NNA Breaking News Update 12/01/98<<<<<
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NNA Breaking News Update 12/01/98
US News
1. Blacks, AIDS and the War on Drugs
2. Muskogee Hate Crime
3. Instant background checks for all gun purchasers begin today
4. U.S. Automakers Said To Have Collaborated With Nazis
World News
5. German Jew Demands ouster of Communist official
6. Germans Dump Transsexual Mayor
7. Jewish Groups Fight for Spoils of Swiss Banking Settlement
8. Saudi Arabia deports 349 foreigners infected with the AIDS
9. Feeding Third World cities alarms United Nations
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New facts and hot stats from the social sciences
By Richard Morin
Blacks, AIDS and the War on Drugs
Here are some puzzling numbers about AIDS in the United States:
* Blacks make up 13 percent of the population, but they comprise
43 percent of new AIDS cases and more than two-thirds of new HIV
infections.
* Black men are seven times more likely than white men to be infected
with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and black women are nearly 20
times more likely to be infected than white women--even though
studies show that blacks are no more likely than whites to use
illicit drugs or engage in unsafe sex.
* Blacks who inject drugs are two to four times more likely to be
infected with the HIV virus than whites who inject drugs.
* The number of newly diagnosed AIDS cases declined by 13 percent
among whites in 1996--the first such decrease since the epidemic
began in the 1980s--but did not drop among blacks.
What explains these discrepancies? Political scientist Cathy
Schneider of American University offers a surprising answer in
the latest Political Science Quarterly. She claims that America's
war on drugs is largely responsible for the fact that the AIDS
epidemic has disproportionately ravaged the inner cities.
Schneider is not alone. Growing numbers of researchers now wonder
whether the government's get-tough policy on drug use inadvertently
accelerated the spread of AIDS among African Americans and other
minorities. These social scientists and public health experts claim
that crackdowns on drug use in the inner city and laws banning the
possession of hypodermic syringes have forced many addicts to engage
in behaviors that promote the spread of AIDS, such as sharing unclean
needles and consuming drugs in clandestine "safe" houses that are
anything but safe from AIDS.
In predominantly white suburbs, the researchers say, drugs are more
likely to be bought, sold and used in the privacy of someone's home
or apartment rather than in or near an open-air drug market. As a
result, "jump-squad" searches and other anti-drug tactics so
successful in inner-city neighborhoods are less effective in the
suburbs--not to mention less tolerated. White suburban addicts
also have less trouble acquiring clean needles, and they're less
likely to be caught. As a result, they don't have nearly as great
a risk of contracting AIDS, Schneider says.
"Black and Latino drug users cannot afford to be caught carrying
either clean syringes or drugs," Schneider said. "Instead they must
use the most readily available syringe, usually from an underground
'shooting gallery' where they've bought their drugs"--places that
also happen to be, she said, "the most risky sites of HIV
transmission, because of both the sharing of infected syringes
and sex-for-drugs exchanges."
Women and children in the inner city--including those who don't use
drugs--also suffer increased risk of contracting AIDS, she argues.
"The high rate of HIV among black and Latino males has exposed women
and their offspring who live in those neighborhoods to a much higher
risk of infection from unprotected sex," Schneider says--the big
reason why HIV infection rates are increasing among minority women
and why AIDS is "the number one killer of minority children."
--
Muskogee Hate Crime
(MUSKOGEE) -- A Muskogee man says he's the victim of an anti-African
American hate crime. Glenn Gardener says the white tenants in his
rent home spray painted the walls with racial slurs. He says it
happened after he asked them to take down a confederate flag from
the wall. Gardener says he'd been showing the house to other
potential tenants and thought the flag would be disturbing to
potential takers. Muskogee police are investigating.
--
Instant background checks for all gun purchasers begin today
WASHINGTON (AP) - Today marks the start of a new national system of
instant background checks by the FBI and state governments of firearms
purchasers, replacing the voluntary checks on handgun buyers conducted
by state and local law enforcement agencies since 1993.
