Brooklyn hit by anti-Semitic arson

Brooklyn's Midwood neighborhood was hit by anti-Semitic vandals early this morning. Residents were awakened at 4:30 by the sound of three cars parked on Ocean Parkway between Avenue I and Avenue J exploding in flames. Graffiti found on the torched cars and adjacent cars and park benches included swastikas, "SS", "KKK" and "Kill the Jews".

More here, including video of the fires: Car Fires, Anti-Semitic Graffiti Put Brooklyn Neighborhood On Edge - NY1.com

Anti-Semitic Arsons In Brooklyn: MyFoxNY.com

David Horowitz' inadvertent conservative case for Cordoba House

David Horowitz' News Real Blog has published what have to be the two worst arguments I've heard in favor of the government intervening to prevent the construction of what is alternately called Cordoba House or "the ground zero mosque". The blogger, who for understandable reasons conceals his identity, calling himself "Joe Blough", argues that the First Amendment applies only to Congress, not to municipal or state governments or to the other branches of the federal government. Addressing the president, "Joe Blough" writes:

(C)ongress isn’t making any laws about the matter so that settles that. Thank you Mr. Assistant Professor in Chief. Unfortunately there is nothing in there preventing the president from insulting the intelligence of the public.

He's right about one thing, and lucky for him. If there were a law against insulting the intelligence of the public, "Joe Blough" and David Horowitz would be fugitives from justice. The question of whether the Bill of Rights applies to state and municipal governments is settled law, as the vast majority of constitutional thinkers including the entire Supreme Court would undoubtedly agree. The editors of News Real Blog seem to think otherwise, choosing to advocate in this instance an extremist States Rights position advocated by opponents of federal civil rights laws against discrimination on the basis of race or religion.  By this line of thinking, the states and municipalities would be free once again to mandate segregation and prevent oppressed groups from voting.  Can David Horowitz really be supporting this extremist argument?

Having summarily wiped the First and Fourteenth Amendments and a massive corpus of Supreme Court decisions from the books, Horowitz' blog goes on to take an extremely odd stand for a purportedly conservative blog. It argues that property rights should not apply because the municipal government already regulates some uses of private property. For some reason, the argument rests on the fact that the city regulates traffic and prohibits smoking in public accommodations such as offices, restaurants, train stations, etc .

Consider the non-smoking rules so dear to (New York City Mayor) Bloomberg’s heart. There are people, loud persistent people, in NYC that don’t like cigarette smoke. And based on that dislike — a mere dislike — property owners, leasors and leasees of all sorts around NYC must prevent their customers from smoking on their property or face the wrath of the city. Property rights in NYC are such that hanging a sign over your door that says “Smokers Only” will not defend you. You have no say in the matter, your rights are not recognized. And that is only one, blatantly obvious example.

NYC is very well practiced at limiting one person’s rights to accomodate the comforts of another.

Public property in NYC is handled with the same high handed flippancy, as if it belonged personally to New Yorkers’ alleged representatives. For example, traffic down Broadway is now slowed to a trickle, because some genius in the administration thought it would be nice to have little parks in the middle of Broadway rather than all those nasty smelly cars. The rights of the public that jointly own that avenue? Not even a consideration.

And here again, why make little parks in the middle of one of NYC’s busiest streets? Because little parks appeal to somebody’s feelings, whereas cars do not.

To be fair, some might argue, perhaps even with some justice, that that is just what local ordinances are for. To legislate matters that in an ideal sense, impinge on individual rights, for the sake of accomodating local sensibilities. But, were that correct, the Bloomberg administration would only stand more deeply damned.

Bloomberg and his functionaries could have found a dozen, perfectly plausible and normal ways to dictate that the mosque could not be built less than than some arbitrary distance from ground zero. They have all the tools they need.

The government of NYC and Mr. Bloomberg, can, will and do legislate and regulate on the basis of feeling. The only question is whose feelings. What we learn is that the feelings of most of the voting public, indeed the feelings of the families of the dead and survivors of the 9/11 attack, do not count. What matters are the feelings of Mr. Bloomberg and his leftist friends.

And believe me when I tell you, those are not feelings of love. Not for America. And not, gentle reader, for you.

The internal contradictions of purported conservatives arguing in favor of more government limitations on both the free exercise of religion and private property rights are so apparent as to scarcely merit counter-argument. The right ties itself in knots with such lines of thinking. Horowitz' blog inadvertently makes this clear by supporting what it itself comically refers to as "arbitrary" restrictions, an argument which should be laughed out of the court of public opinion, regardless of either the conservatism or anti-Islam bias of that opinion.

By publishing this post, David Horowitz has done a tremendous service to conservatives looking for reasons to support the Cordoba House project. Regardless of conservatives' emotional reaction to the project, Horowitz has made clear by the weakness of these arguments in favor of arbitrary government limitations on personal liberties that supporting Cordoba House is a great way for conservatives to stand up for their ideological principles.


read here: 9/11 Victory Mosque: Another Reason the “Rights” Talk is Bunk | NewsReal Blog

So wrong on so many levels

Embedded below is an advertisement made by the National Republican Trust PAC in opposition to Cordoba House, the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque", which is planned to be built two blocks north of the World Trade Center site. The management of CBS and NBC have refused to broadcast it, with an NBC spokesman saying that the ad blurs responsibility for 9/11 in order to imply that Cordoba House's sponsors were culpable for the attacks. (Read here.) While that is true, it puts too fine a point on the reason the ad is wrong. The ad appears to hold all Muslims responsible for 9/11, say that all Muslims celebrated the attacks, and characterize Cordoba House as part of that celebration. That is not just wrong, it is intended to inspire hate and create a hostile atmosphere. Watch it and judge for yourself:

Scott Wheeler, who runs the National Republican Trust, claims that CBS and NBC rejected this advertisement due to liberal bias. Wheeler cites the fact that both networks have broadcast ads by the liberal group MoveOn.org as evidence of a double-standard, which it would be if the ad had been rejected because it represents a conservative viewpoint. But that is not why the ad was rejected, as Wheeler knows. As to whether the ad actually promotes conservatism is also debatable, although it does indicate that some conservatives will resort to hate speech to gain the support of the angry and fearful.

With respect to the ad's claim that "they" are mocking the 9/11 dead with this mosque, Wheeler claims that the word "they" referred only to those who are funding the Cordoba House project. The fact that this charge follows a statement that "(o)n 9/11 they declared war of us" renders Wheeler's defense hollow and meaningless. It is a deliberate deception designed to conceal two things: first, that the opposition to this project is based on bias against all Muslims, and, second, that Wheeler, like all of the Cordoba House opponents, have a dearth of evidence for, and an excess of accusations of, the bad intentions of the Cordoba House backers.

An earlier post on this blog cited a report that the Cordoba House project's leader, Imam Feisal Rauf, was on the board of the Perdana Global Peace Initiative (read here) to temper my earlier unqualified support for the project (read here).  Perdana, which is one of several anti-Israel groups set up by Malaysia's corrupt, authoritarian and anti-Semitic former Prime Minister Tun Mahathir, lists Rauf as a board member on their website. While it claims to be a pacifist group, Perdana absurdly singles out Israel for the vast majority of its

opprobrium, giving most of the world's governments, including those who should be targeted by a truly pacifist group, a free pass.  Speaking on WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show this morning, Imam Rauf's wife, Daisy Khan (who heads the Organization for Muslim American Advancement) stated that Rauf is not on the board of the Perdana group, that he merely gave a presentation at a Perdana conference three years ago, and that the Perdana website is in error. She went on to say that both she and her husband denounce terrorism of any kind including terrorism by Hamas. While I am not thrilled to hear of any association between Imam Rauf and Tun Mahathir or Perdana, the link does not raise the sort of red flags being hysterically waved by Cordoba House opponents such as the New York Post and blogger Pamela Geller, who unreasonably impute terrorist connections. That being said, Rauf and Khan would do well to open a conversation with those who both support their group's right to worship freely and who oppose Mahathir Tun's cynical manipulation of anti-Israel sentiment.

In her interview, Daisy Khan also emphatically stated that the choice of the Cordoba House site on Park Place between Church Street and West Broadway had nothing to do with proximity to the World Trade Center site, a statement I find convincing. First, the neighborhood is a normal New York City neighborhood, not the shrine depicted by the project's opponents. Second, the congregation associated with the project have been in the neighborhood for over 25 years. Third, the site in question has been underutilized for decades, in spite of a real estate boom that has driven up property values and increased occupancy rates. Third, based on that real estate boom, the congregation was essentially faced with choosing between leaving the neighborhood where they were established (making access by the congregation more difficult or impossible), locating the center in a smaller or otherwise inappropriate building, or choosing this site. For the foregoing reasons, it seems much more likely that they chose this site because it was the best one available, not, as the Republican National Trust would have it, to dance on the graves of 9/11 victims.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio has made opposition to Cordoba House the keynote issue of his campaign, alleging that it raises unspecified "security issues" and groundlessly calling for criminal investigation of the project backers for ties to terrorists. (Read here.)  (Earlier this week, Lazio testified at a public hearing implausibly claiming that he opposed the project on historical preservation grounds, because it would alter a historical building.) The Republican National Trust, Rick Lazio and several other Republican and Tea Party candidates currently campaigning against Cordoba House need to stop making unreasonable, hateful accusations against the project, and begin answering a few questions with respect to their intentions, their methodology and their good faith. If they don't, we will be left believing that they are motivated by political opportunism, that they are willing to discriminate and spread hate against innocent people, and that they don't care sufficiently about the results of their actions. They need to temper their questions about the project with the knowledge that speech that encourages hate hurts everyone. By definition, political campaigns which take advantage of racial or religious fear corrode the public discourse and create additional divisions within the community. Those effects can't be measured. We depend on the good faith and responsibility of our leaders to temper their speech on this and similar subjects. They should be working to counter fear and hate, not encouraging more of it.

The bottom line: as far as I know, those behind Cordoba House just want a place for Muslims to worship and build a community center of the kind familiar to Jews and Christians. What's wrong with that?

A note on terminology: As someone who worked for one year in a building next door to the Cordoba House site, and for 12 years directly across the street from the site, and as someone who was present at both World Trade Center attacks (1993 and 2001), I have a lot of personal feelings and opinions relating to the neighborhood. Some of these find expression in the words I choose to use. I will not call the World Trade Center site "Ground Zero". The use of that term (originally coined to refer to the site of the direct impact of the Hiroshima atomic bomb) to refer to the World Trade Center site was an understandable product of journalists looking for words to describe the massive, smoking ruins of the towers in the aftermath of the 9/11 attack. Destruction like that had never before been seen in an American city, and conventional terminology failed to express either its dimensions or its emotional impact. Almost nine years later, the site is finally being redeveloped -- as it should have been years ago. It is no longer "Ground Zero" except for those who would freeze time and maintain the level of fear, anger and hurt that existed in the aftermath of the attack. That is not a place I choose to stay. It's no longer "Ground Zero", it's the World Trade Center site; and when the buildings are completed, it will be the World Trade Center. And it goes without saying that everyone should be welcome there regardless of their religion.

Hate cult visits Brooklyn, part deux

I wrote last week about the planned protest at my synagogue by an anti-gay, anti-Semitic cult-like church called the Westboro Baptist Church (or "WBC"). Last Saturday, they mounted small anti-Jewish and homophobic protests at Brooklyn's Congregation Beth Elohim and Kane Street Synagogue, among a number of other locations. Here are my impressions.

The lead-up to the protest included the news that school children in the Boerum Hill and Cobble Hill neighborhoods of Brooklyn had found scattered on sidewalks hundreds of slips of paper with the slogan "Kill Jews!". Police were said to be investigating a link to the planned demonstration at the Kane Street Synagogue which is located in Cobble Hill. (Read here.)

But that sort of stuff is child's play compared to the other PR techniques used by WBC. They're a small group, but they get a lot of press attention. They've latched onto the idea of protesting homosexuality at military funerals, a move which must be motivated more by attention-seaking than logic.

One means by which WBC generates attention for themselves is through fax spamming. A Zionist organization I know of receives almost on a daily basis faxes announcing WBC's picketing schedule and featuring their particular brand of insane rant. I assume that they're not the only one's getting these faxes.

I've seen some of these faxes, starting with an April 23 flier announcing demonstrations at the Israeli Consulate of Los Angeles and the Corona del Mar High School in Newport Beach, CA. The headline on that one got right to the point "JEWS KILLED JESUS!" and states that the Christ-killing Jews are "now ... carrying water for the fags; that's what they do best..." The announcement for this weekend's Brooklyn rallies (pdf here) was oddly headlined "THE FATEFUL FIG FIND", and included the warning to Jews that the Lord would soon "expel you from off the land & cause you to eat your children". WBC has very largely focused on such anti-Semitic and anti-gay proselytizing, frequently with only the most tenuous of connections. For example, they did detour from their usual path to celebrate both the death of Ted Kennedy and the fires in Athens, both of which they somehow believe to be God's punishment for homosexuality. They have taken the "God's punishment" idea invoked by Jerry Fallwell with respect to New York after 9/11 to its illogical extreme: any death or disaster is attributed to God's punishment for homosexuality.

