"We Shall Remain"

From American Experience

By Jim Kirwan
July 29, 2009
Courtesy Of "Information Clearing House"

The title comes from an American Experience video production, broadcast on PBS Television, which is currently available to rent or purchase. This five part series gives Americans a comprehensive view of the native history that has formed a huge part of what this nation was, as well as what it has become. It is not simply a political diatribe; nor are these observations as clear cut as many have believed they were.

“With depth, breadth and richness, Native American history is told through indigenous eyes in this revolutionary five-part docudrama. Exploring five pivotal periods, the series spans 300 years of Indian adversity, resilience and self-determination. Benjamin Bratt narrates the sweeping series as it reexamines a cornerstone of America's story and offers insight into how history's heartbreak and hope resonate with American Indians today.”

What this series uncovers are a number of critical junctures between the aboriginal inhabitants of this continent, and the various conquering influences that came from the East to colonize this land; under the terms of what was then the basic law for Europeans of conquest, blood and power.

This is not an easy or a simple story—it is however the story of the birth-pangs of what later became the United States of America; and this story is told against the various truths that obtained at the time in which they happened. It is above all a mixture of values, of traditions and violations of contracts, treaties, and intentions; coupled with the realities of the times in which they occurred. Had these events been taught to Americans as a basic part of our actual history—which they are—then the current takeover of this nation could not have proceeded as it has with so little resistance to the barbarity that has come to us, cloaked as it is, in the threadbare rags of a ‘democracy and freedom’ that is no longer even a shadow of its founding concept.

Part One, ‘After the Mayflower’ begins with the landing of the first settlers and their initial struggles, which ended when white settlers began to arrive by the thousands: This totally changed the integral early relationship between strangers on a strange land, and the people that had welcomed them. It also describes the slaughter of the 700 Indians that we still perversely refuse to refer to when we celebrate ‘Thanksgiving,’ as “our” national holiday. In addition part one introduces us to the virulent diseases of the Puritans that brought with them their hatreds and their racism as they sought to build a New Puritanism in which they were the only beings that mattered—and where all the people here had to be destroyed in order for their puritanical passions to survive and prosper.

Part Two, ‘Tecumseh's Vision’ outlines one of the stories of resistance that is seldom discussed, but is pivotal to understanding exactly how colonialism has always created slavery, and plants the seeds of ignoble empires, wherever it has planted its bloodstained boots. This part describes their debt-management of the native population, and how through duplicity and treason, amid so many lies, the leaders of the colonial powers were able even then, to crush all else in their own imperial drive to own-it-all: Well before this place was even considered to be a real nation in its own right.

Part Three, ‘The Trail of Tears’ describes the terrible battle of the Cherokee people in their very different approach to the coming of the settlers into their lands. Here we discover the origin of the term ‘civilization’ which was used to change the habits of native people, to get them to conform to the artificial ways of the white’s over their more traditional natural-rhythms for living with nature, instead of on it, as the white man then preferred to do. The term “CIVILIZATION” was and still is the name of a Christian project designed to steal the language, the rituals and traditions of a people and to erase 'other' people from the earth.

The events described throughout this series point out exactly how the same principles of debt-control over the population, coupled with the national management of disease and poverty have always been used to crush the will of the people of so many nations—that have become victims down through the centuries and that have yielded only loss, injustice and the outrageous wars that in the end have only confirmed the very small minority of those that have always sought total control over all the various people of this world, together with their resources and their lands.

If you look closely and read between the lines throughout this series you can easily see how the world has “chosen, by not choosing” to endure the nightmare of the Palestinians, or the new Trail-of-Tears that will become the fate of so many nations in the world today: Carried out this time with F-16’s and missiles instead of muskets and shot, yet identical in their outcomes; unless those that resist now, also take the lessons learned from this history to overturn the tyranny of the minority and turn the truth behind this history to their own advantage.

There are of course “many truths” at issue here but the course of history must be considered if any people anywhere are to ever have nations of their own again. What is also clear is that words must have meaning, just as consequences must flow from the lies and deceptions of leadership everywhere—because there can never be any kind of lasting peace, or genuine prosperity without the active and realistic rule of law—that must apply to all that live in each place where laws have been justly created. To do this treasons must be answered with the penalty of death for those that commit that crime; this is the only way back to sanity and life from this nearly total nightmare in which we are now living.

