Issues & News From STSSA Friends & Family 10/26/2010

Aim Santa BarbaraOctober 26, 2010 at 2:59pm

Subject: Rockin the Rez in Thousand Oaks, CA. 11/13/2010

“ROCKIN’ THE REZ” 

Join us for a day of live music, crafts, food and fun in a concert to benefit the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation 

Saturday, Nov. 13, 2010 from 
1:00 PM UNTIL 8:00 PM 
(BANDS START AT 3:00 PM) 

location: 
The Chumash Indian Museum 
3290 Lang Ranch Parkway 
Thousand Oaks, CA 91362 

featuring: The NAMA winning - GrayWolf Blues band 
CALL FOR rest of the EXCITING LINE UP!
(805) 492-8076 


Adult - 13 yrs / $10.00 
12 yrs - 5 yrs / $5.00 
under 5 yrs / free 

no alcohol or illegal drugs
Seating is limited - folding chair are highly recommended Dress warm in case of chilly weather

(Profits will go to heat homes for the upcoming winter)

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CherokeeLink Newsletter
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For The HTML Format of the Newsletter:
(Having Problems With The Links? Try this version instead.)http://www.cherokee.org/home.aspx?section=newsletter&Date=10/25/2010
<BR>AOL - <A HREF="http://www.cherokee.org/home.aspx?section=newsletter&Date=10/25/2010">10/25/2010 Newsletter</A>
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Osiyo,

Cherokee Challenge participants will be put to the test this Saturday in Tulsa as Principal Chief Chad Smith and an anticipated 800 Cherokee Nation WINGS members participate in the annual "Tulsa Run". The Cherokee Challenge is a series of runs and walks to encourage healthy eating and healthy living. http://cherokeechallenge.cherokee.org.

The Cherokee Nation is offering an entertaining and educational experience through storytelling and other cultural activities at this year’s Cherokee Cultural Days, to be held Nov. 2-4, in the Tribal Council chambers located inside the tribe’s main complex on Hwy 62 just south of Tahlequah. For more information visit http://www.cherokee.org/NewsRoom/FullStory/3381/Page/Default.aspx

Beginning in November, the Cherokee Nation is hosting a 17-week workshop series in which participants can learn to become more self-sufficient and develop the skills necessary to improve their financial situations.http://www.cherokee.org/NewsRoom/FullStory/3370/Page/Default.aspx

Oklahoma state elections are less than two weeks away. Do you know where the candidates stand on matters relating to the Cherokee Nation? Learn more by viewing Cherokee Nation Voters Guide. It's in the "Check It Out" box on the Cherokee Nation Website: http://www.cherokee.org/

If you are a Cherokee citizen, don’t forget to vote or update your voter registration information. Find out more athttp://www.cherokee.org/Government/Election/Default.aspx

Wado! (Thank you)
Cherokee Nation
P.O.Box 948
Tahlequah, OK 74465
918 453-5000
communications@cherokee.org

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***Cherokee Nation News***
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Sequoyah Cross-Country Teams Qualify for State : 10/21/2010 12:37:00 PM
(C) Cherokee Nation
The Sequoyah Schools’ boys and girls’ cross country teams have qualified for the Oklahoma State Class 3A Cross Country meet to be held this weekend in Shawnee, Okla.
http://www.cherokee.org/news.aspx?id=3380

Fall Carnival and Hayride to be held at Sequoyah Schools: 10/21/2010 12:30:00 PM
(C) Cherokee Nation
The Sequoyah Schools cheerleaders will host a fall carnival and haunted hayride on Thursday, Oct. 28 from 7-10 p.m. in the old gymnasium.
http://www.cherokee.org/news.aspx?id=3379

Cherokee Nation Offers Deer Testing for Hunters: 10/19/2010 11:43:00 AM
(C) Cherokee Nation
The Cherokee Nation in partnership with the Native American Fish and Wildlife Society is offering free services to test wild deer in the local area for chronic wasting disease, a transmittable neurological disease that can be found primarily in deer, elk and moose.
http://www.cherokee.org/news.aspx?id=3377

Sequoyah Students Make a Difference with Phones and Ink : 10/19/2010
(C) Cherokee Nation
The Sequoyah Schools student council has launched a recycling project to benefit the local Help-In-Crisis center in honor of Domestic Violence Awareness Month.
http://www.cherokee.org/news.aspx?id=3378

Council Authorizes Lease of Land for Dialysis Center: 10/18/2010 3:10:00 PM
(C) Cherokee Nation
The Cherokee Nation Tribal Council authorized the lease of trust land adjacent to the Redbird Smith Health Center in Sequoyah County to the Tahlequah Hospital Foundation for a dialysis facility. The proposed tract would be leased for a nominal amount, for 25 years with an option to renew for an additional 25 years.
http://www.cherokee.org/news.aspx?id=3376

Sequoyah Schools Announces Football Homecoming Court: 10/18/2010 3:07:00 PM
(C) Cherokee Nation
The Sequoyah Schools football homecoming court will be crowned at the football homecoming game on Thursday, Oct. 21.  “We always encourage all of our alumni to join us for the homecoming game,” said Rita Bunch, Sequoyah Schools’ superintendent.  “It’s a great opportunity to connect our past with our future.”

http://www.cherokee.org/news.aspx?id=3375

Early Cancer Detection Saves Lives in Cherokee Nation, U.S.: 10/18/2010 9:20:00 AM
(C) Cherokee Nation
Nurse practitioner Brenda Elder is a life saver, even though she doesn’t think so.  However, no one will ever convince Sandy Long that isn’t the case.
http://www.cherokee.org/news.aspx?id=3374

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**** Other Links of Interest ****
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Games - http://www.cherokee.org/home.aspx?section=culture&culture=games

Community Calendar - http://www.cherokee.org/home.aspx?section=calendar
RSS Feed - http://rss.cherokee.org
Podcasts - http://podcasts.cherokee.org
E-Cards - http://ecards.cherokee.org
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**** Cultural Tidbits ****
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Samuel Worcester was a federal agent 'Postmaster' and was in the Cherokee Nation by license of the missionaries.  He was arrested for refusing to pledge allegiance to the States of Georgia.  Initially, ten were arrested.  The State of Georgia told them if they would recant, and pledge allegiance, they could go free.  However, Worcester and Elizur Butler would not.

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With the people all investing their trust in the municipal election system at this time, it would be wise to look at the entire failed political experiment called Canada. When corporatism rules, the war continues.

In 2005 our Women Titleholders  properly notified Tornto District School Board to vacate “Etobicoke Outdoor Education Centre” property located within the six mile limit of the Grand River.In 2008 I sent “Royal Proclamation” 1784, the survey and notice to the mayor and all councilors at the city of Toronto that I would be coming to talk with them all and get the keys to the property. On my way down to the meeting I got a call from Councillor Ford, whom I have known for 40 years, he told me to meet him at Etobicoke City Hall instead. I thought that was strange,  we diverted to Etobicoke City Hall instead. When we arrived there it was just my two companions, Rob Ford and I.

I asked Rob if he brought the keys and he shook his head no. He said “I cant step on any toes, it’s a real sensitive issue” I asked him who were “they” and he would not say.  In my role as “eyes and ears” in Kanekota I received information that Finance Minister  Jim Flaherty is trying to secure the disputed property for himself and he was spotted last month in Honeywood which is 2 km from the property. Has the Finance Minister been at the head of a cabal to ignore a “Royal Proclamation”, the supreme law of the British Empire? This is a real sensitive issue.

I moved up to Kanekota in 2000 because it was “British Protectorate” land for my future children and it was the hilly country of prophecy. I found out rather quickly there was a criminal plot to undermine the Empire, by a cabal of connected individuals called “The Highland Group”. Another source told of these people as;  72 33^rd degree Freemasons whom also know of our prophecy.  Is the Finance Minister one of the Masonic  shareholders? This is a real sensitive issue.

