Posted on 06/13/2004 4:27:40 AM PDT by oceanperch
Indians trying to save their reputation 10:42 PM PDT on Friday, June 11, 2004 By PAT McREYNOLDS / KING 5 News
TACOMA, Wash.
Native Americans are fighting back after federal agents raided 12 tribal smokeshops earlier this week. Shop owners didn't like their businesses being mentioned in the same sentence as Al-Qaeda.
Just as motorists cross into Tacoma on I-5, a new sign blinks in to view that says: "We are not terrorists. We are American Indians. We have been fighting terrorism since 1492." KING
"We are not terrorists. We are American Indians. We have been fighting terrorism since 1492." Patrons of the Emerald Queen Casino couldn't help but comment as they walked by. "I couldn't believe they put something like that up there," said one. "To me, it looks like an over-reaction," said another.
The owner of Lyle's Smokeshop authored the sign in response to a massive raid by customs agents earlier this week when they seized cash and thousands of cigarettes from 12 stores on the same day that the government announced a crackdown on cigarette smuggling and its ties to terrorism.
Those claims touched off a demonstration by smokeshop employees. David Turnipseed owns BJ's, another shop raided by federal agents.
"I think most people know that we're not terrorists. I think everybody knows that's a crock, that's just an excuse to get in the door," he said.
He even claims to have documents proving the cigarettes seized had already passed through customs. "It was bogus. It's a way in the backdoor to try and break the Native Americans," he continued.
Customs officials still have no comment on the raids, and even though many were put off by the message on the reader board, none of them felt their neighbors are funneling money to Al-Qaeda.
The sign is not owned by the casino and has nothing to do with it, and the message has done very little if anything to slow down Friday night business.
The raids took place on Tuesday and so far, customs agents have not charged any of the shops with a crime.
The facts I am reporting from here in WA are not conjecture. I have actually been working with some of these companies to get the illegal smoking ban overturned. (Which was recently done by the WA Supreme Court.) I am not agianst Indians, I am against government regulation and a divided nation. I am FOR business people of all colors being treated the same.
Bob,
Calm down, then sit down with an indian who is related to any of the tribes operating casinos, and have a chat about income; real interesting story.
Formerly 'downtrodden native americans' are living large on profits spread across "tribes" of as few as a dozen members. Profits based on their sovereign status within the US and their offering of entertainment that is ILLEGAL for the rest of us.
And, of course, they are spreading money all over the US political landscape as well. Given their sovereign position *outside of the USA - a 'foreign nation') it seems to me that giving money to US politicians would be enough to get them shut down, shut off, or rolled over. Alas, not politically correct.
(One of Arnold S's first moves as governor was to re-negotiate the amount of money that the tribes hand over to California - not a tax, not a fee, the only word that fits is "bribe".
Most tribes have morphed way beyond the noble savage and/or repressed minority stage that some of you want to hang onto. I'm all for cheap smokes but all you need to do is pay a fee to the Agua Caliente, drive about a half mile from downtown Palm Springs, and see the results of way lots of money flowing into the "reservation" - someday I'd like to live that well.
PS: I have a friend who made enough from his position as absentee member of a tribe on the other side of the US so that his day job became completely insignificant. He worked to retirement only because he'd got used to it before the casino bandwagon got started.
"This is the real argument, not an Indian vs. Americans problem."
You seem to forget, YOU are the import here, not us. We were Americans long before you were. You Europeans defeated us then, and now that you are attacking yourselves and your own cultural decisions you want to drag us down with you. No thanks, we prefer the Constitutional Republic we signed the treaties with instead of the totalitarian state you espouse.
As for emotional, if you wind up any faster, you'll have a stroke. Reading your comments is like reading Hillary writing about the VRWC. You've managed to use the word "emotion" in the last 4 or 5 replies in a row. Put down that coffee and relax.
TYPICAL LIBERAL DOUBLE SPEAK, with a good dose of victimology.. In 1492 American Indians were murdering wholesale and enslaving each other, unless they were just rapeing and looting.
> I believe that technically the Indian reservations are sovereigh nations ...
They are. Which means... the US *could* set up borders around them... gotta have your passport ready to go in and out, say. There is, I believe, nothing wrong with this; it would be an effective card to play if a particular sovereign rez started getting out of hand. If you drove all the way to the rez for a gallon of milk, a pack of smokes or a game of blackjack and you didn't have your passport, you don't get in, and the rez doesn't get your money.
This sort of tactic should be used sparingly but strategically. Whether a state governemnt could set up roadbloack, border crossings and checkpoints, I kinda doubt... but it might be interestign to look into.
It's been done by several states in the North East......New York comes to mind. IIRC, it was more about stopping non-American Indians after they left the Indian smokeshops.....in order to collect the NYS sales and excise taxes on the smokes.
Actually the opposite has almost happened. In NY interstate 81 runs right through an Indian Reservation and whenever Pataki threatens to harass them the Indians threaten to do just that plus put a toll booth up.
