Posted on 06/29/2002 6:27:07 AM PDT by demkicker
June 29, 2002, 12:07AM
28 Nabbed by Feds at Fort Worth site Some may have ties to extremist group
By DEANNA BOYD
Copyright 2002 Fort Worth Star-Telegram
FORT WORTH -- Federal agents raided an aviation repair facility at Fort Worth Meacham Airport on Friday morning, arresting 28 workers on immigration violations. Some of them, sources said, may be affiliated with a Muslim extremist group responsible for a string of kidnappings in the southern Philippines.
Kathy Colvin, a spokeswoman with the U.S. attorney's office for Northern Texas, said federal felony charges will be filed Monday against some of the detained mechanics, who were working for Spirit Aviation Services. Colvin said the workers apparently entered the United States through Mexico, the Philippines and Peru.
Officials said the charges will relate to false statements on immigration documents.
Sources said some of those arrested appear to have ties to Abu Sayyaf, a Muslim rebel group in the Philippines that abducted more than 100 people in the past year, including a Philippine nurse and a missionary couple from Wichita, Kan. The three were the target of a rescue attempt this month in which the nurse and husband were killed and the wife was wounded.
Sources declined to discuss the extent of the connections between those arrested and Abu Sayyaf, which has been linked by federal authorities to the al Qaeda terrorist network.
In May, the United States offered a reward of up to $5 million for the capture of the group's leaders. The Philippine government has had a $100,000 reward on the heads of five Abu Sayyaf leaders for almost a year.
One notorious leader of the gang, Abu Sabaya, is presumed dead after reportedly exchanging gunfire with U.S.-trained forces June 21 while apparently trying to flee in a boat from Mindanao island, in the southern Philippines. According to published reports, one soldier reported shooting Sabaya in the back as he tried to swim away.
About 40 agents from the Border Patrol, Immigration and Naturalization Service and the North Texas Joint Terrorism Task Force participated in the 9 a.m. raid at Spirit Aviation.
"The company was very cooperative," said David Davidson, a supervisor with the U.S. Marshal's Service in Fort Worth.
Sgt. Mike Jones, supervisor of the Fort Worth Police Department's criminal intelligence unit, which also participated in the investigation and raid, said the joint operation's purpose was to "make our country safe."
Since the unit formed in December, Jones said, investigators have received "complaints and concerns from citizens regarding Meacham Airport and certain foreign nationals." He declined to elaborate on the complaints.
Jones said the investigation has been going on for months.
Spirit Airlines, the largest privately held airline in the country, started as a Detroit charter company 12 years ago. Today, it is a passenger line with 28 McDonnell Douglas MD-80 planes and makes 100 flights a day to 15 destinations across the United States and to the Caribbean.
The airline's headquarters are now in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Its planes undergo repair, modifications and painting at the Fort Worth facility, which employs more than 100 workers, said Laura Bennett, a Spirit Airlines spokeswoman.
The airline does not operate commercial flights in or out of Meacham Airport, she said.
Bennett said the company has cooperated with authorities since learning of the federal investigation several days ago and had handed over requested documentation regarding its workers' immigration status.
Bennett said that while all employees had provided the company documentation, such as driver's licenses, passports and mechanic's licenses, the investigation apparently revealed that some of the documents were fraudulent.
"This is very sad for us. Some of these people have become friends and were longtime employees," Bennett said. "The picture that is often painted is (that) these are negative people, but in this case, though some of them may be, it certainly wasn't all of them. They were very hardworking, very professional people who, yes, had bad documents."
Bennett said none of those arrested has a criminal record.
A licensed mechanic working with the company, who asked not to be identified, said the company had recently finished running background checks on employees.
"I think that was because of September 11," the mechanic said. "We didn't have September 11 before. That's why they didn't do anything before."
Bennett acknowledged that background checks and fingerprinting of employees were recently done by the company.
The mechanic said he had worked previously with some of the men arrested in Friday's raid. He said those detained included a man recently promoted, another who had just bought a new truck and a third who had gotten married just months ago.
"I feel sorry for the good people -- the good workers," the mechanic said. "They work for money. Everybody works for money and to put food on the table."
So many immigrants from the provinces had come to the Italian penninsula and to Rome itself by the middle of the first century A.D. that historians have estimated that 60-70% of the population in those areas were of non-native origination by the biginning of the 2nd Cent. A.D.
That means that the culture had changed.
Remember, the Roman Empire had no public education that might have enculturated immigrant children to Roman life. As it were, home teaching was the norm if taught at all.
I suspect resistance was low because the invaders weren't all that different from the people living in Rome in the 3rd century A.D.
The IranContra Affair and CIA Operations at Mena Airport, Arkansas, during the early 1980's. Knowlege of which is possessed by POTUS (X41) George Bush and the then State of Arkansas Governor, W.J.Clinton (POTUS X42).
We have a public education system that does not teach the kids how to be Americans. Same difference.....
All of what you said in your post applies to the US today or tomorrow. The conditions are exactly the same.
The Romans didn't have a democratic republic; only Roman citizens, from Rome, could vote. And only the Patricians could vote for Senators, an inbred class of degenerates you would have difficulty finding elsewhere today. (They liked to drink heated wine from lead goblets; get the picture?)
Women were never allowed to vote and treated as personal property.
Education of Patrician's children was from teachers who were slaves, usually Greek.
TAXES AND THE ROMAN MIDDLE CLASS
One fact that is rarely mentioned however, is that by the middle of the 1st century A.D. the majority of the Roman middle class had disappeared. They were taxed into oblivion.
The Roman Republic was built on the blood, sweat and courage of the Roman middle classes. These people were the bakers, small farmers, potters, merchants, building contractors, inn keepers, brick makers, stone cutters and others on whose efforts the Roman Republic's economy depended.
Since the Senate determined the taxes, wouldn't tax themselves and couldn't wring any money out of the poor, the only classes left to tax were the middle class businesses and professionals ( engineers, doctors, etc).
When the Republic died and the Empire came into existence, the need for tax revenue ballooned.
Entire families sold themselves into slavery to escape paying taxes. By the end of the 1st century they had pretty much disappeared.
For me, Rome collapsed due to the combination of three things: 1) the disappearance of the Roman middle class due to onerous taxation; 2) the maintenance of the status quo which resulted in the Roman government's stultification, its inability to accept change and evolve into a democratically elected Republic; and 3) education for ALL its citizens, thus making them all Romans who have a stake in its survival.
Rome had all the theoretical underpinnings to launch the industrial revolution, but they couldn't make those all important, necessary social changes.
The middle class of America is in much the same condition as the middle class of the Roman Empire. Our middle class is catching it from from sides. It is the middle class who largely support this nation. But, it is under attack.
This nation is undergoing great social changes. It has gone from a democratic republic to largely a socialist state. Even in this century, many socialist states have been born and died.
Books like The Third Wave purport to show evolution in our society when these great literary tombs were actually written to effect social change. These books were written by socialists whose aim was to destroy the old culture and bring about the neo-socialist culture based on economics.
Our culture has been under attack for many years now, and when the Soviets vowed to defeat us without firing a shot, they knew what they were talking about.
This bears repeating for those who remain asleep.
More of those jobs AMERICAN CITIZENS won't do, I suppose.
Interesting data, good of you to post it.
The principal engines of acculturation were the public religion and holidays, and the public spectacles, which formally speaking were religious solemnities. Every Roman theater and amphitheater had its shrine of Magna Mater/Ceres/Demeter. In fact, after the Roman Curia was burned by the mob during the funeral of Publius Clodius the demagogue, the Senate frequently met in theaters as well as temples; and it was indeed meeting in the Temple of Pompey when Caesar was assassinated; it was recorded that he fell close to the pedestal carrying the bust of Pompey himself -- an ironic touch.
Most of the discussions of Roman decline mention barbarian irruptions, but these weren't significant until after the period you're talking about. The real engines of Roman decline were enumerated by Gibbon, and more recently by Michael Grant. Impoverishment of the middle class by taxation (aggravated by successful cost-shifting strategies used by the senatorial class), depopulation due to plague and contagion, and long-term balance-of-trade deficits with India and the East were more significant factors.
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