November 11, 2016 • 45 mins
As of 2014, North Dakota has a population under 500,000 -- so you, like many others, may be wondering why over 1.6 million people used social media to check in to the state's Standing Rock reservation. Listen in to learn more about the protests over the Dakota Access Pipeline, along with allegations of media suppression, state-sponsored violence and more.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
(00:24):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is Noah. They call me pin. You are you?
We hope still uh and we're glad to hear from you.
Whether this is your first time listening to this show
or whether this is your millionth time, which would be
weird because we're not quite at a million episodes. Regardless,
Welcome to stuff they don't want you to know. Calendars
(00:48):
are relatively arbitrary things, and in the calendar regime under
which we live in this era, we are approaching the
end of the year, the penultimate month, the eleventh of twelve,
and what a year it's been. Yeah, so let's talk
(01:09):
about let's let's you know what. I know. Probably people
have already heard some of this, but you haven't heard
much about it. Today. We're talking about the Dakota Access pipeline,
and you've probably seen it pop up on your news feed, right.
You've probably heard somebody mentioned it in a sound bite
(01:31):
or dapple maybe that's been used. The acronym for to
go to Access Pipeline or perhaps Standing Rock. I thought
Dapple was like the new Twitter. It might be. It's
where someone who has a really nice butt dabs. It's
like a dapple bottom. Anything to get the spirits up. So, uh,
(01:54):
what is the Dakota Access Pipeline or Dapple. It's a
one one hundred and thirty four mile long to one thousand,
one d and seventy two mile long underground oil pipeline
project inside the US. Now you heard that those There
are several numbers there, and that's because depending on the source, uh,
you'll see different numbers. The pipeline is being planned by
(02:18):
a company called Dakota Access. They're a limited liability corporation.
They're also a subsidiary of a place called Energy Transfer Partners.
This pipeline will begin in the Bucking oil fields, which
are located in the northwestern part of North Dakota and
the southeast as the crow flies pretty much a straight
(02:39):
line southeast through South Dakota through Iowa all the way
to Patuca, Illinois or Protoca, Illinois, where there's an oil
tank farm. This is all gonna be happening on January one.
That's when the pipeline is due to be delivered a
k A completed. As of people were projecting that the
(03:03):
pipe would carry in excess of four hundred and fifty
thousand barrels of oil per day, and this is hydro
fract crude oil YEP, fracking went to the F word
already this early. The company estimates the pipeline is gonna
be pretty expensive three point seven billion dollars and a
(03:26):
lot of that is going to go to pay landowners
who are getting a pipe run through there their private property.
You're having it forcibly purchased from them. And they think
it will create jobs to probably about forty which doesn't
seem like that many for a four state pipeline, but
that's the that's that's the gist of it. Will have
(03:48):
a lot of temporary jobs that are created. Also, here's
the deal. Though this is the subject of massive controversy.
Native tribal organizations and environmentalist farmers in different states are
warning that this pipeline will eradicate history, that it could
(04:08):
rain devastation on the local water and soil resources, and
supporters of the pipeline argue it's necessary because it will
help the US is chase for energy and dependence, and
just for everyone who is curious about the petro dollar,
energy and dependence, oil and the cs are messed up
(04:32):
things that it makes humans do in this society. Do
visit stuff they'll want you know dot com and check
out our podcasts and videos on the petro dollar, on
oil wars and things of that nature. So the big
flashpoint for both the opponents and the people in support
of the pipeline UM all centers around a place called
(04:53):
the Standing Rock Reservation. UM. There are protests in other
states as well, including South Dakota, Iowa, Illinois. Way. But then,
as we are wont to do, shall we give the facts? Yes,
here are the facts. The other stuff that we were
talking about earlier also factual. I just kind of messed
up the notes a little. So here the fact Standing
(05:15):
Rock Reservation, as you mentioned NOL, it has a it
has a prominent place in history. It is the sixth
largest reservation in the United States in terms of land area.
That includes all of Sioux County, North Dakota, of course
in County South Dakota, little pieces of Dewey and Zibat
Counties in South Dakota, and the reservation has a land
(05:40):
area about nine thousand, two and fifty one ish square kilometers,
with so a little bit under three point six thousand
square miles and as a population of eight thousand or
fifty as of the two thousand census, it officially became no.
(06:00):
These reservations were established in the Agreement of eighteen seventy seven.
They date back aways. There's also the location where Sitting Bull,
the famous elder leader Sitting Bull had had his followers
performing what is called the Ghost stance, which we can
(06:23):
go into in a different podcast, but it's an important
piece of the history of this country, especially the history
that is often not taught to people for one reason
or another. That's where this has taken place, and the
pipeline is what's being built. Here's where it gets crazy.
(06:44):
This pipeline isn't just the subject of controversy. It's the
subject of massive protests that are spanning the four states
we mentioned the dakotas in Iowa and Illinois, and spanning
the internet, social media, online forums, different distribution platforms. And
(07:08):
while it may seem a flash in the pan to
the casual observer, it turns out these pipeline protests date
back quite a ways. Yeah, back in when the pipeline
was first proposed or when it was discussed to be
a project that would be built, environmental activists began sending
(07:31):
up petitions. UH. They were sent to Iowa Governor Terry Brandstead.
UH they asked him to sign a state executive order
to straight up stop the proposed pipeline construction. Then in
March and April of sixteen, the EPA, the Environmental Protection
Agency UM, the Department of Interior, and the Advisory Council
on Historic Preservation came to the Army Corps of Engineers
(07:54):
and asked them to conduct a environmental impact assessment and
then issue an environmental impact statement UM. And then in
following that, in April, a Standing Rock Sue elder established
a camp as a center for the cultural preservation and
spiritual resistance to the pipeline. And then over the summer
(08:14):
of the camp grew, UM, it grew and grew thousands
of people. Yeah, and that elder is La Donna brave
Bull alert. I believe who was Standing Rocks Historic Preservation
officer or one of them. So in July, the Army
Corps of Engineers approved the water crossing permits for the
pipeline under what's called a fast track option, which you've
(08:36):
probably heard before in pipeline Conversations in construction of the
disputed section of the pipeline continued. So in that same month,
in July, a group called Respect Our Water with a Z.
It's a group of Native American youths. They ran all
the way from Standing Rock to Washington, d C. To
(08:56):
raise awareness of the threat to drinking water, now just
to their local community, but to everyone who relies on
the Missouri and Mississippi rivers for drinking water or irrigation.
They have more than one thousand petition signatures that they
attempted unsuccessfully to deliver to the White House. Additionally, the
(09:16):
Standing Rock su Tribe they filed a lawsuit against the
Army Corps of Engineers UH. They were accusing them of
violating the National Historic Preservation Act and several other laws.
They were arguing that quote the Core effectively wrote off
the tribe's concerns and ignored the pipeline's impacts too sacred
sites and culturally important landscapes and not casually culturally important. No,
(09:43):
not like the world's biggest frying pan or something. In
late October, since we are a family show. Let's describe
it this way. Late October, the s hit the f
and armed soldiers in police with riot gear and military
equipment cleared an encampment that was directly in the proposed
pipe bloods path. But why why are these people protesting?
(10:04):
So Many Sux tribes say that the pipeline is a
threat to their environmental and economic well being UM and
that it would actually cause significant damage and possibly even
destroy some of their sacred sites. UM. Protests at pipeline
construction sites in North Dakota started in twenty sixteen in
spring and drew Indigenous people calling themselves water protectors, which
(10:27):
I think is a term that many of you may
have heard, UM some of the Democracy Now coverage of that.
