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'Courageous' Women Front Iran's Resistance
The brutal death of the young Tehran woman Neda Agha-Soltani continued to prompt revulsion inside and outside Iran yesterday, but it also drew more attention to the role the women's movement has played in the current uprising.
Neda Agha-Soltani, 26, who was shot dead in Tehran on June 20, 2009, has become an icon of Iran's post-election demonstrations. Her final seconds of life were captured in a widely distributed Internet video. (FLICKR/REUTERS) "We have seen courageous women stand up to brutality and threats, and we have experienced the searing image of a woman bleeding to death in the streets," U.S. President Barack Obama said at a White House news conference yesterday, noting the recent events in Iran.
"While the loss is raw and painful, we also know this: those who stand up for justice are always on the right side of history."
The 26-year-old woman, who is widely known simply as Neda, was shot dead Saturday near the scene of clashes between pro-government militias and demonstrators who allege rampant vote-count fraud in the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Her final seconds of life were captured in a widely distributed Internet video.
"It's heartbreaking," Obama said of the video. "I think that anybody who sees it knows that there's something fundamentally unjust about it."
Since the first embers of the pro-democracy demonstrations in Iran flared 10 days ago, women have been at the front of the battle line. Photographs show them confronting security forces and urging others in the crowd - many of them men - to press forward.
"There is an unfortunate distorted image of Iranian women. Everybody (in the West) is surprised at what's happening in Iran because they have this image of women victimized by their state, by their husbands," said Farzeneh Milani, a University of Virginia professor who has studied the Iranian women's movement for three decades.
"The truth of the matter is that the women's movement in Iran goes back to the middle of the 19th century."
Women have played a role in each one of Iran's cultural spasms. Many of the pro-Islamic activists during the 1979 Islamic Revolution were women. But the current reformist movement is a reaction to government measures aimed at pushing women to the sidelines of public life.
In 2005, the regime began a modesty campaign, the goal being a stricter enforcement of veiling.
"I call it gender apartheid, the separation of men and women in all spheres," said Shahrzad Mojab, an activist who fled Iran in 1983 and now teaches at the University of Toronto. "It really has been building up over the last 30 years."
As it followed a period of relative liberalization under former president Mohammad Khatami, the modesty campaign provoked a backlash. In 2006, a demonstration of women in Tehran was attacked by security forces. That spawned the so-called "one million signature" campaign aimed at reversing the new laws. Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi is one of the leaders of that movement.
Another key figure has been Zahra Rahnavard, wife of opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi.
"(Rahnavard) has been a major force, sometimes much more important than her husband," said Gholam Reza Afkhami, of Washington's Foundation for Iranian Studies.
Much of the current network has blossomed inside educational institutions in large cities. Despite efforts to marginalize them, Iranian women still make up 65 per cent of all students at universities.
"Iran must be the only country in the world that's thinking of affirmative action for men," Milani said.
After giving the resistance reason to organize, the regime went further last year. It attempted to ease restrictions on polygamy and reduce the tax traditionally paid by husbands to new wives. That drew many conservative Iranian women, those who had supported the regime's strict moral measures, toward the reformist movement.
In the past days, we've begun to learn how potent a force the government has unwittingly created.
"(Women) didn't set the agenda in 1979," said Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, a professor at the University of Toronto.
"Today we are seeing what is historically the first national movement with a leadership that is predominantly female. Women are running this resistance."
While the movement is vast, Neda has become its public face.
In an apparent effort to deflect attention drawn by the killing, state-sponsored Iranian TV yesterday said that Neda had not been shot by a bullet fired by security forces. It also said that the filming and swift spread of the video of her death suggested the incident had been staged.
70 Comments so far
Show AllAn interesting aside, Actress Catherine Bell lived in Iran with her mother after their parents divorced. DEeciding that Iran's brand of male chauvanism was too much, they moved to the USA.
We live in a Wag the Dog world these days. No telling who did it, but if it was not security forces why didn't security forces go after who did?
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We are a little more subtle in the way demonstrators are subdued in the United States when we protest stolen elections. We don't get media coverage of people getting tear gassed and beaten.
Yep.....that bird that fell in Samoa was the West's fault too.......come on Rich, blaming every thing on the US and the West is a bit far fetched.
