*0=>>>>New Old Ways<<<<=0*

AIM on trial again in Rancid City - Frontier Justice in action
By Hazel Bonner
February 9 2004

The government and the defense rested their cases on February 5 in the trial of the American Indian Movement in Rancid City. AIM went on trial here on February 3.

The case involves a botched first autopsy on the body of Anna Mae Aquash which did not even locate a bullet lodged in the head and said the death was from exposure, and failure to charge a suspect for 28 years. The case involves rumors that Aquash was an FBI informant and the testimony of a real FBI informant.

The case also involves the severing of the victims’ hands to be sent to the FBI for identification. The body was placed in December, found in February but not identified until March. I wonder if it was necessary to sever both hands? That is an acceptable but infrequently used medical practice.

The case is titled United States v. Arlo Looking Cloud. When the government rested we had heard little about Looking Cloud’s involvement in the murder of Aquash in December 1975. When the defense rested we had heard only the testimony of David Price, special FBI agent here during that period.

A great deal was heard about the activities of AIM activists Leonard Peltier, Dennis Banks, Russell Means, John Trudell, Thelma Rios, Theda Clark, and others.

The star witness was Darlene (Kmook) Nichols who lived with Banks during the height of AIM activities in South Dakota. She was a spurned lover who discovered that Banks had slept with Aquash.

She told the jury that Leonard Peltier had bragged about shooting an FBI agent at Oglala in 1975. She claims he said, “He was begging for his life, but I shot him anyway.” She further testified that Aquash had told her that Peltier had taken her alone in a car while at a national convention in New Mexico and held a gun to her head. He allegedly asked if she was an informant. She allegedly replied that if he believed that he should shoot her and if he didn’t he should defend her.

According to the star witness, Peltier had met with AIM members to teach them to make bombs. Of course the only thing Nichols had done was hold a piece of dynamite while being instructed by Peltier. She never participated in the building or placing of bombs. Yeah, right! Further she claims to have received a call from Dennis Banks the day the body was found informing her that Aquash’s body had been found.

Nichols also stated that she had been wired when she had a conversation with Dennis Banks, and again when she had a conversation with Troy Lynn Yellow Woods and Arlo Looking Cloud in the Yellow Woods home in Denver. She said that Leonard Peltier and Dennis Banks were dangerous. According to her, both had stated, along with Leonard Crow Dog, that Aquash was an informant. Under cross she admitted to being paid $42,000 for her cooperation, plus expenses. The government then pointed out that the payments were to move her twice when Dennis Banks found out where she was. Come on now, did she believe Banks would kill her, the mother of his four children? Several government witnesses said they believed that Aquash would not be killed, because other informants had been exposed and nothing had happened to them.

At the close of the government case, not one second of the taped conversations had been heard. Witnesses had their memories refreshed by reading from the transcripts of those tapes however. These tapes, I believe, were destroyed “inadvertently” in Denver. Transcripts are no proof that such a conversation occurred, and should not have been admissible without the tapes. Defense counsel said he had heard the tapes. He did not object to the use of the transcripts during the trial. Perhaps he had pre-trial and been denied.

The testimony of Madeline White Bear was almost as incredible. She testified about Aquash coming to her in California with her fear of both the FBI and AIM. She told a story about a secret code involving a ring and a call to AIM Spokesman John Trudell. The call was made when the ring was returned to her in a box after the Aquash death, but before anyone knew about it. She claims to have only talked to the FBI because she believed they were Canadian Mounties. Aquash was from Canada.

Troy Lynn Yellow Woods did not remember things the way the government wanted her to. She had to continuously be refreshed with the 1985 grand jury transcript and the alleged transcript of the conversation taped by a wired Nichols. She ended her testimony by adamantly stating that if Looking Cloud knew what was going on he would have had nothing to do with it. She must not have been so handsomely rewarded for her testimony!

Tim Rensch was the defense attorney. Strangely Rensch appeared to also be indicting AIM while distancing Looking Cloud from them. He asked several witnesses what happened to AIM members who challenged the leadership. He did object each time to the admission of the statements of people not present to testify. Virtually every time his objections were overruled. Rensch’s father Bill Rensch is married to an aunt of Thelma Rios. Other than the above hearsay statements by government witnesses much of the testimony continued to be more damaging to AIM than to the defendant. Looking Cloud called the victims daughters to express his feelings. Denise Maloney Pickman testified about the conversation. She said that Looking Cloud did not incriminate himself during the conversation.

The government claimed that Aquash was never alone between leaving the Yellow Woods home in Denver and her death. She was always being guarded by the defendant, Graham or Clark. Legal defense workers Candy Hamilton and Jeanette Eagle Hawk testified for the government. Both said little about the involvement of Looking Cloud. Candy Hamilton found Aquash alone in the kitchen at the Wounded Knee Legal Defense Offense Committee (WKLDOC) office. Said her hair was cut short and she seemed very unhappy. She did not ask Hamilton for assistance or try to escape out the back door. Looking Cloud was not present during those meetings.

Hamilton testified under cross that she first heard the rumors that Aquash was an informant from John Stewart. Stewart lived in Oglala and was an FBI informant. Perhaps the FBI started the rumors because she had refused to help them?

Cleo (Marshall) Gates testified about a visit made to the home of herself and her husband Dick Marshall in Allen in early December, 1975. Clark, Graham, and Looking Cloud came late at night. They had Aquash with them. Clark said they had a note (again implied evidence that was never seen) and needed to meet with Marshall. They went in the bedroom leaving Aquash alone with Gates. She said nothing about being afraid nor did she seek assistance. Following the meeting, Marshall told her that they wanted them to keep Aquash there until some things were resolved. She refused and said under cross that had she had any indication that Aquash was in danger she would have kept her there. So a few hours before her shooting, she was alone in a room with a woman who did not sense any fear or danger. The decision from that meeting of the three men and Clark was that she should be kept in that home. No wonder Looking Cloud was surprised when she was actually shot.

The issue in this case, I thought, was whether Looking Clouds involvement rose to the level of the charges, murder and aiding and abetting a murder. The government presented a great deal of extraneous background material. The finding of the body by Rancher Roger Amiotte, the location and condition of the body and picture after picture of her. The FBI was in charge of the investigation. The botched autopsy was their responsibility. To me, the pictures and discussion of the condition of her body also seemed prejudicial to Looking Cloud. No objections were made to those admissions, unless that had been dealt with in pretrial motions.

Two government witnesses testimony was basically all over the place. Richard Two Elk and John Trudell testified about alleged conversations they had had with Looking Cloud. Two Elk appeared to be grandstanding and is known for taping conversations with people and selling them on a website. Both Two Elk and Nichols were asked by defense if they planned on making money on this case. Both denied it.

The final government witness was Robert Eccoffee. He testified about his efforts to solve this crime as a BIA law enforcement person and a United States Marshall. His efforts involved in interrogations in 1994, 1995 and 2003. He testified from memory regarding the 1995 interrogation. His memory was challenged by Wrench using reports he had filed. During none of the interviews did Looking Cloud state that while alone in the car with Aquash she had begged him to let her go. The 2003 interview was audio and video taped. It appeared less incriminating that the interview in 1995.

The 1994 interrogation was not allowed to be discussed before the jury. The question became, with those interrogations, why had Looking Cloud not been arrested then, Why wait till now? Looking Cloud was not under surveillance by Eccoffee in Denver and Wrensh challenged him about his oath to protect the public. If he believed in 1994 that Looking Cloud was guilty, shouldn’t he have been charged then, 10 years earlier?

When the government rested, Wrensch called David Price to the stand and then rested. Price was a special agent for the FBI who was stationed in Rapid City at the time. Two prior agents had testified that cultivating informants was not a part of the job of the FBI. David Price said it is.

Price met with Aquash twice, on April 10, 1975, at the Ted Lame residence south of Oglalla and on September 5, 1975 in Rosebud. He said he did not attempt to cultivate her as a witness, just asked her questions about specific crimes, as he did many other persons.

After resting the case for the defense Rensch presented a motion for acquittal before going to the jury. The basis for it was the huge amount of information regarding AIM leaders and the small amount of information about Looking Cloud’s culpability for the crime. Rensch argued that all of that information had nothing to do with Looking Cloud but was very prejudicial to him. The judge said the government had presented a prima facie case and passed it to the jury.

