Police infiltrated protest groups

By Craig R. McCoy and Linda K. Harris

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Sept. 9— The Philadelphia Police Department knew that undercover state police officers planned to infiltrate groups organizing protests during the Republican National Convention, a state police spokesman said yesterday.

“We told them in advance that we would be infiltrating certain groups,” said Jack Lewis, state police spokesman.

The state police did not seek permission from city police before starting the undercover operation.

Philadelphia police “were not involved in making decisions about what we were doing,” Lewis added. “We just ran our own operation.”

The infiltration took place as the city itself faced restrictions on using its own officers for such undercover operations under a long-standing mayoral directive.

The infiltration continued to draw sharp criticism yesterday from the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union as well as from participants in the demonstrations.

Stefan Presser, the Pennsylvania ACLU’s legal director, said the use of state police undercover agents was “an end-run around the mayoral directive. Through the state police, they accomplished indirectly what they couldn’t accomplish directly.”

The directive says the city police cannot infiltrate protest groups without the permission of the mayor, the managing director, and the police commissioner. This requirement, say the civil-liberties lawyers who pushed for it, was designed to ensure accountability when police go undercover against protest groups.

During the convention, Police Commissioner John F. Timoney repeatedly denied that police had engaged in infiltration.

At a news conference on the afternoon of Sept. 7, representatives from various protest groups, along with the city public defender’s office and members of the ACLU, denounced the contents of search-warrant documents made public Wednesday.

The documents were the first public acknowledgment that police had infiltrated groups planning to protest during the Republican National Convention.

The documents were part of the probable-cause affidavits for search warrants for three vehicles and a warehouse at 4100 Haverford Ave. in West Philadelphia, where more than 100 puppets and a large float were being built.

Seventy-five people were arrested in a subsequent raid of the warehouse.

Four men - known as Tim, Harry, George and Ryan - showed up together at 41st and Haverford about a week before the convention, introducing themselves as union carpenters from Wilkes-Barre who built stages, several demonstrators said.

They were big, burly men who were older than most of the people working in the warehouse. They did not seem particularly political or well-informed, according to demonstrators. All four, however, were considered hard workers.

Soliman Lawrence, 20, of Tallahassee, Fla., worked closely with the four on a massive satirical float built for a protest march.

“They gained our trust,” Lawrence said. “The fact that we didn’t know them very well wasn’t a big deal.

“I remember thinking to myself, ‘Why does everyone who looks like that have to be a cop?’ “ Lawrence said. “I didn’t like that I thought like that.”

Mike Morrill, organizer of the Unity 2000 march held the Sunday before the convention began July 31, said his group was cited in the search warrant, even though it had a legal permit to march.

“Unity 2000, from the beginning, was a legal action. We did everything according to their rules. Yet from Day 1, we were still investigated and harassed.”

The protesters say they are also concerned about the return of their property seized in the warehouse raid.

Attorney Andrew F. Erba has written several letters to the city’s Risk Management Division requesting the return of the property. The city’s response, he said, has been unsatisfactory.

“Generally, they don’t come in and take all your property,” Erba said. “What’s unusual about this is, they went into the warehouse after all the kids were taken out, and they took all the property and took it away.”

Morgan Fitzpatrick Andrews, 29, who lives in West Philadelphia, was not arrested during the raid. He was putting on a puppet show with his Shoddy Puppet Company the afternoon of the raid. He said he lost six pairs of scissors, a drill, two hammers, two saws, staple pliers, and other tools that were in the warehouse when it was raided.

“I went to Risk Management. I went to L&I,” Andrews said. “After getting this claims form, I was told that my stuff was in the seventh floor of City Hall in the evidence room. They said, ‘That’s being held for evidence.’”

“Red Scare” revisited

The cold war is long over but Pennsylvania State Police were still on the lookout for communists and Soviet sympathizers among the demonstrators. In the state police affidavits justifying the warehouse raid, troopers alleged that communists were behind the demonstrations.

“Funds allegedly originate with Communist and leftist parties and from sympathetic trade unions,” the state police declared in the affidavits. “Other funds reportedly come from the former Soviet-allied World Federation of Trade Unions.”

The language left critics, including demonstrators and civil-liberties lawyers, both amused and indignant. They said it seemed like something out of a musty red-baiting periodical of the 1950s.

