The Republic of Lakotah – Why? (Part 4)

Posted on 2012-10-24 by TPOL Nathan

This is the fourth part of my review of Stephen Lendman’s article about Russell Means’ re-proclamation of the “Republic of Lakota.”

As I was writing this, the unexpected (though not surprising) occurred: Russell Means (Oyate Wacinyapin) died at age 72 near Porcupine, Oglala Sioux Tribe (Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota) early this morning, from the cancer he said he had overcome.  That makes this “re–proclamation” virtually his last public act.

It is Lakota tradition not to speak ill of the dead, and I shall not do so in this article.  I shall, however, judge his ideas and his claims with righteousness and honesty, and call a spade a spade.  As I pointed out in the first three parts of this review, I do not know (though I may suspect) whether the words are Lendman’s or Means’ but shall point out, to the best of my ability, the truth.

In Parts 1 and 2 , I looked at a recent article by Stephen Lendman.  Part 3 mostly reviewed eight broad categories of claims made concerning conditions of the Lakota nations and other AmerInd nations today.  As I pointed out, while there is some substance to many of these, their advocacy is damaged by the outright lies and more subtle exaggerations which the article (and many others) is filled with.  Again, Lendman’s words are in plain text, and my comments are in italics.

“Lakotan struggle began with the 1803 Louisiana Purchase. They call it “fantasy” US history. France sold America 530 million Native land acres for $15 million. Lakotans owned part of it. They and other Native people weren’t consulted.”

Actually, the Lakota “struggle” began many, MANY years before that.  (That is the subject for another article.)  But the trials and tribulations of ALL the Akhota peoples were well-advanced LONG before there was a United States of America, or before any but a few hardy adventurers had ventured beyond the Atlantic Seaboard.  As for who owned French Louisiana, THAT is a matter of some confusion.  For example, it was French (government) explorers who “found” the Black Hills first, in 1742; but the Oglala did not even reach the Missouri River (from the East) until 1760.  The Lakota did not “discover” the Black Hills until 1765, when Bull Bear raided the Cheyenne, Sutaio, and Kiowa who lived in, and claimed, the Black Hills and the sea of grass around it.  They would not “own” them until they conquered and drove out these other tribes more than a decade later.

“They’ve been systematically ignored and violated. From 1778 – 1871, Washington negotiated 372 treaties. Their provisions were systematically spurned.”

That is what governments DO, people:  they write and break treaties.  Of course, the Lakota ancestors did a fair amount of treaty breaking themselves, but I admit that they are pikers compared to the Federal Government.  Whether it was “systemic” or merely opportunistic is a matter of debate.

“America’s winning the West involved invading, encroaching, stealing, and occupying their lands. That’s how imperialism works. It’s the same everywhere.”

That is true – but it is NOT just “imperialism” – it is the history of humankind, from Nimrod through Cyrus and Alexander and Augustus and Mohammed and all the rest.  But for every “name” there are ten thousand nameless invaders and encroachers and stealer and occupiers who were NOT “imperialists” but the usual tribesmen and adventurers and ne’er-do-wells and such.  The color of their skin is irrelevant: yellow-skinned Nipponese and sons of the Middle Kingdom, black Zulus and Tutsis and swarthy Arabs and Turks and Spaniards and blonde or redheaded pale-skinned Celts and Norse and more: few of whom carried the flags of “imperial” rulers and more often than not brought DOWN empires.  They cannot paint America being so blackened in this matter, when EVERY people has done this: including many of the nations and tribes of AmerInd or “Native Americans” – including the so-called Inca, the Aztec, the Anasazi, the Iroquois Leaque, and the great tribes of the Southeast (such as the Creek and Caddo Confederacies).  Indeed, it is likely one or both of those (the Iroquois and Creek) may have been the reason that the Ahkota people started moving to the northwest in the 1400 or 1500s, well before Anglo-European pressures were present.

“Throughout the 19th century (and earlier), Washington engaged in military, legal, and political battles against Native Peoples. Their rights were contemptuously denied. They were displaced and exterminated. That’s how today’s America was created.”

Hmm.  This is amusing, since Washington DC did not become the capital of the United States until 1800.  Although there were a few battles between the young nation and the various AmerInd nations east of the Mississippi between 1776 (also the year that the Lakota finally defeated the Cheyenne and their allies and stole the Black Hills from them), most were a direct result of alliances between various tribes and the Americans and British and Spanish (plus a few holdovers from the French).  It is, as I’ve already pointed out, a common situation in history: look at the Welsh, the Highlanders, the various tribes of Eire (Ireland), the Basque, the many lost tribes of modern Switzerland and the Balkans, the Maori and Abos, and the Canaanites, among others.  By the way, it is impossible to count the treaties broken over the centuries.

There is no need or time to go through all of these treaties – suffice to say it was a travesty of diplomacy, not the least of which was that the United States created bogus “governments” to even have someone to “negotiate” and sign the treaties with.  The same can be said of the so-called laws – the various Acts of Congress which ignored the Constitution, basic fundamentals of liberty, and simple dignity.

“The 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie was systematically violated. So were provisions of all other treaties. From 1866 – 1868, Washington let the Bozeman trail go through the ‘Heart of the Lakota Nation.'”

“It was a short cut to Montana’s gold fields. Military forts were built on stolen land along its route. Doing so violated 1851 treaty provisions. Battles ensued. Washington negotiated peace. The 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty followed. Native People thought they won. Victory was pyrrhic and illusory.”

“The Supreme Court’s 1883 ex parte Crow Dog decision made no difference. The Court recognized Lakotah freedom and independence. It ruled that tribes held exclusive jurisdiction over their internal affairs. It didn’t matter.”

“The transcontinental railroad facilitated development, land and resource theft.”

“In 1885, Congress passed the Major Crimes Act. It extended US jurisdiction into Lakota territory. The same year, the last of the great buffalo herds were exterminated. At one time, they numbered 60 million. Native People relied on them for food.”

“In 1887, Congress passed the General Allotment Act (the Dawes Act). It ended communal ownership of reservation lands. It distributed 160-acre “allotments” to individual Indians. Tribes lost millions of acres. Wealthy ranchers exploit them today.”

Quite a joke, that – “wealthy ranchers” by whose standards?  Most American ranchers and farmers in the former Lakota lands – indeed, ALL of Russell Means’ Republic of Lakotah, are nearly as much on a reservation and with as little – indeed, LESS – liberty as their AmerInd neighbors and friends.  Yes, there are some wealthy ranchers – just as there are some wealthy Lakota.  (And sometimes they are the same people.)

“In 1888, Congress began prohibiting Indian Spiritual and Prayer Ceremonies. It was part of destroying Native culture. In 1891, a Commissioner of Indian Affairs was authorized. It was to assure Native People obeyed white man’s laws.”

More bogus history.  While it may have had something to do with “obeying white-man’s laws,” the first Commissioner of Indian Affairs was actually appointed in 1832 – 59 years earlier.  And the first AmerInd to be appointed commissioner was Ely Parker in 1869.  (Ely was an engineer, a Seneca veteran of the War Between the States and a brigadier general in the Union Army. He was also an officer in the 2nd US Cavalry during the Indian Wars; and he married a Sackett. History is strange.  Obviously, this little bit of information does not support the contentions of either Lendman or Means.  I could not find any record of a Congressional ban on ceremonies in 1888, however; but it was about the same time that Congress once again prohibited Utah from statehood until the LDS Church (theoretically NOTHING to do with state government – wall of separation and all ) banned polygamy.  “Native culture” wasn’t the only one being destroyed.  (Oh, and by the way, Comanche chief Quanah Parker (a half-breed) continued to have at least five wives until his death in 1911 – long after Congress had forced the “Mormons” to give up plural wives – whose culture was being destroyed when?)

“Many more abuses followed. In Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock (1903), the Supreme Court extralegally recognized near absolute plenary congressional power over Indian affairs.”

“It let US authorities steal tribal lands and resources freely. They did so on the pretext of fulfilling federal responsibilities.”

“Doing so abrogated fundamental indigenous rights unilaterally. The ruling was used to violate hundreds of treaties. Like other Native Peoples, Lakotans were grievously harmed.”

“Their sacred Black Hills were stolen. So were valued resources on them. Lakotans want back what’s rightfully theirs. Their ancestors thought the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty granted them victory. They were wrong.”

“Yet in 1904, even after Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, some believed the Treaty was ‘the only instance in the history of the United States where the government has gone to war and afterwards negotiated a peace conceding everything demanded by the enemy and exacting nothing in return.'”

“Until the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act, Native People got what no one had the right to deny them in the first place. In fact, rights afforded them nominally never existed in fact.”

Again, this is only part of the tale.  There are many (like Ely Parker and Stand Watie and Quanah Parker (no relation to Ely) and tens of thousands who DID vote and own property and exercise all the other rights of American citizens.  But to do so, they gave up the bribes and all the rest that Congress so “generously” bestowed on them in treaties and laws.  Unlike too many, who allowed themselves to be cozened into selling their liberty.  The 1924 Act is one of several early acts creating so-called “group” rights instead of individual rights.  (By the way, it should also be pointed out that the FIRST “Native American” US Representative and Senator, Charles Curtis of Kansas (Kaw, Osage and Pottawatomie) was first elected to Congress in 1892 (and five more times), and was then elected at least three times to the Senate from Kansas BEFORE this 1924 act passed.  But perhaps that helped him get elected as Vice President of the United States in 1928.

“The entire history of Native People in America reflects horrific struggles lost. From 1492 to today, they experienced promises made and broken. Disenfranchized [sic] people remain. Most are bereft of hope.”

To be expected, when they put their hope in government.  At the same time, millions more are NOT enrolled (or don’t bother to tell people that they are) and able to live normal lives, fighting for their liberty along with the rest of us.  It is those trapped on reservations or in Indian communities in the big urban areas (little more than extensions of reservations, whether we are talking Rapid City or Pierre or Minneapolis-Saint Paul or Denver or Los Angeles) that are MORE disenfranchised than the other 300 million of us.  And we have ALL experienced horrific losses and broken promises:  not just AmerInd or blacks or Asians but Southerners and Westerners and the sons and daughters of Volga Germans and Danes and Scots and more.

“On reservations or assimilated, they’re out of sight and mind. Once they lived peacefully on their own land. White settlers changed things. Western civilization destroyed their way of life. There’s nothing civilized about it.”

Now we are back in “Lo, the poor Indian” maudlin weeping.  For most (not all, by any means, but especially for all the Ahkota and virtually all the Plains and most of the nomadic Southwestern tribes: Cheyenne, Blackfoot, Shoshone, Comanche, all the Apache, Kiowa, and many more, WARFARE was THE essential part of life: there was no “lived peacefully on their own land.”  Centuries, if not millennia, of warfare, of fighting over hunting land and then grazing land, water, cropland, sacred lands, sources of stone and metal, are the heritage of AmerInd, as they are of Scots and Irish and English and German and Vietnamese and African Americans.  White settlers changed a lot, but they did not introduce warfare to a peaceful and loving people.  As for civilization – well, that too is what civilizations do: they destroy other cultures:  the Romans destroyed Carthage – and its civilization.  They destroyed Syria and Egypt and THEIR civilizations.  They destroyed the Celts and the British and the proto-civilizations of Britain and Gaul and Iberia.  Just as the Maya and the Aztec destroyed the tribes (nations) of most of MesoAmerica and their civilizations, and Chinese and Japanese did to Koreans and Taiwanese and Vietnamese, and Mongols and Muslims did the nations and civilizations of India.  This is NOT new and NOT unique, however wrong it may be.

