TRUE DEMOCRACY SPRING 2001 TABLE OF CONTENTS
POLICE BRUTALITY
Crime Surge in Giuliani's Police State
by Robert Lederman
He's world famous for eliminating crime in NYC. Is Rudy Giuliani's
reputation in any way justified?
Try asking the victims of the latest rash of shootings, stabbings,
bias attacks and sexual assaults on NYC's supposedly safer streets. Despite
a decade long nationwide trend of falling crime statistics murder, rape and
bias crimes are up in NYC like nowhere else.
This past Sunday June 11, 2000 alone, at least two men were killed
in shootings, one man was stabbed to death and another 28 people were
wounded in 18 separate incidents that took place in such economically,
racially and ethnically disparate locations as Brighton Beach[Brooklyn],
Atlantic Avenue[Brooklyn] and Harlem. On the same day at least four women
were stripped naked and sexually attacked by a gang of youths in broad
daylight on Central Park South[Manhattan], possibly the most elite and
protected block in all of NYC. From Friday night through Sunday, the NYPD
recorded at least 40 separate attacks in which 59 people were shot or
stabbed. So far, six victims have died.
Where was the Mayor's world famous army of 40,000 "highly-trained"
cops armed with 9mm guns and hollowpoint bullets during all the mayhem?
Perhaps they were busy racking up the kind of fake crime statistics Giuliani
has used to create his reputation-hundreds of thousands of arrests for
marijuana possession, fare-beating, homelessness, vending and protesting
against his repressive policies.
It's not that the police aren't out there. There's not a subway
station in the City without its crack team of anywhere from two to twenty
undercover police officers staking out the turnstiles for low-income New
Yorkers trying to beat the administration out of $1.50.
Hardly a day goes by when I don't come across an immigrant vendor in
handcuffs while a team of plainclothes cops on overtime confiscate and bag
up their merchandise. As if those arrests weren't useless enough, Giuliani
has now decided that smoking cigarettes and standing over the yellow line in
subway stations are additional crimes deserving his special attention.
As we all know smoking cigarettes, like smoking marijuana, leads to more
serious crimes.
While murder is up in NYC, the Mayor's focus is as always on the
lowest level misdemeanors. He's promoting a devilishly clever plan whereby
three misdemeanor convictions automatically become the equivalent of a
felony conviction. Three felony convictions make one eligible for a life
sentence in prison.
Will the Mayor's plan take any real criminals off the streets? That
no one can predict but one thing is certain-the average homeless person or
street vendor living under Giuliani's "beneficent" dictatorship manages to
acquire enough misdemeanor arrests in a year to end up doing life under the
Giuliani plan. As someone Jailiani has had arrested 41 times on misdemeanor
charges I'd be qualified for at least four concurrent life sentences.
Luckily for me, I've never pled guilty or been convicted, otherwise my
address would already begin with a prisoner ID number.
It's not the City's police officers that are to blame for this
stupidity. They are on the street each day busily writing parking tickets,
handcuffing hookers and their tricks and searching for any squeegee guys
trying to make a comeback.
As two undercover cops on stakeout that I approached the other day
in a Brooklyn subway station pointed out, it's the Mayor who sets the
priorities that they are ordered to enforce. Commenting on Giuliani's
proposal to have people arrested for standing over the yellow line on subway
platforms, the officers laughingly said, "We'd have to arrest half the
population of New York".
Give him time. With 18 months left in office, Giuliani may still manage
to have every person in NYC arrested before he leaves office. Say hello if
we end up in the same holding cell.
Just in case you didn't believe my past essays claiming that the
CIA-sponsored Manhattan Institute was exerting a huge and insidious
influence on policy decisions both in New York City and across the nation
the NY Times has just come out with an article that sums it all up in one
unambiguous sentence.
NY Times June 12, 2000
Bush Culls Campaign Theme From Conservative Thinkers "Gov. George W. Bush
has said his political views have been shaped by the work of Myron Magnet of
the Manhattan Institute."
The article goes on to mention a number of other "thinkers" who are
on GW's list of the "best minds" that he has promised to surround himself
with if appointed, I mean elected, President by Corporate America. The
article doesn't bother to mention the fact at least three of them, James
Wilson author of Fixing Broken Windows-the book responsible for Giuliani's
phony quality of life arrest policy-Stephen Goldsmith (Bush's chief policy
advisor) and John J. DiIulio, Jr., are also closely associated with the
Manhattan Institute. Magnet, Goldsmith and DiIulio are listed on the MI
webpage as among their resident scholars.
Now that Giuliani, the Manhattan Institute's poster-boy for the
coming Police State, has disgraced himself by dumping his wife and has
alienated the entire Republican party by his fake Senate campaign, the
Institute is putting all its Fourth Reich eggs in the Bush basket.
