Politics, Pyrotechnics, and Purim

Today is the Jewish holiday of Purim, the most joyously celebrated in the Hebrew calendar. Children and adults alike are in the streets of Boro Park and other mostly Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods of New York City wearing costumes, blasting music, and shooting fireworks.

Ghouliani made a career out of the zero-tolerance suppression of every form of pleasure that he didn't think others should enjoy, no matter the hypocrisy in his doing as he pleased, the law notwithstanding?

Yes, and the use of fireworks on Purim went on even during his despotic official tenure, when he put hundreds of cops in Chinatown to prevent the community residents from using firecrackers on the Lunar New Year, as has been their religious practice and tradition for centuries. This ban is still in effect for the Chinese, but today I actually saw a car going down a Boro Park street with the occupants holding burning sparklers out of the windows. Somehow the police patrolling the area didn't notice, though this community gets more than its fair share of police protection.

Make no mistake about it, I do not object to this celebration, nor to the cautious use of fireworks by responsible people. Consumer fireworks Federally approved as safe for public use should be legal in all states, and are legal in most. What I do object to is the RACIST SELECTIVE ENFORCEMENT of the present prohibitions, initiated by Giuliani, the most dangerous despot ever to hold public office in America.

If you were of any other racial or ethnic origin, the use of fireworks when The Ghoul ruled Gotham got you either arrested or ticketed and fined. But somehow even then the police turned a blind eye towards fireworks in the Jewish neighborhoods at Purim, as they still do.

Racists play favorites!

Though sworn to uphold our Consbreastution, by the end of 2002 the courts had found Giuliani in violation of the First Amendment TWENTY SEVEN TIMES. Mayor David Dinkins, his predecessor in office, bravely stated that Giuliani is " - a bully, mean-spirited, and he rules through fear and intimidation." New York's previous mayor, Ed Koch, has said that Giuliani " - uses the levers of power to punish." Among the many arrogant abuses of power by "mayor morality" was the buttignment, at taxpayer expense, of several NYPD detectives as round-the-clock bodyguards for his MISTRESS. Giuliani's vile racism has even been acknowledged by his successor, Mayor Bloomberg: "You forget that every single decision in the Giuliani administration, everybody, every story, everything was always couched in terms of race" - quoted in the November 4, 2003 Daily News from Vanity Fair magazine.

But the tyrant's own words say it best:

" - FREEDOM IS NOT A CONCEPT IN WHICH PEOPLE CAN DO ANYTHING THEY WANT, BE ANYTHING THEY CAN BE. FREEDOM IS ABOUT AUTHORITY. FREEDOM IS ABOUT THE WILLINGNESS OF EVERY SINGLE HUMAN BEING TO CEDE TO LAWFUL AUTHORITY A GREAT DEAL OF DISCRETION ABOUT WHAT YOU DO AND HOW YOU DO IT." - Mayor Giuliani, quoted in the New York Times, March 17, 1994.

"State authority must provide for peace and order, and peace and order in turn must conversely make possible the existence of state authority. Within these two poles all life must now revolve...Ideas of 'freedom,' mostly of a misunderstood nature, inject themselves into the state conceptions of these circles." - Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf.

Berlin, Monday, Aug. 20, 1934 -- Eighty-nine and nine-tenths percent of the German voters endorsed in yesterday's plebiscite Chancellor Hitler's buttumption of greater power than has ever been possessed by any other ruler in modern times. Nearly 10 per cent indicated their disapproval. The result was expected.