satire meets tyranny

take this quote from mark twain

and mix it with last night’s daily show iran coverage & interview with Embrahim Yazdi’s son (22/06/09)

and, if you feel moved to respond to Yazdi’s advice, there’s an opportunity as an individual to voice your concern to Ayatollah Sayed Ali Khamenei via an email campaign set up last week on the Amnesty International USA, or take up the alternative actions (e.g. contacting local Iranian embassies) available your local Amnesty site.

::

Caspian Makan, Neda Agha-Setan’s fiancee, was interviewed by BBC Persia:

About payment for releasing the remains, Mr. Makan had this to say: “No specific amount has been paid at this time, although hospitals, clinics, surgeons and medical examiners have been ordered by the Iranian security services, based on various orders, not to list ‘bullet wound’ as the cause of death on the death certificate in order to prevent the families from filing international complaints in the future. I haven’t seen the release notice of Neda’s remains yet, but I will obtain it from her father in the coming days.” (via Nico Pitney on 22/06. italics my own.)

there is a lack of logic to this defensive policy that even a child could spot. this is not ‘simply’ avoidance of future charges via evidence tampering and supression of truth. in a case of domestic abuse, the use of this underlying manipulation of logic and reality on an adult, let alone a child, would be filed under evidence of psychological abuse. as bureaucratic defense, (as has been so consistently evident in Khamenei’s speech last Friday and all other attempts by authorities to deny electoral fraud) it’s nothing short of Orwellian.

but then as someone pointed out to me last night, recalling Zimbabwe as just one of so many examples, since when did the insanity of believing of one’s own lies ever stop anyone fron running a country for 30 years?

tragically, it doesn’t stop there:

12:40 AM ET — A 19-year-old shot in the head and killed during the demonstrations… and Iranian officials asked his parents to “pay an equivalent of $3,000 as a ‘bullet fee’ — a fee for the bullet used by security forces — before taking the body back.” One of the most tragic stories I’ve read in a long time, by the Wall Street Journal’s exceptional Farnaz Fassihi. (Nico Pitney)

i’ll be honest and say i read that quote and found it difficult to comprehend, such is the inhumane mindfuck this adding-insult-to-murder represents.

::

i’ve not been able to get this reader post from the daily dish out of my head. only time will tell if the reader called it right, but whatever is to come, i suspect this’ll still win my nomination for best use of motherfucker in 2009.

i find myself unavoidably reminded that looking the other way and saying nothing, or taking more interest in Perez Hilton than global hunger, AIDS, genocide, war crimes and political oppression is a choice granted to those of us who have democratic freedom.
i count myself fortunate to have the undeniable luxury of limiting my cares and concerns solely to the insignificant and peurile if i should so choose, however much that is an arguably wasteful disregard of one’s liberty and humanity.

LB

silence and last words

in a city far away someone writes tonight,

“I will participate in the demonstrations tomorrow. Maybe they will turn violent. Maybe I will be one of the people who is going to get killed. I’m listening to all my favorite music. I even want to dance to a few songs. I always wanted to have very narrow eyebrows. Yes, maybe I will go to the salon before I go tomorrow! There are a few great movie scenes that I also have to see. I should drop by the library, too. It’s worth to read the poems of Forough and Shamloo again. All family pictures have to be reviewed, too. I have to call my friends as well to say goodbye. All I have are two bookshelves which I told my family who should receive them. I’m two units away from getting my bachelors degree but who cares about that. My mind is very chaotic. I wrote these random sentences for the next generation so they know we were not just emotional and under peer pressure. So they know that we did everything we could to create a better future for them. So they know that our ancestors surrendered to Arabs and Mongols but did not surrender to despotism. This note is dedicated to tomorrow’s children…”

– an Iranian blogger

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my nasturtium shoots are thriving. thriving and the lushest green. each morning i open out my window and lean on the sill to see their progress. they never say anything, but they are thriving.

::

“… – not an ordinary silence, silence as nothing to hear, but silence that makes itself heard if you listen to it the way Pilate listens to the silence of the man with the split lip. The Gospel that is truth is good news, but before it is good news, let us say that it is just news. Let us say that it is the evening news, the television news, but with the sound turned off.

…

Truth simply is, and is what is, the good with the bad, the joy with the despair, the presence and absense of God, the swollen eye, the bird pecking the cobbles for crumbs. before it is word, the Gospel that is truth is silence, a pregnant silence in its last month, and in answer to Pilate’s question, Jesus kept silent, even with his hands tied behind him manages somehow to hold silence out like a terrible gift. “

– frederick buechner, from telling the truth: the gospel as tragedy, comedy & fairytale. (harpercollins, 1977)

::

i have a recipe card for my mother’s banana loaf. alongside the last birthday card she gave me, and the inscription to me on the inside of a bible, it’s one of few words i have in her handwriting amongst my belongings.

she would have been 62 this week.
yesterday i took her recipe and adding blueberries and some buttermilk, i made muffins. deliciously moist with blueberry burst, and sweet.

::

i told him through my tears i was angry. that i was hurt. i wanted to hate them. but that i had been thinking. thinking that i might be hit by a bus tomorrow. and i was thinking that if i could pause time just before the bus hit, allowing me one last chance, it is them i would go to, in that slice out of time before the impact, so i could make peace…

what would you tell them?, he asked.

i would tell them that i loved them. more than they would ever know. and i had never stopped. and that it was all going to be alright. i would tell them that they were precious.

he said nothing. he just nodded. because this was the truth.

::

none of us is promised a tomorrow. mindful, we might treat each with the reverence and extravagant truth of our last.

LB

yup. good people…

pete has this analogous thing (for something philosophically useful but i can’t remember what it is right now) where he talks about falling in love. it goes something like this:

you can have a list of characteristics, attributes, traits, talents or interests you want in a person and you carry it around looking for someone who’ll fit the bill. but that’s not what you fall in love with. you fall in the love with the person. that is, the human that is made up of those characteristics, attributes, traits, talents or interests and maybe a whole lot of other stuff besides. maybe you fall in love with someone other than what you thought you wanted or needed, who doesn’t match that list you were carrying round at all. when it happens, whether they match that list or not, the list doesn’t seem to matter much anymore. you can’t fall in love with a list of characteristics. what you love is a whole person.

as i see it, what you love is the ineffable them-ness.

and sometimes i get to wondering if community, or indeed church, is no different…

HFASS keeping it absolutely Real

for as far away as they may be, i’m glad Nadia and her people are there. for they tick many boxes on the list. and then there’s the them-ness.

everytime i think i’m done with it all, i am reminded of what matters most…

LB