Protesting in the land of the 'free'

Last week over a hundred thousand people,myself included, marched in
London to protest against Bush's state visit. We were treated
courteously by police and there was no trouble.

A number of Americans, most notably Ron Kovic, a Vietnam war veteran,
joined the protest.

Bush stated, during the visit, that 'he welcomed protest'.

How ironic then, that, should these citizens of what is supposedly the
world's foremost democracy choose to exercise their First Amendment
rights in their home country, they are likely to be harrassed, beaten
and even imprisoned merely for peacefully protesting.

In the US, one man, for example, faces six months in jail for merely
displaying a protest banner near Bush. Protestors in New York on 15th
February this year were ridden down by mounted policemen, as well as
verbally and physically attacked.

Recently in Miami there have been further incidents of police
harrassment and imprisonment of peaceful protestors, and this has even
included media representatives foolish enough to attempt to photograph
any incident.

Those of us who really do live in the free world - Old Europe, as we
are pejoratively known in the US - hold our hands out to our American
brothers and sisters. Send us your huddled masses, and we will treat
them with consideration and courtesy. Over here in the Old World,
where democracy was invented, I'd like to argue that right now we've
got a stronger grasp of what that word actually means. Like, man,
dissent is, uh, actually *healthy*.

We can all only hope that next year, Americans will wake up to the
terrible loss of liberty and freedom they have tolerated in the phony
'war against terrorism', which in fact has become a war against
liberal, democratic values.