Hey, kids! How would you like your local law enforcement, at the behest of our foreign corporate overlords, to brand you as a terrorist threat? Here are some quick and easy "suspicious activities" you can do to make yourself the envy of all your jihadi friends:

1. "Photography, observation, or surveillance of facilities, buildings, or ritical infrastructure and key resources": take pictures of roads, pumping stations, big pipeline storage depots, or TransCanada personnel (what resource is more key than one's people?), and you, too, could be a terrorist!
2. "Eliciting information beyond curiosity about a facility's or building's purpose, operations, or security": Curiosity kills the cat and the creepy eco-terrorist. Keep your questions to yourself, and let corporations do what they want.
3. "Material acquisition or storage of unusual quantities of materials": And how many of you have unusual quantities of ammunition and MREs in your Black Hills bunkers? Heck, how many of you bought more pickles and beans than you really need at Sam's Club last weekend?

TransCanada, a foreign corporation, is advising your law enforcement officials, via suspicious Homeland Security Fusion Centers, to keep an eye out for the above activities, for fear that Constitutionally protected activities by American citizens could hinder their pipeline profits. Pay attention: while right-wing criers distract us with fabricated scandals about the IRS challenging your ability to violate non-profit tax code, corporations are pushing your police to limit your ability to seek information and goods and speak up against injustice. You tell me which is the greater threat to your liberty.

Regular readers know I don't go for conspiracy theories. But give me three instances of the powers that be portraying anti-Keystone XL activists as terrorists, and I can't help thinking we face an orchestrated corporate PR campaign.

First public officials in the Black Hills publicly portray opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline as terrorists in a fictional scenario completely unnecessary to their emergency drill.

Then well-connected journalist Bob Mercer defends that propaganda by pointing to "people in the guerilla fatigues with masks" who stood in silent protest at a State Department hearing on the pipeline in Pierre. Mercer makes no mention if the intimidation factor of burly union reps bused in from other states to the September 2011 Pierre hearing wearing t-shirts declaring their support for Keystone XL.

Now Bold Nebraska finds TransCanada documents showing that the pipeline company is waging a PR campaign to make state and local law enforcement officials view Keystone XL protestors as a terrorist threat:

TransCanada, the Canadian corporation behind the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, is providing security briefings to Nebraska authorities warning them to look into the application of "anti-terrorism laws" on people who oppose the pipeline despite the fact that no Nebraskan has committed a crime in the state in their efforts to stop the pipeline.

Bold Nebraska obtained TransCanada documents from the Nebraska State Patrol through a Freedom of Information Act request and was alarmed to discover what they describe as efforts to build distrust between Nebraska police and citizens who have organized to oppose the pipeline which threatens their air, land and water.

...The preponderance of opposition in the state has come from farmers and ranchers, whose threat level TransCanada describes as "low" while calling them "abusive and aggresive." In the presentations, dated December of 2012 but presented last month in Nebraska, TransCanada warns authorities that actions in Texas and by Anonymous could be coming to Nebraska and are "potential security concerns." They warn authorities to prepare for coming incidences of property destruction and "monkeywrenching." No such incidents have occurred in Nebraska to date [Mark Hefflinger, "TransCanada Calls Nebraska Ranchers Aggressive and Abusive, Talks of Terrorism," BoldNebraska.com, 2013.06.11].

Bold Nebraska posts TransCanada's offending anti-American propaganda for you to read and judge for yourself. But it seems the only real violence happening anywhere along the Keystone XL construction route down south is police roughing up protesters.

TransCanada uses our courts to take our property rights. Now they try to co-opt our police to take away our rights to assemble, protest, and petition. And those corporate-state tactics intimidate some people less than a couple hippies in Army jackets.

I promise, Bob: I was not wearing my camos or mask while writing this post.

Tar sands oil and the pipelines that carry them bring unavoidable risks to South Dakota. But TransCanada exacerbates those risks with what a fired engineer with experience on the Keystone pipeline system calls a "culture of non-compliance":

[Evan] Vokes, an expert on pipeline welding practices, worked for TransCanada for five years and was fired without cause in 2012 after persistently raising concerns about the company's safety practices.

In particular, Vokes provided the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources with a number of documented violations of welding and pressure testing codes. The Committee is now studying the safety of pipeline transportation in Canada.

During the construction of a natural gas line feeding one oil sands project, Vokes alleged shoddy workmanship resulting in "a 100 per cent repair rate." When the engineer identified the code violations to the company, his superiors forced him to "retract" his statement, Vokes told the committee.

"Coercion were the TransCanada management tools I experienced in my first months at TransCanada, as the written communications were very different from the oral instructions."