Calling an election using paper ballots after 3 hours? Could be a bit suspect I believe. I don't have a clue if it was stolen or not, I'd say probably not, but Ahmadinejad and the ruling elite of Iran have demonstrated just how free their society is and what they really are. Anyone can see that.
Canadian elections are called using paper ballots after three hours. (Indeed often less)
You do not have to count every ballot. If after half the votes counted, one side as a 2 to one lead then it very likley the side with the lead wins and the margin of victory remains 2 to 1.
In my opinion, given that the margin of victory the same as the last election and that the proclaimed winner was strongest amongst the same people AND given the polling done all suggesting the same margin of victory, the vote count was legitimate.
This does not mean that I feel a Theocracy that keeps women subjugated is the type of Government I would agree with.
But then neither is a Plutocracy.
Actually, I agree with you, but Iran not being Canada it might have served them better to have waited a bit to lend a bit more decorum to the proceedings considering the conditions leading up to the election. (and I should have put it this way in the first place)
I felt he probably did win for the same reasons you gave. People seldom bite the hand that feeds them.
See the link I posted in my reply to GwNorth.
That was an interesting analysis. It probably wasn't the land slide they were saying, but I still feel he more than likely got the majority of votes. Do you believe he did not win?
The most important thing from all this is the fact that the people in the streets obviously represent a much larger faction of people. It may still be a dictatorship, but cracks are starting to show.
Thanks for the link.
I don't know who won. And don't pretend to know.
That's the only honest thing to say. Here's another perspective on the results:
http://www.counterpunch.org/amin06222009.html
That is interesting. I'm not convinced by the claim that just because ~63% of voters this time voted for Ahmadinejad this time, and ~63% of voters voted for Ahmadinejad last time, the people who voted for him are the same. Which is what Counter Punch claims.
But, the analysis of the official results by Ansari claims that while Ahmadinejad's RELATIVE vote totals, ie percentage, might not have increased, his ABSOLUTE totals did. By about 13M votes than all of the conservative candidates, including himself, previously.
And Ansari does claim that according to the official results, there were indeed swings to him Ahmadinejad.
"In my opinion, given that the margin of victory the same as the last election and that the proclaimed winner was strongest amongst the same people AND given the polling done all suggesting the same margin of victory,"
Nope. I posted this before, but I guess I will have to post it again. And as many times as is necessary:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
commentisfree/2009/jun/22/
iran-election-voters-numbers
Some excerpts:
"Turnout may have been high across the board, but the just over 100% recorded in the conservative strongholds of Yazd and Mazandaran is particularly striking."
"Ahmadinejad claims to have gathered 13m votes more than all three conservative candidates combined managed in 2005. If true, this would be the biggest increase in a vote since the birth of the Islamic Republic,"
"to have increased their vote by 113% would be quite spectacular."
"For the numbers to add up, in 10 out of Iran's 30 provinces, Ahmadinejad would have had to win the votes of all those who did not vote in 2005, all those who voted for the centrist Hashemi Rafsanjani in 2005, and up to 44% of those who voted for reformist candidates that year."
"Instead, it seems Ahmadinejad recorded many of his greatest victories in rural, often ethnic minority, provinces that formerly supported the reformist cleric Mehdi Karrubi. Rural and ethnic minority provinces (contrary to much popular opinion in the west) have traditionally voted against conservatives. Most notable of these was Karrubi's home province, Lorestan, where his 2005 tally of 55.5% was cut to just 4.6%, with an overall increase of 296% in the conservative vote. In a province with a long history of supporting ethnic Lors like Karrubi, this is even more surprising. Ilam, Khuzestan and the crucial province of Fars all saw huge swings from the cleric to Ahmadinejad."
You may be a bit confused, or maybe you don't express yourself accurately enough. The media "call" (predict) a winner after a clear pattern evolves. And yes, sometimes quite early after the polls close, the pattern is clear enough (given the analysis of historical patterns, etc.) that a network will announce what is essentially a prediction of victory--which usually turns out to be correct.
But the agency that looks after federal elections COUNTS ALL THE VOTES... EVERY LAST SINGLE VOTE (so that an accurate total is available as soon as the next morning, or later on that day).
