Leftist Blogs Defend Police Brutality In Student Tazering

Author of tasered student's 'mystery book' points to irony in incident [align=left] Jason Rhyne
Raw Story
Wednesday September 19, 2007[/align]
The book Andrew Meyer clutched in his hands moments before being swarmed and eventually tasered by police--a "mysterious" yellow book, reported the Washington Post--isn't so mysterious at all: it's the latest from BBC investigative reporter and author Greg Palast.
"About eleven people called me after it happened," Palast told RAW STORY. "Then I saw the full clip on YouTube."
Palast's book, Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans--Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild, was the basis for Meyer's comments to Sen. John Kerry, who had been fielding student questions in a forum at the University of Florida.
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On video, Meyer can be heard telling Kerry he'd like to recommend the book to him.
"It's called 'Armed Madhouse' by Greg Palast," the student said, "He's the top investigative journalist in America."
"I've already read it," Kerry replied, as Meyer went on to repeat conclusions from Palast's book, which contends Kerry actually won the 2004 presidential election.
What Meyer was referring to, according to Palast, was a chapter in the book called "Kerry Won. Now Get Over It," in which he says millions of votes cast in the 2004 election were discarded, not counted or prevented from being cast in the first place--a fact the author says has special relevance to the locale of Meyer's arrest.
"There's an entire dimension here that's not being covered here," Palast said of the controversy. "The interesting thing to me as a journalist, is that the [Meyers incident] occurred in Alachua County, Florida, one of the worst places in the country for black voters."
Addressing Kerry before he was taken away by officers, Meyer cites reports, presumably from Palast's book, about disenfranchisement of voters in Florida and Ohio.
"They were deliberately disenfranchising voters," Palast said of Alachua, the county home to Gainesville's University of Florida. "Gainesville is horrendous."
Calling the area the "center of the attack on the black voter," Palast pointed to a 2001 article he wrote in The Nation which details what he says were efforts under Republican-led state government to purge voting rolls of felons who were convicted in other states--eligible voters under Florida law--almost half of which may be black, according to statistics in the piece.
"It's one ugly place," said Palast, who also added that the police's actions in the Meyer case pale in comparison to intimidation techniques used by authorities against minority voters during elections.
As for the tasered Meyer, the author says he sympathizes.
"I must admit I feel some appreciation for [Meyer],"Palast writes at his website, "especially because, even while he was being shot with untold amps of electricity, until he was handcuffed, he would not let go of his mysterious yellow book..."
Palast says he would like to speak to the student and has contacted Meyer's lawyer to arrange a conversation.
"Maybe I'll go down and cover the trial," the journalist added, dead seriously.

so in america you get arrested and tazed for asking questions
i guess you cant question the gov. or any powerful person without getting arrested to, eventhough america is the only country i know of that is supposed to have a TRANSPARENT GOVERNMENT and the people are the gov. but we lost the transparency

if you believe in the america our founding fathers gave us you would believe its bs too along with everything else happening

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Originally Posted by texas grass

so in america you get arrested and tazed for asking questions
i guess you cant question the gov. or any powerful person without getting arrested to, eventhough america is the only country i know of that is supposed to have a TRANSPARENT GOVERNMENT and the people are the gov. but we lost the transparency

if you believe in the america our founding fathers gave us you would believe its bs too along with everything else happening

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wait until protesters start getting shot with real bullets during protests or for asking questions...and you'll still have people saying we need it to happen...it's not worth it try to convince them otherwise...

They will figure it out when they accidently ask the wrong question.

i take the bus sumtimes and there i find the most obnoxious, loud, rude and annoying people....now i know i could just call the cops to throw and taser whoever gets on my nerves for being loud and obnoxious

the guy was acting like an ass and not complying, he asnt "just asking a question" and got tazed. if he was humble and did not resist arrest i would understand. but he was acting up! i wonder if any of yall saw the video?:wtf:.

Kissing pig ass may be a good way to avoid getting tasered, but it's a sad way to live your life.

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Originally Posted by andruejaysin

Kissing pig ass may be a good way to avoid getting tasered, but it's a sad way to live your life.

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yes, now we have to grovel to our masters and we'll all be okay...it's the new freedom.

i hope not! it's becoming a police state

I wish someone would do this at EVERY event like this so we can see which candidates actual have the balls to stick up for their citizens. Anyone who agrees with this ridiculous shit should be shot on site and I speak that from the Heart. You are nothing but an obstacle in the way of movement, a waste of space on this planet, a drone that does nothing but follow grey haired people in suits, we need to stop acting like complete children and handle these situations instead of ignoring them and tackling/tazering anyone who dares questions things. If I read right, the guy was struggling to make his way into the event and to the mic to get his questions asked, that sounds like actions of a concerned citizen to me. Obviously he had done nothing wrong beforehand because he had not been arrested yet.. only harrassed/followed. It really does not matter if he resisted arrest or anything else for that matter because the police had no reason to put their hands on him, all he had done was raise his voice and ask some great questions that is on Americas mind.