After poking around the internet I've found up with a post which is more detailed and less "diplomatic" in describing the offenses committed by Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzales:
Posted by Brenda Norrell - November 19, 2008 at 12:49 am
Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales indicted for criminal conspiracy in private prison profiteering, resulting in prisoner assaults
By Brenda Norrell
WILLACY COUNTY, Texas -- US Vice President Dick Cheney was indicted today for a prison profiteering scheme and charged with abuse of prisoners. Cheney invested millions in the Vanguard Group, an investment management company with interests in the prison companies in charge of detention centers. Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was also indicted in the prison profiteering scheme, resulting in ongoing prisoner assaults and at least one murder.
Human rights activists urged a probe into prison profiteering after the private prison corporations GEO Group and CCA (Corrections Corporation of America) [my bold] began receiving enormous federal contracts to build detention centers to imprison migrants. [my bold] GEO's new migrant prisons including prisons in Laredo, Texas and Jena, Louisiana. [my bold] [dear old Jena, home of the notorious lynching tree and the Jena 6 --click on "Jena 6" in tags for more posts on that story]
Human rights activists said the fever-pitched racism mounted toward immigrants at the US/Mexico border was induced for the purpose of prison profiteering by US officials reaping enormous profits. The increased arrests of migrants resulted in profits and a long list of new prison construction contracts for the GEO Group, formerly Wackenhut, [my bold] both with a long history of assaults and murders in prisons.
A Texas grand jury indicted Cheney today and accused him of at least misdemeanor assaults of inmates by allowing inmates to assault fellow inmates. Gonzales was charged with having used his position to stop investigations into assaults committed in a prison for profit in Willacy County, Texas. Both Cheney and Gonzales were charged with engaging in organized criminal activity.
Last month, a Willacy County grand jury indicted the GEO Group, on a murder charge in the death of a prisoner days before his release in 2001. The indictment alleged the GEO Group allowed other inmates to beat Gregorio de la Rosa Jr. to death with padlocks stuffed into socks. The death happened at the Raymondville facility. A jury ordered the company to pay de la Rosa's family $47.5 million in a civil judgment in 2006. The Cheney-Gonzales indictment refers to the de la Rosa case.
Human rights activists protested both Raymondville and Hutto prisons in southwestern Texas in recent years. At Hutto, migrant women and children were abused. ICE refused to allow a UN Rapporteur into Hutto. [my bold]
During the Bush-Cheney regime, prisons of torture and prisons for migrants became synonymous with the name GEO, from Guantanamo to migrant prisons in the south and along the southwest border.
Cheney said Guantanamo was vital in 2005 and detainees could expect to be treated better here than "by virtually any other government on the face of the earth." Geo was awarded a contract for the continued management of the Migrant Operations Center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in Nov. 2, 2006. Recently, GEO received a contract for a migrant prison in Jena, La. GEO also received a contract for housing "criminal aliens" in the US, as stated on the GEO website.
GEO's migrant prisons were not restricted to the US. GEO also assumed a management contract in the Campsfield House Immigration Removal Center in England.
GEO was not the only one profiteering. The Wackenhut Corp. was also profiteering from transporting migrants from the border after their arrests. The two companies split in 2003.
All along the border, while GEO was building prisons, GEO's other half, Wackenhut Corp., was profiteering from the arrest of migrants from the borders.
The United States Customs and Border Protection agency entered into the contract with Wackenhut Corp., to transport arrested migrants from the border. Wackenhut is now the domestic subsidiary of the U.K.-based security giant Group 4 Securicor. [my bold]
It comes as no surprise that the Vanguard Group is also currently a major shareholder in Halliburton, [my bold] the longtime war profiteer in Iraq. Cheney's investments in the Vanguard Group are estimated at between $25 and $86 million, since exact numbers have not been released.
While the US filled its prisons with migrants, with a price on their heads, the number of Native American prisoners soared.
The US Department of Justice recently released a study showing that Native American inmates in Indian country jails increased by 24 percent between 2004 and 2007. [my bold] The figures for Native Americans in all facilities -- tribal, federal and state -- increased 4.5 percent. Suicides, attempted suicides, deaths and escapes were cited as the result of deteriorating prison conditions.
Human rights activists hope the indictments of Cheney and Gonzales are the first of many indictments of the Bush-Cheney administration.
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/brenda-norrell/2008/11/cheney-indicted-prison-profiteering-texas
November 19, 2008
Cheney-Gonzales Bust Linked to Immigrant/Native American Abuse
May 4, 2008
Kansas Greets Longest Walk
I had a really hard time editing this post. Although I wanted to get everyone’s name in, it seemed to run too long. Eventually I decided there are exceptions. Sometimes it’s well worth the effort to scroll & scroll & scroll. Here’s another story to raise your spirits, to keep in mind that we are all connected to mother earth, and must love each other as well as our heritage.
