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Memo from the Streets of Tehran, Part III
7- Many people were wounded. I don't know how many were killed. I heard different people giving different numbers of those killed today. However, when I turned on the radio to listen to the news; the headlines were all messages of congratulations to the supreme leader for his thoughtful and unifying (!) Friday speech by different government organizations and some members of the clergy. The most eloquent and bombastic was that of President Ahmadinejad who praised the supreme leader for his strong speech which showed the might and resilience of the Islamic Republic. Iranian TV showed one of its known comedy shows of interviewing masked people who confessed that they were connected to the MKO and were led by the foreigners to put buses on fire and to disarm military places. The show was so hastily and clumsily directed that you felt pity for those involved.
8- Today was tough. Tomorrow might be even tougher. People might be forced to go back home. The government may succeed to kill more and to suppress this movement. But even if this happens, will it be a victory?
I doubt it and many people who were in Tehran streets today share this view. People feel more strong now. Tonight, the cries of Allah Akbar (God is Great) was much louder than the previous nights. If we achieve nothing more, I still feel victorious. We are victorious because we are united once again.
Parvez Sharma is the director and producer of A Jihad for Love. He is in constant contact with friends on the ground in Tehran and has also been blogging on The Huffington Post.
John Talks Joe
Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
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Parvez Sharma is the director and producer of A Jihad for Love. He also writes for The Huffington Post and is a speaker on Islam and sexuality.
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Parvez Sharma is the director and producer of A Jihad for Love. He also writes for The Huffington Post and is a speaker on Islam and sexuality.
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Parvez Sharma is the director and producer of A Jihad for Love. He also writes for The Huffington Post and is a speaker on Islam and sexuality.
Just saw p.Sharma on Fox, and went on line .. Please let him know and for him to tell the people of Iran that Myself and family as well as most people in the REAL USA are supporting them and their fight.. We are WATCHING and will write our representitives to urge support them! !!! We want our government to do more to aid them NOW, it is just not right that our government has let them down so far. We wish that our election had gone the other way and they would be getting more world support. Those young people need to have freedom that they have voted for. It is the way, and it is sacred!!
Don't listen to the brainwashed FOX goon who represents the typical low information Republican voter. No, Littlefields post is not representative of the REAL USA. His Republican 'support' sent us to Iraq where the Bushies trashed an entire country. And now Littlefields wants to play hero the the 'freedom' of the Iranian people? Yuck.
Truth. All this talk of the United States' responsibility to help the opposition (read: meddle with foreign affairs) sounds a lot like the White Man's Burden to me.
So Obama gave his obligatory Harrumph yesterday. No solidarity with Iranian people, No Reaganesque, "Mr. Khamenei let your people speak, what I say is of little consequence to you, but listen to the people of Iran, they are great consequence..."
Nothing. Just an experession of outrage, and a discussion of a girl bleeding to death, and then a reference to her being shot. No mention of her muder, nope. too confrontational. He won't even acknowledge the symbol that she has become.
Nothing but empty outrage and a milquetoast statement that "we don't know how this will play out..."
A leadership vacuum, unreal.
I've been following the situation in Tehran very closely, and with awe. I am so impressed and amazed by the fortitude and bravery of the Iranian people, and I hope they realize that the hearts and minds of many Americans are with them.
The fact that Iranian reporters & citizen journalists still have access to the riots & other demonstrations against the recent elections has western reporters & US intelligence gatheres left them with no way to verify stories Iranians give to us. This situation leaves the westerners with the petty quibble of, "We have no way of confirming this report.". That quibble is absurd as calling out when Irianian reporers use the wrong tense of some verbs. These quibbles leave westerners with egg on their faces.
Face it, we are getting timely, accurate, reports. The story is on going; this isn't the time for petty quibbles.
they're not quibbles. They're not discrediting the reports. The talking-heads are just saving face in a politically correct system.
!!! IMPORTANT NOTICE !!!
I have created 24 hour running online "chats" specifically for the use of people in Iran at the website:
http://www.livepoll.net
Each chat runs for 1 hour and is then archived. The chats are not private in any way.
But they do provide an alternative way to communicate with many people at a time.
EVERYONE, please relay this message to people in Iran and to anyone else who might be willing to relay the message to others.
Don
http://www.livepoll.net
http://publicservice.evendon.com
Thank you.
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