[governance] free speech - America the 'defender'

[David Allen]

This incredibly sad incident says it all.

http://www.commondreams.org/further/2011/02/16-3

Ray McGovern, for those who will not know, is ex-military  
intelligence, ex-CIA (for 27 years an analyst there).  You only have  
to google a little to see the great intelligence and perspicacity and  
courage of his writings in recent years, for instance when he said it  
most plainly against utter disinformation from the GW Bush fiasco.

Now at 71 years of age, he is brutalized for standing - silently -  
with his back to Hilary Clinton - as she, most ironically, defends  
free speech!

US positions have _no_ credibility, in the Middle East's dawning new  
day, in this light.  A good bit worse than that, US citizens have  
every reason to ask whether the time for change, at home, has now also  
come.

Text and photos from the link above are reproduced below.  Though the  
link itself is a cohesive presentation and also includes the video  
splash screen and a long trail of comments.

David
______

'So This is America': Veteran Ray McGovern Bloodied and Arrested At  
Clinton Speech

by Partnership for Civil Justice

 From the Partnership for Civil Justice:

As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave her speech at George  
Washington University yesterday condemning governments that arrest  
protestors and do not allow free expression, 71-year-old Ray McGovern  
was grabbed from the audience in plain view of her by police and an  
unidentified official in plain clothes, brutalized and left bleeding  
in jail. She never paused speaking. When Secretary Clinton began her  
speech, Mr. McGovern remained standing silently in the audience and  
turned his back. Mr. McGovern, a veteran Army officer who also worked  
as a C.I.A. analyst for 27 years, was wearing a Veterans for Peace t- 
shirt.

Blind-sided by security officers who pounced upon him, Mr. McGovern  
remarked, as he was hauled out the door, "So this is America?" Mr.  
McGovern is covered with bruises, lacerations and contusions inflicted  
in the assault.

Mr. McGovern is being represented by the Partnership for Civil Justice  
Fund (PCJF). "It is the ultimate definition of lip service that  
Secretary of State Clinton would be trumpeting the U.S. government's  
supposed concerns for free speech rights and this man would be  
simultaneously brutalized and arrested for engaging in a peaceful act  
of dissent at her speech," stated attorney Mara Verheyden-Hilliard of  
the PCJF.

Mr. McGovern now works for Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the  
ecumenical Church of the Saviour in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of  
Washington, D.C.


http://www.youtube.com/embed/My29YT1T4R4
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