http://youtube.com/watch?v=AyvrqcxNIFs

Oh man...shades of abu ghraib.

The kid keeps repeating, "I said I would leave" and they continue to taser him and then demand that he stand up.

Colbert did "The Word" the other night relating to this story and the absence of on-the-street activism due to online engagement. He made exceptionally valid points--but being online provides the resources to stay informed-like the underground presses of the 60's. These videos are enormously chilling.

How could Kerry not see? And if so, how could he not hear?

Fundamentally, I always thought he was a coward who compensated with his military bravado. He never demonstrated courage unless it was safely in vogue politically for the time.

What's been disturbing these last few days is how many people, even on this website, find the police behavior, if not completely acceptable, in some way understandable because Myer was obnoxious. I've dealt with that in my own postings; what this article reminds us of, and of which some people seem to need reminding, is that tasers are a special form of brutality. They have occasionally been **fatal**. Police increasingly use them as punishment for not listening and following (their)directions. It is absolutely irrelevant that, as police have rationalized their own actions, the student was "warned" he would be tased if he didn't do what they said. That Americans, including several posters to Common Dreams, don't seem disturbed by the use of an instrument of torture as a response to behavior that is obnoxious or not completely deferential to police authority, is as frightening as anything; this is worse than Bush. This is the anti-Bush crowd saying, well, he did ask for it.........

Once again the "police state" mentality shows it's ugly head. Cameras, tazers, Iraq, "Free Speech zones", injustice in the DOJ, betrayal of our constitution by a four star General, "War is Peace" et al.
How sad.

If you're a good little American, you won't get tasered.
But that's not freedom.

Longingforsanity: Agreed.

For a long time, throughout the Bush Administration's REIGN of Terror, I have deluded myself into the belief that the majority of the American people would not approve of the trashing of the Constitution if they were better informed.

Blogging about this case has disproved my delusion. It is becoming painfully obvious that the American people are getting the sort of governance--and Police State--that they want and deserve.

What the hell did Meyer do for immediate police action, apart from being a bit loud and attention hungry? Perhaps he is not a sympathetic guy, but he did actually ask 3 good questions. He didnt say "you are an asshole" or whatever.

Even saying "you're an asshole" doesn't warrant tasering.

Paul from Texas--as I looked up your screen name, I found myself wondering, what part of Texas could leave you with the misperception that Americans are civil libertarians at heart. I live in SC, but more to the point, I grew up in NE Ohio where I was a senior in high school, nearing graduation, when the Kent State shootings occurred. Americans didn't seem to overly mind that one either. I guess I keep hoping for some kind of change over time, or that Blue States are more progressive than Red States, but I certainly hoped Common Dreams posters would understand that tasering obnoxious behavior had zero justification. Now I try to tell myself that some small portion of those folks are just visitors and lurkers and no way progressives, just stirring up the pot here. But I don't think so; Jon Stewart basically reached the "pox on all participants" conclusion; in Blue NYC, and one I count on to get me through these trying times. Somehow, I have to come to terms with the fact that even the old moving-to-Canada fantasy is just a fantasy. Honest to God, how do we ever explain that there is a right to be obnoxious, a right to be crazy and even a right to be wrong. What is so hard about that?????????

This is a fight for free speech--make no mistake about it. And the sadistic, ignorant Americans who don't get yet, well, it's never too late to learn, is it? I showed this video to my students and they were shocked. It's the mainstream media that spins this as 'he was obnoxious' or 'he was asking for it'--recognize that some forums hand pick the comments and they get 'stacked.' Beware. Most people are FOR free speech. Most people are AGAINST police brutality. Take up a positive attitude and win people over on this and other matters.

"And he added: 'This is the most professional and sensitive group of university police officers I've ever worked with.'

I'd hate to see Machen's bad cops, then.

He stormed down the aisle. He grabbed the microphone away from the person who rightfully had it. He resisted calm requests to desist and leave. And he has a habit of filming himself doing obnoxious pranks.

