>NYPD disciplines white officer who stopped black commander

>

A white police officer was disciplined for acting “in a discourteous manner” when he confronted a black motorist who turned out to be one of the highest-ranking commanders in the New York City Police Department, an agency spokesman said Saturday.

Chief Douglas Zeigler, the head of the NYPD’s Community Affairs Bureau and the highest uniformed black officer on the force, was off duty and sitting in his department-issued sport utility vehicle on a street in the borough of Queens on May 2 when two white police officers approached.

The encounter turned testy, and one of the officers tried to wrest open Zeigler’s door, even after the three-star chief had identified himself, police spokesman Paul Browne said.

“He dealt with the chief in a discourteous manner, which is unacceptable,” Browne said.

He did not provide details of why the officers decided to question Zeigler. The New York Daily News reported Saturday that Zeigler was parked near a fire hydrant and that one of the plainclothed officers spotted Zeigler’s service weapon inside the vehicle. Browne said he could not confirm whether the officers saw a gun.

He did not specify what discipline was taken by the department. The News said the officer was stripped of his gun and badge and placed on modified duty Friday.

The incident was reported as police are being criticized for stopping and frisking record numbers of pedestrians — about 145,000 in the first quarter of this year. The majority were black or Hispanic.

Zeigler has headed the Community Affairs Bureau since January 2006. His wife, Neldra Zeigler, is the NYPD’s deputy commissioner for equal employment opportunity.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, who has been leading demonstrations in the city to protest the acquittal of three police officers in the shooting death of an unarmed man as he left his bachelor party, took note of the Zeigler incident while speaking at his weekly rally in Harlem.

“You can’t make this stuff up!” he said. “The problem isn’t that they didn’t recognize him. It is that they don’t recognize our rights!”

Also, a New York man has filed a lawsuit claiming that he was taunted and falsely arrested by police officers after they learned that he had the same name as a West African immigrant shot to death by other officers in 1999.

Amadou Diallo said a group of officers confronted him over a broken headlight in February, then searched his vehicle for weapons.

Once the officers learned his name, it became “a source of much amusement, laughing and inappropriate joking amongst the officers, with crude and disgusting comments,” Diallo’s lawyer said in the suit.

Amadou Diallo was also the name of an unarmed immigrant killed in 1999 when four plainclothed officers, apparently mistakenly thinking he was reaching for a gun, fired 41 rounds in the doorway of a Bronx apartment building. The officers in that case were also acquitted of criminal charges. –google

>Office Romance Gets Contractual

>

As a Safeguard, Some Employers Are Asking Employees to Fill Out ‘Love Contracts’

Navigating the workplace can be difficult in itself, but adding a romantic element can make the office landscape more difficult to steer. That’s why some employers are asking employees who date one another to sign so-called love contracts.

“It is documenting the relationship. You need to define the relationship. Is [it] welcome? It is not sex harassment,” explained Stephen Tedesco, an employment lawyer, who said that it is important to make clear that whatever personal conduct has gone on is not harassment.

“It also defines how they are going to conduct themselves in the workplace going forward,” he said.

The issue of workplace romance has become more prevalent with people working longer days and more women in the office. In fact, 82 percent of people said they actually know of a steamy romance between co-workers, according to a 2008 Vault.com office romance survey. – abc

>Family Says Girl’s Mouth Taped Shut

>

The family of a 4-year-old has filed a lawsuit against the child’s teacher for taping the girl’s mouth shut at school.

The lawsuit in Queens Supreme Court says Angela Amedeo had her mouth sealed shut with Scotch tape for 10 minutes because the child spoke during “quiet time.” The incident occurred Aug. 22 at Flushing Fields Play School, the lawsuit claims, and since the incident the child has cried and has nightmares. Angela’s family filed the lawsuit against the teacher, the city and the Department of Education.

The family said it was told at the time that the incident was being investigated, but never got a response. The city Law Department said the office had not received he legal papers in the case, but would review the matter. – tbc

>Daughter fails GED, Dad Jailed

>

Brian Gegner is in jail for 180 days for failing to keep an eye on his daughter’s education. The problem is his daughter is 18 and has passed all except the math portion of the GED which she has failed several times. The order stems from 2 years ago.

