Updates here
##
Looks like paramilitary police and Iranian citizens are clashing during the demonstration today. The good news is that deadly force is not being used - which is what I was worried about. Nevertheless, anytime a state power attacks peaceful protesters - even with non-deadly force - it shows the world just how precious freedom is and how governments across the globe are willing to attack their own people in order to silence them. Here is the latest from Tehran:
--snip--
Some of the protesters turned and ran, but others stood their ground, grabbing anything they could find — sticks and rocks and bricks — to throw at the militia. Three motorcycles were set on fire, filling the area with flames and smoke. Each time the protesters managed to gain ground against the militia, known as the Basij, a roar of support went up from the demonstrators.The number of protesters was much smaller than in recent days, but there were women as well as men among them. Some reports indicated that security forces in other areas had fired their guns into the air, and there were no confirmed reports that any protesters had been directly fired at.
Before the John Bolton's of the world start demanding that we bomb Iran, let me remind all of you of how common such a show of government force is in the United States. Unless we want to bomb ourselves, we have little room to talk. Perhaps the best approach - and one I fully support - is to show the world what real freedom looks like and how democracy functions. But with torture, Gitmo, political prosecutions, and so forth, I have little hope that we will set ourselves apart as an example any time soon.
Here are two examples of how our own police have treated our own protesters.
In 2004, the NYC Police Department spied on hundreds of people who had gathered to plan a peaceful protest. During the protest, the NYPD officers were instructed to arrest demonstrators even without provocation and then lied about the evidence:
During the 2008 Republican National Convention, journalists were arrested without reason and mass violence was used to disrupt peaceful protesters. A very good film documenting police violence against protesters in the US during the 2008 Republican National Convention protests is Terrorizing Dissent. Here is a clip:
Tell me what country this is taking place in? Until we clean up our own house, we should take care how our hypocrisy appears around the globe. There is nothing we can do regarding Iran at this point. We cannot bomb a nation whose government used the same methods our own does.
Double Standards
It is precisely this double-faced demand for justice by the far right that makes our credibility around the world nonexistent. When I speak out against police violence used to silence protests, I don't first stop to consider what political party the protesters are affiliated with. My only concern is that American citizens exercising their rights in a peaceful manner not be mistreated. But if I were to support some police violence against some people with whom I disagree, then what would my word and my outrage be worth?
If I speak out against election rigging in the US, I am attacked as a CT nut as though I were chasing little green people all over Jupiter. Yet the very same people who attack me for pointing out something as measurable and objective as math run to defend the protesters in Iran and take at face value the allegations of election rigging.
These types of double-standards do no serve us well. We must examine ourselves and judge ourselves by the same standards we apply to other nations. If we allow our own crimes to go unpunished, we have no right to demand that crimes committed by other governments and nations be punished.
There is ample evidence that the US election of 2004 was rigged in at least Ohio and Florida. There is also some indication that the recent elections in Iran were fixed as well. If you ignore the one but make noise about the other, what does that say about you and your motives? How does that look to the rest of the world?
