Saturday, August 25, 2012

NY POLICE at WORK


    What is it with New York? 

    Wait, don't answer that.  I don't care -- it just reflects common thinking, if you can call it that, about religion in the United States.

    Do we really need this kind of crap?  "He that disturbs his own house shall Inherit the Wind, and the fool shall rule the wise man" or something like that.  I think it was Solomon who said that.

    Hey, I saw the 1960 Stanley Kramer version of that recently.  Back in 1960, it was not a controversial topic, so far as I could tell.  Now, these morons want "Creationism" taught in schools, especially Kansas and now Texas.  Help!  They are all over the place!!!


    I guess we need Clarance Darrow back along with Woody Guthry.


FRIDAY, AUGUST 24, 2012

NYPD Admits Muslim Spy Program Generated No Leads or Terrorism Investigations — Only Controversy

After years of spying on Muslim neighborhoods, infiltrating groups and eavesdropping on conversations across the northeastern United States, the New York City Police Department has admitted its secret Demographics Unit failed to yield a single terrorism investigation or even a single lead. In the years following the Sept. 11 attacks, the NYPD secretly infiltrated Muslim student groups, sent informants into mosques, eavesdropped on conversations and created databases showing where Muslims lived, worked and prayed. We’re joined by Adam Goldman, who co-wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning Associated Press series that revealed the spy program and, most recently, its failure. [includes rush transcript]

GUEST:

Adam Goldman, reporter for the Associated Press. He and his colleagues were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting for a series of articles revealing the extensive domestic surveillance program deployed by the New York City Police Department in the wake of 9/11.

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

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Transcript

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The New York City Police Department has admitted its secret Demographics Unit that spied on Muslims in an elaborate CIA-backed effort over a more than six-year period failed to yield a single terrorism investigation or even a single lead. In the years following the September 11th attacks, the New York police secretly infiltrated Muslim student groups, sent informants into mosques, eavesdropped on conversations and created databases showing where Muslims lived, worked and prayed.

Court records unsealed Monday show information collected by the NYPD’s Demographics Unit did not spark a single investigation. Assistant Police Chief Thomas Galati said, quote, "I never made a lead from rhetoric that came from a Demographics report, and I’m here since 2006. I don’t recall other ones prior to my arrival." In his unsealed testimony, Galati confirmed the police gathered information on people even when there was no evidence of wrongdoing, simply because of their ethnicity and native language. Galati said a business can be labeled a, quote, "location of concern" whenever police can expect to find groups of Middle Easterners there.

This latest story was first reported by the Associated Press, which first uncovered the NYPD’s Demographics Unit. This is an excerpt from a video that accompanied the AP’s first story on the NYPD’s spying.

AP REPORT: At this New Brunswick, New Jersey, apartment, an alarming scene was found inside unit 1076: terrorist literature strewn about and a wealth of computer and surveillance equipment. But this wasn’t the command center of a terrorist cell. The materials belonged to a secret team of NYPD intelligence officers, a unit operating miles outside its jurisdiction.

AMY GOODMAN: Over the past year, the Associated Press has continued to reveal more details of the NYPD’s actions. These include the targeted surveillance of Shiite mosques following increased tensions between the U.S. and Iran, the practice of spying not just in New York but across the Northeast, financial backing from the White House for the program, and the targeting of Muslim mosques with tactics normally reserved for criminal organizations.

The police departments have drawn widespread protests and even criticism from the FBI, which has said these operations damaged its partnerships with Muslims and jeopardized national security. Faced with protest and calls to resign, New York Police Department Commissioner Ray Kelly defended the spying in February.

COMMISSIONER RAY KELLY: We believe we’re doing what we have to do, pursuant to the law, to protect this city, a city that’s been attacked successfully twice and had 14 plots against it in—you know, in the last two decades.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined by Adam Goldman, who co-authored the Associated Press series that revealed the New York Police Department’s spying and, most recently, how it led to no leads. He was part of the Associated Press team that won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting for the series.

Adam, welcome to Democracy Now! Talk about your latestpiece and also the scope of the spying.

ADAM GOLDMAN: Well, our latest piece, we feel, is important because it—it really brings to the forefront this idea that what the NYPD was doing, in particular with the Demographics Unit, was fruitless. The NYPD has said repeatedly, you know, what they’re doing is keeping the city safe, but as this deposition shows, by the top NYPDofficer in the intelligence unit, nothing much came from these efforts that—the Demographics Unit and what they’ve been doing since 2003. And critics of the Demographics Unit would say that the deposition only shows more of what the NYPD is doing, which is ethnic and religious profiling.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Adam, how was the deposition obtained in the first place? Can you give us some of the background on that?

