[mgj-discuss] Video: The tar sands pipeline as a strategic issue

[Luke Kuhn]

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=187_1315274919
A strategic analysis of the two weeks of protests against the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, what comes next, and the importance of the target. The importance placed on this pipeline by the oil lobby is proof of the importance of stopping it!

(transcript):
The opposition to the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline did not begin with two weeks of civil disobediance in front of the White House:

Instead,opposition to the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline began in Native American communities being harmed by the existing tar sands mining projects:

The campaign against the Keystone XL Pipeline did not end with 1,252 arrests in front of the White House. Already organizers of the two-week campaign are readying a Day of Action on the second of October. 

If President Obama does what he did on ground-level ozone and stabs his environmentalist base in the back, the campaign agianst the pipeline won't end there either, instead it will have just begin. Right now tar sands mining is being limited by the available pipeline capacity. The best way for people who do NOT live where the tar sands are mined to help Indigneous people stop the expansion of the mines is to block the pipeline. The best way for people living in coastal cities vulnerable to a future of Katrina-class hurricanes is to block the pipeline.

In other words, this is not a "consumer" issue but a strategic issue. When people don't like animals being tortured by contract laboratories like Huntingdon Life Sciences, don't waste time protesting at a lab that will never listen, instead they force bankers, insureers, and customers to boycott the offender. If making it impossible for a vivisection laboratory to get a bank account can lead to an Animal Liberation Front visit finding two thirds of the cages empty, then surely making it impossible for a dirty tar sands mining project to get oil pipelines can choke off their expansion, save Native American homes and access to clean water, and help put the brakes on climate catastrophe.

There is a further conclusion to be found here: If Obama does what he did on ozone and stabs us in the back, there are other ways to stop a pipeline! The Keystone XL would take years to build, requiring thousands of subcontractors and suppliers. Drive them away with protest and direct action, and the Keystone XL project will dry up and blow away! Only one non-replaceable piece of land, equipment, or liability insurance would need to be denied to stop the whole project. 		 	   		  
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