Independence, Freedom: I like it.

Independence is Good. I like it.

virtual capitol:   http://www.aoc.gov/index.cfm

architect of the capitol:   http://www.aoc.gov/cc/art/freedom_1.cfm

Heroes HERE

or, if you prefer you can look at what is happening in a

not free country, e.g., iran:

HERE  and HERE

Iranian Women Tortured and Raped; "Death Was Like A Desire" (PBS)

The sadism and nonchalance are embittering. "Thousands of Iranians took to the streets in 2009 as part of the Green Movement to protest a disputed presidential election. The government crackdown that followed included some women being imprisoned, tortured and raped. This report shares some of their stories. It is a co-production with The Center for Investigative Reporting"
from PBS HERE
A gut-wrenching series of interviews -- transcript below
I wish the Whole World was Watching.

Watch the full episode. See more PBS NewsHour.

This is worth watching in its entirety.

The world remembers the murder of Neda ALga Soltaini, but things just get worse.
(Lybia and Yemen, but ) No help in Iran, where intelligent modern women who want democracy are begging for help.

Harsh.

excerpt:

CORRESPONDENT: She said she was taken to a secret prison.

WOMAN (through translator): When the guard was shaving my hair, he was purposely shaving in a way that would cut my skin very painfully. And he left a little patch of hair in front just to bother me. I wasn't sitting in a chair as he was cutting my hair. He was holding me from behind and rubbing himself against me.

CORRESPONDENT: Next, she was blindfolded and gagged. Then, with her hands tied behind her back, she was dragged into an interrogation room. After being questioned for only a short time, Layla says her interrogator became physical with her.
WOMAN (through translator): I was scared to death. The first thing he did was lick my face with his tongue. Then, he started touching my bra and all over my body. I was crying, "Please, please don't. I am innocent. I'm a virgin."
He said, "No, you are not a virgin anymore."

Then he raped me. After he raped me, he urinated on me, on my whole body.
CORRESPONDENT: Layla said her torture didn't end there.

WOMAN (through translator): Then I heard the sound of the whip in the air, and then felt it on my body. Then he untied my hands and he started caressing my arm like a lover. I felt something burning me just for a second. I screamed and he slapped me. He put out his cigarette on my left hand.
He put out another cigarette on my knee. I was still lost in the first and second pain when I felt another cigarette on my chest, another cigarette on back of my feet, another, another, and another, a pack of 20 cigarettes put out on my body.
CORRESPONDENT: Layla showed me the scars from the cigarette burns, but was too afraid to let them be filmed.
As the protests continued in the streets of Tehran, Layla continued to be brutalized in the secret prison for nearly two months.

WOMAN (through translator): I don't know how many times a day I was raped. It wasn't just one person. There were different people. The whole time I was there, I was telling myself, be strong, be calm. The end of this is death, and death will only take a moment.

Death was like a desire for me. I wanted to die.
CORRESPONDENT: Layla was released on several hundred thousand dollars bail, a price so high, that her parents had to sell the family business. She was never formally charged with a crime, and the secret police continue to monitor her.
Layla was one of several women who have talked with me over the past year, even though all of us can face retribution from the regime for speaking out. According to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, "Rape was routinely practiced as a matter of policy to intimidate young ordinary people from ever coming out to protest again."

Letter from an Iranian to the People of Egypt: Learn from Our Mistakes! Updates

Quick update: ElBaradei-to-US: Take-Egypt's Mubarak-off-life-support

post: "Revolution in Iran did not end well". Here is a letter from an Iranian just written to the people of Egypt.
Right here: http://www.iranian.com/main/2011/jan/learn-our-mistakes, a very thought provoking piece.
Click and read the whole thing.
Excerpt

egyptians in revolt

Here is the second part of the post: (the first is in my previous post today..)

"But our lessons:

-- Don't bring religion to government. We Iranian people unfortunately did, and the results are far worse than what we had. Fortunately, you do not have a powerful character like Khomanee who said one thing, before reaching power, and the opposite after. But still, avoid those who provide their strict religious belief as the solution, for complex problems that faces us today. Our problems today, require collective cooperation and rational thinking, and the freedom to do so. Do not let political-Islam to make you envy even these dark days of Mobark, 30 years later!
--Don't just focus on removal of that brutal, ignorant dictator Mobark, but also focus on visionary Egyptions that are NOT power hungry, focused on solving the issues, and are not hateful in their speeches.
--When the tyrant Mobarak finally agrees to step down, don't try to destroy your government and start from zero. That would only take you back another 30 years like it has done so for Iran. Every system, has bad but also very good individual that serves it.
--Don't execute or torture anyone, even those who tortured you or executed your loved ones. That's the only way to insure, execution and torture will be eradicated.

--Destruction of headquarters of Mobarks party is valid reaction to his despotic rule, but do not destroy banks, theaters. Those all belong to Egypt not Mobark.
--When you are rewriting you constitution, do not trust closed door sessions. Read every page of the documents and understand their ramifications. It is better to take the time to come up with a great document, than to hurry this process and have to redo it again in 30 years!
--Here's one we should have chanted from day 1 and we did not, Iran for all Iranian. Say, Egypt for all Egyptians! Moslem or Christian, northerner or southerners. Be aware of anyone who tries to do otherwise.

The whole world is watching and we hope you set a better example than our revolution did. We hope we can learn from you..."
more HERE is the writer's blog.
looks like interesting post titles.



Egypt: more from me HERE.



Neda, we will not forget.

FREEDOM and the media.

Egypt's Government Releases Criminals, Rapists, Murderers to Increase Chaos?

(video below) ABC news and other outlets this morning  interviewed non-government leaders in Egypt who declare that the Hosni Mubarak government has deliberately released violent criminals in order to "show" protesters what the country would be like without his strict rule.    Update HERE and here thousands of convicts flee prison
Yahoo news http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/ml_egypt_protest  reports that   


You Go Girl news sources say thousands pour out of prison

   "After days of escalating chaos, gangs of armed men attacked at least four jails across Egypt before dawn, helping to free hundreds of Muslim militants and thousands of other inmates. Gangs of young men with guns and large sticks smashed cars and robbed people in Cairo."

See how things are not always as they seem? We do not really know what is real.
What is the truth? Were the jails so weak that inmates easily "escaped"? Or does the Mubarak government see a benefit in releasing violent men into the streets so the people will say, "oops--sorry, make us safe again."



How much freedom do you give up to be Safe?

 In this country we are giving up freedoms at a quick pace; how much is actually necessary?

How strongly should our American government, Our Leaders, speak
 For The People in countries where there is oppression?
 How much KISSING UP do Our Leaders do in the name of "slow progress"
versus giving those who
ARE LOSING THEIR LIVES trying to live free
 the United States of America's Imprimatur to act for freedom?
Are there worse folks hoping to move into power,
behind the revolution??
waiting for the instability of the revolution?
Battles for Freedom:
abandoning iran
burmas-mad-men
afghanistan-native-folk
sharia-law-muslim brotherhood
american rape

By the way, Mubarak has kept Egypt under "emergency rule" for 30 years!
what is the Muslim Brotherhood?

More Info and Photo galleries:
jim lehrer interviews Biden


Is Janet Jackson in Egypt?

 Can anyone say Shah?

Here
http://www.iranian.com/main/2011/jan/learn-our-mistakes
  is a letter from and Iraninan to the Egyptians:
Excerpt: "29-Jan-2011
The world is watching the heroic uprising of the brave Egyptian people, and their just demand for political freedom, government accountability and a better living standard. Over 32 years ago, Iranian people did the same against the oppressive regime of the then Shah of Iran, for the same reasons.
My dear Egyptian brothers and sisters,
When we look back in our own lives, sometimes there are situations we wish we handled differently, had we KNOWN more, or had we been wiser. Life of a nation is no different. So I am writing to you, to share our experience, in the hope, the people of Egypt can do better than people of Iran, in dealing with their dictator, and build a better Egypt.
32 years ago, as the emotions of our nation were focused on the immediate removal of the Shah, our mind was not looking forward as to what to replace that old bankrupt system with? Today, not only are Iranian people no closer to a more accountable government nor better living standards, our social freedom along with our political freedom has been taken away from us as well.
Egyptian brothers and sisters,
Today in Iran, we don't have basic political freedom to assemble, as the Islamic Regime of Iran, does not allow freedom of assembly. Today, the Islamic Regime of Iran, does not even allow a candidate that passed its filtering process, and according to their own statistics received over 13 million votes, to hold a simple rally. How much freedom do you think an Iranian have today? Today, we do not have political parties. Even political factions are not tolerated within the Islamic regime.

My dear Egyptian brothers and sisters,
In spite of Iran's vast natural resources, many in Iran live in poverty and those who ask for accountability, are persecuted. So to flee Iran, appears to be the main option. As a result, some of the best and brightest talents of Iran, lives outside Iran, contributing to the host country who sheltered them instead of their own! MORE

Pictures from above link Lehrer intervews Biden

Neda Soltani We will not forget!

