b Namus

April 1st Islamic Republic of Iran Day: Also Known as April Fools Day

2012-02-26T19:57:00.002-03:00

April 1, 2012 will mark the 33rd year of the inception of the Islamic Republic in Iran. In the so-called western world this also marks April Fools Day, a day when tom foolery and tricks and jokes are played upon people in jest. Irony aside, I would like to propose a day of action in front of the embassy of the above mentioned government in Ottawa. I would like to conduct a carnival complete with cotton candy, popcorn, and arbitrary hangings and executions. There will be a festive air to this action however there will be displays of the grotesque acts of the government being conducted for all to see in a manner that belies the action being performed.

I am proposing this because no longer is the placard and shouting and marching of the 1960's and 70's effective; we are dealing with a totally different beast and a creative response is in order. There will be a ring leader, marching band, music, food, song, dancing and the occasional hanging. This juxtaposition is necessary in exposing the banality of evil as Hannah Arendt would say. "Banality of evil is a phrase coined by Hannah Arendt and incorporated in the title of her 1963 work Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. It describes the thesis that the great evils in history generally, and the Holocaust in particular, were not executed by fanatics or sociopaths but rather by ordinary people who accepted the premises of their state and therefore participated with the view that their actions were normal." There would be the need for a chorus which will act as the citizens of society who watch and youtube hangings as if they have gone to the theatre.

This call to action will not be your conventional demonstration. There will be no repetitive chants or speeches. We will be putting on a circus for all to see. Concluding with a mass occupation of the embassy grounds. We will need people to document the action in real time in the style of Augusto Boals Theatre of the Oppressed. We will be engaging with passer bys on Metcalfe street; the people of Ottawa who pass by the embassy on their way to work etc. Not in a passing out of leaflets or informative way but in a manner that entertains and impedes passer bys (sp) every day routine. In effect, it makes the passerby's spectACTORS; becoming the chorus (audience) in an unscripted theatre in the round.

This is a play we are conducting and every scene must be performed with conviction and motivation to engage the passerby's. Without that commitment of engagement the action will be passed off as churlish and ineffective. It must be performed with the dedication of a child at play. I believe that a creative response is the only way to fight fascism in the 2000's; we are out gunned and out manned when coming up against such governments; the masters tools will never dismantle the masters house. However, if we simply expose or hold a mirror up to what is happening in Iranian society today, we will be providing not only an outlet for expression that has yet to be explored as a social movement in Iran but also mapping out a framework for what is in essence an act of civil disobedience that is not punishable in any penal code. We are throwing a party! As a side note, and this ties in to our party atmosphere, every year the embassy of Iran since 1980 has thrown a party on April 1st and February 1st inviting other ambassadors in Ottawa and various dignataries to mark the inception of the Islamic republic. This is the Islamic Republic's version of Canada day so we will have an audience. An audience that does not know it is an audience. An audience that will be compelled to engage; playing a vital role that is unscripted and revelatory. Even if this event does not take place on the day noted above IT WILL TAKE PLACE. It is time for such actions!

The islamic republic's cardboard cut outs

2012-02-03T10:15:00.004-03:00

The automatons of the islamic republic in iran
held an imaginary tea party with their eminent leader Ruhollah Khomeini
a card board cut out of his eminence was displayed just chillin'
and hanging out during the 33rd anniversary of the revolution is not only
absurd but maddening. They also reenacted Khomeini's arrival at the airport
again with a card board cut out complete with a soldier salute.

Ey Iran!

Iran's Liberation of Bottoms

2012-01-02T01:53:00.005-03:00

The article noted below by Janet Afary

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/04/iran-women

speaks of a sexual revolution taking place in present day Iran.
It is interesting to note that in his booklet Fatemeh Fatemeh Ast (Fatima is Fatima), Ali Shariati, one of the chief ideologues of the Iranian revolution, provides a polemical study of why all Iranian women should strive to be like Fatima: daughter of Mohammad, wife of Ali and mother to Hassan and Hussein. He pits Fatima against the so-called liberated and in his view therefore 'selfish' "Western woman" who only thinks of herself and not her family. In this little booklet, Shariati laments the changes taking place in 1970's Iran, particularly the moral degradation of society. In Shariati's other call to action, Where Shall We Begin he refers to these freedoms as "Sexual freedom is indeed freedom of the "bottom" in place of the freedom of the "top" ( head). ...

Looking at Iran's morality laws relationg to sexuality, I have always asserted that A LIBERATION OF BOTTOMS is exactly what society needs: FREE YOUR MIND AND YOUR ASS WILL FOLLOW! It is nice to hear others begin to echo this assertion and to begin to reject the polemical occidentalism of the Ali Shariati's of Iranian society.

dis patch

2011-10-11T15:01:00.003-03:00

Do you recall i told you
it was worth it
do you remember when i said
the pain was sweet?
i was wrong to make that call
derooted and bumbling after the fall

You watched on as i tried to stir free
watched as i skirted beneath this dead sea
no lending hand
no spring
no song
derooted and divided
we sang on

You echoed and surrounded these cliffs
with tethered hands and clenched lips
with jaws wired
and teeth strong
our tongues entangled
singing this old song
of love and sorrow
of time wasted and borrowed

I quivered with every wind
of your embrace
of every etching
of your porcelain face
It was always worth it
every stroke and every word
with divided language
failing to be heard

I loved you
love you
with all my wrongs
with all the remembrances
of solomons songs

You echo in books
and time pieces
in grains of sand
and i wonder:
did you know the vanilla orchid is pollenated by hand?

Mohammad Mohyeddin: Grandpa Turns 105

2011-10-03T12:42:00.005-03:00

Baba Timsar and I
-----------------

"Mohyeddin, a general under the Shah of Iran, a husband of 75 years, a father to eight children, and grandfather to 20, turned 105 years old on Saturday. His advice — summarized neatly by the Zoroastrian axiom “good thoughts, good words, good deeds,” which the family had minted on the reverse of a coin bearing the profiles of Mohyeddin and his wife Ashraf — is only the beginning of what the sharp centenarian had to say about living life well. For the occasion, he wrote out a letter containing all his accumulated wisdom."

http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1063359

I Come

2011-09-05T01:52:00.003-03:00

I Come

From Dick-tates and Man-dates
I have come
For thirty plus years
They have beat their drum

I come
weeping from what they sowed
I now enter from the back
For I am also Jim Crowed

I come from behind curtains
Tents and walls of thread
Of littered streets
named for the dead
and self-appointed prophets
with coloured cloths
covering their heads

I come
From the shriveled vineyards of Shiraz
and the deserted Towers of Silence of Yazd
I come
For every woman
Who did not come before me
I come
For every woman whoever bore me
I come

From every sturgeon
In every sea
For We and They
And You for Me
I come.

- samira mohyeddin.

Language and Linguicide

2011-07-18T02:37:00.002-03:00

Mastery of language
affords remarkeable power

but you know that already
don't you?

Genocidiares always try to
wipe out the language
of the other
first

linguicide

Orientalists
adopt the language of
the other

They are not
lovers of language

they practice
adoption and deconstruction

A Requiem: Iranian Students

2011-07-07T14:11:00.003-03:00

At some point
we will explode once again
however our wrath
will not manifest itself
in summary executions
extra-judicial killings
target assassinations
hangings and/or
stonings

fear inducing will not be our response

there will be no fountains of blood
no martyrs for 'the cause'
no preaching to the ill-converted
no covering of bottoms and minds
no guns with carnations

we will lie down
lock arms
and fingers
in our streets
and mountains

and you will come for us

revolutionary no ?

PRIDE TORONTO: Iranians March

2011-07-04T14:48:00.003-03:00

For the first time an Iranian contingency marched in the official Toronto pride parade. A lot of the marchers had their faces covered as they were fearful for the lives of their family members back home; as homosexuality is punishable by death in Iran. I have always felt that one of the biggest crimes of the government of the islamic Republic of Iran has been to regulate love in all its forms: through music, poetry, wine, and dance and song. For more than 33 years they have told us who and how to love and the day will come when the silent majority will rise up again.
ONE DAY WE WILL MARCH IN TEHRAN.....DEMANDING OUR RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS..... NOT ASKING FOR ACCEPTANCE!
--------------------
PLEASE NOTE THE EXTERNAL LINK IS FROM LONDON ENGLAND!!
THE PICTURE IS FROM THE 2011 PRIDE PARADE IN TORONTO

Iranian embassy / Ottawa / Voting Day 2009

2011-06-13T15:35:00.006-03:00

Trying to stop me from filming I joined the other protesters across the street Those who are not blindly walking to the ballot Those who know that if voting changed anything It would be illegal Those who know ANY VOTE IS A VOTE FOR THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC

B A N U

2011-06-07T22:11:00.001-03:00

No Olympics for female players in Iran......

2011-06-07T00:39:00.001-03:00

"Clergy circles and local football officials believe that the male-dominated atmosphere in football stadiums, and vulgar language used by male fans, were not appropriate for women."

--------

Women on the Frontline

2011-03-09T18:58:00.003-03:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTLqDW7rgkE&feature=player_embedded

Here is a rough cut of the documentary that I was asked to be a part of. Thank you to Sheema Kalbasi and Hossein Martin Fazeli for making this important and timely film. I really like the statement at the end of the footage which reads: A FILM IN THE MAKING ----------- that statement really made a lot of since considering the protaracted struggle for womens rights in Iran / protracted and retracted since 1979. It is a film in the making because it is a movement that 32 years ago suffered an incomparable impediment and is now painstakingly trying to get back what rights it lost upon the formation of an Islamic government in Iran.
------------------------------------TIMELINE--------------------------------------
10-11 Feb 1979

Overthrow of the government of Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtias and establishment of the first Islamic government administration under the premiership of Mehdi Bazargan.

26 Feb. 1979

Family Protection Law suspended by a letter issued by the Office of Ayatollah Khomeini. A Government spokesman later stated that the old law would remain in effect until new legislation was drafted.

3 March 1979

Issuing of decrees appointing women as judges was stopped. Qualified women were told to apply for administrative posts in the judiciary.

4 March 1979

Khomeini, in a speech addressed to thousands of women who had gone to Qom to pay him respect, said that in Islam the right to divorce is the prerogative of the husband, but women could specify in the marriage contract that in case of maltreatment by the husband they are entitled to divorce themselves.

6 March 1979

Minister of Defense, General Madani, declared that women would not be drafted into the army in future. All women serving their conscription terms were dismissed and released from military service.

7 March 1979

During a speech addressed to thousands of visitors in Qom, Khomeini said that women were not prohibited from taking jobs, but that they must wear the Islamic veil at work

8 Mach 1979

Mass demonstration of women to celebrate International Women's Day, and to protest against Khomeini's statement regarding the veil. From early hours of the morning meetings were held in girl's high schools and in Tehran University. Marches, spontaneously decided upon in such meetings, got on their way during the day , some converging on Tehran University, others going to the Office of the Prime Minister Bazargan, others heading for the Ministry of Justice. Some of the slogans of the demonstrators were: 'Freedom in our culture; to stay at home is our shame' 'Liberty and equality are our undeniable rights' ' We will fight against compulsory veil; down with dictatorship' ' In the dawn of freedom, we already lack freedom' 'Women's Day of Emancipation is neither Western, nor Eastern, it is international' 'Freedom does not take rules and regulations".

In several incidents women demonstrators were physically attacked on the streets. Revolutionary Guards fired in the air to disperse women demonstrators, estimated by the press at 15,000, from the streets around the Prime Minister's office. Many meetings, planned in advance by various women's groups on the occasion of International WOmen's Day, were held throughout the day, each drawing an audience of several thousands.

