Would Brownwood Reporter, Steve Nash, be able to see & identify this ?

Hate Letter Scare Hit Illinois College 
Friday, April 22, 2005 7:15 p.m. ET
By Michael Conlon
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Hate mail containing a threat of violence prompted a small Christian college near Chicago to place its black and other minority students under protection off campus, the school said on Friday.
A spokesman for Trinity International University in the town of Deerfield said about 100 of its 1,000 undergraduate students were removed from campus and spent Thursday night under protection in a hotel or in private homes.
They returned to classes on Friday without incident, said the school, which is affiliated with the Evangelical Free Church of America and also has campuses in Miami and Santa Ana, California.
Three hate letters were sent to specific students during the past two weeks and the last one threatened physical violence, said Ken Tracz, police chief in nearby Bannockburn.
He told reporters that specific threat prompted the college to act, given that the third week of April marks a number of violent anniversaries in the United States -- the massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, the Oklahoma City federal building bombing and the conflagration that ended the siege at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, on April 19, 1993.
Officials said the letters may have been sent by someone within the school but the source had not been found, and the details of the threats were not disclosed.
School officials were not available to comment on whether the protection would be extended a second night.
The incident is the latest in continuing hate-related problems in the United States involving immigrants, Muslims, blacks and others.
But it comes as no surprise that it could occur even on a quiet Christian campus, according to Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law center, which monitors such activity.
"University and high school campuses are the most common venue, incredibly enough, for hate crimes, in homes and on the street," he said.
"That's really remarkable since one thinks of a university campus as being open-minded and tolerant," he added. "But it very much reflects what's going on in society at large."
Potok said hate crimes in general are on the rise and run in all directions, though most are anti-black or anti-Jewish. His Montgomery, Alabama-based group recently published a report saying that xenophobic hatred and violence are on the rise in the state of Georgia, where nearly 1 million Hispanic immigrants have arrived since 1990.
Violence against Muslims sharpened after the attacks on New York and Washington in 2001 and continues to be cataloged by the Council on American-Islamic Relations
On Friday, it urged the FBI to investigate vandalism at a mosque in Colorado where a brick was thrown through a window. There has been a series of similar incidents in recent months involving Muslim individuals and institutions nationwide, according to Ibrahim Hooper, communications director for the group.
source: http://wireservice.wired.com/wired/story.asp?section=Breaking&storyId=1023615&tw=wn_wire_story&from=email
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Friday April 22, 2005
Op Ed: Columnist
Proper protests, complicated cases and lawsuits without merit -- Steve Nash

The Associated Press reports that a Vietnam veteran spit tobacco juice into the face of Jane Fonda in Kansas City after waiting in line in to have her sign her new memoir.

I'm hardly a Jane Fonda fan (nor do I play one on TV), and I have held a low opinion of her behavior during the Vietnam war. There's the matter of that little photo she's never managed to live down and the Hanoi Jane moniker she'll probably never shed.
The veteran was quoted as saying that Fonda was a "traitor" and that her protests against the Vietnam War were unforgivable. I'd agree she was a traitor -- not because she protested, because you can do that in America -- but because she gave aid and comfort to the enemy and undermined American POWs in North Vietnam.
But even if she'd kissed Uncle Ho full on the lips, spitting in her face wasn't the way for the veteran to make his point. I'm hardly a touchy-feely Michael-Row-the-Boat-Ashore-singing tree-hugger, but I can't agree with assaulting or otherwise disrupting the activities of someone with whom you disagree.
I don't agree with the "Cat Ballou" actress being spit at any more than I agree with recent pie-throwings on college campuses that targeted conservative speakers including Ann Coulter, David Horowitz and William Kristol. I guess in some groups, tolerance is only practiced toward people you like.
As for Jane Fonda, I don't think we quite know what to do with her. She certainly seems to have remade herself and modified some of her views, but how much? At one time I held a very harsh view toward her activities in North Vietnam, and although that view has softened somewhat, I haven't read enough of her current writings to know whether to say no harm, no foul.
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Got a call recently from a young woman who wanted to talk about an assault which the police had already investigated. As best I could tell, she was not one of the participants but was related somehow, or used to be, to some or all of the people who were involved.
I could not keep up with the minutiae of the relationships -- who was dating who, who was an ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend or ex-in-law, who was pregnant with whose child. It was more confusing than a soap opera.
Who's on first?
I don't know how cops manage to keep it all straight when they're trying to sort through an assault that involves multiple relationships, especially when exes are involved. Some of it is tragic-comic, although it is quite sad when you think about the circumstances these babies are going to be born into -- circumstances that often include poverty, neglect, violence, and drugs and alcohol.
I know of at least one recent case in which a woman was released from the Brown County Jail and gave birth to a baby who tested positive for methamphetamine. The baby is in foster care and the woman is in prison.
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Another recent Associated Press article told of a Canadian aerospace company's agreement to pay a Mormon man $159,000 to settle a religious discrimination lawsuit.
The lawsuit claimed the company had discriminated against an employee and then fired him for complaining about it. A top company executive told the man that his religion was a detriment to his ability to sell business jets and that customers would be offended by his religious-based decision not to drink or smoke, the AP reported.
That defies logic, and ranks up there with the Wendy's finger-in-the-chili story. People just don't behave this way. When was the last time your religious affiliation was a factor in whether you kept your job? When was the last time someone got offended because you don't smoke or drink? There's got to be more to this story.
I have the same reaction when I read about racial discrimination lawsuits that claim someone got lousy or no service in a restaurant because of his or her race. I'm not saying that discrimination never happens, or that bad service never happens.
But the purported facts as stated in the lawsuits are so unbelievable as to be -- well, unbelievable, not in this era. When I go in restaurants, the staff is too busy just trying to survive to pay attention to who is what race and then go out of their way to give bad service.
Now, if these events as depicted in the lawsuits truly happened, then shame on the defendants. I guess I view these alleged events with the same skepticism with which I review reports of UFO sighting. I can't prove they don't exist. I just know I've never seen one. And I have never remotely seen the behavior that is claimed to have existed in these discrimination lawsuits.
Steve Nash writes his column in the Brownwood Bulletin on Thursdays. He may be reached by e-mail at steve.nash@brownwoodbulletin.com.
source: http://www.brownwoodbulletin.com/articles/2005/04/22/op_ed/columnist/opinion05.txt
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Seven Arab Americans sue Denny's owner alleging discrimination

