Thousands
confront white
supremacists in Lewiston, Maine
Go
to article
Bush’s
multibillion-dollar
tax cut for the rich
Go
to article
BRIEFS
Go to
Briefs
Second
INS registration deadline passes
Compiled by Shawn Gaynor
Jan 14. (AGR)— On Jan. 10, the second round of deadlines imposed
by the Immigration and Naturalization Service for the fingerprinting and
interrogation for men from Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Eritrea, Lebanon,
Morocco, North Korea, Oman, Qatar, Somalia, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates,
and Yemen passed as protests against the program took place nationwide.
A protester holds a
sign modeled on the patches placed on the uniforms of detainees in Nazi
concentration camps bearing the name of an individual detained by the
INS. Photo courtesy New York City Indymedia
Civil liberties advocates charge that the new national security measures
being implemented have nothing to do with preventing terrorism. Instead,
they serve to demonize immigrants -- particularly those from predominantly
Arab, Muslim, and South Asian countries -- and provide a pretext for accelerated
repression and future mass detentions.
Randall Hamud, a San Diego lawyer of Middle Eastern descent warned, "Registration
is always the first step to internment (as with the Japanese during WWII)."
In response to the detentions, the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination
Committee (ADC), Alliance of Iranian Americans (AIA), Council on American
Islamic-Relations(CAIR), and the National Council of Pakistani Americans
(NCPA) filed a class action lawsuit against Attorney General Ashcroft
and the INS.
The lawsuit claims that the detentions during the first round of registrations
were illegal, because those detained where held without due process and
access to council. The lawsuit is demanding an injunction ordering the
government not arrest any additional persons in the "special registration"
process without appropriate warrants from federal judges, and an order
preventing the deportation of detainees without due process.
During the first round of registrations, hundreds of immigrants from
Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, and Syria, were detained for minor immigration
violations, largely based on the INS’s inability, or unwillingness,
to process immigration papers in a timely fashion. Some contend that the
INS did an insufficient job at notifying immigrants of the new regulations.
Immigrants from countries on the special registration list are required
to register by the set INS deadlines or face deportation.
"We didn’t know [about the new requirement of registering as
ordered by Ashcroft’s Department of Justice]. We never got a letter
or anything to know that we had to go register," said Nilosar Mukhatar,
whose brother was jailed when he went to register on Dec. 16.
"His father called from Iran and said, ‘We heard this on TV
and I suggest you go and check in.’ He went to his lawyer. He said,
‘It’s O.K. You’ll be fine.’ He never returned."
Mukhatar is a naturalized citizen of the Untied States who says that
her brother has nearly completed the naturalization process.
University of Arizona instructor Jamal Tabatabai, an Iranian native,
went to register with the INS during the first round of registrations
and was detained for six days. Tabatabai, like many others who have been
detained and released, said he was shuffled from facility to facility,
periodically deprived of sleep and food, and kept in squalid conditions.
The program has come under fire from some members of Congress. US Sens.
Russell Feingold, D-Wis., and Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., along with US Rep.
John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., wrote Attorney General John Ashcroft, asking
him to suspend the program.
"This special registration program appears to be a component of
... roundups and detentions of Arab and Muslim males disguised as a perfunctory
registration requirement," their letter stated. "Reports indicate
that hundreds of individuals who have voluntarily appeared to register
at INS offices around the country (but primarily in California) have been
arrested and detained without reasonable justification."
Protesters across the nation took to the streets on Jan. 10 to oppose
the INS registrations. In LA protesters monitored the INS facility to
see if detentions would re-occur. Protesters wore concentration camp style
tags, and performed guerrilla theater acts to speak out against the detentions.
In New York, a broad coalition of groups marched against the special registration.
Hundreds of protesters lined the streets outside the INS office in San
Francisco. "I felt an undercurrent not of anger, but of united strength,"
said a UC Berkeley student who participated in the demonstration.
In Baltimore, MD, hundreds marched behind a black banner with white lettering
proclaiming "Stop the illegal INS arrests & deportation!"
chanting "Immigration’s not a crime, let John Ashcroft do the
time!" One activist reportedly had his camera broken by police. Federal
Protective Officer L. Mount told reporters and activists that it is illegal
to take a picture of the building when on its premises.
