Did you catch the big, fat smile on the corpulent white cop I suspect is doing the deed? At the very least he’s enjoying the guy’s suffering. Or the big grins on several individuals in the audience? Or the folks getting up and leaving in apparent disgust as he commandeers the microphone?
The lessons in this one brief clip are almost too numerous to tally, but the highlights are worth review:
1. Opening your mouth — and especially refusing to close it — at a public gathering too near an agent of “the machine”, regardless of whether the official nametag they wear has an ‘R’ or a ‘D’, will result in pain, suffering and likely incarceration.
2. The general public will sit by and watch, with reactions somewhere between morbid fascination and outright glee that it isn’t them. I wouldn’t have confronted the cops with physical force, as my sense of self-preservation is far too strong, but I would have not been able to refrain from asking them why he was being handled like John Hinckley for simply asking tough questions.
3. While I will acknowledge there are “good cops” out there (I have known a couple personally), the good cop/bad cop ratio has always been lower than we think, and it is shrinking rapidly. Let’s just call it, with a deep and respectful nod at the late, great Herr Vonnegut, The Rise of the PP’s.
4. Kerry kept droning away in the background, even as the guy was screaming away at the back of the venue, rather than addressing a single piece of the fellow’s hurried inquiries. What does this tell us about the “democrat” Mr. Teresa Heinz?
In a nutshell, scenarios like the above are one of the primary signals that a fascist mindset is ruling the roost. Of course, if we glimpse back even just a few years one finds the same basic sociopathic behavior on display among “law enforcement”, from Kent State to Guernica. The only difference being the level of coercion and punishment applied right then and there.
I’ll leave off with an apropos glimpse inside the incisive mind of Eduardo Gallano:
Professional Life (The Book of Embraces, p.106)
They have the same first name, the same surname. They live in the same house and wear the same shoes. They sleep on the same pillow, next to the same woman. Every morning the mirror confronts them with the same face. But he and he are not the same person.
“And what have I got to do with it?” says he, speaking of him and shrugging his shoulders.
“I carry out orders,” he says, or he says:
“That’s what they pay me for.”
Or he says:
“If I don’t do it, someone else will.”
Which is as if to say:
“I am someone else.”
The hatred of the victim astonishes the executioner, and even leaves him feeling a certain sense of injustice: after all, he is an official, and ordinary official who goes to work on time and does his job. When the exhausting day’s work is done, the torturer washes his hands.
Ahmadou Gherab, who fought for the independence of Algeria, told me this. Ahmadou was tortured by a French official for several months. Every day, promptly at 6:00 p.m., the torturer would wipe the sweat from his brow, unplug the electric cattle prod and put away the other tools of the trade. Then he would sit beside the tortured man and speak to him of his family problems and of the promotion that didn’t come and of how expensive life is. The torturer would speak of his insufferable wife and their newborn child who had not permitted him a wink of sleep all night; he railed against, Oran, that shitty city, and against the son of a bitch of a colonel who…
Ahmadou, bathed in blood, trembling with pain, burning with fever, would say nothing.
Thanks for bringing this to my attention. It just goes to show that the game is over, the fascists have won and they continue to amass power.
I guess I am just stunned, even though I shouldn’t be, I’ve been harping about this for years, but it is still shocking to see blatant torture in public in a supposed bastion of free speech. Jesus Christ, I live just south of Gainesville, and two of my brothers are Bull Gator Alums.
I am shocked this kids fellow students just stared with stupid looks on their faces. I couldn’t tell if they were scared (I doubt it), or just thinking about all the snicker-doodles and other goodies they would be getting after the rally (i.e. they couldn’t give a shit that someone was being tortured in their presence, they were only focused on their own petty needs and lives).
Pigs love tazers because the sheeple have been convinced that they are harmless and that their use does not constitute torture. It just shows how the people in their haze and their fervent desire for security above all else have allowed the system to slip away from them.
It is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better.
The guy could have avoided arousing the cops had he simply stated, calmly and clearly, “I have three questions: Why did you concede the 2004 election when you knew that you had won by 5 million votes? Why don’t you advocate impeaching Bush to prevent him from invading Iran? Were you a member along with George W. Bush of the Skull & Bones secret society at Yale?” Then he should have sat down. He wasn’t arrested for asking hard questions. He was arrested for behaving in a way that incompetent cops, nervous about protecting a potential target, could interpret as disturbing the peace. He could have made the exact same spiel out on the front steps of the building and the cops wouldn’t have given him a second glance. If this were a fascist state: (a) the cops would not have been incompetent; (b) the guy would have disappeared immediately and never been heard from again; (c) the video and the videographer would have also disappeared.
On the other hand, Bush’s “free speech zones” that keep protesters out of sight and earshot of his public appearances smack of fascism, albeit a pretty wimpy form of fascism. Real fascists kill protesters immediately.