“They’re either ignored, mocked, or demonized in films and society. They’re called drunks, beasts, primitives, and savages. America always was a white supremacist society.”

Are we not here talking about the Media?  Hollywood?  Are they less to blame than Congress?  Means has been part of THIS little niche of “civilization” for decades.  But again, AmerInd are not alone:  we can add MANY various groups of Americans and others who have been subject to this sort of thing – and MANY of them were predominantly or completely white:  Southerners, German-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Chinese-Americans, LDS (Mormons), and on and on and on.  America is a “supremist” society, but color is just one way of keeping count.

“Rich powerful elites run it. Native People and most others don’t matter. They’re systematically used and abused. They’re not served. It’s the American way.”

Aha!  At last “most others” are mentioned.  If we are to beat on America, we must then beat on the rest of the world even more.  Can you name ONE NATION on this planet where there is not strong evidence that “rich powerful elites” are in charge?  Where too many people, whether they are nine-year-old girls or two-month-old babies or eighty-year-old elders, are NOT used and abused?

Thus ends Lindman’s tirade, but I am not yet done with my rant.

Russell proposes a solution that history has shown is NOT a solution: to create another government, a government built on the same lies as the government it is seceding from.  (Lies such as “treaty rights” and “group rights” and “the world owes me a living.”)  He wants to do what a hundred different countries in Africa and Latin America did: throw off their “colonial oppressors” in favor of “homegrown” oppressors.  Because Lakota land was once stolen, he thinks that the Creator has given him a right to steal the land of other people.  Because Lakota were (and are) abused and neglected and mistreated and used, he figures that it is someone else’s turn to be abused: the 95% Non-Lakota and the 90% Non-AmerInd of his would-be Republic.

Lendman wants America’s evil to go away, and I think he may understand that when that happens, America’s good will ALSO go away.  Too many nations have little BUT evil, and their good (which I shall presume to assume that all have something of) is not even close to balancing the evil.  Even in the blood-soaked history of the United States, there was a lot of good.  Compare it to the final defeat of Carthage, the subjugation of New Spain, conquest of the Russian steppes, or even the pacification of Ireland to see that the process and results could have been much worse.  Consider the Final Solution of the 1940s or the Ugandan experiments of the 1970s.  Or the Balkans of the 1990s.  For that matter, consider the Modoc or the Seminole or the California coastal tribes as compared to the Lakota for examples of even more evil outcomes.

The Republic of Lakotah is stillborn.  The only hope for such a nation is found in the complete collapse of the United States AND anything resembling a major power in the rest of the world, for otherwise, the Lakota are likely to exchange one elite for another – and one not constrained by “treaty rights.”  Perhaps in a sufficiently protracted war between the states or civil war something (much MUCH smaller than Means’ dream) might find a niche, but Pine Ridge and Rosebud are neither the Alps nor the mountains of Ararat or the Himalayas.  Indeed, they are better tank country than the North European Plain.  And by even raising a peaceful flag of rebellion, Means may have sealed the death warrant for his people, by making it expedient to ensure that they do NOT try to rebel against whichever faction in the civil war holds the territory and surrounding area.

Sadly, Lendman and Means seem to belong to that group of people who are so smitten with the magic of words and legal actions that they believe someone will just roll over and play dead.  Just as those who know that just the right words will save them from ever paying income tax, or get real silver for paper money at face value, or get rid of lawyers, they keep on coming up with more ideas that just don’t work.

It is really so much more simple than Lendman or Means imply.  Liberty requires that those who enjoy it or want it must be able to defend themselves and their liberties, on an individual basis, in voluntary cooperation with others – not because they are all members of the same tribe by ancestry, or because they have the same skin color (not that THAT is an issue any more for any of the Lakota nations) or because their ancestors were slaves (or slavers) or spoke the same language.  Liberty is given of God, but He expects man to defend it and take it back when it is stolen.  But that defense has to be done in the right way, with honor and truth, and not with lies, taking freedom away from someone else.  In that, perhaps, Russell Means has been most cruelly betrayed by that Western Civilization that he and Lendman so despise and condemn, because that is the false liberty of ancient Greece and Rome: that SOME people must be slaves so that others can be free.

It is time to look ahead to individual liberty and freedom and justice for all because we ARE free.  I have no doubt that one day there may be a REAL “Republic of Lakota” (or better yet, “Oyate Wolakota Lakota” – United Lakota Nation) with little or no government except that of voluntary cooperation between free people regardless of heritage or any other characteristics – but it will come from people working together for liberty and not because some would-be messiahs claim that they represent the ancestors or anyone else with the intent of lording it over others and paying back past misdeeds.

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Libertarian Commentary on the News #12-44B: This and that

Posted on 2012-10-21 by TPOL Nathan

More from a very long week!

Stupid government tricks – Government-run, tax-funded schools
Minnesota bans free college education
(SLATE.com)

NATHAN:  This issue, according to the article, was resolved favorably, but it STILL points out that education isn’t about “the children” (indeed, except for the rare protegy, no children were involved in this: everyone over age 18, thank you!), but about the power and the money.  Minnesota DOES want to dictate what people do in the privacy of their own home or room – not just sex (I know, I know, the “liberals” will claim ‘t’aint so but they do) but ESPECIALLY studying at a college level.  Them college folks is dangerous powerful threat to the state, you ken?  And of course,  it is only the State that knows what is best to be taught and whether or not you are being taught anything useful and worthwhile.  You (or your parents) can’t possibly know that.

Self-defense
12-Year-Old Girl Shoots Intruder During Home Invasion
(www.newson6.com)  A 12-year-old girl took matters into her own hands during a home invasion in … NewsOn6.com – Tulsa, OK – News, Weather, Video and Sports – KOTV.com | 12-Year-Old Girl Shoots Intruder During Home Invasion In Bryan County … St. Clair, who told her to get the family gun, hide in a closet and call 911.  [When he got to the closet in searching the house, she shot him through the door, wounding him: he was arrested by cops a few minutes later.]

NATHAN: Preaching to the choir time again!  Would she be dead, raped, murdered, or just missing and later found dismembered (like the girl in Denver area last week) if she hadn’t had access to the gun?  Will her parents be investigated and prosecuted for child abuse because the gun was available to a 12-year-old?  Townhall had a good column on this, tying it to the “messiah’s” call during the debate for MORE gun control, but missing points as well. Government can NOT protect us against violence, and every government attempt to do so results in MORE violence, not less. It is not just the current incumbent of 1600 PA that is dangerous to our lives and liberties, but the “major” candidate running for the job.

Theft by government
Welfare cost 746 billion in FY2011
(Godfather Politics) More than Social Security or “basic” military spending (that is, not counting the Afghan occupation or the other interventions).  The article gives a brief history of federal welfare since LBJ’s Great Society in 1964, and points out that 46 million Americans (15.1%) get this plus 283 billion from the states: a total of $1.029 TRILLION.

NATHAN: My trusty calculator says that is $22,370 per person per year: not a GREAT wage but a livable one ($10.75) on a family basis (2 to 4 people each getting that $22K).  Of course, this isn’t paid directly to the welfare recipients, as we all know: MOST of it goes to pay/feed the bureaucrats at salaries easily double that on average, and the average welfare recipient is lucky to get even 40% of that: around $10 K or so.  And this is the individual welfare: not the corporate welfare or the local government welfare or the Beltway Bandit welfare.

Government steals from us in a multitude of ways and here we see several.  First, taxes (or borrowed money) pay for this largesse to the poor and especially to the bureaucrats, and indirectly to the big corporations that benefit from providing commodities and acting as middlemen for food stamps and the like.  Second, this “free” money drives up the costs of the goods that we compete with the bureaucrats and the welfare-clients for.  Third, the taxes and borrowing inflate the money supply, driving the value of our savings and investments down.

Home Front
Report: Violent crime rises sharply, reversing trend
(USA TODAY) 11:54PM EDT October 17. 2012 – WASHINGTON — The violent crime rate went up 17% last year, ending a general decline in violence that began nearly 20 years ago, according to a new federal survey of crime victims. The Justice Department’s National Crime Victimization Survey also found an 11% increase in the rate of property crimes, including household burglaries and car theft. The survey represents a sharp departure from recent years and a preliminary report produced earlier this year by the FBI, which found that violent crime had declined by 4% during the first six months of 2011. The final FBI Uniform Crime Report, which collects data from police departments across the country, is expected out later this month.

Mama’s note: Guess that makes it official… but we knew this a while ago.

Nathan:  It seems that we just have MORE reason to distrust the “data” and numbers being provided.  And I am curious as to “Why?” according to these “experts.”  Too much of this seems to be based on data from large cities (like Chicago and New York) and too much seems to be speculation.

Mama’s note: Very true… I’s almost impossible to know what to believe anymore, but the news stories of increasing crime in the cities, even groups of young women committing crimes we never heard of before – all these are most disquieting. I know we have little reason to trust the “news” in any case, but I’ve seen a few signs of this trend even in the quiet rural area where I live.

The bottom line is that we all must be prepared to defend ourselves, in every way possible.

Stupid people tricks
Disaster shelter offers full kitchen, flat-screen TV
(ClickOrlando.com) Corrugated pipe ‘Doomsday’ bunker priced at $59,900 ALTAMONTE SPRINGS, Fla. -Could a “Doomsday Bunker” protect your family in case of disaster? One local business thinks so and is offering tours of an Atlas corrugated pipe shelter. Al’s Army Navy Store in Altamonte Springs is selling a 32×10-foot shelter. The unit is designed to go 20 feet underground, and can offer protection from hurricanes, tornadoes and other disasters.

Mama’s note: People are so strange sometimes. Hard to imagine anyone who can feed themselves successfully actually believing that a “flat screen TV” would be a useful part of an emergency shelter like this. Wonder how much of a discount they offer if you don’t want the TV? 🙂

Nathan: Hmm.  Well, here are some guesses:

(1)  They assume that the cable networks will continue to function, or will be more quickly restored than they will be able to get their house aboveground repaired.

(2)  They need something to keep the children (regardless of age) entertained to keep them from going stir-crazy.

(3)  They have additional “add-on” options such as cameras to watch the mobs up aboveground or to see the radiation-crazed looters.

(4)  They have a lot of rather stupid customers.  I recall the wife in Heinlein’s Farnham’s Freehold and her drug problems and the trouble she caused from being bored.  We have a lot of her kind around today.

