Truest statement of the week II

So in the United States we've had purely pacifist groups -- out of Pittsburgh we had the groups, the antiwar groups, the Quaker groups -- they were investigated under terrorist designations. So they start terrorism. And once they use the word terrorism, they bring in all kinds of other masses of surveillance. So they demonize the groups, and they do it in the newspapers. Then they all demonize them and they say it's going to be like Seattle. And Seattle is the WTO demonstrations, in which they falsely claimed in the newspapers after the demonstrations that they threw Molotov cocktails and did all kinds of violence. In fact, none of that happened at Seattle. But they now use what they call the Seattle method of policing once they get into the demonstrations. So at least in this country, they put people in pens to demonstrate. You can't have any mass group anymore. They deny permits and make you go to a certain place. So when we had the demonstrations against the war in Iraq, we went to -- we wanted to demonstrate in front of the United Nations on 1st Avenue. We were prohibited from a demonstration in front of the United Nations, had to be taken away, put in pens. Once they have the people in pens or demonstrating, then they do, like they did in Canada, mass arrests. At the Republican National convention in 2004 in New York, downtown there were 400 people beginning a demonstration. They took nets, literally nets, and they covered the entire group with nets, including people pushing their baby carriages, people just strolling by. They arrested 400 people in one mass arrest who had done nothing wrong. I mean, nothing. They were demonstrating. And a lot of the people were just standing by the side. Where did they put them? They put them in what we called Guantanamo on the Hudson, a big bus warehouse with oil and environmental junk all over it. And did they bring them to court in one day? No. They took 3 to 4 days. We had to file writs of habeas corpus to try and get them out. And they did that purposely, so that those people wouldn't rejoin the demonstration. I could give you a dozen examples like that, a dozen examples where they all cooperate. And what we really talk about in the book is how this has gained since 9/11 in particular on the excuse that terrorism is going to be involved in some way in these demonstrations. They even say, well, terrorists might attack these demonstrations, and that’s the kind of BS they give.

-- Michael Ratner, speaking to Paul Jay (Real News Network -- this link goes to video) about the issues he and Margaret Ratner Kunstler tackle in their new book Hell No, Your Right To Dissent. Michael Ratner (Center for Constitutional Rights) co-hosts Law and Disorder Radio which airs Mondays on WBAI and around the country on various radio stations throughout the week. Attorneys Heidi Boghosian and Michael S. Smith are the two other co-hosts.