#stop killing Iranian protesters

[ratinastrawberryhat]

All credit goes to Negartavassoli on TikTok

[bellamonde]

SAY HIS NAME - MEHDI MOHAMMADI FARD

SAY HIS NAME 

Mehdi Mohammadi Fard is an 18 year old who has been sentenced to be hanged twice. Mehdi is just a child. He was charged with “spreading corruption on earth” and “war against god” all because he protested. He was tortured and confessed to setting fire to a police station. He was not given access to his lawyer and his own lawyer of choosing was not allowed to represent him in court. There is no evidence against Mehdi except his forced confession. 

Also, how do you hang someone twice? This regime has no common sense, no humanity and no soul. 

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

People supposedly on our side regurgitated Republican propaganda about Hillary and Trump was elected. Many of those same people are now actively regurgitating Republican propaganda targeting Biden.

Some people are completely naive about how foreign policy and diplomacy work. Short of sending in troops Biden can’t force that little prick Netanyahu to stop this madness. At this point Netanyahu is actively trying to sway the election in Trump’s favor. Trump and the Republicans in power means the literal end of Palestine and its people.

Repeating Republican/Hamas/Iranian/ Russian propaganda will only make things worse for the Palestinians, Americans, and the whole world. Biden is a good man doing as much as he can while being hindered by a Republican House of Representatives and an illegitimate SCOTUS. Stop calling Biden the lesser of two evils, he is not. Trump is the only evil person (from an evil party) and he’s already proved it repeatedly.

Trump killed over a million Americans, killed more Middle Easterners than Netanyahu, and is responsible for the Russian aggression in Ukraine. Further it’s almost a certainty that Putin put his proxy Hamas launch the October 7th terrorist attack on Israel. Putin needed a distraction to take the world’s attention off his campaign in Ukraine and wanted to weaken Biden in the hopes of getting a more compliant Trump back. Putin funnels money and arms through his other proxy Iran to Hamas, which is also a proxy of Iran and has also attacked Israel.

Hamas are not champions of the Palestinians, they are an oppressive terrorist organization holding Palestinian as virtual hostages and using them as literal human shields. Palestinians want them gone as much as they want that little shit Netanyahu gone. Hamas leadership resides in luxury estates in Qatar that are paid for by Iran. Most Middle Eastern governments are oppressive autocracies and they only way they can keep their own people from rebelling is to provide them with a common enemy as a distraction and that scapegoat is Israel. Just as states like Iran need Israel as a foil, Netanyahu, and his conservative government, need the Hamas terrorists and hostile regimes like Iran to keep himself in power.

Protest Netanyahu and his supporters as much as you want as they deserve it and more. Donate to feeding and caring for the people of Gaza. I do both. But don’t repeatedly drag Biden through the mud and dissuade people from voting for him. Biden is trying to solve this nightmare while Republicans are giving speeches about how they are going to exterminate Palestinians and confiscate their land.

All these slogans you repeat came from a Republican think tank. Please consider doing something constructive for the Palestinians instead of working to get Trump back in the White House, because if he does we all lose.

[survivingcapitalism]

Reminds me of how the British blamed the Acadians for the Mi'kmaq resistance.