The allegations - passed to state police by a private group funded by conservative multimillionaire Richard Mellon Scaife - did not belong in government affidavits seeking judicial approval for a search warrant that led to 75 arrests, they said.

“It’s McCarthyite. It’s tarring people,” said David Kairys, a law professor at Temple University. “It’s reminiscent of the worst of the 50s.”

The affidavit’s specific allegation is that communist money flowed to a protest group called the Pennsylvania Consumer Action Network through its supposed ties to People’s Global Action, a social justice group formed in Switzerland two years ago.

All of this astounded Mike Morrill, a leader of the Pennsylvania Consumer Action Network as well as a Unity 2000 organizer.

Morrill last week released his group’s donor list. It showed that the group raised about $48,000 for the Republican convention protests, with the largest contributions coming from well-known city labor unions. Of the total, $200 came from the Communist Party of Eastern Pennsylvania, the only communist group listed.

Morrill said he took no part in the Aug. 1 street blockades that disrupted city traffic.

“Imagine my surprise when I found out my organization was awash in money, funded by Soviet-era organizations and communist-inspired groups from around the world,” Morrill said.

“Were it so, I’d probably have a better wardrobe and live in a nicer house.”

Source: Philadelphia Inquirer

US Navy blamed for poisoning kids in Vieques

Vieques, Puerto Rico, Sept. 6— Six children on the island of Vieques are suffering poisoning from heavy metals such as arsenic, cadmium, bismuth, mercury and lead, the Association of Licensed Naturopaths of Puerto Rico (ANLPR) announced Wednesday.

The group referred to a report by the Doctor’s Data laboratory in Chicago, which examined the stool samples of a group of Vieques children between the ages of one and 13 and found that the heavy metals detected “were above normal levels.”

The ANLPR said that this poisoning was the result of US Navy military exercises on Vieques.

“Six children from Vieques who were examined are accumulating potentially toxic metals in their bodies. This is especially alarming in the cases of two little girls who are only one and two years old who may have absorbed these metals from their mothers’ placenta, because it may mean that this poisoning is being passed on from one generation to another,” the organization said.

Several months ago, the ANLPR - through its scientific committee and its president, Dr. Carmen Colon de Jorge - placed these findings in the hands of the Health Department and the Health Commission of the Puerto Rican Senate.

“The scientific committee has also met and discussed these findings with toxicologists from the Federal Agency of Toxic Substances and Registry of Illnesses to no avail, as the committee has requested these institutions continue investigations and has received no response whatsoever,” the ANLPR indicated.

The organization added that “the committee has sent a copy of the study to Gov. Pedro Rossello and has written to US President Bill Clinton, as well as Puerto Rican lawmakers, and received no answer.”

In related news, this past week saw the US Navy violate a recently negotiated agreement on Vieques Island. According to the agreement made between the White House and the government of Puerto Rico, the US Navy agreed to give 15 days warning before they would start bombing on the firing range on Vieques. They also agreed to post the warnings in Vieques and to allow observers of the Puerto Rican Government to monitor the use of bombs so that they could certify that no live bombs were being used.

On September 6, the Navy violated this agreement. They gave San Juan four days warning. They did not post warnings on Vieques and thus Puerto Rican observers were not present when the bombs started falling.

Source: Tao Federation

Libertarian candidate Harry Browne campaigns in Florida

By Ryan Conley

Tampa, Florida, Sept. 6— Harry Browne, Libertarian candidate for President, held a campaign rally here today as part of his nationwide tour. He began his speech by answering a question he is often asked: “Why are you running for President?” The reason, he said, is that he wants every American to be free to live as they see fit – not as the government wishes.

As Browne sees it, the federal government has no business, and no Constitutional authority, to control health care, law enforcement, drug control, social security, education, or welfare.

Browne said that if he is elected President he will: repeal the income tax; repeal social security and Medicare taxes; immediately bring every US soldier home from foreign countries; grant a pardon to every nonviolent drug offender; end the government’s war on drugs; and reduce the federal government to a fraction of its current size, eliminating several programs and departments.

Libertarianism focuses on very limited government and the elimination of many taxes. On any political issue, Libertarians say their stance is for the smallest possible government and the greatest possible control over one’s own life.

