FTL 5/4/7
May 4, 2007
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Virtual Rape Is Traumatic, but Is It a Crime?
05.04.07 | 12:00 AM
Last month, two Belgian publications reported that the Brussels police have begun an investigation into a citizen’s allegations of rape — in Second Life.
I am half convinced that the tantalizingly brief story, printed in De Morgen and Het Laatste Nieuws, is a hoax or an April Fool’s joke.
Yet it has prompted several threads of discussion, from a legal analysis to four pages of commentary at the Second Citizen forums.
Unfortunately, rape in virtual spaces is not unheard of. And I’m not talking about the “consensual” rape built into some games (although if you’re interested in that debate, GameGrene has a good conversation about it).
There is no question that forced online sexual activity — whether through text, animation, malicious scripts or other means — is real; and is a traumatic experience that can have a profound and unpleasant aftermath, shaking your faith in yourself, in the community, in the platform, even in sex itself.
Our laws say that an adult subjecting a teenager or child to sexual words, images or suggestions on the internet is preying on their mental and emotional state in a sexual way. Even if you never try to meet the minor in person, and even if you never touch them or expose your naked self to them, it is a crime to attempt to engage sexually with a minor.
If it is a criminal offense to sexually abuse a child on the internet, how can we say it is not possible to rape an adult online?
But I have a hard time calling it “rape,” or believing it’s a matter for the police. No matter how disturbed you are by a brutal sexual attack online, you cannot equate it to shivering in a hospital with an assailant’s sweat or other excretions still damp on your body.
That’s not to say I dismiss the trauma a person suffers after being raped online. Virtual rape is not just a prank, one the target needs to get over or expect as part of a role-playing world. (And if you are inclined to pooh-pooh this, first read author Julian Dibble’s chapter about a rape that occurred in a text-only MOO in the early ’90s.)
A virtual rape is by definition sudden, explicit and often devastating. If you’ve never immersed yourself in online life, you might not realize the emotional availability it takes to be a regular member of an internet community. The psychological aspects of relating are magnified because the physical aspects are (mostly) removed.
Even regular users might not realize how wide open they are until something drastic happens — they fall in love, get dumped, have a huge fight or get attacked in the online parallel of rape. In that context, a sexual assault can indeed have a deep impact on a person’s life, especially if they are actual rape survivors.
Some suggest that the best way to deal with a virtual rape is to ignore it, or simply log off and come back as another user.
But in a game, you don’t want to lose the long-term investment you’ve made in your character. And these days, your real world income or professional reputation can depend on your online self.
In a 3-D marketplace, your avatar’s name is your brand. You can change the appearance of your cartoon without much impact, but changing your name makes it too difficult for customers or clients to find you.
If an online environment becomes too hostile or scary, or causes you such great anxiety you cannot work or interact with friends, more has been taken from you than your playtime. Your friends will gather around to give you emotional support — but your customers will wander off and shop elsewhere.
Adult communities facilitate our need to go deeper into our sexual selves, even into secret places around gender and taboos that we cannot acknowledge anywhere else. We feel safe because of the peculiar blend of disclosure and anonymity provided in online communities, and we journey along paths we might not even glance at in the physical world. We don’t expect to have our control wrenched away or our minds assaulted or even the intensity of our anguish during and after.
The truth is, anywhere people gather, we bring all of our potential with us — for love, for sex, for community and creation, and for violence and destruction, too. That’s why we still enjoy pondering whether cybersex is real sex and whether an online affair is more or less damaging to a relationship than a physical affair. It’s a tacit acknowledgement that while the time-space continuum may change, people don’t.
Rape is the ultimate perversion of sexual intimacy. Like sex, rape has mental and emotional elements that go beyond the body and the damage to the mind and spirit generally takes much longer to heal than the body.
But that doesn’t make the psychological upheaval of virtual rape anywhere near the trauma of real rape. And I can’t see us making virtual rape a matter for the real-life police.
It’s a shitty thing to do to someone. But it’s not a crime.