The crackdown on campuses offered a grim continuity: Police and other officials churned out all the same old excuses for quashing resistance. Most notably, their rhetoric relied on the predictable canard of the “outside agitator.” New York Mayor Eric Adams trotted it out as grounds for sending in an army of baton-wielding cops against the city’s students. And Deputy Police Commissioner Tarik Sheppard went even further on MSNBC Wednesday morning, brandishing an unremarkable chain lock — the sort of which I’ve seen on bikes everywhere — as proof that “professionals,” not students themselves, had carried out the takeover of the Columbia building. The bike-lock business quickly came in for rightly deserved mockery, but the “outside agitator” myth is no joking matter. In this current moment, the “outside agitators” conjured are both the perennial anarchist bogeymen or Islamist terror groups sending funds to keep student encampments flush with the cheapest tents available online. The “outside agitator” trope has a long, racist legacy, including use by the Ku Klux Klan. In the 1930s, the Klan issued flyers in Alabama claiming that “paid organizers for the communists are only trying” to get Black people “in trouble.” The allegation does double rhetorical harm by denying the agency and commitment of organizers themselves and suggesting that “outside” support from beyond a given locale or institution is somehow a bad thing. More recently, the canard has been hauled out in defense of movement repression in Atlanta, against Stop Cop City protesters who had made a national call for backup. And it was a common refrain for politicians nationwide during the 2020 uprising, as well as discourse around the earlier Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson after police killed Mike Brown. Blaming outside agitators or interests always was a propaganda ploy and remains so now. The idea that Palestinian liberation struggle is a mere proxy for Iranian interests repeats the delegitimizing logic of the past. In fact, the Gaza solidarity encampments on campuses are student-organized and led, with Palestinian students at front and center, and a disproportionately large presence of Jewish students too. It is students, over 1,000 of them, who have faced arrest. It also happens that millions of people have called for an end to Israel’s genocidal war, and support for Palestinian liberation is not and must not be limited to the mythic and maligned terrain of campus activism.

[matan4il]

Daily update post:

A terrorist in the PIJ (Palestinian Islamic Jihad) has admitted in his interrogation that they practiced for the Oct 7 massacre on Iranian soil. This is important to remember, that it wasn't just Hamas that committed the vicious attack on Israelis during that day, that the Islamist regime in Iran's involvement was crucial to what happened, and that Gaza was NEVER "an open air prison" as the anti-Israel crowd claimed. The above link has the vid quoted here.

Yesterday, Golani infantry's division 36 has left a section in northern Gaza, as a part of lowering the intensity of the fighting there. A short while later, no less than 50 rockets were fired from exactly that area into southern Israel. Yoram Bitan's shop in the southern town of Netivot took a direct hit from a rocket while he and his son were still inside (pic is from this vid, where the start also shows the barrages of rockets over Netivot). They're both thankfully okay, the building absorbed most of the impact.

Just this morning, at least 25 more rockets were fired from that area of Gaza into Israel, before IDF soldiers managed to find and destroy some of the rocket launchers that were used in these attacks (see pic with just one barrage of intercepted rockets over Israel on the horizon, Hebrew source). If Israel can't lower the intensity of the fighting, that's absolutely also because of Hamas' continued choices. Israeli civilians from the south are currently protesting against the possibility that Israel will stop the war before the complete removal of the threat of rockets being fired from Gaza.

The IDF has confirmed yesterday that it has eliminated more than 150 Hezbollah squads since the start of the war.

I got to watch an interview with Shirley (not necessarily her real name), who was a prison guard where Palestinian terrorists were held. She was sexually harassed by a terrorist called Muhammad Atallah for 2 years. Towards the end of her service at this prison, he told her that her life is being threatened by Amjad Awad, a Palestinian terrorist, who murdered the Fogel family when he was 18 years old, together with his relative, 17 years old Hakim Awad. These are 35 years old Ruti, 36 years old Udi, 11 years old Yoav, 4 years old Elad and 3 months (!) old Hadas in Mar 2011. Amjad and Hakim were actually on their way out of the house, when they heard baby Hadas crying in her crib, returned and murdered her (Hebrew source).

You can hopefully understand why Shirley was terrified when she heard Awad wanted to kill her, and Atallah claimed he could keep her safe, using this to try and rape her in a spot between two gates in the prison where there are no cameras. She fought back and saved herself. Atallah, who is imprisoned for attempted murder and murder as part of his terrorist activity, was put on trial back in 2022 for sexual harassment of Shirley and attempted rape, as well as for raping another female prison guard.

But in the interview I listened to yesterday, Shirley talked about how horrified she is over the possibility that Awad and Atallah might be freed in a hostage deal, where Hamas will demand terrorists with "blood on their hands" be released.

Last night, the IDF presented the findings of an investigation into the cause of death of 3 hostages, whose bodies were retrieved from Gaza. The autopsy determined that they were NOT killed by direct IDF or terrorists fire, but the bodies are in such a state, that it's impossible to determine what did kill them.

