NADAL MEETS KOHLSCHREIBER IN MADRID'S ROUND 3 - OBAMA LETS US DOWN RE HUMAN RIGHTS - AMERICAN GENOCIDE

Rafa and Spain's Royalty

Above three photos credit: Pure People

Rafa practicing in Madrid
Above two photos credit: Oscar Gallardo/Enfoque/Cameleon/AbacaPress.com

Photo credit: Marca

Rafa at press conference
Photo credit: Corbis

Tennis - Clay Court Season Continues in Madrid, Spain This Week
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Photo credits: AS, Belga, Daylife, el mundo, Getty, JAMD, Marca, Yahoo
Round 2 Madrid Rafa Nadal vs. Jurgen Melzer

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Marca - Screen Caps by rafafanatic of www.vamosbrigade.com
Press in Madrid

Rafa Nadal defeated Jurgen Melzer 6-3, 6-1 May 13, 2009
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Interview with Rafa Nadal in Spanish after Round 2 match with Melzer
Uploaded by luneworld

ORDER OF PLAY FOR DAY Thursday 14

ORDER OF PLAY - THURSDAY, MAY 14, 2009
MANOLO SANTANA start 10:00 am
A Chakvetadze (RUS) vs A Bondarenko (UKR) - WTA

Not Before 12:00 PM
[16] T Robredo (ESP) vs [4] A Murray (GBR) - ATP
[14] J Blake (USA) vs [2] R Federer (SUI) - ATP

Not Before 4:00 PM
[1] D Safina (RUS) vs L Safarova (CZE) - WTA

Not Before 8:00 PM [1] R Nadal (ESP) vs P Kohlschreiber (GER) - ATP
This is 2:00 pm USA EST-DST

Source: www.madrid-open.com/site/results/orden_de_juego

For a fee, watch the match live at

www.tennistv.com

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Sudanese Government Forces Bomb near North Darfur - UN

Source: www.reuters.com/article/homepageCrisis

Wed May 13, 2009 12:48pm EDT

UNITED NATIONS, May 13 (Reuters) - Sudanese government forces on Wednesday carried out a bombing raid near a town in Sudan's western Darfur region that has been the scene of recent fighting, a U.N. spokeswoman said.

"UNAMID forces observed Sudanese government aircraft bombing targets north of Umm Baru, a North Darfur town that has been the scene of recent fighting," U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas told reporters.

She was referring to the joint U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur, known as UNAMID.

Montas said UNAMID troops and police had heard several explosions early on Wednesday.

Sudan's U.N. ambassador, Abdalmahmoud Abdalhaleem, was not immediately available for comment.

Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) rebels said on Saturday that they had fought off an ambush in Umm Baru by Sudanese armed forces and troops loyal to former rebel Minni Arcua Minnawi, the only Darfur rebel to sign a peace deal with the government in 2006. (Reporting by Louis Charbonneau; Editing by Sandra Maler)

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BAM'S DARFUR SINS

LIBS' OUTRAGE OVER BROKEN VOW

By Kirsten Powers

Source: http://www.nypost.com/seven/05112009/postopinion/opedcolumnists/bams_darfur_sins_168603.htm

OFTEN accused of taking on too many issues, President Obama is catching flak from some of his most ardent liberal supporters, who say he's neglecting the paramount international human-rights crisis -- the Darfur genocide.

So they're fasting, writing letters and posting videos on YouTube pressing him to take a leadership role he promised he'd take on Darfur.

The Web site "Darfur Fast for Life" showcases the frustrations of Pam Omidyar, who, with her husband Pierre, the founder and chairman of e-Bay, was among Obama's top supporters. Joining Omidyar in her fast are such activists as Gabriel Stauring, founder of Stop Genocide Now, and Shannon Sedgwick Davis, a supporter who calls Obama's inaction "unbelievably disappointing." Actress Mia Farrow initiated the fast, but was advised by her doctor to stop after 12 days of consuming only water. British billionaire Richard Branson has taken over for her.

