Wampum

ABC runs a two-pager by a political reporter. Maureen Dowd does a drive-bye, forgetting that there actually is a factual record. That's a banner year for Peltier copy in the MSM.

Brigitte Mohnhaupt will be released on March 27 and then remain on parole for five years, after 24 years of incarceration for participation in the Red Army Faction, also known as the Bader-Meinhoff Gang¹. The Oberlandesgericht Stuttgart [senior district court] held the statutory parole hearing at the conclusion of the minimum 24 year sentence and concluded:

"The court sees no indication that the defendant poses any further danger. The parole ruling is justifiable in terms of public safety."

In addition to participating in operations that engaged or attempted to engage German conservative politicians, politically active corporate executives, and collaterally, ten police officers, she participated in an attack team that engaged the transport vehicle of the commander of the NATO Central Army Group with an RPG-7 in September 1981.

Like Mohnhaupt, Eva Sybille Haule's minimum period in detention expires this year. She was convicted of participating in operations that attempted to engage a NATO school (currently the NATO Geographic Officers Course and related senior staff courses) with a car bomb and engaged an armaments CEO. She too will be eligible for parole.

Nathalie Menigon, Jean-Marc Rouillan, and Georges Cipriani, former members of Action Directe, have served 20 years for operations that targeted the CEO of Renault and the head of sales of the French Ministry of Defense.

I don't think it matters which theory of the case one subscribes to, good Special Agents Ronald Williams and Jack Coler, bad Bob Robideau and Darelle Butler (acquitted, self-defense) and bad Leonard Peltier, or the reverse. The 1977 War, and it was a Dirty War, between the FBI and many others acting in a conspiracy of crime under the color of colonial oppression, and the (pre-faction) AIM and many others also acting in a conspiracy of crime under the color of indigenous resistance, has been over for nearly three decades. Over 100 people died in and out of custody during those years, and Indians die every year in custody. Even New Hampshire under Howard Dean had a statistically demonstrable over-incarceration rate for Abenakis.

The point is, its over. Unlike Geffen, I was not shocked when Bill Clinton declined to grant clemency to a political prisoner that politics has long ago passed. More problematic is the Individual Indian Trust issue, and the conduct in question didn't begin after the December 2000 coup d'état. It began early on Bill Clinton's watch.

¹ Ulrike Meinhoff died by hanging while in custody in Stuttgart-Stammheim on 9 May 1976. Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe died of gun shot wounds on 18 October 1977, and Irmgard Möller survivied four stab wounds inflicted the same day, all while in custody in Stuttgart-Stammheim. All are officially "suicides" or "attempted suicide".