These are Michal and her husband Alex Lubnov.

Alex worked as a bartender at the Nova music festival on Oct 7. He was kidnapped to Gaza. Michal is seven months pregnant. This week, she visited the site from which Alex was kidnapped for the first time. She's waiting for her husband to be freed, and be with her at the delivery room.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[zvaigzdelasas]

[Sky News is Private UK Media]

Washington and London opted to strike Yemen with precision bombs rather than accelerating efforts to end violence in Gaza, where more than 20,000 people have been killed in three months. Regional diplomats say the longer that conflict continues, the less possible it becomes to contain.

The language being used by Biden administration is interesting.

"Iran is a primary - if not the primary - enabler or supporter, sponsor of the Houthis and Iran has been involved operationally in the conduct of these attacks," a Biden administration official said.

They don't talk about Iran directing the attacks against shipping or US military in the region in the way that they might have done not long ago.

They talk about Iran being the "enabler" rather than the puppet master. And that's because they know that the "Iranian proxies" in the Middle East are no longer puppets.

Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and Hamas in Gaza - all are established forces making strategic decisions, aligned with Iranian ideology of course and with Iranian-made weapons, but driven by their own ambitions.[...]

The Houthis have claimed their attacks on shipping are in solidarity with the Palestinian cause.

They frame it as an international shipping lane-based protest against what they call a genocide.[...]

But make no mistake, among regional populations, the Houthis are seen, not insignificantly, as having chosen to back support for Gaza with material action.

America and the UK chose military action to try to stop the Houthi missiles. They chose to bomb the world's poorest nation with precision bombs. That's risky and optically awkward, to say the least.

Another course would have been to seek to remove the Houthi pretext by accelerating efforts to end the Gaza conflict and solve the Israel-Palestine question.[...]

The Americans have shown an unwillingness or inability to influence Israeli actions in Gaza.

And for that, they have not just lost credibility among regional leaders. America has lost populations in the Middle East these last few months.[...]

[C]rucially, [senior regional diplomats] say that while Iran doesn't seek to escalate all this into a regional war, it cannot mitigate for potential miscalculation in Lebanon, Yemen or Iraq because the groups operating there are more and more independent.

What's happening how is this in Sky [12 Jan 24]

[luminalunii97]

The Islamic Republic: we canceled the morality police!

Iranians: so?! Does that change the fact that you have committed genocide in Kurdish cities and Zahedan? Does that restore people's eyesight that you took from them with your rubble bullets? Does that bring back to life almost 500 murdered protesters in the last 3 months, among them at least 60 children? Does that bring back to life 1500 people you massacred in 2019 and those you executed afterwards? Or the 30000 people you executed in the first decade of your rule? And everyone you've arrested, raped, tortured and executed in between simply because they didn't agree with you? Does that mean current executions are stopped? Does that mean tens of thousands of arrested protesters are free? Does that mean fired or suspended students are back to classes and can get an education? Does that mean the poverty threshold is no longer so absolutely high that even the once above average families are considered absolutely poor? Does that erase 40 years of apartheid? State racism? State misogyny? Inequality? Have you stopped bothering religious minorities and are giving them their basic human rights back? Does that mean there's no more child marriages? Legal rape? Does that mean you no longer kill and torture LGBTQ people? Does that make up for the environmental disaster you've caused in Iran? Water shortage? Bewildering fuel shortage? All the lakes and water bodies that are dry now and the jungles that has been destroyed? Currently northern jungles are on fire, are the trees restored? Does that mean you no longer execute environmental activists because they object your unscientific environment policies? Does that mean all censorships and restrictions are lifted? Does that end your meddling in other countries affairs? Does it mean you're not a bunch of thieves and murderers who know nothing about running a country? Does that make up for all the lives you've destroyed? And most importantly does that bring Mahsa Amini back to life???

It's too late for that. Iranians have been loud and clear. We won't sit down until this regime is completely and irreversibly changed. The whole government system, the constitution, and the people in powers. And those who committed crimes have to be put on trial.