The effective date was set in the 1993 Brady Act, which established
federal background checks for handgun purchases. Under the new
system, the number of checks performed will double because a new
law requires background approvals not just for handgun buyers but
also those who buy rifles and shotguns.
An estimated 12.4 million firearms of all kinds are sold each year
in the United States. All will be covered now, as will an additional
2.5 million annual transactions when an owner retrieves a firearm
from a pawn shop.
Officials foresee some difficulties initially with the expanded
checks because of volume. December is the busiest month of the year
for gun sales, with hunting seasons coinciding with Christmas buying.
To prepare, the FBI hired and began training 513 people in West
Virginia to handle its share of the work, set up two telephone
centers through a contractor and sent teams to brief the nation's
106,000 gun dealers and pawnshop owners.
Federal law bans gun purchases by people convicted or under indictment
for felony charges, fugitives, the mentally ill, those with
dishonorable military discharges, those who have renounced U.S.
citizenship, illegal aliens, illegal drug users and those convicted
of domestic violence misdemeanors or who are under domestic violence
restraining orders. State laws add other categories.
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U.S. Automakers Said To Have Collaborated With Nazis
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Historians and lawyers researching
lass-action suits for former prisoners of war have found evidence
that major U.S. automakers collaborated with Germany's Nazi regime,
the Washington Post reported Monday.
Washington attorney Michael Hausfeld, who is involved in a class
action suit against Ford Motor Co. (NYSE:F - news) by former Russian
prisoner and forced laborer Elsa Iwanovat, told the Post similar
legal action could be taken against GM.
``There are many indications that there were surreptitious contacts
taking place'' between the automakers and their German affiliates
even during the war, Steinberg said. Researchers were trying to
determine if the automakers directly or indirectly profited from
the use of forced labor.
The U.S. automakers have vigorously denied that they assisted the
Nazi war machine or that they significantly profited from the use
of forced labor.
A U.S. Army report by investigator Henry Schneider dated Sept. 5,
1945 accused Ford's German branch of serving as ``an arsenal of
Nazism, at least for military vehicles'' with the parent company's
``consent'', the Post said.
Schneider said Ford's U.S. parent had agreed to a complicated barter
deal that gave Germany increased access to large quantities of
strategic raw materials, notably rubber.
Similar allegations have been leveled at General Motors Corp
(NYSE:GM - news) and a book scheduled for publication next year
will accuse the company of playing a key role in Adolf Hitler's
invasions of Poland and the Soviet Union, the Post said.
``General Motors was far more important to the Nazi war machine than
Switzerland,'' author Bradford Snell told the Post. He said Nazi
armaments chief Albert Speer had told him in 1977 that Hitler
``would never have considered invading Poland'' without synthetic
fuel technology provided by General Motors.
Switzerland's largest banks agreed last August to make a $1.25
billion settlement to Holocaust survivors, breathing new life into
long-standing investigations into issues such as looted art, unpaid
insurance benefits and the use of forced labor at German factories
during World War Two.
Both General Motors and Ford insist that they bear little or no
responsibility for the operations of their German subsidiaries,
which controlled 70 percent of the German car market at the outbreak
of war in 1939 and rapidly retooled themselves to supply war
materials to the German army.
But documents in German and American archives indicate that there
were contacts and that U.S. firms did profit from their German units'
use of forced labor, the Post reported.
Ford spokesman John Spellich defended the company's decision to
maintain business ties with Nazi Germany because the U.S. government
did not cut diplomatic relations with Berlin until Washington
declared war on Germany in December 1941, the Post said. That made
it illegal for U.S. firms to have any contacts with their subsidiaries
in Germany.
Spellich said the Schneider report mischaracterized the activities
of the U.S. parent and noted that managers at Ford's headquarters
were frequently kept in the dark by their German subordinates over
events at its German plant in Cologne.
But he acknowledged that company historians had found documents
showing that after the war American Ford received dividends from
its German subsidiary worth approximately $60,000 for the years
1940-43, the Post said.