No, none of this means he deserved Tasering. But it DOES mean that he's no lily-white victim. This is NOT a case, as some here have made out, of a noble young American patriot bravely trying to use his civil rights to hold the nation's leaders accountable. He was wrong AND the police were wrong. Why is he being made out to be so noble?

Auberon: back to the basics, then. I really wish you did not have to be obnoxious to get attention, but you do. I do not fault the student government for their procedures, including turning off the mic. OTOH, how much attention has the electoral fraud of 2004 gotten? And within that tiny attention, how much has been addressed to any hypothetical complicity by Kerry? Notice where I do and don't qualify with "hypothetical." To break through the Mainstream Media you bascially have to grab a mic and get yourself tasered. Unfortunately we are still not talking about electoral fraud, but a dent was made in the armor. If more people get obnoxius, maybe, maybe, maybe, cross your fingers and click your heels 3 times, maybe the election thefts of 2004 and 2000 will get some attention. Then maybe we can stop blaming Americans for creating Bush..........

He stormed down the aisle. He grabbed the microphone away from the person who rightfully had it. He resisted calm requests to desist and leave. And he has a habit of filming himself doing obnoxious pranks

STORMED
GRABBED AWAY
RIGHTFULLY
RESISTED
CALM
HABIT
OBNOXIOUS
PRANKS

You must think we are idiots that can't seee through the buzzwords intended to elicit an emotional reaction.

You must not ever had brothers or sons.
He was an excited kid confronting a political big name.

Jesus, did you watch the damn videos? It was frightening. If you can dismiss that as a prank than I guess you will be willing to dismiss, deny or justify just about anything.
It occurs to me that those who think this kid had it coming to him will be the ones who one day will say, "We didn't know".
Do you really not get it?
Even Chris Matthews acknowleged that if getting tazered for being obnoxious was a crime than he was in trouble.

New story: A wheelchair bound, schizophrenic 56 year old woman has been tasered to death by the police because she brandished a knife and hammer at her family. You wanna talk to me again about this subject?

On Rawstory:

Apparently the campus police thought that
Kerry was a neo-con Republican.

Check out:

http://www.counterpunch.org/cooney09202007.html

I'm reminded of the presidential debates when the candidates constantly go over their time limits in their responses.

So, what's next? -- What if they started electrocuting presidential candidates for going over their allotted time answering questions in the televised debates?

That would probably increase the ratings/viewership, wouldn't it?

You can tell whose side Kerry took by his statement of the student (supposedly) "BARGING to the front of the line." As usual, cowardly Kerry made a hasty exit and was not aware that a taser was used until after he left the building.

I wasn't there and didn't witness the student's supposed aggressive behavior, but so what? The video clip I saw didn't show him doing anything criminal that deserved tasering.

Maybe he was driven to being assertive (not aggressive) because he was fed up with politicians not answering questions or being held accountable. I can't argue with that.

RJ Hayes -
Apparently the campus police thought that Kerry was a
neo-con Republican.

Kerry IS a neo-con Republican. He just wears the mask of the left. Bob Dylan said "I just want you to know I can see through your masks". Well I can see through his. This latest event was really an eye opener.

You mean like "I'm not a real Democrat, but I play one on television"?

I think Kerry owes Andrew Meyer an answer to his questions. And to ALL of us too.

kiraj,

He wielded a weapon: a paperback book.

I just watched the David Snyder video, referenced above. What I find extremely frightening about both incidents is, as some have mentioned, the behavior of the crowd, ranging from total passivity to nervous amusement to outright aggressivity (in the Snyder video a woman cheers on the cop while he beats an innocent man...she says, "Get him! Get him for my Dad!"--I assume her Dad was on the town council on which Snyder was a bit of a gadfly). I can't help thinking of 2 parallels. In Claude Lanzmann's documentary about the Holocaust, Shoah, he asks people living next to Auschwitz if they could hear screaming. They said yes, but that they got used to it. Second parallel: Socrates was put to death by the Senate for being a gadfly and for inciting the youth to think freely and exchange ideas. It happened then, it's happening now, one gadfly at a time.

