I keep seeing bloggers and other people complaining about how the smoking ban is the worst thing that has happened to New York, that it’s a symptom of what’s wrong with New York. Witness Liz Smith’s column today:

THE NIGHT BEFORE, I had attended an atypical dinner party on Park Avenue. (Atypical in that the food was simply great!) Here’s what people talked about, first and foremost: the mayor’s anti-smoking law, and how even people who don’t smoke are deploring it and saying it has hurt him politically more than anything else he has done or ever will do. (Nobody mentioned the city economy, the war or the Middle East. It was as if that was too troubling to touch. But one network biggie did drop a few hints after dinner about the chaos now in Iraq.)

This city endured Giuliani, with the rabid enforcement of no-dancing regulations in bars, the random targeting of clubs for raids and searches, the passage of anti-stripper bar laws that wouldn’t happen in Iowa, without these people getting too upset. But unless you allow them to expose others to second-hand smoke, then — and only then — has fascism begun to arrive.

As I write this, NYC is watching its police force behave as badly under Bloomberg as it did under Giuliani, and I can’t imagine that he isn’t involved. The city continues to lose lawsuits over its treatment of political demonstrators, but chooses to continue to violate their rights and pay out settlements. We’re laying off people because of a budget crunch, but the city has budgeted $5 million for such cases next year. Go read James for a good post on this subject.

This weekend the papers have articles about a 57-year-old woman in Harlem dying of a heart attack after the police broke down her door, threw in a stun grenade, and handcuffed her in a drug raid that was at the wrong address. I don’t need to mention that she was not white, because we all know the NYPD would never behave in this manner in a predominantly white neighborhood. You can go read James’s post on it, and then read Jimmy Breslin, which includes this:

She has lived there for 23 years. The police might have asked neighbors about the occupant of the apartment next door. They did not. Instead, with wanton, criminal disregard they recklessly violated the civil rights of Ms. Spruill and this is a matter that should land them as defendants in federal criminal court.

This morning, while Ms. Spruill will not be in church, George Bush and his prayer book will be in his church.

George Bush is a Jesus freak and a television tough guy.

He wants Americans to replace the saliva in their mouths with blood. He creates the national atmosphere of hate and fear and crackdown and violence.

His creed of scathing contempt and preventive detention and pre-emptive bombing strikes at the smallest country he can find has turned this country’s life into dreadful fear and hate everywhere.

And in Harlem on Friday, it helped cause the death of Alberta Spruill, who worked every day of her life and went to church every Sunday.

NY Newsday has good coverage of this story today, including the fact that the police conducted the raid without doing any verification of their informant’s report.

I can’t finish without one last item from Newsday. They have a big story about city parks. Increasingly, the nicest ones like Central Park and Bryant Park are being privatized, and guards are there to make sure the “wrong kind of people” don’t patronize them. The small story on Bryant Park ends with this:

Unlike most public parks, however, Bryant Park is not entirely egalitarian. Stand out from the BlackBerryed corporate crowd, and you may be asked to state your business.

So it was when a large security guard interrupted a reporter’s interview with a parkgoer to demand credentials. “We like to know what’s going on,” he said.

The dramatic rescue of Private Jessica Lynch was just that — a staged drama. We’re not likely to see this story in the American media except for certain outlets like Salon — see their coverage.

I’m getting my information from a story in the Guardian. Note the paragraph I put in bold. They used blanks while staging the rescue for their cameras.

Her rescue will go down as one of the most stunning pieces of news management yet conceived. It provides a remarkable insight into the real influence of Hollywood producers on the Pentagon’s media managers, and has produced a template from which America hopes to present its future wars.

But the American media tactics, culminating in the Lynch episode, infuriated the British, who were supposed to be working alongside them in Doha, Qatar. This Sunday, the BBC’s Correspondent programme reveals the inside story of the rescue that may not have been as heroic as portrayed, and of divisions at the heart of the allies’ media operation.

“In reality we had two different styles of news media management,” says Group Captain Al Lockwood, the British army spokesman at central command. “I feel fortunate to have been part of the UK one.”

…

The doctors in Nassiriya say they provided the best treatment they could for Lynch in the midst of war. She was assigned the only specialist bed in the hospital, and one of only two nurses on the floor. “I was like a mother to her and she was like a daughter,”says Khalida Shinah.

“We gave her three bottles of blood, two of them from the medical staff because there was no blood at this time,”said Dr Harith al-Houssona, who looked after her throughout her ordeal. “I examined her, I saw she had a broken arm, a broken thigh and a dislocated ankle. Then I did another examination. There was no [sign of] shooting, no bullet inside her body, no stab wound – only RTA, road traffic accident,” he recalled. “They want to distort the picture. I don’t know why they think there is some benefit in saying she has a bullet injury.”