They also maintain several relatively sophisticated websites (all with offensive names) featuring a variety of promotional material such as videos of sermons, music videos, promotional writings and calenders. The "Upcoming Pickets" calendar on the WBC website announced Saturday's Beth Elohim demonstration by denouncing bat mitzvah ceremonies as "unbiblical" and referring to the girl who was to be bat mitzvahed with an insult bordering on obscenity. That calendar entry is thankfully no longer available online.

This targeting of a youngster for abuse is typical of the WBC. They tend to target schoolchildren, frequently targeting schools and houses of worship for obscenity laced picketing. On Friday, September 24, they demonstrated opposite Brooklyn Tech High School in Fort Greene with just such a borderline obscene rally. They were met with a much larger counter-rally. (Read the Brooklyn Paper's coverage of that demonstration here. Their coverage of the preparations for the Beth Elohim demonstration is available here.)

On Saturday morning, my son wanted to come with me to Beth Elohim, but I told him that some bad people were going to be outside the synagogue and I just wanted to make sure that everything was okay.

Things were just getting started when I got there at about 9:45 am. I joined the group standing in front of the synagogue which included members of the synagogue, neighborhood residents, guests there for the bat mitzvah, and counter-demonstrators of various types. The crowd was mostly well-behaved and good-humored. (Kudos to the person who brought a dog wearing a sign reading "Dog Loves Fags".)

The WBC demonstration was extremely small. There had only four adult demonstrators and one child.

Each adult demonstrator held multiple signs, each sign bearing a calculatedly shocking and upsetting slogan or picture. This array of placards gave the impression of a slightly larger demonstration. After my initial surprise at how few of them there were, it occurred to me that these people are a subspecies of the group which includes those who opposed abortion by blocking clinics. They don't need large numbers to have an impact. They compensate for their small numbers with gross imagery, vicious rhetoric and a strategy of provoking confrontation. This was brought into focus by a particularly offensive sign to wave around at families going to various Shabbos services and a bat mitzvah: a picture of an infant inside a giant hamburger bun with lettuce and tomato with the of a slogan: "BITCH BURGER". The below-embedded video shows a WBC member "explaining" the sign.



After some of the chanting heard in the above video, they got to the main event. Like some sort of demented glee club, the WBC people began singing a series of several well rehearsed songs with lyrics concerning the evils of Jews, gays and Barrack Obama who was depicted with devil horns and the slogan "ANTICHRIST", an image also seen at teabag rallies.

At about 10 am, Rabbi Andy Bachman came out of his office bearing a shofar. He stood on the steps in front of the shul and addressed the crowd. After expressing his surprise at how so few WBC demonstrators caused so much tumult, he eloquently thanked the diverse crowd for coming together to oppose hate in the name of a God of love who loves gays and lesbians. He led the group in singing Oseh Shalom. Then the crowd fell back on an old standard to create a more festive mood, singing Hava Negila and dancing the hora. Rabbi Bachman took a moment to lead the crowd in a comic collective nose-thumbing directed at WBC in the name of "the God of Groucho Marx" (okay, it's a Reform congregation). Then he blew the shofar several times, the crowd chanting "tekiah", drowning out the obscene WBC chanting and singing and bringing an air of peace appropriate to the season.

Ben Muessig's Brooklyn Paper article on the Beth Elohim and Kane Street demonstrations (readable here on the New York Post website) was accurate and well-written. Steven Waldman's coverage at Beliefnet was also excellent (read here). On the other hand, Brooklyn's Channel 12 cable TV news covered another WBC demonstration at the Midwood Jewish Center in a very different way, showcasing video of an angry, apparently frum man in a group of men in black hats and tallitot, and contrasting that with an interview with a for-once not shouting Shirley Phelps saying her demonstration was "anti-sin". (View here.)

Video of the local CBS affiliate's coverage of a WBC demonstration in nearby Great Neck, L.I. is embedded below.



Before this week, I didn't really know what could motivate a hate group such as WBC, but their behavior at the demonstration -- a startling combination of obscenity-laced rhetoric concerning and targeting children and including a child participant -- presented an important clue. As a child, Fred Phelps, the leader of this group, must have been taught to associate piety and goodness with abusive, hateful language and exhibitionism, largely focused on a fear of homosexuality. Phelps has been able to promote this obscene, authoritarian world view in a family cult which worships a verbally abusive, narcissistic God. They literally worship hate. Time will tell whether they succeed in passing this ritualized hate onto the next generation of Phelps. From what I saw, the poor child they brought to Beth Elohim on Saturday would much rather have been somewhere, anywhere, else. He seemed ashamed of his elders. I hope that he can preserve that sense of shame.

Hate group to demonstrate at Brooklyn synagogue

On Monday, I posted about a hateful anti-Jewish demonstration conducted outside a Rosh Hashana service in Oklahoma by a small cult-like group called the Westboro Baptist Church. (Read here.) Today I learned that this group is coming to my synagogue. Gene of Harry's Place was kind enough to post the following:

Blogger Adam Holland has received an email from Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn, where his family attends services and where his 4-year-old son attends preschool:

The email concerns plans by a hate-group to demonstrate outside the synagogue. I’ve written frequently about anti-Semitism on my blog for the past three years. Now it has come to my doorstep and demanded my attention and the attention of those who care about this issue.

The group in question, Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, has a long history of demonstrating at gay pride events with signs and slogans of the lowest, most hateful kind. More recently, they have similarly targeted the funerals of those killed in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now they target Jewish religious services as well. I’m asking those with the capacity to speak out against the efforts of Westboro Baptist Church to harm Jews, gays, and members of the military to do so now.

As I wrote on my blog, Westboro Baptist demonstrated outside Rosh Hashana services in Norman, Oklahoma, last Saturday bearing signs reading “God hates Jews”. No Jewish child should be forced to read that sign. No family should have to explain to their child what that sign means. Our families should not be forced to run a gauntlet of bigots in order to worship. By exposing this sort of hatred, and by demonstrating our commitment to peaceful coexistence between all religions, we help to counter those who try to sow seeds of hate.

You may recall that the same group demonstrated outside my old high school last spring because it’s named after the notorious homosexual Walt Whitman.

Although I had some reservations about giving this group the attention it obviously lives for, I've decided to go ahead and cover this. Why? Because I know that I and many other parents will be unable to bring our children to Shabbat services this Saturday so they aren't exposed to hate like that pictured below.

Jacob Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church protests at the Oklahoma University Hillel Rosh Hashahah service.

I'm not sure what will happen on Saturday. Watch this space for a follow-up.

Guss Pickles goes to Brooklyn

The New York Times has a story on Guss Pickles leaving the Lower East Side. No Bernstein's-on-Essex. No pickle stores. Kossar's bialies mere shadows of their former oniony glory (although their onion pletzl is still great).

