After a week of almost non-stop corruption revelations, including charges that Bronx Assemblyman Eric Stevenson took bribes to write a bill to help his friends,
Bloomberg included Gov. Andrew Cuomo in his revulsion of all
things Albany, implying that one of the things that aids corruption is
the practice of the governor sending lawmakers something called a
“message of necessity” so a bill can pass quickly, without anyone having
a the chance to study it.
“Why can’t you give it time? Well, the answer is they don’t want
anybody to see it. That’s the only explanation,” Bloomberg said.
Bloomberg's right about that.
Cuomo wants "laws" passed without anybody reading them, knowing what's in them, knowing what's becoming law.
It's an authoritarian and fascist way to run a government.
And it's emblematic of Shock Doctrine tactics.
"WE HAVE NO TIME TO READ THE BILLS WE"RE GOING TO PASS INTO LAW!!!! WE MUST PASS THEM NOW!!! THEY ARE BILLS OF NECESSITY!!!"
Cuomo is far from the only politician to pull this crap.
As I said, it's classic Shock Doctrine and Bloomberg's got his own way of pushing stuff through that he doesn't want anyone to push back on or challenge him on.
The NYPD’s stop and frisk policy is under attack — and so is talking about it, a new lawsuit claims.
A
NYC social worker was cuffed and tossed in jail for criticizing the
under-siege crime-fighting program within earshot of a hypersensitive
cop, the woman claims in the lawsuit.
Kaylan Pedine, 29, was
chatting about the policy with friends in front of the Mercury Bar in
Midtown when two officers pulled up. “I wish they would stop
stop-and-frisk,” she said as they passed, the suit states.
Police
Officer Craig Campion ordered the bewildered Pedine to turn around, and
handcuffed her before gawking onlookers, according to the suit filed in
Manhattan Federal court today.
After less than an hour in a cell, she was released and issued a
summons for blocking vehicular traffic — but the Greenpoint resident
claims she never stepped off the sidewalk.
So much for First Amendment rights in Bloomberg's New York City.
Criticize official policy, get cuffed and jailed.
That the NYPD feel safe enough to pull this stuff shows you just how unaccountable they have become in this city under Kelly and Bloomberg.
Several people protesting peacefully in Marseille against the trial of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot were detained by police for wearing balaclavas, under France's controversial law that bans Muslim niqabs and all face-coverings from public places.
About 30 demonstrators gathered outside the Russian consulate in the southern French city on Friday to protest against the trial of members of the feminist group famous for wearing bright dresses and colourful balaclavas.
But police swooped on about seven wearing multicoloured face-masks in solidarity with the band, reported La Provence. Asked why the police had stopped the demonstrators who had been standing peacefully behind a banner about the power of poetry, a senior officer told the newspaper: "They are wearing balaclavas in a public space. It's illegal." He said the demonstrators would be questioned and a report written.
In April 2011, Nicolas Sarkozy's government introduced a law banning women from wearing the niqab, or full face-veil, in public places. To circumvent accusations that the law singled out Muslims, the bill was officially called the law against covering one's face in public places.
Special exemptions were created for motorcycle helmets or sports equipment such as fencing masks. There are also exemptions for people appearing in parades, celebrations or places of worship.
The Marseille protesters – including poets, a book editor, and a former culture official – who had removed their masks at police request, were put in a riot van and driven to the nearest police station amid cries of "Absurd!" and "Ridiculous!". They were released that afternoon. Under the law, the case can be referred to a local judge who can hand down a €150 fine, a citizenship course or both.
"We came here to defend freedom of expression in Russia and we find ourselves stopped by French police," one pensioner at the rally told the paper.
The irony in all of this is that the law against public mask wearing is really aimed at Muslim head garb, but of course they extended the law to all masks so as to not make it look discriminatory.
Why did Islamic terrorists attack us on 9/11 again?
Oh, yeah, I remember now - they hate us "for our freedoms."
Julian Assange, holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London as British police amass outside and await orders from the United States and Britain to break international law and seize him, spoke to supporters today:
"As WikiLeaks stands under threat, so does the freedom of expression and the health of all our societies. We must use this moment to articulate the choice that is before the government of the United States of America," he said.
"Will it return to and reaffirm the revolutionary values it was founded on or will it lurch off the precipice, dragging us all into a dangerous and oppressive world in which journalists fall silent under the fear of prosecution and citizens must whisper in the dark?
"I say it must turn back. I ask President Obama to do the right thing: the United States must renounce its witch-hunt against WikiLeaks."
There must be no "foolish talk" of prosecuting media organisations, be it WikiLeaks or be it the New York Times newspaper.
Assange also called on the US to end its "war on whistleblowers", and demanded that Bradley Manning, the US army intelligence analyst suspected of leaking the information, be released.
He has been charged with transferring classified data and delivering national defence information to an unauthorised source and faces up to 52 years in jail.
