Terror Error & Books After Midnight
Terror Error & Books After Midnight
[terror error]
Freedom of the Press
Here are the new rules of international travel among the 27 countries that the U.S. regards as friendlies: Come and go all you want, but just don't tell anyone you're a journalist. British citizen Elena Lappin came winging into LAX from the U.K. on May 3, beginning a six-day vacation, and casually mentioned that she was also going to do some work for the Guardian, one of the biggest daily papers in Britain. Instantly, she found herself in handcuffs, whisked downtown to Metro Detention Center, strip-searched, held overnight without charges, then deported the next day.
“What you're seeing here is a clamping down on foreign journalists across the board,” says Tala Dowlatshahi, the U.S. representative for Reporters Without Borders, an international group defending an unfettered press. “But you are in a democratic country which is preaching free speech and freedom all over the world, and you are threatening the freedom of the press by locking up journalists. Overall, it's a humiliating experience.”
Twelve foreign reporters were turned away from the U.S. in 2003, including big-hatted Australian entertainment journalist Sue Smethurst (reporting on Olivia Newton-John) and six French reporters (going to a videogame conference), all believing they were within their rights under the long-observed visa-waiver program. Citizens from friendly nations are supposed to pass freely, regardless of purpose. Surely, Britain is at the top of that list. And they would have passed, too, if they wouldn't have mentioned working. The new math: tourists, good. Journalists, bad.
“This is the conundrum,” says Dowlatshahi. “Previously, journalists were not required to have a visa. There is no clear policy.”
That was before the existence of Tom Ridge's U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which changed the rules when it came into existence in March 2003. Now only tourists get in without a visa – even if they're terrorists! Go to Disneyland, but for God's sake don't write anything about it.
“From the moment the decision to deport me was made, I was treated like a criminal,” wrote Lappin in an op-ed in Sunday's Los Angeles Times. “I was groped and searched. I was fingerprinted; mug shots were taken. Then, with my hands handcuffed behind my back – a particularly painful and demeaning method – I was taken through the airport to a van.”
Lappin noted that she loves the U.S., but that the whole ordeal gave her “a glimpse of a country hiding its deep sense of insecurity behind an abusive façade, and an arbitrary (though not unintentional) disrespect for civil liberties.”
–Dean Kuipers
[books]
After Midnight
Thirty-four years after opening at its original location in Venice, the independent bookselling institution known as Midnight Special Bookstore will close its doors for good in about a month. The store, now located on Second Street in Santa Monica, was known for its political activism, its informed salespeople, and an eclectic events schedule that included appearances by the likes of Maya Angelou, Oliver Stone, and Frank Zappa.
Owner Margie Ghiz said that the short answer to why Midnight Special is closing is the debt the store accrued during the eight months it took to move from Third Street to its new location. The long answer, she said, has to do with “a social and economic climate that is defined by chains.”
“A chain opens an outlet somewhere, they can afford to not make money for a year or two years. It's very difficult to compete in that kind of climate because we can't do that,” Ghiz said. “Even though our sales were growing, they just weren't growing fast enough.”
Midnight Special began as a cooperative in Venice in 1970 and moved to a small location on Third Street 10 years later. In 1989, Ghiz was approached by Wally Marks Jr., a local real estate owner, who offered to build Midnight Special a new, much larger store on Third Street. Marks made good on the offer, and rented at a below-market price to boot. The store had to move when Marks could no longer afford to subsidize its operation.
Midnight Special Bookstore specialized in political and social science and made its political dissent known through its window displays and community forums that addressed current events, from the Gulf War to the Rodney King verdict to 9/11. “I'm going to miss, with the closing of the store, the opportunity to be a voice, to yell and scream,” Ghiz said.
–Eleanor Barbour
[human rights]
A Slight Hitch
The U.S. Department of State posted the following short press release on its website May 4, 2004. The Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal was about one week old and expanding rapidly:
Postponement of Release of “Supporting Human Rights and Democracy: The U.S. Record 2003-2004”
The release of “Supporting Human Rights and Democracy: The U.S. Record 2003-2004” scheduled for May 5, 2004 has been postponed for technical reasons that have held up completion of the report. We will announce a new date for the release of the report once it reaches the final stage of printing.
2004/489
[End]Published: 05/13/2004
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