From RT
Author: admin
An analysis of Obama’s speech at the UN, September 28
Global Research, September 29, 2015
Addressing the United Nations General Assembly on Monday, President Barack Obama portrayed himself and the US government as the preeminent defenders of international law and diplomacy. He did so even as the catastrophic consequences of the illegal wars of aggression he has overseen continued to send waves of refugees fleeing the ruins of entire countries—including Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen—and as Washington took new steps to turn Eastern Europe into a militarized zone for eventual war against Russia.
With his trademark hypocrisy and contempt for the intelligence of his audience, Obama hailed “an international system that imposes a cost on those who choose conflict over cooperation.” He proclaimed his support for the “international principles that helped constrain bigger countries from imposing our will on smaller ones,” and denounced those who maintain “that might makes right; that strong states must impose their will on weaker ones; that the rights of individuals don’t matter; and that in a time of rapid change, order must be imposed by force.”
This from a man who asserts the right of his government to launch “preemptive” wars against any country or group deemed hostile to Washington’s drive for hegemony over the oil-rich Middle East and the rest of the world; who has killed untold thousands in drone missile assassinations; waged an unprovoked war against Libya and murdered its leader, Gaddafi; and armed and financed a sectarian civil war using Al Qaeda-linked killers as its proxy force, turning Syria into a chamber of horrors.
The main focus of Obama’s remarks was Syria, where the debacle of US policy had become so pronounced that Obama was obliged to pull back from his previous demand for the immediate removal of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. He has proposed talks with the Baathist regime’s main allies, Russia and Iran, on a “managed transition” that would likely retain elements of the current government while eventually easing Assad out of power.
Later on Monday, Obama met with Russian President Putin to discuss the possibility of engineering such a settlement of the four-and-a-half-year war. It was the first formal face to face meeting between the two since 2013, when the White House cancelled discussions with Putin in retaliation for Moscow’s decision to grant NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden temporary asylum. That was followed by a freeze on all high-level talks after the US-sponsored and fascist-led coup last year that overthrew Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych. Since it installed the ultra-nationalist and fascistic regime in Kiev, Washington has backed a brutal assault on pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine that has killed thousands and devastated entire cities.
The US finds its position in Syria and the broader region severely weakened, despite the mass killing in the country—estimated at 200,000 deaths in a country with a population of 23 million—caused by the sectarian civil war instigated by Washington and its regional allies, Turkey and the semi-feudal sheikdoms of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Iraq’s announcement Sunday that it had signed an agreement with Syria, Iran and Russia to share intelligence and coordinate security in the battle against Islamic State forces in Syria and Iraq appeared to take Washington by surprise.
It was preceded by a series of developments exposing Washington’s failure to create a non-jihadist “moderate” force to fight both ISIS and Assad. These included the resignation of the top US commander in the anti-ISIS war; congressional testimony by a leading general admitting that after more than a year and the expenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars, the US had trained “four or five” fighters; reports that the ranks of ISIS fighters were rising despite months of US and coalition bombing; and other reports that forces trained by the US in Turkey had defected or turned over their weapons to Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, the al-Nusra Front.
Moreover, recent weeks have seen an increase in Russian military support to the Assad regime, which Washington has been unable to block.
The net result of Washington’s reckless and murderous war for regime-change in Syria has been to turn the country into yet another geopolitical flashpoint where US and allied military forces face off against those of Russia, raising the very real danger of an armed clash and the eruption of a wider war between nuclear armed powers. On the eve of the UN assembly, France began its own bombing campaign in Syria, making clear that it was prepared to attack forces allied with Assad, potentially including Russian forces, as well as ISIS. Britain is lining up to begin bombing the country later this year.
It would be a dangerous mistake to believe that Washington’s decision to seek talks with Russia and Iran means the US is backing off from the use of military violence. On the contrary, with its economic and diplomatic position weakening, the response of American imperialism will be to ratchet up its bullying and military aggression.
This was clear from Obama’s speech. He denounced the main targets of US aggression, calling Assad a “tyrant,” accusing Russia of violating “the sovereignty and territorial integrity” of Ukraine, implied that China was attacking “the basic principles of freedom of navigation and the free flow of commerce” in the South China Sea and singled out Iran for continuing to “deploy violent proxies to advance its interests.” The chief backer of tyrants in the Middle East, violator of national sovereignty and territorial integrity in Ukraine, threat to freedom of navigation in East Asia and deployer of violent proxies is, of course, the United States.
In the midst of his cynical paean to the international law and diplomacy, Obama issued an unambiguous threat to any nation that dared to get in America’s way, declaring: “I lead the strongest military that the world has ever known, and I will never hesitate to protect my country and our allies, unilaterally and by force where necessary.”
The preparations for a US military escalation against both Syria and Russia are well underway. Last week, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius reported that discussions are being held between US military officials and leaders of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Syria for Washington to step up its military support, including close air support for YPG fighters on the ground.
Powerful factions within the US ruling elite and state are opposed to any talks with Russia or Iran and are demanding the creation of so-called “safe havens” policed by US and allied forces in Syria and an all-out drive for regime-change.
At the same time, the Pentagon and CIA are stepping up their war preparations against Russia. The upcoming US-NATO Trident Juncture 2015 war games, the largest held since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, are designed to prepare Western forces to engage in hybrid warfare operations in the Baltic region and beyond.
Last week, an article appeared in Foreign Policy magazine with the title: “The Pentagon is Preparing New War Plans for a Baltic Battle Against Russia.” The article stated, “For the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US Department of Defense is reviewing and updating its contingency plans for armed conflict with Russia.”
Finally, the US is planning to upgrade its nuclear arsenal in Europe with highly sophisticated B61-12 guided nuclear bombs, each one of which is more than three times as powerful as the atomic bomb that killed over 130,000 people in Hiroshima.
For decades, US imperialism has sought to overcome the decline in its global economic position by relying on its military supremacy. In response to its latest setbacks in the Middle East, this tendency will only be expressed with greater brutality and recklessness.
Press conference of President Putin after meeting with President Obama
From RT
U.S. is blockading Syria — a war crime
Global Research, September 25, 2015
New Eastern Outlook 24 September 2015
The news that the United States asked both Greece and Bulgaria to block Russian flights over their air space headed for Syria is a logical extension of the criminality of the aggression against Syria being conducted by the NATO powers and their allies in the region. The NATO alliance has been conducting a war of aggression against Syria since 2011 when it succeeded in destroying Libya and it was responsible for the waves of humanity who fled the NATO bombing and who now flee the Takfiri militants NATO used as their auxiliaries.
These actions are clearly war crimes of the highest order, contemptuous violations of the UN Charter, international law and of all morality. The resulting misery of the peoples of the countries under attack, who are forced to flee and become refugees in the heart of the very alliance that is attacking them, is beyond words. The images bombard us daily. But the images are not placed in the western media to create a call for peace in the region. Instead, as we see from the recent statements of the British, French and American leaders, they are used to manipulate the emotions of the citizens of the NATO countries to justify a call for more military aggression against Syria which will create more misery, more death and more refugees.
That the flood of stories in the western press about the Syrian refugees is being used as a propaganda tool to is easy to see when we compare the situation regarding refugees from Libya and Ukraine. The Libyan people have been fleeing the hell that NATO created for four years now, with thousands of people arriving in Europe, mostly on the shores of Italy. But there has been no call to attack the vicious thugs that NATO installed in place of the progressive socialist Libyan Republic, no call to bring back the civilized society that existed before Gaddafi was brutally murdered by the same forces, no call for regime change in Tripoli. Instead, chaos and gangsterism prevail, and all is well.
