( – promoted by buhdydharma )
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| This is a brief essay about solidarity. In this case, it’s about solidarity with the people of Iran who are protesting what appears to be a stolen election, the loss of democracy.
How do we support those people, half the world away, in their struggle for democracy? How do we say just as people (and not a government) that we support their efforts to demand democracy? That they’re right, they deserve their democracy and we want them to have it? We can only do simple things. Things like changing our location and time zone on Twitter to Tehran and GMT +3.5 hours. Things like making our avatar green. Things like reading the posts of those who are there. Things like posting and distributing their videos on youtube. Things like writing blogs and asking others to link arms with them in solidarity. Things like talking about what ideas we might have that could be of help to them. These are things that might be completely ineffective to help Iranians achieve democracy, to get a new, fair election, to overturn the sham outcome of their last election. I realize that. But that’s not what’s important. That’s not what’s important now. What’s important, I think, is our solidarity with their struggle, our saying, however we can say it, “Brothers and Sisters, we’re with you. We want you to succeed. We want you to be safe, and free. We want you to obtain the change you seek.” Will they see it? Will they hear about it? Will they know that we are saying this about them? Of course they will. I say it by posting in green. You might have other ways of saying it. It’s important to me to say, aloud, to whomever can hear it, “I support the struggle in Iran for democracy.” Please join me. Please join me in giving to the Iranian people who are struggling for democracy the same support we’d like to receive in our struggles for democracy and equality and peace.
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available at Great Orangutan Society
The images trickling out of Iran show courageous people who are fighting and bleeding for freedom, not evil monsters intent on destroying Israel. The great struggle in the world today is between individual human beings and predatory institutions.
The Internet favors the voices of free individuals. Broadcast media favor the voices of manipulative institutions. What excites us about the flow of direct information from Iran is that it is HONEST. We have been so regularly manipulated, spun, and cheated by corporatist “media,” that we thirst for true depictions of human struggle.
The militarist predators want to pit nation against nation, but the netroots reporting undercuts that sinister tendency. We are seeing with fresh eyes the men women and children of Iran that we have been urged to bomb and kill, and we recognize them as fellow sufferers of oppression. This movement of personal truth against institutional lies has powerful implications for the cause of world peace.
GO BACK DELETE ALL PAST TWEETS that may have Iran usernames . Arrests have been made. Please RT ENSURE ALL SEE THIS #iranelection #gr88
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I turned the front page of dd green! Yay!!!!
They are losing the facade of Democracy, not the real thing. Clealy not democracy when you are controlled by a religious ‘Supreme Leader’.
In the US, we have a facade of Democracy too-but we ain’t losing it. We have the Senate, the Presidency, the Electoral College, the ‘two party system,’ lobbyists, PACs, and courts that overturn elections because of who appointed them. Clearly, not Democracy either.
with the rank and file folks in Iran. Those folks are no different than we are. They live just like us, love just like us, and, unfortunately, some of them are dying just like us, but under worse circumstances.
Here is the problem, in American English terms. In Iran, the preachers control the government. Imagine what this Nation would be like if Jerry Falwell (I should say rest his soul, but I will not for that fascist racist), Don Wildmon (if you do not know who he is, you really need to look him up. He may be the most dangerous person in the Nation at present), and Pat Robertson would rule here. To rule with the power to override anything that our elected folks could pass.
That is what is the reality right now in Iran. The clerics are the final authorities. In my personal opinion, and that is just that, I think folks that hear the voices of non corporeal entities are probably insane. But Christian preachers and Muslim clerics proclaim it all the time.
That is the problem. The People of Iran, for the most part, are free thinkers who have been subjugated by a few preachers and the ones that would back them. If you do not think that this could happen in the United States, you are wrong. It almost did during the Bush term.
If anyone is interested, I have quite a long post to show how these folks thing and act. If you want, please let me know and I will compose it in the next day or two.
Warmest regards,
Doc
I tried, too, but kept getting a “this html code not allowed” — hmmmm, you have a secret? (I will find a way though! LOL!)
And, as always, very good thoughts!
I posted two action notices on the other thread “Activist, etc.” you have going, but it seems that thread is not being viewed, at least, not right now, so I’ll show them here!
The first one deals with a site problem on CARE2 and a request: Important Information!
and this, from Amnesty International USA, Next, Amnesty International USA has an action pending.