THE LIST

international | anti-war / imperialism | news report Friday July 18, 2003 10:16 by Christine Pelisek - LA weekly

read and be amazed!

"George W. Bush declared the “War on Terrorism” “the first war of the 21st century” almost like a boy proudly claims a newfound toy. Soon after followed the knee-jerk USA PATRIOT Act, a misguided piece of follow-the-leader legislation ushering in a new era of human rights violations. Writing for LAWeekly.com, Christine Pelisek has compiled a mile-long list of post 9/11 “accomplishments” and statistics facilitated by the expanded reach the PATRIOT Act granted to federal offices and the creation of the Homeland Security department. For example: “Number of al Qaeda or allied terror suspects arrested by officials since 9/11: 2,700. Number of U.S. citizens indicted by a federal grand jury for al Qaeda-related activities: 5.” Newfound capacity for the Bush administration to exploit post-9/11 fear and grief for its own secret purposes: Priceless.
Anne G"

JULY 4 - 10, 2003

The List
by Christine Pelisek

(Illustrations by Juan Alvarado)

• Number of al Qaeda or allied terror suspects arrested by officials since 9/11: 2,700.

• Number of U.S. citizens indicted by a federal grand jury for al Qaeda–related activities: 5.

• Number of immigrants detained after 9/11 — some up to eight months: 762.

• Number of people arrested by the LAPD’s anti-terrorism bureau since 9/11: 75.

• Number of convicted al Qaeda members: 0.

• Number of people the Justice Department charged with terrorism in the first two months of 2003: 56.

• After a Philadelphia Inquirer investigation, the number of those cases that were found to have nothing to do with terrorism: 41.

• Number of cases that involved Latinos using phony Social Security numbers: 28.

• As of April 22, number of passengers in San Francisco who have been detained for questioning because of the government’s “no-fly list”: 339.

• Since the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act, the number of people secretly detained without charges as “material witnesses” in the 9/11 attacks: 50.

• Percentage of those held up to 90 days: 90.

• Year that many of the USA Patriot Act provisions, including one that gives the FBI greater authority to investigate libraries, are set to expire: 2005.

• As of June 27, number of states that have adopted measures protesting the USA Patriot Act: 3.

• As of June 27, number of cities, towns and counties adopting measures: 129.

• Number of lawsuits the ACLU is juggling on the terrorism front: 33.

• Percentage of librarians who said they “probably” would defy an agent’s order to see patrons’ records: 16.1.

• Percentage of librarians who said they “definitely” would defy an agent’s order to see patrons’ records: 5.5.

• Number of pages in the USA PATRIOT Act: 340.

• Number of House co-sponsors of a bill that would exempt libraries and bookstores from Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act: 122.

• Number from California: 20.

• Under the proposed USA PATRIOT Act II, the number of additional crimes that would be punishable by death: 15.

• Under the proposed USA PATRIOT Act II, the number of days the government could wiretap a suspected terrorist without a judge’s approval: 15.

• Number of computer intrusions or hackers investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2002: 814.

• Number of computer intrusions or hacker investigations still pending in the U.S. Department of Justice in 2002: 1,956.

• Number of computer intrusion or hacker convictions or pretrial diversions by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2002: 101.

• Number of state and local bomb techs trained in 2002: 882.

• Number of terrorist cases investigated, both pending and received, by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2002: 15,455.

• Number of terrorist cases closed by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2002: 5,533.

• Number of terrorism-related convictions by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2002: 251.

• Number of terrorism convictions by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2002: 153.

• Number of hazardous-duty mobile robots in the LAPD Bomb Squad: 2.

• Cost of each: $160,000.

• Weight: 350 pounds.

• High-speed capability: 3.5 mph.

• Number of times deployed in 2003: 0.

• In a poll of 2,000 Americans conducted by National Public Radio and others, the percentage who felt it was more important to protect constitutional rights than to find every potential terrorist: 44.

• Percentage who said finding the terrorists was more important: 47.

