andrew_meyer_1_1.jpg
Did Andrew Mayer do it for the publicity and does it matter? Andrew Mayer, a Jewish student at the University of Florida, was accosted by Campus Police after asking a series of tough question to former presidential candidate Kerry. Kerry said he would answer the question as the police descended upon him. There is considerable debate as to what happened leading up to during and after the incident. He was eventually arrested and it is reported Police charged Meyer with resisting arrest and disturbing the peace.

Before the mic was cut, at the order of the man pictured above on the right, Meyer said:

If you are so against [invading] Iran how come you’re not saying let’s impeach Bush now? Impeach Bush now before he can invade Iran.
Why don’t we impeach him? Impeach Bush.
Clinton was impeached, for what a blowjob, why don’t we Impeach bush? Alright..
Also, are you a member… were you a member of Skull & Bones in college with Bush? Were you in the same secret society as Bush? Were you in Skull & Bones?

The views out there seem to line up this way:

  • Those who would agree with his criticism of the Iraq war think he was silenced because of his anti-War question, are outraged, and want an investigation
  • Those who disagree with his war criticism think he did it for the publicity, and that there should still be an investigation.
  • The UF Student Government President was non-committal and refused to condemn the campus police. The local Hillel has been deluged with inquiries and not about what time Shabbat Dinner starts.

    The students in the audience clapped when Andrew was being taken away, and Andrew’s line of questioning was not so pleasant, but not offensive. At some point the nod was given that the world had heard enough of Andrew Meyer, and the Police pulled him away.

    Two Police officers were immediately put on leave after incident— the supervising officer and the one who tasered him.

    As the incident unfolds, you can here Kerry make a tasteless comment —”Unfortunately he is not available to come up here and swear me in as President” and later Kerry said he had no idea about the taser.

    All of the supposed theories can be correct. It could be a set up. He could be out for publicity for himself, the war in Iraq, a stolen election, the hypocrisy of Kerry and more… There does not have to be ONE reason. There are lots of reasons to pull a stunt in order to draw attention to important issues.

    While there are many questions, the unusually strong reaction by the Campus Police could have been avoided if they had some training in how to deal with stiff-necked Hebrews with tough questions. Andrew could have done things differently to avoid such a harsh arrest. (see below for suggestions) Overall, by acting peacefully, he could have achieved a lot of his goals, though, without the tasering, it is doubtful this would have made anything beyond the local news. It has now broken YouTube viewing records.

    As our society has less tolerance for dissent and different opinions on important issues of National security, and we polarize debate over issues such as immigration and homeland security, Andrew Meyer’s incident stands out. The reaction of the crowd, the police response, the former presidential candidate’s comments, the student organization cutting the mics…all of this point to a serious problem in our society. War does strange things to us without us even realizing it.

    PS it will be interesting to see what happens when Dr. Death, Jack Kevorkian speaks for ACCENT Speaker’s Bureau, the largest, student-run, speaker’s bureau in the nation at U of F, on October 11.

    EXTENDED PLAY VERSION


    More tips for protesters and Police:

    Police want people to do as they ask and are very upset when people disobey. The police here could have approached him differently. They could have stated clearly what their intentions were. They could have asked him to come with them so they could discuss the issue outside. They could have asked him to put his hands out to be arrested. They could have told him if he refused to place his hands behind his back they would do it for him forcefully. They could have given him verbal warning that he was about to be arrested.

    In the future, should Andrew Meyer want to practice non-violent disobedience for a cause, here are some suggestions should his questioning be considered unwelcome. He could have stood in one place instead of trying to walk away from the Police. He could diffuse the tension by speaking in a calm voice instead of shouting. He could have told them he would not resist arrest. Even as they were removing him from the room, he could calmly ask to please let him hear the answer before he was removed. He could have gone limp, instead of fighting. (He asked to sit too late into the conflict) Fighting is a bad idea when you have six officers against you. If you go limp, they will have to do all the hard work themselves, and you will stay in the arena for a long period of time. He could have locked himself to something or someone before he began his speech to make it more difficult for him to be removed. He could have asked some fellow students to sit down in protest with him should he be asked to leave.

    About the author

    Rabbi Yonah

    60 Comments

    • The tasering looks fake to me. I don’t claim to be an expert on the use of it, but I have seen people tasered before, and they don’t roll around screaming owowow, they are knocked out cold. Maybe there are variations in the voltage used, I don’t know. But my question is, is there any doubt out there that the “police brutality” tasering part is real?

