--- Support our Sponsor ------------------------------------ Did you know that you can win just by playing at The River Belle Casino? $20,000 worth of amazing prizes are up for grabs in The River Belle’s Midsummer Mardi Gras Competition. click here: http://click.topica.com/aaaaxJbz8SnrbAjwjxa/RiverBelle ------------------------------------------------------------ __________________________________________________________________________ The Internet Anti-Fascist: Friday, 18 August August 2000 Vol. 4, Number 67 (#455) __________________________________________________________________________ Ongoing Coverage of Net-Based Hate Rick Perera (IDG), "Controversy arises over neo-Nazi domain names," 9 Aug 00 CNN, "Jewish group complains over sale of hate books online," 10 Aug 00 AP, "Yahoo! set for Nazi site ruling," 11 Aug 00 Angela Doland (AP), "Going, Going, Gone: French Judge Orders Ways to Block Yahoo!'s Auction Site," 11 Aug 00 Robin Lloyd (CNN), "Web trackers hunt racist groups online," 12 Aug 00 Rick Perera (IDG), "German political party calls for anti-Nazi Net filter," 14 Aug 00 Eduardo Cué (The Christian Science Monitor), "French antiracism laws meet Internet free speech: Yahoo! goes back to court Nov. 6 after a team decides whether technology can block users from some sites," 14 Aug 00 What's Worth Checking: 10 stories -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ONGOING COVERAGE OF NET-BASED HATE Controversy arises over neo-Nazi domain names Rick Perera (IDG) 9 Aug 00 BERLIN -- In the midst of a renewed debate over right-wing extremism, Germany's central Internet registry is facing scrutiny over neo-Nazi domain names. DENIC eG (Deutsches Network Information Center) in Frankfurt, which administers the top-level domain .de, deleted the domain name "heil- hitler.de" Monday, some four days after it was registered. Use of the Nazi greeting "Heil Hitler" is illegal in Germany. "We've just been informed by a client of the Internet provider which has registered the domain name," said spokesman Klaus Herzig at DENIC. He added that following normal procedure, the name was registered after the ISP (Internet service provider) STRATO Medien AG sent an automatic e-mail request. When a user wants to register a domain name, the ISP automatically forwards the request to DENIC. "It's really difficult (to control domain names) because we have 200,000 registrations in a month, so it's every 15 seconds that we register a new domain name," Herzig said. STRATO spokesman Sšren Heinze said his company has its own policy against offensive domain names. "We've always said, if we find something, we remove it immediately," he said. Germany's Justice Ministry is pressuring DENIC to keep neo-Nazi domain names off the Web. "Everyone has a responsibility when we say as a society we want no right-wing radicalism," said ministry spokesman Christian Arns. "To that extent, we want to hold DENIC responsible too." Arns added that Justice Minister Herta DŠubler-Gmelin, has offered to help coordinate an effort against neo-Nazi domain names. "The question is what you can do about domain names that are distasteful but not illegal," he said "You can't say www.schlagjedenauslaendertot.de ("kill all foreigners"). That would be instigating a crime." But he added that domain names with a neo-Nazi twist, like hitleristganztoll.de ("Hitler is really great"), would theoretically be legal. A check of DENIC's search engine shows that site names like hitler.de, adolfhitler.de, and adolf-hitler.de have been registered, though there is currently no content attached to them. Arns said the Justice Minister will work with anti-racism and minority groups to compile a list of potentially offensive names, suggesting that DENIC could forward anyone who attempted to access such a Web site to an information page on combating right-wing extremism. But DENIC's Herzig was skeptical about the idea. "We think that a list would not solve the problem," he said, since there are endless possible combinations such as "heilhitler1," "heilhitler2," and the like. "I cannot imagine that you can put all these possibilities on this list." He added that a better solution is for ISPs to react quickly when users try to register an offensive name. Asked about the problem of neo-Nazi websites registered outside Germany, Arns said there's no legal action German authorities can take, but that they can rely on moral pressure. "A company has to decide how it wants to make money," he said. "We're just trying to create a high sensibility (in Germany), and we hope also that a similar discussion will take place in other countries." - - - - - Jewish group complains over sale of hate books online CNN 10 Aug 00 The Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center says it has asked the German Justice Ministry to investigate whether Barnesandnoble.com and Amazon.com, America's two largest Internet booksellers, have illegally shipped hate literature to Germany, including "The Turner Diaries" and Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf." The center has written to the booksellers saying they hope and