New York – praag.org

Thousands of US policemen turn their backs on NY mayor De Blasio

Tens of thousands of police from cities across the United States filled a New York City church and nearby streets on Saturday for the funeral of one of two policemen shot by a man who said he was avenging the killing of unarmed black men by police.

The service for Rafael Ramos was one of the largest police funerals in the city’s history, with US Vice President Joe Biden among the dignitaries. But the tradition-bound ceremony was marked by an unusual protest against Mayor Bill de Blasio.

As he rose to deliver the customary mayoral eulogy, thousands of uniformed officers outside silently turned their backs on him in a pointed display of disrespect as his image filled the large screens broadcasting the service.

Angered by the mayor’s qualified sympathy for nationwide demonstrations calling for police reform, some New York police officers had similarly shunned Mr de Blasio as he arrived a week ago at the hospital where Ramos and his police partner, Wenjian Liu, were declared dead.

“He believed in protecting others,” Mr de Blasio said as he stood behind Ramos’ coffin, which was draped in the police department’s flag and bathed in blue light, “and those who are called to protect others are a special breed.” Singled out for their uniforms, the slaying of Ramos, 40, and Liu, 32, as they sat in their patrol car has become a rallying point for police and their supporters around the country, beleaguered by months of street protests accusing police of racist practices.

Offering a counter-narrative to the anti-police chants at many protests, Vice President Biden made the first of several speeches that touched on the marked increase in the racial diversity of the city’s police force, which only a few decades ago was almost entirely white.

“I believe that this great police force of this incredibly diverse city can and will show the nation how to bridge any divide,” Mr Biden said during the service at Christ Tabernacle Church in the suburban Queens neighborhood in which Ramos lived with his wife, Maritza, and their two teenage sons.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said the department had officers hailing from more than 50 different nations and included speakers of 64 languages. He went on to criticise some of the protesters who have held rallies in the city on a nearly daily basis.

“The NYPD protected the right of free speech even though they themselves were the targets of false and abusive tirades by some,” he said.

Sorrow mixed with anger

Streets outside the church were filled for blocks with neat, quiet crowds of officers in blue uniform, including delegations from Boston, Atlanta, St. Louis and New Orleans. Mr Biden said some 25,000 people were thought to have come.

Before joining the police department relatively late in his career, Ramos, known to his friends as Ralph, had worked as a school safety officer.

“He knew how to handle people, and the younger guys looked up to him,” said Bill Bratton, the city’s police commissioner. A regular face as an usher at Christ Tabernacle, Ramos had nearly completed a course to become a police chaplain.

Mr Bratton, a far more popular figure among police than the mayor, announced that he had posthumously appointed Ramos to the position.

The officers’ killer, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, 28, was described by city officials as an emotionally troubled man, and fatally shot himself soon after the attack.

Brinsley, who was black, had written online that he wanted to kill police to avenge the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown — unarmed black men killed by white policemen in New York and Ferguson, Missouri, this summer.

Their deaths and the decisions not to prosecute the officers responsible ignited nationwide protests, renewing a debate about race in the United States that has drawn in President Barack Obama.

In his first year as mayor after campaigning for police reform, Mr de Blasio has struggled to balance the interests of police critics who helped elect him and the officers who now work for him. This week, he was assailed by voices on both sides, with activists angered by his call, which they ignored, that they pause their protests.

Ramos’ family said the mayor was welcome at the funeral, but even many officers who did not turn their backs said they sympathised with the gesture.

“A lot of people feel he has taken a side, and that side is not ours,” a New York police officer said on condition that her name be withheld because of a department ban on unsanctioned media interviews.

Patrick Lynch, president of the city’s largest police union, said within hours of the deaths of Liu and Ramos that there was “blood on the hands” of the mayor.

“We have to understand the betrayal that they feel,” Lynch, in an interview outside the church with CNN, said of the officers’ protest. “The feeling is real, but today is about mourning. Tomorrow is about debate.”

Reply to Rebecca Davis, the Anglo-supremacist genius

Ms. Davis, or perhaps I should address you as “Your Majesty”, given that you have already assured us of your elect status as a member of the planetary cognitive elite by modestly stating on Twitter:

.@DeonJansevanRen @danroodt “Genius” is a bit much. “Above average intelligence” I will take, but honestly I think “genius” is exaggerated.

