Vieques mayor ‘evicts’ US navy

Vieques, Puerto Rico, Aug. 4— The mayor of Vieques delivered a symbolic eviction notice to the US Navy’s base on the island on Monday, July 30, leading some 300 protesters celebrating a referendum that called for an immediate end to Navy bombing exercises. Protesters were angered by a White House announcement Monday that the Navy would leave Vieques only as scheduled in two years, despite the overwhelming vote in Sunday’s non-binding referendum for an immediate withdrawal. Protesters set an American flag ablaze outside the base, saying the Bush administration was ignoring the democratic will of the people. “The position of the people of Vieques is clear,” said Robert Rabin, an anti-Navy protest leader. “This is an issue of life or death and one cannot depend on the Navy or the president.” Later some 300 opponents of the Navy’s bombing exercises marched on the base, led by Vieques’ mayor, Damaso Serrano. The mayor presented the “eviction notice” to Navy personnel at the base. Nearly 70 percent of some 5,000 voters supported an immediate end to the bombing and the Navy’s withdrawal in Sunday’s referendum. A legally binding federal referendum is scheduled for November but residents will not be given the option to have the exercises end immediately. In Washington, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Bush was sticking by the original schedule. “The president has always said it’s very important to listen to the people of Puerto Rico, and he has,” Fleischer said. “The president also believes it’s very important to have a seamless transition so that our military can be the best trained it can be so we are prepared for any contingencies around the world.” Serrano warned Monday if the Navy and Bush don’t stop the exercises, he will call for protesters to enter the bombing range to prevent bombing runs. “If they don’t stop the bombing we are going to ask for the people of Vieques to go inside the impact area to stop it themselves,” he said. Fishermen stall bombing Days later, on Aug. 4, fishermen and protesters in nine speedboats invaded restricted waters off of Vieques, stalling resumed bombing exercises. Reporters watched from a boat outside of restricted waters as the speedboats raced toward the Navy’s firing range, passing within 500 feet of several amphibious personnel carriers that were shuttling equipment and marines to a beach in preparation for mock invasion exercises. Two warships were about 3 miles away. Although security ships chased the boats out of the restricted waters, the fishermen managed to pull up to the range and drop a group of protesters off, three of whom were detained by authorities. The boat chase stalled ship-to-shore shelling for about three hours. Activists said at least 19 people were hiding on the range, but Navy spokeswoman Lt. Comdr. Katherine Goode said the Navy was “confident the range was clear” and that bombing exercises had resumed. Since this round of exercises began Thursday, at least 28 people have been detained for allegedly trespassing on federal property. “This is to make them know that this island and these waters are ours,” said Carlos Maldonado, a 25-year-old fisherman, before he joined Saturday’s protests. “They have to leave.” The latest round of bombing, expected to last 10 days, involves ship-to-shore shelling, air-to-ground bombing, and beach landings with 23,000 personnel, making the maneuvers some of the biggest since a civilian guard was killed by off-target bombs in 1999, when the Navy began using inert bombs. The bombing is conducted 4 miles from civilian areas.

Source: Associated Press

Activists protest Iraq sanctions

By Chris Hawley

By Chris Hawley New York, New York, Aug 6— Opponents of UN sanctions against Iraq marked the 11th anniversary of the measures Monday by holding vigils outside UN offices in New York and in Bagdhad, where demonstrators fasted in 122-degree heat. Fifteen people protested in New York, including eight who were beginning a 40-day fast, said Chicago-based Voices in the Wilderness, a group campaigning against the measures. In the Iraqi capital, 10 Americans and Britons sat outside UN offices on plastic chairs in a tent, observing a one-day fast. “We are here to tell the world we are against sanctions. Sanctions kill children and elderly and this is rejected by all international laws,” Jeff Guntzel, head of Voices in the Wilderness, said in Iraq. The group said similar events were held in 15 cities around the world, including in Canada and Britain. The demonstrations were aimed at pressuring the United Nations to reconsider the sanctions, which were imposed on Iraq on Aug. 6, 1990, four days after its forces invaded Kuwait. Among those fasting at the New York vigil was Denis Halliday, a former assistant UN secretary-general who resigned in 1998 as the UN humanitarian coordinator in Iraq to protest the sanctions. He said thousands of Iraqi children had died from dysentery and other diseases because the UN restrictions had complicated the repair of water treatment plants and stunted food production. “It is of great urgency for those (UN) member states not yet irreparably corrupted by the United States to end the killing,” Halliday said. “How will we explain to our children and grandchildren when the truth of UN genocide in Iraq comes out, as it surely will?” The UN Security Council imposed sanctions after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, but they have been criticized for hurting Iraqi civilians while failing to shake Saddam Hussein’s autocratic regime. Last month, the United States and Britain proposed changes that would have given Iraqis unrestricted access to civilian goods to further ease the impact of sanctions while targeting military supplies and toughening enforcement. The plan was supported by 14 of the 15 members of the UN Security Council, but it was withdrawn in the face of a threatened Russian veto. On Monday, the US Mission to the United Nations directed questions about the protests to the State Department in Washington, which declined comment. Halliday has become a symbol for activists campaigning to lift sanctions. He was sent to Iraq in 1997 as a 34-year UN veteran to oversee the oil-for-food program, which the Security Council adopted in 1995 to help ordinary Iraqis cope with sanctions. The program now allows Baghdad to sell unlimited amounts of oil — provided the money goes into a UN-controlled account for humanitarian relief, oil industry repairs and war reparations. Halliday resigned in 1998, saying the sanctions were devastating the Iraqi population. His successor, Hans Von Sponeck of Germany, quit in 2000 for the same reason. Along with former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter of the United States, they have become vocal opponents of the sanctions.

Source: Associated Press

Interior Dept. destroys evidence in Native land royalties lawsuit

Washington, DC, July 30— The Interior Department destroyed e-mails that may have dealt with mismanaged Indian land royalties, despite repeated court orders that the files be preserved, according to a court-appointed investigator. The data was supposed to be retained at the request of attorneys representing hundreds of American Indians in a lawsuit alleging that the government mismanaged at least $10 billion in royalties collected since 1887 from the use of Indian lands. But from June 1998, when the court first ordered the data tapes preserved, until November 2000, tapes at a number of field offices were routinely overwritten and the information on them destroyed, said Alan Balaran, a court-appointed special master. He issued his report Friday. A report earlier this month from another court-appointed monitor said the government had failed to make any progress in reconstructing how much the Indian trust account holders are owed. Dennis Gingold, the attorney representing the Indian plaintiffs, said the erasure of the e-mails is a serious case of misconduct. “Destruction of evidence by the lawyers is as serious an ethical violation as you can make,” said Gingold. “They’re reporting to the court that it’s being maintained, so they are perpetrating a fraud to the court and destroying documents.” He said he would ask the judge to hold the Interior Department in contempt -- the latest in a serious of such requests. If the Justice Department attorneys recommended erasing the tapes, knowingly violating a court order, they should be disbarred, Gingold said. Justice Department spokesman Charles Miller declined to comment. Interior Department spokeswoman Stephanie Hanna said that the department had told field offices dealing with trust fund issues not to recycle tapes. “It’s the opinion of the Interior Department that we have made every effort to retain documents and e-mails that are now or were in the past relevant,” Hanna said. The trust accounts were created to hold royalties from grazing, logging, mining and oil drilling on Indian land. The government holds the accounts in trust for Indian landholders. From the start the accounts have been mismanaged, the government acknowledges, with shoddy record-keeping, money stolen or used for other federal programs, or never collected.

Source: Associated Press

Cops tap database to harass, intimidate

By M.L. Elrick

By M.L. Elrick Detroit, Michigan, July 31— Police throughout Michigan, entrusted with the personal and confidential information in a state law enforcement database, have used it to stalk women, threaten motorists and settle scores. Over the past five years, more than 90 Michigan police officers, dispatchers, federal agents and security guards have abused the Law Enforcement Information Network (LEIN), according to a Free Press examination of hundreds of pages of LEIN records and police reports. In many cases, abusers turned a crime-fighting tool into a personal search engine for home addresses, for driving records and for criminal files of love interests, colleagues, bosses or rivals. Police said they think the system, which is used to make about 3 million background checks each month, is more widely abused than anyone knows. “I wouldn’t doubt that it happens very often,” said Lawrence Carey, who retired this month as Plymouth Township’s police chief. “A lot of them are taken care of internally.” Using the FBI’s National Crime Information Center, Michigan Secretary of State vehicle registrations and driving histories, and other databases, the LEIN can tell police whether someone is wanted on an arrest warrant, is a sex offender, was reported missing, or is deemed dangerous. The database has been in use since 1967. Police can find out where someone lives as well as confidential information such as whether the person applied for a concealed weapon permit or has a suppressed juvenile record. All it takes to access someone’s detailed personal information is their name or license plate number. Unwanted interest Part-time Memphis police officer Scott Woods used the LEIN to find out personal information about a woman he met on the Internet around March 1999, according to Memphis police reports. Woods, who was also working as a Macomb County Jail guard, asked a friend in Detroit’s 9th (Gratiot) Precinct to get information on a St. Clair Shores woman, according to a Memphis police incident report and Macomb County sheriff’s investigation report. The woman told the Free Press she was afraid to talk about the case and did not want her name used. Woods began corresponding with the woman. According to police records, she gave Woods her phone number and arranged to meet him after work one night. But instead of going on a date, Woods sat outside her workplace in his sport-utility vehicle, the woman told police. She said she waved Woods in, but he just sat there. Woods later told her he had followed her home the night before, according to police records. He called her by her middle name, which she had not told him. He described her height and weight. And he went on to call her at home and work up to three times a day, according to police and sheriff’s records. Woods declined to discuss the case. “It’s something from my past,” he said. “That was all blown out of proportion.” Phillip Ludos, who was Memphis chief at the time, said Woods confirmed the woman’s account when confronted. Ludos said he fired Woods from the Memphis force for conduct unbecoming an officer in 1999. Sharing LEIN information is a misdemeanor in Michigan, punishable by up to 90 days in jail and a $500 fine, upon conviction. As is often the case, the Detroit officers accused of abusing the system to help Woods were not prosecuted. Both are facing a hearing on possible departmental discipline, but it has not been scheduled. Friends helping friends It’s not uncommon for police to help friends get information through LEIN. One hour after Carl Daisy exchanged heated words with another motorist in Northville on Aug. 7, 1998, Highland Park Public Safety Officer Eric Hollowell — who was not involved in the altercation — asked a dispatcher to run Daisy’s license plate number through the LEIN system, state records show. Less than an hour later, Daisy received the first of many ominous calls. “You’re talking to God. I know everything about you,” the man told Daisy. On at least one occasion, Daisy said the caller told him he “had a beautiful wife and that it would be a shame if anything happened to her.” The caller was never identified. Hollowell is not suspected of calling Daisy — and he denies abusing the LEIN system. But Ronald Parham, who was Highland Park Police Chief at the time, said he concluded that Hollowell used the LEIN to help an acquaintance locate Daisy. Parham said he reprimanded Hollowell, and Wayne County prosecutors declined to prosecute. That outrages Daisy. “What would happen if I accessed that information?” he asked. “There are stalking laws. I’d be creamed.”

Source: Detroit Free Press