Disinformation » New York

NYPD Developing Scanners To Detect Concealed Weapons

HAL9000 — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 06:11:46 +0000

Presumably sick of all the bleeding heart liberals whining about civil rights, NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly has devised an elegant solution to sidestep the controversy over his department’s stop and frisk policy. Speaking at a State of the NYPD breakfast this morning, Kelly announced that the NYPD is developing a kind of infrared technology that will enable police officers to detect whether individuals are carrying guns under their clothing. Sure, it’s not as badass as shooting down a plane, but at least cops will finally be able to see what’s under our clothes without having to get out of their cars.

The mechanism, which the NYPD is developing with help from the U.S. Department of Defense, currently only works at a short range of three or four feet. But Kelly thinks they can improve it to scan citizens from a distance of up to 25 meters away. He announced this morning that the gadget will be mounted on NYPD vans with “the infrared rays shooting up the street at the person,” as the Post puts it.

The device detects the radiation emitting from a person’s body, and it can’t penetrate metal, so a concealed gun can be spotted from the image captured by the detector’s lens …

How Should OccupyWallStreet Spend Its $300,000?

ralph — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 21:28:12 +0000

Hopefully they make wiser decisions now. As Alison Bowen reports in Metro New York:

Nearly two months after the NYPD raided Zuccotti Park, Occupy Wall Street protesters are now deciding how to spend $300,000 left in their coffers.

At a recent meeting, protesters debated what to do with the money, down from $706,855 at the movement’s peak, according to the New York Post. Much of that $700K came via online donations from OWS supporters and has already been spent on food and supplies.

The remaining OWS members meet daily at the atrium at 60 Wall Street. During one such meeting, the Post reported, one of the ideas pitched included burning the cash in a bonfire on Wall Street, a suggestion that has since been dropped.

OccupyWallStreet: The Police May Have Seized The Park But The Movement Moves On

Danny Schechter — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 06:48:19 +0000

It was strange, after all these weeks, to be on the outside looking in at a new set of occupiers that were there because they have the guns and we don’t.

When Mao said that “power grows out of the barrel of a gun” he most assuredly did not have anything like Occupy Wall Street on his mind, but somehow the insight applies. Liberty Square/Zuccotti Park had now been power cleaned and was pristine. More than 200 had been arrested in the takeover that included selective physical violence against resisters. Soon, all the tents were gone: Medical, Media, The Kitchen and The Library, as well as all the work group locations that I showed in my film a week earlier.

Now there were cops in command, barricades on the outside and contractors employed by Brookfield Properties, the Park’s owner, on the inside, looking all corporate and regimented. Activists with badges calling themselves the “99%” were soon watching the triumph of authority with pains in their hearts from behind the barricades while a dozen TV trucks set up their antennas to broadcast live on this latest confrontation. The tabloid media were gloating earlier in the day, “BEAT IT” was the headline in the Daily News, Rupert; Murdoch’s NY Post had been tipped in advance and covered the expulsion like a cheerleader.

Earlier in the day, a liberal judge had temporarily ordered the Police to allow the protesters to return to the Park with their stuff, but the case went back to State Court The cops ignored the ruling and by late afternoon had a new one that exonerated their eviction. CBS reported, “A New York judge has upheld the city’s dismantling of the Occupy Wall Street encampment, saying that the protesters’ first amendment rights don’t entitle them to camp out indefinitely in the plaza.” State judge Michael Stallman (A liberal who had worked for a liberal City Council member) on Tuesday denied a motion by the demonstrators seeking to be allowed back into the park with their tents and sleeping bags.

CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen reports that the key paragraph in the judge’s ruling is as follows:

“Here, movements have not demonstrated that the rules adopted by the owners of the property, concededly after the demonstrations began, are not reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions permitted under the First Amendment.”

“Time, place and manner” restrictions on speech like the demonstrators had petitioned against have a long history in American law, going back at least to the 1960s. It is unlikely that this ruling will be overturned on appeal, if it is appealed at all. ”At the end of the day, if this movement is only tied to Liberty Plaza, we are going to lose. We’re going to lose,” said Sandra Nurse, one of the organizers, referring to another name for the park. “Right now the most important thing is coming together as a body and just reaffirm why we’re here in the first place.” The Post reported, “With tensions simmering all day, demonstrators had spent hours surrounding the now-closed park near Wall Street as they waited for the judge’s decision. Hours after the city forcibly evicted protesters, scrubbed down the park and closed it, Occupy Wall Street protests scattered across downtown Manhattan.”

Earlier in the day protesters thought they had a new space to occupy, a mile away at 6th Avenue and Canal Street on a property owned by Trinity Church, a religious institution with vast holdings in Downtown Manhattan. They called for a new mobilization at the site, an unused playground that is a now site for new construction. Hundreds showed up with banners but so did the police in riot gear. Soon a “White Shirt” commander named Esposito arrived to take command. He ordered the occupiers off the site. Apparently someone else at Trinity had reneged on the earlier invite. Some of the protesters left but at least 16 were swiftly arrested with one set of cops telling us to get off the sidewalks and others to get on them. Some journalists were also taken into custody. One woman in a wheel chair was let go.