My stomach no longer recognizes the neighborhood.

read here Big City - Sweet Memories of Growing Up in Half-Sours at Guss’ Pickles - NYTimes.com

Mugabe's NYC supporters

The New York City Council has been the site of some outrageous misbehavior over the years, including the 2003 fatal shooting of a councilman by a frustrated political opponent. (You can read about that here and here and here). Among the most outrageous official acts of the City Council was a special ceremony it held at City Hall in honor of Zimbabwe's murderous dictator Robert Mugabe. The person responsible for that outrage was Councilman Charles Barron. (Read here and here.)

In the years since 2002, Barron's admiration for Mugabe has apparently not been dimmed by Zimbabweans' suffering, as evidenced here:

Barron's undying love for Mugabe is shared by his longtime chief aide Viola Plummer. By way of background, you may remember her as the person formally expelled by the Council for threatening a Councilman with assassination at a press conference at City Hall. That made for entertaining political theater, but in light of the actual assassination of a Councilman at City Hall a few years earlier, the Council found her threat to be beyond the pale of acceptable discourse and kicked her out. She subsequently entered the Council chamber in defiance of this ruling and was physically removed from the chamber. (Read here and here.)

Plummer subsequently filed a federal lawsuit against the City over her expulsion, the status of which I do not know. But I do know a few things about Plummer which you may find interesting.

Plummer is one of the leaders of a political organization called the December 12 Movement, a major part of whose mission is to support Robert Mugabe. They organize on behalf of the Mugabe regime, conducting meetings and rallies in New York City, such as the one in July 2008 at Harlem's Abysinian Baptist Church described very effectively in this article from the Zimbabwe Times: "Close shave with Mugabe’s Harlem allies" by Jane Taruvinga. Read that article and take a look at this video of the meeting taken by a Zimbabwe Times staffer:

Here are some excerpts from Jane Taruvinga's article:

“Mugabe is right, U.S. hands-off Zimbabwe” was the headline that caught my eye when a friend gave me a flyer which she picked from the Abyssinian Church in Harlem, New York. On the flyer was the name of an organization, the December 12th Movement. A telephone number was listed and I called it. When a woman answered the phone I asked her to clarify what the flyer meant.

“We are having an event on Thursday July 3rd at 6.30pm” she advised, somewhat impatiently. “Come there and you will find out what we mean.” The line went dead.

Prior to this incident, I had watched and listened with horror to the news coverage of Zimbabwe over the last three months. Most of my news sources have been family, relatives and friends in Zimbabwe as well as online newspapers run by Zimbabweans, because only state run newspapers are allowed in today’s Zimbabwe. They informed me that most schools in the countryside outside the cities were deserted as the teachers had fled. Teachers were being targeted for brutal victimisation by President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party.

Some of them had acted as polling agents in the March 29 elections, which Mugabe lost. I read the heartbreaking story of a headmaster who, fearing for his life had fled the school, but had returned after being assured of his safety. A week after his return, he was kidnapped by Zanu-PF militiamen. After two days, his worried wife found his Identity card, tie, shoes, and pair of trousers on the veranda of their home.
She went to the police and was told to go to the local mortuary. His body was there. I have seen pictures of people with their faces smashed in, their backs raw and bones sticking out. I read about people whose homes had been burned; people who had been murdered in cold blood.

Though these events were taking place far away back in Zimbabwe, the stories were real to me because the names of the victims were familiar. These are names that, no matter where they are in the world, if Zimbabweans hear such names they immediately recognise them.
But in the comfort of my life here in New York, I thought I could switch on and off the horrific drama that was unfolding in Zimbabwe when it suited me. Then a week ago I received a phone call that my elderly parents in their seventies had been beaten up by the notorious Zanu-PF youths, led by members of the army. Mugabe’s war had come too close to home. I was distraught with worry.

I spent sleepless nights calling my sisters back at home, trying to persuade them to go to our rural village. They were reluctant to go, because in the rural areas far from the prying eyes of the world, Zanu-PF’s militiamen were unleashing an orgy of violence and intimidation. The rural peasants were reliving the Chimurenga War of the 1970s. People were being rounded up and made to sing war songs. The opposition supporters (MDC) were paraded and forced to take turns beating each other up.

In our village, they went around beating up everyone, including a Mugabe supporter, my father. My father’s philosophy is simple. If people don’t vote for Mugabe, there will be war again. In past elections I threatened to withdraw the money that I sent home. Then I threatened not to speak to him if he went ahead and voted for Mugabe. But, when he became seriously ill and needed surgery, I forked out the US$500.00 required.

I have at my disposal in New York many news sources out of Zimbabwe. I remember telling my sisters on the phone that I had seen Tsvangirai’s new red campaign bus. I also told them of incidents that had happened outside Harare, which they did not know about. My family’s knowledge of what’s happening in Zimbabwe has been limited to what is passed on to them by word of mouth. Sometimes they will find out what happened weeks after an incident took place - like the beating of our sister-in-law’s cousin and his wife (both teachers) and their son.

When my sisters visited our sister-in-law they found out that she had just arrived from visiting the trio in hospital. They are still in hospital today, more than a month after the vicious assault.

It was against this background that I was driven by curiosity to find out who these supporters of Mugabe in New York were. I asked a friend who has a video camera to come along with me. My idea was not only to find out the identity of these supporters but also to capture them on video.

When we arrived at the Abyssinian Church the event was already in progress. The room was packed . . . I turned to the man seated next to me and asked him how he had found out about the meeting. He . . . pulled out a letter from WBAI. “I am a member,” he said with a grin.

I took the form from him. It was from WBAI, requesting members to send contributions. I handed it back to him.

“Don’t you listen to WBAI?” he asked me. “That’s where I got the information about this event, they announced it.”

Sure enough, I noticed something that had not occurred to me before. Most of the audience comprised WBAI listeners. I did an internship at the station a few years ago. WBAI . . . relies on contributions from listeners. These members have a lot of control over the program and if they don’t like what they hear, they call up to complain. When I went on air to read international news, which included reports about the bloody land invasions in Zimbabwe, the listeners called the station soon after I came off air. They called me names. . . .

(P)residing over . . . Thursday’s meeting was one Viola Plummer. She rallied against Human Rights Watch (and) Amnesty International, accusing them of supporting the opposition Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe. The MDC, she told her audience, was a front of the white people.

When a young black reporter asked her why Mugabe had banned all the NGOs, she replied that they were distributing food as well as the opposition pamphlets. What about Save the Children (UNCEF), the reporter asked. “They are all the same,” Plummer said, “including CARE.

As her audience cheered her on, she vowed to fight to the death. Trade unions in Zimbabwe were the most racist, she declared. The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, of which Morgan Tsvangirai was secretary general, has an almost exclusively black membership. Plummer claimed that the international organizations in Zimbabwe were funded by the Bush administration and the British government.