The doctors told us that the day before the special forces swooped on the hospital the Iraqi military had fled. Hassam Hamoud, a waiter at a local restaurant, said he saw the American advance party land in the town. He said the team’s Arabic interpreter asked him where the hospital was. “He asked: ‘Are there any Fedayeen over there?’ and I said, ‘No’.” All the same, the next day “America’s finest warriors” descended on the building.

“We heard the noise of helicopters,” says Dr Anmar Uday. He says that they must have known there would be no resistance. "We were surprised. Why do this? There was no military, there were no soldiers in the hospital.

“It was like a Hollywood film. They cried, ‘Go, go, go’, with guns and blanks and the sound of explosions. They made a show – an action movie like Sylvester Stallone or Jackie Chan, with jumping and shouting, breaking down doors.” All the time with the camera rolling. The Americans took no chances, restraining doctors and a patient who was handcuffed to a bed frame.

There was one more twist. Two days before the snatch squad arrived, Al-Houssona had arranged to deliver Jessica to the Americans in an ambulance. “I told her I will try and help you escape to the American Army but I will do this very secretly because I could lose my life.” He put her in an ambulance and instructed the driver to go to the American checkpoint. When he was approaching it, the Americans opened fire. They fled just in time back to the hospital. The Americans had almost killed their prize catch.

Via greg.org, I learn that Maurizio Cattelan has created a limited (48) edition t-shirt that says I [heart] New York, in Arabic.

If the link fails, go to Printed Matter and find it.

Brigitte Bardot blames gays, Muslims, and immigrants for “ruining” France</a>.

Doesn’t anyone care what it feels like to people in Manhattan when a commercial jet flies low over lower Manhattan? We’re becoming so militarized that we’ll do anything for the benefit of the troops without thinking about how it affects anyone else.

A commercial plane carrying returning military personnel flew near the Statue of Liberty and low over midtown Manhattan, prompting emergency calls from some concerned onlookers.

The Continental Airlines plane, a Boeing 777, was given permission to change its flight plan as it approached its destination of Newark Liberty International Airport at about 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

The flight pattern was intended ‘’to provide a special homecoming for members of our armed forces,’’ the FAA said in a statement.

Go check out Move On for actions to take to stop the FCC’s destruction of media consolidation regulations:

On June 2, the Federal Communications Commission intends to lift restrictions on media ownership that could allow your local newspaper, cable provider, radio stations, and TV channels all to be owned by one company. The result could be the disappearance of the checks and balances provided by a competitive media marketplace — and huge cutbacks in local news and reporting. Good, balanced information is the basis for our democracy. That’s why we’re asking that:
“Congress and the FCC should stop media deregulation and work to make the media diverse, competitive, balanced, and fair.”</blockquote>

I have added a link to Move On over there on the right side. It’s a good group to watch for information on all sorts of evil-doing from the folks in Washington.

As James has said — see here for example — our regime needs the threat of war and terrorism to keep it in power. Last week in a NY Times column, Paul Krugman said:

Let me be frank. Why is the failure to find any evidence of an active Iraqi nuclear weapons program, or vast quantities of chemical and biological weapons (a few drums don’t qualify — though we haven’t found even that) a big deal? Mainly because it feeds suspicions that the war wasn’t waged to eliminate real threats. This suspicion is further fed by the administration’s lackadaisical attitude toward those supposed threats once Baghdad fell. For example, Iraq’s main nuclear waste dump wasn’t secured until a few days ago, by which time it had been thoroughly looted. So was it all about the photo ops?

It’s in the paid archives of the Times now, so go here for an excerpt.

That is the only mention of this fact in the U.S. media that I have been able to find via Google News. The News 24 (South Africa) web site has this:

On April 11, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said the facility and nearby Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center urgently required protection from looters. US Central Command sent soldiers from the Army’s Third Infantry Division.

But inspectors visiting the site on Saturday [May 3] found that the soldiers had not been able to keep looters out, and had moreover been allowing Iraqis who said they were employees of the facility to go inside.

A would-be immigrant is hugged to be protected from the cold by a Spanish soldier on the Punta Paloma beach in Tarifa, Spain Thursday May 8, 2003. Some 50 immigrants survived the crossing arriving in a small boat from Morocco Thursday. (AP Photo/R. Perales)

A Spanish soldier cares for an illegal immigrant with symptoms of hypothermia, found near the southern town of Tarifa, May 8, 2003. Tarifa is the nearest point to Africa from Europe and a popular entry point for thousands of illegal immigrants. (REUTERS/Anton Meres)

In case anyone’s feeling very generous, and wondering what to get me for my birthday coming up in June, may I suggest this Richter landscape?

I just heard about this music performance on May 18:

Sequitur
Sunday, May 18th, 2003
Power: A Cabaret

7:00 PM

Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater

World-premiere songs commissioned by Sequitur:
Elena Kats-Chernin
Ned Rorem
Victoria Bond
Stephen Coxe
William Rhoads
Robert Maggio
Robert Carl
Frances Thorne

And classic cabaret favorites by:
Marc Blitzstein
Kurt Weill
Michael John LaChiusa
Noel Coward
Francine Trester