expect the firms will move quickly to ensure they do not inadvertently emerge as a major "purveyor of hate" in Germany. Those letters went to the German-based Bertelsmann company, which owns 50 percent of Barnesandnoble.com, and to Amazon.com. The Simon Wiesenthal Center is a Los Angeles-based international organization for Holocaust remembrance, the defense of human rights and the Jewish people. Barnesandnoble.com and Amazon.com representatives were not immediately available for comment. According to letters addressed to the booksellers, which were posted on the Simon Wiesenthal Center Web site, a researcher for the center in Germany ordered from the Internet booksellers copies of "Mein Kampf," "The Protocols for the Elders of Zion," "The Turner Diaries" and "Hunter." In describing "Protocols," the center wrote that it has "been labeled a warrant for genocide and has been used by antisemites to spread their violent and hateful venom throughout the 20th century." "The Turner Diaries" served as a model for Timothy McVeigh's terrorist attack in Oklahoma City, the letters say, and "Hunter" attacks minorities and homosexuals. In the letters, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, notes that in 1995 a U.S. citizen was convicted and jailed in Germany "for distributing illegal propaganda and for encouraging racial hatred." In a letter to the German justice minister, Cooper said the books were "sent directly to the homes of the customers thereby circumventing the German laws regarding these publications." "Mein Kampf" and "Protocol" are both banned in Germany, Cooper said. In a statement Monday the center said it had received confirmation from the ministry that it was investigating the two Internet retailers. - - - - - Yahoo! set for Nazi site ruling AP 11 Aug 00 PARIS -- Internet giant Yahoo! Inc. is returning to the French court in a legal battle over who should be held responsible for online racism. At issue on Friday is Yahoo!'s auction site, where Nazi medallions, swastika-emblazoned battle flags and other Third Reich paraphernalia can be bought and sold. The case centres on freedom of speech -- which is caught between some nations' laws and the Internet's borderless, hard-to-regulate nature. In France, where it is illegal to sell or exhibit anything that incites racism, two Paris-based human rights groups filed a lawsuit in April against Yahoo! for hosting the auctions of Nazi objects. But Yahoo! is based in the U.S. where the constitution protects many World Wide Web pages expressing racist or extremist ideas. Company fined In May, Judge Jean-Jacques Gomez ruled that Yahoo! had offended the nation's "collective memory." He ordered the company to pay fines to the International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism and the Union of Jewish Students of France which brought the lawsuit, and to find a way to block French users from the U.S.- based pages in question. Gomez must now rule on whether Yahoo! followed his orders, and the prosecution has asked that Yahoo! be fined for each day it violates French law. The battle has sparked fears that one nation's legal system could extend across national borders and put a stranglehold on laws in other countries. Yahoo! has pulled Third Reich paraphernalia from its French site -- in keeping with national laws. Not feasible In a further step, the company recently added warnings, in French, to some pages of its U.S.-based site containing sensitive material, alerting French users they risk breaking French law by viewing them. Yahoo!'s lawyers say it would be impossible to go further, arguing that it is not technically feasible to keep French users off disputed Web sites. Some other European countries also have laws to quash racist expression. A parallel battle is being played out in Germany at a time of escalating neo- Nazi activity. - - - - - Going, Going, Gone: French Judge Orders Ways to Block Yahoo!'s Auction Site Angela Doland (AP) 11 Aug 00 PARIS -- A French judge today ordered a team of technology experts to find ways to block French Internet users from U.S. giant Yahoo!'s auction site — the latest step in a transatlantic legal battle over racism in cyberspace. The Web pages that have unleashed the impassioned debate are posted on Yahoo!'s online auction, where users can buy more than 1,000 objects of Nazi memorabilia. On the site at auctions.yahoo.com, a Nazi battle flag sells for $16, a Third Reich dress sword for $150. In April, two angry Paris-based advocacy groups targeted Yahoo! for "banalizing the Holocaust," and sued the company. In May, Judge Jean- Jacques Gomez ordered the Santa Clara, Calif.