tagged w/ Injustice in America
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Sept 15 2009
"The United States Department of Justice has once again made a mockery of its lofty and pretentious title.
After releasing an original and continuing disciple of death cult leader Charles Manson who attempted to shoot President Gerald Ford, an admitted Croatian terrorist, and another attempted assassin of President Ford under the mandatory 30-year parole law, the U.S. Parole Commission deemed that my release would “promote disrespect for the law.”
If only the federal government would have respected its own laws, not to mention the treaties that are, under the U.S. Constitution, the supreme law of the land, I would never have been convicted nor forced to spend more than half my life in captivity. Not to mention the fact that every law in this country was created without the consent of Native peoples and is applied unequally at our expense. If nothing else, my experience should raise serious questions about the FBI's supposed jurisdiction in Indian Country.
The parole commission's phrase was lifted from soon-to-be former U.S. Attorney Drew Wrigley, who apparently hopes to ride with the FBI cavalry into the office of North Dakota governor. In this Wrigley is following in the footsteps of William Janklow, who built his political career on his reputation as an Indian fighter, moving on up from tribal attorney (and alleged rapist of a Native minor) to state attorney general, South Dakota governor, and U.S. Congressman. Some might recall that Janklow claimed responsibility for dissuading President Clinton from pardoning me before he was convicted of manslaughter. Janklow's historical predecessor, George Armstrong Custer, similarly hoped that a glorious massacre of the Sioux would propel him to the White House, and we all know what happened to him.
Unlike the barbarians that bay for my blood in the corridors of power, however, Native people are true humanitarians who pray for our enemies. Yet we must be realistic enough to organize for our own freedom and equality as nations. We constitute 5% of the population of North Dakota and 10% of South Dakota and we could utilize that influence to promote our own power on the reservations, where our focus should be. If we organized as a voting bloc, we could defeat the entire premise of the competition between the Dakotas as to which is the most racist. In the 1970s we were forced to take up arms to affirm our right to survival and self-defense, but today the war is one of ideas. We must now stand up to armed oppression and colonization with our bodies and our minds. International law is on our side.
Given the complexion of the three recent federal parolees, it might seem that my greatest crime was being Indian. But the truth is that my gravest offense is my innocence. In Iran, political prisoners are occasionally released if they confess to the ridiculous charges on which they are dragged into court, in order to discredit and intimidate them and other like-minded citizens. The FBI and its mouthpieces have suggested the same, as did the parole commission in 1993, when it ruled that my refusal to confess was grounds for denial of parole"......
"In America, there can by definition be no political prisoners, only those duly judged guilty in a court of law. It is deemed too controversial to even publicly contemplate that the federal government might fabricate and suppress evidence to defeat those deemed political enemies. But it is a demonstrable fact at every stage of my case.
I am Barack Obama's political prisoner now, and I hope and pray that he will adhere to the ideals that impelled him to run for president. But as Obama himself would acknowledge, if we are expecting him to solve our problems, we missed the point of his campaign. Only by organizing in our own communities and pressuring our supposed leaders can we bring about the changes that we all so desperately need"...Leonard Peltier
Full Letter can be read @
http://blogs.myspace.com/freepeltierSept 15 2009
"The United States Department of Justice has once again made a... more
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How is it Polka dies but talentless mass produced pop music lives!? Where is the justice? Wait'll they hear the Polka samples on the upcoming Outkast album and there will be a Polka resurgence!
It's enough to make any serious polka fan shove his plate of sausage aside, fling his lederhosen in the closet and go out and shed a few tears in his beer.
The waltz is over for America's Polka King, Jimmy Sturr, not to mention every other squeezebox-loving, ompah-dancing fanatic who followed the Grammy Awards each year just to learn whether Sturr would collect yet another trophy for best polka album of the year.
Moving to ensure that its awards show remains what it called "pertinent within the current musical landscape," the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences announced Thursday it is eliminating its best polka album category.
Although posters to Internet sites catering to polka fans (yes, there are such places) were outraged, Sturr, who is hailed by fans the world over as the King of Polka, was doing his best to take the news in stride.
"Sure I feel a little bad, but I'm grateful, man," said the 58-year-old musician who has won the best polka album trophy 18 of the past 24 years.