The INS has repeatedly refused to disclose who has been detained, or
why; however there were no reports of new detentions associated with the
second registration deadline.
A third INS "Special Registration" deadline, for men from Saudi
Arabia and Pakistan, is due to take place on Feb. 21.
Sources: American-Arab Anti-Discrimination
Committee, Baltimore Indymedia, Indymedia, LA Indymedia, NYC Indymedia,
San Diego Indymedia, San Francisco Chronicle, Tucson Citizen, Zenger’s
News
back to top
Thousands
confront white
supremacists in Lewiston, Maine
Compiled by Shawn Gaynor
Jan. 14 (AGR)—4,500 anti-racist protesters gathered in snowy Lewiston,
Maine to directly confront a recruitment meeting by the white supremacist
World Church of the Creator (WCotC) at the Lewiston National Guard Armory,
and for the "Many and One" rally at nearby Bates college.
The crowd gathered at the Armory included, among others, members of Anti-Racist
Action (ARA) and the Northeast Federation of Anarcho-Communists (NEFAC),
in what Indymedia characterized as a "surly demonstration."
Over 100 riot police and several snipers were on hand to control the crowd
and protect the roughly 40 members of the WCotC.
In downtown Lewiston, another group of protesters gathered to call for
the resignation of Lewiston Mayor Laurier T. Raymond, Jr. The mayor, who
wrote a racially inflammatory letter to the Lewiston paper urging Somali
immigrants not to move to the city, was not on hand for the rally. He
was reportedly playing golf in Florida. Criticism has also been leveled
against the Lewiston police chief for urging people during a radio broadcast
not to attend the anti-racist rally at the Armory.
Local Somalis, who have recently moved to Lewiston because of its "family
friendly atmosphere," said their presence revitalized the mill city
and filled up empty buildings. They called the mayor an "ill-informed
leader who is bent toward bigotry."
Meanwhile, at the "Many and One" rally, Maine Governor John
Baldacci told the crowd, "We stand united as one in Maine when it
comes to neighborliness, when it comes to tolerance, when it comes to
opportunity."
Matt Hale, leader of the WCotC was supposed to attend the Lewiston rally
but he was arrested in Chicago Wednesday on charges that he tried to have
a federal judge murdered.
Matt Hale, 31, was taken into custody by agents of an FBI-led terrorism
task force as he arrived at Chicago’s federal courthouse for a contempt
of court hearing in a trademark infringement lawsuit.
The East Peoria man is head of the World Church of the Creator. A former
member of the racist organization, Benjamin Smith, went on a deadly shooting
rampage against minorities in Illinois and Indiana in 1999. Smith killed
two people and wounded several others before killing himself.
Sources: AP, Democracy Now, Maine Indymedia,
Winnipeg Indymedia
Photos courtesy Maine Indymedia
back to top
Bush’s
multibillion-dollar
tax cut for the rich
By Suzanne Goldenberg
Washington, DC, Jan. 7— President George Bush will be forced today
to defend a massive regeneration package designed to kick-start the US
economy which has come under withering attack as a sop to the rich.
The centerpiece of the White House proposals to spur on the anemic economy,
which President Bush will unveil in a speech in Chicago, is the abolition
of tax on shareholder dividends.
The elimination of the tax has helped to double the expected cost of
Bush’s economic package to around $600 billion over the next decade.
It has also exposed the White House to charges from Democrats and moderate
Republicans that the Bush administration is seeking to take advantage
of the economic recession to reward wealthy Americans and Republican party
supporters at the expense of the poor and the middle classes.
The wealthiest stratum of Americans — an estimated 200,000 people
earning more than $1 million a year — accounts for barely one percent
of US taxpayers, according to figures from the internal revenue service.
However, together they earned about $25.4 billion in dividends last year,
or about a quarter of the overall total of dividends for US taxpayers.
Yesterday, Democrats and moderate Republicans lined up against the economic
package, singling out the dividend tax as unfair and a blow to the poor.