-based Yahoo! to pay fines to the two human rights associations, and called the auctions "an offense to the nation's collective memory." Gomez also ordered Yahoo! to find a way to block French users from the site, and all other sites deemed racist. Yahoo!'s lawyers argued that the demand was technologically impossible: Cyberspace has no frontiers, they said, and there is no effective means of preventing the Net's citizens from traveling where they like. To test Yahoo!'s assertions, Judge Gomez today ordered that three technology experts -- one American, one French and one other European -- study the possibilities of filtering French users from the site. The specialists are to present their findings to the court on Nov. 6. The state prosecutor had requested that Yahoo! be fined for every day it continues to break the law in France, where it is illegal to sell or display objects that promote racism. The judge did not rule out such a measure in the future. For Yahoo, Not a Victory "The judge took into account our arguments," said Yahoo! lawyer Christophe Pecnard. "But it's not a victory." Benjamin Canet, secretary-general of the Union of Jewish Students of France, said the trial was becoming more complex than foreseen. "Perhaps we were a bit naive at the beginning," he said. "We thought Yahoo! would react quickly in an intelligent way and pull the material off its site." The Jewish students' group sued Yahoo along with the International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism. The case has sparked enormous interest here, with many cheering on the small advocacy groups that launched a David-vs.-Goliath attack on a superstar U.S. company. An article in the respected center-left newsweekly Le Nouvel Observateur even called for a boycott of Yahoo! — "portal of Nazis." Several European countries have tough laws aimed at squelching racist expression. But in the United States, the Constitution protects many Web pages expressing extremist ideas. The Net is one key area where these differing ideas have often collided. Judge Gomez today once again dismissed one of Yahoo's key arguments: that its U.S. site does not fall under the jurisdiction of French courts. Yahoo! is worried the case could set a global precedent that could leave Web sites vulnerable to legal attacks from abroad. - - - - - Web trackers hunt racist groups online Robin Lloyd (CNN) 12 Aug 00 The first white supremacist Web site went up more than four years ago but efforts by cyber-detectives to track the dozens of groups that have sprouted online are years behind. The leader of the "hate trackers" is the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama -- considered by some to be the birthplace of the civil rights movement. There, Brian Youngblood heads up a team of 12 that monitors the material at more than 500 Web sites, mostly by hand, as well as a number of chat rooms and news groups. "Search engines are great," he says, "but as I read they only pick up a third of the net. I pick up more sites by picking up links. Link, link, link." White supremacist, neo-Nazi, Ku Klux Klan, skinhead and Christian separatist organizations have signed up thousands of new members over the Internet, but those Web sites also make them more visible to groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center. The center's approach is not to beat the hate groups at their game. Instead, its focus is collecting a truckload of bytes that could someday be turned over to law enforcement for evidence in hate crimes. Information from the center's database was used in a successful lawsuit against White Aryan Resistance leader Tom Metzger, who was held responsible for a 1988 Portland, Oregon murder of an Ethiopian immigrant. Though his followers committed the murder, a jury found that Metzger incited the crime. The Internet has made online tracking of such groups both easier and harder, Youngblood says. It's easier to look at Web sites than to cull through print mailings and fliers, but the messages and messengers change quickly in the information age. White supremacist groups gained more national attention this week with the arrest of a Washington State native, Buford Furrow. Furrow has been linked to white supremacist groups, including the Aryan Nation, The Order and Christian Identity. He also is listed in the Southern Poverty Law Center's database, which could become crucial evidence in the charges brought against Furrow. There has been an escalation of harassment and violence against Jews, says the center's founder Morris Dees. In 1997, 1,200 of 9,000 incidents involving hate were targeted against Jews, he said. And the number of known "hate" sites on the Web has grown from one since the date of the Oklahoma City bombing, April 19, 1995, to up to 2,000, online trackers say. Pioneering site offers chat service, mailing lists, news Youngblood says sites put up by Stormfront and the World Church of the Creator are "pretty good" while those created by the Ku Klux Klan tend to be less sophisticated. Stormfront, the pioneer in online white supremacy material, is less an organization than a portal for an Internet Relay Chat service, mailing lists, news servers and other reference material and social contacts. The site got a lot of traffic from the start because it was the only one of its kind, says Don Black, who started the Stormfront Web site in 1995 and maintains it out of his home in West Palm Beach, Florida. The site generally gets about 2,000 visitors a day, now up to 4,000 due to the fatal shooting by a white supremacist on July 4 in Illinois and now