Most of the demonstrators left the site and headed back to the Park which, later, let some back in after searching them, They are being told they cannot sleep there. Clearly there is a new challenge here — to build the movement without a residential base. Two New York churches are now offering out of town demonstrators places to stay and others will no doubt extend hospitality. Other sites may be found, but their “liberated zone” has been lost for now.

Richard Trumka, the head of the AFL-CIO issued a statement calling for more protests on November 17th when some activists vow to shut Wall Street down. His statement seemed unusually militant:

“They can take away the tarps and the tents. But they can’t slow down the Occupy Wall Street movement.   The 99% is undaunted. Occupy Wall Street’s message has already created a new day. This movement has created a seismic shift in our national debate—from austerity and cuts to jobs, inequality and our broken economic system.”

So, clearly, despite the loss of the Park, this movement will move on. The question remains: where is it moving — and how can bring the large number of Americans who support it along? When the police were doing their thing, no doubt, only following orders, demonstrators chanted, “This is What Democracy Looks Like” and “No Riot here, take off your riot gear.”

Danny Schechter writes about Occupy Wall Street on Al Jazeera, Progressive Radio Network other outlets and his News Dissector blog. He made the film Plunder the Crime Of Our Time. Please email comments to dissector@mediachannel.org

Zuccotti Park Retaken By NYPD

majestic — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 13:58:04 +0000

Zuccotti Park, pre-Occupation. Photo: Tony (CC)

So it’s finally happened. Breaking news (and so likely to change as the day goes on), reported by the New York Times:

Hundreds of police officers early Tuesday cleared the park in Lower Manhattan that had been the nexus of the Occupy Wall Street movement, arresting dozens of people there after warning that the nearly two-month-old camp would be “cleared and restored” but that demonstrators who did not leave would face arrest.

The protesters, about 200 of whom have been staying in the park overnight, initially resisted with chants of “Whose park? Our park!”

The massive operation in and around Zuccotti Park was intended to empty the birthplace of a protest movement that has inspired hundreds of tent cities from coast to coast. On Monday in Oakland, Calif., hundreds of police officers raided the main encampment there, arresting 33 people. Protesters returned later in the day. But the Oakland police said no one would be allowed to sleep there anymore, and promised to clear a second camp nearby.

The police action was quickly challenged as lawyers for the protesters obtained a temporary restraining order barring the city and the park’s private landlord from evicting protesters or removing their belongings. It was not immediately clear how the city would respond. The judge, Justice Lucy Billings of State Supreme Court Judge in Manhattan, scheduled a hearing for later Tuesday.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who scheduled a news conference for Tuesday morning, had issued a statement explaining the reasoning behind the sweep. “The law that created Zuccotti Park required that it be open for the public to enjoy for passive recreation 24 hours a day,” the mayor said in the statement. “Every since the occupation began, that law has not been complied with” because the protesters had taken over the park, “making it unavailable to anyone else.”…

[continues in the New York Times]

Mike Bloomberg As Marie Antoinette

majestic — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 12:31:04 +0000

Matt Taibbi suggests that New York’s Mayor Bloomberg is on his way to becoming the unwitting face of the 1%, at Rolling Stone:

…I thought of all of this this morning, when I read about Bloomberg’s latest comments on Occupy Wall Street. I remembered how pleased Bloomberg looked with himself at the HuffPost ball last year when I read what he had to say about the anticorruption protesters now muddying his doorstep in Zuccotti Park:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said this morning that if there is anyone to blame for the mortgage crisis that led the collapse of the financial industry, it’s not the “big banks,” but congress.

Speaking at a business breakfast in midtown featuring Bloomberg and two former New York City mayors, Bloomberg was asked what he thought of the Occupy Wall Street protesters.

“I hear your complaints,” Bloomberg said. “Some of them are totally unfounded. It was not the banks that created the mortgage crisis. It was, plain and simple, congress who forced everybody to go and give mortgages to people who were on the cusp. Now, I’m not saying I’m sure that was terrible policy, because a lot of those people who got homes still have them and they wouldn’t have gotten them without that.”

To me, this is Michael Bloomberg’s Marie Antoinette moment, his own personal “Let Them Eat Cake” line. This one series of comments allows us to see under his would-be hip centrist Halloween mask and look closely at the corrupt, arrogant aristocrat underneath.

Occupy Wall Street has not yet inspired many true villains outside of fringe characters like Anthony Bologna. But Bloomberg, with this preposterous schlock about congress forcing banks to lend to poor people, may yet make himself the face of the 1%’s rank intellectual corruption.

This whole notion that the financial crisis was caused by government attempts to create an “ownership society” and make mortgages more available to low-income (and particularly minority) borrowers has been pushed for some time by dingbats like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, who often point to laws like the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act as signature events in the crash drama.

But Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are at least dumb enough that it is theoretically possible that they actually believe the crash was caused by the CRA, Barney Frank, and Fannie and Freddie…

[continues at at Rolling Stone]

What’s The Real Reason Why The Occupy Wall Street Protesters Weren’t Kicked Out Of Zuccotti Park?

Join Or DIE — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 19:15:50 +0000

Zuccotti Park, pre-Occupation. Photo: Tony (CC)

Is this it? Robert Johnson writes in Business Insider:

Coming on the heels of the Solyndra debacle, the Obama administration has just approved a $168.9 million loan guarantee for the Granite Reliable wind farm project owned by Brookfield Management BAM).

