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Permalink Reply by Фелч Гроган on June 20, 2009 at 8:44pm

Noble thought - but beware the perils of bandwidth, especially if you get charged for excess usage. Besides, our Iranian friends are pretty tech savvy (dictatorships do that to you), our help is probably superfluous. Doesn't mean you shouldn't do it if you can though.

Looks like the real party has started.

Permalink Reply by Фелч Гроган on June 21, 2009 at 4:07am

It's a laff a minute. BBC teevee have just reported how undercover secret police are mixing in with todays protest crowds and randomly slashing people with razors. Takes several seconds to feel a sharp razor slash - plenty of time in a crowd for no one to notice you.

Permalink Reply by mxyzptlk on June 21, 2009 at 6:25pm

Neda

Permalink Reply by Sentient Biped on June 21, 2009 at 8:11am

This movement has won a victory in a sense.

Previously, the government could claim itself to be elected by the people of Iran, a product of their revolution. Now, using force and secret police to put down mass protests, the government showed itself to Iranians and the world that it is just another autocracy. The victory is that the government's appearance of legitimacy falters.

Memories of the Shah and SAVAK come to mind. I'm no historian or political scientist, but I suspect that, if the military continues to support the current regime, I think the regime will stand. If the military withdraws support, then there will be change even if that change is window dressing.

Permalink Reply by mxyzptlk on July 3, 2009 at 5:47pm

I keep hearing reports that members of the Revolutionary Guard are refusing to follow some of their orders -- they won't turn on the protesters. It's hard to be certain what's going on right now, but if the military is fragmenting, that's huge.

To go along with that, EU nations who trade with Iran are meeting with Iranian ministers now (late June/early July), isolating them -- no one wants to do business with a cracked-up dictatorship, just look at Zimbabwe. This means that even if Ahmadinejad retains the presidency, his nuts are cut; the Guardian Council is split, the Revolutionary Guard is split, the people are against him (at least those in the cities who have some kind of media presence), and Russia just opened a corridor for the U.S. to move forces through Russia into Afghanistan, so there will be a U.S. presence on either side of Iran.

Not a good time to be a theocracy north of the Arabian Sea.

Permalink Reply by Dallas the Phallus on July 3, 2009 at 4:05pm

American Artist Inspires Iranians with Neda Portrait

An amazing thing happened over at Drawger , a website where illustrators post and discuss their work. Yesterday, artist Tim O’Brien posted the above portrait he drew of Neda Agha-Soltan, the woman whose death has become a symbol of the opposition movement after the contested election in Iran. As usual, other illustrators responded in the comments section. But through the magic of the internet, citizens in Iran also found it, and flooded the post with their own heart wrenching and inspiring comments . According to the artist, what is missing from the site are the hundreds of e-mails he received from people less comfortable posting in public. It makes you ponder the power of visuals, and how one image that strikes a chord can inspire a movement.

Permalink Reply by mxyzptlk on July 3, 2009 at 6:27pm

I've never been to Iran, but I've looked at the post-Revolution murals in Tehran; they remind me of the IRA/Protestant murals in Belfast (I've not been to Iran, but I did live in Ireland).

If the Iranians are as charged by their political images as the Irish were/are, we're going to see a lot more of her.

Permalink Reply by Фелч Гроган on July 3, 2009 at 8:01pm

From the heresy files:

How to get yourself beat up by a black person in 1 easy step -

Mention the fact that black slaves, when compared to Irish slaves, were actually a priviliged class by comparison.

African slaves were very expensive during the late 1600s (50 Sterling). Irish slaves came cheap (no more than 5 Sterling). If a planter whipped or branded or beat an Irish slave to death, it was never a crime. A death was a monetary setback, but far cheaper than killing a more expensive African.

http://afgen.com/forgotten_slaves.html

This is not a hidden piece of history if you google it. It is an ignored piece of history. It's not gonna win friends, get votes or get you laid. So it's ignored.

Permalink Reply by mxyzptlk on July 3, 2009 at 9:28pm

Heh -- When you were writing this, I was writing how New Orleans was built by Irish labor because the land-owners didn't want to risk their slaves. You don't hear the word "slave" used much with the Irish; it's usually indentured servant or tenant farmer. All much of a muchness, they say.