the Jewish community center shooting. Stormfront.org started as a dial-in bulletin board service run on a single phone line in the early 1990s. "With the exponential growth of the Net we were able to reach many thousands of people that we otherwise would never have been in contact with our publications and organizations," Black says. The World Church of the Creator site includes a page outlining its "Internet Blitzkrieg," which aims to bring 400 hits a day to the site and for church members to recruit new members in chat room and post its web address wherever possible. Matthew Hale, the church's leader, said the Internet outreach effort has received a great response. The Illinois violence, which put his church's name in the news as the shooter was affiliated with the church, has brought in more professionals and highly educated members, Hale says. "I know that some people have asked if we're an Internet church. It's not but it does enable us to reach people all over the world," he said. The Web site went up in 1996. The Southern Poverty Law Center documents those sites' every move, Youngblood says. West Coast operation also tracks sites The Southern Poverty Law Center's West Coast counterpart is a program called Cyberwatch run by the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. That group reports a higher count of hate groups on the Web -- more than 1,400 - - but does less work than Youngblood's team to be sure of which sites are active. The Wiesenthal Center also recently released a CD-ROM with results of its ongoing study, the latest version of which is called Digital Hate 2000 and lists Web sites that promote racism, post instructions for bomb making and provide links to racist music. Cyberwatch takes calls from citizens concerned about material they see on the Web who may be uncomfortable identifying themselves on the telephone. The Wiesenthal Center is more focused than the Alabama operation on its own Internet presence -- its Web site has been visited by 1 million users and its affiliated educational outreach effort involves 2,000 educators. The Wiesenthal Center shares its online white supremacist list with a number of companies, including This.com, which offers a search engine that blocks sensitive material for family-oriented users. Rabbi Abraham Cooper, assocate dean of the center, calls the Internet insidious, saying hate groups can get their message across using deceptive monikers, like a site that names itself after the Rev. Martin Luther King but is maintained by Stormfront. The Wiesenthal Center last month got Yahoo! to remove several racist sites from its search engine because they violated the search engine's rules about appropriate content. Currently, Wiesenthal staffers are working with Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com to block them from selling literature written by the founder of the American Nazi Party. Cooper calls not for government intervention but for self-regulation among Internet service providers. "They'll find ways back online," he says. Online chats bring supremacists together daily Stormfront's Black agrees that his community will remain online despite harassment. He says his site draws 20-30 daily chatters, who log in anywhere from 2 p.m. to 2 a.m. and "have withdrawal" when his servers go down, Black says. Most chatters start at Stormfront's discussion board and then hang around the chat server through the evening, he said. The site provides an online community for people who feel isolated due to their belief in white supremacy, says Black, who got his first computer training while in federal prison on a conviction involving an effort to overthrow the government in Dominica. Like World Church of Creation leader Matthew Hale, Black dedicates most of his hours to maintaining his online presence, although he has help from 23 moderators who try to make sure Stormfront chatters avoid talk of illegal activities. Hackers have brought the site down for more than a few hours up to a half dozen times in the past four years, Black says. Usually, they spam the site with e-mail or flood it with "pings" -- small data packets that in large numbers choke Web servers. Typical of most leaders and organizations affiliated with high-profile criminals, both Black and Hale distance themselves from the violence committed by visitors to their sites. Without being prompted, Black offered his denial. "No, we don't think we're responsible for the LA shooting," Black said. - - - - - German political party calls for anti-Nazi Net filter Rick Perera (IDG) 14 Aug 00 BERLIN -- Germany's conservative opposition party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), is calling for more voluntary cooperation to combat right-wing extremism on the Internet. In an open letter last week, CDU General Secretary Ruprecht Polenz called on political parties to support the CDU's "Net Against Violence" (Netz Gegen Gewalt) initiative. "The relative anonymity, the speed and the global availability of the Internet are abused by extremists for their purposes," reads the letter. "The structure of the Net makes it difficult