B O O T L E G BUSH, CLINTON, OR PEROT Is that a choice? It's not as though we're voting for a candidate that has a progressive vision of what America needs, but the one that will cause the least amount of harm. The lesser of the three evils, so to speak. George Bush is the ex-C.I.A. director, who along with Reagan plunged this country on a 12 year downward spiral hell. This plutocrat's two-facedness and faults are too numerous to name here, but at least the Republicans at their convention were up front about the greed and exploitativeness. While the Democrats, who immediately sold out in nominating Bill Clinton, then spent the rest of their convention justifying the act. Clinton's record on labor, wimmen's issues and the poor reflect nothing of the traditional democratic values (or do they?). Perhaps he was set up by the powers that be. Perot may be the biggest liar of the three, the self made man with over a billion dollars in government contracts and the rugged individualist who squelches any individuality. This populist's popularity is not due to any attributes of his own but to the dismal character of the other two. Under all three, we're sure to see further erosion of our personal freedoms guaranteed under the bill of rights (sic) and continuation of the status quo favoring the ruling elite. There are alternative candidates out there, such as Ron Daniels, that reflect my beliefs but the mainstream media chooses to ignore them and now the supreme court has frighteningly chosen to declare invalid any ballot with a write i- candidate on it. Even if an alternative or write- in candidate were to receive the majority of the popular vote, they could still lose because of the electoral college. Many sweeping reforms of the presidential election process need to take place, but the most important is the removal of this archaic institution. The electoral college is basically a classist relic designed to protect the status quo. No matter who you vote for in the popular election, in this state you'll wind up voting for Bush. The college representatives don't necessarily have to vote for who the constituents want. Limiting the amount of time and money spent on any level of the elections would definitely work in the people's interest. In many countries as little as 8 weeks are spent on the election. With even state- wide elections running into the millions, moving ahead convention and running times could allow smaller players the time and money to access the mainstream. Finally, we must encourage the disenfranchised and disillusioned to vote. The affluent people who vote compared to the poor is amazingly disproportionate and works well to the elite's advantage. You can affect change on a local level by voting for candidates who most closely reflect your ideals and working towards election reforms that truly encourage government by the people. Scott Fife ############################### The mainstream press has a direct interest in upholding the corporate power structure. It relies on corporate ads for funding and is often corporate owned. It is also published for profit. The mainstream press also has a direct interest in currying the favors of politicians. It is dependent on public figures for information and easy to swallow soundbites. And it is subject to government regulation and censorship. The mainstream press is run by professionals, educated and institutionalized. They are paid to do the job, more often to impress the boss than in an effort to inform the public. They are outside of the issues they attempt to interpret, with little understanding of the context, and misrepresent these issues frequently. BOOTLEG is free-press, underground, radical, published by volunteers, relying on donations, giving voice to perspectives otherwise ignored. BOOTLEG needs your support, your ideas and all your money to continue. send letters, comments, submissions, and your next paycheck to: BOOTLEG 360E Edith ave SLC, UT 84111 or if you send email to msbenefi@cadehp0.eng.utah.edu it will be forwarded. please just trust us and don’\'t read the small print below All submissions will be edited to represent our point of view. Letters will be printed only if they say what we want them to say and how we want them to say it. BOOTLEG is published with generous financial support from Fidel Castro, all donations go to the purchase of weapons for revolutionary movements in the U.S. and abroad. Volunteers will be required to complete an N.A.P. social therapy course before being considered for a staff position. Follow us. we're cool ############################### COCAINE, CONSPIRACY AND CONTRAS...BILL CLINTON THIS IS YOUR LIFE Working for the C.I.A., the D.E.A. and the Medellin cartel. As an operative of Oliver North's, Seal became involved in the lucrative arms-for-drugs flow between the U.S. and Central America, shipping weapons into Nicaragua and cocaine back to the states. Seal based his operations for a while in Mena, Arkansas, where he had his planes retrofitted for drug drops, trained pilots and laundered his profits through financial institutions in Arkansas. Starting in 1983, a federal