Assange described Manning as a hero and "an example to all of us", which drew cheers from scores of supporters.
"On Wednesday, Bradley Manning spent his 815th day of detention without trial," said Assange. "The legal maximum is 120 days."
Assange referred to recent jailings of people for exercising their freedom of speech and called for enthusiastic opposition to such oppressive actions.
"There is unity in the oppression. There must be absolute unity and determination in the response."
...
"I am here today because I cannot be there with you today. But thank you for coming, thankyou for your resolve, your generosity of spirit.
"On Wednesday night, after a threat was sent to this embassy, the police descended on this building. You came out in the middle of the night to watch over it, and you brought the world's eyes with you.
"Inside this embassy in the dark, I could hear teams of police swarming up inside the building through its internal fire escape.
"But I knew there would be witnesses, and that is because of you.
"If the UK did not throw away the Vienna Conventions the other night, it is because the world was watching. And the world was watching because you were watching.
"So the next time that somebody tells you that it is pointless to defend those rights that we hold dear, remind them of your vigil in the dark before the embassy of Ecuador. Remind them how, in the morning, the sun came up on a different world, and a courageous Latin American nation took a stand for justice."
Another day in New York, another dramatic NYPD shooting.
Cops shot a knife-wielding man in Times Square yesterday in the middle of the afternoon. Police claim he had been stopped for smoking marijuana on the street when he pulled out a knife and began running away from them while swinging the knife.
They followed him through Times Square, eventually shooting and killing him on 38th Street and 7th Avenue. The Daily News reports at least fifteen bullet casings on the street, though there may have been more shots fired by the NYPD than that.
Was this guy a danger and a menace?
Absolutely.
According to the media accounts, they'd sprayed him with six blasts of mace and he still hadn't dropped the knife.
The cops claim he lunged at them with the knife right before he was shot.
The NY Post reports he was shouting "Shoot me! Shoot me!" before he "lunged" at them with the knife.
Some people say the knife-wielding man was trying to commit "suicide by cop".
Dunno how much of that to believe and the videos that have surfaced are quite jumpy - it's hard to see what's going on.
That said, the first photo with the man backing away from cops, hands behind his head, as they advance in preparation to shoot him, sure makes you wonder if there was another way to get him down without killing him in a flood of bullets.
But in Bloomberg's New York, this is actually the perfect emblem.
Get rid of the Big Apple symbol and put the photo of the guy with the knife backing away from a dozen armed cops getting ready to execute him in its place.
You don't have to be wielding a knife to get shot by gun-toting NYPD goons.
New York mayor Michael Bloomberg has unveiled a new crime-fighting system developed with Microsoft – and revealed that the city will take a cut of the profits if it is sold to other administrations.
The innovation, which bears a passing resemblance to the futuristic hologram data screens used by Tom Cruise in the science fiction film Minority Report, will allow police to quickly collate and visualise vast amounts of data from cameras, licence plate readers, 911 calls, police databases and other sources.
It will then display the information in real time, both visually and chronologically, allowing investigators to centralise information about crimes as they happen or are reported. "It is a one-stop shop for law enforcement," Bloomberg said at a City Hall press conference unveiling the new technology.
But, though it has many screens, maps, and flashing visuals that make it look like science fiction, the new technology has a distinctly un-Hollywood name: the Domain Awareness System. Developed by Microsoft engineers working with New York police officers, DAS will allow a host of activities to be carried out, such as spotting a suspicious vehicle and being able to track its recent movements or use cameras to track back and see who left a suspicious package.
It features live video feeds, huge databases of recent crime patterns and can take input direct from the field in real time via things like 911 calls or police radios. "All the information is presented visually and geographically and in chronological context," said police commissioner Ray Kelly.
If other cities purchase this system, Microsoft will share 30% of the profit with NYC.
Given how shoddy Microsoft products generally are, I doubt this thing will work as Bloomberg and Microsoft are advertising it, so we'll just have to see if any other municipality signs on to it.
Even so, I am a little disturbed that Microsoft and the NYPD are partnering on a crime tracking system.
Maybe the Gates Foundation can add a test score/teacher evaluation and really bring the school-to-prison complex together into one huge database?
Oops - maybe I shouldn't give Uncle Bill any ideas - he's been known to steal them before and make them into a core component of his Microsoft business model.
Although as I noted above, if this thing is as bad as Microsoft ME, Vista, Zune or Windows 8, I suspect it will spend more time freezing up and causing frustration than actually helping police track "criminals."
The first systematic look at the New Yorkpolice department's response to Occupy Wall Street protests paints a damning picture of an out-of-control and aggressive organization that routinely acted beyond its powers.
In a report that followed an eight-month study (pdf), researchers at the law schools of NYU and Fordham accuse the NYPD of deploying unnecessarily aggressive force, routinely obstructing press freedoms and making arbitrary and baseless arrests.
