CNN Video: Melody Moezzi about martyrs and Neda

On youtube here. Not gonna lie, I cried. You can hear the pain and worry and hope and sorrow in her voice.

A thought: You can dam and divert a river. But you can't even hope to dam an ocean, and that's what this is becoming. This is the major historical moment of our times.

Question to the flist: Is having all these little posts as I come across things in the aggregate blogs all right? Or would you prefer me to just have a big honking Iran 2009 post at the top of my journal to add things to?

Some dispatches from Iran

From the New Yorker, a letter from an Iranian resident. About the last few days, a bit of history, and how people are changing.

From The New York Times, an article by Roger Cohen, on the ground in Iran.

Quote of the day:
"I received this from an anonymous Iranian student: “I will participate in the demonstrations tomorrow. Maybe they will turn violent. Maybe I will be one of the people who is going to be 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!”

And she concludes: “I wrote these random sentences for the next generation so that they know we were not just emotional 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 Mogols but did not surrender to despotism. This note is dedicated to tomorrow’s children.” "

Time Article - Voting Still Matters

Even in a Tainted Election, Voting Still Matters. By Azadeh Moaveni. A bit of history, the run up to the election.

This election is making me think a lot about the way we run our elections here. I've always voted absentee. And now I'm wondering, I need to do some research - are my ballots actually counted? Should I change to voting in person in my precinct? I'll be getting back to you about that, if I find anything.

Excuse me while I rage all over the place

Sarkozy Says Burqas Are Unwelcome in France at the Wall Street Journal online.

WHAT. WHAT.

"The burqa is not welcome on French territory," Mr. Sarkozy said. "In our country, we cannot accept that women be prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity."

The veils are "a test for our civilization," Mr. Gerin said in a telephone interview, adding that his goal is to "liberate these women."

WHAT THE FUCK.

I

I DON'T EVEN.

Do Scrippsies remember that article we read back in core, with Franz Fanon? About Algerian resistance to French colonialism via donning the hijab?

This is just...the stupidest revisiting of patronizing Western Otherization, ooh the Brown man is oppressing the Brown woman, so we, the heroic White men (and women, I've seen so much in that particular wave of the feminist movement that drives me batshit) are going to liberate them! Okay, yes, in certain societies (Hello Taliban!) women are forced to wear them, facing the moral police and I am definitely not advocating that sort of cultural relativism of oh, they do that there and it's their culture so it's okay. But if a woman wants to go with her preference for modesty? To me, you might at well mandate regarding mini-skirts (and my high school had, but then, that's school.)

I'm not that articulate, so if anyone else wants to have a go at this, please do. *flaps hand*