Een hieronder Norm

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Gecategoriseerd | Activisme, Noord-Amerika

Gepost op 10 September 2007

De Procureur Algemeen Robert Kennedy, jaren '60 van de V.S.
Het is bijna tien jaar geweest aangezien ik met mensen buiten de V.S. begon samen te komen en interactie aan te gaan. Ik heb vrij een beetje geleerd. Ik geef ook informatie door.

Alhoewel vele mensen met de populaire en collectieve „cultuur“ worden bedwelmd van de V.S. of zij met het buitenlandse beleid van de V.S. zoals die door de collectieve media wordt bepaald akkoord gaan, vaak hebben zij geen wens om Amerika te bezoeken.

De mensen die arbeiders op lange termijn in de V.S. waren geworden zijn aan hun land toe te schrijven aan het kunnen zich geen gezondheidszorg in Amerika veroorloven teruggekeerd. Of om aan de bedreiging van geweld het hoofd te bieden in elke dag het gaan daar, ondanks de aantrekkelijkheid van het maken van overvloed van geld.

Het is ludicrous voor luisteraars om te horen dat luchthaventype de aftastenmachines om kanonnen te ontdekken in gebruik in Amerikaanse steden (scholen tien jaar - olds) sinds de jaren '80 zijn geweest. Schools, libraries, grocery stores, shopping centers, metro trains, banks and cinemas…all are controlled by people with guns. That’s the way it is.

While there is a degree of knowledge about history of the American state, few can comprehend the reality of historical violence by the state and in the society called democracy’s finest. Penalties of death for crimes such as murder ended 40 years ago in countries as ‘civilized’ as England.

Further, the fact that almost all politicians are lawyers in America seems absurd to people from beyond America’s shores.

In general, the realization comes to discussion partners, whether they are hostile to me as a Political Exile or not, that there is no higher standard of Human Rights in the USA.

I don’t have to be a lawyer to figure this out, and neither does anyone else.

When comparing the society that they live in with the one with the most millionaires and billionaires, it is obvious that almost any other society comes out on top. Few places will have people trained to kill you when checking out a library book.

Collective cultural practices in locales like Brazil or Nigeria curb what is daily social destruction in individualist minded America. Organized for profit making, the capitalist nirvana has made racist hay out of imprisoning millions of usually nonviolent women, children and men.

I do not have a lot of impetus to comment on and on about US domestic political affairs. As a youth, I recall the city of Philadelphia defiant before the federal government: it refused to turn over records of city police shootings and killings of residents, mainly African people. What takes place in a land called the heartland of freedom of speech is almost unbelievable to Asians, Europeans and Africans “out here”. Anyone speaking out about the historical terror put on African people is going to face tremendous pressure. No matter how much the comparison to neo colonial situations is made, listeners don’t know what to say about the “Black mayors, police chiefs and celebrities” who blame the poor and condemn with a fury once reserved for White racists.

I recently explained to a shocked European woman that there is no school district in the USA that has African American history as a graduation requirement. It is a contradiction to many minds how impoverished people died and suffered in houses and on roofs for four days in the Hurricane Katrina crisis of 2005 before government agencies arrived. One reason is that the facts of how the people must live isn’t explained.

It isn’t represented on the American news and broadcasts reaching Europe how often African women, grandmothers, 90 years old, like Kathryn Johnston, are shot down by USA cops (Atlanta police, African so called Americans). Keeping a gun is not unusual, even for seniors in Atlanta and Kathryn shot at the cops when they broke down her door. Sales and drug possession supposedly was the charge. But the warrants were fake. The police then failed to cover up the assassination after putting marijuana bags in the house as the woman lay dying. They were caught and eventually confessed and were ruled guilty but are yet to go to prison almost a year later. The US Department of Justice is supposed to investigate. Meantime, in some US states, for an ordinary person, a packet of drugs in your possession can get you 60 years in prison. If a cop plants this on you or not, if you are Red, Brown and Black you are going to pay for the rest of your life. The US DOJ cannot seem to fix this.