— Rebecca Davis (@becsplanb) November 7, 2014

In your column, you neglected to mention a few things, such as the fact that the Daily Show falsely represented themselves to me as a serious political talk show and that they actually cut the interview and the questions up in such a manner that where I replied “Yes” to a question they would insert a “No” from another part and vice versa.

This is clearly the work of people of extremely high intelligence, real prodigies such as Ms. Davis or Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart or Judit Polgár, the Hungarian girl who became a chess grandmaster at the tender age of 15 and is reputed to have an IQ of 170.

So if I had to interview Ms. Davis and ask her: Do you agree that all 3 million remaining Afrikaners should be herded into concentration camps and exterminated en masse and she replied “No”, I would just pause, ask her to keep her head still and proceed to the next question:

“Have you been to the beach at least once in your lifetime?” To which she would probably reply, “Yes”.

So then we just edit the video, copy or cut the “Yes” from the innocuous question and insert it as the answer after question number one.

Et voilà, another racist, fanatical genocidaire has been created! Sound the applause. Pipe in the laughter and ridicule.

Given that the New York-based Daily Show has such contempt for the Third World dump that is South Africa, pullulating with low-life and especially low-IQ, dumb, retarded Afrikaners who only got introduced to the written word by Nelson Mandela in 1994, it’s more or less QED, quod erat demonstrandum.

It probably never crossed their minds that there were courts in South Africa. Roman-Dutch law, what is that? LOL to the power of 100! Is that a relic of apartheid? Tell me another one!

I don’t suppose the mighty Daily Show and Viacom would obey a court order from South Africa, but let’s test it and see how far we get.

One thing I am really looking forward to is to request some documentary proof of your “really high IQ” which must be way to the far right edge of the distribution. Ever since our country was blessed with immigration from parts of the British isles, as well as Lithuania, many mathematical conundra have appeared that we simpletons who are usually greeted by our superiors with the alliterating phrase “dumb Dutchmen”, are unable to comprehend.

For example, we are supposed to be “Nazis” and therefore presumably killed six million Jews. Yet only 40 000 Jews immigrated here in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. So somewhere along the line a differential equation must exist to prove that 40 000 in 1910 became 6 000 000 in 1948 who were then all gassed at Vlakplaas or some other establishment.

Afrikaners are also supposed to have massacred many more millions of blacks but whose numbers miraculously increased during the “apartheid genocide”, at least enough to occupy about 80% of the voters roll during every recent election.

These are all truisms of Anglo-supremacist genius that we “less gifted” mortals barely comprehend as they depend upon higher thought processes and quick video editing. Or throw in a few cartoons with swastikas or bearded individuals with low, simian foreheads, Zapiro-style.

Oh yes, I also have a book here on my shelf entitled “Blank” which, it seems, was supposed to describe the Afrikaner contribution to South Africa, especially in architecture. Blank minds produce nothing, is more or less the form of the argument, which is another startlingly original syllogism from our cognitive elite manning the PC propaganda pump.

In “Blank” I learned that both the Voortrekker Monument and the campus of the University of Johannesburg (ex-Rand Afrikaans University), together with various former Volkskas buildings by Gawie Fagan, were expressions of both fascism and the mental deficiency of Afrikaners. That must also be why the ANC government in Gauteng is busy demolishing various historical monuments in Johannesburg, designed by the bilingual Scottish Afrikaner, Gordon Leith, as South Africa must now be rid of these lower forms of spatial expression. Entartete Kunst, as it were.

What is really astonishing is that an ethnocultural class so utterly convinced of its own, seemingly biological or divinely-inspired superiority, should accuse others of “racism”. So it is with the resident genius puppeteer Conrad Koch, M.A. (he reminds us in every interview of his postgraduate qualification in anthropology) too. In almost every statement about Steve Hofmeyr he flies into a rage calling Steve “stupid”, “dumb”, etc., in a clear demonstration of his exalted IQ which must be completely off the scale, radiating from Sea Point outwards to illuminate a benighted world.

I think there should be a law requiring every member of the Anglo-supremacist elite in South Africa to go for IQ tests at Mensa and publish it on their CV’s and on their business cards, a bit like the elite bureacrats and engineering graduates of France obtain a “rank” during their aggrégation exam (especially the one in mathematics) which they keep for the rest of their lives.

