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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TRUE DEMOCRACY     SPRING 2001     Copyright © 2001 by News Sourse, Inc.