The people are kind of dubbing themselves as water protectors
and also the term land defenders from throughout North America
and many other supporters. And they created the largest gathering
of Native American tribes in the past hundred years of
American history, which is fascinating and I think speaks to them,
(10:51):
you know, severity of the situation as they see it. Yeah,
And over four d people have been arrested. Some of
these were planned arrest ME mean that people went into
this situation intending to make it inevitable that law enforcement
would arrest them. And this is the civil disobedience stuff
you hear about, like people changing themselves to in this
(11:11):
case heavy machinery. Yeah, either forcibly take me off of
this thing, or you won't be able to get any
work done. And let's look at some of the concerns
that these people have. We mentioned these sacred sites, but
let's explore this a little bit. There are locations with
great historical religious significance. According to Standing Rocks historic preservation
officer who we mentioned earlier, La Donna Brave Bowl Alert
(11:33):
with the quote, of the three and eighty archaeological sites
that face desecration along the entire pipeline route from North
Dakota to Illinois, twenty six of them are right here
at the confluence of these two rivers. It is an
historic trading ground, a place held secret not only by
the Sioux nations, but also by the Arikara, the Mandan,
and the Northern Cheyenne. The US government is wiping out
(11:56):
our most important cultural and spiritual areas, and as it
erases our footprint from the world, it erases us as
a people. And if we just pause here while I
know it may seem easy for some, especially people who
are not, you know, affiliated in any way with Native
American populations, well, it might seem easy for people to
(12:17):
dismiss this as you know, um a nomenclature claim or
change or something like that. This isn't really an eggs
making omelet situation. This comes from a group of people
who were vilified, suppressed, treated like absolute garbage, uh for
(12:44):
centuries by European by by European populations, you know. And
in many ways this could be seen as an extension
of people driven to reservations and then forced to live
within these areas under very very horrific conditions at times,
(13:06):
and now having other pieces of of what what remained
being slowly taken away. Of course, you can see this
could be considered an existential threat to the culture. And
then there's the there's the more physical threat of pollution. Yes,
(13:28):
there's a very real threat of water and soil contamination.
According to the Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration or
p h m s A. That's a sexy acronym. I'm
being sarcastic because well, according to them, there have been
over three thousand, three hundred incidents of leaks and ruptures
(13:49):
at oil and gas pipelines since two thousand ten. That
seems like a lot. And if you want to that's
according to them via Time dot Com. And if you
go to Wikipedia and there a couple other national transportation
government websites you can look at and you can see
reports of all of these leaks. And even if you
(14:13):
just go back to let's say the start of the
twenty one century and two thousand, you can see the
tens of thousands of leaks and just terrible things going
into the environment that shouldn't be there. And we have
a recent, a very recent example in the Colonial Pipeline.
Perhaps you have heard of this on your local news
(14:35):
if you live in the southeast, or you know, maybe
you've heard it somewhere else or read it on Reddit.
But there was an explosion there on October thirty one,
and it killed one person and injured five others. But
this comes just a month after there was a massive
pipeline leak there where three hundred and forty thousand gallons
(14:57):
of gasoline leaked to all over central Alabama and it
forced the line to shut down for twelve days. And
it caused states of emergency to be declared by governors
in six states, and gas prices rose throughout the entire
region and it was very intense. You could even see
it here in Atlanta. I don't know if you guys
(15:18):
noticed that premium and plus gasoline was unavailable for a while,
more so in like a gut stuff for example, where
my mom lives, and maybe a smaller area she couldn't find.
Y like it was a big deal. I didn't have
any problems here, but it's definitely something that you know,
affected people's day to day lives. Well, yeah, and the
bigger impact is that amount of oil spilling out into
(15:40):
natural areas where oil shouldn't be on the surface. Since
two thousand and six, the company that runs Colonial Pipeline,
they have reported one hundred and seventy eight spills and
other incidents that released combined one hundred and ninety three
thousand gallons of hazards liquids and caused thirty nine million
(16:01):
dollars in property damage. And I mean, as we know,
there are definitely regulations in place to keep things like
this from happening, but as we also know, things like
this do happen and It's one thing for a company
to be able to make it good over time, you know,
with money, but in the short term it can totally
ruin people's lives. I mean, look at what happened with
(16:23):
Deepwater Horizon and how long it took for those people
to be made whole, you know. So it's one thing
to say, oh, trust us, everything will be fine. Oh no,
we made a mistake, will make it right. But the
mechanisms in place to make it right do not work
particularly fast or well, let's be completely honest when you
(16:44):
say they don't work particularly fast, I would add, or
particularly well. There is a established history of private oil
companies covering up knowledge that they knew for decades beforehand
regarding risk to the environment. War two local communities, and
there's also just a mountain of stuff indicating that on
(17:06):
local state, at local and state levels at least the
authorities have colluded in covering up reports of oil spills.
And this is throughout the world in South America, Latin America,
North America. Those are the three that I know cases
of best, but it occurs throughout the world, and and
(17:28):
it could be anything from uh, someone who is building
let's say a wall or having to dig and perhaps
the pipeline isn't uh labeled correctly, or a map is
out of date or something to this effect, and you
just hit it and there's a spillops. Or you know,
you have a pipeline that's been there for years and
years and it's aging, and you know it gives way
(17:51):
right there. There are a ton of things that these
companies have to try and think about, and they do
think about, and they work really hard to make sure
it's don't happen. It's just it's nearly impossible to not
have a leak at some point. Also, I want to
I want to assure you, ladies and gentlemen, these are
not rumors. Fracking is a technique proven to have massive
(18:14):
potential for danger, which is essentially you know what I'm
summing up, but what we're seeing earlier. You can find
more information about it on some of our other podcast
our earlier work, as well as the work of our
friends over at Stuff. You should know they have a
great episode about fracking. I know a lot of people
sometimes have a gut reaction when we're talking about preserving
(18:37):
the environment. People can say, oh, I don't want to
hear this, or We're putting a couple of amphibians and
salmon and crap in front of real quality of life
for human people, right like uh like jobs, he ability
put food on the table. That is the That is
not what we were talking about today. This isn't some
touchy feely hippie hugs and sunshine rolling environmental idealism bulls.
(19:02):
We're talking about stuff that turns the water flammable, the
poisons farmland, and can even create earthquakes. Yeah, fracking can
induce earthquakes, not as the science isn't conclusive yet, but
there's a pretty shocking correlation between widespread fracking and earthquakes.
And just to be clear here, that fracking is occurring
(19:24):
in North Dakota in the shale areas right up in
north at the I guess where the pipeline begins. That's
where all those that bad stuff is happening. Then the
gas itself is then moving down the pipeline and those
are you know, those are also hazardous materials. And at
the risk of sounding you know, like a happy hippie
(19:45):
sunshine kid, it's just another example of manipulating the earth
in ways that we don't fully understand. What the outcome
will be it's sort of more of like a short,
short term we need this, We're gonna take this, but
you know, long term consequences be damned. Despite their best
efforts in research. Yeah, it's still there's still out there.
(20:08):
And of course, is it possible that the technology will
improve to the point that it is not as risky, Yeah,
it's possible. Is it possible that the price of fossil
fuels will lower to the point where it is no
longer profitable to pursue this kind of shell technology, Yeah,
it's possible. Uh. Is it also possible that alternative energy
(20:33):
will finally have the breakthrough everybody once like solar power, safe,
nuclear power, wind power, geothermal power, let me just name
them all, high hydropower, hydromancy. Sorry, that's water related magic,
but it may as well be at this point because
it's just not there. The world, whether you like it
or not, runs on oil at this point. Hemp power,
(20:57):
hemp power. Yeah, the wave check ology, that's really cool. Yeah,
and it's look, we made the power of love, the
power to move you with music, soul power. Hey guys,
it's four twenty right now. Oh yeah, I mean it's
time for a break and we're back. Let's get into
(21:26):
a little bit of nitty gritty here. So the Department
of Interior agreed with these statements about fracking, and we
have a quote from their earlier report goes as follows.
The routing of a twelve to thirty in crude oil
pipeline in close proximity to and upstream of the reservation
is of serious concern to the Department when establishing the
(21:46):
Standing Rock Sioux Tribes permanent homeland, the US reserved waters
of sufficient quality and quantity to serve the purposes of
the reservation. The Department holds more than eight hundred thousand
acres of land in trust for the tribe that could
be impacted by a leak or a spill. Further, a
spill could impact the waters that the tribe and individual
(22:07):
tribal members residing in that area rely upon for drinking
and other purposes. The emphasis here is mine. We believe
that if the pipeline's current route along the edge of
the reservation remains an option, the potential impact on trust
resources in this particular situation necessitates full analysis and disclosure
(22:27):
of potential impacts through the preparation of Again, that environmental
impact statement. Um, ben, it wasn't very an issue of
an easement here. Is this something that we can discuss.