News
Republicans seek mention in bill on 1898 race riots
N.C. House passes version without political labels
Raleigh | State lawmakers mixed contemporary political labels into a debate Thursday on how best to acknowledge a bitter, 108-year-old chapter of North Carolina history.
At issue were the words “Republican” and “Democrat.”
In the end, nearly all of the Republicans in the state House voted against a bill intended to acknowledge the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot, saying it was incomplete without party labels. The bill’s lead sponsor, Rep. Thomas Wright, a Democrat from Wilmington, opposed any changes to his bill, saying they were unnecessary. State Rep. Carolyn Justice, R-Pender, broke with her GOP colleagues and voted for the bill.
Lawmakers tentatively approved the bill, 67-47. The bill could come up for its final House vote Monday.
House Bill 751 grew from the recommendations of a state study commission that took more than four years to write a report on the events of Nov. 10, 1898.
On that day, at the climax of a statewide white supremacist campaign of threatened violence and voter intimidation, a white mob in Wilmington destroyed a newspaper office, forced city leaders from office, banished more than 2,000 residents and killed an unknown number of people.
Acknowledgment of that history is important, proponents said, because information about the event had long been left out of the state’s history textbooks and was otherwise suppressed.
The bill places responsibility for those actions on a “conspiracy of a white elite” and on government at all levels that “failed to protect its citizens.”
On Thursday, as the House took up the bill for debate, Republicans proposed adding more words to the bill.
The amendment, sponsored by Republican leader Paul Stam, a state representative from Apex in Wake County, would have placed blame on a “white Democratic elite” and on a government that “failed to protect African-Americans and white Republicans.”
“If you’re going to do history, you have to do it right,” he said. “Let’s not leave a legacy of revisionist history.”
Rep. Dan Blue, a Democrat from Wake County, said it would be wrong to “put labels on it.”
Voting largely along party lines, lawmakers refused Stam’s amendment.
Republicans, said state Rep. Bonner Stiller, R-Brunswick, also opposed the bill because it was drawn as a bill rather than a resolution, which would have expressed the feelings of the legislature but wouldn’t have the force and meaning of law.
“The Civil War happened, but to my knowledge we haven’t passed a bill acknowledging that event,” Stiller said. “Historians do that, and they have various opinions which are constantly debated.”
Greg Wallace, a Campbell University law professor, said in an interview that the bill as written was “symbolic, having significance historically but not legally.”
In Thursday’s debate, Wright - who had been a co-chairman of the commission that wrote a report on the riot and issued the recommendations - said Stam’s proposed changes were historically accurate but unnecessary.
“It doesn’t really fit,” he said. “What you have before you is from the commission.”
Wright said the General Assembly might adopt an even fuller description of the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot. Another pending bill, The 1898 Wilmington Riot Reconciliation Act, mentions in more detail that Republicans allied with Wilmington’s black leaders also were victims of the rioters.
TJB
Main
Violinist’s dress ‘halts US-Iran detente’
America and Iran continued their uncertain dalliance today, with ambassadorial talks in Egypt undermined by military raids in Baghdad, a cryptic conversation between Condoleezza Rice and her Iranian counterpart and a violinist’s red dress.
After the US Secretary of State “exchanged pleasantries” with the Iranian Foreign Minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, on the first day of a conference on the future of Iraq in Sharm-el-Sheikh yesterday, the stage appeared set for a minor thawing of relations between Washington and Tehran and the first top-level negotiations since 1980.
That impression was hardened by a meeting between Ms Rice and the Syrian Foreign Minister, and again today by talks between US and Iranian ambassadors on the sidelines of the conference, which has attracted 50 nations to the Red Sea in an effort to improve the economic, political and security chances of Iraq.
“I don’t know what happened during this meeting but I believe it was positive and indications are positive,” said Hoshyar Zebari, the Iraqi Foreign Minister, who has been among those trying to encourage a rapprochement between the two major external players in his country.
