The Internet Anti-Fascist: Friday, 13 Oct 2000 -- 4:83 (#476)

[Paul Kneisel <tallpaul@xxxxxxxx>]

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            The Internet Anti-Fascist: Friday, 13 October 2000
                         Vol. 4, Number 83 (#476)
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Action Alerts:
   London, 14 Oct -- Demo "Stop racist killings, scrap racist laws"
Obituary/Commemoration:
   AP, "Tokyo plaque honors 'Japan's Schindler'," 10 Oct 00
The Web In the News
   Mike Corder (AP), "Australian Web site ordered to stop denying
      Holocaust," 10 Oct 00
   Julie Tamaki (Los Angeles Times), "Web Site Prompts Claims of Racism in
      Assembly Contest: Incumbent Democrat George Nakano says Republican
      Gerald Felando is stereotyping Asians," 10 Oct 00
Book/Movie Reviews:
   Into The Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport
Rightwing Quote of the Week:
   <<WASP>>, "Encarta Africana CDs TRASH!!!!" 9 Oct 00

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ACTION ALERTS:

London, 14 Oct 00
Stop racist killings, scrap racist laws

Campaign Against Racism and Fascism
<http://www.carf.demon.co.uk/>
NATIONAL DEMONSTRATION AGAINST RACISM
Called by the National Civil Rights Movement
Assemble Saturday 14 October, 1pm, Embankment, London

The National Civil Rights Movement was established one and a half years
ago as the Macpherson Inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence was
published. At that time we were told by the government that they were
committed to stamping out racism, that there would be a root and branch
reform of our institutions, indeed, that they were proud of their anti-
racism.

What is the situation, eighteen months on? The number of racist attacks
has increased dramatically whether you follow the police's own statistics
or reports from community monitoring organisations. An increasing
percentage of these attacks are targeted against refugees and asylum
seekers. The government's asylum legislation has led directly to the
criminalisation of asylum seekers and widespread hostility towards them.
In fact we know that at least 157 people have died since the murder of
Stephen Lawrence, as a result of racism and xenophobic laws. Some have
died attempting to seek asylum in the UK, risking their lives because of
the government's clampdown on migration. Others have died in police
stations, prisons, mental hospitals or on the streets.

We need to build a national movement to end racism and defend asylum
rights. We cannot afford to leave it to the politicians, chief inspectors
and the flawed police complaint authorities. Only a grassroots

mobilisation in support of asylum seekers, refugees and black family
campaigns can deliver true justice.

STOP RACIST KILLINGS. AGAINST RACIST LAWS
   End detention, deportation, vouchers and dispersal
   Support families fighting racism
   Full rights for asylum seekers and refugees
BULD A NATIONAL MOVEMENT AGAINST RACISM

Please pass on this message to friends, family and work colleagues.
Apologies for cross-posting.

For more information, including transport details from outside London,
call the National Civil Rights Movement office on 020-8574 0818. Or write
to: National Civil Rights Movement, 14 Featherstone Road, Southall,
Middlesex UB2 5AA. Fax: 020-8813 9734. Web: <http://www.1ncrm.org.uk>. For
press information, please call 07957-240755.

