Almost 13 yrs later...
Secessionist Sarah: VP pick Sarah Palin and the Alaska Independence Party
by Liz Arnett
Mon Sep 01, 2008 at 01:13:05 AM PDT
In spite of the rethug efforts to delete Sarah Palin's history, particularly between 2004 and 2006, we found a real gem on you tube this evening.
The clips show the connection between Sarah Palin and the Alaska Independence Party. (We downloaded the clips and re-uploaded them into our own you tube account in case they get taken down.)
- Liz Arnett's diary :: ::
In the first clip we see Palin address the AIP convention earlier this year:
This next clip is the 1st of 2 parts from the convention itself. About half way through the speech(at 6:00), the Vice Chairman of the AIP, Dexter Clark, says this of Palin: "Our current governor who I mentioned at the last conference, the one we were hoping would get elected, Sarah Palin, did get elected . . . .and there was a lot of talk about her moving up. She was an AIP member before she got the job as mayor . . . "
This last clip is a continuation of the speech from Dexter Clark, the Vice Chairman from the AIP. In it, he talks about the necessity of infiltrating the major national parties in order to further the goals of the AIP.
The AIP’s main aim is to secede from the United States, becoming either a territory or a sovereign nation. They aim to be entirely "self-sufficient" using profits from the oil and gas resources of the state.
On
their website, you’ll see this:
The Alaskan Independence Party can be summed up in just two words:
ALASKA FIRST!
And their 2008 platform:
To seek the complete repatriation of the public lands, held by the federal government, to the state and people of Alaska in conformance with Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17, of the federal constitution.
Governor Palin’s connections with the AIP are also furthered by her connection to Wally Hickel, a former Alaskan governor. Hickel was elected on the AIP ticket. He served as the co-chairman of Governor Palin’s campaign in 2006
Here is a quote from an interview Hickel did with the Alaska Dispatch:
When Palin was running for governor in 2006, Hickel appeared in advertisements supporting her and the Alaska pipeline.
"I made her governor," Hickel told me.
When asked earlier this year on CNBC about whether she’d be picked for McCain’s VP, Palin said, "We wanna make sure that that VP slot would be a fruitful type of position, especially for Alaskans, and for the things we’re trying to accomplish up here for the rest of the US, before I can even start addressing that question."
So, besides the fact that she doesn’t know what the VP does everyday, Palin wants to be VP only if it’s a good thing for Alaska?
Sarah Palin has a lot of questions to answer about whether she supports Alaska’s right to secede, whether she’s figured out what her job as VP will be, and whether she’s in it to send money or profits to her state.
UPDATE: Thanks for all the rec's! Great comments below, too. And lots of helpers spreading the word. Thanks.
Credit to my husband, Richard Hiorns, for putting together the videos: www.richardhiorns.com
BIG thanks to American in Kathmandu for typing up transcripts of all of the videos:
Sarah Palin's transcript
I’m Governor Sarah Palin and I am delighted to welcome you to the 2008 Alaskan Independence Party Convention in the golden heart city of Fairbanks. Your party plays an important role in our state’s politics. I’ve always said that competition is so good, and that applies to political parties as well. I share your party’s vision of upholding the constitution of our great state. My administration remains focused on reining in government growth so individual liberty and opportunity can expand. I know you agree with that. We have a great promise to be a self-sufficient state, made up of the hardest-working, most grateful Americans in our nation. So as your convention gets underway I hope that you all are inspired by remembering that all those years ago, it was in this same city that Alaska’s constitution was born. And it was founded on hope and trust and liberty and opportunity. I carry that message of opportunity forward in my administration, as we continue to move our state ahead and create positive change. So I say good luck on a successful and inspiring convention. Keep up the good work, and God bless you.