ADAM GOLDMAN: Well, we obtained the deposition after it was unsealed. Galati had to do a deposition as part of a class action lawsuit that dates back to the '70s, when theNYPD was spying on political groups. And as a result of that, the lead plaintiff in the case, Barbara Handschu, in which the case is known, there were a series of—a series of agreements and settlements made with the NYPD in which the NYPD said that they wouldn't gather this type of information on people without probable cause. And after 9/11, the standard got changed to reasonable suspicion.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And so, then the lawsuit was an attempt to determine whether the NYPD was in violation of the Handschu decision?

ADAM GOLDMAN: Yeah, that’s right. After we started publishing our stories, we also published secret NYPDdocuments that were provided to us. And we believe the lawyers used those to help get this deposition.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s turn to some of the testimony ofNYPD Assistant Chief Thomas Galati. In your article, Adam, you note he overheard two Pakistani men complaining about airport security policies that they believed unfairly singled out Muslims. Galati said police were allowed to collect that information because the men spoke Urdu. These are his exact words, quote: "I’m seeing Urdu. I’m seeing them identify the individuals involved in that are Pakistani. I’m using that information for me to determine that this would be a kind of place that a terrorist would be comfortable in," unquote. Your response?

ADAM GOLDMAN: Well, the people involved in theHandschu case would argue that, you know, that’s clearly—that’s First Amendment-protected speech. The police are free to go anywhere they want as a private citizen. You know, obviously they can go to restaurants. You know, they can go to mosques. They can do things that you and me can do. But, you know, when they start going to these places and recording constitutionally protected speech, writing it down and putting it in police files, and, you know, as a result of that, putting the name of innocent Americans in these police files, you know, the lawyers would argue that that’s where they’re crossing the line, and that’s where they’re violating Handschu. And they’re actually retaining that information, which is a violation ofHandschu.

AMY GOODMAN: NYPD Assistant Chief Thomas Galati also justified eavesdropping on a conversation in a Lebanese cafe. He said analysts might be able to determine that the customers were from South Lebanon. Galati went on to explain, quote, "That may be an indicator of possibility that that is a sympathizer to Hezbollah because Southern Lebanon is dominated by Hezbollah." Adam?

ADAM GOLDMAN: Well, once again, critics of this program would say that’s just nothing more than crude profiling. It’s guilt by suspicion. So, everybody from South Lebanon is possibly connected to Hezbollah? I mean, that’s sort of like saying, you know, if you’re Jewish and—you know, if you’re Israeli and you live on the West Bank, are you a radical settler?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, also, there had been previous press reports that at least one terrorist plot had been—the uncovering it had been aided by information the Demographics Unit found. But your reporting suggests that that’s not—or indicates that that’s not true. Could you explain that?

ADAM GOLDMAN: Well, it’s Galati himself who says it’s not true. The public department has been on the defensive trying to defend these efforts and the $3 billion they’ve spent on this. And Galati testified that the Demographics Unit never generated a lead or a terrorism case. And as part of that, we assume he’s talking about the 2004 case in which there was a young man who was in a bookstore, and a confidential informant from the NYPD developed a relationship with him, and eventually, you know, it was revealed through an NYPD operation—you know, a sting, essentially—that, you know, he wanted to bomb the Herald Square subway tunnel. But Galati says—under oath, I might add—he testified that that case, that bookstore, wasn’t a result of the—wasn’t a result of the Demographics Unit. Now, the deputy commissioner, Paul Browne, and this guy Mitch Silber, who used to run the—used to be the top analyst, NYPD, had publicly said that, "Well, that’s not true," that "We did learn learn about this bookstore from the Demographics Unit." So, you know, there’s a disconnect there. I’ll give Galati the benefit of doubt, because he’s testifying under oath.

AMY GOODMAN: Last month, an audiotape was released of the 911 emergency call that helped uncover the New York Police Department’s secret spying on Muslim neighborhoods inside New Jersey. On the tape from June 2009, a building superintendent in New Jersey told a 911 dispatcher he had discovered a suspicious apartment as part of a routine check.

BUILDING SUPERINTENDENT: Came across an apartment where there’s some suspicious activity.

911 DISPATCHER: What’s suspicious?

BUILDING SUPERINTENDENT: Suspicious in the sense that the apartment has about—has no furniture except two beds, has no clothing, has New York City Police Department radios.

911 DISPATCHER: Really?

BUILDING SUPERINTENDENT: There’s computers in there.

911 DISPATCHER: There’s what?

BUILDING SUPERINTENDENT: There’s computer hardware, software, you know, just laying around. There’s pictures of terrorists. There’s pictures of our neighboring buildings that they have.

911 DISPATCHER: In New Brunswick?

BUILDING SUPERINTENDENT: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: On the tape from June 2009, the building superintendent in New Jersey told the 911 dispatcher he discovered a suspicious apartment as part of this routine check. Adam, talk more about this.