I do not know why the defense presented only Price. I do not care to guess about defense strategy. The government strategy was very transparent. Hit AIM with all barrels. Peltier remains in prison for the deaths of two FBI agents in 1975. Testimony about that appeared to have no place in this case, but it was presented.

Testimony about the Custer and Sioux Falls Court House cases was also irrelevant, but it was heard. Testimony about Banks feelings regarding Aquash and his alleged call to Nichols on the day the body was found saying it was Aquash, was irrelevant. All this evidence was admitted through the testimony of Nichols based on wired interviews, without any of the tape being heard, because I understand the tapes were inadvertently destroyed! Perhaps Yellow Woods memory of that conversation was accurate. Without the tape to back up the transcript, use of the transcript was not evidence of the content of those conversations. The jury would believe that they were.

Because I did not believe the jury would be able to parse through all of this and decide what was relevant from what was submitted, not for the truth of the matter, but for the fact that it was allegedly said, I feared that Looking Cloud would be convicted. And another long battle to free him will be in process. I hoped I was wrong in this case. I hoped Rensh would tell the jury the significance of Price’s testimony! He didn’t. Many people felt after closing arguments that Looking Cloud would be acquitted. I still believed he would be convicted. I prayed I was wrong. On Saturday morning following the conviction I visited my son in jail. He is in a cell next to Looking Cloud in the maximum-security pod of the jail. He said the whole pod was upset by the conviction. He said at first Looking Cloud was very quiet but then went in his cell and began singing in Lakota. My son, who is black, said he believes all the other inmates in the pod are Indian. No one stopped the singing. Lakota inmates joined in when they knew the songs.

My son told him he could listen to the singing all night. He praised his musical ability and his talent and stated that it is such a waste to lock that talent away in prison. He is so right! This entire trial was a farce at taxpayer expense. For 28 years after the death of Aquash, Looking Cloud remained free. He served those years in his own private torture chamber. He was forever changed by the events on that ridge overlooking the rugged Badlands that early December morning in 1975. To lock him in prison for the rest of his life seems to me cruel and unusual punishment.

Bonner is a free lance writer who writes from her home. She can be reached electronically at hbonpidge1 at hotmail.com; by phone at (605)343-4467; or by mail at PO Box 3712, Rapid City, SD 55709-3712.

From:http://www.dlncoalition.org/related_issues/bonner_2004feb9.htm

The trial is over, however the background from this BBC News Online Story does convey some of the circumstances and difficulties of American Indian community
of Pine Ridge Reservation during the time of the "set up" of Leonard Peltier and AIM...
The trial did not produce justice, just us!

Unfinished business in Indian country
By Chris Summers
from 2 February 2004...BBC News Online

A revolutionary fighting oppression, killed with a bullet in the back of the head by her erstwhile comrades who suspected her of being an informant. Palestine? Northern Ireland? No, this was America's Midwest.

Arlo Looking Cloud, accused of killing Anna Mae in 1975
Anna Mae Aquash was an activist with the American Indian Movement (AIM), which was fighting for the rights of the indigenous people of the United States.

This week one of her former AIM colleagues goes on trial in Rapid City, South Dakota charged with her murder. The trial of Arlo Looking Cloud, 49, is likely to reopen plenty of old wounds.

A second man, John Boy Graham, who allegedly fired the fatal shot, is fighting extradition from Canada.

The body of the 30-year-old Micmac Indian was found in a remote corner of the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota in February 1976.

It is claimed she was killed because of rumours she was an FBI informant.

'Exploitation and persecution'

In the 1970s a new group was born which was determined to fight proactively for the rights of the Native American people who, it claimed, had been persecuted and exploited for so long by "white" America.

AIM took on the mantle of legendary Indian leaders such as Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse.

Trouble in Indian Country
Feb-May 1973: AIM activists besieged at Wounded Knee, South Dakota
Jun 1975: Two FBI agents shot dead at Oglala, South Dakota
Nov 1975: Anna Mae Aquash goes missing from Denver, Colorado
Feb 1976: Anna Mae's body found near Wanblee, South Dakota
Apr 1977: Leonard Peltier given two consecutive life sentences for murdering FBI agents.
Feb 2004: Arlo Looking Cloud goes on trial accused of killing Anna Mae


Who killed Anna Mae?
AIM grew rapidly and began to challenge the authority of the FBI, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and the tame Indian tribal councils who, between them, had run things on the reservations for decades.

AIM wanted, among other things, to publicise the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty which ceded a vast swathe of South and North Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana to the Lakota (Sioux) people in perpetuity.

The treaty was later torn up and Lakotas were given worthless scraps of land to live on.

They were also evicted from the sacred Black Hills (Paha Sapa) in South Dakota, when the US Government realised they were a rich source of gold, coal, uranium and molybdenum.


Many Lakotas ended up on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota which, in the early 1970s, was run as a private fiefdom by a "half-breed" called Dick Wilson.

Pine Ridge was the home of the Oglala - one of seven Lakota clans. The most famous of all Oglalas was the 19th century warrior Crazy Horse.

In an attempt to highlight what they saw as the graft, nepotism and violence of Wilson's regime and to focus attention on the betrayal of the Fort Laramie Treaty, AIM activists occupied the town of Wounded Knee (scene of an infamous massacre of Indians in 1890) in 1973.

For 71 days armed AIM supporters were besieged by FBI agents, BIA police and Wilson supporters.

Eventually they surrendered after the US Government promised to investigate the corruption.

'Political prisoner'

Little was ever done and by the summer of 1975 violence against AIM activists on Pine Ridge was at record levels and the atmosphere was poisonous.

The Lakota (Sioux) clans
Oglala
Brule
Hunkpapa
Miniconjous
Sans Arcs
Two Kettles
Blackfeet (not to be confused with the Blackfeet tribe from Montana)
On 26 June 1975 two FBI agents, Ron Williams and Jack Coler, were killed by AIM gunmen during a shootout near the town of Oglala.

Two AIM men, Dino Butler and Bob Robideau, were acquitted but another, Leonard Peltier, was given two consecutive life sentences.

He continues to protest his innocence from Leavenworth penitentiary in Kansas and is considered a political prisoner by AIM.


Anna Mae Aquash was suspected of being an FBI informant
He has also drawn support from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, the Dalai Lama and the Reverend Jesse Jackson.

'Like the Third world'

In September 1975 FBI agents investigating the murder of their colleagues at Oglala raided a property on the nearby Rosebud reservation.

Anna Mae was one of several people picked up, although she was later bailed. She jumped bail and headed for California but only got as far as Denver.

What happened to her after that remains uncertain.

In the quarter of a century since the events on the Pine Ridge reservation life has changed little for the Oglala.

Most reservations are run like Third World countries by tribal elders who act like dictators. Some of them don't even allow freedom of speech

Frank King
Native Voice
Frank King, publisher of the Native Voice newspaper, said: "Most reservations are run like Third World countries by tribal elders who act like dictators. Some of them don't even allow freedom of speech."

Mr King, a Lakota who hails from the Rosebud reservation, said many of the 4.3 million Native Americans lived in a welfare culture and the Crow Creek reservation in South Dakota had the highest unemployment rate in the US.


In December 2000 FBI agents protested against Peltier being pardoned
He said alcoholism and obesity were also endemic on most reservations and he blamed it on a "poverty of the mind".

"Tribes have come to the point where they have created a business out of being poor and they are just looking for handouts," said Mr King.

As for AIM, it has become fractured between different factions and Mr King said: "The main AIM is a federally-funded charity with a board of directors and they're always looking for money. It's just lost the spirit of the thing."

One of the early leaders of AIM, Russ Means, said the organisation was targeted by the FBI's Counter Intelligence Program, which was used to destroy groups like the Black Panthers and the Puerto Rican liberation movement.

Speaking from his ranch on the Pine Ridge reservation he said: "The colonialism of the US Government has led to genocide. We now have the lowest life expectancy in the Western Hemisphere, despite sitting on some of the most valuable minerally-rich land in the world. The US Government has stolen $50bn of our money."

