Monday, June 22, 2009 

A new media martyr.


If the events in Iran are the first time that "citizen journalism" has truly come into its own, helped undoubtedly by the fact that the foreign media have for the most part been successfully banished from the streets, then Neda Agha-Soltan(i), a young protester apparently shot dead by a Basij militiaman has become the first most visible martyr, not just of the uprising, but also of the new media age.

Partly this is because the video of her death is both so horrifying and with it, so cathartic. Unlike many of the other videos which litter the internet which show death and violence, few if any so vividly show a life ebbing away, the soul breaking free of the corporeal body. As her eyes glaze over and as the blood, filling her lungs, is breathed out of her nose and mouth, there are few ends that could so disturb, galvanise and ensure that she will be mourned for years to come. It helps that we don't actually see her murderer, or the moment when she was actually shot; that would diminish the empathy that comes naturally, and instead direct the anger at the individual responsible rather than the state that he or she represents.

Undoubtedly, many will be uncomfortable with the fact that this revolution in filming and writing to the bottom means that we get the sort of material, such as the death of Neda, that broadcasters themselves will not generally show. The BBC have only shown grabs of her on the ground, and before the blood begins to pour from her mouth and nose. Some will argue that such censorship, or rather moderation, is not something to object to: after all, not everyone wants to see such material, even on the news, especially when children also might be watching. Yet it also means that we don't have the full picture, or see the brutality and violence at first hand which such crackdowns bring. Even when such material was more carefully veted however, some of the most iconic images of war remain from the Vietnam era: the execution of Nguyễn Văn Lém, and the naked Phan Thị Kim Phúc running from a napalm attack still have the power, even today, to shock and awe.

Others will object that someone's death could be used in ways in which that person may not have wanted, or even how her family would want. Whether she was actually protesting may be in doubt; latest reports say that she left a car she was in for only a period of minutes, but that those minutes turned deadly does only illustrate just what those protesting are defying in order to demand that their votes count. It can't be denied that dying in such a way means that it becomes public property, by definition. Most would rather want their final moments to be private, but no one also would wish to die in such a way. When we lose the choice in how we pass from this world, we can only hope that our deaths are not prolonged and that we are surrounded by friends, although it remains a truism that everyone dies alone, regardless of method or cause. Neda's was not a lonely death, and the power of it may well yet further help the protests towards a brighter future for Iran as a whole. The idea of martyrdom and sacrifice is highly ingrained in both Shia and Persian culture, and despite our reservations, we can only hope that it further denies moral authority from both Ahmadinejad and Khamenei. Regardless of how the next days and weeks pan out, she is unlikely to be forgotten.

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6/22/2009 09:49:00 PM | | | links to this post

Monday, June 15, 2009 

An open letter to the Iranian youth: one solution, revolution.

Dear friends,

Very few of you are likely to actually read this, what with many internet sites being blocked by the authorities and with the language barrier, but those of us watching overseas with trepidation at the turmoil on the streets of your capital and other cities are both worried and optimistic in equal measure at the sudden eruption of what appears to the beginning of a movement against the lack of freedom which has become all the more burdensome since the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005.

That result was partially sparked by apathy. After two terms of the reformist inclined Khatami, his liberalising measures stymied and stopped in their tracks by the Guardian Council and your supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, it was little wonder that some of you were dismayed and simply didn't turn out. During that time there were protests against the rigidly conservative social mores and censorship imposed upon you, both in 1999 and 2003, both of which ended with more repression and the rounding up of the ringleaders, whilst the candidates who wanted change were denied the opportunity to stand in elections. You had seen what the response was to the slightest call for change, and no one will blame you for temporarily taking the eye of the ball.

It sometimes takes a polarising figure to set off in motion movements which have the potential to lead wherever you want to take them. If you'll forgive the already rather hackneyed comparison, Bush inexorably led to Obama. Ahmadinejad, a Holocaust denier, serial liar, economic disaster and general buffoon, but highly appealing to those who have nothing to whom he offers much, similar perhaps to Hugo Chavez, also attractive but undoubtedly a centralising and double-edged personality, is what led you to coalesce around Mir Hossein Mousavi, someone previously unknown in the West, although our attention span at the best of times is not the greatest. Mousavi was not the most liberal and reformist inclined candidate, but was a happy medium; you knew that Mehdi Karroubi simply couldn't win. For those of us who have recently had to put up with everyone talking about "snouts being in the trough" because their MP claimed a few dinners with taxpayers' money, which it seems is all that we care about, the sight of the vast crowds turning out, the almost party atmosphere as the "morality police" stayed out of the way for the first time in years was inspiring and made us believe that you too were about to choose change.

Doubtless many of you were worried that Ahmadinejad would sneak home, Mousavi having only towards the end of the campaign gained the support that he needed, and if he had, similarly you would have almost certainly accepted it. We can't know for certain, but your response above all suggests that the vote was stolen. Why, the cynics will suggest, would the Guardian Council have allowed Mousavi and Karroubi to stand if they weren't prepared to potentially let them become president, when they could have denied them to begin with, but it seems simply that your rulers didn't expect you to turn out in numbers similar to 1997. How though could Mousavi have been beaten in his home state? Why was the result announced within 2 hours? Why did the Mousavi campaign believe, and indeed have been told that they had been the run away winners by the interior ministry only for it subsequently turn out the Ahmadinejad had won with 67% of the vote?