What is happening in Iran, of course, is that there is a strong movement of youth and well-to-do people in Teheran (and other major cities) who want the priests and their strict Islamic crap off their backs. The defeated candidate gave voice to that movement (whether or not he could have accomplished anything to liberalize the administration is doubtful) and provoked hugh demonstrations that gave a clear indication that he had real support. But was that just noisy urban youth, and not really as representative as some would have wished? Other than in the major cities, the conservative faction is reported to be way more popular than the liberal movement of the cities.
Remember that Canada (and to a lesser extent, the US) have democracies that work to a certain extent. Iran has a theocratic dictatorship, without any real press freedom, or an election agency with the kind of independence you have in Canada, for instance. So who knows....
"The protests have nothing to do with women's rights, nor with democratic rights."
Nonsense.
You're assuming that the protests are simply about one candidate over another. Some are there protesting about the election, most are protesting about much much more.
And what national standing did Obama have to publicly denounce the 2000/2004 elections? None. There is no reasonable expectation for him to have done anything about them.
Back in 2004, Obama was just a state senator in a pretty regular state, one of probably over a thousand state senators in this country. He actually could have spoken out about it, and you wouldn't know about it, again, because he had no national standing back then.
he had plenty of national standing, having worked for kissinger directly after grad school. obama was selected for his current post. harvard classmates comment on obama's slipperiness in not taking stands on divisive issues. obama is just another fraud, perhaps even more dangerous than the bushes. cf. the obama deception: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAaQNACwaLw
Right. But why did he not press for human rights/elections during his recent trip to Saudi Arabia and Egypt? Sorry, I forget, they are our "friends."
Elections do not mean democracy. If there are no democratic/liberal institutions such as independent courts, media, opposing political parties, etc, you can have as many elections as you like and not have democracy. Pushing only for elections is the Bush way of saying "See, democracy is spreading in the Middle East! Saudi Arabia had a municipal election!"
As for human rights, I haven't seen full text of his remarks.
Uh, you're a little off base here, RichM June 24th, 2009 10:48 am. In an article by Martin Fletcher in the Times (UK) entitled "Iran Admits 50 Cities Had More Votes Than Voters" dated June 22, 2009, contained this line:
"In 50 Iranian cities the number of votes cast in this month's presidential election exceeded the number of eligible voters, the state's election watchdog admitted today."
-- http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6553843.ece
So the Iranian Guardian Council itself admits there were many 'irregularities' -- an over-count of 3 million votes but, since Ahmadinejad 'won' by 11 million votes, they concluded that was not enough to alter the results of the election. Indeed, as another poster has mentioned, hand-counting approximately 40 million paper ballots in a few hours is an impossible task with the number of people on hand to count the final vote, and it should be recalled that Ahmadinejad's amazing landslide 'victory' was announced BEFORE the counting ended.
While it's true that Mousavi is only incrementally more progressive than Ahmadinejad based on his history, from what I've seen on TV of the Iranians in the streets protesting the election and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the demonstrations are very much concerned with fair democracy, freedom and civil rights for all Iranians, including women.
I won't argue that the elections in this country in 2000 and 2004 were stolen, but, in this context, what does Obama have to gain by mentioning that?
@ NMBill June 24th, 2009 10:34 am: Yes, over here they arrest the protestors before they protest, such as the RNC Eight, who were charged with violations of the Patriot Act for planning demonstrations at the 2008 GOP Convention in St. Paul, MN.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=2008_Republican_National_Convention&action=edit§ion=13
Good thing she was beautiful and young.
Not to detract from the tragedy of a promising young life snuffed out in its prime, why was she there? Was she a participant or merely a hapless spectator? And, in all the confusion, a participant in what exactly? Who will be using this incident for political gain now?
Interestingly, her social background gives an indication of who the protesters are - not rabble, but the middle class, educated; how does this fact change the meaning of the protests?
You never know what detail is going to spark a movement, do you? It's very odd that the one shot fired hit her in the heart - if that claim is true. Fate is a fickle mistress. Also, if she had been a male, no matter how handsome or promising, would anyone be launching a movement now? I don't recall candle-light vigils for the men killed.
I wonder though, was there such an international groundswell of emotion for the unglamorous little Abeer?
Reporting by Al Jazeera indicates she was just passing through the area, not involved in the protests.
That's what I read elsewhere, too.
