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Iran December 27, 2009

Posted by fleshisgrass in conflict, democracy, religion, rights.
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The Contentious Centrist’s blog has this strap:

“Civilization is not self-supporting. It is artificial. If you are not prepared to concern yourself with the upholding of civilization — you are done.” (Ortega y Gasset)

Definitely something to live by, and the reason so many hundreds of people are in Iranian prisons as I write, why others are bleeding and others, dead.

Mehdi Khalaji on Iranians’ fight to wrestle religious authority from the ayatollahs, which will intensify in the coming two months of religious observances.

See Kellie’s links one of which is to Mod’s piece.

Photo-blogger Arash Ashoorinia, scroll down for the permalinks.

Revolutionary and other socialists signal their narrow concerns.

Technology commentators say that blogging doesn’t count – that only street work counts. But it’s not true that moral support is useless. If I were risking my life, it would encourage me to know that writers, even vanishingly minor ones in the bosom of comfort, were noticing. And watching Iranian dissidents is also about our own state of preparedness and our own defences, as Contentious Centrist might agree.

By comparison the mobilisation to purchase Rage Against the Machine depresses me, and not only because it was and remains such a pathetic, futile and nauseatingly macho-puerile pop song.

Sweet naustalgia October 1, 2009

Posted by fleshisgrass in Barkingside, conflict, food.
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Barkingside High Street has a new addition: Mr Simm’s Olde Sweet Shoppe, ‘confectionary specialist’ est. 2004 but posing (badly, incomprehensibly) like it was 1874. The livery is nauseating and is flatly contradicted by the modern business and management talk on the website. Phoney and cynical. These are small transgressions though and I will be making regular selections from the boiled sweet jars.

More boiled sweets: I had  family over and for dessert decided to follow an Iraqi recipe for pumpkin pudding. I made a light caramel and basically cooked some custard marrow in it along with a squash of indeterminate species (they cross fertilise at any opportunity), served up with (soya) yoghurt and mint to my disappointed parents, brother and cousins. My advice to you is don’t do that. It was grim. I couldn’t even stomach it when I was hungry the next day.

In other news there’s a lot of bad stuff going down. Iran is simmering, The Sun is bandwagoning against Labour with its own unique brand of self-righteous spite, they’re starving in East Africa, being beaten in Guinea (for which news media outlets seem to be relying on just one correspondent, Alhassan Sillah), the South Pacific earthquake makes insects of humans, and single issue academics unite to kill more fish.

The world is a bear pit, but it’s impossible to despair with confectionary tucked in your cheek viscously coating your analyses. Keep yourself in sweets, give to charity, make efforts for liberating and protective social change, hope for a peaceful death.

Update: I was at the bottom of the High Street on Saturday and it occurred to me to pay my first visit to the new shop and see if I could buy a sugar mouse. As I approached I could make out a seething mass of kids and bikes in the distance. What with the idea of a sugar rodent and the swarming children, I found myself thinking of lines from Robert Browning’s The Pied Piper of Hamelin:

There was a rustling, that seemed like a bustling
Of merry crowds justling at pitching and hustling
Small feet were pattering, wooden shoes clattering,
Little hands clapping and little tongues chattering.
And, like fowls in a farm-yard when barley is scattering,
Out came the children running.
All the little boys and girls,
With rosy cheeks and flaxen curls,
And sparkling eyes and teeth like pearls,
Tripping and skipping, ran merrily after
The wonderful music with shouting and laughter.

Suffice to say I could hardly get in the door, so the sugar mouse is on hold.

Conflict and democracy – quick international news round-up August 6, 2009

Posted by fleshisgrass in conflict, democracy.
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Honduras:

Iran

Sri Lanka

Burma

  • The legal and political system is on trial alongside Aung.

International

I ran out of time, see?

