Let the Spin Begin: ABC Downplays Torture of UF Student.

Now that everyone and their mother has seen how free speech is “protected” on college campuses, the mainstream media is lining up to mitigate, apologize, and justify.

Anyone watching ABC 7 (the local Washington, DC affiliate) this morning would have thought the anchors were commenting on a comedy sketch and not a video depicting a student’s free-speech and human rights being violated. I’m referring, of course, to the manhandling and eventual tasering of University of Florida student Andrew Meyer, who dared to take more than his allotted two minutes to ask Senator John Kerry some tough questions. Although the video ended with a handcuffed Meyer screaming each time he is shocked with the taser gun, the most fitting comment one of the female newscasters could come up with was something to the effect of, “One sure way to get yourself tasered is to use the word ‘bro.’” Ha ha ha, ABC 7, you kill me! I almost forgot that I was watching police brutality and the suppression of free speech.

I searched and searched the Web for the ABC 7 segment but I couldn’t find it. Instead, I found a segment from Good Morning America which also shows ABC’s attempts to mitigate. Thirty-four seconds into the video, the ABC commentator clearly feels the need to make us understand that Meyer brought it all upon himself for asking John Kerry ”obnoxious” questions. The rest of the video goes on to make it seem as if Meyer somehow deserved to be “forcibly dragged from the campus forum” and get “much more than he bargained for.” Much more than he bargained for? That’s right. Apparently that’s the newscaster’s euphemism for the totally unnecessary close-range tasering of Meyer after he had already been subdued (he was face-down on the ground with his hands cuffed behind him). Lest we think this incident is the huge deal it actually is, ABC reminds us that this was not the first time campus police had used tasers on a student, referring to the tasering of a UCLA student who refused to show his identity card to campus security. Really? Silly me! It’s no big deal after all! This kind of thing happens all the time.

During his narration of the UCLA incident, however, the narrator rediscovers journalistic objectivity and decides to keep his opinions to himself, which is a pity otherwise we might have heard him use words like “excessive,” ”brutal,” or “uncalled-for.” Sadly, such adjectives are notably absent from his commentary. Instead, as the video nears its conclusion, he gloats that ”The taser may now be the least of Meyer’s worries,” since he has now been charged with resisting arrest and disturbing the peace. You can actually hear the humor in his voice as he shares this last tidbit! Finally, we discover that Meyer is famous for practical jokes and for posting short, funny videos of himself on the internet. Good Morning America ends the segment with the words “But his 15 minutes of fame are from a video that is no laughing matter.” I guess we are now supposed to think this was just a prank that backfired? I don’t think so!

ABC News Tasering Cops Put on Leave3.flv

Clearly, this ABC presenter and I live in opposite worlds. When I see the video of Andrew Meyer having his microphone cut, being surrounded and literally carried off by campus security, and finally being shocked with a taser, I don’t see anything trivial or humorous. I see a young American whose First Amendment rights to question a public servant—whatever happened to freedom of speech and the right to petition government?—are denied, who is then violently manhandled although he posed no physical threat to anyone, and finally tortured in plain view of fellow students and a United States senator, who by the way did nothing to intervene.

Accuse me of hyperbole if you will but what happened to Andrew Meyer is torture, pure and simple. Taser guns are designed for long-range use to electrically incapacitate an assailant from a safe distance. The guns shoot small darts that strike the target and deliver an electric shock through connected wires. The shock is usually enough to disrupt the target’s muscle control, rendering him/her temporarily paralyzed. Although taser use is controversial—elderly people and people with heart conditions have died after being tasered—and has been criticized by human rights and civil liberties groups, the argument could be made that they are an effective and non-lethal way to disable a violent or threatening person from a safe distance. Fair enough.

But in the case of Andrew Meyer, the taser was not used for self defense. Meyer was already under arrest and was already incapacitated. Sure, he was still mouthing off but he did not pose a physical threat to the security officers, who were armed and outnumbered him by a factor of about six to one. Even worse, the taser setting for close-range use—as pointed out by Machinist—does not deliver an electric shock powerful enough to incapacitate. Rather, it causes excruciating pain and is used to get the target to comply. In Meyer’s case, the taser was used not to incapacitate him for officers’ protection, but to get him to comply; in other words, to make him shut up and leave the auditorium.

Let’s revisit the scenario. A student asks a question, then he is arrested, cuffed, and tasered. The setting isn’t high enough to incapacitate him and in fact, he doesn’t need to be incapicated because he’s already handcuffed and face-down on the ground. This rules out self defense and leaves only compliance as a motive. Basically, campus security used an electrified weapon to cause excruciating pain to a student in order to get compliance from him. What do you call it when pain is used to make a human being do something? That’s right, torture.

So here we have a student tortured in front of fellow students and a senator who, in an extreme act of callousness and cowardice, continues to speak into the microphone as if nothing was going on. For its part, ABC also tries to spin this by reporting that Sen. Kerry later said he had no idea Meyer had been tasered until after he finished speaking. So what? He should have intervened, or at the very least spoken out, as soon as Meyer was approached by security. Some University of Florida students have redeemed themselves by speaking in defense of Andrew Meyer and free speech, and for organizing an anti-taser rally on their campus. All Sen. Kerry has done is plead ignorance. Shame on John Kerry for not speaking out against the violation of a student’s rights and shame on ABC for attempting to turn a clear case of undue force into a joke. We should all be very worried when newscasters try to use comedy to mitigate the suppression of free speech.

Come to think of it, maybe it’s only fitting that newscasters try their hand at comedy since comedians—like Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher, and Al Franken—are doing a much better job of reporting and analyzing the news.

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That’s just sick! I thought this was a free country!!!

Today, a new torture video started making the rounds on the internet. No, it wasn’t shot at Guantanamo or Baghram or Abu Ghraib. It was shot at the University of Florida. The victim, a journalism student, asked Senator John Kerry a series of tough questions during a question and answer session. For exercising his First Amendment rights, the unfortunate student is hauled off by security while he screams for help and asks why he was being arrested. He ends up face-down with his hands cuffed behind his back, while one of the security guards repeatedly shoots him at point-blank range with a taser gun. Taser guns were designed for long-range use to incapacitate, from a safe distance, someone who poses a physical threat. But in this case, the student was already subdued and handcuffed so the taser was used merely to cause pain, not for self-defense. Using an instrument to cause pain merely for its own sake is nothing more than torture.

When did asking tough questions of political figures become a criminal act? What’s even more disturbing is that everyone else just sits  there and lets this kid get dragged off by a mob of armed guards simply because he took too long to ask his question. For his part, Sen. Kerry keeps on talking as if violations of a human being’s fundamental rights—not to mention the US Constitution—were not being committed in his presence.

I hope this guy sues the pants off those security guards and the University of Florida. And I hope this incident haunts John Kerry for the rest of his career.

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Free the Jena 6!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Question: When does a schoolyard fight result in an attempted second-degree murder charge?

Answer: When it takes place in Jena, Louisiana and involves Black students.

This story’s been making the rounds in lefty and indie media circles but it’s apparently still largely absent from the mainstream media.

Take a look at the video.

Then take some action.

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Blow Salone, Blow!

 

The BBC, the Associated Press, Reuters, and other news outlets are reporting that Sierra Leone’s National Elections Commission (NEC) has declared Ernest Bai Koroma, a former insurance company executive and leader of the opposition All People’s Congress (APC), the winner of last week’s runoff election. Mr. Koroma took 54.6% of the vote while the ruling party’s candidate and incumbent Vice President, Solomon Berewa, got 45.4% of the more than 1.5 million votes cast. Despite clashes between party loyalists and accounts of fraud and other “irregularities” at some polling stations, the elections were declared free, fair, and credible by the NEC and international observers. The runoff election was held after August’s prelimary election yielded an inconclusive result. Despite legal and rhetorical challenges mounted by the incumbent Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah conceded defeat and congratulated Ernest Koroma on winning the presidency. Sierra Leoneans can relax—or blow, as we say in Krio—now that this election season has come to an end.

Traditionally, election time in Sierra Leone is a period of violence, curfews, and general unease. Growing up in the capital, Freetown, I remember the palpable feeling of dread that would descend on the city whenever elections were held. It was not uncommon for supporters of the various candidates to openly clash in the streets; looking back, though, I have no idea what the clashes were about. After all, the APC was the only legitimate party. But as a kid, there was no space in my mind for contemplating the intricacies of Sierra Leonean politics; there was plenty of space for fear, however. Back then, it was not uncommon for people to be beaten or killed, simply for supporting  the wrong candidate in the wrong part of town. In the provinces, elections were an even more gruesome business. Supporters of one candidate would attack villages—and often kill the inhabitants—for committing no greater crime than pledging their support to a rival candidate or for living in the wrong candidate’s stronghold. In those days, Sierra Leonean politicians preferred to kill their rivals’ supporters rather than try to win them over.

As if the open violence weren’t bad enough, we children were warned to be indoors before nightfall as there were constant reports of children going missing and of bodies being discovered sans genitalia or other organs. Apparently, human parts were essential components of the juju rituals performed by political partisans to ensure their candidate’s victory in elections. None of us kids wanted to end up emasculated or eviscerated so, for the duration of the election period, we made sure to be home (or at the very least indoors) before dark.