"The Academy did a lot, not only recognizing me but recognizing polka music," he continued. He added that the recognition gave him a chance to fuse polka with pop, country, rock and folk and broaden the music's audience as he worked with musicians such as Willie Nelson, Alison Krauss and Bela Fleck.
Still, he wasn't completely satisfied with the Academy's explanation that polka was attracting too few entries in its category.
There are millions of polka fans worldwide, Sturr noted, and hundreds of working polka bands in this country alone. They have taken your grandfather's music, he said, and merged it with Tex-Mex, rock, Tejano and other forms to create a distinctly American sound.
As Grammy-nominated player John Gora noted, one of his most popular polka covers is the rock band Genesis' "Follow You, Follow Me."
"And Phil Collins liked it," he said of the Genesis frontman.
For his part, Sturr said he suspects that if there were 20 people on the committee that recommended dropping his category, "19 of them have never been to a polka concert. "
Others speculated that Sturr's amazing record of Grammy wins helped do in the category.
"I think the fact that it was so dominated by one artist, that kind of killed the incentive for a lot of people to enter," said Carl Finch, whose Tex-Mex-Tejano-Conjunto-Polka fusion band Brave Combo upset Sturr to take the award in 1999 and 2004.
Sturr, meanwhile, says he has no plans to stop entering the Grammys, and will nominate his next album in whatever category he is allowed to.
That will be the folk music category, said Bill Freimuth, the Academy's vice president for awards.
Finch, however, worries that that kind of pigeonholing won't go down well with polka fans, who he says are already fed up with all the lederhosen and accordion jokes they must endure.
"It's not that the polka world's not used to it," he said of polka not getting enough recognition. "The polka world expects it. It's like, 'Yeah, the man did it to us again.'"How is it Polka dies but talentless mass produced pop music lives!? Where is the... more
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"Yesterday marked the first time in history that a nationwide poll showed majority support for taxing and regulating marijuana (at 52%). The poll, conducted by Zogby International at the end of April, was also one of the largest sample sizes of any national polls on the subject, with almost 4,000 respondents and a margin of error of +/- 1.6%."
Let's legalize it!"Yesterday marked the first time in history that a nationwide poll showed... more
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Slate posted a letter from John Conyers Jr., chairman of the House judiciary committee, to the DEA's acting administrator Michele Leonhart about the agency's "dramatically intensified … frequency of paramilitary-style enforcement raids" on legal cannabis users and dispensaries.
Conyers asked for an accounting of the agency's costs for these measures against "individuals who suffer from severe or chronic illness" and for its rationale for threatening landlords of licensed dispensaries with "arrest and forfeiture of their property." Meanwhile, the California State Legislature is considering a measure that would allow state and local law enforcement agencies to refuse cooperation with the DEA.
http://www.slate.com/id/2192062/entry/2192063/
Slate posted a letter from John Conyers Jr., chairman of the House judiciary... more
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9,350 marijuana plants found in Georgia. Biggest bust in county's history!
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My first short film at the School of Visual Arts in NYC. It is about Muslim stereotypes.
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izzy74
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added this
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4 years ago
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The medical use of marijuana is examined from every side of a very complex issue with this documentary. The US Government has done research with pot (slang for Cannabis) since it was made legal when Timothy Leary sued the federal government for the The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937. Timothy Leary won the case because having to buy the stamps is Self-Incrimination . So, in response, the government made Marijuana a class I narcotic and banned it.
Some people found out that the Government was growing it and sued and won the case. 7 people were in the case and all seven people are provided marijunna from this site for Medical Use. This site also sells for research.
The people that receive it are called, "compassionate use".The medical use of marijuana is examined from every side of a very complex issue with... more
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Mainstream media is just a show.Really, like Hollywood.Watch this and you'll look at news the same ! Mainstream media is just a show.Really, like Hollywood.Watch this and you'll... more
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This is a brief preview of an incomplete documentary about the abuses of America's Justice system. Your donations are needed to complete the documentary which will include mind blowing evidence of case accounts.
Your donations will also serve as proof:
1. to Justice workers, that we Americans know what they're up to,
2. to broadcasters, that this is a big enough concern to us that we, the American public will not allow the press to be punished by the courts for airing the truth, and
3. to politicians that we want them to do what we put them in their positions of power for; to look out for the best interests of the American people.This is a brief preview of an incomplete documentary about the abuses of... more
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