I told you, get your elected representative to sponsor legislation to do that.
In process. One health department illegal decree gone, one to go. Keeping the rats honest will be tougher. You can't just "legislate" that into being.
Their status is the result of treaties between them and the federal government.
For what I feel is the 1000th time, NO, this is above and beyond the treaties.
The state can't simply tear up those treaties because they want more revenue. That's the real issue here
HELLO! Earth to Batrachian - this move by the government will REDUCE the WA tax receipts. Do you understand REDUCE? When tax paying competitors go under and the tribes take them over, our tax reciepts are REDUCED becasue the tribes don't have to pay state tax. It is NOT about getting MORE tax. It is about Democrat politicans pandering to the tribes to get some of their millions in campaign conributions. IT IS NOT INDIANS VS AMERICANS!
but because it's the Indians, whom you don't seem to like very much, you take the government's side.
Is everyone on this thread unable to read today? Good grief....
you take the government's side
I am AGAINST what the government officials are doing with the tribes!!!! Is that clear enough for you? the GOVERNMENT officials are allowing tribes unfair competition so the tribes will donate to their campaigns! Do you get it yet?
I must be missing something here. They're raiding these Indian smoke shops. How is that pandering to them? It sounds like persecution, not pandering. Can you explain this again? I don't get it.
.....I might think twice about that course of action.....
I would heartily recommend reading some ( actually all) of the Tony Hillerman books that have the subject of the interaction of the Tribal Nations with the American Nation at the tribal level. The books are not only great cop mysteries, they delve deply into the Navajo mind. They are also great travelogues if you plan to visit the Four Corners region.
It turns out that the FBI is the chief law enforcement agency, having jurisdictional authority for many crimes.
Hillerman's protagonists Officer Jim Chee and Lt Leaphorn, officers with the Navajo Tribal police, are frequently frustrated by the failure of the FBI to adequately do their job. The reverse is also true as they work together to solve crimes in the Big Rez.
The Indian tribes were recognized as separate nations by the federal government over a century ago as a part of the efforts to pacify the country.
Now that the Indians have kept their side of the bargain (and have been robbed blind for keeping it) they have finally found a way to make economic progress.
Your opinion is that we should now unilaterally set aside the treaties which were made with the full faith and credit of the federal government.
What honor is there in this path?
It's been done by several states in the North East.....
And in Tennessee....
Off and on Tennessee cops watch Virginia smoke shops and then arrest folks bringing untaxed smokes into the state. Ditto hard liquor until the County went wet.
http://www.eye.net/eye/issue/issue_02.24.94/NEWS/med0224.htm
THE MEDIA'S MOB-PHOBIA IN CIGARETTE SMUGGLING
by
SCOTT ANDERSON
Besides denouncing what The Globe and Mail called the "mobocracy" on native reserves that has grown out of the lucrative illegal cigarette trade, the media haven't really probed organized crime's role in the sale and distribution of contraband tobacco.
It is widely accepted that the traditional mob has established itself as a major distributor of illegal cigarettes. They were in the smuggling business long before native people and have a history of illegally distributing cigarettes from the south into New York to avoid state taxes. Yet the media have only given the mob a cursory mention. In the days leading up to the Prime Minister's announcement earlier this month that his government was slashing cigarette taxes to combat smuggling, the media descended onto the Akwesasne reserve looking for a fight. Chrtien sparked a war of words with native leaders by vowing to step up law enforcement around the reserves and "destroy the racketeering that exists in this land in cigarettes." The media's definition of "racketeering" didn't extend much beyond the reservation either, as the endless images of vehicles darting across the St. Lawrence that week demonstrated.
The Toronto Star alluded briefly to "mob links" but reported only that "a few Kilometres down the St. Lawrence another highly organized group of smugglers sends convoys of trucks and snowmobiles loaded with illegal cigarettes racing to Cornwall, across the frozen section of the river from Snye, Quebec." The exact identity of that suspect organization was never revealed.
Whether it's the mafia or Asian gangs, the extent of organized crime's role in cigarette smuggling should not be underestimated.
"When the mob is involved in something like this it's involved in all aspects of it, controlling pressure points essentially and also ensuring that the people who get the product pay for it," said Richard Laskey, first assistant on the New York State Organized Crime Task Force.
In the past, the mob has been implicated in supplying slot machines for gambling on the reserves and are rumored to be involved in providing weapons to natives as well.
"The warriors do have grenades for their grenade launchers, they also may have some anti-tank rockets and you can only get those with connections, you can't buy them legally anywhere in the U.S.," said John Thompson, director of the Mackenzie Institute, a Toronto-based research group.