I suspect that the same amount of money spent on improving their ABOVE-ground normal house to withstand hurricanes and tornadoes would be far more beneficial, but I also wonder if the value given to this isn’t also tied to things like fear of crime and being singled out and attacked.  An underground bunker is both less visible and more easily defended.

Politics 2012
CNN Poll: 46% Say Obama Won Debate, 39% Say Romney
(CNSNews.com)

NATHAN:  I once again avoided the debate, and THIS time didn’t listen to any of the commentary or reviews the next day.  And I’m glad I didn’t.  As I understand, supposedly the “messiah” did better than Romney, but that in part seems to be because he did so much better than that guy did against Romney in the Denver debate.  At the same time, apparently (unlike the first debate) this debate has had little or no effect on voters: Romney is up slightly (despite being viewed as the loser), but not attributable to this.  It appears that (a) they aren’t that far apart on most issues, when you get right down to it, (b) the issues that they DO differ on are hidden by personality conflicts, and (c) too much of the time is wasted on meaningless garbage.

Mama’s note: If two crickets held a “debate,” how would anyone decide which of them “won?” And what would they “win” if you could figure it out? A pox on both their houses.

Government-run, tax-funded schools – Theft by government
The Imaginary Teacher Shortage
(Wall Street Journal) In 1970, public schools employed 2.06 million teachers, or one for every 22.3 students; in 2012, there are 3.27 million teachers, one for every 15.2 students…

One of the problems is that the number of ADMINISTRATORS and useless hangers-on (Douglas Adams’ “middlemen” in A Hitchhiker’s Guide) like guidance counselors and career specialists and deputy junior assistant principals and school resource officers, have increased at an even MORE rapid rate.  And the spending per student (much of it in increased salaries for administrators and teachers) has grown far in excess of the rate of inflation – even when realizing that inflation as reported by the government is insanely low.  Of course, the subjects TAUGHT by this multitude of teachers has grown more and more watered down and more and more worthless, as well.

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America’s war on wildfires – a cretinous critique

Posted on 2012-10-21 by TPOL Nathan

This week, while doing work on Rosebud Indian Reservation, several projects got disrupted when 60-mile-an-hour winds took a grass fire and turned it into a raging inferno that threatened several small towns and destroyed the livelihood of ranchers.  Hundreds of people, some from 200 miles away, responded to fight the fire, or at least prevent its destruction of the towns and more grass and timber.  It was one of several fires which threatened various parts of the West in a later than usual fire season.

A few weeks ago, I found this Yahoo article: America’s war on wildfires

We Americans LOVE our ‘wars’ – on poverty (remember LBJ), on drugs (starting with Richard Milhous Nixon), on inflation (Jerry Ford), and right up to George W’s War on Terrorism.

So of COURSE we need a war on wildfires.  And of COURSE, the FedGov is doing its usual marvelous job of WINNING that war – NOT.  This Yahoo column talks about how the US is supposedly losing the war against wildfires (even though the vast majority are caused by man’s activities, and no one speaks of a “war on house fires” or a “war on oil spills” – At least not YET.)  And of course, it is not just government action or inaction in actually working to “Prevent Forest Fire” or to respond to those that happen, but it is government inaction on banning us from breathing too much carbon dioxide or emitting too much methane (from another orifice) and thus saving the planet from the dreaded Manmade Global Warming that is to blame.

In the eyes of many libertarians (the minarchist kind) and a fair number of classical liberals and conservatives,  the ONLY justification for government is that it is supposed to defend the people against threats:  external invasion, internal crime, internal tyranny, stupid mistakes, and natural disasters.  Not necessarily (or even) bail them out, but protect life and property against these threats: organize defense against them, set up procedures and ensure that people are trained and equipped and supplied to deal with them.

Based on that thought,  immediately after organizing and deploying a navy to protect the sea lanes and shoreline against piracy and bully nations, an army and air force (militia, really) to protect the borders against invasion, having sheriffs and their deputies to assist in preventing and dealing with crime, and internal invasions and usurpation of power (with the ability to call on militia), most everything else falls into the category of “emergency preparedness and response.”  Indeed, most of the sheriff’s duties fall into this category as well:  planning for and dealing with such threats as storms (snow, tornado, hurricane, flash flood, etc.), earthquakes, and fires.  Having government to HELP with these things is not having government TAKE OVER dealing with these things anymore than having the sheriff around means that we should not be prepared to defend our homes and businesses, on our own or in cooperation with our neighbors.

(Of course, we anarchists point out that the most efficient AND effective way for us to defend ourselves IS to be reasonably well armed, in voluntary cooperation with our neighbors and whomever we may wish to contract with for security and response.  And that government just messes things up.  The exact same concept applies to protecting ourselves against natural and manmade disasters, whether fire, flood, storm, chemical spills, or whatever.)

Anyone who knows the history of the fire service and emergency services in general (emergency medical service, or EMS, fire service (EFS or FS), hazardous materials response operations (HAZWOPER), and so forth knows that the organizations which provide these services originally were established as either voluntary organizations (much like local militias) OR as private companies contracted with related providers, insurance agencies, or directly to potential users.  Just as local militias were eventually absorbed into state and then federal governments, most of these organizations have been absorbed as well.  There are many different paths to this, but today the overwhelming majority of emergency services are government-run and (to some degree) tax-funded.  And with most of these “government services,” the federal government has been increasingly involved, in funding and establishing standards and regulating and providing services and manpower directly and indirectly.  At first, such funding actually bypassed the states, and then the state governments realized that they were missing the gravy train and added their own levels of bureaucracy.

There are two basic types of fire:  structure fires (which may include fires in yards and fields and corrals and such), and wildfire.  Wildfire includes grass and brush and forest fires.  Although due to climate and man’s intervention, wildfire is most significant as a threat in the West and the lower Pacific Coast (due to low precipitation, mainly), it can happen almost anyplace, due to drought, build up of fuels, and stupid humans.  Florida swamps and Georgia forests and Maine timberland, are good examples.  But in the West, the situation with wildfires has grown steadily worse over a century-plus, due to several factors (of which “global warming” is NOT significant, if indeed a factor at all).

First is increased population and establishment of towns and cities.  (Prior to 1874, no one cared if a mountain or valley or two in the Black Hills burned: few people lived in the Hills and could move themselves and their dwellings and possessions out of danger’s way relatively quickly.)  Second was the misbegotten and foolish suppression of wildfires for decades. The “Smokey Bear” concept that ALL fire is bad and must be prevented or put out immediately.  So the ecosystem was disrupted and billions and billions of tons of fuel built up – and not just in woodlands and forests, but in prairies and swamps and more.  Third, as a result of the first two factors, the cost (physical and monetary) of fighting fires grew increasingly large.  A tipi or wickiup or log cabin and its contents is a tragic loss when they burn, but the family and community could and did replace it relatively quickly from materials locally available.  No so easy when it is a house and outbuildings or farmstead or business that is the result of decades of investment of earned capital, and the materials come from across the globe.  Fourth was the FURTHER intervention of government beyond the Smokey Bear stuff,  the skewing of the market by subsidies of insurance (as with floods), zoning and planning controls, environmental regulations, and – especially – refusal to sell the public lands off to private owners.

All this added up to the mess we have today.  Thousands of square miles burn, inevitably taking houses here and barns there, and power and communications lines and even roads and bridges and fences and more.  The cost of the fire damage is astronomical, and the cost of fighting the fires has exploded seemingly as rapidly as the fires.

Fire prevention and fighting efforts are generally supported (directly or indirectly) by the property owners.  Since eighty acres of cultivated cropland presents (even in very dry areas) far less of a risk of fire than native grassland or timberland, and since the development of water supply systems and improved building techniques reduced the number and cost of structural fires in towns and elsewhere, this meant that the more developed an area was, the less per capita fire protection cost.  BUT when much of the land is owned by entities that DON’T develop their land and leave it in tall grass or scrub or trees, AND suppress fire constantly, the ability to fight fires drops as the cost of doing so rises.

Even structure fires are often beyond the capability of local fire departments, and that goes ten times over for wildfires, whether in grass or brush or trees.  For this reason, fire service has always had mutual aid between adjacent departments or districts or zones.  This is no different from a defense unit of militia needing aid from an adjacent unit during a really bad time – or in the old days when a sheriff would ask a neighboring sheriff for some additional posse-members.  There was also some pooling of resources, such as specialized equipment (ladder-trucks in rural or frontier areas, or foam trucks).  Often businesses will provide specialized equipment for dealing with oil spills or derailments or at airports, usually related to their business in some ways. Again, this idea goes back many decades: mining companies bought and provided specialized mine rescue equipment to local volunteer fire companies.  Before the days of mil levies supporting the fire service, the cost was divided out based in large part on the risk of fire faced by the property owners.

But we have (at least in the West and the Pacific coast) a BIG problem.  Much of the land, especially in the areas with brush and forest, is owned by Uncle Sam.  Yes, supposedly he pays “PILT” (Payments In Lieu of Taxes) to the counties, and other special districts, but it based on the average in the county and NOT on special circumstances, such as giant tenderboxes waiting for the match.  So instead, Uncle Sam provides funding for purchasing of equipment and training, and all the other stuff.  This doesn’t go to those who need it most: it goes to those who write the best grant applications – who can suck up best to Uncle.  And like other grants, it comes with strings – must do this, can’t do that, have to provide this – whether it makes any sense or not.  And when Congress wants to spend money for something else, the programs and the grants get cut, and the locals are left without resources.  The locals are partly to blame because they didn’t think it through, but as we know FedGov agencies and Congress are VERY persuasive, and money speaks loudly.  So the Emergency Services are left in the lurch, and a bad fire year makes much hay for those who say this is yet ANOTHER area in which state and federal governments MUST take over to “protect” us.

Isn’t it time we started recognizing that the LAST thing we want to do is have the federal government involved in ANYthing?  You know, if I WERE a statist, I’d notice a couple of things: one, that people who own land in a community and don’t pay their taxes to support “necessary services” get the land seized for that failure to pay.  Two, those landowners who don’t take care of their land and create risks and threats to others often end up losing their land, their money, and even their freedom when local codes are enforced.

Except… these tools are only applied to the relatively weak individuals and companies. Maybe it is time to start applying them to the worst neighbor of all for most western communities: the federal government.

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Libertarian Commentary on the News #12-44A: Hoploclasts and Environists

Posted on 2012-10-21 by TPOL Nathan

Due to travels and work (about 2,300 miles on the road) this week, I’ve had little chance to do the usual in-depth review of the news and provide comments in detail.  However, here are some things that just cry out for comment.

First are a couple of quotes wandering around the internet.  Several people sent these to me; I will thank Scott and Steve for them.