They've watched as Obama has tackled the economy, health care, global warming, the tax system, financial regulations, education reform, embryonic stem-cell research and more. Sadly, human rights don't seem to have made the cut. (Secretary of State Hillary Clinton shocked many when she asserted recently regarding China that human-rights issues couldn't interfere with such other issues as solving the economic crisis).

During his campaign, Obama raised expectations among human-rights activists that he'd place Darfur at the top of his agenda. He highlighted a "passion in bringing an end to this crisis." Calling genocide "a stain on all of us," he claimed that "the United States has a moral obligation any time you see humanitarian catastrophe."

On a 2007 visit to the region, Archbishop Desmond Tutu called Darfur "one of the most awful places in the world." In March of this year, it got even more awful. That's when the Sudanese government kicked out 13 international aid organizations that provided almost two thirds of the sustenance in the refugee camps, threatening the lives of an estimated 1 million people.

Says one activist, "These camps were already abysmal. Now just ratchet that down 60 percent."

The White House's response has been disheartening. By the time it got around to saying anything on the situation, the aid groups had been forced from the country. Some activists felt that had they spoken up earlier and more forcefully, it could have made a difference.

Speaking of Darfur during the campaign, Obama said: "As president of the United States, I don't intend to abandon people." Yet he is. About genocide, he said, "We can't say 'never again' and allow it to happen again." But it is happening again.

Worse, some worry that the mastermind of all this suffering, Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, is manipulating Obama's special envoy to Darfur, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Scott Gration. Bashir has charmed outsiders who believe (erroneously) that he sincerely desires to work to end the suffering. Activists were especially alarmed when Gration provided an overly sunny report of Darfur's ground situation and told some privately that it could be time to ease sanctions and remove Sudan from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Activist Shannon Sedgwick Davis dismisses the idea that Obama is too busy with the economy to address Darfur. "That's an easy out," Sedgwick Davis says. "He has an amazing team that surrounds him for issues just like this and he needs to empower them to do much, much more. That's what they are there for. Hillary Clinton isn't sitting in her office trying to balance the budget."

Gabriel Stauring of Stop Genocide Now has visited the Darfur refugee camps seven times and despairs over the rapidly worsening conditions. He says of those suffering there, "They put so much hope in America. They have this idea that America stands for the right thing and that help is going to come. When Obama took office their hope shot through the roof. They are waiting."

How much longer will they have to wait?

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You can write to President Obama

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

or at

http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

Call him at 202-456-1111
or
1-800-GENOCIDE

Send a post card to President Obama
AddYourVoice.org

He is not going to act for Darfur
without you and without me pressuring him.

In this way, he is no different than other politicians.

JOIN THE FAST FOR DARFUR
fastdarfur.org


www.savedarfur.org
www.stopgenocidenow.org
www.standnow.org

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The Homestake Gold Mine
By Steve Melendez

Used with permission.
Source http://www.aigenom.com/homestakegoldmine.html


The Homestake Gold Mine, in Lead, South Dakota, operated for 125 years and produced 41 million troy ounces of gold(over $24 billion at today's gold prices of over $600 per ounce). In the summer of 1874, Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer was sent into the Black Hills by Gen. Philip Sheridan to search for gold. This was in direct violation of the Treaty of Fort Laramie of 1868. Today, there is a large photograph at the mine of Custer and his entourage entering the Black Hills. The caption information tells us that after gold was discovered, many miners came into the Black Hills in defiance of the army and the Indians but fails to mention that Custer’s army was violating the 1868 Treaty. Neither does the caption information remind visitors to the mine that article 6 of the U.S. Constitution calls a treaty the supreme law of the land.
Custer came into the Black Hills with 1,000 soldiers, over 100 covered wagons, 2 or 3 gatling guns, a cannon, a 16 piece brass band mounted on white horses, and two prospectors who were the experts on gold. On July 30th 1874 Custer sent a dispatch to Ft. Laramie which read: “Gold has been found in paying quantities. I have upon my table 40 or 50 small particles of pure gold. In size averaging that of a small pinhead. And most of it found today from one pan full of earth.” Today, the area where the placer gold (gold carried by mountain streams) was found , is the town of Custer, South Dakota.
Probably the most significant bit of information absent from the Custer photograph at the mine is what the President of the United States said to Congress the following year: “…The Discovery of gold in the Black Hills, a portion of the Sioux Reservation, has had the effect to induce a large immigration of miners to that point. Thus far the effort to protect the treaty rights of the Indians to that section has been successful, but the next year will certainly witness a large increase of such immigration. The negotiations for the relinquishment of the gold fields having failed, it will be necessary for Congress to adopt some measures to relieve the embarrassment growing out of the causes named. The Secretary of the Interior suggests that the supplies now appropriated for the sustenance of that people, Being no longer obligatory under the treaty of 1868, but simply a gratuity, may be issued or withheld at his discretion.” President Ulysses S. Grant’s entire message can be found in Messages and Papers of the Presidents Vol. 9 Pg.4306.