To the people of Zimbabwe, Viola is a foreign dignitary. Over the last several years, she and her entourage have been the guests of Robert Mugabe’s government. In his book, Against the Grain, Geoffrey Nyarota [read here] says as Zanu-PF’s circle of friends in the international community diminished, the December 12 Movement of Harlem in New York shot to prominence in Harare.

“The head of the movement acquired an avant-garde name, Comrade Coltrane Chimurenga, to reinforce his revolutionary credentials,” Nyarota says. “Comrade Chimurenga and one Sister Viola Plummer undertook an annual pilgrimage from Harlem to Harare, their visits timed to coincide with Zimbabwe’s independence celebrations on April 18.

“The delegation from Harlem was flown across the Atlantic and accommodated in the five-star Sheraton Hotel at taxpayers’ expense. After being feted, entertained and flown to exotic tourist attractions like the Victoria Falls, they were paraded at the Independence Day festivities.

“They inevitably granted so-called exclusive interviews to the Herald, the Sunday Mail and the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation’s radio and television channels in which they extolled the virtues of the ruling party and the allegedly profound wisdom of its leaders. They told Zimbabwe’s long-suffering taxpayers what a good job their President was doing for the nation and urged them to support Zanu-PF unflinchingly.

“Soon after the land invasions in 2000, Comrade Chimurenga was quoted by the government media as having unreservedly endorsed the ‘Third Chimurenga’, or Third Revolution, whose centrepiece was the violent occupation of white-owned farms. In New York, Mugabe relied on the December 12 Movement to organise an occasional demonstration, even at short notice - rent-a-crowd events, as Bill Saidi aptly summed up their timely interventions - in support of Zimbabwe’s President and government.”

An editorial in the June 12, 2007, issue of the New York Daily News has this to say of Plummer. “Who is Viola Plummer? Let’s go to the record. In 1985, she stood trial with seven co-defendants on charges of plotting to crash out of prison two members of the gang that pulled off the 1981 Brink’s armored car robbery in which a guard and two cops were killed in Rockland County. “Acquitted of the most serious charges, other members of the group, including Plummer’s son Robert Taylor, were convicted of possessing weapons such as dynamite and machine guns. In the transcript of an undercover recording introduced at the trial, a leader of the bunch, Coltrane Chimurenga, instructed Taylor in the ways of armed robbery.”

As she angrily rallied against white injustice here and abroad last Thursday, her audience cheered and clapped their hands. She characterised what was happening in Zimbabwe as white retaliation for the land invasions. Some in the audience were wearing Zanu-PF T-shirts with the campaign message: “100% empowerment, VOTE for Mugabe.”

But the people of Zimbabwe, including her contacts in Zanu-PF do not seem to know who Viola Plummer really is? Viola Plummer is a former aide to councilman Charles Barron, who is also known as a former member of the Black Panther Movement. She was fired by New York City Council Speaker Christina Queen after she threatened to assassinate a New York City councilor over a legislative dispute. The (threatened) councillor had refused to support her measure to have a street renamed after a black activist called Sonny Carson.

Prior to this incident, Viola Plummer went on trial after being accused of trying to stage the jail break-in to free two fellow activists who had been jailed for their involvement in the1981 Rockland County robbery. Plummer ended up only being convicted of falsely identifying herself to the police.

Plummer was in Zimbabwe during the independence celebrations this year and prior to the June 27 presidential runoff. At the meeting, she said she had attended the inauguration of Mugabe in Harare on Sunday, June 29.

You may know Comrade Coltrane Chimurenga by one of his aliases, listed on the caption of this federal lawsuit: "randolph Simms", "rashidpendergrass", "lionel Jean-baptiste", "john Thomas", or "macio Mcadams".

Prior to Zimbabwe's March 2008 election, the Mugabe regime had banned most foreign observers, as reported here and here. They did, however extend an invitation to a delegation from the December 12 Movement. Readers will be reassured to learn that, according to this article in Zimbabwe's official government-sanctioned newspaper, the Herald Reporter:

THE December 12 Movement, one of the foreign observer missions that witnessed the June 27 presidential run-off election, has endorsed the poll as an expression of the will of the people of Zimbabwe.

The African-American organisation, based in New York in the United States, however, said the existence of sanctions and the disproportionate and biased reporting of what was taking place in Zimbabwe by a few media outlets with global outreach had skewed the playing field against Zanu-PF. Members of the mission yesterday said their findings so far indicated that the poll outcome was not only a free expression of the will of Zimbabweans, but that it set an example for the rest of Africa and the Africans in the Diaspora.

If you want a sense of what the December 12 Movement think of Mugabe's Zimbabwe and want it from the horse's mouth, read this transcript from WBAI Pacifica Radio's Democracy Now. The subject was the March 30, 2008 election in Zimbabwe. The speaker was Omowale Clay of the December 12th Movement "International Secretariat". Clay was part of the delegation invited by Mugabe to observe the election, which occured on the day preceeding his report.

Omowale Clay: I have something very important to report to the Pacifica community in general and to African people, in particular. Yesterday the people of Zimbabwe resoundingly said they will never be a colony again. Unofficial results have confirmed that Zanu PF has won a major victory, and by all counts will in fact capture over 2/3 of the electoral vote, which will give them the ability to restructure their constitution, to institutionalize the [inaudible] which was always the view of them fighting for the total emancipation of their people politically and economically. So I wanted to make sure to bring back the people, to also let them know, Amy, that democracy in Zimbabwe is not anything new. For the past 25 years as we celebrate the 25th silver jubilee, democracy was brought to Zimbabwe through national liberation armed struggle and it was never given to the Zimbawean people. But since 1980 when the first elections took place, there have been six major parliamentary elections that have taken place, and there have been three presidential elections that have taken place. So no one can teach Zimbabwe democracy. Zimbabwe is teaching it to the African and pan-African world, as well as to the neo-colonizers who are trying to re-colonize Zimbabwe.

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In case you wondered where Viola Plummer landed after leaving the City Council, well ...she fell up. In December 2008, Viola Plummer was chosen to be chief of staff for newly elected New York State Assembly Representative Inez Barron, who just happens to be the wife of Councilman Charles Barron. Here's a local blog post about that appointment:

VIOLA PLUMMER JOINS ASSEMBLYWOMAN INEZ BARRON'S STAFF

Assembly member Inez Barron has selected Viola Plummer to join her staff. Ms. Barron made the announcement during her judicial swearing-in ceremony at the House of the Lord Church. Ms. Plummer, who served as Chief of Staff with Council member Charles Barron, will work in Assembly member Inez Barron's 40th AD district office. Ms. Barron has also selected Mel Faulkner to staff the district office. Mr. Faulkner has worked in Council member Barron's district office.