Among its many holdings BAM owns Brookfield Renewable Power, which owns the Granite Reliable and it also owns Brookfield Office Properties, whose holdings include the now famous Zuccotti Park.

The Department of Energy finalized the loan guarantee less than a week after Occupy Wall Street protesters took to Zuccotti Park, and with the Obama administration’s Tuesday endorsement of the protests, rumors are starting to circulate that this could be the reason Brookfield is allowing protesters to remain on its property.

Long Island Couple Seeks Trademark For “Occupy Wall St.”

Join Or DIE — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 02:29:49 +0000

Just another reason to hate Long Island … reports the Smoking Gun:

Citing the potential of “Occupy Wall Street” to become a “global brand,” a Long Island couple has filed to trademark the name of the amorphous organization responsible for the protests and encampments in lower Manhattan and other U.S. cities, the Smoking Gun has learned.

In a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) application, Robert and Diane Maresca are seeking to trademark the phrase “Occupy Wall St.” so that they can place it on a wide variety of goods, including bumper stickers, shirts, beach bags, footwear, umbrellas, and hobo bags.

The October 18 filing, made in Diane Maresca’s name, cost the couple $975, which Robert Maresca, 44, termed “something of a gamble” in a TSG interview …

The Eviction of OccupyWallStreet from Zuccotti Park

majestic — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 18:23:03 +0000

Will Mayor Bloomberg and the NYPD manage to evict the #OWS protesters tomorrow? Drew Grant’s report for the New York Observer suggests maybe not:

After being told that they would have to “temporarily” vacate Zuccotti Park for sanitation reasons by Mayor Bloomberg, Occupy Wall Street responded to what one member is calling “an eviction notice.”

According to one of OWS’ Media team, a young man named Luke, there is “no way” that the protesters can comply with all the outlines set in Brookfield’s letter to the city, since OWS has been expressly forbidden from emptying the parks trash receptacles themselves; that the “cleaning” would include the removal of all tarps and sleeping bags, which the residents have been using to spend the night in the parks.

In reaction, Occupy Wall Street has planned to clean the park up in their own, which they announced on Twitter…

[continues at the New York Observer]

State-Sponsored Counter-Terror Tactics?

Hadrian999 — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 22:13:30 +0000

As we count down to the impending “credible terror threat” it is important to take a real look at the nature of many of the planned terror attacks in the USA. Gordon Corera takes an eye opening look at an interesting source of terror in the homeland for the BBC:

In May 2009 David Williams was keeping watch at the corner of 246th Street and Independence Avenue in the Bronx, New York — the look out for a terror group aiming to blow up a building nearby. The target was the Riverdale Jewish Center where the terror cell’s leader, James Cromitie, was planting what he believed to be two devices containing C-4 plastic explosive.

Having completed their task, the four man team planned to then head back to their hometown of Newburgh, a run-down town 60 miles (97km) north of New York City, where they intended to use a surface-to-air missile to take down a military plane at the Stewart Air National Guard Base.

The weapons had been provided by a Pakistani man. A few weeks earlier he had met the four men to discuss the attacks. He had accompanied them as they selected a site from which to fire the missile and he was also with them when they bought mobile phones for the plot, and travelled to a Connecticut warehouse to obtain the missile and explosives.

Before the team could return to Newburgh and attack their second target a Swat team moved in and arrested the cell — all except the Pakistani. He was in fact an undercover informant working for the FBI, and the weapons he provided were an inactive missile and inert explosives. The four others were subsequently found guilty of terrorism offences and each sentenced to 25 years in prison.

The CIA And NYPD Join Forces To Violate Your Civil Rights

majestic — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 21:11:29 +0000

Huffington Post’s Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman reveal the dubious activities that the NYPD has been engaging in, with CIA help, in the never-ending “war on terror”:

In New Brunswick, N.J., a building superintendent opened the door to apartment No. 1076 one balmy Tuesday and discovered an alarming scene: terrorist literature strewn about the table and computer and surveillance equipment set up in the next room.

The panicked superintendent dialed 911, sending police and the FBI rushing to the building near Rutgers University on the afternoon of June 2, 2009. What they found in that first-floor apartment, however, was not a terrorist hideout but a command center set up by a secret team of New York Police Department intelligence officers.

From that apartment, about an hour outside the department’s jurisdiction, the NYPD had been staging undercover operations and conducting surveillance throughout New Jersey. Neither the FBI nor the local police had any idea.

Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the NYPD has become one of the country’s most aggressive domestic intelligence agencies. A months-long investigation by The Associated Press has revealed that the NYPD operates far outside its borders and targets ethnic communities in ways that would run afoul of civil liberties rules if practiced by the federal government. And it does so with unprecedented help from the CIA in a partnership that has blurred the bright line between foreign and domestic spying.

Neither the city council, which finances the department, nor the federal government, which contributes hundreds of millions of dollars each year, is told exactly what’s going on.

The department has dispatched teams of undercover officers, known as “rakers,” into minority neighborhoods as part of a human mapping program, according to officials directly involved in the program. They’ve monitored daily life in bookstores, bars, cafes and nightclubs. Police have also used informants, known as “mosque crawlers,” to monitor sermons, even when there’s no evidence of wrongdoing. NYPD officials have scrutinized imams and gathered intelligence on cab drivers and food cart vendors, jobs often done by Muslims.