Economists, meanwhile, said it offered precious little to stimulate economic
growth or create jobs.
The furor over the tax cut was fuelled by reports yesterday that the
Bush administration intended to freeze all spending on domestic programs
aside from homeland security.
Officials argue that the spending cap on welfare, the environment, job
creation and other government programs is needed to put the budget on
a war footing.
However, poverty action groups say the freeze will take away $3 billion
from programs that directly benefit lower-income groups at a time of recession.
They singled out a $300 million cut to a program to help poor families
with heating fuel costs.
"At a time when some people badly could use help, Bush’s tax
cut mostly will help those who need it least," the Washington Post
said yesterday.
President Bush and the Republican party leadership have fought back by
accusing their critics of indulging in "class warfare."
The emerging row over the president’s economic package now threatens
to overshadow the first week of the new Congress when the Bush administration
had hoped to capitalize on Republican control of both chambers to further
its conservative agenda.
Instead, the handful of newly declared contenders for the Democratic
party nomination for the 2004 presidential elections seized on the elimination
of the dividend tax to kick-start their campaigns.
The Democrats were to release their own, more modest, version of an economic
stimulus package last night. The measures, expected to cost the US treasury
$130 billion over the next decade, were thought to include individual
tax rebates of $300 a worker, as well as business tax incentives.
President Bush’s plan is also expected to include an extension of
unemployment benefits and an acceleration of the tax cuts schedule approved
two years ago, as well as tax incentives on equipment purchases for businesses.
Although a reduction in dividend tax had been widely anticipated, it
did not become clear until yesterday that President Bush intended to eliminate
the tax entirely.
However, administration officials claimed yesterday that shareholders
suffered a double burden by being taxed on dividend earnings.
"Very often, critics of tax relief described everybody as rich in
an effort to stop tax relief," the White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer,
said yesterday. "I think that’s been an old tactic by people
who wanted to raise taxes on the American people in the first place."
Source: Guardian (UK)
Tax plan would pad the president’s
pocket
President Bush said the average family of four would save about $1,100
from the $670 billion tax-cut plan he announced Jan. 7. His family of
four would save almost 44 times that, based on the president’s tax
return.
Based on 2001 tax returns, the president would have saved about $17,000
on the $43,805 in dividends he received for the year, had they been tax-free.
With accelerated income-tax cuts, the president would have saved another
$27,500, based on his $711,453 in taxable income.
Bush said he didn’t know the details of his finances when asked
what he’d do with the cash. "My money is in a blind trust,"
he said Monday. "I don’t know if I’ve got any dividends."
Vice President Dick Cheney, who reported $278,103 in dividends on his
2001 return, would have saved about $107,000 in federal taxes that year.
Cheney, the former chief executive officer of Halliburton Co., the world’s
second-largest oilfield-services company, would have saved about $220,000
on $4.3 million in reported income that year. His spokeswoman, Jennifer
Millerwise, declined to comment.
Bush and Cheney "are making more in tax savings than 95 percent
of people are going to be making in a year," said Joel Friedman,
a senior fellow of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a frequent
critic of the Bush administration’s tax plans and an ally with Citizens
for Tax Justice.
Source: Bloomberg News
back to top
BRIEFS
Eighth-grader punished for not saluting
flag
The parents of a Lakeport, CA middle school student asked their school
board Jan. 9 to fire a teacher who told the student to leave the classroom
for refusing to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
Victoria Kearney believes the Lakeport Unified School District should
dismiss David Laven for telling her son, Jim Woodbury, to stand outside
the classroom when he wouldn’t say the Pledge of Allegiance in his
US history and Constitution class last semester.
"We are appalled that this can go on in the school," Kearney
said, "My son’s rights were violated. We are trusting that the
Constitution is behind us on this."
Woodbury, an eighth-grader, said he refused to say the pledge because
of his political beliefs.
"I believe the flag is a symbol of the government, and I think it’s
corrupt and I don’t agree with some of the choices it made,"
he said.