GM spokesman John Mueller told the Post that General Motors lost
day-to-day control over its German plants in September 1939 and
``did not assist the Nazis in any way during World War Two.''
Elan Steinberg, executive director of the World Jewish Congress,
told Reuters he was not surprised by the Post report in light of
the class action suit against Ford.
Ford has mobilized dozens of historians, lawyers and researchers to
fight the civil lawsuit, the Post said. Company officials were not
immediately available for comment.
--
World News
German Jew Demands ouster of Communist official
MOSCOW (NNA Staff) According to local Russian television, November 27,
the Chairman of the Jewish Union of Germany met with Communist leader
Zyuganov, and demanded the ouster of General A. Makashev from the
Communist Party.
So far no action has been taken against General Makashev.
Things have been flaring up recently between the Internationalist
Jews and Russian patriots in economically ruined Russia.
Early on November 25, the apartment of Legislative Council of St.
Petersburg Serov, a Jew, was sprayed with machine-gun fire.
Before that, Galina Starovoitova, 52, a Judeophile politician slated
to be Russia's next President and the Western Media's newest martyr
was gunned down the week before Starovoitova had recently spoken out
on behalf of the Jews after a Russian patriot, General Albert
Makashov,
made less than complimentary remarks about Jews.
Another apparently related incident involved the theft of a computer
belonging to Narusova, the wife of the former mayor of St. Petersburg,
who had fled earlier to Paris. This computer apparently holds
confidential correspondence which could be damaging to Jewish
interests in Russia.
Jews had a heavy involvement in the Bolshevik revolution that claimed
the lives of over 20 million Russians and Ukrainians. Today, the Jews
pose as "capitalists" and comprise two-thirds of Russia's billionaires
while ethnic Russians are near starvation.
Jews make up only one half a per cent of the population of Russia.
--
Germans Dump Transsexual Mayor
QUELLENDORF, Germany (AP) -- Residents of the eastern German
village of Quellendorf voted to dismiss their mayor Sunday after
he announced he was becoming a woman.
Norbert Lindner, 40, was elected to a seven-year term in 1996 but
shocked many villagers last summer when he began wearing women's
clothes and calling himself Michaela.
Lindner's celebrity has since spread far beyond the village of
1,048 people, where transsexuals from Germany and France converged
Sunday to show support for the mayor.
Quellendorf's citizens voted to oust Lindner, despite his appeal
for tolerance.
``I think society as a whole has some catching up to do,'' he told
reporters.
Lindner, a father of two children whose wife has left him, said he
plans to start sex change surgery Thursday. A member of the reformed
East German communists, he had said he would leave Germany if voted
out of office.
--
Jewish Groups Fight for Spoils of Swiss Banking Settlement
The New York Times
A battle is flaring between Jewish humanitarian groups, plaintiffs'
lawyers and concentration camp survivors over the $1.25 billion paid
by Swiss banks to settle Holocaust-related lawsuits, and potentially
billions more from claims against companies in Germany, Austria and
other countries.
At the core of the dispute is the emotionally charged question of
how to divide the bulk of that settlement, because only a small
fraction of it will go to the heirs of Jews who had Swiss bank
accounts on the eve of World War II and were killed by the Nazis.
As a result, up to $1 billion may be up for grabs.
In recent weeks, Jewish charitable groups have prepared competing
proposals to distribute that portion of the fund, plans that could
give them a major stake in the allocation and bolster their influence
in the Jewish world. But some lawyers and survivors argue that the
money should be paid directly to those who suffered.
The success in the Swiss case has also spurred lawyers experienced in
large class-action litigation to pursue a wave of lawsuits against
banks and insurers in other European countries and manufacturers
accused of profiting from forced labor during World War II like
Volkswagen, Siemens, and the German operations of Ford.
Those suits could yield billions of dollars more in settlements and
tens of millions in lawyers' fees.