Many of these operations were built with help from the CIA, which is prohibited from spying on Americans but was instrumental in transforming the NYPD’s intelligence unit…

[continues at Huffington Post]

Tim’s Awesome (UFO Encounter) Show in Greenpoint, Brooklyn (Video)

bluemana — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 00:58:20 +0000

Occam’s razor? Video shot by Tim Heidecker of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! fame:

Atheist Group Sues Over ‘Ground Zero Cross’ At 9/11 Memorial

bluemana — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 07:48:45 +0000

Reports the Associated Press via the Wall Street Journal:

NEW YORK — The installation of a cross-shaped steel beam at the Sept. 11 memorial at ground zero is unconstitutional, a national atheist group argued in a lawsuit filed Wednesday, asking a judge to order it removed or request that other religions and nonreligious views be equally represented at the site.

The museum is a public institution and should not reflect a specific religion, said the American Atheists, a nonprofit group aimed at safeguarding separation of church and state that filed the civil lawsuit in Manhattan State Supreme Court.

The cross was found amid the wreckage from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks by a construction worker who said he stumbled onto a miracle. It was moved to the ground zero site last weekend from a temporary post after a blessing by a Catholic priest and is to become part of the permanent collection of the National September 11th Memorial and Museum. The memorial will open this year on the 10th anniversary of the attack; the museum, which is mostly underground, will open next year.

The Rev. Brian Jordan, who was instrumental in the preservation of the cross, celebrated Mass under the twisted steel beams and said people from other religions came to pray collectively. He said the 2-ton, 20-foot-high T-beam provided comfort to hundreds of suffering people — and continues to do so.

Rochester Police Ticket Supporters of Woman Who Taped Police From Her Own Front Yard (Video)

BananaFamine — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 17:55:39 +0000

The video below is from a Rochester, New York, neighborhood meeting in support of Emily Good, the woman arrested for videotaping a traffic stop from her front yard. So Rochester police sent four squad cars to ticket the cars of meeting attendees who parked more than 12 inches from the curb. Yes, they even brought a ruler.

See original video which led to the protests here. (On May 12th, A Rochester woman was arrested for taping a traffic stop in front of her 19th Ward Home. She was standing in front of her house with a hand held recording device when the arrest happened. Officer Mario Masic, Rochester Police Department, executed the illegal arrest).

New York State Passes Gay Marriage Bill

imkaan — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 03:56:49 +0000

Reid J. Epstein writes in the Politico:

Striking what advocates believe is a historic victory for gay rights, the New York state senate Friday approved same-sex marriage, bringing New York a promised governor’s signature away from being the sixth and largest state to allow gays and lesbians to marry.

The 33–29 vote is an enormous victory for first-year Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat who pledged during last fall’s campaign to push for gay marriage. It comes after an intense public and private lobbying campaign from a wide cast of politicians, celebrities and athletes, including New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former President Bill Clinton.

Cuomo, whose two daughters attended the vote in the senate gallery, is expected to sign the bill. The bill will become law 30 days after Cuomo signs it, and when it does, it will double the population of Americans for whom same-sex marriage is legal.

The NYC Fancy Rat Convention

JacobSloan — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 18:00:54 +0000

June is a special time of year in New York, when the sun warms the city, and the rats come out of hiding and get whisked off to fashion shows in the finest of attire at the Fancy Rat Convention.

Jon Stewart Destroys Donald Trump (Video)

ralph — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 00:33:28 +0000

Via The Daily Show:

Donald Trump disrespects New Yorkers by taking Sarah Palin to a pizza chain and eating his stacked slices with a fork.

New York Man Spends Life Savings Ahead of May 21 Doomsday

BananaFamine — Mon, 16 May 2011 14:24:54 +0000

[disinfo ed.'s note: just as a reminder, the world may end on Saturday. Have a great week!]

A video report from CNN, and below a write up from Fox News:

A New York man spent his entire $140,000 life savings advertising his prediction that the world will end May 21, the New York Post reported Friday.

Robert Fitzpatrick, a 60-year-old Staten Island resident, said he spent at least that sum on 1,000 subway-car placards and ads on bus kiosks and subway cars.

They say, “Global Earthquake: The Greatest Ever! Judgment Day May 21, 2011.”

In a self-published book, “The Doomsday Code,” Fitzpatrick said the Bible offers “proof that cannot be dismissed.”

“Judgment Day will surprise people. We will not be ready for it,” Fitzpatrick said in an interview with the newspaper. “A giant earthquake will render the earth uninhabitable.”

If you want to set an alarm clock, the quake will happen just before 6:00pm local time, he said.

“God’s people will be resurrected. It is also the day that God stops saving anyone,” he said.

Fitzpatrick hopes that he is one of the chosen ones, but he could not be really certain…

For more information, see original article.

IMF Director Arrested After Alleged Sex Attack on NY Hotel Maid

Join Or DIE — Sun, 15 May 2011 00:30:34 +0000

Via MSNBC:

NEW YORK— The leader of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was arrested on Saturday, minutes before he was to fly to Paris from John F. Kennedy International Airport, The New York Times reported.

Strauss-Kahn, a candidate for president of France, was taken off an Air France flight by officers from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and turned over to Manhattan detectives, a Port Authority spokesman told the Times.

