I am tired of this clown. Go home to his wonderful
America.
But serve time first. Pity he probably won’t get canned like
another infamous American!
September 26, 2007
by Paul Craig Roberts
Bush’s “war on terror” quickly became Bush’s war on Iraqi
civilians. So far over one million Iraqi civilians have lost their
lives because of Bush’s invasion, and four million have been
displaced. Iraq’s infrastructure is in ruins. Disease is rampart.
Normal life has disappeared.
Self-righteous Americans justify these monstrous crimes as
necessary to ensure their own safety from terrorist attack. Yet,
Americans are in far greater danger from their own police forces
than they are from foreign terrorists. Ironically, Bush’s “war on
terror” has made Americans less safe at home by diminishing US
civil liberty and turning an epidemic of US police brutality into a
pandemic.
The only terrorist most Americans will ever encounter is a
policeman with a badge, nightstick, mace and Taser. A Google search
for “police brutality videos” turns up 2,210,000 entries. Some
entries are foreign and some are probably duplications, but the
number is so large that a person could do nothing but watch police
brutality videos for the rest of his life. A search on “You Tube”
alone turned up 2,280 police brutality videos. PrisonPlanet has a
selection of the most outrageous recent cases.
Police brutality has crossed the line from using excessive force
against a resisting Rodney King to unprovoked gratuitous violence
against persons offering no resistance, such as the elderly, women,
students, and elected officials. Americans are not safe anywhere
from police. Police attack Americans in university libraries, in
public meetings, and in their own homes.
Last week we had the case of the University of Florida student
who was repeatedly Tasered without cause for asking Senator Kerry
some good questions in the question and answer period following
Kerry’s speech. Two days after the Florida student was gratuitously
brutalized, Senate Republicans defeated Vermont Democrat Patrick
Leahy’s bill to restore habeas corpus protection.
A UCLA student was Tasered by police
without cause for studying in the university library without having
his student ID on his person. Following police orders to leave, the
student was walking toward the door when police grabbed him and
repeatedly Tasered him.
On September 19, 2007 a young woman was repeatedly Tasered
without cause by a large brutal cop in a parking lot outside a
night club in Warren Ohio.
On September 14, 2007, Roseland, Indiana, city council member
David Snyder was ejected from a council meeting by dictatorial
council chairman Charlie Shields. Snyder had protested being
limited to one minute to speak. Police goon Jack Tiller escorted
Snyder out, and as Snyder exited the building, Tiller, following
behind, pushed Snyder to the ground and without cause began beating
Snyder in the head with a nightstick. Snyder was hospitalized.
Local TV news stations throughout the US offer an endless stream
of police brutality videos, which are then posted on the stations’
web sites, often with an opportunity for citizens to express their
opinion of the incidents.
There are many disturbing aspects to police brutality
cases.
One disturbing aspect is that the police always arrest the people
that they have gratuitously brutalized. There was no justification
whatsoever to arrest councilman Snyder, or the UCLA student, or the University of Florida student. The
cops committed assault against innocent citizens. The cops should
have been arrested for their criminal acts. Instead, the cops cover
up their own crimes by arresting their victims on false charges
that are invented to justify the unprovoked police violence against
citizens.
Another disturbing aspect is that no one tells the police to
stop the brutality. “Free” Americans are so intimidated by police
that on February 19 of this year male customers in a Chicago bar
stood aside while a drunk cop weighing 251 pounds beat a 115 pound
barmaid, knocking her to the floor with his fists and repeatedly
kicking her, for obeying the bar rules and not serving him more
drinks.
Yet another disturbing aspect is that a minority of citizens
will justify each act of police brutality no matter how brutal and
how unprovoked. For example, WNDU.com’s poll
of its viewers found that 64.2% agreed that Snyder was a victim of
police brutality, but 27.8% thought that Snyder got what was coming
to him. “Law and order conservatives” and other authoritarian
personalities invariably defend acts of police brutality. Perhaps
the police brutality pandemic will bring the day when we will be
able to say that a civil libertarian is a law and order
conservative who has been brutalized by police.