One problem I have in Kerry's statement is his desciption of Myers "barging to the front of the line"

If you watch the full Utube video, you can see him patiently waiting his turn in line while the previous questioner finished, and Kerry called him to the mic.

Why not just have the microphone wired to several hunderd thousand volts, so if soneone asks an inconvenient question, the police dont have to be bothered? Just have the guy on the podium control the TAZ button.

By the way.."LAND OF THE FREE, HOME OF THE BRAVE" is a fucking joke.

you refuse freedom of speech, wiretap EVERYONE, murder foreign women and children, steal othr countries resourses, discriminate based on sex and race..

the USA is pathetic

As a U.S. citizen, I have to agree canuckchuck, pathetic pretty well sums us up...

We need to separate out a few issues here. There's free speech with regard to content, and then there's decorum. I watched the video the first time with my volume turned off, simply to read body language of everyone. I'd recommend this is an evaluative exercise for everyone. I really think the cops went after him by reading visual cues more than anything else.

I'm not making a broad defensive statement here. The protest cages at both the latest Republican and Democratic conventions are an intense police state intrusion on free speech. Much worse than burning a flag (a mere symbol) this is the burning of the real thing, a change in life. Bush's tactics at banning protesters, even protest messages, t-shirts, etc. at his appearances. All of this is totally antithetical to democracy, to truth, the First Amendment itself.

I really don't think this is the best test case. Had the student been more to the point, didn't accelerate almost into a manic approach, had he not used the word "blow job", etc. we'd have a much better case for the very real cause. In American society, the Latin substitutes are considered polite, medically and scientifically valid, etc. There's a linguistic imperialism afoot that sets people off.

In general I have a HUGE problem with lowering the wedge to the old battle of cops & protesters. It's much higher than this. A cop salary in many metropolitan areas can barely feed a family and pay for a mortgage. In the greater scheme of genuine progressive causes, local police are of little concern. The battle lines are between dedicated professionals in all organizations, and corrupt or inept administrators. For instance, the retirement of Gonzo left a terrible morale problem in his department. This suggests great opportunity for resonance with outside messages. Perhaps some of them even agree with some of the material coming out of the progressive camp these days. They may be sitting on stories, anecdotes, etc.

That's where the bar is, where the real win exists. Not between cops & students, cops & protesters, protesters and counter-protesters, etc.

Amazing how the university president makes some vague general comments that sound good, then "pointedly refused to criticize the police or the use of tasers." Which means everything else he said was just good sounding BS.

When the police feel they can do this to anyone in front of a large crowd and a US Senator, and they know the university President won't even do as much as criticize them, much less discipline them or fire them, then anything the university President said about keeping an environment open for discourse is complete bull. Talk is talk, but when its not backed up by action, its just meaningless babble.

Now, if there were several university police officers who were fired today because of this incident, then you'd know the message that the rights to free speech and political discourse must be maintained would be delivered.

And of course, where is the condemnation from Sen. Kerry who was there as a witness and who can be heard just droning along in typical Kerry-esque fashion in the background? The most surrealistic part of the video to me was hearing the young man scream "why is this happening?" only to here Kerry drone about 'a very important question' in the background.

Kerry is standing there with a microphone, with the authority and respect of a US Senator and Presidential candidate. He could have called out over the microphone to the police officers to stop at any point. When the young man is still at the microphone, he could have called out then to the police to leave him alone and let him ask his questions. At any point when the man is being dragged to the back of the room and tasered, Kerry could have intervened stopped this. Most dramatically he could have left the stage and gone back there to make sure this was stopped.

