Flyby News
"News Fit to Transmit in the Post Cassini Flyby Era"
MemoGate ~ PeltierHearings * ElectionRotten * JustUS
10 June 2005
"Government without the consent of the governed
is the very definition of Slavery."
-- Jonathan Swift1) Memogate Hearings Scheduled for June 16
2) Something Rotten in Ohio by Gore Vidal
3) Peltier Hearing ~ June 15 ~ Lakota Sovereignty at Stake
4) Castro Strikes a Nerve on US Criminal Justice System
Editor's Notes:
This issue is about justice, not about JUST US. The first item is a June 10 press release from David Swanson and
AfterDowningStreet.org The second item is a new article by Gore Vidal about election fraud in the US. For a while the big lies -- TOO BIG TO BE TRUE -- can work - but not never ending.. Item 3 is on Leonard Peltier, and a new hearing that will test sovereignty of the Lakota Nation. Item 4 brings the words of a dictator, Fidel Castro, striking a nerve in the US, exposing its corrupt criminal justice system, ‘which incarcerates more people per capita than any other developed nation..'
Flyby News
friends Prison Update -- The news on Malik Abdullah Akili is not so good. He was hit with two more years before his next parole hearing. He had won an appeal to have his parole hearing re-addressed, since there is evidence that he has been targeted for his political involvement in the past as a Black Panther Party member. This is still likely the case. For more background on Malik's case, see:
A Nation Behind Bars: the buried talents of a populationWhere is the Christian moral right when you need them? A criminal justice system that does not embody compassion and equitable fairness is not about justice, but oppression. And the oppressor turns right inside out until they can only fool oneself.
"You can fool some of the people all of the time,
and those are the ones you want to concentrate on."
– George W. Bush
(joking?) at a Gridiron Club dinner,
Washington, D.C., March 2001.Jehan Abdur Raheem, who also got another two-year-hit at his parole hearing, and stated in a letter:
".. I accept that there are many things in life that we are powerless to change, but there are many things we can. What we do with our powers, talents and abilities show what our character are. I have both contempt and pity for those who can easily co-exist with evil. They watch entire nations starved by greedy power-brokers; They watch entire species hunted into extinction; They sit through Corporate piracy, institutionalized slavery and party politic oppression and say nothing while laying claim to some moral high-ground.
We must never become such hypocrites.. True spirituality doesn't cling to the physical or worship the material. True spirituality seeks to be in harmony with itself ~ and not finding harmony - creates it."
Richard Sitcha has written recently too. He is in prison for no crime. After being granted political asylum in the US from Cameroon, where he defended the disappeared Bepanda 9, now, for more than 20 months, he is waiting with a death threat hanging if he is returned to his former country. In calling my Senators' offices, they requested a direct letter from Richard and/or his attorney representing him. Richard has not yet received legal counsel at this latest stage, but has written to both Senators directly. We will keep you updated on these cases. I realize I am blessed to know such diverse, special, and united people. This following is from Richard, dated June 2nd 2005:
Dear Jonathan,
Thank you so much for your recent letter with the Flyby News, which was so rich in information. I enjoyed reading it and other INS detainees read that also. The news was about London Times concerning the pack of lies upon Iraq War, CITGO, Venezuela, President Chavez, etc.. I also received via Sister Gladys the other Flyby News where my letter to you was published. I will not stop being thankful to GOD for having all of you in my life; People who knows the value of Human being, people full of love, understanding and compassion. Your struggle for justice, peace, and nonviolence could not be recognized by this wrongful society, but GOD is aware of your job and that is what matters. Thank you for all.
Richard
For more on Richard's case, and address to write him, visit
FreeRichard.com If you wish to help FN cover expenses for sending downloaded issues into prisons, please send any financial contribution to Flyby News (and any toner cartridges for HP5 laser jet printer). Thanks for reading and interest in independent news.
