Hasta La Gadget!

After a sweet exchange with the cashier, he turned, his kind eyes zeroed in on my son and he asked him, “What’s your favorite sport?”

No, not AGAIN!

It is so freaking common. Please stop. I get it, you’re being nice, and I thank you for seeing and acknowledging my child. But please, stop asking him what sports he plays.

He doesn’t like sports. I don’t know why. I don’t care. I can guess, but really, that’s not the point. The point is that he doesn’t like sports, so when people ask him which sports he plays, it takes that moment of, “Yes, you see me; I am part of this world,” and crushes it into another uncomfortable, and quite honestly, annoying moment.

His shoulders drop as he says, “Soccer.”

The cashier goes on about how awesome that is and gives him a high five. It’s the lamest high five… because my son was lying. I mean, not really. My son likes playing soccer with his buddies at recess and randomly in the driveway. But the sport of soccer… no. Would he want to play on a team? No. He doesn’t like sports. Period.

I want to step in and challenge this question. But I don’t. This is my son’s journey.

We talk about it as we walk out of Target. What else can he say? We trying coming up with something creative and funny.

“Do you play sports?”

“No, I’m a triathlete.”

“No, do you?”

“No, Sports are for girls.”

“What sports do you like?”

“The sport of happiness.”

“I run from girls.”

“Gross, sports are for girls.”

*Can you tell which one I like?

But he’s not that interested in challenging societal norms like I am, so he concludes that he does like soccer and is content with the easy answer.

I’m not. So I’ll keep asking people — yes, you people — to think about what you ask the children you meet in the world and what that says to them about expectations and acceptance.

I’ll keep asking you to get honest with yourself about how your biases influence the questions you ask boys and girls and what it means to even assume whether a child identifies as a boy or a girl. Notice your biases. Challenge yourself to see girls as more than just pretty and to see boys as more than just athletes. Because we are. And you know it.

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Gaming keyboards tend to be an either/or proposition. Either you get the fast action and feedback of mechanical switches, or you ‘settle’ for the relative comfort of membrane rubber domes. Razer doesn’t think you should have to choose. It’s introd…

Fait accompli (a thing that has already happened or been decided before those affected hear about it, leaving them with no option but to accept)

Credit: Georgianne Nienaber

Energy Transfer Inc., and invested owners of the proposed North Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), have begun psychological warfare against peaceful protestors near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. It will be a challenge for the persecuted to stay vigilant, stay strong and stay true to their beliefs. So far the People have remained nonviolent in the face of dog attacks on their bodies and their horses, while facing extreme psychic trauma in the form of desecration of graves and sacred sites. On Saturday “sacred places containing ancient burial sites, places of prayer and other significant cultural artifacts of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe were destroyed by Energy Transfer Partners,” Tribal Chairman David Archambault II said in a press release.

The tribal Chairman also has an op-ed in the New York Times that clearly lays out the issues facing Standing Rock.

Acting with a slap in the face to the judicial process, Energy Transfer Inc., in partnership with the Enbridge Corporation and Marathon Oil, bulldozed a two mile, 150 feet wide path through land currently being contested in Federal Court. Meanwhile, ancient cairns and stone prayer rings can never be replaced.

Ask the question: How would you feel if a construction company bulldozed a family plot in a local cemetery that contained the remains of you family?

“We’re days away from getting a resolution on the legal issues, and they came in on a holiday weekend and destroyed the site,” said Jan Hasselman, attorney for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. “What they have done is absolutely outrageous.”

The site at the conjunction of the Cannonball and Missouri Rivers is not the only historic site at risk. Other culturally and historically significant sites will be damaged or destroyed as the DAPL crude oil pipeline snakes 1168 miles through North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Illinois.

Stopping A Fait Accompli

Immediately recognizing the need to stop this process, on August 4, 2016 the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe along with attorneys from Earthjustice filed a motion with supporting documents for a preliminary injunction against the DAPL. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) issued the initial permitting for the pipeline. Federal Judge James E. Boasberg rejected the motion to ignore the injunction request and ordered a status conference on September 14, leaving room for discussion after his ruling on September 9.

That fact that the corps ruled in favor of the DAPL routing to begin with is beyond puzzling, since not one, but three Federal agencies opposed it. The Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of the Interior, and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation have all said that the USACE had not done an adequate Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), mainly with regard to drinking water.