From: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3406955.stm

Former Federal Prosecutor John Loftus
Confirms the Bush-Nazi scandal
October 31. 2003

Some of our most famous American families, including the Bushes, made their
fortunes from the Holocaust. Before I tell this awful story, I have to admit
that I am a Democrat, but I quite like this President. He is not the
sharpest tool in the shed, but he has a good heart, and the good sense not
to follow in his father's footsteps. "W" has some good people around him who
keep a firewall in the White House against his father's oil cronies. In
terms of Republican politics, "W" is a rebel.

Morally, George W. Bush is the polar opposite of his grandfather and great
grandfather (the "W" stands for Walker) who caused such havoc in the world
with their Nazi investments. One cannot blame "W" for what his grandfather
did, anymore than one can blame Jack Kennedy because his father bought Nazi
stocks. What most people do not know is that Joseph Kennedy bought his Nazi
stocks from Prescott Bush. Every great family has its scandal. The Bush
family's scandal is that they funded Hitler and profited from the Holocaust.

It is quite possible that "W" (and his boyhood friend William Stamps
Farrish, now US Ambassador to Britain) have tilted towards Israel perhaps
because they wished to atone for the sins of their fathers. (Farrish's
father committed suicide over his father's connections to the Bush-Nazi
scandal.) Whatever the reason for the rebellion of the grandchildren, this
Bush is quite a different man than his forbears. I like him and wish him
well. But liking this Bush does not excuse my duty as a historian to tell
the truth and let the chips fall where they may.

There was a great deal of skepticism ten years ago when I first wrote about
the Bush-Nazi scandal in my book, "The Secret War Against the Jews." Its
historical validity has now been confirmed by the ground breaking work of
reporter John Buchanan. In October 2003, Buchanan unearthed the recently
released Bush-Thyssen files in the US National Archives.

These long buried US government files demonstrate that the Bush family
stayed on the corporate boards of Nazi front groups even after they knew
beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were helping the financial cause of the
Third Reich. It was all about the money. Nazi Germany is where the Bush
family fortune came from, and where the Harrimans, and the Rockefellers
increased their fortunes to obscene proportions.

Of course some of them were quite rich to begin with. The Harriman railroad
monopoly helped create the Rockefeller oil monopoly in the 1800's. Their
despicable price fixing schemes earned them the press label "the Robber
Barons." My favorite Republican Teddy Roosevelt ruined their rapacious
profits with his anti-monopoly and anti-trust legislation.

The Robber Barons bribed Congress (it happens) into passing a loophole, the
Web-Pomerene Act of 1918 which legalized cartels and monopolies outside the
borders of the United States. This loophole law let the Robber Barons loose
to prey on a helpless world already ravaged by the human and and financial
cost of WWI.

Averil Harriman (patriarch of the famous Democratic family) promptly broke
another American law by secretly financing the Bolsheviks while American,
British and White Russian troops were still fighting against the infant
communist revolution. (The FBI "ARCOS" files on Harriman's connections with
the Soviets are quite a read). Harriman bribed Lenin into letting him take
over the Czar's cartels, which exported managanese, iron ore and other raw
materials. Harriman shipped the Russian raw materials to his German
partners, the Thyssens, who had been secretly bought out by the
Rockefellers.

The Rockefeller's lawyers, the Dulles Brothers, had deliberately and
systematically bankrupted the German economy with the Versaille Treaty.
German currency was almost worthless after WWI, and so the Dulles brother's
favorite clients, the Rockefellers, were able to buy the stock of nearly
every German company for a song. The great sucking sound that preceeded the
Great Depression was the whistling of Wall Street money out of America into
Germany, Russia (and as a side deal, Saudi Arabia). Two generations later,
we are still paying for it.

The Robber Barons did not call it an international crime. They called it
synergy. Harriman's Soviet cartels would deliver the raw materials,
Rockfeller's high-tech German companies (the Thyssens) would process the
manganese into steel for Harriman's railroads. To save transportation costs,
the Robber Barons looked for a middle ground in eastern Poland for a future
factory site. It had to be in the coal fields of Silesia, on the banks of
the Vistula river, where a canal could be dug to ship materials in cheaply
from Russia. The Polish town was named Oswieczim, later known to the world
by its German name: Auschwitz.

It was not a killing factory then, although slave labor was always
contemplated for the maximum profit factor. Auschwitz was designed to
process Silesian coal into tar additives necessary for Russian aviation
fuel. It was a high tech German chemical factory built to balance out
Harriman's Russian-to-Germany export trade.

The Rockefeller-Harriman front company that financed Auschwitz was called
Brown Brothers Harriman. It is still around today. Our President's great
granfather, Herbert Walker, founded the company, and appointed his
impecunious son-in-law Prescott Bush to the boards of several holding
companies, all of which became Nazi fronts. The Walkers and Bushes never
really liked the Nazis, anymore than Harriman liked the communists. To the
robber barons, they were just dogs on a leash. One day the dogs broke their
chains, and Hitler and Stalin got loose. Fifty million people died as a
result of a bad investment.

The Robber Barons saw it coming. Their lawyers, the Dulles brothers, had a
contingency plan. They had established three banks, one in Germany, one in
Holland, and one in New York (the Union Banking Corporation, headed by the
ever-useful son-in-law Prescott Bush). No matter who won World war II, the
corporate stocks would be shifted around to whichever bank was in a neutral
country when the war was over.

After WW II, the Dulles brothers' shell game deceived a gullible and
war-weary world. The "neutral" Dutch bank reclaimed their German assetts as
"stolen" by the Nazis, and the whole merry fraud continued. Prescott Bush
got his Union Bank back from the US Government in 1951, despite its seizure
in 1942 as a Nazi front. Prescott Bush and father-in-law Walker were paid
two shares worth about $1.5 million in 1951 dollars. It was a petty payoff
for a job well done.

Nearly 4,000 shares (98% of the Union Bank holdings) were held by Roland
Harriman in trust for the Rockefellers. That's about three billion in 1951
dollars, more than 30 billion dollars in todays money. Most of it was
reinvested in post-war Germany where they made even more obscene profits.
After all, Germany was just as cash starved after World War II as they were
after World War I. It was just another cycle in the Robber Baron's
spreadsheet. Everyone made money off the Holocaust, except of course the
Jews and the Allied soldiers.

A few decades later things had quited down and all the Nazi money finally
came home to Wall Street. By 1972, one of Rockfeller's assetts, the Chase
Manhattan bank in New York, secretly owned 38% of the Thyssen company,
according to internal Thyssen records in my custody. Not a bad payoff for
the Robber Barons. The Auschwitz investment paid off handsomely. The
Thyssen-Krupp corporation is now the wealthiest conglomerate in Europe. WWII
is over. The Germans won.

Also in the 1970's, Brown Brothers Harriman, perhaps coincidentally,
convinced the ever pliant New York State Banking Commision to issue a
regulation permitting them to shred all their records for the Nazi period.
The Robber Barons, unlike the Swiss bankers, knew how to cover their tracks.

There were, of course, exceptions. Von Kouewenhoven, director of the Dutch
Bank, discovered the secret Thyssen-Nazi connection after the war, and
foolishly went to New York to warn his old friend Prescott Bush. His body
was found two weeks later. It was reported with a straight face that he died
of a heart attack.

A dear friend of mine, former American secret agent William E. Gowen, played
a principal role in unravelling the entire Bush-Nazi scandal. Gowen
confirmed that years after Von Kouenhowen's death, another Dutch
investigator, a journalist named Eddie Roever, also suffered a convenient
heart attack just as he was about to confront Baron Heinrich von
Thyssen-BjornaMissa at his palatial London home, across from Margaret
Thatchers.

Margaret Thatcher may not have known (or maybe she did) that her neighbor
Baron Heinrich's brother was the infamous Nazi, Fritz Thyssen, who served
Brown Brothers Harriman at the heart of the Nazi war machine. The Dulles
Brothers hired ghostwriters for Fritz's mea culpa book "I Financed Hitler."
To this day, gullible American media believe that Fritz Thyssen turned
against Hitler in disgust at the last moment before WWII. Now that is spin!

The truth is that Prescott's Unon Bank loaned the money to the Dutch Bank
that loaned Hitler the money to build his first Nazi headquarters, the Braun
Haus in Munich. The Thyssen's factories built the Bismark, the rail lines to
Auschwitz and Treblinka, and sent the rest of their steel to their cartel
partners, Flick and Krupp. Together, these war criminals made the bullets
and the bombs that killed our parents' generation. They got away with it.

It is not suprising that their grandchildren are ashamed of how their
families made their money. The only suprise is that the American media is
still afraid to go to the US national archives and look at the files that
John Buchanan found. But then, I am not surprised at all.

Here is what I wrote nearly ten years ago in "The Secret War Against the
Jews":

THE BUSH-DULLES-NAZI CONNECTION

"George Bush's problems were inherited from his namesake and maternal
grandfather, George Herbert 'Bert' Walker, a native of St. Louis, who
founded the banking and investment firm of G. H. Walker and Company in 1900.
Later the company shifted from St. Louis to the prestigious address of 1
Wall Street. . . .

"Walker was one of Hitler's most powerful financial supporters in the United
States. The relationship went all the way back to 1924, when Fritz Thyssen,
the German industrialist, was financing Hitler's infant Nazi party. As
mentioned in earlier chapters, there were American contributors as well.

"Some Americans were just bigots and made their connections to Germany
through Allen Dulles's firm of Sullivan and Cromwell because they supported
Fascism. The Dulles brothers, who were in it for profit more than ideology,
arranged American investments in Nazi Germany in the 1930s to ensure that
their clients did well out of the German economic recovery. . . .

"Sullivan & Cromwell was not the only firm engaged in funding Germany.
According to 'The Splendid Blond Beast,' Christopher Simpson's seminal
history of the politics of genocide and profit, Brown Brothers, Harriman was
another bank that specialized in investments in Germany. The key figure was
Averill Harriman, a dominating figure in the American establishment. . . .

"The firm originally was known as W. A. Harriman & Company. The link between
Harriman & Company's American investors and Thyssen started in the 1920s,
through the Union Banking Corporation, which began trading in 1924. In just
one three-year period, the Harriman firm sold more than $50 million of
German bonds to American investors. 'Bert' Walker was Union Banking's
president, and the firm was located in the offices of Averill Harriman's
company at 39 Broadway in New York.

"In 1926 Bert Walker did a favor for his new son-in-law, Prescott Bush. It
was the sort of favor families do to help their children make a start in
life, but Prescott came to regret it bitterly. Walker made Prescott vice
president of W. A. Harriman. The problem was that Walker's specialty was
companies that traded with Germany. As Thyssen and the other German
industrialists consolidated Hitler's political power in the 1930s, an
American financial connection was needed. According to our sources, Union
Banking became an out-and-out Nazi money-laundering machine. . . .

"In [1931], Harriman & Company merged with a British-American investment
company to become Brown Brothers, Harriman. Prescott Bush became one of the
senior partners of the new company, which relocated to 59 Broadway, while
Union Banking remained at 39 Broadway. But in 1934 Walker arranged to put
his son-in-law on the board of directors of Union Banking.

"Walker also set up a deal to take over the North American operations of the
Hamburg-Amerika Line, a cover for I.G. Farben's Nazi espionage unit in the
United States. The shipping line smuggled in German agents, propaganda, and
money for bribing American politicians to see things Hitler's way. The
holding company was Walker's American Shipping & Commerce, which shared the
offices at 39 Broadway with Union Banking. In an elaborate corporate paper
trail, Harriman's stock in American Shipping & Commerce was controlled by
yet another holding company, the Harriman Fifteen Corporation, run out of
Walker's office. The directors of this company were Averill Harriman, Bert
Walker, and Prescott Bush. . . .

". . . In a November 1935 article in Common Sense, retired marine general
Smedley D. Butler blamed Brown Brothers, Harriman for having the U.S.
marines act like 'racketeers' and 'gangsters' in order to exploit
financially the peasants of Nicaragua. . . .

". . . A 1934 congressional investigation alleged that Walker's
'Hamburg-Amerika Line subsidized a wide range of pro-Nazi propaganda efforts
both in Germany and the United States.' Walker did not know it, but one of
his American employees, Dan Harkins, had blown the whistle on the spy
apparatus to Congress. Harkins, one of our best sources, became Roosevelt's
first double agent . . . [and] kept up the pretense of being an ardent Nazi
sympathizer, while reporting to Naval Intelligence on the shipping company's
deals with Nazi intelligence.

"Instead of divesting the Nazi money," continue the authors, "Bush hired a
lawyer to hide the assets. The lawyer he hired had considerable expertise in
such underhanded schemes. It was Allen Dulles. According to Dulles's client
list at Sullivan & Cromwell, his first relationship with Brown Brothers,
Harriman was on June 18, 1936. In January 1937 Dulles listed his work for
the firm as 'Disposal of Stan [Standard Oil] Investing stock.'

"As discussed in Chapter 3, Standard Oil of New Jersey had completed a major
stock transaction with Dulles's Nazi client, I.G. Farben. By the end of
January 1937 Dulles had merged all his cloaking activities into one client
account: 'Brown Brothers Harriman-Schroeder Rock.' Schroeder, of course, was
the Nazi bank on whose board Dulles sat. The 'Rock' were the Rockefellers of
Standard Oil, who were already coming under scrutiny for their Nazi deals.
By May 1939 Dulles handled another problem for Brown Brothers, Harriman,
their 'Securities Custodian Accounts.'

"If Dulles was trying to conceal how many Nazi holding companies Brown
Brothers, Harriman was connected with, he did not do a very good job.
Shortly after Pearl Harbor, word leaked from Washington that affiliates of
Prescott Bush's company were under investigation for aiding the Nazis in
time of war. . . .

". . . The government investigation against Prescott Bush continued. Just
before the storm broke, his son, George, abandoned his plans to enter Yale
and enlisted in the U.S. Navy. It was, say our sources among the former
intelligence officers, a valiant attempt by an eighteen-year-old boy to save
the family's honor.

"Young George was in flight school in October 1942, when the U.S. government
charged his father with running Nazi front groups in the United States.
Under the Trading with the Enemy Act, all the shares of the Union Banking
Corporation were seized, including those held by Prescott Bush as being in
effect held for enemy nationals. Union Banking, of course, was an affiliate
of Brown Brothers, Harriman, and Bush handled the Harrimans' investments as
well.

"Once the government had its hands on Bush's books, the whole story of the
intricate web of Nazi front corporations began to unravel. A few days later
two of Union Banking's subsidiaries -- the Holland American Trading
Corporation and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation -- also were
seized. Then the government went after the Harriman Fifteen Holding Company,
which Bush shared with his father-in-law, Bert Walker, the Hamburg-Amerika
Line, and the Silesian-American Corporation. The U.S. government found that
huge sections of Prescott Bush's empire had been operated on behalf of Nazi
Germany and had greatly assisted the German war effort." (1)

EDWIN PAULEY

"Try as he did," continue the authors, "George Bush could not get away from
Dulles's crooked corporate network, which his grandfather and father had
joined in the 1920s. Wherever he turned, George found that the influence of
the Dulles brothers was already there. Even when he fled to Texas to become
a successful businessman on his own, he ran into the pirates of Wall Street.

"One of Allen Dulles's secret spies inside the Democratic party later became
George Bush's partner in the Mexican oil business. Edwin Pauley, a
California oil man, was . . . one of Dulles's covert agents in the Roosevelt
and Truman administrations . . . a 'big business' Democrat. . . ."

Among the key posts held by Pauley were: treasurer of the Democratic
National Committee, director of the Democratic convention in 1944 and, after
Truman's election, Truman appointed him the "Petroleum Coordinator of
Lend-Lease Supplies for the Soviet Union and Britain."

Just after the end of World War II, "in April 1945 Truman appointed Pauley
as the U.S. representative to the Allied Reparations Committee, with the
rank of ambassador," as well as "industrial and commercial advisor to the
Potsdam Conference, 'where his chief task was to renegotiate the reparations
agreements formulated at Yalta.' As one historian noted, the 'oil industry
has always watched reparations activities carefully.' There was a lot of
money involved, and much of it belonged to the Dulles brothers' clients."

At the same time, report Loftus and Aarons,

"the Dulles brothers were still shifting Nazi assets out of Europe for their
clients as well as for their own profit. They didn't want the Soviets to get
their hands on these assets or even know that they existed. Pauley played a
significant role in solving this problem for the Dulles brothers. The major
part of Nazi Germany's industrial assets was located in the zones occupied
by the West's forces. As Washington's man on the ground, Pauley managed to
deceive the Soviets for long enough to allow Allen Dulles to spirit much of
the remaining Nazi assets out to safety. . . .

"Pauley, a key player in the plan to hide the Dulles brothers' Nazi assets,
then moved into another post where he could help them further. After
successfully keeping German assets in Fascist hands, Pauley was given the
job of 'surveying Japan's assets and determining the amount of its war
debt.' Again, it was another job that was crucial to the Dulles clique's
secret financial and intelligence operations." (2)

After Pauley retired from government work he went back to being an
independent oil man. Loftus and Aarons state that: "In 1958 he founded
Pauley Petroleum which: . . . teamed up with Howard Hughes to expand oil
production in the Gulf of Mexico.

"Pauley Petroleum discovered a highly productive offshore petroleum reserve
and in 1959 became involved in a dispute with the Mexican Government, which
considered the royalties from the wells to be too low.

"According to our sources in the intelligence community, the oil dispute was
really a shakedown of the CIA by Mexican politicians. Hughes and Pauley were
working for the CIA from time to time, while advancing their own financial
interests in the lucrative Mexican oil fields. Pauley, say several of our
sources, was the man who invented an intelligence money-laundering system in
Mexico, which was later refined in the 1970s as part of Nixon's Watergate
scandal. At one point CIA agents used Pemex, the Mexican government's oil
monopoly, as a business cover at the same time Pemex was being used as a
money laundry for Pauley's campaign contributions. As we shall see, the
Mexican-CIA connection played an important part in the development of George
Bush's political and intelligence career. . . .

"Pauley, say the 'old spies,' was the man who brought all the threads of the
Mexican connection together. He was Bush's business associate, a front man
for Dulles's CIA [Allen Dulles was CIA director then], and originator of the
use of Mexican oil fronts to create a slush fund for Richard Nixon's various
campaigns. . . .

"Although it is not widely known, Pauley, in fact, had been a committed, if
'secret,' Nixon supporter since 1960. It should be recalled that Nixon tried
to conceal his Mexican slush fund during the Watergate affair by pressuring
the CIA into a 'national security' cover-up. The CIA, to its credit,
declined to participate. Unfortunately, others were so enmeshed in Pauley's
work for Nixon that they could never extricate themselves. According to a
number of our intelligence sources, the deals Bush cut with Pauley in Mexico
catapulted him into political life. In 1960 Bush became a protege of Richard
Nixon, who was then running for president of the United States. . . .

"The most intriguing of Bush's early connections was to Richard Nixon, who
as vice president had supervised Allen Dulles's covert planning for the Bay
of Pigs [invasion]. For years it has been rumored that Dulles's client,
George Bush's father, was one of the Republican leaders who recruited Nixon
to run for Congress and later convinced Eisenhower to take him on as vice
president. There is no doubt that the two families were close. George Bush
described Nixon as his 'mentor.' Nixon was a Bush supporter in his very
first tilt at politics, during his unsuccessful run for the Senate in 1964,
and turned out again when he entered the House two years later.

"After Nixon's landslide victory in 1972, he ordered a general house
cleaning on the basis of loyalty. 'Eliminate everyone,' he told John
Ehrlichman about reappointments, 'except George Bush. Bush will do anything
for our cause.' . . . According to Bush's account, the president told him
that 'the place I really need you is over at the National Committee running
things.' So, in 1972, Nixon appointed George Bush as head of the Republican
National Committee.

"It was Bush who fulfilled Nixon's promise to make the 'ethnic' emigres a
permanent part of Republican politics. In 1972 Nixon's State Department
spokesman confirmed to his Australian counterpart that the ethnic groups
were very useful to get out the vote in several key states. Bush's tenure as
head of the Republican National Committee exactly coincided with Laszlo
Pasztor's 1972 drive to transform the Heritage Groups Council into the
party's official ethnic arm. The groups Pasztor chose as Bush's campaign
allies were the emigre Fascists whom Dulles had brought to the United
States. . . .

". . . Nearly twenty years later, and after expose's in several respectable
newspapers, Bush continued to recruit most of the same ethnic Fascists,
including Pasztor, for his own 1988 ethnic outreach program when he first
ran for president.

"According to our sources in the intelligence community," state the authors,
"it was Bush who told Nixon that the Watergate investigations might start
uncovering the Fascist skeletons in the Republican party's closet. Bush
himself acknowledges that he wrote Nixon a letter asking him to step down.
The day after Bush did so, Nixon resigned.

"Bush had hoped to become Gerald Ford's vice president upon Nixon's
resignation, but he was appointed U.S. ambassador to the UN. Nelson
Rockefeller became vice president and chief damage controller. He formed a
special commission in an attempt to preempt the Senate's investigation of
the intelligence community. The Rockefeller Commission into CIA abuses was
filled with old OPC [Dulles's Office of Policy Coordination] hands like
Ronald Reagan, who had been the front man back in the 1950s for the
money-laundering organization, the Crusade for Freedom, which was part of
Dulles's Fascist 'freedom fighters' program." (3)

In 1988, Project Censored, a news media censorship research organization,
awarded the honor of "Top Censored story" to the subject of George Bush. The
article revealed "how the major mass media ignored, overlooked or
undercovered at least ten critical stories reported in America's alternative
press that raised serious questions about the Republican candidate, George
Bush, dating from his reported role as a CIA 'asset' in 1963 to his
Presidential campaign's connection with a network of anti-Semites with Nazi
and fascist affiliations in 1988." (4)

NOTES: GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH

1.The Secret War Against the Jews, pp. 357-361
2.Ibid., pp. 362-364
3.Ibid., pp. 365-371
4.The 1993 Project Censored Yearbook: The News That Didn't Make The News -
And Why, Project Censored; Dr. Carl Jensen, Director., pp. 230.

Scource:http://www.john-loftus.com/bush_nazi_scandal.asp

© Copyright 2003 John Loftus. All rights reserved.

OPEN LETTER FROM RAMSEY CLARK

to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, members of the UN Security Council and
President George W. Bush

Dear All U.S. Citizens,

Please read this open letter from Ramsey Clark widely.
On March 20, join Ramsey Clark and thousands of others in the mass protest
at Times
Square in New
York City to demand "Impeach Bush" and "Bring
the troops home now," and more. If you have not yet signed the demand
to Impeach Bush, click
here to cast your vote, and to access the materials
available at the
new Impeach
Bush Resource Center, click here. Check your email in the
coming days for more information on the March 20 demonstration in New York
City and those being held around
the
country to learn how you can join the Impeach Bush contingents.

---

January, 29, 2004

Dear Secretary General Annan,



U.S. President George W. Bush again confirmed his intention to continue waging
wars of aggression in his State of the Union message on January 20, 2004.

He began his address:

“
As we gather tonight, hundreds of thousands of American service men and women
are deployed across the world in the war on terror. By bringing hope to the
oppressed, and delivering justice to the violent, they are making America more
secure.”

He proclaimed:

“
Our greatest responsibility is the active defense of the American people...
America is on the offensive against the terrorists...”

Continuing, he said:

“
...our coalition is leading aggressive raids against the surviving members
of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.... Men who ran away from our troops in battle
are now dispersed and attack from the shadows.”

In Iraq, he reported:

“
Of the top 55 officials of the former regime, we have captured or killed 45.
Our forces are on the offensive, leading over 1,600 patrols a day, and conducting
an average of 180 raids a week....”

Explaining his aggression, President Bush stated:

“
...After the chaos and carnage of September the 11th, it is not enough to serve
our enemies with legal papers. The terrorists and their supporters declared
war on the United States and war is what they got.”

Forget law. No more legal papers, or rights. Forget truth. The claim that
either Afghanistan, or Iraq declared war on the U.S. is absurd. The U.S. chose
to attack both nations, from one end to the other, violating their sovereignty
and changing their "regimes", summarily executing thousands of men,
women and children in the process. At least 40,000 defenseless people in Iraq
have been killed by U.S. violence since the latest aggression began in earnest
in March 2003 starting with its celebrated, high tech, terrorist "Shock
and Awe" and continuing until now with 25, or more, U.S. raids daily causing
mounting deaths and injuries.



