Police Brutality: Police Deny Student 1st Amendment Rights, Attack him, and Taser him

The incident took place at a question and answer session with John
Kerry at the University of Florida.
A journalism student decided to use an opportunity at the microphone
as a soapbox for his strong views. Before the allotted 2 minutes was
up, the event coordinators silenced his mic, and within seconds he was
grabbed by the university police which escalated into a violent
altercation, which ended up in him being tasered and arrested,
shouting out in pain, all the while as he shouted for help as an
auditorium full of students—and John Kerry—stood by and watched it
happen..
Call me naive but I think something is wrong with our country when
police can be allowed to do something like this.

The mainstream media are portraying him as an angry dissident who was
"disturbing the peace" and the blogoshere is saying he got what
deserved.

I think this is important evidence of the growing and totally
unwarranted police brutality that is becoming more and more prevalent
as Bush hacks away at our civil liberties.

I think it is important that this news gets out.

Here's the link to the full video:

http://wikiprotest.com/blog/index.php/2007/09/17/uf-student-tasered-and-arrested-at-john-kerry-speech/

This version is longer than the video that is circulating in the
mainstream press.
This one shows the lead-up to the point when the police began to
hassle him so you have more context.

The following is a passionate editorial on counterpunch.com decrying
this abuse of police power and linking it into a wider discourse.


September 19, 2007
Why Did Senator John Kerry Stand Idly By?
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Naïve Americans who think they live in a free society should watch the
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.

*The video of Andrew's Mayer's arrest may be found at
http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/index.php?filmID=601

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the
Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street
Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He
is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at:
PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com

The Market

I've been watching the market and saw what it did today.

Keep in mind that I've never taken a class in economics - ever. So I
might not really know what I'm talking about.

So the Dow saw its biggest single day gain in 5 years today, rising
336 points and 2.5%

I went to the media to see what caused such a substantial gain.
the reason is pretty obvious: the federal reserve cut the interest
rate by 0.5% to 4.75%
asset managers on wall street were quoted saying "finally the fed is
listening to us and doing what wall street knew had to happen all
along"
they say that this was a "necessary move" to prevent an economic
recession and that preventing a recession is more important than
worrying about inflation.
now tell me if this right...by cutting interest rates, the fed is
trying to encourage more consumer spending. because that's what keeps
the economy going. and when interest rates are high, people don't want
to borrow on credit. but low interest rates making borrowing on credit
more appealing, so they spend more.

now why is it that lower interest rates can lead to inflation?
is it because the people setting prices are onto the market...they
realize that all this growth in stock prices (like that seen today) is
just empty speculation - its artificial money thats not based on any
real economic growth. its all in the heads of traders on wall street
who are betting on the economy. and these price-setters dont buy into
wall street's optimism. they are the word on the street, and they know
that the economy may very well be heading into a recession, so they
raise prices, causing inflation.
or maybe, with all the stockholders seemingly getting richer on the
speculative growth in their stock prices, there is suddenly a lot more
money floating around (on paper, at least) and so naturally prices are
going to go up (which essentially neutralizes the gains made by those
lucky enough to own stocks, but hurting those who dont)

I guess what I dont understand is why such a small cut in interest
rates—making it slightly cheaper to borrow on credit—can make such a
difference. The assumption seems to be that consumers will be that
much more wiling to spend—and go into debt—if only their debt payments
are slightly lower. Is that really sound reasoning? Ideally, wouldn't
consumers not have to go into debt at all? Wouldn't they only spend
money that they already had in the bank? Maybe not for home mortgages,
I know. And that's a major piece of the pie. But in general, isn't the
logic that encouraging consumers to go into debt into order to boost
the economy awfully flawed? They may be spending more, giving profits
to the corporations. But if they themselves are going into debt, isn't
that a bad thing for the economy as a whole? Aren't 'the people' the
basis of 'the economy'? Or has the basis of the economy gone way beyond the domain of ordinary human beings and become these free-floating financial markets with their billions of dollars being traded digitally.
the financial speculators on wall street?

grading woes

Last year I was a lab TA. That meant I spent most of my TA time in the computer lab, administering multiple lab sessions each week. I also spent time grading, but the grading was easy and not very time-consuming.

