The Meaning Of That Kerry Fracas In Florida

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. [Music
Scholar Barred From U.S., but No One Will Tell Her Why,
By Nina Bernstein, New York Times, September 17,
2007]

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.

COPYRIGHT

CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Paul Craig Roberts
[email
him] 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. Click

here for Peter
Brimelow`s Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts
about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.