All this death-dealing aggression has occurred during a period, Mr. Bush
boasts, of "over two years without an attack on American soil".
The U.S. is guilty of pure aggression, arbitrary repression and false portrayal
of the nature and purpose of its violence.



President Bush's brutish mentality is revealed in his condemnations of the "killers" and "thugs
in Iraq" "who ran away from our troops in battle". U.S. military
expenditures and technology threaten and impoverish life on the planet. Any
army that sought to stand up against U.S. air power and weapons of mass destruction
in open battle would be annihilated. This is what President Bush seeks when
he says "Bring 'em on."



President Bush declared his intention to change the "Middle East" by
force.

“
As long as the Middle East remains a place of tyranny and despair and anger,
it will continue to produce men and movements that threaten the safety of
America and our friends. So America is pursuing a forward strategy of freedom
in the greater Middle East. We will challenge the enemies of reform, confront
the allies of terror, and expect a higher standard from our friends.”

“...America is a nation with a mission... we understand our special
calling: This great republic will lead the cause of freedom.”

He extended his threat to any nation he may choose:

“
As part of the offensive against terror, we are also confronting the regimes
that harbor and support terrorists, and could supply them with nuclear, chemical
or biological weapons. The United States and our allies are determined: We
refuse to live in the shadow of this ultimate danger.”

President Bush's utter contempt for the United Nations is revealed in his
assertion that the United States and other countries "have enforced the
demands of the United Nations", ignoring the refusal of the U.N. to approve
a war of aggression against Iraq and implying the U.N. had neither the courage
nor the capacity to pursue its own "demands".



His total commitment to unilateral U.S. action, was asserted by President
Bush when he sarcastically referred to the "permission slip" a
school child needs to leave a classroom:

"
America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our people".

President Bush intends to go it alone, because his interest is American power
and wealth alone, though he prefers to use the youth of NATO countries and
others as cannon folder in his wars.



President Bush believes might makes right and that the end justifies the
means. He declares:

“
...the world without Saddam Husseins regime is a better and safer place".

So U.S. military technology which is omnicidal- capable of destroying all
life on the planet-will be ordered by President Bush to make the world "a
better and safer place" by destroying nations and individuals he designates.

President Bush presided over 152 executions in Texas, far more than any other
U.S. governor since World War II. Included were women, minors, retarded persons,
aliens in violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and innocent
persons. He never acted to prevent a single execution. He has publicly proclaimed
the right to assassinate foreign leaders and repeatedly boasted of summary
executions and indiscriminate killing in State of the Union messages and elsewhere.

The danger of Bush unilateralism is further revealed when he states:

“
Colonel Qaddafi correctly judged that his country would be better off, and
far more secure without weapons of mass murder. Nine months of intense negotiations
involving the United States and Great Britain succeeded with Libya, while 12
years of diplomacy with Iraq did not.”

Forget diplomacy, use "intense negotiations". If President Bush
believed it was "diplomacy", which maintained genocidal sanctions
against Iraq for twelve years that failed, rather than an effort to crush Iraq
to submission, then why didn't he use "nine months of intense negotiations" to
avoid a war of aggression against Iraq? He was President for nearly twenty
seven months before the criminal assault on Iraq, he apparently intended all
along. Iraq was no threat to anyone.

What President Bush means by "intense negotiations" includes a
threat of military aggression with the example of Iraq to show this in no bluff.
The Nuremberg Judgment held Goerings threat to destroy Prague unless Czechoslovakia
surrendered Bohemia and Moravia to be an act of aggression.

If Qaddafi "correctly judged his country would be better off, and far
more secure, without weapons of mass murder", why would the United States
not be better off, and far more secure, if it eliminated all its vast stores
of nuclear weapons? Is not the greatest danger from nuclear proliferation today
without question President Bush's violations of the Non Proliferation (NPT),
ABM and Nuclear Test Ban treaties by continuing programs for strategic nuclear
weapons, failing to negotiate in good faith to achieve "nuclear disarmament" after
more than thirty years and development of a new generation of nuclear weapons,
small "tactical" weapons of mass murder, which he would use in a
minute? Has he not threatened to use existing strategic nuclear weapons? The
failure of the "nuclear weapon State Party(s)" to the NPT to work
in good faith to achieve "nuclear disarmament these past 36 years is the
reason the world is still confronted with the threat of nuclear war and proliferation.

None of the many and changing explanations, excuses, or evasions offered
by President Bush to justify his war of aggression can erase the crimes he
has committed. Among the less invidious misleading statements, President Bush
made on January 20, 2004 was:

"
Already the Kay Report identified dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related
program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed
from the United Nations."

Three days later, Dr. Kay told Reuters he thought Iraq had illicit weapons
at the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, but that by a combination of U.N.
inspections and Iraq's own decisions, "it got rid of them". He further
said it "is correct" to say Iraq does not have any large stockpiles
of chemical or biological weapons in the country. He has added that no evidence
of any chemical or biological weapons have been found in Iraq.

Iraq did not use illicit weapons in the 1991 Gulf war. The U.S. did - 900
tons plus of depleted uranium, fuel air explosives, super bombs,, cluster bombs
with civilians and civilian facilities the "direct object of attack".
The U.S. claimed to destroy 80% of Iraq's military armor. It dropped 88,500
tons of explosives, 7 1/2 Hiroshima's, on the country in 42 days. Iraq was
essentially defenseless. Tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians
perished. The U.S. reported 157 casualties, 1/3 from friendly fire, the remainder
non combat.

U.N. inspectors over more than 6 years of highly intrusive physical inspections
found and destroyed 90% of the materials required to manufacture nuclear, chemical
and biological weapons. U.N. sanctions imposed August 6, 1990 had caused the
deaths of 567,000 children under age five by October 1996, the U.N. FAO reported.
Twenty four percent of the infants born live in Iraq in 2002 had a dangerously
low birth weight below 2 kilos, symbolizing the condition of the whole population.

In March 2003 Iraq was incapable of carrying out a threat against the U.S.,
or any other country, and would have been pulverized by U.S. forces in place
in the Gulf had it tried.

More than thirty five nations admit the possession of nuclear, chemical and/or
biological weapons. Are these nations, caput lupinum, lawfully subject to destruction
because of their mere possession of WMDs? The U.S. possesses more of each of
these impermissible weapons than all other nations combined, and infinitely
greater capacity for their delivery anywhere on earth within hours. Meanwhile
the U.S. increases its military expenditures, which already exceed those of
all other nations on earth combined, and its technology which is exponentially
more dangerous.

The U.N. General Assembly Resolution on the Definition of Aggression of December
14, 1974 provides in part:

Article 1: Aggression is the use of armed force by a State against the sovereignty,
territorial integrity or political independence of another State;

Article 2: The first use of armed force by a State in contravention of the
Charter shall constitute prima facie evidence of an act of aggression;

Article 3: Any of the following acts ... qualify as an act of aggression:

(a) The invasion or attack by the armed forces of a State of the territory
of another State, or any military occupation, however temporary, resulting
from such invasion or attack;

(b) Bombardment by the armed forces of a State against the territory of another
State or the use of any weapons by a State against the territory of another
State;

(c) The blockade of the ports or coasts of a State by the armed forces of
another State;

(d) An attack by the armed forces of a State on the land, sea or air forces,
or marine and air fleets of another State.

If the U.S. assault on Iraq is not a War of Aggression under international
law, then there is no longer such a crime as War of Aggression. A huge, all
powerful nation has assaulted a small prostrate, defenseless people half way
around the world with "Shock and Awe" terror and destruction, occupied
it and continues daily assaults. President Bush praises U.S. soldiers' "...skill
and their courage in armored charges, and midnight raids." which terrorize
and kill innocent Iraqis, women, children, families, nearly every day and average
180 attacks each week.

The first crime defined in the Constitution annexed to the Charter of the
International Military Tribunal (Nuremberg) under Crimes Against Peace is War
of Aggression. II.6.a. The Nuremberg Judgment proclaimed:

“
The charges in the indictment that the defendants planned and waged aggressive
war are charges of the utmost gravity. War is essentially an evil thing. Its
consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the
whole world.”

To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime,
it is the supreme international crime...

