Thursday, November 16, 2006

Congress Must Act to Restrain Security State Insanity

What's shown, or heard, in this video may be the tipping point that finally brings America face to face with the nightmarish implications of its Homeland Security paranoia. Watch it. More than that, listen to it, because much of the action is obscured by the crowd of witnesses...

...witnesses of the repeated attacks by police against a UCLA student, using a taser stun gun. What had the student done? Had he been violent? No. He was simply reading books in his own university library, without identification. For that, the police shocked him over and over again, with the student screaming in pain each time. I count at least 5 times the student was shocked.



I'm putting this movie on this blog, because it is a sign of a serious problem that Congress needs to deal with: The security paranoia in the United States has gotten out of hand. As the Los Angeles Times reports, this is not an isolated incident. More and more, police are being caught on tape using violent force against people just for refusing to show identification in public places.

The police in this particular incident were so violent that they threatened to attack one witness, David Remesnitsky, with their stun gun simply for not leaving the scene of the brutality.

Describing the attack, Remesnitsky said, "It was beyond grotesque. By the end they took him over the stairs, lifted him up and Tasered him on his rear end. It seemed like it was inappropriately placed. The Tasering was so unnecessary and they just kept doing it."

We don't need security sweeps of police officers through university libraries, attacking students with stun guns, to keep us safe. Homeland Security has gone too far. The Democratic Congress ought to be holding hearings on this problem, and finding ways to bring the security paranoia back under control.

Well, that's my reaction, anyway, after watching a student being electrically shocked over and over and over and over again. But, as the Democrats in this district keeps on telling me, I'm just part of the liberal fringe that Congressman Arcuri wants to distance himself from.

Maybe this kind of thing is what the Democratic mainstream wants: Strong shows of force against students emperiling the security of the Homeland by reading books without an ID. Maybe most people feel safer with these kinds of security sweeps taking place. Law and order and all that.

We're all in danger, after all, right? There are terrorists lurking in every airport, just waiting for us to stop putting our shoes through the X-ray machines, right?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I absolutely believe to the core of my being the words of FDR that "you have nothing to fear but fear itself".

The difference today is we have a President who spent his whole life in fear. Fear of dying in Vietnam so he joined a National Guard unit that would never go because it flew an old model plane, fear of failure because he had so many business failures. He stopped drinking only because of fear of his wife leaving him and then took up religion because he needed to fear a god.

Fear is central to George Bush's life and that is not a good thing for this country.

We truly need a fearless leader again.

Allen Carstensen said...

Jon said "Maybe this kind of thing is what the Democratic mainstream wants"


The Democratic mainstream is with you on this. They were with you when John Adams imprisoned newspaper publishers. They reacted by replacing John Adams with Thomas Jefferson. Lets work together and do it again.


I'm encouraged by the reaction of the other students, and I'm grateful for the technology that let's us see and hear what happened.


then there's this good news from the AP :


A few hours after the rally, acting Chancellor Norman Abrams announced he had chosen Merrick Bobb, the founder of a local nonprofit dedicated to police reform, to lead an independent investigation.


Bobb served as staff attorney for the Christopher Commission, which was formed to examine allegations of excessive force in the Los Angeles Police Department after the King beating in the early '90s. 



Anonymous said...

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/
11/18/gonzales.ap/index.html

2008 can't come too soon.

24thIndependent said...

"The Democratic mainstream is with you on this."

Really, Allen? They're with me on this?

No plans in the House to investigate the growth in this kind of abuse.

Anonymous said...

1. This is horrible.

2."No plans in the House to investigate the growth in this kind of abuse."

...You know this HOW? Are you in congress? How is it you "know" EVERYTHING that is planned in congress? A congress that hasn't even come into session yet besides!