Workers World Jan. 13, 2000: Times Square 2000<meta name="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="true" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="../../ui/styles/top.css" /> <script type="text/javascript" src="../../ui/script/ie5.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.workers.org/ui/script/DropDownMenuX.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> window.onload = function() { var ddmx = new DropDownMenuX("menu1"); ddmx.type = "horizontal"; ddmx.delay.show = 0; ddmx.delay.hide = 400; ddmx.position.level1.top = 0; ddmx.position.level1.left = 0; ddmx.position.levelX.top = 0; ddmx.position.levelX.left = 0; ddmx.fixIeSelectBoxBug = true; ddmx.zIndex.visible = 500; ddmx.zIndex.hidden = -1; ddmx.init(); } </script> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" /> </head> <body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000" link="#483d8b" vlink="#2f4f4f" alink="#a52a2a">  <table width="65%" border="0" cellpadding="10" align="center"> <tr> <td height="911" align="left" valign="top"><table width="100%" border="0"> <tr> <td colspan="2"> <a href="http://www.workers.org/"><img src="../../images/wwlogo.png" alt="Workers.org" width="600" height="58" border="0" /></a></td> </tr> </table> <table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" id="menu1" class="ddmx"> <tr> <td> <a class="item1" href="http://www.workers.org/">Home</a></td> <td> <a class="item1" href="javascript:void(0)">Books</a> <div class="section"> <a class="item2" href="http://www.workers.org/marcy/cd/index.html">Selected works of Sam Marcy</a> <a class="item2" href="http://www.workers.org/marcy/cd/sambol/index.htm">Bolsheviks and War</a> <a class="item2" href="http://www.workers.org/marcy/cd/samtech/index.htm">High Tech, Low Pay</a> <a class="item2" href="http://www.workers.org/marcy/cd/samsoc/index.htm">Soviet Socialism: Utopian or Scientific</a> <a class="item2" href="http://www.workers.org/indonesia/index.html">Indonesia 1965</a> <a class="item2" href="http://www.workers.org/cm/empire.html">Expanding Empire</a> </div></td> <td><a class="item1" href="javascript:void(0)">Subscribe</a> <div class="section"><a class="item2" href="http://www.workers.org/email.php">Email list</a> <a class="item2" href="http://www.workers.org/orders/index.php">Print edition</a> </div></td> <td> <a class="item1" href="http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php">Donate </a></td> <td> <a class="item3" href="http://www.workers.org/mo/index.html">Noticias en Español</a> </td> </tr> </table> <print> <table width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="3"><tr> <td width="19%" align="left" valign="top" bgcolor="#E2E2E2"> <p class="caption">Support<br /> anti-war,<br /> anti-racist<br /> news </p> <p class="caption"><a href="http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php">:: Donate now ::</a></p> <hr /> <p class="caption"><print><a href="http://www.workers.org/cgi-bin/mailww/mailww.cgi"><img src="http://www.workers.org/graphics/email.gif" width="21" height="20" border="0" alt="Email this article" />Email this article</a> </print></p> <p class="caption"><print><a href="/print.php"><img src="http://www.workers.org/graphics/printer.gif" width="21" height="20" border="0" alt="Print this page" />Printable page</a></print></p> <hr /> <p class="caption"><a href="mailto:letters@workers.org">Email the editor</a></p> <form method="get" action="http://www.workers.org/cgi-bin/search/search.pl"> <input name="Terms" id="fdse_TermsEx" size="12" maxlength="255" class="email" /> <input type="submit" value="Search" style="align: center; padding: 1px 2px 1px 2px; background: #DCDCDC; color: darkslategray; font-size: 9px; border: solid #696969 1px;" /> </form> <p class="caption"> </p></td> <td width="81%"> <blockquote> <div align="right" class="translate"><a href="http://www.faganfinder.com/translate/ref.php?from=en" title="click here to translate this page into any language, using the Fagan Finder Translation Wizard" target="new" hreflang="en">Translate this page</a></div>  <h4><u>NEW YORK ON NEW YEAR'S EVE</u></h4> <h1>What's behind the massive show of police force?</h1> <P><B>By Pat Chin</B><BR> </P><B>Brooklyn, N.Y.</B></P> <P>The year 2000 dawned in New York City with a massive deployment of almost the entire police force. Some 37,000 cops were on the streets to prevent millennium-related terrorism, claimed Mayor Rudy Giuliani. It was a virtual police state.</P> <P>Many are asking if there was a real threat involved, or was this just a practice run for using the repressive state apparatus to control a population left on the wrong side of the growing income gap?</P><P>This huge show of force was preceded by a nationwide FBI hunt for "terrorists" allegedly working with Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian national. Ressam was arrested in Seattle, Washington on Dec. 14 after crossing the Canadian border. He was charged with smuggling explosives.</P><P>Since then the FBI has conducted nationwide sweeps to build a case against Ressam tied to an alleged Algerian plot to violently disrupt the New Year's celebrations. Ressam's arrest has been sensationalized by the big business media to the point of whipping up anti-Arab racism and hysteria.</P><P>On Dec. 30, federal agents swarmed through a Brooklyn neighborhood here. Dozens of people were detained. "It was total chaos," one resident remarked. "There were SWAT teams, bomb sniffing dogs. They were all here." (Associated Press, Dec. 30)</P><P>Tariq Wasim, whose origin is Pakistan, was awakened by FBI agents pounding on his door. They demanded to see his immigration papers.</P><P>Motorist Mahmudur Rahman was stopped and detained because his van had Canadian license plates. "They had their guns drawn," he said. "They told everyone to come out of the car, they detained us for about an hour and a half. They searched the van, and looked through our wallets. They thought we could be suspects. I never expected something like that to happen here." (New York Times, Dec. 31)</P><P>Rahman, a student from Canada, was visiting his Brooklyn family. </P><P>Tariq Khother complained about circling helicopters. "Three straight nights, we cannot sleep and our children cannot sleep," said the Pakistani. "They're watching anyone who is Muslim. They're treating us like animals."