MIAMI — Seven men of Middle Eastern descent have sued a South Florida Denny's restaurant franchisee and one of its managers for $28 million, saying they were kicked out because of their ancestry and compared to Osama Bin Laden.
The men, who are all U.S. citizens, are seeking $4 million each from Restaurant Collection Inc., which owns the Denny's franchise, and shift manager Eduardo Ascano, whom they say compared them to the Al-Qaida terrorist leader.
"This was a terrible act against Arab Americans," Alan C. Kauffman, one of the attorneys for the group, said Wednesday.
The seven men are of Egyptian, Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian descent and include a doctor, a real estate agent, an insurance broker and a restaurant owner. They live in Broward and Palm Beach counties. They filed suit last week in Miami-Dade County Circuit Court. No trial date has been set.
Restaurant Collection's owner, Alfonso Fernandez, said in a statement Wednesday that the men's allegations are false.
"We are truly committed to treating all of our guests with respect, and we take every guest concern seriously," Fernandez wrote. "These allegations of discrimination were immediately and thoroughly investigated by an independent, outside agency that found no evidence whatsoever to support the guests' claims."
Fernandez did not identify the agency. However, an investigation by the Florida Commission on Human Rights said "reasonable cause does exist" to support the discrimination claim.
The seven men say they went to Fernandez's restaurant in Florida City, on the southern tip of the Florida peninsula, about 2 a.m. Jan. 11, 2004. They say they were seated, given menus and received their drink orders. But an hour later, their food hadn't arrived. One of the men — Ehab Albaradi — approached Ascano and inquired about the group's order, the lawsuit says.
Ascano allegedly said: "Bin Laden is the manager of the kitchen" and "Bin Laden is in charge."
Albaradi and a second man, Usama El-A-Baidy, decided to speak to Ascano again about their order.
Angered, Ascano told the short order cooks in the kitchen to cancel the group's order, the suit claims.
El-A-Baidy then asked Ascano why he had used the name bin Laden.
"We don't serve bin Ladens here! You guys, out!" Ascano allegedly said.
A group of officers from the Miami-Dade County and Homestead police departments eating at the Denny's also told the seven men to leave and threatened to arrest them if they didn't, the lawsuit said. The officers have not been identified, Kauffman said.
Miami-Dade police spokeswoman Cathy Webb said Thursday that the department could find no record of a complaint being filed by the men and because so many months have passed, it will be difficult to determine who the officers were. Homestead Capt. Ed Bowe said no complaints were filed with the department and its records show no on-duty officers were at the restaurant at the time.
Ascano no longer works for the resaurant, Fernandez said. Ascano does not have a listed phone number and could not be reached for comment.
Denny's restaurants have long been the targets of discrimination lawsuits across the country.
The 1,600-restaurant chain, which has annual sales that exceed $2 billion, settled a 1994 lawsuit for $54.4 million that accused the chain of asking blacks to prepay for meals. Since then, it has faced at least six more discrimination lawsuits filed by African-Americans and Hispanics and has been investigated in at least two cases involving discrimination against people of Middle Eastern descent.
Debbie Atkins, a spokeswoman at Denny's Spartanburg, S.C., headquarters said Thursday that the company stands by the independent investigation that cleared Restaurant Collection, but reiterated "we have zero tolerance for discrimination." She said the company has instituted several diversity and anti-discrimination programs in recent years.
"We are a very different company" compared to a decade ago when it was facing the earlier discrimination charges, Atkins said.
source: http://www.palmbeachpost.com/state/content/gen/ap/FL_Dennys_Lawsuit.html