(The morality police have been around under different names for almost the entirety of this regime. This is just a temporary stop. Even if the morality police is disbanded for good, compulsory hijab is still a law and it's illegal to not wear appropriate clothing. Any police force is able to arrest non hijabis since they're doing something illegal, it's not an exclusive morality police duty. Plus the morality police was just enforcing hijab in the streets. What about every governmental and private offices and institutions? They all have to enforce mandatory hijab on both their employees and costumers So this news means literally nothing. West media should research these things better before publishing misleading informations)

I strongly recommend everyone to go to #MahsaAmini in twitter and read iranians tweets. Like, I strongly recommend it. I even put the link to make it easier for you. Just click on it.

[intensepokerface]

Tomorrow, September 25th is an important day in the Shia Islamic culture. It is the anniversary of the death of both the prophet and Imam Hassan.

Tomorrow is also a week after Mahsa Amini’s passing. In Muslim and Iranian culture, the friends and the family of the departed gather together again a week after their passing.

The people of Iran are no doubt going to protest tomorrow. They are going to mourn the loss of Mahsa and the many lives lost during this past week.

The government will try to derail this again. They will burn copies pf the Quran, and the Iranian flag and they will yell disrespectful things about Islam and then they will claim that all of that was done by protesters. They have done this before. About 13 years ago, after a long period of protests against the government, when they where unable to stop people, the government burned copies of flags with Imam Hossein’s name during the month of Moharram. They said that the protestors had disrespected Islam and so they used that as an excuse to slaughter people. They killed them in most violent ways. Mass slaughter. The protests stopped immediately.

Don’t let this happen again please. Do not they believe the shit they will inevitably feed you. Stand by Iranians. Know that standing by Iraninas will in no way mean that you are standing against Islam or any religion for that matter.

Iranians are not against Islam. Iranians are against the Islamic Republic government.

[girlactionfigure]

🟢 Mon morning - ISRAEL REALTIME - Connecting to Israel in Realtime

❌ IRANIAN PRESIDENT DEAD.. along with Foreign Minister and 7 others - it appears his presidential helicopter flew directly into the mountainside.  

Search efforts took all night, only confirmed a few minutes ago, and the wreckage was found by a Turkish observation drone.

This president was known as a “the hangman” and the “butcher of Teheran”, a mass murderer of political opponents of the regime in his early ‘career’, and was the president responsible for the mass drone and missile attack on Israel.

❌ IRAN CHIEF OF POLICE (likely) ASSASSINATED.. (unconfirmed report, possibly fake) the chief was shot multiple times and killed.  He is held responsible for the murder of hundreds of innocent civilians in protests.

▪️RUSSIAN NATIONALIST CHANNELS.. are sure that this is the work of the Mossad. (( The placement of the mountain in front of the helicopter was particularly masterful. ))

▪️SAUDI KING HOSPITALIZED.. with pneumonia, 88 years old.  

▪️PROTEST - Sha’ar HaGai .. "Brothers in Arms" slow down and block traffic on Highway 1, demonstrating against the conscription exemption law.  13 arrested including 4 of the leaders of the movement.

▪️AID PROTESTORS.. were stopping trucks on the  oad in the French Giva neighborhood in Jerusalem, interrogating drivers looking for humanitarian aid trucks coming from Jordan to Gaza. Police were called to the scene.

▪️REFUGEE RIOT.. late night a fight broke out between Eritrea’s including tools, knives and clubs in the Tel Aviv Hatikva neighborhood. Several of these riots between opponents and supporters of the Eritrean regime have occurred.  3 injured, 1 policeman lightly injured.

▪️POLICE RAID TEL AVIV MUNICIPALITY.. LAHAV 443 (Israel’s major crimes unit) investigators raided the Tel Aviv municipality this morning: 13 were arrested on suspicion of public corruption, money laundering and offsetting fictitious invoices amounting to hundreds of millions of shekels, and the involvement of the mafia.  Among those arrested is the head of a department in the municipality and his deputy.