“This is a process I think. It needs more work. There is a lot of suspicion. There is a lot of mistrust. But it is in my country’s interest really to see a reduction of this tension,” he added.
But other evidence from the conference, and the Iraqi capital, suggested that the last 24 hours in America and Iran’s severely frayed relationship have been anything but straightforward. Iraqi officials present at Ms Rice’s brief conversation with Mr Mottaki over lunch yesterday recounted the following strange diplomatic exchange:
“As-salama aleikum (peace be upon you),” Mr Mottaki is believed to have said.
“Hello,” replied Ms Rice. “Your English is better than my Arabic.”
At which point the Egyptian Foreign Minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, is said to have joined in, encouraging the two countries to talk: “We want to warm the atmosphere some.”
To which Mr Mottaki replied: “In Russia, they eat ice cream in winter because it’s warmer than the weather,” a somewhat obscure comment that Ms Rice is said to have agreed with.
The Egyptian Foreign Minister is then reported to have persisted with his match-making intentions, inviting Ms Rice and Mr Mottaki to an informal dinner on the beach in Sharm-el-Sheikh last night, where Mr Mottaki was placed directly opposite the US Secretary of State.
But the Iranian minister did not stay long enough even to sit down, with reports differing as to whether he objected to the seating arrangements or the revealing dress of the violinist who was entertaining the diplomats. “I am not sure which woman he was afraid of: the woman in the red dress or the Secretary of State,” said Sean McCormack, the US State Department spokesman.
Any progress towards easing relations between Iran and America — which are heavily strained by Iran’s disputed nuclear programme and US accusations that Tehran is providing weapons and support to extremist Shia militias in Iraq — appeared to be then further undermined by a speech given by Mr Mottaki this morning.
The Iranian Foreign Minister used his address before the conference to say that the US military presence in Iraq was the source of the ongoing instability and violence there. “There should be no doubt that the continuation of and increase in terrorist acts in Iraq originates from the flawed approaches adopted by the foreign troops,” he said. “The United States must accept the responsibilities arising from the occupation of Iraq.”
Mr Mottaki also made strong objections to the American capture of five Iranian officials, described as military agents by the US and diplomats by Iran, in January this year.
The speech surprised the Iraqi delegation, led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, which is anxious to see an improvement in relations between Iran and the US. “We didn’t expect it to be in this manner,” an aide told the Associated Press. Mr al-Maliki, for his part, asked countries across the region to help secure IrSite is currently unavailable .Please come back later
Soemmerda, Germany - For the second time in days, neo-Nazi grafitti have been scrawled on a German monument
commemorating Jewish women and the thousands of concentration camp victims killed on forced marches. Police in the eastern town of Soemmerda said they had no idea who had painted swastikas on the pillar in the night.
The monument marks the last terrible act of the Nazis, who forced weakened inmates of the filthy camps in 1945 to trek away from Allied armies. Thousands died of exhaustion only days before German defeat.
Thuringia state police said neo-Nazis had repeatedly attacked the monument.
Authorities have regularly scrubbed off the grafitti. Neo-Nazi grafitti was also daubed on a Left Party office in the town and on walls of the home of the mayor, Wolfgang Floegel, who is a leftist.
Rabbi: Nazi era, current situation not the same
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LOS ANGELES (EJP)—Whatever the level of Islamist-inspired anti-Semitism in Europe, it’s “not wise” for Jews to leave the continent en masse, Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said.
Speaking to a visiting delegation of Canadian journalists in Los Angeles, he said: “Sixty years after Auschwitz, Jews are being told to retreat from Europe. It’s ridiculous.”
He added: “We should insist on our rights. It’s the Muslim fundamentalists who should retreat from Europe.”
Demonizing Israel has entered the “mainstream” in Europe, he said, and Jews have felt “unwanted and threatened,” despite the fact that Germany is experiencing a significant influx of Jews.
Rabbi Hier said that such demonization is a form of anti-Semitism.
“Look, Israel is a mess and is by no means flawless. But Israel is the only country that faces a constant barrage over its right to exist,” he said.
