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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1992-09-09, Page 5Arthur Black THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 9,1992. PAGE 5. Intelligence a quirky business There's no doubt that J. Edgar Hoover will go down in history as one of the most loathsome toads ever to huddle under the skirts of Democracy. The man has been dead now for 20 years, but before that he ran the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation on a short leash for nearly five decades. He did some good stuff. He established fingerprinting as a cornerstone of police work. He greatly encouraged the use of forensic science in crime detection. But that hardly outweighs the evil the man wrought. He did everything he could to destroy Martin Luther King. Indeed, he smeared every Civil Rights spokesman who dared to challenge the Jim Crow status quo. He dispatched agents to investigate any public figure to the left of Attila the Hun. He kept files on politicians right up to and including the Kennedys. And he wasn't shy about letting public figures know that he had dossiers on the skeletons in their closets. Dead for 20 years - and still the slime of his foul machinations oozes out onto the pages of our press. FBI records released last ilnternational Scene Mixed-up borders, a global affair As I was reading yet another report about the fighting in Yugoslavia as the various factions try to carve out new borders in that war-tom nation, I thought back to my studies in history when I was amazed at the creation of borders between two countries which seemed to have been carried out with anything but common sense in mind. The whole globe, it seems, is replete with minorities that are on the wrong side of the border. In some cases minorities are so mixed up that it would be impossible to draw any line dividing the two but, in the vast majority of cases, a little common sense would have done a far better job. Even our border with the U.S. comes in for some criticism. The 49th parallel was drawn when there was little settlement in the west but, if you look carefully at the map in British Columbia, you will see that it cuts across the tip of a small peninsula which means that the people living in the southern half of this strip of land are Americans who are totally cut off from the rest of their country. If they want to drive anywhere in the U.S. they have to cut across Canada. Would it not have made more sense to have given the entire peninsula to Canada at the time? Probably, but then, as I have indicated, the logical thing is not the one that is done. . \ \ month show that Hoover kept a secret file on Sammy Davis Jr., of all people. Why? Hoover's file identifies Davis as ‘a black nationalist’ engaged in ‘questionable activities’. Such as? Well, such as being married to Swedish actress Mai Britt, for one thing. She's white, you know. Another damning indictment that appears in Davis's FBI file reveals that during a 1967 benefit for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the entertainer went on record as saying “all races must learn to live together in a peaceful manner.” Hell, hanging’s too good for a trouble maker like that. One would like to think that such outrageous red neck tyranny died when Hoover bit the dust in 1972, but recent revelations from California show that the pinched and ugly spirit of J. Edgar is alive and well in the nineties. L. A. Secret Police: Inside The LAPD Elite Spy Network is the name of a book just published in the States. It reveals that for the past 35 years, the Los Angeles Police Department has been sending out a 57-man unit of urban spies. The unit's job: to follow, tap the telephones of, and otherwise maintain surveillance on a host of “potential threats”. What kind of threats - Saddam Hussein? Manuel Noriega? Charlie Manson types? Would you believe Robert Redford? Connie Chung? Tommy Lasorda???? Robert Redford makes movies. Connie i By hay mond Canon , The French provinces of Alsace and Lorraine are made up almost entirely of German speaking people but they are part of France and there is no effort or desire whatsoever on the part of the French government to give them back to Germany. At times, during the history of the area, both provinces have, in fact, been part of Germany; this was the case up to 1918 but, after the completion of World War I, France demanded and got their return. One of the most touching stories I have read is by the French author, Daudet. Entitled “The Last Class”, it describes the agony of the teacher and the students at being forced to switch from one language to the other. Speaking of German minorities, there is another one in Northern Italy. They originally lived in the Austro-Hungarian Empire but, at the end of the first world war, the empire was broken up. While most of the German speaking people found themselves in the newly created Austria, some of them didn't. Rather, they were in Italy where they still remain. While there are periodic demonstrations to redress the issue, nothing has been done nor is it likely to be. This problem carried to the extreme has to be the Kurds in the Middle East. They have never had a country to call their own; their numbers are so large, however, that they are located in no less than four countries - Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Syria. Is there any real drive to create a homeland for them? Not on your life. The closest thing they have is in northern Iraq where part of Saddam Hussein's domain has been set aside, as it were, for the Kurds to congregate. They are still harassed by Saddam's troop but there has been nothing done to find them a permanent homeland. Nor is there likely to Chung reads newscasts on television. Tommy Lasorda, for crying out loud, manages the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team. What threat could they possibly pose to the peace and safety of the citizens of Los Angeles? Well, Intelligence is a quirky business. The L.A. Police also kept tabs on every single member of the