The US has been dropped 27 places in the World Annual Index ranking for its harsh treatment of reporters inside the country during OWS protests.
Meanwhile, the OWS [Occupy Wall Street] movement marks its 6,000th arrest by US Federal police. Despite all this, the US president did not mention the wide-spread movement as an issue in his recent State of the Union Address.
Some activists say the US authorities act to arrest protesters is against the country's constitution, which guarantees the freedom of speech.
Brent Budowsky joins Press TV to share his opinion on the issue. What follows is an approximate transcript of the Interview.
Press TV: After OWS [Occupy Wall Street movement], the US has actually dropped 27 places in the World Annual Index and that is thanks to the harsh treatments of reporters who were covering the protests.
This is reporters without borders who has reported this. It doesn't sound too good for a democracy, especially given the coverage or lack of it of course with arrests that are taking place and beatings on these reporters.
Budowsky: Well, first of all, I am a columnist with the major news paper and you do not know a stronger supporter of Occupy Wall Street than I have been in the major media.
And while they are not happy in the power structure with everything I write I do not find myself getting beaten up or getting abused. There have been problems there is no question about that, but what is happening in America right now is that there is a growing movement within Occupy, but also among the average American people who are tired of all the rip-offs; tired of all the cheating; tired of all the Wall Street corruption - and it is not new by the way.
This happened in the 1890's before Theodore Roosevelt came in. It happened in the 1920's before Franklin Roosevelt came in and it's happening right now and it's happened over the last ten years especially when George Bush came in. But these are problems that have been going on for a long time. What is different now is people want to fight back and people want to stop it.
Now, I will say about the President Obama… I am a democrat, I have been harshly critical of the Republicans and at times I have been willing to criticize President Obama, but… in his State of the Union address while he did not specifically mention Occupy Wall Street, he did make a major issue as he has been over the last five or six weeks of the rip-offs on Wall Street, the corruption in the American economy and a need for strong reforms.
So on that level, things are moving in the right direction and that is good and I have been willing to criticize the President before in my column in the Hill [newspaper], on American television and on Press TV, but I do want to emphasize that in the last four to six weeks he has become more forceful and the Democrats are becoming a little more forceful.
What I expect to happen in the spring is that all will come together with major demonstrations, major political action and a major campaign against the real people that the Occupy Wall Street movement criticized. It is not President Obama. It is not even the Republicans, although they are part of it; it is the corruption on Wall Street and those who want to buy America with their money to steal the American idea, to corrupt the American system and the American people are tired of it and that fight will go on into the spring.
Press TV: I get the feeling that based on the time the Occupy movement started, you're saying that the US president in the past six weeks has been on the right track - to sum up what you said. Why did it take him so many months?
Budowsky: Yes, well the problem with American politics is that, Democrats as well as Republicans including the president, including almost everybody take a lot of money from banks; take a lot of money from Wall Street; take a lot of money from the one percent who are corrupting it. And that's just a fact of life of American politics.
It is not rare, it happens in many countries, but when our politicians take so much dirty money to run their campaigns - the Republicans take more than the Democrats, but the Democrats take more than they should - you are going to have the politicians reluctant to challenge the people who give them the money; the people who do the corruption. And very often they are the same people.
Now, I do think the things have gotten somewhat better. I think the president is a little more in a fighting mode; the Republicans are against almost anything that would make things better.
The president might not go as far as I would like him to, but he definitely has made a decision and it is not just one speech, it is about six weeks. They take a stronger position to fight harder, to support not necessarily the Occupy movement per se, which he has not talked about very much, but the principles of fighting against the corruption and for change and for reform and for jobs in the US not just a destruction of the economy by who has the most money, by the system to support their destruction.
Press TV: A list of things there that Gordon Duff was citing the president de-criminalizing bank mortgage operations; that they are behaving like a mafia rather than government; his broken promises and accusations of setting up a state of martial law or a police state), of course I'd like your reaction to that and I'd also like to hone in on this piece of news I have, after your reaction to Gordon Duff I'll pose that question to you.
Budowsky: Well let me put it this way, on behalf of the 99 percent of Americans - the true 99 percent, they would not agree very much with descriptions of the United States as a police state; as descriptions of the police as thugs, that is not true And to say Obama has done nothing simply is not true. And whether my colleague likes it or not, I guarantee you most of the 99 percent of Americans agree with me.
Now, I have criticized the President for not going far enough, he hasn't. I have done it from the inside and I will be paying the price politically with some of my Democratic and White House friends for doing it, so I am not an apologist for the White House. They have not done nearly half by my standards, that is true.
The problem is that what we have to do is in the middle of the campaign where there is a lot of money going around; we have to escalate the fight. We have to register more voters to have the power of the people to tell the politicians to stop playing to the money of Wall Street and banks.
We have to have a people power that I believe will expand, increase and become much more aggressive as we go into the warmer weather, not the winter. And I also make a quick point to my brothers and sisters in Egypt. On Tahrir Square you have many friends in the United States and I am just one of them; we are with you, the men and the women and we wish you well and if you want to see thugs, look at the people beating up women in Cairo in the Egyptian movement; in the Occupy Cairo movement; in the Arab Spring movement.
As unwise as it was to evict people in the US and I oppose that and I will also add some of it was done by democratic Liberal mayor - that was wrong, that was a mistake. But they are not beating people up in the way they did in Cairo. That isn't true - to say that the president of the United States was working with people to do it - that is not true, that is false and I know because I am in the middle of it.
Press TV: So, you are comparing Egypt in terms of the beatings that took place. This is the context of which the United States is now being compared to, that they should take pride for the police men, for example in New York and the beatings that took place?
Budowsky: No, I disagree. I disagree with most of the arrests and I disagree with almost all of the evictions. I have privately protested to the White House and to many Democrats that we should oppose those things and I agree that they are wrong. Ok? But when you start hearing language like police state - That is grossly in accurate and grossly inappropriate and false based on any normal, intelligent, professional definition of what a police state is.
We make mistakes in this country, but when you start using a language like that I am forced- just not only as an American, but as somebody that believes in truth. I am speaking for most of the 99 percent in America about this. Mistakes have been made, yes. The president hasn't done enough, correct.
