They may have the remnants of a constitution still in place but it's routinely ignored. Russia and China are obviously not role models, for democracy but neither is the US, and that's leaving aside its international adventures.
A National Lawyers Guild Report
on Government Violations of
First Amendment Rights in the United States
http://www.ringnebula.com/demonstration ... ookWeb.pdf
When the President travels, Secret Service agents visit the venue
in advance and give orders to local law enforcement to establish
free-speech zones. Protesters opposing the President’s policies are
then quarantined in those zones, far from sight of the President
and out of view of the press. When President Bush was in
Pittsburgh on Labor Day in 2002, Bill Neel, a 65-year-old retired
steelworker, held a sign proclaiming, “The Bush family must
surely love the poor, they made so many of us.” 125 Local police
46 The Assault on Free Speech, Public Assembly, and Dissent
who, at the direction of the Secret Service, established a chainlink
fenced “designated free-speech zone” on a baseball field,
arrested Neel after he refused to move on. While anti-Bush
protesters were directed to the free-speech zone, pro-Bush signholders
were allowed to flank the President’s path. At Neel’s trial,
police detective John Ianachione testified that the Secret Service
asked the local police to confine “people that were there making a
statement pretty much against the President and his views” in a
free-speech area.
At a 2001 pro-Bush rally at Legends Field in Tampa, two
grandmothers and another protester were arrested for holding up
small, handwritten protest signs outside the zone. Seven people were
arrested on charges of “obstructing without violence and disorderly
conduct” at a pro-Bush rally at the University of South Florida Sun
Dome after refusing to be penned in a protest zone hundreds of yards
from the Dome.
Activist Brett Bursey was arrested for holding a sign that read “No
War for Oil” when George Bush visited Columbia, South Carolina.
Under orders from the Secret Service, local police set up a freespeech
zone half a mile from where Bush was speaking. Bursey was
standing among a large crowd of people holding pro-Bush signs
when police singled him out and asked him to go to the free-speech
zone. When he refused to comply, he was arrested. When he asked
police officers whether the content of his sign was the reason for his
arrest, they acknowledged that it was. Five months after he was
arrested on the charge of trespassing, the charge was dropped
because South Carolina law prohibits arresting people for trespassing
on public property. The Justice Department then charged Bursey
with violating a rarely enforced federal law involving “entering a
restricted area around the President of the United States.” 126
During antiwar demonstrations in New York City on February 15,
2003, police kept many people off the street by arresting them and
detaining them for extended periods of time, and in many cases
mistreated them as well. Police delayed the release of 215 arrested
demonstrators and held arrestees for up to ten hours on buses with no
heat in temperatures below 20 degrees, without providing access to
medical treatment, bathrooms, food, or water. Some of those arrested
were forced to stand shackled outside the police precinct for hours
without gloves or proper jackets. Attorneys were denied access into
the jails and onto the buses. Some injured activists smeared their
blood on the windows of the buses to signal that they needed medical
attention, but such attention was not provided. Protesters detailed
how police asked them questions about their political beliefs and
pushed them for answers by threatening them with all-night
detention.13
At the February 15, 2003 antiwar protests in New York City, Guild
legal observers noted, “Demonstrators were often penned in on the
sidewalk, in many cases over a dozen blocks away from the rally
site, and told they would be arrested if they tried to exit.” 158 They
witnessed an incident in which Ann Stauber, who attended the
A National Lawyers Guild Report 59 protest in an electric wheelchair, tried to leave a barricaded pen to use a bathroom. A police officer grabbed the wheelchair’s steering
handle, swinging and breaking it, leaving Ms. Stauber immobilized
in the cold and unable to leave for an hour.159 Legal observers also
noted that “the police used pepper spray and batons on the crowd and
in some cases actually picked up the metal barricades and used them
to push people.”
The rush tactic involves police officers, usually on horseback,
motorcycles, or bicycles, charging and assaulting a group of
demonstrators. At the FTAA demonstrations in Miami on the
morning of November 15, 2003, police used their bicycles to form a
circle and entrap a group of about 50 people for approximately two
hours—a tactic known as flanking.164 Whenever demonstrators asked
whether they were being detained, the police said no. When
A National Lawyers Guild Report 61 demonstrators asked whether they were then free to leave, they were also told no.165 This entrapment prevented the group from joining a
large, nonviolent march through downtown Miami. When the group
finally received permission to walk, the police flanked them, walking
their bikes in lines on all sides of the group. The police used their
bicycles to push demonstrators off the sidewalk and into the street.
After an hour herding the demonstrators in this fashion, the police
formed a line in front of them with their bicycles and proceeded to
shoot them with Tasers. About five people were arrested, and many
more were Tasered. One demonstrator was arrested after being
knocked to the ground when a police officer rammed his bicycle into
the demonstrator’s back.166
Professor that Criticized Bush Added to No-Fly List
Walter F. Murphy, a top constitutional scholar and Professor at Princeton University, recently found out that he was on the Transportation Safety Administration's "no-fly" list.
When inquiring as to why he might be on the list, the clerk asked if he had ever been a part of a peace march, because they "ban a lot of people from flying because of that."
Murphy stated that he had publicly criticized the president, to which the clerk replied with "That will do it."
Murphy is a decorated Marine.
Say goodbye to any form of dissent, no matter how crap the govenrment is
Military Commissions Act empowers US presidents at their discretion to declare US citizens as enemy combatants and subject to detention without charge or due process. Link 1 | Link 2 | Link 3
John Warner Defense Authorization Act allows a president to declare a public emergency and station US military troops anywhere in America as well as take control of state based national guard units without consent of the governor or other local authorities. The law authorizes presidential deployment of US troops to round-up and detain “potential terrorists”, “illegal aliens” and “disorderly” citizenry. Link 1 | Link 2
National Security Presidential Directive 51 (NSPD-51) establishes a new post-disaster plan (with disaster defined as any incident, natural or man-made, resulting in extraordinary mass casualties, damage or disruption) which places the president in charge of all three branches of government. The directive overrides the National Emergencies Act which gives Congress power to determine the duration of a national emergency. Link 1 | Link 2
The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Act. According to the bill the term `violent radicalization’ means the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change, while the term ‘ideologically-based violence’ means the use, planned use, or threatened use of force or violence by a group or individual to promote the group or individual’s political, religious, or social beliefs.” Link 1 | Link 2 | Link 3
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