9 March 1979

Segregation of sports was proposed. Women were subsequently barred from international sports on the grounds that coaches, judges, spectators, etc. in such events include men.

10 March 1979

Further demonstrations and sit-ins against imposition of the veil. A mass meeting of women held at the Ministry of Justice. The meeting was attacked by hard-liners and women were beaten by armed men. 10 March 1979: Demonstration of women in front of the National Television, protesting against the news black-out of their demonstration and activities. Prime Minister Bazargan announced that wearing the veil is not compulsory and that Imam Khomeini's statement had been misunderstood.

11 March 1979

Even though, following Bazargan's statement, some of the women's organizations withdrew their support for the demonstration planned for this day, some 20,000 women attended the rally in Tehran University. After several speeches, women marched towards Azadi Square. Along the route the march drew support from offices, hospitals and schools. It was attacked at several points by Muslim fanatics, men and women. The final rally had to be abandoned because of the increasing number of fanatics encircling the rally point.

21 May 1979

Ministry of Education banned co-education. All educational institutions were ordered to segregate all classes. Many institutions indicated that since the number of female students alone would not justify setting up separate classes they could be unable to register any female students. In late September, when schools opened, female students of technical training schools staged a protest against de facto suspension of their studies as a result of this decision. They were told to change their courses of training to fields where there were enough female students to justify separate training courses.

3 June 1979

The Ministry of Education banned married women from attending ordinary high schools. They were told they should continue studies on their won and take part in special examinations in order to obtain final degrees. Coupled with the lowering minimum age for marriage of women to 13 years, this would mean an increase, over the coming years, in lower educational levels for women.

13 June 1979

All the day-care and nursery centers at work-places were closed and women with children were encouraged to quit their jobs and stay at home. The women employees of the Communication Corporation were threatened with mass lay-off.

8 July 1979

Several Caspian Sea resort towns initiated a sexual 'segregation' of the sea. Many women were flogged in public during the summer of 1979 on charges of swimming in the men's section.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I am really impressed with the documentary so far; it is very nuanced and provides so many variables on the women's movement in Iran. It is not pushing a specific agenda.....if my voice and haghighatjoo's can be in the same documentary, then their might be some hope for the Iranian parliament in the future.

From Egypt to Iran and Back Again

2011-02-11T19:48:00.003-03:00

Uninstalling dictator… 100% complete
█████████████████████████
Uninstalling dictatorship… 5% complete
█░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░

--------------------------
32 years ago on this day the army declared its neutrality and the revolution in Iran was complete.....less than three weeks later the draconian laws began in Iran, with the first being the nullification of the Family Protection law of 1967 and the imposition of mandatory hejab (head covering) on women.

--------------------------

Today the military junta are now ruling in Egypt and Mubarak has resigned.
What is to become of Egypt? It is to early to tell.

I hope the Egyptians do not go the way of Iran!

2011-01-30T18:07:00.004-03:00

On March 8, 2010, for the first time in its history the islamic republic of iran was taken to court and had to defend itself against the charge of murder in a Quebec Superior court. Anxiously we have waited for more than 9 months to see if her son Stephan, would be allowed to sue the murderous regime and take them to task for the rape murder and torture of his mother Zahra kazemi in July of 2003. The ruling came today and SHAME SHAME SHAME ON YOU CANADA for not allowing this son to vindicate the killing of his mother. Canada/Quebec has ruled that the STATE IMMUNITY ACT applies to the murderous regime of the Islamic Republic and that states may kill citizens without any chance of being taken to task for their actions. This only solidifies the fact that Canada has a two-tiered citizenship. If iran had murdered a 'true' canadian you can bet that that a lot would have been done in the name of that canadian ------- perhaps even a couple of plaques erected. But nothing nothing was done for Zahra kazemi - a woma who Chose this country - she was not simply born here ---- she chose it and that should mean a lot more.

To Stephan --- you took the legal route and lost and now you must do all that you can BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY we/I/us should vindicate your mothers murder ----- not in blood but in memory in provocation in creativity. Zahra Kazemi must not have died in vain.

TO BE CONTINUED
SHAME ON YOU CANADA!!

TODAY I AM ASHAMED TO BE CANADIAN!

http://thevarsity.ca/articles/15427

FREE NASRIN SOTOUDEH

2010-12-15T23:14:00.004-03:00

New criminal charges have been brought against detained Iranian human rights lawyer and women's rights activist Nasrin Sotoudeh, her husband has told RFE/RL's Radio Farda.

Reza Khandan told Radio Farda on December 14 that his wife must appear in court on December 27 to defend herself against charges of "not wearing the hijab" and "not observing Islamic standards of conduct."

Khandan said that when his wife was barred from leaving Iran to receive an international human rights award in 2008, she sent a message via video clip to the International Human Rights Committee in Italy, which had selected her as the awardee.

"Her new charge is that she did not wear a head scarf in that video clip," Khandan said.

Sotoudeh was taken into custody on September 4 on charges of "acting against national security," "assembly and collusion to disrupt security," and "cooperation with the Defenders for Human Rights Center," a prominent organization chaired by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi.

Khandan said Sotoudeh has not yet been sentenced, but in a phone call late on December 13 she said that she was told by officials that they would not let the judge sentence her to less than 10 years imprisonment.

Sotoudeh has staged three hunger strikes since her detention. She began the most recent one on December 7. Khandan said that she has become extremely weak:

"She could barely talk, and during our last phone conversation it cost her a lot of energy to utter every sentence," he said.

Sotoudeh represented a number of political prisoners who were arrested during the unrest following last year's disputed presidential election.

http://www.rferl.org/content/new_hijab_charges_against_iran_rights_lawyer/2248892.html
--------------------------------------
Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi is now living in exile in London, England. When she won the nobel peace prize all she could do is travel the world and regurgitate the words of Khatami and spew more garbage about a 'dialogue amongst civilizations'. When she came to the university of toronto and accepted her honourary doctorate I was outside protesting her constant assertion that Islam and Democracy are one and the same. An absurd notion! There is no such thing as a religious democracy; be it Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist va va va. Ms. Ebadi could have done a lot to help the opposition movement in and outside of Iran, but instead she chose to try and change the system from within------when all the while it was the system that had changed her and now POOF she leaves and joins the ranks of the other citizenised Soosan's and Tenured Teymours in exile.
------------------------------------
My problem with Ebadi has long been that she does not acknowledge that the problem of the Islamic republic is systemic. Instead, she repeats that the government in Iran is not following the constitution of the country....

It makes me think that she
has not even read the constitution
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
HERE ARE SOME ARTICLES FROM THE CONSTITUTION OF THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC

Article 20
All citizens of the country, both men and women, equally enjoy the protection of the law and enjoy all human, political, economic, social, and cultural rights, in conformity with Islamic criteria.

Article 56

Absolute sovereignty over the world and man belongs to God, and it is He Who has made man master of his own social destiny. No one can deprive man of this divine right, nor subordinate it to the vested interests of a particular individual or group. The people are to exercise this divine right in the manner specified in the following articles.

Article 175

The freedom of expression and dissemination of thoughts in the Radio and Television of the Islamic Republic of Iran must be guaranteed in keeping with the Islamic' criteria and the best interests of the country. The appointment and dismissal of the head of the Radio and Television of the Islamic Republic of Iran rests with the Leader. A council consisting of two representatives each of the President, the head of the judiciary branch and the Islamic Consultative Assembly shall supervise the functioning of this organization. The policies and the manner of managing the organization and its supervision will be determined by law.

Article 150

The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, organized in the early days of the triumph of the Revolution, is to be maintained so that it may continue in its role of guarding the Revolution and its achievements. The scope of the duties of this Corps, and its areas of responsibility, in relation to the duties and areas of responsibility of the other armed forces, are to be determined by law, with emphasis on brotherly cooperation and harmony among them.

look up the penal code yourself...

HERE IS A SNEAK PREVIEW

Article 76. The testimony of women alone or in conjunction with the testimony of only one just man shall not prove adultery but it shall constitute false accusation which is a punishable act.

Article 81. If the adulterer or the adulteress repents prior to confessing to the act of adultery, he or she shall not be punished (subject to hadd). If, however, he or she repents following his or her confession the punishment for adultery shall apply.

Article 82. The penalty for adultery in the following cases shall be death, regardless of the age or marital status of the culprit: (1) Adultery with one's consanguineous relatives (close blood relatives forbidden to each other by religious law); (2) Adultery with one's stepmother in which the adulterer's punishment shall be death; (3) Adultery between a non-Muslim man and a Muslim woman, in which case the adulterer (non-Muslim man) shall receive the death penalty; (4) Forcible rape, in which case the rapist shall receive the death penalty.

Article 83. Adultery in the following cases shall be punishable by stoning: (1) Adultery by a married man who is wedded to a permanent wife with whom he has had intercourse and may have intercourse when he so desires; (2) Adultery of a married woman with an adult man provided the woman is permanently married and has had intercourse with her husband and is able to do so again.

Note. Adultery of a married woman with a minor is punishable by flogging.

Article 84. Old married adulterers and adulteresses shall be flogged before being stoned.

Article 85. Revocable divorce shall not relieve the husband or wife from the bond of marriage during the waiting period whereas irrevocable divorce shall do so.

Article 86. Adultery of a permanently married man or a permanently married woman who does not have access to his or her spouse, due to travel, incarceration or similar impediments, shall not require stoning.

Article 88. The punishment for an unmarried adulterer or adulteress shall be one hundred lashes.

AND THAT'S THE LAW!!
SO WHAT DOES BEING A LAWYER IN IRAN MEAN??

2010-12-15T00:40:00.000-03:00

As Yet Untitled

Shall I compare thee to a Catholic theocracy?
NO
You have your own peculiarities and pathologies
Torquemada’s and Torquemortazavi’s
At your disposal your automatons with electric batons
Trying to beat the truth off of people
When we all know that Gravity is what
Holds our skin together

And now your representatives
are re-presenting themselves
a new recycling program:
where ex-presidents
become supreme leaders
and assembly experts
and ex prime ministers
presidents
re duce
re use
re cycle
GO GREEN

Are we to clean up the mess you left us with?
So that you can return to your north your cabarets and chatanooga’s
There isn’t enough water in the Caspian to do so
Even the sturgeon are leaving you

NA SHARGHI
NA GHARBI
JOMHURI E ISLAMI?
What were you thinking?
Were you thinking?
As you played games of ‘we’ and ‘they’
As Rudyard Kipling liked to say

And now
Some of you
Tenured uncle toms
Secured and citizenised Susies
Tell us to let it run its course
As you spin in your tautological circles
Dizzying the rest of us
With your jargon

Talks
Symposiums
Conferences
Round tables
With cheap wooden paneling
Teeth chattering
and pockets clamouring
Moderated by experts - expats
who natter on about our inalienable right
to eat yellow cake

I know
Abbreviated
Abbreviate it
Many do
I.
R.
I.
Try to make it benign
They call it quasi
Semi
Demi
Mockery-Mockracy

]\And then there was she
And from Schopenhauer to Shariati
They expounded at great length
On her inferiority

It is the unwritten laws
That bind us
That deems our strands
As potent potential
Corrupting agents of the nation
And its security

Are we willing participants love?

No…not now
Let us end with that question

Love?