Our right to defend ourselves under attack
Chicago gun violence now to end – a quote and commentary

Won’t fix gang violence: “If we were to pursue a tax on something like guns and ammo, clearly that wouldn’t be popular with the [gun lobby] out there, and it may not generate $50 million, but … it is consistent with our commitment to pursuing violence reduction in the city and in the county.” –Kurt Summers, chief of staff to Cook County (Chicago) Board President Toni Preckwinkle (You can find this referenced in a Chicago Tribune opinion piece. )

Chicago’s city fathers (read, the nutcases in charge of one of the three most powerful and largest cities in the nation) this week decided on the major cause of gun violence in that city (Now #1 in the nation and climbing – if that is possible: “This year, 346 people have been killed in Chicago, up 31 percent from the same period last year, while shootings are up 8 percent citywide. The homicides have been concentrated mostly in the city’s South and West Sides, where gun violence has been rampant.”)

NATHAN: What is that cause?  Guns don’t cost enough.  So they raised taxes on them; or at least they are trying to do so. (Chicago Area Proposes First Local Tax on Guns, Bullets – WSJ.com)  Never mind that most criminals don’t pay taxes on what they steal (but isn’t that obvious?), or that until Chicago DOES contract with OCP and put up that “Chicago Wall” around the city they so desperately want, with fifty versions of Checkpoint Charlie, that you can buy guns other places and bring them into the city. (Indeed, Walter Williams has proposed that California do the same, but with the intent of keeping the wealth of its celebrities and businesses from escaping to other states: A Modest Proposal).  I am sure that the price of guns in Chicago, like that of drugs, will go up quite nicely.  And Chicago’s crime rate will start dropping. Right after Dorothy and Toto get back home.

A second quote also piqued my interest, similarly found on line and provided by several friends.

Environists and Tranzi enemies of liberty
Outside the Constitution

Rule of men becomes tyranny: “What people don’t understand is sometimes we have to step outside the boundaries of the Constitution to get things done. Laws are made to protect corporations and we need laws that protect Mother Earth.” –environist Paula Hern on-line at the Washington Examiner.

NATHAN: Just in case you wondered what attitude a lot of these people have.  They condemn christians who put God and God’s word ahead of the Constitution, but scratch not far under the surface and you find that religious fanatic (green, Gaea, etc.) that I’ve been talking about for years.

Are these people fascists?  Some, yes: the classic definition of totalitarian/authoritarian partnership between government and corporations fits many.  It is only SOME corporations that Hern and her ilk condemn: their organizations are all corporations and they enjoy the protections of the state (dubious as they sometimes are) well enough.

Indeed, we can see that these are Transnational Fascists or Socialists or Progressives: Tranzis.  It is not just the United States Constitution that they work “outside of” but EVERY document, EVERY system, that is designed to try and protect the God-given rights of humans.  This is a bizarre mix of tribalism (“those who are not of my immediate blood and group (clan, tribe, lineage, dynasty) are not really human, and I can do whatever I want to with them.”) and a lot of other things: paganism (transformed into earth-worship with big host new-age, feminist, darwinist things mixed in), and something that amounts to worship of the State.  (The old LP’s overblown rhetoric about railing against the cult of the omnipotent state is seeming to be more and more just the plain truth.)

As I have said, before, the attitude of these people is that of the ancient dynasties of the pharaohs of Eygpt:  they are godlike (and therefore the only REAL humans) and will tell the mere mortals what to do and how to do it because they deserve the highest standard of living technology and slavery can bring them: the rest of us are (at best) useful tools and a source of servants and raw materials. It is the philosophy of evil, of men making themselves gods and ends in darkness.

If we take them at face value and believe that they are doing these things because they really believe that the earth is sacred and we are destroying it, or for some bizarre love of the masses which must be saved, we are doomed to fail to defeat them.  Just as the ancient kings of Mesopotamia and Egypt and Anatolia and Greece and Italy and India and China and Africa did it for the power and the wealth and their own vain glory, people like Hern exercise their greed and consider the rest of us no more than ants or cattle to be used.

Fortunately, as history has shown time and time again, resistance is NOT futile.

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The Republic of Lakotah – Who? (Part 3)

Posted on 2012-10-18 by TPOL Nathan

In Parts 1 and 2, I looked at a recent article by Stephen Lendman concerning a recent “re-proclamation” by Russell Means of the “Republic of Lakotah” and the various things wrong with both Lendman’s report and Means’ claims.

The article made a series of claims I want to look at now.  Lakota, particularly the Oglala (of Pine Ridge) and Sicangu (Rosebud or Upper Brule) that I am personally most familiar with, are in very bad straits, but so are the Dakota and others. But misrepresentations on this scale do no LEGITIMATE cause any good.

Here I pick up in Lendman’s column:

He [Means] cited longstanding problems and grievances. They include land theft, resource plunder, poverty, unemployment, repression, and overall human depravation[sic]. All of it remains out of sight and mind.

The Republic of Lakota described ongoing genocide as follows:

I don’t know whether the claims made are Russell Means’ or Stephen Lendman’s or from  someone else.  It doesn’t matter: they are used to support Means’ agenda, and Lendman’s.  Let us look at these.

(1) Mortality

Life expectancy for Lakota men is less than 44 years. It’s the lowest of all sovereign countries. It’s the highest in America. Infant mortality is threefold higher than the US average. Diseases are a major problem. “Cancer is now at epidemic proportions.”

Teenage suicide is150% higher than America’s average. One-fourth of Lakota children are fostered or adopted by non-Native people. Doing so destroys their identity and culture. Ward Churchill calls it killing the Indian, saving the man.

(1) Mortality:  I do not disagree that many Lakota die young, that many diseases are epidemic, and that it is a serious problem. But cancer is epidemic in the entire nation. As is suicide.  It is not germane.  The statistics may be disputed because it is hard to track data, due to the dispersal of much of the population.  On the rez, too many people die too young.

And today, to quote an Oglala Lakota friend, in South Dakota reservations, “death is a growth industry.”  The WW2 generation is dying off, but so are the young people, and the baby-boomers.  Only the high birth rate keeps the population growing.  Disease, alcoholism, drugs, old age, and more kills people.

But the thing that needs to be asked is WHY?  For 130 years, the Lakota have been living in a socialist paradise, and like ALL socialist paradises, it is a distopia – racism may be or have been a factor, but it is a smothering nanny government with “free” one-payer, one-provider health care that has resulted in this.

Teenage suicide? Why?  Hopelessness, incest and other abuse, peer pressure, gangs, government-run education ALL can be identified as key causes: none are unique to Lakota but all lead to this.  Nationally, teen suicide is way, way up: many have speculated on the causes.  In any case, if the usual pampered and coddled teens are killing themselves in record numbers, is it any wonder that those seemingly trapped on reservations are doing so as well?

As for the one-quarter of Lakota children fostered outside the tribes?  It is that or more, but the question is why?

First, it is because the average family on the rez IS dysfunctional:  the father (if known and around) is a downwardly-spiraling alcoholic, the mother is nearly the same, without employment or prospects for a job; The other children are as much abusers as the parents and other relatives, and frequently victims of fetal alcohol syndrome.  This is “normal.”

Second, the drive is ALWAYS to place a child with a family of the same tribe or a related tribe, but that is not possible when the only available families have the same problems as the home from which the child is “rescued.”  I am not saying that every family is like that – but enough are.  There are families with mothers and fathers and grandmothers (yes, and grandfathers), that all have jobs (or retirement income) and have nice houses: but they are often already supporting their own immediate blood relatives: nieces and nephews and cousins and sometimes grandchildren.  They cannot take any more, whether the state or tribes pays for the support or not.

Third, many of the foster families ARE not enrolled in the tribe, but live on or near the reservation, and try to help the children keep (or gain) their cultural heritage, and honor their oyate and relatives and history of their people.

Fourth, there are a LOT of Lakota children: fully half the population on Pine Ridge is under 21: it is difficult to find enough homes in the Dakotas, which aren’t the biggest states in the land.

Fifth, many of the children are fostered when taken away from families that are NOT on the reservation, but instead have moved to cities like Rapid City or Sioux Falls or Denver or Omaha or Minneapolis.  Again, why this situation?  Government: federal and tribal (yes, and state, as well).

Sixth,  fostering children ON the reservation does not remove them from most of the threats to them: the gangs in schools, the close-by relatives of dysfunctional families, and the peer pressures.  All too often, the fostered children are so incredibly dysfunctional that their foster homes and the community in which they are fostered still must receive treatment as the most “at-risk” of any child in the community.  Those issues take priority: cultural orientation and preservation take a backseat – especially when it seems obvious to many of the providers that it is the culture (that of 2012, NOT that of 1642 or 1776 or 1880) that has failed the child.

(2) Disease

Tuberculosis is 800% higher than America’s average. Cervical cancer is fivefold higher. Diabetes is eight times the national average. The Federal Commodity Food Program provides high-sugar foods. They contribute to poor health.

(2) Disease:  Yes, which is one reason WHY mortality is so high, AND growing – and will continue to grow. Once more, they refuse to see the obvious: government is to blame. Why?  First, the commodity foods are part of the treaty obligations of the US government, or at least that is assumed.  But commodity foods are dairy and carbohydrates: grains – flour and rice and such.  Not much meat.  There are a lot of Lakota children (39% of the population of Shannon County), and most go to school.  A school lunch of 750 calories of fruits and vegetables is NOT what a typical Lakota child needs, based on their genetic heritage.  Why?  Carbs were a very small part of a normal Lakota diet before the 1870s (about eight generations back): they were meat eaters, with a variety of wild fruits and vegetables to supplement, and a trade in coffee and corn for meal and such.  But the government is getting by on the cheap: they are already paying for the commodities, and so that is what is provided.  When food stamps (SNAP) are substituted for the actual commodities, people buy what is relatively cheap and filling – not healthy – and what they’ve been eating for the last century-plus.  Although beef is raised locally, there isn’t a lot of meat-processing done locally.  And these folks are products of government schools: they don’t know how to butcher a beef (or even a deer or elk) or how to grow a garden or even cook – same as the rest of the nation: microwave “cooking” of prepared foods.  This comes as no surprise, and government – government-run schools, government welfare, government regulations – all are to blame.

(3) Poverty

Annual median income is $2,600 – $3,500. Poverty affects 97% of Lakotans. [I don’t know what a Lakotan is – if it is not a typo perhaps it is a jelly or cream-filled donut of some kind (just like “ein Berliner” is a jelly donut but “Berliner” is a citizen of that city). He means “Lakota.”] Many families can’t afford essentials most people take for granted. In winter, many use ovens for heat. Simple luxuries are unheard of. Life is hard, merciless, punishing, and unrelenting.

(3) Poverty.  Yeah, there is a lot of it.  Both numbers are exaggerated, however.  There are a fair number of wealthy Lakota, even those living on the reservations.  Many are well-paid civil servants (tribal and federal), there are teachers and professors, there are medical personnel and technicians.  And some are successful in private business: contractors, store owners, managers, morticians, druggists, and all the other professions and jobs in any American city or town.  I’d go with 90%, but not with 97%.  And median income is low, but not THAT low:  not when you count ALL kinds of income, including all the welfare freebies and such. And not even when you DO NOT count that: US Census says that per-capita CASH income is $7772/year in Shannon County (which is more than half of Pine Ridge Reservation and the OST), average for 2006 to 2010.  That is only one-quarter of South Dakota’s average, but well over twice Lendman’s/Means’ bogus numbers.