Longest Walk herald for Mother Earth at Kansas Capitol
Written by Brenda Norrell, Saturday, 03 May 2008
Dennis Banks, cofounder of the American Indian Movement, and Kickapoo Chairman Steve Cadue joined forces on the steps of the Kansas Statehouse to draw attention to the destruction of Mother Earth, vanishing rivers and assaults on American Indian rights.
Standing with the Longest Walkers, Kickapoo Chairman Cadue said his people in northern Kansas have been hauling water around the clock because the Delaware River is dry, threatening the economic and cultural survival of his people.
[...] “We had the right to the water and the land before the establishment of Kansas,” Chairman Cadue said. The federal court case, the Winters Doctrine, established the rights of Kickapoo to water. The Winters Doctrine gave American Indians first rights to water over the states, he said.
Now, threatened with the loss of their economic development, culture and survival, Chairman Cadue asked Dennis Banks to carry the message of the Kickapoo people to the President of the United States.
“Tell the President that the Kickapoo people need water, the treaties need to be honored,” Chairman Cadue said.
Speaking on the statehouse steps, Dennis Banks, coordinator of the southern route of the Longest Walk, thanked the walkers from the northern route for their tremendous effort and being part of the historic journey.
Banks said during the Longest Walk of 1978, walkers gathered 1,500,000 signatures to ensure American Indian rights. He said the Longest Walk was successful and defeated anti-Indian legislation and countered the Washington legislators who sponsored it.
[...] Banks said when the Longest Walk began in 1978, walkers spoke out in defense of sacred San Francisco Peaks near Flagstaff, Arizona. San Francisco Peaks are sacred to all American Indians Nations in the region, who continue to conduct sacred ceremonies and gather medicine plants there. However, the Peaks are once again under attack by the corporate plan to use sewer waste water for fake snow production for recreational skiers on the mountain.
“We are going to challenge Sen. McCain wherever he stops,” Banks said of the issue of protecting San Francisco Peaks.
Further, Banks said chromium contamination is threatening the survival of the Mohave, Havasupai and Hualapai in Arizona and California.
Pointing out the crisis on the national scale, Banks said it is time for U.S. presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton “to stop their squabbling and focus on what is going to save this country.”
[...] Banks said American Indian people are stewards, with the responsibility of protecting future generations. “There will be no Seventh Generation if we don’t say anything, do anything.”
[...] “We all need water, we need water for our ceremonies; we are born of water.”
During the capitol rally, Stephanie Cole, spokesperson for the Sierra Club in Kansas, spoke of the partnership of the Sierra Club and American Indians in protecting the environment, including the nearby Haskell Wetlands, a sacred site on the Longest Walk. Cole also spoke of the threat of new power plants in Holcomb. She said most of the power won’t even go to Kansas.
“We will be draining our water resources in western Kansas to generate power
for Colorado and Texas,” Cole said.
Raelin Butler, president of the Haskell-Baker Wetlands Preservation Organization, said the cultural and environment issues of protecting the wetlands are a focus of the walkers on their journey through Kansas.
Kansas Governor Sebelius’ Proclamation of the Longest Walk was also read during the rally. Gov. Sebelius’ proclamation celebrates the 30th anniversary of the walk and praises walkers for their efforts to protect the environment.
Calvin Magpie Jr., Cheyenne Arapahoe coordinating the runners on the Longest Walk Northern Route, explained that the staffs carried by the walkers contain a feather or contribution from each community the walkers have passed through since leaving Alcatraz on Feb. 11, 2008. Magpie also presented Banks with one of the staffs.
Banks praised the walkers on the northern route, who walked over the Sierra Nevadas in Nevada and Rocky Mountains in Colorado, including the 11,000 foot Monarch Pass in Colorado, so far on their 3,600 mile trek to Washington D.C. “We’re getting sunburned on the southern walk, these guys were getting frostbite,” Banks said.
Following the presentation at the Kansas Capitol, Dennis Banks, with a delegation from the southern route, walked into Lawrence, Kansas, with the northern route. Walkers were welcomed at Haskell Indian College with a feast of buffalo and roasted corn.
Banks and the Earthcycles radio crew, Longest Walk Talk Radio, left immediately after dinner, driving through the night, to support the Yankton Sioux in South Dakota. More than 40 Yankton have been arrested in two waves of arrests by the County Sheriff deputies and South Dakota State Police, as Yankton struggle to protect their sovereign land from a large scale, disease-producing hog farm under construction in the heart of their community, one-half mile from the Yankton Head Start Center.