Laven received a warning letter in December from the school board. The
board is now scheduled to review Kearney’s request for dismissal
in closed session. (Santa Rosa Press Democrat)
FBI admits tip on illegal immigrants
in terror probe was false
Already red-faced over intelligence snafus prior to the Sept. 11 terror
strikes, the FBI faced another embarrassment last week, acknowledging
it was duped into launching a search for five Middle Eastern men thought
to have entered the country illegally.
The tip came from suspected alien smuggler Michael John Hamdani, who had
been arrested Oct. 31 in Canada, where he told police he had been paid
to help Pakistanis cross illegally to the US via Britain and Canada. On
Dec. 29, the FBI issued an alert seeking the public’s help in finding
five men whose names were given by Hamdani.
Hamdani’s information is now believed to have been an attempt at
a negotiation with US authorities to get his charges reduced.
"As a result of uncovering fabricated information, there is no longer
a need for public assistance in locating the five individuals," FBI
spokesman Bill Carter said. "We are not looking for them anymore."
(Agence France-Presse)
Face recognition cameras stir ‘Big
Brother’ fears
Police in the popular resort city of Virginia Beach, VA recently began
operating video surveillance cameras with controversial face recognition
technology that critics say brings the US one step closer to becoming
a society where "Big Brother is watching you."
Virginia Beach, along with Tampa, FL, is one of only two cities in the
US to acquire the technology, which cost it $197,000. The system went
live last September, at the tail end of the summer vacation period when
the city was crowded with visitors.
As a result of involvement with citizen and minority groups, police say,
the cameras may only be used for two narrowly defined purposes: to catch
some 1,500 people wanted by the city on outstanding felony warrants, and
to find runaway children or missing persons. All images picked up by the
cameras are supposed to be immediately deleted from the system if there
is no match.
So far, the system has failed to produce a single arrest, though it has
generated a few false alarms. Critics say it is highly inaccurate and
can be easily fooled, and fear the system is a dangerous step toward the
erosion of personal privacy. (Reuters)
Maryland study finds racial disparities
in death penalty
Prosecutors in Maryland are much more likely to seek the death penalty
in cases where blacks are accused of killing whites, according to a University
of Maryland study released Jan. 7.
Outgoing Gov. Parris Glendening commissioned the report in 2000 in response
to concerns that the state’s death penalty is unfairly meted out
according to race and jurisdiction. He imposed a moratorium on executions
last May while the study was being completed, but Republican Gov.-elect
Robert Ehrlich has promised to lift the ban when he takes office Jan.
15.
Criminologist Ray Paternoster found that the race of the defendant was
not significant in death penalty-eligible cases, but wrote that the race
of the victim proved a major factor in determining whether prosecutors
sought the death penalty.
Furthermore, the race of the victim and offender taken together showed
significant differences, Prosecutors filed death notices, indicating their
intent to seek the death penalty, in almost half of the homicides where
a black defendant was accused of killing a white victim, but only in about
a quarter of all other homicides.
Several black lawmakers have proposed legislation to extend the moratorium
while the General Assembly reviews the study.
(AP)
Insecticides, anti-nerve gas drug linked
to infertility in soldiers
A trio of chemicals used to protect troops against insect-borne diseases
and nerve gas poisoning during the Gulf War – substances expected
to be used in any future attack on Iraq – may be the cause of infertility
and sexual dysfunction among veterans of the 1991 war. That is the conclusion
of researchers at Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina, whose
study based on animal experiments was published Jan. 10 in the Journal
of Toxicology and Environmental Health.
The study found that some cells responsible for the production and maintenance
of sperm were damaged or killed by exposure to the combination of the
insect repellent DEET, the insecticide permethrin,and an anti-nerve gas
drug known as pyridostigmine bromide, or PB.
The study is one of many investigating the causes of the puzzling array
of medical problems that plague men and women who served in the Persian
Gulf. According to epidemiological studies, about 200,000 Gulf War veterans
have suffered illnesses since the war. During the war, troops were exposed
to pesticides, chemical and biological warfare agents, vaccines, PB, infectious
diseases, depleted uranium, oil well fires and smoke, and petroleum products.
Veterans have long wondered what role exposure to that cocktail of substances
has played in their ailments.