to combat this, especially on a national scale. But this fact must not lead to a capitulation to illegal content. We must do what we can." The CDU is calling on users to help by implementing filtering software to protect youth from exposure to online right-wing propaganda, and by reporting extremist sites to ISPs (Internet service providers) and to German federal security agents. "The only thing that we can do as opposition is try to organize the Web community to help to identify those sites, to support those people who try to develop filtering software... while knowing this is insufficient," said Jochen Becker of the CDU's Internet office. The "Net Against Violence" Web site includes forms allowing users to report the addresses of extremist sites to Germany's federal secret service, or to groups developing filtering software. One link is to the Bertelsmann Foundation, that is developing a filtering system in cooperation with the Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA), which was founded by industry giants such as AOL Europe GmbH, IBM Corp., and Microsoft Corp. A new filtering program will be rolled out in September, building on the existing Recreational Software Advisory Council (RSACi) standard, said Bertelsmann Foundation spokesman Thomas Hart. "Whereas the old system had categories like nudity, violence, and sex... you couldn't tackle, say, extremist content. The new system will be able to do that, because in addition to the actual filter according to categories, there's another option: black lists and white lists." Nonprofit groups like the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Anti-Defamation League have undertaken to maintain lists of objectionable sites that users can download and implement with their filtering software, Hart said. Conversely, "white lists," of recommended sites for children for example, can also be downloaded. "The basic principle of the ICRA system is one of user autonomy and of self-regulation," Hart said. "The whole system very heavily depends on interested third parties." Asked how "Net Against Violence" intends to combat the problem of extremist Web sites registered outside Germany, the CDU's Becker said, "We ask the government to put pressure on the international community, especially on the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers)... they will have the opportunity to really shut down Web sites. At present, their job is not to control, they are just administering the domains but they are not really controlling them from a content point of view." The ruling coalition government had no immediate reaction to the CDU initiative. An Interior Ministry spokeswoman said the government had rolled out its own anti-violence project, the Alliance for Democracy and Tolerance (Bundnis fur Demokratie und Toleranz) in May. The Alliance's Web site carries a motto and a video spot about tolerance. - - - - - French antiracism laws meet Internet free speech: Yahoo! goes back to court Nov. 6 after a team decides whether technology can block users from some sites. Eduardo Cué (The Christian Science Monitor) 14 Aug 00 PARIS -- The Internet is in certain ways the modern version of the American Wild West - in its vastness there's freedom for everyone, but the rule of law is an experiment at best. The difficulty of establishing a universal code of conduct for the Internet was made evident in Paris Friday when a judge ordered an expert study to see if it is technically possible to prevent French subscribers to Yahoo! from accessing the Internet portal's online auctions of Nazi memorabilia from World War II. The items for sale include Zyklon B gas canisters used in Nazi death camps. French laws do not allow the sale or exhibition of objects that have negative racial overtones. Both Yahoo! and the three human rights groups that brought suit against the company said they were pleased with the ruling creating the panel. The team, to be composed of a French, an American, and a European expert, is to make its report within two months on the feasibility of blocking certain subscribers to some online services. Yahoo! has argued that it is technically impossible to block the sites to French citizens. While the auctions in question are not available on the French Yahoo! site, Internet surfers can connect to the Yahoo.com sites quite easily by simply hooking up with computers based in the United States, where the Yahoo! sites under review are legal. The Paris case is considered a watershed because it could lead to an Internet war, with those opposing any restrictions arguing that a ruling barring access to a site could lead to broader censorship, while others see sites such as the one selling Nazi items as an unacceptable offense to those who suffered in German concentration camps. "In France, like in most European democracies, there are laws against racism," says Marc Knobel of the Paris-based International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism, one of three groups that brought the suit against Yahoo! "Most other countries should not be obliged to sign up to practices in the United