Kerry did none of that. He just droned on and on and on in that manner of his that tells you that whatever he is droning on about is completely detached from reality. What a useless shit. Thank god this fool didn't become President. We just saw a perfect picture of exactly how little he cares for civil liberties and free speech. If someone is annoying him with a speech and question about impeachment, he's perfectly happy to see the police haul the person off and taser him. Another typical rich fool pretending to give a damn about the people when he really doesn't. Like I said, thank God that Kerry didn't become President!

PS ... its when someone's speech is 'obnoxious' or 'offensive' is when it is most important that their rights to free speech be protected. Its easy to protect the rights of someone to say something you agree with. But if that's all you protect, then you are left with lots of judgement calls by the people in authority about whether they agree with the speech and thus it can be protected.

The key of the concept of freedom of speech is that if you believe in the concept you are obligated to stand up and protect the rights of the most obnoxious fool in the world to stand up and speak freely. Only then will you have a system where you also have an unfettered right to free speech.

So what you think about the behavior of this man and the content of his question and the style in which he was asking his question is irrelevant. As Americans, we have a right to free speech, and we have a right to petition our government for redress of our grievances. Go read the First Amendment. There's nothing in there that says 'as long as people don't think you are obnoxious.' Because the people who insisted that the Bill of Rights be added to our Constitution before it could be adopted knew that these rights had to be unfettered for them to mean anything.

Hey, folks, let's blame the stupid police, not John Kerry. Let's hope that those uniformed imbeciles get what they deserve. And "Lillulu", before calling Senator Kerry "cowardly", remember he volunteered for combat duty in Vietnam, then incurred the wrath of Nixon and his hatchet-men when he became an anti-war activist.

I know it's beyond the capacity of conservative talk-radio fans, but thinking people would enjoy Douglas Brinkley's book, "Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War."

Let's bear in mind, the one who deserves our everlasting contempt is that AWOL hero of the Tex-ass Air National Guard; the one who had even Chris Matthews and G. Gordon Liddy swooning and swaying when he dressed in his GI Joe Action Pilot Flight Suit (with the padded crotch) and used the Navy as props for a 2004 campaign ad.

yes,kerry's choice of words..did make him transparent.i never did like him,anyway.members of secret societies,with alliance to secret oaths...should never be leaders in an open(free)society.the point i have been exhausted to make...is that tasers should not be used for civil disobedience,on anyone,simply because they are an electomagnetic weapon designed to deliver torture....and they are only a nano away from their bigger even more lethal counterparts.

I'm noticing a common denominator to the Jena Six story and this one-- there's a popular position to the effect that "I'm not saying what the police/DA did was right, mind you-- but we really need to take a harder look at this kid..."

Sorry-- the "asking for it" charge is one of those things that has a powerful superficial appeal, but which invariably proves to be a lame cop-out. That used to be a popular and successful defense against the crime of rape, remember, and our would-be enlightened society is only now beginning to emerge from the primordial slime of applying this logic in that context.

So, regardless of how important it seems to you, whether the victim is an obnoxious asshole prankster or a kid with a criminal history is irrelevant to the abuse of power by the authorities. The abuse issue trumps the "deserving victim" aspect.

Funny how some people are fascinated, and others repelled, by the sight of a "Clockwork Orange" thug of a cop in paramilitary regalia zapping the bad guy.

I saw the video. It was disgusting. Then I realized that all those cops whore black. The Schutzstaffel (SS) also wore black.

Kerry used the same strategy for ending illegal violence right in front of his face as he and the wussy Dems have been using against the Loonitary Decider:

"I asked the police to allow me to answer the question..." And the Campus Police ignored his very nice request without hesitation, as if the fact that he was a US Senator was irrelevant. Which, it turns out, it is.

Next time, JK, try "pretty please."

Here is one that is worse:-

http://youtube.com/watch?v=AyvrqcxNIFs

Half of the youtube respondents picture themselves being tasered and find it repugnant or very repugnant. I get the feeling that a third of them picture themselves doing the tasering or enjoy it, and hence support it. Which, if I am right either doesnt say much for mankind, or doesnt say much for Americans.