There's some scholarship in the past 15 years looking at how much food Ireland was producing and exporting during the famine, which was more than enough to feed everyone; looking at the chain of policies leading up to that point; and making the argument that this was an attempt at a structural genocide.

When the Barack Obama/crazed chimp cartoon ran in the New York Post, I had my students follow the story and we looked at the history of comparing minorities to apes (most of my students are black, and freshman). They knew about black people being compared to apes, but were a bit shocked when I showed them cartoons of Irish being compared to apes, and a few 19th C. cartoons of blacks and Irish looking like apes.

Permalink Reply by mxyzptlk on July 3, 2009 at 9:12pm

I just checked the link and it worked for me, but is the attached image the one you're talking about?

I love that Douglass quote. When Douglass lectured in Dublin, he was welcomed by Daniel O'Connell with a state dinner; O'Connell was incredibly impressed with him. A woman from Newcastle, Ellen Richardson, raised the funds to buy out Douglass' freedom; I remember O'Connell being mentioned in regard to that when I lived there, but I can't find any records of who all chipped in.

It's funny; O'Connell's anti-slavery really divided the Irish in America. Some thought he should just focus on Irish issues -- it was the famine, after all. I've always wondered if that played a part in the basically tribal racism of the Irish in Boston in New York toward African Americans (Scorsese portrays it well).

I know there were other forces at play; the Irish weren't really considered "white" until about the time Al Smith became governor of New York. From before the famine, through the Civil War, and into the first part of the 20th C., Irish labor was often made to compete with slave, freed slave, and black labor in the north. W.E.B. DuBois writes about this -- the Irish and black merchant marines were segregated from the rest of the sailors, and they shared their quarters (and food, and songs). Much of New Orleans was built by Irish famine refugees because the work was dangerous and slave holders didn't want to risk their investments; they could pay the Irish next to nothing because they were desperate for work. (They couldn't acclimate to tropical New Orleans coming straight from Ireland, and died at a pretty rapid rate.)

So it always struck me as odd, this difference between the Irish history with African Americans, and the Irish American history with African Americans. There was a surprisingly high number of African Americans living in Dublin when I was there; many played basketball in Europe, and stayed on to live in Dublin. The Irish gave more in charity per capita to Africa than any other EU nation (and I think North America as well). It was as common to see portraits of Martin Luther King, Jr. as Kennedy. But in the U.S., the Irish Americans seem to have less a relationship with African Americans than their Irish ancestors.

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Permalink Reply by mxyzptlk on July 4, 2009 at 7:10pm

Yeah, that's part of it. The quote is from Life and Times, and goes on to discuss the double-edged sword of racism, as the British were constantly facing problems that arose from their oppression of the Irish: "England is to-day reaping the bitter consequences of her injustice and oppression."

In some other places/speeches, Douglass had some interesting things to say about Irish Americans. In the 19th C., there was a fairly strong anti-Catholic sentiment in the U.S., and Douglass reflected that (he was Methodist). Thomas Carlyle was writing about how if slaves were freed in the West Indies, it'd become a "black Ireland," thinking that a class of people so long held in servitude could not possibly rule themselves and would only cause the rest of the world problems.

Douglass reflected similar sentiments towards Irish immigrants in the U.S., lamenting how they were indoctrinated with hatred against blacks when they first arrived; how they were made to believe that black "adversity was essential to their prosperity"; how blacks and Irish were forced into direct economic competition; and when an Irish man was first allowed to practice law in New York, but blacks weren't allowed to go to law school, he deplored how black Americans were treated worse than Irish "aliens" who "fill your jails and alms-houses as well as build them."

Yet the Irish in Ireland and Douglass were sympatico on all kinds of philosophical ideas on liberty. It honestly makes me wonder if things would have been different if slaves were allowed to learn how to read. Douglass got in trouble a few times for teaching slaves to read. The Irish had a long literary tradition before any of their famines or British occupation. Their native language and literature were suppressed, but they retained a literary facility. Given that, I can sort of see why some Irish would be allowed to practice law -- they came ready-made with a facility for language. At the same time slaves were kept from ever developing such a facility, which helped to justify not allowing them into higher education, etc. etc.

Man, I really rat-holed this thread... Can you tell I teach?

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