I think they were contesting that there was. Okay, so yeah,
you're absolutely right. Now there's uh, what some like call
a little more conservative argument against the pipeline here too.
(22:49):
A lot of farmers are concerned about the state's ability
to condemn private land for another private entities use. And
this is something we've heard about before. Imminent domain essentially
a k a. The reason that here in the US,
other other entities can take several feet off a homeowner's
(23:10):
front guard to for instance, um in big in the road.
I just wanted to say, I'm big in too, you know,
Widen the road, make it more bigly. Yeah, yeah, exactly,
Please don't make it more bigly. And uh And as
preposterous as it sounds, it's completely possible for someone who
lives next to an expanding road to lose more and
(23:32):
more and more of their property each time there's construction. Look,
we don't talk about it much here in the US,
but the ability for someone to own land is awesome
and amazing, and it doesn't happen in a lot of
other places. In some places, the government owns everything and
(23:52):
all you can do is lease land for a long
amount of time. In other places, in parts of the
US like this, it impossible for most people to ever
have enough money to buy something, you know what I mean.
Imagine trying to buy a house in London Vancouver is
really difficult. And those are you know, those are relatively
similar places culturally to hear. But the argument with them
(24:18):
in a domain then is this idea like do I
really own this thing that I bought or is it
just a situation where we all pretend it's mine until
Uncle Sam comes and initially says, hey, we'll give you
this much for it, and you say, no, it's not
worth that much, and they're like, all right, we'll give
(24:39):
you a little more and you say no, I just
don't want to sell it, and they say, okay, well
we're gonna legally make you give it to us. If
anyone else did that, that would be a crime. Is
im in a domain necessary in many cases? Yeah, you
can make a strong argument that it is. That's how
cities work. We have to have things like roads and
(24:59):
and wiring for electricity and telephone power and utilities and stuff.
But how far does that go, how slippery is that slope.
That's a that's a very big concern, you know. So
we've got these arguments, right. We also see that there
have been similar protests in it, like in rough rough terms,
(25:24):
so and there have been protests of roughly similar nature
in the past. Unfortunately, it very very rarely ends well.
You can look at as Matt noticed noted, South America,
Central America especially, and whenever there is a multinational patroleum
(25:45):
company involved, there's a possibility that they can simply outperform
the countries rule of law, especially if it's vulnerable to corruption.
So the most conspiratorial aspect of this situation the they
(26:05):
in today's episode of stuff they don't want you to know,
According to many people, would be the mainstream media. And
I'm starting to hate that phrase more and more. The
mainstream media seems kind of like a false psychotomy. We
live in a time where everybody can just be an
Internet connection in a little bit of hardware away from
jumping on and creating their own source of information, however
(26:30):
pure or however corrupts. Here's the deal. While the protests
have drawn international attention, there was limited mainstream media coverage
of it until early September. This means that people in
other countries knew more about this then people who you know,
live in this country. Yeah, and in September it got
(26:55):
us attention when construction workers bulldozed the section of land
that the historic preservation officers had dot had recently documented
as a sacred site, and when protesters entered the area,
security workers used attack dogs on them as well as
pepper spring. There's video of all of this the Democracy
Now and several other people captured. There's one called the
(27:18):
Unicorn Riot on YouTube. I know it's a strange name,
but you can find lots of on the ground footage
of these kinds of occurrences. And yeah, at least five
of the protesters were bitten by these dogs. But very
very strange days. Also, we cannot ignore the impact of
(27:41):
social media. That's something that makes us a little different
from the nineteen fifties or other other earlier protests, similar
to the way that Twitter. Depending on your perspective, Twitter
either organically encouraged the so called Arab spring or was
used by intel gents agencies to foment an uprising. But
(28:03):
whether it is a tool or simply a medium of
effective communication, there's no question that this sort of online
platform and all its variations of social media, has greatly
impacted the nature protests. So in in in the old days,
the olden days, it was possible for just a fool
(28:27):
companies to control the narrative of the media. Uh spoiler alert.
They still do, but now more and more whippers snappers.
So you were seeing their own social media, so social
of information from mesher, I'm gonna drop that accent, but
you get the point. Creeping me out, man, I'm creeping
me out too, man. I've tremendously enjoyed that. So that
(28:50):
for what you will. That's why we're a system of
checks and balances, my friends. So more and more people
are using their own social media as what would hopefully
be a tool for change or a tool to get
there at least their perspective out there. And the biggest
(29:10):
example here in terms of the protest is the famous
viral check in at Standing Rock on Facebook. Did you
guys do this? My wife? Did? I did? Did you been?
I can't remember if I did. Probably I probably didn't
then because I would have remembered, wouldn't I. By the
time I saw it, so many people had done it too,
(29:32):
that I wondered. I immediately became kind of contrarian because
I wondered if it was helping, and it seems like
it seems like it is, so maybe I'll wait and
then do it later too. I was thinking, any authority
that was trying to figure out who has been checking
in would be able just to use location services with
(29:52):
phones if they're turned on. And you know, I'm just
I'm just assuming that these you know, these authority, these
have whatever technology the n s A has, which is
probably not true. So it probably did help a lot,
but what Yeah, but that's the question, how much does
it actually help. I'm sure it didn't hurt people. I mean,
it could have been an example like a situation where
they thought they were really clever by doing that in
(30:15):
the first place, you know, by turning that on, because
I mean, you know, social media has has been in
the last handful of years an important um element and
catalyst for protests and organizing people. So you know, you
have a Facebook event page or a group, you know,
and people can see that a lot of times even
if they're not a member. So you know, the powers
that be here could have been like, oh well, gee,
(30:37):
willakers we can totally see who all is there and
see who the leaders are and kind of keep tabs
on them by monitoring their Facebook groups. And this is
just kind of, you know, a show of solidarity on
the one hand, and also possibly a good smoke screen
to kind of keep them from using those tools against
people that are using them to try to peacefully organize.
So here's sorry. I was gonna say one last thing.
(30:58):
I was gonna say that, Um, we talk about the
Democracy Now coverage, and uh, one thing that interesting that
came out of that, aside from their video getting millions
of views showing attack dogs with blood on their muzzles,
and um, Amy Goodman, who is a Democracy Now is
um sort of anchor um questioning authorities on why they're
using these dogs when no one was armed and no
(31:20):
one was being overtly threatening in any way. She actually
had a warrant issued for her arrest um for trespassing, supposedly,
and she fought it and it was ultimately dropped. But
it's just kind of another example of intimidation, trying to
suppress the media and sort of punish them for putting
(31:43):
this information out there. And so with that excellent summation
and I didn't know about them. Warrant. That's pretty interesting,
the excellent summation. We just wanted to give you some
numbers to let you know the scale of this. But
there's a further step here we can go down, which
is the Yeah, all social media at this point is
(32:04):
privately owned, and that means the business owners can also
suppress a story or a narrative they don't care for.
And this is this might be a little bit of
what do they call it inside baseball for some But
one thing that Noel and Matt and I are all
very conscious of is that Facebook really really doesn't like
it if you post a YouTube video, right, and you
(32:27):
can talk a little bit about that, right, Matt. Yeah,
if you're linking out to any third party site, generally
they dislike it. Um. The strange thing that that we found,
especially if it's a social media site and YouTube is
considered social media. So yeah, if you wanna show peep
(32:47):
your your Twitter account or your Instagram page or a
video you made for YouTube, yeah, it's not gonna happen.
You're gonna get maybe one percent of the engagement and
impressions on Facebook. And and we have so much, we
have so much weird fun when we need to point
anybody to a specific thing off of Facebook but still
(33:11):
considers social media. We've had we found so many different
ways to sort of say wink wink, cough cough, YouTube,
but they don't work anymore because the algorithms now are
checking for like symbolic versions and differently spelled They're evolving
like terminator, Yeah, exactly. We need to come up with
(33:32):
a code word that everybody knows that we can use
to disseminate information. Yeah, like cheese pizza. I talked about
cheese pizza all the time. Though I have an issue.
