HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK ---------------------------
Last night I sent out a news article from the New York Times entitled "It Can Happen Here" to several friends and contacts. One of my friends forwarded to a friend of his who wrote this incredibly powerful and moving reply that truly needs to be read, forwarded and published worldwide. mart ----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, December 02, 2001 8:13 AM Subject: [Fwd: It Can Happen Here, to you!] This is a reply that I got from the e-mail, "It can happen here"! This is very well said, this is true America, 300 plus years of advancement, but yet nothing has changed, the powers to be are still seeking, destroying and dominating. -------- Original Message -------- Subject: It Can Happen Here, to you! I cannot think of another country in which I would rather reside at this time. However I realize the citizens of this country have been living in Alice's Wonderland much too long. I guess I tend not to get too overly excited about losing my civil rights in this country and articles such as the one I just read. You see, I cannot forget the days that the white kids rode by us on the new school bus and yelled at us calling us Nigger as we stood waiting for the old dilapidated school bus to pick us up. I cannot forget that when I bought ice cream in Hamilton's drug store in Keysville, that no matter how hot it was, I had to go outside and eat mine. I could not stay inside in the air conditioning and enjoy it. I remember when I went to Randolph-Henry for the first time in the eighth grade how I would have a whole table to myself in the cafeteria because the white children did not want to sit anywhere near me. I remember when I started working for the Department of Corrections, I was told that even though I had a Masters Degree in Criminal Justice, the only thing I was qualified to do was be a correctional officer (only requirement is a high school diploma or GED). I remember when I was conducting a certification audit in Abingdon, Virginia, for the Department of Corrections a few years ago, I decided to go out for a walk after dinner. As I was walking down the road, a bunch of whit kids drove by and yelled out the window, "Hey Nigger." I look at the prison population and wonder how all those Black men were able to acquire the means (money, planes, ships, etc.) to import all those drugs that they were caught dealing and for which they subsequently received significant prison sentences. I cannot forget that man who was tied to the back of a pickup in TEXAS and dragged to his death - his only crime being that he was a Black man. I cannot forget that AMERICA dropped not one, but two atom bombs during World War II. I cannot forget that while Hitler was busy taking the Jews off to internment camps, AMERICA was busy detaining the Japanese-Americans simply because they were Japanese. The Tuskegee Experiments did not occur in Germany. They occurred right here in America. I have difficulty discerning the difference between a Jew going to an internment camp and a Black people being hanged by the Ku Klux Klan. The results were the same for the victims. Both were deprived of their civil rights. Only the numbers, as they have been reported, are significantly different. I cannot forget that today we have a serious problem with racial profiling, particularly DWB (driving while black). It annoys the hell out of me for store detectives and clerks to follow me around in a department store simply because of the color of my skin. I have been making loans from the Bank of Charlotte County ever since I started gainful employment. Yet when I go in there now, after 20 years of paying loans off on time (early in many cases), for some reason I come out feeling like Lightning asking the Boss for a handout. If you ever looked at Amos and Andy, you know who Lightning was. I hope you will understand and forgive me if I don't get too wrung up about losing my civil rights. Peoples civil rights are being eroded, but whose civil rights are they in the first place? Maybe those who are not Black will understand what it's like to live in a country that was stolen simply because it was there for the taking. Maybe those who are not Black will understand what it's like to be someplace where you are not wanted, but you are not here by choice in the first place. Maybe those who are not Black will someday understand why America is so hated around the world. Maybe those who are not Black will understand why I haven't yet put a flag on my car (even though it is a foreign car). But, I'm afraid that only those who are BLACK LIKE ME will understand how it has already happened here in so many cases. That's all for now. Catch ya later. From: Miroslav Antic Sent: Saturday, December 01, 2001 7:13 PM Subject: It Can Happen Here HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------- Published on Saturday, December 1, 2001 in the New York Times It Can Happen Here by Anthony Lewis BOSTON -- On the basis of secret evidence, the government accuses a non-citizen of connections to terrorism, and holds him in prison for three years. Then a judge conducts a full trial and rejects the terrorism charges. He releases the prisoner. A year later government agents rearrest the man, hold him in solitary confinement and state as facts the terrorism charges that the judge found untrue. Could that happen in America? In John Ashcroft's America it has happened. Mazen Al-Najjar, a Palestinian, came to the United States in 1984 as a graduate student and stayed to teach at a university. The Immigration Service moved to deport him for overstaying his visa - and asked an immigration judge, R. Kevin McHugh, to imprison him. Secret evidence, the government lawyers said, showed that Mr. Al-Najjar had raised funds for a terrorist organization, Palestinian Islamic Jihad. In June 1997 Judge McHugh issued the detention order. Mr. Al-Najjar's lawyers went to federal court and challenged the use of secret evidence against him. The court held that he must at least be told enough about the evidence to have a fair chance of responding to it. Judge McHugh then reopened the case in his immigration court. In a two-week trial the government's lead witness, an Immigration agent, admitted that there was no evidence of Mr. Al-Najjar contributing to a terrorist organization or ever advocating terrorism. At the end Judge McHugh found that there were no "bona fide reasons to conclude that [Mr. Al- Najjar] is a threat to national security." Judge McHugh, a former U.S. marine, wrote a 56-page decision that evidently carried much legal weight. The Board of Immigration Appeals rejected a government appeal. And Attorney General Janet Reno, who had the right to step in, refused to do so. A year ago Mr. Al-Najjar rejoined his wife and three daughters. Last Saturday immigration agents arrested Mr. Al-Najjar again. The Justice Department issued a triumphant press release saying that the case "underscores the department's commitment to address terrorism by using all legal authorities available." Mr. Al-Najjar, it said, "had established ties to terrorist organizations." That flat, conclusory statement was in direct contradiction to the findings made by Judge McHugh after a full trial. And the department did not claim, this time, to be relying on undisclosed information. It said the detention was "not based on classified evidence." It seems to me shocking that the United States Department of Justice should state as a fact something that a judge has found to be untrue. The whole press release had the ring not of law but of political propaganda. That is not the department of respected lawyers that I have known over many years. Mr. Al-Najjar is not only back in prison, he is being treated with exceptional severity, indeed cruelty. He is in solitary confinement 23 hours a day. He is not allowed to make telephone calls, and he may not see his family. Only his lawyer is permitted to visit him. Because Mr. Al-Najjar is stateless and no country will accept him, he probably cannot be deported. So if the Justice Department view that he is a security risk prevails - in the teeth of the judge's finding - he could spend the rest of his life in prison. Why is Attorney General Ashcroft using his office to punish this man so severely? At a time of national anxiety about Arabs and Muslims, Mr. Al-Najjar is a useful target: a Palestinian Muslim. More broadly, Mr. Ashcroft has claimed power to detain non-citizens even when immigration judges order them released. It could be, too, that Mr. Ashcroft wants to use this case to establish the right to use secret evidence against aliens. The practice had been all but abandoned by the Justice Department after several judges frowned on it and more than 100 members of the House co-sponsored legislation to prohibit it. With all the extreme measures taken by the administration in recent days - detaining hundreds of people, ordering thousands questioned, establishing military tribunals - Mr. Ashcroft and President Bush have assured the country that they will enforce the measures with care, and with concern for civil liberties. Their motto is, "Trust us." The Al-Najjar case shows that there is no basis for trust. Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: [email protected] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://TOPICA.COM/u/?a84x2u.a9WB2D Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