Supporting organisations: Action 58, Active Resistance to the Roots of War,
Afghan Academy, Anti-Nazi League, Asian Dub Foundation, Ladislav Balaz,
Black Networking Group, Narayan Bhattacharjee, Bradford Immigration and
Asylum Support and Advice Network, Professor Lee Bridges, Brighton & Hove
District Trades Council, Brighton & Hove UNISON, Brighton & Hove Unemployed
Workers Centre, Bristol Defend Asylum-seekers Campaign, Saffron Burrows,
Campaign Against Racism and Fascism, Campaign for Justice for Carl Egonu,
Campaign to Close Campsfield, Chhokar Family Justice Campaign, Chinatown
Monitoring Group, Christopher Alder Campaign, Chumbawamba, City of Plymouth
UNISON, Committee of Refugees from Turkey, Committee to Defend Asylum-
Seekers, Close Down Harmondsworth Campaign, December 18 Online Network for
the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Migrant Workers, Devon and
Cornwall Refugee Support Council, Dover Residents Against Racism, Europe-
Roma, European No-Border Network, Exeter Anti-Fascist Action, Exeter
Campaign to Defend Asylum Seekers, Exiled Writers' Ink, Farhan Mire Family
Campaign, Federation of Iranian Refugees, Fight Racism Fight Imperialism,
Free Satpal Campaign (London), Freedom and Justice for Samar and Jawad,
Friends of Mumia in Devon, Gypsy Council for Education, Culture, Welfare
and Civil Rights, Hackney Refugee and Migrant Support Group, Diane Hammill,
Hillsborough Justice Campaign, Human Too, International Federation of Iraqi
Refugees, Jewish Socialist Group, Joint Council for the Welfare of
Immigrants, Justice for the Plymouth Gypsies, Justice for Ricky Reel
Campaign, Kalayaan, Kebele Kultur Project, James Kelman, Kent Refugee
Action Network, Imran Khan, Kurdistan Information Centre, Liban Ali Family
Campaign, Liberty National Council, Mike Mansfield, Michael Menson Family
Campaign, Mubarek Family Campaign, National Civil Rights Movement, National
Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns, Palestinian Right of Return
Coalition UK, Gareth Peirce, Plymouth Campaign to Defend Asylum Seekers,
Plymouth Socialist Alliance, Plymouth Trades Union Council, Satpal Ram, A.
Sivanandan, Southwark Day Centre for Asylum-Seekers and Refugees,
Statewatch, The Monitoring Group, Torbay Anti-Racist Group, Frances Webber,
Westminster Short Life Housing, Women's International League for Peace and
Freedom, Worker Communist Party of Iran (UK), Benjamin Zephaniah.

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OBITUARY / COMMEMORATION

Tokyo plaque honors 'Japan's Schindler'
AP
10 Oct 00

TOKYO -- A Japanese diplomat who saved thousands of Jews in Lithuania
during World War II was honored Tuesday in Tokyo, where government
officials unveiled a memorial plaque to celebrate the 100th anniversary of
his birth.

"Here, we praise Chiune Sugihara's courageous and humanitarian act
conducted in an extreme situation amid the Nazi persecution of Jews,"
Foreign Minister Yohei Kono said at the ceremony.

On Sept. 1, 1939, the day World War II began in Europe, Sugihara was named
Japanese consul in Lithuania. There he was deluged by Jews seeking help in
fleeing Nazi atrocities, and he responded by issuing visas to thousands of
Polish Jews in 1940 against the express orders of his government.
Because of the documents, many of the refugees escaped to Kobe, a major
port city in western Japan, and from there they were able to reach other
nations. Sugihara has come to be known as "Japan's Schindler" ? a reference
to Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist who also saved Jewish lives
during the war.

Sugihara's recognition as a hero in Japan, however, took time. After the
war, he was forced to resign from the diplomatic service over the issuance
of the visas. He died in 1986.

Sugihara's name and deeds have come to be better known in Japan in recent
years, and his story is occasionally the subject of newspaper feature
articles and television documentaries.

The plaque unveiled Tuesday was placed on the wall in the lobby of Japan's
Diplomatic Record Office, a government building in Tokyo. The office also
set up a spot to exhibit information about Sugihara.

The plaque reads in part: "A courageous diplomat of humanity. In
commemoration of the 100th anniversary of his birth."

Sugihara's widow, Yukiko, and officials from the Israeli and Lithuanian
embassies in Tokyo were among about 60 people who attended the ceremony.

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THE WEB IN THE NEWS:

Australian Web site ordered to stop denying Holocaust
Mike Corder (AP)
10 Oct 00

SYDNEY, Australia -- A government-funded commission ordered a Web site in
Australia on Tuesday to stop publishing material that questions whether the
Holocaust really occurred and the use of gas chambers at Auschwitz.

A prominent Jewish group welcomed the decision, but the site's owner said
he would defy it.

The Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission outlawed the material
and ordered Frederick Toben to remove it from the Web site of a private
group called the Adelaide Institute. Toben is the institute's director.

The ruling marked the first time the commission ordered material removed
from the Net.

Although the commission has no enforcement powers, if Toben refuses to
comply he could be prosecuted and jailed for contempt.

In its ruling, the commission branded as "bullying, insulting and
offensive" claims on the Web site that the Holocaust amounted to nothing
more than allegations and assertions by Jews.

Millions of Jews died in Nazi death camps during World War II.

The Adelaide Institute claims to examine "the truth about historical
events, especially those connected with World War II and the Holocaust."
Its Web site questions if there ever were gas chambers at Auschwitz, one of
the main Nazi camps.

Kathleen McEvoy, the head of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities
Commission, ordered the institute to remove the material on grounds that
its main purpose was to humiliate and denigrate Jewish people.

"In public discourse there is a need to balance rights and
responsibilities," she said. "It is never appropriate to victimize people
of a certain race in the name of freedom of speech."

Toben was also ordered to apologize to Australia's Jewish community.

In a telephone interview, he told The Associated Press that he would not
remove the material from his Web site and was prepared to go to jail if
found guilty of contempt of court.

"I find the procedure was immoral," he said.

Hundreds of extremist sites exist on the Internet today, ranging from neo-
Nazi alliances, the Ku Klux Klan, groups that hate gays and lesbians,
conspiracy theorists and Holocaust denial sites.

The online posting of Holocaust denials and other material considered to
incite racial and ethnic hatred is illegal in a number of countries,
including Germany and France. But because the Internet is global and
borderless, such laws are easily circumvented.

- - - - -

Web Site Prompts Claims of Racism in Assembly Contest: Incumbent Democrat
    George Nakano says Republican Gerald Felando is stereotyping Asians
Julie Tamaki (Los Angeles Times)
10 Oct 00


SACRAMENTO--In one of the nastier political races this season, a Republican
candidate for the Assembly has come under fire by Democrats and Asian
American leaders for operating a campaign Web site they say is racist.
Republican and former state Assemblyman Gerald Felando is vying for the
53rd Assembly District seat in the South Bay, currently held by Democrat
George Nakano. A Felando campaign Web site features an image of Nakano
dressed in a traditional Japanese robe and holding a sword over his head.

The site describes Nakano, who has a fifth-degree black belt in the
Japanese sport of kendo, as a samurai warrior "who has accepted illegal
campaign contributions from federally convicted money launderers and
Chinese arms dealers."

A news release on the site attempts to link Nakano to the controversy
surrounding Firestone tires, which the release notes has a Japanese parent
company. The release also features quotes from a book called "Agents of
Influence: How Japan Manipulates America's Political and Economic System."

Nakano described the Web site as "consistently outrageous." Based on the
words of support Nakano says he has received from Republican members of the
Assembly, he believes Felando's behavior has backfired.

"I believe he went over the edge this time," Nakano said. "I've been in the
Assembly for two years now and nobody behaves like that."

Felando, who served in the Assembly from 1978 to 1992, said neither he nor
his Web site is racist. Felando said the photo of Nakano in kendo garb was
originally circulated by Nakano's own campaign--an assertion that a Nakano
spokeswoman denied--and that he merely reprinted the image.

"A samurai warrior is a very honorable, ethical person," said Felando
during a break from walking precincts Monday. "I'm just trying to help him
out a little. He has so much bad luggage."

Nakano's campaign says Felando is trying to rehash an issue that surfaced
in a previous election regarding roughly $8,500 in campaign contributions
that Nakano received in an unsuccessful 1994 run for the state Senate.

Some of Nakano's contributors later surfaced as key figures in the national
Democratic fund-raising scandals and pleaded guilty to money laundering
charges. None of the contributions that Nakano received were deemed
illegal, Nakano's campaign says.

elando said he believes Nakano should have returned the money.

Stuart DeVeaux, a spokesman for the California State Republican Party, said
he does not believe Felando's site will harm his party's efforts to reach
out to ethnic communities. "Our party is more than one person," DeVeaux
said. "It's larger than one individual."

Assembly Republican Leader Scott Baugh of Huntington Beach could not be
reached for comment Monday. Campaign contribution reports show that
accounts controlled by Baugh have provided about $7,000 to Felando's
campaign.

Bob Mulholland, an advisor to the California State Democratic Party, had
plenty to say about Felando's Web site Monday. "Felando is a cyberspace,
racist terrorist that has sunk to the level of a skunk," Mulholland said.
Stewart Kwoh, executive director of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center
of Southern California, said he believes voters will have more sense than
to accept the innuendo contained in the Web site. Kwoh described the site
as an attempt by Felando to link Nakano to everything that Asians have ever
been accused of doing wrong.

"It draws on all the false stereotypes and applies them to George because
he's in this Asian kendo uniform," Kwoh said.

John Tateishi, national executive director of the Japanese American
Citizens League, said he plans to write Felando a letter. Nakano founded
the Torrance chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League in 1983.

"To use that photograph of George to try to imply that there's something
very foreign about him because he practices martial arts, to me, is so
offensive and racist," Tateishi said. "I don't think there's any excuse for
this kind of depiction of someone of Japanese ancestry as being someone of
questionable character."

Dick Rosengarten, who edits the California political newsletter CalPEEK,
said he expects Nakano to win the seat.

"Felando doesn't have any money and the Republicans don't have any money to
give him," said Rosengarten, who was not familiar with Felando's Web site.

According to campaign finance reports made available Friday, Nakano has
$53,628 on hand, compared to Felando's $1,999.

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BOOK/MOVIE REVIEWS:

``Into The Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport,''

Film Tells Untold Story of Second World War
Ivor Davis (Reuters)
10 Oct 00

LOS ANGELES -- Deborah Oppenheimer produces frothy TV fare like ``The Drew
Carey Show,'' but her latest project is light years away from laugh tracks
-- and closer to home and her mother's heart than anything she has ever
done before.

A documentary she produced, ``Into The Arms of Strangers: Stories of the
Kindertransport,'' now being shown, tells the story of a little-known event
that took place in Germany just nine months before the start of the Second
World War.

In l938, 10,000 German Jewish children said tearful farewells to their
parents and were loaded onto trains and taken to foster families in
Britain, expecting to be reunited soon. Most never saw their parents again.

Among them was Oppenheimer's mother Sylva, who went to England when she was
11. Six years later she learned that her parents had died in Nazi camps
and, when she was 19, she went to join her mother's sister in the United
States.

The United States had been asked to take some of the ''kinder'' (German for
children) but refused after a debate in Congress where some legislators
declared it ``immoral to separate children from their parents.''

The experience of Oppenheimer's mother led her daughter, with financing
from Warner Brothers, where she had spent much of her career, to search out
as many surviving kinder as she could along with a few of their rescuers
who were still alive.

Her research turned up a treasure trove of photographs, artifacts and film
clips. With writer/director Mark Jonathan Harris, she weaves a complex tale
of survival and pain, kindness and cruelty, rescue and abandonment in her
film.

Lifetime's Parental Guidance In Two Weeks

The now seventysomething kinder tell of their struggles with the early
trauma and how it affected the rest of their lives. One of the most
devastating lines in the film comes from Eva Hayman, who now lives in New
Zealand.

``We had about a fortnight before we left,'' said Hayman, 15 when she left
Czechoslovakia. ``And into the fortnight both mother and father were trying
to give the instructions, the guidance that they hoped to have their whole
life to give.''

The pain of the partings and their feelings of abandonment stayed with the
kinder all their lives, often making it almost impossible for them to talk
about their experience even to closest relatives. Oppenheimer's mother died
in 1993 without ever having talked honestly about her experience with
anyone.

``My father didn't know anything, my sister didn't know anything, my
brother didn't know anything,'' Oppenheimer said in an interview. ``The
very sad thing is that I have now searched just about everybody in my
mother's life -- best friends, early friends, first friends, childhood
friends, relatives. Nobody knew her story. So the little bit I knew I
pieced together from fragments that she told me. ... It was such a
forbidden subject that I didn't even know what to ask.''