For its part, the government of then-President Siaka Stevens did nothing to alleviate our fear and paranoia. On the contrary, government curfews, roadblocks, and checkpoints greatly contributed to the general sense of unease in Freetown. Rather ironically, election season was the worst time for political activity and demonstrations were brutally put down by the police and the army. In case anyone had trouble remembering who was in charge, Siaka Stevens made sure that his entire arsenal—the basis of his power—was constantly and prominently displayed throughout the country. In those days, I felt that anyone who got involved in politics was insane, but many people did anyway. No doubt some hoped to bring about a change for the better. Others, I am certain, merely hoped to carve a larger piece of the pie for themselves.

Thankfully, the 2007 elections went off without much of the anticipated violence but with perhaps more than a little of the expected irregularities. Ballot boxes were stuffed and swapped, ballot forms were forged, and ghost voters did cast many a vote—in some areas, ballot tallies exceeded 100% of registered voters. Nonetheless, in the final analysis, the 2007 elections may provide the faintest glimmer of light at the end of a long, dark tunnel of oppression, corruption, and violence. Even if the new APC government turns out to be as rotten and ineffectual as its predecessor, the relative peacefulness of the recent elections raises the possibility that, after years of war, Sierra Leoneans might have finally realized that violence has no place in the political process. That realization is, by itself, a major victory for the Sierra Leonean people.

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Better Late Than Never: Klansman Found Guilty of 1964 Murders.

James Seale, a former Mississippi police officer and member of the Ku Klux Klan, has finally been convicted in the 1964 deaths of Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore, two Black hitchhikers. According to testimony from Seale’s cousin and ex-klansman Charles Marcus Edwards, Seale and his companions drove the two victims, both in their teens, to a forest where they were held at gunpoint by Seale while his accomplices beat them. Dee and Moore where then gagged, stuffed into the trunk of the car, and driven to a tributary of the Mississippi River where Seale attached heavy weights to them. The victims were then dumped into the water while they were still alive.

Seale was originally arrested in 1964 and charged with the crimes but he escaped conviction and imprisonment after the charges were dropped by local law enforcement officials (see my first post).

Because the kidnapping did not result in the victims’ being “returned unharmed,” the most recent conviction may carry the maximum sentence of life in prison on each count.

For the sake of the victims and their families, I am happy that justice has finally been done. In a perfect world, Seale would have been charged with murder as well. But hey, you win some, you lose some. I just hope this animal spends the remainder of his natural life behind bars.

Pity his accomplices won’t be there with him.

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Tale of Racist Police Murder in Leeds Comes to Light.

David Oluwale, a homeless Nigerian man was routinely abused and humiliated by Leeds police officers in the late ’60s. David’s body was eventually discovered in a river and ruled a drowning. A year-and-a-half later, the case was was re-investigated and two police officers were convicted for the death. It was revealed that “[t]hey beat him, urinated on him, smashed his head against the floor and took him to woods miles outside Leeds and left him there.”

Kester Aspden’s new book Nationality: Wog – The Hounding Of David Oluwale sheds new light on the life and death of David Oluwale, exposes the abuse he experienced at the hands of Leeds police officers, details his treatment at mental health institutions, and includes interviews with people who knew David Oluwale while he was alive.

Read a review of the book here and an interview with the author here in which he talks about David’s experience in the mental health care system and mental health providers’ prejudices towards Black people.

For those not familiar with British lingo, “wog” is a racial slur equivalent to “nigger” in the U.S.

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One Klan Washed the Other: Mississippi Police Colluded With KKK.

Jerry Mitchell makes a compelling case that the Ku Klux Klan was able to literally get away with murder in Mississippi—home of some of the most high-profile murders in the Civil Rights era—thanks to assistance from local law enforcement officials.

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Cops Gone Wild!!

A 39-year-old Detroit police officer, Roosevelt Tidwell, has been charged with sexual assault and sexual misconduct.

According to the 41-year-old female victim, she and a male friend were drinking in their car in a public park. Tidwell approached them and assured them that he would not take police action against them if the victim returned to the patrol car with him. Once in the car, he forced her to perform a sex act with him. He also got her mobile phone number and, about a month later, threatened her into a meeting with him during which he forced her into again having sex with him in the patrol car.

What makes this case even worse is that the new allegations come after Tidwell was already being held in jail on 16 felony charges of forcing several couples to perform sex acts in Detroit’s Chandler Park. Tidwell apparently approached the couples in the park and ordered them into sex acts while he watched.

This is clearly a case of a police officer using his position to fulfill his perverted sexual desires. Voyeurism is cool and all but only when the person(s) being watched is(are) willing to put on a show. And forcing someone to have sex against their will is rape. Plain and simple.

I hope this guy goes away for a long time.

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