<nettime> Tourists and Terrorists: Guiliani 2000

[eon_infowar <eon@infowar.net>]

Subject:     Tourists and Terrorists: Giuliani 2000
Sent:        12/22/1919 1:35 AM
Received:    12/27/1999 1:08 PM
From:        ARTISTpres@aol.com


Tourists and Terrorists: Giuliani 2000
By Robert Lederman

According to Mayor Rudolph Giuliani Times Square on New
Yearís Eve is the safest place to be in all of New York City
with midtown Manhattan locked down like a giant maximum
security Federal penitentiary. 

Aptly named project Archangel, Mayor Darksidesí ominous
security plans include having his imperial troops, eight
thousand uniformed cops, stand guard duty in Times Square
backed up by hundreds of FBI agents, private security guards
and operatives from other Federal agencies. The remainder of
the Cityís 40,000 uniformed police officers will take time out
from their Christmas assignment of rounding up and arresting
homeless families to diligently search the subway tunnels and
streets of New York City for potential terrorists and Giuliani
critics. 

Roofs in Times Square will be manned by crack teams of
police snipers with night vision scopes mounted on their
high-powered rifles. Every parked car in a mile long three
block wide strip of midtown will be towed to prevent the
deployment of car bombs. The party-going public will be
herded cattle-like through an endless maze of police barricades
and metal detectors and treated to body searches in below zero
temperatures. Many attendees are expected to be arrested on
the way to the event simply for possessing alcohol, a substance
zero-tolerance Giuliani believes often leads to terroristic
anti-social acts such as dancing, solicitation of prostitutes and
public urination.

Manhole covers will be welded shut. Mailboxes will be sealed.
Every garbage can in midtown will be removed. Hundreds of
undercover police officers will be circulating through the
partying crowd disguised as tourists. As they do in Washington
Square Park with marijuana sales officers will run sting
operations, in this case offering to sell high school kids
everything they need to make their own New Yearís bomb and
then busting them as ìterroristsî. For the past few weeks the
NYPD has been bribing hundreds of informants in order to get
them to report threatening comments theyíve overheard from
drunks bragging in neighborhood bars or the thinly-veiled
threats of community activists.

Are the enormous expenses of this event and itís
unprecedented and ultimately futile security precautions worth
the economic and social cost to the taxpayers of New York
City? This is not a Presidential inauguration, the signing of an
international peace treaty or anything of genuine public value
that justifies either the cost or the risks involved. This once
stirring celebration of diversity and democracy has been
reduced to nothing more than a slick ad for Disney, the Times
Square Business Improvement District and the Giuliani for
U.S. Senate campaign. 

Watching the ball drop on New Yearís Eve was once an
authentic celebration by actual New Yorkers who traveled by
subway from ethnic neighborhoods in all five boroughs. They
came to share a collective experience in the center of a real
city. Giulianiís ersatz ìpartyî is closer to Hitlerís 1937
Olympics celebration than the New Yearís event which became
a symbolic celebration of freedom renowned throughout the
world.  

Giuliani isnít celebrating a New Year so much as his cleansing
of New Yorkers and authentic New York culture from Times
Square. The hotdog stands, shoeshine parlors, peep shows,
all-night movie theaters, hookers, hustlers and gritty texture of
a flesh and blood city have been replaced by a sterilized
Mickey Mouse mall every square inch of which has been
tagged with mind-boggling fluorescent graffiti.  This corporate
freakshow on steroids is prowled by an army of black
uniformed cops whose sole mission is to protect tourists from
low income New Yorkers and to uphold the real estate values
of Giulianiís top contributors. 

Aside from terrorists, virtually all of the two million
participants expected to be in Times Square this New Years
Eve will be tourists. No sane New Yorker would venture
anywhere near midtown as Giuliani pulls the lever on his
Police State 2000.

The idea that Adolf Giulianiís army of poorly trained and
underpaid cops, who are known to despise Furhrer Giuliani,
can somehow prevent a genuine attack by determined terrorists
is ludicrous. Not even the real Hitler with his real Gestapo was
able to prevent acts by determined terrorists. If actual terrorists
wanted to make a big splash in Times Square they could have
securely planted their bombs or gas canisters months ago. 

Then whatís the point of Project Archangel, Lucifer-Giulianiís
aptly named contingency plan to thwart a terrorist attack? Like
the event itself the security arrangements are nothing more than
an advertisement for Emperor Giuliani and the police state he
hopes to usher in for the new millennium.

Ironically, the biggest threat to the tourist throngs in Times
Square will probably be the NYPD itself, which Giuli-anus is
fond of calling, ìthe most restrained police force in the U.S.î.
Hereís the likeliest disaster scenario. While peering through a
defective nightscope obtained from a supplier/contributor
linked to the Giuliani administration a police sniper on the 30th
floor of a Times Square office building thinks heís seeing a
drunken tourist make a threatening move, perhaps only
flipping Giuliani the bird. With no time to do anything but act,
he takes the poor sucker out. In a domino effect hundreds of
panicy cops on the street misinterpret the police sniper fire
Diallo style and begin blasting back. After thousands of rounds
of newly distributed exploding bullets are expended and the
Square is littered with dead and wounded tourists,
Commissioner Safir and Hollowpoint Giuliani will cite
ìcontagious fireî, the same explanation they gave for how four
cops fired 41 times at unarmed West African immigrant
Amadou Diallo last February.

The most cost-effective thing a government can do to reduce
the threat of terrorism is to stop pissing off so many people. To
be anything more than an insane act of meaningless violence
politically-motivated terrorism depends on grievances that are
popularly understood and commonly agreed with. 

Even though Mayor Giuliani has no influence whatsoever on
foreign policy, the Giuliani administration inordinately fears
terrorists because it specializes in oppressing people. Vast
numbers of those who live in New York City now feel
victimized by the Mayor and his circle of thugs. Like a mob
boss that expects to be cut down at any moment Giuliani is
paranoid because he knows better than anyone the multitude of
people who have a legitimate grievance against him. He went
so far as to invent bogus warnings from the FBI that City Hall
was in imminent danger from terrorists in order to restrict
access to New Yorkers. These imaginary warnings were later
publicly denied by the FBI itself.

We do face a real terrorist threat in New York City but itís not
from fundamentalists in turbans or bible belt militias. The main
suspect resides in Gracie Mansion, has a taxpayer funded office
in City Hall and lately hides out in his high-tech bunker in the
World Trade Center.  He depicts himself as an advocate of law
and order while actually being the biggest lawbreaker in the
entire City. While mouthing platitudes about the glories of
liberty and free speech and the dignity of work, he uses 680
lawyers to subvert the Constitution, is an outright enemy of
anyoneís free speech but his own and has a view of work
closer to a WWII forced labor camp than an actual job.

As the ball drops in Times Square on New Yearís Eve letís
hope we will be seeing the final curtain call in the career of
Mayor Rudy Crueliani. If not, we may be seeing the opening
act in what is sure to be the police state future the Malathion
Madman foreshadowed in his most infamous quote:

"Freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything
they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority.
Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being
to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what
you do and how you do it." Mayor Giuliani, New York
Times, March 17, 1994. 

Have a Happy and safe New Year and do yourself a favor by
staying far away from Foolianiís nightmarish party in Times
Square.

Robert Lederman is an artist, a regular columnist for both the
Grenwich Village Gazette [See: http://www.gvny.com/ ] 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 40 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.
(Artistsí 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/news.htm for
Ledermanís essays on Malathion and the spraying of toxic
insecticides on NYC [scroll down the menu to the items
highlighted in blue].



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