“Why is that? It’s very simple: anti-Semitism.”
Rabbi Hier, who this year was named America’s “most influential rabbi” by Newsweek magazine, cautioned against drawing analogies between the “new” anti-Semitism and the Nazi era.
“I would never compare Auschwitz with what I see today,” he said.
Rabbi Hier noted that whatever evils came from infamous Nazis such as Adolf Eichmann or Josef Mengele, they would never have sacrificed their own lives for the cause, as do Islamist suicide bombers.
More optimistically, Rabbi Hier said that despite the disconcerting rise in anti-Semitism worldwide, the Jewish world is also experiencing “one of the greatest renaissances in Jewish life,” with new synagogues and schools sprouting up and young people being drawn to Jewish affiliation and observance.
Rabbinical center condemns attack against rabbi in Paris
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By Yossi Lempkowicz |
Updated: 20/Apr/2007 11:41 |
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BRUSSELS-PARIS (EJP)—The Rabbinical Center of Europe has strongly condemned the attack in Paris against a French rabbi and expressed its concern about increasing anti-Semitic violence in Europe.
The Brussels-based centre reacted after Rabbi Elie Dahan, the rabbi of the Jewish community in northern France, was attacked Thursday morning while he was walking at the Paris north station.
The 45-year-old Dahan was insulted and knocked in the face by his assailant, a 20-year-old Black man from the French Antilles, who ran away.
“I arrived in Paris from Lille for personal matters. I was walking at around 11 am in the station when the man, who was accompanied by a woman, turned at me and shouted: dirty Jew, you are looking at me. I will knock you dirty Jew,” the rabbi declared.
While Dahan was trying to calm the situation, he was knocked in the back and in the face.
He was brought to a nearby hospital with a bleeding eye and in shock.
“We call out to act with increase severity of punishment and warning in order to prevent the reoccurrence of anti-Semitic events in the future,” the Rabbinical centre of Europe, which provides supports to rabbis across Europe, said in statement.
Rabbi Dahan told European Jewish Press that control cameras in the train station have probably filmed the attack. “It occurred near a metro turnstile where cameras are placed.” he said.
He said that immediately after the assault he had “the good idea” to call directly the Paris Prosecutor and the head of the city’s police before lodging a complaint.
“They swiftly informed the second division of the judiciary police which is specialized in such attacks and started the investigation,” he said.
Dahan said it is the first time that he was physically attacked. “But verbally it already happened.”
The rabbi returned to his home in Lille on Friday.
Martine Aubry, Lille’s Mayor, condemned the agression. “This is a unspeakable and coward anti-Semitic act,” she said, after expressing her soldiarity with the Jewish community.
Charles Sulman, president of the Jewish Consistoire in northern France, spoke of a “grave and upset situation”.
“I am worried about the fact that we are in a country where it is easy to say that one is racist and anti-Semite.”
“There is a big work of education to be done and politicians don’t speak enough about this.”
Thousands remember Holocaust victims
OSWIECIM, Poland (AFP)—Thousands of people marched Monday from the brick buildings of Auschwitz in southern Poland to the killing fields of nearby Birkenau to commemorate victims of the Holocaust.
Some 8,000 people, from teenagers to elderly Holocaust survivors, assembled in this southern Polish town for the annual March of Living, an annual tribute to the estimated six million Jews who died at the hands of the Nazis in World War II.
After the wail of a ram’s horn signalled the start of the march at 1:15 pm, the marchers began walking the three kilometres from the infamous “Arbeit macht Frei” (Work Brings Freedom) gateway that leads out of Auschwitz, to the ruins of the gas chambers of Birkenau, where a memorial service would be held.
Before the marchers began making their way through the streets of Oswiecim– whose name was Germanicised by the Nazis to become Auschwitz — a rabbi sang the kaddish, the Jewish prayer of mourning, outside a former cell block at Auschwitz which today houses an exhibition dedicated to Hungarian Jews.
