Are you claiming that your Mohawk cousins can buy & import, possess and use ANY weapons on their reservation with the full appoval of the US Governmemt? Full auto rifles for instance?
209 -tpaine-
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The provisions of 25 USC § 1302 differ in language and in substance in many respects from those contained in the constitutional provisions on which they were modeled.
The provisions of the Second and Third Amendments, in addition to those of the Seventh Amendment, were omitted entirely.
-bunkerhill-
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So.. -- Does this mean that your Mohawk cousins can buy & import, possess and use ANY weapons on their reservation with the full appoval of the US Governmemt?
Full auto rifles for instance?
Have any of them ever tried to thumb their noses at the ATF goons & the fed 'regulations'?
Could they get away with it? -- If they can, we ALL can, imo.
viz: "The Indians defended themselves with automatic weapons like RPK-machineguns and AK47's." below cf.:
Special Report
Text: Rob Tuinstra
http://www.highlife.nl/archief/2001/2001-3/sigaretten_eng.htm
Tobacco industry under fire for involvement
Smuggle cigarette is coming on
It should have been a celebration day. The worlds biggest cruise ferry 'the pride of Rotterdam' was sailing out for the first time on May 2nd from Rotterdam to the English harbor Hull. On board were numerous dignitaries that should give the first trip of the over 300 million guilders costing luxury showpiece of the ship owner P&O extra cachet. The festivities got a black border when it turned out that besides all invited guests, also an uninvited load of cigarettes with a value of one million guilders was on board. The feast more or less collapsed but the catch meant for the British customs not more then business as usual. More and more cigarettes are getting smuggled and this will only increase. In the meanwhile the tobacco industry is under fire for involvement. Several counties, and also the European Union, had taken legal actions against several tobacco multinationals. A story about the smoky world of big money.
confiscated cigarettes are being destroyed (foto ANP)
Trading smuggled cigarettes is unstoppable. This appears from figures of Dutch customs. In 1997 19 million cigarettes were caught, one year later it were 70 million. In 1999 the number grew to 250 million cigarettes. And that rise went on and on. Last year, over 340 million cigarettes were intercepted. So the Dutch Government missed 80 million guilders. The checking on cigarettes have sharpened. The famous drug dog got company of trained tobacco dogs and in for instance the harbor of Rotterdam, they nowadays use special roentgen apparatus for containers.
In other countries there is even more smuggling. Especially England is missing out billions of tax. From an investigation of the authorities appeared that one out of three cigarettes that is smoked in the United Kingdom is smuggled. Harbors like Rotterdam and Antwerp play a big role. This smuggle cost the British state in 1999 over 7 million guilders. Experts of the World Bank and the World health Organization think that the tobacco industry is working together with criminal organizations. According to reports of these organizations the tobacco producers want to force the British government to decrease the tax by smuggling. Also the producers wanted to create new markets by smuggling, now the amount of smokers is decreasing by information campaigns in the Western world.
St. Regis Mohawk Indians
The smuggling of cigarettes is a world wide billion business. That appears for instance form a huge smuggling operation between the United States and Canada, in which according to the Canadian Government, the American Mafia, the Indian tribe and a cigarette producer RJReynolds-MacDoanld Inc. (the producer of for instance Camel) are involved. This huge smuggling operation was one of the most successful ones in history, because the smuggling was so huge that the Canadian Government was forced to decrease the tax one a packet of cigarettes.
In the book 'the Merger' of Jeffrey Robinson this smuggling operation is extensively described. Shortly put the following has happened: to prevent Canadian youngsters from smoking the tax on a packet of cigarettes was highly increased between 1984 and 1993. That had two results. At first the amount of young smokers decreased, but this was followed by an increase of smuggled cigarettes.
Kingpin of this smuggle was a businessman named Larry Miller that among others imported cigarettes to the American Indian reservations. By his friendship with the Mohawk Indian Tony Laughing he smuggled via the Akwesasne Reservation billions of cigarettes.
The Akwesasne Reservation is for many years a kind of no man's land that extends over parts of Canada and the United States. On over 5,600 acres live 11,000 St. Regis Mohawk Indians that claim to live in a sovereign state. They belong to the six tribes of the Iroquois Nation, that according to the Jay-Pact from 1794 live on sovereign land. The Indians think they have nothing to do with Canadian or American laws, and especially not with the border between both counties. Their claim of living in their own state got world wide fame after they stopped a golf course on a piece of ground that they consider to be a holy cemetery.