AIGM President, Steve Melendez, and his children at the site of the Homestake Gold Mine. The mine is an open pit 1250 ft. deep and a half mile across. (Summer 2006)

The fact that President Grant would suggest that a starvation policy should be implemented may be difficult for most Americans to believe but the attitude of that day can be found in the words of another President whose image is carved 40 miles south of the Homestake Mine on Mt. Rushmore.

Mount Rushmore in South Dakota

"The Most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages. The rude, fierce settler who drives the savage from the land lays all civilized mankind under a debt to him...it is of incalculable importance that America, Australia, and Siberia should pass out of the hands of their red, black, and yellow aboriginal owners, and become the heritage of the dominant world races."The Winning of the West Vol. 4 The Indian Wars Page 56 by President Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt


Wounded Knee

If you ever have the opportunity to visit the mass grave site of the Wounded Knee Massacre, you must reflect on why such a thing happened. It was the 7th Cavalry that did it, so the average American is led to believe that it was revenge for Custer’s Last Stand at the Little Big Horn. But knowing President Grant’s words to Congress is to know that the gold was on the Sioux Reservation and that Custer was there in violation of the Treaty of Ft. Laramie of 1868. And to know President Grant’s words to Congress is to know that he called on America to starve the Indians off their land.

Wounded Knee, December 1890.
Courtesy of the Denver Public Library

Wounded Knee Memorial Site, 2006.

When a president of a country openly calls for the
deliberate and systematic destruction of a people,
what other conclusion can be reached? If you ever
visit the mass grave site at Wounded Knee on the
Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, know that
the men, women and children who were thrown into
this trench, were the victims of genocide.

American Indian Genocide Museum - website

THE TRUTH REMAINS TO SET US FREE IN THE USA

THE DENIAL OF TRUTH

Human nature often includes the denial of truth because we are uncomfortable with the truth. So we live with our lies. Suppress our knowledge of truth.

WE SHALL REMAIN on TV PBS' American Experience
Five episodes about the indigenous people - the Native Americans

I finished watching all five episodes last night. It will be repeated on TV and you can watch full episodes online . I encourage you to watch. This is a part of our history that needs to be told. It needs to be integrated into our conscience. In my mind, it needs to be formally acknowledged by our government that we have repeatedly done wrong to the native peoples. The land now called the United States of America was stolen by the immigrants. Our government legalized criminal acts against the people named by the immigrants as Indians (so-named because the immigrants thought they had arrived in India).

As someone who has been watching the internally displaced Darfuri people forced to leave their homes by their own government, have their land stolen, and now - especially since March 4, 2009 - have starvation, dehydration and diseases become part of the way to kill off the Darfuri people, I see striking similarities of what the white immmigrants did to the people already here in the United States of America.

It is wrong what was done to the Indians. The one race of people that remains to be discriminated against in the USA that pretty much is not talked about is the discrimination of the Indians - the Native Americans.

The United States of America declared independence while robbing independence from the Native Americans. Not only robbing independence, but institutionalizing racism.

The "land of the free" was built from the land that wasn't theirs. Many people who are not engaged in the lives of the Native Americans choose not to see how the nation was started. Our past affects what we are today. The truth remains to set us truly free.