When the original truancy happened, Brian Gegner had custody of his daughter even though she was living with her mother. Brittany and her mother both say they should be the ones to go to jail if anyone had to. “It’s ridiculously wrong,” said Brittany.

The court says that even though Brittany is now an adult the order can be upheld since she was a juvenile at the time. Gegner is also facing the possibility of losing his job, which he has had for 15 years, over this situation. –shortnews

>Flashback: Lack of air coverage of DC on 9/11 explainable only by inside conspiracy.

>

“WHAT REALLY HAPPENED ON 9-11?” – The Transcript
Jared Israel Interviewed by Mark Haim
KOPN 89.5 FM (Missouri) Evening Edition * 2 April 2002
[Posted 10 June 2002]
=======================================

[Editor’s note: to make the transition from speech to written word more readable and useful I deleted repetition and side-comments, mercislessly cut callers’ questions or summarized them and condensed or otherwise altered sentences for clarity. The resulting text is 40% shorter. I have also corrected minor errors (e.g., Jared said the FAA knew of the first hijacking at 8:25, but they actually said 8:20) and added words where the meaning, in print, would be ambiguous.- John Flaherty]

The details fade over time so this is an interesting refresher.

…* MARK HAIM

Before we get started though, can you give us a little thumb-nail sketch of who Jared Israel is, what you do, where you’re from.

* JARED ISRAEL

… I was active in the civil rights movement and the student movement against the war in Vietnam. And then I did just regular life things. I got back into activity in l998, dealing with media coverage of, especially, Yugoslavia, and since then media coverage of 9-11. Analyzing media distortion is a special interest of mine. I did a lot of that during the war in Vietnam. So I have some experience.

* MARK HAIM

Sort of an investigator of journalists.

* JARED ISRAEL

Well, that’s right. The thing that our Website, Emperor’s Clothes, does is look at how the media misrepresents information. Frighteningly, we find it occurs in definite patterns, which are very hard to explain in a nice way. But that’s what we do. We study the facts.

* MARK HAIM

Very quickly, after the tragic events of September 11th you-all devoted a rather extensive portion of your Website to a critique of the information we were given. Do you want to share just a broad outline of what your research has shown?

* JARED ISRAEL

Well, the first thing that shocked me and a lot of other people too because I’ve heard this from people in the military and the Customs Department – was that no planes went in the air over Washington, D.C. until after the Pentagon was hit.

* MARK HAIM

You’re talking about planes that might intercept incoming –

* JARED ISRAEL

Yeah. Intercept doesn’t necessarily mean an aggressive act. It means a plane goes up and interacts with another plane.

There’s a huge Air Force Base 10 miles from the Pentagon, Andrews Air Force Base, that has two combat-ready fighter wings. The Air National Guard Fighter Wing describes itself as being maintained in the highest possible state of combat readiness. None of those planes went in the air. But then, a few minutes after the Pentagon was hit, they did go in the air, because we have news reports about that. Why would that happen?

* MARK HAIM

So essentially, four planes are hijacked and they’re able to observe these planes on their radar, going off course and yet, no response. Is that it?

* JARED ISRAEL

Well, here’s for example. At 9:06 the FAA, according to their account, closed the air corridor between Cleveland and Washington, DC. (1) If they closed this air corridor, which is one of the most extreme actions the FAA has ever taken, why wouldn’t they put planes in the air over Washington?

* MARK HAIM

This is after the –

* JARED ISRAEL

After the first two hits. The second World Trade Center hit was at 9:03, approximately. So this was at 9:06, within three minutes.

The U.S. has a very sophisticated air force. On Emperor’s Clothes we posted some of the documents which lay out what NORAD, the FAA – the Federal Aviation Administration – and the Joint Chiefs of Staff are supposed to do when there’s a hijacking. (2)

The FAA says they knew or strongly suspected there was a hijacking by 8:20. (3) We believe they knew sooner but let’s take their word. Vice President Cheney said on ‘Meet the Press’ on September 16th, that the Secret Service went on emergency open lines with the FAA as soon as the first plane hit the World Trade Center. Which was at 8:45 Eastern Time, right? So, if the Secret Service was on open lines to the FAA at 8:45; if at 9:06 the corridor between Washington and Cleveland was closed, then how could it be that no planes were put in the air over Washington?