The announcement was made during the first of 2 consecutive ceremonies celebrating Ms. Barron's new position. Judge Sylvia Ash gave Assembly member Barron the Oath of Office at both events - first at the House of the Lord Church, then later that evening at St. Paul's Community Baptist Church. Rev. Herbert Daughtry gave a historical perspective of community activism and electoral politics. Councilman Charles Barron spoke of his love and support for his wife.

Elected officials in attendance at the events were Judge Geraldine Picket, Assembly members Annette Robinson, Karim Camara, and Michael Gianaris, State Senators Eric Adams and Bill Perkins, Council members Letitia James, Bill DiBlasio, and Eric Gioia. Others who came to witness Ms. Barron's oath were family members and a variety of community leaders: Dr. James McIntosh, Faye Moore (Local 371 Public Sector Social Service Workers), David Galarza (CSEA Local 1000), Ms. Ollie McClean, Dr. Ron Daniels and his wife Mary France, Sam Anderson, Kevin Powell, Stan Kinard and his wife Tulani (candidate for the 41st Council seat), Bob Law, Dr. Lenora Fulani, and Brenda Walker.

Special acknowledgements were made to those who assisted in getting Ms. Barron elected: Paul Washington (Inez Barron's Campaign Manager) and his wife Peggy, Andre Mitchell, founder of Man Up, Inc. and Hip Hop SUV (Stand Up and Vote), December 12 Movement, Operation Power, the United African Movement, and the Coalition of the Outsiders.

Noted at both events was the history made: a siting council member and assembly member husband- wife team covering the same geographic area at the same time.

You may recognize Dr. Lenora Fulani as the public face of the sometimes far-left, sometimes far-right political cult called the New Alliance Party. (Read about them here.) Fulani, who has over the years run for several positions without success, may be considering another run for office, this time for New York mayor, according to this blog post.)

To bring this post full circle, Paul Washington, Inez Barron's campaign manager, was Charles Barron's chief of staff. He's also the guy who introduced Mugabe at New York City Hall when he recieved the official honors of the City Council in 2002 (read here). According to this blog post:

(The City Council honoring Mugabe) was the inspiration of Councilman Charles Barron, and his Chief of Staff, Mr. Paul Washington, whom Barron calls his "Comrade in Struggle and Co-Council Member," brought it to fruition.

And now, according to the Daily Gotham (read here):

Charles Barron is intent on running his former chief-of-staff (Paul Washington) to replace him after he is term-limited from his seat in the council.

So it appears likely that Robert Mugabe will continue to have a voice both in the New York State Assembly and in the New York City Council (as well as on WBAI radio) even as the most of the world condemns him.

December 12 Movement Rally, NYC

_________________________________________________________________

UPDATE 4/14/2009:

from the New York Daily News:

Plummer Case Redux

(By Elizabeth Benjamin on April 7, 2009)

The case brought against the city and Council Speaker Christine Quinn by Councilman Charles Barron's ex-chief of staff, Viola Plummer, in the wake of the 2007 Sonny Carson street re-naming flap is one step away from being dismissed.

The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued a ruling today that overturned a lower court decision denying immunity to Quinn on Plummer's claim that the speaker's decision to fire her violated her First Amendment rights and ordered the case remanded for dismissal.

The decision note the city's burden in making its case was lower due to Plummer's status as a high-ranking public employee and the fact that her use of the word "assassination" in connection with Councilman Leroy Comrie sparked a reasonable concern for his safety in Quinn, given the 2003 muder of Councilman James Davis.

"The First Amendment does not require employers to sit idly by when an employee engenders such concerns. In view of these two incidents of “disruption,” taken together, and because we conclude that there is no genuine issue as to whether Quinn’s actions were taken in retaliation for Plummer’s speech...For these reasons, we hold that Plummer’s First Amendment rights were not violated and enter summary judgment for Quinn and the City of New York."

According to an attorney in the city's Law Department, unless Plummer decides to appeal, the case will end here.

I reached Plummer at her new job as director of operations in Assemblywoman Inez Barron's office. She hadn't yet heard of the ruling, and thus couldn't comment on what her plans might be.

NOTE: The decision is by three judges: Circuit Judges Rosemary Pooler and Debra Ann Livingston and District Judge Jed Rakoff.

Crown Heights Situation (Part 3)

Here are some local news reports from New York City concerning several apparent hate crime incidents.

from The New York Times: Crowd Protests an Assault on a Jewish Teenager

A crowd of more than 300 Hasidic Jews, some shouting “We want justice!” marched in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, on Friday afternoon to protest the assault and robbery of a Jewish teenager early that morning.

The protesters marched from the scene of the assault, at Empire Boulevard and Albany Avenue, to the 71st Precinct station, and then up New York Avenue to Eastern Parkway, where they blocked traffic. They were briefly stopped at Kingston Avenue by a line of police officers who stood arm to arm.

Traffic was reopened on Eastern Parkway at 6:10 p.m., and the crowd gradually dispersed around 6:45 p.m.

According to the police, the teenager, 16, left his house in Crown Heights around 12:10 a.m. on Friday and was attacked and robbed a short while later. He sustained a concussion and cuts on his face and hands, and his bicycle, watch and cellphone were stolen, the police said.

The beating of the teenager, identified by the protesters as Alon Sherman, is being investigated as a possible hate crime, and officers are looking for witnesses, the police said.

The protest was an outburst of tension in a neighborhood that erupted in 1991 with unrest and violence among Jews and blacks, who have coexisted in the area, usually peacefully, for decades.

Recently, black leaders expressed anger after a 20-year-old black college student, Andrew Charles, was attacked in the neighborhood on April 14 by two Jewish men, in what the police have described as a hate crime. On Friday, the police released a photograph of a man, Yitzhak Shuchat, 25, who is being sought as a “person of interest” in the attack on Mr. Charles.

Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said at a news conference Friday morning that the police were investigating reports that Mr. Shuchat was a member of an unofficial Hasidic security group.

“There has been talk of a group that is not officially sanctioned or recognized,” he said. “If that is the case, we certainly frown on that.”

from CrownHeights.info » Ray Kelly Meets with Jewish Leaders About Attacks

New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly visited The Schluchim Center Monday night to talk with local Jewish leaders about the recent rise in racial attacks.

People who met with Commissioner Kelly say the message they wanted to get across is that the incidents aren't a Jewish issue or a black issue, but a problem facing the entire community.

“We are happy he came but we're still concerned the police department isn't realizing the severity of the situation,” says Rabbi Yosef Jacobson.

Commissioner Kelly listened to concerns and noted that crime was lower now than it was in the 1990s.

