Iran & America

Oh golly.

I had a dream the other night that the little city that I live in turned into a third world nightmare. Suburbans with AK-47 wielding thugs hanging off the outside, their faces wrapped in Keffiyahs. Little dictatorial warlords clashing over religious principles. Leaders choosing to impose their idea and will on the rather herdlike general populace.

They came into my apartment. I was afraid for my life. I felt helpless to reisist. I was so glad it wasn't real, but it is. Just not for me.

That's not Iran, though it reminds me of what western media shows me of places like Somalia. I hear from a Somalian that I met, who has family there, that it's not ALL like that. But he conceded that parts of it certainly are.

Watching and reading what little is available on what is happening/happened in Iran is disturbing. Videos like this one tell a story that is as inspiring as it is horrifying; a crowd around a bleeding man wielding cellphones like vultures is the only reality that is escaping the confines of the media lock down.

I'd like to assume that only the worst is getting out. Haven't we (as a united, world-wide people) realized that you can't snuff out the human spirit? and that if you (the person trying to snuff it out) sincerely try you will only be limited the amount that escapes, not whether or not the escape happens at all.

With the media shut down, the information coming out of Iran is on cellphones and the internet. With no one to regulate or interpret the information the chaos of the protests and riots is being held within Iran like an induction layer. It's not stopping it, it's not even really limiting it, the act of media black out is giving no room for expansion - it's seems like a pressure cooker over there.

And the official government stance is that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won in a landslide and that the west (particularly the U.S.) is meddling in Iranian affairs. That western media has no information on voter fraud, even as they make every attempt to cover the civil unrest.

It's a media black out! The internet is maintaining the only semblance of free speech and they (the unelected theocratic government of Iran) are doing everything they can to shut that down too. Seems to me that these people (the Iranians) want their voices heard, but they aren't rallying against the clerics who seem to be considered to be behind the contested election and it's possibly fraudulent results...

Have their silenced voices brought about a blind, unfocused rage? or is there something we're not being told/shown?

Rage. Rage against the dieing of the light.

My heart and prayers go out to the people of Iran - may the truth of their voices be heard, and may there rage find its true target.