The Third Jihad, a Clarion Fund-produced Islamophobic film, includes such inflammatory images as a black-and-white Islamic flag flying over the White House.

The director of a Bay Ridge-based Arab-American organization has called on Police Commissioner Ray Kelly to step down over his role in appearing in an anti-Muslim film, having it screened during mandatory counter-terrorism training sessions, and for the program of surveillance aimed at Arab and Muslim communities in New York.

When initially challenged by the Village Voice a year ago, the NYPD first denied that any officer had seen The Third Jihad, a film produced by The Clarion Fund (itself an offshoot of Aish Hatorah, described by Atlantic Monthly columnist Jeffrey Goldberg as “just about the most fundamentalist movement in Judaism today”). The Department eventually admitted that “some” officers had seen it, but it wasn’t until a Freedom Of Information Act request by The Brennan Center For Justice came to fruition did the full impact become known – the film was screened on “continuous loop” to 68 lieutenants, 159 sergeants, 31 detectives and 1,231 patrol officers.

The Third Jihad shows “72 minutes of gruesome footage of bombing carnage, frenzied crowds, burning American flags, flaming churches, and seething mullahs” according to the Voice, while stating that “Americans are being told that most of the mainstream Muslim groups are moderate, when in fact if you look a little closer you’ll see a very different reality. One of their primary tactics is deception.”

The film includes pieces of an interview with Commissioner Kelly, which the Department initially claimed was culled from old interviews and used without permission. But it turned out that was more deception from the NYPD – it was eventually revealed that the film producers sat down with Kelly to interview him specifically for the film. Gothamist took care to document 10 high-profile cases of the Department lying to the press (or at least 10 times they got caught lying to the press).

Linda Sarsour, the director of the Bay Ridge-based Arab American Association of New York, has spoken to various press outlets, demanding that Ray Kelly be replaced as Commissioner. BK Southie contacted her directly and asked about the connection between this film screening, Kelly’s participation, and the pervasive state surveillance documented extensively by the AP last year. Sarsour replied:

This recent controversy over the showing of The Third Jihad to 1500 police officers is but one piece of a larger pattern of religious and ethnic bias against the Muslim-American community by the NYPD. While Commissioner Kelly and his Community Affairs department of One Police Plaza visit mosques and local centers to demonstrate partnership, they have been secretly infiltrating and spying on the very people and institutions in the Muslim community they called their friends. This was confirmed by the revelations that continue to surface through the AP investigative reports. For God’s sake, they have a Demographics Unit that focuses on 28 “ancestries of interest” including Black American Muslims. The ancestries of interest are Arab and predominantly Muslim majority countries.

If that’s not ethnic and religious profiling, I don’t know what is.

The issue now is not about one film, it’s about integrity of public officials those tasked with our tax payer dollars to protect all New Yorkers, but instead they are protecting most from the threat of “these people” who fall into one of the ancestries of interest.

Some call it “terrible judgment” that film was showed. There is no room for terrible judgment and I believe that current leadership of NYPD think they are accountable to no one. That is unacceptable and they need to go.

Mayor Bloomberg has also spoken out against the screening of the film, and described it as a black eye on the department and Kelly’s credibility. But, he continues to support Kelly to remain as Commissioner and is resisting calls for his termination.

New York State Senator Marty Golden (R- Brooklyn) doesn’t agree with the Democrat-controlled assembly’s choice to budget $32 million for teacher training centers. The senator objects to what the Daily News calls “Teacher Pork”, at a time when the notion of teacher layoffs is becoming a reality. “How do you put money for teacher centers in when you are laying teachers off?” said Golden as reported by the Daily News.

Mayor Bloomberg has threatened the city’s educators with “more than 4,600″ lay offs. The mayor is using the possibility of job losses as ammunition in his fight with Albany to end the last in, first out law. Similar to changes currently underway in states like Wisconsin and Ohio, overturning or changing seniority protection would weaken the power of the 140,000  member United Federation of Teachers in New York City, a group that has often been at odds with the mayor. The teachers union has battled with Bloomberg over charter schools and budget cuts in recent years.

