Dropped by my blog, now shamefully out of date...; Iran is revolting and for the first time ever I have been able to follow the minute by minute updates on Social media; Twitter. Vietnam was the first war to be televised, Somalia on CNN and so was Iraq/Afghanistan, but also on the Internet/ YouTube... So now we have Twitter with the hashtag # IranElection and hurray for this incl all the faults!
What's happening right now in Iran, where the just held election was "Bogarded" by the sitting Pres. Ahmadinejad with the support of the spiritual leader of Iran; Khameni is Real and Live and on the Net; The Paramilitary gangs (Basij) shooting students armed with rocks, doors being kicked down in the night and whole families taken away to torture, fake courts and then a very real sentence of public hangings....
Today I saw a young girl die in the streets of Tehran and this made me tremble... (It's very graphic -It's here)
I'm 51 years old and I remember seeing the famous clip from Hanoi(?) on TV, where a man is shot point blank on the street, seen horrendous photos from Burma, Rwanda and all the other places where war, sudden and violent death has been reported with live footage and stills, I've worked with the "displaced children" in Bosnia during the war in '93, and I've worked for more than 10 years in Refugee camps in Denmark and seen what Shiite Vs Sunni can do in a "Peoples Court" during the Lebanese civil war, but still; The open eyes of Neda dying in her fathers arms of a gunshot wound in the stomach- "hit" it home for me and left me shivering in the summer sun; This is for real, this is how "I'll die for what I believe in - I'll die for Freedom " looks like......
The youth of Iran is now ready for the 30 year long oppression to end, not that the Shah was much better, the plight and suffering for the Iranians, once a mighty Persian empire is a long potholed and very rocky road!
But the girls wants to feel the wind ruffle their hair and boys wants to be able to hold the hands with their loved ones (being straight or Gay) without being hanged by the Moral Police - Who can blame them, these are things we take for granted. And while we in the West has made our selves comfy in our "Lazy Boys" while leaving it all up to "our savior Obama" to change our worlds for us - Though we're very, very, very quick to complain, when things don't happen as fast or exactly how we want it to..... We're very hard to please, you know! We live under our noble motto; Success is a fine thing, but other peoples failures is okay too!
Now the Iranians will have to muster all their courage and be prepared to give their lives for a "Change; Yes We Can" - In our neck of the woods, we just have to shuffle down to our local ballot box and exercise, what we now consider our birthright; Namely to vote in a democratically held election without the votes being tampered with in any way or form......!
What a difference, eh? Suddenly (or not so suddenly, really...!) how our spoilt and sheltered existence is pointed out to us ...... again!
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