Most recently, representatives of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues said the same, and that the Tribe must have a say.

There is separate discussion about the corps illegally discharging into federally protected wetlands, but the effort to stop the fait accompli of destruction of historical and sacred sites is the main issue here. One needs look no further than violations of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) by the permitting agency, the USACE. These egregious violations and the consequence came into full view this Saturday.

Reading through the 53 page initial “motion for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to withdraw Nationwide Permit 12 as applied to the Dakota Access Pipeline, and to withdraw verifications issued on July 25, 2016 for the Dakota Access Pipeline to discharge in federally regulated waters at 204 sites along the pipeline route,” is tedius, yet informative. Everyone connected with the protest should study it. One is struck by the testimony that destruction of ancient burial grounds and ceremonial sites constitutes “irreparable injury to the Tribe and its members.”

The regulatory process remains incomplete, numerous lawsuits have been filed against DAPL and the corps, and significant public controversy surrounds the project. Yet Energy Transfer Inc. seeks to render the legal dispute moot by finalizing construction before the Tribe can be heard. The dog attacks and bulldozing over the weekend were an attempt to force a violent confrontation, but the protestors held fast to their peaceful intent in spite of extreme psychological and physical duress.

The Standing Rock Sioux, as a successor to the Great Sioux Nation, is party to the Treaties of Fort Laramie 1851 and 1868. The 18,000 enrolled members view the water and ancestral lands as sacred entities. The tribe learned that the original configuration of the DAPL pipeline was upstream of Bismarck, but was later moved to one half mile outside of the reservation’s current and “official” boundary and upstream of the 18,000 residents by only one half mile.

The “main camp” with the majority of the protesters is located on U.S. Army Corps of Engineer’s land just north of the Cannonball River. The North Dakota Department of Emergency Services says it is not on tribal property, but the original treaty line was moved in 1889, so if you support broken treaties, you could call it illegal. In this case legality is in the eye of the beholder. The bulldozers and attack dogs wrought their destruction near the borehole site, which is a main focus of the request for a preliminary injunction.

The pipeline is scheduled to run under Lake Oahe, and Lake Oahe is where we begin.

The Timeline

On February 17, 2015 the USACE sent a letter to the Tribal Historian Preservation Office (THPO).

The USACE permitting process is the only Federal action associated with the project and therefore USACE is solely responsible for conducting consultation with interested Tribes in accordance with Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act. The purpose of this letter is to initiate Section 106 consultation and review, determine your interest in consulting on this undertaking, and to gather information that will assist the Corps in identifying historic properties.

In several subsequent responsive emails, the THPO requested a full archeological investigation. By August 19, 2015, the USACE had still not responded.

On September 15, 2015, the tribe got a form letter asking if it wanted to participate in the National Historic Preservation Act process, and was given a month to respond.

The THPO responded and emphasized that the tribe, thus far, was not allowed to participate in Section 106 of National Historic Preservation Act.

Several more months went by with no response and then a lie was used by the USACE to obfuscate and delay.

The corps instead published a draft Environmental Assessment (EA) in mid-December 2015 for Lake Oahe and “falsely stated that THPO had indicated no impact to tribe,” according the docket filed in Federal Court.

But, like Mark Twain once said, “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”

The Corps had already received critical letters from USEPA, US Department of Interior and ACHP regarding water and historical preservation oversights.

Meanwhile tribes in Iowa and the Osage Nation in the Omaha District were experiencing the same stonewalling from the USACE.

Finally, the Omaha District Commander for the corps toured the borehole site on Lake Oahe on February 29, 2016.

A follow up by archeologists from the corps and the Tribe on March 7, 2016 witnessed places where moles had pushed dirt to the surface containing prehistoric pottery shards, pieces of bone, flint and tools. Even the tribes were unaware of these sites.

Shockingly, the corps continued the lie and wrote an assessment on April 22, 2016 that “no historic properties” were affected by the Lake Oahe decision.

Moles vs. Machines (an aside)

Readers can decide for themselves if moles are bringing artifacts to the surface all over the area of DAPL at Lake Oahe, is it really possible that NOTHING was found at the bore hole site? USACE did not find one, not even ONE, artifact near the future bore pit location? Stretches the imagination. The American Auger DD440T is the machine of preference for this project.

