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Come visit CareerMosaic.com today! http://click.topica.com/aaaaoybz8SnrbAjwjxa/job_openings ------------------------------------------------------------ __________________________________________________________________________ The Internet Anti-Fascist: Tuesday, 30 May 2000 Vol. 4, Number 45 (#426) __________________________________________________________________________ TV Reviews: The Tulsa Lynching of 1921: A Hidden Story Defamation and the Net David Gehrig, "[On Dealing With Anti-Semites]," 28 May 00 Chris Gaither (Miami Herald), "Judge orders AOL, Yahoo! to identify online writer," 26 May 00 Continuing Coverage of Damages from Holocaust Reuters, "Holocaust Payment Protection Money-Austria Rightist," 28 May 00 Paul Geitner (Associated Press), "Contributions Slow for Nazi Fund," 28 May 00 Adam Tanner (Reuters), "US Official: Slave Labor Deal Possible This Week," 30 May 00 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- TV REVIEWS: Tulsa Lynching The Tulsa Lynching of 1921: A Hidden Story (Wed. (31), 6:30-8:00 p.m., Cinemax) "Tulsa Lynching" revisits race riot Steven Oxman (Variety) 30 May 00 HOLLYWOOD (Variety) - Illuminating a mostly forgotten but deeply chilling event, "The Tulsa Lynching of 1921" documents what is probably the worst race riot in American history. Director Michael Wilkerson tells the harrowing story cleanly and very effectively, using a combination of recollections by now-elderly witnesses, commentary from historians, celebrity voice-over readings of contemporary accounts, and an impressive collection of black-and-white photographs and some film depicting the destruction of an entire black community. In 1921, Tulsa was considered the "Oil Capital of the World," and the black community was among the most prosperous in the nation. The Greenwood section of town was known both as "Little Africa" and as "The Black Wall Street." The film does an excellent job of concisely laying out the various conditions that set the stage for the riot, from the return of unemployed (and heavily armed) veterans from WWI to the popularity of the film "Birth of a Nation" and the growth of the Ku Klux Klan. The catalyst for the violence was a misunderstood incident where a black man named Dick Rowland accidentally fell onto a white female elevator operator, who screamed for help. As historian Don J. Guy points out, though, this wasn't the real incident -- that occurred at the local newspaper, The Tulsa Tribune, which published an afternoon article distorting the event and calling for a lynching. By that evening, crowds of white men were gathered at the jail seeking blood, and violence soon broke out between them and a much smaller group of blacks. Supposedly to keep the public order, the sheriff began deputizing any white citizen who wanted to join the police force, and soon hundreds of Klansmen, now representing the law, began organizing what, in the words of historian and retired General Ed Wheeler, was effectively a military operation. By the next day, over 300 blacks had been killed, over 1,200 homes had been burned, and the surviving African-American population of Tulsa was forced into confinement. Those who were vouched for by whites were released, but made to wear ribbons that immediately bring to mind the later yellow stars used by the Nazis to mark the Jews. The newspapers continued to refashion the incident, and all copies of the initial incendiary article disappeared. The city council passed laws that effectively made it impossible for the black community to rebuild, and a tent city was created to house the impoverished homeless population. Wilkerson presents a fascinating story, which is even more horrific for its having remained under-acknowledged. The eyewitnesses who were children at the time relate some specific details that make the story even more vivid - - a white man, for example, telling of a young girl happily handing out gum that clearly had been looted from a black store. The written accounts, read without any ornate interpretation, give a strong sense of the total shock of the incident. This is a film that could certainly become a staple of history classes. Voices: Alfre Woodard, John Vernon, Bill Cosby, Celeste Holm, Courtney B. Vance, Ed Asner, Mary Kay Place, Mary Steenburgen, Mike Farrell, Nell Carter, Rae Dawn Chong, Roscoe Lee Browne, Dale Robertson, Bill Cobbs. A Barrister Productions presentation in association with Cinemax Reel Life. Produced and directed by Michael Wilkerson; associate producer, Michael Brown. Editors, Brown, Wilkerson; music, Brown; camera, Phillip Atkinson, Brown. Executive producer for Cinemax, Sheila Nevins; supervising producer, Nancy Abraham. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- DEFAMATION AND THE NET [On Dealing With Anti-Semites] David Gehrig Usenet post to alt.revisionism Re: To David Michael 28 May 00 No, "I am not an antisemite" doesn't bother me. "I am not an antisemite" followed by paragraph after paragraph of unsupported criticism of The Jews and What They Do starts to. "I am not an antisemite" followed by "And in Tractate Pesukei D'Zimra The Jews say that gentiles prefer sex with cows and it's legal to marry three-year-old girls" does tend to trigger the klaxon. - - - - - Judge orders AOL, Yahoo! to identify online writer Chris Gaither (Miami Herald) 26 May 00 A Miami-Dade Circuit Court judge on Thursday ordered America Online and Yahoo! to divulge the identity of an anonymous message writer sued for defamation by Fort Lauderdale businessman J. Erik Hvide -- saying Hvide has every right to face his accuser. Although the issue of releasing identities behind screen names has been at the core of much legal debate, attorneys in this case and national experts believe Circuit Judge Eleanor Schockett's ruling is the first court order to question whether "John Doe" has a constitutional right to anonymous speech on the Internet. "Give them anonymity and nothing holds them back," she said. "That's why the Ku Klux Klan wears hoods." Schockett deemed Hvide's right to face his accuser in court more important than the defendant's right to remain nameless. "It sends the message, `You can have your say if it's responsible,' " she said in a hearing in her downtown Miami chambers. Hvide, former chief executive officer of Hvide Marine Marine, alleges that an unnamed person -- who posted under such names as "justhefactsjack"-- made defamatory comments, calling Hvide a criminal, in AOL and Yahoo! chat rooms. He denies the charge, and Hvide doesn't have a criminal record in Florida. But his Fort Lauderdale attorney, Bruce D. Fischman, could not sue someone he could not find. Privacy advocates said the ruling sends a frightening message to Internet users: If you critique someone online, a lawsuit may be coming your way. "This has become an increasingly common tactic to silence criticism on the Internet," said David Sobel, general counsel for the Washington, D.C.-based Electronic Privacy Information Center. "If the courts decline to provide some protection for anonymity, then that really is a negative development for free speech on the Internet." In recent years, people under attack from anonymous message-posters have increasingly relied on subpoenas to root out their attackers' identities. But Yahoo! rarely notified its customers when they were being sued, so the anonymous writers had no chance to challenge the subpoena. Thinking their screen names were protection enough, they were unmasked without a fight. But under pressure from such agencies as Sobel's, Yahoo! recently changed that policy. Hvide's anonymous critic had time to hire a lawyer. That lawyer, Christopher K. Leigh of Fort Lauderdale, contended in oral arguments that "anonymity encourages candor and frank discussion where it wouldn't normally occur." Schockett countered that anonymity encourages irresponsibility. Yahoo! attorney Clifford A. Wolff said the Internet company would not take a position one way or another on the issue -- but indicated the company wouldn't contest a judge's order. Amid mounting financial troubles, Hvide stepped down in June 1999 after 29 years running his family's Port Everglades company. Hvide Marine, a publicly traded global marine services company with $50 million in revenues, filed for bankruptcy two months later. Under a half-dozen screen names, the online postings started in 1998 and accused Hvide of criminal activity and running the company into the ground. Hvide's attorneys subpoenaed Yahoo! for the posters' identities. They were all traced back to one e-mail address: [EMAIL PROTECTED] "We can't do a thing about it without litigating it," Fischman argued before the judge. "Let me take his deposition." But the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, which urged Schockett to keep the identity secret, fears the decision could set millions of chat room users on edge about every posting they make. "Hvide made general allegations about being criticized and being damaged, and I think the judge needs to look into those before opening the door to a policy that may threaten free speech on the Internet," ACLU Executive Director Howard Simon said after the hearing. Schockett placed a 20-day stay on her ruling to allow time for an appeal, but Leigh said his client has not decided whether to appeal. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- CONTINUING COVERAGE OF DAMAGES FROM HOLOCAUST Holocaust Payment Protection Money-Austria Rightist Reuters 28 May 00 VIENNA -- An Austrian politician who once questioned the existence of Nazi gas chambers described compensation payments to victims of Nazi-era slave labor as "protection money" needed to maintain good trade relations with the United States. "The compensation is necessary in order not to disturb trade relations, especially with the United States," John Gudenus, a member of the far-right Freedom Party in the Austrian second chamber, the Bundesrat, told Profil magazine. "There is nothing else behind it. This compensation is nothing other than protection money which we have to pay. We are in a situation in which we have to knuckle under to the great powers. But Austrians today have nothing to do with the events of that time." Profil released excerpts of the interview on Sunday ahead of publication on Monday. Austria has been politically isolated within the European Union since the Freedom Party entered government in coalition with Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel's conservatives in February. The Freedom Party is best known internationally for its fierce opposition to immigration and for controversial remarks by former party leader Joerg Haider playing down the crimes of the Nazis. He has since retracted the remarks. Austria, which was part of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich from 1938 to 1945, is establishing a $477.7 million fund to compensate survivors of Nazi forced labour. Earlier this month, it reached agreement with the United States and six central and eastern European countries on how much individual victims should receive. Gudenus resigned as a member of Austria's main chamber, the Nationalrat, in 1995 after causing uproar by suggesting the existence of Nazi gas chambers was "dogma" rather than historical fact. He later said he did accept their existence as fact. He entered the Bundesrat in 