And so, when it is mentioned that the now retired US Department of Justice head Alberto Gonzalez has been caught in lies about the ruthless firing of government lawyers, I am not impressed. A predecessor, Janet Reno, once also the top lawyer, got rid of all the US attorneys when she took office under Bill Clinton. The legal wars in courts that my partner and I fought versus the US Department of Education and US Justice Department and raged from 1993 to when we fled America in 1997. The Attorney General, Reno, former official Deval Patrick (now governor of Massachusetts) and various high ranked figures decided to derail our civil court actions. Most of these legal actions cited the 1960s Civil Rights laws on the books. The Washington DC boys and girls didn’t appreciate that we were not legal professionals-though my wife had some training as a paralegal. We entered the halls of American justice and the battle was on. The system fought back. But it was hardly by merit of legal procedure.

Lawyers, actually snipers for the elite emerged to try and snuff us out because we had the nerve to hold government and corporate giants to their own laws. We were a couple in our thirties who felt we had to fight for our humanity and that of our people. Agent provocateurs, sometimes openly declaring their US government identities, harassed us in the streets, on jobs in several states. I was barred from several law school libraries after “someone” tipped off the university who I was. Informants followed my wife to work daily and were “newly hired” co workers and subordinates looking to entrap her. The telephone surveillance nightmares many complain about in the US today were daily battlegrounds for us. Apartment break-ins and opened post mail occurred for 5 years and no postal general could apparently stop our legal, personal and medical correspondence being opened, stolen and intercepted. Most evidence of what would one day be in our refugee claim in Canada can’t be printed here. We won a legal case (Consent Decree, Charlottesville, Virginia school district, 1996) against Washington, DC anyway. Several other cases were thrown out on a technicality or completely ignored by the agency set up to handle the complaints.

And Reno had the FBI and informants on her side. FBI COINTELPRO was in effect. My partner and I challenged the society (most called COINTELPRO a relic of the past in 1993) and the government, which had only advanced the counterintelligence in the years after its 1971 exposure. Ridiculed and alienated by family, friends and most activists we shouldered then the surveillance burden felt by US residents in a post 11 September 2001 world. Fighting for your life, you are bound to get a reward: ours was being able to safely get out of America.

America’s domestic political ills didn’t begin with Alberto Gonzalez or George Bush. Or the Clinton White House residency we managed to deal a few blows to.

As far as his infamous quote about the United Nations Geneva Convention being obsolete, it never was upheld in America or by America anyhow. Canada, the political pet next door, bowed to American bureaus of inhumanity by forcing us out of Canada before our UN Convention Refugee appeal could be heard before the Canadian federal court in Ottawa in late 2000.

I know for a fact that it is true.

I faced off against that monstrosity and called them to account in a 1996 appeal to the US court of Appeals Fourth Circuit. In my brief I put them on notice that while they felt their corrupt version of a nation of laws was mighty it wasn’t above international laws. Once in Canada and the troubles continued across the border, we found a lawyer and began the process of seeking political asylum. The brief to the US federal appeals court was but one of 4000 documents in our Political Refugee claim filed with Canada in 1998. Exceptional for claims from the USA, we were found eligible. It was determined that my wife and I had a credible fear of persecution by the American government and its agencies.

To this day, I know that one doesn’t have to be a lawyer to fight injustice in America.

But if you are, or must learn to be, take note.

In relation to Human Rights, America is a standard below.

10 September 2007

From Exile,
Bankole
www.geocities.com/exiledone2002

[ In 2005, the UNHCR in Geneva Switzerland was sent a complaint by Aisha and Bankole Irungu about the situation of African so called Americans and Human Rights violations. 800 global supporters signed a petition. The US government's lack of accountability before international law is well known globally when it's foreign policies are considered. Yet there has been no redress for 'national minorities' within the US before an international forum-Native and African peoples are paper citizens but also can be banned, exiled, imprisoned and tortured with no government or NGO prepared to challenge the American state. Currently, Geneva has not effectively responded to the complaint.]