2nd clip - Dexter Clark (38+ / 0-)
.....My name is Dexter Clark, I am the vice chairman of the Alaskan Independence Party, in ???, which is slightly bigger than Texas all by itself. We like to joke that if you guys don’t behave yourselves there’ll be two states in Alaska, and you’ll be the third largest state. If you were to interpose the map of Alaska on the US it would overlap both northern and southern borders and almost reach to both coasts. (Intro of his wife and where they’re from). The Alaskan Independence Party was established by Joe and Dora Colbert (?) and officially recognized as a political party by the state of Alaska rule 25 years ago. Within 10 years of that recognition, the party nominated a governor and a lieutenant governor and they were elected. Before their term was over, Mrs. Goldberg? passed away and Mr. ?? was assassinated. After the tragedy of losing our leader, almost all political observers in Alaska said that’s the end of the AIP, we don’t have to worry about them any more. But the basic argument of the Alaskan Independence Party has always been, the number one plank in our platform, is the question of our vote to become a state. The most glaring disparity in that vote was the definition of an eligible voter. Among those qualified to cast a ballot were 41,000 American soldiers and their 36,000 dependents. Now to the native population of Alaska, to me, these were occupation troops, and they were made eligible, in fact encouraged to vote, there were educational meetings held on the military bases. I can’t imagine them telling anyone that anything but that statehood would be very good for the military, in fact they still have 6-7 big bases and numerous smaller holdings in this state. Statehood would be good for the military. Now can you imagine the international uproar if the American troops had all went and got their purple fingers in Iraq? There would have been ...that’s not an election, that’s imposing your rule.
Another thing that research revealed had to do with the United Nations. President Truman signed the UN Charter making it the law of the land whether you like it or not. And among their provisions, they had a provision or a committee that deals with what they call a non-self-governing territory, which Guam and Puerto Rico to this day are still reported by the United States, Virgin Islands is another one, American Samoa, they report every year to this committee that these are our territories that are not governing themselves, and the committee that came up with the rules of how you would change that relationship imposed certain restrictions, and among those was that when a poll was held there should be more than one choice on the ballot. Specifically, they state three of the four following choices should be on that ballot, and that is to remain a territory - just keep your relationship the same, become a commonwealth which has all of its own advantages and disadvantages, to become a state, or to become an independent nation. When the ballot appeared before Alaskans it had statehood yes or no, and under the voters rights Act at that time, you had to be able to read and write English to vote, which pretty much took care of any of the native population having any vote in the election whatsoever.
Now a letter that Joe (?) received, showed me, Mr. Vogler(?) had finally gotten a sponsor before this committee, this committee in charge of non-self-governing territories, to take a look at these discrepancies. Of course that door was closed with his death, that was a personal letter to him, and we’ve seen a copy of it, and it was dated within the week of his death.
The AIP now has 13,689 registered voters as members, that’s not our count, that’s the State of Alaska, they count them for us, we don’t have to keep track of them. That’s a little more than 300 up from last year’s conference. Our current governor, we mentioned at the last conference, the one we were hoping would get elected, Sarah Palin, did get elected. There’s a joke, she’s a pretty good looking gal, there’s a joke goes around we’re the coldest state with the hottest governor. And there was a lot of talk about her moving up. She was an AIP member before she got the job as a mayor of a small town – that was a non-partisan job. But you get along to go along – she eventually joined the Republican Party, where she had all kinds of problems with their ethics, and well, I won’t go into that. She also had about an 80% approval rating, and is pretty well sympathetic to her former membership. Both of our senators to the American Congress are under investigation and there are pretty good stories going around. One is under sealed indictment and this is the result of the oil lobby(?), there is bribery and fraud charges and oil money is buying what they want in Alaska. The royalty share in Alaska of oil, I don’t know if you have the numbers in front of you what your own state gets like Texas..., in Alaska the royalty share is 12.5%! I mean ?? sharecropper did better than that. The people of Alaska from what I’ve heard in this room and several other areas are fed up. And if ever there was a time that is ripe for change, this is it. On our own situation, we’ve discussed several options. Do we try to get our case into the International Court of Justice? Or to the World Court? Several of the native Alaskan organizations are taking that route independent of us. They want to do it on their terms. They haven’t realized in my mind what the potential of their own political party which there are pitfalls of an organized political party. You don’t have any control over who joins that party. They put the X next to it on the registration form, and if they go to the primary and win that primary, they’re your candidate, like it or not. I think Ron Paul has kinda proven that – he’s a dyed-in-the wool libertarian, he came to Alaska and spoke as a libertarian, and put the Republican label on it to get elected, that’s all there is to it. And any one of your organizations should be using that same tactic. You should infiltrate – I know the Christian Exodus(?) is in favor of it, the Free State movement is in favor of it – I don’t think they even care which party it is. Whichever party in that area you can get something done, get into that political party, even though it does have its problems. Right now that is one of the only avenues. And you get a few people on a city council or a ??? you can have some effect. I kind of digressed there a little bit.
