Monday, August 28, 2017

According to this lawsuit, if you opposed DAPL, you’re a terrorist


Nikhil Swaminathan, grist.org

uncaptioned image from article
Excerpt:
The natural gas company Energy Transfer Partners has opened a new front in its ongoing battle with the environmental movement that opposed the Dakota Access Pipeline.
The Dallas-based company is now labeling many of those who opposed its pipeline “eco-terrorists.” This from a company that employed a private security outfit to surveil and track members of the #noDAPL movement as though they were jihadists.
A lawsuit filed in federal court argues that GreenPeace, Earth First! and many other green groups engaged in racketeering, outlining a “criminal enterprise” involving a coordinated attack launched by “wolfpacks of corrupt” environmental groups — using fake news and publicity stunts — that bogged down its construction effort and cost the company millions of dollars. ...
“This is full-scale, frontal military assault on the environmental community,” says Daniel Sheehan, a constitutional lawyer and lead attorney for the Lakota People’s Law Project. He notes that the lawsuit was filed by the law firm of President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Marc Kasowitz.
Sheehan says that the racketeering charge is totally unsubstantiated and points out that the suit centers primarily around defamation claims. It accuses the environmental groups of launching a campaign of misinformation, including spreading lies about how the pipeline was routed, that it would contribute to climate change, and the likelihood that it would leak. (By late May, there were three known leaks.)
Sheehan says the lawsuit was the latest salvo in a so-called “public diplomacy campaign,” [JB emphasis] which began with the company’s hiring of the private security firm TigerSwan last fall. As reported by Grist and The Intercept, TigerSwan portrayed the #noDAPL movement participants as, in Sheehan’s words, “an armed enemy that is threatening their physical facility.” That framing, he says, helped local law enforcement see protesters as violent adversaries. This lawsuit continues the narrative.
“They leap on Greenpeace because that’s who most of their constituents recognize as the flagship of the environmentalist movement,” Sheehan says. ...