States." Those practices include giving people wide latitude for freedom of speech. "The point is whether we want to condemn the Internet to be closed in the same way that the media have traditionally been closed by frontiers," said Philippe Guillanton, Yahoo! managing director for France, when the suit was first heard in court last May. As a general rule, freedom of expression is less protected in Europe than in the United States. Britain has strict libel laws. In Spain, it is unconstitutional to attack the institution of the monarchy or the person of the king. In Germany, Nazi symbols are outlawed - on Thursday the German Army suspended a staff sergeant on suspicion of setting up a neo-Nazi Web site. In France, celebrities frequently sue and win cases against the "people press" when they consider that their privacy has been violated. For the moment, technology rather than philosophy or constitutional rights has emerged as the key issue in the Yahoo! case. At the May hearing, Judge Jean-Jacques Gomez concluded that the Web sites selling Nazi paraphernalia were "an insult to the collective memory of the country" and rejected arguments by Yahoo! attorney Christophe Pecnard that the auctions were protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. The judge ordered Yahoo! to bar access to the sites for French subscribers and ordered the US company to pay more than $2,000 in fines to the International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism, the Union of French Jewish Students, and the Movement Against Racism and for Friendship Among Peoples, the three groups that brought the suit against Yahoo! "The real question for France," Lionel Thoumyre, a legal scholar at the University of Montreal, told the French newspaper Le Monde, "is whether we are ready to assume the consequences of the globalization of information and especially to tolerate the values of freedom of countries that are located just one click away." -------------------------------------------------------------------------- WHAT'S WORTH CHECKING stories via <ftp://ftp.nyct.net/pub/users/tallpaul/publish/story6/> Stephen Manning (AP). "Hate crime allegation dropped for 2nd brother in Chestertown shooting trial," 20 Jun 00, "Hate crime charges were dropped Monday against a white man accused of firing a shotgun at three black women driving home from a Christmas shopping trip, killing one woman. The charges were dropped shortly before David Starkey's trial on a first-degree murder charge began. Last week, the judge threw out hate crime charges against Mr. Starkey's younger brother, Daniel, for lack of evidence. Daniel Starkey, who drove past the car while his brother allegedly shot at it, was convicted of second-degree murder and attempted murder." <1631.txt> AP, "No Indictments in Cop Shooting," 20 Jun 00, "A grand jury decided Tuesday not to indict two white police officers in the death of a black man whose shooting heightened racial tensions in Baltimore. Police said Officer Wayne Barry Hamilton shot Larry Hubbard, a suspected car thief, point-blank in the back of the head on Oct. 7 after he grabbed for Officer Robert Quick's gun. Witnesses at the time said Hubbard, 21, was beaten by the two officers and was on his knees, begging for his life, when he was killed." <1632.txt> Conference Report: LAW: The Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment, 21 June 2000, "On 5-7 June, 2000, LAW: The Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment, hosted an international conference on the occasion of its tenth anniversary. The conference, Culture and Community in Jerusalem: Strategies to Protect and Promote Human Rights, which took place in the Ambassador Hotel in East Jerusalem, attracted over 700 participants from twenty-six countries. Throughout the conference, participants condemned Israeli policies of ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem, involving measures that deprive non-Jewish residents of such basic human rights as their right to housing and adequate health care. Attention was further drawn to Israel's policy of creating "facts on the ground" in Jerusalem, in a bid to predetermine the outcome of the peace process with regard to the status of Jerusalem." <1633.txt> The Circle Online: The Circle Briefs, "South Dakota governor Bill Janklow calls Federal Civil Rights Report 'garbage'," 1 Jun 00, "South Dakota governor Bill Janklow said last month he doesn't intend to follow the recommendations contained in a civil rights report that condemns the state's treatment of Native Americans. The March 28 report titled "Native Americans in South Dakota: an Erosion of Confidence in the Criminal Justice System," outlined 15 steps to erase the effects of systemic racism. Admitting he hadn't read it fully, Janklow called the report "garbage" and "fiction." Local residents meet President Bill Clinton as he visits with the state capital in May. The Federal Civil Rights Commission held a day- long hearing in Rapid City, S.D. last fall to hear the grievances Native Americans had against South Dakota's justice system. Among the complaints