Recorded Octo­ber 28, 2007
MP3: Side 1 | Side 2
REALAUDIO

Con­tin­u­ing analy­sis from FTR#550, this pro­gram looks at the use of native, “unrep­re­sented” peo­ples by polit­i­cal ele­ments that don’t appear to be gen­uinely con­cerned with the wel­fare of those pop­u­la­tion groups. Specif­i­cally, we look at a strange brew of Tibetan Bud­dhists, Mon­go­lian Bud­dhists, Islamists and Pan-Turkists work­ing under the aus­pices of the House of Hab­s­burg in order to pre­cip­i­tate the seces­sion of resource-rich provinces from China. It is Mr. Emory’s opin­ion that the use of unrep­re­sented, “native” peo­ples by ultra-reactionary inter­ests like the Haps­burgs is a cyn­i­cal manip­u­la­tion of these pop­u­la­tions. Rather than sin­cerely cham­pi­oning the inter­ests of these groups and pro­mot­ing their wel­fare, sus­te­nance and demo­c­ra­tic gov­er­nance, they appear to be using these groups as vehi­cles for the desta­bi­liza­tion and par­ti­tion­ing of larger nations—China in par­tic­u­lar. It is for the pur­poses of covert desta­bi­liza­tion that the House of Hab­s­burg and its ally the Under­ground Reich appear to be “going native.” One should not fail to note that Native Amer­i­can tribes like the Lakota and Native Hawai­ians have been focal points of the Haps­burg polit­i­cal front the UNPO—“The Unrep­re­sented Nations and Peo­ples Orga­ni­za­tion.” One of the most impor­tant points of the broad­cast con­cerns the close col­lab­o­ra­tion between Ger­many, Ger­man polit­i­cal par­ties of the cen­ter, right and left and the Dalai Lama. Directed at weak­en­ing or frag­ment­ing China, this col­lab­o­ra­tion has enlisted the sup­port of the South Tyrolean inde­pen­dence move­ment and used that move­ment as a par­a­digm for fur­ther­ing Tibetan inde­pen­dence from China. Indeed, the Tibetan and Mon­go­lian inde­pen­dence move­ments and the South Tyrolean sep­a­ratists allied with them are direct man­i­fes­ta­tions of what the Ger­mans call “Volksgruppenrechte”—the rights of eth­nic minori­ties. The super­fi­cially noble appear­ance of this prin­ci­ple should not blind an observer to the cyn­i­cal, fascis­tic ends toward which this ded­i­ca­tion to the cause of eth­nic minori­ties is directed. The sec­ond pro­gram (FTR#616) sets forth two other man­i­fes­ta­tions of the Ger­man “Volks­grup­pen­rechte.” Ger­man offi­cials have cited the Holy Roman Empire (all white, all Chris­t­ian) as an appro­pri­ate prece­dent and model for the oper­a­tion of the EU—no “eth­nic minori­ties” need apply, thank you very much. In addi­tion, Ger­man eth­nic think­ing expressed through the Ber­tels­mann foun­da­tion has found favor in cer­tain U.S. mil­i­tary cir­cles, which are propos­ing to redraw the map of the Mid­dle East along “eth­nic lines.” If enacted, this out­crop­ping of Volks­grup­pen­rechte will fun­da­men­tally alter life and the bal­ance of power in the Mid­dle East.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Dis­cus­sion of the pos­si­ble use of Native Hawai­ians and other native peo­ples of the United States to weaken or dis­solve the U.S. at some point in the future; the World War II alliance between Nazi Ger­many, its Japan­ese ally and the young Dalai Lama; the Nazi ori­gins of the South Tyrolean sep­a­ratists who hud­dled with the Dalai Lama dur­ing his visit to Bolzano [Italy]; review of the roles of Otto von Bolschwing and Helena von Damm in infil­trat­ing the Repub­li­can party and turn­ing it into a vehi­cle for the Naz­i­fi­ca­tion of the United States.

1. Return­ing to a sub­ject that Mr. Emory dealt with in FTR#’s 547, 548, 549, 550, these pro­grams delve deeper into the Dalai Lama’s his­tor­i­cal con­nec­tions to the Third Reich and ele­ments of the SS. In addi­tion, the broad­casts set forth more infor­ma­tion about the use of eth­nic minor­ity groups to desta­bi­lize and frag­ment larger coun­tries. The Dalai Lama has been active on behalf of Tibetan sep­a­ratism and the sep­a­ratist move­ment of Mon­go­lia as well–both sep­a­ratist move­ments are directed at frag­ment­ing China in such as a way as to per­mit a for­eign entity desirous of exploit­ing China’s nat­ural resources with­out hav­ing to reckon with the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment. As will be seen below, this same tac­tic might be used in the future to frag­ment or weaken the United States, as well. Much of the pro­gram mate­r­ial high­lights the pro­found Ger­man sup­port for the Dalai Lama’s sep­a­ratist efforts, as well as the extent to which the Ger­man tac­tic of “Volks­grup­pen­rechte” has served as the tem­plate for the Dalai Lama’s activ­i­ties. Indeed, the Dalai Lama has drawn sup­port from the South Tyrolean sep­a­ratist move­ment, which seeks to tease this German-speaking minor­ity region in North­ern Italy from the Ital­ian nation as a whole. (Seri­ous lis­ten­ers are referred to FTR#’s 547, 548, 549, 550 in order to gain an under­stand­ing of the fun­da­men­tal back­ground mate­r­ial nec­es­sary for a seri­ous com­pre­hen­sion of the mate­r­ial.) “The Ger­man chan­cel­lor is rein­forc­ing Berlin’s spe­cial rela­tion­ships to Chi­nese sep­a­ratists, in spite of Beijing’s mas­sive protests. The Dalai Lama had talks in the Ger­man Chan­cellery, for the first time, Sun­day, Sept. 23. He is the leader of a self-proclaimed Tibetan exile gov­ern­ment, with its head­quar­ters in India, which is call­ing for the seces­sion of Tibet from the Peo­ples Repub­lic of China or at least spe­cial rights in accor­dance with the Ger­man model of ‘auton­omy.’ The Dalai Lama is a west­ern ally, help­ing to weaken Bei­jing and ham­per its rise to the sta­tus of world power. For decades he has been enjoy­ing the cross-party sym­pa­thy in Ger­many and is receiv­ing sup­port from con­ser­v­a­tives, lib­er­als and Greens alike. Still his meet­ing with Angela Merkel has been met with crit­i­cism, because busi­ness cir­cles fear retal­ia­tory actions on the part of the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment will have a neg­a­tive effect on their busi­ness. Ger­man strate­gies of attri­tion against Bei­jing, their his­tor­i­cal pre­cur­sors in the first half of the 20th cen­tury and the scenes of cur­rent mea­sures, are the themes of a series of arti­cles that german-foreign-policy.com began Mon­day Sept. 24. . . . The role model for the rights of auton­omy, that the Dalai Lama is demand­ing from Bei­jing, is pat­terned on the Ger­man eth­nic model ‘Volks­grup­pen­rechte’ (the rights of eth­nic minor­ity groups). In the North­ern Ital­ian autonomous region of Trentino-Alto Adige (South Tyrol) this is in force and has done noth­ing toward end­ing efforts toward seces­sion. Already in 1993 an assis­tant of the Euro­pean Acad­emy Bozen, in Alto Adige, con­tacted the ‘for­eign min­is­ter’ of the Tibetan exile government.[2] This acad­emy, that has an ad hoc ‘Volks­grup­pen­recht’, Insti­tute was founded with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of the for­eign min­istry of Germany.[3] The Dalai Lama per­son­ally vis­ited Bolzano in 1997. Still dur­ing the 90s, the Tibetan exile gov­ern­ment began con­sul­ta­tions with the Euro­pean Acad­emy on the ques­tion of ‘Volks­grup­pen­recht’. ‘South Tyrol has def­i­nitely the char­ac­ter of a role model for Tibet’ explained the Tibetan exile ruler dur­ing his sec­ond visit to Bolzano in 2005. . . . In meet­ing the Dalai Lama, the Chan­cellery is tak­ing a major risk. As one hears in Berlin, Bei­jing is prob­a­bly avoid­ing any con­flict with Ger­many and Ger­man firms, imme­di­ately pre­ced­ing the Olympic Games. The oppor­tu­nity for inten­si­fy­ing sup­port for Tibetan sep­a­ratism with­out risks are there­fore grow­ing. And this, it is said, is quite desir­able. As Roland Koch, the prime min­is­ter of Hesse, is said to have learned dur­ing his trip to Tibet last July, the chances are grow­ing to inten­sify the pres­sure on the People’s Repub­lic of China and Bei­jing is wor­ried that if the Tibetan dig­ni­tary (72) dies, rebel­lions could break out in Tibet and in other national minor­ity areas. Accord­ing to Koch, Chi­nese gov­ern­ment cir­cles are speak­ing of the dan­ger of Tibet becom­ing a ‘pow­der keg’ [9] with seri­ous con­se­quences. ‘If it doesn’t work out good there (in Tibet, the author) it could have reper­cus­sions in Xin­jiang and Inner Mon­go­lia’ rejoices the Dalai Lama with the two other poten­tial seces­sion­ist regions in mind: ‘after all, these three autonomous regions stretch over half of the Chi­nese ter­ri­tory’. . . .”