Flyby News; P.O. Box 1999; Wendell Depot, MA 01380
Doing time creates a
demented darkness of my
own imagination. . . .
Doing time does this thing
to you. But, of course, you
don't do time.
You do without it. Or
rather, time does you.
Time is a cannibal that
devours the flesh of your
years
day by day, bite by bite.
Leonard Peltier
{Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance}
1) Memogate Hearings Scheduled for June 16For Immediate Release: June 10, 2005
Memogate Hearings Scheduled for June 16
On Thursday June 16, 2005, Rep. John Conyers, Jr., Ranking Member of House Judiciary Committee, and other Democratic Members will hold a Democratic hearing to hear testimony concerning the Downing Street Minutes and the efforts to cook the books on pre-war intelligence.
On May 1, 2005 a Sunday London Times article disclosed the details of a classified memo, also known as the Downing Street Minutes, recounting the minutes of a July 2002 meeting of Prime Minister Tony Blair that describes an American President already committed to going to war in the summer of 2002, despite contrary assertions to the public and the Congress. The minutes also describe apparent efforts by the Administration to manipulate intelligence data to justify the war. The June 16th hearing will attempt to answer the serious constitutional questions raised by these revelations and will further investigate the Administration's actions in the lead up to war with new documents that further corroborate the Downing Street memo.
Directly following the hearing, Rep. Conyers, Members of Congress, and concerned citizens plan to hand deliver to the White House the petition and signatures of over a half million Americans that have joined Rep. Conyers in demanding that President Bush answer questions about his secret plan for the Iraq war.
WHAT: Democratic hearing on Downing Street Minutes and Pre-war intelligence
WHEN: Thursday, June 16, 2005, TIME TBD
WHERE: LOCATION TBD
WITNESSES: Joe Wilson, Former Ambassador and WMD Expert; Ray McGovern, 27-year CIA analyst who prepared regular Presidential briefings during the Reagan administration; Cindy Sheehan, mother of fallen American soldier; John Bonifaz, renowned constitutional lawyer and co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org.
For details on time and place and for downloadable flyers promoting the rally, please watch the top of this website:
www.afterdowningstreet.org AfterDowningStreet.org is a rapidly growing coalition of veterans' groups, peace groups, and political activist groups, which launched on May 26, 2005, a campaign to urge the U.S. Congress to begin a formal investigation into whether President Bush has committed impeachable offenses in connection with the Iraq war.
Contact: David Swanson david@davidswanson.org 202-329-7847
2) Something Rotten in Ohio by Gore VidalPublished June 9, 2005 by The Nation
Something Rotten in Ohio
by Gore Vidal
Outside the oil and gas junta that controls two and a half branches of our government (the half soon to be whole is the judiciary), there was a good deal of envy at the late British election among those Americans who are serious about politics. Little money was spent by the three parties and none for TV advertising. Results were achieved swiftly and cheaply. Best of all, the three party leaders were quizzed sharply and intelligently by ordinary citizens known quaintly as subjects, thanks to the ubiquitous phantom crown so unlike our nuclear-taloned predatory eagle. Although news of foreign countries seldom appears in our tightly censored media (and good news, never), those of us who are addicted to C-SPAN and find it the one truly, if unconsciously, subversive media outlet in these United States are able to observe British politics in full cry.
[EXCERPT]
Asked to predict who would win in '04, I said that, again, Bush would lose, but I was confident that in the four years between 2000 and 2004 creative propaganda and the fixing of election officials might very well be so perfected as to insure an official victory for Mr. Bush. As Representative Conyers's report, Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio (
www.house.gov/conyers), shows in great detail, the swing state of Ohio was carefully set up to deliver an apparent victory for Bush even though Kerry appears to have been the popular winner as well as the valedictorian-that-never-was of the Electoral College.