In Ukraine over a million people have fled the Kiev junta’s massive armed attacks on its own people, the type of attacks that NATO countries alleged Gaddafi had used on his own people to justify their attack on Libya. The US puppets in Kiev have used bombing raids on civilians, white phosphorus shells, cluster bombs and other banned weapons and they have used them not on military targets of the peoples resistance forces but on civilian houses, shops, schools, hospitals, power stations and other civilian infrastructure. Food and medical supplies are blockaded. The people of the Donbas are under siege. All these actions are war crimes and crimes against humanity. Yet the western media says not a single word about them. There is no call from Washington or London or Paris or Ottawa to bomb Kiev and remove Poroshenko. Instead they supply him and his Nazi friends with weapons, supplies and money and send in their own forces to assist in these criminal attacks. The double standards applied and the deep hypocrisy and cynicism displayed by the NATO governments and the western news media that provide the information flow to the people, must shake anyone’s belief in the viability of western civilization.
In stark contrast, Russia has taken in over a million refugees so far from Ukraine without complaint while the EU countries argue bitterly amongst themselves as to who should take the refugees they have created and while they fan the flames of xenophobia among their own populations. But then the motivations are completely different. The Russians want to help the people being attacked by NATO and its puppet regime in Kiev. The Europeans only want to use the refugees as a means of creating hysteria in Europe so that their people will support a combined NATO attack on Syria.
Since these EU countries in one way or another support the forces attacking Syria they are responsible under international law for receiving and caring for the refugees they have created. They must follow certain humane standards in the treatment of them, but instead we see images of them being fed like animals or being kicked and tripped up by the very media sent to report on the crisis.
But now the situation has escalated further with the United States demanding that Greece and Bulgaria block relief supplies from Russia from using their air space, an attempt to completely block these supplies. Greece has found the courage to refuse the request. Bulgaria to its shame has decided to lick their boots.
The Americans try to justify their demand by claiming that some of those flights are used to deliver military supplies to Syria. Yes, and so what? Russia has every right to support the Syrian government in its fight against the Nato-Saudi, Israeli auxiliaries who are fighting in Syria under the acronyms ISIS or ISIL or Al Qaeda and has been openly doing so since the beginning. There is no UN approved arms embargo against Syria and the United States and its allies are daily dropping supplies to these same groups and have let it be known that their special forces are operating on the ground alongside those forces. Just the other day another story broke of the Israeli Army airlifting wounded from these groups for treatment in Israeli occupied zones and one must wonder if those selectively helped are not indeed Israeli special forces themselves. The Americans and Bulgarians are not just worried about more Russian military supplies from being delivered. They also want the Syrian people to experience the maximum state of misery and despair to punish them for their support of their government and to try to force them to turn against it.
Indeed, the Russian and Syrian governments affirm that many of those flights are delivering much needed humanitarian relief including medical supplies, generators for hospitals, food, tents for internal refugees, and related supplies to relieve the distress of the Syrian people in the face of the American provoked attacks on them. One has to ask, where are the American and European relief supplies for the Syrian people? Where are the ships and planes that should be carrying the same supplies the Russians are delivering? If they had delivered them and if they had insisted that the attacks on Syria stop there would not be any refugees. But they want the refugees to generate war propaganda and so they do not want relief supplies to get through.
The attempt to blockade the delivery of humanitarian assistance amounts to a war crime under international law, including the the Geneva Conventions, the Nuremburg Principles and the Statute of Rome that sets out the definitions of war crimes under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. The attempted blockade of humanitarian assistance constitutes murder, inhuman treatment, collective punishment, an action designed to bring about the physical destruction of the population and the nation, and other related crimes committed against the Syrian civilian population. Every European leader who takes part in this criminal conspiracy should be charged with war crimes. The American president should be Number One in the dock. But international criminal law continues to be administered by criminals and we watch with disbelief the complete silence of the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court who sits in her office in The Hague and twiddles her thumbs while Damascus, Aleppo and Donetsk burn.
