NYPD Occupying Liberty Square; Demands Unclear

fuckyeahmarxismleninism:

New York, NY — The NYPD have been occupying Liberty Square since 1:00am Tuesday morning, with the brand new occupation now set to enter its second day in just a few short hours. But will anyone listen to them when their message is so incoherent?

“What are their demands?” asked social historian Patrick Bruner. “They have not articulated any platform. How do they expect to be taken seriously?”

Critics of the new occupation allege that meddling billionaire Michael Bloomberg is behind the movement. Others question the new occupiers’ militant posture, concerned about the potential effects on the neighborhood.

“I suppose they have a right to express themselves,” said local resident Han Shan. “But I’d prefer it if instead they occupied the space with the power of their arguments.”

ABOVE: a rogue NYPD affinity group occupying the NY Stock Exchange

With CIA help, NYPD moves covertly in Muslim areas

fuckyeahmarxismleninism:

A months-long investigation by The Associated Press has revealed that the NYPD operates far outside its borders and targets ethnic communities in ways that would run afoul of civil liberties rules if practiced by the federal government. And it does so with unprecedented help from the CIA in a partnership that has blurred the bright line between foreign and domestic spying.

Neither the city council, which finances the department, nor the federal government, which contributes hundreds of millions of dollars each year, is told exactly what’s going on.

The department has dispatched teams of undercover officers, known as “rakers,” into minority neighborhoods as part of a human mapping program, according to officials directly involved in the program. They’ve monitored daily life in bookstores, bars, cafes and nightclubs. Police have also used informants, known as “mosque crawlers,” to monitor sermons, even when there’s no evidence of wrongdoing. NYPD officials have scrutinized imams and gathered intelligence on cab drivers and food cart vendors, jobs often done by Muslims.

Many of these operations were built with help from the CIA, which is prohibited from spying on Americans but was instrumental in transforming the NYPD’s intelligence unit.

Federal government isn't touching Arkansas terrorism case

fuckyeahmarxismleninism:

Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad insists he is an Islamic radical, has confessed to killing an Army soldier and wounding another at a Little Rock recruiting station two years ago, and wants to be tried on terrorism charges in federal court.

But in an unusual twist, state prosecutors, with the blessing of the federal government, are treating him like a common American criminal and trying him in state court next week on capital murder charges.

Either way, Muhammad could become the first person sentenced to death in the U.S. for an act of terrorism — even if that is not the charge — since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Melvin Bledsoe, who runs a Memphis tour bus company, said he learned of his son’s incarceration in Yemen from a Tennessee FBI agent who interviewed Muhammad while he was in jail there. But that was the last Bledsoe heard from the FBI. And he believes that gets at the explanation behind the federal government’s strange lack of interest in trying his son.

Bledsoe charges that federal officials deferred to state prosecutors because they feared a federal trial would make them look bad — because they knew his son was a radicalized Muslim and yet did not watch him when he returned to the United States.

“They should have done their job and this never would have happened,” Bledsoe said. “I think that somebody in the federal government and the FBI should be charged with negligence. Negligent homicide.”

Bledsoe’s son has a different explanation for why he is not being charged as a terrorist.

Muhammad has written jailhouse letters to Pulaski County Judge Herbert Wright demanding a federal trial. “In my eyes it’s a sham trial [in Little Rock] set up only to make sure I’m handed down a death sentence,” he wrote May 10.

Ten days later, he wrote again: “The facility where the shooting took place was a federal building. The army recruiters outside that federal building were federal employees. I was under federal investigation at the time of the shooting by the FBI. Why then is this a state case in state court, which the state seeks my execution? Injustice!”

To some outside legal experts, both father and son make valid points.

This could create some interesting problematic precedents for the future…