It is necessary to understand that the police army at Standing Rock wants to start killing the water protectors. You don’t deliberately inflict hypothermia on people, especially older people, unless you are cognizant of the fact that this can be lethal. Their use of water cannons in this context is lethal force. I imagine they’re delighted at the opportunity; they’ve only held off on live ammunition this long because massacres are bad PR.
(Oh, and a quick sidenote: “rubber” bullets are not made of rubber. They are metal pellets with a thin rubber coating. You can absolutely kill or severely injure someone with a rubber bullet.)Water protector Sophia Willansky was critically injured last night – she’s in surgery facing amputation of an arm – after being hit by what is called a “stun grenade” while distributing water bottles to her fellow protectors. “Stun Grenade” is an interesting euphemism for a concussive weapon that is not significantly less destructive to living things than a regular grenade. If you would like to see what a “stun grenade” does to a person’s body, you can google Sophia Willansky, but the images are graphic and I’m not sure she has consented to their release. Rest assured that it’s fucking horrific. This isn’t, like, “set phasers to stun”; this is “use words that sound nicer for stuff that kills people” and it’s scary and garbage.