The precedent for a Royal Proclamation superseding Admiralty Law is the enactment of the “Balfour Declaration 1917” Whereby the British Generals invaded Palestine in 1947 to create Israel, as per the Royal Proclamation. I am one of “his majesties faithful allies” as the royal proclamation states. I think there is still one general in the British military whom will deal with this problem for us.  This is a real sensitive issue.

As Gushwenta states; we stay in our canoe, you stay in your boat. With the rats knowing at the hull, your boat is in danger of sinking. This is a real sensitive issue.

With unity of mind comes great strength, with this power we will attain the peace,

thahoketoteh of Kanekota

www.myspace.com/thahoketoteh

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Mining of Huichol/Wixarika Sacred Sites

Dear Friends of Don Marcelino and the Huichol/Wixarika 

Unless action is taken, the sacred sites of the Huichol/Wixarika will be permanently scraped from the face of the earth.

Please visit the below web site, sign the petition and forward as appropriate. http://intercontinentalcry.org/indigenous-wixarika-people-demand-a-moratorium-on-mining/>

Thank you for your support

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[AIMFLCH] News From Indian Country/Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson

Posted by: "Audrey Beavers"

Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson: The exhumation of a monster 
 
 

NFIC Columnists and Team - Albert Bender 

By Albert Bender
NFIC October 2010

There is a monstrous specter haunting  Indian Country – a specter that when it last appeared sentenced tens of thousands of Native Americans to hideous, agonizing deaths. A specter that American Indians would  have never imagined to rise  again from the depths of Hades to anguish Native people; Andrew Jackson has been exhumed.

The wraith has taken the profile of an art form – the play Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson. This iniquitous, malevolent production  parading itself as historical “satire” arose in Los Angeles  in 2008,  and after a “successful” run at the Public Theater in New York is now set gracing the lights of Broadway  at the Jacob’s Theater.  Its current run began on September 20. This foul creation is replete with the most  racist anti-Indian lines passed off as “humor” and the most flagrant, biased stereotypes of Native people. This drama was meant to appeal to an undercurrent of anti-Indian hatred flowing through  white America. It has been  a sold out show and the subject of rave reviews including those appearing in the New York Times. In fact one reviewer said   “The last ten minutes are best, when Jackson offers Native Americans a final solution. This comment refers to Jackson’s statement to a Native character  “What I know to
be true is that the extinction of your people is inevitable”. 

Sound familiar – Hitler’s “final solution” was to send the Jewish people to the crematoriums.  The Nazi leader was the first to use the term the “Final Solution,” and now incredibly it is resurrected in reference to Native Americans by  mainstream journalism. 

Native characters are caricatured and degraded. Historic Indian leaders are portrayed as slow-witted and dull-minded, ever ready to sell their tribal homelands for a few paltry blankets and dream catchers.

The great Muscogee Creek leader Menawe, who fought Jackson’s forces at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814, and was wounded seven times, is depicted wearing a dime store headdress and signing a treaty to which he never even considered affixing his hand.

The valiant, iconic Sauk leader Black Hawk, who fought a war to hold his ancestral lands in 1832, against the American military steamroller, is seen as a traitorous collaborator disposing of his tribe’s lands. 

This production is the result of anti-Indian racism that has seen an apparent  increase in recent years. The writers and producers of this despicable drama realized this and knew how to craft a play to appeal to the worst in the European American mentality.

Parallels can be made with Hitler’s Germany, in the 1930’s when the Nazis’ antics were first viewed with amusement and disdain by Jews as being too absurd to pose a menace. But, in a few years  they  found themselves the victims of the most horrendous and extensive genocide campaign of the 20th Century.

What is also so disturbing is that this “play” has been running to sell-out crowds in urban areas where one would expect to find sophisticated theater-goers and not advocates  and enablers  of the most crude, artless anti-Indian racism.

Moreover, to increase crowd appeal and to make the racism more palatable Jackson is presented as a rock star. But, the Indian hater side is always at the forefront of this so-called “satire” with other classic Jackson lines addressed to an Indian leader, “You  people are despicable creatures! You show no loyalty  to anything, your music is terrible, your table manners suck, and your painting skills are absolutely dreadful. You savages, you’re soul-less.” 

You get the point. These  are crude racist insults covered in a mask of so-called “satire” and so-called artistic license - there is no humor. Satire by definition is a literary exercise using irony and wit to expose folly or wickedness. But what this play needs is satire on its satire.   

But even more telling is an omission by the writers and producers, that indicates out how eager they were to single out, to target Native Americans.

Some critics point out that other groups are also lampooned – Spaniards, gays , Southerners  and rich whites. But, where are the Black people?

Jackson was as much pro-slavery as he was anti-Indian and he in fact owned a large plantation. The Hermitage, his Nashville, Tennessee home, was maintained  by the toil of  numerous  African American slaves. Further, there were tens of thousands of enslaved African Americans in the South during Jackson’s heyday.

Obviously, the writers were afraid to have any Black characters in the drama with demeaning stereotypes or to have Black characters in the play at all. The writers were palpably afraid of an uproar from the politically powerful Black community.

If there had been even one demeaning stereotype of a Black character, I repeat, even one there would have been a national uproar. Obviously, Native Americans deserve the same respect accorded other races in this country, but, if it is not forthcoming. 

  In Bloody, Bloody, did the producers decided to “pick on’ American Indians because Native people are politically too weak to make a difference? Can anyone imagine a white audience in this day and  time sitting in a theater and emitting  knee-slapping laughs at the portrayal of demeaning stereotypes of African Americans or any other race in this  country?

Can anyone imagine a play entitled the Bloody, Bloody Slave Owners  with white actors in blackface? 

I might add that all the Indian roles in Bloody are played by white actors.

Or how about a drama entitled Bloody, Bloody Adolf Hitler with derogatory, demeaning stereotypes of Jewish people? How far would that play  go in the U.S.?  It certainly would never make it to Broadway. Or what about a similar play depicting Hispanics, or Asians? Again, it would not go to Broadway and certainly would never  have gotten off the ground in of all places, Los Angeles.

Let’s take a look at the real Andrew Jackson. Actually his so-called Indian fighting  career   began rather late in life.  Jackson moved to Nashville in 1788, at a time when battles between white  settlers and  allied Cherokees and  Creeks were raging in the area , but there is no record of his having fought any Indians  at all, during this period. This seems somewhat odd in light of his later advocacy.

He was forty-six when the Creek War began in 1813. In the first two campaigns against the Creek Nation, his armies were actually repulsed by grimly determined, intrepid Creek warriors who were vastly  outnumbered and massively outgunned by Jackson’s forces.

According to Anglo history Jackson defeated the Creeks at Horseshoe Bend, with the Creeks losing over 800 warriors. But, there is a Creek version that Jackson’s forces actually slaughtered hundreds of women and children after making sure that most of the warriors were absent from the fortified village in the bend of the Tallapoosa River. 

As for the Trail of Tears, Jackson was the evil architect and enforcer of Indian removal. He signed the Indian Removal Bill on May 28, 1830 and militarily enforced fraudulent treaties resulting  in the agonizing deaths of tens of thousands of Native American men, women, children and elderly. 

Jackson carried out the most murderous removal campaign against American Indians in U.S. history. The most egregious of the so-called  treaties was the infamous Treaty of New Echota that brought death to thousands of Cherokees.

So bent was Jackson on Indian extermination that he even tried to prevent the issuance of soap to Cherokees on the Trail.  This was after he was no longer president, and his successor Martin Van Buren was carrying out his wishes. 

Jackson  was a racist devil incarnate – an early day American Hitler whose deadly legacy for Native Americans remains extant to this day .

