" And Revolution in the air..."

Dropped by my blog, now shamefully out of date...; Iran is revolting and for the first time ever I have been able to follow the minute by minute updates on Social media; Twitter.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!

The Bitter Swat Valley soup ........

All this gettin' up and leaving "the Conference against Racism" looks a bit adolescent and Drama queenish to me. Let it be said, I'm no fan of Pres. Ahmadinejad and his regime!!! But saying that "Zionism is racist" is not that far off, from the truth. Yes, wherever we like or not; Living in Israel is living with Apartheid.... I don't understand all the fuss and I start to suspect that Ahmadinejads speech is not the reason, there must be something else - we don't hear about - What do Europe benefit from boycotting this conference? Wouldn't it have been more constructive to stay and make a well augmented defence instead? Doesn't it just show, that we're acting up like spoiled brats, spreading "Our" Democracy and Freedom of Speech by the way of the gun, but when it comes down to actually having to imply it in our own actions, we stomp off and slam the door, when people say things we don't like to hear? That's not the way, I'd  democratise the unruly nations of the world who, let's face it, does need a lesson or two, on how to implement basic human-rights to their peoples.

What I find much more, but much more scary is the Taleban powers slowly rising in Pakistan! Cause this mean more power to the Dark Side, it means a return to most primitive level of human existence, and it probably means yet another war and Pakistan is not some picturesque & backwards country, still living in the middle-ages, yet! They have a fully grown military force and when/if ? the US and her allies invades , it will not be just a picnic in the hills!

 Introducing Sharia as a way of life will be crippling to the Pakistani society. This harsh degrading view on humans and the treatment of women is beyond belief, recently a 17 year old girl was publicly flogged for going outside her house, without (family-)male companion. If this spreads through out the rest of the country, and what's there to stop it, then the region will have a whole new perspective of an explosive neighbourhood to display - with our troops sandwiched in between...

I find it worrisome, that we don't hear more of these troubling news - because this is something to fear, ladies and gentlemen.  And they'll not contain themselves to stay put, at their own neck of the woods - and yes, they'll have the means and know-how to make international terror raids much more often and much closer to "home" than Al Qaeda has now ...  The arrogance/ignorance of the Western world will quickly come to a screeching halt, when  operations like 9/11 in NYC, Madrid and London will become everyday horrors... I'm not trying to instill fear and make a panic run for the exit, but this is serious - I think.    

      In Afghanistan, Pres. Karzaii is inching closer to the same destructive forces, by presenting partial Sharia laws - again sacrificing women and children; sending the Afghan society back into the shadows. And in Iran we have Ahmadinejad and his priests shouting out the glory of Sharia laws, while they hang their children.... (Before we get too smug, a Rabbi says; Israel should do the same with the Arab kids) 

        I still have the images of the great Buddhas in Bamian, being blown up as the image of how primitive Mankind can be, when they succumb to fanaticism and the primal fear of not being able to control the tomorrow nor the free thinking mind of their fellow Man - 

                      Is this what, we want

 American, British, Danish boys and girls to fight and die for?

No blowing up mountains nor slamming of doors will ever solve a damn thing - Thought we'd know that by now. And if we don't learn how to do it differently sometime soonish, we're going to perish as the people, who didn't know how to go forward only crawl backwards, 

back into that primordial soup we came from....