The most disturbing aspect is that the police usually get away
with it.
I remember decades ago when civil libertarians in New York City
tried to stop police brutality by establishing civilian review
boards to introduce some accountability into the police’s
interaction with civilians. Law and order conservatives at William
F. Buckley’s National Review went berserk. Accountability was
“second-guessing” the police. The result would be a crime wave. And
so on.
Police forces have always attracted bullies with authoritative
personalities who desire to beat senseless anyone who does not
quake in their presence. In the past police could get away with
brutalizing blacks but not whites. Today white citizens are as
likely as racial minorities to be victims of police brutality.
The police are supreme. The militarization of the police, armed
now with military weapons and trained to view the general public as
the enemy, against whom “pain compliance” must be used, has placed
every American at risk of personal injury and false arrest from our
“public protectors.”
In “free and democratic America,” citizens are in such great
danger from police that there are websites devoted to police
brutality with online forms to report the brutality.
Nine years ago Human Rights Watch published a report entitled,
“Shielded from Justice: Police Brutality and Accountability in the
United States.” The report stated:
“Police abuse remains one of the most serious and divisive human
rights violations in the United States. The excessive use of force
by police officers, including unjustified shootings, severe
beatings, fatal chokings, and rough treatment, persists because
overwhelming barriers to accountability make it possible for
officers who commit human rights violations to escape due
punishment and often to repeat their offenses. Police or public
officials greet each new report of brutality with denials or
explain that the act was an aberration, while the administrative
and criminal systems that should deter these abuses by holding
officers accountable instead virtually guarantee them impunity.
“This report examines common obstacles to accountability for
police abuse in fourteen large cities representing most regions of
the nation. The cities examined are: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago,
Detroit, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New Orleans, New
York, Philadelphia, Portland, Providence, San Francisco, and
Washington, D.C. Research for this report was conducted over two
and a half years, from late 1995 through early 1998.
“The brutality cases examined, which are set out in detail in
chapters on each city, are similar to cases that continue to emerge
in headlines and in survivors’ complaints. It is important to note,
however, that because it is difficult to obtain case information
except where there is public scandal and/or prosecution, this
report relies heavily on cases that have reached public attention;
disciplinary action and criminal prosecution are even less common
than the cases set out below would suggest.
There is no way to hold police accountable when the president
and vice president of the United States, the attorney general, and
the Republican Party maintain that the civil liberties and the
separation of powers mandated by the US Constitution must be
abandoned in order that the executive branch can keep Americans
safe from terrorists.
Even before the “war on terror,” federal police murdered 100
people in the Branch Davidian compound at Waco, and no one was held
accountable.
Who is a terrorist? If the police and the US government have the
mentality of airport security, they cannot tell a terrorist from an
86-year old Marine general on his way to give a speech at West
Point. Retired Marine Corps General Joseph J. Foss was delayed and
nearly had his Medal of Honor confiscated. Airport security
regarded the pin on the metal as a weapon that the 86-year old
Marine general and former governor of South Dakota could use to
hijack an airliner and commit a terrorist deed.
In America today, every citizen is a potential terrorist in the
eyes of the authorities. Airport security makes this clear every
minute of every day, as do the FBI and
NSA with warrantless spying on our emails,
postal mail, telephone calls, and every possible invasion of our
privacy. We are all recipients of abuse of our constitutional
rights whether or not we suffer beatings, Taserings, and false
arrests.
The law makes it impossible for Americans to defend themselves
from police brutality. Law and order conservatives have made it a
felony with a long prison sentence to “assault a police officer.”
Assaulting a police officer means that if a police thug intends to
beat your brains out with his nightstick and you disarm your
assailant, you have “assaulted a police officer.” If you are not
shot on the spot by his backup, you will be convicted by a “law and
order” jury and sent to prison.
No matter how gratuitous and violent the police brutality, a
“free” American citizen can defend himself only at the expense, if
not of his life, of a long stay in prison. Osama bin Laden must
wish that he had such power over Americans.
