smCOLUMN EIGHTY, DECEMBER 1, 2002
(Copyright © 2002 The Blacklisted Journalist)
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COLUMN
EIGHTY, DECEMBER 1, 2002
(Copyright © 2002 The Blacklisted Journalist)
FROM PORTSIDE
Portside
(the left side in nautical parlance) is a
news, discussion and debate service of the Committees
of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. It
says it aims to provide varied material of interest to people
on the Left.
* * *
BRIEFS
THE 'NO-FLY LIST'
Subject:
FBI List Screens Progressives at Airports
Date: Thu, 17 Oct 2002 16:20:30 -0700 (PDT)
From: portsideMod <portsidemod@yahoo.com>
Reply-To: portside@yahoogroups.com
To: ps <portside@yahoogroups.com>
More
Anti-War Activists Snagged by "No Fly" List
===============================================
from
The Progressive
October 16, 2002
The
No Fly list is still up and running. The FBI and the Transportation Security
Administration have a list of suspicious people they distribute to the airlines,
and the airlines check the names of their passengers against this list. The
existence of the list was first reported here on this web site and then in the
June issue of The Progressive, after a group of peace activists were detained in
Milwaukee on April 19.
On
August 7, two more peace activists found themselves on the list. Rebecca Gordon
and Jan Adams were detained by San Francisco police at the airport there,
reported Alan Gathright of The San Francisco Chronicle on September 27. Gordon
and Adams, veteran peace and justice activists in the Bay Area, work on a
newspaper called War Times (war-times.org).
"We
get to the airport at 9:30 in the evening for an 11:30 flight to Boston on
ATA," Gordon tells The Progressive. "As we go to the check-in counter
to check in our baggage, the woman takes our IDs and types in our names, and
then says, 'There's something wrong with my computer.' So she goes and gets
another woman, who types our names into her computer. She, too, says, 'There's
something wrong with my computer. Please step aside so we can check the other
people in.' "
Gordon
says she and Adams thought there might be a problem with their e-tickets. But it
was more serious than that, as they found out a few minutes later when one of
the airline employees told them, "You both turned up on the FBI No Fly
list, and we've called the San Francisco police. They are coming over to talk to
you. In the meantime, one of us has to stay with you, so please come along with
your baggage," Gordon recalls.
Gordon
says the woman from the airlines seemed bewildered. "We were standing there
in the middle of the airport, and I'm sure she's thinking these are just
garden-variety middle-aged white dykes," Gordon says.
"I
can't imagine why this is happening," the airline employee said, according
to Gordon.
"And
I said, 'Well, I can tell you why. We work on a paper that opposes the war on
terrorism.' Her eyes got kind of big, and she said, 'Oh.'"
Gordon
says three uniformed members of the police then came, took their IDs, and called
headquarters. They wouldn't let her even get a drink of water.
"After
ten or fifteen more minutes, one of the officers told us, 'You aren't on the
master list,' and they handed us back to the airline, Gordon says.
But
the airline was still suspicious, and circled a big S on their boarding passes.
"I assume it means search, and then a red S was put on it," Gordon
adds. "In fact, at the gate we were selected for search and they did the
usual search procedure, the wanding and the shoes.
Before
I got on, I asked the ticket agent if this is going to happen every time. She
said, 'I don't know, but I'd recommend that you get to the airport early.'
"
For
its part, the San Francisco police has little comment.
"We
had no report of any of our officers stopping them," says Larry Ratti, a
spokesperson for the police at the airport.
"Whenever
anyone comes up on the No Fly list, we come out in one or two minutes and the
situation is cleared up. Generally, they would make a police report if they
detained people for any length of time."
Ratti
says the department gets calls about suspicious people at the airport
"maybe one a day, one every two days." Some of these calls come from
the No Fly list, "but we don't differentiate," he says. "It's
just a suspicious-type-person call."
I
ask Gordon what conclusion she draws from this experience.
"This
is harassment," she says. "It's to let us know that they've got their
eye on us."
Adams
agrees. "Nothing felt very threatening in the episode--except that they are
doing it," she says. Adams adds that she was singled out for searching on
her return trip from Boston, as well.
--
Matthew Rothschild
http://www.progressive.org/webex/wxmc101602.html ##
* * *
THE WORLD IS AGAINST BUSH'S UNILATERALISM
Subject:
Americans will Die of Ignorance (Comment from Kenya)
Date: Wed, 09 Oct 2002 14:38:57 -0000
From: "portsidemod" <portsidemod@yahoo.com>
Reply-To: portside@yahoogroups.com
To: portside@yahoogroups.com
Americans
will Die of Ignorance
By
E.D. MATHEW
Comment
Tuesday,
October 8, 2002
Daily
Nation (Kenya)
http://www.nationaudio.com/News/DailyNation/08102002/Co
That
democracies don't attack other countries unless attacked has been a comforting
norm in international relations ever since Abraham Lincoln's famous definition
of democracy took root in the modern world.
That
may change soon as the American juggernaut aimed at unseating Iraqi President
Saddam Hussein looks unstoppable despite mounting international opinion against
such a misadventure.
Democratic
governments worth their salt pay heed to public opinion, especially when it
comes to grave decisions such as a declaration of war which will cause
unimaginable suffering to both combatants and civilians, including innocent
children and women.
When
the United States Government is itching to drop megatons of smart bombs
thousands of miles away over Iraq which forms part of a volatile region already
seething with anti-American sentiments, the public opinion it must take heed of
should not be limited to the borders of the United States. Being the self-
appointed globocop, the American Government should pay attention to what the
rest of the world feels.
Let
us start with former South African President Nelson Mandela whose moral stature
few American presidents in history can match. Surely, the world, including
America, should sit up and ponder when Mandela, who ranked third (after Einstein
and Mahatma Gandhi) as Man of the Millennium in Time--that quintessentially
American magazine--explicitly criticises America for its war-mongering and
dictatorial tendencies.
There
is also the recently re-elected German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder whose
anti-war stance is embraced by 80 per cent of his country-people. It is not much
different in the rest of Europe. France does not support a unilateral attack on
Iraq. In Britain too, barring Prime Minister Tony Blair and a few of his party
cronies, most people do not favour war.
Russia,
China and much of Asia balk at the American unilateralism. In other words,
America is out of step with the world. The looming confrontation with Iraq is
the latest and gravest example of this. America's stance against the
International Criminal Court, its opposition to the Kyoto Protocol, and its
support to Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon for pulverising Palestine, have only
helped the world drift away from America. ##
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