investigation, assisted by the Arkansas State Police, looked into allegations of drug smuggling, weapons shipments and money laundering surrounding a small airstrip in Mena. A federal grand jury was assembled and later dissolved after being denied access to crucial evidence, important witness testimony and a twenty-nine count draft indictment on money laundering drawn up by an attorney with the Justice Department's Operation Greenback. Russel Welch, the prime investigator for the Arkansas State Police into covert and illegal activities at Mena, says he was warned off the case by F.B.I. agents in the mid 80s. "They said that they had heard that the C.I.A. had an operation at Mena and they didn't want us to screw it up." Welch was working with Bill Duncan, then a senior I.R.S. investigator and now working in the Arkansas Attorney General's office. As a consequence of his role in the investigation, Duncan was harassed into resigning from the I.R.S. and powerful government forces later tried to squelch his testimony to Congress in 1988. When the federal investigation was dropped in 1988 and the Arkansas State Police were subsequently pulled off the case, Charles Black, a deputy prosecutor in Polk County, Arkansas, where Mena is located, delivered in person a letter to Governor Bill Clinton urging him to provide funds for a continuing probe and stating that he feared a federal cover-up. Black has said that Clinton never got back to him. In 1989, Clinton received petitions from Arkansas citizens demanding that he convene a state grand jury to continue the investigation. In 1990 Winston Bryant, now the state Attorney General, made the subject of drugs and Mena an issue in his campaign. A year later Bryant turned over the state files concerning Mena, along with petitions from 1000 citizens, to Iran/contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh. To date, Clinton has done nothing to encourage an investigation. On August 12, 1991, Clinton's adviser on criminal justice wrote to a concerned citizen to say that he understood the matter was being looked into by Bryant, Walsh and Arkansas Representative Bill Alexander. Attorney General Bryant does not have the power to conduct an investigation and Congressman Alexander, who has also complained about the apparent cover-up of activities at Mena, maintains that the only thing holding up the investigation is a lack of commitment at the state level. Last fall, Alexander arranged for Congress to allocate $25,000 to restart an investigation in Mena. Since then, the money has been held up behind a wall of bureaucratic excuses in Little Rock. Clinton's campaign spokeswomyn, Max Parker, now claims that Clinton offered $25,000 in State funds to restart the investigation to Joe Hardagree, chief prosecutor in Polk County, through State Police commander Tommy Goodwin. Hardagree, Parker says, rejected the offer as insufficient. But Hardagree states, in a letter to Mark Swaney of the Arkansas Committee, states: "During my tenure as prosecuting attorney, I did not receive $25,000 in State funds, or any part of this amount of money, nor did I hear anything concerning these State funds, from Colonel Goodwin or anyone at the Arkansas State Police or anyone in the Governor's office." When asked about the $25,000 allocated by Congress in October 1991 at the request of Bill Alexander, Parker said that it was just a matter of completing some paperwork and that Tommy Goodwin should be contacted for more information. Goodwin, who was once enthusiastic about the resumption of an investigation, is now hesitant and says that he's not sure there would be any 'value' to it. Asked about the statements of Parker and Goodwin, Hardagree states "what I said in the letter stands...I think the world of Tommy [Goodwin], but someone's put the heat on him." Terry Reed was a pilot friend of Barry Seal's, formerly with Air America in Thailand, who was working for Oliver North by 1983 and by 1984 had established a base at Nella, ten miles north of Mena in the Ouachita National Forest, where Nicaraguan contras and other recruits from Latin America were trained in resupply missions, night landings, precision paradrops and similar maneuvers. One of Reed's contacts in North's network was William Cooper, another Air America veteran then working for Southern Air Transport. Cooper was at the controls of the C-123, once owned by Seal, that was shot down by a Sandinista soldier on October 5, 1986, loaded with arms and documentation linking the crew to a chain stretching back to the office of Vice President George Bush. That plane had been serviced at Mena. It was through Cooper that North directed Reed, in 1985, to go to Guadalajara, Mexico, and set up Machinery International, a C.I.A. front company, with the assistance of Felix Rodriguez, indicted C.I.A. agent and Bush crony. Reed says that he first became aware that cocaine was being shuttled through Machinery International's premises in Guadalajara in late 1987, when he confronted Rodriguez and told him he was quitting. Buddy Young is the man in charge of Bill Clinton's personal security. Tommy Baker is a former Arkansas State