▪️LAG b’OMER FIRE CONCERNS.. The Israel Fire and Rescue Commissioner has announced that in light of the fire conditions expected on Lag B'Omer there is a ban on lighting bonfires outside specified (controlled) areas.

▪️POPULAR FRONT & POP. RESISTANCE COMMITTEE THREATENS THE US FLOATING PIER.. Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine warns against using the floating port to deport Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and protect Israel.  The Resistance Committee warns the pier s "a propaganda measure that helps legitimize the Israeli siege and occupation of the Rafah crossing, and divert attention from the siege, the mass extermination and the war of starvation."

"any Israeli or foreign presence at the floating sea port or at the border crossings, including American forces, would be a legitimate target."

⭕ ROCKETS at Metulla, by Hezbollah, 2 rounds.

[readingsquotes]

"

The negligible acts of property damage were not, of course, what was being policed. Nor was the holding of campus space; students have done this before in recent decades without their university administrators inviting the force of militarized police.

Instead, it was the protesters’ message that was being handcuffed — the condemnation of Israel and the calls for a free Palestine — and young peoples’ commitment to it.

I have been reporting on political dissent and violent policing for 15 years, particularly in New York City. Compared to Tuesday night, I have never witnessed, at the scene of a protest, the use of police power so disproportionate to the type of demonstration taking place.

Make no mistake: This is an authoritarian escalation."

....

The “Outside Agitator” Myth

The crackdown on campuses offered a grim continuity: Police and other officials churned out all the same old excuses for quashing resistance. Most notably, their rhetoric relied on the predictable canard of the “outside agitator.”

New York Mayor Eric Adams trotted it out as grounds for sending in an army of baton-wielding cops against the city’s students. And Deputy Police Commissioner Tarik Sheppard went even further on MSNBC Wednesday morning, brandishing an unremarkable chain lock — the sort of which I’ve seen on bikes everywhere — as proof that “professionals,” not students themselves, had carried out the takeover of the Columbia building.

The bike-lock business quickly came in for rightly deserved mockery, but the “outside agitator” myth is no joking matter.

In this current moment, the “outside agitators” conjured are both the perennial anarchist bogeymen or Islamist terror groups sending funds to keep student encampments flush with the cheapest tents available online.

The “outside agitator” trope has a long, racist legacy, including use by the Ku Klux Klan. In the 1930s, the Klan issued flyers in Alabama claiming that “paid organizers for the communists are only trying” to get Black people “in trouble.” The allegation does double rhetorical harm by denying the agency and commitment of organizers themselves and suggesting that “outside” support from beyond a given locale or institution is somehow a bad thing.

More recently, the canard has been hauled out in defense of movement repression in Atlanta, against Stop Cop City protesters who had made a national call for backup. And it was a common refrain for politicians nationwide during the 2020 uprising, as well as discourse around the earlier Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson after police killed Mike Brown.

Blaming outside agitators or interests always was a propaganda ploy and remains so now. The idea that Palestinian liberation struggle is a mere proxy for Iranian interests repeats the delegitimizing logic of the past.

In fact, the Gaza solidarity encampments on campuses are student-organized and led, with Palestinian students at front and center, and a disproportionately large presence of Jewish students too. It is students, over 1,000 of them, who have faced arrest.

[humansofnewyork]