The study, published on Tuesday, found evidence that police made violent late-night raids on peaceful encampments, obstructed independent legal monitors and was opaque about its policies.
The NYPD report is the first of a series to look at how police authorities in five US cities, including Oakland and Boston, have treated the Occupy movement since it began in September 2011. The research concludes that there now is a systematic effort by authorities to suppress protests, even when these are lawful and pose no threat to the public.
Sarah Knuckey, a professor of law at NYU, said: "All the case studies we collected show the police are violating basic rights consistently, and the level of impunity is shocking".
The report says the NYPD was by far the worst offender of all the police departments involved in suppressing Occupy protests:
The NYPD appears to be the worst offender, in large part because it has made little attempt – unlike Oakland, for example – to reassess its practices or open itself up to dialogue or review. The NYPD practices documented in the report include:
• Aggressive, unnecessary and excessive police force against peaceful protesters, bystanders, legal observers, and journalists. This included the use of batons, pepper spray, metal barricades, scooters, and horses.
• Obstruction of press freedoms and independent legal monitoring, including arrests of at least 10 journalists, and multiple cases of preventing journalists from reporting on protests or barring and evicting them from specific sites.
• Pervasive surveillance of peaceful political activity.
• Violent late-night raids on peaceful encampments.
• Unjustified closure of public spaces, dispersal of peaceful assemblies, and trapping of protesters.
• Arbitrary and selective rule enforcement and baseless arrests.
• Failures to ensure transparency about government policies.
• Failures to ensure accountability for those allegedly responsible for abuses.
The report argues that the lack of transparency and accountability is especially troubling because the public does not know whether police actions are guided by specific written policies, or whether they are random or ad hoc.
The NYPD turned down multiple requests to meet the researchers, who say they were keen include the police's point of view in the report. The other four police departments examined for the project all sent representatives to meet researchers. The NYPD did not provide a comment to the Guardian by the time of publication of this article.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced today that he is declaring the American Constitution null and void in the borders of New York City.
Bloomberg, who overturned term limits to run a third time in New York City back in 2009, stated on WOR radio yesterday that "Democracy and freedom are just unworkable these days, they make trying to control people just too damned difficult, and so we have decided to do away with both in New York City."
Bloomberg stated that recent protests over his education policies, his stop-and-frisk policing policies, and food and restaurant regulation policies had sent him over the edge.
"We just can't have people in this city telling the mayor they won't do what he wants," Bloomberg told WOR radio host John Gambling Jr. "This is an oligarchy, John, and people have got to follow the rules and regulations I make, whether they like it or not."
"Except for my friends at Goldman Sachs, of course, " the mayor added with a chuckle. "They can do whatever the hell they want."
Bloomberg's controversial decree, essentially declaring martial law in the city, will take effect this Sunday, June 3 at 12:00 AM.
WOR radio host Gambling, normally a passive interviewer who lets Bloomberg have his say without much pushback, seemed nonplussed by the mayor's decree.
"Mr. Mayor, are you sure you have the power to do this? I'm no constitutional law scholar, but it sounds vaguely unconstitutional."
Bloomberg seemed annoyed with Gambling. "Listen, John, don't fuck with me, okay. I'm telling you, I've had it up to here with people trying my patience and not listening to what I say or doing what I want. I've got my own army in the NYPD, I've got my own General Patton in Commissioner Ray Kelly and I will do whatever the fuck I want when I want to whomever I want and if any NYCLU commie pinko liberal wants to say differently, I will have them orange netted and in a cell so fast it will make their birkenstocks spin off."
Legal experts say that while Bloomberg's decree seems unconstitutional on the face of it, if he uses the veneer of "terrorism" as a reason for declaring martial law within the borders of the city, he just might get away with it.
"It's very disturbing, to tell you the truth," said Jonathan Turley, law professor at George Washington University Law School, "but ever since 9/11, these people in government can pretty much do whatever they want, so long as they say it's to keep us safe from terrorism. I mean, who'd have thought an American president would say he has the legal right to assassinate any American citizen suspected of terrorism at any time in any place? And yet, Obama has done just that. So why shouldn't Bloomberg be able to get away with declaring martial law in New York? It's just the kind of thing the right wing nuts on the Supreme Court will love."
Turley, who was visiting MSNBC studios at 3o Rockefeller Center at the time of his comment, was later arrested by NYPD officers on terrorism charges and is currently being held in a Riker's Island jail cell until he can be transferred to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for questioning.
Three Nato protesters, arrested in a late night raid on Wednesday, have been charged on terrorism-related offences.
Police claim the charges of conspiracy to commit terrorism, providing material support for terrorism and possession of an explosive or incendiary device, are the result of a month-long investigation into a group they believe was making Molotov cocktails. They had already been pulled over by police last week and asked about their protest plans in a stop they posted on YouTube.