One of the fragments was the fact that Oppenheimer's mother has kept two
letters from her parents in her shoe. ``She told me there had been a bomb
raid in London and she destroyed them for fear that the letters might
disclose her parents whereabouts and endanger them. But the bombing turned
out to be a false alarm and I just thought that was a devastating story.''

What she did not know was that there were more letters and these were found
after her mother's death.

'Staggering' Discovery

``Father found them when he was going through her drawers one day. He
didn't even know they existed and my parents had a very close marriage.
They worked together six days a week and they never traveled apart. They
were both German. They understood each other's experience, but they never
talked about it. That was staggering to me.''

The film is full of heart-rending stories, like the girl whose father
pulled her from the departing train at the last moment because he could not
bear to send her away even to save her life. The girl survived the Terezin
concentration camp but her father perished in a death camp.

There is also the story of the boy who bonded so strongly with his foster
family that when his parents came back to claim him -- one of the very few
families who survived -- he had great difficulty in forging a relationship
with them again.

One boy, Alexander Gordon, who arrived in England at 16, endured more
suffering than most. In 1940 he was arrested when the British government
ordered the interment of all German refugees over the age of 16 and was
shipped to Australia on the ship ``The Dunera,'' which survived a bombing
on the way.

Gordon, interned Down Under for a year until he volunteered to join the
British Army and returned to England, now lives in New Jersey.

``So these children escape the deportations of the German and Polish Jews,
they get to England safely, they lose their parents and now, at some point
in the course of the war, the British become frightened of an insurrection
from within and intern them, mixing them in with real enemy aliens,''
Oppenheimer said.

``So you could find a kinder transport child in the same room as a Nazi.
The kid is putting up a photograph of his parents and the Nazi is putting
up his picture of Hitler. It's unbelievable.''

Some of the internment camps became an intellectual hothouse out of which
came doctors, lawyers and scientists. Two of the kinder became Nobel
prizewinners.

Some of them lived in stately homes in England, some in orphanages. Some
became servants as working class Britons took advantage of the chance to
get some cheap labor and show off their foreign help to the neighbors.

Jack Hellman was more fortunate. He was in boarding school in Frankfurt
where his parents had sent him to escape growing anti-Semitism in his home
village when his house mother wrote to Baron James de Rothschild in England
and persuaded him to take in 26 children plus the parents and their two
daughters. He agreed and the whole party joined the Kindertransport.

In a huge crop of films and documentaries about the Holocaust, ``Into the
Arms of Strangers'' stands out partly because its story has not been told
before but mainly because everyone can relate to the pain it conveys,
Oppenheimer said.

``It transcends the Holocaust because everybody is born of parents,
everyone can remember some aspect of their childhood. It's for people who
have children, for people who have suffered a loss, for people who have any
passing acquaintance with the Holocaust. I don't think you have to be
Jewish to understand and I don't think you have to have children. I think
it's a universal story and a very powerful, dramatic one.''

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RIGHTWING QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
For those who believe that fascism is only a thing of the past

From:       --<<WASP>>-- <antizog88@xxxxxxxxxxx> [sic]
Subject:    Encarta Africana CDs TRASH!!!!
Date:       9 Oct 00
Newsgroups: alt.politics.nationalism.white

I purchased Microsoft Encarta Reference Suite 2001 today and was
appalled to find it contained two CDs titled "Africana." I inserted
the first Africana CD and was met with images of Negro Communist
criminal Nelson Mandela, Malcolm the tenth and other radical criminals who
were touted as heroes.  I was pissed but did not want to return the
product, as Encarta is the best reference suite out there.  I also felt
that my 12-year-old son should have the opportunity to view the Negro CDs
so he could see how the ZOG system is using Negroes in its project to
demonize Whites.  I cut off the page holding the two Africana CDs, removed
the CDs, cut up the page, and placed the two CDs in the BACK of an old
ragged empty CD holder where they belong!!!

Dump Africana Microsoft!!!!!

                           * * * * *

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)

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