IPFS News Link • Criminal Justice System
I am Barack Obama's Political Prisoner Now
• Counterpunch / Leonard PeltierAfter
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.
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.
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.
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.
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2 Comments in Response to I am Barack Obama's Political Prisoner Now
His stamina is amazing. How he can keep clear direction after all these years of imprisonment and abuse is beyond me.
Clinton promised to review the case and just put it off until he was out of office. It would do a lot to "change" my attitude of Obama were to do so.
Im proud to say that a hunger strike has been taking place in Washington by a fellow Indian warrior from the Oklahoma Territory "Choctaw Nation". Sun Dance Chief and Warrior Ben Carne's who was decorated with a 1987 Oklahoma Human rights award is holding this hunger strike to see and talk to Obama in relation to this fiasco. As this "System with no SOUL" continually crashes around us, I am forced to protect My sovereign Nation rights of the Chickasaw's and all Indian nations and to support those that have ties to the "Trail of Tears".