US-backed dictator critiques violence against protesters

King Abdullah of Jordan says that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad ought to honor the will of his people, as expressed in their protests against the regime, by stepping aside and letting the democratic process proceed:

BBC News - Dozens killed in Syria as Jordan king tells Assad to go: ""I would step down and make sure whoever comes behind me has the ability to change the status quo that we're seeing," King Abdullah stated in an exclusive interview with BBC World News television.

He said: "If Bashar [al-Assad] has the interest of his country [at heart] he would step down, but he would also create an ability to reach out and start a new phase of Syrian political life.

King Abdullah added: "Whenever you exert violence on your own people, it is never going to end well.""

It's always interesting when US clients, who take dirty money in order to thwart the legitimate will of their own people, and serve as compliant torturers for the US regime, speak out in such unequivocal terms about how dictators should relate to their own people. There's not a hint of irony in Abdullah's remarks regarding his own status as a hereditary ruler of a state without legitimate democratic institutions, but like most of the West's stooges in that region, he knows which side his bread is buttered on. When the boss says criticize your neighbor for the exact same defect you yourself suffer, you go on TV and do it.

One finds it hard to reconcile the reaction of the West to Assad with the equally abrupt manner in which the authorities have cracked down on the dissenters at various Occupy sites across the US. Free speech has been under siege in the beacon of democratic values for a number of years, with the events of 9-11 serving as a convenient pretext for categorizing demonstrators as terrorists to be silenced by any means necessary. This has led to travesties such as "free speech zones" during events like presidential inaugurations, to more militaristic responses to G-20 soirees targeted by the anti-globalization movement.

Now, with the Occupy movement having gained a bit of traction, and drawing an increasing diverse cast of characters from across the political landscape, there appears to have been a call from the oligarchy to silence this movement with extreme prejudice. As it is commanded from on high, so it is done on the streets of Americas big cities, as we see the powerful elites start to use all means at their disposal to shut those protests down.

The US is practicing its accustomed double standard here, where the poor, backward countries of the third world are held to a higher standard than the US hold itself. Since the country entered a permanent state of emergency in recent years, everything has been put in place to facilitate the mass roundup and detention of troublemakers, and we'll see that infrastructure increasingly put into use -- to an extent that the leadership in Syria has never even dreamed.

It'll be interesting then to see how well Abdullah's prediction about violence against one's own people turns out.