Moscow. The statement did not make any reference to Navalny and was posted about 40 minutes before the rally was set to begin.
The demonstrations have not received an official government permit and the authorities have warned people not to attend them.
Several allies of Navalny have been detained this week for inciting the protests, including his spokesperson Kira Yarmysh, Anti-Corruption Foundation investigator Georgy Alburov and opposition activist Lyubov Sobol.
Supporters of Navalny take part in a rally in support of him in Yekaterinburg, Russia.
The coordinator of Navalny's Moscow office, Oleg Stepanov, was detained on Saturday, according to a tweet from Navalny's Moscow team.
The Russian Ministry of Foreign affairs has accused the United States of encouraging the protests after the US Embassy in Russia posted an alert on its website advising US citizens to avoid the demonstrations.
In a tweet posted on Saturday, the ministry said that posting information about the rallies was "in line with Washington's provocative policy of encouraging protests in countries whose governments are seen by US as undesirable."
Under Russian law, an official appeal for approval of a protest has to be made to local authorities at least 10 days before the event. Navalny was only arrested less than a week ago, so the organizers had insufficient time to launch an appeal.
Navalny was detained at a Moscow airport late Sunday, just moments after arriving from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from Novichok poisoning he blamed on the Russian government. The Kremlin repeatedly denied any involvement.
On Monday, he faced an unexpected hearing where a judge ordered Navalny to remain in custody for 30 days ahead of a court hearing to determine whether he had violated the terms of his suspended sentence in a 2014 embezzlement case, which he claims was politically motivated.
Russian internet regulator said Thursday it was planning to fine major social networks, including Twitter, Facebook and TikTok, for "spreading information prohibited by law and aimed at attracting minors to participate in unauthorized mass public events."
A reindeer. (photo: Wild Ark)
How Creating Wildlife Crossings Can Help Reindeer, Bears - and Even Crabs
Patrick Greenfield, Guardian UK
Greenfield writes: "Every April, Sweden's main highway comes to a periodic standstill. Hundreds of reindeer overseen by indigenous Sami herders shuffle across the asphalt on the E4 as they begin their journey west to the mountains after a winter gorging on the lichen near the city of Umeå."
weden’s announcement this week that it is to build a series of animal bridges is the latest in global efforts to help wildlife navigate busy roads
As Sweden’s main arterial road has become busier, the crossings have become increasingly fractious, especially if authorities do not arrive in time to close the road. Sometimes drivers try to overtake the reindeer as they cross – spooking the animals and causing long traffic jams as their Sami owners battle to regain control.
“During difficult climate conditions, these lichen lands can be extra important for the reindeer,” says Per Sandström, a landscape ecologist at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences who works as an intermediary between the Sami and authorities to improve the crossings.
This week, Swedish authorities announced they would build up to a dozen “renoducts” (reindeer viaducts) to aid the crossings and allow reindeer herds to reach grazing more easily.
It is hoped the crossings will allow herders to find fresh grazing lands and alleviate traffic jams, and also help moose and lynx to move around the landscape. The country’s 4,500 Sami herders and 250,000 reindeer have been hit hard by the climate crisis, battling forest fires in the summer and freezing rain in the winter that hides lichen below impenetrable sheets of ice.
“The animals that will really benefit from this system are long-ranging mammals that are really not meant to survive in these small, isolated pockets,” says Sandström, who started his career in the US helping to create ecological corridors in Montana for grizzly bears.
The renoducts are part of a growing number of wildlife bridges and underpasses around the world that aim to connect fractured habitats. On the Yucatán peninsula in Mexico, underpasses have been used to shield jaguars from traffic. Natural canopy bridges in the Peruvian Amazon have helped porcupines, monkeys and kinkajous pass over natural gas pipelines. On Christmas Island, bridges have been built over roads to allow millions of red crabs to pass from the forest to the beaches on their annual migration.
The wildlife bridges help avert some of the billions of animal deaths that happen on the roads every year around the world and counteract unintended consequences of human infrastructure.
In southern California, there have been signs of inbreeding among lions in the Santa Monica Mountains because busy freeways around Los Angeles have isolated populations with low genetic diversity. To help save the mountain lion population from local extinction, an $87m (£63m) wildlife bridge is planned over the 101 highway north of LA, which would be the largest in the world.
“When habitat is isolated, we can have impact on individual animals where they might not be able to find water or food. We can also have impact on the genetic diversity of populations,” says Mark Benson, a member of the human-wildlife coexistence team for Lake Louise, Yoho and Kootenay at Parks Canada.
The agency has overseen one of the most successful uses of wildlife bridges in the world in Banff national park, Alberta, installing seven overpasses and 41 underpasses on the section bisected by the Trans-Canada Highway. A 2014 study found that fencing off the road and installing wildlife passes had maintained high genetic diversity in black and grizzly bear populations. Benson credits the passes with a big fall in roadkill along the highway, also significantly reducing human mortality from animal collision.
“We can go all the way back to 1983. There was an underpass that was put in place as part of twinning improvements [widening the highway] in the park. The first overpasses were put in place in 1996 and the twinning of the highway was completed in 2016,” he says.
“It’s very effective in terms of allowing wildlife to move across the landscape.”
In the UK, wildlife bridges are likely to form part of the government’s nature recovery network which aims to link together biodiverse areas under a 25-year environment plan. A 2015 review by Natural England acknowledged the benefits for nature and cited the example of the Netherlands, which is developing a network of “ecoducts” to help animals move around the country.
Highways England is increasingly building wildlife bridges as part of schemes around the country, with more planned for future infrastructure work. But some conservationists warn not enough is being done in the UK.
“We’re woefully behind the rest of the world. In Europe, it’s become second nature in some areas,” says Martin de Retuerto, director of conservation at Hampshire & Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust.
The trust is advocating the creation of a green bridge across the M3 at Twyford Down, one of the most controversial road schemes in English history, built in the 90s. The motorway severed the link between the South Downs national park and St Catherine’s Hill, an iron age fort and nature reserve home to rare butterflies and wildflowers.
Major protests against the scheme might have failed to stop construction but De Retuerto says they marked a shift in attitudes to environmental issues in the UK. For that reason alone, he says, a green bridge at Twyford Down should be made to kickstart the nature recovery network.
“It’s been heralded as the best bad example of how to do a road scheme. It’s symbolic and deserves to be the one where, politically, prioritisation is centred,” he said.
“If the Romanians can build them for bison, then we can build them for butterflies.”
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