The cartloads of the dead overflow the cemeteries. The misery of the living mounts. The hope that is left for peace and security, even for a little kindness in this life, drips out of our veins with every drop of blood shed by the victims of these NATO wars. It is very easy to despair. I despair. But we must resist. We must demand these wars stop, We must stop sitting around face booking and surfing the internet, get out of these artificial worlds they have built to turn us into zombies of the living and get back on the streets where we still count, where they still fear us and where we can shout our demands so loud they will shake the walls of the state itself.
Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto, he is a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada and he is known for a number of high-profile cases involving human rights and war crimes, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
Copyright © Christopher Black, New Eastern Outlook, 2015
Putin warns about ISIS, and says about Syrian refugee crisis: Nobody will pass the buck to Russia (video, Eng. subs)
From RT
3:04
Dresden Rally: “Merkel to Siberia, Putin to Berlin!” (video)
Lugansk conference discusses Donbass vs. Crimea scenarios
From Fort Russ
September 21, 2015 –
NCN –
Translated for Fort Russ by J. Arnoldski
“Polish political scientist: Donbass clearly wants to become a second Crimea”
The polish political scientist Mateusz Piskorski participated in a conference in Lugansk, where his colleagues discussed the idea of the accession of Donbass to the Russian Federation.
The leadership and people of the unrecognized Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics are in favor of joining Russia if Kiev will continue to not abide by the Minsk agreements. The director of the European Center for Geopolitical Analysis, Mateusz Piskorski, stated to the National News Service this while participating in the Lugansk conference “The Path of Integrating Donbass into Russia.”
“Sooner or later, if the Ukrainian side will not be up to implementing the Minsk agreements and Kiev will continue to call the leadership and population of the DPR and LPR terrorists and separatists, then Donbass will not be left another exit other than joining the Russian Federation,” the Polish expert said.
This topic is not being discussed on a political level, but nevertheless it is a reflection of public opinion, Piskorski noted. According to him, the political scientists and participants of the conference were interested in understanding “whether Novorossiya will become a second Crimea for Russia, that is, acceding to Russia through a referendum, through direct democracy.”
“At the conference in Lugansk, there were participants not only from the DPR and LPR, but also from Russia and European countries. In addition to political experts, politicians, in particular the head of the LP Igor Plotnitsky and the speaker of the parliament of the DPR, Denis Pushilin, attended,” Piskorski told the National News Service.
Let us recall that since April, 2014, Kiev is conducting the so-called anti-terrorist operation. Ukrainian security forces use armored vehicles and heavy artillery against disgruntled locals who are against the February coup and who held a referendum on secession from Ukraine.
In more than a year of fighting, the local militia has managed to defend a part of the territory of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, proclaiming there two republics which have so far not received international recognition.
A plan for settling the armed conflict was written in the Minsk agreements which implied the preservation of Donbass as part of Ukraine by granting the region a special status.
According to the United Nations, nearly 8 thousand people have been killed over the course of the conflict.
http://fortruss.blogspot.com/2015/09/lugansk-conference-discusses-donbass-vs.html
U.S. will station 20 nuclear bombs in Germany against Russia
Global Research, September 22, 2015
Germany’s ZDF public television network headlines on Tuesday September 22nd, “New U.S. Atomic Weapons to Be Stationed in Germany,” and reports that the U.S. will bring into Germany 20 new nuclear bombs, each being four times the destructive power of the one that was used on Hiroshima. Hans Kristensen, the Director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, says, “With the new bombs the boundaries blur between tactical and strategic nuclear weapons.”
A former Parliamentary State Secretary in Germany’s Defense Ministry, Willy Wimmer, of Chancellor Merkel’s own conservative party, the Christian Democratic Union, warns that these “new attack options against Russia” constitute “a conscious provocation of our Russian neighbors.”
German Economic News also reports on Chancellor Merkel’s decision to allow these terror-weapons against Russia:
“The Bundestag decided in 2009, expressing the will of most Germans, that the US should withdraw its nuclear weapons from Germany. But German Chancellor Angela Merkel did nothing.”