Rabbi Jacobson says the most recent attack occurred Saturday night when members of his congregation were attacked while walking home from a Sabbath meal. Additional incidents involved a Jewish teen allegedly being beaten and attacked on Friday and a young black teen allegedly attacked by a group of Jewish men last month.

and from The Jewish Week: Jewish Outrage In Crown Heights

Outraged by a continuing series of violent attacks against Jews in Crown Heights, hundreds of protesters from the Chabad-Lubavitch community rallied last Friday in the Brooklyn neighborhood outside the local police precinct calling for a greater police presence and the ouster of the precinct commander.
Three days later, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly visited the neighborhood and held an impromptu meeting with community leaders. The next day, the leaders reported a heavier police presence, including two mobile observation towers and three commander posts, and a chasidic blog reported that the commander, deputy Inspector Frank Vega of the 71st Precinct, was being transferred.
The report was denied by the NYPD’s top spokesman.
Crown Heights leaders on Tuesday also met with Deputy Mayor Edward Skyler to discuss their concerns.
The protests followed the attack on 16-year-old Alon Sherman early Friday morning, which left him unconscious. He was robbed of his bicycle and other possessions.
That attack was followed by another incident Sunday. Witnesses said three young black men threw rocks and shouted anti-Semitic slurs at Jewish pedestrians outside a synagogue on Eastern Parkway. Last week, a school bus full of children from a chasidic school was pelted with rocks thrown by an estimated 10 youths on President Street.
All this takes place against the backdrop of a police manhunt for assailants in the April 14 assault on a black college student in which the assailants are said to be volunteers in a chasidic patrol group. District Attorney Charles J. Hynes has convened an investigative grand jury to probe that incident, and police identified Yitzchak Shuhat, 25, an emergency medical technician, volunteer patrolman and former NYPD auxiliary officer, as someone wanted for questioning.
“This is creating outrage and disgust among the Jewish community,” said Yossie Stern, chairman of the Shmira Patrol, which was implicated by Hynes in the incident. “There have been close to 40 beatings [of Jews] in the past and not one single arrest. People are very angry at the police department and shocked that in the end, reaction to this one isolated incident tells the Jewish community that they are not acting fairly.”
Tensions are also reportedly building between Shmira and its rival, the Shomrim patrol group, from which it separated more than a decade ago. Anonymous bloggers continue to launch personal attacks against Stern and other members by name, accusing them of the halachic transgression of mesirah, turning a Jew over to secular authorities, in an unrelated incident last year.
During Kelly’s visit to Crown Heights Monday night he told chasidic leaders that the neighborhood is safer than it has been in 20 years. In a video posted on a Chabad Web site, Kelly is seen arguing that point with a local rabbi, Yosi Jacobson. In that argument Kelly seems to allude to Shmira, whose members were referred to by Hynes as “renegades” whose work is unsanctioned by the community and the police.
“We need calm heads, cool heads,” says Kelly in the footage. “We don’t want people irrationally causing problems.”
Black and Jewish elected officials and community leaders were to gather on Thursday to discuss obtaining funding to post more video surveillance equipment on streets where attacks have taken place , in order to help deter crime and identify culprits.
“We need to restore confidence and security on the streets,” said Councilwoman Letitia James, who represents Crown Heights. “As an elected official I’m going to help restore that.”
Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who does not represent Crown Heights, said Tuesday that he has spent many hours in the community to assess the situation because of his own concern and what he described as a “leadership vacuum” in the community. He says he was asked to get involved.
“One of the reasons the authorities get away with not doing their job is because [the community is] divided,” Hikind said, describing reports from crime victims that police lost paperwork related to their cases. “I was shocked to hear what I was hearing.’
Hikind said he believed Mayor Michael Bloomberg should visit the area. “It would improve so much the sense that someone cares,” said Hikind. The assemblyman, who recently formed an alliance of black and Jewish elected officials to address common concerns, said he would convene that group for Thursday’s press conference.
Following the meeting with Skyler on Tuesday, Hanina Sperlin, vice president of the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council, said, “They gave me a very good assurance that we are going to see a big difference. When I got home there were about 100 additional policemen. My only question is if they will still be there in a week.”
Sperlin said there were rumors in the community that Vega would be replaced, saying “He is a nice guy, I have a good relationship with him, but it’s time for new leadership.”
But Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne, the top NYPD spokesman, said on Tuesday that Vega “is the commanding officer of the precinct. Period.”
He did not respond to a request for permission to interview Vega.
Browne emphasized that overall crime in the 71st Precinct was down 12 percent so far this year compared to the same period last year. “That’s in all categories,” he said.
But Rabbi Jacob Goldstein, chairman of Community Board 9 in Crown Heights, said in reply: “Tell that to the people who are victims, who have had buckets of tar thrown at them and names shouted at them. Let them look at the statistics within the Jewish community and then say that in public and let’s see the reaction.
“At this rate every thug in town will be emboldened to attack because it seems these incidents are going on unabated.”

An editorial from the New York Daily News: Cool in Crown Heights

Alon Sherman, 16, was attacked and beaten while riding his bike early Friday morning in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

The touchy, sometimes volatile relationships between black and Jewish residents of Brooklyn's Crown Heights have frayed, with members of each community blaming the other for violent attacks aimed at youngsters.

In January, a Jewish teenager needed stitches after being jumped by black youths shouting epithets. In April, a black college student got pepper-sprayed and clubbed by a man police say may be a member of a Jewish community patrol. And Friday, another Jewish teen was beaten and robbed by black perpetrators.

There have been no arrests, prompting complaints from black and Jewish residents, along with irresponsible accusations that police are shielding lawbreakers of one group at the expense of the other.

We've seen this movie before, and it can end badly. The 1991 riots that racked Crown Heights were preceded by ethnic grievances that city officials were slow to recognize and inept at easing. Fortunately, City Hall is not standing idly by this time.

Community affairs aides have been circulating to maintain communications among local leaders and neighborhood organizations. And the NYPD has responded aggressively, and evenhandedly, to every incident. But still, there are tensions.

Some critical messages must get through. First is that crimes, both basic felonies and hate crimes, should be treated as individual acts, representing the mind-set of the perpetrators only and not of a larger community.

As our colleague Errol Louis, who lives in Crown Heights, wrote on Sunday, "Where the conversation goes haywire is when people retreat into their tribal corners, seeing every crime as a skirmish in some larger ethnic war."

The second critical message is that the NYPD will come down hard on retaliation, should any occur. And the third message, perhaps the most important, is that all of Crown Heights shares the goal of reducing crime.

Like all of New York, the neighborhood is far safer than it used to be. Major crimes are down more than 75% since 1990 in the two police precincts that cover Crown Heights. But in one of those precincts, the 77th, the number of murders climbed from nine in 1998 to 15 in 2007, with the pace picking up further this year.

Recognizing the trend, the NYPD has assigned special anti-crime troops to the area. That is exactly what's needed, along with a concerted, cooperative push by all parties to assist in battling crime. While also taking to heart that something as simple as a smile and a greeting to one's neighbors can add small drops to the reservoir of goodwill.