If they use ovens for heat, then SOMEone is paying their electric or propane bill – and that is income.  Yes, I know some who have – but this makes it sound like 97% are.  And as for simple luxuries?  That is in the eye of the beholder:  television, videos, cars, cell phones, MP3 players, and many other things are present, even if not everyone has them.  But I won’t argue that for a lot of people, life is “hard, merciless, punishing, and unrelenting.”  In a recent interview of a dozen young (20-25 year old) Oglala workers, only THREE had a driver’s license.  But for many of them it was because young as they were, they already had three or more DUI convictions.  Life IS hard when you drug or drink yourself – or when you are born crippled because your parents did that.

And life is even harder when you are living in a socialist paradise that has, in essence, been a satellite of a major power for 130 years, with socialism and despotism the rule of the day: think East Germany but for three times as long!

(4) Unemployment

It’s 80% or higher. Government corruption, cronyism, and indifference destroy normal living opportunities.

(4) Unemployment.  While certainly right about government, and about unemployment, the question that Lendman (and Means) don’t even ask is “how does government create this problem?”  And once again, their stats don’t match, even if you find the US Census Bureau data suspect (as I do):  Shannon County has 14,000 people, of which 1,800 are in private, non-farm employment.  This apparently includes 385 “non-employer” establishments, which apparently means sole proprietors who have no official employees – just the owners.  But this does NOT include public employees:  according to city-data.com, 55% of all employment in Shannon County is GOVERNMENT – so if there are 1,800 (39%) private, then there are about 2,500 government employees, and that means 4,300 or so out of 14,000 – which is incredibly low (about 69%), but NOT 80%.  (Of course, since government statistics are designed by current and past administrations to lie, virtually none of these unemployed COUNT against state or federal numbers, since they are not “in the workforce.”)

But, like for the Federal Executive Branch and Congress,  the truth isn’t good enough for Lendman and Means: they have to lie about it.  Of course, for those of us who think government is, in essence, (being polite here) a scam we are down to about 85% unemployment.  And in some places, that is the case:  Wounded Knee District with somewhere between 3,000 and 6,000 residents, had exactly 41 private-sector jobs last year.  Including ranchers.

And Lendman and Means are absolutely right that government corruption, crony-ism, and indifference are big factors, but what Lendman and Means propose is MORE government.  They want to create a third-world country right here – not just LIKE a third-world but another one; where the corruption and crony-ism and indifference will be magnitudes greater.

(5) Housing

In winter, elderly people die from hypothermia. They freeze to death for lack of heat. One-third of homes lack clean water and sewage. About 40% have no electricity. About 60% of families have no telephone.

Another 60% of homes are infected with potentially fatal black molds. On average, 17 people reside in each household. Many have two to three rooms. Some homes built for six to eight people have up to 30 in them.

(5) Housing.  Yes, these things happen.  Here and in Chicago and Baltimore.  These statistics are, at best, out-dated. Though still poor – dirt, grinding poor – by American standards, there are vast government bureaucracies which work (however inefficiently) to prevent and fix these things – and thereby add to the corruption and the crony-ism.  Again, suspect Census data says that there are 3,628 housing units (as of 2011); numbers more likely to be accurate than actual population data.  And there are supposedly 14,000 people.  Let us say that there are really twice as many: 28,000 (I’d argue for a number of about 25,000 myself).  That is just under 8 people per household: still a LOT of people, but far from “17.”  Especially when 39% are under age 18.

Billions of dollars are spent to provide these services – and wasted, or at least foolishly spent.  Example: Red Shirt is a village of the Oglala on the northwest corner of Pine Ridge Reservation, on the banks of the Cheyenne River.  The water in that river flows to the Missouri and downstream where some of it is captured by a multimillion dollar pumping and treatment plant which pushes that water back up about 200 miles of the Mni Wiconi (Water of Life) Project to – among many other places, the several dozen homes of Red Shirt village and its school.  Huge waste water treatment plants and hundreds of septic systems are built and replaced each year.  Tribal governments (with federal dollars) provide free firewood, free propane, and subsidize electrical bills every year.  Free cell phones (“Commod” or commodity cell phones) are provided to many of them, as cell phone towers are constructed in more and more places.  There are certainly many overcrowded and jam-packed houses (reminding you of the stories of post-Revolutionary Russia), but hundreds are built each year.  And the kids keep filling them.

Even if they have to use ovens, even if they are overcrowded, go to Mexico and see what they live in.  Go to Kenya or Somalia or even Pakistan or Syria.  Honduras or Panama.

But all these statistics make Means and Lendman look good: if it bleeds, it leads.  The question that they don’t answer, because they don’t even ask, is WHY? Once more, the answer is government.  And THEIR answer is MORE GOVERNMENT?  Please.

(6) Drugs and Alcohol

Over half of adults battle addiction and disease. Alcoholism affects 90% of families. Two known methamphetamine labs operate. Authorities haven’t closed them.

(6) Drugs and alcohol.  Just two meth labs?  Give me a break: I suspect that in the nine South Dakota reservations alone (of which five are officially “Lakota”) there are at least a dozen.  Of course, authorities have not been able to close the several dozen which exist in the rest of South Dakota either: the war on some drugs pushes ever more out into the rural areas, while technology makes these obsolete.  But the meth labs have little to do with the addictions that plague the people.

Every family, Lakota or outlander or Anglo, on the reservations is affected by alcoholism and drug use – if not by the actual sellers and users, then by the side-effects.  But alcohol and drugs are something that we ALWAYS have with us: every culture, every society, throughout history has had drugs and alcohol or something very much like it.  But it is only societies under enormous stress that have this kind of addiction problem, either hidden or (as here) on the surface.  Rome, Azteca, Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, the Arab nations.  While there are many causes of stress, the most common is tyranny – government is again the key problem here.  For ten generations, starting in the 1850’s, the Lakota have been under direct pressure from the United States; for eight generations, from the 1880’s, the Lakota have been directly under the thumbs of worse than soldiers – government bureaucrats.  The drinking and now the drugs are one of the methods of escape.

(7) Incarceration

Indian children imprisonment exceed whites by 40%. Native People comprise 2% of South Dakota’s population. They account for 21% of those imprisoned.

Indians have the second highest state prison incarceration rate in America. Most live on federal reservations. Less than 2% are where states have jurisdiction.

(7) Incarceration.  Yes, there are a lot of AmerInd, not just Lakota and Nakota and Dakota, who are imprisoned.  As there are a lot of blacks and hispanics and immigrants in prison.  As there are a LOT of Americans in prison.  Too many, and for too many BAD reasons.  Some of those reasons (drug-related crime, for example) are stupid.  It is and should be a sore point.

But again, Lendman (and Means, or  wherever these “statistics” come from) aren’t content with the truth.  No, they have to lie about it.  Keeping in mind that Lendman and Means may be playing with the definition of “Native People” (discussed in Part 2), according to census data and other sources, 12% – TWELVE PERCENT – of South Dakotans are AmerInd: the vast majority of them enrolled members in one of the nine Ahkota tribes which have some or all their reservation in South Dakota.  Not 2% but 12%.  And that is if the census figures are actually not too low – which many of us think they are. It could be close to 20%.  So for tribal members to account for 21% of the imprisoned population is really NOT that high, given all the problems on the reservations and the dysfunctional situation of so many Lakota and others.

They aren’t content with just one lie, though: they proceed to use “statistics” to whinge even more.  MOST AmerInd do NOT live on Federal Reservations – like most Americans, they are living in cities and traveling outside the reservations.  This 2% number (unless we are talking the Means-Lendman definition of who is “Native People”) is not supported by anything that I can find.  Large numbers of Lakota live outside their five traditional reservations:  they are found in larger cities (by my definition, not federal definition) like Rapid City and Sioux Falls and Pierre and Aberdeen and Omaha and Lincoln; and they are found in smaller towns near the Rez, like Valentine (NE) and Chadron (NE) and Murdo (SD) and elsewhere.  Many crimes committed by AmerInd are committed in those areas, where all too often they are part of an underclass.  And even on the reservation, with tribal courts or federal jurisdiction, there are a lot of things that aren’t crimes elsewhere: like bootlegging on the Pine Ridge Reservation, where alcohol is illegal.

Lendman and Means want us to believe the incarceration rate is due to racism.  The truth is, a combination of factors, just as with blacks and hispanics, accounts for this.  It doesn’t make it right – NO one belongs in jail for smoking pot.  And the underlying truth is that government for the last 130+ years is to blame for the conditions that lead to criminal activities, conviction, and incarceration.

(8) Culture

It’s threatened with extinction. It’s federal policy to destroy it. Only 14% of Lakotans speak their language. It’s not shared inter-generationally.

The average fluent Lakotan speaker is 65 years old. In another generation or less, perhaps few or none will remain. Lakotan language skills aren’t allowed or taught in US government schools. Nor is much of anything about native history and culture. America wants it destroyed and forgotten.

(8) Culture.  I agree that Lakota culture is threatened.  I disagree that it is federal policy to destroy it.  It WAS federal policy, once upon a time, but it hasn’t been for the last 30+ years: official OR unofficial.  Indeed, tens of millions of dollars of money is spent by federal agencies to “preserve” the culture (although their idea of preservation is sometimes more akin to taxidermy than conservation).  But the rest of the claims by Lendman (and I assume it is his claim, since we see that strange word “Lakotan” used again) are phony.  The number of Lakota (that is, enrolled members of the five tribes) who speak Lakota has been growing for a generation or more, BECAUSE of efforts to preserve the language and to teach the young.  It IS being “shared inter-generationally.”  I’ve seen such classes and heard the results in young people from 5 to 25, in person.  Fluency is, of course, a matter of opinion, but I know many Lakota who are in their 70s and 80s who do NOT speak more than a handful of words in “Injun” (a term used by one of those people – not MY word).  But their children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren DO.

It is absolutely FALSE that Lakota (NOT “Lakotan”) language skills and native culture and native history are NOT taught in “US government schools.”  They are taught, DAILY, in schools (whether BIA Education or Tribal schools (supported mostly by US government dollars) or “Public” schools (supported by US government dollars AND local property taxes) on Pine Ridge, the Rosebud, Crow Creek Reservation, to my personal knowledge in the last ten years, and presumably in other schools on and near other reservations.  I also know, personally, that both Navajo (Dineh) and Ute (Numu) language, culture, and history are taught in many schools (again, BIA, tribal, and public) in and around the Navajo, Ute Mountain, and Southern Ute Reservations.  Yes, it was not the case decades ago, but this claim today is a bald-faced lie.  Here are some pictures to show what I mean.  These are at Rockyford School, where a major expansion of the school was dedicated by Shannon County School District (in August 2012), with guests including state and federal officials (one governor, one senator, and more bureaucrats than you can shake a fist at – I know, I was there because several close friends of mine were the engineers and architects that designed and built the place.  The building was designed to encourage and promote Oglala Lakota culture in every way possible, and the teachers (regardless of race or cultural background) lay it one with a heavy trowel.

