The American Legislative Exchange Council is a big-business-backed think tank whose funders run the gamut from oil companies to Tesla motors; they specialize in drafting insane, racist, voter-suppressing laws and getting them enacted at the state level, primarily by Republican state governments. Read the rest

Canada's filthy tar sands are the world's most carbon-intensive petroleum source, and in the boom years, they flooded the country with so much filthy money that the country spent a decade making war on science and trashing democratic fundamentals in a bid to sustain the tar-sands bubble. Read the rest

The Standing Rock protesters were an unprecedented coalition of indigenous peoples, veterans, and activists of every stripe, and they faced down vicious mercenaries who targeted them with "anti-terrorist" tactics. Read the rest

Tigerswan, a secretive private mercenary company, was hired by Energy Transfer Partners to run campaigns against Dakota Access Pipeline protesters in five states, including states in which they were not licensed to operate -- the measures they deployed were developed as counterterrorism tactics. Read the rest

During the Standing Rock confrontations, the Electronic Frontier Foundation got reports of police use of IMSI Catchers -- secretive surveillance devices used to gather data from nearby cellphones, often called Stingrays or Dirtboxes -- so it dispatched lawyers and technologists to monitor the situation, and filed 20 public records requests with law enforcement agencies. Read the rest

It's been a week since the Army Corps of Engineers announced that they would not grant a permit for the Dakota Access Pipeline to cross the river that the indigenous Sioux people relied upon for their drinking, farming and washing. Read the rest

As things stand now, something nearly miraculous has happened: the protesters have won, indigenous people will not be forced at gunpoint to allow a danger to their drinking water that their settler neighbors had rejected, and the pipeline may die. Despite a media blackout and brutal suppression, native people have won an historic and just victory through bravery and humbling perseverance, and that victory has also struck a blow for a world where preventing climate change and preserving our common home takes precedence over enriching the tiny minority of investors in the oil industry. Read the rest

Yesterday, Wesley Clark Jr -- son of retired U.S. Army General Wesley Clark -- met with North Dakota law enforcement officials on behalf of the 2,100 members of the Veterans Stand for Standing Rock group, who have pledged to come to the conflict site and build barracks to shelter the water defenders fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline. Read the rest

Jack Dalrymple, the Republican governor of North Dakota, has ordered an "emergency evacuation" on the unceded treaty lands owned by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, where protesters have endured potentially lethal, unconstitutional violence from law enforcement, including the use of water cannons as antipersonnel weapons in subzero temperatures and the use of tear-gas cannisters as projectiles fired into crowds of protesters. Read the rest

Unicorn Riot is a media collective that formed in response to the lack of media coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Tar Sands Blockade; their news comes direct from the front lines of some of the most significant and under-reported conflicts in the world, in the form of unedited livestreams from the conflict zone, and edited highlight reels after the fact. Read the rest

Amy Goodman, award-winning journalist and host of Democracy Now, has been facing an outrageous arrest warrant in North Dakota for “criminal trespass” since early September. The charges are a result of her merely doing her job as a reporter and covering police violence against oil pipeline protesters in North Dakota. Read the rest

A number of climate change and indigenous land rights activists were arrested today following an attempt to shut off five major oil pipelines from Canada. Read the rest

The United States government today ordered a temporary halt to construction of a stretch of North Dakota oil pipeline that has been the focus of a sustained and growing occupation protest by Native Americans and environmental activists. Read the rest

On MSNBC, Lawrence O'Donnell reminds us that the United States of America has awfully mistreated the people who lived on this continent before us, and helps America understand the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. Read the rest

In Washington today, District Judge James E. Boarsberge said he will not issue a decision on a legal challenge by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Dakota Access, LLC, the private firm behind a nearly $4 billion oil project Native people say will destroy their land and cause unprecedented damage to human, plant, and animal life in the region. Read the rest