Then of course we have the moles. No schematic is necessary, but this member of the insectivores is certainly efficient and truthful.

Advice From Someone Who Fought the Corps and Won

In a very interesting op-ed, “I triumphed over the Army Corps of Engineers and the Sioux Nation can, too,” the founder of levees.org, Sandy Rosenthal, offers some sage advice to the Sioux Nation direct from New Orleans. Here are some edited comments:

Don’t give up. The corps may appear disconnected from reality, but in fact there is most definitely a behind-the-scenes plan. Meanwhile, the corps stalls. They stall and stall. The corps expects you to get tired and frustrated. Accept that the corps will never formally admit they made a mistake. Recognize that personal attacks are a sign you are winning. Personal attacks and ad hominem criticism are a sure sign that you’re asking the right questions. They are evidence that you are a very real threat. Stay the course.

The Present

On July 25, 2016, the corps issued the final NWP 12 verification at 204 sites in four states, including Lake Oahe. The corps did not mention 106 compliance but allowed a farcical “Tribal Monitoring Plan” that allowed tribal members to watch construction.

In a bait and switch, the final EA and Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) acknowledged the risk of oil spills, spill response and mitigation.

This has not worked out very well on other spills.

Still, the corps found “no direct or indirect impacts to Standing Rock Tribe,” even though spills are a risk and some would say a probability for the people downstream. Bismarck must be breathing a sigh of relief about now, since the pipeline was not placed in their backyard.

The corps insists that APE (Areas of Potential Effects) for Lake Oahe crossing are composed of “only” unsupervised bore holes, stringing and staging areas, and access routes, according to the corps. Never mind the miles of unmapped and undiscovered remnants of the mighty Sioux Nation.

One Setback and Another Filing

The Three Affiliated Tribes at Fort Berthold ordered a separate project halted amid concern that the Sacagawea Pipeline developer Paradigm Energy Partners needed tribal permission to place the pipelines beneath Lake Sakakawea.

U.S. District Court Judge Daniel Hovland disagreed and allowed construction to continue. On Thursday, the judge again refused to stop construction. He’s expected to rule within the next two weeks on whether the company should’ve gotten tribal permission and the project can move forward.

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe says it “surveyed a portion of the Dakota Access Pipeline route this week and discovered multiple graves and other significant historical sites not previously identified,” according to Indian Country Today.

Court documents filed Friday include statements from Tim Mentz, former tribal historic preservation officer.

Mentz writes that the survey located “at least 27 burials, 16 stone rings, 19 effigies and other features in or adjacent to the pipeline corridor just north of the Standing Rock reservation.”

In a sad conclusion that brings us all up to date, this is the area bulldozed by Energy Transfer, Inc. — the very definition of psychological and physical warfare– the use of dogs, pepper spray, and desecration of sacred grounds.

Over a period of days spent at the camps last week, I learned about the Bird Song. According to Native spiritual beliefs, the bird song was given to the people to teach respect and empathy. Instead of bulldozing their way into getting what it wants, perhaps DAPL interests might want to try listening to a people who have experienced extreme loss and generational trauma over the last 500 years. They are still here. the people can endure much, and remain peaceful.

This is more than the security forces for Energy Transfer have demonstrated.

The Bird Songs song have not been silenced. Listen. Just Listen. Please just listen.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

HANGZHOU, China, Sept 4 (Reuters) – British Prime Minister Theresa May cast doubt on Sunday on the effectiveness of ‘points-based’ immigration systems that screen applicants on the basis of factors like education and skills, setting up a potential conflict with some of her own ministers.

Foreign minister Boris Johnson and trade minister Liam Fox were part of the ‘Brexit’ camp that argued that voting to leave the European Union would free Britain from the duty to admit all EU nationals who want to live and work here, enabling it to cut immigration by introducing an Australian-style points system.

May, who favored staying in the EU but has promised to deliver on the June 23 referendum vote by steering Britain out of the bloc and tightening border controls, said such systems were difficult to manage.

“One of the issues is whether or not points-based systems do work,” she told reporters on her way to a G20 summit in China, citing her experience as Britain’s longest-serving interior minister in over 50 years.