(“Strate­gies of Attri­tion (Part I)”; German-Foreign-Policy.com; 9/24/2007.)

2. Sup­ple­ment­ing infor­ma­tion about the Dalai Lama’s Nazi con­nec­tions pre­sented in FTR#547, the pro­gram notes that both Ger­many and Japan were allied with the Dalai Lama as early as 1942! “ . . . Ger­man plans for Tibet became top­i­cal for the last time, dur­ing the Nazi rule. in 1942. Impressed by the Wehrmacht’s advance on Soviet ter­ri­tory, Himm­ler ordered the ‘total explo­ration of the Cen­tral Asian vital liv­ing space (‘Lebensraum’)’.[11] When, in the sum­mer of 1942, Japan­ese troops advanced into the region bor­der­ing Tibet, they encoun­tered a Ger­man ally in Lhasa — the Dalai Lama. [Empha­sis added.] The god-king’s camar­illa was hop­ing to dis­en­gage itself from Chi­nese, Soviet Russ­ian and British influ­ence and to eter­nal­ize the Tibetan feu­dal dic­ta­tor­ship. The goal was to cre­ate a ‘Pan-Mongolian Fed­er­a­tion’ — under the lead­er­ship of the Third Reich and Japan. . . .”
(“Strate­gies of Attri­tion (Part II)”; German-Foreign-Policy.com; 9/27/2007.)

3. The South Tyrolean People’s Party that net­worked with the Dalai Lama dur­ing his Euro­pean visit also has strong Nazi roots: “ . . . Last week, a del­e­ga­tion of North Ital­ian par­lia­men­tar­i­ans held exten­sive talks with the Tibetan self-proclaimed ‘exile gov­ern­ment’ at its head­quar­ters in Dharam­sala, North­ern India. This is impor­tant for the for­eign pol­icy of Ger­many, because ‘South Tyrol’ has many links to the net­works of eth­nic Ger­man ‘Volks­grup­pen’ pol­icy. Franz Pahl’s party (leader of the del­e­ga­tion), the Südtiroler Volkspartei (South Tyrolean People’s Party), is a mem­ber of the Fed­eral Union of Euro­pean Nation­al­i­ties (FUEN), that was founded by Nazi ‘Volks­grup­pen’ experts and is today still financed by the Ger­man gov­ern­ment. The FUEN is also sup­ported by the Autonomous Region Trentino — South Tyrol and the Autonomous Province of Bozen. The ‘South Tyrol’ auton­omy is pat­terned after con­cepts of the Ger­man ‘Volks­grup­pen’ pol­icy and was estab­lished after a series of ter­ror­ist attacks, insti­gated by Ger­man res­i­dents. For­mer ‘South Tyrol’ ter­ror­ists are still shel­tered on Ger­man soil. . . .”
(“Strate­gies of Attri­tion (Part III)”; German-Foreign-Policy.com; 10/02/07.)