And was there such an international groudswell of emotion for Rachel Corrie? There is another point to bear in mind as well in this senseless killing, and that is that WE DON'T KNOW who killed her. Since the Iranian uprising so resembles the aborted, CIA/NED-fueled anti-Chavez coup in 2002, we would do well to remember that some people were shot during that unrest as well. The Western media of course assumed it was Chavez's men who had done the shooting, but then it turned out it was some fascist snipers among the would-be golpistas. Who's to say that isn't the case here as well?
Among the many sins of the Islamic Republic of Iran, its' most disturbing is the rampant misogyny that is only exceeded in the immediate neighborhood by Wahhabi Saudi Arabia & Taliban Afghanistan. Thus it is oddly karmic justice that the icon of this is a pretty woman gunned down by a probably stray shot whom was more than likely just a bystander at the wrong place at the wrong time. Whatever legitimacy the likes of Ahmadinejad and Khamenei had bled out with Neda Agha-Soltani's blood.
Thanks for pointing out what Iran really is. The treatment in the middle east of women varies by country, but most are still in the middle ages.
Here we go again, ignorant rhetoric that could have come right out of the neocon establishment. Get a clue. "Most" women in "most" countries in the ME ar not treated like in barbaric ways. What propaganda! Have you ever been to these countries? Have you ever taken the time to pull your head out of your hole where America=civilization and all others=barbarism? Are there isolated pockets where uneducated, bad people do bad things? Yup. And I live in the southern US and if you saw the news reports about treatment of women and children down here, I think you'd see things are about equal around the world.
From the tone of your reply, it appears as if you have never set foot in the Middle East, nor are aware in any of the life ways prevalent in that part of the world. I would venture to guess you've never even set foot in North African, Turkish, & Middle Eastern neighborhoods in Western Europe, where odious parts of their culture, purdah and honor killings, spill out on the streets of nations that host them and such behavior is abhorred.
Thus comes the operative question: how precisely is purdah and honor killings not barbaric? The Neo-Cons are a bunch of incompetent fascists who use Iran's ass backwards treatment of women as an argument plank. It does not invalidate the fact that Iran is a bad place to be if you are woman who wants to determine for herself what her life should be. If the American South is still as backwards as you present, then shame on Dixie.
Henry8 June 24th, 2009 2:02 pm: "The treatment in the middle east of women varies by country, but most are still in the middle ages."
Particularly ironic since the Prophet Muhammad himself worked for his wife and considered her his equal.
we see her image because our controllers want us to. then we can buy pizza and beer and enjoy the coming shock and awe campaign to give them a real democracy. but don't expect any closeups of the carnage when we're the ones doing it or when it doesn't serve anglo american imperial interests.
the US has been funding three different al qaida groups to destablize iran. blowing up mosques, etc. al qaida is a US/MI6 creation, and still is. this woman's murder was staged and we are likely the ones behind it.
the rand corporation said we need another big war to silence criticism of the $15 trillion banker rip off, and the furtherance of the federal reserve/bank of england/rothschild takeover of the planet's monetary system.
you didn't think drone attacks could happen here? or being held indefinitely with no access to a lawyer or the evidence held against you? or secret lists that bar you from employment, buying a gun, or food credits? that was just for the brown foreigners, right? just wait.
cf. infowars.com
i am sorry. was the above "hate" speech? did i hurt someone's feelings? questioning the government is "unamerican" now especially since we need to line up behind a "war time" president.
The drones are already lined up along the Canadian border - security?
Tired old excuse.
Wait for the water wars - can't use the excuse of "bringing democracy" to Canada, eh.
Have to use "security" this time...all those wild-eyed bearded jihadists armed with suitcase dirty bombs flooding across the border between Saskatchewan and NDakota.
Drink Canada Dry. Hillary's emphasis on "shared resources" raises hackles.
Yes Sir, I think it would happen. If the American people had marched in the streets against Bush and Cheney regime we would have been bombed,gassed, shot by our great honorable military. This country has lost all respect for the law of the land if you are a politican or multi millionaire. The citizens are only peons to pay taxes to pay for their everything. The paycheck I get I have to pay for my own hair cuts, my food,my gas. Hell they get big money plus everything paid for. If ever a Country should see their people m,arching in the streets against Government, it is this one. I will never apologize for the things I say about the corruption in our Gov.
