NYPD:  Shredding the Constitution

James Zogby

President, Arab American Institute; author, 'Arab Voices'

osted: 03/17/2012 11:47 am

The massive surveillance program implemented by the New York City Police Department (NYPD) in coordination with CIA officials is shredding the Constitution, putting at risk the rights and freedoms of Arab Americans and American Muslims. If left unchecked, their behavior will weaken the foundations of our democracy and seriously compromise our values as an open and inclusive society.

Revelations by the Associated Press have established that the NYPD, working with a few CIA officials, has been monitoring Arab and Muslim-owned businesses, mosques, and "mapping" areas of the city where high concentrations of Muslims and Arab immigrants are known to live.

In order to accomplish these objectives, the NYPD has coerced and entrapped Muslims to act as spies.

In one instance, the police scoured records of taxi drivers looking for those who had unpaid tickets and other violations. Those who also had immigration status issues were given the option of acting as spies or facing possible deportation. Once turned into informants, they were then asked to go to popular gathering places (coffee shops, stores, etc.), attend religious services, and other community events in order to report on who was present and what was said. This material has been entered into extensive surveillance files, even when the activities attended and the words spoken have been innocent and protected by the First Amendment.

The reports which have been compiled and are categorized as "SECRET" are, at best, trite. At the same time, they are dangerous, since they represent ethnic profiling at its worst and an extension of the long arm of the state into the normal everyday activity of an entire community.

One report, for example, on "Egyptian Locations of Interest" purports to map "centers of activity" or "hangouts" for Egyptian Americans that can be used as "listening posts" where informants can go to "listen to neighborhood gossip...[and] get a feel for the community." The report goes on to present a demographic profile of where persons of Egyptian descent live in New York City and describes, with pictures attached, all of the restaurants and other businesses where Egyptians and other Arab immigrants to the city congregate or shop. [There is another similar report on "Syrian Locations of Concern" which includes such noteworthy information about a travel agency as -- "Observed a female named 'Rasha' working in the travel agency, she recommended the 'Royal Jordanian Airline.'"]

While it is expected that law enforcement should be on guard and should be proactive in countering potential threats, as Attorney General Eric Holder has said, police should only monitor activity "when there is a basis to believe that something inappropriate is occurring or potentially could occur." The "SECRET" reports on the Egyptian, Syrian, Palestinian, and Shi'a Muslim communities which have been leaked and released by the AP clearly violate Holder's criterion.

As disturbing as this behavior has been, is outright denial by New York officials that anything untoward has occurred and the public's apparent tolerance for these flagrant violations of rights. Despite clear evidence to the contrary, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly claims that "the value we place on privacy rights and constitutional protections is part of what motivates the work of counterterrorism. It would be counterproductive in the extreme if we violated those freedoms in the course of our work to defend New York." For his part, Mayor Michael Bloomberg denies that any profiling is involved saying "we don't stop to think about religion. We stop to think about the threats and focus our efforts there," ignoring the statements in the beginning of each of the "SECRET" reports that they are targeting specific ethnic and religious communities. Finally, a recent poll of residents of the City concluded that "New Yorkers brush aside the gripes about police surveillance of the Muslim community."

In addition to the violations of the fundamental and guaranteed rights of citizens to be free of intrusive government surveillance as they go about their normal everyday activity, there are other troubling issues that must be noted. First and foremost is the fear and suspicion generated by this behavior. As a result of this NYPD/CIA program, Arab and Muslim immigrants have become increasingly fearful of law enforcement. Trust has been broken. And trust between the community and the police is the key to any successful crime prevention strategy. Another by-product of this effort is the suspicion it has created about the community, reinforcing prejudice and negative perceptions. Some might say "if the police think that they are all a threat, they must be."

It must also be pointed out, especially after reviewing the "reports" what an enormous waste of resources this has all been. Not only has it alienated the community from the police, it has also expended countless hours of valuable labor to produce files and reports that are of no value. In fact, it can safely be said, that the net result of all this work has been of zero benefit to the effort to keep New York safe.