He was accused of a sodomizing a maid at a Times Square hotel earlier in the day, the authorities said. He has not been charged but was being questioned, police said.

Strauss-Kahn, 62, allegedly crept up behind a maid after she entered his room and forced her to perform oral sex on him, sources told the New York Daily News. The New York Post said he was naked and had emerged from the bathroom.

Is Tony Kushner The New Helen Thomas?

Danny Schechter — Thu, 12 May 2011 21:52:11 +0000

Playwright Tony Kushner. Photos: Timothy Herrigan/Courtney Hamilton (CC)

Jewish Playwright has honorary degree restored by City University of New York after it had been stripped because he was labeled too critical of Israel.

First, it was Helen Thomas.

After the veteran White House correspondent spoke inelegantly once about her feelings about Israel—and apologized, but to no effect—she was blackballed at the instigation of strident Israeli supporters and her career achievement-standing journalism awards were stripped. She became persona non-grate with many media outlets joining in the denunciations of a colleague they honored for decades.

Many at the time suspected the wrath was especially severe because she is an Arab-American. Right-wing provocateur Ann Coulter even asked if “that Arab” should be allowed near the President.

Now a new flap driven by some of the same issues involves a Jewish Pulitzer Prize winning playwright and a leading academic institution in New York.

His name, Tony Kushner, best known for the brilliant Angels in America plays that bravely took on AIDS and the hypocrisy, if not criminality, of a the prominent Jewish lawyer Roy Cohen who was an aide to the late fanatically anti-communist symbol, Senator Joseph McCarthy.

Now McCarthy’s name has been introduced into a debate following a decision by a City University of New York to strip Kushner of an honorary degree after one conservative pro-Israel trustee took umbrage at his criticisms of the Israeli government and convinced his colleagues to take action.

Supporters of Israel have been primed by their lobby and the Israeli government to confront and all attempts to “ deligitimate” Israel and even criticize its government.

Kushner became the symbol of those closet anti-Semites or self-hating Jews bashing Israel, so a group of trustees turned him into an Israel hater. He became a new Helen Thomas even though he is Jewish.

But in New York, unlike Washington which seems ruled by a conservative media elite that is frequently intimidated, if not directed by the Israel Lobby, there was a cultural push back against what was seen as an act of intolerance that violated freedom of thought.

Soon the New York Times was making it a big story with strong statements against the efforts of conservative Republican trustee Jeffrey S.  Wiesenfeld, to blackball plans to honor Kushner by  John Jay College, one of the system’s schools. Wiesenfeld did not win much sympathy when he was quoted as questioning whether Palestinians were human.

Blogger MJ Rosenberg offered insight into Wissenfeld’s didactic views:

“Here is his Wiesenfeld’s rationale for his actions, which he offered in a telephone call with the Atlantic’s Jeff Goldberg:

“My mother would call Tony Kushner a kapo,” he said in a telephone conversation earlier this morning. “Kapos” were Jews who worked for the Germans in concentration camps.

Pretty amazing likening criticizing Israel to working with the Nazis to kill Jews. But Wisenfeld, has some strong views.” He was also aligned with Pam Geller, the Muslim hater who led the fight against the so-called Ground Zero mosque. He was an active supporter of AIPAC, the Israel lobby.

His diatribe was seen as too severe and inflammatory by many civic leaders. Prominent supporters of Israel were soon supporting Kushner, including former Mayor Ed Koch, newspaper Publisher Mort Zuckerman and a who’s who of cultural figures.

Enter the top officials at the City University who agreed to review the decision and vowed to reverse it. On May 9^th, they did so, voting unanimously to restore the award.”

The Guardian reported:

“The chancellor, Matthew Goldstein, addressing the board on Monday night, said he had supported the original recommendation of the award and praised Kushner’s ‘extraordinary body of work’. He urged the board to overturn last week’s decision and to support the award.”

Some members of the board spoke, all of them voicing support for Kushner. One of them described the row as a “blemish” on the university’s reputation as an upholder of freedom of expression.

Tony Kushner had told the Times,

“I have been honored many times by prominent Jewish organizations, proudly identified as a Jew and maintained a passionate support for the continuous existence of the State of Israel,” he said in an interview on Thursday. “An apology should come from the Board of Trustees for not following the dictates of simple fairness and decency when this happened, and allowing someone who deserved better treatment to be treated shabbily.”

Since the CUNY board’s action, he has received an outpouring of support from peace groups, friends, and intellectual and artistic groups. “It’s completely overwhelming,” he said.

The City University’s leaders rushed to restore its honor and on Monday Night, May 9^th, reversed the Trustee’s decision, reinstating Kushner’s award.

Here’s how the Times put it:

“Having embarrassed themselves more than was absolutely necessary in the eyes of many New Yorkers, trustees of the City University of New York are … to undo the damage.”

In an earlier statement, Kushner, who has edited a collection of essays critical of Israel said:

“It’s been my experience that truth eventually triumphs over SoundBits spin and defamation, and that reason, honest inquiry, and courage, which are more appealing and more persuasive than demagoguery, will carry the day.”

His story went from the Jewish press to the pages of the New York Times, and quickly became an international free speech issue.

But even if his status is rehabilitated, The Times asks, “Will a reversal end the affair? Not necessarily. Closing a self-inflicted wound can be tough.”