The "seizure" of Austria in March 1938 and of Bohemia and Moravia
from Czechoslovakia in March 1939 following the threat to destroy Prague were
judged to be acts of aggression by the Tribunal even in the absence of actual
war and after Britain, France, Italy and Germany had agreed at Munich to cede
Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland to Germany.



The first conduct judged to be a war of aggression by Nazi Germany was its
invasion of Poland in September 1939. There followed a long list, Britain,
France, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Holland, Luxemburg, Yugoslavia, Greece.
The attack on the USSR, together with Finland, Romania and Hungary, was adjudged
as follows:

It was contended for the defendants that the attack upon the U.S.S.R. was
justified because the Soviet Union was contemplating an attack upon Germany,
and making preparations to that end. It is impossible to believe that this
view was ever honestly entertained.

The plans for the economic exploitation of the U.S.S.R., for the removal of
masses of the population, for the murder of Commissars and political leaders,
were all part of the carefully prepared scheme launched on 22 June without
warning of any kind, and without the shadow of legal excuses. It was plain
aggression.

The United Nations cannot permit U.S. power to justify its wars of aggression
if it is to survive as a viable institution for ending the scourges of war,
exploitation, hunger, sickness and poverty. Comparatively minor acts and wars
of aggression by the United States in the last 20 years, deadly enough for
their victims, in Grenada, Libya, Panama, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Sudan,
Yugoslavia, Cuba, Yemen with many other nations threatened, sanctioned, or
attacked, some with U.N. complicity and all without effective United Nations
resistance, made the major deadly wars of aggression against Afghanistan and
Iraq possible.



Failure to condemn the massive U.S. war of aggression and illegal occupation
of Iraq and any U.N. act providing colorable legitimacy to the U.S. occupation
will open wide the gate to further, greater aggression. The line must be
drawn now.



The United Nations must recognize and declare the U.S. attack and occupation
of Iraq to be the war of aggression it is. It must refuse absolutely to justify,
or condone the aggression, the illegal occupation and the continuing U.S.
assaults in Iraq. The U.N. must insist that the U.S. withdraw from Iraq as
it insisted Iraq withdraw from Kuwait in 1990.

There must be no impunity or profit for wars of aggression.

The U.S. and U.S. companies must surrender all profits and terminate all contracts
involving Iraq.

There must be strict accountability by U.S. leaders and others for crimes
they have committed against Iraq and compensation by the U.S. government for
the damage its aggression has inflicted on Afghanistan and Iraq, the peoples
injured there and stability and harm done to world peace.

This must be done with care to prevent the eruption of internal divisions,
or violence and any foreign domination or exploitation in Iraq. The governance
of a united Iraq must be returned to the diverse peoples who live there, acting
together consensually in peace for their common good as soon as possible.



Sincerely,



Ramsey Clark



The identical letter has been sent to:

Members of the UN Security Council

The President of the UN General Assembly

The Secretary General of the UN

The President of the United States

Grammys, Geronimos, Piestewa, Mascots, Religion

By EDyega6722 / UNA Staff Member

Many societal changes are made in the name of "Political Correctness". These changes are often accompanied by a bunch of eye-rolling about how some group is being "overly sensitive" or "difficult". But when is something "politically" correct and when is something simply "correct", or the decent thing to do?

For years, schools have given their teams Native American mascots, names and appearances. Movies have depicted Native Americans from their limited observations. Halloween revelers have costumed themselves up as Indians. Our war cries, songs, dances, sacred rituals, manner of dress, and heroes have all been mocked ridiculously over and over throughout the years.

Yet, if we speak up, we are dismissed as being "pesky" or "difficult" with the offenders attempting to defend their stance using such ridiculous reasons as "tradition" and feel that they are only being asked to change their actions based on the ever-limiting concept of "political correctness". And I disagree with that... these actions should be changed on the basis of correctness.... it is not only rude, but wrong to make a mockery of something just because you don't understand it.

And, that is, I think, where the problem lies. Many things that offend and insult stem from ignorance and a lack of understanding of something or someone who is different from us. Those who mock and then defend their actions do so because they either don't care or don't understand. We all have symbols and heroes which are very meaningful to us, but we don't always take the time to understand other people and their beliefs, and understanding is key to avoiding conflict.

Why is it that Native Americans and European immigrants have co-existed for over 200 years now, and you still know so little about us? Is it because in a land where the Constitution allows for the freedom of religion, we were not allowed to practice ours? Is it because we were forced using every despicable means available (murder, enslavement, starvation, contamination, lies, trickery and deceit) off our land and onto the most useless and infertile lands, where you would not have to see us or interact with us? Or, is it because, in spite of the fact that we were not allowed to publicly practice our religion and were forcibly removed from our land, we continued to practice our sacred religion in private, and that is why you still know and understand nothing about us?

There were over 500 tribes in what has come to be known as the United States with many different languages and customs, yet we are all lumped into one group, Indians, by the immigrants to this land who now call themselves Americans. And just like the Pilgrim, Shaker, and Quaker "founding fathers" who came here with their bibles, and the many other religions that have sprung from that one source, we are the same and yet different too.

When these people came, they found us worshiping God too. Could it be that in the same way God revealed himself to your Moses, he revealed himself to us too? We knew God then and we know him now. Just as those of you who read the Bible and draw your customs regarding how you practice your religion from it, we have our divinely inspired customs, too.

Whatever the many interpretations of your one book are, whether or not you worship on Sundays or Saturday, eat some kinds of meat or not, cover your head when you pray or not, circumcise your boys, drink coffee, celebrate Christmas, dance, smoke, use birth control, allow divorce or blood transfusions, allow women to wear pants, make-up or cut their hair, pray straight to God for blessings and forgiveness or go through a confessional and a Priest... it seems the many interpretations of religion are at least respected, until it comes to ours.

Our ceremonies are holy and sacred to us. We believe in God the Creator and honor him in all aspects of our daily lives. Some of the ways we show it is by wearing feathers... it is our belief that the higher a bird flies, the closer it gets to God and as such, the feathers of these birds who have soared to those heights are revered by us. Headdresses that were painstakingly made of eagle feathers that some people call the "War Bonnet" were not called that by us. Our ancestors did not dress up to kill, they dressed up so that in the event they were killed, they would meet the Creator in their finest, most respectful attire. Feathers to us are a very powerful symbol and we wear them for comfort and protection the same as you might wear a crucifix. We annoint with oils, as do many religions all throughout time. We burn sage and believe the smoke purifies. Drums accompanied prayer... the drum signifies the heartbeat... loud enough for God to hear. If our ancestors prayed by the warmth of the fire where they gathered to share their stories, and prayed as a group for rain, to provide nourishment to the crops which would sustain the whole tribe... and if this prayer were accompanied by dancing and drums... is this laughable or entertaining to you? How is it different, really, from someone, somewhere else, who prays on their knees, next to a bed, all alone, that his crops flourish too?

We proudly call this country the melting pot and as such there are many religions. And even when religion is not always understood, it at least appears that if a Jewish man is wearing a Yarmulke, or a Middle Easterner in a turban, hijab or burqa, most people know these items are worn for religious reasons and are respectful of that. And, just as the wafer taken at Communion is not really the body of Christ, but symbolizes that to so many, our symbolism may not always resonate with you, but know that is has meaning to us. And we will continue to worship using our symbolism as you do yours. We respect your right to worship and your many religions and would never intentionally disparage or criticize your practices by saying or doing anything that you would consider offensive or sacreligious. All we ask in return is that you show us the same respect.

And, if we complain when an irreverant group of yahoos, dress themselves up as retro-pop Indians, prancing and hollering in order to get the crowd to their feet at the grand finale of the 2004 Grammys (the Outkast performance), we would hope that you would agree with us that such blatant disrespect for our culture should not be allowed. I cannot imagine that if the band onstage were wearing psychedelic tie-dyed turbans while gyrating with crucifixes that anyone would find it acceptable or amusing... so why is it acceptable if the culture being parodied is Native American?