Police officer and longtime friend of Young. Together the two of them played a pivotal role in a case designed to land Reed in prison shortly after he walked out of the arms-for-drugs operation in Guadalajara. Early in 1983, Reed says, Oliver North had asked him to donate his plane for the sake of counter- revolution in Nicaragua. Reed says he refused. On March 24 of that year, the same plane disappeared from a repair shop in Joplin Missouri. Reed reported the theft to his insurance company and received compensation. In 1985 North's people contacted him and told him his plane had been returned to his hangar in North Little Rock after having been in Central America for two years, and asked him not to report it returned because they might need to 'borrow' it again. This time, Reed consented. On October 8, 1987, less than one month after Reed had returned to the United States, Tommy Baker happened to be passing Reed's hangar when a powerful gust of wind blew the door open, revealing a plane. Baker says he thought the plane looked 'suspicious' and so called his pal Young at the Governor's mansion. Young later claimed in testimony that he called the registration number on the plane into the National Crime Information Center to see if a plane with that number had been stolen, found no record of this and so instructed Baker to check if the plane's markings had been changed, a common practice of plane thieves, also a routine practice at Mena and in North's Project Donation. Baker established that they had been, and by October 21 the two had turned the case over to the F.B.I. Under scrutiny that sequence, as set out by Baker and Young, did not stand up. On October 5, three days before that fortuitous gust of wind blew open the hangar door, Young was phoning Reed's parents masquerading as an old friend of their son, according to legal papers filed by Reed. Young had called in the plane's correct registration number to the N.C.I.C. - so the center's records show - on October 7, before Baker had, by his account, even set eyes on the plane. That same evening Young had called Joplin to inquire about the plane's original disappearance. In June of 1988, Reed was indicted on mail fraud charges in connection with his 1983 insurance claim on the plane. Reed, in a suit filed July 5, 1991, has charged the two with preparing and presenting false evidence for the purpose of furthering a false prosecution. Buddy Young made his calls from Bill Clinton's mansion. Young and Baker have admitted to entering Reed's hangar three times without a warrant. They have admitted to tampering with the plane. When they finally did obtain a warrant, it was on the basis of misrepresentations. They subsequently made false statements to a federal grand jury as well as, on more than one occasion, in hearings related to United States v. Reed. A federal judge involved in the case, Frank Theis, declared that Baker and Young had acted with "reckless disregard for the truth." Finally, evidence that might have helped Reed's case was secreted in Young's office in Bill Clinton's mansion when it was supposed to have been in federal court. In early 1988, while his security chief was embroiled in the case against Reed, Bill Clinton gave a job to another contra veteran, Larry Nichols, recently returned from Honduras where he had been gathering data on contra military potential as part of a propaganda package designed to persuade Congress to renew military aid. Nichols was set up with a job as director of marketing in the Arkansas Development Finance Authority. With Nichols' help, Clinton was happy to issue Arkansas 'Traveller' citations, a fairly routine honorific, to three of the most notorious figures in the contra nexus: Adolfo and Mario Calero and General John Singlaub. Discovering that this contra veteran was working in the A.D.F.A., a reporter queried Clinton about the appointment. Nichols was promptly fired. Clinton claims that Nichols was axed for making 700 unauthorized phone calls to Central America. A student organization at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, which has long been investigating the Mena affair, has successfully requested, under state F.O.I.A. laws, Nichols' phone toll records from the A.D.F.A., and Mark Swaney, a member of this organization, says there are no calls to Central America on the tolls during the relevant period. After what he regards as his unjustified dismissal, Nichols prepared a lawsuit, seeking retribution, from which Star drew its allegations concerning Gennifer Flowers. As these allegations caught fire in January, Nichols confided - so a member of the Arkansas Committee says - that Buddy Young had phoned to tell him as an old friend that if he kept this up he was a 'dead man'. The Arkansas Development Finance Authority, which grew out of an agency offering low-interest loans for housing construction, was vastly expanded by Clinton in 1985 to attract capital to the state for the purpose of economic development, offering companies long term loans financed through the sale of tax-exempt bonds and is apparently one of the governor's personal fiefdoms. According to