* MARK HAIM

What time was the Pentagon hit?

* JARED ISRAEL

The Pentagon was hit at approximately 9:45 Eastern Time, so we’re talking about an hour and 40 minutes between the time they knew there was a hijacking and the time the Pentagon was hit. That hijacked plane was flying west from Boston. So they knew it could have been flying to Washington, right? Why didn’t they put planes in the air?

* MARK HAIM

When you ask these questions, what answers are given?

* JARED ISRAEL

Well, no Official has answered us. Which is amazing, because the documentation that we’ve produced has gotten a tremendous readership.

The answers they have given in general to this question, because it has been raised by millions of people, is, “We just weren’t ready. We didn’t realize this kind of thing was coming.”

That was the first answer they gave. And then they changed the answer on the 14th of September and said they had put planes in the air but it was too late. This is very important because they didn’t say that during the first three days. They only discovered that they had put planes in the air three days, four days after the event. Now just think about that.

* MARK HAIM

These planes were put in the air from where?

* JARED ISRAEL

They claimed two planes were put in the air from Otis Air Force Base but weren’t in time to catch Flight 11 before it hit the World Trade Center. And they claimed planes were sent out of Langley Air Force Base, which is around 126 miles south of Washington, DC, near Newport News. They claimed that again those planes were too late.

Now, that story is simply absurd. Consider. A plane hit the Pentagon, supposedly, because we’re going by their story, at 9:45. That plane left Dulles Airport. It went west 300 miles to Ohio and turned around.

Supposedly the transponder was turned off. Turning off a transponder does not make a plane invisible. It merely means that certain aspects of the tracking become non-functional and some more recent radar can’t then see the plane, but basic radar can. There are several radar stations that would have been able to see that plane in that area. Keep in mind that it was at 9:00 Eastern Time that this happened. This was around 30 minutes after they knew another plane had been hijacked and flown into a building. Planes have not been hijacked in the US for many years and this would be the second possible hijacking. A few minutes later they closed the air corridor from Cleveland to Washington, D.C., so they knew something was happening, right?

There are multiple radar stations that can scan that air corridor, including military stations. There are also military aircraft that have the capacity to go up and see 250 miles with basic radar. So they can see planes with the transponder turned off. I mean, after all, hostile military planes can’t be expected to turn on their transponders when they invade your country.

How could it be possible for Flight 77 to go to Ohio and turn around under those circumstances and fly 50 minutes back to the Pentagon and nothing be done? How could no planes be put in the air over Washington, DC during the entire period that that plane was coming from Ohio back to Washington, DC, given all that they knew and given that they knew enough to close the air corridor? This is like you’re standing there and a dog walks by and you notice it has the head of a cat.

* MARK HAIM

Good that people are asking these questions. Wouldn’t people rejoinder that it’s been many years since planes had been hijacked in the US so the authorities are just not used to it happening?

* JARED ISRAEL

Well, unless we’re talking about people who got frozen by some special ray…I mean a plane had been hijacked at 8:20 and they don’t deny that they have the capacity to intercept.

The defense that is made by the government, is basically stupidity and incompetence. That’s what they say. “We were confused; we didn’t know.” This spectacle of Bush…

* MARK HAIM

Let’s get to Bush in just a moment…We got a caller.

* JARED ISRAEL

Let’s take the caller.

* MARK HAIM

Oh, he’s not there.

* JARED ISRAEL

Was it something I said?

* MARK HAIM

No, I doubt it.

* JARED ISRAEL

I was getting off the point slightly and it would have been a long way back so let me just deal with the specific thing you asked. I said it’s been a long time, about 10 years, since the previous hijacking. And you asked, wouldn’t it be reasonable to say that the people in the government were unprepared?

And many people have raised this point. The media raised it a good deal. People in the government said it, Rumsfeld said it; they all made this point. And their behavior said it. I mean, the spectacle of Bush reading to children about goats after the second WTC crash, when the air corridor to Washington, DC from Cleveland had been shut down and when, Cheney said on Meet the Press, there were direct lines from the Secret Service to the FAA –

* MARK HAIM

The Secret Service was with Bush.