If you’re like most people, you’ve never heard of Harry Browne, even though Browne has passed Buchanan and is close to Nader in the latest polls. Browne receives a small fraction of the media mentions that Buchanan and Nader receive. He has refused to accept federal campaign funds, and therefore can’t afford to purchase as many television advertisements as the main candidates. However, Browne said he expects to be on the ballot in all 50 states and will be campaigning nonstop until election day.

For more information: www.harrybrowne.org

US now has more prisoners than farmers

Washington, DC, Sept. 10— The United States now has more prisoners than farmers.

According to the Washington, DC-based Justice Policy Institute the United States prison population recently topped 2 million. The statistics are shocking, especially given that the US accounts for a quarter of the world’s prisoners, but only 5% of the world’s population.

According to the last farm census, there were 1.9 million farms in the US (a farm is defined as any place selling $1,000 or more of agricultural products). In other words, there are more people behind bars in the US than there are behind the wheel of a tractor.

While some would argue that the US criminal justice system and industrial agriculture have little in common, the statistics reflect social systems in profound crisis:

* Number of US farms: 1,911,859

*2.5% of US farms are operated by blacks and other races.

*Direct federal payments to farmers in 1999: $23 billion ¨ US prison population: 2,000,000

*Roughly half of the state and federal prisoners incarcerated in the US are African Americans, although they make up only 13% of the US population.

*The cost of incarceration: approximately $40 billion per year.

Source: Rural Advancement Foundation Intl (RAFI):
www.rafi.org

Gore’s uncle under FBI investigation for drug smuggling

By Tony Hays

Tennessee, Sept. 12— Federal and Tennessee state law enforcement officials have targeted Whit LaFon, Vice President Al Gore’s uncle, in a narcotics distribution and money-laundering scheme involving powder and crack cocaine and thousands of dollars of profits which covers much of southwest Tennessee.

The investigation involves the FBI, the Inspector General’s office at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Tennessee’s 24th Judicial District Task Force and the Tennessee Highway Patrol.

According to state and local officers, a seaplane, allegedly containing narcotics, frequently lands on the water in southern Decatur County, Tenn., near Swallow Bluff Island on the Tennessee River. The drugs are transferred to four-wheelers via motorboats. The four-wheelers then scoot out from LaFon’s compound and haul the drugs to delivery points.

Federal law enforcement officials have confirmed both the investigation and its targets – retired judge Whit LaFon and a state chancery court judge.

Source: SavannahJournal.com: www.savannahjournal.com/news/lafon.shtml

AIDS activist disrupts Bush fundraiser

Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Sept. 8— An ACT UP activist crashed a $500-a-plate fund-raiser for Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush in Bethlehem, Pa., Tuesday. Mark Milano, who has AIDS, shouted at Bush as he spoke at the event at a local Holiday Inn. “You have never mentioned the word ‘AIDS.’ Where is your plan for AIDS drugs for poor countries?” Milano was apprehended by Secret Service agents and removed from the dining room. The [Allentown, Pa.] Morning Call reports that insurance agent Ron Hoffman, who was standing next to Milano as he began shouting, tore a placard from Milano’s hands and threw it on the floor, saying, “He must be a Democrat.” AIDS activists have criticized Bush for his AIDS and Medicaid policies. “AIDS decimates countries around the globe thanks to drug company greed and government indifference,” said Bob Kahn, an ACT UP member. “Clearly the lives of millions of destitute people with AIDS are inconsequential to [Bush] and his industry cronies.”

Source: The Advocate

Nader favors legalizing marijuana

By Barry Massey

Santa Fe, New Mexico, Sept. 8–– Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader on Friday advocated the legalization of marijuana as part of an overhaul of the nation’s “self-defeating and antiquated drug laws.”

Nader joined with New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, a Republican, in criticizing the nation’s “war on drugs” as a failed policy for fighting drug use.

“Addiction should never be treated as a crime. It has to be treated as a health problem,” Nader said at a news conference where he was flanked by the GOP governor.

“We do not send alcoholics to jail in this country. We do not send nicotine users to jail in this country. Over 500,000 people are in our jails who are non-violent drug users.”

Nader – like Johnson – supports lifting criminal sanctions for marijuana possession. For other drugs, such as heroin, he advocated “harm reduction” programs, such as methadone maintenance and needle exchanges, that focus on treatment of addiction and prevention of health problems from drug use.

Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush oppose legalizing marijuana, according to their campaign spokesmen.

Source: Associated Press