Green Thursday takes support for Iranian freedoms offline today, plus Persepolis 2.0 – t July 9, 2009

Posted by fleshisgrass in conflict.
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Via Harry’s Place:

Please Join us 9th July

Its another big day tomorrow. The 10th anniversary of the student uprising in Iran. The student protests in 1999 spread to 19 cities and went on for 6 days. The uprising was brutally crushed but it was the beginning of a new dawn. It gave us hope that change was coming to Iran. That despite all the propaganda machinery of those who consider themselves the ‘Representatives of God on earth’, the young Iranians had not been duped, and they had not given up. They were as determined as ever to bring about the 100 year old struggle of the Iranian people for democracy and freedom of speech to fruition.

‘Freedom of Thought, Forever, Forever’ Was the main slogan of those youngsters who had risked their lives by joining the protests in 1999. Ten years on now, the struggle is much more widespread. Now its every section of the Iranian population. The people of Iran deserves your international support.

Come and join us outside the Islamic Republic embassy in London, tomorrow 9th July, in London after 5:30 pm. Let the forces of darkness know that the freedom loving people of Iran are not on their own.

See you tomorrow at: 16 Prince’s Gate, SW7. The nearest Tube station is South Kensington.

Victory to the freedom loving people of Iran.

Help them enjoy the same freedoms you enjoy.

Back online again – via Shiraz Socialist, Iranian graphic novelist Marjane Satrapi in the New York Times and the recent and freely downloadable graphic novel Persepolis 2.0 (see Spread Persepolis). See also the Flickr slideshow (which WordPress’ free service currently won’t let me embed).

At Iran Body Count the poor, brave Azadi Eshgeman’s works unsensationally to make sure that nobody’s death goes forgotten.

Iran, the dead, and the withered June 30, 2009

Posted by fleshisgrass in conflict, democracy, rights.
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I found a blog which names the dead of Iran’s post-election riots. I wonder if we can find out any more personal about these people, to remember them by, other than that they rioted and were killed, sometimes after torture.

The blog’s author comments on another blog:

“Dear Azarmehr, the dead and injured are innumerable. I set up the site http://iranbodycount.blogspot.com and I just don’t have the time to post all the killed and injured, all photos and videos, they are soo much!!! I could do it all day and they won’t finish!

This is worse than anything before.”

Bob’s recent post on Iran and the left is depressing to the extreme, but perhaps the link to formerly imprisoned Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky will indeed prove prescient

For Iran – on Wednesday 24th June wear black to commemorate and green for hope June 22, 2009

Posted by fleshisgrass in conflict, democracy.
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In Iran things are the opposite of subsiding. We learn that the election was rigged, with more than 100% turnout in many regions. This assessment is based on the Iranian government’s own data. They are a living insult to their people, and they are not even attempting to hide this:

  • In two conservative provinces, Mazandaran and Yazd, a turnout of
    more than 100% was recorded.
  • If Ahmadinejad’s victory was primarily caused by the increase in voter
    turnout, one would expect the data to show that the provinces where
    there was the greatest ’swing’ in support towards Ahmadinejad would
    also be the provinces with the greatest increase in voter turnout. This
    is not the case.
  • In a third of all provinces, the official results would require that
    Ahmadinejad took not only all former conservative voters, all former
    centrist voters, and all new voters, but also up to 44% of former
    reformist voters, despite a decade of conflict between these two
    groups.
  • In 2005, as in 2001 and 1997, conservative candidates, and
    Ahmadinejad in particular, were markedly unpopular in rural areas.
    That the countryside always votes conservative is a myth. The claim
    that this year Ahmadinejad swept the board in more rural provinces
    flies in the face of these trends.

For those far away from Iran, there is Green Wave Global day Wednesday 24th June – wear black to commemorate and green for hope. That’s all you have to do – but it would help to take a picture, post wherever you post these things, and tag it intelligently. It seems small, even pathetic, but it will be a comfort to Iranian democratic reformists whose governments will try to criminalise them and make them feel alone.

Supporters of Palestine? January 16, 2009

Posted by fleshisgrass in Palestine, conflict, national liberation movements.
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Not in any positive sense. What have they achieved?