This loathsome production idolizing  this monster  should  be canceled. There should be a massive militant, mad, angry, furious, enraged Indian  demonstration at the Jacob’s Theater.  This abominable tribute to that racist villain, Andrew Jackson, must be stopped!

Your Donation Is More Than Appreciated. It has Kept This Site Alive, Helped Train Native Students, Help Buy New Equipment and Underwritten Live Broadcasting of Native Programming That You WATCH HERE. Even a $2 donation, "MAKES A DIFFERENCE". Thank you! 

Or Become a Member of the Website or Subscribe NFIC Hard Copy 

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Firefly (Lilia Adecer Cajilog)

Tawo Seed Carrier

POB 1456

South Pasadena, CA 91031

Gulf Oil Spill: Mission Accomplished or Ongoing Crisis?
http://theintelhub.com/2010/10/24/gulf-oil-spill-mission-accomplished-or-ongoing-crisis/

By: Alex2245
Tags: 
GULF OIL DISASTER 
The corporate media has almost entirely stopped covering the Gulf oil spill.

Many have tried to say that the effects of the spill are not nearly as bad as feared, and that everything is pretty much cleaned up and back to normal.

But today, it is widely being reported that there are currently massive stretches of weathered oil spotted in the Gulf of Mexico .

And websites like Florida Oil Spill Law (FOSL) have tirelessly been reporting on the Gulf oil spill this whole time.


BE CAREFUL OF THE FISH YOU EAT!

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America declared that ninety six percent of the Gulf of Mexico is open to fishing
http://theintelhub.com/2010/10/23/america-declared-that-ninety-six-percent-of-the-gulf-of-mexico-is-open-to-fishing/

By: Alex2245
Tags: 
GULF OIL DISASTER 
The fact that 96% of the Gulf of Mexico is now open for fishing is scary. The chemicals from the dispersant used in the supposed clean up of the gulf mixed with the VOC’s are a very toxic combo.

The fact is that poisons and toxins have not only harmed humans, they have also caused massive fish kills and an untold number of wildlife deaths.

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G20 finance ministers agree to global economic regulations
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/10/g20-finance-ministers-agree-global-economic-regulations/

Tags: 
ECONOMY 
The rules, announced in September by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, will be phased in over several years starting in 2013. They will be formally adopted by G20 leaders at a Seoul summit next month.

Under the Basel III reforms, banks of all sizes will be required to hold more reserves by January 1, 2015, with the "minimum requirement for common equity", the highest form of loss-absorbing capital, raised to 4.5 percent of overall assets from 2.0 percent at the moment.

In addition, banks would be required by January 1, 2019 to set aside an additional buffer of 2.5 percent to "withstand future periods of stress", bringing the total of such core reserves required to 7.0 percent.

Webmaster's Commentary: 
The question left unanswered is what happens to the status of the US dollar as the world's reserve currency until Basel III starts taking effect?



Oct 22 09:53 

States of Emergency 
http://www.morphcity.com/home/85-states-of-emergenc

Tags: 
CLIMATEGATE 
DICTATORSHIP 
POLITICS/ELECTIONS/CORRUPTION 
Thirty-two states are on the path to UN-inspired carbon reduction, Cap-and-Trade schemes and unconstitutional alliances; the supporting Governors must be held accountable. Carbon reduction and population reduction go hand in hand. The United Nations failed to impose their treaties from the top down (the Kyoto and Copenhagen Accords) and the federal government has abandoned its unpopular national Cap-and-Trade scheme for now. Cap-and-Trade is being pursued on the state level, and one region has even raised over $700 million in carbon auctions.

Webmaster's Commentary: 
Now that the mortgage-backed-security bubble has burst, and even before the public can recover from the financial clubbing they have been forced to endure, here comes the carbon-bubble!

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Details about the illegal federal raid on raw food buyer's club in California

NaturalNews Insider Alert (www.NaturalNews.com ) email newsletter 
(Unsubscribe instructions at bottom)

Dear NaturalNews readers,

Just a few months ago, state and federal law enforcement authorities conducted an illegal armed raid on a raw food buyer's club in Venice, California.

"Rawesome Foods" was subjected to what can only be called a wildly illegal, intimidation-driven armed raid that saw cops stealing coolers full of food from the store! (Law enforcement looting...)

NaturalNews spoke with Rawesome Foods to get the real story on what happened, and we've done our best to document the story behind the story of this outrageous assault on food freedom. Hey, even the cops were outraged by this one!

Many of the details in this story haven't been published before. Read my article at:
http://www.naturalnews.com/030136_Rawesome_foods_raid.html

Did you know that nonstick cookware may cause ADHD in children? Read the latest research:
http://www.naturalnews.com/030133_nonstick_cookware_ADHD.html

Anxiety, meanwhile, really can be treated with medicinal herbs!
http://www.naturalnews.com/030135_anxiety_herbal_medicine.html

And did you know that almonds and walnuts can actually help prevent heart disease and diabetes?
http://www.naturalnews.com/030131_almonds_heart_health.html

P.S. If you didn't catch our specials on coconut aminos, coconut vinegar, coconut nectar and other coconut-derived products (many of which are organic), we've got the combo packs here at the NaturalNews Store (click here).

More news continues below on the dangers ofantibiotics in meat, the amazing ability ofselenium to protect you from mercury, hidden animal ingredients in food and much more (see below)...

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This email newsletter is made possible by sponsorship from these quality product providers: ( more info )

• The Secret of people who Don't get cancer – it's now the cure for everybody!Cancer-Step Outside The Box
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Today's Feature Stories:

Rawesome Foods raw milk co-op raid conducted by criminal elements of local, state and federal law enforcement
(NaturalNews) On June 30, 2010, a group of armed government agents from local, state, federal and even the Canadian government illegally trespassed on private property and raided Rawesome Foods, a private food buying club in Venice, California...

Anxiety can be treated with herbs and nutrients, says new research
(NaturalNews) Who hasn't felt anxious before a test, or after some personal upset or accident? But sometimes anxiety can become chronic. And ongoing feelings of apprehension, fear or nervousness can rob people of their quality of life and even negatively...

Nonstick cookware chemical causes ADHD in children
(NaturalNews) A chemical used in nonstick cookware increases children's risk of developing attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), according to a study conducted by researchers from Boston and Harvard Universities and published in the journal...

Antibiotics used in meat pose a threat to public health, admits FDA
(NaturalNews) On June 28 of this year, the FDA issued a draft of new guidelines urging meat producers to refrain from using antibiotics to promote livestock growth, calling the practice an "urgent public health issue." "To preserve the effectiveness...

Eat Almonds and Walnuts to Promote Heart Health and Prevent Diabetes
Man has evolved to eat almonds and walnuts in their natural form and extensive research confirms the benefits to our health. It`s no coincidence that the ratio of fats and other essential nutrients are in perfect balance with our own nutritional...

Selenium: Find Health with the Mercury Magnet
Today's society is loaded with powerful toxins of all shapes and sizes. One of the most harmful & potentially lethal of these biological toxins is mercury. Mercury has a strong affinity for fatty tissue and loves to clog up the brain, liver...

Invisible DNA body spray technology may soon be installed at a business near you
(NaturalNews) A U.K. company has developed a technology that it says will help deter thieves from robbing local businesses. SelectaDNA Spray, as it is called, coats robbers with an invisible DNA mist that cannot be washed off and remains present on skin...

Natural Lifestyle Changes Cut Diabetes and Heart Disease Risk, Assist Weight Loss Goals
Diabetes is the seventh leading cause of death in the US as new cases continue to be diagnosed at a rate of 4000 per day. This sobering statistic places millions of people at greatly increased risk of coronary heart disease, stroke and sudden...

Beware of Hidden Animal Ingredients in Food
Vegetarians and vegans are usually known for making wise food choices, seeking healthy foods. They, along with other consumers, might be surprised to find out that some seemingly harmless foods actually contain hidden animal ingredients. Some...

