Big Mother

 

Reclaim The Net

In response to escalating incidents of harassment, particularly against Jewish and Muslim communities, New York’s Governor Kathy Hochul is today intensifying the state’s counterterrorism measures and is boosting the controversial practice of surveilling social media platforms, and therefore the speech of New Yorkers and other American citizens.

This measure follows ongoing tension in Israel and Gaza. Hochul revealed plans for enhancing the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force personnel and assigning an extra $2.5 million to the State Police.

“…we’re very focused on the data we’re collecting from surveillance efforts, what’s being said on social media platforms, and we have launched an effort to be able to counter some of the negativity and reach out to people,” Hochul said.

“When we see hate speech being spoken about on online platforms, our media analysis, our social media analysis unit has ramped up its monitoring of sites to catch incitement to violence, direct threats to others.

“And all this is in response to our desire, our strong commitment to ensure that not only do New Yorkers be safe, but they also feel safe.”

This isn’t the first time Hochul has stuck her nose into monitoring online speech.

A New York law aimed at regulating “hateful conduct” online was blocked by a judge. This law, signed by Governor Hochul, required social media networks to report and address hateful conduct, broadly defined as actions that vilify or incite violence based on various identity factors.

Judge Andrew L. Carter, Jr. ruled that the law violated the First Amendment, emphasizing the importance of protecting even hateful speech. The court argued that the law not only restricted the speech of social media users but also compelled social media networks to adopt and endorse the state’s definition of hateful conduct.

 

Mayor Adams normalizes censorship

 

Reclaim The Net 

New York City Mayor Eric Adams has used this month’s Buffalo shooting to call for more social media censorship.

Speaking live on PIX11’s Morning Show, Adams was asked by the host Hazel Sanchez what could be done about regulating social media.

“Governor Hochul, she was on PIX11, demanding social media platforms be held accountable. Now, you’ve been calling for that since the suspected Brooklyn subway shooter, Frank James, allegedly posted racist rants online,” Sanchez said. “But social media’s been around and unregulated for a long time. So what kind of change can you see happening?”

Mayor Adams responded, saying that it was time for social media platforms to start using “artificial intelligence to identify words, identify phrases, to immediately remove and censor some of this information.”

Mayor Adams likened the censorship techniques to the removal of President Trump’s Twitter account; “We did it to Donald Trump on Twitter. He was dangerous to the country. So why aren’t we doing it to the everyday people who are using it and is dangerous to our neighborhoods and communities?”

Likening his censorship demands to his similar demands for social media platforms to censor some forms of rap on social media, Adams stated, “The type of violence that’s being promoted on social media is beyond anything I’ve ever witnessed before.

“Particularly in some of the drill music that actually taunts and threaten people. There’s a direct correlation. That’s the type of social media monitoring we believe the social media companies should do.”

The Blaz's Knuckle Standard school reopenings

 NY Post

They’re reading, writing, and roughhousing at a highly regarded Queens high school — according to more than a dozen videos of students brawling in hallways, the cafeteria and outside, insiders confirmed.

The 14 clips of wild fistfights at or near Benjamin Cardozo High School on 223rd Street feature both girls and boys. Crowds of noisy classmates surround the combatants, egging them on.

“Fight! Fight!” a boy is heard shouting as two girls face off, before finally swinging at each other in a frenzy.

In one fight close to the nearby playground of PS 213, video shows a teen thrown to the ground, trying to shield his head from further kicks and blows.

Footage in front of shops on Springfield Avenue near Horace Harding Expressway shows a boy knocked flat onto his back, motionless.

Fight videos were taken down from the Instagram account @cardozohighschoolfights after The Post asked the NYPD about them. Two showing fights that happened off-site remain online, including one warning of “graphic or violent content.” 

“We are actively looking into the incidents,” said NYPD spokeswoman Sgt. Jessica McRorie, citing five complaints of violence in or near Cardozo since Sept. 13, when classes began.

In one case, a student menaced another kid with a Taser, though no arrests were made, she added.

In most cases, the fights were “handled administratively,” a source with knowledge of the videos told The Post, referring to school officials.

 

Falafal Hebdo

 

 Queens Chronicle

A beloved falafel restaurant in Astoria has been getting sha-warmed by Saudi loyalist trolls in response to its owner’s criticism of the crown prince.

King of Falafel & Shawarma, a restaurant with a brick-and-mortar site at 30-15 Broadway and food trucks in Manhattan and Astoria, got over 37,000 scathing one-star reviews within a span of 30 hours earlier this week, according to its owner, Freddy Zeideia.

Zeideia said the reviews came from trolls who targeted KOFS after @Columbuos, a pro-Saudi social media account, shared a video of the restaurant’s social-distancing sidewalk decal with pictures of Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, and Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the ruler of the United Arab Emirates, and an invitation to step on their faces.

The KOFS patron who originally filmed the video made an inflammatory attack on the people of Saudi Arabia in Arabic after entering the restaurant, according to a translation of the video that a Saudi Arabian Twitter user posted online.

The pro-Saudi influencer shared a link to the restaurant’s Google page and encouraged his followers to give it a one-star rating.

Zeideia, who is originally from the Israel-occupied Palestinian West Bank, has not shied away from openly displaying his political beliefs. In response to the Israel-Hamas violence in May, he displayed a Palestinian flag in the front window.

Earlier in the summer, he installed a similar floor decal with Andrew Yang’s face after the mayoral hopeful pledged solidarity with Israel in the conflict.

The floor piece that upset the influencer was aimed at criticizing the Saudi Arabian-led war in Yemen and the UAE’s military intervention in Libya’s civil war. Zeideia said that the trolls were also aggrieved that he had posted a Pride flag honoring the LGBTQ awareness month of June.