* JARED ISRAEL

And they were with Bush. And here he is sitting in a publicly known place reading to children – it’s just mind-boggling. It’s a nonsense point.

You know, ordinary people say, “I was shocked.” And the spin-masters are trying to create the impression that the same goes for the people responsible for air safety and air defense, that they’re just like us. But they are not. Air traffic control is a carefully organized, military-type operation or else the planes would hit each other. When a plane goes off course, it doesn’t have to be hijacked. And if they can’t make contact with the pilot and find out what’s going on, they have a procedure which is they send a plane up. They don’t have to have evidence of hostile intent to send a plane up. They just have to have –

* MARK HAIM

Do you know how often they do that?

* JARED ISRAEL

Not very often but they do do it. For instance, when Payne Stewart’s Lear jet went out of control, they sent planes and chased it across the country and determined it was on autopilot and it was going to go to an unpopulated area. There was no evidence there of hostile intent.

There were articles in the New York Times of September 13th and September 15th which stated that the Pentagon knew that that plane was coming from Ohio. The Pentagon was in touch with the FAA immediately about it. Now, under those circumstances why wouldn’t they scramble planes into the air from Andrews Air Force Base?

Just think about it. The President’s plane flies into and departs from Andrews Air Force Base. You mean to tell me they have no fighter escorts there? If the President is in trouble they have to call from Langley Air Force Base to please come help? They have 10,000 people working there and they can’t put a plane in the air? Please.

>9/11 Inside Job – The Most Damning Evidence Yet!

> Vodpod videos no longer available. from www.youtube.com posted with vodpod

>Gas Prices Send Surge of Riders to Mass Transit

>

With the price of gas approaching $4 a gallon, more commuters are abandoning their cars and taking the train or bus instead.

Mass transit systems around the country are seeing standing-room-only crowds on bus lines where seats were once easy to come by. Parking lots at many bus and light rail stations are suddenly overflowing, with commuters in some towns risking a ticket or tow by parking on nearby grassy areas and in vacant lots.

“In almost every transit system I talk to, we’re seeing very high rates of growth the last few months,” said William W. Millar, president of the American Public Transportation Association.

“It’s very clear that a significant portion of the increase in transit use is directly caused by people who are looking for alternatives to paying $3.50 a gallon for gas.”

Some cities with long-established public transit systems, like New York and Boston, have seen increases in ridership of 5 percent or more so far this year. But the biggest surges — of 10 to 15 percent or more over last year — are occurring in many metropolitan areas in the South and West where the driving culture is strongest and bus and rail lines are more limited.

Here in Denver, for example, ridership was up 8 percent in the first three months of the year compared with last year, despite a fare increase in January and a slowing economy, which usually means fewer commuters. Several routes on the system have reached capacity, particularly at rush hour, for the first time.

“We are at a tipping point,” said Clarence W. Marsella, chief executive of the Denver Regional Transportation District, referring to gasoline prices.

Transit systems in metropolitan areas like Minneapolis, Seattle, Dallas-Fort Worth and San Francisco reported similar jumps. In cities like Houston, Nashville, Salt Lake City, and Charlotte, N.C., commuters in growing numbers are taking advantage of new bus and train lines built or expanded in the last few years. The American Public Transportation Association reports that localities with fewer than 100,000 people have also experienced large increases in bus ridership.

In New York, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority reports that ridership was up the first three months of the year by more than 5 percent on the Long Island Rail Road and the Metro-North Railroad, while M.T.A. bus ridership was up 10.9 percent. New York City subway use was up 6.8 percent for January and February. Ridership on New Jersey Transit trains was up more than 5 percent for the first three months of the year.

The increase in transit use coincides with other signs that American motorists are beginning to change their driving habits, including buying smaller vehicles. The Energy Department recently predicted that Americans would consume slightly less gasoline this year than last — for the first yearly decline since 1991.

Oil prices broke yet another record on Friday, climbing $2.27, to $125.96 a barrel. The national average for regular unleaded gasoline reached $3.67 a gallon, up from $3.04 a year ago, according to AAA.