This is about education and about language and its uses, both white and red, in the continuing struggle for supremacy over the land and consequently over the people that sought to live and prosper on these disputed lands, going so far as to have a Supreme Court Ruling that granted the Cherokee nation its ‘rights’ over their own lands—only to have President Jackson officially refuse to obey that ruling—that ultimately led to the infamous Trail of Tears.

Americans as a nation today, will soon be facing today’s form of the Trail of Tears if we continue to fail to forcefully resist the coming clash between ‘this New-Reality-on-the-ground’ and the now defunct laws of what was in theory only, “our country.” This is why the FEMA camps were created, to house the millions-of-us who will be forced out of this place by the current deceptions and treasons which we (as a people) have steadfastly refused to recognize. “In the 1830’s what we did to the Southeastern Indians was (and still is) ethnic cleansing.” These crimes that formed our national beginnings cry out to the universe for consequences—maybe that is why we are where we are today—or maybe we will listen to the needs of national and personal honor and chose to change what is obviously waiting if we fail ourselves AGAIN, and do not resist whatever may be coming in September.

History is about to repeat itself, but not just as it affected the Cherokee Nation in the 1800’s, or as it has afflicted the Palestinian people for the last sixty plus years—this time the stakes are for all of everything in this blood-soaked and treacherous country and by collateral and correlated actions globally against the rest of the world as well—unless we rise against the coming political and military whirlwind that will wipe us out as a people of any kind, in the known world that has chosen to refuse to deal with reality.

This series is about the ‘stories in our blood’ that in many ways are carried in the blood of so many people the world over—but what remains missing from these stories is the justice-delayed that is always ‘justice denied’ for far too many in the current form of ‘the civilized world.’ How we have chosen to "Build Our Future" is now more important than ever!

This series tells an important missing part of what this nation came from. Yet ‘we’ today know so little of our real past supposedly as a nation, that it would be laughable if it were not so barbaric a past and so riddled with the crimes of the oppressive few that have made a Nest of Vipers from what was supposed-to-have-been ‘a place apart’ where ‘new beginnings’ could have remade the world in an entirely other way had the people involved behaved differently than what the history has shown us in this series.

There are two other parts to this series that deal with Geronimo in Part Four and Wounded Knee in Part Five. In the interests of space and time I’ll leave this article here, and ask that you watch the entire series for yourself; because the past is too important not to know as much as possible about what really happened here so long ago—that has left so many crimes unanswered and that must still be dealt with, if we are to ever have the joy of a tomorrow that stands for promise, instead of surrender, to the Dark Side on every front.

kirwanstudios@sbcglobal.net

The Truth Of US Foreign Policy

By Greg Gillette
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Courtesy Of The Post Independent
Glenwood Springs, CO Colorado

Most people do not know the truth of this country’s foreign policy because most of the news we receive has been distorted. I appreciate all the great things this country has done, but I want people to understand the bad things the U.S.A. has done in the name of spreading democracy.

Our foreign policy should be called corporate policy, because that is the truth. The U.S. supports nations that support our corporations, and will, and has overthrown leaders that are not friendly to our economic interests. Once these leaders are overthrown, economically friendly “puppet” leaders and governments are installed. For example: Mohammed Mossadegh of Iran was overthrown and the Shah was put back into power. Mossadegh was democratically elected and wanted to use his country’s resources for his people.

How would we feel if a foreign country overthrew our elected leader?

“It is impossible to overstate the magnitude of anger and hatred that the Iranian people had for the U.S. government in 1979, not only because their world-famous democratically elected prime minister had been ousted by the CIA, but also for having had to live for the following 25 years under a brutal and torturous dictatorship, a U.S.-government-supported dictatorship that also offended many Iranians with its policies of Westernization.” (Jacob Hornberger)

This country’s actions contributed to the 1979 Iranian revolution that brought bitterly anti-American leaders to power and inspired Islamic radicals around the world.