Senator Golden represents District 22, which includes Marine Park, Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights, Gerritsen Beach, as well as parts of Sheepshead Bay, Gravesend, Midwood and Bensonhurst.

Daily News: Teacher centers get $32 million gift from Democrat-controlled Assembly

With the sad MTA history this project will probably be over budget and behind schedule! As I ride the slow train going past the construction workers I see one guy doing all the work and 4 or 5 guys just standing there watching. How many times have you been on a Brighton Beach local train and it breaks down, delayed for a stalled train, a police investigation, a sick passenger, or whatever BS excuse, etc and your almost manageable commute becomes a long terrible trying ordeal and there is no announcement or sounds like Charlie Brown’s grandmother or you ask an unknowledgeable MTA employee WTF is going on and the worker does not know because of the poor MTA communication?

The overpriced MTA is quick to do one thing…point the blame finger at someone else! Only if the trains moved that fast…I got a finger to point at them. “It’s Albany’s fault”….well true Albany politics sucks….they don’t care because they don’t ride the system but they are quick to waste our tax dollars…if you pay taxes. Their cruel and unusual punishment should be to ride the sucky subway during rush hours. That lawbreaking Mayor Bloombucks illegally overturned term limits and spent 100 million dollars for a third term. Money the MTA could have used but would have misused! One of his “campaign promises” was an express train for Brooklyn…yeah who believes false statement? Ya ya he occasionally rides the subway (though he really only does so when there’s a photo-op in it for him)…during non rush hours. Hey did all you tea partiers and teetotallers vote?

(Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28198273@N05/ / CC BY-ND 2.0)

1. Splitting Coney Island’s central district in two – a City portion and a Sitt portion – is good for you and me. One of the problems I see with Atlantic Yards – a Bloomberg “Legacy” project with no accomplishments to date – is that a corporate developer has oversight over both his boondogle and the affordable housing which was billed as a benefit to the City. Well, now that the economy has tanked, guess which part of his plan is on indefinite hold, and guess how much public assistance he has to forfeit. If Sitt had been left in charge of the whole of Coney Island, I have no doubt that the social benefit (in this case, a new, quality amusement park) would have been tossed by the wayside in favor of a never-ending run of rent-a-carnivals and fleas-by-the-sea. Now he can focus on combing his patch of sand for every last penny and wooden nickel, and the Bloomberg Administration can concentrate on actually following through on one of their Legacy projects.

2. The Bloomberg Administration’s record with Legacy projects is a bit on the dim side (Olympics, West Side Stadium, Tolls For Transit Take 1, etc), yet I’m oddly optimistic that they’re going to get the job done at Coney Island. Here’s something from the RFP fact sheet I found particularity telling – they’re not looking for a rent-a-carnival to bide time until the big guns move in. They want someone to move in by next summer, and continue to improve their amusement park with phased development. If they can get contractual guarantees – something they apparently failed to do with the affordable housing attached to the Atlantic Yards project – they’ll be in excellent shape to get their first win since the Million Trees.

3. The City is out to prove the Doesn’t Matter side of the Size debate. Count me among those, like the activist group Save Coney Island, who believe there should be more carnival/amusement park space than the 12.5 acres that the City has proposed. But this land sale has sealed it – they’re clearly letting Sitt run with his plans on his side of the demarcation line. If Sitt fails, there may be another chance to review this in the future, but the lines are set for the foreseeable future.

4. We’re going to get a better amusement park than the rent-a-carnivals that Sitt has brought in the past two summers. Some of the names I’ve seen take an interest in the City RFP – i.e. Zamperla, which runs the small carnival in Central Park – tell me they’re serious about breathing some life into Coney Island’s magic.

MEMORANDUM

From: Me

To: Operators of Central PA’s Knobels Amusement Park

I had a blast when I saw you in August. Wanna come to Coney Island? It’s only six subway stops away!

5. The City is dreaming big, but only time will tell if we get the U.S. version of Tivoli Gardens, or a scaled-down copy of Rye Playland. No offense to Rye Playland… but Coney Island has a better history than that, and deserves a better future.