I don't know if I would do the best. Maybe
people can send us suggestions. What do you think that
sounds good? How about hot dog stand in Hawaii? Visit
(33:53):
our hot dog stand in Hawaii to learn more about
Facebook censorship. Maybe maybe that'll work, you know. Facebook, Though,
beside aside from them the funny hypothetical examples, it appears
that Facebook did censor the Dakota protests and did use
their almighty algorithm to game the system, and when they
(34:16):
were called on it, they claimed it was an error
and they said the link was removed in error restored
as soon as we're able to investigate. Our team processes
millions of reports each week. We sometimes get stuff wrong.
We're very sorry about the mistake. Do you believe them?
That's up to you. Well, why don't we marinate on
that for a second when we take another quick break.
(34:43):
Welcome back everybody. So now we're gonna get to the future.
What what is going to happen with this pipeline? In particular,
are these protests going to be successful? Will they just
shut down the whole thing like the Keystone xl pie blind?
Is the earth gonna be okay? Well, that's interesting that
(35:05):
you would mention that, because you see, the federal government
did tell the oil company to pause construction in September. However,
according to a report by The Guardian, UH, the project
continues despite Uncle Sam telling them to pause it for
a second, not put the kabash on it, but not
(35:27):
to continue. UH. The Energy Transfer Partners Operation says it's
mobilizing drilling equipment to tunnel under late one of the lakes,
which activists say is unconscionable and devastating. And that's the
that's the strangest thing, because you would think that when
the federal government says don't do this anymore, they would
(35:51):
stop on their side. I'm sure there's an argument for
how much money they lose each day that they're not
doing it, you know what I mean. But if it's
a federal at the federal government tells you to do
something you kind of have to, kind of have to
and something you mentioned in the video this week, then
(36:12):
they released that news on a particular day, didn't on
election day on election days through US presidential candidate. Yeah.
And it brings us also to a larger concept here,
which is the future of protesting in general. How will
social media affect protesting? We we've seen it, you know.
(36:35):
People people are able to provide some cover for protesters
by being there on social media, even if they're not
physically there. People are of course able to transmit messages
through mediums that are at this point more nimble than
the tools of law enforcement. So on a federal level
(36:59):
and national level, many intelligence agencies are very very good
at observing information and sometimes of predicting it, but not
quite able to shut it down yet. And there have
been controversial moments where, for instance, the Twitter network was
(37:20):
shut down in a specific region. The ability to completely
shut something down may exist, but right now there are
literally billions of people who are working to share information.
Just the strength of ingenuity coming from those numbers means
that social media is irreparably interlinked with protesting, with being
(37:42):
able to have an alternative voice to a government or
a dominant narrative. But I have a question for you
guys to we've heard the term before cliquivist, right where
what what would we describe a clickutivist as or that
what that term means? Hey, I clicked like on a
page or I shared something on my social media and
(38:06):
I have done action to protest. Now I'm basically gandhi, Yes,
you're welcome. I I go back and forth with that
term because I think it is kind of unfair to
to judge people's intentions that way. You know what I mean, Well,
in the very least, it's showing I don't know, it's
(38:28):
making awareness. I guess that is. I mean, that is
a real arguments that happens. That's a real thing. It's
a worthwhile thing too. Ah. But there's a there's another
aspect here where I can see if people become I
I think one thing people object about with so called clicktivism,
(38:50):
people are critics of that is there. They're asking what
the time span is, like, are you going to care
about this next month, next year, next week? Yeah, but
you'll you'll always remember when those services like that do
the throwback Thursday thing, it'll let you know in ten
(39:11):
years that, hey, on this day, you change your profile
picture to this for this thing. Right. Yeah. I I'm
just hesitant to um, I'm just hesitant to completely disavow that,
you know, because I think that I certainly don't. I
(39:33):
certainly don't disavow it. However, it's you know it it's
not physical action. It's not volunteering. It's not going on
and doing something right, you know, with your with your
hands or you know, physically making a change, but it
is yeah, but it is making awareness, which is you know,
I don't think if it can be understated that that
(39:57):
is important. Yeah. And then this goes to another thing too.
We're talking about this about this narrative stuff. How can
individuals shape the course of a story or an event
now when the future protests or even learn of opposing
views in this creepy world of algorithm driven filter bubbles. So,
(40:19):
for instance, here's something that you will probably you'll probably notice, uh,
at least in Facebook and smother a lot of other
social media if you if the algorithm has proof that
you are a fan of I don't know, just what's
a random celebrity, just random celebrity. Okay, that you're a
(40:44):
fan of Iron Chef Bobby Flay, and Iron Chef Bobby
Flay does something uh tremendously controversial, weird and Gary Busey esque,
and half of half of the world is saying, yes,
Bobby Flay, take at home, buddy, You're You're the future,
(41:05):
and and then the other half of say, like, Bobby Flay,
You're a walking hate crime. You monster, you disgust me.
Then what the social media platforms and algorithms will do
is look back on your past posting history and say, oh, well,
Matt really really likes Bobby Flay, so he's on this
(41:26):
side of the argument. And what that means is that
what you will probably see, which are much more likely
to see on your Facebook feed or whatever your home
platform is, is just gonna be all the other people
who also think Bobby Flay is God's gift to barbecue
or whatever, and you'll miss all the people who might
have very valid points about why Bobby Flay is like
(41:47):
a monster. I don't you know if he listens to
the show, I don't, I don't know. You man, he
really messed up. He messed it up. But yeah, so
are we not? Here? Arene things? Uh? Is? Are we
more and more becoming echo chambers? Used the use the
right the right thing there, Matt the right re turn
(42:10):
of phrase. So this brings us to uh, something that's
somewhat irrittained to me, which is that it's an ongoing event.
So we don't know how it's gonna end, and we
don't have all the information. So it's quite possible that
this will come out and then within days something incredibly
decisive will happen and we'll need to go back and
(42:33):
do an update. But as for now, despite what may
or may not be reported by your local news affiliates,
there is a massive protest going on, and it's about
the future of people who have historically been oppressed with
the absolute compliance and at times UH leadership of our
(42:58):
country behind this, behind the practice, and it also goes
into the future of protests. And look, it's not even
it's not even a subject of what makes a person
a person or how human beings behave in groups so
much as it is that technology is disruptive, and now
(43:20):
more than ever at any point, we have this, We
have this situation where in the old status quo is
going to be increasingly fragile. It's gonna be brittle, It's
already bending, and soon it may break. All to say
that the future is going to be paved with protests
(43:41):
at least for a time, and possibly, you know, global
instability will finally result in the world war people have
been talking about, or uh, maybe an admittance that the
World war has already begun. And we want to know,
of course, what you think. When is the future protesting?
What's going to happen in the Dakota pipeline? Are you
(44:03):
for it or against it? And if so why? I'm
going to be pretty clear. I usually don't put my
personal opinion out here, but look, fracking is is a
dangerous technology that we do not fully control, and for
that reason, I do believe it's a bad decision. Is
(44:25):
it a necessary evil? Some would argue that it is.
At this point, I am not persuaded, and that is
again just one person's opinion. Are you for it or
against it? Uh? And if so why do you believe
that energy and dependence outweighs the concerns uh fracking? Do
you believe that fracking itself is an inherently unstable technology?
(44:48):
We'd like to hear from you, and again we can't.
I can't come up with high enough praise to do
the earlier stuff. You should know episode Justice they did
a really great job with fracking. And what's the best
way to get in contact with us? Well, we have
several several options before before a private entity or a
(45:10):
government shuts them down. You can contact us both on
Facebook and Twitter. But wait, there's more. You can also
contact us on Instagram. We are conspiracy stuff and most
of those, but on Instagram we are a conspiracy stuff show.