4. Note that another “Strate­gies of Attri­tion” paper (IV) has been pub­lished by German-Foreign-Policy.com. It is avail­able at: http://www.german-foreign-policy.com/en/fulltext/56104. The infor­ma­tion in this arti­cle sup­ple­ments and updates the mate­r­ial in FTR#’s 549, 550, fur­ther devel­op­ing infor­ma­tion about the UNPO and its asso­ci­a­tion with the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan sep­a­ratist move­ment and the Mon­go­lian sep­a­ratist. Note that the UNPO is headed by Karl von Haps­burg, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

5. Exam­in­ing the appli­ca­tion of Volks­grup­pen­rechte to Europe, the broad­cast notes that some Ger­man offi­cials are look­ing to the Holy Roman Empire of medieval Europe—“all Ger­man, all the time”—as a work­ing model for the Euro­pean Union. Don’t expect to see eth­nic minori­ties in Europe get­ting the “Dalai Lama treat­ment!” In this con­text, Mr. Emory notes that in the early 1990’s, Ger­many denied the North Frisians and the Sorbs the right to speak their own lan­guage. (The Sorbs are a Slavic minor­ity peo­ple in Ger­many and the North Frisians are a Dan­ish eth­nic minor­ity in the Fed­eral Repub­lic. No Volks­grup­pen­rechte for them!) Note that Otto von Haps­burg, the father of UNPO head Karl von Haps­burg, is an enthu­si­as­tic sup­porter of the view of the Euro­pean Union as “Holy Roman Empire Redux.” Otto von Haps­burg has overt fas­cist sym­pa­thies, as can be seen in the excerpt that fol­lows in para­graph #9. Also of inter­est here is Bernd Neumann’s invi­ta­tion to the Pope to attend the EEC’s 50th anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tion. As dis­cussed in FTR#’s 508, 559, the avail­able evi­dence sug­gests very strongly that the cur­rent Pope is answer­able to the Under­ground Reich. “The medieval, Europe-wide Ger­man Reich is a valid model for the union of Euro­pean coun­tries today. So says the Berlin State Min­is­ter for Cul­ture, Bernd Neu­mann. Accord­ing to him, the mem­ory of the Holy Roman Empire of the Ger­man Nation reveals ‘an inner his­tor­i­cal con­sis­tency’ with the found­ing and steady expan­sion of the Euro­pean Union. These remarks are a prepa­ra­tion for the fes­tiv­i­ties in Berlin for the fifti­eth anniver­sary of the Euro­pean Eco­nomic Com­mu­nity (EEC), to which the Fed­eral Chan­cel­lor, Angela Merkel, has invited the Ger­man Pope, Joseph Ratzinger. Ratzinger is a com­mit­ted sup­porter of the ‘Impe­r­ial Ideal’ (Reich­sidee) and is to speak on the ‘spir­i­tual foun­da­tions’ of Europe in the Ger­man cap­i­tal. This gov­ern­ment offen­sive to revi­tal­ize the mpe­r­ial Ideal will under­line the Ger­man lead­er­ship of the EU and con­firm fears in France, Great Britain and almost all the states of east­ern Europe. Sec­tions of the Ger­man elites are warn­ing against an all-too-public asser­tion of Ger­man hege­mony. As the Berlin State Cul­ture Min­is­ter Bernd Neu­mann said, the Ger­man Reich of the Mid­dle Ages can ‘from today’s view­point’ serve ‘as a valid model of the func­tion­ing order of a super­state’. . . . The pub­lic ref­er­ences to the struc­tures of the medieval Reich which are evi­dent in Neumann’s posi­tion used to be the province of the extreme right, or con­fined to clerical-conservative cir­cles — at any rate since the Sec­ond World War. This was the opin­ion of the CSU (Chris­t­ian Social Union) politi­cian and grand­son of the Aus­trian Kaiser, Otto von Hab­s­burg who made it known at the end of the Sev­en­ties that ‘the Euro­pean inte­gra­tion of our times (...) fol­lows the grand out­line and prin­ci­ples of the Reich, which sur­vived 1806, because they are of last­ing validity’.[3] Sim­i­larly, the Pan-Europa Union, an asso­ci­a­tion of EU sup­port­ers close to the CSU insisted that ‘the eter­nal func­tion of the Reich must be renewed in the Europe of tomor­row in the inter­est of the West’.[4] Sim­i­larly, Joseph Ratzinger, the present Pope Bene­dict XVI acknowl­edged that the ori­gins of today’s EU should acknowl­edge ‘a com­mon impe­r­ial ideal (Reichsidee)’.[5] In recent years, con­ser­v­a­tive news­pa­pers have opened their columns to new advo­cacy for the‘Reich’. . . .”
(“The Order­ing of a Super­state”; German-Foreign-Policy.com; 8/29/2006.)

