Dave Lindorff: Obama Against Criminalizing Dissent in Iran, but Not in U.S.
President Barack Obama, referring to the violent attacks on protesters against the controversial election results in Iran's just-completed presidential election, this week lectured Iran's government, saying, "Peaceful dissent should never be subject to violence."
Referring to the tens and hundreds of thousands of frustrated and angry Iranians who have taken to the streets accusing Iranian authorities of rigging the election in favor of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Obama said that "the Iranian people and their voices should be heard and respected."
But there is a certain hypocrisy going on here.
Just days ago, the ACLU of Northern California issued a press release announcing that it had filed a complaint over a Pentagon anti-terrorism training manual. That training manual, aimed at Pentagon personnel, describes domestic protests as "low-level terrorist activity." As Staff Attorney Ann Brick and ACLU Washington National Security Policy Council member Michael German write in their complaint letter to the Department of Defense, "For the DoD to instruct its employees that lawful protest activities should be treated as 'low-level terrorism' is deeply disturbing in and of itself. It is an even more egregious insult to constitutional values, however, when viewed in the context of a long-term pattern of domestic security initiatives that have attempted to equate lawful dissent with terrorism."
The ACLU has documented that the government has been and continues a policy of spying on legitimate peaceful protest organizations -- particularly those that have been opposing America's wars and its military policies, and the new president has said nothing and done nothing about terminating this egregious assault on First Amendment freedom of speech and assembly. Given that President Obama has also done nothing since taking office to undo the USA PATRIOT Act, which codifies much activity that traditionally would have been called dissent as a crime, or to publicly reverse the policy of the last eight years during which non-violent protest organizations have been spied on and infiltrated by agents of the military and by the FBI, and during which actual protesters have been harassed, penned into fenced-off "free speech zones," assaulted by armed police and arrested, his pontificating to Iran about the sanctity of dissent rings particularly hollow.
Imagine, if you will, what this government's response would be to having hundreds of thousands of American protesters gather in the center of Washington, DC without a permit, to protest the policies of the national government. There would be riot police in the thousands, some mounted on horseback. There would be federal troops. There would be police charges against demonstrators. There would be tear gas and arrests.
How do we know this? It happens every time there are major protests in Washington -- even when protests are granted permits.
This writer spent three days in the Federal Detention Center at Occoquan, VA, back in 1967 for participating in a peaceful anti-war protest at the Pentagon that year. I was one of hundreds at that event who found himself, as a peaceful demonstrator, confronting armed federal troops with fixed bayonets at that event. Not much has changed since '67, as others have met the same fate over the years in Washington and around the country. Certainly there is every reason to assume that, if the public finally loses patience over the current administration's continuation of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, its failure to really tackle the health care crisis, and its limp response to the economic crisis, and if people descend on Washington or perhaps New York City en masse to protest, those people will be met with the same kind of draconian, police-state style response that protesters have met in the past -- or that protesters are being met with in Iran today.
If the Pentagon is teaching its people to equate protest with "low-level terrorism," how different, really, is Washington from Tehran?
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006 and now available in signed collector's edition through his website). Lindorff's work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net.
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Protesters
Iran vs. America
Stop being a Chicken Little Balls
We do not have arrests, tear gas and other repressive measures every time there is a lawful protest in Washington, D.C.
I personally attended the three 100,000 plus pro peace marches in D.C. when Bush was president.
Other than a few minor incidents, all three marches were in fact peaceful.
The problem was, at the end of the day, everyone went home.
If they would have just stopped marching and sat down in front of the White House and Congress, and refused to leave, they could have started a Constitutional Revolution that would have held our employees in our federal government accountable for their actions.
However, WE THE PEOPLE, collectively, are nothing but wee the sheeple. That's the change you can believe in that remains the same. You can't blame Obama and the Democrats for being DINO Neocon-Fascists, but you can blame the American public.
Baaaaaa!
