Home > America Is No More By Paul Craig Roberts

America Is No More By Paul Craig Roberts

by Open-Publishing - Wednesday 19 September 2007
4 comments

Police - Repression School-University Parties USA

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?

(watch the video : http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/index.php?filmID=601 )

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.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18417.htm

Notes

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/index.php?filmID=601

Forum posts

  • That’s the way the Country Crumbles!

  • cowardly kerry will never be tasered because he is a member of skull & bones, and therefore a cooperative servent/beneficiary of the ill-loo-ME!!!-naughty that is trying to run the nwo...

    he has no business ever again appearing publically— he should retreat to his mansion...

    what is particularly alarming was the students who applauded as their fellow student was dragged from the microphone. it was ’as if’ his questions were seen as overly rude or bothersome, and the punishment was certainly appropriate for the ’disruption’ he was causing... the seeds of publick skooling and it’s emphasis on ’consensus-building’ and making everyone ’feel comfortable by ensuring a non-confrontational setting’ are starting to bear evil fruit... just wait till tHey start taking people away in public and broad daylight! (well, guess tHey just DID!)

    also deeply disturbing is the role of the campus security force in this! it seemed as if the ’police’ that dragged and tasered the (tuition-paying "customer" in a sense!!) student were the private campus security guards. traditionally— till now!!!— they served to protect students from each other, outsiders and themselves, and raise some revenue via parking tickets, and help insulate students — where possible — from the official ’outside’ town police force...

    the parents paying sky-high tuition, room-and-board and fees for their precious children —and students who are working hard to put themselves through college— should take notice and rise up in OUTRAGE over this abrupt switch in priorities— the campus police that YOU pay for are no longer there to PROTECT you and your children, now they are power-mad snitches-with-deadly-weapons enforcing the nwo official status quo...

    Cassandra

  • My "fellow" as a German who lives in your country I’m shocked about the situation with the police and the prisons not to tell what happens with the innocent people on death row.

    You elected a President - Bush - who committed 244 death penalties during his time as the govenor of texas.

    As far as I know from our "German" experience your country has overcome the transition into a facist/plutocratic system. Unthinkable that a criticism of a General like Petraeus could raise the attention in a European parliament.

    I think the existence of the Sowjet Union kept the bad sides of the US under control. It couldn’t imagine doing something like the pledge of allegiance - Americans are so proud to do. Even in the Soviet Union there was commons sense.

    You have lost it, and the World will have to deal with the US facism in the same way the had to deal with the Nazis or the Third Reich. US and Israel have replaced the Third Reich and will fail miserably.

    Or do you think barely 400 million can kill the rest of humanity? Forget it!

    • The population of the US has been estimated at a little over 300 million, mon ami.
      But your conclusion is essentially correct. The rest of the world is not going to sit idly by as these neofascists continue to wreak havoc throughout the world.

      But you see, the world can easily stop the neofascists right in their tracks. There is one thing that the neofascists need above all else to keep their designs for world empire going.

      It’s called money. The US political class through their decades-long profligate spending, outsourcing of US manufacturing jobs to foreign countries and their insane buildup of the central government have painted themselves into a corner they cannot espape.

      The housing market debacle I’m afraid is only the tip of the iceberg.
      The US dollar is now free-falling straight down an abyss it will not recover from for generations and more and more foreign central banks are now unpegging their currencies from a US dollar that is contributing no small part to world wide inflation.

      Why are foreign holdings in the US treasury so important?
      To make a long story short, the US Federal Government cannot operate without at least $850 billion in foreign investments every year to cover its horrendous deficit.

      Already, if you look at the latest figures in foreign holdings from both the US Treasury and the New York Federal Reserve, foreign cental banks are starting to place less and less orders to buy the securities and bonds the US Treasury needs to sell in order to keep this enormous, obese Federal Government operating.

      From an average of over $70 billion a month in foreign holdings, the latest figures show a huge drop to just $17 billion a month. If the figures for August and September of 2007 show the same downward slide, the US federal government will become toast. NO federal government, no US military. No attack on Iran.
      And the foreign banks, most especially the Chinese, can do all of this without firing a single shot.

      It appears that the Chinese are now spending their overvalued US dollars on precious commodities, reinvesting in their own economy and helping African nations build oil refineries and national infrastructures instead of reinvesting their money into a faltering, American economy that has not been able to pay its debt for quite a long time, an overleveraged economy that keeps asking the rest of the world for more and more, with dubious promises of riches.

      This is how the Feds fueled the American economy for the last six years with an ever expanding housing market bubble.
      What can the Feds sell now to the rest of the world that will keep their economy and their central government going that the rest of the financial world can believe in now that the housing industry is collapsing?
      One word: nothing. The fact that the Feds lowered the subprime rate even further is a sign of panicky desicion making, since this cut will only decrease the value of the US dollar even further, and increase the inflation rate in this country to an untenable level.
      The imperial fantasies of the neofascists will evaporate into thin air without a vibrant economy sustaining their monstrous military machine.
      A US economy without a strong manufacturing base, a debt load of over $55 trillion (both public and private), a dollar in free fall, and a real inflation rate of over 18% is most definitely not a healthy economy.

      What central bank will keep reinvesting their nation’s savings into an economy whose central bank keeps lowering their subprime rate and lowering an investor’s return on investment?
      Remember all of these foreign holdings in the US treasury are based on a currency that keeps dropping, no matter what the Feds do to save it. Only a fool would throw their cash into the insatiable monster that the US federal government has become.

      The Chinese and the Indians now have a middle class and a consumer market larger than the US, so they really don’t need to sell their goods here in the US, so there is no need for them to invest in the US treasury at all, except to forestall a global economic collapse if the US fails to get enough foreign investments to keep both its government and economy running.

      However, they are much better off selling their own goods to their own people who can afford it, than to keep reinvesting in a losing proposition.

      What fool will keep investing in anything that doesn’t pay him back?