If you don't want to do any of that stuff
and you want to send us a suggestion, because, as
you know, if you'll listen to the show before, our
(45:31):
best ideas come from you guys, So shoot us a
good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at how stuff
works dot com.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
(00:24):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is Noah. They call me pin. You are you?
We hope still uh and we're glad to hear from you.
Whether this is your first time listening to this show
or whether this is your millionth time, which would be
weird because we're not quite at a million episodes. Regardless,
Welcome to stuff they don't want you to know. Calendars
(00:48):
are relatively arbitrary things, and in the calendar regime under
which we live in this era, we are approaching the
end of the year, the penultimate month, the eleventh of twelve,
and what a year it's been. Yeah, so let's talk
(01:09):
about let's let's you know what. I know. Probably people
have already heard some of this, but you haven't heard
much about it. Today. We're talking about the Dakota Access pipeline,
and you've probably seen it pop up on your news feed, right.
You've probably heard somebody mentioned it in a sound bite
(01:31):
or dapple maybe that's been used. The acronym for to
go to Access Pipeline or perhaps Standing Rock. I thought
Dapple was like the new Twitter. It might be. It's
where someone who has a really nice butt dabs. It's
like a dapple bottom. Anything to get the spirits up. So, uh,
(01:54):
what is the Dakota Access Pipeline or Dapple. It's a
one one hundred and thirty four mile long to one thousand,
one d and seventy two mile long underground oil pipeline
project inside the US. Now you heard that those There
are several numbers there, and that's because depending on the source, uh,
you'll see different numbers. The pipeline is being planned by
(02:18):
a company called Dakota Access. They're a limited liability corporation.
They're also a subsidiary of a place called Energy Transfer Partners.
This pipeline will begin in the Bucking oil fields, which
are located in the northwestern part of North Dakota and
the southeast as the crow flies pretty much a straight
(02:39):
line southeast through South Dakota through Iowa all the way
to Patuca, Illinois or Protoca, Illinois, where there's an oil
tank farm. This is all gonna be happening on January one.
That's when the pipeline is due to be delivered a
k A completed. As of people were projecting that the
(03:03):
pipe would carry in excess of four hundred and fifty
thousand barrels of oil per day, and this is hydro
fract crude oil YEP, fracking went to the F word
already this early. The company estimates the pipeline is gonna
be pretty expensive three point seven billion dollars and a
(03:26):
lot of that is going to go to pay landowners
who are getting a pipe run through there their private property.
You're having it forcibly purchased from them. And they think
it will create jobs to probably about forty which doesn't
seem like that many for a four state pipeline, but
that's the that's that's the gist of it. Will have
(03:48):
a lot of temporary jobs that are created. Also, here's
the deal. Though this is the subject of massive controversy.
Native tribal organizations and environmentalist farmers in different states are
warning that this pipeline will eradicate history, that it could
(04:08):
rain devastation on the local water and soil resources, and
supporters of the pipeline argue it's necessary because it will
help the US is chase for energy and dependence, and
just for everyone who is curious about the petro dollar,
energy and dependence, oil and the cs are messed up
(04:32):
things that it makes humans do in this society. Do
visit stuff they'll want you know dot com and check
out our podcasts and videos on the petro dollar, on
oil wars and things of that nature. So the big
flashpoint for both the opponents and the people in support
of the pipeline UM all centers around a place called
(04:53):
the Standing Rock Reservation. UM. There are protests in other
states as well, including South Dakota, Iowa, Illinois. Way. But then,
as we are wont to do, shall we give the facts? Yes,
here are the facts. The other stuff that we were
talking about earlier also factual. I just kind of messed
up the notes a little. So here the fact Standing
(05:15):
Rock Reservation, as you mentioned NOL, it has a it
has a prominent place in history. It is the sixth
largest reservation in the United States in terms of land area.
That includes all of Sioux County, North Dakota, of course
in County South Dakota, little pieces of Dewey and Zibat
Counties in South Dakota, and the reservation has a land
(05:40):
area about nine thousand, two and fifty one ish square kilometers,
with so a little bit under three point six thousand
square miles and as a population of eight thousand or
fifty as of the two thousand census, it officially became no.
(06:00):
These reservations were established in the Agreement of eighteen seventy seven.
They date back aways. There's also the location where Sitting Bull,
the famous elder leader Sitting Bull had had his followers
performing what is called the Ghost stance, which we can
(06:23):
go into in a different podcast, but it's an important
piece of the history of this country, especially the history
that is often not taught to people for one reason
or another. That's where this has taken place, and the
pipeline is what's being built. Here's where it gets crazy.
(06:44):
This pipeline isn't just the subject of controversy. It's the
subject of massive protests that are spanning the four states
we mentioned the dakotas in Iowa and Illinois, and spanning
the internet, social media, online forums, different distribution platforms. And
(07:08):
while it may seem a flash in the pan to
the casual observer, it turns out these pipeline protests date
back quite a ways. Yeah, back in when the pipeline
was first proposed or when it was discussed to be
a project that would be built, environmental activists began sending
(07:31):
up petitions. UH. They were sent to Iowa Governor Terry Brandstead.
UH they asked him to sign a state executive order
to straight up stop the proposed pipeline construction. Then in
March and April of sixteen, the EPA, the Environmental Protection
Agency UM, the Department of Interior, and the Advisory Council
on Historic Preservation came to the Army Corps of Engineers
(07:54):
and asked them to conduct a environmental impact assessment and
then issue an environmental impact statement UM. And then in
following that, in April, a Standing Rock Sue elder established
a camp as a center for the cultural preservation and
spiritual resistance to the pipeline. And then over the summer
(08:14):
of the camp grew, UM, it grew and grew thousands
of people. Yeah, and that elder is La Donna brave
Bull alert. I believe who was Standing Rocks Historic Preservation
officer or one of them. So in July, the Army
Corps of Engineers approved the water crossing permits for the
pipeline under what's called a fast track option, which you've
(08:36):
probably heard before in pipeline Conversations in construction of the
disputed section of the pipeline continued. So in that same month,
in July, a group called Respect Our Water with a Z.
It's a group of Native American youths. They ran all
the way from Standing Rock to Washington, d C. To
(08:56):
raise awareness of the threat to drinking water, now just
to their local community, but to everyone who relies on
the Missouri and Mississippi rivers for drinking water or irrigation.
They have more than one thousand petition signatures that they
attempted unsuccessfully to deliver to the White House. Additionally, the
(09:16):
Standing Rock su Tribe they filed a lawsuit against the
Army Corps of Engineers UH. They were accusing them of
violating the National Historic Preservation Act and several other laws.
They were arguing that quote the Core effectively wrote off
the tribe's concerns and ignored the pipeline's impacts too sacred
sites and culturally important landscapes and not casually culturally important. No,
(09:43):
not like the world's biggest frying pan or something. In
late October, since we are a family show. Let's describe
it this way. Late October, the s hit the f
and armed soldiers in police with riot gear and military
equipment cleared an encampment that was directly in the proposed
pipe bloods path. But why why are these people protesting?
(10:04):
So Many Sux tribes say that the pipeline is a
threat to their environmental and economic well being UM and
that it would actually cause significant damage and possibly even
destroy some of their sacred sites. UM. Protests at pipeline
construction sites in North Dakota started in twenty sixteen in
spring and drew Indigenous people calling themselves water protectors, which
(10:27):
I think is a term that many of you may
have heard, UM some of the Democracy Now coverage of that.