6. The broad­cast sets forth the fas­cist incli­na­tions of Otto von Hab­s­burg, the aging patri­arch of that fam­ily and the father of Karl von Hab­s­burg. (Younger lis­ten­ers should note that Rudolph Hess was one of Hitler’s clos­est aides and the last pris­oner at Span­dau prison.) For more about the Haps­burgs and the UNPO, see FTR#550. “ . . . The final esca­la­tion was reserved for Otto von Hab­s­burg, a CSU del­e­gate to the Euro­pean par­lia­ment and the son of the last Aus­trian emperor; since 1973 he has also been pres­i­dent of the ultra-right Pan-Europa-Union and a mem­ber of the Free­dom for Rudolf Hess Com­mit­tee [Empha­sis added.] . . . .”
(The New Reich: Vio­lent Extrem­ism in Uni­fied Ger­many and Beyond; by Michael Schmidt; Copy­right 1993 by Michael Schmidt; Pan­theon Books [HC]; ISBN 0–679-42578–0; p. 137.)

7. Next, the focus turns to an appli­ca­tion of “Volks­grup­pen­rechte” being pro­posed for the Mid­dle East by some strate­gic thinkers with influ­ence within Amer­i­can mil­i­tary cir­cles. Bor­row­ing on ideas floated by the Ber­tels­mann foun­da­tion, some U.S. mil­i­tary the­o­reti­cians are propos­ing to redraw the bound­aries of the Mid­dle East to coin­cide with the pop­u­la­tions of eth­nic minori­ties. Note that the Ber­tels­mann Foun­da­tion is closely asso­ci­ated with the Ber­tels­mann media cor­po­ra­tion, the major focal point of the For The Record series about Ger­man cor­po­rate con­trol of Amer­i­can media. The pub­lish­ing house of the SS and the largest pub­lisher of books for the Wehrma­cht dur­ing World War II, Bertelsmann’s patri­arch Hein­rich Mohn was in the SS. Bertelsmann’s offi­cial cor­po­rate historian—Dirk Bavendamm—has pub­lished books as recently as 1998 blam­ing World War II on U.S. impe­ri­al­ism, Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt and “Jew­ish con­trol over the Amer­i­can news media.” That is an inter­est­ing point of view for the offi­cial his­to­rian of the com­pany that dom­i­nates Eng­lish lan­guage pub­lish­ing. [For more about Ber­tels­mann, the Third Reich and the ongo­ing Nazi influ­ence at Ber­tels­mann, see—among other programs—FTR#298, as well as the other pro­grams in the series on Ger­man cor­po­rate con­trol of the Amer­i­can media.] In the con­text of this poten­tial Amer­i­can appli­ca­tion of “Volks­grup­pen­rechte” in the Mid­dle East, it is impor­tant to remem­ber that the Under­ground Reich has gained con­trol of the United States, largely through the infil­tra­tion of the Repub­li­can Party as a result of the Otto von Bolschwing/Helene von Damm con­nec­tion described in—among other programs—FTR#’s 180, 332, 465. “Amer­i­can mil­i­tary cir­cles are rec­om­mend­ing a re-organization of all nations in the Mid­dle East along eth­nic lines. Loss of ter­ri­tory and draw­ing new bor­ders will effect Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Ara­bia, Iraq, Iran and Pak­istan among oth­ers. Through the com­plete dis­so­lu­tion of states, new actors will be cre­ated in inter­na­tional law, along the lines of eth­nic and reli­gious affil­i­a­tion. Accord­ing to this plan, a coun­try, by the name of ‘Free Kur­dis­tan’ will be cre­ated, three times the size of Syria, from ter­ri­tory taken from today’s north­ern Iraq and east­ern Turkey. The remain­der of Iraq will be divided, the cap­i­tal, Bagh­dad, smashed. Iran would lose exten­sive areas of its coast, as well as, ter­ri­tory bor­der­ing on Pak­istan, where a ‘Free Baluchis­tan’ is to be founded. Mekka and Med­ina, until now located in Saudi Ara­bia, will be pro­moted to cap­i­tals of an ‘Islamic Sacred State,’ that will extend to the south­ern bor­ders of Jor­dan — dou­bling the sur­face of the Hashemite ter­ri­tory (‘Greater Jor­dan’). This eth­nic re-organization is depicted on sev­eral US maps, that the his­to­rian Dr. Pierre Hillard (Paris) has now pub­lished in France. In his talk with german-foreign-policy.com Hillard deems that ‘Ger­man pol­icy plays an impor­tant role