The terrorist meme spreads among authoritarian governments

Is there a terrorist hiding under your bed at night?  The [insert name of national government] will protect you!

Via: Mail

Monday, Jun 22 2009 This Afternoon  21°C This Evening 12°C 5-Day Forecast

Ten Iran protesters die in one day as police target 'terrorists' in crackdown

By Mail Foreign Service
Last updated at 12:04 AM on 22nd June 2009

Opposition clerics in Iran stepped up criticism of the authorities yesterday after more than a week of unprecedented protests.

At least ten demonstrators were killed on Saturday alone and dissident clerics declared that resisting the 'people's demand' was against religious law.

But in a sign of their determination to crack down on unrest, officials dismissed the protesters as 'terrorists' and rioters.

Iranian leaders also took another swipe at Britain, with hardline anti-Western President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accusing the UK of interfering in Iran's affairs. Its foreign minister said Britain had 'sinister designs'.

Black-clad police wielding truncheons, tear gas and water cannon were last night accused of brutality over Saturday's protests in Tehran.

Injured demonstrators were said to have been arrested while being treated in hospital.

Via: Salon

JUNE 14, 2009 7:35PM

DoD Training Manual: Protests are "Low-Level Terrorism"

Update appended at the end:

The Department of Defense is training all of its personnel in its current Antiterrorism and Force Protection Annual Refresher Training Course that political protest is "low-level terrorism."

The Training introduction reads as follows:

"Anti-terrorism (AT) and Force Protection (FP) are two facets of the Department of Defense (DoD) Mission Assurance Program. It is DoD policy, as found in DoDI 2000.16, that the DoD Components and the DoD elements and personnel shall be protected from terrorist acts through a high pirority, comprehensive, AT program. The DoD's AT program shall be all encompassing using an integrated systems approach."

The first question of the Terrorism Threat Factors, "Knowledge Check 1" section reads as follows:

Which of the following is an example of low-level terrorism activity?

Select the correct answer and then click Check Your Answer.

O   Attacking the Pentagon

O   IEDs

O   Hate crimes against racial groups

O   Protests

***

The "correct" answer is Protests.

A copy of this can be found on the last two pages of this pdf.

The ACLU learned of this training and on June 10, 2009 sent a letter to Gail McGinn, Acting Under-Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, objecting to their training all DoD personnel that the exercise of First Amendment rights constitutes "low-level terrorism." 

For those who have worried about a trend - evident, for example, in the USA PATRIOT Act, the universal and ongoing government surveillance of all of Americans' electronic communications that began in February of 2001 (seven months before 9/11), the global war on a tactic (terrorism), therefore making this war unending, the unprecedented pre-emptive arrests of protestors at the 2008 Republican National Convention with those protesters being charged as "domestic terrorists," the justifications for torture, pre-emptive wars of aggression, ongoing occupations, American gulags such as Bagram, suspension of habeas corpus, and "prolonged detention" for acts someone might commit, not what they have done, FBI et al infiltration of protest groups and the government's acknowledged use of undercover agents (agents provocateurs) in said infiltration, thus giving the government under the rubric of fighting domestic terrorism unrestrained and unsupervisable power to suppress legitimate political activities, the unleashing and justifications for Christian fascists to murder those they do not like (such as the assassination of Dr. George Tiller and the killing at the Holocaust Museum a few days ago) - this news adds further fuel to the fire.

These are not items from some famously vilified, non-US dictatorial regime. These are items from the good ole USA, land of the free and home of the brave.

Just how brave are we now? How free are we still? Are we brave enough to be "winter soldiers" and stand up against these fascist moves? Or will we go down in history in infamy, the way the "Good Germans" of the 1930s and 1940s did? 

Update at Salon.