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Tag: "protests"

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The next generation of protests continues in Iran
By Erich Vieth on August 01st, 2009

The next generation of protests continues in Iran

I have been following the political news regarding Iran at various websites, including Windows on Iran, a site maintained by Dr. Fatemeh Keshavarz, a professor of Persian and Comparative Literature at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. According to Windows on Iran, the protesters are still optimistic:

A young friend returning from Iran recently reported that an amazingly high percentage of people continue to wear green wristbands on a daily basis. Strangers passing by on the street, make “V” signs for victory, smile, and carry on with their daily activities. According to her, the nightly chants continue, and despite the pressures and the presence of police, there is a sense of hope.

Image by Windows on Iran (republished with permission)

The political persecution continues. As reported by ALI AKBAR DAREINI:

Iran began its first trial of the post-election crisis on Saturday, a mass court case against more than 100 activists and protesters accused of plotting a “velvet revolution” to topple clerical rule.

Some of the most prominent politicians of the pro-reform movement, including a former vice president, were among the defendants brought before the court in gray prison uniforms.

One of the recent posts by Keshavarz details the loud protests that are continuing, though the protests have evolved logistically to avoid harassment and arrest by the Basij Officers.

Demonstrators are careful to for small, loud, and fast groups who can protest and run before the riot police moves in. Here is one such demonstration happening near the Iranian state-run TV and Radio.

In the meantime, what is the American corporate media reporting about Iran? Fox News reports on the ongoing trials of the protesters (CBS too). Most American news site home pages reported that three American tourists were arrested after accidentally crossing over into Iran from Iraq. PBS reports nothing about Iran on its home page. Iran was a country that many prominent conservatives insisted on “bombing” in order to effect political reform. If the bombs were dropping, we’d have non-stop stories and photos of American military leveling portions of Iran. Coverage is scant, however, because the reform, which has endangered to lives and careers of many thousands of Iranians, is progressing without the backdrop of exploding American armaments.

American Culture • Civil Rights • Current Events • Media
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By Erich Vieth on June 28th, 2009

Song from Iran and other news

For the past few years, I’ve been receiving emails and attachments from a woman with close ties to Iran. Along with this Youtube she wrote the following:

Here is a song gifted to the new Iran emerging from the 2009 election by the one of the greatest musicians of present day Iran, Mohamad Reza Shajarian. And he rightly calls it “Iran, the land of hope.

She indicates that letters are circulating in Iran to weaken the grip of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s government by doing the following:

o Refusing to give ads to the state run TV, and newspapers
serving as the voice of the government.
o Pulling out money invested in banks and financial
institutions run by the government or by the revolutionary
guards.
o Refraining from contributing to the charity boxes scattered
throughout towns all across the country.

Protesting has become incredibly dangerous.

Civil Rights • Politics • The Middle East
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Scientology 101
By Stacy Kennedy on June 17th, 2009

Scientology 101

I attended an Anonymous rally last Saturday. You know, Anonymous—the international internet-linked underground that protests Scientology. Anonymous sprang up on imageboards—notably Futaba and the infamous 4chan—in 2006. Project Chanology, the organized, ongoing protest against the Church of Scientology, began in 2008 with a press release and a famous YouTube video, and has since taken on a life of its own.

Scientology, as DI readers probably already know, is a scam masquerading as a sort of religion/self-actualization movement hybrid. The Church of Scientology (CoS) was dreamed up by a guy named L. Ron Hubbard, who used to write a lot of pulp fiction. In 1950, Hubbard published a book called Dianetics, in which he claimed that neuroses and other problems are caused by engrams. Engrams are like little negative scripts that get encoded into the unconscious mind (Hubbard called it the “reactive mind”). These engrams take root, supposedly, because when we’re unconscious, the reactive mind hears whatever’s being said around us, and takes it literally. Even fetuses get engrams–from the moment of conception, they can hear everything that’s being said in their mother’s vicinity, and their little reactive minds are busy recording engrams which, without Dianetic treatment, will cause all manner of psychological trouble throughout their lives.

I’m not making this up. L. Ron Hubbard made this up.

And, sadly, he got some people to believe it. Enough people, in fact, that he was able to morph Dianetics from a mere self-help fad into a new “religion”–the Church of Scientology.

Featured • Religion • snake oil
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By Erich Vieth on April 19th, 2009

What are the teabag protests really about?

What are the teabag protests really about?

Their message is so incredibly incoherent, that it’s clear that these sparsely-attended “protests” weren’t really about what they were supposedly about, at least for many of the protesters. Therefore, we need to explore the subterranean reasons. On Keith Olberman’s show, Janeane Garofalo suggests that what really upsets the teabaggers is that there is a black man in White House. With her theory, Garofalo is echoing one of my suspicions. And check out the blogger who took the microphone at one of the protests and had the protesters eating out of his hand, to demonstrate the incoherence.

American Culture • Bigotry • Politics • Psychology Cognition
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