Harry Belafonte on President Bush

Transcript (audio links on page)

Excerpt:
[N]o previous regime tried to subvert the Constitution. They may have done illegal acts. They may have gone outside the law to do these, but they did them clandestinely. No one stepped to the table as arrogantly as George W. Bush and his friends have done and said, ‘We legally want to suspend the rights of citizens, the right to surveil, the right to read your mail, the right to arrest you without charge. You do not have the right to counsel if we so decide, and you can stay in prison as long as we want you to, until we're satisfied that we have reached the objectives that we want, despite the Constitution.’
I think that every person in the United States of America should be up in arms, should be up in rebellion against the reality that we face, that it is that fact that made me say that I think and I feel that we are at the dawnings of a new Gestapo state here in the United States, through the security -- Securities Commission and through the Homeland Security, as well – National Security Agency. All of these different agencies, all of these different bureaucracies have their own special assignments, and then they come – and when you look at the collective, America is playing out a horror theme. The fact that we're a joyous nation, when you see sports and you see so much light, frothy, mindless entertainment bombarding you every day and so much disinformation coming your way, is enough to make any citizen mentally, as well as socially, blurred to truth.
But the fact is that it exists, and it exists very intensely in our midst. There are citizens at this moment who are being arrested, who are not being told why they're arrested. Some have been spirited out of this country to faraway places to be imprisoned and tortured. These are realities, and the American people had best wake up, because as one priest once said, or I think it was a protestant minister in Germany, said, ‘When they came for the communists, I didn't know any. When they came for the Jews, I didn't know any. When they came for the labor movements, I didn't know any. And then when they came for me, no one was left.’ I don't think we can distance ourselves from what's going on in America. And as Roosevelt said, that ‘When our government is being subverted, our Constitution is being undermined by those who sit in the seat of government and power, it is the right of citizens and the responsibility of citizens to raise their voice against this intrusion and this collapse and should speak out against it and, in fact, change the government; and those who do not do that, should be charged with patriotic treason.’