The problem, of course, is that Kushner’s status earned him reconsideration; other less well-known personages critical of Israel, including academic and political analysts, are often targeted in ways that generate less attention and debate. Many conclude it’s just not worth it to speak up about Israeli policy less they became targeted and smeared, and even lose their jobs.

Meanwhile, Helen Thomas continues to live defensively as an exile in the straitlaced Washington Media world in which she was once a luminary. A group of journalists are now lobbying The Society of Professional Journalists to reinstate her status but, at age 90, she has no major newspapers or high-profile politically-acceptable people behind her.

Perhaps Tony Kushner could do a play about how Thomas has suffered the slings and arrows of unfair slurs and demonization.

Filmmaker and News Dissector Danny Schechter edits Mediachannel.org.

For more on his film Plunder: The Crime of Our Time and companion book The Crime Of Our Time: Why Wall Street Is Not Too Big To Jail, visit plunderthecrimeofourtime.com.

Edward H. Rulloff, Victorian New York’s Evil Genius

Haystack — Sat, 07 May 2011 18:35:43 +0000

Edward H. Rulloff's brain on display at Cornell.

E. H. Freeman’s biography of the criminal-scholar Edward H. Rulloff is finally back in print. Victorian Gothic looks at his bizarre life and obsession with philology:

Visitors to Cornell University’s psychology department would be hard pressed to overlook the eight pickled brains, preserved in heavy glass jars, which are proudly showcased on the second floor of Uris Hall. A small sample of the 122 specimens in the university’s Wilder Brain Collection, each belongs to a notable scholar or learned individual whose think-meat was once deemed worthy of anatomical examination.

One of these brains, however, is not like the others. If the brain of Edward H. Rulloff, a.k.a. Professor Leurio, were able to come alive, glowing and pulsating as it issued angry, murderous commands to you from inside your head, it would.

Rulloff was a criminal genius who left no question of how he should like to be remembered. One week prior his execution in May of 1871, he had this to say:

…you cannot kill an unquiet spirit, and I know that my impending death will not mean the end of Rulloff. In the dead of the night, walking along Cayuga Street, you will sense my presence. When you wake to a sudden chill, I will be in the room. And when you find yourself alone at the lake shore, gazing away at gray Cayuga, know that I was cut short and your ancestors killed me.

Rulloff was a murderer and a thief whose savant-like intelligence and erudition have invited comparison to Doyle’s Professor Moriarty. He committed robberies throughout his life in order to fund his grandiose research into the science of philology; an obsession that may have had unrecognized origins in a deep-seated sense of remorse.

Binghamton journalist E. H. Freeman was Rulloff’s jail-house confessor. His 1871 biography, Edward H. Rulloff: The Veil of Secrecy Removed, recounts much of Rulloff’s story in his own words. It is the story of a long and ignominious criminal career that begins in Dryden, NY, where Rulloff established himself as a botanical physician, and married a seventeen year old pupil named Harriet Schutt…

[Full Article at victoriangothic.org]

Welcome to Surveillance Hell: Kings Point, New York

Easy Rider — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 21:23:24 +0000

Here’s a direct quote from the mayor of this town: “Crime will always be out there,” [Mayor Michael] Kalnick said. “Do you wait for it to happen? I think no.” Emily C. Dooley writes in Newsday:

The 3.3-square-mile North Shore enclave of Kings Point is launching a far-reaching surveillance network that can compare the license plate of every car going into the village against federal and state crime databases such as most-wanted lists, stolen vehicle alerts and suspected terrorist files.

When the project is completed, 44 cameras will monitor 19 entrances into the village in what may be one of the most extensive municipal tracking programs anywhere.

The number of cameras equals about one for every 120 people in the village of 5,305 people. Kings Point, a community of million-dollar homes, sits on the Great Neck peninsula, surrounded on three sides by water.

In 2010, 19 property crimes and one violent crime were reported in the village. The most notable crimes last year were a series of home invasions, starting in November, during which women and girls were menaced.

Mayor Michael Kalnick said the tracking program is necessary to protect residents, but privacy and civil rights groups consider it an overreaching intrusion.

NYC Advertisment Featuring Photoshopped 9/11 Firefighter Pulled

BananaFamine — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 05:40:47 +0000

Jamie Schram writes in the New York Post:

An ad agency for a law firm specializing in 9/11 lawsuits said today it is pulling the controversial posters after it was revealed that the somber, soot-smeared FDNY firefighter holding an image of the charred remains of the World Trade Center was not actually at Ground Zero.

“We issue a sincere and deep apology to Firefighter [Robert] Keiley and this ad will not run again,” said John Barker, president of the Barker/DZP ad agency.

The Post reported today that Keiley — who joined New York’s Bravest only in 2004 — was working as a model when he posed for what he thought would be used for a run-of-the-mill fire-prevention ad.

He appeared in generic firefighter gear and gripped a helmet for the shot — not the photo of the destroyed Twin Towers that was “put” into his hands with Photoshop software for the Worby Groner Edelman & Napoli Bern ad.

“It’s an insult to the Fire Department. It’s an insult to all the families who lost people that day,” said Keiley, 34, an ex-cop who now works out of an engine company in Flatbush, Brooklyn.