Mention a major native cigarette wholesaler on any of the reserves in upstate New York or Ontario and references to mob connections are inevitable. For example, Smokin' Joe Anderson, a reputed cigarette wholesaler on the Tuscarora reserve near Niagara Falls, N.Y. (he also has family on the Six Nations reserve near Brantford), is said to be close with tobacco distributors Junior Attia and Frank Colucci. Attia owns the biggest cigarette wholesale warehouse in Buffalo. In 1987, The Buffalo News reported that Colucci, now believed to be out of the cigarette trade, was suspected to have ties to organized crime. The News story also said that on one occasion Colucci had been arrested for carrying "several 45 calibre handguns, a sub-machine gun and a disarmed hand grenade while delivering a truck load of cigarettes to St. Regis" (which is part of the Akwesasne reserve). Colucci was registered to carry the weapons and told The News that he always travelled heavily armed to protect his cargo.
LETTER BOMB ATTACKS
More recently, Marcel Talon and Jacques Palombo, who were charged last December in connection with a series of bombings that shook Cornwall, are said to be tied to the Montreal underworld. Cornwall is a smuggling hotbed because of its proximity to Akwesasne. Talon is also a suspect in last September's $46.7-million armored truck robbery in Montreal.
That string of attacks has also prompted speculation that the bombings in up-state New York last December may have been mob-related. Five people were killed and two injured when letter bombs exploded at seven different locations in Buffalo, Rochester and Hogansburg. Eight hours later, the police arrested ex-con Michael Stevens and Earl Figley. All of the bombs were delivered to relatives of Stevens' girlfriend, Brenda Lazore. Her mother, Eleanor Fowler, and her husband, Robert Fowler, were both killed. The police told the media that Stevens wanted to knock off Brenda's family because they were trying to break up their relationship.
"This guy just didn't want to deal with the fact that the stepfather of his girlfriend didn't like him," one investigator told The Buffalo News. The absurdity of this explanation was not overlooked by The News, which also reported that it was "a motive that hardly makes sense."
Still, that was the official police story and that's what the media pursued.
However, the media never followed up Brenda's relationship with her uncle, William Lazore, one of the bomb recipients, who lives on the edge of the Akwesasne reserve. Lazore opened the package with a rake and sustained only minor injuries to his legs. To begin with, anybody who opens their mail with a rake is probably afraid of somebody and in Lazore's case it could be any number of people. According to sources close to the reserve, Lazore is involved in cigarette smuggling and possibly gun running.
It would certainly appear that somebody has a vendetta against Lazore, considering the other recent catastrophe in his life. Eighteen days after the bombing, his daughter, Dawn Lazore, was found beaten to death on Cornwall Island.
However, Detective Klancy Grasman, who is heading up the joint investigation between the OPP and Long Sault Police into Lazore's death, said he contacted New York State Police about a possible connection with the bombing, and that so far there is "no indication that it's related to this incident at all."
http://www.tobacco.org/news/155351.html
Jury finds five guilty in cigarette smuggling case
Source: AP, 2004-03-03
Intro:
A jury found five people guilty Wednesday of conspiring to commit money laundering in a cigarette smuggling case.
Authorities said the defendants purchased millions of dollars of untaxed, unstamped cigarettes for sale on the black market in Michigan and New York, resulting in an estimated loss of tens of millions of dollars in excise tax revenues to the two states.
One of the defendants, Aref Ahmed, 27, of Niagara Falls, provided $14,000 to five Yemeni-Americans who were part of the so-called Lackawanna Six who attended an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan in 2001, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Anthony Bruce.
Since the illegal smoking ban just occurred in which the tribes were involved as recipients of the illegal ruling, I wanted to talk about it and Washington's increasingly difficult tribal vs non-tribe business problems and other growing concerns. I expanded on the recent illegal smoke ban and gave background info on how it was a political matter and not truly a "health" concern. I also talked about other tribe vs other WA people issues. That's all. Perhaps it just got too broad for you - There is a lot going on with tribes now. They are defineitely power players in politics. They are heavily democrat, and our democrat officials are helping them take charge over certain businesses and avoid regs other businesses must face. Infact, this smoking ban was really an attempt by democrats to turn over the entire state gambling business to the tribes by allowing them to have smoking but everyone else was BANNED from allowing it, even in their bars and casinos. Gambling, drinking and smoking go together if you known what I mean. In thanks, the tribes will pump millions into their democrat political campaigns.
I thought, perhaps incorrectly, that other FReepers would be interested. It WILL impact more and more non-tribal people and communities in the country. I would hate to see us end up like Canada. And I hate to see the rats screw our non-tribal business owners, makig policy that will hurt us into the future - just for campaign donations. I hope that is more clear. Whew, I'm exhausted! ;)
I believe that is a different type of situation......I don't think those particular operations involve the Indian Reservation......
I saw your comments about Tony Hillerman's books........they are wonderful.
the government announced a crackdown on cigarette smuggling and its ties to terrorism.
“I think these raids on Indian smoke shops have a lot more to do with tax dollars than with terrorism.”
What’s next on the list of “ties to terrorism”, illegal parking? Al Quida probably makes more money from manipulating the stock market than from cigarettes.
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