WHAT "WE" - "OUR" ANCESTORS DID - WAS NO DIFFERENT FROM WHAT IS BEING DONE TO THE DARFURI PEOPLE OF SUDAN BY THEIR GOVERNMENT for the past six years.

Treaty after treaty, promise after promise has been broken by the USA government with the Native Americans. This treatment continues today. Another related link: Native American First Nations History

It is time to acknowledge the truth. The United States of America will never be based on values until it formally acknowledges what it did to the Native peoples. Until we can accept what is wrong as wrong, mistreatment and injustice will continue.

Denying truth doesn't make truth less true.

“I was ready to do whatever it takes for change. I didn’t care. I had children, and for them I figured I could make a stand here.”

— Madonna Thunder Hawk (Two Kettle Lakota) More about the film Download the Episode Transcript

• 1 After the Mayflower
• 2 Tecumseh's Vision
• 3 Trail of Tears
• 4 Geronimo
• 5 Wounded Knee

Previous posts of mine regarding Native Americans


justice-too-long-delayed-is-justice-denied

genocide-by-united-states-of-america

neglected-story-of-discrimination

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The hypocrisy of the document below is transparent
if read with even small bits of knowledge of the history of the Native Americans.

The Declaration of Independence
of the United States of America

Source: www.wfu.edu

Preamble to the Declaration of Independence

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these States. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

Charges

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

[Excised passagte on slavery]
see Jefferson's draft He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidels powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. He has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce determining to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren.

We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us.

We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence.
They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity.

We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

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Links of interest

American Indian Genocide Museum


A troublesome report by the BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8046516.stm

To voice concern over the BBC report
use this link and the information provided below:
http://faq.external.bbc.co.uk/questions/contact/complaint

The Facts about Darfur
United Nations say
2.7 Million Darfuris are displaced internally in camps
300,000 more are displaced to camps outside of Sudan in bordering Chad

4.7 Million need humanitarian aid such as food, water and medical help

The number of dead has been between 300,000 and 400,000 for a few years, now.

IMUS EXPOSES US, THE CONTENT OF CHARACTER

First

Just

Because . . . Ioan Gruffudd is Beautiful

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“I AM PAINFULLY CONSCIOUS OF MY imperfections,

THEREIN LIES ALL THE STRENGTH I POSSESS.”

Mahatma Gandhi

April 16, Oprah’s show was a response to the Imus mess following his two firings through recent use of “Nappy Headed Hos”. Her show’s topic was “What do we do next?” April 17 will air Part Two of this topic. Honestly Oprah said she had been avoiding discussing racism on her show, but that now she is. I request to broaden the discussion. And specifically to include the Native American Indian societal and institutionalized racism. And let's lose the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" requirement of gays in the military. For goodness' sake, they are over in Iraq putting their bodies in death's way and we can't stomach letting the gay service people live their lives in truth. What are we, if not bigots?

If we have cancer, we think of removing it. If we have a sickness, we make a move to be healed of the illness and feel better. If we spew hatred cloaked in the claimed right of freedom of speech, it still affects not only those who it is directed toward, but it affects the one who owns the words. In the movie “Amazing Grace” the minister says to William Wilberforce’s question “In what way are you trying to make the world better”, with “When you make the world better in one way, it becomes better in all ways.” What is thrown out into the universe affects the world as a whole. We make the world what it is. We color the world with our words, behavior and silence. If we hurt someone else, we can’t help but hurt ourselves. It may not be visible hurt or even apparent to the receiver as well as the giver, but we live with who we are. And you can’t say crap and not have it be part of your life.

“The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit.

The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.”

Marcus Aurelius

BEAUTY

I am white, female, 58 years living, heterosexual and a human rights activist, although primarily regarding genocide, Darfur, Sudan, I also speak at speaking engagements, “letters to the editor” and write on my main blog, here, as well as my blog at tvguide.com, regarding “human dignity through human rights” for other groups. I have spoken up for the rights of girls, women, foster children, the poor, the Native American Indians, homosexual and bisexual human beings. I was a music teacher for 30 years. Although the April 16^th Oprah show was for the most part not seen due the east coast downed TV cable lines and the Virginia Tech murders’ two interruptions to the Oprah show – I did catch bits and pieces of the show. (An aside: George Worthless Bush says he will give support to Virginia Tech and the government stands ready to help. I laughed at him. Like he has been giving help and support to those victims of a hurricane called Katrina?)