I urge would-be reformers of our politics as well as of such anachronisms as the Electoral College to read Conyers's valuable guide on how to steal an election once you have in place the supervisor of the state's electoral process: In this case, Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, who orchestrated a famous victory for those who hate democracy (a permanent but passionate minority). The Conyers Report states categorically, "With regard to our factual findings, in brief, we find that there were massive and unprecedented voter irregularities and anomalies in Ohio. In many cases these irregularities were caused by intentional misconduct and illegal behavior, much of it involving Secretary of State Kenneth J. Blackwell, the co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio." In other words, the Florida 2000 scenario redux, when the chair for Bush/Cheney was also the Secretary of State. Lesson? Always plan ahead for at least four more years.
It is well-known in the United States of Amnesia that not only did Ohio have a considerable number of first-time voters but that Blackwell and his gang, through "the misallocation of voting machines, led to unprecedented long lines that disenfranchised scores, if not hundreds of thousands, of predominantly minority and Democratic voters."
For the past few years many of us have been warning about the electronic voting machines, first publicized on the Internet by investigator Bev Harris, for which she was much reviled by the officers of such companies as Diebold, Sequoia, Es & S, Triad; this last voting computer company "has essentially admitted that it engaged in a course of behavior during the recount in numerous counties to provide ‘cheat sheets' to those counting the ballots. The cheat sheets informed election officials how many votes they should find for each candidate, and how many over and under votes they should calculate to match the machine count. In that way, they could avoid doing a full county-wide hand count mandated by state law."
Yet despite all this manpower and money power, exit polls showed that Kerry would win Ohio. So, what happened?
I have told more than enough of this mystery story so thoroughly investigated by Conyers and his Congressional colleagues and their staffers. Not only were the crimes against democracy investigated, but the report on What Went Wrong in Ohio comes up with quite a number of ways to set things right.
Needless to say, this report was ignored when the Electoral College produced its unexamined tally of the votes state by state. Needless to say, no joint committee of the two houses of Congress was convened to consider the various crimes committed and to find ways and means to avoid their repetition in 2008, should we be allowed to hold an election once we have unilaterally, yet again, engaged in a war—this time with Iran. Anyway, thanks to Conyers, the writing is now high up there on the wall for us all to see clearly: "Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin." Students of the Good Book will know what these words of God meant to Belshazzar and his cronies in old Babylon.
Gore Vidal's 'Imperial America' will be out in paperback this September.
This article will run in the July 4, 2005 issue of
The Nation magazineand posted at:
www.commondreams.org/views05/0609-21.htm- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
For related news from FN archives, see link for
The Bush Conspiracy and 9/11 Investigative Reports,
looking into the unanswered questions.
3) Peltier Hearing ~ June 15 ~ Lakota Sovereignty at StakeJune 3, 2005
Leonard Peltier Defense Committee
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PELTIER HEARING TO ADDRESS LAKOTA NATION SOVEREIGNTY
As Mark Felt, one of the main responsible FBI officers overseeing illegal counterintelligence programs targeting the American Indian Movement and other groups in the 60s and 70's, is hailed as a hero for catalyzing the toppling of the Nixon administration, Leonard Peltier approaches his fourth decade of unjust imprisonment.
Today, from the perspective of the U.S. government, everything is excusable in the war theatre, even as the world questions U.S. policies and actions that point unequivocally to human rights abuses. A puppet government, people murdered and terrorized, that was the climate in the Pine Ridge reservation in 1975 when two FBI agents were killed in a shootout. Leonard Peltier and fellow warriors responded to the call for protection from the Oglala Lakota people, but he was blamed for the deaths of the agents and is serving two consecutive life terms for that.
However, his defense team has been granted a hearing to correct his illegal sentencing. The basis for this motion is that the United States District Court lacked subject matter jurisdiction under the statutes upon which Mr. Peltier was convicted and sentenced. The statutes in question require that the crime take place "within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States". Since the deaths of the agents occurred on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation which is neither "within the special maritime [or] territorial jurisdiction of the United States", the Peltier defense team is asking the Court to grant Mr. Peltier's motion and vacate the illegal sentences imposed upon him.