This grandiose entrance features traditional Lakota shapes and colors.

This is the Legends Room, where Lakota traditions (including Traditional Religion and Science) are taught.

My own son is a graduate of Shannon County Virtual High School, in 2010.  He (we) are NOT Lakota, and he was one of seven graduates.  But the Lakota customs and traditions followed in the ceremony were so intensive and dominant that many of the non-Lakota present, including in-laws of families with graduates, felt very out-of-place.  But this is a “US Government” school.  I’m not saying Means didn’t grow up in much worse conditions (vis-a-vis Lakota language and culture in schools) but it is NOT true today.

In summary, although the problems are real, the lies that Lendman and Means tell about the problems discredit them, and make it harder for legitimate representatives of the communities to do what could be done.  It shows Lendman and Means up for the fakes that they are.

In Part Four, I’ll look at the rest of the article by Lendman, and wrap this all up.

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The Republic of Lakotah – Wrong? (Part 2)

Posted on 2012-10-15 by TPOL Nathan

In part 1, I addressed the first part of Lendman’s article about Russell Means’ fresh proclamation of the independence of the “Republic of Lakotah” on 29 SEP 2012.  This continues my discussion of Stephen Lendman’s article.

I have omitted Lendman’s exhaustive (and biased) discussion of “genocide,” with the sole comment that the word is stretched far out of its original or standard meaning.  The definitions he uses could be established as a basis for saying that telling someone you hate them and their family and tribe and culture is genocidal in nature.

To read that, go to: Freedom’s Phoenix (No, I don’t have the foggiest idea why they use the picture of the girl waving at the sky.  I suppose it is better than the other picture I’ve seen associated, of an “Indian brave” that is more suitable for the cover of a romance novel than for a modern political article.)

Based on Lendman’s definition, the war against Hitler’s Germany was a war of genocide, as was the war against Imperial Japan, and even the war against Mussolini’s Italy.  Indeed, I cannot think of a single nation on earth that has not, at one time or another, practiced genocide against some distinct group of people.  Examples would include the French Revolution (genocide against the royal family (the Bourbon Clan), the nobility, the clergy, and the monastic orders), Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries, and of course, the Spanish-Portuguese Reconquista of Iberia.  Picking up at the end of the “genocide” discussion, we see this:

“Constitutional provisions don’t let government abuse people or deny them their rights. They don’t authorize genocide, either within or outside the country. They don’t permit theft and occupation of their lands or any others.”

Bold claims, indeed.  I’ve yet to hear of a nation on this planet which has a constitution that EFFECTIVELY prevents government from doing these things.  Indeed, many constitutional provisions in various nations are designed (and used) to empower government to do this.  Just legally!

“Nonetheless, binding principles are spurned. America, Israel, and rogue NATO partners violate them with impunity. Crimes of war, against humanity, and genocide are official policy. Millions of corpses bear testimony.”

Lendman’s words, almost certainly.  I do not think that Russell Means cares much one way or another about Israel or NATO.

“On December 17, 2007, a delegation of Lakota people went to Washington. They declared independence. They called it “the latest step in the longest running legal battle” in history.”

A delegation representing whom?  Themselves, certainly, but who else?  How many tens of thousands of Lakota men and women signed petitions for them, nominated them, elected them, or gave them powers of attorney to represent them?  As near as I can find, virtually NONE.

“It’s not a cessation, they said. It’s a lawful “unilateral withdrawal” from treaty obligations permitted under the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.”

Wait for it.

At the time, American Indian Movement (AIM) leader Russell Means said:

“We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us.”

“We offer citizenship to anyone provided they renounce their US citizenship.”

Nothing but rhetoric: there is no process that I can find on the Republic of Lakotah website or anywhere else for a single non-Lakota (as defined by them) to declare for the republic, or renounce US citizenship.  Meanwhile, remember that “unilateral withdrawal” bit?  Just wait for it.

“United States colonial rule is at an end.”

I am sure that is a great relief and encouragement to millions of Southerners, more millions of Texans, quite a few Alaskans, to say nothing of Puerto Ricans, Afghanis, and Okinawans.  Oh, and did I mention Latter-Day Saints (not just “fundamentalist Mormons”) and Scientologists?

“Signed documents were delivered to the State Department. Sovereignty was declared. The Republic of Lakota was established. It’s based on the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie. It created the Great Lakota (Sioux) Nation.”

Indeed?  Signed by whom?  The people that delivered it?  They claim only a quarter of a million survivors: how about just a measly five percent of those: 12,500 people?  Many states require that just to get a political party on the ballot.

Here is what I’ve asked you to wait for:  That 1851 Treaty supposedly is one of the several treaties from which they are unilaterally withdrawing.  Yet, they admit (or claim) that the Great Sioux Nation (the term used in the treaty) was founded by the very treaty that they are now rejecting!

You see, there WAS no “Great Sioux Nation” as defined by international standards, until that evil US government MADE ONE UP.

There was a people – actually, many peoples, who had a common language (relatively common – slight variations called “Lakota, Nakota, and Dakota” (with or without the h’s and substituting a “c” for a “k” or not) because the dialects swapped a L for a D for a N.  But each of those groups of common language speakers (which didn’t even share a common economy, ecology, or society) was made up of various independent, self-governing bands.  These bands sometimes preyed on each other.  But mostly they preyed on speakers of other languages or relatives whose language departed enough from the basic Ahkota that they were hard to understand (“These people talk funny, they are not really human and they are not related to us; we must kill or enslave them!”)

There were no chiefs of even the Seven Council Fires who were elected or acclaimed: no one had ANY authority to speak for the Sicangu or the Oglala or the Sicasapa as a group.  “Oyate” (now usually translated as “nation”) meant only “a group of related people that share a lot of things and get together now and then.”  They were less of a nation than Germany was prior to 1871 or Italy before 1861 or Ireland before the Five Kingdoms.  These various groups were as much a nation because they shared a common language as the Americans and the British, or Swiss German-speakers and Austrians and Germans.

It took the US government to appoint some of the chiefs of those bands to be Chiefs of the Great Sioux Nation.  And they didn’t even get the name right: most of the real “Dahcotah” (those who used D instead of L) lived EAST of the Missouri and even in Minnesota: it was not for another dozen years that they would be driven west – and even then, most didn’t make it to the Missouri.  So the boundaries include ONLY the general area where the Lakota wandered.

It states in part:

“The territory of the Sioux or Dahcotah Nation, commencing the mouth of the White Earth River, on the Missouri River; thence in a southwesterly direction to the forks of the Platte River; thence up the north fork of the Platte River to a point known as the Red Buts, or where the road leaves the river; thence along the range of mountains known as the Black Hills, to the head-waters of Heart River; thence down Heart River to its mouth; and thence down the Missouri River to the place of beginning.”

It gave Lakota people portions of northern Nebraska, half of South Dakota, one-fourth of North Dakota, one-fifth of Montana, and another 20% of Wyoming.

It “gave Lakota people” something that was not Uncle Sam’s to give.

But the maps that the Republic of Lakota has used actually claim ALL of Nebraska north of the Platte River clear to the Missouri, south of Omaha, and so claim Omaha and most of the state.  Some claim all the way to the Solomon River in Kansas.  There are more problems: little ones like the fact that the US government agents who negotiated this did not understand (or care) that much of this chunk of territory was also claimed as the hunting and living territory of a good many other tribes, such as the Ponca, the Cheyenne, the Crow, and the Arikara and the Pawnee.  Nor did they seem to note or care that the Lakota themselves had only fairly recently (in historic terms) come into control of most of their territory. They did not steal the Black Hills from the Cheyenne until 1776, and had not even discovered the Black Hills until three decades after French explorers did (1642 versus 1678 or so). (And yes, I use the term “steal” deliberately and intentionally and specifically. The Lakota took the Black Hills from the Cheyenne in precisely the same way that the Americans took the Black Hills from the Lakota – by invasion, conquest, and a “treaty.”  That the Lakota and Cheyenne then became allies is as inconsequential as the fact that tens of thousands of Lakota men and women have served in American armies in the last century.)

This map is one of many on the web showing what the Republic of Lakotah claims.

However, here is a map showing the area described in the treaty which they claim established to “Great Sioux Nation” as a political entity.  The differences are significant, and the land “recognized” by the US government still included a LOT of land claimed by other tribes – and in which other tribes lived!

For those who are interested, the “White Earth River” in the treaty is today known as the White River, in South Central South Dakota including both the Sicangu and Oglala country (the Rosebud and Pine Ridge).  For an interesting discussion, see

David Bernstein: Current Projects: Geography

Not only did the US government make up the “Great Sioux Nation” out of several dozen different bands of Lakota (and didn’t even understand their name correctly), but the US also created their boundaries out of whole cloth – subject for a separate article.  They gave the new Lakota nation a bunch of other folks’ territory.  Nice, huh?  But it is the very treaty that Means wishes to unilaterally withdraw from that established the boundaries that he claims.

“Unilateral withdrawal from all treaties and agreements became policy. America never honored its own. More on that below.”

The exact logic here escapes me.  But there is certainly a lot of exaggeration in these statements.

“Earlier events led to the 2007 declaration. In 1974, 5,000 International Indian Treaty Council delegates, representing 97 North and South American Indigenous People, signed a Declaration of Continuing Independence.”

Just as the numbers here baffle me.  5,000 delegates represented 97 people?  Or 97 groups of people?  Out of how many separate tribes?  There are more than 200 federally-recognized tribes in the US alone – many more in Canada, and certainly hundreds more in MesoAmerica and South America.  It sounds neither VERY “democratic” and/or “republican” in nature.  It DOES sound like something that the Bolsheviks (or modern Transnational Progressives/Socialists) would do.

“It was a ‘Manifesto representing the wisdom of thousands of people, the Ancestors, and the Great Mystery supports the rights of Indigenous Nations to live free and to take whatever actions are necessary for sovereignty.’ ”

Apparently, it is only “Indigenous Nations” that have these rights: not individuals, and not “non-native” individuals or groups.  To people like Lendman and Means, despite their “libertarian” protestations, there is no individual sovereignty, there is no individual liberty and no personal responsibility: there is only the GROUP.  For the Group, of the Group, by the Group.  The GROUP may be the state, or the tribe, or the “proletariat” or the clan or whatever.

In Part 3, I will look at the idea of just who can claim to represent the Lakota people, and for that matter, the entire Seven Council Fires (Great Sioux Nation), and at the various claims made by Means and Lendman.

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Mama’s New Dog, Laddie

Posted on 2012-10-14 by MamaLiberty

Laddie and his toy box

My previous dog lived to be 19 years old. In June of 2011, he became ill and had to be put down. Losing a long time companion like that was hard, and I didn’t even really look for a new dog for a long time.

When I was ready, I went looking for a Pembroke Welsh Corgi. I had a mixed breed Corgi many years ago, and knew I’d enjoy having another. They are lively and vocal without a hint of aggression, though they are usually territorial and protective – mostly expressing this in vigorous barking. Oh, and they LIVE to herd things… anything and everything!

