The atrocities being committed by militarized police on behalf of the Fossil Fuel Industry against the unarmed Water Protectors of Standing Rock Sioux is beyond appalling.  A horrifying page of history is being reopened which may signal a more radical fascist turn for the US in general.  With barely a peep from a weak and sycophantic corporate media, jackbooted thugs in armored trucks are firing water cannons on protectors in sub freezing temperatures, using flash grenades that can cause blindness and burns, and firing rubber coated bullets which have already maimed many.

This hideous face of Empire is nothing unique.  It is the same banal, raw, aggression and power seen all over the world.  The militarized police of the Dakotas share their unoriginal brutality with the Israeli Defense Force in Palestine, and the Indian Army occupying Kashmir, and the Indonesian military forces against the indigenous people of Papua New Guinea.  The aim of Empire is always the same: to crush, exploit, rape and plunder the vulnerable of the earth and the living earth itself for the gain of power and coin for a select few.

President Obama’s tepid response to what is happening at this very moment at Standing Rock Sioux is nothing less than complicity in the crimes of Empire.  And it is chilling to think about a Trump regime which will most assuredly ramp up the violence and state aggression to a new and more horrifying level.  He can do this thanks to expanded powers the Obama regime has enabled and empowered.

I would be saddened but not be surprised in the least if drones were employed by the coming regime.  Water protectors could easily be labeled with vague, all encompassing terms like “enemy combatants” and “terrorists” because they threaten “US interests,” code words for corporate industry plunder and exploitation via the State.  Targeted assassinations of US citizens are now completely legal thanks to the Obama administration.  In fact, US citizens have already been assassinated without due process.  Indefinite detention is also now completely legal and there is no reason to think that a Trump regime would not use these powers and even expand upon them.

This signals a major shift in the US that is nothing less than monstrous.  And it forces a choice on the rest of us. We must either stand on the side of the Water Protectors or we lend our tacit, albeit apathetic, support to the omnicidal madness of Empire.  This avarice fueled insanity will not stop at Standing Rock Sioux; and there is no middle ground when it comes to this.  Our fragile biosphere is imperiled like never before.  Water is life and we must passionately protect it.  Otherwise we will all suffer the immeasurable misery and self annihilation of doing without it, and that potential nightmare is sooner than anyone could ever imagine.

Kenn Orphan  2016