Attorneys representing the men say the charges are fabricated and aimed at intimidating activists. "We cannot say enough that we believe that these charges are absolutely … very trumped up charges," said Sarah Gelsomino of the Peoples Law Office. "Clearly in an attempt to continue this intimidation campaign on activists. Charging these people who are here to peacefully protest against Nato for terrorism, when in reality the police have been terrorising activists in Chicago, is absolutely outrageous.
"All three of these guys, interestingly, were in the car about a week ago that was stopped and harassed by the Chicago police department," Gelsomino said. "They then posted that video online in an attempt to expose that police misconduct. Each of those three are now being charged with these crimes. That's as much as we know."
The three men are all in their twenties. Two come from Florida and one from New Hampshire. They were arrested in the Bridgeport area of the City after 11pm on Wednesday. Chicago police dressed in black and armed with battering rams broke down doors in an apartment building, searched the units and then arrested nine protesters for allegedly making or possessing Molotov cocktails. Lawyers say it was just beer-making equipment.
"The city has so far failed to produce any evidence or the search warrant affidavit used in the raid," said Kris Hermes of the National Lawyers Guild.
When police detained the people, they also seized parts of a beer-making kit, including bottles and caps, and a cellphone, Gelsomino said.
"This is the playbook," said Gelsomino. "Shoddy police work. It's a fear campaign."
Indeed it is.
One protester said he had been handcuffed for 18 hours in an "interrogation room" before being released. Others say they were held without being told what they were going to be charged with.
Those of you out there still unconvinced that Barack Obama and Rahm Emanuel and the rest of the so-called Democrats are as dangerous to democracy and humanity as George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld, please take note of these arrests, along with all the drone killings across the world in the name of "freedom," the slaughtered Afghan children who show up in a little paragraph on A6 of the Times every week, the treatment of Bradley Manning, the harassment of whistleblowers by the feds, and all the spying and surveillance Obama is having his people do in order to keep us "safe from terrorism."
You could be the next one arrested for "terrorism" with your beer-making kit and your You Tube videos that expose the police for fascist goons.
There is a devastating article showing the effects of segregation on NYC schools in today's Times.
It's entitled "Why Don't We Have Any White Kids?" and takes a close look at Explore Charter School in Flatbush, or "the prison school" as it is known to its students.
First, here are the numbers on segregation, first city-wide, then at Explore Charter:
In the broad resegregation of the nation’s schools that has transpired over recent decades, New York’s public-school system looms as one of the most segregated. While the city’s public-school population looks diverse — 40.3 percent Hispanic, 32 percent black, 14.9 percent white and 13.7 percent Asian — many of its schools are nothing of the sort.
About 650 of the nearly 1,700 schools in the system have populations that are 70 percent a single race, a New York Times analysis of schools data for the 2009-10 school year found; more than half the city’s schools are at least 90 percent black and Hispanic. Explore Charter is one of them: of the school’s 502 students from kindergarten through eighth grade this school year, 92.7 percent are black, 5.7 percent are Hispanic, and a scattering are of mixed race. None are white or Asian. There is a good deal of cultural diversity, with students, for instance, of Haitian, Guyanese and Nigerian heritage. But not of class. Nearly 80 percent of the students qualify for subsidized lunch, a mark of poverty. The school’s makeup is in line with charter schools nationally, which are over all less integrated than traditional public schools.
At Explore, as at many schools in New York City, children trundle from segregated neighborhoods to segregated schools, living a hermetic reality.
The school’s enrollment is even more racially lopsided than its catchment area. Students are chosen by lottery, with preference given to District 17, its community school district, which encompasses neighborhoods like Flatbush, East Flatbush, Crown Heights and Farragut. Census data for District 17 put the kindergarten-through-eighth-grade population at 75 percent black, 13 percent Hispanic, 12 percent white and 1 percent Asian. But the white students go elsewhere — many to yeshivas or other private schools.
And of course the predominantly white teaching staff imposes strict discipline on their black charges:
Explore students wear uniforms and have a longer school day and year than the students in the other schools in the building, schools with which they have a difficult relationship. A great deal of teaching is done to the state tests, the all-important metric by which schools are largely judged. In the hallway this spring, before the tests, a calendar counted down the days remaining until the next round.
Explore’s academic performance has been inconsistent. Last year, the school got its charter renewed for another five years, and this year, for the first time, three students, including Jahmir, got into specialized high schools. Yet, on Explore’s progress report for the 2010-11 school year, the Education Department gave it a C (after a B the previous year). In student progress, it rated a D.
“We weren’t doing right by our students,” Mr. Ballen said.
In response, a new literacy curriculum was introduced and greater emphasis was put on applauding academic achievement. School walls are emblazoned with motivational signs: “Getting the knowledge to go to college”; “When we graduate ...we are going to be doctors.” Teachers are encouraged to refer to students as “scholars.”