(San Francisco Chronicle)
Native Americans say gov’t has
cheated them out of billions
More than 3,000 Native Americans gave a federal judge a detailed court
filing Jan. 6 based on private historical records asserting that the government
had cheated them out of as much as $137.2 billion over the last 115 years.
The court action marked a significant turn in the largest class-action
suit ever filed by Native Americans against the federal government and
showed just what kind of sums are at stake.
For generations, Native Americans have complained that the federal government
has lost or stolen millions of dollars earned on tribal lands. And for
decade after decade the government has ignored or disputed those contentions
while failing to offer detailed accounts of how much money has been raised
from oil and mineral, timber and grazing leases, proceeds of which go
into a trust fund for the benefit of native peoples.
The conflict – dating from 1887 – escalated into a lawsuit that
Native Americans filed against the Dept. of the Interior in June 1996.
In the six years since, the standoff has become ever more bitter, documents
have been destroyed, and Interior and Treasury secretaries have been held
in contempt of court. Until now the evidence of loss was largely anecdotal.
Now, a voluminous filing containing records that go back to the late 19th
century substantiates the Native Americans’ claim.
(NYT)
Detention upheld in enemy combatant
case
A federal appeals court handed the Bush administration a major legal victory
Jan. 8 in ruling that a wartime president can indefinitely detain a US
citizen captured as an enemy combatant on the battlefield and deny that
person access to a lawyer.
The case, which set up a stark clash between the nation’s security
interests and its citizens’ civil liberties, may have expanded the
power of the presidency as the three-judge panel ruled unanimously that
Bush was due great deference in conducting the "war on terrorism."
The judges of the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond,
VA, said it was improper for the federal courts to probe too deeply into
the detention of Yasser Esam Hamdi, a 22-year-old American-born Saudi
who was captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan and is now imprisoned
in a military brig in Norfolk, VA.
Lawyers for Hamdi challenged his detention, asserting that because he
is a citizen he has the constitutional right to consult a lawyer and to
question the reasons for his confinement. (NYT)
Illinois governor overturns 167 death
sentences in blanket clemency
The governor of Illinois lifted the death sentences of 167 death row inmates
Jan. 12, in an historic blanket commutation which could have far-reaching
implications for other US states, observers said.
Given the state’s "shameful" track record of miscarriages
of justice, and the possibility that more innocent people might be sitting
on death row, Governor George Ryan said he felt he had no option but to
commute the sentences to life without the possibility of parole.
It was the staggeringly inconsistent application of the death penalty
throughout the state and the failure of Illinois lawmakers to act on proposed
reforms that ultimately persuaded the outgoing governor that he must act,
Ryan told an audience at Chicago’s Northwestern University.
"Our capital [punishment] system is haunted by the demon of error
– error in determining guilt, and error in determining who among
the guilty deserves to die. Because of all of these reasons today I am
commuting the sentences of all death row inmates," he said.
Many of the exonerated men have accused the police of torturing them in
order to extract false confessions. An independent prosecutor is investigating
whether a certain police commander should face criminal charges regarding
the claims. (Agence-France Presse)
‘Red’ Emma’s words still
controversial
Anarchist "Red" Emma Goldman’s writings, housed at the
Universityof California-Berkley are at the center of a new controversy.
Candace Falk, director of the Emma Goldman Papers Project, used three
quotations from Goldman’s work as part of a fund-raising appeal.
University officials stopped the mailing, saying Falk deliberately chose
the quotes to make a political statement against war with Iraq.
Falk said she in fact selected the quotes because of their relevance to
possible military action by the US, and felt so strongly about the principles
at stake that she sent out an uncensored letter at her own expense.
"You can’t work on the Emma Goldman Papers Project and fold
on something like this," she said. "We just had to find a way
to get this out."
Falk chose one quote from a 1915 Goldman paper that called on people "not
yet overcome by war madness to raise their voice of protest, to call attention
to the crime and outrage which are about to be perpetrated on them."
Chancellor Robert Berdahl said in a statement Tuesday that he understood
how the university’s effort to delete the quotes could be interpreted
as censorship and said "in retrospect, had we to do it over, we would
have done it differently." (AP, NY Times)
back to top
|