In recent months, competing lawyers from the United States have
barnstormed across Europe soliciting clients, publicly castigating
each other and privately maneuvering to oust their adversaries. And
the World Jewish Congress, which helped instigate the Swiss bank case,
recently met with political and corporate leaders in Austria and
Germany to warn that its claims must be dealt with before peace
can be purchased.
But as the disputes widen, a campaign once fired by moral outrage may
be dissolving into a battle over power and money. Some now fear that
aging survivors with few years left could again be victimized, this
time by those claiming to fight in their names. "I don't want an
industry to be made on the memory of victims, particularly because
there are so few survivors out there who will benefit from it," said
Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League.
Holocaust-related claims are growing rapidly. Michael J. Bazyler, a
professor at Whittier Law School in California, said that in the five
decades before the Swiss settlement in 1996, fewer than a dozen such
suits had been filed. The number has tripled since then, he said.
Lawyers pursing the suits say their goal is simple: to right
historical
wrongs and render a final accounting for one of humanity's greatest
crimes. Implicit in such a reckoning, they say, are such difficult
questions as who speaks for the millions who perished.
"These lawsuits will complete a picture of the Holocaust that has
never before been fully developed about the willing accomplices and
companies that stood behind the direct participants," said Michael
Hausfeld, a class-action lawyer from Washington who reached a
landmark $140 million settlement with Texaco in 1996 over racial
discrimination.
The roots of today's tensions go back to 1995, when the World Jewish
Congress, a New York-based group led by Edgar M. Bronfman Sr., and
Rabbi Israel Singer, the group's secretary general, started the
political uproar against the Swiss banks. They argued that the banks
had failed to check properly for accounts opened by Jews who perished
in the Holocaust, and that the banks might be still holding billions
of dollars.
A year later, suits were filed by competing lawyers. One camp was
headed by Mr. Hausfeld and two other well-known lawyers, Melvyn I.
Weiss of New York and Martin Mendelsohn of Washington, who were
aligned with the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles and sought
backing from other Jewish groups.
The other legal camp was led by Edward D. Fagan, a former
personal-injury lawyer from New York with a street fighter's style who
has garnered publicity and criticism for holding vigils with Holocaust
survivors outside companies that are targets of his suits. That group
said it represented the views of individual survivors.
The factions fought furiously. For example, Mr. Weiss and his allies,
who have worked on the Swiss case pro bono, asserted that Mr. Fagan's
group simply wanted to settle the case cheaply so they could collect
their fees.
"The two teams were spending their time denigrating each other, their
ability, parentage, ethnic heritage, you name it," said Burt Neuborne,
a
professor at New York University Law School who originally entered the
fray on Mr. Fagan's side but has since become aligned with Mr.
Hausfeld's group.
The World Jewish Congress also apparently viewed the lawyers and
groups like the Wiesenthal Center as latecomers to its party.
Mr. Weiss said that when he asked Elan Steinberg, a World Jewish
Congress official, to join a 1996 meeting of Jewish leaders at the
offices of his law firm in Manhattan, Mr. Steinberg appeared to give
the group the cold shoulder. "He said he had come only out of
respect," said Mr. Weiss. "He stood there with his arms folded
and waved us off as though we were intruding on turf that they
had already covered."
But before long, these conflicts were temporarily resolved by others.
The competing suits were consolidated before Judge Edward Korman of
Federal District Court in Brooklyn, and Swiss negotiators eager to
resolve the legal and political aspects of their quandary insisted
that the World Jewish Congress take part with plaintiffs' lawyers in
settlement talks.
The result was the $1.25 billion settlement in August, twice the sum
offered by the Swiss banks just a few months earlier.
But the alliances of convenience formed during the settlement talks
quickly frayed, setting the stage for the current battle.
One issue was who would control the rising number of claims. Rabbi
Singer, who is chief strategist at the World Jewish Congress, has
said a wave of such claims could yield billions in settlement funds.
That prospect was not lost on the lawyers.
By last year, the two legal camps were again filing competing suits.
And this time, the faction led by Mr. Hausfeld and Mr. Weiss said
they would also seek to be paid legal fees, rather than working pro
bono.