1996. Gudenus said ethnic Germans expelled from what was then Czechoslovakia after World War Two should also receive compensation. - - - - - Contributions Slow for Nazi Fund Paul Geitner (Associated Press) 28 May 00 BERLIN -- The German envoy to talks setting up a fund to compensate Nazi- era forced and slave laborers criticized the slow pace at which German firms were signing up to contribute Sunday, but said he remained confident the money would be raised. In an interview in the Welt am Sonntag newspaper, Otto Lambsdorff called for striking a clause from the law being drafted for the $4.8 billion fund, under which it would only come into effect once the full amount has been collected. Lambsdorff said that was "not acceptable" because it could delay the payments to victims, which the German government hopes to begin this year. "If we presume that the German industry holds to its promise - and it will hold to it - then we can also let the law take effect" without requiring that all the money first be there, he said. Some 2,260 companies have so far pledged about $1.4 billion of the $2.4 billion it has to raise. The other half is to come from the German government. Lawmakers from the governing coalition worried the cash-strapped government could be forced to come up with more than its half if it strikes the clause and business doesn't hit its target. "Legislators should not get into a situation that could bring new risks to the budget," lawmaker Volker Beck said. Lambsdorff again criticized the slow pace of firms signing up. Only about half of the country's 1,000 biggest firms have joined. "The hesitation is damaging the image of German industry," Lambsdorff said. He said he was optimistic that talks with representatives of the U.S. government and other parties this week would resolve one of the last remaining issues holding up the deal: the question of legal protection for German firms against lawsuits from Holocaust victims. The Clinton administration has agreed to prepare a "statement of interest" to be submitted in any U.S. court dealing with such a lawsuit, expressing the U.S. government's position that such claims should best be directed to the compensation fund for settlement. Lambsdorff said the "crunch point" is that Washington wants the statement to explicitly say that it is not legally binding, due to the constitutional separation of powers. The German side would prefer the point be left unaddressed to avoid making the statement look weak, he said. Lambsdorff doubted the final declaration would be ready until late June, despite hopes President Clinton and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder could sign it during Clinton's visit to Berlin this week. - - - - - US Official: Slave Labor Deal Possible This Week Adam Tanner (Reuters) 30 May 00 BERLIN -- The top U.S. official seeking a deal on German compensation for Nazi-era slaves said an agreement was possible in time for President Clinton's summit with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. "I expect an agreement even this week," Deputy U.S. Treasury Secretary Stuart Eizenstat told the weekly Die Woche newspaper, in comments released Tuesday. Clinton visits Berlin on June 1-3. The German government and industry have each offered to pay half of a 10 billion mark ($4.75 billion) fund to compensate many thousands of surviving slave laborers. When tax breaks are figured in, the German government is footing about 75 percent of the overall bill. Although negotiators have agreed to the broad outlines of a compensation deal, they are still hammering out the exact language of the text. Berlin wants more assurances it will not face lawsuits on the issue after those payments are made. "The German firms have to realize that under our legal system -- in which the government in Washington has no influence on courts -- there can be no one hundred-percent guarantee of legal security," Eizenstat said in the interview. He added the U.S. government would seek the dismissal of subsequent cases provided they do not contradict U.S. foreign policy interests. German Industry Not Convinced A spokesman for German industry participating in the fund said such a pledge was not enough. "This is certainly too little for us," said Wolfgang Gibowski. German officials are seeking what they call a legal statement from Washington rather than a political declaration, a difference they say will make it easier for courts to dismiss future slave labor lawsuits. "I hope we can clear away all of the remaining legal questions. This will succeed with goodwill," Eizenstat said. "A signing could then follow soon after." U.S. officials last week played down the possibility of reaching a deal during Clinton's visit to Berlin. But German officials have said that a tough U.S. statement on "legal closure" will be enough to nail down a deal. The next round of negotiations starts Wednesday in Berlin, the day before Clinton's arrival, and may continue during his visit. The main beneficiaries of a deal are expected to come from two groups: -- An estimated 240,000 slave laborers, of whom more than half were Jewish, who the Nazis planned to work to death. Many are now resident in the United States. -- About one million people, mostly from eastern Europe, who were pressed into service during World War Two as forced laborers under less mortal conditions. Officials are anxious to complete a deal as soon as possible because of the advanced age of many of the survivors 55 years after the war ended. * * * * * 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 -------------------------------------- FREE digital photo album software. 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