The U.S. gave weapons and support to Saddam in the ’80s during the Iraq/ Iran war and to Osama when Afghanistan was fighting the Soviet Union. The only justified wars the U.S. has been in on foreign land are World War I and II. All the rest have never been declared Constitutionally, and they all were and are about money and resources.

We have terrorism in this country because of our foreign policy actions.

It is time to switch our foreign policy from corporate policy and military force to a peace-building policy that respects life and all the governments and people of the world and uses military force as a last resort.

You can take this article for what it is — the truth — or you can do what most Americans do: Deny the truth, avoid the truth, refuse the truth, hate the truth, and bury the truth. But if you really take a hard look at yourself and this country and begin to finally think for yourself and to question authority and the government and big corporations, you will discover the truth and you will be set free to take action and demand a better and more peaceful United States. For the rest of you, who do not want to believe the truth and who will not investigate history and at least search for the truth outside the government and corporate influence, I feel saddened by your lack of thinking and questioning and from your action of blindly following what people in authority place in front of you.

Greg Gillette lives in Glenwood Springs.

A ReDrawn Map Of South Asia

Pakistanis Fear U.S. Collision With Neighboring Enemies

By Jane Perlez
Published: November 23,2008
Courtesy Of The International Herald Tribune

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: A redrawn map of South Asia has been making the rounds among Pakistani elites. It shows their country truncated, reduced to an elongated sliver of land with the big bulk of India to the east, and an enlarged Afghanistan to the west.

That the map was first circulated as a theoretical exercise in some American neoconservative circles matters little here. It has fueled a belief among Pakistanis, including members of the armed forces, that what the United States really wants is the breakup of Pakistan, the only Muslim country with nuclear arms.

"One of the biggest fears of the Pakistani military planners is the collaboration between India and Afghanistan to destroy Pakistan," said a senior Pakistani government official involved in strategic planning, who insisted on anonymity as per diplomatic custom. "Some people feel the United States is colluding in this."

That notion may strike Americans as strange coming from an ally of 50 years. But as the incoming Obama administration tries to coax greater cooperation from Pakistan in the fight against militancy, it can hardly be ignored.

This is a country where years of weak governance have left ample room for conspiracy theories of every kind. But like much such thinking anywhere, what is said frequently reveals the tender spots of a nation's psyche. Educated Pakistanis sometimes say that they are paranoid, but add that they believe they have good reason.

Pakistan, a 61-year-old country marbled by ethnic fault lines, is a collection of just four provinces, which often seem to have little in common. Virtually every one of its borders, drawn almost arbitrarily in the last gasps of the British Empire, is disputed with its neighbors, not least Pakistan's bitter and much larger rival, India.

These facts and the insecurities that flow from them inform many of Pakistan's disagreements with the United States, including differences over the need to rein in militancy in the form of Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

The new democratically elected president, Asif Ali Zardari, has visited the United States twice since assuming power three months ago. He has been generous in his praise of the Bush administration. But that stance is criticized at home as fawning and wins him little popularity among a steadfastly anti-American public.

So how will the promise by President-elect Barack Obama for a new start between the United States and Pakistan be received here? How can it be begun?

One possibility could be some effort to ease Pakistani anxieties, even as the United States demands more from Pakistan. That will probably mean a regional approach to what, it is increasingly apparent, are regional problems. There, Pakistani and American interests may coincide.

American military commanders, including General David Petraeus, have started to argue forcefully that the solution to the conflict in Afghanistan, where the American war effort looks increasingly uncertain, must involve a wide array of neighbors.

Obama has said much the same. Several times in his campaign, he laid out the crux of his thinking. Reducing tensions between Pakistan and India would allow Pakistan to focus on the real threat — the Qaeda and Taliban militants who are tearing at the very fabric of the country.

"If Pakistan can look towards the east with confidence, it will be less likely to believe its interests are best advanced through cooperation with the Taliban," Obama wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine last year.

But such an approach faces sizable obstacles, the biggest being the conflict over Kashmir. The Himalayan border area has been disputed since the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, and remains divided between them.

Pakistan's army and intelligence agencies have long fought a proxy war with India by sponsoring militant groups to terrorize the Indian-administered part of the territory.

