Community | July 05, 2009 | Comment on this video (7)

Iranian Protests in U.S. Streets may Save them from Dehumanized War unlike Iraqis and Afghans

StopWarProject
LOS ANGELES - Iranians have been holding a protest vigil since the Iran election in front of the federal building at Westwood and Veteran Avenues in West Los Angeles. On Sunday, June 28, 2009, about 5,000 of them took to the streets here in the march depicted in this film. Many would not be interviewed on camera, probably in fear of reprisals against their families in Iran by the Iranian government, as some told us. Of those who spoke on camera, they explained how their presence was only to show solidarity with those in Iran. They feel frustrated that they cannot do something more to stop the Iranian government. Some want the U.S. and the U.N. to impose sanctions on Iran, specifically to companies like Nokia that do business with the Iranian government in providing surveillance technology used wrongfully against the Iranian people, to deny them basic freedoms.

However, sanctions on Iran from the U.S. in the past have hurt the Iranian people as much, if not more than it hurt the Iranian government. Is it possible for the U.S. or the U.N. to have the acuity to distinguish between the Iranian people and the Iranian government; to impose selective and targeted sanctions on companies like Nokia, or at least the offending technologies they sell (http://bit.ly/dsTBG)? If so they would then target the Iranian government's anti-democratic behavior without hurting the Iranian people, unlike what the U.S. did to Iraq after the Gulf War in obtuse sanctions that effectively broke down their infrastructure, and took away basic human needs like water and electricity from all the Iraqi people.

One good thing that these marches do is to show the world and the Iranian government the faces of Iranians, which makes it impossible for the U.S. and other governments, to dehumanize the Iranian people in order to wage war, as the U.S. has done in Iraq and Afghanistan (See: Iran Was an Easier Enemy Before We Saw Their Faces: http://tinyurl.com/kjskql). Iraq War veterans have testified to this fact in the Winter Soldier testimonies on U.S. military racism (http://ivaw.org/wintersoldier), citing how their superiors demean Iraqis, and now Afghans, by routinely referring to them as "hodgie", a slag term for Hajji.

It is a well known fact among scholars (like Dr. Haig Bosmajian, University of Washington in Seattle http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1442) that the U.S. military has, as a matter of policy, demeaned the people of entire countries that we have gone to war with, ever since the Korean War when they referred to Koreans as "gooks", which carried over to the Vietnam War. It is no stretch to call our military racist. But this was also found during WWII when they called the Germans "krauts". The Germans are especially infamous for their pro-war dehumanization campaign of the Jewish people in calling them "rats". The purpose of this as government policy is to make it easier for people and troops to accept war, especially the killing and genocide of innocent people.

See also: Iran Was an Easier Enemy Before We Saw Their Faces (http://tinyurl.com/kjskql)
by David Bromwich, Huffington Post, June 24, 2009 12:32 PM
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7 comments // Iranian Protests in U.S. Streets may Save them from Dehumanized War unlike Iraqis and Afghans // Video

  • WhiteNoise
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    • Image

    • In memory of Taraneh Mousav

      Taraneh Mousavi, 28, was among hundreds arrested on June 19th, 2009 in Iran's post-election aftermath. She was waiting outside her beauty school and she, along with a group of about 14 protestors were arrested, blindfolded and taken to a nearby "safehouse" a.k.a. interogation and torture center.
      Friends have reported that the basijis were giving the woman a particularly hard time at this location and that Taraneh, who had beautiful green eyes, nice hairstyle and makeup and dressed in a green shawl and overcoat with high heels, had obviously grabbed their interest. Her interogation apparently took twice as long as the others who were subsquently released. When all other detainees were allowed to contact their families except her, she sensed there would be trouble and gave her parents number to a few of the girls there who in turn contacted her family after being released.

      Apparently after 3 weeks of searching for her, her mother and father, who had desperately tried to have a child for years and were finally blessed with this one gift, began piecing together what might have happened to her. One anonymous witness who appears to have seen her at Evin prison, stated that she was physically and emotionally abused and tortured and repeatedly gang raped over a course of a few days. During this entire time, no contact was made with her parents. Other anonymous tips revealed that she was never turned over to the police and was still with the Basiji, which of course horrified her parents even further.

      The probability the she had been gang raped increased when a couple of days later an unidentified person telephoned the family and said that after an "accident" Taraneh had been admitted to Imam Khomeini Hospital in Karaj because of tears in her womb and anus. However when they arrived at the hospital she was not registered and nowhere to be found. One of the nurses confirmed that an unconscious girl matching Taraneh's description had been brought in by plain clothes basiji forces and had been removed again after a couple of hours while still in a coma. This girl's particulars hadn't been entered in the hospital records.

      She remained missing until a few days ago when her family was informed that her burned body was found in the desert between Karaj and Qazvin. The family has been threatened not to talk about their daughter’s arrest and fearing that they will never have a chance to properly bury their only child, or even know where her final burial site is, they are remaining quiet the best they can.

      We ask you all... man or woman... to place yourself in the shoes of this woman. Men you have mothers and sisters... and daughters... imagine what she must have gone through for numerous days. The repeated rape, pain, humiliation and shame she must have felt. How badly she must have been beaten and raped that her her womb and anus were ruptured! .... sending her inevitably in a coma... one can never truly fathom what this woman went through unless they have been in a similar situation...but you can try to do so.

      This woman was not shot with a single bullet...she was mistreated over the course of days...and she deserves for her story to be heard. She deserves to be treated with honor and dignity in the afterlife...one which she did not have during the last few days of her young life.

      Please share her story with the world such that she will not have died in vain. May she rest in peace.

    • 2 years ago
  • WhiteNoise
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    • As humanists we are saddened and enraged by humanity's shortcomings: in this case, the abject and repugnant assassination of a young woman.

      What makes Neda so special are the circumstances of her death. Random and cruel, her execution goes against all basic human instincts and those values our species takes pride in defending.

      This collective of artists and musicians is reacting appropriately to this assault and affront to all that is sacred in existence : life, freedom, dignity and respect.

      http://www.youtube.com/user/weareneda
      http://neda.webnode.com/

      EXCELLENT EXECUTIVE RESUME

      Iran's Military Coup
      by Reza Aslan
      http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-06-15/irans-military-coup

      The days in which power in Iran rested in the hands of a single individual (the supreme leader) or a single group (the mullahs) are over. The new power base in Iran is the Pasdaran.

      It is the Pasdaran that controls Ahmadinejad, not the mullahs. Indeed, it was precisely fear of the Pasdaran’s rising political and economic influence that led to the “anybody but Ahmadinejad” coalition we saw in this election, wherein young, leftist students and popular reformists like Mohammad Khatami joined together with conservative mullahs and "centrists" like Rafsanjani to push back against what they consider to be the rampant militarization of Iranian politics. There is a genuine fear among these groups that Iran is beginning to resemble Egypt or Pakistan, countries in which the military controls the apparatus of government.

      Iran election: faces of the dead and detained
      http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2009/jun/29/iran-election-dead-detai...

      WOMEN’S RIGHTS ACTIVIST ABDUCTED IN BROAD DAY LIGHT
      http://www.meydaan.org/english/showarticle.aspx?arid=848

      This is a humanist, feminist & pacifist movement.
      Join humanity !

      http://www.facebook.com/Neda4ever
      http://www.antiwar.com

    • 2 years ago
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