    • 1) It’s John Kerry not Al Gore.

      2) He wasn’t tasered. He was stunned. It was a stun gun and thats why he wasn’t knocked out cold. If he had been tasered it would have just put it out. I guess tasered sounds more serious then stunned so thats what caught on.

      3) Liberals think they should always be allowed to say whatever they want, however disruptive or inappropriate whenever they please. Yes there is free speech in this country, but there are also laws. It wasn’t his turn, they weren’t taking any more questions and he was saying some very inappropriate comments (re bill’s yippity yaw) and was told several times to step back.

      You don’t follow the rules, you get in trouble.

    • I am no expert on tasering, which sounds yucky.

      But you just cannot get physically rowdy around presidents, or presidential candidates. That’s not negotiable. Period.

      They guy seems to have been given a chance to get a hold of himself, and didn’t. After that, yes, restrain him. Physically.

      There just has to be rule of law. It’s not like there is no avenue of expression available to him.

      As for impeaching, well, that’s up to Congress.

      They guy had no right to physically disrupt a meeting. That goes triple for a meeting with a presidential candidate.

      I am not saying that because I like this particular candidate. I am no fan of Kerry, not at all.

    • JM, he’s a former presidential candidate. He’s a U.S. Senator, nothing more, nothing less. He doesn’t deserve any more or less respect than any other person. Meyer’s questions were legitimate.

      The Tasing was not fake. Those are real UPD officers, really Tasing a guy. Meyer was being a huge pain in the ass, but he didn’t do anything that justifies his being manhandled, much less taking a Taser in the back.

      Probably nothing will happen at the Kevorkian talk, just as nothing much ever happens at any of our ACCENT events. Even before all this, one would have to have expected a pro-life protest outside the event and a few belligerent questions inside. I’m pretty sure campus police are gonna be walking on eggshells this time. They might just bring in city police, though, considering the venue capacity and the circumstances.

    • Great blog as always. = )

      I’m borrowing a few lines from an article because it says it better than I ever could…

      “There is an axiom in police work that goes something like this: If you have a lawful reason for wanting someone to behave in a certain way, first you ask him, then you tell him, then you make him.”

      From watching the video – this procedure was followed.

      And this point also makes sense … again, from the same article.

      “And here is where Meyer gives the officers no other option. He breaks free again, shouting, “Get away from me, man!” The officers were now suddenly faced with the prospect of lunatic running loose in the theater while Senator Kerry continued to blather up on the stage. Imagine if Meyer had not been the obnoxious, self-absorbed publicity seeker we now know him to be, but rather someone bent on doing physical harm to Kerry. No police officer worthy of the title would have done anything other than what those cops did, which is put Meyer on the floor in a hurry.”

      The full article is an interesting read … give it a look when you have a minute. National Review Online … copy/paste the address below into your browser.

      http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZjgzNTI2ZGE3NTJkNzNmYmVmNDEyMWRmZDBlNGQ3NWI=

    • 😆

      brilliant t-shirts!

      “Incite a riot” is what the officer said. That alone shows how absurd their over-reaction is. That’s their reason for moving in on him and then arresting him?

    • TM, my guess is that they didn’t meet the requirements to become actual cops / appear on C.S.I. Miami, so they joined campus security. Their way of reacting is anything but professional.
      They’d have come in handy in Salem 315 years ago though 😉

    • He was given a chance to get a grip on himself. He had made his point.

      Continuing to holler is certainly inciting a riot!

      Why? Because if he can holler, so can the rest. He’s not special. It’s only mere luck that others didn’t join in. That’s not a meeting. That’s a brown-shirt steam-rollering, and it’s not allowed.

      The presence of a presidential candidate certainly raises the level of order needed. You folks are too young to remember the sixties. A lot can happen and very fast. They did right.

      There’s a REASON why meetings have very strict procedures, Robert’s Rules of Order, like that. Otherwise they can become brawls very easily, and then there are never, ever any more meetings, just one-side rallies.

      We have DISCOURSE in this country. That is about people who DISAGREE. That is very different from a one-opinion rally.

    • Ofri, post 5, he is the elected representative of the people of Massachussets and must leave in the same health he came in. Must.

      On top of that, he is certainly still in the fog of possible presidential candidates.

      Sharp, loud questioning is one thing, but this guy got physical.

      King Mutton, post 7, has it right. By the way,I know nothing about the Nation, and have never read it.