3rd Clip: Rest of Clark
But the problem remains that you have to be at the table in the existing political realm – you have to be a Demopublican or a Republicrat is what we call it. But the bottom line is the situation is completely out of hand, the decay of the federal government is totally complete. What has been forgotten in American is that America was at one time a union of sovereign states that surrendered a certain part of their rights to the federal government, and most importantly retained the rest of them – all the rest of them. That’s completely full circle to now where if it isn’t enumerated, you don’t have them, instead of the original concept where if it wasn’t on the list, it’s yours. The federal government is just plain a monster. States are just lines on a map and they’re trying to erase them as quickly as they can, including some of the international ones to the north and the south. The government can do no wrong. They’re not wrong in Iraq. There’s nothing that they ever admit that they’re wrong to. We had a situation on a road in Alaska where it ended up that we had deed, title, conveyed to the state, on statehood? We had the deed in our hand in front of the judge and the judge looked at us and said, well, that transfer was either illegal or inadvertent. Now if I go too fast down this road and get a speeding ticket, can I get away with telling the cop, oh that was inadvertent, I didn’t mean to go that fast. You're not going to get away with it, but the government can do it. But part of the reason that many of us are in this room is that the wrong they do reflects on us. When we travel, we’ve learned – we don’t say we’re Americans. We say we’re Alaskans, and it’s a totally different situation. We’ve gone into classrooms in Fairbanks and do presentations to the high school all the way down to the elementary school. And when we speak at the high school and we talk to these youngsters and tell them they’re different, they already know. And when we talk about America, there are kids in that class doing this (shows thumbs down), and when we say Alaskan, they’re thumbs are up. And they’re the ones I’m worried about. We have to save – they talk about all these lock ups and minerals and stuff – that doesn’t bother me too much, but with the situation the way it is now, we’re going to have to leave those young people something to pay the bills they’re running up. And the longer this situation continues, the harder it’s going to become for a peaceful solution. So that’s why it’s so important that everyone in this room brings what they have and we try to work something out. We’re well into an economic war. WWIII has been going on for about 20 years and the money is the main weapon. If you can get your opponent to spend all his money and have nothing left, devalue his money so that there’s nothing left, you’ve won that war, without ever firing a shot. And as Ben? said before, and I don’t remember who said it first, but I know I’ve said it before, and as a gold miner in Alaska, I’ve stood in front of a group of my fellow miners, and I told them that we have to hang(?) together, or they’re going to pick us off one by one. Well, the gold miners that I know are as independent, if not more so, than I am, and we all heard what I said, but nobody listens. They’re not coming after me today, they’re not trying to shut me down, your water’s dirtier than mine, you don’t know how to mine. All these different inter-relationships between individuals involved prevented us from becoming that core(?). We tried different organizations – none of them seemed to work. So the long and the short of that is that the areas that we mined in the 1980s there was about 150 small mom and pop gold mines. Today, less than 10. In the meantime, more than 5 of the mega corporate mines have been established to take their place. So the idea is the guy that lost his own mine is going to go up on the hill and work for the big outfit. And I know many of you have seen the same thing happen to the small businesses and industries in your own areas, your home states. Now my biggest question is how can we all put our efforts together with one common goal in mind? What can we agree on? And one of the things that came to my mind – both of these secessionist conventions have been held in cities with brick buildings – both old and new – and they all have their own story to tell. But every time I see that, I think for a minute of the men who built those buildings. They stated with a pile of bricks about this big (gestures to his chin level). And they put those bricks together, there was no machine to put 10 bricks down at a time, every one of those bricks was put in place by hand, cemented in one by one. And the result is a very sound and usable building. But they had to have one thing before they started, or it would never have happened. They needed a plan. They needed to know where all those bricks fit, where the windows would go, where the doors would go. Without that plan, they would have had no building. I believe here each of us are bringing our own little bag of bricks. And we’re hoping to build a sanctuary, I think, for liberty out of those bricks, and it’s our duty to devise a way to fit those bricks together. Thank you. Applause.