in prop­a­gat­ing these ideas’. German-foreign-policy.com pub­lishes, for the first time in Ger­many, the US car­tog­ra­phy. Rec­om­men­da­tions for a com­plete over­throw of the pre­vail­ing state order were pub­lished in the ‘Armed Forces jour­nal’ (AFJ, June 2006) a mag­a­zine of the ‘Army Times Pub­lish­ing Com­pany’. This enter­prise pub­lishes at least ten mil­i­tary mag­a­zines (includ­ing ‘Army Times’ and ‘Navy Times’) and is owned by the Gan­nett Media Group (Vir­ginia, USA). In a self-portrait, the oper­a­tional income of the group, to which the well-known daily, ‘USA Today’ is also affil­i­ated, fig­ured at US $7.6 bil­lion in 2005. . . . As the French his­to­rian, Pierre Hillard, judges, this eth­ni­cist aggres­sion, car­ried out by west­ern pow­ers, is being deci­sively pro­moted through the for­eign pol­icy of Ger­many. Hillard refers to con­tin­u­ous efforts by Ger­man front orga­ni­za­tions, seek­ing to ‘remodel the Mid­dle East,’ [5] and in this con­nec­tion, men­tions specif­i­cally the activ­i­ties of the Ber­tels­mann Foun­da­tion. The foun­da­tion annu­ally orga­nizes forums (‘Kro­n­berg Talks’) on the Mid­dle East, where dis­cus­sions cen­ter around a ‘com­plete trans­for­ma­tion of the polit­i­cal, eco­nomic and reli­gious Insti­tu­tions’ of the Mus­lim resource states — with the objec­tive of ‘cou­pling them to the Euro-Atlantic axis,’ . . . The reap­por­tion­ment of entire state sys­tems is not unknown to Ber­tels­mann. Thus, on the eve of the (1999) aggres­sion against Yugoslavia, the foun­da­tion rec­om­mended ‘the eth­nic prin­ci­ple’ [8] and the mobi­liza­tion of eth­nic groups against Bel­grade — genet­i­cally defined minori­ties with claims to ter­ri­to­r­ial rights. Ber­tels­mann, in 1996, like­wise pro­posed an eth­nic par­ti­tion plan for Hun­gary, Roma­nia, Rus­sia and the north­ern Cau­ca­sus. Sim­i­lar to the propo­si­tions con­tained in the ‘Armed Forces Jour­nal’ sev­eral UN mem­ber states are being threat­ened with the loss of their exis­tence, as nation-states. The author at Ber­tels­mann bases him­self on the allegedly ‘unnat­ural’ draw­ing of the bor­ders and stakes claims to bogus tribal rights of eth­nic com­mu­ni­ties. . . .”
(“Dirty Lit­tle Secret”; German-Foreign-Policy.com; 9/8/2006.)

8. Con­clud­ing the dis­cus­sion with the topic of Native Hawai­ian rights, the pro­gram notes that Con­gress recently passed a bill that would give the natives of the 50th state rights sim­i­lar to those of other native Amer­i­can pop­u­la­tions. One should not fail to note that the native Hawai­ians have been among the peo­ples on which the UNPO has focused. (For more about the UNPO, see FTR#550.) The pos­si­bil­ity that Hawaii and its native pop­u­la­tion could be tar­geted for seces­sion from the United States fol­low­ing an eco­nomic, polit­i­cal or nat­ural cat­a­stro­phe is one to be seri­ously con­sid­ered. Might the native Hawai­ians, or the Lakota or some other eth­nic minor­ity be used by the Under­ground Reich or a related entity to weaken or dis­solve a fail­ing United States? “Native Hawai­ians should regain some of the self-governance pow­ers lost when the islands’ queen was over­thrown more than a cen­tury ago, the House decided Wednes­day. The White House threat­ened a veto, say­ing the leg­is­la­tion that passed by a 261–153 vote would divide Amer­i­cans ‘along sus­pect lines of race and eth­nic­ity.’ The bill would give the 400,000 peo­ple nation­wide of Native Hawai­ian ances­try the right to form a gov­ern­ing entity that could nego­ti­ate with the state and fed­eral gov­ern­ments over such issues as con­trol of nat­ural resources, lands and assets. The inte­rior sec­re­tary would have to approve that gov­ern­ing body. Native Hawai­ians, who long have sought the bill, insist they deserve many of the self-autonomy rights pro­vided to Amer­i­can Indi­ans and Native Alaskans. . . .”
(“House Passes Native Hawai­ian Bill” by Jim Abrams [AP]; San Fran­cisco Chron­i­cle; 10/25/2007.)