Posted on Fri, Nov. 19, 2004
Dutch Lawmaker Urges Halting Immigration
ANTHONY DEUTSCH
Associated Press

HE HAGUE, Netherlands - One of the most popular politicians in the Netherlands said Friday the country's democracy is under threat and called for a five-year halt to non-Western immigration in the wake of the killing of a Dutch filmmaker by a suspected Muslim radical.

"We are a Dutch democratic society. We have our own norms and values," right-wing lawmaker Geert Wilders told The Associated Press in an interview. "If you chose radical Islam you can leave, and if you don't leave voluntarily then we will send you away. This is the only message possible."

In his first interview with the foreign media since the slaying of filmmaker Theo van Gogh on Nov. 2, Wilders said his own life has been repeatedly threatened. He said he has begun living under state protection and has even had to stay away from his own home.

Wilders split with the free-market coalition partner Liberal Party two months ago because it backed the candidacy of predominantly Muslim Turkey for the European Union.

He formed his own conservative party, the Wilders Group, which has one seat in the 150-member parliament. But a recent poll suggested his anti-immigrant message was reverberating through the electorate, and he would win 24 seats if elections were held today - up from 19 seats before Van Gogh's murder.

Wilders said that without swift, bold action, Islamic fundamentalism will topple the country's democratic system.

"The Netherlands has been too tolerant to intolerant people for too long," he said. "We should not import a retarded political Islamic society to our country. There is nothing to be ashamed of to say this. It's not Islam. I speak out against the facts."

In Brussels, Belgium, European Union leaders met Friday to discuss immigration, one of Europe's most pressing and sensitive issues. EU justice and interior ministers agreed to demand that new immigrants learn the language of their adopted countries and adhere to "European values" to guide them toward better integration.

Even as the number of immigrants arriving in Europe falls due to tougher policies, led by a sharp drop in the Netherlands, Wilders said closing the borders isn't enough. Newcomers should be forced to integrate.

"If in a mosque there is recruitment for jihad, it's not a house of prayer, it's a house of war. If it's not a house of prayer, it should be closed down," he said.

Wilders, known for his radical positions and peroxide-blond hair, has been a member of parliament since 1998. He was born and educated in the southern city Venlo, near the German border.

"I'm very tough on radical Islam. I have the toughest ideas on beating this problem and I'm proud of it. I say nothing wrong. I'm no racist, no anti-Islamist," he said.

Wilders and the police took the death threats more seriously following the slaying of Van Gogh, who had produced a television drama critical of how women are treated in some Muslim societies. The filmmaker was shot and stabbed to death, allegedly by a 26-year-old suspected Islamic extremist who holds Dutch and Moroccan citizenship.

The most recent threats were disclosed when two terror suspects, arrested Nov. 10 after a standoff in which several policemen were wounded by a hand grenade, were charged with threatening Wilders and other politicians, their lawyer said.

The latest video threat broadcast on the Internet - in Dutch, with Arabic music in the background - condemns Wilders for insulting Islam and offers the reward of paradise for his beheading.

Wilders' style and cause are reminiscent of Pim Fortuyn, a flamboyant political outsider who put immigration on the national agenda before the 2002 elections. Fortuyn was shot to death by an animal rights activist days before the vote, but major parties since have largely embraced his ideas.

Wilders said he is not opposed to mainstream Islam but is concerned by studies saying 10 percent of the Dutch Muslim population - or about 100,000 people - support radical Islamic views.

He cited a report by Dutch intelligence saying recruitment for jihad, or holy war, is taking place in as many as 20 mosques in the Netherlands, and said they should be closed and their imams, or preachers, arrested and deported.

"If we don't do anything ... we will lose the country that we have known for centuries. People don't want the Netherlands to be lost, and this is something that I get angry about and I am going to fight for, to keep the country Dutch," he said.

Thursday, November 18, 2004
Laborers assail Redondo crackdown on job-seekers
Advocates for workers file a lawsuit calling Redondo Beach's ban on work solicitation a violation of civil rights.
By Kristin S. Agostoni
Daily Breeze

n the suit filed Tuesday, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and National Day Laborer Organizing Network contend a provision in the city's Municipal Code banning solicitation of work from streets and sidewalks deprives laborers of their free speech rights.

Chanting "Trabajo si, policia no" -- "Work yes, police no" -- laborers lined up in front of city offices before a throng of television cameras.

"Looking for work is not a crime," Pablo Alvarado of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network yelled to the crowd.

Over the past few months, undercover police have arrested 60 laborers at two well-known gathering spots: the intersections of Manhattan Beach Boulevard and Inglewood Avenue, and Artesia Boulevard and Felton Lane.

The sweeps come in response to a barrage of nuisance calls from nearby business owners, said police Sgt. Phil Keenan. Shop owners have said they've seen laborers littering, harassing customers and urinating in public.

City officials said the Municipal Code's intent is to govern the manner in which laborers solicit work -- along a street or highway -- and is not intended to stifle free speech rights. City Attorney Jerry Goddard said he'll fight the suit.

"We're attempting to enforce the ordinance in a legal and constitutional manner that complies with state law," Goddard said. "We're trying to prevent groups of people from soliciting (work) and coming into the roadway for jobs."

But Thomas Saenz, vice president of litigation for MALDEF, said he disputes the city's decision to prohibit laborers from soliciting on sidewalks. They're meant to be places where people can express themselves freely, he said.

"We will not let them continue to do that," he said. "Day laborers go where there's a demand for work. When you take away sidewalks, it's much more difficult."

The lawsuit contends the city violated workers' First and 14th amendment rights in the U.S. Constitution, which guarantee the freedoms of speech and assembly and due process.

Redondo Beach police officers did not check the immigration status of any of the detained workers. But Shaheena Ahmad Simons, another MALDEF attorney, emphasized that the First Amendment applies "to all persons within our borders" -- even noncitizens.

Furthermore, she argued, the code does not adequately explain the term solicitation.

"I think an argument can be made it doesn't define 'solicit' or 'attempt to solicit,' " Simons said. "It's not only vague, it's overly broad."

Day laborer advocates have been successful in mounting challenges to similar laws in the past. In 2000, a federal judge told a lawyer for Los Angeles County that an ordinance barring day laborers and passing motorists from soliciting each other is vague and may "chill" the right to free speech.

And about two years afterward, the city of Lawndale repealed a similar ordinance.

Most of the men caught in the Redondo Beach sting a few weeks ago were released on $100 bail. Others made court appearances and faced $50 fines, and then were ordered to stay 150 yards away.

The fines may seem minimal, but they're a hardship on laborers who solicit work each day in order to feed their families, said Braulio Gonzales of Lennox, who was rounded up last month.

Gonzales, 48, of Guatemala said he had to pay more than $300 as a result of the police sting.

When officers coaxed him and some others to a supposed demolition job, Gonzales said, he followed the group in his car. It was towed away, which cost him $185 the first day, plus a late fee when he finally returned to pick it up.

"It's not fair," he said. "They lied."

And it's the undercover method that upset Oscar Reyes of Hawthorne, a 25-year-old tile setter who searches for work at the corner of Manhattan Beach Boulevard and Inglewood Avenue.

"Right now, I am not going with Anglo-looking persons," said Reyes, a native of Mexico who came to the United States in 1988.

"There's another day to make more money, but there's not another day to erase the humiliation."

Several years ago Redondo Beach officials began talking about whether to create a job site similar to the Los Angeles Day Laborer Program location in Harbor City. The program administered by the Los Angeles Community Development Department offers a supervised site that matches laborers with employers, offering water and coffee, rest rooms and access to a trailer.

But discussions about creating a site in Redondo on Marine Avenue, near the Metro Green Line station, eventually broke off, City Councilman John Parsons said.