In the beginning
They tethered the tongue of Tahereh
Clenched
Wired
Shut
The mouths of the Bina’s
Bagged and Dragged
The Parsa’s
All the while
Howling from the rooftops
Looking for faces in an unforgiving and inescapable moon

Waiting
Waiting
Waiting

In the end I never got to see my khanoom joon again

Were we willing participants love?

You see
We have become a petition nation
An abbreviated abomination
Every other day
I am asked to put my name to
…
“SO AND SO WILL BE STONED TO DEATH IN THE NEXT FEW DAYS
FOR ACTS INCOMPATIBLE WITH MORAL CHASTITY
SO AND SO WILL BE HUNG FOR CORRUPTING THE EARTH
AND SO AND SO HAS BEEN DETAINED AND NOT HEARD FROM IN 3 WEEKS”

ACT NOW!
CLICK HERE AND HERE
ADD HERE
CC
SEE?
YOUR MONITOR SCREEN WILL NOT SAVE YOU

You
who watch the boob tube
You tube
Spectators
Shifting in your peykan seats and littered streets
Hands in your pockets
While you listen to her
Wail and wail and Veil
And you the unfairer sex
In between your legs
Your tail
Your tail
Your tail

I curse your cursors
That write letters to murderers
Your excellencies
Who stand for elections
As loyal oppositions
“It is a semi democracy”
Complete and replete
With mass unmarked graves
Paved over with glass
And steel politicide

Tehran today
Majid
28 years young
This is what cultural authenticity looks like
Royal blue
Peacock blue
Loyal blue
We hang in style
3000 thread count
Onlookers
Cheap hookers
Youtube uploaders and
Bloody freeloaders
Mobile extractors
And IRI detractors
Pixel power
Public parks
Moharebs apostates
Unite
It is the onlookers of orgiastic violence that are doing your hanging
Capturing for posterity
This moment on my son
Sony
For the Canon of 2009

Most people would just go to the cinema for drama
But you’ve burnt those too
Slowly
Slowly
We did it to ourselves
We use to stand on different pieces of wood
that were not knocked out from under us
However these are our independent podiums today
Without medals
These are our stages
With fists raised
Looking to where the skies are dotted
With bobbing listless heads
And colourful cranes

We are now independent
Esteghlal
And free
Azadi
Of so called western tyranny
I swear
Ask our stadiums
Avenues and squares
We named them over
Again and again

So
Keeps your cells to yourselves
We now know how to tie a mean knot
And how to hand weave an unforgiving god
We have our own industry of death
And no longer need to look to your celluloid screens
Or Casablanca dreams
We have our own
eroded canvasses
Sprayed with stories that
fiction could never do justice

Iran - revolution - third time is a charm

2010-11-16T23:41:00.002-03:00

"History is the progression of consciousness to freedom" - Hegel

Last year I had the opportunity to listen to professor, writer, activist, Angela Davis give a lecture at the Bloor Cinema in Toronto. Ms. Davis has been active with many movements for social change but gained notoriety with her involvement with the Black Panther party. She continues to this day to fight forms of fsacism both in the united States and abroad. Half-way through her lecture she asked the audience to name names and the obvious came up - FREE LEONARD PELLTIER, FREE MUMIA ABU JAMAL, FREE GARY FREEMAN; I yelled out FREE POLITICAL PRISONERS IN IRAN - she looked square into my eyes and said, Absolutely!

One of the points that Ms. Davis was emphasising throughout her talk was how our histories inhabit us and how we inhabit our histories. She also made an example of how the civil rights movement in the United States was never referred to as a civil rights movement by those who were active in it. They referred to it as the freedom movement. She also lamented the fact that the freedom movement became encapsulated in one man, Martin Luther King, and 'his' dream, "as if we did not have dreams". Her assertion that movements, often wrongly, become associated with one individual struck a chord with me when reflecting on the Iranian peoples struggle to free themselves from a totalitarian theocracy. When we lionize one individual we reduce our ability to make change as a collective; we evacuate our sense of power and hand it over to one individual."

When asked about who she thought had murdered her parents, who she thought had stabbed her mother seventy-two times, the daughter of the Forouhars respnded, "In my opinion it is not an individual or individuals who are the real culprits. It is a system of thought or ideology, which is behind such crimes. it isn't just a person or persons who committed these crimes or even those who gave the orders; it is the ideology behind it."
-----------------------------

theatre of the oppressed

fascism is not dead...

----------------------------------------------------------------

- Saeed Mortazavi - Head of the judiciary in Tehran (judge, jury, and prosecutor all in one...a true multi-tasker...and sometimes he even provides help to the goons working as interrogators in iran's prison system.

"I don't have any need for the law,I am the law." - saeed mortazavi

==============

Zahra Kazemi was brought into Evin at 5:40 p.m. on June 23, 2003, and between 10:25 that night and 2:30 a.m., she was interrogated by Mortazavi and a deputy. Prison records show that during her encounter with Mortazavi's crew, she was beaten and her nose and her fingers and toes were broken and crushed.

After the interrogations, Mortazavi issued a warrant for her arrest on charges of espionage...

"He said, 'every game has its rules and this lady did not play by the rules.' As Kazemi continued to vomit and faint, at times being literally dragged between prison cells, Mortazavi sent her for more interrogation by various ministries rather than provide medical treatment. As a result of her injuries, Kazemi lapsed into a coma on June 27, and her life support was removed 13 days later.==============

The Criminal Code gives Canadian courts jurisdiction to prosecute torturers even if the torture occurred outside Canada. And countries that have ratified the UN Convention Against Torture are required to either prosecute suspected torturers on their soil, or extradite them.
------------------------------
conventions and resolutions

amendments and immunity

state agents

acting without impunity

------------------------------------

DFAIT

commercial interests

supercede human needs

human rights

freedom is to be free of the need to be free

Gay and Iranian

2010-11-16T17:41:00.003-03:00

Letter to the UNHCR
Immigration Minister Jason Kenney to UNHCR rep / National / Monday, March 16, 2009
Abraham Abraham
UNHCR Representative in Canada
280 Albert Street, Suite 401
Ottawa, Ontario K1P 5G8

February 20, 2009

Dear Mr Abraham,

Re: Asylum in Turkey

My office has been contacted by groups advocating on behalf of homosexual Iranian refugees. They report that homosexual Iranians who have been granted asylum in Turkey are subjected to persecution (random beatings, harassment, etc) in the country of asylum, and that homosexual Iranians are in a uniquely precarious position vis the rest of the refugee population in Turkey. For this reason they seek faster processing of their applications out of Ankara.

I wanted to bring this serious matter to your attention. Any information you may be able to provide to us with respect to this issue would be very much appreciated.

We have also made enquiries with our embassy in Ankara with respect to this issue.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

The Honourable Jason Kenney, PC, MP
Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism
-------------------------------------------------------

The Toronto Star has provided a three part series about what it means to be gay in Iran, meaning under an Islamic system of governance, and about all the gay Iranian refugees living in Turkey and seeking asylum elsewhere.
-------------------------------------------------------
When we talk about rights, we must do so for every one, not just some of the population. The right to love - should be the most precious right anyone of us can have.

2010-09-30T13:15:00.000-03:00

W A N T E D ---------

* Mohammad Ali Jafari, the commander of the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC)
* Sadeq Mahsouli, the current minister of welfare and security, and former minister of the interior
* Qolam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, the current prosecutor-general of Iran and former intelligence minister
* Saeed Mortazavi, the former prosecutor-general of Tehran
* Heydar Moslehi, the minister of Intelligence
* Mostafa Mohammad Najjar, the current interior minister and former deputy commander of the armed forces for law enforcement
* Ahmad-Reza Radan, deputy chief of Iran's National Police
* Hossein Taeb, current deputy commander for Intelligence for the IRGC and former commander of the IRGC's Basij militia

FOR CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY

Hossein Derakhshan - 19 years to think about his own treachery...

2010-09-28T15:45:00.002-03:00

I have appeared on numerous talk shows with Hotair Derakhshan and am quite conflicted about this news as i have first hand knowledge of what a duplicitous, chauvinist, self-indulgent individual he is. Although i oppose anyone being imprisoned under this tyrannical regime, i cannot help but recall all the words Hossein wrote about Zahra Kazemi being a traitor and about her knowing "what she was getting herself into when she went to Iran." I hope Hossein stares at the dirty walls of his jail cell and is haunted daily by his own words. Words that cut at the very core of Zahra Kazemi's son, Stephan. Hossein Derakhshan made the mistake of believing that the monster he was bolstering would not one day turn around and bite him too. He was offered a job by the iranian government and went running back to serve that which he previously claimed to abhor.

i have written numerous articles about Hotair Derakhshan and am reminded of this one

http://www.iranian.com/Mohyeddin/2006/September/Derakhshan/index.html

which was a response to this....

http://www.iranian.com/Derakhshan/2006/September/Jahanbegloo/index.html

Hossein Derakhshan: much ado about nothing new

2010-09-26T00:13:00.003-03:00

It seems that Hossein or HODER has now, after being imprisoned, been sentenced to death. This is still unconfirmed but the prosecutor is seeking a death sentence. It's sad when the monster which you bolster turns around and bites you. Quite cyclical actually. No one desrves such treatment, however, I am not quite sure how to feel about Derakhshan's current predicament as I have appeared on many talk shows and panels with him and know first hand what an insipid, navel gazing, self-indulgent chauvinist he actually is.

Regardless, Hossein Derakhshan should be released unconditionally and so should all the thousands of political prisoners in Iran.

Hejab by the Sea : How our bodies became a battle ground

2010-08-25T02:20:00.002-03:00

2010-06-15T22:55:00.001-03:00

" No one can terrorize a whole nation,
unless we are all his accomplices."
- Edward R. Murrow

Limericks for the Green (Naive)

2010-06-10T16:43:00.003-03:00

MOUSSAVI IS NOT MY LEADER --

KARROUBI IS A CLOWN --

THE PRESIDENCY IS NOT OUR PROBLEM --

WE NEED TO BRING THE SYSTEM DOWN --

مرگ بر جمهوری اسلامی

The Islamic Republic's Assassins: Welcome Home Party

2010-05-18T22:37:00.004-03:00

This is the easiest way to get laid in Iran - assassinate a prime minister (Shapour Bakhtiar) and then after being sentenced to life in prison in France for murder, you get released after 18 years back into a country that has no shortage of thugs for hire.

Merci encore France!

Herald Paris on BoobQuake versus BrainQuake

2010-05-06T17:40:00.002-03:00

“Boobquake was rightly making a mockery of a comment made by a moronic cleric in the Islamic Republic,” Mohyeddin writes in a fiery post on Iranian.com. “I am not interested in being invited to join the Islamic Republic at its table; I want to cut its legs off.”

Furthermore, Mohyeddin suggests that the majority of Iranian women do not share the sentiments of the Brainquake group, while questioning whether its supporters rejected McCreight’s concept because of her ethnicity.“Is it because Jennifer is an ‘outsider,’ because she is not Iranian or Muslim and therefore should not be commenting on such subjects?” Mohyeddin says. “These insider-outsider debates have been a serious impediment in developing a universal movement for women’s rights.”

