Targeting the Free Press

Police Seize Journalists Notes About RNC Protest Plans
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIm-IWaOPjo

National Lawyers Guild reports..... A trio of journalists who have a track record of documenting police abuse at political conventions were stopped and searched during the early morning hours in Minneapolis. Police took their video equipment, cell phones, computer, hard drive and notes about protests planned for next week's Republican National Convention. They took away their ability to report.

RNC Raids Have Been Targeting Video Activists
"St. Paul is a free country!" cried a resident of Iglehart Avenue, a neighborhood street in St. Paul, Minn., as she watched her next-door neighbor's house being overtaken by police officers on Saturday afternoon. Just one in a series of house raids over a 24-hour period the weekend before the Republican National Convention, St. Paul police surrounded the private home with weapons drawn, detaining people in the backyard, while journalists, activists and neighbors -- including several children -- looked on.

Their crime? None whatsoever. No one was trespassing or engaging in acts of civil disobedience. Instead, members of I-Witness Video, a New York-based media watchdog group that records police activity in order to protect civil liberties, were holding an organizing meeting at 949 Iglehart, the home of St. Paul resident Mike Whalen, when armed police officers arrived in the early afternoon and ordered their surrender.

Apparently, independent journalists, the last bastion of the free press, are frowned upon in fascist Amerika, only the corporate lapdog press need apply to cover the RNC. The gestapo seems to be actively seeking out journalists who don't publish the official propaganda, detaining them without cause, stealing their equipment and notes, assaulting and intimidating them. Breaking heads and taking names they are...Isn't this type of tyranny exactly why Freedom of the Press is guaranteed by the Constitution? Oh and, by the way, the Declaration of Independence is quite clear on our obligations in just this sort of situation..."But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security." Oh..darn...is it still legal to quote the Declaration? Well, I guess I should have at least been in designated "free speech zone"before doing such a radical thing....hell, these days Homeland Security labels you a terrorist if you admit you have read the Constitution....sigh...big red flag attached to my name on the no fly list for sure....no Bahamas vacation for me.

The American Gestapo is Busy Today

Amy Goodman and Two Democracy Now! Producers Unlawfully Arrested At the RNC

ST. PAUL, MN—Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman was unlawfully arrested in downtown St. Paul, Minnesota at approximately 5 p.m. local time. Police violently manhandled Goodman, yanking her arm, as they arrested her. Video of her arrest can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYjyvkR0bGQ

Goodman was arrested while attempting to free two Democracy Now! producers who were being unlawfuly detained. They are Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar. Kouddous and Salazar were arrested while they carried out their journalistic duties in covering street demonstrations at the Republican National Convention. Goodman’s crime appears to have been defending her colleagues and the freedom of the press.

Interesting. Generally, the more well known journalists are left alone, as they don't want to outrage the people...they must be pretty sure that the American public has degraded to spineless sheeple to pull this one. Unfortunately, they're probably right, and they probably haven't got much to worry about.

Considering a protest? You Too Could Be Arrested for THOUGHT CRIMES

Massive police raids on suspected protestors in Minneapolis

Federal government involved in raids on protesters

We've gone from seeing citizens brutalized, intimidated, and arrested for exercising their right to free speech, to a bizarre state of affairs where one can receive that treatment for THINKING about doing so. Or being a journalist covering the story of police thugs attacking people in their homes for THINKING about protesting. OR, even being a lawyer willing to represent innocent, non violent people who have broken no laws. We have reached the ultimate police state. They can kick in your door for thought crimes, for disagreeing with the government. Took a bit longer than Orwell thought, but it is here. The inmates are in charge of the asylum, and the sheeple seem to be content with letting them run the show.

Bush, senators blast MoveOn.org ad against Gen. David Petraeus - cleveland.com

Bush, senators blast MoveOn.org ad against Gen. David Petraeus - cleveland.com:

Republican support for the war in Iraq turned to declarations of disgust as President Bush and a Senate majority Thursday condemned MoveOn.org, the liberal activist group, for accusing the war's top general of betrayal. But 25 Democrats, including Sherrod Brown of Ohio, refused to support the amendment condemning MoveOn's recent ad, which called Gen. David Petraeus 'General Betray Us.' Brown instead voted for a pre-emptive measure that condemned criticism of all military officers - past and present."

My my, that ad managed to get past the Ministry of Truth....Rather reminiscent of the time when we had a free press, doing their part to keep government honest. Interesting that such demonstration of our quaint and antiquated first amendment rights has raised such an uproar in Congress...certainly a sign of the fascist times we live in.

The president is threatening me, By MARIE MARCHAND

In case I get picked up and taken away under President Bush's Military Commissions Act of October 2006, I want it on record that I am not a terrorist or an enemy combatant, and that the organization I run in Bellingham is not associated with any terrorist cell.

The Whatcom Peace & Justice Center works non-violently to end the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is committed to envisioning and creating a world for our children where diplomacy and friendship are the measuring stick for our foreign policy. We have never intended, planned or considered violence as a means to peace.

In case my assets, which are few, get seized and my hard drive gets robbed under Bush's new executive order of July 17, 2007, I want you to know my name so that I am not disappeared. I have a 6-year-old son to raise, and, like so many intelligent, passionate peace activists, the world needs me to be a leader in ending my country's imperial addiction to warfare.

Dissent is getting dangerous in "The Land Of The Free"....our freedoms have been whittled away, one little law at a time. Inch by inch, the Iron Curtain is descending upon America, while most of her citizens drown out the ominous clinking sound by turning up the volume on the home theater system.