Nichols, connections to Clinton are practically a requirement for companies seeking loans from the A.D.F.A. The Los Angeles Times reports in a June 29 article on the use and abuse of the A.D.F.A., as part of a series on how the Clintons have run Arkansas: "Presidential candidate Bill Clinton has rewarded the financial elite of Arkansas with lucrative state business and low-interest loans while soliciting them - in one instance urgently and personally - for millions of dollars in political contributions and campaign loans." Among underwriters of the bond issues, Stephens Inc. features prominently. The company's chairman, Jackson Stephens, and his son Warren have helped Clinton raise more than $100,000 for his campaign. In January the bank Stephens has a controlling interest in, Worthen National, extended to Clinton a $2 million line of credit. Jackson Stephens is also the man who brokered the arrival of B.C.C.I. in America in 1977. He is an old friend of Bert Lance and was investment banker to Lance's National Bank of Georgia. Stephens introduced Lance to Saudi billionaire Ghaith Pharaon, who, fronting for B.C.C.I., would later buy the National Bank of Georgia, and to B.C.C.I. founder, Agha Hassan Abedi. Lance later urged Abedi to buy First American Bankshares in Washington. According to S.E.C. documents, Stephens had also steered Abedi toward First American. Stephens was named, along with Lance and B.C.C.I., in the S.E.C.'s 1978 civil suit on the takeover of First American. More recently - in 1990 - another B.C.C.I. investor, Abdullah Taha Bakhsh, doubled his stake in Worthen National Bank, to a $10 million share. And last year Jackson Stephens joined with Mochtar Riady, another B.C.C.I. investor, to buy the B.C.C.I. Hong Kong subsidiary from its British liquidators. News of Stephens' ties to B.C.C.I. came out before he gave his fundraising boost to Clinton and before Worthen National made it's $2 million loan to the campaign. So Clinton is running for President on funds linked to one of the biggest banking collapses in history. Another familiar name on the A.D.F.A. bond issues is the now defunct Lasater and Co. Dan Lasater, who headed the company, was an Arkansas bond dealer under investigation as part of a drug sting at a time when Clinton pushed a profitable state bond issue his way. Lasater, who ultimately did time on a cocaine charge before being pardoned by Clinton, was a friend of the Governor and his brother Roger Clinton, who also fell afoul of the law over cocaine, on a stiffer charge than Lasater. Then there's the Rose law firm, Hillary Clinton's firm, whose name adorns both bond issues and loan agreement papers. Hillary Clinton has represented a company owned by Stephens Inc. in litigation. Rose partner Webb Hubbel represented the recipient of the first loan that A.D.F.A. made, a company called Park on Meter, or P.O.M. The current president of P.O.M. is Seth Ward Jr., Webb Hubbel's son in law and also known as a friend of Clinton. Webb Hubbel had been secretary of P.O.M. in the early 1980s. Worthen National Bank appears among institutions that have from time to time had liens on P.O.M. A Michael Riconosciuto is a former contract employee of the C.I.A. who worked at Mena on and off between 1980 and 1989. He came to Mena with experience in computer technology and programming as well as in intelligence, gained from years of working with the Wackenhut Corporation, a private security company whose association with the intelligence community is well known. Riconosciuto was arrested shortly after being named as a witness in the Inslaw Corporation's case against the U.S. government for the latter's alleged unauthorized use of software Riconosciuto wrote for Inslaw. He was arrested on ten drug-related charges and has been convicted of seven. Riconoscituo claims he was set up. He is being held, pending sentence, in a county jail outside of Tacoma, Washington. A Riconosciuto has corroborated information already supplied by Terry Reed and Barry Seal concerning drug drops and weapons shipments in Mena, but unlike Reed and Seal, Riconosciuto served in an administrative capacity that gave him a broader picture of the operation, particularly the role of P.O.M., a parking meter manufacturer in Russelville, Arkansas, across the street from the 354th Chemical Company of the 122nd Army Reserve Command. A In addition to manufacturing parking meters, P.O.M. makes re- entry nose cones for the nuclear warheads on the MX missile and nozzles for rocket engines, and is under contract with McDonnel Douglas to make aircraft parts. According to Riconosciuto, P.O.M. was also enlisted in a project with Stormont Labs of Woodland, California and the Wackenhut Corporation, to develop chemical and biological weapons that could be deployed in guerrilla warfare, with P.O.M. assigned the task of producing delivery systems that could be easily carried and used by contras in Nicaragua. A P.O.M.'s involvement began in 1983. Two years after entering into this chemical weapons project, by Riconosciuto's account, P.O.M. became the first company to receive an industrial development loan from the