That went not very peaceful on both sides. The Canadian Government sent hundreds of heavily armed members of the riot police. Only after an almost three months lasting siege, the growing police force cleared a camp with Mohawk Indians. The Indians defended themselves with automatic weapons like RPK-machineguns and AK47's.
No man's land
With the help of this no man's land between Canada and the United States the smuggling operation was for a long time without any problems. The method of working was simple. Cigarettes were exported from Canada tax-free and would be transported via the transit sheds in the American part of the Akwesasne Reservation to Russia. Of course nothing of this would happen, and sometimes the same day the cigarettes were back in Canada. On a certain moment one out of three cigarettes that were smoked in Canada was smuggled in this way into the country. Attracted by the cheap smuggled cigarettes, many young Canadians started smoking. Between 1991 and 1996 the amount of smoking teenagers rise with 48 percent. At last the government was forced to decrease the tax with almost three guilders per packet. The Canadian tobacco lobby and criminal middlemen like Larry Miller could go on until 1998. Then the trade by the Americans was stopped. Miller declared after his arrest that the tobacco producer knew about the smuggling. RJReynolds denied it at first, but it could be proved the company agreed to pay a fine of millions of dollars. After the gang was rounded up the Canadian Government increased the taxes again. New smuggling gangs had already filled up the hole that Miller and his Mohawk Indians left.
This example from Canada is not the only one. So the authorities of Colombia brought charges against Philip Morris. According to the Colombian authorities, the smuggling plan was invented, designed and done by the highest management of Philip Morris to increase the sell and profit as much as possible. Colombia demanded a compensation of 20 billion guilders. According to the Colombian Government, cigarette smuggling is an important mean of laundering the profit of illegal sell of drugs.
European Union
Also closer at home the cigarette smuggle is increasing. The European Union has taken action too. At a court in New York also complaints have been put froward against Philip Morris and RJReynolds. The European Union suspects both producers of involvement of the smuggling, so billions of taxes are missed. An estimated ten to twenty percent of the cigarettes in Europe are illegally on the market. Researcher Luuk Joossens is trying by order of the World Bank and the WHO to get solid proof. In the report 'Curbing the Epidemic, governments and the economics of tobacco control' he and some fellow researchers put that the tobacco industry wants to put the governments under pressure to decrease taxes. As an example not only the situation in Canada is explained, but also how England has to do with this smuggling. British tobacco producers like Rothmans, Royal tobacco and BAT lately smuggled enormous amounts of cigarettes to the paradise of taxes, Andorra. In 1993 got the 60,000 inhabitants of Andorra 13 million of packets, in 1997 it was increased to 1,520 million packets.
Now the candidate EU-member State Cyprus is discovered by the organized crime as a handy export destination. Converted to the total inhabitants of the isle, every Cypriot has to smoke three packets of cigarettes a day from his birth to justify the amount of imported cigarettes.
Camorra
Now the war against smuggling cigarettes is high on the agenda of the European Union. Besides the juridical way that is done in New York now, several European customs have sharpened their surveillance. But especially in Italy this has little success. The Camorra from Naples controls especially the southeast coast of this county. A while ago two Italian custom officers died during a pursuit of the smugglers. The well-organized Camorra daily smuggles with fast speedboats millions of cigarettes from Montenegro to Italy into the European Union. By land it goes on via armored cars. It this area underground hiding places and transit sheds are discovered. The Italian police estimate that over 70,000 people in this region are busy smuggling.
International criminal investigation services like Interpol thinks that more and more drugs-smugglers switch over to smuggling cigarettes. 'There are two reasons for that,' according to a spokesman. 'First is that the law is not sufficiently adapted, so the punishments are relatively low. Second is that smuggling cigarettes is very lucrative. Every year the international organized crime earns many billions of dollars to this kind of smuggling. It is time that governments internationally use their power to stop this. We lose more and more ground.'
With a EU standard of minimal 57% tax on a packet of cigarettes, it seems wishful thinking. The incurable smoker keeps on smoking, and rather as cheap as possible. The advance of the smuggled cigarette seems unstoppable.
viz: "...the tribe won't let the U.S. government patrol its lands.
Rowena General, chief of staff for the Mohawks, said the tribe has no history of trust with the U.S. government. Many tribal elders recall decades past when, they argue, local and federal authorities would harass them and juries would convict them for crimes simply because they were Indians.