• Percentage who believe the federal government threatens their own personal rights and freedoms: 32.

• President Bush’s defense-budget request for 2004: $380 billion.

• Amount set aside for missile defense by the U.S. Senate: $9.1 billion.

• Amount set aside for developing chemical-and biological-weapon detection and protection technology: $181 million.




• Amount set aside for 12 civil-support teams to help first responders in the event of a chemical, biological or nuclear attack by terrorists: $88.4 million.

• Number of major chemical facilities nationwide: 15,000.

• If attacked, the number of those facilities that would endanger the lives of a million or more Americans: 100.

• Number of the government-appointed Defense Policy Board members out of 30 who were linked to companies that have won more than $76 billion in defense contracts in 2001 and 2002: 9.

• Requested down payment in 2002 for the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agencies’ Total Information Awareness System (TIPS), a system that allows the government to study the purchases and activities of its citizens: $200 million.

• When it was defunded: March 2003.

• Percentage of Americans TIPS sought to turn into snitches before it was dismantled: one in 24.

• Right after 9/11, percentage of Americans who favored putting Arabs under “special surveillance” like that used against Japanese-Americans during World War II: 32.

• Percentage who favored “heightened surveillance of Middle Eastern immigrants”: 66.

• Number of days Nacer Fathi Mustafa and his father, both American citizens of Palestinian descent, were held in a Texas jail after being falsely accused on September 15, 2001, of altering their passports: 67.

• Number of countries whose citizens are required to register with the Bush Administration’s National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS): 25.

• Number of people who have registered across the country with NSEERS: 138,053.

• Total number of men and boys who showed up at immigration offices to register for NSEERS: 82,414.

• Total number of men and boys detained after registering for NSEERS: 2,747.

• Number of those subjected to enforcement actions: 739.

• Number of those who were considered by the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services as “criminals”: 130.

• Number of those held in custody: 114.

• Total number linked to terrorism: 11.

• Estimated number of Iranians arrested in Los Angeles by the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services as part of NSEERS: 700.

• Number of illegal immigrants removed from the United States in March 2003: 14,137.

• Number of those considered “criminals” by the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services: 5,818.

• Number deported: 3,556.

• Number deemed “inadmissible”: 10,581.

• Number of immigration inspections in March 2003 in the U.S.: 34,941,527.

• Number of inspections conducted at airports: 5,941,752.

• Number of inspections conducted at land borders: 27,274,733.

• Number of inspections conducted at sea: 1,239,029.

• Number of applications for asylum in March 2003: 4,670.

• Number of applications for asylum approved: 1,141.

• Number of applications for asylum denied: 1,252.

• Country that submitted the most asylum applications: Indonesia.

• From January to August 2002, the number of “no match” letters the Social Security Administration sent out to employers asking them to explain why names and numbers of their employees didn’t match: 800,000.

• Estimated number of immigrant workers who lost their jobs because of Operation Tarmac raids at airports, the new citizenship requirements for screeners and Social Security “no match” letters: 10,000.

• In L.A., the number of employees out of 150 at Super Assi Market who lost their jobs after receiving Social Security Administration “no match” letters in August 2002: 60.

• Number of applications to surveil suspected foreign-intelligence and terrorist targets under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) granted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in 2000: 1,012.

• Number of applications approved in 2002: 1,228.

• Number of FISA warrants challenged by federal judges in 2002: 2.

• Number of times the FISA court has admonished the FBI for misrepresenting facts since 9/11: 75.

• Number of terrorist attacks around the world in 2001: 355.

• Number of terrorist attacks around the world in 2002: 199.

• Number of deaths due to terrorist attacks: 725.




• Number of people killed in the terrorist bombing at the nightclub in Bali: 200.

• Number of Iraqi civilians killed during the recent war: 3,240.

• Number of Afghan civilians killed during the 2001 war: 1,800.

• New name of the Immigration and Naturalization Service: Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services.

• Number of foreign nationals inspected at LAX in 2000: 4,465,206.

• Number of foreign nationals inspected at LAX in 2001: 4,330,501.

• Number of foreign nationals inspected at LAX in 2002: 3,655,193.

• Number of applicants refused entry at LAX — excluding people who claimed asylum, parole cases or those subjected to deferred inspection in 2000: 3,161.

• Number of similar applicants refused entry at LAX in 2001: 3,015.

• Number of similar applicants refused entry at LAX in 2002: 3,797.

• Number of Japanese rounded up — most of them U.S. citizens — on the West Coast during World War II: 120,000.

• Number of allegedly “subversive” aliens President Woodrow Wilson’s attorney general, A. Mitchell Palmer, rounded up for deportation during the Palmer raids: 3,000.

• Number of suspected al Qaeda members the U.S. claims it has detained at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba: 680.

• Number of nationalities: 42.

• Number of confirmed suicide attempts by Guantánamo Bay prisoners: 28.

• Number of prisoners under monitoring by a psychiatrist in the newly opened mental ward at Guantánamo Bay: 24.

• Number of hours prisoners were handcuffed, shackled, made to wear mittens, surgical masks and ear muffs, and blindfolded by the use of taped-over ski goggles during their flight to Guantánamo Bay: 22.




• Amount the NYPD spends per day on security since 9/11: $700,000.

• Number of full- and part-time airport screeners at 420 U.S. airports: 55,600.

• Number of screeners Congress has sought to limit the work force to: 50,000.

• Number of passenger and baggage screeners employed by LAX as of June 5, 2003: 2,695.

• Number of those recently fired for poor performance: 360.

• Average hourly wage for screeners nationwide: $13 to $14.

• Number of health-care workers Bush announced would be given the first set of shots to protect against an intentional release of the smallpox virus: 500,000.

• Number of hospitals nationwide that refused to participate: 80.

• In the 90 days after 9/11, the number of anthrax scares in the L.A. Unified School District: 33.

• Yearly salary Donald Rumsfeld was making while a board member of ABB, the engineering company that won a $200 million contract to provide the design and key components of two light-water nuclear reactors to North Korea in 2000: $190,000.

• Average pay increase of defense-company CEOs from 2001 to 2002: 79 percent.

• Average pay increase of company CEOs from 2001 to 2002: 6 percent.

• Pay increase of the CEO of Lockheed Martin, the country’s largest defense contractor: 400 percent.

• The distance from which the Pentagon wants to be able to identify people with its new radar-based device that identifies people by the way they walk: 500 feet.

• Amount U.S. government agencies have spent in the past five years on camera surveillance technology — with a notable increase in spending proposals after 9/11: $50 million.

• Percentage funneled toward facial-recognition programs: 90.

• Percentage of the time that face-recognition biometric technology turned up false positives in matching scans with a database according to a study by the National Institute for Standards in Technology: 43.




• Cost of the proposed national-identity-card system: $4 billion.

• Amount the 9/11 Independent Commission originally received to explore the causes of the attacks: $3 million.

• Amount a 1996 federal commission was given to study legalized gambling: $5 million.

• Amount a commission was given to look into the Columbia shuttle crash: $50 million.

• Amount the Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas, received from the family of Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz: $1 million.

• Amount made available by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security from the 2003 budget to California to beef up security at local ports: $28,511,178.

• Amount given to the Los Angeles Harbor Department: $800,000.

• Amount given to the city of Long Beach and the Port of Long Beach: $10 million.

• Number of communities in Los Angeles County that took part in weekly vigils to protest the war with Iraq: 45.

• Number of people arrested during an anti-war protest on March 20, which forced the police to close down a section of Wilshire Boulevard: 14.

• Number of law-enforcement officers deployed: 600.

• Number of peaceful demonstrators herded into a trap and arrested during a September 2002 protest near the White House: 400.

• Number of protesters arrested in San Francisco the day after the Iraq war started: 2,300.

• Percentage increase in membership of the ACLU since 9/11: 25.