PhotoPresident Obama has pointed a way out of a dangerous standoff over an oil pipeline being built in North Dakota. He told an interviewer on Tuesday that the Army Corps of Engineers was looking for a new pipeline route, presumably away from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, whose members and allies have been protesting the project for months, saying it threatens the tribe’s sacred lands and water supply. The $3.7 billion Dakota Access pipeline is meant to carry crude oil from the Bakken fields of western North Dakota to Illinois, 1,170 miles to the east. The law-enforcement response to the largely peaceful Standing Rock impasse has led to grim clashes at protest camps between hundreds of civilians and officers in riot gear. But without relitigating the history of the North American conquest, perhaps the protesters can achieve their aim to stop or reroute the pipeline.

Source: New York Times November 04, 2016 00:23 UTC