"Not by any means are we inviting federal agencies to come into our territory and police our communities," General said.""
http://www.why-war.com/news/2002/02/17/usreserv.html
US: Reservations Pose Border Risk
Laura Sullivan | Baltimore Sun | February 17, 2002
"As U.S. officials worried about terrorists tighten security at ports and borders, they have become concerned about the more than 20 American Indian reservations that line hundreds of miles of the borders with Canada and Mexico. Neither the U.S. Border Patrol nor any other state or federal agency has jurisdiction to patrol Indian lands without permission."
Potential U.S. Entry Through Indian Lands Raises Terror Alarms
TOHONO O'ODHAM NATION, Ariz. — Here in the shadeless valleys of the Southwest, where the dust whips between patches of dry shrubs and cactuses, the line between Mexico and the United States is a tattered wire fence that pleases no one.
To the Tohono O'odham Indians, the fence is an arbitrary marker that bars them from moving freely across ancestral land that long ago extended into Mexico. To the U.S. government, the fence is symbolic of a glaring weakness in its war on terrorism.
As U.S. officials worried about terrorists tighten security at ports and borders, they have become concerned about the more than 20 American Indian reservations that line hundreds of miles of the borders with Canada and Mexico. Neither the U.S. Border Patrol nor any other state or federal agency has jurisdiction to patrol Indian lands without permission.
The lands are often desolate and remote. But in recent years, a rising number of smugglers and illegal immigrants have taken advantage of such reservations to travel, virtually unnoticed, into the United States. Here on the Tohono O'odham reservation, U.S. officials say, more than 1,000 cross into the country each day.
Law enforcement officials who had never given much thought to the Indian reservations on the borders are suddenly horrified by the idea that terrorists could sneak through these reservations and into the country with a four-wheel-drive vehicle, a snowmobile, or even just a backpack and bottle of water.
"I woke up one morning shortly after Sept. 11 and said to myself, 'I don't know how many of these tribes are on the border, but I know there are a lot,' " said James W. Ziglar, commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. "I knew we were going to have to increase border security" at the reservations.
Ziglar said he and other officials regard the Indian tribes not as a hindrance but as key allies in helping to seal the U.S. border against terrorists.
"This is a grand opportunity to reach out to Indian tribes, who have been segregated from our society, and integrate them into our society and really make them feel part of the American experience," Ziglar said, "because they have a very significant role in the protection of this country."
U.S. officials have launched a broad effort to try to forge closer ties with the tribes. Representatives of 19 reservations accepted invitations to a conference last month in Washington that focused on border security. Federal officials also have sent liaisons to talk with tribe members. In those meetings, officials have urged the tribes to lift curbs that limit patrols of Indian land by U.S. border agents.
So far, the path to collaboration has been anything but easy. Many American Indian groups have gone to these discussions with age-old stories of abuse and deceit at the hands of the U.S. government. To some, the idea of welcoming federal agents to roam their land at will is all but unthinkable.
Last month, Attorney General John Ashcroft told a meeting of American Indian leaders, "We must establish permanent formal relations" with Indian tribes "in order to secure the safety and security of all Americans."
But one tribal elder likened the process to trying to cross a river where there has never been a bridge.
The issue is sensitive for the Tohono O'odham, who also go by the name of Papago. In the early 1990s, when the number of illegal immigrants crossing the reservation began soaring, the Tohono O'odham opened their lands to more border agents. Tighter immigration policies had effectively shut down the borders near San Diego, Calif., and El Paso, Texas, so droves of illegal immigrants went looking for new entryways across the desert.
The Tohono O'odham's ancestral lands have been desecrated by the waves of people, who leave trash and trample vegetation. Their homes have been left vulnerable to break-ins by travelers so hungry and thirsty that dust cakes the crevices of their lips.
The reservation also has become a magnet for drug haulers. The Tohono O'odham Police Department seizes more drugs each year than any other local police department in the country. Last year, the department confiscated 43,000 pounds of marijuana from smugglers.
But although the Border Patrol has helped stymie some of the traffic, many Tohono O'odham complain of patrol agents who stop them three or four times a day, mistaking them for immigrants and demanding U.S. identification, which nation members do not have. Some also contend that the Border Patrol's vehicles do more damage than illegal immigrants do.
The tribe is divided about evenly between those willing to work with the Border Patrol and those who reject the notion that a government can impede people's movement across borders or any other land. Many Tohono O'odham members feed and offer water to the immigrants making the three-to four-day journey across the desert.