The people are kind of dubbing themselves as water protectors
and also the term land defenders from throughout North America
and many other supporters. And they created the largest gathering
of Native American tribes in the past hundred years of
American history, which is fascinating and I think speaks to them,
(10:51):
you know, severity of the situation as they see it. Yeah,
And over four d people have been arrested. Some of
these were planned arrest ME mean that people went into
this situation intending to make it inevitable that law enforcement
would arrest them. And this is the civil disobedience stuff
you hear about, like people changing themselves to in this
(11:11):
case heavy machinery. Yeah, either forcibly take me off of
this thing, or you won't be able to get any
work done. And let's look at some of the concerns
that these people have. We mentioned these sacred sites, but
let's explore this a little bit. There are locations with
great historical religious significance. According to Standing Rocks historic preservation
officer who we mentioned earlier, La Donna Brave Bowl Alert
(11:33):
with the quote, of the three and eighty archaeological sites
that face desecration along the entire pipeline route from North
Dakota to Illinois, twenty six of them are right here
at the confluence of these two rivers. It is an
historic trading ground, a place held secret not only by
the Sioux nations, but also by the Arikara, the Mandan,
and the Northern Cheyenne. The US government is wiping out
(11:56):
our most important cultural and spiritual areas, and as it
erases our footprint from the world, it erases us as
a people. And if we just pause here while I
know it may seem easy for some, especially people who
are not, you know, affiliated in any way with Native
American populations, well, it might seem easy for people to
(12:17):
dismiss this as you know, um a nomenclature claim or
change or something like that. This isn't really an eggs
making omelet situation. This comes from a group of people
who were vilified, suppressed, treated like absolute garbage, uh for
(12:44):
centuries by European by by European populations, you know. And
in many ways this could be seen as an extension
of people driven to reservations and then forced to live
within these areas under very very horrific conditions at times,
(13:06):
and now having other pieces of of what what remained
being slowly taken away. Of course, you can see this
could be considered an existential threat to the culture. And
then there's the there's the more physical threat of pollution. Yes,
(13:28):
there's a very real threat of water and soil contamination.
According to the Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration or
p h m s A. That's a sexy acronym. I'm
being sarcastic because well, according to them, there have been
over three thousand, three hundred incidents of leaks and ruptures
(13:49):
at oil and gas pipelines since two thousand ten. That
seems like a lot. And if you want to that's
according to them via Time dot Com. And if you
go to Wikipedia and there a couple other national transportation
government websites you can look at and you can see
reports of all of these leaks. And even if you
(14:13):
just go back to let's say the start of the
twenty one century and two thousand, you can see the
tens of thousands of leaks and just terrible things going
into the environment that shouldn't be there. And we have
a recent, a very recent example in the Colonial Pipeline.
Perhaps you have heard of this on your local news
(14:35):
if you live in the southeast, or you know, maybe
you've heard it somewhere else or read it on Reddit.
But there was an explosion there on October thirty one,
and it killed one person and injured five others. But
this comes just a month after there was a massive
pipeline leak there where three hundred and forty thousand gallons
(14:57):
of gasoline leaked to all over central Alabama and it
forced the line to shut down for twelve days. And
it caused states of emergency to be declared by governors
in six states, and gas prices rose throughout the entire
region and it was very intense. You could even see
it here in Atlanta. I don't know if you guys
(15:18):
noticed that premium and plus gasoline was unavailable for a while,
more so in like a gut stuff for example, where
my mom lives, and maybe a smaller area she couldn't find.
Y like it was a big deal. I didn't have
any problems here, but it's definitely something that you know,
affected people's day to day lives. Well, yeah, and the
bigger impact is that amount of oil spilling out into
(15:40):
natural areas where oil shouldn't be on the surface. Since
two thousand and six, the company that runs Colonial Pipeline,
they have reported one hundred and seventy eight spills and
other incidents that released combined one hundred and ninety three
thousand gallons of hazards liquids and caused thirty nine million
(16:01):
dollars in property damage. And I mean, as we know,
there are definitely regulations in place to keep things like
this from happening, but as we also know, things like
this do happen and It's one thing for a company
to be able to make it good over time, you know,
with money, but in the short term it can totally
ruin people's lives. I mean, look at what happened with
(16:23):
Deepwater Horizon and how long it took for those people
to be made whole, you know. So it's one thing
to say, oh, trust us, everything will be fine. Oh no,
we made a mistake, will make it right. But the
mechanisms in place to make it right do not work
particularly fast or well, let's be completely honest when you
(16:44):
say they don't work particularly fast, I would add, or
particularly well. There is a established history of private oil
companies covering up knowledge that they knew for decades beforehand
regarding risk to the environment. War two local communities, and
there's also just a mountain of stuff indicating that on
(17:06):
local state, at local and state levels at least the
authorities have colluded in covering up reports of oil spills.
And this is throughout the world in South America, Latin America,
North America. Those are the three that I know cases
of best, but it occurs throughout the world, and and
(17:28):
it could be anything from uh, someone who is building
let's say a wall or having to dig and perhaps
the pipeline isn't uh labeled correctly, or a map is
out of date or something to this effect, and you
just hit it and there's a spillops. Or you know,
you have a pipeline that's been there for years and
years and it's aging, and you know it gives way
(17:51):
right there. There are a ton of things that these
companies have to try and think about, and they do
think about, and they work really hard to make sure
it's don't happen. It's just it's nearly impossible to not
have a leak at some point. Also, I want to
I want to assure you, ladies and gentlemen, these are
not rumors. Fracking is a technique proven to have massive
(18:14):
potential for danger, which is essentially you know what I'm
summing up, but what we're seeing earlier. You can find
more information about it on some of our other podcast
our earlier work, as well as the work of our
friends over at Stuff. You should know they have a
great episode about fracking. I know a lot of people
sometimes have a gut reaction when we're talking about preserving
(18:37):
the environment. People can say, oh, I don't want to
hear this, or We're putting a couple of amphibians and
salmon and crap in front of real quality of life
for human people, right like uh like jobs, he ability
put food on the table. That is the That is
not what we were talking about today. This isn't some
touchy feely hippie hugs and sunshine rolling environmental idealism bulls.
(19:02):
We're talking about stuff that turns the water flammable, the
poisons farmland, and can even create earthquakes. Yeah, fracking can
induce earthquakes, not as the science isn't conclusive yet, but
there's a pretty shocking correlation between widespread fracking and earthquakes.
And just to be clear here, that fracking is occurring
(19:24):
in North Dakota in the shale areas right up in
north at the I guess where the pipeline begins. That's
where all those that bad stuff is happening. Then the
gas itself is then moving down the pipeline and those
are you know, those are also hazardous materials. And at
the risk of sounding you know, like a happy hippie
(19:45):
sunshine kid, it's just another example of manipulating the earth
in ways that we don't fully understand. What the outcome
will be it's sort of more of like a short,
short term we need this, We're gonna take this, but
you know, long term consequences be damned. Despite their best
efforts in research. Yeah, it's still there's still out there.
(20:08):
And of course, is it possible that the technology will
improve to the point that it is not as risky, Yeah,
it's possible. Is it possible that the price of fossil
fuels will lower to the point where it is no
longer profitable to pursue this kind of shell technology, Yeah,
it's possible. Uh. Is it also possible that alternative energy
(20:33):
will finally have the breakthrough everybody once like solar power, safe,
nuclear power, wind power, geothermal power, let me just name
them all, high hydropower, hydromancy. Sorry, that's water related magic,
but it may as well be at this point because
it's just not there. The world, whether you like it
or not, runs on oil at this point. Hemp power,
(20:57):
hemp power. Yeah, the wave check ology, that's really cool. Yeah,
and it's look, we made the power of love, the
power to move you with music, soul power. Hey guys,
it's four twenty right now. Oh yeah, I mean it's
time for a break and we're back. Let's get into
(21:26):
a little bit of nitty gritty here. So the Department
of Interior agreed with these statements about fracking, and we
have a quote from their earlier report goes as follows.
The routing of a twelve to thirty in crude oil
pipeline in close proximity to and upstream of the reservation
is of serious concern to the Department when establishing the
(21:46):
Standing Rock Sioux Tribes permanent homeland, the US reserved waters
of sufficient quality and quantity to serve the purposes of
the reservation. The Department holds more than eight hundred thousand
acres of land in trust for the tribe that could
be impacted by a leak or a spill. Further, a
spill could impact the waters that the tribe and individual
(22:07):
tribal members residing in that area rely upon for drinking
and other purposes. The emphasis here is mine. We believe
that if the pipeline's current route along the edge of
the reservation remains an option, the potential impact on trust
resources in this particular situation necessitates full analysis and disclosure
(22:27):
of potential impacts through the preparation of Again, that environmental
impact statement. Um, ben, it wasn't very an issue of
an easement here. Is this something that we can discuss.