ADAM GOLDMAN: Well, this was an apartment in New Brunswick, New Jersey, that the NYPD Intelligence Division had been using as a base of operations, essentially, to spy on citizens of New Jersey. And we learned about that safe house, and we wrote about it originally in our first story in the Pulitzer series that we published in August of 2011. When we tried to get the 911 call—eventually we had to sue the New Brunswick Police Department after NYPDmeddled with the case, and we obtained that. And they were using that apartment to, we believe, spy on a Muslim student association in New Jersey.

And, you know, what makes that interesting, on several levels, but most importantly, the federal authorities and others say that the NYPD went to New Jersey, and they didn’t tell anybody. And then, when this call came in, you know, the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force and local police responded to the house. I mean, it sets up a dangerous situation when other law enforcement officers are working in a state, and they don’t tell anybody.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Adam, you mentioned the FBI. Could you retrace for our viewers and listeners this whole issue of the FBI stance on this spying by the Demographics Unit? It’s not the first time that the FBI has raised publicly skeptical questions about activities, of anti-terrorism activities of the New York Police Department. But the department, on the other hand, has engaged in a pretty aggressive public relations campaign to defend its activities.

ADAM GOLDMAN: Yeah, the NYPD has really been out there defending—defending what they’ve done, saying they—you know, everything they’ve done has been—conforms to Handschu. The FBI’s problem with what theNYPD is doing is that when the NYPD Intelligence Division comes to the FBI with a possible lead or referral, the FBIhas to be sure that information was gathered in a way that can be used in court and that it wasn’t, you know, generated from First Amendment speech, protected speech. So, there are things that the FBI has refused to take from the NYPD. There is a great deal of mistrust there between these two organizations. The FBI doesn’t feel that it can trust the NYPD Intelligence Division in how they’re gathering this information, and if, in fact, it was a legitimate lead or, in fact, were they just doing what the Demographics Unit was doing—they’re just going into, you know, a bookstore and spying on people and then putting an undercover officer or an informant there and saying, "Oh, yeah, this is how we obtained the information." But in reality, how they obtained it was, you know, spying on people who were just having political speech. And it reached a head when we published a story about the NYPDand the Demographics Unit mapping the Muslim community in Newark. The NYPD said, "Well, we were following a lead," but we know that’s not true. We know from our sources in the NYPD that they did the same thing they did in New York. They just went to this community, and they mapped it, without any probable cause. The cause was that they were Muslim, so thus we need to go over there and we need to take a look at them. And then we—

AMY GOODMAN: Adam, we’re going to have—

ADAM GOLDMAN: OK.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there, because we have to go to a breaking story in the Arctic. Adam Goldman, a reporter for the Associated Press. He and his colleagues won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting for the series they did revealing the extensive domestic surveillance program deployed by the New York Police Department in the wake of 9/11.


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Thursday, August 23, 2012

A Response to Power


One of you, obviously, tried to post on power here.  Since it was sent to me, and since I try
to publish all responses that make any sense at all, here it is.  well written, I might add:


I had a reply but wasn't able to post it, not sure why.  I think animals are acutely aware of power
relationships.  The servility or aggression  displays of dogs reflects their self-awareness of their 
place in the power structure.  They behave like children with their 'masters', who feed and house them
but can become easily violent and even lethal towards strangers.

Kids quickly learn about power and make it the cornerstone for understanding the world. Can Superman 
kill Godzilla, who or what is more powerful?

The Garden of Eden story is very obtuse, but someone brought up the power of God in declaring a tree off limits.
The forbidden door, book, food, person, article of clothing is a common mythological device.  Tempting and exciting, 
the forbidden thing always leads to ruin or punishment.  Since children learn from the Bible, God as 'the angry parent'
was bound to occur as a theme, 'wait until your father gets home'.

A frequent theme in what is known as 'process theology', based on the ideas of Alfred North Whitehead's process
philosophy, where the process is more fundamental than the usual 'essence' of things or events, is the idea of two
kinds of power.

The one we're most familiar with is power over someone, parent over child, boss over employee, God over creation.  
But in the process view, the power to hold things together, to lure, to attract into a higher unity is primary.

God the Father may manifest the first kind of power, but God the Son, Jesus of Nazareth demonstrates the more
significant attractive power.  In the vacuum of his absence the Church was formed through the attractive power of 
love and forgiveness.

Studying attractive power can be done without resorting to theology of course.  But Christian theology does offer
an interesting example of both types.


OCTOBER 2011

Because a sustainable future depends on the people willing to see the truth for what it is, and for those to stand up in unison in order to make a difference.