"The Border Patrol and the nation have come a long way," Henry Ramon, vice chairman of the nation, said recently. "We have tried to make them more aware of our cultural sensitivities, our sacred sites and our beliefs — that the plants, trees, the cactus, the wildlife and the universe are all interconnected. They cannot just come in and think this is their land."
From a hill overlooking one of the Tohono O'odhams' many desert valleys, police Chief Lawrence Seligman watches with night-vision goggles as streams of illegal immigrants wind around the dry shrubs and head toward state Route 86, where vans wait to carry them to jobs picking vegetables or washing dishes. Each year, more men, women and children try to cross.
"It's common knowledge in Mexico that this is the place to go," Seligman said. "In light of Sept. 11, if the concern is protecting the border, this part of the U.S. border has a lot of illegal traffic.
"Those who are a direct threat, if they chose to, could more easily cross here than many other areas to get into the country," he said.
Other Indian nations have been less willing to open their reservations. The St. Regis Mohawk Tribe, which lines the border with Canada, has declined the government's request to patrol its land.
That reservation, called Akwesasne, is but a dot on the map in upstate New York. Yet over the past decade, a rising number of smugglers, carrying drugs and human cargo, have sought to enter the United States through the tribe's land and waterways to evade tighter patrols elsewhere.
In 1998, in the tribe's first attempt at working with federal law enforcement, officials broke up a smuggling ring that was bringing 150 Chinese into the country each month. Despite that success, the tribe won't let the U.S. government patrol its lands.
Rowena General, chief of staff for the Mohawks, said the tribe has no history of trust with the U.S. government. Many tribal elders recall decades past when, they argue, local and federal authorities would harass them and juries would convict them for crimes simply because they were Indians.
"Not by any means are we inviting federal agencies to come into our territory and police our communities," General said.
The tribe appreciates the U.S. government's new emphasis on guarding the border, General said, and suggests that federal agencies train the Mohawk Nation's police force so it could patrol the border — which some U.S. officials said they are willing to do.
Part of the difficulty in finding a solution to border security is that the 21 reservations on the country's borders — and four others that are within miles of a border — embody cultural experiences as disparate as the lands they inhabit.
"They are each individual entities," said Robert Harris, an associate chief of the U.S. Border Patrol who organized last month's conference. "There is no cookie-cutter approach.
"It's an area of vulnerability. You've got a million people streaming across the border each year unchecked," many coming across reservation lands, he said. "Yes, most are only coming across for a better way of life, but it only takes one [terrorist]."
Next to the Tohono O'odham reservation, at the Border Patrol station in Nogales, Ariz., agents said they see mostly Mexican nationals trying to cross. But, said Ben Johnson, a Border Patrol agent, over the past several years they have also caught people from Chile and Bolivia, as well as several from the Middle East.
Down in the desert, where the cactuses look like beacons calling people home, it's hard to imagine a band of terrorists ducking under the shrubbery and carrying gallon jugs of water, as illegal immigrants do each day.
Yet Ramon, the vice chairman of the Tohono O'odham Nation, acknowledges that the threat exists. And so long as the federal government respects the tribe's way of life, he said, it will do what it can to aid the U.S. mission.
"The world is changing," he said. "We're scared, too."
www.sunspot.net/
"Although U.S. and Canadian authorities have the right to inspect the land for illegal contraband or persons crossing without permission, this right is often not exercised.
Instead, a militant group of Akwesasne, equipped with stockpiles of small arms, acts as defenders of the
land, exercising control over the individuals entering their territory.
http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/pdf-files/AsianOrgCrime_Canada.pdf
"We had only one automatic weapon, an AK-47 that one Oklahoma boy had brought back from Vietnam as a souvenir" (Crow Dog 126-127)..."
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/1290/jeremy_wounded_knee.html
-Jeremy Kyle Brown-Wounded Knee 1973
"As Native gangs gain more access to fully automatic weapons..."
viz:
Native American Communication Office
http://naco.umcom.org/resources/bravespirit.htm
Dancing with a Brave Spirit:
Telling the Truth About Native America
1999-2000
Native gangs, relatively unheard of until 1992,
have become visible in urban areas and on reservations.
More than 180 gangs have been identified in Indian Country
within the last few years. While Native gangs have been relatively unsophisticated in the past, they will pose an increasing problem as they become more organized. Many tribes still remain in denial regarding gang problems in both tribal and urban communities.
As Native gangs gain more access to fully automatic weapons,
their manpower and firepower will exceed that of tribal law
enforcement. With reduction in the funding for tribal law enforcement, Native gangs will become more confrontational.9