The group of New York cyclists who join the monthly Critical Mass Bike Ride is asking Mayor Michael Bloomberg to join in so he can see first-hand how they're treated by police. They also say they are going to launch a letter campaign asking the mayor for a public hearing to explain why money is being spent to police their events. "Critical Mass happens around the world," said Sara Stout of World Carfree Network.

From The New Standard, Aug. 24:

Responding to last month’s bombings in the London subway system, transit officials in New York City decided to hand one of the nation’s largest defense contractors $212 million to dramatically increase surveillance efforts throughout the metropolitan transportation system.

Aug. 24 commentary in MarketWatch takes Goldman Sachs to task for exploiting the chaos—as well as government largesse—over the Ground Zero redevelopment effort in New York City:

For a Wall Street bank, Goldman Sachs plays the Main Street game of government extortion like a veteran.

The bio-chemical warfare tests in New York City, initially scheduled for two days ago, went ahead today. New York's ABC News reports Aug. 8 that scientists in midtown Manhattan used perfluorocarbon, "a harmless gas," which was tracked with electronic monitors.

NYC activist Robert Lederman offers the following commentary on the below Aug. 5 AP story on plans to conduct simulated bio-chemical warfare attacks in the city:

The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) has filed suit against the city to keep police from searching the bags of passengers entering the subway. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, claims the two-week old policy violates constitutional guarantees of equal protection and prohibitions against unlawful searches and seizures—while doing almost nothing to shield the city from terrorism.

From AP, Aug. 3:

2 NY Officials Back Terror Check Profiling
Middle Easterners should be targeted for searches on city subways, two elected officials said, contending that police have been wasting time with random checks in efforts to prevent terrorism in the transit system.

How depressing. The lead op-ed piece in today's New York Times (picked up by several papers around the country, such as the Houston Chronicle) is an open and abject call—not only for surrendering our privacy rights in the name of "security," which nearly everybody seems to take for granted—but for racial profiling. Utterly terrifying how quickly these ideas are being legitimized.