Neda Soltan Angel of Iran

The Media and World Struggle

U.N.?

US media parties with the Prez while Egypt Burns?

(gripe grype. what were you doing, writing concerned notes to your congressperson?)

i hope our government is  well on top of this lil egypt thingy

I liked the way Hillary Clinton did not let the press put words into her mouth this morning. (Yes i watched the stagecrap today as i needed the sleep)

Biography | Fiction | Paulo Coelho Fights Oppression With Horrible Faux-Aspirational Motivational Poster Literature. Not That, You Know, I Dislike The Works Of Paulo Coelho Or Anything.

Paulo Coelho has been banned in Iran. This places me in an unfortunate position, seeing as I have a great dislike for the works of Paulo Coelho, and have no desire to see his global domination or his image as some kind of saintly, aphoristic guru of personal fulfilment get any bigger than they already are. I simply don’t think the world has any need of more sage advice like “There is suffering in life, and there are defeats. No one can avoid them. But it's better to lose some of the battles in the struggles for your dreams than to be defeated without ever knowing what you're fighting for.” Or other rip-off, faux-individuatic fables like The Alchemist. I don’t like his self-help brand of enlightenment. I don’t care that he escaped from a mental asylum three times or that he dwelt in the Amazonian jungle for years. None of this necessarily gives you unique insights into spirituality and life. Dostoyevsky started writing great literature after being publicly humiliated and sent to prison; Jeffrey Archer didn’t. And now Coelho pops up and starts being a symbol of great art struggling against a suffocatingly oppressive regime. Just perfect.

I HATE YOU SO MUCH.

Why must flawed writers be allowed to become something bigger than themselves in an important and moving cause? All the Ayatollah needed to do was print a couple of pages of literary criticism explaining that Paulo Coelho had been banned in order to prevent the people of his country being exposed to trite mysticism and self-important posturing, and he’d have won the battle. His predecessor could just have easily have explained that Salman Rushdie got that fatwa because The Satanic Verses was clunking, overlong and on-the-nose.


Pardon my immense bad taste. I know, I know, it's witty and entirely appropriate satire, but it's making me cringe. Let’s try and put that behind us and look at the mechanics of the thing. Coelho presumes that he’s being censored because he’d posted on social networking sites showing support for his Iranian editor and anti-government activist, Arash Hejazi. Which seems like…well, a very small thing, even for that infamously prickly administration.


So then we’re looking at a future where ‘controversial’ posts in social networks can not only have significance for an individual’s watchful employers…but another nation? I refer you to the Icelandic MP’s Twitter problems with the US over Wikileaks. Part of the wonder of the Internet, I suppose – I can now irritate whole governments overseas from the comfort of my desk.


Oi, Ahmedinijad! You smell! Also, your regime is, like, tyrannical and out-dated! Take that!

Heheheh.


Coelho’s response was to say that he’d put all of his books, translated into Farsi, available on the Internet for free. Which cheered me up immensely, as it meant that nobody who spoke Farsi would ever have to buy a Paulo Coelho book ever again, thus lowering his global sales.

I was going to post a picture of an Iranian bookshop here, along with a witty caption like 'We can burn everything in the 'Philosophy and Self-Actualisation' section! But I couldn't find one on Google. So imagine I found one, and look at these cute cats instead. The entire Internet seems to be composed of pictures of cute cats these days. Probably a cat plan for global domination. It's the sort of thing they do.

Okay, enough of the Paulo Coelho bashing. If he goes through with it, loath as I am to admit it, this will be a fascinating and cheering undertaking. When the vast majority of books have been published online for free in the past, it’s been out of cunning marketing, desperation (online unknown authors - big up to you, ladies and gents. Big up to you.), or a sense of scholarship with older titles. This is an author planning to publish his entire works online, simply so that they may be read as they were intended; so that, in one tiny area, the fog of censorship may be lifted.


I’ve spoken before – too many times, probably, with reference to Wikileaks – about the practicalities of the Internet as a tool for politics, and in particular political activism. Its ability to be moulded by tyrants as well as by revolutionaries is still uncertain (could Coelho’s online works be censored by Iran? ) but the intent, at least, is a pleasant reminder of the power of the unreal – books and the Net – in breaking through to the real, and making a small, potent difference.

Jon Ware
Soon To Be Banned In Iran