Freedom of Speech – Not All It’s Cracked Up To Be
A couple of images from the ‘Occupy Portland’ and ‘Occupy Wall Street’ protests, November 17th, that make it pretty clear that the right to free speech and public protest in the USA take second place behind state-sponsored protection of private banks:
It’s hard to effectively exercise one’s right to freedom of speech with a face-full of pepper spray
Or when a jack-booted psycho has you by the hair:
Apparently, journalism students aren’t the only ones being brutalised by the NYPD. The office of NY mayor Bloomberg has openly admitted that accredited members of the press have been arrested along with, so far, 10000 protestors nation-wide. Strangely enough however, no FOX News reporters were among those arrested, although the OWS protestors did take an opportunity to let FOX news reporter Adam Shapiro know what they thought of FOX’s particular definition of ‘fair and balanced’:
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The shouting down of Adam Shapiro with the words “Fox News Lies” was not only an exercising of first amendment rights by the protestors, it was also the unvarnished truth. It’s kind of funny that the Fox News plastic talking heads would decry the alleged abuse of their first amendment rights with the ‘shouting down’ of Shapiro, when they are a major news corporation with access to the ears of millions of Americans. It’s the same as the bankers saying that the OWS protestors have no right to criticise them because, they, just like the protestors, have an equal right to make money. The fact that the odds are stacked massively in favor of the bankers and corporations like Fox News when it comes to access to the means of making money and expressing first amendment rights is apparently lost on the Fox News pundits.
In any case, the bottom line is the OWS protestor’s point – that Fox News lies – is demonstrably true, while the claim by Fox News that they are just ‘covering the story’ is demonstrably false. Here’s one example (of many):
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