Iran: the acceptance of gender apartheid as cultural authenticity

2010-04-30T14:16:00.011-03:00

In 2005 I attended a conference in Montreal and presented a paper on The Discourse of Cultural Authenticity and the Impeding of Womens Movements in Iran - it was to be a rough sketch of my PhD dissertation and looks explicitly at the writings of some of the Islamic revolutions ideologues...Ali Shariati in particular. It also looks to see how feminism is viewed as a derivative concept, "Western", and how this assertion is made in order to bring any womens movement into disrepute. I am now building upon that paper in order to also show how the rise of a non-critical scholarship about the Islamic Republic has further impeded any advancement that women might make. What is very disheartening is that this rise in non-critical scholarship is due mostly to SOME Iranian so-called academic feminists who, a decade ago were promulgating the oxymoronic notion of an Islamic feminism (to me feminism is inherently secular and i view all religions as patriarchal constructs) and today are now touting the new recyclng program of the Islamic Republic known as the Green Movement, where ex-prime ministers clamour to become presidents and ex-presidents become Guardian council leaders; one big regurgitation every four years that is what an Islamic Republic looks like.

On another note, adding insult to injury, the United Nations has given a seat to the Islamic Republic on its womens council, despite a petition signed by Iranian women activists urging them not to allow this most perverse form of satire. A country in which women have no right to divorce, custody of their children, freedom of mobility, the right to dress themselves as they see fit, no right to inheritance; who are equal to half a man in all aspects of Iran's penal code, is now sitting on the womens council of the United Nations. The Islamic Republic has refused to ratify CEDAW based on cultural and/or religious reasons for the past thirty-one years. Meaning, somehow it is in our Iranian culture to treat women as subordinate beings. That the only thing available to us, the only woman that we are to emulate or strive to be, as Islamic ideologue Ali Shariati advised, is Fatima. Fatima, daughter of Muhammad; Fatima wife of Ali, Fatima mother of Hassan and Hussein, Fatima nothing of her own. This is what is offered to the women of Iran and now the United Nations is complacent in this. If I sound indignant it's because I am.

We all know that to see signs which display - COLOURED ONLY - or - WHITES ONLY - is wrong and morally repugnant. And yet, when it comes to women and gender apartheid all these other factors are brought into play to justify and further demean women, in the name of social mores, religion, culture, etc. For hundreds of years Southern Americans referred to slavery as being an integral part of their socio-cultural fabric and so for the past 31 years the Islamic Republic has tried its hardest, even bringing on board a lot of comprador female intellectuals who advance their agenda, to convince the international community that women in Iran are different but equal. The 'different but equal' argument comes from Islamic feminism and Islamist ideologues like, Muhammad Abduh, Ali Shariati, Sayyid Qutb,Hassan al Banna and Amin, who allocate different rights and responsibilities to men and women based on their biological make-up. This form of thinking is so base and from Schopenhauer to Shariati women's biological reality has been used to keep women out of certain positions. The noble laureate SHIRIN EBADI, who now only can speak ad nauseum about the commonalities of Islam and democracy, was actually a judge before the Iranian revolution took place and after the Islamic Cultural Revolution she and all other female judges were fired and asked to take secretarial positions, while uneducated clerics took their positions and became judge, jury and executioner all in one. Women are thought too emotional to be judges in the Islamic Republic, they are thought too arousing to walk around without a head covering or an all encompassing shroud; they cannot ride bicycles because the physical act is again arousing to men. It is high time that we begin to reject our position as the carriers of the male burden and we cannot begin to do that until we name all the ways in which we are burdened.

FAULT-LINES AND HEM-LINES: Censorship and the Brainquake vs. Boobquake Debate

2010-04-27T18:58:00.002-03:00

Recently, an Iranian cleric, Kazem Sedighi, stated that it is women’s immodest clothing which leads to promiscuity and is responsible for earthquakes and other natural disasters. The news quickly spread around the world and once again the Islamic Republic of Iran became the butt of many jokes. Sedighi, by no means a seismologist, was taken to task and his assertion put to the test by a Purdue State university student who created an event on Facebook called Boobquake. Jennifer McCreight wanted to test Sedighi’s theory and so asked women to bare as much of their cleavage as possible on April 26th, 2010, in order to see if volcanic eruptions and tsunami’s would ensue as a result of the women’s immodest dress.

A week after the call to action of Boobquake came the creation of another event, which billed itself as Brainquake. The project of two Iranian women, Negar Mottahedeh and Golbarg Bashi, who claimed that, “Everyday women and young girls are forced to show off cleavage and more in order simply to be heard, to be seen, or to advance professionally.” And so, Brainquake was formed for women to post what they are most proud of, including their CV’s and personal accomplishments, on-line as a rebuttal to Boobquake’s supposed further objectification of women. Although their intentions may have been to advertise that women are more than their boobs, Brainquake’s platform and written mandate speaks to something else; something that continues to create divisions and impede the global women’s movement.

Unlike Boobquake, which rightly raised awareness and exposed the absurdities of the ideological underpinnings of the Islamic Republic in Iran, and which was steeped in satire, Brainquake did not come about as an organic call to action against the comments of Mr. Sedighi, it was formed as a response to Boobquake, nothing more and nothing less. In fact, their statement of intent makes an unnecessary and illogical comparison between the words of Mr. Sedighi and the words of evangelical preacher and 700 Club leader, Pat Robertson. It reads:

“When Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi made his stupid comment that immodestly dressed women cause earthquakes, he of course joined fellow fundamentalist religious preachers such as Pat Robertson who have made similar claims about marginalized groups, women, the poor, third world nations, etc being responsible for natural disasters” (http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/event.php?eid=100832899962032&ref=ts

What point could Brainquake have had in making such a comparison? Was it the old – “Hey we might have our moronic clerics but you have your own lunatic preachers” – or is it that tired ailment that some of us Iranians are afflicted with which does not enable us to speak of our country without mentioning the proverbial United States of America in the same breath? It is a childish tit for tat, or in this case tit for Pat, which relegates the Islamic Republic to a non-state entity; an intellectually odious and dangerous position to take.

What Brainquake conveniently fails to acknowledge is that preacher Pat and the 700 Club, do not run the United States government. However, Mr. Sedighi’s comments are the hallmark of the regime in Iran, a system of governance that has mandated that all girls, both Muslim and non-Muslim alike must cover their hair and dress in a modest manner from the age of nine on! Let’s talk about that! Let’s talk about the sexualization of pre-pubescent girls! These are not social constructs in Iran, this is the law for the past thirty-one years. Women’s bodies in Iran are legally not their own: women have no freedom of mobility, nor freedom to clothe themselves as they see fit. Brainquake’s churlish comparison between a woman’s CHOICE to show her cleavage and FORCED hijab is irresponsible and a further slap in the face to all those women being subjugated under such misogynistic and patriarchal laws. It is as reprehensible a comparison as breast augmentation would be to female genital mutilation.

Ms. Bashi and Ms. Mottahedeh’s further promulgations include: “Mr. Sedighi and the Islamic Republic of Iran are afraid of women’s abilities to push for change, to thrive despite gender apartheid (Did you know that over 64% of students studying at universities in Iran are women?).” Do Mottahedeh and Bashi care to know that the same regime that they assert is afraid of their accomplishments repeats this same statistic ad nauseum to show how advanced it is! Mr.Sedighi never lamented women’s brains and academic activity as being disturbing to Iranian society. He referred to immodest clothing and promiscuous behaviour on the part of women; to our strands of hair, that for the past thirty one years has been branded as potent potential threats to its national security.

The Islamic Republic occupying Iran does not care how educated, ‘nobled’, statured, or employed, we become. In fact, the more educated and accomplished, the more they will claim it as a victory of the revolution and will proudly proclaim: Look what OUR women have achieved! It only cares that women in Iran continue to be coerced and violently punished into remaining the only signifying marker of this regime; the living, breathing, walking, billboard signs of its Islamization process. Mandatory veiling of women was the first imposition on Iranian society after the revolution and so it shall remain the last.

Boobquake was rightly making a mockery of a comment made by a moronic cleric in the Islamic Republic. Brainquake’s - HEY EVERYBODY WE HAVE BRAINS! – project is further unpalatable because of its pandering to a challenge that women should not even be engaged in; we should not have to sell ourselves and our accomplishments, we should not have to sell our boobs or our brains; if after more than a century of struggle for our inalienable rights we are still shouting these banal and insipid statements as women - perhaps it is us and our movement that needs a shaking at the core, and not mother earth. You see, I am not interested in being invited to join the Islamic Republic at its table; I want to cut its legs off.

In the title of this editorial I have used the word censorship, in reference to my comments having been barred from Brainquake’s event site. The comments that were erased were no different than the one’s outlined above. In fact, it was Ms. Bashi, who referred to me as a “brain dead lunatic who has too much time on her hands.” For some reason, the creators of Brainquake found it necessary to silence voices of critical engagement with their project. We no longer have to worry about governments censoring us, it is our peers who have, as Ms. Bashi put it – “reserved the right to do so” – a sentence the Islamic Republic has frequently uttered when being rebuked for its censoring of dissidents. Congratulations Ms. Bashi and Ms. Mottahedeh for becoming that which you claim to abhor.

Since the creators of Brainquake denied this Iranian woman the opportunity to say what she is most proud of on-line, I will tell you now:

I am most proud of growing up and living in a society that did not try and shame my body, and that did not fascistically attempt to shape my mind. I am proud that I do not need the written permission of the male guardian in my family to board a train to Montreal. I am proud of my Masters in Women and Gender studies from the University of Toronto. I am proud that I am allowed to ride my bicycle throughout this beautiful city and I am proud that the country of Canada, for the past fifteen years has recognized my inalienable right to go topless, should I so choose to do so. But what I am most proud of is my ability to distinguish between something that is chosen by me and something that is physically forced upon me.

I was just informed by a friend that the Brainquake site has now changed drastically and that no one is able to post on their wall at all and one the creators, Golbarg Bashi has removed her name from being the administrators of the site.

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlanticwire.com%2Fopinions%2Fview%2Fopinion%2FBoobquake-Spurs-Feminist-Infighting-3365%2F&h=12640

Centre for Iranian Studies in Toronto - Centre for the Islamic Republic in Iran

2010-04-15T02:38:00.004-03:00

The Brothers Larijani
Toronto Centre for Iranian Studies
290 Sheppard Ave W
Toronto, ON M2N-1N5
Canada

Tel: 647-350-6555
Fax: 647-350-7555
http://www.iranology.ca
-----------------------
Brother of Iran’s judiciary chief founded the “non-partisan” Toronto-based centre

by Michael Petrou on Tuesday, April 13, 2010

An organization in Toronto that describes itself as a non-partisan centre for Iranian culture and scholarship was founded by a well-connected Iranian diplomat and is funded by the Iranian embassy in Ottawa.

The Center for Iranian Studies, located at 290 Sheppard Ave. W., was incorporated in January 2008. One of its three directors at the time was Fazel Larijani, who was then Iran’s cultural attaché in Ottawa. He is the brother of Ali Larijani, speaker of the Iranian parliament, and Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani, head of the judiciary. Mahdi Shahrokhi, who works at the centre, says it still receives money from the Iranian embassy but is not controlled by it.

------------------------------------------

In 2005 I (samira) attended a conference that marked the 25th anniversary of the Iran/US Hostage crisis, during which a group of Iranian students took the American embassy hostage and held 52 Americans for 444 days. The conference had a pantheon of sponsors.

The first section of the conference was available to the general public, with registration. The second section included about thirty of us and took place in a different section of the munk centre; more of a board room type setting. The second section included Gary Sick and Larijani. I could not believe that Larijani was there and was wondering if anyone else is going to acknowledge the bearded elephant in the room. Finally, during a break, I looked around and said - "Does anyone see who is sitting at this table with us, what is going on, what is this guy doing here?" - one of the other participants, Hossein Derakhshan, said and i quote - "do you have to make this political" - to which i replied - "you are an idiot." At the end of the conference i watched in horror and disbelief as other Iranian bursary students, Bahman Kalbasi, now a journalist for BBC Persian (washington), and Nasli Kamvari, a blogger (sibiltala.blogspot.com) went over and shook Larijani's hand and grasped their chests and bowed their heads. It was so disconcerting and infuriating.

