The Lakota Indians have announced they are declaring independence from the United States.

The Lakota Indians, who gave the world legendary warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from treaties with the United States.

“We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us,” long-time Indian rights activist Russell Means said.

A delegation of Lakota leaders has delivered a message to the State Department, and said they were unilaterally withdrawing from treaties they signed with the federal government of the U.S., some of them more than 150 years old.

The group also visited the Bolivian, Chilean, South African and Venezuelan embassies, and would continue on their diplomatic mission and take it overseas in the coming weeks and months.

Lakota country includes parts of the states of Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming.

The new country would issue its own passports and driving licences, and living there would be tax-free - provided residents renounce their U.S. citizenship, Mr Means said.

The treaties signed with the U.S. were merely “worthless words on worthless paper,” the Lakota freedom activists said.

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Russell Means

Find out more on the official Lakota Freedom Web site. In stating why the Lakota are declaring independence from the United States, they are unsparing and candid about the “colonial apartheid system imposed on the Lakota Sioux.”

The devastation this has wrought is clear:

Lakota men have a life expectancy of less than 44 years, lowest of any country in the World (excluding AIDS) including Haiti.

The Lakota infant mortality rate is 5x the U.S. Average.

The Tuberculosis rate on Lakota reservations is approx 800% higher than the U.S national average.

97% of our Lakota people live below the poverty line.

Unemployment rates on our reservations are approximately 85%.

Teenage suicide rate is 150% higher than the U.S national average for this group.

Our Lakota language is an Endangered Language, on the verge of extinction.

Here is Glenn Beck’s hour-long interview with Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul which aired on CNN earlier this evening.

Singer and songwriter Dan Fogelberg has died at 56. View classic performances of “Leader of the Band” and “Same Old Lang Syne” right here.

Dan Fogelberg, the singer and songwriter whose hits “Leader of the Band” and “Same Old Lang Syne” helped define the soft-rock era, died Sunday at his home in Maine after battling prostate cancer. He was 56.

His death was announced Sunday in a statement released by his family through the firm Scoop Marketing and also posted on his Web site.

Mr. Fogelberg learned he had advanced prostate cancer in 2004. In a statement then, he thanked fans for their support. “It is truly overwhelming and humbling to realize how many lives my music has touched so deeply all these years,” he wrote. “I thank you from the very depths of my heart.”

Mr. Fogelberg’s music was powerful in its simplicity. He did not rely on the volume of his voice to convey his emotions; instead, they came through in his soft, tender delivery and his poignant lyrics. Songs like “Same Old Lang Syne,” in which a man reminisces after meeting an old girlfriend by chance during the holidays, became classics not only for his performance, but also for their engaging story lines.

Mr. Fogelberg’s heyday was in the 1970s and early ’80s, when he scored several platinum and multiplatinum records fueled by such hits as “The Power of Gold” and “Leader of the Band,” a touching tribute he wrote to his father, a bandleader. Mr. Fogelberg put out his first album in 1972.

Source.

More information on the official Dan Fogelberg Web site.

“Leader of the Band”



“Same Old Lang Syne”