http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/protesters-occupy-indigenous-northern-affairs-office-1.3533662

Native American Tribes Are Ready to Go to War over the Keystone Pipeline

Last night, a bill that would have advanced construction of the Keystone XL pipeline was killed. By a single vote, Senate Democrats managed to stop the legislation, which has become one of the most divisive issues of the Obama administration. Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu, the chairwoman of the Senate Energy Committee who has staked herprotracted reel​ection campaign on being able to get t​hings done for the oil and gas industry in her home state, had made a major push for the issue in the last week, but in the end, couldn’t get the 60th vote needed to start the pipeline project.

About half of the Keys​tone pipeline is already built, and has been in operation since 2010. Since then, a solid majority of​ Americans have supported a massive expansion that would carry as much as 830,000 barrels of petroleum per day from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf Coast. The issue has blown up into a huge political proxy battle, between Republicans who argue that the pipeline would create jobs and be a boon to the economy and environmentalists who say it would damage ecos​ystems and create toxic runoff.

Why Did a Black Man Get Shot and Killed by Police in Walmart for Carrying an Unloaded Air Rifle in an Open Carry State?

On Wednesday, prosecutors released security footage from the Beavercreek, Ohio, Walmart where 22-year-old John Crawford III was fatally shot by police on August 5. Also on Wednesday, a grand jury decided not to bring charges against Sean Williams, the officer who killed Crawford. This all seems depressingly normal: A black man is dead for little or no reason, everyone agrees it’s a very, very sad thing, and you can’t help but think that he wouldn’t be dead if he were white.

The August 5 incident began when Crawford picked up an air rifle in the store and aimlessly fiddled with it as he spoke on a cell phone to his girlfriend. Unbeknownst to him, police officers Sean Williams David M. Darkow were on the scene after responding to a call from a man named Ronald Ritchie, who told 9-1-1 a black man was waving a gun and pointing it at children. The full surveillance footage does not match up with that account, and Ritchie has now changed his story. The final two minutes of footage show Crawford being seemingly unaware that police were there, as he chats on his phone. And police in turn gave him no time at all to drop the rifle before shooting. Crawford’s last words—heard over the phone by his girlfriend—were “It’s not real!”

Currently, Crawford’s death is being treated as a tragedy by the authorities, but a mostly unavoidable one. According to the grand jury the cops responded appropriately considering what they heard from dispatch—who, Williams’s report says, told them that Crawford was waving around a real gun. Even if Crawford failed to obey their “repeated commands” to drop the weapon, however, the surveillance footage shows that he didn’t have any time to do so before the cops opened up.