I have long argued that Arabs and Muslims were the weak link in America's civil liberty chain. When the rights of vulnerable minority groups are threatened, we recognize the need to demand a halt to abuse, because we have learned that when the rights of any group are compromised, the rights of all are at risk. It is worrisome that in the post-9/11 era the challenge to constitutional rights has all too often been met with silence -- because it was Arabs and Muslims who were the targets. What we have failed to recognize is that if the rights to assemble, to speak freely, to be secure from unwarranted search, to due process, and more are put at risk by the NYPD and CIA in New York, then these rights may ultimately be threatened for all Americans.

http://www.aaiusa.org/dr-zogby/entry/nypd-shredding-the-constitution/
Dr. James J. Zogby is the author of "Arab Voices: What They Are Saying to Us, and Why it Matters" (Palgrave Macmillan, October 2010) and the founder and president of the Arab American Institute (AAI), a Washington, D.C.-based organization which serves as the political and policy research arm of the Arab American-community.

 

Follow James Zogby on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/AAIUSA

Fox News says: Obama criminalizes dissent. WATCH

URGENT! OBAMA Signs Anti-Protest Bill - FREE SPEECH & Protest will get you JAIL TIME!

The First Amendment to the Constitution prohibits the government from infringing upon the freedom of speech, the freedom of association and the freedom to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Speech is language and other forms of expression; and association and petition connote physical presence in reasonable proximity to those of like mind and to government officials, so as to make your opinions known to them.

The Declaration of Independence recognizes all three freedoms as stemming from our humanity. So, what happens if you can speak freely, but the government officials at whom your speech is aimed refuse to hear you? And what happens if your right to associate and to petition the government is confined to areas where those of like mind and the government are not present? This is coming to a street corner near you.

Certain rights, like thought and privacy and travel, can be exercised on their own. You don't need the government to cooperate with you; you just need to be left alone. Other rights, like those intended to influence the political process, require that the government not resist your exercise of them. Remember the old one-liner from Philosophy 101: If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there, does it make any noise? Here's the contemporary version of that: If you can criticize the government, but it refuses to hear you, does your exercise of the freedom of speech have any value?

When the framers of the Constitution wrote the First Amendment, they lived in a society in which anyone could walk up to George Washington or John Adams or Thomas Jefferson on a public street and say directly to them whatever one wished. They never dreamed of a regal-like force of armed agents keeping public officials away from the public, as we have today. And they never imagined that it could be a felony for anyone to congregate in public within earshot or eyesight of certain government officials. And yet, today in America, it is.

Last week, President Obama signed into law the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011. This law permits Secret Service agents to designate any place they wish as a place where free speech, association and petition of the government are prohibited. And it permits the Secret Service to make these determinations based on the content of speech.

Thus, federal agents whose work is to protect public officials and their friends may prohibit the speech and the gatherings of folks who disagree with those officials or permit the speech and the gatherings of those who would praise them, even though the First Amendment condemns content-based speech discrimination by the government. The new law also provides that anyone who gathers in a "restricted" area may be prosecuted. And because the statute does not require the government to prove intent, a person accidentally in a restricted area can be charged and prosecuted, as well.

Permitting people to express publicly their opinions to the president only at a time and in a place and manner such that he cannot hear them violates the First Amendment because it guarantees the right to useful speech; and unheard political speech is politically useless. The same may be said of the rights to associate and to petition. If peaceful public assembly and public expression of political demands on the government can be restricted to places where government officials cannot be confronted, then those rights, too, have been neutered.

Political speech is in the highest category of protected speech. This is not about drowning out the president in the Oval Office. This is about letting him know what we think of his work when he leaves the White House. This is speech intended to influence the political process.

tags: free speech news 2012 bill obama protest hr347 arrest charges secret service felony year in jail 1st amendment president congress no zones ban right to we the people judge andrew napolitano fox 829speedy human rights alex jones infowars protection civil liberty vote ron paul

Time for an Economic Bill of Rights: Ellen Brown

Time for an Economic Bill of Rights

Posted on November 12, 2011 by Ellen Brown 

 

Henry Ford said, “It is well enough that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”

We are beginning to understand, and Occupy Wall Street looks like the beginning of the revolution. 

We are beginning to understand that our money is created, not by the government, but by banks.  Many authorities have confirmed this, including the Federal Reserve itself.  The only money the government creates today are coins, which compose less than one ten-thousandth of the money supply.  Federal Reserve Notes, or dollar bills, are issued by Federal Reserve Banks, all twelve of which are owned by the private banks in their district.  Most of our money comes into circulation as bank loans, and it comes with an interest charge attached. 

According to Margrit Kennedy, a German researcher who has studied this issue extensively, interest now composes 40% of the cost of everything we buy.  We don’t see it on the sales slips, but interest is exacted at every stage of production.  Suppliers need to take out loans to pay for labor and materials, before they have a product to sell.