His first encounter with the deer was funny, and I’m very glad there was a fence between them. He would have given anything to be able to run out and start herding them, which I doubt they would have appreciated.

Laddie is a joy to train, and already a very loving and precious companion. Now I need to figure out some way to safely allow him to chase a rabbit… it’s only fair.

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The Republic of Lakotah – Right? (Part 1)

Posted on 2012-10-14 by TPOL Nathan

This is my analysis of a particularly strange piece of “non-news” that cropped up a few weeks ago.  I noted it first in Freedom’s Phoenix.  Because of my professional work, and because of my historical research and ancestry, and interest in the West, I look at these things with great interest.

I think many other folks will be interested as well.  This is part 1 of 4 parts.

WARNING:  I consider Stephen Lendman to be an evil, vicious, hateful, and spiteful individual who taints any cause he supports by his blindness, arrogance, and ability to twist any innocent thing into what he considers to be evil.  At the same time, I force myself to read his screeds because too many people think like him and it is important that we understand his kind of evil.  I’m grateful that Freedom’s Phoenix posts his columns: they are good about posting ravings like this one we are going to look at.

In this case, Lendman’s espousal of a cause and a person does damage to that cause and purpose, but I find it hard to be sympathetic to either.

I was unable to find Dennis Means’ pronouncement directly on-line: Lendman’s link is to a video from 2007 or 2008.  He apparently made this latest statement on Saturday, 29 September 2012, and at first it was picked up by CNSNews.com from la Voz de Aztlan but was removed before I found it (it was not on their usual daily digest).  I suspect that one reason is that his announcement was not news as it was virtually identical to the original proclamation made on 17 December 2007 – nearly a half-decade ago.  In other words, it was not news: it was a stunt by someone.

The reasons for the declaration are not new, either, but the claims made are not all true: many have been exaggerated for whatever reason, and many are political statements with no real meaning, or ad hominem attacks and use of the typical swear words found in politics:  “genocide,” and “fascist” and “racist” and “hater” and “bigoted” are all so very common and twisted beyond meaning.

Lakota Sioux Nation Leaves America
by Stephen Lendman
First off, this “Lakota Sioux Nation” (actually, Means proclaimed the “Republic of Lakotah” and not the LSN or anything like it) hasn’t left America.  I suspect there are not more than a few hundred adherents to this cause: you can find more people who claim to be citizens of the Republic of Texas.  Russell is still here in the USA, and I suspect virtually every one of his supporters are as well.  There is no border fence around the area he claims (more on that, later), and there are no border signs or customs checkpoints, or anything else to indicate that you have crossed from a part of South Dakota or Wyoming that is still part of the Union, to one that is not.  And the area is inhabited by around a million people, of which only about 1/10 have any AmerInd blood, much less Lakota blood.

“America betrayed them and all Native Peoples. Throughout US history and earlier, genocide was policy.”

This is a favorite theme of Lendman’s – but I’ll go along with him with this proviso: it was not just “Native Peoples” but ALL people that have ever dealt with the US that have been betrayed time and again, from indentured servants in 1783 and American merchant seamen in 1803 to Texan frontiersmen in 1849 and Oregon emigrants in 1850 and LDS settlers in 1854 and Southern yeoman farmers in 1860 and coal miners in 1900 and Hutterites and German emigrants in 1917 and Japanese emigrants in 1942 right down to business owners and medical patients in 2012.  As for genocide, yes, at one time that was the de facto policy, but it has not been the legal policy for more than 130 years, and not the actual policy for a century.  But it happened, and we don’t have a time machine, and we cannot undo the past.

“Historian Ward Churchill explained four centuries of systematic slaughter. It went on from 1492 – 1892. It continues today against Native culture.”

Anytime you hear Ward Churchill cited as a reference or an authority, pull your pants up and get on your wading boots; it is gonna get deep quick.  To call it “systematic slaughter” is patently absurd: there is not a single government – not even Massachusetts or Virginia, that can really honestly trace its existence back 400 years.  And the “slaughter” – effective though it may have been – was not systematic: it was sporadic, driven by many reasons, and hardly to be equated to even the Soviet campaign against the kulaks, or the Holocaust.  To compare the actual killing of people with the destruction of culture is not only false and demeaning to both, but incredibly stupid.

“Churchill estimated around 100 million Native People throughout the Americas ‘hacked apart with axes and swords, burned alive and trampled under horses, hunted as game and fed to dogs, shot, beaten, stabbed, scalped for bounty, hanged on meathooks and thrown over the sides of ships at sea, worked to death as slave laborers, intentionally starved and frozen to death during a multitude of forced marches and internments, and, in an unknown number of instances, deliberately infected with epidemic diseases.’ ”

So too were hundreds of millions of others, of every race and skin color and ethnicity and nationality and age and sex – for the entire history of the human race since Cain spilled Abel’s blood.  The AmerInd – and especially the Lakota – are pretty lucky as these things go:  how many Azteca or Dumonii or Etruscans or Montanards or real Moors are still around?

“Destruction of their culture continues in new forms. ‘The American holocaust was and remains unparalleled, in terms of its scope, ferocity, and continuance over time.’ ”

This is Churchill’s stock in trade.  Churchill, like Lendman, makes his preferences clear.  Russian Soviets can kill 50 million, Mao’s Communists can kill 100 million, but American efforts are “unparalleled.”

“Silence and denial suppress what happened and goes on today. Try finding coverage anywhere by America’s major media. Virtually nothing is said, let alone explained.”

You won’t find me supporting the mainstream media, of course.  But there is a LOT of coverage – notice nothing is said about Barbara Walters’ recent crybaby “expose” of Pine Ridge.  Of course, that happened in October 2011, long after this initial “declaration of independence.”

“Survivors represent a tiny fraction of original numbers. They also symbolize a longstanding US tradition of butchery and viciousness.”

“After centuries of systematic slaughter, Census Bureau data estimated around a quarter-million US survivors. Those living struggle to get by.”

Note, of course, that “survivors” are defined as “full-blooded, original language speakers who believe only in the ancestral religion” – and of course this ignores the tens of millions of Americans, Canadians, and Mexicans whose genes come from a mix of “native American” and Euro-Asian-African blood, but didn’t have ancestors that let them get trapped on the reservations.  Never mind that much of the killing and other actions were NOT the “US” but various imperial and royal governments, from Spanish and Russian to French and English.

After centuries of systematic slaughter, Census Bureau data estimated around a quarter-million US survivors. Those living struggle to get by.

Like I said, unless you use Means’/Lendman’s secret definition of “survivors,” you can’t come up with this.  Quarter-million?  There are twice that many Navajo (and that is the enrolled, half-blood or better kind); there are that many Ahkota (Lakota, Nakota, and Dakota) in the Dakotas and Minnesota alone!  And there are hundreds of thousands, though enrolled members of various tribes, who are ARE doing well as private businessmen and women, professionals, military personnel, and (sadly) government employees: federal, tribal, state, and county – even local.  Even on the Rosebud or Pine Ridge, there are still a significant percentage of the population that are well-off, even by American standards.  And that does not include those of us whose ancestors were smart enough to NOT get on the government rolls and “protected” but assimilated to our nation’s culture, just as did tens of millions of Campbells and O’Rourkes and Goldsteins and Lees and Gonzalezes and Spinellis and all the rest.  But we aren’t “real Native Americans” because we cut our hair short and don’t worship Wakan Tanka and spend a day a week in a sweat lodge or go to fancy-dance competitions or have the right shade of skin or hair.  Not for Means or Lendman.

In part 2, I will look at the bogus land claims and the odd contradiction in how they address these treaties.

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Libertarian Commentary on the News, #12-43F: Police state and winter in America

Posted on 2012-10-13 by TPOL Nathan

A cold, damp morning in the Four Corners, after a day of thunderstorms with rain and a little hail: not so nice in the Black Hills and West River: no moisture at all, though warm enough for mid-October.

But the political and social climate are wintery:  the two idiots rush down the last three weeks or so of campaigning. The “messiah’s” campaign has now raised (and presumably is spending) more than a billion dollars in an increasingly-desperate attempt to not have to pay rent or lease a place and have four more years of never-ending golf games and jaunts around the world for him and his family.  And Romney is doing what most GOP candidates at national level seem to do: missing opportunities and floundering and being beat up by the mainstream media.

Meanwhile, Gary Johnson and Jim Gray are drawing bigger and bigger crowds and more signs and bumper-stickers are popping up.  Their supporters (even the fringe-lunatic crew that the LP shares with the GOP and Dems) know it is a forlorn hope, but I understand why they feel they have to try.  Who wants to face God and say, “I didn’t really do anything to stop the Collapse?”  (Or for those who don’t want to believe – Who wants their grandkids to curse their memory because of the messed-up world they got left?

One example of the wintery conditions hails from Billings.  Montana is supposed to be one of the freer states left in this defunct Union, but you wouldn’t think so from THIS story:

Local Tyranny
Grenade burns sleeping girl in SWAT attack on wrong house
(Billings Gazette) …[The mother] questioned why police would take such actions with children in the home and why it needed a SWAT team.

“A simple knock on the door and I would’ve let them in,” she said. “They said their intel told them there was a meth lab at our house. If they would’ve checked, they would’ve known there’s not.”

She and her two daughters and her husband were home at the time of the raid. She said her husband, who suffers from congenital heart disease and liver failure, told officers he would open the front door as the raid began and was opening it as they knocked it down.

When the grenade went off in the room, it left a large bowl-shaped dent in the wall and “blew the nails out of the drywall,” Fasching said.

[Billings Police Chief] St. John said investigators did plenty of homework on the residence before deciding to launch the raid but didn’t know children were inside.

“The information that we had did not have any juveniles in the house and did not have any juveniles in the room,” he said. “We generally do not introduce these disorienting devices when they’re present.”

Nathan:  THIS is heartbreaking on so many levels.  Check out William Grigg’s column at LewRockwell.com for an excellent analysis. I might point out that William’s column was posted hours before the local newspaper (the Billings Gazette) published anything: he took his information from the Missoula Missoulan, a newspaper based 350 miles away and which perhaps considers itself safe from retribution by St. John and the Billings City and Yellowstone County fathers. (The Gazette did have a brief article posted Wednesday about the raid, almost certainly taken from a police press release and a drive-by reporter: nothing at all about the actual raid or wounds or damage.)

It is worth reading both the comments to the Missoulan and the Gazette stories. In a total of 107 comments, only SIX were supporting the cops. Six: about 1 in 20. And one of the comments told readers about LEAP. That is the good response. Another couple of good responses point out that this sort of action is nothing but terrorism – state-sponsored terrorism.  Montanans should be proud of people willing to respond like this, even if safely doing so through essentially anonymous postings.

But what dismays me the most is that this is MONTANA. Yellowstone County has all of 140,000 people. What need is there for this sort of Gestapo? What excuse is there for this sort of tactics? But worse: where are the tens of thousands of Montanans who claim to be lovers of liberty and freedom and haters of tyranny and injustice? It has been three days now, and there are not (that I can see) any widespread, much less formal, calls for investigations, suspensions, filing of charges, or any of the other dozen PEACEFUL things that would be the response of a truly free (and peaceful) population. And not ONE protest?  Not even one LONE person willing to carry a sign in front of the police headquarters or the Sheriff’s office saying “JUSTICE FOR THE FASCHING GIRL” or something like that?

And this is MONTANA. Why has not someone (even the usual nutcases, to be honest) called for the elimination of the danger of this City-County Special Investigations Unit (CCIU) by whatever means necessary? Where are the Montanans who CLAIM to be Libertarians?  Where are the people of Billings who CLAIM to be Libertarians, or even the ACLU types?  Where is the Sheriff? First, in breaking off all cooperation and participation in the CCIU, and second, in investigating the BPD to protect the citizens of his county? And no indication at ALL of special meetings of the Billings city council or the Yellowstone County commissioners to deal with – or even make a statement about it!!!

Face it, Montana is as worthless and dangerous a state to freedom as California or Illinois or New York: it is as filled with gutless people who pay lip service to liberty and American ideals as the pieces of trash that live and work in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and across the Potomac in the Pentagon.

The Russia Today story reports in its last line that three days later, NO charges have been filed against the Fasching family.  But no charges have been filed against the negligent and imcompetent cop that set off the flash-bang (inside a building which was supposed to have a meth lab!), nor the incompetent investigators that did not know children were present, nor the incompetent interrogators who determined the false fink was lying about a meth lab.  As one of the RT commenters noted: “The STUPID Americans don’t realize that their so called “free” and “democratic” republic is the most despotic and totalitarian police state that exists on this planet. Its even worse than 1984. And they still think they are free… LOL”

Winter in America.

Home front:  Bizarre case: Texas
Parker County Teen Kills Mother and Sister
“Parker County officials said that both Jake Evans and his younger sister were home schooled.”

Mama’s Note: Bizarre indeed. I fully expected this youngster to be filled to the gills with the drugs forced on kids by the “schools.”

In any event, I wonder if he was taking anti-depressants or any of the rest of it. They are involved in MOST such crimes, at least in this country. Of course, we’ll probably never know. Sigh.

Nathan: It is bizarre and heartbreaking.  There HAS to be something – as you say, we’ll never know – that triggered this:  medication, pressures, something.  Hormones alone certainly would not seem to account for it.  But I am sure the home-school aspect will be played up big time, especially in Dallas-Fort Worth.

This sort of thing is NOT new or even that uncommon: Lizzie Borden and her little ax are part of American folklore.  Indeed, this sort of thing seems to be increasing:  mothers killing their own children, children killing parents (and each other), sometimes with years of plotting, sometimes with “reason” and sometimes without.  And always, “why?”

Parker County is named for one of my ancestors, a Texian family established the first settlement (Parker’s Fort) in the region before the Revolution. A lot of people died in the early years:  they killed each other over cattle and horses and water and even politics; they killed each other because they were invaders and the people who had controlled the land for more than a century and made their living by raiding and stealing and kidnapping as much as hunting.  Sometimes they killed over jealousy or because they got drunk and angry.  The killings, for the most part, had a reason.

But Parker County is no longer a frontier settlement: it is twisted and warped by the world around it and in this case, it seems that a young man snapped.  It didn’t have to be a .22-cal pistol: it could have been another ax, or a kitchen knife, or a piece of wood or a piece of rope or wire.  It might be medication or hormones or even (according to some people) demonic possession.  The cops, the courts, the county, the parents, did not stop it, could not stop it.  And will not stop it.  No doubt, this young man will be sentenced to life in prison, maybe even executed:  he and his father are both very likely to kill themselves in relatively short order.  And life will go on for the rest of us, wondering why.

But today, with winter in my heart and on my mind, it is just another way in which we are indeed enduring “Winter in America.”  Perhaps it is because we have all been so damaged by the stresses of government and its destruction of our lives and families and society and economy that such stresses cause anyone to crack and lash out.  Perhaps we are like two (or two million) scorpions in a bottle, like rats crammed into a cage with no room to stretch.  Perhaps we are so influenced and corrupted by modern media and attitudes that we have turned our backs completely on God, and this is part of the self-inflicted punishment:  God does not need to push to punish us here on earth: we do it to ourselves so well.

For fifteen hundred years, Israel and Judah rebelled against and returned to God, time and time again, but ultimately, He left them to die and be scattered.  With America, the process  is much faster, because of course we are NOT the chosen people.  But winter is here, and the days grow shorter and colder and the dark night is approaching.

Winter in America.

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Libertarian Commentary on the News #12-43E: Politics’ Stench

Posted on 2012-10-13 by TPOL Nathan

Well, it really is Friday, but it feels like another Monday.  New and old projects all jumbled, and further behind on work and projects, like everyone else in the family.  And just in case people WANT to hear about that silly debate last night (59 seconds was too much), I found this great review at Godfather Politics:

Joe Biden: ill-mannered, rude, lying, and condescending
(Godfather Politics)  Joe Biden consistently interrupted and did his best to prevent Paul Ryan from being able to get his point across.  He would sit and laugh with an air of disdain and mockery.  Biden also consistently called everything Ryan said a lie and inaccurate when in fact much of what Biden was saying was inaccurate and lies.

Biden also consistently put words and policies in Ryan’s mouth that he’s been told time and time again that those things are NOT what they have said or propose.  Every time Ryan tried to explain what their policies were, Biden interrupted and tried to again put lies in Ryan’s mouth.

Gee, I didn’t realize that the “messiah’s” First Minion was so talented: all those Amtrak rides back and forth would be such fun?!  He can do all this at once?  Wow.

Theft by government
GOP Senator to USDA: Stop Promoting Food Stamps
(CNSNews.com) As well ask a snake to stop being a snake, or a scorpion a nasty little vicious monster that lurks in your boots and sting you multiple time?  Except that FedGov bureaucrats, nice though many of them are in person, and no matter how dedicated and helpful, are STILL government bureaucrats, and in mass, a good substitute for Heinlein’s stobor: I’ll take snakes and scorpions anytime.  Of course, maybe this senator is thinking of reorganizing and moving SNAP over to DHHS.  The original concept of food stamps was inventive, at least: here we are paying all these farmers either NOT to grow food OR buying a lot of the food they DO produce to increase demand and thus keep prices up, so why not turn around and use that to feed all these poor – not just the AmerInd or military personnel.  But like EVERY other government program, this metamorphosed into the present monster: virtual bread lines.  A monster beloved by grocery stores and convenience stores and local wardheelers across the nation.

Fun, huh?

WORST STATES FOR RETIREMENT OR BEST?
(BANKRATE.COM) Yeah, most of us don’t figure on being able to retire, but these numbers are interesting to say the least.

Louisiana: crime 4,196.5 per 100,000, 11.5 % of retirees live below poverty level, life expectancy 75.4 years.

Georgia: crime 3,043.8, poverty 10.7%, life expectancy 77.1

New Mexico: crime 4,024.3, poverty 12%, life expectancy 78.2

Texas:  crime 4,233.3, poverty 10.7%, life expectancy 78.3

Arkansas: crime 4,064.2, poverty 10.2%, life expectancy 76.1

Tennessee: crime 4,271.2, poverty 9.7%, life expectancy 76.2

South Carolina: crime 4,498.1, poverty 9.8%, life expectancy 76.6

Mississippi: crime 3,254.7, poverty 11.9%, life expectancy 74.8

Alabama: crime 3,894.6, poverty 10.7%, life expectancy 75.2

Kentucky: crime 2,793.9, poverty 11.2%, life expectancy 76.2

Now, aren’t those some fascinating statistics? Notice some obvious things: these are ALL southern states.  In fact, EVERY one of the Southern states EXCEPT Oklahoma, Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia.  Of course, Florida IS retirement-central, and its native AmerInd and cracker population overwhelmed by the retirees from the Rust Belt and the Roach Belt (excuse me, Northeast).  Virginia has Northern Virginia “inside the Beltway” or near enough: I suspect that if we were dealing with the REAL Virginia, it would be right up there.  North Carolina and Oklahoma are puzzles to me, but perhaps it is large numbers of military retirees that pulls up the data. (And yes, New Mexico IS a Southern State, as well as a Hispanic state (together with TX, AZ, FL, and CA).)

Why these ten?  Contrast them to the “10 best” (at InvestmentNews.com) They used a different metric: (*Ranking based on seven factors: Income tax, taxation of Social Security, taxation of pensions, property taxes, cost of living, health care insurance, and climate.)

Here is their list (no raw data) (and HONEST, folks, I just picked these two lists as the first up on Google):

10. Nevada

9. Georgia

8. Oklahoma

7. Florida

6. Arkansas

2. (tie) Alabama

2. (tie) Mississippi

2. (tie) Louisiana

2. (tie) Texas

1.  Tennessee

What did I say?  Amazing? Bizarre?  These two lists each share EIGHT states in common:  of course, they chose totally DIFFERENT metrics:  you can’t live as long in those states as you might in, say California or Minnesota, but you’ll pay less and enjoy it more.

Now, contrast it with THIS list: Worst States to Retire 2012.
(TopRetirements.com) The factors for 2012 are: Fiscal health, property taxes, income taxes, cost of living, and climate. … Three new states made our list this year: Vermont, Minnesota, and Maine. That means that 3 states were lucky enough to leave the list: Ohio (low property and income taxes), Nevada (in terrible financial shape but no income tax and low property taxes), California (bad financial shape and high property taxes, but almost no income tax on our prototypical couple, plus a great climate).

1.   (Worst) Connecticut
2.   Illinois
3.   Rhode Island
4.   Vermont
5.   Massachusetts
6.   New Jersey
7.   Minnesota
8.   New York
9.   Maine
10. Wisconsin

What do we make of this?  First, obviously, different people place a different emphasis on what makes a state good or bad.   Secondly, these are obviously averages for the states:  taxes as well as climate can vary quite a bit in a state – like Texas.  Third, it is obvious that government at the state and local level has a VERY big impact on these things, both in taxes and in services.

As for the original list, which slammed the Southern States, it comes as no surprise that Southern States are again portrayed as horrible places full of evil people and evil habits and attitudes, centuries behind the progressive states of the West Coast and the Northeast.  But in things like this, our friends in DC have MUCH to answer for:  much of the squalor of the South is due to its treatment since 1860.  I see no reason why these pieces of data should not be thrown back in the FedGov’s face.

New religions: Envrionism
Should Cities Ban Plastic Bags?
(Wall Street Journal) Consumers would have to use a cotton bag 173 times before they match the energy savings of one plastic bag, assuming 40 percent of bags are reused…

We see this -straightforward science shows that plastic bags are NOT a detriment, but are a net improvement to the environment AND to human health and food safety.  But as usual, the religious fanatics that worship Mother Gaia are perfectly willing to lie to themselves as well as us.

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