Parsons said he'd consider broaching the subject again, but he was discouraged to hear about the lawsuit.

"Obviously if MALDEF is looking for solutions and would help get these guys out of an area where they really are disturbing the peace," he said, "I'd rather have them work with us than say 'We're going to sue you.' "

---

Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund?

National Day Laborer Organizing Network?

two organizations with entirely misleading names. defending citizens from other countries illegally in america.

American lawyers are fighting against the citizens of this country, and that's perfectly okay i guess. Thomas Saenz, vice president of litigation for MALDEF and Shaheena Ahmad Simons, another MALDEF attorney are deplorable for their continued abuse of the american court system clogging them with their asinine cases of civil rights.

"The lawsuit contends the city violated workers' First and 14th amendment rights in the U.S. Constitution, which guarantee the freedoms of speech and assembly and due process."

Shaheena, your yale graduting self is missing the point. This is the United States Constitution for United States citizens. Mexico already has their own that applies to its citizens.

and the Mexican Constitution states quite frankly:

Foreigners may not in any way participate in the political affairs of the country.

Disguised in Iraqi Uniforms, Rebels Kill a Marine

By DEXTER FILKINS

Published: November 13, 2004

ALLUJA, Iraq, Nov. 12 - The farther south the marines push through this rebellious city, the more often they notice that the men shooting at them are wearing tan uniforms with a smart-looking camouflage pattern that is the color of chocolate chips.

Those are the uniforms of the Iraqi National Guard.

On Friday, after several hours of nonstop gun battles around a mosque in southern Falluja had killed about 100 insurgents, the marines said that those tan uniforms had cost one of their own his life the day before. It happened in what they first called an ambush, but now believe was a case of mistaken identity, combined with quick reflexes by insurgents who are using their wits to deadly effect as they approach their last stand.

The insurgents are also believed to have killed marines in the First Battalion, Eighth Marines, with the help of a network of tunnels gouged beneath Falluja for this fight. And they have apparently found a way to zero in with their mortars on strobes that the marines use to mark their position as a protection against friendly fire - strobes that they thought were invisible to their foe.

"You can tell that the quality of the fighters has improved as we've moved south through the city," said Lt. Steven Berch. "They shoot better, they move better, they cover themselves better."

That progression, too, seems to have been part of a plan by the rebels. How well it has worked is open to debate, but the 50-man platoon that lost the marine on Thursday had nine other casualties as well - a stunning rate of 20 percent in a single day - all a result of the rebels' skill.

This tale begins with the Iraqi soldiers who sat in a circle, cross-legged, within the Great Mosque on Friday, wearing those same tan uniforms. The only difference was that these Iraqis had been ordered to mark themselves as friendlies with swatches of red tape on their right arms and white tape on their left legs.

On this day, the soldiers were not doing much of anything except eating MRE's, the American military's "Meals - Ready to Eat." In fact, they have done little if any fighting at all, but as a gesture to Muslim sensitivities are generally the first to enter each mosque as it is taken.

When approached and asked about themselves, the soldiers reflexively lapse into robotic platitudes. "I joined the Iraqi Army to clean the terrorists out of our country," said a man who identified himself only as Muhammad, a Sunni Arab from Mosul. "I am proud to be doing this."

The soldiers have revealed more of themselves during their limited periods of activity. During the gun battle around the mosque, an Iraqi in civilian clothes who had been seriously wounded in the face appeared on the street waving a white flag. "Don't shoot, don't shoot!" he pleaded in Arabic. "I have a family with me. There are women in the car."

There were no obvious signs of an ambush, but two of the Iraqi soldiers said, "Just shoot him." But for whatever reason, the Americans held off, and the man produced his wife, mother and two children, all struck by gunfire. His daughter had been shot in the back and his mother in the head. Trying their best to avoid stepping on another set of Muslim taboos, Marines attempted to remove the bullet from the man's daughter while she was standing up, with her clothes on. Her fate is unknown, but the man's mother died later.

These seemingly loyal Iraqi soldiers had no direct involvement in the Thursday incident first classified as an ambush. But visual memory being what it is, when members of the First Platoon, B Company, First Battalion, Eighth Regiment of the First Marine Expeditionary Force, turned onto a street on Thursday, they saw the chocolate-chip camouflage pattern and hesitated.

There was no red tape on the right arm or white tape on the left leg. It did not matter. Before that registered with the marines, the insurgents opened fire, killing one and wounding two. The rebels fled

Inside the mosque, Staff Sgt. Eric Brown of the First Platoon looked toward the Iraqis who were eating the MRE's. "They should just take these guys out of here," Sergeant Brown said, "because they're causing my men to hesitate.'' He added, "That hesitation cost my marine his life."

It is not clear whether the bootlegged uniforms have been stolen or bought on the black market, or whether they are actually on the backs of the Iraqis who have been trained and put into the uniforms by Americans as a replacement for Saddam Hussein's disbanded security forces. After an aborted invasion of this city in April, a uniformed group called the Falluja Brigade was formed but quickly disbanded.

"You can't see the tape at night," conceded Col. Craig Tucker, commander of a huge combat team made up of several battalions, including the First Battalion.

Colonel Tucker also conceded that the Iraqi fighters were not in the same league as the marines. But he said, "It's important to the people of Falluja that Iraqi soldiers are here."

The marines here say that insurgents also turn up in the uniforms of the old Iraqi Army. Whether the uniforms are some ploy or just a way to stay warm, though, it is clear that this is not the only way they are getting inside the Americans' heads.

Seven of the First Platoon's casualties Thursday came when marines entered a house and there were two big explosions. Some of the wounded said that grenades had been tossed at them, and when marines later discovered a tunnel system under the house, they surmised that the insurgents had entered that way and attacked. "We were briefed that there was a tunnel system under the city," said Sgt. Sam Williams, who saw the tunnels before the entire structure was destroyed .

As for the insurgents apparently using the American military's strobes - the ones that protect against friendly fire - to guide their nighttime mortar attacks, the marines solved that problem by removing them from the buildings they occupied.

And for a few minutes on Thursday night, as Capt. Read Omohundro and about a dozen other members of B Company sat in the dark on a rooftop, things were quiet. There was only slight concern when Captain Omohundro heard on the radio that a group of about 15 insurgents had been identified somewhere close to his position, and that an airstrike had been called in to destroy them.

Then something clicked in his mind, and he rushed to the radio and called off the airstrike. The captain had been mistaken for an insurgent.

Members of Cuban Troupe Say They Will Seek Asylum

By NICK MADIGAN

AS VEGAS, Nov. 14 - In what appears to be the largest mass defection of Cuban performers to date, 44 dancers, singers and musicians, here to stage a revue, plan to seek political asylum in the United States, troupe members said on Sunday.

Most of the artists intend to deliver their applications for asylum personally on Monday morning at the Federal Building here, the performers said in interviews in an auditorium at the Stardust Resort and Casino, where their "Havana Night Club" revue is booked for a three-month run.

Seven other members of the ensemble have already sought asylum from United States officials in Berlin; those performers were due to travel to Las Vegas in time for the show's opening on Tuesday.

"The only thing we regret is that our families in Cuba may suffer," Puro Hernández, 31, the troupe's musical director, said in Spanish. "But the Cuban government left us no choice - they put us between the sword and a wall."

Members said they had defied Cuban orders in early summer not to seek United States entry visas. But once the visas were granted, Cuban officials allowed the troupe to leave Cuba. They did so, the cast members said, because the issue had received widespread attention in the United States and because the Castro government did not want to be seen as impeding the flow of culture.

In addition, organizers of the show said, several influential people worked to get permission for the trip. The actor Kevin Costner contacted the Cuban Interests Section in Washington on the group's behalf. Siegfried & Roy helped the ensemble land the engagement at the Stardust.

Pamela Falk, a law professor at the City University of New York, who worked to reunite the family of Orlando Hernández, the Yankees pitcher, also worked behind the scenes in this case, acting as the group's legal adviser, meeting its members as they arrived from Cuba at the Cancún airport in Mexico and escorting them to the United States.

The company's founder, Nicole Durr, who is German, said in an interview on Sunday that Cuban officials raided the troupe's offices in Havana in August and confiscated about $250,000 worth of instruments and equipment. Ms. Durr said she was arrested, questioned and given 24 hours to leave Cuba. She complied. She said the equipment had not been returned. The troupe is independent, and receives no state support.

After many delays, about two-thirds of the cast were able to leave Cuba and take part in an abbreviated version of their show at the Stardust here in late August. It will open with its full complement of players on Tuesday, after a news conference on Monday at which the defections will be announced officially.

Despite four decades of a United States-imposed trade embargo against Cuba, cultural exchanges between the two countries have often passed under the radar, but they have recently received harsher scrutiny. This year, the United States authorities denied visas to Ibrahim Ferrer, who gained worldwide fame as a member of the Buena Vista Social Club, and the pianist Chucho Valdés, among others.

In October 2003, five dancers with the Ballet Nacional de Cuba defected while on tour in the United States. They followed 15 others from the company who in the course of a year defected in Mexico, Spain and the Dominican Republic.

Cast members of "Havana Night Club," most of whom are in their 20's and 30's, have performed in 17 countries, including Britain, Germany, Spain, Thailand and Japan, since the troupe was founded seven years ago.

"My show is the love affair between the Spanish culture and the African drum,'' Ms. Durr said. She said it sketched scenes from Cuban night life in the 1940's and 50's and traced a time line up through the urban rhythms of present-day rappers.

The performers said they decided to stay in the United States after the Cuban authorities told them they could be jailed or at the very least not be allowed to continue as professional artists in Cuba if they persisted in their plan to work in Las Vegas.

Ariel Machado, 33, the group's manager, said it was never the performers' intent to defect. "For me,'' Mr. Machado said, "it was crucial to promote our Cuban culture here even when our government does not recognize us as an element of Cuban culture."

With that, Mr. Machado, who is divorced, pulled out a wallet photograph of his two children, an 8-year-old boy and a 4-year-old girl. Speaking in Spanish, like all his colleagues, he said he hoped that by living and working in the United States he would be able to guarantee his children a decent future.

"It's almost impossible to live apart from the people we love, but you realize when you're out of Cuba that you have opportunities to do important things," said Mr. Machado, who has an engineering degree. "You assume a responsibility for your family, and you can't rest until you do everything possible to help them."

He said that when he tried to explain his position to officials from Cuba's Ministry of Culture, "they left me in no doubt that if I continued with this project I ran the risk of going to jail for ignoring the government's wishes."

Two other performers in the ensemble have told colleagues that for family reasons they would return to Cuba after the Las Vegas engagement.

Fearing repercussions back home, Lala Montes, 28, a singer, said she had not yet told her parents, her sister or anyone else in her family in Havana that she was planning to defect. For the moment, she reasoned, the less they know the better.

"It worries all of us here," Ms. Montes said. "We've all got family in Cuba, and they shouldn't have to pay for our decisions."

Arafat the monster

By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist | November 11, 2004

YASSER ARAFAT died at age 75, lying in bed surrounded by familiar faces. He left this world peacefully, unlike the thousands of victims he sent to early graves.

In a better world, the PLO chief would have met his end on a gallows, hanged for mass murder much as the Nazi chiefs were hanged at Nuremberg. In a better world, the French president would not have paid a visit to the bedside of such a monster. In a better world, George Bush would not have said, on hearing the first reports that Arafat had died, "God bless his soul."

God bless his soul? What a grotesque idea! Bless the soul of the man who brought modern terrorism to the world? Who sent his agents to slaughter athletes at the Olympics, blow airliners out of the sky, bomb schools and pizzerias, machine-gun passengers in airline terminals? Who lied, cheated, and stole without compunction? Who inculcated the vilest culture of Jew-hatred since the Third Reich? Human beings might stoop to bless a creature so evil -- as indeed Arafat was blessed, with money, deference, even a Nobel Prize -- but God, I am quite sure, will damn him for eternity.

Arafat always inspired flights of nonsense from Western journalists, and his last two weeks were no exception.

Derek Brown wrote in The Guardian that Arafat's "undisputed courage as a guerrilla leader" was exceeded only "by his extraordinary courage" as a peace negotiator. But it is an odd kind of courage that expresses itself in shooting unarmed victims -- or in signing peace accords and then flagrantly violating their terms.

Another commentator, columnist Gwynne Dyer, asked, "So what did Arafat do right?" The answer: He drew worldwide attention to the Palestinian cause, "for the most part by successful acts of terror." In other words, butchering innocent human beings was "right," since it served an ulterior political motive. No doubt that thought brings daily comfort to all those who were forced to bury a child, parent, or spouse because of Arafat's "successful" terrorism.

Some journalists couldn't wait for Arafat's actual death to begin weeping for him. Take the BBC's Barbara Plett, who burst into tears on the day he was airlifted out of the West Bank. "When the helicopter carrying the frail old man rose above his ruined compound," Plett reported from Ramallah, "I started to cry." Normal people don't weep for brutal murderers, but Plett made it clear that her empathy for Arafat -- whom she praised as "a symbol of Palestinian unity, steadfastness, and resistance" -- was heartfelt:

"I remember well when the Israelis re-conquered the West Bank more than two years ago, how they drove their tanks and bulldozers into Mr. Arafat's headquarters, trapping him in a few rooms, and throwing a military curtain around Ramallah. I remember how Palestinians admired his refusal to flee under fire. They told me: `Our leader is sharing our pain, we are all under the same siege.' And so was I." Such is the state of journalism at the BBC, whose reporters do not seem to have any trouble reporting, dry-eyed, on the plight of Arafat's victims. (That is, when they mention them -- which Plett's teary bon voyage to Arafat did not.)

And what about those victims? Why were they scarcely remembered in this Arafat death watch?

How is it possible to reflect on Arafat's most enduring legacy -- the rise of modern terrorism -- without recalling the legions of men, women, and children whose lives he and his followers destroyed? If Osama bin Laden were on his deathbed, would we neglect to mention all those he murdered on 9/11?

It would take an encyclopedia to catalog all of the evil Arafat committed. But that is no excuse for not trying to recall at least some of it.

Perhaps his signal contribution to the practice of political terror was the introduction of warfare against children. On one black date in May 1974, three PLO terrorists slipped from Lebanon into the northern Israeli town of Ma'alot. They murdered two parents and a child whom they found at home, then seized a local school, taking more than 100 boys and girls hostage and threatening to kill them unless a number of imprisoned terrorists were released. When Israeli troops attempted a rescue, the terrorists exploded hand grenades and opened fire on the students. By the time the horror ended, 25 people were dead; 21 of them were children.

Thirty years later, no one speaks of Ma'alot anymore. The dead children have been forgotten. Everyone knows Arafat's name, but who ever recalls the names of his victims?

So let us recall them: Ilana Turgeman. Rachel Aputa. Yocheved Mazoz. Sarah Ben-Shim'on. Yona Sabag. Yafa Cohen. Shoshana Cohen. Michal Sitrok. Malka Amrosy. Aviva Saada. Yocheved Diyi. Yaakov Levi. Yaakov Kabla. Rina Cohen. Ilana Ne'eman. Sarah Madar. Tamar Dahan. Sarah Soper. Lili Morad. David Madar. Yehudit Madar. The 21 dead children of Ma'alot -- 21 of the thousands of who died at Arafat's command.

Jeff Jacoby's e-mail address is jacoby@globe.com.