Convinced that student unruliness was impeding learning, the school installed a rigid discipline system. Infractions — for transgressions like calling out without permission, frowning after being given a demerit, being off task — lead to detention for upper-school students. On some days, 50 students land in detention, a quarter of the upper school.
Positive behavior does bring rewards, like making the Respect Corps, which allows a student to wear an honorary T-shirt. Winning an attendance contest can lead to treats for the class or the freedom to wear jeans.
Still, some students have taken to referring to Explore as “the prison school.”
25%-35% of the teaching staff turns over every year.
But one thing remains constant.
65% are white.
Now an integrated school environment doesn't ensure an excellent education for children.
It doesn't ensure that kids will learn racial and ethnic tolerance.
But it does ensure one thing:
When you have an integrated school, you do NOT have a predominantly white teaching staff imposing strict (and sometimes harsh) discipline onto a student body that is overwhelmingly black.
Explain to me how there is a difference between Bloomberg setting up a school system run by white people to "discipline" students of color and a police policy which, in the words of Commissioner Kelly, seeks to "instil the fear in black and Hispanic youth that every time they leave their homes they will feel that they could be stopped"?
Chicago police accused of intimidation as Nato demonstrations planned
Video appears to show officers asking protesters about Nato summit plans, adding that they would 'come looking for' them.
Chicago police have been accused of intimidating protesters ahead of the Nato conference next week.
A video posted to YouTube appears to show officers saying they would "come looking for" protesters after a traffic stop in the city.
Thousands of protesters are expected to gather in Chicago when the city hosts the Nato conference on 20-21 May. Police have been criticised for spending some $1m on riot gear ahead of the demonstrations.
YouTube user NewsPowerTV posted the three-minute video, which it said was "anonymously submitted" on Monday. It said the video showed officers "intimidating and threatening physical violence against protesters arriving in Chicago on May 9th, 2012". The user later posted a 30-minute, unedited, version of the encounter.
In the footage an officer is heard asking: "You guys got something planned for next week?" Before one of the protesters says they are heading to Occupy Chicago.
As the video continues, at the 12-minute mark a man's voice, apparently a police officer, says: "You like that, he knows, see these guys know, '68 … you guys all know '68", in an apparent reference to riots in Chicago during that year's Democratic National Convention, which resulted in more than 500 arrests.
The same voice continues: "What did they say back in '68?"
"A billy club to the fucking skull," another voice responds.
One of the protesters contends that the riots were related to "a race issue", prompting a voice to respond: "Ok, now we'll beat your white ass."
Later in the video, at around the 27-minute mark, an officer says: "Wait for the protest day. Save it up for then."
"We'll see you on Nato," a protester says.
A police officer apparently responds: "We'll come looking for you. Each and every one of you."
Police in Chicago have spent $1m on riot-control equipment in the last few months ahead of next month's Nato summit, which is expected to attract thousands of anti-war protesters.
Protesters from a coalition of organisations including unions, anti-war and Occupy groups are expected to descend on the city. National Nurses United, the largest nurses' union in the US, is providing free buses to Chicago for activists from across the country even as its own plans to demonstrate were vetoed by the city of Chicago on Tuesday.
While protesters insist demonstrations during the Nato conference – the main action is planned for Sunday 20 May – will be peaceful, police appear to be leaving nothing to chance. Records show that since it was announced the Nato conference would be held in Chicago, police have purchased improved riot gear for both officers and horses. Officers are also preparing to use the controversial long-range acoustic device, or LRAD, during the operation.
Chicago police confirmed to the Guardian that they will have a LRAD available at the 20 May protest, "as a means to ensure a consistent message is delivered to large crowds that can be heard over ambient noise".
"This is simply a risk management tool, as the public will receive clear information regarding public safety messages and any orders provided by police," said Chicago police spokeswoman Melissa Stratton.
However while the device can be used simply to transmit voice messages, it also has a "deterrent tone", emitted at a volume which is painful to the human ear and which can be used to disperse crowds.
LRADs have been purchased by the US army and navy, and have also been used in commercial shipping as an attempt to drive away pirates. The device was first used at a protest in the US at the G20 Pittsburgh summit in September 2009, however there are ongoing complaints that its use there caused some people to suffer permanent damage.
Karen Piper, a university lecturer, claims she suffered irreversible hearing damage that day, and is currently bringing a legal case against the city of Pittsburgh. "This is a device that has the capability to inflict permanent hearing loss on people," Piper's lawyer, Vic Walczak, told the Guardian, adding that the device is "more dangerous than a Taser".
"We don't believe it should be used against demonstrators. It should not be used outside the battlefield."
The New York City police department will be forced to defend in court its controversial practice of stopping and questioning hundreds of thousands black and Latino citizens every year against accusations that it amounts to an unconstitutional system of racial profiling.
A federal lawsuit filed by four men who found themselves on the receiving end of the department's so-called stop-and-frisk policy has passed key legal hurdles, and a decision is now awaited on whether the case should be ruled as a class action.
The resulting trial would throw a spotlight on a policy that the city's police commissioner, Ray Kelly, once described as "dubious", and which critics say has resulted in a culture of fear in New York's minority populations.
One New York state senator, Eric Adams, alleges Kelly even told him in 2010 he wanted to "instil the fear in black and Hispanic youth that every time they leave their homes they will feel that they could be stopped".
The number of reported encounters has soared under Kelly and New York mayor Michael Bloomberg. In 2002, NYPD officers recorded 97,296 stop-and-frisks. Nine years later, that figure increased to a record-breaking total of 684,300.
Every year the vast majority of those stopped – generally 85% or more – have been African Americans or Latinos, and about nine out of 10 were released without a charge or a summons. The NYPD says the stop-and-frisk policy has reduced crime; this is disputed by its critics, who say it has increased racial tensions in the city. In one of her rulings, the judge in the federal case said the links are "not clear".
The corporate media have been cheering for a Commissioner Kelly run for mayor in 2013.
I am hoping for one too.
That would give us all an opportunity to take a closer look at this police commissioner who has his boot on the faces of many in the city and the "policing" techniques he utilizes.
Groups backing charter schools, vouchers, merit pay for teachers and limits on teacher tenure plan to unite under a new, statewide supergroup, The Post has learned.
The New York State Education Reform Council will include the new StudentsFirstNY — which has hired away Mayor Bloomberg’s Albany lobbyist — Democrats for Education Reform, and charter-school-advocacy and upstate organizations.
“We’re going up against one of the most powerful interests in Albany,” Democrats for Education Reform Executive Director Joe Williams said, referring to the New York State United Teachers and United Federation of Teachers. “We don’t stand a chance if we’re not aligned and focused.”
“We’re going to have access to a lot of resources that will enable us to counter the resources of those who want to protect a failed status quo,” added Bloomberg lobbyist- turned-StudentsFirstNY-Executive-Director Micah Lasher, who will team with Williams to chair the council.
The umbrella group won’t have its own staff, but Lasher’s and Williams’ organizations are backed by hedge-fund and investment-banking money.
The men said the initial aim is to get the member groups working together on common issues, which the unions claim also include barring teachers from almost any role in shaping curricula or determining working conditions.
Great, just what New York State needs - a "supergroup" funded with blood money from criminals at the investment banks and hedge funds looking to hand out suitcases full of cash to Albany politicians ready and willing to do their bidding.
The education reformers like to depict themselves as underdogs and portray the teachers unions as all-powerful in the machinations of politics, but the reality is, New York State government has been bought and sold by the financial industry, the investment bankers and the hedge fund managers and these guys get whatever it is they want when they want it.
You can bet Bloomberg will put a lot of money into this effort and continue to influence education policy in this state long after he is gone from office - and even long after he is gone from life.
Like the Rockefellers before him, Bloomberg is going to put his personal stamp on an entire century of policy.
And whatever money Bloomberg doesn't pony up, the hedge fund crooks and Wall Street criminals will donate to this malanthropic supergroup .
Fascism and totalitarianism in the 21st century comes from foundations funded by business and corporate interests.
This couldn't be more clear than in this story where a "supergroup" of education reformers funded by some of the scummiest and most evil people on the planet (i.e., Goldman Sachs) promotes an anti-democratic agenda behind the scenes using the blood money expropriated from the 99%.
After a police officer fatally shot an 18-year-old man in his Bronx apartment on Thursday, the man’s grandmother, a witness to the shooting, was taken into custody and held against her will for several hours, a friend of the family said on Saturday.
An officer confronted the man, Ramarley Graham, who was in the bathroom possibly trying to flush some marijuana down the toilet. A moment later, a shot rang out, killing the teenager.
While officers had trailed Mr. Graham to the apartment thinking he was armed, no gun was found, making the grandmother, Patricia Hartley, 58, a critical witness. The shooting is drawing the kind of close scrutiny reminiscent of the killing of Sean Bell, who died in a hail of 50 police bullets in Queens in November 2006.
At this juncture little is known of precisely what Ms. Hartley saw and what of that she has told detectives.
But her treatment by the police in the hours after her grandson was killed could become a sticking point in an investigation that Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said would be presented to a grand jury.
After Mr. Graham was killed, Ms. Hartley was taken to the 47th Precinct station house on Laconia Avenue and held for seven hours, according to Carlton Berkley, a friend of Ms. Hartley’s who said he had retired from the police force as a detective in the 30th Precinct in upper Manhattan. Mr. Berkley added that Ms. Hartley was forced to give a statement about what happened.
“She gave it against her will,” Mr. Berkley said. “She didn’t want to speak to the police.”