I think they were contesting that there was. Okay, so yeah,
you're absolutely right. Now there's uh, what some like call
a little more conservative argument against the pipeline here too.
(22:49):
A lot of farmers are concerned about the state's ability
to condemn private land for another private entities use. And
this is something we've heard about before. Imminent domain essentially
a k a. The reason that here in the US,
other other entities can take several feet off a homeowner's
(23:10):
front guard to for instance, um in big in the road.
I just wanted to say, I'm big in too, you know,
Widen the road, make it more bigly. Yeah, yeah, exactly,
Please don't make it more bigly. And uh And as
preposterous as it sounds, it's completely possible for someone who
lives next to an expanding road to lose more and
(23:32):
more and more of their property each time there's construction. Look,
we don't talk about it much here in the US,
but the ability for someone to own land is awesome
and amazing, and it doesn't happen in a lot of
other places. In some places, the government owns everything and
(23:52):
all you can do is lease land for a long
amount of time. In other places, in parts of the
US like this, it impossible for most people to ever
have enough money to buy something, you know what I mean.
Imagine trying to buy a house in London Vancouver is
really difficult. And those are you know, those are relatively
similar places culturally to hear. But the argument with them
(24:18):
in a domain then is this idea like do I
really own this thing that I bought or is it
just a situation where we all pretend it's mine until
Uncle Sam comes and initially says, hey, we'll give you
this much for it, and you say, no, it's not
worth that much, and they're like, all right, we'll give
(24:39):
you a little more and you say no, I just
don't want to sell it, and they say, okay, well
we're gonna legally make you give it to us. If
anyone else did that, that would be a crime. Is
im in a domain necessary in many cases? Yeah, you
can make a strong argument that it is. That's how
cities work. We have to have things like roads and
(24:59):
and wiring for electricity and telephone power and utilities and stuff.
But how far does that go, how slippery is that slope.
That's a that's a very big concern, you know. So
we've got these arguments, right. We also see that there
have been similar protests in it, like in rough rough terms,
(25:24):
so and there have been protests of roughly similar nature
in the past. Unfortunately, it very very rarely ends well.
You can look at as Matt noticed noted, South America,
Central America especially, and whenever there is a multinational patroleum
(25:45):
company involved, there's a possibility that they can simply outperform
the countries rule of law, especially if it's vulnerable to corruption.
So the most conspiratorial aspect of this situation the they
(26:05):
in today's episode of stuff they don't want you to know,
According to many people, would be the mainstream media. And
I'm starting to hate that phrase more and more. The
mainstream media seems kind of like a false psychotomy. We
live in a time where everybody can just be an
Internet connection in a little bit of hardware away from
jumping on and creating their own source of information, however
(26:30):
pure or however corrupts. Here's the deal. While the protests
have drawn international attention, there was limited mainstream media coverage
of it until early September. This means that people in
other countries knew more about this then people who you know,
live in this country. Yeah, and in September it got
(26:55):
us attention when construction workers bulldozed the section of land
that the historic preservation officers had dot had recently documented
as a sacred site, and when protesters entered the area,
security workers used attack dogs on them as well as
pepper spring. There's video of all of this the Democracy
Now and several other people captured. There's one called the
(27:18):
Unicorn Riot on YouTube. I know it's a strange name,
but you can find lots of on the ground footage
of these kinds of occurrences. And yeah, at least five
of the protesters were bitten by these dogs. But very
very strange days. Also, we cannot ignore the impact of
(27:41):
social media. That's something that makes us a little different
from the nineteen fifties or other other earlier protests, similar
to the way that Twitter. Depending on your perspective, Twitter
either organically encouraged the so called Arab spring or was
used by intel gents agencies to foment an uprising. But
(28:03):
whether it is a tool or simply a medium of
effective communication, there's no question that this sort of online
platform and all its variations of social media, has greatly
impacted the nature protests. So in in in the old days,
the olden days, it was possible for just a fool
(28:27):
companies to control the narrative of the media. Uh spoiler alert.
They still do, but now more and more whippers snappers.
So you were seeing their own social media, so social
of information from mesher, I'm gonna drop that accent, but
you get the point. Creeping me out, man, I'm creeping
me out too, man. I've tremendously enjoyed that. So that
(28:50):
for what you will. That's why we're a system of
checks and balances, my friends. So more and more people
are using their own social media as what would hopefully
be a tool for change or a tool to get
there at least their perspective out there. And the biggest
(29:10):
example here in terms of the protest is the famous
viral check in at Standing Rock on Facebook. Did you
guys do this? My wife? Did? I did? Did you been?
I can't remember if I did. Probably I probably didn't
then because I would have remembered, wouldn't I. By the
time I saw it, so many people had done it too,
(29:32):
that I wondered. I immediately became kind of contrarian because
I wondered if it was helping, and it seems like
it seems like it is, so maybe I'll wait and
then do it later too. I was thinking, any authority
that was trying to figure out who has been checking
in would be able just to use location services with
(29:52):
phones if they're turned on. And you know, I'm just
I'm just assuming that these you know, these authority, these
have whatever technology the n s A has, which is
probably not true. So it probably did help a lot,
but what Yeah, but that's the question, how much does
it actually help. I'm sure it didn't hurt people. I mean,
it could have been an example like a situation where
they thought they were really clever by doing that in
(30:15):
the first place, you know, by turning that on, because
I mean, you know, social media has has been in
the last handful of years an important um element and
catalyst for protests and organizing people. So you know, you
have a Facebook event page or a group, you know,
and people can see that a lot of times even
if they're not a member. So you know, the powers
that be here could have been like, oh well, gee,
(30:37):
willakers we can totally see who all is there and
see who the leaders are and kind of keep tabs
on them by monitoring their Facebook groups. And this is
just kind of, you know, a show of solidarity on
the one hand, and also possibly a good smoke screen
to kind of keep them from using those tools against
people that are using them to try to peacefully organize.
So here's sorry. I was gonna say one last thing.
(30:58):
I was gonna say that, Um, we talk about the
Democracy Now coverage, and uh, one thing that interesting that
came out of that, aside from their video getting millions
of views showing attack dogs with blood on their muzzles,
and um, Amy Goodman, who is a Democracy Now is
um sort of anchor um questioning authorities on why they're
using these dogs when no one was armed and no
(31:20):
one was being overtly threatening in any way. She actually
had a warrant issued for her arrest um for trespassing, supposedly,
and she fought it and it was ultimately dropped. But
it's just kind of another example of intimidation, trying to
suppress the media and sort of punish them for putting
(31:43):
this information out there. And so with that excellent summation
and I didn't know about them. Warrant. That's pretty interesting,
the excellent summation. We just wanted to give you some
numbers to let you know the scale of this. But
there's a further step here we can go down, which
is the Yeah, all social media at this point is
(32:04):
privately owned, and that means the business owners can also
suppress a story or a narrative they don't care for.
And this is this might be a little bit of
what do they call it inside baseball for some But
one thing that Noel and Matt and I are all
very conscious of is that Facebook really really doesn't like
it if you post a YouTube video, right, and you
(32:27):
can talk a little bit about that, right, Matt. Yeah,
if you're linking out to any third party site, generally
they dislike it. Um. The strange thing that that we found,
especially if it's a social media site and YouTube is
considered social media. So yeah, if you wanna show peep
(32:47):
your your Twitter account or your Instagram page or a
video you made for YouTube, yeah, it's not gonna happen.
You're gonna get maybe one percent of the engagement and
impressions on Facebook. And and we have so much, we
have so much weird fun when we need to point
anybody to a specific thing off of Facebook but still
(33:11):
considers social media. We've had we found so many different
ways to sort of say wink wink, cough cough, YouTube,
but they don't work anymore because the algorithms now are
checking for like symbolic versions and differently spelled They're evolving
like terminator, Yeah, exactly. We need to come up with
(33:32):
a code word that everybody knows that we can use
to disseminate information. Yeah, like cheese pizza. I talked about
cheese pizza all the time. Though I have an issue.
