President Obama issues statement on Iran - Saturday

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Statement-from-the-President-on-Iran/


THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary
_______________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release June 20, 2009


Statement from the President on Iran

The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.

As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion.

Martin Luther King once said - "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." I believe that. The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian peoples’ belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness.

(Edited to add statement content)

Isn't it.

now we must continue to watch closely

Hypocrisy at its finest.....

http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/39822prs20090610.html

ACLU Challenges Defense Department Personnel Policy To Regard Lawful Protests As “Low-Level Terrorism”

(6/10/2009)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: 202.675.2312 or media@dcaclu.org

Anti-terrorism training materials currently being used by the Department of Defense (DoD) teach its personnel that free expression in the form of public protests should be regarded as “low level terrorism.” ACLU attorneys are calling the approach “an egregious insult to constitutional values” and have sent a letter to the Department of Defense demanding that the offending materials be changed and that the DoD send corrective information to all DoD employees who received the erroneous training.

“DoD employees cannot fully protect our nation and its values unless they understand that a core American value is the constitutional right to criticize our government through protest activities,” said ACLU of Northern California attorney Ann Brick. “It is fundamentally wrong to equate activism with terrorism.”

Among the multiple-choice questions included in its Level 1 Antiterrorism Awareness training course, the DoD asks the following: “Which of the following is an example of low-level terrorist activity?” To answer correctly, the examinee must select “protests.”

The ACLU sent a letter today to Gail McGinn, Acting Under-Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, asking that the materials be corrected immediately. The ACLU points out that the misinterpretation of First Amendment freedoms is particularly disturbing when viewed in the context of a larger, long-term pattern of domestic security initiatives by the government that have attempted to treat lawful dissent as terrorism. Examples of this shameful pattern can be seen in the Pentagon’s monitoring of at least 186 anti-military protests, the FBI’s surveillance of potential protesters at the Republican National Convention, the Fresno County Sheriff Anti-Terrorism Unit’s infiltration and surveillance of Peace Fresno, a community peace and social justice organization and the covert surveillance by the Maryland State Police of local peace and anti-death penalty groups.

“Teaching employees that dissent on issues of public concern is something to be feared, rather than respected, is a dangerously counterproductive use of scarce security resources, making us less safe and less democratic,” said Michael German, ACLU National Security Policy Counsel and former FBI Special Agent, who co-signed the letter with Brick.

The Level 1 Antiterrorism Awareness training course is an annual training requirement for all DoD personnel that is fulfilled through web-based instruction.

:grr:

innocents in Afghanistan and Pakistan. One hopes the Iranian government will be able to parse out the subtle difference.

I'd like to think killing innocents in Afghanistan isn't the purpose our attacks.

The difference, of course, is immaterial to the dead but probably not so subtle to the rest of us.

They would argue they're maintaining order. Dead protestors are a byproduct of maintaining order. Killing innocents in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Iraq, the Leaders of the Free World would argue, isn't the purpose of the attacks by troops acting at the behest of Leaders of the Free World. Dead innocents are a byproduct of our desire to find WMDs/spread democracy to the Middle East/gain revenge for 9-11/get all the oil we can before it runs out. Again, the difference is subtle and not apparent to some who lack the understanding that the US shall be as a City upon a Hill and all that.

shining.

looks like the good guys may not make it out of the maze.