"I'm Listening to all my Favorite Music;
Maybe Tomorrow I will be Among those Killed"
The owner of this site is tidying affairs in preparation for dying Saturday at the hands of the Iranian security forces. Mousavi supporters are planning another big afternoon demonstration despite the threats issued today by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei against such protesters. NIAC translates:
"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…”
End/ (Not Continued)
posted by Juan Cole @ 6/19/2009 09:00:00 PM
|
Facebook
5 Comments:
You think she can do all that and still make it to the demonstration?
Excellent example of the progressive in Iran, thanks, Prof. Cole.
I wonder if there will be more serious analysis of individual peaceful protestors (using various technologies to connect with one another, such as twitter, youtube, and blogs) through first person narratives, case studies, and interviews. There is a general expectation that such "accounts" are shared around 10-years later. Perhaps, there could be an attempt to share this earlier, maybe in a year or two, including using digital media.
What do you think?
It may sound trite, but that's very much the way I felt when I was with a group of students at NYU, occupying the computer room of the Courant (sp?)Physics Institute during Nixon's invasion of Cambodia with the whole campus occupied and under siege by thousands of NYC police and federal agencies.
The Kent State student shootings had just happened, or were to occur shortly thereafter.
The war in Vietnam was coming home in a way no one had expected, and there was 'war' in the streets of many major US cities between the police, federal agencies, and anti-war protestors.
The people in charge of the occupation of that building, "Transcendental Students", affiliated with the Weather Underground faction of Students for a Democratic Society, were contemplating the destruction of the small Darpanet mainframe computer, and I instinctively knew (because they were hot-head college students) their internal security was not that secure and the authorities would find out shortly.
Fortunately, they decided against taking one of NYU's own fire axes to it and only did... 'un-mentionable things' to it.
Honestly... Given the same circumstances, at 55 now, I'd probably do it again..
Be careful my friend.
Leigh
Some things are worth fighting for, From the Port Huron Statement, the founding document of SDS.
"...Loneliness, estrangement, isolation describe the vast distance between man and man today.
These dominant tendencies cannot be overcome by better personnel management, nor by improved gadgets, but only when a love of man overcomes the idolatrous worship of things by man....
...We regard men as infinitely precious and possessed of unfulfilled capacities for reason, freedom, and love.
In affirming these principles we are aware of countering perhaps the dominant conceptions of man in the twentieth century: that he is a thing to be manipulated, and that he is inherently incapable of directing his own affairs.
We oppose the depersonalization that reduces human beings to the status of things -- if anything, the brutalities of the twentieth century teach that means and ends are intimately related, that vague appeals to "posterity" cannot justify the mutilations of the present.
We oppose, too, the doctrine of human incompetence because it rests essentially on the modern fact that men have been "competently" manipulated into incompetence -- we see little reason why men cannot meet with increasing skill the complexities and responsibilities of their situation, if society is organized not for minority, but for majority, participation in decision-making.
Men have unrealized potential for self-cultivation, self-direction, self-understanding, and creativity.
It is this potential that we regard as crucial and to which we appeal, not to the human potentiality for violence, unreason, and submission to authority.
The goal of man and society should be human independence: a concern not with image of popularity but with finding a meaning in life that is personally authentic: a quality of mind not compulsively driven by a sense of powerlessness, nor one which unthinkingly adopts status values, nor one which represses all threats to its habits, but one which has full, spontaneous access to present and past experiences, one which easily unites the fragmented parts of personal history, one which openly faces problems which are troubling and unresolved: one with an intuitive awareness of possibilities, an active sense of curiosity, an ability and willingness to learn.
This kind of independence does not mean egoistic individualism -- the object is not to have one's way so much as it is to have a way that is one's own."
http://ia331424.us.archive.org/2/items/sds_papers/
the void is not empty
it's filled with light
of this i am sure of
with all of my might
the world is troubled
as i rest tonight
half in darkness
something’s not right
the day will break
the sun will rise
and i'll see things
through different eyes
i hope that my visions
not clouded by doubt
peace among all of us
is the only way out
this is how peace is waged. By standing for what you believe. No fight, just words.
Peace be upon that individual. I hope he lives a long healthy life. I hope he did not perish, or become imprisoned.
Post a Comment
<< Home