Use Homeopathic Remedies for Acute Diarrhea, Nausea and Vomiting
Acute cases of diarrhea, nausea and vomiting due to a viral or bacterial infection can be effectively treated at home using single homeopathic remedies. Diarrhea, nausea and vomiting caused by overindulgence in food or drink can also be treated...

Thyroid cancer patients turned into walking dirty bombs after drinking radioactive poison as cancer therapy
(NaturalNews) My, you look glowing today! Cancer patients who receive radiation of their thyroid glands by being given radioactive iodine are highly radioactive for up to a week following their release from the hospital -- and they end up irradiating...

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Copyright (C) 2010  (NISA) Northwest Indian Storytellers Association

All rights reserved. 
You are receiving this email because you are either a member of NISA or have expressed interest in becoming a contributing member.

 

Northwest Indian Storytellers Association

5518 SE Flavel Drive

Portland, Oregon 97086

Add us to your address bookNISA announcement October 2010


Greetings Friends,


You are invited to the Northwest Indian Storytelling Festival which is

celebrating its fifth seasonof tribal storytelling in the Pacific Northwest. The festival will be held on Friday and Saturday

evenings, November 12-13, 2010, at Agnes Flanagan Chapel, Lewis and Clark
College, 0615 SW Palatine Hill Rd in Portland, OR.


This year's festival features some of the region's finest traditional and
contemporary tribal storytellers, plus guest storytellers from tribes in California and Alaska.
Events will include tribal drumming and singing and opening prayers by spiritual elders. A Silent Charity

Auction will be held at the events to benefit the Northwest Indian Storytellers Association.
Items will include Pendleton Woolen Mills blankets & clothing, Native American arts & crafts,
getaways, & other items.

A two-day workshop for emerging tribal storytellers will be held on Saturday and
Sunday, 13-14 November. Tribal members from any community are welcome to join NISA and

attend the workshop which culminates in an Emerging Storytellers Matinee on Sunday
afternoon, 14 November. If you are enrolled with a Native American or Alaskan Native tribal
community,or self-identified as Native American, you are welcome to join NISA and register

for this workshop.

This year’s festival theme is Canoe Journey. Traditional canoe stories by tribal

storytellers from Washington, Oregon, California and Alaska will be featured, as well as a
presentation by the Grand Ronde/Chinook Canoe Family. For centuries, canoes have played an important
part in the lifestyle of
Northwest tribes. To honor this ancestral mode of travel, many
Pacific Northwest tribal communities have reconnected with long-held canoe paddling traditions,
traveling by canoe each summer to a central location to celebrate. This culminates months of

family oriented cultural activities of Native American and First Nations peoples and has become
a major cultural revival, providing tribal communities the opportunity to focus on building
healthy communities.

NISA was formed in October 2005 to encourage, preserve and strengthen
traditional storytelling among tribes in Oregon, Washington and Idaho and to share tribal oral cultural

arts with the entire regional community. Among American Indian tribes throughout America,
winter is storytelling time. Knowledge and wisdom, traditional cultural values and
spiritual qualities, as
well as tribal oral history and prophesy, are all imparted to younger
generations through storytelling from generation to generation during the winter months.

Admission is on a sliding scale from $5 - $20. Festival sponsors include Lewis

and Clark College’s Indigenous Ways of Knowing Program and Center for Community
Engagement, and Wisdom of the Elders, Inc. For a map to Lewis and Clark College and campus
location, go to http://wisdomoftheelders.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=c0bce7dfa6e9f8dffd398367a&id=c1e73fc1bd&e=b301541480.

For more information on the festival and
emerging storytellers workshop for tribal community members, or to request a

registration
form, contact Emily Olson at emily@wisdomoftheelders.org or call (503) 775-4014.@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

 

Revolution and American Indians: “Marxism is as Alien to My Culture as Capitalism”

snippits-and-slappits.blogspot.com

Speech by Russel Means
  
This is one of the most striking and intelligent articles I’ve ever read, encouraging a total reconfiguring of how to view capitalism and revolution. Russell Means was a leader in the American Indian Movement (AIM) of the 1960s and 70s, and remains one of the most outspoken Native Americans in the U.S.


I came across this essay while researching for my upcoming critique of Marxism, and was blown away by its clarity. This is Means’ most famous essay. It was published in Ward Churchill’s book “Marxism and Native Americans”, under the title “The Same Old Song”, and has appeared elsewhere under the names “Marxism is a European Tradition,” and “For America to Live, Europe Must Die.” Yet, it is actually not very available on the internet. I hope by republishing it I will raise some much-needed debate on the nature of the revolutionary project today.


I want to point out one difference I have with the essay, namely that the “European culture” Russell Means criticizes is capitalism, and before it could commit genocide and ecocide on the rest of the planet, this social system had to be imposed upon Europe first.Silvia Federici’s book Caliban and the Witch is key to my understanding of these violent origins of capitalism. The importance of this distinction is to clarify what Means says at the end of the essay, that he is not making a racial argument, but a cultural argument. For me, we need more than that, we need a political/economic argument which cuts to the core of why capitalism is destroying the planet and making us all miserable.Only then does revolutionary change appear possible. [alex]
“For America to Live, Europe Must Die”

The following speech was given by Russell Means in July 1980, before several thousand people who had assembled from all over the world for the Black Hills International Survival Gathering, in the Black Hills of South Dakota. It is Russell Means’s most famous speech.


“The only possible opening for a statement of this kind is that I detest writing. The process itself epitomizes the European concept of “legitimate” thinking; what is written has an importance that is denied the spoken. My culture, the Lakota culture, has an oral tradition, so I ordinarily reject writing. It is one of the white world’s ways of destroying the cultures of non-European peoples, the imposing of an abstraction over the spoken relationship of a people.


So what you read here is not what I’ve written. It’s what I’ve said and someone else has written down. I will allow this because it seems that the only way to communicate with the white world is through the dead, dry leaves of a book. I don’t really care whether my words reach whites or not. They have already demonstrated through their history that they cannot hear, cannot see; they can only read (of course, there are exceptions, but the exceptions only prove the rule). I’m more concerned with American Indian people, students and others, who have begun to be absorbed into the white world through universities and other institutions. But even then it’s a marginal sort of concern. It’s very possible to grow into a red face with a white mind; and if that’s a person’s individual choice, so be it, but I have no use for them. This is part of the process of cultural genocide being waged by Europeans against American Indian peoples’ today. My concern is with those American Indians who choose to resist this genocide, but who may be confused as to how to proceed.


(You notice I use the term American Indian rather than Native American or Native indigenous people or Amerindian when referring to my people. There has been some controversy about such terms, and frankly, at this point, I find it absurd. Primarily it seems that American Indian is being rejected as European in origin–which is true. But all the above terms are European in origin; the only non-European way is to speak of Lakota–or, more precisely, of Oglala, Brule, etc.–and of the Dineh, the Miccousukee, and all the rest of the several hundred correct tribal names.


(There is also some confusion about the word Indian, a mistaken belief that it refers somehow to the country, India. When Columbus washed up on the beach in the Caribbean, he was not looking for a country called India. Europeans were calling that country Hindustan in 1492. Look it up on the old maps. Columbus called the tribal people he met “Indio,” from the Italian in dio, meaning “in God.”)


It takes a strong effort on the part of each American Indian not to become Europeanized. The strength for this effort can only come from the traditional ways, the traditional values that our elders retain. It must come from the hoop, the four directions, the relations: it cannot come from the pages of a book or a thousand books. No European can ever teach a Lakota to be Lakota, a Hopi to be Hopi. A master’s degree in “Indian Studies” or in “education” or in anything else cannot make a person into a human being or provide knowledge into traditional ways. It can only make you into a mental European, an outsider.