Mr. Berkley, speaking on Saturday outside the Graham family home on East 229th Street in Wakefield, said: “We’re going to fight that statement.”
Let's not forget Kelly's voluntary appearance in a film that smears Muslims as terrorists, a film that was shown to cops as part of their training, and Kelly's bragging that he could shoot down a plane over New York City if he wanted to, he's just that powerful.
And let's also not forget that his son is currently under investigation for rape and the NYPD has been working overtime to discredit the alleged victim in the tabloids with anonymous quotes.
But this latest outrage, the murdered teen and the cops holding the grandmother until she gave the statement they wanted her to give, that goes beyond the pale.
It's time for this autocratic commissioner to go.
Frankly after the OWS crackdown, he belongs in jail sharing a cell with Bernie Kerik.
That won't happen, of course, which is a shame.
But even the cops who work for this creep want him gone.
An 85-year-old Long Island grandmother says she plans to sue the TSA after a humiliating strip search on Tuesday by agents at JFK Airport.
Lenore Zimmerman, who lives in Long Beach, says she was on her way to a 1 p.m. flight to Fort Lauderdale when security whisked her to a private room and took off her clothes.
“I walk with a walker — I really look like a terrorist,” she said sarcastically. “I’m tiny. I weigh 110 pounds, 107 without clothes, and I was strip-searched.”
TSA spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said a review of closed circuit TV footage from the airport shows “proper procedures were followed.”
But Zimmerman, whose hunched back puts her at 4-foot-11, said her ordeal began after her son, Bruce, drove her to the JetBlue terminal for the Florida flight. She lives in warm Coconut Creek during the winter.
She checked her bags, waited for a wheelchair and parted ways with her doting son — her only immediate relative.
When Zimmerman reached a security checkpoint, she asked if she could forgo the advanced image technology screening equipment, fearing it might interfere with her defibrillator.
She said she normally gets patted down. But this time, she says that two female agents escorted her to a private room and began to remove her clothes.
“I was outraged,” said Zimmerman, a retired receptionist.
As she tried to lift a lightweight walker off her lap, she says, the metal bars banged against her leg and blood trickled from a gash.
“My sock was soaked with blood,” she said. “I was bleeding like a pig.”
She says the TSA agents showed no sympathy, instead pulling down her pants and asking her to raise her arms.
“Why are you doing this?” she said she asked the agents, who did not respond.
The TSA claims the footage does not show any sign of the injury.
Ms. Zimmerman is lucky the NYPD didn't get - she'd have gotten an orange net thrown around her and been pepper-sprayed too.
This is the new normal in America - more and more security and control by the establishment, and while they nominally say you don't have to submit to it, the people who ask out often pay a price.
Even 85 year old, 110 pound women who are 4 foot 11 and use a walker.
Until Americans finally wake up and say enough with this shit, things are going to get worse and worse.
He's got his own army, a billion dollars of his own money to drop on the campaign, his own media empire to promote his candidacy, and the delusion that an arrogant, prickly, Wall Street-cheering, union-busting, transfat-banning, gun control-promoting New York Jew could win the White House in 2012.
Run, Mike, run!
Can't wait to see him tell the nation that nobody's gonna know where he spends his weekends and anybody who thinks differently can go fuck themselves.
That'll go over swell in Middle America - as will the gun control and the transfat ban.
Oh, and don't forget putting bike lanes on all the major highways across this great land of ours.
People will love that in Iowa.
Maybe you can make Cathie Black your running mate?
Joel Klein Secretary of Education?
Ray Kelly Defense Secretary in charge of killing all those brown people in Pakistan and Afghanistan? Janette Sadik-Khan as Secretary of Transporation?
That's UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi doing the walk of shame past UC Davis students after hiding in her office for three hours after giving a press conference at which she defended her use of armed police to disperse Occupy UC Davis protesters from a tent city they had set up next to an academic building to protest tuition hikes and police brutality at UC Berkeley.
Police, dressed in stormtrooper gear straight out of Star Wars and brandishing machine guns like U.S. soldiers in Baghdad, first destroyed the tent city students had erected, then ordered students to leave the area or face arrest.
Students calmly sat on the ground, arms linked, heads bowed, in civil disobedience of the police order.
Police used batons to try to push the students apart. Those they could separate, they arrested, kneeling on their bodies and pushing their heads into the ground. Those they could not separate, they pepper-sprayed directly in the face, holding these students as they did so. When students covered their eyes with their clothing, police forced open their mouths and pepper-sprayed down their throats. Several of these students were hospitalized. Others are seriously injured. One of them, forty-five minutes after being pepper-sprayed down his throat, was still coughing up blood.
Katehi defended her use of armed police on the campus at a press conference held in an administrative building on the UC Davis campus. Students were not allowed to attend this press conference and gathered outside the building to protest. The Davis Enterprise picks up the story:
UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi remained inside Surge II for nearly three hours Saturday after hundreds of protesters surrounded the building, interrupting her news conference about the pepper-spraying of protesters by campus police the day before.