“There is no single silver bullet that is the answer in terms of dealing with immigration.”

The comments offer the first glimpse into May’s stance on the hardest conundrum thrown up by the referendum: how to tighten border controls with the EU without losing access to its single market.

Its 27 partners are so far adamant that it cannot enjoy full trade benefits unless it continues to let in EU nationals as before.

WATERED-DOWN BREXIT

The prime minister risks upsetting key members of the team she assembled in July to deliver an EU exit that protects Britain’s global standing and carves out a new role for the country at the vanguard of global free trade.

Speaking in June before he was appointed as foreign minister, Johnson – figurehead of the Leave campaign and May’s one-time rival for the prime minister’s job – said a points-based system could bring back democratic control and better meet businesses’ needs.

May’s words will fuel fears among voters and Eurosceptic lawmakers that having a pro-Remain prime minister in charge will result in a watered-down version of Brexit that does not represent what people voted for.

May also declined to commit, when asked, to Leave campaign promises to increase healthcare spending and reduce energy taxes.

Asked whether immigration controls precluded access to the single market, May said she was optimistic about what sort of deal Britain could negotiate.

“I want to be ambitious with what we can achieve, I don’t take anything for granted, I’m going out there to get the best possible deal.”

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

I have often said that my worst professional mistake was leaving the clangorous world of daily newspapers for magazines and book writing. Of course, that was back in 1985, a very different time for the media, and for the world.

The digital era had not yet dawned, and we “hacks” – as print journalists, particularly foreign correspondents, were known – scrambled around in search of stories. We then scrambled around some more to find a post office with a telex machine to file our dispatches to our home offices. No email in those days, no satellite phones either. Your dispatches depended on the caprice of the telex operation. He was more influenced by the graft you gave than the novelty, timeliness and piquancy of your stories.

My search for stories took me to Africa, where the New York Times had posted me in the lovely Kenyan capital of Nairobi. From there I crisscrossed the vast continent. I felt a little bit like Marlow, the narrator of “Heart of Darkness,” the celebrated novella by Polish-British novelist Joseph Conrad, about a voyage up the Congo River into the Congo Free State, in the heart of Africa.

That novella has been the basis of several films, perhaps the best known being Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now,” released in 1979. As Wikipedia puts it: “In Vietnam in 1970, Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) takes a perilous and increasingly hallucinatory journey upriver to find and terminate Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), a once-promising officer who has reportedly gone completely mad. In the company of a Navy patrol boat filled with street-smart kids, a surfing-obsessed Air Cavalry officer (Robert Duvall), and a crazed freelance photographer (Dennis Hopper), Willard travels further and further into the heart of darkness.”

It was a romantic time to be a foreign correspondent. The Times was generous with travel budgets; it no longer is. But, on occasion, a skeptical accountant at headquarters would ask if it was really necessary to fly to Paris from Nairobi in East Africa in order to get to the Senegalese capital of Dakar in West Africa. Well, yes. Especially if the stopover in Paris lasted at least a day during which to sample the delights of Montmartre. After all, being a hack in those days wasn’t easy – all that traveling, all those stopovers, all those missed flights. You understand, right? The accountant didn’t, and would scrutinize my travel expenses with a beady eye.

I still remember him well. Turned out to be a jolly fellow who, after a pint of ale or two, regaled me with hilarious stories of the outrageous expense reports that some correspondents filed.

I’m now at that age when memories are far more restive than anticipation of the future. The journalism that I grew up in, that nourished me, that transported me around the world, that offered me opportunities to listen to dramatic stories of everyday people and the exaggerations of potentates – that journalist era has evaporated, and its great practitioners are dead or dying.

But what adventures they were, however long ago.

I ask myself: Did it all really happen? Was I really that fortunate? And what happened to the scores of people I met in a multitude of societies, and ate with and laughed with and sometimes shed tears with? Did their dreams of a better life materialize? And what about the ambitions of their children in a world that, because of technology and the exigencies of politics, would soon be so different from the one in which their forebears were raised?

They may be part of my increasingly receding past. But the past never really leaves you alone. You may want to push parts of it away, the unpleasant ones anyway, but those episodes and characters surface when you least expect it. Which is mostly all the time.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.