    • JM, that’s the National Review…just about the diametrical opposite to The Nation when it comes to politics.

    • Leave it to Kerry to jump in and help. ‘officers…folks…calm down…’. Jerk. Guess that isn’t how they did things in ‘nam.

    • Kerry did tell them that he would answer his questions. I guess by that point they were too pumped up about the prospect of manhandling a stupid boy who might possibly harm a former Presidential candidate. Finally! Some real police work. It’s telling that the gorilla who tasered the kid, as well as the supervising police officer have been suspended. Inciting a riot, jesus friggin christ. What’s the matter with these people.

    • Thanks Annie. We need a full-time editor/fact-checker here…

      This whole incident was kind of appalling… Andrew Meyer may have been a bit of a dolt (he once stood outside a book store where people were lining up to buy the latest Harry Potter novel with a sign that said “Harry dies”) but the situation could have been handled better, especially in the presence of police officers and a Senator sworn to uphold the US Constitution.

    • I always thought part of the American Dream was to hold an impromptu speech about the value of freedom followed by the audience’s standing ovations. Suppose it has to fit the screenplay though.

    • I get my opinions from my native wits and umpteen years of life experience. This is not my first war. You could say it is my third. (I wasn’t much affected by Korea.)

      “A stupid boy who might possibly harm a former presidential candidate”, CK, is 1) a man, and 2) a danger to the democratic process.

      The people of Massachusetts would not be amused at any scratches on one of their only two duly elected Senators!

      Or are they supposed to be good sports, because they have another one in reserve?

      Dallas 1963 is either a long way away, or you were not born, or you were playing with toy trucks at the time, but I was not.

      No more of that, please. Stand down when you have had your say.

      Unless – your Mommy told you no one can shut you up before you wanna, because you are so special. That was not directed at anyone here, but at this dude, whoever he was.

    • do what for the publicity? he couldnt of planned on getting tased.

      btw, it’s extremely bad form to ask a Bonesman if they were in Skull and Bones. Everyone knows they can’t admit it publicly.

    • He stood outside a bookstore where a bunch of kids were lined up to buy the last Harry Potter book and he held up a sign that read “Harry Dies”?

      Damn right, taser the punk. For that. But not for the other thing… geez…

    • You can too plan on being tased!

      At least, you can plan to make a big, fat, loud, wild, incident, and exactly how they handle it doesn’t matter.

      People plan on being hauled limply away, grinning fetchingly for the camera, all the time. If he had gone limp, he would have been let alone.

      But this was a meeting in a room, physically near an elected leader.

      Even if it hadn’t been, who is he to take over a meeting?

      Why can’t you put shoe on other foot? What if one of those awful flag-heads, who vote Republican, a real gung-ho red-stater, had started hollering, and got physical when asked to calm down after saying his piece? Would you have supported tasering such a person? My guess is yes.

      I don’t subtract very well but I think it is 44 years since Dallas 1963 and you just can’t feel the feeling.

      There is a lot of high feeling out in the land, a whole lot, and we have to be careful. We cannot change our leadership with our hands.

      I have seen most of this all before and I know we can handle it.

    • I wonder how Emma Lazarus would have put it:
      “Give me your tired, your poor,
      Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
      The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
      Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
      I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
      And if they speak up, I’ll smack ’em with my torch.”

    • Sarah, he had his say. In spades.

      Emma was a great poet, but her politics were impractical. Anarchism doesn’t really work.

      Are we not all one banana peel away from a deep abiding faith in proper, accountable procedure, in the person of efficient, well- trained, respectful, badge-wearing EMS personnel?

      One banana peel. It waits for us all.

    • Well… It’s about time you guys covered this..

      When I first saw this idiot’s name, I thought to myself, “Great, another dumb Jew making the rest of us look bad. As if famous Jews like Babs, Soros, Woody Allen, Amy Winehouse, etc., don’t make us look bad enough, now we have some wanna-be famous sh!t stirrer exercising his freedom of speech (after handing a camera to his friend to videotape his cry for attention)”.

      Personally, I felt like tasering the punk myself just for lack of manors and this is coming from a person who can’t stand Lurch nor his suga-momma.

      “They’re going to kill me!!!” – What an Ahole.

      After growing up listening to “F*** the Police” (which applies to the Sew-On-Patch Police as well), I’ve learned that we are lucky to live in a country where you generally get warned 3 times before being brutalized and I respect that. I personally think they took it easy on him.