These students, a lot of them bursary students, were in many of my classes and were adamant supporters of the Islamic Republic. It was often noted by other students that these students from Iran wold spy on those of us who wold vocalise our opposition to the Iranian regime. I myself have been threatened on numerous occasions, particularly while writing for the university of Toronto newspaper, The Varsity.

In fact a couple of weeks ago, it was reported in the Australian Press, that fake students coming from Iran were spying on other Iranian students and reporting back to the iranian regime on their activities. This occured exactly at the same time as iran delaring that it is setting up special courts to deal with Iranian dissidents in exile.

Micheal Petrou has exposed something that many of us in the Iranian community have been speaking of for decades; Canada has become a haven for those high ranking officials who are now looking for a safe haven as the cookie begins to crumble in Tehran. The Mullahs have set-up camp in Toronto's Bridle Path neighbourhood------

It is now time to begin to name names
and dates and places
-----------------------------

IRAN: Holocaust Denier Named Deputy Minister

2010-03-06T18:16:00.003-03:00

Ah....the Islamic Republic making us proud once again.
Nothing surprises us anymore really....

Iran Fascism

2010-02-26T01:56:00.001-03:00

Bahai's and the Islamic Republic in Iran

2010-02-25T03:59:00.004-03:00

No post secondary education for you
A country which demands you to state your beliefs daily
in order to move or take a step is problematic;
they call that state fascistic
totalitarian and the like.
The Islamic Republic in Iran
is such a state.
------------------
Bahai's are systematically persecuted in
this type of government because this type of government
has an official religion and every one else has different laws
It begins with classification
dehumanization
It divides people up
It is more colonial than the colonizer
dividing and conquering their own.

your revolt 31 years ago
is revolting
-------------------
The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane, and devoted natures; the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement - but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders of a revolution. They are its victims.
- Joseph Conrad

Shadi Sadr versus Karroubi

2010-02-24T20:27:00.002-03:00

I have long maintained that the so-called leaders of the 'green movement' are more concerned with their own well-being after the government of the Islamic Republic falls. Feminists inside Iran, and i am not referring to the likes of Zahra Rahnevard, mouthpiece for Islamic feminism whatever that oxymoron means, and the like. I am referring to women like Shadi Sadr who indefatigueably challenges the system and its misogynistic laws. Below is an excerpt of Sadr's challenging Mehdi Karroubi's five points which was recently sent out over the virtual world.
-------------------------------------------

However, a look at similar experiences in other countries reveals that responding to continuous and systematic human rights violations, by establishing a justice-seeking process, is a pre-requisite for the realization of democracy and the only guarantee for stopping the cycle of violence. The following are all processes that have been tested and can lead a society to peace and non-violence: a social discourse concerning justice-seeking; the formation of truth-finding commissions to gain collective awareness of the reality of murder, rape and torture, and its effects on victims, their family and society; the establishment of open and public courts with objective standards for judgment.

Without these processes, “compromise,” “pardon” and “reconciliation” will only mean “covering over” and “obfuscation.” Even worse, this type of forgiveness or pardon, will never lead to reconciliation, because the oppressors will feel confident that they will be immune from search and punishment, regardless of the degree to which they violate the rights of the people and continue committing acts of brutality.

South Africa is one of the best and most vibrant examples of a national reconciliation process . . .Although we have not had this grand experience, we have learned from other nations. The responsibility of civil society activists is to learn from the successful experiences as well as defeats of other countries, in order to not let made-up interpretations of non-violence, render the people’s movement sterile. On the contrary, all of us have to do our best to prepare society for the following: Hearing the truth, however bitter; reconstructing collective-historic memory, however difficult; traversing the process of guaranteeing the prevention of systematic human rights abuses, however long. More than anything, we need to look at the mirror on a daily basis and stare ourselves in the eye and say: The demand for compromise and pardon from a mother who does not know where her child is buried or how she/he was killed, is in reality another act of suppression. Let us not forget that suppression and brutality are not only defined by truncheons that hurt the body.

Iran's so-called Reformers

2010-02-24T00:48:00.003-03:00

Yesterday Ayatollah Rafsanjani, head of the 86 member Assembly of Experts, a rag tag of unelected fascistic clerics, announced his undying support for an Islamic Republic and for the position of the supreme jurisconsult better known in persian as Velayat e Faqih. What is hilarious is that some people were amazed at his devotion and support for the system. I cannot believe that some people are prone to such fits of unreasonable hopefulness. Rafsanjani, Karroubi, Moussavi, Khatami, are all showing their true colours now and it is not green.....it is yellow! They are all part and parcel of this system and to jeopardize the foundation of this system means to jeopardize not only their own ideologies and/or world view, but also their livelihoods. Even those so-called moderate parliamentarians take an oath of allegiance to the Islamic Republic and its constitution.

This whole fiasco is nothing but political infighting. Moussavi could careless for the Iranians who have risked their lives over the past 31 years and specifically over the past nine months; he is only concerned with his own rise to power and is indignant that he did not become the president of the fascistic theocracy.

These so-called leaders need to step aside and need to decide for themselves where they will be standing when the walls are tore down; will they be buried under the rubble or will they be aiding to re-build the country!

Henry David Thoreau... Iran needs you!

2010-01-27T21:28:00.005-03:00

I read for the 28th time today...
the only constitution
that i would
want to live
my life
by and by
------------------
We need a universal refusal to obey!
------------------

If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth — certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.

As for adopting the ways of the State has provided for remedying the evil, I know not of such ways. They take too much time, and a man's life will be gone. I have other affairs to attend to. I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad. A man has not everything to do, but something; and because he cannot do everything, it is not necessary that he should be petitioning the Governor or the Legislature any more than it is theirs to petition me; and if they should not hear my petition, what should I do then? But in this case the State has provided no way: its very Constitution is the evil. This may seem to be harsh and stubborn and unconcilliatory; but it is to treat with the utmost kindness and consideration the only spirit that can appreciate or deserves it. So is all change for the better, like birth and death, which convulse the body.
- On the duties of civil disobedience- Henry David Thoreau (1849)
--------------------

Moussavi is Not My Leader - Freedom Is.

2010-01-08T00:37:00.007-03:00

REDUCE, RE-USE, RECYCLE
THIS IS THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC'S NEW GREEN PLAN
TO GIVE ITSELF A LONGER LIFE
BY MIXING OLD AND NEW MANURE TOGETHER
REPRESENTATIVES RE-PRESENTING THEMSELVES
THE WOLVES NOW IN SHEEPS CLOTHING
BEARING WITNESS TO THE SAME SYSTEM
THAT THEY HELPED BRING TO POWER

A Proposal for Iranians on civil disobedience

2009-12-10T04:14:00.008-03:00

We need a systematic and organised movement of non-cooperation.

For instance, when hitlers army invaded Denmark and wanted to round up the Jewish population and send them off to camps or Todesmarch, the king of Denmark gave a decree that all citisens of Denmark should wear the yellow star. Meaning, every Dane became a Jew and hitlers army backed off. No one in Denmark cooperated with the decrees and prejudicial laws of the third reich. As much as every one would like to blame Germany for the massacre of more than 6 millions Jews, it was the commanders, lieutenants, guards etc. of the conquered countries that cooperated with the Germans.

We must become unwilling subjects who refuse to sit in the back of the bus and who refuse to enter buildings from the back and who refuse to wear their uniforms, who refuse to be told who and how and when they can love.

We don't need special dates in a calendar, colours, limericks, or schemes, or even impetus's to do this! We certainly don't need to wait for any decrees either and our movement is not in need of a maniacal leader. We know what we want, now we must fight for it. Non-violently, cunningly, and creatively....

For instance, every Iranian student when having to declare his/or her religion in an entrance exam, should declare themselves a Bahai in solidarity with the Bahai's of Iran; who by the laws of the Islamic Republic are exempt from post-secondary education, are systematically persecuted, their graveyards desecrated, their lands confiscated, officially they are not to exist. Although most religious, ethnic and lingual minorities are not equal before the law, Bahai's, more than others, have been systematically persecuted and in many instances executed simply for their beliefs.

These are all forms of non-violent civil disobedience.

For instance, when was the last time that you heard a group of boys and girls laughing together at the corner of an avenue in Tehran. Laughing aloud! Not in a mountain villa or somewhere in the north of tehran....but in midtown in downtown. It is the unwritten laws that we must break! Not the written ones. Nowhere in Iran's penal code is it illegal to laugh aloud and in public. However, it is quite a subversive act!

For instance, women should begin to dress in costumes....as ghosts.....wearing sheets over their heads with holes cut out where their eyes are.....if they want us to be ghosts in the legal system, then we should become ghosts. Nowhere in Iran's penal code is it illegal to dress asa ghost. In fact, we are told to cover-up as much as possible. A BIG BATHROBE MIGHT EVEN DO. Every day is halloween. How wonderful...i would love to join such a movement.

my own private hostage crisis (2004)

2009-11-05T04:55:00.001-03:00

November 4, 2004, marked the 25th anniversary of the hostage crisis in Iran. A quarter-century after reactionary students seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans hostage for more than a year, I am again reminded of my own all-too-early introduction to hate, xenophobia, and violence.

On November 4, 1979, I was five years old. While I was walking home from school in a suburb of North York, with my sister and two female cousins, a group of older boys from the local junior high surrounded us and began yelling, "You eye-ranian's took them hostage...now we're gonna take you hostage!"

Newly arrived from Iran, we could not figure out what these boys were talking about, but we knew that they were becoming more agitated by our silence and confusion. My sister began shouting in French at one of the boys, who was now pulling rope out of his hockey bag, "Nous n'avons pas fait, imbecile! [We did not do it, stupid!]"

The boys were not bilingual, and, to make a long story short, and we were tied up to the fence in the back of our apartment building for about three hours, before my uncle spotted us from the balcony. All the while, my sister, who was ten years old, kept trying to explain to us that the American embassy in Tehran had been taken over. I was not even listening to her; I had begun sobbing as soon as the boys had left. I could not stop myself.

I could not understand what was happening to us, to Iran. Being able to theorize about the event, decades later, does not help my continued feelings of bewilderment and anger. I continue to try and process these events, and I continue, along with many other Iranians, to pay for the crimes of our so-called government.

While recently entering the United States, I was fingerprinted and had my picture digitally scanned. Once again I was reminded of how citizens bear the overwhelming weight of the actions of their leaders. This is analogous to the crimes against humanity that occurred on 9/11.

In Canada, I could not have been more removed from the hostage crisis of 1979, and yet I was made to feel the repercussions of what those Iranian reactionaries did. The hostage crisis not only took 52 Americans hostage, it took the Iranian psyche hostage and solidified the zealots' stranglehold on the country.

When BBC News recently interviewed Ebrahim Asgharzadeh (a transcript of which is available on their website), one of the masterminds behind the takeover of the embassy, and asked what the aim of their plot was, Asgharzadeh replied, "we neither thought of the aspects of this move, nor its implications." After a quarter century, can't we say the same about the implications of the Iranian revolution itself?

Poetry of Iranian Women

2009-10-29T00:57:00.001-03:00

My poem Entre Nous was published in this anthology
please purchase this work as the proceeds go to
fight breast cancer.

