Obama to Native Americans: The cost of access in the age of spying

Obama's campaign extracted a million dollars Friday from Native Americans, as the US continued to target American Indians with spying and false intelligence

By Brenda Norrell

While many Native Americans were cold and hungry this winter, President Obama charged $10,000 to $35,000 per ticket for American Indians to attend his political campaign fundraiser on Friday targeting the money of Native Americans. There was another charge of $10,000 to have one's photo taken with Obama.

Obama hoped to extract $1 million from Native Americans from the 70 people attending.

This news came at the same time that the COINTELPRO type spying on American Indians, with its dangerous misinformation and hysteria, was exposed.

Anonymous hacktivists exposed the e-mails of the private global intelligence firm Stratfor, and the misinformed and absurd comments of Stratfor as it was spying on Occupy Austin and Deep Green Resistance.

Stratfor worked with Texas DPS to infiltrate activists. As they infiltrated and spied on activists, they targeted the Deep Green Resistance website, which has a 1973 photo of the occupation of Wounded Knee. The website also has Austin's Indigenous Struggle Solidarity Statement and links to Native American organizations.

Stratfor's false and outdated information, exposed in the hacked files, is a good example of US flawed intelligence. It is this type of flawed US intelligence responsible for the murder of innocent people, and torture of innocent people by the US, throughout the world.

This type of false intelligence hype has far reaching consequences for those who are the victims of self serving exaggerated information, outdated info, and outright lies. The consequences are seen around the world, in the reckless use of drones to assassinate people by the US; the torture in secret prisons; and the creation of bogus wars.

Meanwhile, while US private intelligence spies on Native Americans, some American Indians paid between $10,000 and $35,000 to be at Obama's campaign fundraiser in DC on Friday. For another $10,000 they could have their photo taken with Obama. Obama's campaign expected to extract about $1 million from Native Americans -- while many Native people do not have firewood, food, medicine, safe homes or safe drinking water.

This disparity between the haves and the have-nots in Indian country reveals a truth about the Indian "gaming" industry, an industry devised by non-Indians to profiteer in Indian country. Today, millions of dollars in profits from Indian casinos go to non-Indian management firms, non-Indian attorneys, non-Indian lobbyists, non-Indian charities and to the states.

While only a few Native Americans profit, most of Indian country continues to live in desperate need of jobs, housing, firewood, clothing and even clean water and food.

In the slick campaign to create the illusion of Indian gaming, the word "gambling" was changed to "gaming" to make it palatable, and to hide the truth of gambling and its addiction.

The slick public relations campaigns continues to deceive by way of the media. The media is now complicit in these crimes against humanity as it promotes gambling, the expansion of coal-fired power plants and mining, from the Navajo Nation to the Plains, and elsewhere in Indian country. The media promotes the corporate destruction and disease of environmental racism.

At the same time, the media attempts to silence the voices of grassroots Native Americans and publish dishonest articles denying the holocaust of Indian boarding schools and the genocide of Indigenous Peoples.

It was the chosen few "haves" in Indian country that President Obama targeted with his fundraising on Friday.

Obama spoke of unemployment in Indian country at the fundraiser, without pointing out the irony of the money he was extracting from Indian country.

Obama told those who paid the price of access, “As long as Native Americans face unemployment rates that are far higher than the national average, we’ve got more work to do.”

Who paid for those tickets and photos?

Did Native Americans attending pay with money from their tribe's general funds, funds that were meant for Native Americans who are desperately in need?

Who approved these expenses?

The question now is whether Obama will give back this million dollars, directly to Native Americans who are cold and hungry in Indian country this winter.

 Also see: US spies target Wounded Knee 1973 photo and Indian organizations:

http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2012/01/us-spies-focus-on-wounded-knee-1973.html