Posted on 06/28/2003 7:59:39 AM PDT by Chief RSO
For anybody paying attention: I was struck by a professor at a peace rally. The universtiy professors were lying to the students. I spoke up for America, amidst the Bush bashing, and one of the peacenik professors ran through the crowd and hit me. Not hard enough to bleed, but hard enough to get him convicted of assault in a criminal court. It was caught on tape by local NBC. Four months later, the university is pressing "disruption" charges against me. Among the penalties that they are attempting to impose is restriction of my free speech on campus for one year. My investigation, for defense purposes, has led me to discover that the organization who staged the rally, Progressive Faculty Association, participated in buying and signed on a full page ad and printed this letter in the Local newspaper. Read closely, and keep your barf-bag nearby. They go on and on about matters of conscience and obligation to dissent. But when I spoke out for truth, I was attacked and I'm being prosecuted and oppressed by them and the university system, under speech codes (designated free speech zones), as a result.
See the professor swing at me here:
http://www.woai.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=E397F441-E5C9-465D-A110-5FC4782A9F0C
See a copy of the statement that they put in a full page ad in the San Antonio Express-News (February) here:
http://www.nion.us/NION.HTM
Obviously, the obligation (and right) to dissent only applies if you're a left-wing fruitloop. Folks, forgive me if this is old news, but these freaks are pursuing me NOW. This is what is happening on our university campuses. This is not a joke!
A STATEMENT OF CONSCIENCE
Not In Our Name
Let it not be said that people in the United States did nothing when their government declared a war without limit and instituted stark new measures of repression.
The signers of this statement call on the people of the U.S. to resist the policies and overall political direction that have emerged since September 11, 2001, and which pose grave dangers to the people of the world.
We believe that peoples and nations have the right to determine their own destiny, free from military coercion by great powers. We believe that all persons detained or prosecuted by the United States government should have the same rights of due process. We believe that questioning, criticism, and dissent must be valued and protected. We understand that such rights and values are always contested and must be fought for.
We believe that people of conscience must take responsibility for what their own governments do -- we must first of all oppose the injustice that is done in our own name. Thus we call on all Americans to RESIST the war and repression that has been loosed on the world by the Bush administration. It is unjust, immoral, and illegitimate. We choose to make common cause with the people of the world.
We too watched with shock the horrific events of September 11, 2001. We too mourned the thousands of innocent dead and shook our heads at the terrible scenes of carnage -- even as we recalled similar scenes in Baghdad, Panama City, and, a generation ago, Vietnam. We too joined the anguished questioning of millions of Americans who asked why such a thing could happen.
But the mourning had barely begun, when the highest leaders of the land unleashed a spirit of revenge. They put out a simplistic script of “good vs. evil” that was taken up by a pliant and intimidated media. They told us that asking why these terrible events had happened verged on treason. There was to be no debate. There were by definition no valid political or moral questions. The only possible answer was to be war abroad and repression at home.
In our name, the Bush administration, with near unanimity from Congress, not only attacked Afghanistan but arrogated to itself and its allies the right to rain down military force anywhere and anytime. The brutal repercussions have been felt from the Philippines to Palestine, where Israeli tanks and bulldozers have left a terrible trail of death and destruction. The government has waged an all-out war on and occupied Iraq–a country which has no connection to the horror of September 11. What kind of world will this become if the U.S. government has a blank check to drop commandos, assassins, and bombs wherever it wants?
In our name, within the U.S., the government has created two classes of people: those to whom the basic rights of the U.S. legal system are at least promised, and those who now seem to have no rights at all. The government rounded up over 1,000 immigrants and detained them in secret and indefinitely. Hundreds have been deported and hundreds of others still languish today in prison. This smacks of the infamous concentration camps for Japanese-Americans in World War 2. For the first time in decades, immigration procedures single out certain nationalities for unequal treatment.
In our name, the government has brought down a pall of repression over society. The President’s spokesperson warns people to “watch what they say.” Dissident artists, intellectuals, and professors find their views distorted, attacked, and suppressed. The so-called Patriot Act -- along with a host of similar measures on the state level -- gives police sweeping new powers of search and seizure, supervised if at all by secret proceedings before secret courts.
In our name, the executive has steadily usurped the roles and functions of the other branches of government. Military tribunals with lax rules of evidence and no right to appeal to the regular courts are put in place by executive order. Groups are declared “terrorist” at the stroke of a presidential pen.
We must take the highest officers of the land seriously when they talk of a war that will last a generation and when they speak of a new domestic order. We are confronting a new openly imperial policy towards the world and a domestic policy that manufactures and manipulates fear to curtail rights.
There is a deadly trajectory to the events of the past months that must be seen for what it is and resisted. Too many times in history people have waited until it was too late to resist.
President Bush has declared: “you’re either with us or against us.” Here is our answer: We refuse to allow you to speak for all the American people. We will not give up our right to question. We will not hand over our consciences in return for a hollow promise of safety. We say NOT IN OUR NAME. We refuse to be party to these wars and we repudiate any inference that they are being waged in our name or for our welfare. We extend a hand to those around the world suffering from these policies; we will show our solidarity in word and deed.
We who sign this statement call on all Americans to join together to rise to this challenge. We applaud and support the questioning and protest now going on, even as we recognize the need for much, much more to actually stop this juggernaut. We draw inspiration from the Israeli reservists who, at great personal risk, declare “there IS a limit” and refuse to serve in the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
We also draw on the many examples of resistance and conscience from the past of the United States: from those who fought slavery with rebellions and the underground railroad, to those who defied the Vietnam war by refusing orders, resisting the draft, and standing in solidarity with resisters.
Let us not allow the watching world today to despair of our silence and our failure to act. Instead, let the world hear our pledge: we will resist the machinery of war and repression and rally others to do everything possible to stop it.
(Excerpt) Read more at nion.us ...
...while knocking you unconscious. Nice.
Liberals, they always become what they hate.
And yet turn violent when your concience causes you to express a dissenting opinion. The left only believes in freedom of speech for themselves. The rest of us are expected to shut up and listen.
Not hard enough to bleed? Since when does a sweatshirt hood bleed. Hurrah for standing up to the lies, but boo for filing a frivolous lawsuit.
I'm not trying to make a direct comparison, but does anybody remember the Communist vs. KKK gunfight many years ago somewhere in NC?
The Commies opened fire on a KKK parade with a couple of .22s. The Klan returned fire with everything from shotguns to rifles to magnum handguns.
Guess who won?
Somehow I suspect a Freeper vs. peacenik rumble might end the same way.
Since when is seeking justice a 'frivolity'?
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