Viewing the conflict wrong. See Harry’s Place and Engage for (give or take) the three weeks previous to this date for the particulars. Nothing they do seems to have any impact on the occupation. But there are nasty side-effects.

Expressing themselves, but with futility. Is it this futility and outrage combined which leads to terrorising Jews?

It’s hard to know how to respond. Where does this go next?

On Gaza January 14, 2009

Posted by fleshisgrass in conflict.
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I’m afraid this post is virtually linkless. Which is a shortcoming since it touches on the need for evidence in punditry. Been mostly talking and thinking about Gaza all day, for weeks. And for weeks, pictures of the dead, the grieving and the bomb-wracked streets. A photo journalist posted on Frames of Reality a picture of children peeking from behind washing hung out to dry on railings in Gaza. Some of them were smiling. She has always taken pictures of children. Recently the children have been dead. And why shouldn’t she? She sticks up for Hamas these days. (I know that’s an anecdote.)

Any thoughts on Gaza should be framed by who is dead and who is at risk. I think that it’s clear now if it wasn’t before – in a head to head at this time between Israel and Hamas, Gazans are most vulnerable. I’m not surprised that people are horrified by the humanitarian situation and side with the weak and vulnerable against the side with the power. And I’m not surprised that this taking of sides is played out on campuses, trade unions, political groupings all over the world. Gazans need people fighting their political corner. At the same time, those people need to think critically about the situation, and in order to do that they require more than simple compassion. I deplore the thinness of the arguments, the poverty of knowledge among the far left supporters of Palestine, and the poverty of judgement which follows. But then, they are told that Israel has no possible defence, that our response should be manifest already to anybody with a conscience. And so the protest is fuelled by huge amounts of vitriol, and this is what is so strange about these Jekyll and Hyde British activists – they are so very cautious about the ongoing conflicts in Sri Lanka, Darfur, Congo, and so frothing-at-the-mouth livid when it comes to Israel. I can understand it in Islamists, because it’s a central tenet to hate Israel. But British Socialists? Spare me the orgies of post-colonial guilt.

But don’t just look over there. Look also at Gaza. Face what is going on, and understand the difference between what they have there and a dignified, secure existence. This means something in itself, and it means something in the pragmatic terms of Israel’s security.

That is practically all I know. I’ve had a bit of an identity crisis – not my own identity but that of my Gaza pundits. When you – as somebody trying to make sense of what is going on – are confronted with analyses which are not only disagreeing on interpretation but so contradictory on basic facts as to be mutually exclusive, then the usual measures for checking the reliability of a piece let you down and you have to go on gut feeling. Basically, you believe what you want to believe.

Of course this is utterly perilous, considering the looming antisemitism not just in Britain but all over the world these last few weeks. In so many minds Jew-is-Israel-is-Zionist. So, worried about believing simply what you want to believe, you evaluate your pundits in terms of what you think they want, themselves, against what you want (or think you ought to want). It becomes about being a fan or an anti-fan. I don’t like that. Only the other day I, defending pseudonymity at an event about identity on the Web, stridently declared to about 30 people that on the Web only ideas had to matter. How could I have forgotten about the contradictions which are submitted on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and how life is too short to fact-check?

Peace and security for all, based on a multilateral accommodation, is what I want. We should read more John Strawson, for example. Like all lawyers, he has a commitment to evidence-based opinion – something I really like in my pundits. And he seems like such a kind man too. I would be so interested to read his answer to a question I saw asked on a discussion forum – does he think that international humanitarian law is good law, in its detail? I like what Marwan Muasher says too. He has been party to so much negotiation. I have his book The Arab Centre. You can hear a podcast of him at the RSA. His voice is stunning (he sounds like he looks like King Abdullah, but in actual fact he’s more Rowan Atkinson). He is watching the Arab moderates buckle under the pressure from the extremists, because they put so much of their effort into the peace process with Israel and so little into Arab civil society that when the peace process came to nothing they had little to hold up to the Arab people and say “Look what we have achieved”. They are weakened. But seems to me that they are Israel’s biggest ally. Israel should try to look after them – give them something. If Israel could have allowed Mahmoud Abbas to take credit for the withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, for example.