@ treebeard June 24th, 2009 11:57 am, ah, we have another acolyte of Alex Jones and his constant-conspiracy InfoWars site.
Did it ever occur to you, Treebeard, that if everything Jones, Kurt Nimmo and others posted on InfoWars was completely accurate, they'd all be dead, assassinated by the all-powerful government conspiracy they have constructed?
If you want to be really paranoid, why not consider for a moment that Jones and his merry band might be fronts for a US government intel operation to spread fear and distrust among both the right and left? It's happened in other nations.
Aside from that, Jones allowed himself to be used by Rupert Murdoch's Fox News -- part of the Big Media propagandists he constantly decries -- to attack Obama. At that point, the man lost all claim to credibility and became just another hustler trying to sell his wares.
rsj: sometimes killing truth tellers brings more attention to their cause than ignoring them. anyway, obama's and holder's attempt to limit internet speech is well on its way to reality with government takeover of internet hubs (in the name of infrastructure "security") and pending "hate" speech legislation. "hate" being characterized as pro-2nd amendment, pro-constitution, anti-obama, suspicious of government, 911 truth, right to life, anti-war, pro animal-rights, and anything considered "extreme" by government interests. we're not quite there yet, but we have the demonizing of dissent, people stuck in the two-party paradigm, and language in pending bills and present in leaked security state documents that profile various groups for the cia/fbi/state police/fema fusion centers that have sprouted up all over the country.
look back at chomsky's work, or adam curtis' excellent bbc documentaries. what leads you to believe that these efforts of false flag ops, manipulating public opinion, expansion of empire under the pretext of "democracy," etc have all stopped?
jones has spent even more time exposing bush and his neo-con/nazi/secret society roots. stop enabling the puppet obama. why don't you talk about the federal reserve/bank of england/imf/ibs cabal that controls our media, northcom, and washington dc? that's where our focus should be. but we're not going to get there if people like you continue to rally around fake figureheads who are just there to distract us.
are you an operative? or just stuck in the matrix?
Funny, treebeard June 25th, 2009 10:56 am, I was going to ask you a similar question: Are you an operative, or just a garden-variety goofball? I can assure you I am not an operative for anyone but myself and 'The Matrix' was a film starring Keanu Reeves that I don't confuse with reality.
You've managed to drag in the whole alphabet soup of intelligence and international agencies in your desperation to 'prove' that we are the victim of some massive conspiracy masterminded by -- I don't know -- Jewish bankers, Israel, the Mossad, the Bush Family, the CIA, Obama, Wall Street or who? There are conspiracies, of course -- Nixon's Watergate and the CIA's overthrow of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran in 1953 being an example of just two -- but not everything is a conspiracy and the all-encompassing paranoid Alex Jones 'Universal Field Theory' of conspiracies just distracts from the real conspiracies out there and, frankly, makes its advocates look like they're nuts.
Here's one conspiracy theory I was assured by people of your bent would take place: Bush would never allow the 2008 elections. He would concoct another 9/11 attack, maybe with a dirty bomb this time, suspend all elections and declare martial law due to a national emergency. Proof that this was going to happen was the reassignment of some Army brigades within the US. I was guaranteed by Jones conspiracists this was going to occur, without question, and I was a fool for not believing them. Well, you may have noticed, it didn't happen.
I know you're going to weasel here and say the suspension of the election wasn't necessary because the CIA-directed, corporate-stooge, Israeli agent, Muslim-without-a-US-birth-certificate Obama was going to continue Bush's policies, but that's not what I was assured -- the precise guarantee was that Bush would be president for life as we became an open fascist state and the military would crack down on dissent to keep order. Oh, yeah, and the Internet would be censored, as well. It was all just a frothing crock of crackpot paranoia, cooked up by Jones' conspiracy theorists.
There are other off-the-wall conspiracy theories that have been presented over the years by Jones' acolytes which also failed to blossom, but this is a perfect example of how wrong they have been.
Incidentally, since you mentioned Noam Chomsky, you might also note that he has not indulged in Jones' InfoWars madness and even supported Obama in the last election as a small step in the right direction. Chomsky has written some excellent books and articles over the years revealing the underpinnings of how our government and the world economy operate, but he did it with a scholar's regimen of intelligence and discernment, not with his tongue hanging out in 'gee whiz' paranoid delusion.