Contacted by the Chronicle last Friday morning, Zeideia was remarkably unflustered by the attacks on his business.

“I’m not gonna stress myself. I know my Astoria. I know my people out here and they know who we are. We’ve been serving them for the last 20 years,” he said.

City Council candidate curses out women and calls them nazis

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NY Daily News

 A potty-mouthed City Council wannabe in Queens has gone after a number of women on social media — along with joking about rape and apparently challenging a man to a fight after getting into an argument on Facebook.

Steve Behar, a Democrat running to represent eastern Queens, recently came under fire for a sexist tweet targeting opponent Linda Lee. He suggested her message boiled down to saying, “Vote for Me I’m a Mommy!”

Since then, more outrageous social media posts by Behar have surfaced.

“F--k you ... You’re a stupid racist c--t!” he wrote a Long Island woman on Facebook.

“You’re a Nazi c--t!” he raged in a follow-up post.

Outgoing Councilman Barry Grodenchik is backing Behar, his staff attorney, to take over his seat.

Among Behar’s ravings about Christine Blasey Ford’s sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Behar wrote on Facebook over two years ago, “This woman is not credible and I refuse to destroy someone’s career without any due process.”

Around the same time, he made another inflammatory post.

“Come on now! Who didn’t grope and rape girls in high school? Democrats are such snowflakes!” Behar wrote. He told The News he was being sarcastic.

In separate posts, he called former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos a “dumb b---h” and former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen “Nazi Barbie.”

While debating policy with a Long Island man, Behar raged on Facebook, “You prove you’re more stupid and more of a p---y with each post!”

Update: Where Behar gets fed his lunch and resorts to unjustifiable race baiting and shaming

Update: Steve rages full on at a BLM protest last year.

NY Daily News

A Queens City Council wannabe’s profanity and rage aren’t just confined to the online world.

Steve Behar went off on an expletive-filled tirade against Black Lives Matter demonstrators gathered at a Jamaica, Queens, park last summer.

“You have no f--king business being here!” he yelled at activists gathered in Major Mark Park in June 2020, according to video posted to Twitter.

When a demonstrator interjects, “We all have business being here,” Behar snaps back: “F--k you! You’re pathetic!”

Video shows him ranting — with his face mask on his forehead — in spite of protests from a man who noted there were children present.

“You co-opted a Black Lives Matter protest for your own agenda!” Behar fumed while pumping his fist. “You should be ashamed!”

Asked by a demonstrator why Behar was there, he yelled: “I’m here to show my little niece and nephew that Black Lives Matter!”

The demonstration was one of many across the city after Black Minnesota man George Floyd was killed by a white police officer in May 2020.

Out of about 100 demonstrators at the park that day, some were protesting local electeds for taking campaign cash from police unions, according to attendee Ramy Noaman, who shot the video.

 

Feds come for militia minded internet troll in Middle Village for posting ideas on social media

Patch 

  A reputed Proud Boys member was arrested Tuesday night in Queens after federal authorities tied him to a series of online posts threatening to send an armed caravan to Washington D.C., according to news reports.

The FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force arrested Middle Village resident Eduard Florea, 40, after searching his home on 76th Street near Elliot Avenue, the New York Daily News and NBC4 New York reported.

Florea was charged with being a convicted felon in possession of ammunition, a law enforcement source told Patch.

He is expected to appear in Brooklyn federal court Wednesday.

Florea is not believed to have joined the deadly siege on the U.S. Capitol last week by pro-Trump extremists, law enforcement sources told NBC4 New York.

 But he has purported ties to the Proud Boys, a far-right group that reportedly helped lead the attempted insurrection on Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol, according to ABC7 New York.

Florea has previously been arrested on weapons and domestic abuse charges.

 When a Proud Boy got taken, I didn't say anything because I'm not a Proud Boy...

When a Progressive got taken....

Update: The suspect is quite the influencer

Vice

The Proud Boys typically move around public demonstrations like a small army, flooding entire blocks in their trademark black and yellow colors. But on this day, their strategy was to avoid detection. Their self-styled “chairman,” Enrique Tarrio, had ordered the Proud Boys to go “incognito” and dress in plain clothes, so while they were central to the planning, inciting, and execution of the insurrection that led to five deaths, their role was not immediately obvious from the video disseminated from the scene.

In a stream from before the rally, Joe Biggs, a former InfoWars staffer who led the Proud Boys in Tarrio’s absence, reiterated the plan for the group not to wear their traditional colors. 

“We will not be attending D.C. in colors. We will be blending in as one of you. You won't see us. You'll even think we are you,” Biggs said. “We are going to smell like you, move like you, and look like you. The only thing we'll do that's us is think like us! Jan 6th is gonna be epic.”

Partly because of this, the group has mostly evaded scrutiny for the violence at the Capitol—which came as lawmakers were scheduled to convene and certify the results of the 2020 election, affirming Joe Biden as the winner and Donald Trump the loser. 

Tarrio himself was not present: He was arrested on his way into D.C. earlier in the week and charged for a misdemeanor for his alleged role tearing down Black Live Matter signs from a Black church in December. During the arrest, police discovered two high-capacity magazines, emblazoned with Proud Boy insignia, and charged him with an additional felony. Upon his release, a judge ordered him to stay away from D.C.

 

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Lincoln Restler rises again

Remember Lincoln Restler everybody? The neoliberal trust fund brat who arranged secret meetings to get approval for a big hotel chain to house homeless people in Maspeth without the community's consent? Now the mayor has got him to push the RAD and PACT policies for NYCHA buildings for renovations via privatization, which has shown that it leads to displacement. This hipshit sure gets around when it comes to fucking with city residents lives.

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Politco journalist gives props to this blog on social media

Thanks a million, Laura. You rock.