For government projects, Kennedy found that the average cost of interest is 50%.  If the government owned the banks, it could keep the interest and get these projects at half price.  That means governments—state and federal—could double the number of projects they could afford, without costing the taxpayers a single penny more than we are paying now. 

This opens up exciting possibilities.  Federal and state governments could fund all sorts of things we think we can’t afford now, simply by owning their own banks.  They could fund something Franklin D. Roosevelt and Martin Luther King dreamt of—an Economic Bill of Rights. 

A Vision for Tomorrow

In his first inaugural address in 1933, Roosevelt criticized the sort of near-sighted Wall Street greed that precipitated the Great Depression.  He said, “They only know the rules of a generation of self-seekers.  They have no vision, and where there is no vision the people perish.” 

Roosevelt’s own vision reached its sharpest focus in 1944, when he called for a Second Bill of Rights.  He said:

This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights . . . . They were our rights to life and liberty.

As our nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.

He then enumerated the economic rights he thought needed to be added to the Bill of Rights.  They included:

The right to a job;
The right to earn enough to pay for food and clothing;
The right of businessmen to be free of unfair competition and domination by monopolies;
The right to a decent home;
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
The right to a good education.

Times have changed since the first Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution in 1791.  When the country was founded, people could stake out some land, build a house on it, farm it, and be self-sufficient.  The Great Depression saw people turned out of their homes and living in the streets—a phenomenon we are seeing again today.  Few people now own their own homes.  Even if you have signed a mortgage, you will be in debt peonage to the bank for 30 years or so before you can claim the home as your own. 

Health needs have changed too.  In 1791, foods were natural and nutrient-rich, and outdoor exercise was built into the lifestyle.  Degenerative diseases such as cancer and heart disease were rare.  Today, health insurance for some people can cost as much as rent. 

Then there are college loans, which collectively now exceed a trillion dollars, more even than credit card debt.  Students are coming out of universities not just without jobs but carrying a debt of $20,000 or so on their backs.  For medical students and other post-graduate students, it can be $100,000 or more.  Again, that’s as much as a mortgage, with no house to show for it.  The justification for incurring these debts was supposed to be that the students would get better jobs when they graduated, but now jobs are scarce.

After World War II, the G.I. Bill provided returning servicemen with free college tuition, as well as cheap home loans and business loans.  It was called “the G.I. Bill of Rights.”  Studies have shown that the G.I. Bill paid for itself seven times over and is one of the most lucrative investments the government ever made. 

The government could do that again—without increasing taxes or the federal debt.  It could do it by recovering the power to create money from Wall Street and the financial services industry, which now claim a whopping 40% of everything we buy.

An Updated Constitution for a New Millennium

Banks acquired the power to create money by default, when Congress declined to claim it at the Constitutional Convention in 1787.  The Constitution says only that “Congress shall have the power to coin money [and] regulate the power thereof.”  The Founders left out not just paper money but checkbook money, credit card money, money market funds, and other forms of exchange that make up the money supply today.  All of them are created by private financial institutions, and they all come into the economy as loans with interest attached. 

Governments—state and federal—could bypass the interest tab by setting up their own publicly-owned banks.  Banking would become a public utility, a tool for promoting productivity and trade rather than for extracting wealth from the debtor class.

Congress could go further: it could reclaim the power to issue money from the banks and fund its budget directly.  It could do this, in fact, without changing any laws.  Congress is empowered to “coin money,” and the Constitution sets no limit on the face amount of the coins.  Congress could issue a few one-trillion dollar coins, deposit them in an account, and start writing checks.    

The Fed’s own figures show that the money supply has shrunk by $3 trillion since 2008.  That sum could be spent into the economy without inflating prices.  Three trillion dollars could go a long way toward providing the jobs and social services necessary to fulfill an Economic Bill of Rights.  Guaranteeing employment to anyone willing and able to work would increase GDP, allowing the money supply to expand even further without inflating prices, since supply and demand would increase together. 

Modernizing the Bill of Rights

As Bob Dylan said, “The times they are a’changin’.”  Revolutionary times call for revolutionary solutions and an updated social contract.  Apple and Microsoft update their programs every year.  We are trying to fit a highly complex modern monetary scheme into a constitutional framework that is 200 years old. 

After President Roosevelt died in 1945, his vision for an Economic Bill of Rights was kept alive by Martin Luther King.  “True compassion,” King declared, “is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.” 