In addition, engineering shortcuts associated with the first phase of the Keystone XL project "resulted in substandard material being used in Keystone pump stations," he alleged [Andrew Nikiforuk, "TransCanada Has a 'Culture of Non-Compliance': Engineer to Senate Committee," The Tyee: The Hook, 2013.06.07].

First phase of the Keystone XL project—that's the Keystone 1 pipeline that runs under East River from Marshall County to Yankton. All four of the pumping stations along that South Dakota stretch of the pipeline sprang leaks in its first year of operation. Those are the pumping stations that TransCanada absurdly tried to exclude from its risk assessment.

Vokes isn't the first engineer to blow the whistle on TransCanada's shoddy work on the Keystone pipeline system. In September 2011, Bechtel inspector Michael Klink found faulty steel, bad construction practices, and pressure from TransCanada to cover up problems on Keystone 1. Of course, it doesn't take an expert to see daylight through TransCanada's welds.

Making mistakes is one thing. Cheating is another. TransCanada's record shows we can't trust them to follow the rulers and take responsibility for the risks their work poses to South Dakota's natural resources.

Fellow green neighbor Phyllis Cole-Dai follows up on the fascist propaganda injected into  a Black Hills emergency drill last week and gets the names of the people responsible for putting her, me, and other opponents of Keystone XL and Powertech Uranium on a local terrorist watch list:

The script presenting a threat ("inject") posed by a terrorist in opposition to the KXL or uranium mining was co-authored by two men at the county level of planning. The first is Ken Hawki, chair of the Lawrence County Local Emergency Planning Committee and Assistant Emergency Manager for Lawrence County. The second is Fred Wells, a 25-year veteran of the military (specializing in anti-terrorism planning) who now volunteers his expertise to "two different fire departments and his county" (Butte, I think). (A sidenote: While I don't mean to cast aspersions on Mr. Wells's military service, his involvement in this seems noteworthy when there are increasing reports of Big Oil utilizing counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency tactics against groups that oppose its projects.) [Phyllis Cole-Dai, "Follow-Up on Keystone XL 'Terrorist' Drill," Fast for the Earth, 2013.05.23]

Cole-Dai reports that the script then received approval from other local officials involved in the drill:

After these two men wrote the script, it was presented for consideration to a 15-20 member group that was planning a crisis management drill in three schools (not five, as the journalist reported). Members of the group were representatives of local emergency responders, local emergency management, and the three school districts involved (Deadwood, Custer and Hot Springs). The group gave its consent for the script to be used and it was then prepped to meet federal guidelines for such drills and submitted [Cole-Dai, 2013.05.23].

Cole-Dai's report fits with a statement I received from Brad Maskovich, state exercise coordinator for the South Dakota Office of Emergency Management. He said he had one state-level person involved the day of the exercise, and that state staffer had no involvement in creating the anti-Keystone XL/uranium terrorist fantasy.

However, Cole-Dai's report runs a bit contrary to the response I received from the Hot Springs school district, where Superintendent Donald Marchant forwarded my inquiry to district lawyer Patrick Ginsbach. Counsel Ginsback responds:

The mock scenario was distributed by Fall River County Emergency Management Director Frank Maynard.  The school agreed to participate in the exercise and was not aware of the scenario until it was distributed by Director Maynard [Patrick M. Ginsbach, e-mail, 2013.05.23].

Hmm... the school district says it was not aware of the scenario until it was distributed by the county EMD, but Cole-Dai says district officials were aware of and consented to the scenario.

Whoever gave the okey-dokeys, the participants are mostly running from this offensive portrayal of sensible South Dakotans as terrorists. Cole-Dai says the men who wrote the scenario are offering the classic non-apology: they are sorry if anyone took offense, but they consider the scenario justified.

I still see no justification. If, as Cole-Dai says, the main objective of the May 14 exercise was "simply to run a drill to help evaluate the crisis plans meant to protect schoolchildren against terrorist threats," what practical purpose was served by creating a little fairy tale about opponents to two big West River business projects going nuts and threatening violence?

Well, heck: if I'm going to be on some South Dakota emergency management terrorist watch list, I might as well be at the top of that list!

No one needs to send a bomb threat to make this point: booming domestic oil production and decreasing supply (we talked about this on Sunday!) make the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline unnecessary to national security:

Given the American petroleum boom, it is now harder to make the case that the oil the line would carry is vitally needed to quench the nation's thirst for fuel.

Instead, analysts say that in this era of plenty the Keystone’s main function isn't meeting U.S. needs, but getting oil from the land-locked province of Alberta to overseas markets via U.S. refineries on the Texas coast. Two pipeline projects from Alberta to the Canadian coast face such stiff opposition that some analysts say they're unlikely to be built.