And now she okays the U.S. to increase America’s German-based nuclear arsenal against Russia.
Maria Zakharova, of the Russian Foreign Ministry, says: “This is an infringement of Articles 1 and 2 of the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,” which is the treaty that provides non-nuclear states the assurance that the existing nuclear powers will not try to use their nuclear status so as to take over the world.
German Economic News says:
“The federal government had demanded the exact opposite: The Bundestag decided in March 2010 by a large majority, that the federal government should ‘press for the withdrawal of US nuclear weapons from Germany.’ Even the coalition agreement between the CDU and FDP, the German government in 2009 had promised the withdrawal of nuclear weapons from Büchel. But instead there will be these new bombs.”
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
Copyright © Eric Zuesse, Global Research, 2015
Who is Twitter-luring refugees to Germany?
Global Research, September 22, 2015
Oriental Review 21 September 2015
Content-analysis of a great number of tweets that triggered the ongoing wave of migration from Turkey to Germany since August this year suggests that these human streams were inspired and channeled from outside of continental Europe.
According to Vladimir Shalak from the Russian Academy of Science who developed the Internet Content-Analysis System for Twitter ( Scai4Twi), his study of over 19000 refugees-related original tweets (retweets discounted) demonstrates that the vast majority of them mention Germany and Austria as the most refugee-welcoming countries in Europe:
Counties mentioned in tweets containing #Refugees hashtag, percent
Importantly, 93% of all tweets dedicated to Germany contained positive references to German hospitality and its refugee policy:
• Germany Yes! Leftists spray a graffiti on a train sayin “Welcome, refugees” in Arabic
• Lovely people – video of Germans welcoming Syrian refugees to their community
• Respect! Football fans saying “Welcome Refugees” across stadiums in Germany.
• This Arabic Graffiti train is running in Dresden welcoming refugees: (ahlan wa sahlan – a warm welcome).
• ‘We love Germany!,’ cry relieved refugees at Munich railway station
• Thousands welcome refugees to Germany – Sky News Australia
• Wherever this German town is that welcomed a coach of Syrian refugees with welcome signs and flowers -thank you.
Analysis of 5704 original tweets containing #RefugeesWelcome” hashtag and a country name lead to even larger gap between Germany and the rest of Europe:
The next step is to study the source twitter accounts where the hashtag #RefugeesWelcome + Germany originate. Next diagram shows the countries of origin of the relevant twitter accounts (where they could be idenfitied):
As you see, only 6,4% of all tweets with “#RefugeesWelcome”+Germany came from Germany itself.Almost half of them were originated from UK, USA and Australia! Looks like your remote planetmates are blushlessly inviting guests to visit your home without inquiring your opinion beforehand!
A couple of popular samples:
Lotte Leicht, director of Human Rights Watch’s Brussels Office, August 30 (source).
Washington Post, September 1 (source).
Further analysis shows that it was only a beginning. A whole army of netbots has galvanized ‘hit-the-fan’ effect to the topic.
On Aug 27 forty automatic netbots @changing_news, @changing_news1,…, @changing_news39 from the United States simultaneously issued the following tweet at 8:00:33AM:
A new welcome: Activists launch home placement service for refugees in Germany and Austria #News #Change #Help
On Sept 1 the same group of netbots releases same tweets with caps on at 22:30:37:
A New Welcome: Activists Launch Home Placement Service For Refugees In Germany And Austria #News #Change #Help
On August 29 at 11.02PMa group of 80 netbots posts the following:
Thousands Welcome Refugees to Germany at Dresden Rally: Thousands of people took to the streets of the German city of Dresden on Satu…
Another group of fifty netbots from Australia (all created on Feb 14, 2014 between 06:02:00 до 06:24:00AM) publish a post on Aug 31 at 17:26:08:
#hot Football Fans in Germany Unite with ‘Refugees Welcome’ Message #prebreak #best
On Sept 1 at 07:29AM 95 netbots owned by Media for Social and Cultural Impact, Dallas, Texas, USA publish the following tweets:
German Soccer Fans Welcome Refugees Amid Ongoing Crisis: As Europe faces the challenge of a wave of migration…
Needless to say that every original tweet was multiplied in dozens of copies and spread Twitter-wide.