Moussavi: Criminal OR Ahmadinejad: Genocide Denier

2009-05-14T03:41:00.003-03:00

Not much of a choice again
Iranians are asked to go to the polls again
this time we get to vote between\
an x
prime minister
who over saw
overseer
the execution of tens of thousands
men women and children
politicide is the new word
or a thug who denies the mass murder
genocide
of a people
--------------------
The "generation gap"
is an important
social tool
for any repressive society.
If the younger members
of a community
view the older
members as contemptible
or suspect or excess;
they will never be able
to join hands and examine
the living memories
of the community,
nor ask the all important question,
"Why?"
This gives rise
to a historical amnesia
that keeps us working
to invent the wheel
every time we have to
go to the store for bread.
- Audre Lorde from The Masters Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House (1984)

thank you...

2009-04-21T00:28:00.001-03:00

Jomhuri e Islami...........Pizza ye Ghormeh Sabzi

2009-04-13T23:58:00.003-03:00

----------------------------------------------------
Time to vote for
the new impotent
President
of an abbreviated
abomination
I...........R.............I

achtung

2009-03-30T23:55:00.002-03:00

"Iran depends on Europe
no less than Europe
depends on Iran,"
he said.

Khorshidi's statements stirred an uproar at the conference, which was also attended by Germany's ambassador to Israel, Dr. Harald Kindermann. He stepped on stage unannounced in order to refute the claims made by the ayatollah, stressing that his country had changed its policies towards Iran.

Khorshidi served as justice minister in Khomeini's government and also as the prime minister's religious affairs advisor. He was arrested and jailed for five years after criticizing the regime, and in 1986 sought refuge in Germany. He currently resides in Los Angeles.

And another one

2009-03-23T19:57:00.000-03:00

29 years old.............
died for his beliefs

TIME HAS COME TODAY

2009-02-10T23:40:00.001-03:00

CONGRATULATIONS

2008-08-10T06:43:00.002-03:00

your demise
has become somewhat of an
obsession
preoccupation
occuption
you cheated me
out of smells
and language
a mother
tongue
you deemed my hair
here
strands
as potent
potent ial
threats to our
your
national security
totalitarian
religious
strong hold
i abhore you
and all that you
lay down for
your demise is often
wished
dreamed upon
and yet
exilic
tongue and hands tied
i know not what to do

theatre in the round

2008-02-29T08:28:00.002-03:00

there is
no proscenium stage
no fourth wall
no sotto voce
no pregnant pauses
no beats
no understudies
----------------

http://sarbazevatan.multiply.com/video/item/170

your silence will not protect you

Theatre in the round

2008-02-29T08:24:00.003-03:00

the revoultion will be you tubed

2008-02-26T06:48:00.003-03:00

and what are
we doing?
the tenured
secured
die
ass
poor
a?

while you wail
under your tents
and veils
we hold
symposiums
and round tables
mentally
masturbating
teeth chattering
and pockets
clamouring

i
m
sorry
i
apologise

welcome to my tautological circle

2008-02-20T15:34:00.002-03:00

cognitive dissonance is relative

the masses
them asses

relative
relatives
swinging from cranes
freeeeeeedumb
is relative
let me show you
how to tie a knot

it is not about
being long and down
it is about making a home
where creativity is not
regimented
washed
and denied
creativity
in life
in sexuality
that is freedom
if some choose
to deny this
it is a choice
i chose not to make
there is nothing absolute
in that
that is freedom
to be free
of absolutes...

and as far as vodka
/ wodka / water goes
i am with gogol

no accusations
only ruminations

it is not about being obtuse
abstract
ambivalent
simplicity is an art
it has been dying
ever since the rapture began
and continues

no accusations /
just ruminations
on a never ending
circular dream
that once in a while
leads to flights of fancy
it is about engagement...

not having to use guillaumets

virtual realm

2008-02-20T06:56:00.005-03:00

and what of
these words
cursory glances
tabs and shifts
back and forth?

someone had
written ornamental love
on the bathroom
door

ornamental
in script
verse
and song?

orna
mental
for you
i long
long
long

afternoon of a fawn: how ballet became haram or bourgeois in the Iran of the Islamic Republic

2008-02-19T03:02:00.007-03:00

He was born to a family of artists,
poets and writers in 1961.
Afshin Mofid was one of two children
born to the legendary Bijan Mofid and
Farideh Fardjam, the first female Iranian playwright,
prize-winning author, poet, and director.
He started ballet training in Tehran
when he was nine years old,
moving to New York to attend
School of American Ballet at 16,
and becoming the star of New York City Ballet.
-----------------
"I was nine when I started Ballet in Tehran.
I had never seen ballet before in my life.
My uncle, Ardavan Mofid,
was friends with Bijan Kalantari,
who was a ballet dancer and a choreographer himself,
and wanted to start the first
Iranian ballet company from the ground up,
entirely with Iranian dancers,
hoping to be able to perform internationally.
Of the 14 students in the newly founded
ballet program at Tehran's Music Conservatory
(Honarestan-e-Ali-e-Moosighi),
there were 12 girls and only two boys.
I was one of them."
--------------------
Afshin auditioned for School of American Ballet
in 1978 and was admitted.
--------------------
During the Iranian Revolution,
life became very hard for Afshin,
as it did for many other Iranian students.
His scholarship payments stopped,
leaving him with almost no money with which
to feed himself.
He says for many months he sustained
himself on a loaf of bread
and a small container of
orange juice at mealtimes.
He also received a letter in the mail
from the new Iranian government,
asking him to explain what he was doing in the US.

MOHAREK : OR....ODE TO A PLAYER

2008-02-17T18:36:00.002-03:00

vulnerable
available
for you
always for you
dancing with cliches
playing with prototypes
sleeping with irony
fiddling with satire

i have been
the archetype
the phenotype braced humility
raged against humanity
i have been
the bumbling fool
arousing your laughter
into a cackle
maintaining the mystique
of dionysius
the beauty of aphrodite
i have been
falling to my knees
wailing for your
mothers
raging against your
fathers

and in the end
you
the master
i
the player

and so it shall be

2008-02-15T13:43:00.002-03:00

and lead us not into temptation

2008-02-04T05:02:00.000-03:00

- Farhood Azarsina, Iranian engineering student, PhD...
MORON EXTRAORDINAIRE !
-----------------
In a sentencing submission,
Azarsina said he gave in to
temptation when he acted on
impulse and kissed
the woman's breast.kissed a woman's breasts
in an elevator
at Memorial University
Asked what happened, he said,
"I just kissed her breasts in less
than a second.
As I say, I mean,
nothing serious."
-------------
nothing serious...
-------------
IMBECILE
-------------
a lot of people (iranians)
with complexes are upset about the fact that
it was mentioned that this moron
is Iranian and have actually gone
as far as saying that this constitutes
racism
PATHETIC YOU ARE
NATIONALIST AT EVERY TURN
THAT YOU WOULD APOLOGISE
FOR THIS TURD
YOUR BROTHER
YOUR BRETHREN
--------------
he is a student from Iran
a national of Iran
if he was from Madagascar
and that was mentioned
would it have gotten
your back up?
---------------
In his defence,
the asshole actually said in court
that when he saw the breasts
he could not control himself
because they were out there
visible
---------------
Perhaps if she
was wearing a tent
like your sisters back home
this would not have
happened....
we know that's bullshit
don't we?

I Love U Henry Morgentaler

2008-01-28T10:05:00.000-03:00

"a woman should be the one, the only one, who chooses what happens to her body"
(1969)
morgentaler began to openly perform abortions in his clinics and challenged Canada's abortion laws...........if it was not for Henry and his supporters women would still be in back alleys with quacks and coat hangers
=================
A Polish Jew who
survived the Auschwitz
and Buchau death camp
(where he was tattooed
number 95077)
================

laying waste

2008-01-20T11:41:00.000-03:00

Bottomless black almonds
they say you are pickled
you are depreciating

From shiftless
vacuous posturing
‘employee’s
To dormant filial
concern
and conceit

to biological
water giver
and maternal
blood giver

PRONOUNCE

Wasted talent
Well what are you doing
WITH IT
and then what?

Excuse me
Is this about
The after rife
life?
Another way of
arriving at heaven
the secular way

RESULT ORIENTED

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Waste…my waste
Is it
recyclable?

What do you want to do?
but
You don’t belong here?

Wrong
I belong everywhere
am everywhere
have made homes
in unpronounced
unmapped places

am I marketable
you want?
I can’t
answer
I can’t
won’t
ask
such a question
how existential
perhaps I am a solipsist
so said my grade 11
creative writing teacher
perhaps there is a little girl
wanting to come out
so said my grade five
harp playing teacher
perhaps I have never
met someone like you
so said my grade 12
law teacher
perhaps you made me sob
so said my grade 13
drama teacher
perhaps you are extremely
agile and athletic
so said my grade 10
basketball coach
perhaps that was
one of the best
soliloquies I have
ever witnessed
so said my acting teacher
perhaps you should leave
this department
so said my graduate advisor
perhaps I cannot allow you
to go on stage
with that on
so said the usher
at graduate convocation
$37,487.23 was the sign

We were taught to
think critically
but not to act
on it

And what
of you?

On Exile

2008-01-16T03:43:00.000-03:00

"There is a popular
but wholly mistaken
assumption that being exiled
is to be totally cut off,
isolated, hopelessly separated
from your place of origin.
Would that surgically
clean separation were true,
because then at least
you could have the
consolation of knowing
that what you have left behind is,
in a sense, unthinkable
and completely irrecoverable.
The fact is that for most exiles
the difficulty consists
not simply in being forced
to live away from home,
but rather, given today's world,
in living with the many reminders
that you are in exile,
that your home is not
in fact so far away,
and that the normal traffic
of everyday contemporary life
keeps you in constant
but tantalizing and unfulfilled touch
with the old place.
The exile therefore exists in a median state,
neither completely at one with the new setting
nor fully disencumbered of the old,
beset with half-involvements and half-detachments,
nostalgic and sentimental on one level,
an adept mimic or a secret outcast on another.
Being skilled at survival
becomes the main imperative,
with the danger of getting too comfortable
and secure constituting a threat
that is consistently to be guarded against."

- EDWARD SAID (PP. 48 - 49) Representations of the Intellectual

you once said...

2008-01-10T07:37:00.000-03:00

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms,
numberless times,
In life after life,
in age after age forever.
My spell-bound heart has made
and remade the necklace of songs
That you take as a gift,
wear round your neck in your many forms
In life after life, in age after age forever.

Whenever I Hear old chronicles of love,
its age-old pain,
Its ancient tale of being apart or together,
As I stare on and on into the past,
in the end you emerge
Clad in the light of a pole-star
piercing the darkness of time:
You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here
on the stream that brings from the fount
At the heart of time love of one for another.
We have played alongside millions of lovers,
shared in the same
Shy sweetness of meeting,
the same distressful tears of farewell -
Old love, but in shapes that renew and renew forever:

Today it is heaped at your feet,
it has found its end in you,
The love of all man's days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life,
The memories of all loves merging with this one of ours -
And the songs of every poet both past and forever

- rabindranath tagore

TEHRAN UNIVERSITY : ALIVE AND KICKING

2007-12-17T06:04:00.000-03:00

Dream Deferred

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
Langston Hughes (1902 - 1967)

Hijab and the Fallacy of Choice

2007-12-12T02:15:00.000-03:00

- Aqsa Parvez died Monday night at Sick Kids hospital in Toronto
after her father bludgeoned her to death for not wanting to cover her hair.
----------------------------

Aqsa Parvez was found in her
Longhorn Trail home on Monday
morning without any vital signs.

