Voters face racism on SD reservation

American Indian voters have filed a lawsuit against the city of Martin, SD claiming redistricting maps were redrawn to keep American Indian voters from gaining influence.

The lawsuit, Cottier vs. Martin, piggy backs another lawsuit, Boneshirt vs. Chris Nelson, or the state of South Dakota. The Boneshirt case was filed to force redistricting of Districts 26 and 27 which encompass the Rosebud and Pine Ridge reservations therefore stacking most American Indian voters into special districts. A decision is expected soon.

Central to the Martin case is that American Indian preference candidates for city council, mayor, and for county commission in Bennett County, where Martin is located, have almost always lost. (Indian Country Today)

SC death row inmate loses appeal

The Supreme Court refused June 21 to consider an appeal from South Carolina death row inmate Jamie Wilson, convicted of killing two third-graders during a shooting spree at an elementary school in 1988.

Mental health groups had urged the Supreme Court to use Wilson’s case to decide if it is unconstitutional for states to execute people who were seriously mentally ill when they committed their crimes. The high court has already decided that mentally retarded inmates may not be put to death.

Wilson pleaded guilty — but mentally ill — to the murders. He had been released from a hospital psychiatric unit about five months before the shootings. (AP)

US opens Enron case to extradite British bankers

Three British former NatWest bankers — Gary Mulgrew, David Bermingham, and Giles Darby — accused of conspiring with senior Enron fraudsters to embezzle almost $20 million began their battle June 21 against extradition to the US.

Their alleged co-conspirators — former Enron chief financial officer Andrew Fastow and his right-hand man at the collapsed energy firm, Michael Kopper — have pleaded guilty to charges relating to the alleged fraud and are cooperating with the US Department of Justice’s Enron taskforce.

The three bankers are the first British nationals to face extradition under controversial new legislation that does not require the US to provide evidence of crimes alleged.

The extradition proceedings will be vigorously contested by one of Britain’s top lawyers.

The bankers, who believe they will be cleared of all charges, want to be put on trial in Britain. They claim that in November 2001 they voluntarily provided information about Enron to British regulators, who in turn passed it to the US authorities. NatWest, now part of Royal Bank of Scotland, also provided US prosecutors with a number of emails sent by the bankers.

The Enron taskforce claims the bankers hatched a plot with the two Enron executives involving the vastly undervalued sale of NatWest’s investment in an elaborate offshore corporate structure.

US prosecutors claim $7.3 million was transferred through a number of offshore businesses before being split among the bankers while a further $12.3 million was shared between Fastow and Kopper. (The Guardian (UK))

Possible federal trial for anti-war activists

The St. Patrick Four — Daniel Burns, Clare Grady, Peter De Mott, and Teresa Grady — recently learned that the Tompkins County, NY district attorney has asked the US Attorney to prosecute their case in federal court. The four were tried in a Tompkins County court on charges of felony criminal mischief for carefully pouring their own blood in the vestibule of the local military recruiting center on Mar. 17, 2003, hours before the invasion of Iraq. The trial ended in a hung jury.

Loyola University law professor Bill Quigley, who acted as advisory counsel during the first trial said, “The mere fact that Attorney General John Ashcroft would take the extraordinary step of considering re-prosecuting people after state prosecutors have admitted they can’t get a conviction is a scary example of increased criminalization of dissent.” (Common Dreams)

Baltimore’s 24-hour surveillance part of bigger plan

Local and state homeland security authorities are beginning to build a regional network of 24-hour surveillance cameras that will first go live this summer in Baltimore.

When asked about privacy concerns raised by groups opposed to cameras constantly monitored by retired police officers or college students, Dennis R. Schrader, Maryland’s director of homeland security, replied, “We’re at war.”

The network is part of a comprehensive strategy in the Baltimore area to spend $25 million in homeland security grants this year and next to improve regional cooperation on terrorism concerns “for the homeland defense…while also reducing crime and public disorder,” reads the city’s request for proposals from companies capable of building the system. (Baltimore Sun)

Cuba travelers face deadline to return to US

Hundreds of Cuban Americans will be considered illegal travelers to Cuba and will be subject to $7,500 fines if they do not return from the island before new travel rules take effect on June 30.

Travel agencies are scrambling to charter more flights and to contact Cuban Americans already on the island who may not know that they have to return before the more restrictive rules take effect.