The claim that “political correctness” is encouraged by firing Imus and the-like, misses the point. Claiming pretentious “political correctness” results when “We the People” speak out and say this kind of speech is anything but freeing dismisses Right for what sounds right. We must address wrongs, injustices and expose indecent behavior. This sick language and behavior that doesn’t have the light shone on it will simply find roots and continue to grow like weeds. This kind of language strangles the truth from all of us regardless of who the language is directed toward. It keeps us all down and from being free. Also, the point isn’t that having “freedom of speech” gives us the right to be condescending and dehumanizing to another of the human race. Not being denigrated is a civil rights issue. We have the inalienable right to be treated with decency. And I so agree with the mindset that says this is not a black woman’s issue, or even just a woman’s issue. This behavior and “talk” belittles all humankind, regardless of race or gender.

We have put up with this kind of behavior and language for too long. Let us look at ourselves and face who and what we are. We have a country built on racism. And it started even before the first African black slaves were shipped here as human cargo. The nation was built on land lived on by other societies before Europeans arrived on its shores. Even in the Declaration of Independence, the description of the Native North Americans, dubbed by the immigrants as “Indians” because they thought they were in India, comes from a place of ignorance, pomposity and illustrates dehumanizing language. The Declaration of Independence states “the inhabitants of our Frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known Rule of Warfare, is an indistinguished Destruction of all Ages, Sexes and Conditions” indelibly imposes this unjustifiable description on the Native Americans, who were forced to fight to protect their established ways of life AND their land.

Genocide of the Indians was authorized by those that came to this land as immigrants. Do you suppose the Indians wished they had united and built a fence to keep out immigrants? Injustice is a one-word sum total of the treatment of the Indians by the government.

A class-action lawsuit, Cobell v. Norton was filed on June 10, 1996, in U.S. District Court to force the federal government to account for billions of dollars belonging to approximately 500,000 American Indians and their heirs, and held in trust since the late 19th century. This money is missing. The money has been lost by the very federal agencies that were responsible to care for the funds belonging to Indians. Through document discovery and courtroom testimony, the case has revealed mismanagement, ineptness, dishonesty and delay by federal officials. Leading U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth declared their conduct "fiscal and governmental irresponsibility in its purest form”. This case has not been resolved to this day.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court turned down the request of the Narragansett Indian Tribe of Rhode Island to consider overturning the lower court ruling against them with the state of Rhode Island. It was over a smoke shop incident where state troopers went onto Indian Land and aggressively and violently overtook and arrested the unarmed Indians. We saw the video played over and over on the TV screens for weeks. It didn’t make the troopers look good. Apparently according to a treaty the Indian Tribe signed – their land legally is not sovereign land, as other Indians’ lands are. The history of broken treaties with the Indians and the United States government, from the beginning to this day is appalling. When the treaties were broken – it ALWAYS fell in the favor of the government and never the Indians.

The Narragansett Indians had a proposal to build a casino on the ballot last November. But the voters of Rhode Island voted it down. We have gambling in Rhode Island, actually right where I live, but for some reason Rhode Islanders didn’t want the Indians to have this.

Putting myself in the shoes of the Indians, I would feel betrayed by a government that stands on the values expressed in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal …with certain unalienable Rights . . .”

History would indicate that the reason the treaty between the State of Rhode Island and the Tribe, in regard to Narragansett Indians’ Smoke Shop, was upheld in court and NOT broken - is because to do so, favored the government and NOT the Indians.

I propose that the strength of a country is evidenced by the willingness to face and acknowledge the errors of its ways. It is time for admitting the injustices that we as a nation and a state have done and still do to the Americans who were here first. It would provide a turning point where the healing could begin. The Indians should not continue to be held hostage by racism institutionalized by law.