If anyone has more information concerning this arrest I would like to know what the initial arrest authority was. What law did he violate to give the officers probable cause to arrest/detain him initially? Personally the guy seemed like a real asshole, but the arrest appears to be a blatant violation of his 4th amendment rights. Also with four officers there restraining the guy the use of a Taser is excessive.
The only thing I can think of is if he was being asked to leave by the property owner, his refusal may have constituted criminal trespassing (it’s a stretch). Also the dynamics change if it was a forum open to the public (right assemble, right to free speech).
ArcaniX,
Survival Acres posted a link to another video of the same incedent. The camera person follows the cops out into the lobby where the guy asks why he’s being arrested. One of the cops tells him that he was “inciting a riot”. I’ll admit, he seemed a little jumpy while he was hollering into the mic, but I gotta be honest, I probably would have reacted more or less the same way if a bunch of cops hauled me out of a public forum for simply asking questions. I see Peregrino’s point, but the guy had a right to demand an answer to his questions from an elected official. In the 2nd video, you can hear Kerry telling the audience, in his trademark monotone, “People, let’s calm down”. In other words, Don’t anyone get any ideas. Stay asleep.”
– Mike Lorenz
What a horrible thing to watch in so many ways. I was born in Gainesville, my parents still live there. I can truly never go home.
The student questioner, Andrew, was right. Without the massive fraud, John “Kerry” Forbes-Kohn, husband of Teresa Thierstein Simoes-Ferreira Heinz, probably won the 2004 election by something like five million votes. He won handily in Gainesville, and yet, almost nobody came to hear him speak in 2007. An nearly empty room for a guy the hoi polloi backed for sock puppet-in-chief just three years ago? Obviously, his record of supporting Bush’s policies for the last three years has demoralized his former supporters. Almost everyone has given up on the political process now.
What a contrast to May 1972, when U of F students occupied the street intersection of 13th and University for three days. The protesters held their ground until a final assault by a phalanx of over a hundred armored police supported by tear gas grenade launchers and an actual armored personnel carrier. The current student generation has no fight at all. They truly, fully accept their enslavement, as long as it comes with an I-pod.
Defense.gov News Photo 110426-A-7597S-183: U.S. Special Operations service members with Special Operations Task Force South board two UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters following a clearing operation in Panjwa'i district in Kandahar province, Afghanistan, on April 25, 2011. Source: Wikimedia.
Did you catch the big, fat smile on the corpulent white cop I suspect is doing the deed? At the very least he’s enjoying the guy’s suffering. Or the big grins on several individuals in the audience? Or the folks getting up and leaving in apparent disgust as he commandeers the microphone?
The lessons in this one brief clip are almost too numerous to tally, but the highlights are worth review:
1. Opening your mouth — and especially refusing to close it — at a public gathering too near an agent of “the machine”, regardless of whether the official nametag they wear has an ‘R’ or a ‘D’, will result in pain, suffering and likely incarceration.
2. The general public will sit by and watch, with reactions somewhere between morbid fascination and outright glee that it isn’t them. I wouldn’t have confronted the cops with physical force, as my sense of self-preservation is far too strong, but I would have not been able to refrain from asking them why he was being handled like John Hinckley for simply asking tough questions.
3. While I will acknowledge there are “good cops” out there (I have known a couple personally), the good cop/bad cop ratio has always been lower than we think, and it is shrinking rapidly. Let’s just call it, with a deep and respectful nod at the late, great Herr Vonnegut, The Rise of the PP’s.
4. Kerry kept droning away in the background, even as the guy was screaming away at the back of the venue, rather than addressing a single piece of the fellow’s hurried inquiries. What does this tell us about the “democrat” Mr. Teresa Heinz?
In a nutshell, scenarios like the above are one of the primary signals that a fascist mindset is ruling the roost. Of course, if we glimpse back even just a few years one finds the same basic sociopathic behavior on display among “law enforcement”, from Kent State to Guernica. The only difference being the level of coercion and punishment applied right then and there.
I’ll leave off with an apropos glimpse inside the incisive mind of Eduardo Gallano:
Professional Life (The Book of Embraces, p.106)
They have the same first name, the same surname. They live in the same house and wear the same shoes. They sleep on the same pillow, next to the same woman. Every morning the mirror confronts them with the same face. But he and he are not the same person.
“And what have I got to do with it?” says he, speaking of him and shrugging his shoulders.
“I carry out orders,” he says, or he says:
“That’s what they pay me for.”
Or he says:
“If I don’t do it, someone else will.”
Which is as if to say:
“I am someone else.”
The hatred of the victim astonishes the executioner, and even leaves him feeling a certain sense of injustice: after all, he is an official, and ordinary official who goes to work on time and does his job. When the exhausting day’s work is done, the torturer washes his hands.
