19 items | 1 visits
The effects of empire at home. The domestic costs of imperialism.
Updated on Apr 02, 16
Created on Dec 14, 09
Category: Others
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Tomorrow is Anzac day - whereby an increasing number of people are being fed the lie that thousands of New Zealanders died fighting for freedom and independence. What people forget, is that it was NZ that was invading Turkey. What had Turkey ever done to us? Well, John Minto has written a brilliant and striking riposte in the Press to all the false commemoration of war - especially in terms of Anzac day and the First World War. Minto correctly argues that World War I - like most wars that NZ has been involved in - was fought for control of resources and markets. Instead of dying in a moral fight, the NZ conscripts died on a giant Monopoly board of European struggle for the control of empires, driven by greed, envy and suspicion. Minto also corrects the myth that NZers are a peace-loving people, when in fact our warmongering governments send troops off to fight unjust wars about every 10 years. We should be shamed that NZ is one of the harshest in its treatment of conscientious objectors, and also by the fact that 'In the entire history of human warfare no country has proportionally sent a greater number of troops a greater distance to fight a war than this little country of ours did in 1914.' As Minto says, we should be honouring the dead by demanding 'No more wars'. See also: Matt McCarten's column, Anzac story a sordid tale of world domination and death.
On this ten-year anniversary of September 11, 2001, the media has reported a number of accounts on law enforcement’s broad-based surveillance of Muslim communities in the United States. The New York City Police Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation are being trained to conflate Islam and Muslims with violence and terrorism.
Law enforcement is watching the day-to-day activities of thousands upon thousands of Muslims, with focus on mosques and hookah (waterpipe) bars, Pakistani cab drivers and the devout. Relying on informants, undercover cops, and a vast structure for information-sharing and joint policing, the FBI and NYPD - with assistance from the CIA - are working toward a cartography of Muslim communities.
This mapping is being done in the name of national security. But on what theory?
NEW YORK - The New York Police Department put American citizens under surveillance and scrutinized where they ate, prayed and worked, not because of charges of wrongdoing but because of their ethnicity, according to interviews and documents obtained by The Associated Press.
The documents describe in extraordinary detail a secret program intended to catalog life inside Muslim neighborhoods as people immigrated, got jobs, became citizens and started businesses. The documents undercut the NYPD's claim that its officers only follow leads when investigating terrorism.
It started with one group, Moroccans, but the documents show police intended to build intelligence files on other ethnicities.
Undercover officers snapped photographs of restaurants frequented by Moroccans, including one that was noted for serving "religious Muslims." Police documented where Moroccans bought groceries, which hotels they visited and where they prayed. While visiting an apartment used by new Moroccan immigrants, an officer noted in his reports that he saw two Qurans and a calendar from a nearby mosque.
It was called the Moroccan Initiative.
First Published: 2011-09-08
The Long Life of Profiling, Ten Years After 9/11
A decade ago, there was near universal acknowledgement that profiling was unethical and ineffective. Yet the practice continues, notes Moustafa Bayoumi.
Published: 24 August, 2011
The latest scandal surrounding the New York Police Department suggests that the Big Apple’s boys in blue were targeting Muslims in undercover operations, working outside of their jurisdiction and profiling ethnic communities with aid from the CIA.
<!--RTEditor:genereated--><!--RTEditor textarea-->The NYPD are denying allegations reported by The Associated Press that the Police Department has been sending undercover informants into mosques, minority neighborhoods, hookah bars and other hangouts frequented by Muslims in order to gather intel, despite having no probable cause to suspect crimes were being hatched.
A federal judge overruled a law in 2002 that kept cops from waiting for “specific information” before gathering intelligence, and ever since the NYPD has used this to their advantage to infringe on the constitutional rights of Muslims by spying on them in what is being suggested as an anti-terrorism initiative.
Retired-CIA Chief David Cohen tells the AP that he helped overrule that legislation nearly a decade ago, and with the help of the NYPD installed a “Demographic Unit” within the Police Department. The undercover police officers involved were then sent to houses of worship and other locales in order to get an insight into what followers of Islam were up to. If these “mosque crawlers,” as Cohen calls them, were conducting operations, the surveillance they carried out could be highly illegal.
Cohen tells the AP that it’s no racial profiling, however. He says that in a post-9/11 New York City, measures are necessary to keep another terror attack from taking the city by storm.
Last Wednesday August 24, New York City’s Muslim and Middle Eastern residents experienced yet another low blow. According to an investigative report by the Associated Press, the New York City Police Department (NYPD), with help from the CIA, set up dozens of “surveillance stations” around mosques, bookstores, cafes, nightclubs and hookah bars.
Undercover NYPD officers, called “rakers” were sent into several locations to listen to conversations, in hopes of finding evidence of terrorist activity. There were also “mosque crawlers” who infiltrated mosques and served as informants to the police department.
When among friends, you're far more likely to air your dirty secrets.
A corporate conference held in Houston, Texas, on October 31 to November 1, 2011, titled "Giving Communications Professionals At Unconventional Oil & Gas Companies The Tools To Design A Comprehensive Media & Stakeholder Relations Strategy For Engaging The Public On A Positive Image For The Industry" provides perfect evidence of this.
The goal at the conference was a simple one: communications professionals in the natural gas industry sharing with one another the optimal communications strategies and tools to fight back against media and community opposition to what is inherently a toxic product, natural gas.
Natural gas, obtained through the hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking" process, was brought into the limelight by the Academy Award-nominated documentary film "Gasland," directed by Josh Fox.
19 items | 1 visits
The effects of empire at home. The domestic costs of imperialism.
Updated on Apr 02, 16
Created on Dec 14, 09
Category: Others
URL: