/=-=-=-=-Click Here & Support Our Sponsor-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=\ Add "character" to your messages with eWalla! Use animations to deliver your personal messages! eWalla lets you send talking, animated cyber-characters to any PC desktop. It’s free so visit: http://click.topica.com/aaablbbz8SnrbAjwjxa/eWalla \=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=/ __________________________________________________________________________ The Internet Anti-Fascist: Friday, 2 February 2001 Vol. 5, Number 7 (#509) __________________________________________________________________________ Action Alerts: ACLU Action Alert, "Oppose Taxpayer-Funded Religious Discrimination," 31 Jan 01 Book/Movie Reviews: Pierre Birnbaum, "Jewish Destinies: Citizenship, State, an Communisty in Modern France," Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. New York: Hill and Wang, 2000 Rightwing Crime In the News: Maria L. La Ganga and John M. Glionna (Los Angeles Times), "Killer Dog Linked to Ring Run by Inmates: The breeding operation was directed by white supremacists inside Pelican Bay prison, authorities say," 31 Jan 01 What's Worth Checking: 10 stories -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ACTION ALERTS: Oppose Taxpayer-Funded Religious Discrimination ACLU Action Alert 31 Jan 01 President Bush this week proposed sweeping changes in the way pervasively religious organizations can use taxpayer money to provide social services. His new initiative, which includes a White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, would in fact create government-funded discrimination in employment and services, as well as result in a dangerous loosening of licensing and standards for providers of social services. Provided that they use their own funds, religious organizations are exempt from many civil rights laws and courts have allowed them to discriminate on the basis of their religious beliefs and teachings about race, religion, sexual orientation, gender and pregnancy status. But that equation must change once religious organizations begin to use tax dollars. Under the Bush initiative, for example, a Catholic church receiving tax dollars for literacy programs could fire a teacher for getting pregnant outside of marriage, or an Orthodox Jewish synagogue that used public funds to operate a food bank could refuse to provide food to non-Jews. TAKE ACTION! Stop the Bush administration from transforming the helping hand of government into a chokehold of discrimination! You can read more about this and other concerns with the Bush proposal and send a FREE FAX to Congress and the President from our action alert at: http://www.aclu.org/action/charchoice107.html -------------------------------------------------------------------------- BOOK/MOVIE REVIEWS: Pierre Birnbaum, "Jewish Destinies: Citizenship, State, an Communisty in Modern France," Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. New York: Hill and Wang, 2000. vii + 324 pp. Notes index. $35.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-8090-6101-5. Reviewed by Jonathan Judaken, Department of History, University of Memphis . Published by H-Antisemitism (December, 2000) French-Jewish Emancipation and its Discontents "Let us be grateful to assimilation. If at the same time, we oppose it, it is because this "withdrawal into the self" which is essential to us, and which is so often disparaged, is not the symptom of an outmoded phase of existence, but reveals a "beyond" to universalism." --Emmanuel Levinas "The vise gradually tightened. The first stage was the roundup of a thousand prominent Jews in December 1941. One of my uncles was in that group. He and most of the others never returned from deportation. That roundup proved conclusively that Nazis were going to destroy the Jews, whatever their origin. Until then--not to their credit or foresightedness, it must be said--French Jews thought they would be treated differently from foreign Jews. That day, they realized that they shared a common destiny. This important lesson influenced the French Jewish community in the postwar years. They realized that they shared a common destiny whatever their background. That explains, I believe, the warm, generous welcome extended to the Jews from France's former colonies." --Annie Kriegel These two epigraphs encapsulate the historical, political and sociological questions raised in this excellent translation of Pierre Birnbaum's tour de force, Destins juifs: De la Revolution francaise a Carpentras (1995). Jewish Destinies is an outstanding overview of key debates and personalities that have shaped the history of Jews in modern France. Birnbaum, a Professor at the University of Paris I (Pantheon-Sorbonne) and the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris, a leading political sociologist, and one of France's most eminent scholars of the political history of Jews in France, has written close to twenty books, several of which have appeared in English. Unlike Paula Hyman's masterful social history of The Jews of Modern France (1998), which offers a general historical survey, Birnbaum's book focuses on how the conflicts faced by the contemporary Jewish community between universality and particularity, the national community