So please, Ms. Davis, do not keep us in suspense anymore, publish your IQ here so that South Africa may be humbled and feel grateful to have you here whereas you could just as well have made a far greater contribution to humanity in New York, such as humiliating a few Republicans as a member of the Daily Show.

Just don’t use calculus or Sanskrit in your reply; mine is a bit rusty, being of lower genetic stock.

Ebola translator steals the show

This is not the first time that has sign language translator has grabbed the headlines at a major event.

While an Ebola news conference should have been grabbing the headlines, a signer stole the show. The signer has now gone viral on social media, with some even questioning whether he was a legitimate interpreter.

The media conference was headed by New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and health officials, who were giving updates on the city’s first case of Ebola on Friday. However, as the officials continued, attention started to be diverted to a man sitting on the very left of the platform.

At Nelson Madela’s funeral in December 2013, South African Thamsanqa Jantjie appeared on stage and proceeded to conduct fake sign language gestures during the dignitaries’ speeches – including by US President Barack Obama – in an event that was watched by 95,000 mourners at Soccer City stadium in Johannesburg and millions around the world.

“There was zero percent accuracy. He couldn’t even get the basics right. He couldn’t even say thank you,” Delphin Hlungwane, a South African sign language interpreter at DeafSA, told Reuters.

Jantjie later claimed he was suffering a schizophrenic episode at the Mandela memorial service.

South African broadcaster, eNCA investigations, discovered that Jantjie, who is receiving treatment for his schizophrenia, has also faced rape (1994), theft (1995), housebreaking (1997), malicious damage to property (1998), murder, attempted murder and kidnapping (2003) charges.

The new SA colonials have arrived

Without as much as a whisper the South African government allowed at least 400.000 Chinese to swamp the country during the past six years. Chinese migrants, mainly from the overpopulated Fujian province in China, have been shipped off to South Africa at an alarming rate. Spreading all over the country, even in the remotest parts, between 6 000 and 12 000 “Chinese shops” sprang up.

New York also began to witness an influx of Fuzhounese Chinese-Americans. Fuzhou is the capitol city of the Fujian province of China, located in the southeast. Fuzhounese immigrants were attracted by promises of opportunity in New York (other destinations of interest were Japan, Australia, and Europe). Many undocumented immigrants came to New York as well, brought to the United States through human smuggling practices that had become widespread in the towns outside Fuzhou.

Today there are over 400.000 Chinese-Americans living in New York.

Emigrants who traveled to New York lived both in Fuzhou itself and in smaller villages outside of Fuzhou. The quantity of Fuzhounese immigrants measure into the tens of thousands. Fuzhounese immigrants in New York now outnumber Cantonese immigrants. Parts of the Lower East Side Chinatown and Sunset Park Chinatown are coming to be described as “Little Fuzhou” to acknowledge the growing Fuzhounese population.

Since the arrival of Fuzhounese people in Manhattan, Chinatown has expanded dramatically. Parts of the Lower East Side that originally belonged to Little Italy were now being assimilated into the ever-growing “Little Fuzhou”

Prof Colin McCarthy, retired from the University of Stellenbosch, first noted the “Chinese colonization” in South Africa. Says Prof McCarthy: “All the evidence indicates that the project to set up such an extensive network of Chinese shops, all following the same pattern and targeting the same market, was well researched, well planned, well organized and well financed”.

The young, unemployed couples from Fujian province settled into the network – pushing up cheap Chinese plastic, products and clothing into a lucrative retail chain far bigger than Pick ‘n Pay, Pep Stores or Edgars. To make matters worse: most of the Chinese shops are not registered and do not pay any taxes in South Africa’ not even import or export duties – in fact, China puts its clothing exports to South Africa to R11,3 billion in 2010; whilst South Africa’s failing statistics put the Chinese clothing imports at only R6,7 billion! It means that in one single year R4,6 billion worth of Chinese clothing entered South Africa illegally.

A South African Revenue Services employee spilled the beans on a small Chinese shop in a rural area where, when raided by SARS, R1,2 million was found under the counter.