Evidently, the logic behind this campaign is to deteriorate social situation in Germany and undermine its economic development. Another target is the social structure of German society. 1 million of refugees coming annually there and supplementing existing 31% of local families having at least one migrant parent, would definitely disbalance the voting structure and secure a loyal leadership in Germany for the decades to come. On the other hand that would instigate ultra-right sentiments within the indigenous population and cause furious clashes between migrants and German radicals. Both processes would result in weakened Germany and diminished EU.
That is the real agenda behind innocent tweeting…
U.S. adopted Doctrine of Discovery to deal with First Nation tribes
From Indian County Today Media Network
Library of Congress
In January 1891, the bodies of four Lakota Sioux are seen wrapped in blankets, three weeks after the December 29 massacre by U.S. forces at Wounded Knee River on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota.
Disastrous Doctrine Had Papal Roots
Vinnie Rotondaro
9/21/15
Scholars say the Doctrine of Discovery holds immense importance in world history. They say it resulted in disaster and genocide for Native peoples, but that its legacy remains largely overlooked.
According to Steven Newcomb, a columnist for Indian Country Today Media Network and co-founder of the Indigenous Law Institute, what became known as the Doctrine of Discovery originated from a series of papal bulls issued in the era following the Crusades.
The first bull of consequence was issued in 1436 and titled Romanus Pontifex, he said. It concerned “the concession of the right of domination over the Guanches people” and the Canary Islands, which was taken over by the crown of Castile, a medieval state in the Iberian Peninsula.
The bull marked the first time the papacy “made it look as though no one was living there,” or had any ownership over the land being pursued by European powers, “because there were no Christians there,” Newcomb said.
That “pattern of thought” then began marching through history.
In 1452, the papal bull Dum Diversas instructed the Portuguese crown “to invade, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens, pagans, and other enemies of Christ, to put them into perpetual slavery, and to take away all their possessions and property.”
In 1454, another bull titled Romanus Pontifex furthered that thinking, sanctifying the seizure of non-Christian lands in parts of Africa and restating the legitimacy of enslaving non-Christian people.
In 1493, after Christopher Columbus’ fateful voyage, Inter Caetera granted Ferdinand and Isabella “full and free power, authority, and jurisdiction of every kind,” over almost all of the Americas, save for a portion of modern-day Brazil and a few island outposts.
More bulls followed, said Newcomb, author of the book Pagans in the Promised Land: Decoding the Doctrine of Christian Discovery. Each bull incorporated language from preceding bulls, he said, forming a mosaic of papal license that was “taken to distant, non-Christian lands and used as a template, an authorization for what I call a dehumanization and domination of non-Christian peoples throughout the planet.”
These developments represented “the beginnings of international law,” said Joshua Jeffers, a member of the history department at Middle Tennessee State University who has studied the Doctrine of Discovery.
Racism coursed through the doctrine and the bulls that informed it, Jeffers said, but its origins were ultimately political, stemming from the “Vatican trying to come to terms with the discovery of the New World … and trying to head off massive wars between Spain and Portugal” over gold.
Over the centuries, the doctrine evolved. “In 1600, it meant something different than it did in 1650,” he said. “It changed based on what the colonizer wanted to do.”
In 1823, a turning point was reached in its “ideological essence.” In the U.S. Supreme Court case Johnson v. M’Intosh—which involved a land dispute—“a new type of property ownership,” was created for Native Americans, Jeffers said, “a lesser form of ownership.”
