By ADAM GOLDMAN and MATT APUZZO | Associated Press – 14 hrs ago
NEW YORK (AP) — A paid informant for the New York Police Department's intelligence unit was under orders to "bait" Muslims into saying inflammatory things as he lived a double life, snapping pictures inside mosques and collecting the names of innocent people attending study groups on Islam, he told The Associated Press.
Shamiur Rahman, a 19-year-old American of Bangladeshi descent who has now denounced his work as an informant, said police told him to embrace a strategy called "create and capture." He said it involved creating a conversation about jihad or terrorism, then capturing the response to send to the NYPD. For his work, he earned as much as $1,000 a month and goodwill from the police after a string of minor marijuana arrests.
"We need you to pretend to be one of them," Rahman recalled the police telling him. "It's street theater."
Rahman said he now believes his work as an informant against Muslims in New York was "detrimental to the Constitution." After he disclosed to friends details about his work for the police — and after he told the police that he had been contacted by the AP — he stopped receiving text messages from his NYPD handler, "Steve," and his handler's NYPD phone number was disconnected.
Rahman's account shows how the NYPD unleashed informants on Muslim neighborhoods, often without specific targets or criminal leads. Much of what Rahman said represents a tactic the NYPD has denied using.
The AP corroborated Rahman's account through arrest records and weeks of text messages between Rahman and his police handler. The AP also reviewed the photos Rahman sent to police. Friends confirmed Rahman was at certain events when he said he was there, and former NYPD officials, while not personally familiar with Rahman, said the tactics he described were used by informants.
Informants like Rahman are a central component of the NYPD's wide-ranging programs to monitor life in Muslim neighborhoods since the 2001 terrorist attacks. Police officers have eavesdropped inside Muslim businesses, trained video cameras on mosques and collected license plates of worshippers. Informants who trawl the mosques — known informally as "mosque crawlers" — tell police what the imam says at sermons and provide police lists of attendees, even when there's no evidence they committed a crime.
The programs were built with unprecedented help from the CIA.
Presently, the greatest threat to world peace is Jihad.
Jihad does not take prisoners. All life is expendable in the pursuit of Jihad.
The world would be pretty quiet right now if it weren't for Jihad.
Who do you feel has called for Jihad? What do you think it would take to satisfy it? Do you think that any of our countries actions might objectively be defined using the same language and terms?
Presently, the greatest threat to world peace is Jihad.
Jihad does not take prisoners. All life is expendable in the pursuit of Jihad.
The world would be pretty quiet right now if it weren't for Jihad.
The greatest threat to world peace is economic inequality. There was war long before there was jihad, and there will be war after jihad. Wars, on the other hand, have almost invariably been over economics.
Jihad is the struggle of Muslims that is either internal or external. Like many things Islam, there are many meanings, from improving your home and community, to the armed struggle against infidels and non-believers.
Presently, the greatest threat to world peace is Jihad.
Jihad does not take prisoners. All life is expendable in the pursuit of Jihad.
The world would be pretty quiet right now if it weren't for Jihad.
I actually think on the whole Jihad is not really a big deal. At worse they may unleash a bomb here and there. No, the greatest threat does not even involve bombs and military at all, that is an antiquated 20th century way of looking at the world. No the greatest threat is the world economy and currency.
americans aren't very concerned about their rulers slaughtering innocent people, and if they are I don't see many speaking out about it
it seems the anti-war or peace movements have been marginalized by authority and sham promises
some people are afraid of that same govt putting them on a list or targeting them for whatever, they fear the violence or threat of violence
others just don't know or care, they're looking at (listening to) promises of what govt can do for them
those promises are backed up by force/laws/rules and folks want to be on what they perceive to be the beneficial end of that coercion and violence, even if it means ignoring or turning a blind eye to murder, death, destruction and locking people in cages
obama and romney are both purchased by the same lobbyists and people will fall for their rhetoric cause they've been trained to or because it is just easier to go along
the war machine is a big business and wielding that power has been coveted by rulers for ages
human rights? peace? innocent life?
they'll continue to be snuffed by these two and millions will vote to enable it...
regards
Interestingly, it didn't always use to be this way (see Vietnam). And even stranger when you go further back in time: American Resistance to a Standing Army
Now, apparently, "resistance" is living the atomized good life, keeping your head down and avoiding eye contact.
In Foreign Policy Debate, Romney Capitulates, Agrees With Obama In Monday’s presidential debate, GOP contender Mitt Romney persistently avoided confronting President Obama on foreign policy issues, with both candidates agreeing on most fundamental issues.
americans aren't very concerned about their rulers slaughtering innocent people, and if they are I don't see many speaking out about it
it seems the anti-war or peace movements have been marginalized by authority and sham promises
some people are afraid of that same govt putting them on a list or targeting them for whatever, they fear the violence or threat of violence
others just don't know or care, they're looking at (listening to) promises of what govt can do for them
those promises are backed up by force/laws/rules and folks want to be on what they perceive to be the beneficial end of that coercion and violence, even if it means ignoring or turning a blind eye to murder, death, destruction and locking people in cages
obama and romney are both purchased by the same lobbyists and people will fall for their rhetoric cause they've been trained to or because it is just easier to go along
the war machine is a big business and wielding that power has been coveted by rulers for ages
human rights? peace? innocent life?
they'll continue to be snuffed by these two and millions will vote to enable it...