voiced were: unfair sentencing of Native people, racial profiling by police officers, unsolved/uninvestigated Indian murders, harsh prison sentences for Native youth, and leniency for whites who commit crimes against Indians." <1634.txt> Rick Hinrichs (MSNBC), "City divided about police response," 21 Jun 00, "Now that most of the dust has settled from the latest anarchist riots in Eugene, the great debate has begun. Right now, the city is divided over which side was more right and which side was more wrong during the events of the past weekend. Many members of the broader activist community are still very much in support of the anarchists, at least as far as their right to speak out and assemble is concerned. Many of them also believe that the police overreacted, made indiscriminate arrests and tried to prevent the media from getting close enough to see what was going on." <1635.txt> Marc Lacey (New York Times), "Drug Office Ends Tracking of Web Users: White House Admits Privacy Concerns," 22 Jun 00, "The White House conceded today that it might have violated federal privacy guidelines, and it ordered its Office of National Drug Control Policy to stop using a software device that tracks computer users who view the government's antidrug advertisements on the Internet. To monitor traffic on its Internet sites for children and parents, the White House's drug policy office has employed computer files known as cookies, which are placed in computers electronically -- usually without the knowledge of users -- to monitor their Internet travels. The software is widely used by commercial Web sites to record information about the shopping habits and other interests of their users. But White House officials said they saw a distinction between companies tracking customers and the government doing similar monitoring." <1636.txt> John Leo (U.S.News & World Report), "Faking the hate: Not all reports of campus incidents are true," 6 Jun 00, "For three weeks this spring, minority students at the University of Iowa's College of Dentistry were the targets of menacing E-mail and a bomb threat. Red noodles were left on the doorstep of a black student, with a note suggesting that they represented a dead black person's brain. Surveillance tapes were set up. The FBI located the computer used in the E-mail threats. A black dental student, Tarsha Michelle Claiborne, was arrested and confessed. In the midst of an antirape rally at the University of Massachusetts, a woman cut herself with a knife, tossed it under a car, and then walked across the street, claiming to be a victim of sexual assault. After nearly a month of negotiations between police and her attorney, she admitted that she had made up the whole thing. This was the fourth in a series of reported sexual assaults at the school. In one of the previous three, a woman said she fought off three male attackers and ran for help ...." <1637.txt> Philip Willan (Guardian), "US 'supported anti-left terror in Italy:' Report claims Washington used a strategy of tension in the cold war to stabilise the centre-right," 24 Jun 00, "The United States was accused of playing a large part in the campaign of anti-communist terrorism in Italy during the cold war, in a report released yesterday by the Left Democrat party. The explicit accusation is contained in a draft report to a parliamentary commission on terrorism." <1638.txt> Jim Adams , "Anti-Mohawk bills ready to pass New York Legislature," 28 Jun 00, "In spite of furious last minute lobbying, two bills attacking tribal economies were poised to pass the New York State Assembly in the final hours of this year's session. A bill that would limit off-reservation casinos, such as the one proposed by the St. Regis Mohawks for the Catskill resort region, received the blessing of Assembly Speaker, Sheldon Silver, in a morning radio talk show before the Assembly convened." <1639.txt> Richard Carelli (AP), "Court rejects free-speech complaint from racist," 26 Jun 00, "The Supreme Court rejected the appeal of an Illinois white supremacist who says the state committee that denied him a law license violated his free-speech rights. The court, acting without comment Monday, turned away Matthew Hale's arguments that Illinois has established 'orthodox religious and political beliefs to which (an aspiring lawyer) must subscribe as a condition of admission.' Hale, a Peoria resident and leader of the segregationist World Church of the Creator, was denied a law license last summer even though he graduated from Southern Illinois University's law school and passed the state bar exam. State bar officials noted that Hale had "dedicated his life to inciting racial hatred," and said 'he cannot do this as an officer of the court.' The Illinois Supreme Court refused to hear Hale's appeal last November." <1640.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/> --- Sponsor's Message -------------------------------------- TOO MUCH DEBT? Let this nonprofit help you lower your credit card interest charges and consolidate your payments without a loan. 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