Finally, why don't you tell your hero Jones, who has spent so much time exposing the Bush Family links to the neocons, the Nazis during WWII, and Yale's Skull and Bones Society (none of this info was secret, BTW), to stop appearing on Fox News helping multi-billionaire Rupert Murdoch further ruin our political discourse for his own profit? Have you noticed Jones criticizing Murdoch or Fox News since he's been showing up as a guest on Fox?
Stop being so gullible and looking for mortal media heroes -- especially endless self-promotors like Alex Jones.
rsj: i am not sure what you are so excitedly defending. obama's fiscal or foreign policies? the truthfulness of the corporate media? plus you trot out a lot of straw men to debunk. please. you don't have to be on homeland security's payroll to be in the drone brigade as you appear to be.
conspiracies don't have to be intentional in nature; they can just be a confluence of shared interests. such is the military-corporate-congressional-media establishment. but it doesn't help that the pentagon spends $billions per year on fake news, planted news, paid "experts" etc to shape our reality.
why don't you call your congressperson to cosponsor HR 1207, ron paul's bill to audit the federal reserve? even kucinich is a cosponsor now. the fed does not want to be audited. $trillions are unaccounted for. there is a "conspiracy" to keep the fed unaccountable to the US govt. do some research on it.
jones never claimed that the 2008 elections would be aborted. that was your left wing darling naomi wolf. but it was a possibility. i don't put anything past our security state apparatus filled with the likes of oliver north and dick cheney. anyway, we've been under "martial law" since 9/14/2001 (suspension of constitution due to "national emergency") that is supposed to be reviewed and approved by congress every 6 months. it's never been reviewed once, and every year this state of emergency has been renewed by executive fiat. why isn't the mainstream press covering this? or is that a conspiracy too?
neither chomsky nor zinn want to have a new independent investigation into 911, though amy goodman and 40,000 new yorkers do. i find chomsky and zinn's positions suspicious given the clear evidence of coverup and mismanagement of the 911 Commission's and United Laboratories' whitewash.
btw operation paperclip, where nazi officers and scientists were brought into the USA after WWII, and other covert cia ops were secret until recently. it is usually only the result of the work of a dogged reporter that this information sees the light of day -- something we will see less of as our newspaper industry crumbles.
what i admire about jones is his fearlessness and his passion. most of what he talks about is documented. people sometimes react negatively to his forceful delivery style. but that is a matter of aesthetics, not substance in my opinion.
that's it for now, rsj. all the best to you.
The pseudo-progressives get their frilly shorts in a knot about the tangential, never the essential.
This is PURE disinfo..she was a bystander and not involved at the time in any protests...... nice try....
There's something about this that doesn't pass the smell test.
Why are we being fed photo coverage of what is happening in Iran?
Why are we being manipulated to "look over there"?
How many women have WE KILLED...with OUR guns, with OUR bombs, not only in Afganistan, but for years and years and years in Irag?
We need to take the LOG OUT OF OUR OWN EYE BEFORE WE TRY TO REMOVE THE SPLINTER FROM OUR BROTHER'S EYE.
WE HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO MORAL AUTHORITY TO CRITICIZE ANYONE.
NONE.
Absolutely right, truthteller. And the fact that this is being used to trot out that by-now tired excuse of saving the "women" of these countries from their brutal, medieval regimes really makes it seem fishy. As if the women of Afghanistan, Iran, etc. would prefer to have their husbands, sons, fathers, etc. slaughtered, all for the sake of being "liberated" to wear slutty fashions and pollute their brains with Ipods and cellphones.
I'm confused by the author's decision to use the death of Neda Soltani (or Soltan) in context to the larger message the author attempts to translate.
If the author was aware of the circumstances of Neda Soltani death, why does she not inform the audience Soltani was caught in a traffic jam and was not on the front lines of resistance, but part of a crowd on the sidelines, did not hold any political alliance with any of the main candidates, and attended a few silent vigils (as did 10s of thousands of everyday Iranians)?
Such a tragedy for this family, but also such a tragedy when authors, journalists, and the politically motivated attempt to sensationalize a storyline.
