According to the New York Post — not the most reliable source — ConEd is using dirty tricks to evict the Park 51 developer from its section of the old Burlington Coat Factory in lower Manhattan.

The old coat factory occupied what is actually two different properties. Park 51 owns one property and ConEd the other part. The Park 51 developers have been renting ConEd’s part and wants to buy it, and then knock the structures on both properties down to build their Islamic community center. Here’s what the Post says –

But the plan hit a major obstacle in August when Con Ed raised the rent from $2,750 a month, a rate set in 1972, to $47,437 a month, retroactive to July 31, 2008, The Post has learned.

They can do that? They must have found one mother of a loophole in the rental agreement.

When the mosque failed to fork over the $1.7 million, the utility fired off a letter demanding the money by Oct. 4 and threatening to evict.

Park51 principals responded with a lawsuit to stop the increase, calling Con Ed’s rent demands “outrageous.”

That’s just wrong. Somebody got to somebody.

The rented section is the area being used for prayers. The other part is being used for community events, such as a recent photography exhibit.

Wonkette has a video showing NYPD arresting some demonstrators inside a CItibank branch. The demonstrators were being very low-key, lining up to be arrested, when the cops nabbed a woman in a business suit, bank book in hand. She is screaming “I’m a customer! I’m a customer!” as they haul her to the paddy wagon.

Wonkette says the woman was there to close her Citibank account, although you can’t tell that from the video. The cops just said they were arresting her for being inside the bank. Apparently during business hours, I might add.

Some self-appointed Stasi informant “infiltrated” OWS — like that was hard — and got on their internal listserv, and has been forwarding the emails to Breitbart, the NYPD, the FBI, and anyone else he thought might be interested. The stooge, Tom Ryan, has been trying to identify the members of the hacktivist group Anonymous for some time. Now Ryan is trying to tie OWS to al Qaeda. Seriously. And Breitbart is claiming that OWS is a terrorist organization trying to undermine U.S. security by destabilizing the markets.

No doubt Ryan, Breitbart et al. are volunteer stooges for the plutocracy because they believe in freedom.

BTW, the Reuters description of the global protests yesterday makes most of them sound pretty underwhelming.