Thursday, December 13, 2012

NYPD Conspires Against Muslims

The phrase "conspiracy theorist" is widely used in the U.S. today. Usually, people who are dubbed conspiracy theorists are seen as insane, "off the rocker," "thinking too much," or "making a big deal out of nothing." One of the big ones that comes to mind are the 9/11 conspiracy theorists.

The 9/11 conspiracy theorists argue that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were spearheaded by the U.S. government to provide a populus justification for waging war on Iraq. They even go far enough to argue that Bush Junior carried out the 9/11 attacks under his father's direction so that his father can get revenge for and attain closure with Desert Storm.

These theories have been dismissed by quite a few people simply because they are just that--theories. Further, they have been disproved time and again by various credible sources including INDEPENDENT investigation teams.

Another theory that popped up after the attacks was mainly circulated among Muslims. This theory asserts that the government is plotting against Muslims because they fear Islam. At first, I scoffed at it. Recently, though, this has changed.

I was given an article by a friend of mine that talks about informants planted to purposely make Muslims say things that will get them flagged as threats. But wait, why not other people? Simply because this only works with Muslims. You can't take a White man who doesn't even remotely look Arab and get him talking about "violent jihad" and expect people to take him seriously.

This case deals with the NYPD (New York Police Department.)

A paid informant for the New York Police Department's intelligence unit was under orders to "bait" Muslims into saying inflammatory things as he lived a double life, snapping pictures inside mosques and collecting the names of innocent people attending study groups on Islam, he told The Associated Press.

Shamiur Rahman, a 19-year-old American of Bangladeshi descent who has now denounced his work as an informant, said police told him to embrace a strategy called "create and capture." He said it involved creating a conversation about jihad or terrorism, then capturing the response to send to the NYPD. For his work, he earned as much as $1,000 a month and goodwill from the police after a string of minor marijuana arrests.

Before you start the "well anyone can say that" argument, let me point out that this is from the Associated Press, so it lends itself some credibility.

I appreciate that Rahman actually came forward and disclosed what he did. I have a lot of respect for him for doing that. It must have been nerve-wracking, to know that what is actually going on in the local government and that his life could be at stake for whistle blowing.

"We need you to pretend to be one of them," Rahman recalled the police telling him. "It's street theater."

Rahman said he now believes his work as an informant against Muslims in New York was "detrimental to the Constitution." After he disclosed to friends details about his work for the police — and after he told the police that he had been contacted by the AP — he stopped receiving text messages from his NYPD handler, "Steve," and his handler's NYPD phone number was disconnected.

Yes, you read that correctly. They actually tasked him with "being one of THEM." The operation is so undercover that he is not even told the name of his "handler."
Informants ... are a central component of the NYPD's wide-ranging programs to monitor life in Muslim neighborhoods since the 2001 terrorist attacks. Police officers have eavesdropped inside Muslim businesses, trained video cameras on mosques and collected license plates of worshippers. Informants who trawl the mosques ... tell police what the imam says at sermons and provide police lists of attendees, even when there's no evidence they committed a crime.
Let me break this down for you. Since September 11, 2001, NYPD (and probably other law-enforcement departments as well) are planting actors inside Muslim communities. These actors have a simple mission objective: to put these Muslims in a spot where they will say something that can potentially be viewed as a threat, or they will use words that will raise alarms. For instance, if I say "I'm going to commit radical jihad," it is different from "I don't like radical Arabs." However, to the NYPD they are one and the same. I used the word "radical" so I must be "one of THEM."

Further, the NYPD will be quick to deny these allegations (of course, "don't mess with our surveillance--we're 'keeping Americans safe.'") That's what disgusts me about this incident. In the name of security, the government is quite literally spying on us and finding any excuse to drag us away. I've often joked with my friends that I'm probably on a watch list for keeping this blog and being open about my religious identity. The article brings this to reality, to where it's no longer a laughing matter. Apparently, going to a Mosque or Islamic center is also an act of terrorism. Thank you Taliban and Hamas for storing your bases under Muslim places of worship, and thank you Americans for being so ignorant and uneducated that you think they represent all of us. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this how the roundup of Japanese-Americans started after Pearl Harbor?

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