 |
| Image Courtesy: OpManning.Tumblr |
If
you want to know why the US -- beacon of freedom, land of the First
Amendment -- is now ranked number 47th (out of 179) in terms of freedom
of the press in the annual ranking put out by Reporters Without
Borders, below South Africa, Botswana, South Korea and Comoros, and just
above Argentina, Romania and Latvia, you could ask Mike Bloomberg, the
billionaire mayor of New York and himself owner of a huge news
organization, or his Chief of Police Raymond Kelly.
For
that matter you could ask the mayors and police chiefs of Chicago, Los
Angeles, Seattle, Portland, Boston, Philadelphia, or a host of other
cities.
Better yet, ask the mayor of Oakland and her police department’s latest gestapo chief, Howard Jordan.
According
to Reporters Without Borders, what caused the US to plunge from 20th
place last year, up there with Ireland, Germany, Belgium and Japan,
down to 47th this year, was the way reporters were treated by police as
they tried to cover the Occupy Movement that began last September.
Across
the country, police maneuvered to block reporters from covering their
brutal crackdown on the Occupy Movement. They swept into encampments
from Los Angeles to New York wearing black military-style riot gear in
the dead of night to avoid cameras and videocams, waiting until most
journalists had gone home to bed before tearing up the tents and firing
the tear gas grenades, the rubber bullets and the pepper spray at
unarmed, unresisting protesters. Or, when reporters did show up and
tried to cover the assaults on peaceful demonstrators, the cops
sometimes, as in New York, smashed them and their cameras, or just
arrested them.
“Who
here has a press card?” asked the officer in charge in New York before
the final assault on Zuccotti Square’s occupiers. When reporters
dutifully raised their hands or held up their press passes, New York’s
not-so-finest grabbed them, cuffed them and hauled them away. “Only for
their safety,” was the explanation given later by the cops and the
mayor after that particularly noxious display of police-state tactics
against the media.
Reporters
from alternative media were manhandled, but so were some reporters even
from the main newspapers in the city, the New York Times and the Daily
News...
For
the rest of this article by DAVE LINDORFF in ThisCantBeHappening!, the
new independent Project Censored Award-winning online alternative
newspaper, please either contract Homeland Security’s records or go to: www.thiscantbehappening.net/
Please, IF
YOU VALUE THIS PUBLICATION, PLEASE SUPPORT US! (AND CHECK OUT OUR NEW
T-SHIRTS BY SCROLLING DOWN THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE HOME PAGE. BE THE FIRST
ON YOUR BLOCK TO BECOME “A MAJOR DESTABILIZING INFLUENCE”!)
This publication is now celebrating its first
full year of publication. We did this all with almost no financial
support--only what you, our readers, provided. Can you help us make our
second year a whole lot better, by giving use more financial support,
so that we can devote more time to being reporters? If you believe as
we do that we need more independent journalism, please put your money
where your convictions are, and back ThisCantBeHappening!
Use the Paypal
button at the bottom of the home page, or send us a check at the
address listed on the “Support Us” page.
No comments:
Post a Comment