I should be clear about something here, because there seems to be some confusion about it. When I speak of Europeans or mental Europeans, I’m not allowing for false distinctions. I’m not saying that on the one hand there are the by-products of a few thousand years of genocidal, reactionary, European intellectual development which is bad; and on the other hand there is some new revolutionary intellectual development which is good. I’m referring here to the so-called theories of Marxism and anarchism and “leftism” in general. I don’t believe these theories can be separated from the rest of the of the European intellectual tradition. It’s really just the same old song.


The process began much earlier. Newton, for example, “revolutionized” physics and the so-called natural sciences by reducing the physical universe to a linear mathematical equation. Descartes did the same thing with culture. John Locke did it with politics, and Adam Smith did it with economics. Each one of these “thinkers” took a piece of the spirituality of human existence and converted it into code, an abstraction. They picked up where Christianity ended: they “secularized” Christian religion, as the “scholars” like to say–and in doing so they made Europe more able and ready to act as an expansionist culture. Each of these intellectual revolutions served to abstract the European mentality even further, to remove the wonderful complexity and spirituality from the universe and replace it with a logical sequence: one, two, three. Answer!


This is what has come to be termed “efficiency” in the European mind. Whatever is mechanical is perfect; whatever seems to work at the moment–that is, proves the mechanical model to be the right one–is considered correct, even when it is clearly untrue. This is why “truth” changes so fast in the European mind; the answers which result from such a process are only stopgaps, only temporary, and must be continuously discarded in favor of new stopgaps which support the mechanical models and keep them (the models) alive.


Hegel and Marx were heirs to the thinking of Newton, Descartes, Locke and Smith. Hegel finished the process of secularizing theology–and that is put in his own terms–he secularized the religious thinking through which Europe understood the universe. Then Marx put Hegel’s philosophy in terms of “materialism,” which is to say that Marx despiritualized Hegel’s work altogether. Again, this is in Marx’ own terms. And this is now seen as the future revolutionary potential of Europe. Europeans may see this as revolutionary, but American Indians see it simply as still more of that same old European conflict between being and gaining. The intellectual roots of a new Marxist form of European imperialism lie in Marx’–and his followers’–links to the tradition of Newton, Hegel and the others.


Being is a spiritual proposition. Gaining is a material act. Traditionally, American Indians have always attempted to be the best people they could. Part of that spiritual process was and is to give away wealth, to discard wealth in order not to gain. Material gain is an indicator of false status among traditional people, while it is “proof that the system works” to Europeans. Clearly, there are two completely opposing views at issue here, and Marxism is very far over to the other side from the American Indian view. But let’s look at a major implication of this; it is not merely an intellectual debate.


The European materialist tradition of despiritualizing the universe is very similar to the mental process which goes into dehumanizing another person. And who seems most expert at dehumanizing other people? And why? Soldiers who have seen a lot of combat learn to do this to the enemy before going back into combat. Murderers do it before going out to commit murder. Nazi SS guards did it to concentration camp inmates. Cops do it. Corporation leaders do it to the workers they send into uranium mines and steel mills. Politicians do it to everyone in sight. And what the process has in common for each group doing the dehumanizing is that it makes it all right to kill and otherwise destroy other people. One of the Christian commandments says, “Thou shalt not kill,” at least not humans, so the trick is to mentally convert the victims into nonhumans. Then you can proclaim violation of your own commandment as a virtue.


In terms of the despiritualization of the universe, the mental process works so that it becomes virtuous to destroy the planet. Terms like progress and development are used as cover words here, the way victory and freedom are used to justify butchery in the dehumanization process. For example, a real-estate speculator may refer to “developing” a parcel of ground by opening a gravel quarry; development here means total, permanent destruction, with the earth itself removed. But European logic has gained a few tons of gravel with which more land can be “developed” through the construction of road beds. Ultimately, the whole universe is open–in the European view–to this sort of insanity.


Most important here, perhaps, is the fact that Europeans feel no sense of loss in all this. After all, their philosophers have despiritualized reality, so there is no satisfaction (for them) to be gained in simply observing the wonder of a mountain or a lake or a people in being. No, satisfaction is measured in terms of gaining material. So the mountain becomes gravel, and the lake becomes coolant for a factory, and the people are rounded up for processing through the indoctrination mills Europeans like to call schools.


But each new piece of that “progress” ups the ante out in the real world. Take fuel for the industrial machine as an example. Little more than two centuries ago, nearly everyone used wood–a replenishable, natural item–as fuel for the very human needs of cooking and staying warm. Along came the Industrial Revolution and coal became the dominant fuel, as production became the social imperative for Europe. Pollution began to become a problem in the cities, and the earth was ripped open to provide coal whereas wood had always simply been gathered or harvested at no great expense to the environment. Later, oil became the major fuel, as the technology of production was perfected through a series of scientific “revolutions.” Pollution increased dramatically, and nobody yet knows what the environmental costs of pumping all that oil out of the ground will really be in the long run. Now there’s an “energy crisis,” and uranium is becoming the dominant fuel.


Capitalists, at least, can be relied upon to develop uranium as fuel only at the rate which they can show a good profit. That’s their ethic, and maybe they will buy some time. Marxists, on the other hand, can be relied upon to develop uranium fuel as rapidly as possible simply because it’s the most “efficient” production fuel available. That’s their ethic, and I fail to see where it’s preferable. Like I said, Marxism is right smack in the middle of European tradition. It’s the same old song.


There’s a rule of thumb which can be applied here. You cannot judge the real nature of a European revolutionary doctrine on the basis of the changes it proposes to make within the European power structure and society. You can only judge it by the effects it will have on non-European peoples. This is because every revolution in European history has served to reinforce Europe’s tendencies and abilities to export destruction to other peoples, other cultures and the environment itself. I defy anyone to point out an example where this is not true.


So now we, as American Indian people, are asked to believe that a “new” European revolutionary doctrine such as Marxism will reverse the negative effects of European history on us. European power relations are to be adjusted once again, and that’s supposed to make things better for all of us. But what does this really mean?


Right now, today, we who live on the Pine Ridge Reservation are living in what white society has designated a “National Sacrifice Area.” What this means is that we have a lot of uranium deposits here, and white culture (not us) needs this uranium as energy production material. The cheapest, most efficient way for industry to extract and deal with the processing of this uranium is to dump the waste by-products right here at the digging sites. Right here where we live. This waste is radioactive and will make the entire region uninhabitable forever. This is considered by the industry, and by the white society that created this industry, to be an “acceptable” price to pay for energy resource development. Along the way they also plan to drain the water table under this part of South Dakota as part of the industrial process, so the region becomes doubly uninhabitable. The same sort of thing is happening down in the land of the Navajo and Hopi, up in the land of the Northern Cheyenne and Crow, and elsewhere. Thirty percent of the coal in the West and half of the uranium deposits in the United States have been found to lie under reservation land, so there is no way this can be called a minor issue.


We are resisting being turned into a National Sacrifice Area. We are resisting being turned into a national sacrifice people. The costs of this industrial process are not acceptable to us. It is genocide to dig uranium here and drain the water table–no more, no less.


Now let’s suppose that in our resistance to extermination we begin to seek allies (we have). Let’s suppose further that we were to take revolutionary Marxism at its word: that it intends nothing less than the complete overthrow of the European capitalists order which has presented this threat to our very existence. This would seem to be a natural alliance for American Indian people to enter into. After all, as the Marxists say, it is the capitalists who set us up to be a national sacrifice. This is true as far as it goes.


But, as I’ve tried to point out, this “truth” is very deceptive. Revolutionary Marxism is committed to even further perpetuation and perfection of the very industrial process which is destroying us all. It offers only to “redistribute” the results–the money, maybe–of this industrialization to a wider section of the population. It offers to take wealth from the capitalists and pass it around; but in order to do so, Marxism must maintain the industrial system. Once again, the power relations within European society will have to be altered, but once again the effects upon American Indian peoples here and non-Europeans elsewhere will remain the same. This is much the same as when power was redistributed from the church to private business during the so-called bourgeois revolution. European society changed a bit, at least superficially, but its conduct toward non-Europeans continued as before. You can see what the American Revolution of 1776 did for American Indians. It’s the same old song.