If the Court does not recognize the Pine Ridge Reservation as sovereign "then one must wonder, what does sovereignty mean?" stated Barry Bachrach, attorney for Leonard Peltier. "Sovereignty seems to be a concept that is given merely lip service. It is raised when the government does not want to get involved, and infringed when the government wants to take action." As Bachrach further stated, "This hearing is important because Mr. Peltier was never charged with crimes over which the United States had jurisdiction. The history of the constitution, and the statutes implicated, unequivocally establish that Mr. Peltier was not convicted under the Indian Crimes Act, which is the only possible authority under which the government could have tried and convicted Mr. Peltier. Whereas here, the court had no jurisdiction to convict Mr. Peltier under the crimes for which he was convicted, those convictions must be set aside as a matter of law."
The hearing will take place on Wednesday June 15th, 2005 at 2:00 PM at the Quentin N. Burdick U.S. Courthouse in Fargo, North Dakota (655 1st Ave. North - 4th Floor, Courtroom 1).
For more information contact:
Russ Redner, LPDC Director, 915-533-6655 or TOLL FREE 866-534-6151
Barry Bachrach, LPDC ATTORNEY, 508-926-3403
Raquel Robles Burnet, LPDC Headquerters 785-842-5774
The Court Documents will be available for viewing at:
freeleonard.org and
www.leonardpeltier.org- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Note:For a new book on Leonard Peltier by Harvey Arden
visit
www.HaveYouThought.comalso
For FN's archive issues on Leonard Peltier and background, see:
Leonard Peltier and FBI Misconduct - & What You Can Do About It!
4) Castro Strikes a Nerve on US Criminal Justice SystemCastro Strikes a Nerve
By Jill Soffiyah Elijah, AlterNet.
Posted June 3, 2005.
By aiming the spotlight on the criminal justice system in the U.S., which incarcerates more people per capita than any other developed nation, President Castro exposed a tender nerve for Washington.
In April 2005 the international community began to take a closer look at the United States justice system as its government attempted to explain and or deny the presence of admitted terrorist, Luis Posada Carriles. As news stories sprouted from even mainstream media calling for the extradition of Posada to Venezuela, a country with which the U.S. has had a longstanding extradition treaty, Washington went into a frenzy.
After some false starts concerning what it was going to do about Posada, Washington "defended" its position by hurling barbs at Cuban President Fidel Castro about the political asylum granted to Assata Shakur by the Cuban government. President Castro retorted that Ms. Shakur had not received justice in the United States and that she, like many other political prisoners, had been persecuted and denied a fair trial.
The United States incarcerates more people per capita than any other developed nation on earth. The population of the United States comprises 5% of the world's population but its incarcerated population is equal to more than 25% of the world's prisoners.
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, based on current rates of first incarceration, an estimated 32% of black males will enter state or federal prison during their lifetime, compared to 17% of Hispanic males and 5.9% of white males. In other words, one third of black men can expect to be incarcerated during their life times if they live in the United States.
Incarceration in the U.S. is a growing industry. . . Sentencing decisions regarding probation and incarceration reflect the same racial overtones as the earlier stages of the system. The racist practices of prosecutors was so prevalent that in 1986 the United States Supreme Court finally outlawed the practice of routinely removing blacks from the jury in Batson v. Kentucky (476 U.S. 79).
..The millions who have had their lives interrupted by the criminal "justice" system know that fairness is usually an illusion discussed widely in classrooms but not mentioned in courtrooms. They know it's unjust. Castro's pronouncements bear witness to the fact that "justice" in the United States, isn't justice at all.
Jill Soffiyah Elijah, Esq. is deputy director of the
Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard Law School.
The complete article is posted:
www.alternet.org/rights/22155
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