..."With this outlook, why would the United States need the controversial Keystone XL pipeline?" asked Earle Gray, the former editor of Oilweek magazine and author of several books about Canadian oil, in the Toronto Star.

"We do not really need the oil," said an editorial entitled "Pipeline to Nowhere" by Jerald L. Schnoor, editor in chief of Environmental Science & Technology, published this month by the American Chemical Society. Schnoor said the real key to securing energy independence is to use less oil [John H. Cushman, Jr., "With U.S. Awash in Oil, Nat'l Interest Argument for Keystone Weakens," Inside Climate News, 2013.05.21].

The boom threatening the Keystone XL pipeline isn't some eco-terrorists dreamed up by corporate fascists. It's Americans producing more oil and using less. That's what really terrifies the oil profiteers.

And now I think I'll walk to work.

Has your government ever labelled you a potential terrorist? My state government may have just done that to me.

Last Tuesday, May 14, five Black Hills school districts—Rapid City, Sturgis, Deadwood, Custer, and Hot Springs—participated in a terrorism response drill. County and state emergency response personnel also participated. Here's how Curt Nettinga describes the scripted events in Hot Springs:

While the drill actually commenced at 12:30 p.m., things began early when a bus driver reported a suspicious SUV with several people following during his morning route. Next, a letter handed to a student at the Elementary School over the lunch hour is turned in to Principal. The letter threatens that “things dear to everyone will be destroyed unless continuation of the Keystone pipeline and uranium mining is stopped immediately.”

While the entire scenario was scripted, the use of pertinent and timely issues seemed to make it more realistic. Similar letters were scripted to have been sent to the other respective schools, each of which had slightly different scenarios presented to them [Curt Nettinga, "Mock Drill Has Positive Results," Hot Springs Star, 2013.05.21].

Wait a minute: Canadian companies threaten South Dakotans' land rights, water quality, and safety, and public officials in South Dakota tell kids to be afraid of citizens who have the audacity to stand against that foreign corporate agenda? Good grief! If our public officials can weave that kind of propaganda into their emergency exercises, I think they've just given me license to label them, TransCanada, and Powertech as corporate fascists.

Let me be clear: blowing up schools has never entered my head as a moral or effective response to TransCanada's or Powertech's predations. But I want to know whoever's head it did enter.

Whose cockamamie idea was it that scripting an imagined eco-terrorist agenda into an emergency readiness exercise would help teachers lock their doors faster, would help kids be quieter, or would help bomb squads find the fake bombs faster? Seriously, I want a name. I want an agency. Whose idea was it to label the political opponents of South Dakota's Canadian energy sell-out—people like me—as likely terrorist threats?

TransCanada representatives showed up at the tribal office in Eagle Butte to talk up the Keystone XL pipeline, which will cross the Cheyenne River just outside the southwest corner of the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation. They had a closed-door meeting with tribal chairman Kevin Keckler. After that meeting, Cheyenne River Sioux Councilwoman Robin LeBeau caught TransCanada's hired men and offered the response we all ought to give to TransCanada: take a hike.

Councilwoman LeBeau understands that TransCanada is just another bunch of wasicus looking to rape and steal and take her people's land. And in TransCanada's eyes, we are all Indians.

Here's the second part of LeBeau's conversation with TransCanada's men, in which she gets to know these fellas, who say they are from Sioux City and Oklahoma. The reps note that the tribal chairman says he opposes the pipeline but welcomes TransCanada to send folks to talk:

The Keystone XL pipeline poses all sorts of risks for South Dakotans to bear for the sake of private Canadian profits. Vi Waln points out that the man camps necessary to house the workers needed to build this pipeline across western South Dakota pose a risk to the safety of our women and children:

If President Obama signs the Presidential Permit approving TransCanada’s application to build their death project, there will most likely be a man camp established in the Colome, SD area with at least 600 roughnecks from all over the country staying there. They will be making good money to build the monster pipeline. We have tribal members living in this area.

...Those of us who choose to live here already know our Indian Reservations are extreme poverty areas. We have vulnerable women and children. What do you think is going to happen when we have an influx of wealthy strangers who lack integrity?

If you research the areas where man camps are established you will find they have a whole lot of horrid side effects – prostitution, drug activity, disappearances and even unsolved murders of women. Would you want your mother, aunt, sister, daughter, granddaughter or other women relatives spending time with men who are staying in these camps? [Vi Waln, "Tribes Must Be More Aggressive to Stop Tar Sands Pipeline," Sicangu Scribbler, 2013.04.30]

President Obama delivered a great victory to our Indian neighbors when he signed the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act in March. It would be a shame to see him undo some of that good by allowing Keystone XL to drag its ills across western South Dakota.