The Doctrine of Discovery, while not mentioned by name, was given a legitimating stamp. Chief Justice John Marshall’s ruling stated:
On the discovery of this immense continent, the great nations of Europe were eager to appropriate to themselves so much of it as they could respectively acquire. Its vast extent offered an ample field to the ambition and enterprise of all; and the character and religion of its inhabitants afforded an apology for considering them as a people over whom the superior genius of Europe might claim an ascendency. The potentates of the old world found no difficulty in convincing themselves that they made ample compensation to the inhabitants of the new, by bestowing on them civilization and Christianity, in exchange for unlimited independence. But, as they were all in pursuit of nearly the same object, it was necessary, in order to avoid conflicting settlements, and consequent war with each other, to establish a principle, which all should acknowledge as the law by which the right of acquisition, which they all asserted, should be regulated as between themselves. This principle was, that discovery gave title to the government by whose subjects, or by whose authority, it was made, against all other European governments, which title might be consummated by possession.
The ruling maintained that Native Americans—referred to in the decision as “fierce savages” and “the conquered”—had the right to occupy land, but not full sovereignty. It stipulated that tribes were dependent on the federal government.
Johnson v. M’Intosh became the cornerstone of U.S. federal Indian law, Jeffers said. Subsequent Marshall court decisions attempted to walk back some of its harsher provisions, Jeffers said, but it remains to this day the dominant legal precedent.
“And not just in the United States,” he added, but also “in Australia, New Zealand and Canada,” where large indigenous populations exist. “There are Canadian rulings that refer to the 1823 [U.S.] ruling.”
Indigenous activists maintain that the inequality perpetuated by U.S. federal Indian law continues to leave Native American legal claims stuck in the mud.
For instance, in 2005, the Supreme Court referenced the Doctrine of Discovery in the first footnote to the case City of Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation of New York, which maintained that parcels of tribal land sold and later repurchased by the Oneida were neither tax exempt nor sovereign. The decision precluded “the tribe from rekindling embers of sovereignty that long ago grew cold,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the majority.
A more recent 2011 Supreme Court ruling severely limited a tribe’s ability to sue the federal government over fiduciary trust indiscretion.
In 2007, the United Nations issued the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, a landmark document that provided what Native American scholar and attorney Walter Echo-Hawk once called a “human rights framework” for replacing the colonial MO.
The U.S., Australia, New Zealand and Canada initially held out on signing, but have since endorsed the U.N. document. However, “the thing with these U.N. declarations,” Jeffers said, “is that they have no real teeth, so countries quibble about what is in them.” Without “real enforcement power,” the colonial model remains in place.
“It sounds archaic and ridiculous,” Jeffers said, but it is reality, and it has become “so deeply ingrained” in U.S. society that it’s practically “invisible—it’s just assumed.”
“If you take the Doctrine of Discovery away,” he said, “there is no real, legitimate basis for [U.S.] American ownership of any land.”
RELATED: Intergenerational Grief on Cheyenne River Indian Reservation
RELATED: Boarding Schools: A Black Hole of Native American History
RELATED: Limited Housing, Poor Economy Plagues Reservation
RELATED: ‘Reeling From The Impact’ of Historical Trauma
Vinnie Rotondaro (vrotondaro@ncronline.org) is national correspondent for National Catholic Reporter, where this series first appeared. Republished with permission.
Editor’s note: It may seem like papal statements from 500 years ago are ancient history. But Native American activists and scholars insist that Catholicism’s past continues to affect the present. Papal bulls from the 1400s condoned the conquest of the Americas and other lands inhabited by indigenous people. The papal documents led to an international norm called the Doctrine of Discovery, which dehumanized non-Christians and legitimized their suppression by nations around the world, including by the United States. Now Native Americans say the church helped commit genocide and refuses to come to terms with it. This is Part Five of a six-part series on the legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery.
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2015/09/21/disastrous-doctrine-had-papal-roots-161756
Posted under Fair Use Rules.
See also
Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery
Free Ukraine Now 