Ahmadou Gherab, who fought for the independence of Algeria, told me this. Ahmadou was tortured by a French official for several months. Every day, promptly at 6:00 p.m., the torturer would wipe the sweat from his brow, unplug the electric cattle prod and put away the other tools of the trade. Then he would sit beside the tortured man and speak to him of his family problems and of the promotion that didn’t come and of how expensive life is. The torturer would speak of his insufferable wife and their newborn child who had not permitted him a wink of sleep all night; he railed against, Oran, that shitty city, and against the son of a bitch of a colonel who…
Ahmadou, bathed in blood, trembling with pain, burning with fever, would say nothing.
excuse my language, but wow, that’s fucked up. If I was in the audience I would’ve been arrested for assaulting a police officer…..
Thanks for bringing this to my attention. It just goes to show that the game is over, the fascists have won and they continue to amass power.
I guess I am just stunned, even though I shouldn’t be, I’ve been harping about this for years, but it is still shocking to see blatant torture in public in a supposed bastion of free speech. Jesus Christ, I live just south of Gainesville, and two of my brothers are Bull Gator Alums.
I am shocked this kids fellow students just stared with stupid looks on their faces. I couldn’t tell if they were scared (I doubt it), or just thinking about all the snicker-doodles and other goodies they would be getting after the rally (i.e. they couldn’t give a shit that someone was being tortured in their presence, they were only focused on their own petty needs and lives).
Pigs love tazers because the sheeple have been convinced that they are harmless and that their use does not constitute torture. It just shows how the people in their haze and their fervent desire for security above all else have allowed the system to slip away from them.
It is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better.
The guy could have avoided arousing the cops had he simply stated, calmly and clearly, “I have three questions: Why did you concede the 2004 election when you knew that you had won by 5 million votes? Why don’t you advocate impeaching Bush to prevent him from invading Iran? Were you a member along with George W. Bush of the Skull & Bones secret society at Yale?” Then he should have sat down. He wasn’t arrested for asking hard questions. He was arrested for behaving in a way that incompetent cops, nervous about protecting a potential target, could interpret as disturbing the peace. He could have made the exact same spiel out on the front steps of the building and the cops wouldn’t have given him a second glance. If this were a fascist state: (a) the cops would not have been incompetent; (b) the guy would have disappeared immediately and never been heard from again; (c) the video and the videographer would have also disappeared.
On the other hand, Bush’s “free speech zones” that keep protesters out of sight and earshot of his public appearances smack of fascism, albeit a pretty wimpy form of fascism. Real fascists kill protesters immediately.
If anyone has more information concerning this arrest I would like to know what the initial arrest authority was. What law did he violate to give the officers probable cause to arrest/detain him initially? Personally the guy seemed like a real asshole, but the arrest appears to be a blatant violation of his 4th amendment rights. Also with four officers there restraining the guy the use of a Taser is excessive.
The only thing I can think of is if he was being asked to leave by the property owner, his refusal may have constituted criminal trespassing (it’s a stretch). Also the dynamics change if it was a forum open to the public (right assemble, right to free speech).
ArcaniX,
Survival Acres posted a link to another video of the same incedent. The camera person follows the cops out into the lobby where the guy asks why he’s being arrested. One of the cops tells him that he was “inciting a riot”. I’ll admit, he seemed a little jumpy while he was hollering into the mic, but I gotta be honest, I probably would have reacted more or less the same way if a bunch of cops hauled me out of a public forum for simply asking questions. I see Peregrino’s point, but the guy had a right to demand an answer to his questions from an elected official. In the 2nd video, you can hear Kerry telling the audience, in his trademark monotone, “People, let’s calm down”. In other words, Don’t anyone get any ideas. Stay asleep.”
– Mike Lorenz
What a horrible thing to watch in so many ways. I was born in Gainesville, my parents still live there. I can truly never go home.
The student questioner, Andrew, was right. Without the massive fraud, John “Kerry” Forbes-Kohn, husband of Teresa Thierstein Simoes-Ferreira Heinz, probably won the 2004 election by something like five million votes. He won handily in Gainesville, and yet, almost nobody came to hear him speak in 2007. An nearly empty room for a guy the hoi polloi backed for sock puppet-in-chief just three years ago? Obviously, his record of supporting Bush’s policies for the last three years has demoralized his former supporters. Almost everyone has given up on the political process now.
What a contrast to May 1972, when U of F students occupied the street intersection of 13th and University for three days. The protesters held their ground until a final assault by a phalanx of over a hundred armored police supported by tear gas grenade launchers and an actual armored personnel carrier. The current student generation has no fight at all. They truly, fully accept their enslavement, as long as it comes with an I-pod.
I agree with RobertS: We are now living with full-blown fascism. There was no inappropriate or disorderly behavior on the part of the student.
In a free society, you don’t get arrested and tased for asking questions that make cops–or political figures–“nervous.”