Paramedics revived her
and took her to Toronto's
Hospital for Sick Children,
where she died late Monday night.

Police said they received a
call from a man who said
he'd just killed his daughter.

The victim's father,
Muhammad Parvez, 57,
was arrested at the scene.
He will appear in court
on Tuesday and face murder charges.

Aqsa Parvez's friends told CBC News
that the teen had been having arguments
with her father because
he allegedly wanted her
to wear a traditional hijab.

-------------------------
Of course the Canadian Islamic Congress and
other Canadian Islamic institutions
were to quick to respond by saying
"this is not about the hijab...
it is about teenagers being teenagers"...
said Mohammad Elmasry...the head of the
Canadian Islamic Congress
the same man who said that
Saudi Arabia is to be emulated by
all Islamic countries
-------------------------
CHOICE?

a woman's worth

2007-11-30T02:43:00.000-03:00

Leila was in a women's prison
when she heard about her own sentence
from the warden:
"I am going to tell you
something but please
do not be upset.
You are going to be hanged."

how the left left

2007-11-05T08:45:00.001-03:00

Here are some of Mohyeddin's answers.

There's a 1960s-era protest culture of "placards and megaphones" that lingers on the left, and it expects nothing more of its cadres than opposition to America. The prevailing leftist mindset continues to "exoticize" Iranian culture and clings to a naive and mistaken assumption that the Islamic Republic is somehow "culturally authentic." Many liberals and leftists tend to be infatuated with a shallow anti-imperialism that wrongly equates human rights and freedom with "western" values.

The result is a narrative that strengthens the hand of the Islamist reactionaries arrayed against Iranian democrats, and it's everywhere, from the smartly-designed pages of Adbusters magazine to the tracts that appear in The Nation. It's a narrative that conspicuously ignores Iranian totalitarianism except when its attributes might be employed for cheap rhetorical comparisons with the adversaries of the North American left.

tehran today

2007-08-02T20:47:00.001-03:00

majid 28 years old

royal blue
peacock blue
loyal blue
we hang
in style
three
thousand
thread
count
$$$$$$$$$$$
On lookers
cheap hookers
youtube
uploaders
bloody
FREE LOADERS
mobile extractors
I...R...I....
detractors
click
click
click
flashing lights
pixel power
public parks
free concerts
summer festivals
roped
tongue tied
and twisted
mohareb's
apostates
unite

it is the onlookers
of orgiastic violence
who are doing your hanging

capturing for
posterity
this moment
on my son
sony
for the
canon of
2oo7...
most people
would just go
to the cinema
for drama
but we burnt
those/them
too

majid...
28 years young
this is
what cultural
authenticity
looks like
slowly
slowly
we did it
do it
to ourselves
------------

we used to stand
on different
pieces of wood
that were not
knocked out
from under us
HOWEVER
these are our
independent
podiums today
1
2
3
without medals
and/or national
anthems
these are our
stages
with fists
unraised
looking to
where the skies
are dotted with
bobbing
listless
heads
and colourful cranes
however
we are now
independent
esteghlal
and free
azadi
of so-called
western tyranny
i swear
ask our stadiums
avenues
and squares
we named them
over
again and again

so

keep your cells
to yourselves
we know how
to tie a mean
knot and how
to hand weave an
unforgiving G_D
###############
We now have
our own industry
of death
and no longer
need to look
to your
celluloid
screens
casablanca
dreams
we have
our own
eroded canvases
sprayed with stories
that fiction
could never
do justice
###########
in
dependent
###########
i will tell you
what i will do
and what i will
not do...

i will not serve that
in which i no longer
believe
whether it call
itself my home
my fatherland
my church
mosque
or state
and i will try
to express myself
in some mode of
life or art
as freely as i can
and as wholly
as i can,
using for my
defence the only arms
i allow myself to use
SILENCE
CUNNING
EXILE

ear marked

2007-07-16T01:12:00.001-03:00

Are we to
clean up the
mess
you
left
us
with...

So that
you
can
return
to
your
north
your
cabarets
and
chatanooga's

there isn't
enough
water
in the
Caspian
and the sturgeon
have left you

NA SHARGHI
NA GHARBI
JOMHURI E ISLAMI?

what were you
thinking?

Were you thinking?

shish e ye
nay...
shab e yalda
shekast

and now
some of you
the tenured
secure
citizenized
ann-tellectuals
tell
us
to let it
run its course
as you
spin in your
tautological
circles
dizzying the
rest of us
with your jargon

talk
symposium
conference
round table
panel

petition
nation

Abbreviate it
I.
R.
I.
try
try
to make it
benign
call it
quasi-
semi-

to be continued...

sm

generations...no link to base

2007-06-01T18:32:00.000-03:00

banu

It is the unwritten laws
That bind us
That deems our strands
As corrupting agents
Of the nation
And its security

Are we willing
Participants love?

No
Not now
Let us end with that
Question

Love

In the beginning
They tethered
the tongue
of Tahereh
Clenched
Wired
Shut
The mouths
of the Bina’s
Bagged
Dragged
the Parsa’s
All the while
Howling
From the roof tops
Looking for faces
in an unforgiving
and inescapable
moon

waiting
waiting
waiting

In the end...

I never got
To meet my
Khanom joon

Again

Were we willing
Participants
Love?

Can we leave
the affairs
of the state love?

How about our state
of affairs...
when did i n i
become your enemy?

You used me
to work through
yourself

Purpose

I have no purpose

I Love YOU

I used to say it
in a different tongue

but i am
no longer
that talented

one more...

2007-05-12T05:04:00.000-03:00

i just cannot
understand
why all
are astonished
and pen
petitions
letters
addressed
YOUR EXCELLENCY

that is your
second mistake

HALEH ESFANDIARI

On May 8, officials at the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence summoned Esfandiari for questioning, arrested her without warrant or explanation, and transferred her to Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, where Human Rights Watch has documented cases of torture and detainee abuse. Prior to Esfandiari’s arrest, ministry officials had repeatedly interrogated her in their offices on Africa Street in Tehran, and subsequently in their main building on Khaje Abdollah Ansari Street.

Esfandiari, who is head of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, had traveled to Iran in December to visit her 93 year old ailing mother. On December 30, prior to her planned departure from Iran, armed and masked men stopped her taxi and seized both her Iranian and US passports. According to her husband, Shaul Baksh, she has endured more than 50 hours of interrogation. Since December, Iranian authorities have failed to replace her passport.

Agar khiar geroon mishe
Sali 3 bar geroon mishe
Agar ke bi moghadame
Mive be nerkhe khoon mishe
be joone Cameroon Diaz
Agar ke gheymate piaz
be gheymate golabiye
TAGHSIRE BAD HEJABIYE!

IRAN: GET IN THE CAR BITCH!

2007-05-10T22:03:00.000-03:00

hair
hair
hair
hair
hair
hair
fair
nair
nare
do
well
fare
scare
tear
shit
wind
sun
son
wind
down
wind
a
revolution
of
tops
and
bottoms

2007-05-09T07:25:00.000-03:00

And the conversation rises

and slowly fades into silence
And you see behind every face

the mental emptiness deepen
Leaving only the growing

terror of nothing to think about;
Or when, under ether,

the mind is conscious

but conscious of nothing—
I said to my soul, be still,

and wait without hope
For hope would be hope

for the wrong thing;

wait without love,
For love would be love

of the wrong thing;

there is yet faith
But the faith and the love

and the hope

are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought,

for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light,

and the stillness the dancing.

- T.S Eliot

HHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAIIIIIIRRRR and national security in IRAN

2007-05-08T02:48:00.000-03:00

10,00 women
ten days
and so
on
and so
on
and so
on
and so
on
.....
.....

a threat...

2007-05-03T06:53:00.000-03:00

Sae'ed Mortazavi,
Tehran's public prosecutor,
made this clear when he told the Etemad newspaper:
"These women who appear in public like decadent models, endanger the security and dignity of young men".
Mohammad Taqi Rahbar,
an Iranian MP, agreed, saying,
"Men see models in the streets
and ignore their own wives at home.
This weakens the pillars of family."

THIS IS WHAT AN ISLAMIC REPUBLIC LOOKS LIKE

2007-04-27T15:15:00.000-03:00

THE VIDEO ON THE EXTERNAL LINK
IS OF A GIRL REFUSING TO BE TAKEN
INTO CUSTODY BY MORALITY POLICE
IN TEHRAN...FOR SHOWING SOME HAIR...

FOR DARING TO HAVE SUNLIGHT SHINE
ON HER HAIR...
HAIR THAT CAN CORRUPT SOCIETY
SHEEN THAT BOUNCES OFF HER
GLISTENING LOCKS SENDS MEN
INTO A FRENZY...
=======================
you who watch
the boob tube
spectators
not spectACTORS
shifting in your
peykan seats
littered streets
hands in your pockets
while you listen
to her wail
and wail
and wail
and wail
of her veil
and you
the unfairer sex
in between your legs
your tail
your tail
your tail

Iran...as it warms up

2007-04-23T17:02:00.000-03:00

Saint June

2007-04-19T03:31:00.000-03:00

fiery, fiesty, committed, brilliant,
poignant agitator, compassionate,
ALIVE, beautiful,
funny, fun, biting,
journalist
feminist
ACTIVE
88888888888888

INTERVIEWER - Do you believe in God?

JUNE CALLWOOD - I believe in kindness. I believe it’s very communicable just as meanness is… Great consideration for one another — that’s what’s going to save the world.

JUNE 2, 1924 - APRIL 14, 2007
you will be missed...

“The beaver, which has come to represent Canada as the eagle does the United States and the lion Britain, is a flat-tailed, slow-witted, toothy rodent known to bite off it's own testicles or to stand under its own falling trees.”
- june callwood

let them eat yellow cake

2007-04-16T19:16:00.002-03:00

marie antoinette
ahmadinejad

man dat oratory listening...KIOSK

2007-04-15T16:04:00.000-03:00

"democrasi e dini ... pizza ye ghorme sabzi"

dresden...meat locker...survivor...slaughterhouse #5

2007-04-13T04:14:00.000-03:00

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center.
- kurt vonnegut

thank you for breakfast of champions
changed my life at 14...
you will b missed sweet sweet sweet kurt.

MOMMONY

2007-04-12T04:46:00.000-03:00

my grand mother is 91 in 1386
born 1916
or
1295
if you like
. . . . . .
Alamtaj Geranpayeh

IN PURGATORY DWELL. . .

2007-04-03T02:17:00.000-03:00

a feminist critique of ward churchill

chapter nine is missing,
it's setup as a suicide
by gleason after the treason
here it is
the knotted wheatgrass
singing that saga groenlandika-
unlike ratracing the masons,
brushes with the jasons-
is a spirit it fades not

~sweet helena

IRAN...Petition Nation

2007-04-02T02:54:00.000-03:00

Every other day
i receive a new petition
to put my name to...
so and so will be stoned
to death in the next few days
for acts
incompatible with moral chastity
so and so will be hung
for corrupting the earth
so and so has been
detained and has
not been heard from in three weeks
ACT NOW !
CLICK HERE !
and here
and here
and here
Cc
Cc
see?
see?
your monitor screen
will not save you
i curse
your cursor's
that write letters
to murderers
who stand for elections
"it is a semi-democracy"
complete and replete
with mass unmarked graves
paved over
with glass and steel politicide
and now...
we want the bomb
we gotta have that bomb
yeah we want the bomb

L i f E

2007-03-31T05:44:00.001-03:00

(Tahereh Qorat ul ayn) wrote the following couplet more than 160 years ago:

If I see Thou, my beloved
Gaze-to-gaze, face-to-face,
I will explain your pain
Bit-by-bit, pace-by-pace
But to see thy face,
I have become the wandering breeze
Going house-to-house, door-to-door,
Alley-to-alley, and street-to-street

and 475 other poems...
but you won't find them
on your net
or in your spider web

alphadeath

2007-03-29T14:14:00.000-03:00

entry

2007-03-25T07:10:00.000-03:00

well said...