</P><P>Four people were arrested in this multinational working-class community. They included Abdel Ghani, an Algerian who was charged with credit card fraud and being Ressam's "accomplice." Others were held for immigration violations.</P><P>In Boston that same day five people were taken into custody, including three Algerians. FBI agents, police and immigration officials and a police helicopter chased Mouai Badredine, one of the three, through the streets. All five people are being held on immigration charges. </P><P>Hussein Ibish, a spokesperson for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, blasted the raids. "We've sort of passed over from the stage of heightened vigilance into the state where people's ethnic identity becomes suspect in and of itself," he said. "People of Arab ethnicity who are being held on routine visa violations--the most mundane type of arrest--are being treated as potential terrorists." (AP, Dec. 30)</P><P>Federal officials admitted that no specific or credible threats of terrorism were found yet police were deployed en masse. In New York City, the authorities activated aspects of the "Citywide Security Assessment Plan," created in 1998. It was the biggest police mobilization in a single day in the city's history.</P><P>Some 37,000 of the department's total of 40,000 cops were on active duty. Eight thousand were stationed at Times Square--the site of a huge millennium ritual staged by the mayor as a platform for his anticipated Senate run.</P><P>Many others were working undercover. People were randomly searched for weapons. The covers on utility tunnels were welded shut. Subway garbage bins were locked.</P><P>Emergency police trucks were equipped with poison gas antidote kits. One hundred cops were trained to use gas masks. All police helicopters were airborne at midnight with high-powered surveillance cameras. Cameras were also mounted on lampposts. Aircraft flying below 4,000 feet were banned from a three-mile radius around Times Square, the shrine to capitalist glorification.</P><P>Giuliani remained in the Office of Emergency Management, the city's high-budget bunker, until just before midnight. With City Hall already a fortress, officials activated additional pneumatic barriers. In the end, nothing happened.</P><P>The colossal police display was part of a secret scheme hatched by the mayor and backed by his rich supporters on Wall Street. It was linked to the Security Assistance Plan which consists of four alert levels: "Alpha," normal conditions; "Bravo," heightened awareness; "Gamma," heightened alert; and "Omega," highest alert.</P><P>Condition "Bravo" is the police department's current alert status. It was activated after the U.S. bombed a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan and sites in Afghanistan in 1998 on the claim they were tied to international terrorism.</P><P>The Giuliani administration was poised to activate condition "Omega" if deemed necessary, according to reports. This alert level triggers sweeping citywide police powers and would involve military-like operations.</P><P>Every single cop would be pressed into duty. Thousands of people would be stopped and questioned. Whole sections of the city--most likely the oppressed communities--would be sealed off, among other draconian measures.</P><P>It's no coincidence that this massive show of force took place in New York City, the center of world finance capital.</P><P>Justified as part of the fight against foreign "terrorists," it was in fact a thinly veiled rehearsal for domestic social control in anticipation of greater class struggles caused by the growing polarization of rich and poor. The defiance of anti-WTO protesters in Seattle last Nov. 30 and Dec. 1, who faced down advancing police goons, must have shaken the ruling class.</P><P>The history of the United States is rooted in violence and organized class terror domestically and internationally. This is true, from the early trafficking in enslaved African peoples and the near extermination of the Native Indian nations, to imperialist interventions, police murders and brutality, to list a few examples.</P><P>And then there's the economic terror of cutbacks, union busting, homelessness, joblessness and 44 million people without health insurance coverage.</P><P>Capitalist expansion and imperialist plunder require that the U.S. maintain the biggest and most efficient repressive machines--from the armed forces to the cops.</P><P>The world headquarters for international terrorism is in fact located at the Pentagon. Its duty, like the police's, is to maintain the economic dominance of the capitalist class through state terror and repression.</P>  <p>This article is copyright under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/">Creative Commons License</a>.   <br /> Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011<br> Email: <a href="MAILTO:ww@workers.org">ww@workers.org</a><br> Subscribe <a href="MAILTO:wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net">wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net</a><br> Support independent news <a href="http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php">http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php</a>)  </p> <p class="caption"><a href="http://www.workers.org/">HOME</a> :: <a href="http://www.workers.org/us/">U.S. NEWS</a> :: <a href="http://www.workers.org/world/">WORLD NEWS</a> :: <a href="http://www.workers.org/editorials/">EDITORIALS</a> :: <a href="http://www.workers.org/orders/">SUBSCRIBE</a> :: <a href="http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php">DONATE</a></p> </blockquote> </body> </html>