Well, I was going to put a video together with clips from various protests and run it into news coverage of political bashing on our president.. but I got lazy and decided to spend 3 hours writing a rant and posting other peoples videos instead… so here we go….

Alot of drama has followed the recent elections in Iran. Current Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the election in a landslide victory over reform candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi. The Islamic Republic News Agency, Iran’s official news agency, announced that with two-thirds of the votes counted, incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won the election with 66% of the votes cast, and that Mir-Hossein Mousavi had received 33% of the votes cast. The European Union and several western countries expressed concern over alleged irregularities during the vote, and some analysts and journalists from United States and Europe based media voiced doubts about the authenticity of the results.

This has led to mass protests from the people of Iran who supported Mir Hossein Mousavi and rightfully so. If you’re candidate lost and you believe that there is a chance of fraud in the results.. stand up and shout… I guess that the real leaders of Iran don’t like that very much though.. so they have tried to shut the protesters up. Bring in the other countries of the world including the US… While president Obama has been slow to throw his support behind the protesters, the GOP has fully grasped the idea of the Iranian people embracing their freedom and right to protest and at the same time taken full advantage of the President’s slow response time… Here is a lengthy video from fox news where former GOP presidential candidate John McCain attacks Obama’s “hands off postion” on the protests and then boasts about the bill that passed the senate by stating that “all of us have certain basic human rights, and they should be allowed to exercise them, and that we should support people’s right to protest without being beaten”… Here is the full clip…

… I think that’s great and I applaud John McCain and the rest of the US Senate for making that statement… especially the GOP and the upstanding view on peoples basic right to protest no matter where they live and what views their government takes on protesters… I just have one little problem with all of it…

While our government is taking a stance on the rights of Iranian citizens and stating that they should be allowed to protest and stand up in the streets to speak their mind against their government… they are doing what they can to suppress our own rights to those same freedoms..

According to a report on FOX News, the department of defense considers protesting a form of terrorism… Don’t believe me… You can see it here Pentagon Exam Calls Protests ‘Low-Level Terrorism’.

Beyond that… does anyone remember back to the Republican National Convention held in Minneapolis-Saint Paul during Spetember of last year? I sure do… people who tried to peacfully protest the war in Iraq were taken down by police in riot gear… here are a few videos from some of the protests.

Here is a girl holding a flower in her hand as police in riot gear march by.. Most of them leave her alone, but as the video moves along, you can see the girl and a photographer behind her get sprayed at least twice. Wtf were the cops afraid of? What the hell was she going to do with her flower? Attack them?

There are more… lots more… You would think by the number of videos I am posting from fox news that I am a big fan of their right wing biased bullshit… that isn’t the case though… I practically vomit in my mouth every time I see O’reilly, Beck, Hannity and all the other mouth pieces they have on that channel. These just happen to be the videos I am finding… Here is another video from Fox News where the reporter is live on the street and showing a 21 year old girl who was peacefully protesting , raising her hands in surrender and telling the cops that she loves them… They maced her, sprayed her with pepper spray, punched her, pushed her down with their bikes and pretty much beat her in the streets… She was doing nothing threatening at all… she was just refusing to leave the street because she felt her voice needed to be heard… A voice that said I love you repeatedly… I mean we should support people rights to protest without being beaten… right? where have i heard that before? hmmmmm…. anyway.. here is the video..

Amy Goodman is an American broadcast journalist, syndicated columnist and author. During the 2008 Republican National Convention, several of Goodman’s colleagues from Democracy Now! were arrested and detained by police while reporting on an anti-war protest outside the RNC. While trying to ascertain the status of her colleagues, Goodman herself was arrested and held, accused of “obstruct[ing] a legal process” and “interfer[ing] with a peace officer”, while fellow Democracy Now! producers were held on charges of probable cause for riot. Here is the video of her arrest and a news conference that was held afterwards discussing it.

So now journalists are being arrested at protests? Sounds like something that only happens in countries like Iran… our Senate needs to do something to stop this sort of thing from happening in other countries… oh, wait.. that wasn’t another country.. it was our own.. Hmm… all of us have certain basic human rights, and they should be allowed to exercise them, and that we should support people’s right to protest without being beaten…. yeah.. ok… Here’s a video of a police line in riot gear advancing on some more PEACEFUL protesters.

I have work that needs to be done.. so I am going to end this novel for now… To sum things up.. I guess it is bad to suppress protesters when it is the Iranian government doing it… but good to suppress protesters when it is the US government doing it..

Here’s a wake up call.. to all of our senators… and congressmen. Republican and Democrat alike.. Wake the fuck up… stop worrying so much about what is happening in other countries when the liberties and freedoms of the people in your own country are being eroded and taken away. Stop using the rights and freedoms of people around the world as your political strategy to win the next election or attack your opponent and start doing the job you were elected to do. Serving the citizens of this country, the United States of America.

While I agree that we need to keep a close eye on the situation in Iran to help ensure that the Iranian government does not start slaughtering these people for speaking up, we need to spend some time looking at ourselves.. and fixing what is wrong with our own country. Senator, Congressman…. Start doing your job! Or at best someone else will be elected to replace you and do that job for you and at worst, we will be relying on other countries around the world to step in and keep our government and police forces from slaughtering people who are peacefully protesting in the streets at a political convention…..

And one more thing… I don’t think the republican party in this country has any ground to stand upon and accuse someone else of fraud during an election and encouraging protest as a result of that fraud. Seems to me they are the experts when it comes to stealing elections they have not rightfully won as well as suppressing the voice of the opposition as a result of the stolen election.

So, to conclude this rant….. The footage I have seen from Iran and all reports indicate that there were a few people shot during the many days of protests in Iran. Whether they were shot by Iranian police and military or someone else is in question. But, those people are still dead. However, the reports and video footage I have seen showed the protesters in the streets of Iran as being pretty violent. I watched them throw rocks at the police while the police stood there and took the constant barrage from the people. I’m not talking small stones. Im talking chunks of concrete and large rocks being hurled at the police. I watched the Iranian protesters light fires and do things that were not happening in any of the videos I saw from the protests in Minneapolis-Saint Paul. Can you imagine the carnage that would have ensued in Minneapolis-Saint Paul if the protesters outside the republican national convention were hurling rocks at the police and lighting fires in the streets? How many of those protesters do you think would have been shot? I would be willing to bet martial law would have been declared and the government would have stepped in to silence the people and get them off of the streets. So, while I think it is great to support the people in Iran and back them in their ability to protest and speak freely. I think it is weak and cowardly to use it as a political wedge as the Republican party is doing, while just 9 months ago we saw an out of control police force suppressing those same rights of American citizens at the request of the Republican’s.