Protesters showed up minutes after the 4 p.m. conference began. Their voices could be heard within the building.
Many of those who had gathered outside said they believed Katehi did not give the UCD community sufficient notice and that the choice of venue was unfair because it did not permit the general public inside.
“After what happened yesterday, everyone is really, really angry,” said Steve Cox, a UCD graduate student. “It’s kind of unfair for her to hold a press conference in a really small venue with very short notice to try to exclude the student body. We have just as much of a right to be there as anybody and she needs to answer to us.”
The press conference was cut short as a result of the student protest outside, but Katehi refused to leave the building, trying to make it look like students were holding her hostage even though they had cleared a path for her to leave:
The protesters formed lines leading away from the building, leaving a pathway to permit the chancellor’s exit, but the chancellor did not leave immediately following the conference.
“It didn’t seem like we would be allowed to leave,” said Mitchell Benson, assistant vice chancellor for university communications. “There was quite a loud, and I would hazard to say, hostile crowd outside both of the doors of the building and it didn’t seem that she would be able to get out in a safe manner, so she stood put for a couple of hours.”
While protesters chanted outside for, among other things, her resignation, Katehi stayed inside.
“I didn’t have a sense that it was an appropriate atmosphere or an appropriate environment to walk out of the building at that time,” Mitchel continued. “There was no rush to leave.”
Here is a photo of students clearing a path for Katehi and other administrators to leave:
Doesn't look like Katehi is being held hostage by students.
Rather, it looks like she feared to face them on her way out.
And no wonder - when she not only ordered armed police to disperse protesters but even defended their use of force against students in order to keep the campus safe before video surfaced showing very clearly that the students were not aggressive in any way and force didn't need to be used, well, why would she want to walk by them?
She has to know, despite her public refusal to step down or acknowledge that she did anything wrong, that her days are numbered at UC Davis and she has now become one of the faces of brutal repression in modern America.
This atrocity at UC Davis will go down in American history as one of the more egregious examples of Police State Clampdown.
The bravery of the students who endured the pepper-spraying, the restraint the rest of the students showed in the face of this brutal act, indeed, the restraint the students showed outside Katehi's press conference and the breath-taking video of Katehi doing the SILENT WALK OF SHAME by them, it really puts the official state response to the OWS protests into stark contrast with the "official story" that the corporate media has been telling about them.
These are not violent, aggressive criminals that police can only corral by using extreme force.
These are seated students engaged in passive civil disobedience, the kind that Gandhi and Martin Luther King engaged in.
It is very difficult if not impossible for ANYBODY to defend this brutal act or the lack of accountability that Katehi is showing by not immediately resigning in disgrace.
This woman should not only lose her job at UC Davis, she should never be allowed to work in any position connected to young people, or even adults, ever again.
Clearly she has neither the ethics nor the judgment to be in any position of authority.
As for the police, one of the officers who sprayed students has been identified as Lt. John Pike.
There is another officer doing some spraying here, although I have yet to see this one identified.
Others are reported to have held students down while officers pepper sprayed their mouths.
In a day and age when teachers are subject to having their names and teacher data reports published in the newspapers as a way to hold them accountable for performance, I cannot see how the police officers who engage in these brutally repressive acts can remain nameless and faceless behind their THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK helmets and pepper spray fire extinguishers.
And yet, other than the this instance with Lt. Pike and a few other instances, so far they have.
Even in cases where they have been identified, as in the case of Tony Bolonga in NYC, there has been little to no punishment of the police brutality.
Bologna, for instance, lost 10 vacation days and was transferred from Manhattan to Staten Island, where he lives.
Gee, how awful - now he has a shorter commute to work.
The pepper spraying of four women already corralled in orange netting on Broadway, the kettling of hundreds of protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge, the shooting of an Iraq war veteran in Oakland with rubber bullets that put him into a coma, the pepper spraying of an 84 year old woman, the pepper spraying of a pregnant woman, the brutal beatings administered at Zuccotti and the Wall Street area, the police brutality at UC Berkeley and now the atrocity at UC Davis.
This is the official response to the OWS protests.
It won't be long now before there is a Kent State-like atrocity wherein some sadistic police goon opens fire on protesters.
That is unfortunate, but you can see that it is coming.
The police brutality is getting worse with each of these incidents, not better.
They are not being held accountable AT ALL for any of this.
And as Glenn Greenwald has pointed out more than once, they are outfitted with paramilitary equipment, ostensibly to fight terrorism, that they're now itching to use against OWS protesters.
So it goes.
The shame of UC Davis.
The shame of a nation.
Welcome to 2011 America.
Beware the pepper spray, police batons, tear gas and orange netting.