Keily had threatened to sue. “It makes me look like I’m cashing in on 9/11, saying I was there even though I was never there, and that I’m sick and possibly suing, trying to get a chunk of money.”

For more information, see original article.

The Fitness Revolution And America’s Class Struggle

Mickey Z — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 22:17:55 +0000

Mickey Z

Some 35 years ago—during the pre-Stairmaster days of yore when your standard gym looked more like a cave than Studio 54—Arnold may have already been Mr. Olympia several times over but there probably weren’t more than a couple of dozen people who could pronounce “Schwarzenegger” on the first try.

Let’s face it, when Bobby Fischer was the nation’s athletic ideal, it was clearly time for a fitness revolution.

Fast-forward to the twenty-first century and a health club on every corner. This time around the revolution was televised and joining a gym has become a post-modern rite of passage. You plunk down the plastic and get introduced to a “personal trainer.”

Welcome to my world…

An upscale health club is one place where the different classes meet and mingle. Any personal trainer worth his or her supplements craves an elite clientele. Conversely, their well-heeled customers dream of wielding their buff buns and ripped deltoids like post-modern status symbols.

Trainers and clients are often from different worlds … sometimes at odds but frequently in synch. Their relationships are a complex and unique offshoot of a society in which an elite percentile of Americans own wealth equal to, say, the bottom 95 percent.

But in the gym, you can’t use your stock portfolio to get through a tough set of lunges…that’s what us trainers are for.

An excellent example of the gap between this particular trainer and some of my clients occurred during the early days of the Hurricane Katrina aftermath:

I’ve got a female client on the elliptical machine, the TV is blaring, and all eyes are transfixed on the horrendous but predictable images of official indifference.

Staring at a poor black family as they wade through chest-deep water, my client blurts out: “I don’t understand. Why didn’t they just leave?”

There was just enough smugness in her voice to irritate me but I stayed calm, replying: “Most of them couldn’t leave.”

Unconvinced, she declared: “I would’ve gotten in my car and gone to stay in a hotel or something.”

I swallowed deeply. “These people are very poor.”

“I know, but why would you stay there if you know a hurricane is coming?”

Before I could respond, someone walked into the gym and broke the tension.

We went on with our workout while the people in New Orleans went on wading.

Adapted from Personal Trainer Diaries: Making the Affluent Sweat Since the 1980s by Mickey Z, available now as an ebook for only $4.99. From hanging with Arnold, Sly, Fabio, Tyson, and Bianca Jagger in the go-go ’80s right up to training today’s ever-growing training market, Mickey Z. has witnessed firsthand the evolution of a fitness revolution. He’s also the author of the disinformation book 50 American Revolutions You’re Not Supposed To Know.

Daugther Of Malcolm X Arrested

Pelliciari — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 22:30:11 +0000

Photo: Ed Ford, World Telegram Staff Photographer

How far does the apple fall from the tree? Malcolm X fought for civil rights, now his daughter is fighting the New York Civil Court. Huffington Post reports:

The daughter of Malcolm X was being held in a North Carolina jail and could be extradited to New York to face charges on several outstanding warrants, authorities said Monday.

Malikah Shabazz was arrested Friday night after authorities responded to a call to a Mars Hill home, said Chief Deputy Michael Garrison of the Madison County Sheriff’s Office. Investigators found that the 45-year-old had several outstanding warrants from Queens, N.Y., that include charges for grand larceny, forgery and identity theft.

Garrison and her lawyer, Sean Devereux, said Shabazz is the daughter of slain civil rights leader Malcolm X, who is also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. She was born months after Malcolm X was assassinated exactly 46 years ago Monday.

[Continues at Huffington Post]

New York Publishes Official Apocalypse Survival Plan

majestic — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 16:05:06 +0000

Do the civil servants who run New York State’s legal and public health bureaucracy know something the rest of us don’t? Just in time for the next popular end times date in 2012, the state has published a doomsday book of sorts. William Glaberson analyzes its contents for the New York Times:

Major disasters like terrorist attacks and mass epidemics raise confounding issues for rescuers, doctors and government officials. They also pose bewildering legal questions, including some that may be painful to consider, like how the courts would decide who gets life-saving medicine if there are more victims than supplies.

But courts, like fire departments and homicide detectives, exist in part for gruesome what-ifs. So this month, an official state legal manual was published in New York to serve as a guide for judges and lawyers who could face grim questions in another terrorist attack, a major radiological or chemical contamination or a widespread epidemic.

Quarantines. The closing of businesses. Mass evacuations. Warrantless searches of homes. The slaughter of infected animals and the seizing of property. When laws can be suspended and whether infectious people can be isolated against their will or subjected to mandatory treatment. It is all there, in dry legalese, in the manual, published by the state court system and the state bar association.

The most startling legal realities are handled with lawyerly understatement. It notes that the government has broad power to declare a state of emergency. “Once having done so,” it continues, “local authorities may establish curfews, quarantine wide areas, close businesses, restrict public assemblies and, under certain circumstances, suspend local ordinances.”

Ronald P. Younkins, the chief of operations for the state court system, said the book’s preparation was similar to other steps the New York courts had taken to plan for emergencies, including stockpiling respirators and latex gloves. Like such manuals in other states, Mr. Younkins said, it is intended to give judges and lawyers a place to turn in an emergency because the maze of state and federal laws — some decades or centuries old — can be difficult to decipher. For judges, the manual may well be their only refresher on the case of Mary Mallon, “Typhoid Mary,” who was isolated on an East River island from 1915 until her death in 1938.