MLK too has now passed away, but his vision has been carried on by a variety of money reform groups.  The government as “employer of last resort,” guaranteeing a living wage to anyone who wants to work, is a basic platform of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).  An MMT website declares that by “[e]nding the enormous unearned profits acquired by the means of the privatization of our sovereign currency. . . [i]t is possible to have truly full employment without causing inflation.”  

What was sufficient for a simple agrarian economy does not provide an adequate framework for freedom and democracy today.  We need an Economic Bill of Rights, and we need to end the privatization of the national currency.  Only when the privilege of creating the national money supply is returned to the people can we have a government that is truly of the people, by the people and for the people.

——————

Ellen Brown is an attorney and president of the Public Banking Institute, http://PublicBankingInstitute.org.  In Web of Debt, her latest of eleven books, she shows how a private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back.  Her websites are http://WebofDebt.com and http://EllenBrown.com.

RANT OF THE DAY: TO MSNBC, love US Uncut MN

We, the real 99% of people, versus the 0.01% who rule this country.  THEY have stolen not only our money but our civil rights. It grows worse by the day, as any self-respecting politician running for office who cares about social justice cannot get the money TO run OR they find that the right wing money (esp. via the K-K-K-Kochs and K-K-K-Karl Rove) moves in to revile them.

WE HAVE LOST TOO MUCH - hopes, dreams, rights, the social safety net is unravelled.   In the street, we are all EQUAL and there is no "glass ceiling."

Why doesn't MSNBC talk about the People's Assembly?  Why doesn't it mention how many states are organizing support occupations?  OccupyMN, OccupyLA, occupyChicago, OccupySF, etc. Why doesn't it mention how much caring social media is at work?  Why can't it realize that it is a multifaceted story with legs?  I'll tell you something - our local Fox News outlet does better reporting than MSNBC, by a loooong shot, too.

I do a paper.li paper on US Days of Rage Minnesota Daily.  Folks, take a look at it. Watch the videos that are posted.  Read the articles.  Decide which is more Important - People or Profit$?  Fooling one's self that oppy is just around the corner OR sticking up for yourself and your loved ones?

We are all sick of Grover Norquist, the American Legislative Exchange Council (Kochs, too), graft, corruption, #austerity, high co$t$ of higher education, fear mongering, endless war$, escalating poverty, privatization of prisons/executions, bailouts, sociali$m for the rich, voter fraud, gutting of the EPA, consumerISM, rampant individualISM and "optimism", voodoo economics, xenophobia/ Islamaphobia, WAR CRIMES, torture, campaign RHETORIC,  tax loopholes, offshoring, corporations holding trillions of dollar$ in asset$ as a liquidity hedge, hedge fund$, the Federal Reserve Bank, the Chamber of Commerce, the Supreme Court 5, Tim Greithner, the hahaha Super committee which is a junta of 13, laws against umbrellas and masks in NYC, Big Pharma, GMO frankenfood, hydrofracking, the teabagger stoopidity, Citizens United, imperialISM, racISM, sexISM, homophobiak, child abuse and BAD JOURNALISM - a bought off media.  The three legs of FASCISM;  military, money, MEDIA.
What did happened to Cenk anyway?  We hate insiders in the Beltway, btw.  We LOVE Cenk who exposes Wall Street CRIME and CRIMINALS.

There's more to come . You can bet on it. As in Tunisia, Egypt and other places - Revolution 2.0 will be tweeted, "liked" and shared.  We will win.

Shared at this link:
http://world-news.newsvine.com/_news/2011/09/24/7945486-80-arrested-at-occupy-wall-street-protest?pc=25&sp=50&threadId=3230346#discussion_nav  Page 3

The Uptake's request for coverage from us all

http://bit.ly/fY86np
Hello Virginia,

Can you pass this along to the other state organizers of US Uncut?

We're covering the tax fairness/middle class/workers' rights story that US UnCut's actions are part of.

We're trying to collect video from as many of the 50 states tomorrow with your actions so it can be seen on our site as well as Free Speech TV, Grit TV, Mother Jones and other members of the Media Consortium.

We've set up a way for people to easily send video of your events to us.
http://theuptake.org/actions/send-us-a-video/

If you could pass along this information to attendees, we can help them become the media.

Michael McIntee
Executive Producer
The UpTake
(651) 261-2272
michael.mcintee@theuptake.org
www.theuptake.org