A.D.F.A. This loan, for $2.75 million, was rushed to completion at the close of 1985. Stormont has confirmed that in the early 80s it was approached by Wackenhut in connection with the development of biological weapons, but denies anything went beyond the talking stage. Wackenhut denies any involvement with Stormont, P.O.M. or Riconosciuto. A We come now to the final player in this sordid tale of covert warfare, international drug smuggling and highway robbery, of cocaine, conspiracy and contras...Bill Clinton, this is your life. This article was adapted from Alexander Cockburn's column BEAT THE DEVIL in the Feb 10, Feb 24, March 23, April 6 and April 20 issues of THE NATION, and I would urge readers to look these up. Also relevant is the May 4 issue which contains Cockburn's response to a TIME magazine editorial attacking his column. In addition to the atrocities noted here, would-be Clinton voters should know of his avid support for the death penalty, an interest of Bill's which even tied him up on the night of the New Hampshire primaries. While many candidates were making frantic last pushes to get voters to the polls, Clinton took time out of his campaign to return to Little Rock, where he spent the night overseeing the execution of a brain damaged black man. Hillary's involvement in children's issues takes on a new light when she is asked about the hundred thousand children who lost their lives in the Gulf War, or the babies born brainless in small towns along the U.S.-Mexican border due to pollution by U.S. corporations enjoying the benefits of free trade. Clinton, it should be noted, supported Desert Storm and endorsed George Bush's "fast track" negotiations for a North American Free Trade Agreement. Clinton's pro-choice stance isn't quite as exciting when seen side by side with his support for parental notification legislation and opposition to Medicaid assistance for poor women seeking abortions. Clinton has presided for years over an anti-labor, anti-union, right-to- work state that ranks 48th in environmental practice, and yet has been endorsed by the AFL-CIO, the Sierra Club and the National Organization for Women. The man is born and bred elite. He dissed Sister Souljah. He has golfed for years at an all-whites golf course and he didn't even inhale. "If you accept the system on its terms, you get the system, on its terms." Alexander Cockburn ############################### your ad isn't here, and it never will be a message from the council for an ad-free society ############################### WILDERNESS I sat down at the typewriter this morning to write about wilderness. But I once again found myself daydreaming out the window, looking into the adjacent field for pheasant. And then it came to me. I walk in this meadowmarshyfield often. It's a wild, forgotten bit of land with a small creek running through, and I think the county "owns" it. Some people from across the meadow borrow the land to graze their four horses. The meadow is teeming with life. I go out with a guidebook sometimes and try to identify the plants, and so far, I've found milkweed, Russian olive, coneflowers, cattails, bulrushes, watercress, sourdock, lamb's quarters and then there are all those grasses; I'll never learn all the grasses. I see black-billed magpies all the time, screeching from the branches of the Russian olive trees, and robins and white crowned sparrows and black-capped chickadees. Last winter, a rough legged hawk used this field for her hunting ground, listening for voles in the hard earth, voles I know live there because once my cat brought a dead one to me. Garter snakes and tobacco hornworms and sweetheart underwings and white lined sphinx are among other moths and critters that my cats have brought to me. Most of them come to me unharmed, so I return them to the field. Canada geese and mallards and shovelers also use this meadowmarsh. And the field is full of pheasants, who toot to each other during the crepuscular hours. If development were to threaten this field, I would know it, the minute a survey stake pierced the ground. If someone diverted the stream, I would know it and if someone took a chainsaw to the Russian olives, I would be one of the first to notice. This is a wilderness that is mere paces from my cabin, and, although it is bordered by suburban houses and fenced in yards and streets, it is a pocket of biodiversity, a vital habitat for real life in the suburbs. And the more I come to know this meadow, the more I love it, the more I realize that this, too, is wilderness and is sacred. There are vast wild places in Utah but they are disappearing quickly. Mining, oil and gas exploration, roadbuilding and ATVs, clearcuts and chaining, the general encroachment of civilization and the inexorable march of subdivisions across the land, and the slaughter of those who inhabit the wild places - the activities of people daily threaten wilderness. Wilderness is just a word until we know the land. Wilderness is just an abstraction until we come to know a special place like an old friend. Do you know a place where the bluebells and columbine and paintbrush and monkeyflower