— Jake Edward Keli'i Eakin



Next week the corporate party political conventions are here. Take action in Tampa, FL and Charlotte, NC or at home if you cannot make the conventions.  The conventions are followed by secret negotiations for the TransPacific Partnership – the Global Corporate Coup – in Leesburg, VA.

Stop the Corporate Coup!

If you care about the environment, the wealth divide, corporate power, democracy, worker’s rights, food, health care or so much more, the corporate power grab –
the TransPacific Partnership (TPP) –needs to be at the top of your agenda.

Secret negotiations are being pushed forward aggressively that will set the terms for corporate power in the 21st Century. Trade negotiators and corporate lobbyists from the United States and throughout the Pacific Rim will be meeting at a fancy resort in Leesburg, Virginia outside of Washington, DC from September 6 to 15 to advance the secretive TPP — and we will be there to
Occupy the TPP.

U.S. negotiators have granted approximately 600 corporate lobbyists access to the negotiating texts, but have flatly refused to tell the public or even Congress what they have been proposing in our names.  In fact, they don’t intend to tell us what they’ve been working on until four years after the deal is signed and completed. And, they are planning a fast track vote in Congress – up or down, no committee hearings and no amendments.

So, now is the time to stop this agreement (aka NAFTA on steroids).  Protests have held back negotiations around the World Trade Organization since the Battle of Seattle in the 1990s. The TPP will mean fewer jobs, lower wages and benefits, and a smaller tax base for public services.  It will create trade tribunals where corporations can demand that governments pay for profits lost from laws and court decisions that protect the environment, workers and consumers.  The 'judges' for these tribunals – corporate lawyers on leave from their corporate job! The Leesburg round of negotiations this September is crucial.

It is up to us to stop this global corporate coup!


Join the action training in Baltimore, MD on Saturday, September 8 and Sunday, September 9 with national trainers Bill Moyer of the Backbone Campaign and Kim Marks of Rising Tide North America and Earth First! We will travel to Leesburg, VA on the afternoon of September 9 for a rally outside the hotel and there will be actions on Monday and Tuesday in Leesburg.  The training is free but we will be training for specific actions so we ask you to commit to a least one action.  For more information, contact us at itsoureconomy.us@gmail.com.

Protest the Corporate Political Duopoly

Lots of actions are planned at Occupy the RNC and Occupy the DNC; and actions are being urged around the country as both conventions occur. The U.S. lives in a tweedle-dee/tweedle-dum corporate duopoly that shuts out non-corporate alternatives and creates a mirage democracy where people get to vote for two corporate approved and funded candidates. Occupiers around the country are heading to the conventions to protest and others will be joining protests in their home towns.

The RNC protests will be kicked off with a
March for Our Livesfrom Romneyville in Tampa, FL.  The march, being organized by the Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign, will include the poor, homeless, and unemployed. They have created a Poor People's Encampment called “Romneyville,” modeled after the “Hoovervilles” of the 1930s. It is located right in the heart of downtown in the “Event Zone.”  Occupy Tampa has formed a Regional General Assembly to coordinate Occupy groups throughout the bay area, including: Occupy Lakeland, Occupy St. Petersburg, Occupy Bradenton, Occupy USF, Occupy Port Richey and Occupy Sarasota. Updates to RNC activities can be found by visiting the Occupy Tampa RNC page.

Occupy Tampa’s General Assembly has reached consensus on a national action, Shut Down Bain Capital. They urge people to peacefully protest Bain Capital on August 30th which is the day that Mitt Romney will give his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, FL to raise awareness about Bain’s unethical business practices.  A list of Bain businesses can be found here. They are located all over the country so there can be protests everywhere.



Occupy Charlotte, NC is leading organizing efforts for Occupy the DNC.  In their
call to action, Occupy Charlotte call on people to hold President Obama accountable for his unfair economic policies, his health insurance giveaway that does not provide universal health care and his militarism, drone attacks and failure to prosecute torturers as well as the national effort to quash the Occupy Movement.  They provide links to the various organizations planning actions around the DNC.

If you can’t make it to Charlotte people are urged to join nationwide protests at Obama campaign offices urging the release of Bradley Manning. The action is being called for by the Bradley Manning Support Network, Afghans for Peace and SF Bay Iraq Veterans Against the War to be held on September 6, 2012.  This day of action builds on successful
protests by occupiers, veterans and Manning supporters in Los Angeles, Oakland and Portland on August 16th.

There is a lot going on, and important events are coming up after these.  Please share this email in your networks and urge people to
sign up here to receive weekly updates of occupy-related activites.

The Backbone Campaign is in need of donations to continue their amazing work to train activists and create spectacle actions. To see what they do, visit BackboneCampaign.org and please make a donation if you are able.

In Solidarity,
October2011/OccupyWashingtonDC.org


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Our mailing address is:
October 2011
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