Janet Wilhelm of the HSRC observes: “It is amazing how so many people can enter a country seemingly unnoticed!” She quotes the SAPS Aliens Investigation Unit as saying “Many Chinese travel to South Africa via Mbabane, Maputo and Maseru from where they enter South Africa with false identity documents by road”.

Patrick Chong, chairman of the Chinese Association of South Africa, says: “Many would enter on tourist or student visas then simply stay”.

Researches of Noseweek followed the Chen family where one pioneer settled illegally in South Africa, spreading within four years to 172 members of the family scattered across Lesotho trading Chinese products.

The South African ANC government officially proclaimed Chinese as “honorary blacks”, making them exempt from affirmative action, quotas and Black Economic Empowerment.

It is ironic that while populists like Malema and Shivangu walk about claiming “land and minerals for the South African people”, the ANC government has allowed at least 400 000 additional Indians and Pakistanis, at least 400 000 Chinese and at least 10 million illegal’s from Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Mozambique, Angola and now also Zambia into the country.

Source: southafricatoday.net

Millions of fake dollars flooding New York

An international counterfeiting ring has been pumping millions of dollars in phony $100 bills into New York and other cities in the metropolitan area over the past several years, forcing the Secret Service to step up its operation to shut it down, sources told “On The Inside.”

Federal officials are tracking the mules who smuggle bogus bills into the country and distributing an alert to New York businesses, banks and security industry personnel that teaches how to detect the fake C-notes, a copy of which DNAinfo New York obtained.

The counterfeit cash appears to have been manufactured on offset printing machines using plates and ink, rather than on more sophisticated copiers, according to Michael Seremetis, the assistant special agent in charge of the New York Secret Service office.

The loot is produced in bulk and bundled into packages that are smuggled in luggage or carried on planes by couriers who get about 40 cents on the dollar to put the fakes into circulation.

If you have a phony $100 that is confiscated, you will lose the value of the money but can declare a tax loss at the end of the year, officials said.

“We are asking the public to let us know if they encounter these bills,” Seremetis said.

Source: DNAinfo New York

Pussy Riot in an unauthorized offensive show at the US Federal Reserve?

Before the make-over — Before the unusually expensive make-over

Is the American Federal Government into concert promotion?

Two members of the unusually lame Russian punk rock band Pussy Riot, who seem to have a unusually strong media promotion team behind them, were recently released from prison and will appear at an Amnesty International concert in Brooklyn February 5th, WNYC reports.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina are scheduled to appear during the Bringing Human Rights Home concert at the Barclays Center in New York.

It is not certain which human right they had wished to defend when they were caught trespassing in a church in Moscow. The whole episode has an air of being manufactured, as if they might appear alongside the US Federal Turds next.

Musically it is hard to understand their large global following, but politically less so.

Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina were released from prison last month after serving 21 months for hooliganism after a March 2012 arrest for giving an unauthorized offensive performance in Christ The Savior Cathedral.

It is not known whether they might do an unauthorized offensive performance in front of the Federal Reserve.

Bill de Blasio elected mayor of New York

Progressive Democrat Bill de Blasio has been elected mayor of New York City, replacing billionaire Michael Bloomberg, US media reported Tuesday.

“Thank you, New York City,” de Blasio’s campaign tweeted just after the close of polls, together with a photo showing the presumed winner together with his wife and two children.

The 52-year-old will succeed Bloomberg in January at the helm of the United States’ largest city.

De Blasio promises a new style in a city transformed by 12 years of tough love under Bloomberg, who is stepping down after a record three terms.

He is one of the most progressive politicians in the country and left Republican rival Joe Lhota trailing in the dust by tapping into the worries of the economically vulnerable middle class. – AFP

South Africa to address ‘outdated ANC terror lists’

Scene of the Amanzimtoti bomb planted by the ANC and SACP

The department of international relations would continue in its attempts to rectify the travel restrictions of former ANC urban terrorists in some international countries, it said on Monday.

“The SA government has repeatedly raised this matter with the US and will continue until this matter is sorted,” said international relations spokesman Clayson Monyela.

The New Age reported earlier that ANC stalwart Tokyo Sexwale had been briefly detained by immigration control at the John F Kennedy International Airport in New York.

His lawyer Leslie Makhabela said: “They alleged he posed a threat to international security.”