As for our heroes, most of our heroes died after waging valiant battles against the invasion. And, that is what the conquest of America was... an invasion. We were here, living peaceably among ourselves since time immemorial. We had a completely different concept of land ownership than the Europeans.... we believed the Creator had given us the land, air and water for all to use....that it could not be divided up by surveyors into plots and sold.... a fence was an unthinkably rude and previously unheard of thing to a Native American. We shared all that we had been blessed with, so that none would go without. But when we shared the use of some of our lands and helped the newcomers to survive, our intentions were misunderstood.... things got ugly... I would say the rest is history, but sadly it is not. Your version is told... not ours. Not how when we began to resist the fences, and forts and endless shiploads of immigrants, and loss of farmland, hunting grounds and ancestral burial sites and found ourselves face to face with the weapons of mass destruction of the day - cannons and the U.S. Cavalry, did our ancestors realize that they were really going to have to fight for everything they held dear. And they did. Many lost their lives. Agreements, treaties were made with the government... these agreements were also broken by the government, over and over and over again. Many of those who fought long and bravely to retain our lives and form of existence lost thier lives in the fight. Our heroes are our heroes and we cherish their memory and their struggle and efforts on our behalf. Their names and actions have real significance to us and we hold them in the highest esteem.

But, our heroes names and words used to describe them are used disrespectfully by others. A recent example is the flap over "Geronimo's Liquor Store" in Florida and the Caucasion owner who won't change it. Or, the recent incident with the Caucasion teacher, Mrs. Dutton, in Faith, South Dakota who reprimanded and punished a Native American boy who "stunk" of marijuana (sage). Or, the controversy in Arizona over the renaming of the offensive "Squaw Peak" to "Piestewa Peak" (honoring Lori Piestewa, the first ever Native American woman KIA - killed in action) and the immediate rescission of that meaningful and inoffensive choice. Indian names and images continue to be used as mascots for sports in schools and on the professional level (Washington Redskins, Atlanta Braves, Warriors etc., ) despite prolonged and repeated efforts to change them.

The lack of respect and sensitivity anger us and is perplexing to us at the same time ....
could it be that you just don't understand us?

NOTE: Please read the previous post of Friday, February 13 - "Outkast's Grammy performance offends many"

OutKast’s Grammy performance offends many
by: Jim Adams / Associate Editor / Indian Country Today
February 13, 2004

LOS ANGELES - Bare-midriffed dancers wearing two-piece leather-fringed green suede outfits and green feathers in green headbands kicked and gyrated in front of a giant tipi backdrop during the finale of the Feb. 8 Grammy awards, sparking an Indian country mini-controversy almost as energetic as their dancing.

The production backed the hip-hop duo OutKast, big winners at the Grammys, performing their hit "Hey Ya!" Some Indian viewers were startled and offended by what they saw as out-moded racial stereotyping. One West Coast group lodged a protest with the Federal Communications Commission. Yet other people active in promoting Native musicians defended OutKast arguing that their set provided international exposure for the indigenous genre.

The show provoked an unusual outpouring of comment both for and against within Indian country. (A number of letters were posted on the Indiancountry.com Web site.)

"It was the most disgusting set of racial stereotypes aimed at American Indians that I have ever seen on TV," said Sean Freitas, a board member of the Native American Cultural Center in San Francisco. "It was on par with white people dancing sexually in black face, or yarmulkes, or the vestments of the Catholic Church. I am shocked and outraged."

The Oneida Indian Nation, which has sponsored side events at the Grammys for several years, issued a formal statement calling the set an "insult" to Indians. Chuck Fougnier, Wolf Clan Representative to the Oneida Nation’s Men’s Council and chairman of the Nation’s charitable foundation, said "Performances like OutKast’s during Sunday’s Grammy broadcast undermine the entertainment industry’s dedication to diversity and use racial stereotypes in a hurtful way."

On the other hand, Donald Kelly, executive director of the Native American Music Association, said, "I thought it would inspire other acts to start working with other Native musicians." Emphasizing that he expressed a personal opinion, he said good could come of the show "if it was something that would help young Native artists step into the spotlight."

But the OutKast controversy appeared to make little impact on mainstream media, still consumed with the bodice ripping that ended the half-time show during the Super Bowl.

Both the Grammys and the Super Bowl were broadcast by the CBS network, a division of Viacom, Inc. Both CBS and its corporate parent have apologized at length for the Super Bowl incident. Mel Karmazin, president and chief operating officer of Viacom, testified about it Feb. 11 in a televised Congressional committee hearing on decency in broadcasting. But corporate spokesmen had little to say about the Indian stereotyping. The public relations office at Viacom referred the call to CBS, which had not replied by deadline.

A representative of the Federal Communications Commission said that the incidents fell under separate legal provisions. The Super Bowl incident, in which Justin Timberlake deliberately tore off part of Janet Jackson’s top, fell under a specific prohibition of "indecency" in broadcasting, said Rosemary Kimball, director of the FCC Office of Media Relations. But the broadcasting statutes had no specific ban on racial stereotyping, she said. Such incidents would be covered by the general requirement that broadcasting not violate the public interest.

"This is something we could get into if it was not in the public interest," she said.

Kimball said she had not immediately noticed complaints about the Grammys because the FCC was swamped with 200,000 messages about the Super Bowl. She later called back to Indian Country Today and said the FCC had received one.

Criticism of the OutKast production appeared to come as a surprise to executives of both the Recording Academy, which presents the Grammys, and CBS. The three-and-a-half hour primetime production fell under intense scrutiny because of the controversy over the Super Bowl, and CBS even imposed a five-minute delay on the live broadcast to screen out improprieties. The network even has a long-standing censorship arm, the euphemistically named Office of Standards and Practices, to review content of broadcasts and commercials. The Office engendered a pre-Super Bowl controversy by rejecting a commercial criticizing the Bush Administration, although the debate was quickly overshadowed by Janet Jackson’s right breast.

The OutKast production came as a shock to some Indian viewers because the outset, a recording of a traditional drum group, appeared to be a tribute to Native music. The Grammys inaugurated a category for Native American music four years ago, awarding it this year to the drum group Black Eagle, led by Pueblo Indians from New Mexico.

Ellen Bello, president of NAMA, suggested that OutKast could have avoided complaints if it had used a live drum group on stage instead of the recording. "It’s not as if they didn’t have access to the resources," she said. "They had Black Eagle."

She said NAMA was also trying to learn whether OutKast members Andre "3000" Benjamin and Antoine "Big Boi" Patton claimed Indian heritage, which she said also might mitigate the impact. But publicists for the group had not replied by press time.
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This article can be found at http://IndianCountry.com/?1076685404

Leonard Peltier Responds to FBI Show Trial

Leonard's Reaction to Kamook and the Arlo Looking Cloud Trial
10 Feb 2004

Hau Kola,

First of all, I want to thank all those who have been standing up for the
American Indian Movement and myself. The Arlo Looking Cloud trial was
nothing more than an indirect presentation of another Myrtle Poorbear to
discredit AIM and myself, and to extradite John Graham. I am an innocent
man. The government knows that, and Kamook knows I am innocent as well.

On a personal note, Kamook's testimony was like being stabbed in the heart
while simultaneously being told your sister just died. I cannot convey
enough, the shock and hurt that I felt. Of all the fabrications that the
government has used to keep me imprisoned, this one hurt so deeply. I would
have laid down my life to defend Kamook and her people and I did risk it
several times. If there has ever been a time during my 28 years in this
hole that I have felt disheartened, it is now. I loved Kamook as my own
family. I can't believe the $43,000 the FBI gave her was a determining
factor for her to perjure herself on the witness stand. There must have
been some extreme threat the FBI or their cronies put upon her.

If you want to know who is responsible for Anna Mae's death, just look
around and see who else has been irresponsibly pointing fingers at proven
warriors. This kind of behavior is doing the dirty work of the F.B.I. and
the corporate entities that seek to control or own Native lands and
resources. All of those who took part in this abortion of justice in Rapid
City should be ashamed. I would say more, but my emotions are overwhelming
at the moment.

We as a people and a nation need to honor those who sacrificed for the
people and not forget them as they become elders. In every generation we
must stand strong. The enemy has many masks and the ideologies that drive
it are centuries old now, the gluttonous appetite for money and power of
those addicted. I will not give up and it's not over until it's over.
Speak, organize, demonstrate, pray, help the poor and oppressed, be a good
example, and most of all "don't ever give up!"

In The Spirit Of Crazy Horse,
Leonard Peltier
Mitakuye Oyasin

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