      The best part of the video is listening to Lurch drone on in the background during the fiasco as if he “didn’t notice”. Please.

      What an embarrassment. As a Jew, I distance myself from Andrew Meyer like Hilary should distance herself from MoveOn.

    • JM, I agree with you wholeheartedly that manners, respect and proper conduct in public are important. But I do get concerned when ersatz executive forces are given powers that should be reserved to law enforcement professionals (those learn about de-escalation as a means of getting a situation under control). I’ve seen security staff at major parties with thousands of young people attending doing a way better job at handling conflict situations. Put an average mind into a uniform, and it’ll feel superior. History has clearly shown that seventy years ago.

    • BTW, “Mayer” / “Meyer” / “Maier” / “Meier” isn’t necessarily a Jewish name. It’s the secondmost-common surname in Germany as it in German refers to an official at the court of a medieval king.

    • Why can’t you put shoe on other foot? What if one of those awful flag-heads, who vote Republican, a real gung-ho red-stater, had started hollering, and got physical when asked to calm down after saying his piece? Would you have supported tasering such a person? My guess is yes.

      Guess again. And stop being so presumptuous.

    • Sarah, your reference to the nazi takeover is 180 degrees backwards. THEY took over meetings. Like this person. HE is the danger. It seems clear that he was allowed his say, but was then asked to yield the floor, and he wouldn’t. That’s not speech, Sarah! That’s action, and is not protected under the First Amendment.

      Sarah, if YOU had been speaking, and a strapping young man, extremely opposed to your politics, physically refused the request of duly constituted authority to stfd, and kept hollering, you would have been …..

      scared. So would anybody.

    • I don’t like Lurch, but what was he supposed to do that he didn’t do? All he could do was drone on. At least he didn’t run out.

      What would you have done in his place?

    • “Jewish Mother”, would you please stop with the “you all don’t understand because you’re babies” condescension?

      Why is everyone so concerned with the Rule of Law that Andrew Meyer “broke”? and not with the laws that this administration has been shattering since before day one? That was Meyer’s point: that our elections did not operate how they were supposed to–and since then, things have only gotten worse.

      Meyer was disruptive by harassing Kerry and the audience with pointed questions. Did this break the ***Rule of Law***? I’m not sure, but I know that Libby broke the law, and Bush pardoning someone in his own administration seems a little…um…wrong. And what about unauthorized spying on the American public? And, yeah, that elephant: the way this war has been conducted.

      Doesn’t anyone care that they’re keeping track of what books you check out of the library, and what you’re reading when you’re on an airplane, and with whom you talk? And the fact that a man at a Bush speech was arrested for turning his back to the President?!?!? This sounds like another country to me. I used to be so grateful that I didn’t live in those countries. Now I’m scared.

      By the way, confirmed: Andrew Meyer is Jewish.

    • JM, I wouldn’t have been scared. I teach youths that have been to prison on account of causing others severe physical injuries, drug-related crimes etc. I know how to handle a difficult person, and I know I won’t get anybody to shut up by evading an answer. Denying somebody an answer also qualifies as a lack of manners (and I do abide by the high standards of Western European manners; I know what adequate conduct is). The very least that could have been expected from Mr Kerry in terms of manners was to ask Mr Mayer to take a seat and to note that he’d get back to answering his questions later; that would have given Mr Kerry plenty of time to think of an answer.

      If I go into politics, I’m well-aware that people will try to wash my dirty laundry in public. Mr Mayer was being fussy to draw attention, no doubt, but if you’ve ever experienced a violently agressive person live, you can easily see he was not threating anybody.

      BTW, the Nazis did take over with the help of para-military forces showing up in outnumbering bodies to conventions, not by single unarmed propagandists randomly acting up.

    • Sarah, they aren’t campus security and they aren’t “ersatz authority figures.” They are campus police, and they go to the same police academy that all other cops go to. That having been said, maybe you have more faith in “real” cops than I do.

      JM, Kerry is not a presidential candidate, and won’t be again. Not in 2008, at any rate. I don’t know why you have a hard-on for authority figures, but my point was that I would expect that any guest of the university should be treated with respect, regardless of his or her station in life. Who got physical?! Meyer was never within fifteen feet of Kerry, and only got physical with the police when they grabbed him, which he never gave them any good reason to do.

      DeisCane, I don’t know who you root for, but you’re just jealous. It’s alright, though, you have every reason to be.