Until CommonDreams, gets a clue about having an online editor like this to leave comments, all posters that are going to insert L...O...N...G URLs, should first shorten them by processing them through ...

http://tinyurl.com/create.php

I'm getting sick and tired of someone dropping in a long URL that then forces me to open a large window to read the article.

The real ? meyers was about to ask is Why did Kerry cut a deal with Bush? answer Because in the skull and Bones club you get tapped to become president John didnt but gw did....or another option is if you contest this you and your family will die, its all so simple. look forward to more of this type of thing in the next few months.

Someone please link me to the video where the student "stormed", "grabbed", and committed "pranks".

All I saw was a video of a loud-mouthed, but completely non-violent, young man who pointedly asked an embarrassing question of Senator Kerry. In response he was strong-armed by a half dozen cops and electrocuted with a taser device.

If I have this wrong please link me to a video of the event that is more informative.

Here's what we really need more of:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr3x_RRJdd4

Galen, thanks for the smile!

The police are lucky I wasn't in the crowd, they would have had to taze two people. This is surreal, but it was predicted and warned against by the founders of the country. And so, this is why the second amendment exists. The right to carry arms especially as protection against abuses such as this, it's time to start carrying tazers to public events to ensure free speech is not restricted.

Hi.

I wrote to the president of the University of Florida the other day to express my concern that a student was tasered for asking questions on his campus. I got an email response back from President Machen saying that his biggest regret about the incident was the "lack of civil discourse". So I wrote back saying that I should have thought the lack of civility was considerably less "regretable" than the unwarranted use of a serious weapon on someone who posed no threat to anyone's safety but was only asking questions.

I also mentioned to President Machen that I thought Andrew Meyer's questions were good ones, and that I would like the answers myself, and that I might just write to Sen. Kerry and very politely ask for them. So I did. And I included one of my own too: Why did Sen. Kerry, who had a mike in his hand and an elevated view of the hall, not say, "Stop. Leave him alone. He is only asking questions, as is his right"? Sen. Kerry could then have answered the questions or not as he chose. Even apart from the tasering, which Sen. Kerry might not have seen (considering that Mr. Meyer was restrained and on the floor at the time), I would have expected him to protest someone being dragged away for asking him a question. I am troubled that he did not.

But, maybe I've been away too long (20 years), and this is all par for the course these days in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave?

"Civil discourse" - Do not ask questions we do not like, or we will cut off your microphone, after which, if you do not immediately leave the podium when ordered to do so, you will be strong-armed by police, electrocuted by a Taser, and thrown in jail.

I think tasering is a way to get even with someone who pisses you off. It should be used only for when you would normally use a gun.

outside, I wrote to him as well and to date, haven't recieved any reply whatsoever.

>Colbert did "The Word" the other night relating to this story and the absence of on-the-street activism due to online engagement. He made exceptionally valid points–but being online provides the resources to stay informed-like the underground presses of the 60's. These videos are enormously chilling.

The key is taking all that information and translating it into action. One easy way to do that is to talk with your friends, and when possible, co-workers, neighbors and family about what is happening, and what to do about it. Overall, the best action comes from conscious knowledge and discussion.

Given the state of research on the effect of TASERs, meaning that there is virtually none, and what little there is suggests pre-existing conditions dramatically increase the likelyhood of death and lasting bodily harm. ALL potential recipients might do well to state quite clearly, "I have a heart condition", to cast a shadow of fear and reticence over the officer's intended application of electric shock.

Outside,

Regarding Kerry's inaction. In one video of the event, he is quite clearly seen saying, "Stop, let me answer his question". But let's be realistsic. The Police had already committed by then. They are going to stay the course in a public forum. Have you ever seen a police officer change his mind in the field? I certainly haven't. They are going to follow through and claim mia culpa after the fact. At that point Kerry was invisible to them. They were not going to listen to anyone but another officer.