L.A. City Council. They hadn't done anything illegal, but the cops spied on them anyway. After the beating of Rodney King, Police Chief Daryl Gates was fired. The next day, he was miraculously reinstated. By the Los Angeles City Council, says Ivan Goldman, author of the aforementioned book: “They (the police) were spying on the entire city council. They had stuff on the whole council.” Lest you think overzealous police work is an American disease, let me direct your attention to a couple of RCMP “dirty trick” initiatives used against Quebec separatists back in the late ’70s. Their mission according to the Globe and Mail: to “spread the use of ‘disruptive tactics’. The Mounties targeted ‘dangerous’ people and got them fired from their jobs, broke up their marriages by planting false evidence of marital infidelity, damaged their cars and carried out a number of break-ins and thefts.” These are public servants we're talking about. I wonder if they thought they were doing that for you and me? I wonder what they're up to this week? $ be. An interesting situation has developed in the three Baltic countries - Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. As you know, all three were taken over by the Soviet Union in 1939 although their acquisition was never recognized by either Canada nor the United States. As far as the Kremlin was concerned, they were just three of the many minorities with which the government had to deal. Now the wheel was turned full circle. The three have all gained their independence but all three have Russian minorities which consist of people who have, for the most part, lived there for a goodly number of years. What do the Estonians, for example, do with the sizeable Russian minority in their country? There has been the suggestion that they all be sent back home (which the Russian government rejects) but nobody has proposed that they be put in a specific part of the country along the border with Russia and then have it given back to Moscow. Interestingly enough, there is another side of the coin in this picture. I should point out that Switzerland, as we know it, would not exist if linguistic boundaries were the only criteria. The canton of Tessin would be given back to Italy since that is the language spoken there. The most westerly cantons would find themselves part of France once more while the German speaking Swiss would be part of either Germany or Austria or even both. Try that proposal out on the Swiss, regardless of which language they speak, and see just how popular you would be. The Citizen welcomes letters to the editor The Short of it By Bonnie Gropp There's no hitch Just when you thought it was safe to start reading this column again, I'm back. One of the most challenging aspects of this job, and there are a few, is trying to come up with something somewhat significant to write about each week, when essentially my life is pretty insignificant to anyone other than myself. So a break for the old grey cells was nice and now they're raring to go. Well, as raring as they gel anyway. While you might think that anyone who can ramble away like this week after week enjoys conversation, to be quite frank, with regards to myself, the opposite is true. I am rather reticent and typically avoid small talk as much as I can. I always have this dread fear if I actually approach someone that I haven't seen for a time, that I might have to say more than hello, so I tend to tum tail and run, a move that has many times in the past made me wish I could replay the moment. Likewise is my feeling with the telephone. A marvelous invention though it may be, it is one that is seriously overused. To my way of thinking the telephone should be used only when necessary and for as brief a time as possible. Though I try not to be rude, I sometimes resent wasting my valuable time chatting on the talk box. Thus you can imagine how I react when the caller is one of those telemarketing salespitchers. A few weeks ago, the telephone rang, late in the evening when I was finally enjoying some moments of relaxation. "Would I mind answering a few questions?" they asked. Knowing I was likely letting myself in for something, but too tired to be anything but resigned, I responded to five queries. To my amazement, that was the end of it and the caller hung up a short time later. Then this past week, the phone rang again, and I was informed that for answering those questions, my name had been entered in a draw and wonder of wonders, I had won. There was a condition to getting my prize- (again surprise, surprise). When they dropped it off, I had to let them demonstrate their vacuum cleaner. There was no obligation to buy. When could they come? When I told the woman that I was not interested, there was a moment's silence before she asked me if she could ask why. I found it hard to believe she didn't know, but I told her I simply wasn't interested, nor did I have the time, after which she continued to push. Having been here many times before, I knew this was going nowhere and did, perhaps a bit curtly, cut the conversation short. It's not that I don't appreciate that these people are only trying to do a job; it's just that there's a limit to how much you should push and how often a person's intelligence can be tested. Perhaps my first few experiences embittered me to a degree. The first time, my naivetd found me as the proud owner of $200 worth of pens. A more worldly friend told me at that time that you have to be brutal to get these people to quit. So, though it went against the grain, the next time I hung up on the person. Seconds later the phone rang again and when I answered, to my surprise, and amusement, the caller hung up on me. I realized then that Mom was right and there's no excuse to be rude, but when my phone rings and it's someone telling me "there's no hitch" it's tough. If they've got something to sell, why not just come out and say so - briefly. I still may not buy it, but I would respect them enough that if I ever went shopping for what they were selling, I'd keep them in mind.