dare not grow in tidy rows, but sprawl their glorious colors in swirling haphazard patterns through a meadow? Is that a place where the birds have never known the insanity of cages, where the fish have never slammed their noses against a dam, where the coyotes sing the songs of their grandmother's journeys, where they know not the metallic jaws of a trap? Where the Douglas Firs have never bled sap against the chainsaw's lacerations? There are vast wild places in Utah, and they are essential, not just as a storehouse for human resources like clean water, or human spirituality, but for themselves. Wilderness has value, as it is, for itself, forever, it's a value independent of those values which we pin upon it. Come to know the land. Even if its an overgrown weedy lot next door, for that is where the wild is cracking the pavement that tried to kill it. Even if you think bears are lurking in the thicket or moose cows with calves are hiding in the willows. Even if you have this THING about big furry tarantulas or slithering rattlesnakes or those bizarre arachnids, the windscorpions, and the way they just sit there under rocks in the desert, and you never know what they do or eat or how they breathe under there. Even if you're afraid of getting lost in the folded juniper ridges and suicidal canyons of Southern Utah overnight with no water and only a flannel shirt and a book of matches and a pair of tweezers. Come to know the wild land, ESPECIALLY if you are afraid. Chief Dan George most eloquently expressed what I am struggling with here: :...what you do not know, you will fear. What one fears, one destroys." It is impossible to allow, to consent to, the destruction of wilderness if wilderness is familiar, a part of us, a place we know, a place we hold dear. And the best part about coming to know wilderness in the personal, practical way is that we don't need to plant our hiking boots on every square foot of this landscape to understand its value. I may never see for myself the rugged grandeur of the Peruvian Andes, but because I know Grandeur Peak in the Wasatch, I feel the soul of Mountain and I know that Mountain Soul is essential, anywhere. The rough-legged hawk that spends her winter in this meadowmarsh, perhaps she spends her summers circling the foothills of Grandeur Peak. If we can come to know just one wild place wholly, we can also extend that knowing to a love of wilderness anywhere. And wilderness, as it turns out, is everywhere. @#$#$^$%!@$@!$#$%@#%!#$!@#%^@#! The driving force behind the destruction of the tropical rain forests is the American meat habit. The rain forests are cleared then planted with grass for grazing livestock to create hamburgers for fast food restaurants. More than one half of all the water used in the United States is used for raising animals for food. 25 gallons of water is needed to produce a pound of wheat. 2500 gallons of water is needed to produce a pound of meat. Dependence on foreign oil is one of the principle reasons for US intervention in the Persian Gulf. The length of time the world's oil reserves would last if all human beings ate a meat based diet would be approximately 13 years. The length of time the world's oil reserves would last if all human beings ate a plant based diet would be approximately 260 years. Feedlots and slaughterhouses are both major polluters of rivers and streams. Filling them with poisonous residues and animal wastes. 250,000 pounds of animal excrement is produced every second in the US and there are no sewage systems to treat the wastes. In 1989, over 40% of the world's grain harvest was fed to animals going to slaughter. If the same grain was fed directly to human beings, there would be more than enough grain to feed the entire world. Over 20 million people will die as a result of malnutrition this year. In the third world private and government money has gone to developing cash crops for export while food production for the poor majority is neglected. 80% of the corn grown in the US is fed to animals raised for food rather than going to hungry people. On a purely vegetarian diet the world can support a population many times its present size. On a meat based diet the current world population could not be sustained. Cattle ranching has always completed with wildlife. Coyotes and wolves would not be shot and poisoned by ranchers if people did not eat steak and lambchops. Destroying the rainforests to raise cattle is causing millions of birds, monkeys, snakes and other species to lose their homes and lives. In the US this year alone thirty seven and one half million cattle, eighty five and one half million pigs, five and one half million sheep, two hundred forty two million turkeys, four billion, one hundred forty seven million chickens will be murdered for the taste of their flesh. Pain, frustration, stress, fear, abuse, neglect and deprivation are realities of the raising of animals in today's factory farms. Animals are artificially inseminated, fed growth hormones, overcrowded, chained and caged. Raising livestock for profit is a competitive business. Being humane means costs will go up. These