Sexwale and many other anti-apartheid terrorists had been on a list of people banned from entering several countries since the apartheid era.

They were not removed after the country gained democracy in 1994.

Sexwale had since returned to the country. – Sapa and PRAAG

Tokyo Sexwale arrested in New York as terrorist

Businessman Tokyo Sexwale will approach the US government after he was arrested in New York for being on a list of banned persons to that country.

The former Housing minister’s lawyer, Lesley Mkhabela says Sexwale was arrested at JF Kennedy Airport while on a business trip to New York.

Former ANC terrorists were banned from visiting America during apartheid. The ban has since been lifted but not all names have been removed from the list, said Mkhabela.

“He has instructed us to take the matter up with the authorities of the US so we will address the letter to the US embassy in South Africa,” said Sexwale lawyer.

He says that they will also send the copy to the state’s departments requiring clarification on the status of this issue and also assuring that this shall not happen again in the future. – SABC

Racist rampage leaves man brain-dead

It came out of nowhere.

A black man allegedly went on a rampage in Union Square on Wednesday afternoon and left a complete stranger brain-dead in the process.

Police said that the attack may have been a hate crime.

Friends of Jeffrey Babbitt, 62, were shocked to hear about the random act of violence that left the gentle, retired train conductor in a coma, CBS 2′s Dave Carlin reported on Friday.

“I don’t believe that. I don’t know why that happened. He is very nice,” Igor Sapozhnikov said.

Babbitt was minding his own business as he walked through the crowd near the chess boards in Union Square when a man made a hateful announcement and began his rampage, witnesses said.

“He said ‘the next white person who walks by I’m going to [expletive],’” one woman said. “His fist went in and the man’s head bobbed and he hit the ground and you could hear his skull hitting the ground.”

The man continued his rampage before demanding to see police officers.

“He stood there and hit two more people and asked for the police to come,” Michael Benson said.

Stunned witnesses counted a total of three people attacked. The suspect, Lashawn Marten, 31, remained at the scene until police arrived.

Babbitt was on the ground with blood flowing from his head. Nearby were two other victims icing their faces.

Because of Marten’s alleged comments about targeting white people the incident could result in hate crime charges in addition to felony assault charges, according to Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.

“Obviously our Hate Crimes Task Force is involved in aspects of that case,” Kelly said.

Witnesses said they were amazed at the brazen, public nature of the assault.

“This is such a crowded area. You’d expect it in a back alley, but there are so many people here. That’s the strange part,” Garrett Browning said.

Babbitt was taken to Bellevue Hospital. Family and friends said that he is in a coma and has been declared brain-dead.

His 92-year-old mother, Hedda, was by his side. She shared a Sheepshead Bay apartment with her son. He was her primary caregiver. – CBS New York

UNSC concerned by use of chemical weapons in Syria

The United Nation Security Council (UNSC) has echoed sentiments by the UN Secretary General of strong concern for the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria.

Opposition groups have accused the Syrian government of firing rockets with poisonous gas on residential areas early Wednesday morning, with reports claiming hundreds if not over one thousand victims. The allegations are uncorroborated but vehemently denied by the Syrian army.

The Council was briefed by the deputy Secretary General on the situation in Syria in an emergency session late Wednesday.

“There is a strong concern among council members about the allegations. There is also a general sense that there must be clarity on what happened and that the situation has to be followed carefully. All council members agreed that any use of chemical weapons by any side under any circumstances is a violation of international law,” says Council President Argentina’s Ambassador Maria Perceval at an emergency session in New York.

A UN team is on the ground to investigate earlier claims of chemical weapons usage and is now pushing to examine the site of Wednesday’s attack.

Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson called the latest attack an escalation. “We see the need to investigate this as soon as possible. This represents, no matter what the conclusions are, a serious escalation with grave humanitarian consequences and human consequences. We hope that we will be able to conduct the investigation. Dr Sellström and his team are in place in Damascus,” says Eliasson.

Syria would have to agree to any change in the team’s mandate to include additional sites. Modalities for the inspection of three earlier sites took months to iron out with the team only arriving in Damascus just this weekend.

“It is a very dramatic situation and the security situation right now does not allow such access and that is why this should also be seen in the broader perspective. We need cessation of hostilities in this particular area and in general,” he added.