6. Astroland is not coming back, and thank God. Carol Albert told the Brooklyn Paper that she still has almost all of Astroland’s rides and is ready to stage a comeback. Um, no thanks – I wasn’t a big fan of seeing Astroland shuttered without Something Better ready to go in its place, but since it’s already shuttered, let’s get to work on bringing in the Something Better.

7. The City still has some work to do on the land acquisition front. This property deal gives them much of the land they’ll need, but not all. And the price they paid for Joe Sitt’s property will set the market and make the remainder of its land acquisitions incredibly expensive. At least one of the land owners in the way has already squatted on his land since the 1980s, so he’s not under any genuine pressure to sell. A smaller obstacle will be the Wonder Wheel kiddie park – the city owns the land, but the operators of the Wonder Wheel have a multi-year lease. They’ll want and deserve to be part of the Coney Island future.

8. The Boardwalk shops are safe for next summer, but expect those buildings to become part of the new amusement park development. Some of the family-friendly mainstays like Ruby’s and Nathan’s will probably be invited to stay. It even looks like Lola Starr will be invited back (though her shop has found refuge in her roller rink that is thankfully far removed from all of this mayhem). Cha Cha’s, unfortunately, is probably too much of a dive bar to fit into the City’s plans.

9. Joe Sitt now has full blessing to build the biggest hotel and the brightest neon lights that he wants. But given his record of success in actually building nice things – see the Festival-By-The-Sea, see the Ablee Mall – I don’t expect anything better than another crappy mall Marty Markowicz can lampoon on his web site (see #21), and that’s if he builds anything at all.

10. Joe Sitt’s plans, if they take place, will still take some time to get off the ground – the tanking economy and commercial credit markets will see to that. So while waiting for his hotel ducks to line up, will he allow the current game operators on the Bowery to stay? Or will he force them out and demolish the land? I have no idea. Recent history suggests the latter, but my inner optimist hopes for the former.

11. If (and that’s a big ‘if’) Sitt keeps the existing carnival for now, his property could become a refuge for small-time operators that don’t fit into the City’s plans. That would be so ironic, it would be Alanis Morrisette-lyric worthy. But places like Cha Cha’s, which are fun, but too trashy for Mayor Oligarch’s New England sensibilities, deserve a home on the Rabbit’s Isle. If Sitt isn’t too hasty with his land, he could provide the perfect home for them.

12. Regardless of what Mike Bloomberg or Joe Sitt do or don’t, life goes on for much of Coney Island. The Cyclone roller coaster, the Wonder Wheel, and Lola Starr’s roller rink will all still be there. So will the Cyclones baseball team and the free Tuesday/Thursday concerts at Asser Levy Seaside Park. The Mermaid Parade and Siren Festival are coming back. The beach is still an amazing place to blow off an 80-degree summer day.

(Photo credit: Brian Hedden)

And only 228 days, 5 hours, and 30 minutes to the next Hot Dog Eating Contest at Nathan’s.

Related:

• Seven acres of fun: City inks $95.6M deal on Coney Island for new amusements, eyes May opening (NY Daily News)
• EDC Issues Coney Island Request for Proposals (Sheepshead Bites)

Parks Department officials began soliciting bids Wednesday for a Beach Adventure park on the sand near Steeplechase Pier that could also include giant inflatable slides, trampolines, climbing walls and trapeze swings.

The city proposed a similar beachfront amusement area in 2005 and 2007, but didn’t get any takers. Officials are hopeful they’ll have more luck this time.

In other Coney-related news, Borough President Marty Markowitz has passed judgement on the Bloomberg Administration’s rezoning and redevelopment plan for the amusement area. He was largely supportive of the City plan, though he suggested a few minor changes – the one I found most interesting was this:

• stipulating that there will not be “one overarching manager of the amusements,” like Six Flags.

In other words, the opposite of what Bloomberg said back in November 2007:

“Today, you can’t have a bunch of individual little things and have them survive, not when the public has entertainment alternatives,” said Bloomberg. “They can fly anyplace for next to nothing.”

The City Planning Commission reviews the plan next, followed by the City Council.