In Foreign Policy Debate, Romney Capitulates, Agrees With Obama In Monday’s presidential debate, GOP contender Mitt Romney persistently avoided confronting President Obama on foreign policy issues, with both candidates agreeing on most fundamental issues.
(...) But what was I to expect? For years I ironically asserted that the best way to win a Nobel Peace Prize was to wage war or support those who wage war instead of peace. An overstatement perhaps, but take a look. (...)
A very thoughtful piece. Thank you.
Note that my remaining eye hates you. ::joking:: (It's hard to read these days.)
(...) But what was I to expect? For years I ironically asserted that the best way to win a Nobel Peace Prize was to wage war or support those who wage war instead of peace. An overstatement perhaps, but take a look. (...)
(...) All the main warring states were responsible for the brutal suppression of nations, large and small, throughout the racist despotisms that were their colonial empires. In the years leading up to the first world war an estimated 10 million Congolese died as a result of forced labour and mass murder under plucky Belgian rule; German colonialists carried out systematic genocide against the Herero and Nama peoples in today's Namibia; and tens of millions died in enforced or avoidable famines in British-ruled India, while Britain's colonial forces ran concentration camps in South Africa and meted out continual violent repression across the empire.
The idea that the war was some kind of crusade for democracy when most of Britain's population – including many men – were still denied the vote, and democracy and dissent were savagely crushed among most of those Britain ruled, is laughable. And when the US president, Woodrow Wilson, championed the right to self-determination to win the peace, that would of course apply only to Europeans – not the colonial peoples their governments lorded it over.
As the bloodbath exhausted itself, it unleashed mutinies, workers' revolts and revolutions, and the breakup of defeated empires, giving a powerful impetus to anti-colonial movements in the process. But the outcome also laid the ground for the rise of nazism and the even bloodier second world war, and led to a new imperial carve-up of the Middle East, whose consequences we are still living with today, including the Palestinian tragedy.
Unlike in 1940, Britain wasn't threatened with invasion or occupation in 1914, and Europe's people were menaced by the machinations of their masters, rather than an atavistic tyranny. Those who died didn't give their lives "for freedom"; they were the victims of an empire that was a stain on humanity, the cynicism of politicians and the despicable folly of the generals. As Harry Patch, last British survivor of the trenches who died three years ago, put it, the first world war was "nothing better than legalised mass murder". (...)
The pro-peace organization is having its national convention in downtown Miami this week, looking at past U.S. military involvement in Latin America to learn lessons for the future.
With pamphlets and peace buttons, bumper stickers and self-published books, the gray-haired veterans and eager young activists at the Veterans For Peace convention in Miami this week are out to educate America on the evils of war.
The national convention began on Wednesday at the Marriott in downtown Miami and is focused on “Liberating the Americas: Lessons from Latin America and the Caribbean.” Highlights include speeches from author Alice Walker and filmmaker and former TV talk host Phil Donahue. The convention concludes Saturday.
VFP president Leah Bolger explained that as the United States is wrapping up wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, dancing around military engagement with Iran, and starting to pick sides in Syria, these veterans are trying to draw attention to the military mistakes of the past and the perils of fighting undeclared wars. She denounced the “war on drugs” and “war on terror” as a “huge waste of money and just a premise to intervene militarily” all over the world.
The focus on Latin America is also connected to the founding of VFP in 1985 when a group of Vietnam veterans organized to oppose the Reagan administration’s involvement in the civil wars and regime changes in the southern half of the hemisphere. The group has since protested U.S. support of Nicaraguan contras, funding of death squads in El Salvador and training of dictators in Argentina, Brazil and Chile.
In the early years of the Iraq war, the membership grew to over 4,000, but the organization has struggled to attract younger veterans returning from these conflicts. Bolger said that the soldiers of this generation “have to work so hard to heal themselves,” that they probably don’t have time for anti-war activism.
Veterans manning tables at the convention also offered literature on the prolonged detainment of Wikileaks informant Bradley Manning, the ongoing environmental impact of Agent Orange in Vietnam, and drone strikes in Pakistan. They commemorated the 65th anniversary of the atomic bomb in Nagasaki and petitioned for closing Guantánamo.
Yet with all these ideas and impassioned arguments, some participants were still frustrated with the lack of concrete action.
Peter Branson, a 78-year-old retired schoolteacher from New York City, said he wants VFP to talk to the “unconverted” who still support a bloated defense department and ambitious military campaigns.
“Most progressives want to demonstrate and carry banners and hold vigils, but our job needs to be to educate the American people,” Branson said. “We need to organize locally and act nationally.”
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/08/10/2944539/veterans-for-peace-convene-in.html#storylink=cpy#storylink=cpy
A new AP/Gfk poll is showing that the trend of opposition to the Afghan War continues, with an overwhelming 66% of Americans now opposed to the conflict, with only 8 percent of Americans remaining “strongly” in support of it.
Surprisingly, the false narrative of Obama as in touch with the opposition to the war and moving to extricate America from the conflict remains at least somewhat intact, with a slight majority (53%) approving of President Obama’s handling of Afghanistan.
Still and all, every poll is securely showing a supermajority of voters in opposition to the Afghan War, and sooner or later it seems like that opposition must make the administration’s determination to escalate and extend the war is going to become a political liability.
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the questions
why in f**k are we still there?
what happened to sane people speaking out for peace?
