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America Is No More
By Paul Craig Roberts
09/18/07 "ICH" --- -- Naïve Americans who think they live in a
free society
should watch this video
filmed by students at a John Kerry
speech September 17, Constitution Day, at the University of
Florida in Gainesville.
At the conclusion of Kerry’s speech, Andrew Meyer, a 21-year old
journalism student was selected by Senator Kerry to ask a
question. Meyer held up a copy of BBC investigative reporter
Greg Palast’s book, Armed Madhouse, and asked if Kerry was aware
that Palast’s investigations determined that Kerry had actually
won the election. Why, Meyer asked, had Kerry conceded the
election so quickly when there were so many obvious examples of
vote fraud? Why, Meyer, went on to ask, was Kerry refusing to
consider Bush’s impeachment when Bush was about to initiate
another act of military aggression, this time against Iran?
At this point the public’s protectors—the police—decided that
Meyer had said too much. They grabbed Meyer and began dragging
him off. Meyer said repeatedly, “I have done nothing wrong,”
which under our laws he had not. He threatened no one and
assaulted no one.
But the police decided that Meyer, an American citizen, had no
right to free speech and no constitutional protection. They
threw him to the floor and tasered him right in front of Senator
Kerry and the large student audience, who captured on video the
unquestionable act of police brutality. Meyer was carted off and
jailed on a phony charge of “disrupting a public event.”
The question we should all ask is why did a United States
Senator just stand there while Gestapo goons violated the
constitutional rights of a student participating in a public
event, brutalized him in full view of everyone, and then took
him off to jail on phony charges?
Kerry’s meekness not only in the face of electoral fraud, not
only in the face of Bush’s wars that are crimes under the
Nuremberg standard, but also in the face of police goons
trampling the constitutional rights of American citizens makes
it completely clear that he was not fit to be president, and he
is not fit to be a US senator.
Usually when police violate constitutional rights and commit
acts of police brutality they do it when they believe no one is
watching, not in front of a large audience. Clearly, the police
have become more audacious in their abuse of rights and
citizens. What explains the new fearlessness of police to
violate rights and brutalize citizens without cause?
The answer is that police, most of whom have authoritarian
personalities, have seen that constitutional rights are no
longer protected. President Bush does not protect our
constitutional rights. Neither does Vice President Cheney, nor
the Attorney General, nor the US Congress. Just as Kerry allowed
Meyer’s rights to be tasered out of him, Congress has enabled
Bush to strip people, including American citizens, of
constitutional protection and incarcerate them without
presenting evidence.
How long before Kerry himself or some other senator will be
dragged from his podium and tasered?
The Bush Republicans with complicit Democrats have essentially
brought government accountability to an end in the US. The US
government has 80,000 people, including ordinary American
citizens, on its “no-fly list.” No one knows why they are on the
list, and no one on the list can find out how to get off it. An
unaccountable act by the Bush administration put them there.
Airport Security harasses and abuses people who do not fit any
known definition of terrorist. Nalini Ghuman, a British-born
citizen and music professor at Mills College in California was
met on her return from a trip to England by armed guards at the
airplane door and escorted away. A Gestapo goon squad tore up
her US visa, defaced her British passport, body searched her,
and told her she could leave immediately for England or be sent
to a detention center.
Professor Ghuman, an Oxford University graduate with a Ph.D.
from the University of California at Berkeley, says she feels
like the character in Kafka’s book, The Trial. “I don’t know why
it’s happened, what I’m accused of. There’s no opportunity to
defend myself. One is just completely powerless.” Over one year
later there is still no answer.
The Bush Republicans and their Democratic toadies have, in the
name of “security,” made all of us powerless. While Senator John
Kerry and his Democratic colleagues stand silently, the Bush
administration has stolen our country from us and turned us into
subjects.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in
the Reagan Administration. He is the author of Supply-Side
Revolution : An Insider's Account of Policymaking in Washington;
Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the
Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton
of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and
Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of
Justice.
Notes
http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/index.php?filmID=601
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