From CounterPunch online journal
A CounterPunch Exclusive
The Denial of My Parole
I Am Barack Obama's Political Prisoner Now
By LEONARD PELTIER
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.
To claim innocence is to suggest that the government is wrong, if not guilty itself. The American judicial system is set up so that the defendant is not punished for the crime itself, but for refusing to accept whatever plea arrangement is offered and for daring to compel the judicial system to grant the accused the right to right to rebut the charges leveled by the state in an actual trial. Such insolence is punished invariably with prosecution requests for the steepest possible sentence, if not an upward departure from sentencing guidelines that are being gradually discarded, along with the possibility of parole.
As much as non-Natives might hate Indians, we are all in the same boat. To attempt to emulate this system in tribal government is pitiful, to say the least.
It was only this year, in the Troy Davis, case, that the U.S. Supreme Court recognized innocence as a legitimate legal defense. Like the witnesses that were coerced into testifying against me, those that testified against Davis renounced their statements, yet Davis was very nearly put to death. I might have been executed myself by now, had not the government of Canada required a waiver of the death penalty as a condition of extradition.
The old order is aptly represented by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who stated in his dissenting opinion in the Davis case, “This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is 'actually' innocent. Quite to the contrary, we have repeatedly left that question unresolved, while expressing considerable doubt that any claim based on alleged 'actual innocence' is constitutionally cognizable.”
The esteemed Senator from North Dakota, Byron Dorgan, who is now the chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, used much the same reasoning in writing that “our legal system has found Leonard Peltier guilty of the crime for which he was charged. I have reviewed the material from the trial, and I believe the verdict was fair and just.”
It is a bizarre and incomprehensible statement to Natives, as well it should be, that innocence and guilt is a mere legal status, not necessarily rooted in material fact. It is a truism that all political prisoners were convicted of the crimes for which they were charged.
The truth is the government wants me to falsely confess in order to validate a rather sloppy frame-up operation, one whose exposure would open the door to an investigation of the United States' role in training and equipping goon squads to suppress a grassroots movement on Pine Ridge against a puppet dictatorship.
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. Please support the Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee in our effort to hold the United States government to its own words.
I thank you all who have stood by me all these years, but to name anyone would be to exclude many more. We must never lose hope in our struggle for freedom.
In the Spirit of Crazy Horse,
Leonard Peltier
Leonard Peltier #89637-132
USP-Lewisburg
US Penitentiary
PO Box 1000
Lewisburg, PA 17837
For more information on Leonard Peltier visit the Leonard Peltier Defense-Offense Committee website.
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So Hitler interprets the game? whose game? your game?
"In the "Definitions" chapter of Jung's seminal work Psychological Types, under the definition of "collective" Jung references representations collectives, a term coined by Levy-Bruhl in his 1910 book How Natives Think. Jung says this is what he describes as the collective unconscious. Freud, on the other hand, did not accept the idea of a collective unconscious."
Freud did not accept the idea of a collective unconscious...dude.
The motiff is just that geometric India sanskirt a simple tool to set down on a ground like a compass and determine where they hell you are on earth. Kaohi
The moral authority got rid of Pres. Carter and they will get rid of Obama too. The sadness is he is from Hawaii. So how are we going to survive this aftermath?
As for Leonard Peltier, Obama is a great communicator and that's why he got his job. What he is not is a first nation. Leonard Peltier is from a first nation. So unless we can convince Obama that our indpendence movement and the Hawaiian Kingdom is the direction we want and that we want de occupation of the military from Hawaii, this request remains as plausible.
We need to let Obama know that the Akaka Bill is nothing but within a high risk entity. I don't see how Leonard Peltier can be free. Why? Because that is why Leonard Peltier is behind bars, he heard the call and came running to a first nations cry for help. Who was the actual 'evil' Native American leaders doing the Pinkville on their own kind. That is why AIM was created.
Obama is not a first nation person, his from Punahou the very institution that countered first nation people in Hawaii. Go to the front gate of Punahou School check out the Pohaku that's directly infront the gate. It's just a tip, and Obama represent that tip of what's to come in the near future, as in nuclear war.
If, I can't convince the moral authority that DU is bad and that Tad Davies have no right to pollute our communities with DU. How can I convince a Punahou Grad that Leonard Peltier should be free because the FBI and their evidence against him was untrue, faulty and a lie. And that he wasn't even near enough to shoot and kill the FBI agents. The person that confessed to the killing got off scott free and is now dead.
How can I convince a President of the US to set a native American free, just based on factual truth. In the same way, how can I convince Obama that we shouldn't continue killing people in foreign countries. Or that the bail out was a mean move, and Paul Volckner ought not to raise the commercial interest rates.
We don't have a President in Office that cares about the first people and their innocence. Besides, neither are we Native Americans? or Indians? or first nation within a US system. We are Kanaka Maoli from an illegal overthrow. I just wish I had the right words to convince the President that enough is enough and Leonard Peltier should be free because he did not do the crime. His government is faulty and detriment to the first people beginning with the Bureau of Indian Affairs ending with Office of Hawaiian Affairs. Kaohi
Replies
"In the "Definitions" chapter of Jung's seminal work Psychological Types, under the definition of "collective" Jung references representations collectives, a term coined by Levy-Bruhl in his 1910 book How Natives Think. Jung says this is what he describes as the collective unconscious. Freud, on the other hand, did not accept the idea of a collective unconscious."
Freud did not accept the idea of a collective unconscious...dude.
The motiff is just that geometric India sanskirt a simple tool to set down on a ground like a compass and determine where they hell you are on earth. Kaohi
As for Leonard Peltier, Obama is a great communicator and that's why he got his job. What he is not is a first nation. Leonard Peltier is from a first nation. So unless we can convince Obama that our indpendence movement and the Hawaiian Kingdom is the direction we want and that we want de occupation of the military from Hawaii, this request remains as plausible.
We need to let Obama know that the Akaka Bill is nothing but within a high risk entity. I don't see how Leonard Peltier can be free. Why? Because that is why Leonard Peltier is behind bars, he heard the call and came running to a first nations cry for help. Who was the actual 'evil' Native American leaders doing the Pinkville on their own kind. That is why AIM was created.
Obama is not a first nation person, his from Punahou the very institution that countered first nation people in Hawaii. Go to the front gate of Punahou School check out the Pohaku that's directly infront the gate. It's just a tip, and Obama represent that tip of what's to come in the near future, as in nuclear war.
If, I can't convince the moral authority that DU is bad and that Tad Davies have no right to pollute our communities with DU. How can I convince a Punahou Grad that Leonard Peltier should be free because the FBI and their evidence against him was untrue, faulty and a lie. And that he wasn't even near enough to shoot and kill the FBI agents. The person that confessed to the killing got off scott free and is now dead.
How can I convince a President of the US to set a native American free, just based on factual truth. In the same way, how can I convince Obama that we shouldn't continue killing people in foreign countries. Or that the bail out was a mean move, and Paul Volckner ought not to raise the commercial interest rates.
We don't have a President in Office that cares about the first people and their innocence. Besides, neither are we Native Americans? or Indians? or first nation within a US system. We are Kanaka Maoli from an illegal overthrow. I just wish I had the right words to convince the President that enough is enough and Leonard Peltier should be free because he did not do the crime. His government is faulty and detriment to the first people beginning with the Bureau of Indian Affairs ending with Office of Hawaiian Affairs. Kaohi