2007-03-22T13:44:00.000-03:00

like...

2007-03-20T18:30:00.000-03:00

vernal
equinox
==== ==== =====

SPRING

new dawn

2007-03-19T07:33:00.000-03:00

perhaps...
next year

A R T

2007-03-15T03:27:00.000-03:00

4$4$ EMPIRE

- Irony/Passion –

You are reading this
and deciding whether
it is irony or passion

You think it is irony

You think it is exercising
a distancing mechanism

You think you
can escape codification

You can’t

You don’t belabor the point,
because you know that
irony is rife with forgiveness

You are lucky this isn’t passion,
because passion never forgets

You only employ
the declarative
in a parodistic context

You neutralize information
through display

You do what you can
to get what you want

You know how to locate
and stroke a tendency

You are aware of
obligatory concerns

You are a child of inheritance
but prefer not to discuss it

You sometimes like to act
like you’re not a professional

You live in a bad neighborhood
but it feels good to you

You think violence provides
interesting visual and textual material

You bypass
the correlations
between sexuality,
call to arms,
race,
property,
style,
fear,
duty,
authority,
and power

You are aware
that saying,
naming,
and pointing
are the handiest
forms of appropriation
- Barbara Kruger,"Remote Control" (1979)

REFUSE TO CHOOSE

2007-03-08T03:49:00.000-03:00

WE ARE OFTEN MADE
TO PICK A SIDE
THE BIG FOOTBALL GAME
IS ABOUT TO BEGIN
PLEASE... BE GOOD...
NIMBLE CHEERLEADERS…

ONE SIDE:
AMERICAN GOVERNMENT
IN POWER: HAS CAUSED
THE DEATHS OF THOUSANDS
UPON THOUSANDS
UPON THOUSANDS
IN THE NAME OF “DEMOCRACY”…
=====++++++=====++++++
OTHER SIDE:
A GOVERNMENT
IN THE NAME OF “GOD”
HAS KILLED AND/OR EXECUTED,
THOUSANDS
UPON THOUSANDS
UPON THOUSANDS
OF ITS OWN CITIZENS…
THESE ARE THE CHOICES
THAT ARE FED TO US…
======================
PLEASE GO TO THIS VIRTUAL
SIT-IN

SO..SO..SO..SOLIDARITY WITH IRANIAN WOMEN

2007-03-05T21:43:00.000-03:00

===========
"FREEDOM
IS TO BE
FREE
OF THE NEED
TO BE
FREE"
- from one of my favourite parliaments
of all time...funkadelic that is...
also responsible for expounding
other wisdoms such as...

FREE YOUR MIND
AND YOUR ASS
WILL FOLLOW

IRANIAN WOMEN ARRESTED

2007-03-05T18:23:00.000-03:00

tHE IRANIAN GOVERNMENT HAS ONCE
AGAIN TRIALED
TO MAKE SURE THAT WOMEN WILL
NOT AGITATE ON INTERNATIONAL
WOMEN'S DAY BY ARRESTING ACTIVIST
WOMEN...
A PREMPTIVE
STRIKEAsieh Amini,
Jila Bani Yaghoub,
Mahboubeb Abbasgholizadeh,
Mahboubeh Hosseinzadeh,
Sara Loghmani,
Zara Amjadian,
Mariam Hossein Khah,
Jelveh Javaheri,
Niloofar Golkar,
Parastoo Dokoohaki,
Zeinab Peyghambarzadeh,
Maryam Mirza,

Saghar Laghayee,
Khadijeh Moghaddam,
Saghie Laghayee,
Nahid Keshavarz,
Mahnaz Mohammadi,
Nasrin Afzali,
Tal'at Taghinia,
Fakhri Shadfar,

Maryam Shadfar,
Elnaz Ansari,
Fatemeh Govarayee,
Azadeh Forghani,
Sommayeh Farid,
Minoo Mortezayee,
Sara Imanian.
Nooshin Amhadi Khorasani,
Parvin Ardalan,
Shahla Entesari,
and Susan Tahmasebi.
=================
SOLIDARITY
IS THE POLITICS
WHICH INTERESTS
ME.
=================
The "generation gap"
is an important social tool
for any repressive society.
If the younger members
of a community view the older
members as contemptible
or suspect or excess;
they will never be able
to join hands and examine
the living memories
of the community,
nor ask the all important question,
"Why?"
This gives rise to a historical amnesia
that keeps us working
to RE-invent the wheel
every time we have to
go to the store for bread.- Audre Lorde from
The Masters Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House (1984)

WHITEY DON'T LIKE IT

2007-02-23T21:44:00.000-03:00

ROSE NORTON OF BEVERLY HILLS
kiss my iranian @##

what would sappho have said...?

2007-02-23T21:38:00.000-03:00

IRAN TO HAVE
WOMEN ONLY
ISLAND

COINTELPRO and HAPPY BLACK HIS STORY MONTH

2007-02-07T02:04:00.000-03:00

expose
disrupt,
misdirect
discredit
neutralize
========
When congressional investigations,
political trials and other traditional
legal methods of repression failed
to counter the growing movements
of the 1950s, '60s and '70s, and even
helped fuel them, the FBI and
police moved outside the law.
They used secret and systematic
methods of fraud and force,
far beyond mere surveillance,
to sabotage constitutionally
protected political activity.
Its targets in this period included
the American Indian Movement,
the Communist Party,
the Socialist Worker's Party,
Black Nationalist groups,
and many members
of the New Left
(SDS, and a broad range of
anti-war, anti-racist, feminist,
lesbian and gay,
environmentalist and other groups).
Many other groups and individuals
seeking racial, gender and class
justice were targets who came under attack,
including Martin Luther King,
Cesar Chavez,
the NAACP,
the National Lawyer's Guild,
SANE-Freeze,
American Friends Service Committee,
and many, many others.

...you have made daddy proud

2007-02-01T00:04:00.001-03:00

do these women understand that Jalal al - Ahmad
referred to Forough Farokhzad as a lewd woman
who had no talent at all and that her only talent
was that she was besharm (shameless)...and tht some
25 years later the judge who handed down Shahrnush
Parsipur's sentence also said the same to her.

NOW
WHO
IS
THE
ANTHROPOLOGISTIC
MUSEUMIZER?

who has learnt
some key phrases

you
are boring
me
PO
MO

binary
dichotomy
reductive
monolithic
deconstruct

va
va
va

while
swimming
in your
tautological
circles
===========
Women have always been used as scapegoats
and in the war on feminism, there seems to be
some strange not so new...
bed fellows.

I wonder if the authors of this text http://http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?itemid=12010 have actually ever read any of the memoirs
or if they have read any of the iranian women political
prisoners memoirs which are all too slowly
getting some coverage? Are those female political
prisoners also 'workin' for the man'? Are they also
going to be branded as women who are aiding imperialism.

When I read articles like the one linked here,
I get really depressed. WE HAVE LEARNT NOTHING!!
The moment women begin to speak...
throughout history, they are branded as aiding and abetting
the ever present enemy du jour...
in the 60's and 70's it was the immoral
and undignified Iranian woman, and today, according to
Shakhsari, Akhavan, Kia, and Bashi (Dabashi), it is the Iranian
woman writer...

HOW DARE SHE?
HOW DARE SHE SPEAK OF HER PAST LIFE
AND PRESENT REALITY
WHEN OUR BELOVED IRAN
FACES IMMINENT IMPERIALISTIC
TENDENCIES?

iran

truth

commission

every

one

will

have

voice

longer

sotto

voce

Iranian Women Political Prisoners

2007-01-29T23:10:00.000-03:00

WOMEN POLITICAL PRISONERS OF IRAN:

MEMOIRS,MEMORIES AND ART

From Scream to Scream, Dir. Pantea Bahrami(2005)

The story of a young woman

who spent eight years in jail for

her political activism in Iran.

Inspite of her confinement,

she produced more than

200 paintings and drawings

and smuggled them out.

Speaker: Soudabeh Ardavan

==========
She was charged with participating in demonstrations against the Islamic Republic. At first, she was detained, interrogated, and finally, blindfolded on the floor, and sentenced to two years in jail. There was no judge nor a jury or a lawyer. "Islamic justice" did not take more than a few minutes.
It was the most despicable time in the history of the Islamic regime. Interrogation, torture, execution were the order of the day. For the next 8 years, she would be transferred, from Evin to Ghessel Hessar prison, back and forth, from one unit to another, spending time in between in solitary confinement.
============
She remembers the first time she entered a cell. She thought she had entered a girls school. The prisoners were all young girls, in their teens. Sometimes, there were older women, as old as one's grandmother. They had apparently aided the prisoners or were family members.

Soudabeh Ardavan is from Tabriz, a former political prisoner now living in Sweden. She is in her early 40's. She spent eight years of her precious life in the Islamic regime's jail. She is also an artist who drew prison life while she was confined in a cell with other women.

=========
Through these images, drawn from the time she became a prisoner in 1981 until she was released in 1989, Soudabeh tells a story of those horrible days. While in prison, her mother had a stroke because she had thought Soudabeh was among the many executed prisoners; she could not bear the thought of it. She died at age 57, a year after Soudabeh was released.

statement on holocaust denial conference in tehran

2007-01-29T19:12:00.000-03:00

i was more than happy to sign my
name to this statement...
which will be published in the
New York Review of Books
===============
...Disturbed by this silence,
more than 100 Iranians living
in the United States and Europe,
including writers, journalists, film directors, historians, scientists, and human rights activists—
people with a very wide range
of political views—
have signed a statement
designed to show the world
that there are some Iranians, at least,
who abhor their government's
attempt to "falsify history."
"We the undersigned Iranians,"
the statement begins,
"notwithstanding our diverse
views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict"
and "considering that the Nazis' …
campaign of genocide against Jews
and other minorities during World War II
constitute[s] undeniable historical facts,"
deplore the way that the "denial of these unspeakable crimes has become a propaganda tool" of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

iranian women political prisoners 2007

2007-01-28T03:00:00.000-03:00

On January 27th, 2007, in the Imam Khomeini Airport,
Ms. Mansoureh Shojaei, Ms. Sedigheh Taghinia (known as
Tal'at Taghinia) and Ms. Farnaz Seifi who are all
reporters, were arrested on their way to India to
participate in a journalism workshop, which was being
held by the Shahrzad News website. They were all
transferred to the 209 section of Evin Prison. Before
they were transferred, officers entered the houses of
the above-mentioned and after seraching their houses,
took some of their personal belongings, such as cell
phones, computers, books and notes.

2007

2007-01-27T06:37:00.000-03:00

historiography: ahmadinejad style

2007-01-25T04:37:00.000-03:00

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19831

...Recalling that this government
has refused to acknowledge, among other things,
its mass execution of its own citizens in 1988,
when thousands of political prisoners,
previously sentenced to prison terms,
were secretly executed because of their beliefs;
Strongly condemn the Holocaust Conference
sponsored by the government of the
Islamic Republic of Iran in Tehran
on December 11–12, 2006, and its attempt
to falsify history;