Iran is the first country outside the US where I ever collected interviews. I remember how nervous I was. This was over ten years ago. There hadn’t been a nuclear deal yet. I didn’t have a ‘fixer.’ I hadn’t even been working long enough to know what a ‘fixer’ was. I’d been assigned a full-time personal tour guide—a requirement for all Americans. He’d prepared a packed itinerary of museums and historical sites for us to visit. I still remember his surprise when I said: ‘Actually, I just want to stop random people on the street.’ But miraculously he agreed to the pivot. And over the next ten days we approached well over one hundred people. I’d spent so much time worrying that no Iranian would want to speak to an American with a camera. But of the hundred people I approached—only three refused my request. That’s the first thing you notice: the hospitality. The average Iranian is so welcoming: please come in and eat, please sit and have tea. It’s why I returned for a second time in 2016. There’s an openness there. A long history of humanism, art, and scientific discovery; it’s baked deep in the culture. But that openness is suppressed by an empowered minority. Iran is not a country that looks or sounds like its leaders. It’s much more youthful. Much more liberal. And it’s much, much more female. The current protests are being led by young women, of course. Because they’re living under laws created by old religious men. At the end of my first trip, I was getting frantic emails from well-meaning people, warning me to leave. Hardline journalists had begun calling for me to be stopped, from the unspeakable sin—of photographing Iranian women. It can be difficult to know exactly what is happening in Iran right now. We know the government is struggling to crack down on the largest protests they’ve ever seen. We know that many young women have been killed. It can be hard to know how to help. But in a letter to The Times this weekend, A. Maziar Zafari said the protestors need support from ‘all artists in open and democratic societies.’ So I’d like to say, especially to the young women risking the most: we see you, we hear you, and you continue to inspire us.

[ratinastrawberryhat]

All credit goes to LittleYeg on TikTok

[bellamonde]

Iran Executions

Some of you may have seen the news by Western media that the claims about Iranian executions is fake. As an Iranian woman who was born and raised in Iran, I felt the need to address this claim. And in advance, sorry for the length of this text. 

Let me start off by saying that these western journalists have not covered Iran protest during the past few weeks. They did not cover the massacre in Zahedan, they did not cover when war planes landed in Sanandaj, they did not cover the bloody attack on Sharif University students nor did they cover the fire at Evin prison. But all of a sudden, they are claiming with one voice that the claim that 15,000 people will be executed is false. To me, it’s interesting how they are cherry picking the stories to cover. 

Now as for their claim.

First, Iranians did not say that 15,000 will be executed. We said there is a real threat that they may be executed. Majority of the so-called lawmakers in the Islamic Republic’s parliament asked the judiciary to find the political prisoners guilty of corruption and execute them. There are videos of the session evidencing this request. Based on this, Iranians said that the lives of 15,000 political prisoners are in clear danger and they may very likely be executed. For non-Iranians, it may be difficult to understand this nuance. Westerns media operate in a democracy and western journalists are applying western standards to the Islamic Republic. They are waiting for actual death sentences to be handed out, without realizing that the Islamic Republic operates differently. This request is a reflection of the regime’s intent and end goal. Islamic Republic is a dictatorship - there are no debates, no real trials. If a request has been made to the judiciary, there is a high probability it will be carried out.This nuance is missed on non-Iranians. 

Second, executions take place in secret - Navid Afkari was executed in secret.  By not voicing the threat, by not raising alarms, and waiting for the actual death sentence to be handed out, Western media is toying with the lives of innocent people. Once a person is sentenced to death, it cannot be stopped. We can campaign but it won’t make any difference - again, look at what happened to Navid Afkari. 

Third, the Islamic Republic has a long history of executing prisoners. In 1988, 30,000 political prisoners were executed by the Islamic Republic. According to an Amnesty International report, “During the first six months of 2022, the Iranian authorities executed at least one person a day on average. The state machinery is carrying out killings on a mass scale across the country in an abhorrent assault on the right to life. Iran’s staggering execution toll for the first half of this year has chilling echoes of 2015 when there was another shocking spike.” You can read Amnesty’s report here. Balouchis are disproportionately affected. 

Fourth, the Islamic Republic is executing the protestors every day in front of the world’s eyes. What do you call targeting and shooting directly at protestors with live bullets? What do you call torturing them to death? What do you call torturing them until they commit suicide? Are these not executions? Execution means the act of carrying out a sentence. In Iran, protesting against the Islamic Republic is considered “waging war against God” or “spreading corruption on Earth” and both charges carry the death penalty. Criticizing the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader is considered waging war against God because he is the supposed representative of God on earth. Therefore, when protestors chant “death to Khamenei”, they are waging war against God. Khamenei in a speech called protestors scattered riots designed by enemies. Espionage and assisting the enemy also carry the death penalty. Essentially, Khamenei declared all protestors to be enemies of state. The Islamic Republic’s guards are carrying out the orders of Khamenei - protestors are designed by the enemy, they are assisting the enemy and therefore, should be executed. Trials are a sham in Iran - political prisoners are not permitted to consult their lawyer. In fact their lawyers are either arrested or not allowed to be present during the trial. Political prisoners were found guilty the moment they set foot in the streets demanding human rights and justice. And so each time an Islamic Republic guard shoots at a protestor, they are carrying out an execution. 

