Probably four of them with guns. The guys with the guns were in the military, and then t there were some police officers and then some plain clothes guys who I believe were the secret service guys. They detained me for fifteen or twenty minutes and they took the camera away from Jay. I was in the back seat of the police vehicle and I noticed they had my camera in the front seat. Now I don’t know what that did to the camera, or if they did anything, or maybe Jay just messed it up, but the video he shot of me in cuffs didn’t work, it’s corrupt. For Whatever reason that is, it did not work.
So they held you for fifteen or twenty minutes, interrogated you and let you go?
Yes. They said, “Well, apparently you haven’t broken any laws, you’re free to go.” They took my name, my social security number, my address, my place of employment and they said if they needed to get in touch with me they would give me a call.
Rob Kall: Have you had any further contact from them or been in touch with them?
No.
Rob Kall: So, have you been political. I know you were aware of Cheney cursing out Leahey. Have you been active in politics.
For a long time I was, I think, like a lot of Americans, pretty apathetic towards politics, because it seems like both sides… I wish there a viable third party… but it seems that with the two party system you’re getting two sides of the same coin kinda deal, where they both seem to interested in, in not doing what’s right for the American people and doing what’s wrong, for their agenda and their pocketbook.
I did start becoming a little active. You know I’ve been playing guitar since I was thirteen years old and started writing songs when I was 20 or so. I had written several songs which kinda had a political edge to them and they did pretty well on mp3.com and I was in my band dR. O, and we did real well on mp3.com and just to make a long story short, our claim to fame for dR.O on mp3.com was we had more number ones than any band in the world. We had 26 genre number ones on mp3.com, we had listeners in over 100 countries. Yahoo life magazine labeled us the supergroup of cyberspace.
Rob Kall: Cool. How would you describe your sound.
It’s sort of alternative hard rock.
Getting to the political activism point of it, on Sept. 11, of 2002, 2003 and 2004 I was in New York to play a concert called the September Concert, which is a free music, city-wide event where musicians come from all over the world to play music in New York, after 9/11, of course, to basically not let people forget about it. In 2004 I decided to stage a one man protest in front of the United Nations. And I played a song I wrote, Four More Wars, that I wrote specifically for the protest. That was a month before the election. It flabbergasted me that people still voted for this person, that, to me, anybody with half a brain wouldn’t vote for this guy. Everyone’s allowed to vote for whoever they want to, but my personal opinion is that this is the worst administration in the history of our country.
If you look at the list of “accomplishments” that W. Gump has, I call him W. Gump because he’s an overachieving simpleton and he’s the world’s most famous cheerleader, the mess doing the agenda of Cheney and Rove… anyway I played that song four more wars. Basically, the chorus of the song is “are you for more wars? Vote for George Bush, for more.”
He’s the war president, if you vote for him, guess what you’re going to get. You’re going to get more wars, because apparently that’s all he knows how to do is start war after war without legitimate reason.
Now I must backtrack and say that I was behind the president when he went into Afghanistan . I thought that was certainly justifiable and needed to be done, but then somewhere along the line he got off track and was misled, I don’t know if… Sometimes I like give him the benefit of the doubt, that he’s being a little naïve and being misled by his handlers spoon feeding him all this bad information as far as justifying a war in Iraq when anybody should have known it was a bad idea. I think most people who follow politics at all thought it was a bad idea. Even his father thought it was a bad idea, if you look back at the historical writings of Bush senior—about things “turning into a quagmire,” which is what we have now.
And then you have Donald Rumsfeld—everything that comes out of his mouth is the opposite of truth—“Oh, it’s not a quagmire. It’s not like Viet Nam.” Anything he says you can just turn it 180 degress and that’s the reality of the situation. To me, he’s our version of Baghdad Bob.
Rob Kall is executive editor and publisher of OpEdNews.com, President of Futurehealth, Inc, inventor . He is also published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com. He is a frequent Speaker on Politics, Impeachment, The art, science and power of story, heroes and the hero's journey, Positive Psychology, Stress, Biofeedback and a wide range of subjects. He is a campaign consultant specializing in tapping the power of stories for issue positioning, stump speeches and debates. He recently retired as organizer of several conferences, including StoryCon, the Summit Meeting on the Art, Science and Application of Story and The Winter Brain Meeting on neurofeedback, biofeedback, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology. See more of his articles here and, older ones, here.
To learn more about me and OpEdNews.com, check out this article.
and there are Rob's quotes, here.
To Watch me on youtube, having a lively conversation with John Conyers, Chair of the House Judiciary committee, click here Now, wouldn't you like to see me on the political news shows, representing progressives. If so, tell your favorite shows to bring me on and refer them to this youtube video
My radio show, The Rob Kall Show, runs 9-10 PM EST Wednesday evenings, on AM 1360, WNJC and is archived on www.whiterosesociety.org Or listen to it streaming, live at either www.wnjc1360.com or here.
A few declarations.
-While I'm registered as a Democrat, I consider myself to be a dynamic critic of the Democratic party, just as, well, not quite as much, but almost as much as I am a critic of republicans.
-My articles express my personal opinion, not the opinion of this website.
Thank God there are still people like Dr. Ben Marble who are not afraid to speak their mind, even after the attempted intimidation by the Secret Service personnel of Vice President Cheney. This administration has the stagecraft of positive images of the president and vice president down to a science. It's refreshing when the truth breaks through that wall. That's probably why the Secret Service was so surprised when Dr. Marble made his statement to Vice President Cheney. You can be sure the Secret Service won't make that mistake anymore. The audiences for any future appearances for Bush will be thoroughly vented. It's some world we're living in today isn't it? Who would have ever imagined that we would come to this? That someone speaking exercising their right of free speech makes the news.
by
Vipponah (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1 comments)
on Saturday, September 24, 2005 at 2:06:43 PM
I still don't believe he legitimately won. Have we forgotten all the protests after the first and second election? And we still haven't had any real investigation into the results, because any that were done, were negated. I think we need to give ourselves more credit, as a country of educated humans. Even though we can't prove it, and we're still kindof naive.
We need to believe that someone like Kucinich could win if he got the coverage he deserves. He's the legitimate third party guy you're looking for, even though he's a democrat.
Thank you for speaking for the rest of us.
by
Penelope Grover (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 3 comments)
on Saturday, September 24, 2005 at 5:54:28 PM