    • Does being tasered feel anything like a vibrator? If it does, I think I’ll start attending some Campus political events.

      How come they don’t call it a phaser? Kirk used to be able to tell his security guards what settings to put them on.

    • Ofri, if that is what trained police officers do, then they need better training. A trained law enforcement officer should be able to a) de-escalate a conflict situation, b) pin down an unarmed person by themself. That is part of police academy training. It really is. Ask a cop. If law enforcement officers are obviously unaware of such techniques, I cannot bring myself to believe that they’ve attended a police academy or any other training institution to that effect. And yes, I do have faith in real cops as I know what great work they do and that many of them put their lives out at risk on any given day.

    • If the security people didn’t have tasers but did have pistols, would it have been necessary for them to shoot the guy? If the answer is “no” then the use of a taser was inappropriate. Period.

    • From what I’ve read the dude has a history of recording some clownish bullsh*t and posting it on his website. I’m pretty sure security thought he was going to try and do some sort of stupid stunt and they were ready for him.

      I have nothing against asking critical questions of Senator Kerry. And I think Kerry did try to answer his questions. But it’s another thing to jump up and down and act like a fool. These are tense times and when someone engages in erratic behavior around a senator, security is going to “escort” them out. Some may say, “he’s no different than me,” but a senator, whether we like it or not, is more likely to be a target of some whacko—political, religious, or just plain crazy—who wants to make some sort of point.

      U.G. writes:

      “The tasering looks fake to me. I don’t claim to be an expert on the use of it, but I have seen people tasered before, and they don’t roll around screaming owowow, they are knocked out cold.”

      You need to watch COPS. People get tasered all the time on that show. I’ve watched them pull barbs from at least three or four separate tasers out of one dude. He was a big dude.

      Gingi:

      “Doesn’t anyone care that they’re keeping track of what books you check out of the library, and what you’re reading when you’re on an airplane, and with whom you talk?”

      Who are “they”? I’ve worked in a university library and in places that contain information of interest to radical movements. Never, not once, did anyone come to us and ask us what books people are checking out. The only cases I am familiar with are when the people in question have committed a crime. There is no agency keeping track of library records in a generic sense. And how do “they” know what you are reading on an airplane?

      JM:

      Emma Goldman was an anarchist. But I don’t ever recall reading Emma Lazarus was an anarchist.

    • Sarah, I don’t disagree with you. What these officers did seems amateur at best to me. I was just sharing what I know to be true.

    • I know that American laws in many states provide for that people can be hired as police without any proper training (over here, part of the application process is a psychological assessment to evaluate how the aspiring officers react in stressful / critical situations _before_ they get to lay hands on any kind of weapon).

    • Gingi, post 34, I don’t think anybody is an idiot, or a baby.

      But it matters what one has personally seen, and personally been through.

      You really do learn as you go along.

      You yourself know more than people younger than you, don’t you?

      Nobody younger than 59 age can remember the Kennedy assination as a 15 year old.

      Nobody under 60 can remember Vietnam as a 20 year old.

      Everybody under sixty thinks a peaceful world is how life just is. They know better intellectually but it is just outside their real life lived experience.

      I am not hand wringing, or accusing. I am comforting! I am living proof you can survive, and that the US can face terrible crises, and right itself. I have literally seen this happen, many, many times. I was there. You weren’t.

      I am no better than you! That’s just when my mother and father had little me! I was cute in those days… but the diapers were cloth and the photographs of sweet little me are all in black and white. Color photography was in the future.

    • Sarah, I’d really appreciate it if you could point me specifically to any one of these laws. If what you say is true, it’s alarming. Frankly, though, it strikes me as patently absurd. As far as I know every police officer in this country graduates from police academy and I’m fairly certain that some form of psychological evaluation is involved. Whether or not you consider American police academies to be “proper training” or not is another matter, I suppose, but until proven otherwise I have no reason to believe that just anybody can be hired as a police officer on a whim.

    • If I ruled the country, I’d have cops like this arrest people for switching the subject (gingi, #34).

    • Ofri, Texas, Virginia – just to name two states. I know from a friend that’s been in the Army (he served in Iraq, infantry; his unit took over Baghdad) that former members of military are entitled to join police in most US states without extra training.

    • Tom, you could be the second Catholic President. (Or the first Catholic king, whatever your heart desires.)

    • Ofri, the reply’s in another comment, but it has to undergo inspection first 😉

      So, anyhow, a guten yontef to everybody.