How could anyone recall Khodanoor’s murder and not call it an execution? Hadis, Sarina, Nika, Minoo, Mehrshad, Khodanoor, Yalda and hundreds more were executed. 

I want to end with this. Please do not let this detract us from reality - the point is that 15,000 innocent people are facing the risk of execution. In light of Islamic Republic’s past, this risk is palpable. 

Thank you to all who have tirelessly supported our cause and amplified the voices of the people of Iran. Every post, every story, every letter written to or phone call made to a representative, and every protest has helped amplify the voices of Iranians. Please continue sharing. Life in Iran is difficult and life as a woman is precarious. But for the first time in almost 44 years, there is a slim hope for freedom. I never believed we could be free in my life time but it is now a possibility. So please do not abandon the cause. 

#Woman Life Freedom

[sixty-silver-wishes]

with regards to the iran/israel situation and literally any other humanitarian situation that's going on right now, I just want to re-iterate some of my stances on current events:

I do not believe in wishing death on anyone. no matter anyone's identity or beliefs, I think that everyone should be entitled to basic human rights. I will NEVER advocate for statements calling for the mass death of civilians of any country, and detest seeing such statements made as jokes. I don't want to see "death to (country)," "burn (country) to the ground," "(country) needs to be nuked," etc. if you make those statements, think about what you're saying. we should not believe ourselves to be entitled to who gets to live or die. that is genocidal rhetoric.

WAR IS NOT ENTERTAINMENT. by that I mean I'm tired of people who have never experienced war treating it like fictional media. it's not strictly good vs. evil, it's not a sports game where you pick your favorite team. people die in war. and of course that seems obvious, but ever since the russian invasion of ukraine, I've seen people online, usually westerners with no connection to either country, treating a global conflict with devastating civilian consequences like fandom. express your support for ukraine by raising awareness for humanitarian causes, supporting ukrainian businesses, or learning about ukrainian culture and history, not making volodymyr zelensky thirst traps, goddammit. (and yes, I remember the volodymyr zelensky thirst traps. those were indeed a thing.) war is not meme fodder and entertainment, especially for those who are fortunate enough to be removed from it.

I do not believe in generalizing entire populations based on the actions of their governments. yes, of course there are civilians that support a government's actions, and there are civilians who oppose them. there are israelis who oppose the actions of the israeli government, russians who oppose the actions of the russian government, americans who oppose the actions of the us government, etc. the minute you generalize all civilians under a certain government as holding the same beliefs, you risk promoting rhetoric that is also used to justify ignorance and bigotry in best-case scenarios, and genocide in worst-case scenarios. people are not monoliths, and treating them as such can lead down a dangerous pipeline of attempting to justify the extermination of entire populations.

just because a government is committing atrocities doesn't mean the governments opposed to it are absolved of atrocities. powerful governments are not generally interested in human rights; they're interested in gaining as much influence and power as possible. ukrainians and palestinians are both suffering, but the international governments that claim to support either group of people are only doing so to support their own self-interests, such as global prominence or economic gain. we should not be cheering for the iranian government just because they oppose the israeli government; the mahsa/jina amini protests happened for a reason.

whenever there's a war, civilians always suffer the most. for those of us removed from war, we're removed from the full extent of this suffering. nowadays, with the rise of social media, we are able to witness atrocities in real time, but seeing videos of mutilated bodies and hearing the testimonies of survivors still doesn't equate to witnessing such atrocities firsthand. I don't believe that we should actively seek out graphic or distressing footage in order to alleviate any feelings of guilt, but we should treat these situations with extreme sensitivity, because we're not the ones experiencing them.

this goes with point #1, which is sort of where all of these points ultimately stem from, but I don't believe the killing of civilians is ever justified. even if one believes the ends justify the means, the lives of those people don't stop mattering.

please, going forward, let's be sensitive, compassionate, and kind. we need to be open to learning about different perspectives, as well as history, culture, and current events. there's already been so much suffering in the world in these last few years alone, and for those of us who are privileged enough to be removed from this sort of suffering, it's our responsibility to do our best not to make it worse than it already is.

[shintin]

I had to to delete my posts about Iran's protests, but I beg you all, please don't stop being those innocent people's voice!

Everyday, government is killing protesters, even minors and kids in the streets!

This is not fair!

You were lucky to born in a safe geography, so be the voice of the people who weren't. Be the voice of brave Iranian who are standing before bullets with bare hands to gain their freedom back!

Women, Life, Freedom.

Say her name, #MahsaAmini

[luminalunii97]

Recently, 227 out of 290 members of Iran parliament voted to execute those who were arrested in the past 8 weeks of uprising. According to Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), the number of arrested protesters are more than 14,000 people. Islamic republic has a long history of mass murders. In the 1988 massacres of political prisoners, more than 30,000 people were executed. In 2019 protests, the government killed more than 1,500 protesters during the internet shutdown. They never stop their criminal ways because blood and bone is the foundation of their reign.

These people, who have the dream of freedom in mind, are going to be sentenced to death if international human rights organizations don't do something about it. We're not talking about nameless faceless people. These 14,000 lives have friends and families, pets and lovers. Let's get to know some of them:

This is Hossein Ronaghi. He is an iranian blogger and human rights activist. He's also a computer programmer and one of his activism areas is internet restrictions and how to go around them. He has a long history of political activities and since 2009 protests, he has been a political prisoner on and off. During current protests, he was called to turn himself into Evin prison or his family will be in danger, so he did that. But even though he was there voluntarily, security forces violently attacked him and beat him. Currently he's in prison with broken legs and no medical attention and a 46-day-long hunger strike. His life is in danger.

These are Elaheh Mohammadi and Niloofar Hamedi, the two journalists who covered Mahsa Amini's murder news. This is not the first time the government arrest and punish someone who spread a crime news instead of arresting those who committed said crime. Media freedom is a joke in Iran and those who speak the truth get silenced. A while ago in an interview with Shargh daily, the newspaper Niloofar works for, she addressed sexism in her field of occupation and explained: "sometimes a female journalist would think with herself maybe I should just give up this job, this job has many safety issues and the salary isn't good at all. but most of them stay. Women journalists never give up."

This is Fatemeh Sepehri, a political activist. She oppose Khamenei leadership and demands a democratic future for iran. She's a mother who lost her child custody to sexism. Her husband was a martyr of Iran-Iraq war. Her brother is also a political prisoner. She was kidnapped at the beginning of current protests and is being kept in solitary confinement.

This is Leyla Hosseinzade, former Tehran university student. She didn't believe in hijab and still doesn't. She refuse to wear hijab while in jail and that put her in a dangerous situation with security guards. She's currently on a hunger strike.

This is Faezeh Barahui, a young Baluchi girl who was arrested during protests in Zahedan, has been in prison for weeks.

This is Fetemeh Mashhadi Abbas, a professor in Shahid Beheshti university of medical sciences. She was kidnapped and is now being kept in Evin prison.

This is Toomaj Salehi, Iranian rapper who's songs are mostly protest songs aimed at the regime. He was brutally arrested and is under heavy torture at the moment.

This is Nazila Maroufian, a journalist who's in Evin prison because she interviewed with Mahsa Amini's father.

This is Marzieh Ziari, a women's rights activist in iran who was arrested and her current condition is unknown.

There are many many many more people. This is just a thin list of more known ones. According to HRANA, among all these arrested citizens, 1,941 of them have been identified and their arrests have become publicly known, 438 of them are university students. Children are among prisoners too but their number has not been reported. The wellbeing or placement of some prisoners are not known and that causes a lot of concerns.