Revolutionary Marxism, like industrial society in other forms, seeks to “rationalize” all people in relation to industry–maximum industry, maximum production. It is a doctrine that despises the American Indian spiritual tradition, our cultures, our lifeways. Marx himself called us “precapitalists” and “primitive.” Precapitalist simply means that, in his view, we would eventually discover capitalism and become capitalists; we have always been economically retarded in Marxist terms. The only manner in which American Indian people could participate in a Marxist revolution would be to join the industrial system, to become factory workers, or “proletarians,” as Marx called them. The man was very clear about the fact that his revolution could only occur through the struggle of the proletariat, that the existence of a massive industrial system is a precondition of a successful Marxist society.


I think there’s a problem with language here. Christians, capitalists, Marxists. All of them have been revolutionary in their own minds, but none of them really means revolution. What they really mean is continuation. They do what they do in order that European culture can continue to exist and develop according to its needs. Like germs, European culture goes through occasional convulsions, even divisions within itself, in order to go on living and growing. This isn’t a revolution we’re talking about, but a means to continue what already exists. An amoeba is still an amoeba after it reproduces. But maybe comparing European culture to an amoeba isn’t really fair to the amoeba. Maybe cancer cells are a more accurate comparison because European culture has historically destroyed everything around it; and it will eventually destroy itself.


So, in order for us to really join forces with Marxism, we American Indians would have to accept the national sacrifice of our homeland; we would have to commit cultural suicide and become industrialized and Europeanized.


At this point, I’ve got to stop and ask myself whether I’m being too harsh. Marxism has something of a history. Does this history bear out my observations? I look to the process of industrialization in the Soviet Union since 1920 and I see that these Marxists have done what it took the English Industrial Revolution 300 years to do; and the Marxists did it in 60 years. I see that the territory of the USSR used to contain a number of tribal peoples and that they have been crushed to make way for the factories. The Soviets refer to this as “the National Question,” the question of whether the tribal peoples had the right to exist as peoples; and they decided the tribal peoples were an acceptable sacrifice to the industrial needs. I look to China and I see the same thing. I look to Vietnam and I see Marxists imposing an industrial order and rooting out the indigenous tribal mountain people.


I hear the leading Soviet scientist saying that when uranium is exhausted, then alternatives will be found. I see the Vietnamese taking over a nuclear power plant abandoned by the U.S. military. Have they dismantled and destroyed it? No, they are using it. I see China exploding nuclear bombs, developing uranium reactors, and preparing a space program in order to colonize and exploit the planets the same as the Europeans colonized and exploited this hemisphere. It’s the same old song, but maybe with a faster tempo this time.


The statement of the Soviet scientist is very interesting. Does he know what this alternative energy source will be? No, he simply has faith. Science will find a way. I hear revolutionary Marxists saying that the destruction of the environment, pollution, and radiation will all be controlled. And I see them act upon their words. Do they know how these things will be controlled? No, they simply have faith. Science will find a way. Industrialization is fine and necessary. How do they know this? Faith. Science will find a way. Faith of this sort has always been known in Europe as religion. Science has become the new European religion for both capitalists and Marxists; they are truly inseparable; they are part and parcel of the same culture. So, in both theory and practice, Marxism demands that non-European peoples give up their values, their traditions, their cultural existence altogether. We will all be industrialized science addicts in a Marxist society.


I do not believe that capitalism itself is really responsible for the situation in which American Indians have been declared a national sacrifice. No, it is the European tradition; European culture itself is responsible. Marxism is just the latest continuation of this tradition, not a solution to it. To ally with Marxism is to ally with the very same forces that declare us an acceptable cost.


There is another way. There is the traditional Lakota way and the ways of the American Indian peoples. It is the way that knows that humans do not have the right to degrade Mother Earth, that there are forces beyond anything the European mind has conceived, that humans must be in harmony with all relations or the relations will eventually eliminate the disharmony. A lopsided emphasis on humans by humans–the Europeans’ arrogance of acting as though they were beyond the nature of all related things–can only result in a total disharmony and a readjustment which cuts arrogant humans down to size, gives them a taste of that reality beyond their grasp or control and restores the harmony. There is no need for a revolutionary theory to bring this about; it’s beyond human control. The nature peoples of this planet know this and so they do not theorize about it. Theory is an abstract; our knowledge is real.


Distilled to its basic terms, European faith–including the new faith in science–equals a belief that man is God. Europe has always sought a Messiah, whether that be the man Jesus Christ or the man Karl Marx or the man Albert Einstein. American Indians know this to be totally absurd. Humans are the weakest of all creatures, so weak that other creatures are willing to give up their flesh that we may live. Humans are able to survive only through the exercise of rationality since they lack the abilities of other creatures to gain food through the use of fang and claw.


But rationality is a curse since it can cause humans to forget the natural order of things in ways other creatures do not. A wolf never forgets his or her place in the natural order. American Indians can. Europeans almost always do. We pray our thanks to the deer, our relations, for allowing us their flesh to eat; Europeans simply take the flesh for granted and consider the deer inferior. After all, Europeans consider themselves godlike in their rationalism and science. God is the Supreme Being; all else must be inferior.


All European tradition, Marxism included, has conspired to defy the natural order of all things. Mother Earth has been abused, the powers have been abused, and this cannot go on forever. No theory can alter that simple fact. Mother Earth will retaliate, the whole environment will retaliate, and the abusers will be eliminated. Things come full circle, back to where they started. That’s revolution. And that’s a prophecy of my people, of the Hopi people and of other correct peoples.


American Indians have been trying to explain this to Europeans for centuries. But, as I said earlier, Europeans have proven themselves unable to hear. The natural order will win out, and the offenders will die out, the way deer die when they offend the harmony by over-populating a given region. It’s only a matter of time until what Europeans call “a major catastrophe of global proportions” will occur. It is the role of American Indian peoples, the role of all natural beings, to survive. A part of our survival is to resist. We resist not to overthrow a government or to take political power, but because it is natural to resist extermination, to survive. We don’t want power over white institutions; we want white institutions to disappear. That’s revolution.


American Indians are still in touch with these realities–the prophecies, the traditions of our ancestors. We learn from the elders, from nature, from the powers. And when the catastrophe is over, we American Indian peoples will still be here to inhabit the hemisphere. I don’t care if it’s only a handful living high in the Andes. American Indian people will survive; harmony will be reestablished. That’s revolution.


At this point, perhaps I should be very clear about another matter, one which should already be clear as a result of what I’ve said. But confusion breeds easily these days, so I want to hammer home this point. When I use the term European, I’m not referring to a skin color or a particular genetic structure. What I’m referring to is a mind-set, a worldview that is a product of the development of European culture. People are not genetically encoded to hold this outlook; they are acculturated to hold it. The same is true for American Indians or for the members of any culture.


It is possible for an American Indian to share European values, a European worldview. We have a term for these people; we call them “apples”–red on the outside (genetics) and white on the inside (their values). Other groups have similar terms: Blacks have their “oreos”; Hispanos have “Coconuts” and so on. And, as I said before, there are exceptions to the white norm: people who are white on the outside, but not white inside. I’m not sure what term should be applied to them other than “human beings.”


What I’m putting out here is not a racial proposition but a cultural proposition. Those who ultimately advocate and defend the realities of European culture and its industrialism are my enemies. Those who resist it, who struggle against it, are my allies, the allies of American Indian people. And I don’t give a damn what their skin color happens to be. Caucasian is the white term for the white race: European is an outlook I oppose.