“It is a very grim read,” Mr. Younkins said. “This is for potentially very grim situations in which difficult decisions have to be made.”

Published with the disarmingly bland title “New York State Public Health Legal Manual,” the doomsday book does not proclaim new law but, rather, describes existing law and gives lawyers and judges ways of analyzing any number of frightening situations.

The manual provides a catalog of potential terrorism nightmares, like smallpox, anthrax or botulism episodes…

[continues in the New York Times]

Marijuana Arrests in New York City Skyrocket

Easy Rider — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 23:56:14 +0000

Alice Speri writes in the NY Times’ City Room:

More people were arrested last year in New York City on charges of marijuana possession than during the entire 19-year period from 1978 to 1996, according to an analysis released this morning by the Drug Policy Alliance.

Last year, the sixth year in a row that marijuana possession arrests increased, 50,383 people were arrested, according to a report recently released by the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services and obtained by the policy alliance, which advocates for reform of drug laws.

The figure adds up to 140 arrests a day, making marijuana possession the leading reason for arrest in the city, and represents an 8 percent increase over 2009 and a 69 percent increase since 2005, the alliance reported in a statement issued Thursday.

From 1978 to 1996, there were 49,326 marijuana possession arrests, according to an analysis for the alliance done by Harry Levine, a sociology professor at Queens College and an expert on marijuana enforcement.

The increased enforcement, the policy alliance says, is due not to increasing consumption, but to harsher enforcement.

Home Of The New World Order: Alphabet City, NY

majestic — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 17:09:13 +0000

New Yorkers Welcome Planned Terror Attacks On Wall Street Banks

majestic — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 19:15:40 +0000

I know I should be horrified by the comments to this New York Post story claiming that the FBI and NYPD are advising Wall Street banks that terrorists are planning to attack them, but on the other hand it does show just how despised the bankers are because of the never-ending fallout from their self-induced financial crisis. Here are some particularly choice examples:

sadtruth
02/01/2011 1:32 PM
Planning attacks against major wall street executives? When? Do they need housing and accommodations?

Cut Off The Freeloaders
02/01/2011 1:25 PM
Shouldn’t we be referring to them as “superheroes” instead of terrorists? ANyone who has any dealing with US banks in the last few years would agree Im sure. The heads of US banks are the biggest criminal empire known to man.

TommyNYC
02/01/2011 10:32 AM
This will be the first terrorist attack sanctioned by the american taxpayers!! Take the executives but leave the buildings please!!

actressdiva
02/01/2011 7:57 AM
good thing all the records of the investigations on Wall Street were destroyed on 9-11….yeah….good thing huh Goldman??

How An RC Airplane Buzzed the Statue of Liberty, With No Arrests (Video)

HAL9000 — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 05:11:34 +0000

The video speaks for itself:

Bible Spouting, Freemason Sword-Wielding ‘Ugly Betty’ Actor Kills His Own Mother

bluemana — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 20:11:06 +0000

Truly horrific, and the spouting of Bible verses and references to Freemasonry just makes it more disturbing. Via the New York Post:

A crazed bit actor wielding an ornate Freemason sword hacked his mother to death early yesterday in their Brooklyn apartment while screaming out Bible passages and Masonic references, police and witnesses said.

“Repent! Repent! Repent!” Michael Brea, screamed at his 55-year-old mother, Yannick, during his bizarre meltdown and the subsequent bloodbath at their Prospect Heights apartment, neighbors said.

Brea, 31, who had roles in Ugly Betty and the movie Step Up 3D, was heard repeatedly through the door shouting about the “architect of the universe,” a term used by Freemasons to refer to a supreme being. Longtime family friend Sylvan Benoit confirmed that Brea was a member of the Freemasons and had been to a meeting earlier in the evening.

The Masonic sword was 3-feet long and meant for ceremonial use, police sources said.

When cops broke down the apartment door at around 2 a.m., they Tasered and arrested Brea, and charged him with murder.

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[disinfo ed.'s note: just as a reminder, the world may end on Saturday. Have a great week!]

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Playwright Tony Kushner. Photos: Timothy Herrigan/Courtney Hamilton (CC) Jewish Playwright has honorary degree restored by City University of New York after it had been stripped because he was labeled too critical of Israel.

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For more on his film Plunder: The Crime of Our Time and companion book The Crime Of Our Time: Why Wall Street Is Not Too Big To Jail, visit plunderthecrimeofourtime.com.

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New York Publishes Official Apocalypse Survival Plan

Marijuana Arrests in New York City Skyrocket

Home Of The New World Order: Alphabet City, NY

New Yorkers Welcome Planned Terror Attacks On Wall Street Banks

How An RC Airplane Buzzed the Statue of Liberty, With No Arrests (Video)

Bible Spouting, Freemason Sword-Wielding ‘Ugly Betty’ Actor Kills His Own Mother

Playwright Tony Kushner. Photos: Timothy Herrigan/Courtney Hamilton (CC)

Jewish Playwright has honorary degree restored by City University of New York after it had been stripped because he was labeled too critical of Israel.