After the 9/11 attacks, Pakistan reined in those militants for a time, but this year the militants have renewed their incursions. Talks between the sides made some progress in recent years but have petered out.

Pakistanis warn that the United States should not appear too eager to mediate. First, they caution, India has always regarded Kashmir as a bilateral question. India, they note, also faces a general election early next year, an inappropriate moment to push such an explosive issue.

Second, some Pakistanis are concerned about the reliability of the United States as a fair mediator. "Given the United States' record on the Palestinian issue, where the Palestinians had to move 10 times backwards and the Israelis moved the goal posts, the same could happen here," said Zubair Khan, a former commerce minister who has watched Kashmir closely.

It was discouraging, Khan said, that the United States ignored the importance of the huge nonviolent protests by Muslims in Kashmir against Indian rule this summer. "Anywhere else, and they would have been hailed as an Orange Revolution," he said, referring to the wave of protests that led to a change in the Ukrainian government in 2004.

Such distrust has been exacerbated by what Pakistanis see as the Bush administration's tilt toward India.

Exhibit A for the Pakistanis is India's nuclear deal with the United States, which allows India to engage in nuclear trade even though it never joined the global Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Pakistan, with its recent history of spreading nuclear technology, received no comparable bargain.

The nuclear deal was devised in Washington to position India as a strategic counterbalance to China. That is how it is seen in Pakistan, too, but with no enthusiasm.

"The United States has changed the whole nuclear order by this deal, and in doing so is containing China, the only friend Pakistan has in the region," said Talat Masood, a retired Pakistani army general.

Further, Pakistan is upset about the advances India is making in Afghanistan, with no checks from the United States, Masood said.

India has recently made big investments in Afghanistan, where Pakistan has been competing for influence. These include a road to the Iranian border that will eventually give India access to the Iranian port of Chabahar, circumventing Pakistan.

India has offered training for Afghanistan's military, given assistance for a new Parliament building in Kabul and has re-opened consulates along the border with Pakistan.

The consulates, the Pakistanis charge, are used by India as cover to lend support to a long-running separatist movement in Baluchistan Province. (Baluchistan was even made an independent state on the theoretical map, which accompanied an article by Ralph Peters titled "Blood Borders: How a Better Middle East Would Look," originally published in Armed Forces Journal.)

Both India and Pakistan in fact have a long and destructive history of, gently or not, putting in the knife. Exhibit A for the Indians is the bombing in July of its embassy in Afghanistan, which American and Indian officials say can be traced to groups linked to Pakistan's spy agency.

If the Obama administration is indeed to convince Pakistanis that militancy, not the Indian Army, presents the gravest threat, it will not be easy.

The commander of American forces in Afghanistan, General David McKiernan, got a taste of the challenge this month, when he visited Islamabad and sat down with a group of about 70 members of Pakistan's Parliament at the residence of the United States ambassador, Anne Patterson. Their attitude showed an almost total incomprehension of the reasons for American behavior in the region after Sept. 11, 2001.

"A couple of the questions I got were, 'Why did you Americans come to Afghanistan when it was so peaceful, before you got there?' " McKiernan recalled during an appearance at the Atlantic Council in Washington last week.

"Another one," he said, "was, 'We understand that you've invited a thousand Indian soldiers to serve in Afghanistan by Christmas.' "

There was no truth to the claim, he told the Pakistanis. "We have a lot of work to do," he told his audience in Washington.

Indeed, among ordinary Pakistanis, many still regard Al Qaeda more positively than the United States, polls find. Talk shows here often include arguments that the suicide bombings in Pakistan are payback for the Pakistani fighting an American war.

Some commentators suggest that the United States is actually financing the Taliban. The point is to tie down the Pakistani Army, they say, leaving the way open for the Americans to grab Pakistan's nuclear weapons.

Recently, in the officer's mess in Bajaur, the northern tribal region where the Pakistani Army is tied down fighting the militants, one officer offered his own theory: Osama bin Laden did not exist, he told a visiting journalist.

Rather, he was a creation of the Americans, who needed an excuse to invade Afghanistan and encroach on Pakistan.