Your thoughts will almost certainly be turning back to 1979, or rather what you have been taught about it. The overthrowing of the Shah, supported to the hilt by the CIA, with his departure still recently bemoaned by the likes of Donald Rumsfeld, was without doubt a wonderful thing. Sadly though, like many other revolutions, from the French to the Russian to the Chinese, the replacement has turned out to be little better than what came before, if not in some cases worse. While 1979 occurred because the people were united, whether they were religious or atheists, together they triumphed. It was then that those who objected to the establishment of a theocracy were purged, imprisoned and broken. Since then change has had to be incremental, and slight, and you have worked within those imposed boundaries, respecting what your parents and elders had achieved.

Isn't it now clear however, that those very constraints have become intolerable? They allowed you to vote for reform, and then they denied those elected to implement it the opportunity to do so. Now they have denied you the opportunity for your vote to even be counted. In its way, this has turned out to be to your advantage: the change that most of you want would probably have been denied had Mousavi been allowed to ascend to the presidency. Those of you who want to have the choice whether or not you wear the hijab, let alone other far more radical changes, would have almost certainly been left disappointed.

Even when it seems this clear, you are almost certainly scared and hesitant about the conclusion which you have independently reached. Would overthrowing the theocracy be not just disrespecting, but spitting in the face of your relatives and those who fought for that initial freedom, and also then while the West supplied Saddam Hussein with weapons during the war with Iraq, resulting in the deaths of a million? Certainly, there are millions within your country who are happy with the way they are ruled: otherwise no one would have voted for Ahmadinejad, or his even more conservative opponent. This will lead to fissure and disputes, almost certainly within your own families.

Yet the reward which you can now potentially acquire is worth both enduring the above and the lives of those who will fall and have already fallen in pursuit of the freedom you want. Some of you will wonder whether Ayatollah Khamenei's unprecendented offer of a inquiry into the vote is worth waiting for. You have now though a similarly unprecendented opportunity: the government is uncertain of how to react, even as reports come in of the shootings in the middle of the night. You may not have this chance again for years. Whether you want simply Mousavi to be president, or for this to be the end of the theocracy, you need to take to the streets in the same or even higher numbers as today, and stay there until you get what you want. Further action may well be required; you may well have to take arms up to defend yourselves, but you can be safe in the knowledge that the world is watching. It's unlikely now that another Tienanmen could take place: use that to your advantage. And remember, even if despite everything, the authorities win, you carry a new world in your hearts. That is what matters.

With fraternal love,
septicisle.

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6/15/2009 09:15:00 PM | | | links to this post

Tuesday, November 13, 2007 

The only thing worse than more war is Iran getting nukes.

That, in a nutshell, is the argument of today's Scum leader. Doubtless intended as a prod to Brown after last night's dismally familiar and sterile speech on foreign policy at Mansion House, Murdoch makes clear how he considers yet more death, destruction, insecurity and a worldwide wave of terrorism in revenge preferable to Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. Predictably, it resorts to a number of half-truths and deceptions in order to do so:

THERE is only one thing worse than military action to stop Iran acquiring nukes.

And that is Iran with nukes.

Anyone who believes this oil-rich nation wants nuclear power for peaceful purposes is hopelessly deluded.


Despite Iran's oil-wealth, it earlier this year temporarily enforced fuel rationing because of the huge cost of importing petrol, due to Iran's own lack of refining capacity. The Grauniad today also reports that Iran was seriously considering the recent approach from Russia for the uranium needed for their nuclear plants to be enriched there, only for the talks to be abandoned when the US imposed unilateral sanctions on Iran's revolutionary guard.

Sometimes we have to judge a person — or a nation — by what they say.

Iran’s President Ahmadinejad says he wants to “wipe Israel off the face of the map”.


Sigh. How many times have we got to go through this? Ahmadinejad did not say that he wanted to "wipe Israel off the face of the map" or that Israel should be wiped off the face of the map. Because of the difficulties of translating from the Persian into English, Ahmadinejad's statement, which was in fact a quote from Ayatollah Khomeini, was something along the lines of "this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e eshghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad)." Ahmadinejad was speaking in the context of the Soviet Union and Saddam Hussein's Iraq having collapsed; he was not calling for the destruction of Israel, or that he personally wanted Israel as in the country to disappear. MEMRI, hardly sympathetic towards Iran, translated his speech similarly. How can you possibly judge someone when you're not informed correctly of what they actually said?

He says the holocaust which claimed 6million Jewish lives, never happened.

This is more clear-cut. Ahmadinejad has certainly dabbled in holocaust denial, something which only an idiot, which Ahmadinejad certainly is, would deny took place. Denying the holocaust is moronic and intellectually bankrupt, but it most certainly does not help towards justifying military strikes when all the intelligence suggests the Iran is still years away from a nuclear weapon.

And he says he wants to impose extreme Islam on the world.

Really? I shouldn't rely on Wikipedia, but there's no mention of this anywhere in the rather copious entries on both himself and the controversies surrounding him, and I can't recall any such statement. In any case, just how would Iran impose extreme Islam on the Middle East, let alone the world? It can't even effectively do it within Iran itself, continuing to crackdown on supposed western influence, crimes such as women wearing make-up and showing hair under their hijab. Saudi Arabia has been far more successful in imposing extreme Islam and spreading Wahhabist doctrine than Iran has been in propagating its own interpretation of Shia Islam.

As Gordon Brown says, the West cannot afford to wait and see if he really means it.

According to the Sun then, 650,000 deaths in Iraq just isn't enough. It wants even more wars, more blood to be spilled to ensure that Iran doesn't even come close to acquiring nuclear weapons. To hell with mutually assured destruction, the fact that if Iran did attack Israel it would be at the same time destroying Palestine, and the inevitable revenge from Iran's proxies, we cannot afford to wait and make sure another Middle East madman actually has WMD before letting lose the cruise missiles. If Iraq is a disaster, attacking Iran would open the gates of hell.

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11/13/2007 08:06:00 PM | | | links to this post

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