animals are kicked, prodded, electroshocked, dragged and finally transported to their deaths. A vegetarian diet promotes superior health, endurance and longevity. Animal products have 3 nutritional disadvantages. They contain too much protein, too much fat, and no fiber. Do not believe the protein myth. It was based on a study done by the meat and dairy industries to rats, animals who need 1000 times more protein in their diet than humans. from CONSOLIDATED friendly fascism 1991 ############################### DECLARATION OF SOVEREIGNTY FROM THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLES OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS TO THE GOVERNMENTS OF CANADA, ALBERTA, THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND THE WORLD 1992 marks 500 years of European domination in the Western Hemisphere, and for the indigenous peoples of the Rocky Mountains and Northern Plains it will be a time for total emancipation from the alien laws that have disallowed us to live as we were instructed to by the Great Mystery. We have witnessed your concept of sovereignty and civilization which allows air, water, earth and yourselves to be poisoned, raped and despiritualized so that your children inherit the curse you refer to as your culture. The Earth is our government, and the natural laws of the creation that we have chosen to honor and live by give us our sovereignty. Our people have lived sovereignly in this Western Hemisphere for at least thirty thousand years because of our belief system. Going back a mere one hundred years to the time of your industrial revolution in our homelands, the Earth and our people have been victims of serious and unnecessary destruction to the extent that your own scientists have announced that you must change your unnatural and unclean ways or you will not survive another decade. Upon your arrival in this hemisphere, our ancestors advised your forefathers how to live with the Earth, but because of greed and arrogance you find yourselves in the perilous situation that you are in today. We cannot relate to "Canada" because it represents colonial oppression, industrial and corporate greed, and a people out of balance living in distress and uncertainty. The origin of the word "canada" derives from the word "kanata", which, in our language, means clean; so for us to accept being Canadian is to accept not only the pollution of our language but to include ourselves amongst those who have turned this beautiful country into the unclean state it is in today. You would be well-advised to listen to those concerned people amongst you who are offering safe and healthy alternatives to your dangerous and life threatening ways. Our people have historically accessed the Rocky Mountains and ceased to do so only because of the imposition of "your indian act", and "your fraudulent treaties" which we were forced to sign or face extermination. The day is over for our people existing in "third world" conditions created by you and further perpetuated through your racist governmental policies. We will begin to occupy the Rocky Mountains in the Province of Alberta as we are aware of the water diversion conspiracy between the governments of the United States of America, Canada, and the Province of Alberta. We will not allow you to divert the rivers to the south because they do not belong to you and were not placed on this earth to accommodate your schemes. These Rocky Mountains have always been and will continue to be our sacred spiritual center, so it should be well understood why we will defend them with our very lives. We will obey the laws of our nation and stop Anyone who will come in to abuse or disrupt the natural order; the natural order includes the animal nations that are an inseparable part of our world. We are not claiming ownership of these mountains as it is against our laws to own the earth, but we are informing you that no government or corporation on this world will ever again be allowed to impose their alien legalistic policies of destruction in our homeland. All people are welcome to access these mountains and experience the beauty and power of our common mother, but we will not tolerate any further desecration of our holy land. The political terminology used to determine the status and rights of our people will no longer apply. We know who we are, and we will not permit neo- colonialists to further misrepresent us by begging for recognition from you through a constitutional process which you cannot even agree upon amongst yourselves. Any harassment whatsoever from any branch of your governments, directed toward our people, will be interpreted as an act of aggression and will be dealt with immediately by our nation's defenders. If you wish to deal with us in a court of law, we will gladly accommodate you through a world tribunal held in our territory with all the other nations present to witness your reply to the charge of genocide. In conclusion, we would like you to understand that we have serious concerns for our children's future and that future depends on our ability to honor the Earth by protecting the natural world of which