………………………………………………………………

………………………………………………………………

Winds -by Mauro

“so you killed me...
I knew you would”

I respectfully request that the discussion that found attention through a prominent white man’s utterance of “nappy headed hos” be broadened to more than racism of black Americans and sexism, let’s open up the scourge of racism to include our first sin regarding racism against the Native American Indians. When I was considering moving to Indian Country in New Mexico, my partner was black and I asked the real estate agent if there was racism in the area and his answer was “No. Except for the Indians.” I found this to be true as I was in a shop one day that I thought sold Indians' art work. The white man behind the counter, brazenly and ignorantly told me the people ruining the sale of the goods in his store were the Indians. I was confounded. Here I was in his store because I wanted to buy Indian-made jewelry and pots and he said if Indian jewelry and pots were made by the Indians it was no good. He told me his things were made by white people.

I hear comments from members of my own family that are racist and they would not imagine that they are racist. My brother referred to my past partner who was black. He said he didn’t think of Mark as black. I said Mark considers himself black. My uncle said of the people in New Orleans pictured on TV after hurricane Katrina that were doing what he considered to be unacceptable behavior … “I hate to say it, but you look on TV and they’re all black.” My sister the day after hurricane Katrina hit said that the hurricane happened because ALL of the people in New Orleans were heathens and sinners. I asked her, “ALL of them?” And she said, “Yes”. These relatives are ignorant racists. But take out the word ignorant of that sentence and you still have a racist, don’t’ you?

When I was eleven years old I met a black boy at church camp and had a deep crush on him and he on me. My father quietly leaned into my ear while waiting for the bus one morning and said that my children would be striped and polka dotted. My mother secretly destroyed my two love letters from Eddie and the two pictures of us together. She never told me that she did it. But I know. And I never put her on the spot and asked her why. My mother cringed when she sat on a bus once in Florida with other people who were obviously not her kind, white. I learned that my dad’s family dog's name was “nigger”. I grew up in an all-white towns. During the 1960’s there was never a mention in our home about the civil rights marches and the murders of Edgar Evers and Martin Luther King, Jr. During this time, my father’s father said once on the way home from church while I was a young child that “they ought to go back to Africa”.

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Emily faces racism.

When I was 36 years young, I thought I was in love. His name was the same as my father’s, Mark. We met in Bermuda. He was black. And since I was living in New England and my parents lived in Indiana they hadn’t met him yet. My mother and father were visiting me in Rhode Island and my mother made a comment how upset my dad was if Mark was a negro, as she put it. I don’t know why I was accused of making dad unhappy and not her, other than she disapproved and she found it easier to totally put it all on dad. As enlightened as I am, I make an effort to consider if I am racist. I try to see everyone as individuals and judge them for the content of their character.

“If nearness kills love what hope is there for humanity?"

Sudborough

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GLOBAL DAYS FOR DARFUR
April 23-30, 2007
Find an event in your area and attend or better yet, organize one
http://www.savedarfur.org
has the ideas on the website and you can find events in your area

We must not be complicit

regarding human to human hatred, bigotry, mass crimes or genocide

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Join the "Fidelity Out of Sudan" Campaign
www.FidelityOutOfSudan.com

http://www.sudandivestment.org/

http://www.genocideintervention.net
http://www.ajws.org

http://grassroots.amnestyusa.org/

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PLEASE, sign the petition of Amazing Changes Campaign
http://www.theamazingchange.com/abolish.html

Zach Hunter is a fifteen year old, who wants to put an end to world-wide slavery
Zach’s website:
http://www.myspace.com/amazingchange

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www.amazinggracemovie.com

Starring Ioan Gruffudd

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“By arguing on the ‘force of circumstances,’ we have argued all force from ourselves; and stand lashed together, uniform in dress and movement, like the rowers of some boundless galley. Practically considered, our creed is Fatalism; and, free in hand and foot, we are shackled in heart and soul with far straighter than feudal chains.” Thomas Carlyle

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