The mandate of the investigators is a limited one they are merely to establish whether chemical weapons were used in Syria and not who used them.

That, the Secretary General said earlier this week, would be for member states to decide, perhaps the Security Council which has two options, to break the stalemate on Syria and agree on a course of action or engage in more of the same. But first an investigation must still take place to clarify what are to date merely accusations and denials. – SABC

Theresa Reel sexually harassed by black, Hispanic boys

A white high school teacher who said she was sexually tormented by her students and then punished for complaining has scored a $450,000 settlement from the city, reports the New York Daily News.

Theresa Reel, 52, who quit her job when she signed the deal, said the knowledge that she never has to set foot in the High School for Legal Studies again is just as sweet.

“I wasted six years of my life being treated like dirt — less than dirt,” Reel told the Daily News on Thursday. “I can’t put into words how happy I am.”

The Mississippi native started working at the Williamsburg, Brooklyn, school in 2005 and within a month, her job was a nightmare. The High School for Legal Studies is 62% black and 35% Latino.

In a lawsuit she filed three years later, she described how students called her filthy names, flung condoms at each other and even touched her breast.

Her pleas to school bosses were met with accusations that she showed too much cleavage, she charged.

When she told then-Principal Denise Morgan that she made a student leave the class for sexual comments, the official’s response was: “And how does that threaten you?”

Morgan defended her handling of Reel’s complaints.

“I am very comfortable with the professional manner in which I responded to this teacher’s concerns,” she told The New York Daily News.

After Morgan was replaced at the troubled school, the new principal, Monica Ortiz, gave Reel unsatisfactory ratings.

And a 2008 letter from the Department of Education chastised the social studies educator for “inappropriate attire,” described as a “low-cut, V-neck lace top.”

“It made me feel like I was worthless, like my own supervisors believed that I deserved to be treated like this,” Reel said at the Woodside, Queens, home she shares with her cat.

Reel’s court papers detail the barrage of X-rated insults she faced in the classroom and corridors.

One boy allegedly told her: “I’ve got rubbers — want to party?” Another student accused a classmate of performing a sex act on Reel for good grades, she said.

She recalled one male student crossing a hallway so he could graze her breast with his elbow and then “smirk” at her.

“I was screaming,” Reel said.

She said the harassment made it impossible to function some days.

“Sometimes I’d break down on the subway,” she said. “I would go home, sit in front of the TV and cry.”

At one point, she said, she was suicidal.

“I had a plan in mind,” she said, without elaborating. “It got so black and bleak I couldn’t see it getting any better.”

The city tried to get the federal discrimination suit tossed out, arguing Reel did not prove the school was a hostile environment, that she was singled out for her gender, or that she faced retaliation.

On each count, the judge ruled there was enough evidence to let a jury decide and set a trial date for Sept. 10.

On Aug. 31, the city agreed to pay Reel $450,000 and remove the poor ratings from her record if she resigned.

“We think she had a very strong case,” said lawyer Joshua Parkhurst of Cary Kane LLP. “We ultimately agreed to settle because it allows our client to get on with her life.”

Reel has been on an unpaid leave of absence for a year, spending down her pensions savings. She’s been looking for a new job, but was even turned down for a cleaning gig.

DOE had no comment on the case.

Morgan, the former principal, is now an assistant principal at the High School for Violin and Dance in the Bronx. Ortiz is still the head of Legal Studies, a D-rated school which had less than 60% of its students graduate in 2009.

Legal Studies made headlines in 2010 when teachers were caught taking a lavish, taxpayer-funded junket and students were busted for using cell phones to film brawls and sex acts.

Reel wasn’t the only person at the school who thought pupils were out of line. In a 2010 city survey, only 49% of the students said learners treated teachers with respect.

Anti-Islamic campaign in New York subway

Anti-Islamic advertisements will go up across New York City’s subway system next week after a federal judge ruled that the city’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority could not legally refuse to host the signs on the basis of “demeaning” language.

As early as next Monday, ten NYC subway stations will showcase adverts declaring, “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.” The campaign was created by the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), an organization considered a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center watch group.

Pamela Geller, the executive director of the AFDI, stands by her signage despite rampant complaints circulating before the campaign has even begun.