This year I am a grading TA. I go to lectures, but I don't see the students outside of lecture. Instead, I see their essays...200 of them. 200 students and I'm the only TA! It's a bit of an unreasonable ratio, I think. Fortunately the essays are only 1 page each (single to 1 1/2 spacing). Still, this process takes a lot of time and concentration, and attention. I find myself giving each individual essay more attention than I probably should. I feel the editor in me coming out...marking up students' papers with abandon...everything from grammar and syntax and structure to fundamental flaws in their ideas and logic. I wonder if they normally get this much attention from TAs at Penn State. I feel like it's my job to give them the most useful feedback I can, so that they learn and do better on the next essay. But that kind of attention is extremely taxing on my time. So I'm trying to work out some sort of medium.

It makes me wonder how much time my TAs spent on MY papers when I was in college. And I wasn't writing 1 page papers back then. I was writing 6, 10, 15 page papers. I still remember some of the first college papers I got back, and the comments I got from my TAs, and feeling hurt, that my TAs must have thought I was so stupid. That makes me worry. I don't want my students to think I think they're stupid. I want them to do better. Maybe my TAs wanted the same thing. I kick myself now for not making more of an effort to get to know my TAs and seeking their help. I almost never went to office hours in college. There were all those amazing scholars within my reach and I failed to take advantage of them. I definitely felt intimidated at times at Harvard.

China Eases Death Penalty....and why I find this troubling

I'm a staunch anti-Death Penalty advocate.
So you'd think that my response to the news this week that China plans to reduce its use of capital punishment would be enthusiastic.
And it is, in measured degrees.
But I also have concerns based on what I've read about who, and under what circumstances, will benefit from this change of policy.

What bothers me is that the new policy appears to give more leniency to people who have committed serious crimes, such as murder or public corruption resulting in rampant negligence and injury or death, and yet are able to "compensate" for their crimes through monetary means.

This is extremely troublesome to me. It implies that if you are rich enough, you can get away with anything. For the very rich, this could actually be an incentive, rather than a deterrent, to commit future crimes. They can be safe in the knowledge that they can avoid the death penalty as long as they have enough money to "pay" for their crimes, literally. I don't think we should judge wealthy criminals by a different standard than poor criminals. If anything, I think wealthy criminals are more despicable than poor criminals. Poor criminals, not to condone their actions, often commit crimes out of desperation. The rich only commit crimes when they are truly evil.

I think it sets a dangerous precedent to send a message to the rich that they can be excused from their crimes.

The text of a BBC article is reprinted below, or here http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/6994673.stm

BBC NEWS
China to reduce death penalty use
China's Supreme Court has ordered judges to be more sparing in the imposition of the death penalty.

An order on its website said execution should be reserved for "an extremely small number of serious offenders".

It said the death penalty should be withheld in certain cases of crimes of passion or economic crimes.

Amnesty International says China carried out two-thirds of the world's executions last year, but China says it expects a 10-year low this year.

Amendment

The Supreme Court said murders triggered by family disputes should not always result in the death penalty.

Crimes of passion should take into account the offender's payment of compensation, it said.


CHINA'S DEATH PENALTY
China is believed to execute more people than rest of the world combined
Non-violent crimes such as tax fraud and embezzlement carry death penalty
Other crimes include murder, rape, robbery and drug offences
China does not publish official figures on executions
Many cases are based on confessions and trials often take less than a day, observers say

Similarly, those convicted of economic crimes should be treated more leniently if they help to recoup money that was defrauded.

The court suggested greater use of two-year suspensions on death penalties - allowing them to be converted to imprisonment.

However, it continued to back capital punishment as a deterrent.

"We must hand down and carry out immediate capital punishment in regard to heinous cases, with iron-clad evidence that result in serious social damage," its statement said.

The most high-profile execution this year was of the former head of the State Food and Drug Administration, Zheng Xiaoyu, for taking 6.5m yuan ($860,000; £430,000) in bribes and for dereliction of duty.

In 2005, an estimated 1,770 executions were carried out and nearly 4,000 people were sentenced to death, human rights group Amnesty International says.

But China says the number has fallen since an amendment came into force this January requiring the Supreme People's Court to approve all death sentences.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/6994673.stm

Published: 2007/09/14 10:50:56 GMT

© BBC MMVII

Grrr stupid tourists

When I'm browsing the web I see lots of latest news headlines.
Here's one I just saw: "Tourists Flee as Felix Nears Honduras".
I hate headlines like this.

Why the hell should care about the fleeing tourists? Oh, poor tourists! They had to cancel their holiday and evacuate the island as their comfy airplanes fly them back to the comfort and safety of their homes. Pity them!

The news should be about the people who LIVE in Honduras and who are going to have to deal with the hurricane!