I don't know if I would do the best. Maybe
people can send us suggestions. What do you think that
sounds good? How about hot dog stand in Hawaii? Visit
(33:53):
our hot dog stand in Hawaii to learn more about
Facebook censorship. Maybe maybe that'll work, you know. Facebook, Though,
beside aside from them the funny hypothetical examples, it appears
that Facebook did censor the Dakota protests and did use
their almighty algorithm to game the system, and when they
(34:16):
were called on it, they claimed it was an error
and they said the link was removed in error restored
as soon as we're able to investigate. Our team processes
millions of reports each week. We sometimes get stuff wrong.
We're very sorry about the mistake. Do you believe them?
That's up to you. Well, why don't we marinate on
that for a second when we take another quick break.
(34:43):
Welcome back everybody. So now we're gonna get to the future.
What what is going to happen with this pipeline? In particular,
are these protests going to be successful? Will they just
shut down the whole thing like the Keystone xl pie blind?
Is the earth gonna be okay? Well, that's interesting that
(35:05):
you would mention that, because you see, the federal government
did tell the oil company to pause construction in September. However,
according to a report by The Guardian, UH, the project
continues despite Uncle Sam telling them to pause it for
a second, not put the kabash on it, but not
(35:27):
to continue. UH. The Energy Transfer Partners Operation says it's
mobilizing drilling equipment to tunnel under late one of the lakes,
which activists say is unconscionable and devastating. And that's the
that's the strangest thing, because you would think that when
the federal government says don't do this anymore, they would
(35:51):
stop on their side. I'm sure there's an argument for
how much money they lose each day that they're not
doing it, you know what I mean. But if it's
a federal at the federal government tells you to do
something you kind of have to, kind of have to
and something you mentioned in the video this week, then
(36:12):
they released that news on a particular day, didn't on
election day on election days through US presidential candidate. Yeah.
And it brings us also to a larger concept here,
which is the future of protesting in general. How will
social media affect protesting? We we've seen it, you know.
(36:35):
People people are able to provide some cover for protesters
by being there on social media, even if they're not
physically there. People are of course able to transmit messages
through mediums that are at this point more nimble than
the tools of law enforcement. So on a federal level
(36:59):
and national level, many intelligence agencies are very very good
at observing information and sometimes of predicting it, but not
quite able to shut it down yet. And there have
been controversial moments where, for instance, the Twitter network was
(37:20):
shut down in a specific region. The ability to completely
shut something down may exist, but right now there are
literally billions of people who are working to share information.
Just the strength of ingenuity coming from those numbers means
that social media is irreparably interlinked with protesting, with being
(37:42):
able to have an alternative voice to a government or
a dominant narrative. But I have a question for you
guys to we've heard the term before cliquivist, right where
what what would we describe a clickutivist as or that
what that term means? Hey, I clicked like on a
page or I shared something on my social media and
(38:06):
I have done action to protest. Now I'm basically gandhi, Yes,
you're welcome. I I go back and forth with that
term because I think it is kind of unfair to
to judge people's intentions that way. You know what I mean, Well,
in the very least, it's showing I don't know, it's
(38:28):
making awareness. I guess that is. I mean, that is
a real arguments that happens. That's a real thing. It's
a worthwhile thing too. Ah. But there's a there's another
aspect here where I can see if people become I
I think one thing people object about with so called clicktivism,
(38:50):
people are critics of that is there. They're asking what
the time span is, like, are you going to care
about this next month, next year, next week? Yeah, but
you'll you'll always remember when those services like that do
the throwback Thursday thing, it'll let you know in ten
(39:11):
years that, hey, on this day, you change your profile
picture to this for this thing. Right. Yeah. I I'm
just hesitant to um, I'm just hesitant to completely disavow that,
you know, because I think that I certainly don't. I
(39:33):
certainly don't disavow it. However, it's you know it it's
not physical action. It's not volunteering. It's not going on
and doing something right, you know, with your with your
hands or you know, physically making a change, but it
is yeah, but it is making awareness, which is you know,
I don't think if it can be understated that that
(39:57):
is important. Yeah. And then this goes to another thing too.
We're talking about this about this narrative stuff. How can
individuals shape the course of a story or an event
now when the future protests or even learn of opposing
views in this creepy world of algorithm driven filter bubbles. So,
(40:19):
for instance, here's something that you will probably you'll probably notice, uh,
at least in Facebook and smother a lot of other
social media if you if the algorithm has proof that
you are a fan of I don't know, just what's
a random celebrity, just random celebrity. Okay, that you're a
(40:44):
fan of Iron Chef Bobby Flay, and Iron Chef Bobby
Flay does something uh tremendously controversial, weird and Gary Busey esque,
and half of half of the world is saying, yes,
Bobby Flay, take at home, buddy, You're You're the future,
(41:05):
and and then the other half of say, like, Bobby Flay,
You're a walking hate crime. You monster, you disgust me.
Then what the social media platforms and algorithms will do
is look back on your past posting history and say, oh, well,
Matt really really likes Bobby Flay, so he's on this
(41:26):
side of the argument. And what that means is that
what you will probably see, which are much more likely
to see on your Facebook feed or whatever your home
platform is, is just gonna be all the other people
who also think Bobby Flay is God's gift to barbecue
or whatever, and you'll miss all the people who might
have very valid points about why Bobby Flay is like
(41:47):
a monster. I don't you know if he listens to
the show, I don't, I don't know. You man, he
really messed up. He messed it up. But yeah, so
are we not? Here? Arene things? Uh? Is? Are we
more and more becoming echo chambers? Used the use the
right the right thing there, Matt the right re turn
(42:10):
of phrase. So this brings us to uh, something that's
somewhat irrittained to me, which is that it's an ongoing event.
So we don't know how it's gonna end, and we
don't have all the information. So it's quite possible that
this will come out and then within days something incredibly
decisive will happen and we'll need to go back and
(42:33):
do an update. But as for now, despite what may
or may not be reported by your local news affiliates,
there is a massive protest going on, and it's about
the future of people who have historically been oppressed with
the absolute compliance and at times UH leadership of our
(42:58):
country behind this, behind the practice, and it also goes
into the future of protests. And look, it's not even
it's not even a subject of what makes a person
a person or how human beings behave in groups so
much as it is that technology is disruptive, and now
(43:20):
more than ever at any point, we have this, We
have this situation where in the old status quo is
going to be increasingly fragile. It's gonna be brittle, It's
already bending, and soon it may break. All to say
that the future is going to be paved with protests
(43:41):
at least for a time, and possibly, you know, global
instability will finally result in the world war people have
been talking about, or uh, maybe an admittance that the
World war has already begun. And we want to know,
of course, what you think. When is the future protesting?
What's going to happen in the Dakota pipeline? Are you
(44:03):
for it or against it? And if so why? I'm
going to be pretty clear. I usually don't put my
personal opinion out here, but look, fracking is is a
dangerous technology that we do not fully control, and for
that reason, I do believe it's a bad decision. Is
(44:25):
it a necessary evil? Some would argue that it is.
At this point, I am not persuaded, and that is
again just one person's opinion. Are you for it or
against it? Uh? And if so why do you believe
that energy and dependence outweighs the concerns uh fracking? Do
you believe that fracking itself is an inherently unstable technology?
(44:48):
We'd like to hear from you, and again we can't.
I can't come up with high enough praise to do
the earlier stuff. You should know episode Justice they did
a really great job with fracking. And what's the best
way to get in contact with us? Well, we have
several several options before before a private entity or a
(45:10):
government shuts them down. You can contact us both on
Facebook and Twitter. But wait, there's more. You can also
contact us on Instagram. We are conspiracy stuff and most
of those, but on Instagram we are a conspiracy stuff show.
If you don't want to do any of that stuff
and you want to send us a suggestion, because, as
you know, if you'll listen to the show before, our
(45:31):
best ideas come from you guys, So shoot us a
good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at how stuff
works dot com.
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
Hosts And Creators
Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Show Links
RSSStoreAboutLive ShowsPopular Podcasts
United States of Kennedy
United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com