and individuality, and religiosity and secularism were shaped by France's distinct path through the modern period. The text is divided into three parts with twelve chapters framed by an introduction and conclusion, with a preface for American and English readers that sketches the differences between the constructions of citizenship, state and community in France, the United States and Great Britain. An "Afterword" discusses events in the French-Jewish community since the book's French publication. Even for readers familiar with Birnbaum's other work, his discussions of the "Different Roads to Emancipation" (Part I) and "The Scope of the Opposition" (Part II) are nevertheless intriguing to revisit here because they are framed by the concerns he raises most directly in Part III, "The Unknown Present." This section is richly informed by the perspective of the longue duree_, which Birnbaum concludes is sorely missing from much of the discussion in France today (p. 277). Since his book is less a survey than a tableau that allows Birnbaum to intervene in the major historiographical debates of modern French-Jewish history, I will discuss each chapter to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of what constitutes the unifying leitmotif of this work, Birnbaum's own defense of French Republicanism. His apologia is muted by his deep understanding of the problems of the Republican model, but it nevertheless fails to go beyond reaffirming the promises of Franco-Judaism because of the dangers he identifies with a different path. [The remainder of the review can be founda t<http://www2.h- net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=15565980290028> -- tallpaul] -------------------------------------------------------------------------- RIGHTWING CRIME IN THE NEWS Killer Dog Linked to Ring Run by Inmates: The breeding operation was directed by white supremacists inside Pelican Bay prison, authorities say Maria L. La Ganga and John M. Glionna (Los Angeles Times) 31 Jan 01 SAN FRANCISCO--What first looked like a terrifying tragedy--young woman killed by rogue dog--has revealed an illegal guard dog-breeding operation run from behind the walls of the state's most secure prison, law enforcement officials said Tuesday. Authorities investigating the death of Diane Whipple, 33, are on the trail of a bizarre story, complete with white supremacists, a surprise adoption and the Mexican Mafia. The dog that killed the college lacrosse coach in her apartment hallway here was raised at the direction of two members of the Aryan Brotherhood, a white supremacist gang, who were illegally controlling a guard-dog breeding operation while incarcerated at Pelican Bay State Prison, corrections officials said. Whipple was mauled to death Friday by Bane, a 123-pound English mastiff- Canary Island crossbreed. The dog belonged to two attorneys who had represented Paul "Cornfed" Schneider, 38, and Dale Bretches, 44, who are serving lengthy sentences for violent crimes, said Russ Heimerich, a spokesman for the California Department of Corrections. San Francisco police are investigating whether Bane and eight other dogs were being raised at a remote Northern California farm as professional fighting dogs or guard animals for members of the Mexican Mafia, another prison gang, said San Francisco police Lt. Henry Hunter. And in a strange twist, the attorneys acknowledged in a brief telephone interview with The Times on Tuesday that they had filed court documents in San Francisco to adopt Schneider, who is serving a life sentence without possibility of parole for attempted murder and aggravated assault while in prison. The adoption was granted by Superior Court Judge Donna J. Hitchens on Monday, according to court documents, which say the attorneys and the inmate have "agreed to assume toward each other the relation of parent and child." Couple Could Face Charges The attorneys, Marjorie Knoller and Robert Noel, who owned Bane and another English mastiff-Canary Island mix named Hera, could be charged with a felony in the death of Whipple within three weeks, San Francisco Dist. Atty. Terence Hallinan said Tuesday. Hallinan said they could be charged with responsibility for injuries caused by trained fighting dogs. They could face as much as four years in prison and a $10,000 fine, if convicted. Authorities would have to prove that the owners knew that Bane and Hera had a propensity for violence. Until Noel and Knoller took custody of the animals 10 months ago, the dogs were being cared for by Janet Coumbs on her Hayfork, Calif., farm, where they had already killed more than two dozen farm animals, including a ram, sheep, chickens and a house cat, the Trinity County woman said in an interview. Coumbs said she had unwittingly become involved in the dog operation after she began visiting Schneider at Pelican Bay as part of a Christian outreach. Coumbs said she and her 17-year-old daughter "felt like prisoners to those dogs." Whipple died Friday after a brutal attack that has stunned this normally animal-loving city. The athlete and coach had just gotten home from her job at St. Mary's College in Moraga when Bane gripped her throat, while Hera tore at her clothing. Knoller tried to intercede to no avail. Whipple was taken to San Francisco