Also I commend those at Engage and Harry’s Place and Z-Word for insisting that when we protest on behalf of Gazans, we do so with the well-being of Jews in mind. Bad news from Israel and Jews catch it – in not dissimilar ways from how Muslims caught it over 9/11 – except the Left defended them. If you don’t understand what this political responsibility means, go read those blogs. One on Harry’s Place – Five Comments. One from Engage responding to Naomi Klein.

The news tonight got very strange. Tonight on BBC Radio 4’s 10 o’ clock news included an astonishing interview with a kind of Egyptian Lloyd Grossman explaining why Egypt was maintaining the blockade of Gaza. I think that to ask this is long overdue. His response was various, including worries about the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s intermediary status and ending with the observation, basically, that Egypt wanted Palestinian facts on the ground in Gaza and speculating that if they opened the border Gazans would disperse into Egypt and Israel would move in. Astonishing. Dershowitz was on Newsnight and on the attack, in apposite ways. Scobie, on the international legal case against Israel, was sober and a good advocate. But Dershowitz is right. Britain went to oust the Taliban and Baathists, and escaped the ICC with far more children dead. Less of the orgiastic about reporting Gaza tonight. Perhaps, in the manner of all assaults on Gaza, it’s going stale for everybody except Gazans, Israelis – and Stop The War who are fantasising about the rebirth of the mass movement and new opportunities to preach Stalinism at larger groups of people. If that lot ever get into power I’ll strangle myself like an unwanted kitten.

Here to end (and forgiving his link to Pappe) is Gabriele Marranci, anthropologist of Muslim communities, a reluctant commentator writing sadly that bad politics requires blood.

For some links I’d also have posted, see Bob from Brockley and his invaluable filter service – two posts.

PLO’s historic message to the Israeli people November 24, 2008

Posted by fleshisgrass in Israel, Palestine, conflict.
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See Gush Shalom. I’m not in a very good position to weigh up the terms of the peace agreement but if it’s acceptable to senior Kadima ‘realist doves’ like Shimon Peres, that means a lot. What I find significant is that the PLO are speaking to the Israeli people. This is beautiful.

Haaretz may have taken the wind out of its sails though:

THE DAY before yesterday, two documents appeared side by side in Haaretz: a giant advertisement from the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and the results of a public opinion poll.

The proximity was accidental, but to the point. The PLO ad sets out the details of the 2002 Saudi peace offer, decorated with the colorful flags of the 22 Arab and the 35 other Muslim countries which have endorsed the offer.

The public opinion poll predicts a landslide victory for Likud, which opposes every single word of the Saudi proposal.

THE PLO ad is a first of its kind. At long last, the PLO leaders have decided to address the Israeli people directly.

The ad discloses to the Israeli population the exact terms of the all-Arab peace offer: full recognition of the State of Israel by all Arab and Muslim countries, full normalization of relations – in return for Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders and the establishment of the Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as its capital, in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The refugee problem would be solved by mutual agreement – meaning that Israel could veto any solution it considered unacceptable.

More at Gush Shalom. For some justifiable, sharp griping about the main political rival to Israeli peace-makers in the up-coming general elections from an Israeli voter (and I will play along with Snoopy the Goon by not oxygenating him with keyword publicity) see Simply Jews.

“We are all Zionists now” November 17, 2008

Posted by fleshisgrass in Israel, Palestine, art, conflict.
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Have a careful read of Ami Isseroff’s Swiftian piece Punishment for Self Hating Anti-Israel Jewish Traitors on ZioNation (first seen on Bob From Brockley)

It is a smart piece but it will only work for the initiated and it’s too good to keep just for them, so explanation if necessary:

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