UN Special Rapporteur on Rights of Indigenous Peoples James Anaya will visit the United States from April 23 to May 4 to launch the UN's first ever investigation into the rights situation of Native Americans. Anaya will be looking into the rights of Native Americans, Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians, and meeting with government officials throughout the nation. One main goal of his investigation is to determine how the Unites States' endorsement of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in December 2010 has affected the rights of these groups, and what improvements may still be needed. Anaya will report his findings and make recommendations to US federal and state officials during his trip.

The US Department of Justice (DoJ) and Department of the Interior (DoI) announced a $1.023 billion settlement with 41 American Indian tribes April 11. The announcement comes following a 22-month negotiation period after the tribes charged in a class action that the DoI and the Department of the Treasury mismanaged money held in a trust account from natural resources on tribal lands. The DoI holds nearly 56 million acres in trust for Native American tribes, and leases much of these lands for various uses including timber, mineral, oil and gas extraction. Attorney General Eric Holder stated that the settlement "fairly and honorably resolves historical grievances over the accounting and management of tribal trust funds, trust lands and other non-monetary trust resources that, for far too long, have been a source of conflict between Indian tribes and the United States."

The US Supreme Court on Feb. 17 blocked enforcement of a Montana Supreme Court ruling, which upheld a state law limiting the amount of money corporations can spend on campaigns, until it can consider an appeal from the corporations challenging the law. The Montana court ruling in Western Tradition Partnership, Inc. v. Montana appears to conflict with the 2010 US Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission , which struck down a regulation that prohibited corporations and unions from using their general treasury funds for "electioneering communications" aimed at supporting or opposing a political candidate. The 1912 Corrupt Practices Act upheld by the Montana Supreme Court prohibits the same activity. The plaintiffs will now have to apply for a writ of certiorari to have the case heard by the Court. If cert is granted, this case is likely to play out as an attempt to narrow the scope of, or overrule Citizens United.

Two of the last remaining Occupy encampments left in the USA have met with setbacks in recent days. Two members of Occupy DC remain jailed on charges of assaulting officers during a Feb. 4 clash with US Park Police who razed their encampment at McPherson Square. A second encampment at nearby Freedom Plaza was raided the next day, although many tents were left standing. (Huffington Post, Feb. 7) On Feb. 1, police cleared out the hearty souls who had stuck it out in frigid Buffalo. The raid came three hours after Occupy Buffalo held a press conference in which they stated their refusal to sign a contract with the city that would have required them to decamp by March 8. From a first-hand account in Buffalo's ArtVoice:

Us old-school lefties have been wondering for a quite some time, which is more annoying—the legions of "Anonymous" hacktivists who think that faceless adventurism is the cutting-edge of revolution, or Ron Paul supporters who think that this ultra-reactionary Republican crank stands for progressive change? Well now, much to our amusement, they appear to be at each other's throats! And we have to give an editorial tip o' the hat to Anonymous for uncovering more dirt on Paul's ties to real live neo-Nazis. In their latest cyber-attack, they apparently hacked the website of some nimrods calling themselves American Third Position, or A3P—a Southern California-based outfit that is seeking to mainstream white supremacism by running candidates, in the style of David Duke back in the '90s. The hackers evidently splashed a bunch of the A3P crew's internal e-mails on the group's homepage—and, lo and behold, it turns out they are a well integrated into Paul's political machine! This account from the UK's International Business Times, Jan. 31:

Could everybody just stop and think, please? Rand Paul won applause from basically freedom-loving folks when he was blocked from boarding a flight by the Transportation Security Administration last week in Nashville, after refusing to submit to a full body pat-down. Carl Gibson on Huffington Post points out a salient little irony to the situation: Paul was headed for Washington DC to participate in an anti-choice event, the "March for Life"! So much for personal freedom! This cuts to the heart of the bogus pseudo-libertarianism of Rand and his old man Ron Paul. Gibson astutely writes:

In the sixth YouTube edition of the Moorish Orthodox Radio Crusade, World War 4 Report editor Bill Weinberg calls out Ron Paul as a neo-Confederate crank and pseudo-libertarian reactionary—and particularly defends the memory and honor of the great homegrown American anarchist and abolitionist Lysander Spooner against Paul's slimy revisionist attempt to appropriate his legacy. Share this with all your friends who are rooting for Ron Paul!

NewsOne now brings to light a YouTube video in which Ron Paul gives a "South was Right" speech to an evident gathering of Confederacy nostalgists. No date or place is offered, but this supposed "libertarian" is speaking against the backdrop of a giant Confederate battle flag! The video was apparently first placed on YouTube by a neo-Confederate channel with the slightly ironic name "Patriot Review." In it, Paul regurgitates several of the usual revisionist tropes—he dismisses slavery as an "excuse" and "rabble-rousing issue" that "really wasn't the issue of why the war was fought"; he suggests differences over "protectionism" and the "banking system" were really behind the war; he points out that other countries "got rid of slavery without war" through "legislation" (as if the abolitionists hadn't fought generations for that!) or (of course, the free-market solution) "literally buying slaves' freedom." Et cetera. NewsOne adds: