Bush, Sr., reaped huge profits from Native and federal land scams

President George Bush, Sr., reaped huge profits from Western Shoshone lands and other Native lands, with title transfer scams

Setting fire to California lands led to cheap land transfers
Photo: National Geographic

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Here's excerpts from, "Bush family cleaning up on transfer of public lands to private hands," by Wayne Madsen of the Online Journal.

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_3748.shtml

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"President George H. W. Bush, is reaping windfall profits from the transfer of title of public federal and state lands to private hands. The elder Bush, according to our sources, has a vested financial interest in land title companies that specialize in the transfer of public lands to private interests.
"The land-grabbing scheme primarily involves the transfer of federal lands, including Native American lands and national forest system lands, in the Rocky Mountain West, state lands in Texas, and both federal and state lands in California, Mississippi, and Florida to private entities. The scheme is also at the center of the scandal surrounding jailed GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff who conspired to privatize federal lands and assets around the country to benefit his corporate clients.
"In 2004, under pressure from Abramoff and the White House, Senators Harry Reid (D-NV) and Jim Gibbons (R-NV) shepherded the passage of the Western Shoshone Distribution Act, which was quickly signed by President George W. Bush. The act settled federal violations of the Ruby Valley Treaty of 1863 with the Shoshones and compensated them a mere $135 million for 24 million acres of Shoshone land illegally seized by the federal government in Nevada, California, Utah, and Idaho. The Shoshones cried foul, saying their land is rich in gold reserves. Gibbons, who is now governor of Nevada, instantly moved legislation to privatize the former Shoshone lands. Reid, Gibbons, and Senator John Ensign (R-NV), all received lucrative cash contributions to their campaigns from Abramoff clients.
"WMR has also learned that the Bush administration ordered a number of California and other Western state forest wildfires purposefully set with the intention of damaging and destroying federal and state forestlands, thus making them ripe for exploitation and sale to private interests."

Twentieth news reporter murdered in Mexico

By Brenda Norrell
Photos: Armando Rodriguez; Below: Murdered Indigenous radio reporters in Oaxaca, Felicitas Martinas Sanchez, 20, far left, Teresa Bautista Merino, 24, third from left. Photo Indymedia.
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico -- CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico -- News reporter Armando Rodriguez was the fifth reporter to be murdered in Mexico this year, and the 20th news reporter to be murdered in Mexico since 2000, when he was gunned down as he took his child to school on Thursday, Nov. 13, 2008. These numbers increase when the number of independent journalists murdered are added to the list of media assassinated in Mexico.
Rodriguez, a reporter for El Diario, the largest privately-owned daily in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, Texas, was shot dead outside his home. Rodriguez, a crime specialist for the past 14 years, was leaving his home to drive his eight year old daughter to school when an unidentified gunman ambushed and shot him dead at point blank range before running to a nearby vehicle where accomplices were waiting, Reporters without Borders said.
Editor of El Diario, Pedro Torres, told Reporters Without Borders that Rodriguez had received a threatening message on his mobile phone in February 2008 telling him to “tone it down." As a result, he was transferred to El Paso for two months for his safety but on his return he had insisted on resuming work without any special protection. Carlos Huerta Munoz, a reporter on the local daily El Norte, pointed out that Rodriguez had on the previous day reported on the killing of two local police officers. A severed head had also been found on November 6, on a monument in the Journalist’s Square in the centre of Ciudad Juarez, which the city’s media took to be a direct threat against them.
The number of reporters murdered this year is even higher than reports often show, because of those murdered working in independent media.
In April, two Indigenous Triqui women who worked at the community radio station La Voz que Rompe el Silencio, "The Voice that Breaks the Silence," in the autonomous municipality of San Juan Copala of the Mixteca region, were murdered on their way to Oaxaca city to participate in the State Forum for the Defense of the Rights of the Peoples of Oaxaca. Three other people were injured. Teresa Bautista Merino, 24, and Felícitas Martínez Sánchez, 20, were shot and killed.
The women had departed from the radio station, which is part of the Network of Indigenous Community Radio Stations of the Southeast (Red de Radios Comunitarias Indígenas del Sureste), around 1:00 PM. They were travelling in a truck on their way to Oaxaca city, and were ambushed on the outskirts of the community Llano Juarez, according to independent media reports.
Two journalists were murdered in Oaxaca during a major wave of protests against state governor Ulíses Ruiz Ortíz in 2006. Indymedia reporter and U.S. citizen Bradley Will, and Raúl Marcial Pérez, an indigenous community leader and columnist for the regional daily El Gráfico, were murdered. No one has been brought to justice for their murders.
The death squads of the Zetas, trained at the US School of the Americas, are now carrying out murders for Mexican drug cartels and hired as killers in Iraq.
Read more: http://www.narconews.com/
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Dakota: Minnesota racism didn't vanish on election day

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From Chris Mato Nunpa

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Hi All,
I thought some of you might be interested in Nick Coleman's article on the Dakota Commemorative March and Waziyata Win, my younger daughter, and the 71 plus comments which clearly indicate there's a long way to go. White America may be ready to elect a black man as president of the U.S., but are they ready to acknowledge the truth about what really happened in this state of Minnesota and in the United States?
Is white America ready to admit the massive land theft, the broken treaties, the genocide of the Dakota People in Minnesota and of the Indigenous Peoples of the U.S.; the suppression of languages, the suppression of religions, etc. etc. etc.?
Chris Mato Nunpa

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Shell Mound Kickoff Dinner with Winona LaDuke

Shell Mound and Peace Walk kicks off with dinner with Winona LaDuke in Oakland

By Johnella LaRose

OAKLAND -- On Friday, November 14, participants of the Sacred Sites/Shell mound Peace Walk will gather for a kickoff dinner to start their two-week, 250-mile walk around the San Francisco Bay. Traditional Native American leaders and the Nipponzan Myohoji Buddhists will lead the walk. We will walk and pray with our ancestors in areas where shell mounds and sacred sites have been desecrated by development. The November 14 dinner will feature Winona LaDuke, Native American leader, activist, and director of Honor the Earth, prayers, Native American drumming and prayers. The walkers will gather at Sogorea-te'-Glen Cove in Vallejo at 8am on November 15 to start walking. Local native people have been fighting for years to protect this burial ground and sacred site from development. Walkers will then travel on to Pt Pinole, El Cerrito, Alameda, Oakland, Hayward, Fremont, San Jose, and up to San Francisco to end with an educational picket at the Huichiun Shell mound in Emeryville on November 28 where a shopping mall complex was built on top of a series of shell mounds and burial sites. Each day of walking begins with a prayer circle. Participants then walk with sacred staffs as they travel through the Bay Area past dozens of sacred sites, Ohlone village sites, and visit many of the hundreds of huge shell mounds that used to dominate the Bay area. The largest of the shell mounds were as tall as 3 storey buildings and 300 feet in diameter. We stop to honor our ancestors and pray at the destruction of these sites. Along the way we are fed and housed by various community groups, churches, and a Sikh temple. This year is the culmination of four years of Sacred Sites/Shell mound Peace Walks. Read article and schedule

Photo slide show of 2007 Shellmound Walkers

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