But meeting the greater demand for mass transit is proving difficult. The cost of fuel and power for public transportation is about three times that of four years ago, and the slowing economy means local sales tax receipts are down, so there is less money available for transit services. Higher steel prices are making planned expansions more expensive.

Typically, mass transit systems rely on fares to cover about a third of their costs, so they depend on sales taxes and other government funding. Few states use gas tax revenue for mass transit.

In Denver, transportation officials expected to pay $2.62 a gallon for diesel this year, but they are now paying $3.20. Every penny increase costs the Denver Regional Transportation District an extra $100,000 a year. And it is bracing for a $19 million shortfall in sales taxes this year from original projections.

“I’d like to put more buses on the street,” Mr. Marsella said. “I can’t expand service as much as I’d like to.”

Average annual growth from sales tax revenue for the Bay Area Rapid Transit District, a rail service that connects San Francisco with Oakland, has been 4.5 percent over the last 15 years. It expects that to fall to 2 percent this year, and electricity costs are rising. “This is a year of abundant caution and concern,” said Dorothy W. Dugger, BART’s general manager, even though ridership on the line was up nearly 5 percent in the first quarter of the year.

Nevertheless, Ms. Dugger is happy that mass transit is winning over converts. “The future of mass transit in this country has never been brighter,” she said.

Other factors may be driving people to mass transit, too. Wireless computers turn travel time into productive work time, and more companies are offering workers subsidies to take buses or trains. Traffic congestion is getting worse in many cities, and parking more expensive.

Michael Brewer, an accountant who had always driven the 36-mile trip to downtown Houston from the suburb of West Belford, said he had been thinking about switching to the bus for the last two years. The final straw came when he put $100 of gas into his Pontiac over four days a couple of weeks ago.

“Finally I was ready to trade my independence for the savings,” he said while waiting for a bus.

Brayden Portillo, a freshman at the University of Colorado Denver, drove from his home in the northern suburbs to the downtown campus in his Jeep Cherokee the entire first semester of the school year, enjoying the rap and disco music blasting from his CD player.

He switched to the bus this semester because he was spending $40 a week on gas — half his salary as a part-time store clerk. “Finally, I thought this is stupid,” he said, and he is using the savings to pay down a credit card debt.

The sudden jump in ridership comes after several years of steady, gradual growth. Americans took 10.3 billion trips on public transportation last year, up 2.1 percent from 2006. Transit managers are predicting growth of 5 percent or more this year, the largest increase in at least a decade.

“If we are in a recession or economic downturn, we should be seeing a stagnation or decrease in ridership, but we are not,” said Daniel Grabauskas, general manager of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, which serves the Boston area. “Fuel prices are without question the single most important factor that is driving people to public transportation.”

Some cities are seeing spectacular gains. The Charlotte Area Transit System, which has a new light rail line, reported that it logged more than two million trips in February, up more than 34 percent from February 2007.

Caltrain, the commuter rail line that serves the San Francisco Peninsula and the Santa Clara Valley, set a record for average weekday ridership in February of 36,993, a 9.3 increase from 2007, according to its most recent public calculation.

The South Florida Regional Transportation Authority, which operates a commuter rail system from Miami to Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, posted a rise of more than 20 percent in rider numbers this March and April as monthly ridership climbed to 350,000.

“Nobody believed that people would actually give up their cars to ride public transportation,” said Joseph J. Giulietti, executive director of the authority. “But in the last year, and last several months in particular, we have seen exactly that.” – nyt

>Judge Drops General From Trial of Detainee

>

In a new blow to the Bush administration’s troubled military commission system, a military judge has disqualified a Pentagon general who has been centrally involved in overseeing Guantánamo war crimes tribunals from any role in the first case headed for trial.

The judge said the general was too closely aligned with the prosecution, raising questions about whether he could carry out his role with the required neutrality and objectivity.

Military defense lawyers said that although the ruling was limited to one case, they expected the issue to be raised in other cases, potentially delaying prosecutions, including the death-penalty prosecution of six detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for the Sept. 11 attacks.

Some say they want to convict and kill some people for 9/11 based on false confessions obtained by torture so Dick Cheney, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, will be forever off the hook. If you haven’t taken a look at the evidence that 9/11 was an inside job yet, there is plenty.