I suppose the author of the
It's About Time Buzzflash addressed the ANTI-democratic tendenc
that Buzzflash addressed the ANTI-democratic tendencies, not just endemic in the NY/DC/Chicago "Establishments," ....not just within the Neo-Con infested "Democrat" Party
(think Mayor Daley smashing heads of anti-war protestors as Chicago's 1968 Democratic Convention; think JOE LIEBERMAN, DIANNE FEINSTEIN, and JANE HARMAN, all fierce advocates of the WAR LOBBY & POLICE STATE & Government powers to tax the public to maintain that "swords, not plowshares" economy)...
... but now within the so-called "Change!" Obama administration !!
Obama has surrounded himself with authoritarian, establishment, big-finance, war-powers, & pro-war Neo-Cons, starting of course with RAHM EMANUEL and LAWRENCE SUMMERS.
Emanuel is a LIKUDNIK NEO-CON who doesn't give AN INCH to JOE LIEBERMAN in the "We love US wars in the Mideast" department. (During Gulf War-1, Emanuel worked as a Civilian worker for... for the Israel Army, the IDF.)
It strains credulity that Obama could hitch his star - the very fate of his administration - to that of LAWRENCE SUMMERS, who was run out as Harvard's president for caddish behavior - and that was BEFORE, that is, the full extent of the DAMAGE (losses) done to Harvard's endowment under Summers' "leadership" was realized!!
"HOW?"! Could Obama POSSIBLY hitch his star to such an unpopular, disastrous megalomaniac official??!
For his part, Robert Rubin helped steer CITI-bank into the CESSPIT of BANKRUPTCY - saved ONLY by the Bush-PELOSI-Paulson HUNDREDS of BILLIONS of taxpayer dollars "bailotus" !! Rubin, while still Secretary of Treasury under Clinton, of course helped UBER-RIGHT-WING REPUBLICANS PHIL GRAMM and JIM LEACH pass the "DEREGULATION!" atrocities, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999, and the "Commodity Futures 'Modernization' Act of 2000" - the REGULATION GUTTING bills which led directly to the "ENRON LOOPHOLE" and the DISASTERS which drove AIG, Citi, Goldman-Sachs, Chase, and other banks into bankruptcy. (Again, SAVED, ONLY by TAXPAYER hundreds of billions of dollars of "bailouts" - a de facto REWARD for FINANCIAL FRAUD.)
Don't take my word for it: Here is the Great Robert Scheer, FIRED by the LA Times for being critical of... Bush & Cheney! - saying "DON'T BLAME REAGAN for THIS Economic meltdown - blame GREENSPAN, LEACH, GRAMM, Rubins, & Summers - the last two of 'em ostensibly "Democrats" !!!!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-scheer/reagan-didnt-do-it_b_210675.html
You got what you voted for
Why the surprise? You voted for the party that helped the Republicans pass the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and the "Patriot" acts, which basically overturned the Constitution.
You'll never get a even break depending on corporate-financed parties to run things. Voting for a non-corporate party like the Greens, the socialists, or Ralph Nader sends three messages to the Democrats:
1. You're not satisfied with their performance,
2. You will support a party that acts in citizens' interests, and
3. If they continue their business-first agenda, they'll lose still more votes.
Unfortunately, in recent elections you've sent the Democrats the opposite message, that they can sell out our freedoms and liberals will STILL support them. The results of this losers' strategy are apparent.
Vote Green!
Tehran? Is That A Town In Texas?
You hit the nail on the head with your rhetorical question, Dave. I'll attempt to answer some of it.
Both Tehran and DC are dominated by elitist religious fundamentalists whose only purpose is to further their control of those who aren't co-religionists. Both governments issue edicts which they themselves will never obey. Both governments care nothing about the will of the people, and will do anything to maintain power. Both populations are expected to sit down and shut up as ordered by the government. Both governments promote propaganda over information. Both governments are taking steps to ensure that the people cannot communicate with each other without being monitored for subversive topics like freedom of speech and the right to a fair election.
I'm sure others have some good observations, so I'll yield the floor.