General Hospital, where she died several hours later. Bane was put to death over the weekend. Hera is in protective custody, awaiting a Feb. 13 hearing about her fate. As the incident gained attention, police began receiving calls about the couple and the animals, including reports from neighbors and others alleging that Bane and Hera had attacked other animals. One of the callers was Coumbs. Coumbs, 49, who suffers from arthritis and asthma, said she began corresponding with Schneider in 1997 after a friend suggested that she reach out to local prison inmates. She visited Schneider several times before he proposed that she begin raising the animals as a way to make extra money on her tiny farm. Coumbs said she was instructed to contact a kennel in Chicago and select two puppies. Looking at pictures the kennel supplied her, she decided on Bane, then three months old, and a 9-month female. The dogs were later delivered to her at the Sacramento airport after she paid $1,200 apiece for the animals, money that she said Schneider supplied her. Schneider soon instructed her to purchase two more females from a kennel in Ohio. "He said I could make more money by breeding the dogs," she said. But the arrangement went sour when Coumbs stopped receiving money for the dogs' upkeep from Schneider and from a Sacramento woman, who she said also instructed her on the dogs' care. Schneider never told Coumbs to train them to attack, she said, and she did not, but "he told me not to make wusses out of them." In debt for the dogs' care, Coumbs said, she declined to answer a letter sent by the convict. Months later, she was sued by Noel and Knoller for custody of the animals. Lt. Ben Grundy, a spokesman for Pelican Bay, said Schneider and Bretches allegedly ran the dog-breeding operation from behind bars by writing to accomplices in code to hide the identity of those involved and the extent of the operation. The prison investigated the operation, which Grundy described as "lucrative," between October 1999 and April 2000. At that point the research was turned over to the FBI. According to a U.S. Department of Justice advisory that Hallinan received Tuesday, detailing the prison's investigation, an Aryan Brotherhood group at Pelican Bay had allegedly maintained a business to buy and sell fighting dogs for profit. The Department of Justice report said the gang used associates outside the prison to raise and sell the dogs and funnel the profits back to incarcerated gang members, Hallinan said, adding that some dogs were to be sold to the Mexican Mafia. It is illegal for inmates to operate moneymaking enterprises from inside prison. But Heimerich said the FBI found no evidence of illegal practices outside the prison involving the dog-breeding operation. As a result, charges were never filed. Last April, Knoller and Noel got custody of all nine dogs from Coumbs and took Bane and Hera home to their one-bedroom apartment. Authorities are investigating what happened to the other seven animals. The attorneys would not comment on the incident or the investigation. According to Heimerich, however, the two attorneys were frequent visitors to Schneider in Pelican Bay, visits that overlapped with the dog-breeding operation. They also had represented Schneider in at least one lawsuit. Officials Got Letters In 1998, Knoller and Noel wrote on behalf of Schneider to a laundry list of public officials, including California Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein and then-U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno. In the letter, Knoller and Noel wrote that they have represented half a dozen Pelican Bay state correctional officers charged with civil rights violations against inmates. Two guards had been found guilty of conspiring with inmates who belonged to white supremacist groups, including the Aryan Brotherhood. The guards and inmates had conspired to set up brutal attacks against convicted child molesters and other inmates at the bottom of the prison hierarchy. At one point in the 39-page letter, obtained by The Times, Noel and Knoller pleaded with Del Norte County and federal officials that Schneider's life was in danger because he was being forced to share a cell with another inmate. "I strongly urge you to offer Mr. Schneider the immediate option of being single celled," Noel wrote then-warden of Pelican Bay, Robert Ayres, in March 1998. "I strongly urge you to consider an immediate transfer of Mr. Schneider to another institution for his safety." The letter was written during a war inside the ranks of the Aryan Brotherhood, internecine violence marked by several murders. At the time, according to Noel, the Aryan Brotherhood inside Pelican Bay had splintered into at least three factions, two of which were allegedly trying to murder Schneider. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- WHAT'S WORTH CHECKING stories via <ftp://ftp.nyct.net/pub/users/tallpaul/publish/story7/> Reuters, "Anniversary of Liberation Marked at Auschwitz," 29 Jan 01, "As much of Europe marked Holocaust memorial day, low-key commemorations were held at the site of the most notorious Nazi death camp to mark the 56th anniversary of its liberation. Some 500 people, including camp survivors and local Jewish leaders, walked from the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp's Gate of Death to its giant memorial wall, past the remains of the camp's gas chambers and crematoria." <2061.txt> Beth Gardiner (AP), "Europe Honors Nazi Victims," 27 Jan 01, "Europe recalled one of its darkest eras Saturday as ceremonies from London to Lithuania marked the 56th anniversary of the Auschwitz death camp's liberation. Britain and Italy held their first-ever Holocaust memorial days while survivors, spiritual leaders and politicians across the continent pledged to remember a grim historical lesson about the consequences of intolerance." <2062.txt> Reuters, "U.S. judge delays German Holocaust suit decision," 29 Jan 01, "A U.S. District Court judge on Monday delayed a decision on whether to dismiss class-action suits filed by Holocaust survivors and victims' heirs against Germany and its industries until she receives more information about how a new settlement fund will be handled. The decision by Judge Shirley Wohl Kram risks further delaying payments from the new fund that Germany and its industries last year created to resolve lawsuits brought by Holocaust families, Ed Fagan, a New York lawyer involved in the cases, told Reuters." <2063.txt> Kim Gamel (AP), "Sweden Conference Tackles Neo-Nazism," 29 Jan 01, "Neo- Nazism is on the rise in Europe, with hate groups using unemployment and poverty to promote a fear of foreigners and immigrants, Sweden's prime minister said Monday at a conference about combatting intolerance. 'Just a few generations after the liberation of Auschwitz, we see an alarming rise in right-wing extremists in Europe,' Swedish Prime Minister Goeran Persson said. 'There is no room for hesitation. It is time for action and cooperation.' For two days, politicians, academics and human rights activists will study racism, religious intolerance, homophobia and xenophobia, as well as develop proposals for education, legislation and community initiatives to combat hatred." <2064.txt> Beth J. Harpaz (AP), "Ex-Nazi Slaves Eligible for Funds," 31 Jan 01, ""An effort was launched Tuesday to find Holocaust survivors who were forced to work for the Nazis and who may be eligible for compensation from a $5 billion fund established by Germany." <2065.txt> Burt Herman (AP), "Germany Tries to Ban Far-Right Party," 31 Jan 01, "A far-right party blamed for fueling a rise in hate crimes expresses 'anti- Semitic and racist views spiritually similar to Nazism,' the German government said in court documents released Wednesday seeking a ban on the National Democratic Party. The government's filing for a ban on the party, known by its German initials as NPD, comes as new figures showed more anti- Semitic crimes were recorded in Germany in the last three months of 2000 than ever before for that time period. Official data on all hate crimes haven't been released but police expect an increase. Filed late Tuesday in Germany's highest court, the application for the ban outlined the party's policies of racism, anti-Semitism, their cooperation with skinheads and calls for taking their fight to the streets - often citing speeches by party leaders or party publications." <2066.txt> Richard Murphy (Reuters), "Austrian Parliament Approves Holocaust Deal," 31 Jan 01, "The Austrian parliament Wednesday unanimously approved a compensation package for Jews whose property was stolen by the Nazis despite fierce criticism by the leader of the country's tiny Jewish community. Conservative Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel said the measures approved by all four parliamentary parties, which give legal effect to an agreement reached in Washington two weeks ago, were only a gesture, but they were an important one." <2067.txt> AP, "College in Tex. Suspends Fraternity," 31 Jan 01, "The University of North Texas suspended a fraternity accused of chanting racial slurs and waving a Confederate battle flag at a group of football recruits, many of whom were black." <2068.txt> AP, "Explosion Damages Monument in Zagreb," 1 Feb 01, "An explosion in a cemetery in the Croatian capital on Thursday badly damaged a monument to those who fought the country's pro-Nazi regime during World War II, police said." <2069.txt> Nicholas K. Geranios (AP), "Aryan Nations To Meet at Ex-Base," 1 Feb 01, "A white supremacist group losing the site of its annual conference to bankruptcy plans to hold this year's event at a former Navy base where sailors once trained to fight fascism. Many in the area are upset at the Aryan Nations renting the northern Idaho site of the Farragut Naval Training Center, one of the largest training bases during World War II. But officials say they have little choice but to allow the group to use the property, now Farragut State Park." <2070.txt> * * * * * In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. __________________________________________________________________________ FASCISM: We have no ethical right to forgive, no historical right to forget. (No permission required for noncommercial reproduction) - - - - - back issues archived via: <ftp://ftp.nyct.net/pub/users/tallpaul/publish/tinaf/> ============================================================ GET A NEXTCARD VISA, in 30 seconds! 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