Critics of the military commission system said Friday that the judge’s decision would provide new grounds to attack the system that they say was set up to win convictions.

The judge, Capt. Keith J. Allred of the Navy, directed that Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Hartmann of the Air Force Reserve, a senior Pentagon official of the Office of Military Commissions, which runs the war crimes system, have no further role in the first prosecution, scheduled for trial this month.

General Hartmann, whose title is legal adviser, has been at the center of a bitter dispute involving the former chief Guantánamo military prosecutor, Col. Morris D. Davis of the Air Force.

Colonel Davis has said the general interfered in the work of the military prosecution office, pushed for closed-door proceedings and pressed to rely on evidence obtained through techniques that critics call torture.

“National attention focused on this dispute has seriously called into question the legal adviser’s ability to continue to perform his duties in a neutral and objective manner,” the judge wrote on Friday, in a copy of the decision not released publicly but obtained by The New York Times. Decisions by Guantánamo judges are not typically released publicly until days after being handed down.

Cmdr. Jeffrey D. Gordon of the Navy, a Pentagon spokesman, declined to comment on the ruling, saying senior Defense Department officials were reviewing it.

Reached at his office shortly after the decision was distributed inside the Pentagon, General Hartmann said he could not talk. His spokeswoman did not respond to requests for comment.

General Hartmann, who has been a controversial figure since his appointment last summer, is the legal adviser to the Pentagon official with broad powers over the war crimes system, Susan J. Crawford. She has the military title of Convening Authority of the Guantánamo war crimes cases.

Ms. Crawford has never made a public statement in her role.

General Hartmann has been the military official most publicly identified with prosecutions in recent months. It was he, for example, who announced the Sept. 11 charges and has publicly pressed prosecutors to move faster.

Ruling on a defense lawyers’ request that said General Hartmann had exerted unlawful influence over the prosecution, Judge Allred said that public concern about the fairness of the cases was “deeply disturbing” and that he could not find that the general “retains the required independence from the prosecution.”

Pentagon officials could ask the judge to reconsider, could appeal to a special military appeals court created to hear Guantánamo cases or could replace General Hartmann.

General Hartmann has denied Colonel Davis’s assertions and said the commission system would “follow the rule of law.” He has also said he has pressed prosecutors and others involved in the tribunals to move the cases more quickly.

As convening authority, Ms. Crawford has powers over the entire war crimes system, including the power to approve or reject charges, to reach plea deals and to provide financial resources to the prosecution and the defense.

Among officials in the war crimes system, General Hartmann was assumed to have been acting on her behalf. But the judge did not find there was evidence suggesting she should be removed even from the single case.

Judge Allred’s ruling followed a hearing in Guantánamo on April 28 at which Colonel Davis said General Hartmann pressured him in deciding what cases to prosecute and what evidence to use. The judge called the hearing after lawyers for a detainee, Salim Hamdan, said his charges were unlawfully influenced. – nyt

>Marilyn Monroe Sex Film Snapped Up

>

A sex tape of Marilyn Monroe has been sold to a New York businessman for $1.5m.

The explicit 15-minute film shows the Hollywood legend performing a sex act on an unidentified man.

But it is unlikely to be the latest online celebrity sex tape phenomenon or even see the light of day – because its new owner wants to protect Monroe’s privacy.

“The gentleman who bought it said out of respect for Marilyn he’s not going to make a joke of it and put it on the internet and try to exploit her,” said memorabilia collector Keya Morgan, who arranged the sale.

“That’s not his intention and I would never get my name involved if that were to happen.”

Monroe is clothed and the man’s head remains out of shot for the entire length of the film, which was sold by the son of a dead FBI informant.

The actress, who died in 1962 aged just 36, was rumoured to have had an affair with US President John F Kennedy.

Former FBI Director J Edgar Hoover, a Kennedy rival, went to great lengths to try to prove it was Kennedy in the film, Morgan claimed.

One of Monroe’s ex-husbands, baseball star Joe DiMaggio, once tried to buy the tape from the collector but “he would not part with it,” according to FBI files. – sky

Just destroy the film… and the copies the FBI has.