The new rules, which have been pending for months, were published June 16 in the Federal Register. A spokeswoman for the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, which regulates travel from the US to Cuba, said the two weeks until they take effect allow travelers time to change schedules. First-time violators with mitigating circumstances have sometimes gotten off with a warning letter, she added. (Miami Herald)

Military discharges 770 under ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’

A new study by the Defense Manpower Data Center has found the military discharged 770 people last year because they were gay under the Pentagon’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell policy.” The majority of the discharged were enlisted personnel. This comes at a time that the military is issuing stop orders to prevent thousands of soldiers from retiring or returning home from Iraq. Hundreds of the discharged were specialists including 88 linguists, seven of whom spoke Arabic. 39 specialists who worked on nuclear, chemical, and biological warfare were dismissed as were 90 nuclear power engineers. (Democracy Now!)

RNC protesters say rights threatened

New York officials are threatening the rights of demonstrators planning to show up at the Republican National Convention (RNC) by failing to issue a single permit so far, said Leslie Cagan of protest group United for Peace and Justice (UPJ) on June 15. The group applied for a permit more than a year ago but has not yet been granted permission.

Republicans are set to gather at Madison Square Garden from Aug. 30 to Sept. 2 and nominate President Bush to run for re-election in November.

June 15 was the deadline for applying for protest permits.

Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne said protesters had failed to engage in serious talks about making arrangements with officials and that police are concerned about terrorists “infiltrating a political climate and [disrupting] the outcome of the election.”

The city’s parks department has denied UPJ a permit for a 250,000-person rally on Aug. 29 that would have marched past the convention site to Central Park. Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said the civil rights group will take New York to court if permits are not issued. (Reuters)

Court order forces FBI to turn over documents

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) documents turned over to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other civil liberties organizations by a Freedom of Information Act request filed in October 2003 reveal that the FBI invoked the controversial surveillance provision Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act only weeks after Attorney General John Ashcroft publicly declared that this power had never been used.

The records disclosed to the ACLU do not indicate how many times the FBI has invoked Section 215 since October 2003.

“The records we’ve obtained suggest once again that the government’s secrecy decisions are guided not by national security concerns but by political ones,” said Jameel Jaffer, an ACLU Staff Attorney.

The United States District Court for the District of Columbia overturned the FBI’s original attempt to withhold the documents until 2005 and ordered the FBI to release the documents over a period of six weeks. This week’s release was the first of two expected; a further release is expected in early July. (ACLU)

Dozens protest investigation of artist

Dozens of artists, academics, and others gathered in Buffalo, NY June 15 in protest of a grand jury investigation of an artist whose work includes the use of bacteria and lab equipment.

Last month, agents from the Joint Terrorism Task Force cordoned off and searched Steve Kurtz’s Buffalo house after police who were investigating his wife’s death became alarmed when they found biological materials. Kurtz, a University at Buffalo art professor, was not charged at the time but the FBI began delivering subpoenas soon after.

The petri dishes and other materials had been intended for an installation titled Free Range Grains that Kurtz had been preparing for display at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.

The US Attorney’s office has declined to comment on the investigation. (AP)

Bush’s rash promise keeps the border busy

Every day the border patrol station at Douglas, AZ arrests about 600 migrants attempting to enter the US illegally. The biggest and busiest in the country, it covers six and a half miles on the border crossing between Douglas and the Mexican town of Agua Prieta.

Since January, when George Bush said he would consider temporary residence rights for illegal immigrants already in the US, there has been a dramatic increase in the number seized on the border. But he has said nothing more on the subject.

TJ Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, an officers’ union, said: “[Bush] tried out an idea intended to woo Latino voters but it played so badly with his conservative base that he had to drop it.”

But the president’s speech was interpreted south of the border as promising an amnesty, and a scramble to get under the wire has ensued.

“I’ve come across people who ask about the amnesty when we pick them up,” Agent George Quinn of the US border patrol in Douglas said. “You just have to tell them there isn’t one, and send them back.” (The Guardian (UK))

One million African American votes didn’t count in 2000

In the 2000 presidential election, 1.9 million Americans cast ballots that no one counted. About one million of them — half of the rejected ballots — were cast by African Americans although black voters make up only 12 percent of the electorate.

The two million ballots were spoiled by a stray mark, a jammed machine, or a punch card punched twice.

Florida’s Gadsden County has the highest percentage of black voters in the state — and the highest spoilage rate. One in eight votes cast there in 2000 was never counted. Many voters wrote in “Al Gore.” Optical reading machines rejected these because “Al” is a “stray mark.”

The US Civil Rights Commission looked into the spoiled ballots and concluded that, of the 179,855 ballots invalidated by Florida officials, 53 percent were cast by black voters. In Florida, a black citizen was 10 times as likely to have a vote rejected as a white voter.

Philip Klinkner, the statistician working on the Edley investigations, concluded, “It appears that about half of all ballots spoiled in the USA — about 1 million votes — were cast by nonwhite voters.” (GregPalast.com)