we are a part. For non-indigenous peoples and governments, we invite you to learn from us for the good of your children's future and to restore balance and sanity to the people of the Earth. To the government of Canada, we invite your representatives to abandon their arrogance and misconceptions of our people and begin to listen and learn from us, for we have much to offer you in ways of finding solutions to the problems you have created. We have been watching you stumble through your constitutional talks and we see clearly how secularly humanized you have become, so we will, in closing, offer you some advice which to our people is a living philosophy: "A constitution that is in harmony with the Earth will bring harmony to the people of the Earth." For an in depth understanding of this declaration, write or phone: Indigenous peoples of the Rocky Mountains P.O. Box 5157 Minton, Alberta; Canada T7V 1X45 (403) 865-7549 please copy and distribute this declaration - send copies to politicians and include your feelings on the issue ############################### THE LOST GENERATION MUMIA ABU-JAMAL Recent published reports have lamented the fact that Afro-American youth are remarkably resistant and virtually unresponsive to traditional, big-name public relations and big-time sports figures when they utilize the major media to attempt to communicate with younger blacks. The study found deep and profound alienation amongst youth, and a fundamental streak of fatalism about the promise of tomorrow - a sense that "tomorrow may not come, so let's live for today" permeates youth consciousness. The youth, while they view large blocks of TV, perceive it from the position of outsiders, knowing that the dramas, comedies and news programs are not designed for their consumption. Only the urbo-tech musical form known as rap touches them, for it is born of urban youth consciousness, and speaks to them, in their idiom, about lives lived on the margin. It is this profound dissociation that forced members of the nouveau middle-class blacks to lament for youth as "the lost generation." But are they really "lost" and, if so to whom? The Martiniquan Black Revolutionary, Franz Fonan once opined that every generation must find its destiny, fulfill it, or betray it. In my father's generation, Southern born of the late 1890s, their destiny was to move their families north, to lands with a promise of a better life away from the hateful homelands in Dixie. The dreams of that generation, sparked by visions of new homes, better education, new cars and prosperity were, in relative, realized by some, but Northbound Africans were never able to outrun the stigma of racism. By the time the 50s and 60s generation came of age, during the Nixon-Reagan-Bush eras, race once again defined the limits of Black aspirations, and with the shifting of manufacturing jobs back down South and abroad, so went the dreams of relative prosperity. The children of this generation, born in the sobering poverty amidst shimmering opulence, their minds weaned on Falcon Crestian TV excess while locked in want, watching while sinister politicians spit on their very existence, these youths are the Hip-Hop/Rap generation. Locked out of the legal means of material survival, looked down upon by predatory politicians and police, left with the least relevant educational opportunities, talked at with contempt and not talked to with love, is there any question why such youth are alienated? They look at the lives they live and see but a drumbeat of civil repression by a government at war with their dreams. Why the surprise? This is not the "lost generation." They are the children of the L.A. protest, the children of the MOVE bombing, the children of the Black Panthers, and the grandchildren of Malcolm. Far from the "lost" they are probably the most aware generation since Nat Turner's; they are not so much "lost" as they are "mislaid," and discarded by this increasingly racist system that undermines their inherent worth. They are all potential revolutionaries, with the historic power to transform our dull realities. If they are "lost" - then find them. Mumia Abu-Jamal, a veteran of the Black Panther Party since age 16, later emerged as a well known and widely respected journalist reporting on racism in the United States. The Philadelphia Tribune called him the Voice of the Voiceless in 1980 and the same year he was elected president of the Association of Black Journalists. Jamal now resides on death row in Philadelphia where he was framed for the killing of a local policeman. This article originally appeared in the September 1992 issue of The Commemorator, published by the Commemoration Committee for the Black Panther Party. ############################### SUBSCRIBE TO BOOTLEG Keep a copy on your coffee table; it's a great way to impress friends or start conversations. Use it to start fires or line the litter box. As long as we're making money. BOOTLEG subscriptions are $20 for 12 issues, sliding scale. New issues will be published when we get together enough material and money, send both. 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