The Vietnamese Communists are not exactly what you might consider genetic Caucasians, but they are now functioning as mental Europeans. The same holds true for Chinese Communists, for Japanese capitalists or Bantu Catholics or Peter “MacDollar” down at the Navajo Reservation or Dickie Wilson up here at Pine Ridge. There is no racism involved in this, just an acknowledgment of the mind and spirit that make up culture.


In Marxist terms I suppose I’m a “cultural nationalist.” I work first with my people, the traditional Lakota people, because we hold a common worldview and share an immediate struggle. Beyond this, I work with other traditional American Indian peoples, again because of a certain commonality in worldview and form of struggle. Beyond that, I work with anyone who has experienced the colonial oppression of Europe and who resists its cultural and industrial totality. Obviously, this includes genetic Caucasians who struggle to resist the dominant norms of European culture. The Irish and the Basques come immediately to mind, but there are many others.


I work primarily with my own people, with my own community. Other people who hold non-European perspectives should do the same. I believe in the slogan, “Trust your brother’s vision,” although I’d like to add sisters into the bargain. I trust the community and the culturally based vision of all the races that naturally resist industrialization and human extinction. Clearly, individual whites can share in this, given only that they have reached the awareness that continuation of the industrial imperatives of Europe is not a vision, but species suicide. White is one of the sacred colors of the Lakota people–red, yellow, white and black. The four directions. The four seasons. The four periods of life and aging. The four races of humanity. Mix red, yellow, white and black together and you get brown, the color of the fifth race. This is a natural ordering of things. It therefore seems natural to me to work with all races, each with its own special meaning, identity and message.


But there is a peculiar behavior among most Caucasians. As soon as I become critical of Europe and its impact on other cultures, they become defensive. They begin to defend themselves. But I’m not attacking them personally; I’m attacking Europe. In personalizing my observations on Europe they are personalizing European culture, identifying themselves with it. By defending themselves in this context, they are ultimately defending the death culture. This is a confusion which must be overcome, and it must be overcome in a hurry. None of us has energy to waste in such false struggles.


Caucasians have a more positive vision to offer humanity than European culture. I believe this. But in order to attain this vision it is necessary for Caucasians to step outside European culture–alongside the rest of humanity–to see Europe for what it is and what it does.


To cling to capitalism and Marxism and all other “isms” is simply to remain within European culture. There is no avoiding this basic fact. As a fact, this constitutes a choice. Understand that the choice is based on culture, not race. Understand that to choose European culture and industrialism is to choose to be my enemy. And understand that the choice is yours, not mine.


This leads me back to address those American Indians who are drifting through the universities, the city slums, and other European institutions. If you are there to resist the oppressor in accordance with your traditional ways, so be it. I don’t know how you manage to combine the two, but perhaps you will succeed. But retain your sense of reality. Beware of coming to believe the white world now offers solutions to the problems it confronts us with. Beware, too, of allowing the words of native people to be twisted to the advantages of our enemies. Europe invented the practice of turning words around on themselves. You need only look to the treaties between American Indian peoples and various European governments to know that this is true. Draw your strength from who you are.


A culture which regularly confuses revolt with resistance, has nothing helpful to teach you and nothing to offer you as a way of life. Europeans have long since lost all touch with reality, if ever they were in touch with who you are as American Indians.


So, I suppose to conclude this, I should state clearly that leading anyone toward Marxism is the last thing on my mind. Marxism is as alien to my culture as capitalism and Christianity are. In fact, I can say I don’t think I’m trying to lead anyone toward anything. To some extent I tried to be a “leader,” in the sense that the white media like to use that term, when the American Indian Movement was a young organization. This was a result of a confusion I no longer have. You cannot be everything to everyone. I do not propose to be used in such a fashion by my enemies. I am not a leader. I am an Oglala Lakota patriot. That is all I want and all I need to be. And I am very comfortable with who I am.”

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@99 Weeks: When Unemployment Benefits Run Out

(Note: Don't forget everyone, it was Bush/ Cheney that got us into this. We are just trying to pull out of their mess that they left. Dave)

Scott Pelley Reports On The Growing Number of Americans Who Are Exhausting Their Benefits

 Play CBS Video Video Unemployment Benefits: The 99ersEven after an extension of unemployment benefits to 99 weeks, many of those about to go off the program are in a quandary. Scott Pelley talks to some of them in Silicon Valley.Video Extra: Wiping Out SavingsLong-term unemployment is wrecking years of saving and planning by people like Lisa and Doug Francone. They tell Scott Pelley they have had to tap into the 401(k) and their kids' college funds.
Video Extra: San Jose and the Recession San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed explains to Scott Pelley how not one but two recessions have hit his city, destroying thousands of jobs.Scott Pelley, meeting people attending a workshop called "Job Connections."  (CBS)

(CBS)  The economic jam we're in has topped even the Great Depression in one respect: never have we had a recession this deep with a recovery this flat. Unemployment has been at nine and a half percent or above for 14 months. 

Congress did something that it has never done before - it extended unemployment benefits to 99 weeks. That cost more than $100 billion, a huge expense for a government in debt. 

But now, for many Americans 99 weeks have passed and there's still no job in sight. Some have taken to calling themselves the "99ers." 

"60 Minutes" and correspondent Scott Pelley went to several communities in search of the 99ers, but we didn't expect to find such a crisis in Silicon Valley, the high tech capital that many people hoped would be creating jobs. 

Extra: Wiping Out Savings 
Extra: San Jose and the Recession 
Link: Job Connections 
Link: Second Harvest Food Bank 
Link: Martha's Soup Kitchen 

If you want to understand why the economy is stalled, come to San Jose, Calif., and talk with 99ers like Marianne Rose. "I remember it coming close to like six months. I was saying, 'I can't believe I'm out of work this long.' Then the year mark hit. And I just started just panicking seriously. Now that it's over two years I can't believe it. I just, I can't believe it," she told Pelley. 

Rose was a financial analyst at a real estate firm. Age 54, she's single with a grown daughter. After being laid off with about 100 co-workers, she spent her savings, lost her home and finally found herself sitting in a truck with her dog and all of her possessions. 

She made a desperate call to a friend and found refuge upstairs in the home of strangers, her friend's brother and sister-in-law. 

"How long did you think you would be in here?" Pelley asked. 

"Two weeks really. That's all I thought," she replied. 

But she told Pelley it has been six months. "And not really an end in sight, yet." 

"What sort of things would you be willing to do at this point?" Pelley asked. 

"Well, I can say that probably the lowest level position for me has been now to apply for a clerk, a county clerk and I just realized the competition is pretty stiff out there," she replied. 

Asked what she meant by stiff competition, Rose explained, "There's a lot of people, speaking of the county. I had applied to those clerk positions. There's actually four positions that were open. I found there were over 2,000 people that applied for those four positions." 

Rose is one of at least a million and a half Americans who've exhausted their unemployment checks. 

Now, Silicon Valley, the capital of American innovation has a new creation: revival meetings for the unemployed. On weekends, they come by the hundreds. 

"60 Minutes" joined a gathering called "Job Connections," held inside a local church. 

It's part how-to-find-a-job workshop, part networking opportunity with the feel of a 12-step program. 

The people in the group are the faces of unemployment in Silicon Valley, people in their 40s, 50s and 60s who thought they had done everything right: earned a degree, stayed with their company, saved for retirement. 

"I'm curious. How many PhDs in this room?" Pelley asked. "One, two, three, four… several. Now leave your hands up. How many master's degrees? Oh boy. And how many of you went to college. Everybody keep your hands up if you have a college degree, a master's degree or a PhD." 

Many in the room had their hands up. 

"How many of you expected to retire from the company where you were working?" he then asked. 

"More than half the room," he noted. 

"How many of you have cashed out your 401ks? IRAs? Savings accounts?" Pelley asked. 