Here is an Al Jazeera report quoting Neda Soltani fiance recapping the last minutes of her life, saying she and her music teacher (originally reported as her "dad") got out of a car while waiting in a traffic jam, stating she wasn't protesting and that moments after getting out of a car, she was shot. He also alleges the Basij shot Soltani because citizens aren't allowed to carry guns, and further argued the government must be behind it because they didn't act for 3 days and then refused a public memorial service.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPo9fp_98Ik
In the last few days, the Iranian government alleged the shootings look to be by a gunman or gunmen who mistook Soltani for the sister of an Marxist opposition leader (PMOI) who was executed last year. The allegations are that the gunmen appear to have shot Neda Soltani believing the killing would cause an uprising against the government. From the state-run IRNA report, the Iranian government alleges this terror plot is why there was an instant video and uploaded and dissemination
www.edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/06/24/iran.neda.death/
Here is an additional recap of events from Guardian UK, where accounts of the an Iranian asylum seeker in the Netherlands -Hamed- received a call from a friend who is remains anonymous --seeking Hamed to release the video. In 5 minutes the shooting is on youtube....
guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/22/neda-soltani-death-iran
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
commentisfree/2009/jun/23/
iran-women-protest
"With labour unions impotent and no real opposition, the women's movement began to gain momentum – especially after the election of President Ahmadinejad, who sought to roll back rights won under Khatami. Universities capped the number of female students,"
"It was then that the One Million Signature Campaign was conceived. What began as a grassroots movement to mark the anniversary of a violent police raid snowballed into one of the most formidable civil-society forces to hit the Islamic regime. The network of activists collecting signatures to petition for a revision of discriminatory laws has spread to over half Iran's provinces."
"The group formed a pre-election coalition with other women's organisations to back the reformist candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi. He had promised to appoint women to high posts, break up the morality police and enact legal reform. But the coalition was forced to disband amid fears of a crackdown."
I was shocked to see " 'Courageous' " and "women" juxtaposed with scare quotes. Are we to surmise that women in general are not capable of "real" courage? That these particular women are only "pretending" to be courageous? Or that "serious" journalists these days are so gutless that they dare neither admire nor despise the people they report on, so had to drag in a one-word "quote" from US President Obama to "justify" the word in a headline? The quote was even trimmed stupidly, since Obama's quote actually read "courageous women". I reckon the "incredible" phrase "courageous women" boggled the mind of the right-wing mouthpiece, Michael Cooke, who's taking over the editorial pages of the formerly progressive Toronto Star.
Sic transit &cet...
Liobhan
Hopefully Iranian women will put a stop to female genital mutilation. A practice supported by the mullahs.
No, let's let Obama take charge of that. That's his domain as Leader Of All That Is Good. I don't see any hypocrisy in Obama's supporting abortion and drone attacks, yet righteously standing against some backwards mullahs who pose no security threat to the US. No cognitive dissonance there.
Ding! We have a right-wing troll! What does Obama's support of a woman's right to choose what to do with her body have to do with opposing the mullahs, treebeard June 24th, 2009 1:26 pm? Last I checked, the conservative Imams in Iran were on your side in the abortion debate.
As much as you right-wingers try to disguise yourselves as progressives or liberals on these threads, you always eventually give yourselves away.
I don't believe the Iranians go in for female genital mutilation. My understand is that is something that's done in some African cultures and, to a lesser degree, among some Arab (Egypt?) cultures. But if could be wrong.
No, it happens in rural Iran too. I've seen a disgusting YouTube video on it.
You are an ignorant jackass, "charles martel," or worse, a vile, lying propagandist. I know and have known many Iranians, many of them women, and never has there been any mention of clitorectomy. This practice is limited sub-Saharan Africa, as far as I know. If you are so worried about women, I suggest you look to your Zionist paymasters and ask them why they tolerate the clandestine sex trade of foreign women, mostly Slavs, in Israel.
excellent reply, clovis.
haven't bechtel and other military contracting orgs been found guilty of human/child trafficking as well, with London, Dubai, and Saudi Arabia being preferred destinations for the sex traders?
btw: the judaeo-christian practice of circumcision has been shown to cause permanent neurological damage to men. cf. The Magical Child by Joseph Chilton Pearce
bligh4
The protests seem to me to be directed more towards the autocratic and cruel rule of the mullahs and less about any one candidate-for an office with no real power.