New website: NoSubwaySearches.org

[despairing optimist]

I don't know if anyone has posted this yet, but I apologize in advance if it's redundant. The link below takes you to a site that apparently opened on July 25. It appears to be affiliated with NYCLU and is starting a mailing list. The link:

www.nosubwaysearches.org

The searches are by no means ubiquitous on the system, and how can they be? There isn't enough manpower, for one thing, and who's policing all those manholes that have ladders leading into the subway tunnels? Swiss cheese has fewer holes than this absurd attempt to ease frayed nerves. Meanwhile, innocent people are humiliated on Gray Line buses just for looking "funny" to ignorant people, and London police are busy catching up to their NYPD counterparts in the Amadou Diallo/Patrick Dorismond department.

I don't want to say who I think will have the last laugh, but most of us won't be laughing. I just hope we'll still be breathing. What makes officials think that terrorists here will imitate London is beyond me. Did the London attacks mimick 9/11's? I don't think I'm alone in wondering what's keeping "them" so long and whether that means something far bigger and unbearable is in the works, and we may look back at this time of foolish fears in the way the French looked back on their Maginot Line that was supposed to save them from another German invasion.

[SoDesuKa]

1. Freddy Ferrer Supports the Searches

On today's Democracy Now program, mayoral candidate Freddy Ferrer told Amy Goodman that he supports the searches. He thinks random bag checks make the subways safer.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/28/149236

[despairing optimist]

2. There's an article in this week's Voice supporting them too

Even though the writer acknowledges their futility. It seems that many among us subscribe to the notion that appearance alone is all the reality we need anymore. But until New York City formally falls through the looking glass and is rechristened Wonderland, I'll join with my fellow NYers and say these searches are a waste of time and resources, and they fool absolutely no one. They don't throw the terrorists off guard at all, they put average citizens into a mindset that legitimizes endless intrusions on their privacy and dignity only to surrender more rights and freedoms to state authorities.

[SoDesuKa]

5. What a Bad Article

The Village Voice is on its way to becoming irrelevant. Aging movie stars end up doing sendups of themselves when they were good. That's all the Times is doing anymore. Sad to see the Voice is falling into it as well.

[rusty charly]

3. a surplus of $833 million this year

god forbid they lower the subway fee or put it towards security:

Buoyed by an unexpected surge in tax revenue, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced yesterday that it would have a surplus of $833 million this year and that it would consider using the money to create a giant platform over its West Side railyards, which it could then sell to developers for office and apartment towers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/28/nyregion/28mta.html

and why do i think these offices and apartments will come with huge tax breaks?

[despairing optimist]

4. Why the tax breaks? For the big atrium mall with all the expensive stores

that qualify as "public space" so the developer can get a zoning variance to go up 75 stories. Ricky Martin needs at least three triplex pennthouse condos in Manhattan, you know? Why are you so anti-success? ;-)