In recent months, competing lawyers have crisscrossed Europe and
Israel to sign up clients. Mr. Fagan has recently traveled to
Austria, Germany and Hungary. And late last month, plaintiffs'
lawyers aligned with the Wiesenthal Center flew to Paris, where
they appeared on a radio program to publicize their suit against
French banks.
The increasing invasion by Jewish groups and plaintiffs' lawyers
from this country has made some European Jews uncomfortable. And
some European historians who have worked on slave labor issues,
for example, have rebuffed efforts by lawyers from this country
seeking alliances with them.
The legal fighting has also reached a fevered pitch. Two law firms
that once sided with Mr. Fagan recently broke some of those ties
and joined with Mr. Weiss's group.
In court papers filed earlier this month, one of the lawyers involved,
Robert L. Lieff, cited a fax in which Mr. Fagan referred to leaders of
the World Jewish Congress as "pigs," adding that the lawyer took an
equally "crude and overly competitive" approach to those he perceived
"as competing for glory in Holocaust cases."
Mr. Neuborne, the New York University professor, also jumped into the
fray. In a filing, he stated that he would oppose a large award of
legal fees to Mr. Fagan in the Swiss banks case because he did not
believe he deserved it. He also said in the same papers that
Mr. Fagan's "property interest" in Holocausts lawsuits threatened
to turn survivors into "chattel to be acquired by entrepreneurial
lawyers bent on making a profit."
In his own filing earlier this month, Mr. Fagan accused adversaries
like Mr. Lieff and Mr. Weiss of scheming, among other things, to
steal his clients and undermine his lawsuits, in order to gain
control of Holocaust cases and resulting profits for themselves.
In an interview, he also said that lawyers like Mr. Lieff wanted
the backing of major Jewish groups as a means of accomplishing
that end.
"This is a fight over dead people's money, that's what it is,"
Mr. Fagan said. "And I think survivors should be the ones making
decisions about where their parents' money should go."
While the lawyers bicker, the World Jewish Congress has also been
seeking a central role in the claims.
Mr. Steinberg, the executive director, said the group had taken that
position because the World Jewish Restitution Organization, an
affiliate, is empowered by the Israeli Government to represent Jewish
interests on Holocaust-related matters. That group, like the Congress,
is headed by Mr. Bronfman, the former chairman of the Seagram Company,
and Rabbi Singer. "Our fundamental principle is that the victimized
parties are Holocaust survivors and the Jewish people as a whole," Mr.
Steinberg said, "and we have been mandated to represent them."
Recently, for example, Rabbi Singer met with Chancellor Viktor
Klima of Austria at the home of a former Chancellor, Franz Vranitzky,
to discuss possible restitution by companies in Austria.
Rabbi Singer also said that he and a prominent German Jew, Ignatz
Bubis, who is an official of the World Jewish Congress, was involved
in talks started last month between Chancellor Gerhard Schroder of
Germany and top business leaders seeking to develop a unified
response to dozens of suits.
Leaders of the World Jewish Restitution Organization also met this
month at Mr. Bronfman's office in Manhattan to discuss another issue:
How to distribute the Swiss funds.
Under a proposal being developed by the group, about 80 percent of
the funds would go to needy survivors, either through direct payments
or charitable services by groups like those in the World Jewish
Restitution Organization, said Bobby Brown, the adviser for Diaspora
Affairs to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. The remaining
20 percent would be marked for Holocaust-related educational programs
and research.
But some survivors and others say all the funds left after payments
to the heirs of Swiss account holders should go directly to survivors.
"This is for the survivors," said Estelle Sapir, a Holocaust survivor
from Far Rockaway, Queens, who sued Swiss banks on behalf of her
father, who died in a Polish camp. "Not the organizations, not the
lawyers."
Mr. Weiss said that using criteria like financial need may create
legal problems because the Swiss suits were filed as class actions
without regard to financial status. Others, like Mr. Neuborne, say
they worry that creating bureaucracies might delay payments to
survivors in their last years. Estimates on the number of Holocaust
survivors vary, but it may be at least 350,000, with an average age
of 80.