    • Sarah, that is truly horrifying. I’ve just been casually looking into throughout the morning, and it’s kind of amazing how hard it is to find information on this issue. The sense I get is that hiring practices vary from one department to the next. There’s some sort of accreditation system. Some departments offer training in-house, which I imagine is often less than ideal.
      Gmar hatimah tovah.

    • “By the way, confirmed: Andrew Meyer is Jewish.”

      More proof… that even we aren’t perfect.

    • Okay, first, I recommend that everybody read this: http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=4637
      It’s long, and scary, but information that every U.S. citizen should be know.

      WEVS1: Well, the “they” to whom I was referring is a bit unclear, given that the government spying is not all authorized by law and includes a lot of groups. That’s why I chose an ambiguous pronoun, without specifying an antecedent, instead of “Bush’s henchmen” or another more specific term that would have been more satisfying to you, such as, maybe, NORTHCOM.

      http://archive.southcoasttoday.com/daily/12-05/12-17-05/a09lo650.htm

      “[I]n addition to the CIA, DIA, NSA, FBI and others in the “big 15″ of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC), there exist a whole host of shadowy, half-known, and little understood, if well-acronymed, intelligence/military/security-related offices, agencies, advisory organizations, and committees such as the Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), the Defense Airborne Reconnaissance Office (DARO), the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) and the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board (IOB); the Department of Defense’s own domestic cop corps, the Pentagon Force Protection Agency (PFPA); and the Intelligence’s Community’s internal watchdog, the Defense Security Service (DSS).” In fact, there are now more people in “security forces” than in our Armed Services.

      By the way, “Jewish Mother”, Meyer did not get physically rowdy until the police descended on him. Where did you get the impression that he was going to harm Kerry? He never rushed down to the stage, and all he had in his hands was a book. Reminds me of Jena, where the prosecution identified the murder weapon as one of the student’s shoes…

      “Everybody under sixty thinks a peaceful world is how life just is.” Wow, wow. Right. Obviously no one under sixty has an experience with the real world. I know some of the people on this blog live in Israel and are under sixty; are you going to tell them that they just think that “a peaceful world is how life just is”? “I was there. You weren’t.” Unless you’re part of the security information-sharing program, I don’t think you have any idea who I am, what countries I’ve lived in, what I’ve seen, and how long I’ve lived. And your diapers? Were you trying to prove your age? I don’t really care about your diapers…

    • I meant, everyone under sixty in the US.

      You sound young. Anyway, you sure don’t sound sixty.

      Yes, I was giving an idea of just how long ago that was.

      I am not selling tasering or stunning.

      I am no expert on how to subdue someone who wants to disrupt a meeting after having said their piece.

      Continuing to holler after being asked to chill, in a meeting, is indeed inciting a riot. That the riot did not happen, THIS TIME, does not change that at all. Perhaps you have never been in a riot. There haven’t been any for a long time.

    • JM, maybe you meant everyone under sixty who is white and lives in a suburb or gated community in the U.S. Otherwise, that’s a pretty ridiculous thing to say.
      That kid could not have been further from inciting a riot. Pretty much everyone just wanted him to shut up. If anybody was likely to start a riot it’s the police, who escalated the situation and blew it way out of proportion.

    • Explanation: by a peaceful world, I did not mean a violence-free world.

      I meant, a world that is not engaged in a full-scale shooting war. The kind of war where there is no restraint, and whatever weapons nations have, they use, and there is only going to be one victor.

      This seems like a good moment to remark that: war is awful, and losing is worse.

      Much worse.

      Ofri, post 57, no offense, but I wonder if you realize that you are demonstrating, in your post, EXACTLY WHAT I MEANT.

      YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT A WAR IS.

      You think it’s: not being safe from creeps, and having little education, and a whole lot of social problems. That’s terrible but that’s not war.

      No.

      War is when major weapons are trying to kill, you all the time. It is when another organized group wants you to live their way, under their boot, or not live at all. Bye-bye all rights and social guarantees. If you lose you are toast. You will be rounded up and told what is going to be. You will not be asked. You will be told.

      As for what’s his name, you are correct that he had no support in the crowd. However, there is always next time. He HAD to obey the rules. Really. There is NO right to yell all day in a public meeting.

    • Funny Gingi posts from antiwar.com, a site that has carried anti-semitic propaganda frequently, over on this blog. Ick.