When you read about or watch on television the carefully
orchestrated efforts to depict dimwitted, cocaine snorting party animal GW
Bush as compassionate, don't forget that the Manhattan Institute was founded
by William Casey, who became the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency
immediately afterwards. For its entire history the CIA's main job has been
to use propaganda to create the illusion that Fascists, ex-Nazis, drug
dealers and genocidal far right dictators are actually patriotic freedom
fighters, compassionately struggling to make the world a kinder, gentler
place.
The alleged religious convictions of these men are often highlighted
as Bush's are in the NY Times article and as Giuliani's have often been,
despite the fact that the Mayor has not attended a single church service
other than for political reasons during his administration. If arresting
innocent people and presiding over executions makes one compassionate and
religious, then these two are truly the spiritual heart of a new America.
Come to think of it, during the Inquisition, arresting people and executing
them was the proof of religious conviction.
As a perfect example of how propaganda is used to deceive people
into supporting things that are diametrically opposed to their own best
interests-like the five decade-long CIA inspired Cold War-just examine the
entire DNA issue that Bush is suddenly the leading proponent of. While I
fully support the idea that any person accused of a crime should be allowed
to use DNA technology to prove innocence or appeal their convictions, let's
not imagine that Bush or the other political leaders behind this "movement"
have the public's interests at heart.
Once routine DNA testing for those accused of crimes becomes the
standard, it will be no time at all before DNA sampling for everyone is
required by law, something Giuliani has already publicly advocated [see:N.Y.
Times 12/17/98 "Giuliani Backs DNA Testing of Newborns for Identification"].
Under the guise of exonerating innocent people who stand accused of crimes
we will all soon become part of a nationwide DNA database.
Such a database will lead to widespread genetic profiling affecting
our jobs, educational opportunities, access to health care and parental
rights. Ultimately it will lead to people becoming suspects, receiving harsh
sentences and even being convicted of crimes based on their DNA showing a
propensity for criminal activity.
Sound far fetched? Among the Manhattan Institute's most cherished
ideas is that crime has a genetic basis, an idea that's fundamental to the
racist Eugenics theories espoused by many of the Manhattan Institute's past
and present thinkers. On their website http://www.manhattan-institute.org/
you'll find a number of essays extolling the virtues of DNA testing. Under
the guise of fighting crime Bush, Giuliani and the Manhattan Institute are
helping usher in a technologically advanced Eugenics-inspired Police State
that will rob us of our most basic rights while pretending to give us
quality of life.
The coming election may be a first.[This article was written last year.]
We'll get to chose between two Hitler admirers (GW Bush's family were among
Hitler's biggest American accomplices during WWII operating banks and
shipping concerns that helped finance the Third Reich; Buchanan has publicly
admired Hitler), and Gore, a corporate stooge working for the same U.S.
companies whose support put Hitler in the position to almost accomplish
world domination.
The media keeps emphasizing skinheads as a threat while never mentioning
the Bush family history, yet another example of propaganda meant to divert
attention from the real Nazi threat in the White House, the U.S. Congress
and from "think tanks" like the Manhattan Institute.
Robert Lederman is an artist, a regular columnist for the
Greenwich Village Gazette [See: http://www.gvny.com/. For an
extensive archive of Lederman columns] The Shadow,
The Vigo-Examiner
[see: http://www.vigo-examiner.com/archive.htm] and Street
News, and is the author of hundreds of published essays
concerning Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. His essays and letters
have appeared in the NY Times, NY Post, Daily News,
Newsday, Brooklyn Bridge, Park Slope Courier, The Daily
Challenge, Amsterdam News, Sandbox, Penthouse, Our Town,
NY Press and are available on hundreds of websites around the
world. Lederman has been falsely arrested 41 times to date for
his anti-Giuliani activities and has never been convicted of any
of the charges. He is best known for creating hundreds of
paintings of Mayor Giuliani as a Hitler like dictator.
Robert Lederman, President of A.R.T.I.S.T.
(Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics)
ARTISTpres@aol.com (718) 743-3722
http://www.openair.org/alerts/artist/nyc.html
Also see: http://www.levymultimedia.com
[For essays and notes on pesticides scroll down to and click on
Lederman archive link or go to
http://www.levymultimedia.com/lederman/index.htm]
http://www.american-politics.com/101299Lederman.html
http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/district-court.html
http://www.mindspring.com/%7Etheremin/fooliani/index.html
Eds' note: Crime will always exist but Giulian's method of trying to control
crime is not only ineffective but it is disengenuous because he is not
interested in controlling crime, he is perpetuating the goals of the elite
in imprisoning people of color at a far higher disappropriate percentage so
these human beings will be desposed of and using New Yorkers' taxes to do
it.
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