Other Jewish groups, like one representing the Orthodox Satmar sect
in Brooklyn, also expect to make proposals on how the money should be
spent. In an effort to prevent a long legal clash over the issue,
those involved in the Swiss bank case asked Judge Korman earlier this
month to appoint an outside lawyer to review the competing proposals
when they are submitted to the court in several months and to make a
recommendation.
--
Saudi Arabia deports 349 foreigners infected with the AIDS
JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia (AP) - Saudi Arabia has deported 349 foreigners
because they have AIDS, Okaz newspaper reported today.
The Jiddah-based daily said the men and women deported were
discovered to have the HIV virus, the virus that causes AIDS,
when they took tests required for work permits. It said the maids,
drivers and laborers were deported between June 1997 and June 1998.
Foreigners infected with the AIDS virus are not allowed to remain
in Saudi Arabia. The strict Islamic kingdom does not divulge
figures for Saudis infected with the disease.
The nationalities of the deportees were not disclosed.
--
Feeding Third World cities alarms United Nations
Agence France-Presse
ROME, Nov 29 (AFP) - The inexorable spread of cities in the developing
world is causing severe problems of keeping the population fed, the
Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) says in its latest annual
report.
For example, Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh, has 1,300 new mouths to
fill every day, the United Nations body says, adding that those who
flood to the cities in the search for a better life do not often
find it.
By 2005 the world's urban population will have exceeded those living
in rural areas, and in the next 20 years 93 percent of that
population's growth will be in the Third World.
In 2000, the world will have 20 cities of 10 million people or more.
Six are on the American continent (New York, Los Angeles, Mexico
City, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires), two in Africa
(Lagos and Cairo), and 12 in Asia (Tokyo, Osaka, Seoul, Beijing,
Tianjin, Shanghai, Manila, Dhaka, Calcutta, New Delhi, Karachi and
Bombay).
By 2015 there will be half-a-dozen more (Hangzhou, Jakarta,
Hyderabad, Lahore, Tehran and Istanbul). Apart from the last,
which is half in Europe, all are in Asia.
Such a megalopolis requires 6,000 tonnes of food a day, the FAO said,
involving coordination between producers, transporters, wholesalers
and distributors, including retail shops, street sellers and markets.
But it warned that while the cities were expanding the infrastructure
was not keeping up. With the urban area of developing countries
doubling in 10 to 15 years, the result would be anarchic and illegal
construction, shanty towns, overcrowding, corruption, sickness from
poor sanitary conditions and inflation due to the increase in
middlemen.
According to World Bank estimates, the number of impoverished city
dwellers will mushroom from 400 million in 1990 to one billion in
2000.
Such poor households can spend between 60 percent and 80 percent of
their income just on feeding themselves. This is 30 percent more
than rural families, and their diet is inferior, the FAO said.
Attracted by the hope of a better life in one or two generations,
as well as enjoying benefits like running water, sanitation and
health services, country dwellers who move to the city can equally
well find themselves far from markets, without transport and eating
contaminated food in overcrowded conditions.
While private enterprise and individuals sell and distribute food,
municipal authorities tend to provide the roads, warehouses and
market facilities.
But much of this infrastructure is badly sited, costly and unfit
for its purpose, the FAO said.
In Africa, for instance, wholesale markets are often stuck on the
edge of towns and lack the basic equipment needed. The result is
goods stolen or lost, unhealthy conditions, and no refrigeration.
Grain is often piled up in the open air and losses reach unacceptable
levels.
In Asia or Latin America on the other hand city centre markets
pollute the environment with their waste, and surrounding roads
are blocked by delivery trucks.
Almost everywhere wholesalers form cosy cartels which enable them to
charge exorbitant prices, the FAO report said.
It stressed the important role played by small markets and street
vendors, which create employment and provide a service to the poorest
inhabitants. In Caracas, for instance, produce bought on the street
represents 20 to 25 percent of household expenditure on food.
--
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