Croatian Nazi Concert Planned in NYC

Croatian neo-Nazi, neo-Ustase singer took his stage name from the Thompson submachine gun.


from The New York Sun:Neo-Nazi Band Set To Play Amid Protests, By MARUXA RELAÑO:

Protests are mounting against plans for a Croatian rock star, Marko Perkovic, who critics say glorifies the Nazis, to perform in New York.

The performer, known as Thompson, combines folk-inspired melodies with the electric thrill of heavy metal and nationalistic lyrics.

While Thompson's songs promote love of God, family, and his nation, the singer and songwriter is also said to glorify war and Croatia's Nazi past, and that has groups lining up in protest of his two New York shows at the Croatian Center in Midtown next month.

In past concerts, he has performed an anthem of the country's Nazi-backed military regime — the Ustasha — that references extermination camps where tens of thousands of Jews, Serbs, and Gypsies were killed during World War II. He greets adoring crowds with a famous Ustasha slogan — and many respond with the Nazi salute.

"To glorify what happened during the Holocaust is not what we need in the world today, nor do we need it in this city — after the events we have recently been through. To play with that for the sake of music, or even conviction, I find it totally repugnant," the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Task Force Against Hate, Mark Weitzman, said.

Mr. Weitzman said his group is in conversations with the Croatian Embassy, whose government has been trying to distance the country from the strong nationalism of the 1990s as part of a serious bid to join the European Union in 2010.

"I get the sense that they are not very happy about the concert, but I'm not sure how they are going to respond. Hopefully there will be the right response," Mr. Weitzman said.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights nonprofit that has been monitoring Mr. Perkovic's performances for several years, has also asked the Croatian Embassy in Washington to publicly repudiate the band as part of the country's commitment to international treaties denouncing the Holocaust, and to forgo working with any institution that supports the tour.

Last week, organizers of a Thompson concert planned in Toronto next month cancelled after pressure from the Canadian offices of the Task Force Against Hate. The group is now in conversations with the venue that is to host their Vancouver appearance, as well as to police there, said Leo Adler, director of national affairs.

Mr. Adler said in Canada, where there is a lower threshold for what constitutes hate speech, there is a chance that Thompson's lyrics could violate the law. In America, freedom of speech is more protected, he noted.

The director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, said he hoped education and exposure of the band's background would convince people to not attend their concerts. "The sad part is how popular they are in Croatia and that they are now coming here to appeal to U.S. Croats to almost justify the Holocaust," Mr. Foxman said.

"It's a free country, and people can choose to be offensive. We are not in the business of censorship or shutting people down, but we do hope that when people understand what they are about they will not want to hear them play," he added.

For Serbs living in America, whose minority population in Croatia was decimated during WWII and the Balkan wars of the 1990s between Serbs and Croats, Thompson's songs strike a particularly sensitive chord.

"He is singing about genocide against a people who were ethnically cleansed. It's intolerable," a development officer at NYU, Radosh Piletich, 35, said. Mr. Piletich is part of a loose group of Serbian-Americans in New York who would like to see the concert canceled and have lodged complaints with the office of Rep. Jerrold Nadler, in whose congressional district the concert will be taking place.

"I would like to stop the concert. I would like to stop the hatred. I don't understand how we can be in the 21st century and allow this type of language to take place," a man whose grandmother was killed by Ustasha during the war, Tom Djurdjevich, 37, said.

"If you listen to his lyrics, it celebrates butchery. It's beyond inhumane. He talks about gouging out of eyes and sawing off of heads," Mr. Djurdjevich continued.

One of the New York events' organizers, George Corluka, of Syndicate Productions, did not return calls and emails requesting comment.

But patrons at several Croatian bars in Astoria, Queens, where tickets for Mr. Perkovic's performance are being sold for $45, dismissed the importance of Thompson's extremist rhetoric, saying he is just appealing to a young nationalist sentiment long repressed by the Communist regime that gripped the country following World War II.

"Everybody says he's a good person. He's singing about genocide in the context of a war," said a painter, Marko Marienovich, 42, whose 21-year old daughter has made plans to go hear Thompson play said. "What he's singing about, he went through. He sings about the things he saw."

Many said they respect the fact that Mr. Perkovic is a veteran in the war between the Croats and Serbs. He earned his stage name from an American-issued submachine gun used by the Croats.

"He's a Croatian hero. You are going to see how many people show up for his show," a retiree, Boris Yurisic, 47, said.

So far, tickets for Mr. Perkovic's November 2 concert at the Croatian Center on 41st Street in Manhattan — which holds 700 people — are sold out. Tickets for a second concert the following day, scheduled due to strong demand, will soon go on sale. The Croatian Center adjoins the Roman Catholic Church of Saints Cyril and Methodius and St. Raphael, on 10th Avenue. Calls to the church offices were not picked up.

A spokesman for the Archdiocese of New York, Joseph Zwilling, said he didn't know about the concert or the artist and therefore couldn't comment. "I'd have to contact the Parish about this and we'll have to investigate it, certainly," he said.

At a readers' suggestion (thanks DAVID), here are some links to Thompson's videos. The truly Nazi character of this material has to be experienced to be believed. This is MTV from hell:

BEFORE WATCHING THOMPSON'S MUSIC VIDEOS, WATCH THESE VIDEOS OF THE JASANOVAC DEATH CAMP SO YOU KNOW WHAT HiS SONG CELBRATES. YOU CAN ALSO SEE WHERE HE GOT SOME OF THE FOOTAGE HE USES.

HERE'S A VIDEO FOR THOMPSON'S "Jasenovac i Gradiska Stara" GLORIFYING THE CROATION HOLOCAUST

and ANOTHER VIDEO FOR THE SAME SONG

and ANOTHER

NAZI CHANT BY FANS AT THOMPSON CONCERT

VARIOUS OTHER THOMPSON VIDEOS:

#1 #2 #3

Greetings from the beautiful Gowanus Canal!

This story is a bit off my usual beaten path, but #1) it's in my neighborhood, #2) it's a whale swimming in a notorious waterway best known for being an open industrial sewer with the worst pollution in NYC with the occasional mob hit victim floating like marshmallows in toxic cocoa, and #3) it gets depressing dealing with the stuff I generally write about. So godamnit, I'm gonna blog it!

Young Whale Wanders into NY Harbor | TIME

By RICHARD PYLE
A minke whale swims in New York City's Gowanus canal, Tuesday, April 17, 2007..




Marine biologists were standing watch on Tuesday over a young whale that lost its way in New York harbor and nearly wandered into a narrow waterway notorious for industrial pollution.

The animal, described as a juvenile minke whale about 15 feet long, was cruising around Gowanus Bay, the outlet from the mile-long Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn. It appeared to be in good health and not distressed, said Kim Durham, rescue program director for the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation.