By Debra Sweet
When Iranian director Asghar Farhadi received the Golden Globe award for Best Foreign Film Sunday night, he said:
When I was coming up on the stage, I was thinking what should I say here. Should I say something about my mother, father, my kind wife, my daughters, my dear friends, my great and lovely crew. But now I just prefer to say something about my people. I think they are a truly peace-loving people. Thank you very much.
The film, "A Separation" is about, what? The life of one married couple coming apart; the choices people make to stay or go; the fractures between men and women; classes; secular thinkers and fundamentalists? It may be all of that. Yet, somehow the film got past the mullahs and censors, and Farhadi was in the U.S. to make such a simple and eloquent statement.
Whatever the criticism due towards the actions of the leaders of the Islamic Republic — and to me those are significant and justify and mass opposition by the Iranian people — U.S. or Israel making war on Iran is wrong. In effect, war has already begun against the people of Iran, with the U.S. threatening the people of Iran with the use of "bunker-buster" bombs, shutting down the Central Bank’s access to foreign markets, and stopping the lifeblood flow of oil in and out of Iran.
Tonight, leaders and activists from anti-war organizations will be discussing actions to take aimed at preventing t a U.S. war on Iran. We will be announcing more soon. I would like your ideas and input on how we should go out to the people living in this country to challenge them to act against war. Please email me.
Meanwhile, a look at this map shows which country is surrounding Iran with military. These are the U.S. military bases we know about which surround Iran. Who is the aggressor in the Middle East?
Washington DC, Chicago, San Francisco, New York 300+ cities:
More on the week of action to Close Guantánamo, Stop Indefinite Detention
Without doubt, last week saw the largest protests yet against the torture and detention policies of the US in Washington, DC.
Andy Worthington is back in the UK now but wrote this report on his time touring the US and speaking (including to many of you reading this message) about the individuals at Guantánamo he’s gotten to know through years of research and the policy that continues in such a terrible direction through today: With Right on Our Side: The Inspiring Guantánamo 10th Anniversary Protest in Washington D.C.
More links to reports and photos from the week, around the country, have been added here.
Unjust Wars Require Dehumanizing the "Enemy"
Sometimes an event breaks into the mainstream media that reveals the truly brutal, oppressive nature of the armed forces of the US and the wars they are fighting. At a moment when we are being told by the oh-so-rational and humane administration of Barack Obama and Co. that we must line up behind a new aggressive war against an oil-producing Central Asian country, the recently released video of US soldiers urinating on Afghan corpses has exposed the way "our" soldiers view the entire population of the region: as subhuman.
Now we must challenge Americans to not look away from these terrible images, but absorb what these incidents tell us about the essence of what is still happening in our names: unjust, illegitimate violence unleashed by the most powerful against some of the poorest people on the planet.
From thehill.com:
Texas Gov. Rick Perry slammed the Obama administration on Sunday for being too tough on a group of Marines photographed urinating on the dead bodies of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.
"Obviously, 18, 19 year-old kids make stupid mistakes all too often, and that’s what’s occurred here," Perry said on CNN’s "State of the Union."
Perry said the soldiers should be punished but that criminal charges are excessive.
"What is really disturbing to me is the over-the-top rhetoric from this administration and their disdain for the military it appears," Perry said.
U.S. and Afghan officials have condemned the incident, and a military investigation is underway. The Geneva Convention bans desecrating the dead.
Today, I received this poem from Tania Ramalho:
Apology
To the Afghan people:
We apologize for our boys
pissing on the bodies of your
rag tag Taliban resistance fighters.
We have a saying here,
"boys will be boys"
but this "is absolutely inconsistent
with the standards of behavior that the vast majority
of Marines hold themselves to,"
as reported in the paper today;
we are a nation of high moral standards.
It won’t happen again,
we promise.
“Those found to have engaged
in such conduct
will be held accountable
to the fullest extent.”
In the future, we will have
more drones and
robot soldiers with no penises
(no souls, really)
programmable strictly
to kill–only–
not to laugh
at war bounty.
January 13, 2012
Queensbury, NY