Again, many hands went up. 

A lot of them are too young to retire and, maybe, too old to rehire. The longer they're out, the tougher it gets. 

Judy Thompson was marking the time before she loses her home. "Three months maybe, and I've been in that house since 1982. I don't want to move," she said. 

Asked where she is going to go, Thompson told Pelley, "I don't know. I'm trying' not to think that far ahead. But anyway, didn't mean to get emotional. Sorry." 

Sara Huber may lose her family business of 23 years. "Everything's gone and we can't survive 'cause these people can't survive," she explained. 

"Because these people don't have jobs, they're not coming to your business?" Pelley asked. 

"The equity lines are frozen, Right. People don't have credit. There's nothing there," she replied. 

When asked how long her business can go on, Huber said, "We're going month to month, literally. I'm praying for more work." 

Jim Wild has been applying for jobs two years. "I've gone through the tier one companies. I've gone through the tier two companies and now I'm down to Target. I just got a job offer from Target to work a part-time job at 9.50 or 9.25 an hour," he explained. 

The Target job is floor sales; previously, Wild was a fiber optics engineering manager. 

He's taking the job at Target and he's glad to get it. 

These folks aren't that unusual: today, nearly 20 percent of the unemployed in America have college degrees. 

Silicon Valley lost its jobs in construction, manufacturing and in high-tech engineering that went overseas. San Jose looks the same, but it shrank by 75,000 jobs. Many buildings there stand empty. 

The national unemployment rate of about nine and a half percent sounds incredibly high and of course it is. But it doesn't nearly capture the depth of the trouble. It doesn't count the people who've seen their hours cut to part time. It doesn't count the people who have quit looking for work. 

If you add all of that together, the unemployed and the underemployed, it's not nine and a half percent, it's 17 percent; and in California it's 22 percent. 

And what makes it so much worse is that, nationwide, one third of the unemployed have been out of work more than a year. That hasn't happened since the Depression.

"60 Minutes" stopped by the soup kitchen in San Jose. Many folks used to think that they could see all the way to retirement. But now long-term unemployment is wrecking years of saving and planning by people like Lisa and Doug Francone. 

Doug was a $200,000-a-year personnel executive. 

"You must have thought that you'd get another job pretty quickly," Pelley remarked. 

"Yeah. It really didn't cross my mind that I wouldn't find something. The question was trying to take the time to find the right job," he replied. 

"You'd have a job in six months, a job that you liked in six months, and how long has it been?" Pelley asked Lisa Francone. 

"Two years and three months," she replied. 

They had saved for retirement and college for their son and daughter. But most of that is gone. "The unemployment checks were tiny, I can't remember what they were but…," Francone said. 

"$475," his wife said. 

"Lisa, what were you doing with $475 a week?" Pelley asked. 

"Well, by the time we paid benefits, we had enough to pay a bill or two but certainly not meet the mortgage or property taxes or groceries," she replied. 

Now their son is going to the military instead of college; selling the house will be next. 

Doug Francone took matters into his own hands: he created jobs for him and his son, buying a franchise that cleans air ducts. He spent his 401(k) on this. But, there hasn't been enough business to make money. 

"I don't wanna come off like 'Oh you know, woe is us.' There's other people struggling a lot worse than we are. But it's certainly very different for us," he told Pelley. 

"You're surprised to be in this place?" Pelley asked. 

"Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Shocked really," Francone replied. 

Like the Francones, four and a half million Americans have taken hardship withdrawals from their 401(k)s. With savings gone, unemployment checks exhausted, many are coming to charities including the CALL Primrose Center, a pantry of free food. 

Mary Watts has run CALL Primrose for 11 years. 

"Before the Great Recession began, you were sending out how many bags of groceries in a year? Pelley asked. 

"When I started in '99 it was 4,000 bags a year," she replied. "It's going to be 32, to 35,000 bags this year." 

"You know these people coming into the pantry now, they must look like professionals," Pelley remarked. 

"Oh absolutely, yes, absolutely professionals. Career professionals, people that never, ever would have thought they would be coming in our door other than perhaps as a donor," Watts said. 

We met Claudia Bruce at the center. She was an office manager making $70,000 a year when she was laid off. Now her 99 weeks of unemployment checks are running out. She never imagined she'd need free food. But then, she never imagined she would be picking out trash to sell to the recycler. 

"You do what you have to do. I'm not delighted, but I'm happy to have the money that it provides," she told Pelley. 

"The day before you were laid off, what was your lifestyle?" Pelley asked. 

"I was a shop-a-holic. Yeah. I was trying to reform myself, but there's nothing like losing your job for a long period of time to completely reform a shop-a-holic," she replied. 

Her car has turned into a garbage truck, filled with recyclables. 

She's learned a lot. Glass pays more than cans, and she has to be quick to beat the neighborhood homeless guy to the good stuff. 

She estimated her haul would bring in $28; instead, she got $33.81. 

"Personal record," she told Pelley. 

"Did you ever think that $33 would mean so much?" he asked. 

"No. But then, I never thought $5 would mean so much either," Bruce replied. 

She has applied for hundreds of jobs, from office manager to clerical work. She's had four interviews in two years. She has kept a small apartment with help to pay the rent. 

"I do get some help from my mom," Bruce said. 

Her mother is 83. 

"And so, she's helping you out even now," Pelley remarked. 

"Yeah, I'm her baby still, you know," Bruce said. 

"You didn't expect to be her baby at this point in your life?" Pelley asked. 

"Absolutely not. I thought I'd be helping her now, that she wouldn't be helping me," she replied. 

Her benefits will end when she hits 99 weeks soon. No one is expecting Congress to vote another extension of unemployment checks given our historic budget deficits. 

As government benefits run out, a lot of people are depending on kindness to take their place. 

Marianne Rose lived with her friend's brother for seven months, insisting on cooking and cleaning to earn her keep. In recent days she found a job in a public school. It'll pay about one third what she used to make. It's the best thing to happen in two years, but it's little and late. 

"Do you imagine getting your lifestyle back?" Pelley asked. 

"No," Rose replied. "Not to the same point now because now I would have to worry about, you know, my old age, in my old age you know its rebuild a nest egg, pay off my debts that I have. That has to happen so now, my lifestyle will not be the same ever, ever again."

Firefly (Lilia Adecer Cajilog)

Tawo Seed Carrier

POB 1456

South Pasadena, CA 91031

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@(Scumbag Delay, Dave)

One of the most corrupt members to ever walk the halls of Congress will finally face a jury of his peers. Former Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s trial on money laundering charges begins this week in the Lone Star State (generally not the best place to be a criminal defendant). While it is a relief to see this case get underway after years of legal wrangling, it is deplorable that Mr. DeLay will never face any federal charges.

After more than five years of investigating, this past August the Department of Justice decided not to prosecute the former majority leader for selling off Congress to the highest bidders.

I’m sure CREW is not alone in wondering why not, but the Department of Justice isn’t explaining.

So we decided to get to the bottom of this. CREW submitted a request under the Freedom of Information Act for records related to the investigation. We’ve asked for witness statements, prosecutorial memos, documents - you name it, we want it - because the American people have a right to know why DeLay got away.

Every since the Department of Justice botched the prosecution of the late Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK), the Public Integrity Section there has been outgunned and undermanned. But it is critical that prosecution of public corruption be a top priority. Otherwise, dishonest politicians get the message that there are no consequences, no matter how egregious the violations.

With the support of folks like you, CREW will continue to demand that the Obama administration provide the resources necessary to ensure that other crooked congressmen (like those on our Most Corrupt list) are brought to justice.

After all, if Tom DeLay – the poster child for congressional corruption – can get away with brazenly selling his influence to Jack Abramoff, what crimes would be serious enough for the Justice Department to prosecute?

Sincerely,

Melanie Sloan,
Executive Director
CREW