“I will not abridge my freedoms so as not to offend savages,” Geller tells Sky News

Geller has long advocated against so-called “Islamist propaganda” in America and has campaigned in the past to call for the shutting down of a Washington, DC museum exhibit that highlighted Muslim contributions to science. The installation was declared “Best Touring Exhibit” by the Museum Heritage Awards in 2011, but Geller claimed “It has indoctrinated hundreds of thousands of children into a rosy and romanticized view of Islam that makes them less appreciative of their own culture’s achievements and more complacent about Islamization in the West.”

For her overt actions waged against Islamic culture, the pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League has said Geller “fuels and fosters anti-Muslim bigotry in society.”

Those ideals will be brought to New York subway stations next week despite a legal battle that ended in July with a Manhattan federal judge agreeing that the First Amendment allowed Geller to have her ads run in the metro system.

“I live in America and in America we have the first amendment,” Geller tells Sky News.

[ad 1]

Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American Islamic Relations, responded to the outlet by condemning Geller’s actions, but agreeing with the federal judge’s decision regardless.

“Our basic position is that the first amendment means that everyone is free to be a bigot or even an idiot like Pamela Geller,” Hooper tells Sky. “We wish she wasn’t provoking and inciting hatred, but in America that’s her right.”

“We encourage Muslims to exercise the same right to publicly denounce such adverts. The real danger is the spread of hatred in our society, which can lead to attacks on innocent people.”

On the website for the AFDI, Geller critiques a journalist who has labeled her efforts as anti-Muslim, insisting that such a label “implies that every Muslim is a jihadi who wants to impose sharia and ‘eliminate and destroy Western civilization from within and sabotage its miserable house.’”

Defending her advertisements to KQED News last month, Geller said it was right to refer to Islamic worshipers as “savage,” because “any targeting of innocent civilians is savagery.”

“Mothers and children on a bus are targeted, and that is savagery. Kidnapping and murdering is savagery. The U.S. does not conduct war that way, and neither does Israel. Now, there is sometimes the accidental death of civilians, which is far different than the targeting of innocent civilians,” she said.

Previously, Geller told Huffington Post of her ads, “If I had my way, they’d be in every city in the United States of America and if I can get the funding, that’s exactly what’s going to happen.”

She has successfully campaigned to have the adverts included in San Francisco and is all but certain to expand to New York in the coming days. In California, San Francisco’s transit authority promised to donate the $3,400 Geller spent on advertising fees to the Human Rights Commission.

2 killed, 8 wounded in shoot-out outside Empire State Building

Two people were killed and at least eight were wounded in a shooting outside the landmark Empire State Building in New York City on Friday, a New York police source said.

One of the dead was the shooter, the source said, adding there was no apparent link to terrorism.

A white tarp covered what was believed to be a body in front of the entrance to the office building but police declined to confirm if it was the shooter.

“I heard the gunshots,” said Dahlia Anister, 33, who works at an office near the 102-story Empire State Building. “It was like pop, pop, pop. It was definitely in a bunch.”

The shooting started shortly after 9 a.m. on the busy sidewalk on Fifth Avenue outside the Midtown Manhattan building.

It came at the height of the tourist season outside one of New York City’s most popular attractions, startling tourists and commuters. Police cordoned off the area around the building, one of the most recognizable in the world.

The Empire State Building is two blocks from Pennsylvania Station and a few blocks from Grand Central Terminal, two of New York City’s main transportation hubs.

“People started running, saying somebody has a gun, so I just ran the other way. I was scared,” said Adrianne Lapar, 27, who works in the Empire State Building.

The United States has had two other mass shooting cases this summer. On July 20, James Holmes, 24, is accused of opening fire at a midnight screening of the Batman film “The Dark Knight Rises” in Aurora, Colorado, killing 12 people and wounding 58.

On August 5, a gunman killed six people and critically wounded three at a Sikh temple outside Milwaukee before police shot him dead in an attack authorities treated as an act of domestic terrorism.

The Empire State Building was the world’s tallest building for 40 years from its completion in 1931 until construction of the World Trade Center. Following the September 11, 2001, attacks, it was again the tallest building in the city, though was recently surpassed by a new tower under construction at the World Trade Center. – Reuters