Hungary only began mass deportations of Jews late in the war, but once they began they were carried out with horrifying efficiency. Some 450,000 Hungarian Jews were killed at Auschwitz, many sent directly to their deaths as soon as they arrived at the camp, packed into cattle cars.
Candles
As the rabbi intoned the kaddish, a handful of young Israelis lit votive candles at the nearby “execution wall”, where prisoners were summarily killed by Nazi firing squads.
“Every Jewish person should have this experience,” Sapir, 17, from Kiryat Malachi in Israel, told AFP.
Her friend Karin, also 17, added: “It’s very difficult here, when you see what happened to the Jewish people.”
Another group of youngsters wept after emerging from the gas chamber where, in 1941, the Nazis first used Zyklon B gas to kill inmates.
Irene Zisblatt, 76, was startled when she realised this year’s march was taking place on the 60th anniversary of the April 16, 1947 execution of the reviled Nazi commander of the camp, Rudolf Hoess.
“He was the devil for me,” said Zisblatt, who was deported to the camp from Hungary in 1944.
Zisblatt today lives in Florida and has taken part in seven consecutive marches.
“Every time, I leave a piece of myself in the gas chamber where they murdered my whole family,” she said.
“It’s always difficult. There is no closure. I never know, when I walk in, what’s going to happen to me.
“The reason I come here is to imprint onto the future what happened during the Holocaust. It’s my duty to do so.”
The event has been held since 1988, and is aimed at stilling the voices of those who deny the Holocaust ever happened.
All faiths
Originally open only to Jews, people of all faiths were invited to take part in the march in the 1990s.
Howard Schneider, 55, from Florida, carried a small wooden plaque in memory of his wife’s aunt.
“Aunt Malke, we didn’t know you, but you are not forgotten,” read the simple memorial, which Schneider intended to place in the soil at Birkenau.
Auschwitz-Birkenau was built up between 1940 and 1945 by Poland’s Nazi German occupiers from a concentration camp for 10,000 prisoners to a mass extermination machine.
The camp was originally confined to 20 Polish army barracks on the outskirts of Oswiecim, but in 1941 the Nazis began to extend their “zone of terror” to include the nearby village of Brzezinka — Birkenau in German — where they built interconnecting gas chambers and crematoria.
It was in Birkenau that more than one million European Jews were killed, many immediately after being shipped into the camp by train.
Six million European Jews, half of them from mainly Catholic Poland, home to Europe’s largest Jewish community before World War II, perished in the Holocaust.
Jewish Group Urges Firing Of CNN’s Dobbs Over Nazi Remarks
A Jewish group is calling for the firing of an outspoken CNN anchor, Lou Dobbs, after he accused advocates for illegal immigrants of using propaganda techniques employed by Nazi Germany.
“Comparisons to Nazis — especially in this day and age — are abhorrent,” the president and CEO of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Gideon Aronoff, said in a statement yesterday. “Mr. Dobbs has crossed the line between responsible television commentary and hate-speech propaganda of his own. Keeping him on the air is essentially sanctioning by CNN — which is why we’re asking CNN to remove Dobbs from his very public platform.”
In a broadcast last week, Mr. Dobbs denounced immigrant-rights groups for portraying a crackdown on illegal immigration as a threat to foreigners who live in America legally.
“They might as well work for Herman Göring,” Mr. Dobbs said. “I mean, they’re running so much propaganda, trying to confuse the debate, the national dialogue, by talking about immigrants rather than illegal aliens and legal immigrants. It’s mindless beyond belief.”
A spokeswoman for CNN, Christa Robinson, did not respond directly to the call for Mr. Dobbs’s ouster. However, she said his rhetoric was directed at those promoting sanctuary for illegal immigrants, such as Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco.
“Lou Dobbs’s expression of outrage was not directed toward anyone except the officials of San Francisco. Any offense taken by any other group was certainly not intended,” Ms. Robinson said in a statement last night.
Mr. Dobbs’s use of the Nazi metaphor was first reported on The New York Sun’s political Web log, nysunpolitics.com.
Top Catholic leaders to discuss anti-Semitism
ROME (EJP)—The world’s top bishops have made a discussion of the issue of anti-Semitism one of their top priorities in advance of an international Roman Catholic conference to be held in Italy next year.
In a preparatory document for the October 2008 conference released last week, a whole section was dedicated to the relationship between the Church and the world Jewish community.
Speaking at a news conference presenting the agenda for the bishops meeting, the synod’s general-secretary, Bishop Nikola Eterovic said: “Much has already been done, but everything must be done to dispel every shadow.”
Overcome anti-Semitism
The 60-page document, which was approved by Pope Benedict XVI, called for efforts “to overcome every form of anti-Semitism.”, noting the “close associations of the two in faith”.
It included a questionaire for bishops to fill in on the issue, asking local leaders to nvestigate the use of biblical texts to “ferment attitudes of anti-Semitism.”
It was only in 1965 that anti-Semitism was officially outlawed in the Church when the Second Vatican Coucil released the seminal “Nostra Aetate” which repudiated the claim that the Jews should be blamed for the death of Jesus.
The pre-conference document encouraged individual and group study of the Bible and warned against the possibility of literal interpretation of the Scriptures leading to fundamentalism.
Meanwhile, there has been concern in the Jewish world over relations with the Church after it was revealed that the Pope may revive a controversial prayer which calls for all Jews to convert.
The traditional Latin Mass was outlawed in 1965 but some Catholics have called for a revival.
It reads: “Let us pray also for the Jews, that the Lord our God may take the veil from their hearts and that they also may acknowledge our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Rabbi David Rosen president of the International Jewish Committee for Inter-religious Consultations said the fact that no decision has yet been made “is a reflection of the Pope’s desire to create greater unity in the church, the intention is not to set the clock back.”
“We are alerting the Vatican that elements of the prayer provide implications for Catholic and Jewish relations,” he added.
Ambassador: Israel-Germany relations heading for strains
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EJP |
Updated: 02/May/2007 21:30 |
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BERLIN (EJP)—Israel’s ambassador to Germany said this week diplomatic relations between Germany and his country are heading for strains, with German sorrow for the Holocaust no longer the centrepiece, the German news agency DPA reported.
Addressing the Germany-Israel Law Society in Leipzig, the diplomat said he detected growing distance and criticism of Israel in Germany.
After 42 years of diplomatic relations between the two countries, the links were marked by change rather than continuity.
“There has been a change of generation,” he told the society.
The group met in Leipzig to see more than 70 law graduates posthumously rehabilitated.
In the Nazi period, the university had stripped the graduates of their doctorates because they were Jewish or had fled abroad.
TNB
Guns banned from Somali streets
The new mayor of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, has banned people from carrying weapons on the streets.
Former warlord Mohamed Dheere announced the ban at his inauguration ceremony, following his appointment last week.
The move is seen as a big step forward in the process of restoring stability to Somalia, which has not had a working government in 16 years.
The government last week ended a six-week operation against Islamist and clan fighters in the city.
Some 1,600 people were killed in the clashes, local aid groups say.
Tinted windows
Mr Dheere announced that those who flouted the ban would be punished but did not give details.
Only government security forces would be allowed to carry weapons, he said.
New police chief Abdi Hassan “Qaybdiid” Awale - also a former warlord - announced a ban on tinted windows in the city.
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“Anyone who fails to abide by these rules will be brought before the court,” he said.
The new measures come a day after prominent companies handed their weapons over to African Union peacekeepers and said they would trust the government to look after their security.
The business community had set up its own security teams to protect their operations from rogue militiamen during Somalia’s years of lawlessness.
Until last week, when the government announced victory against the Islamists, weapons were openly on sale in the Mogadishu market.
But the BBC’s Mohammed Olad Hassan in the city says the Ethiopian-backed government troops closed down the arms bazaar.
However, he says the dealers were allowed to keep their weapons.
Somalia is awash with guns after 16 years of civil war.
Casino exec: All-Star Game wasn’t good for business
ESPN.com news services
LAS VEGAS — MGM Mirage Inc.’s chief executive does not want the NBA All-Star Game to return to Las Vegas, saying Thursday that the casino’s first-quarter earnings were potentially hurt by the rowdy crowd that turned out for the league’s showcase game.
“The gang-bangers and others who came for purposes other than attending the game, they weren’t very good for Las Vegas.”
– Terry Lanni, MGM Mirage Inc. chief executive
Terry Lanni made the comments after the company, which owns the most casinos of any operator on the Las Vegas Strip, reported first-quarter earnings that fell below analyst forecasts, sending MGM Mirage shares down more than 4 percent. They rebounded 2.4 percent in after-hours trading.
The company said the earnings shortfall was partially due to a partially problematic crowd that surrounded the All-Star Game in February, which fell on the same weekend as the Lunar New Year — a crucial period for bringing in high-rollers from Asia.
“The gang-bangers and others who came for purposes other than attending the game, they weren’t very good for Las Vegas,” Lanni told The Associated Press.
Lanni said there was little action on the gambling tables the day of the game.
“There’s a big difference between out-of-towners coming to Las Vegas to party and locals going to a ball game. The crowd that was disruptive is different from loyal Las Vegas fans who back their home team.”
– Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman
“In talking to our casino hosts, a number of people stayed in their villas and suites. They felt uncomfortable,” he said.
Excluding Beau Rivage, which opened in Mississippi in August, quarterly casino revenues slipped 6 percent from a year ago, and table game revenue, including the baccarat game that Asian players favor, fell 7 percent.
There was a spike in arrests and complaints about rowdy behavior during NBA All-Star Weekend. Five people were shot, including three outside a strip club. Tennessee Titans cornerback Adam “Pacman” Jones and two friends are being investigated for their roles in an earlier brawl at the club. The NFL suspended Jones for the 2007 season, in part because of the incident, but he has appealed.
Las Vegas is interested in landing an NBA franchise, and commissioner David Stern recently said a committee of owners will review the proposal Mayor Oscar Goodman submitted to the league.
“Mr. Stern can keep his basketball franchises out of Las Vegas as far as I’m concerned,” Lanni said.
Lanni later backed away from those comments, with MGM Mirage spokesman Alan Feldman saying his complaints “only meant to refer to the All-Star Game.”
Clark County Commissioner Rory Reid, who worked with Goodman on the proposal, said Lanni made his concerns abundantly clear even before the pitch was sent to Stern last month.
“Frankly, it’s a concern if a company like that has concerns on that scale,” Reid said. “It’s obviously something that we’ll have to address if we’re going to move forward.”
He also said he and the mayor tried to reassure Lanni that having a team based in Las Vegas might not cause the same trouble as a single, high-profile event.
“That was one game on one weekend,” Reid said. “If there were 41 games here, it may be different, but I don’t know.”
Goodman said having a team cheered on by local fans would be vastly different from the rowdy tourist spectacle that the All-Star weekend became.
“There’s a big difference between out-of-towners coming to Las Vegas to party and locals going to a ball game,” he said. “The crowd that was disruptive is different from loyal Las Vegas fans who back their home team.”
New Orleans population up, count says
Thu May 3, 8:40 PM ET
NEW ORLEANS - The city’s population has surpassed half of its count before Hurricane Katrina emptied the city, according to a new report based on utility hookups.
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New Orleans gained more than 30,000 residents between July 2006 and March 2007, for a total population of about 255,140, according to the report by local demographer Greg Rigamer.
“The trend is positive,” said Raphael Rabalais, senior planner for Rigamer’s firm, GCR & Associates.
The
Census Bureau estimated the population in July 2006 at about 223,000.
Whether the city reaches its pre-Katrina population of about 455,000 remains to be seen. It had been losing population for years before the Aug. 29, 2005, storm flooded about 80 percent of the city.
Mayor Ray Nagin called the estimates encouraging but noted “significant threats” to the city’s recovery, including uncertainties about recovery aid.
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