o_d_m wrote:It seems like Ahmadinejad is being embraced by the left and all I'm saying is watch out. This guy is in no way someone who should remotely be embraced by the left. Nor is his government.

A lot is made about Ahmadinejad, but it really seems like propoganda to me. I agree with what Joe Klein said in his article in Time magazine. Unfortunately, Ahmadinejad plays right into the hands of those who want to wage war with Iran - it's easy to point a finger at the holocaust denying / gay bashing Iranian President and say things like "the world is not safe" unless we take action against him. I feel like I've heard this all before from this administration - and I don't trust Bush and his cohorts to make the right decision at all.

hopelesshomo wrote:Go watch this BBC documentary. It's a full length movie, but even if you only watch part of it, you'll get the idea. Just because their president is fucked, just like ours is, is no reason to buy into the full on propaganda blitz. these people aren't the Nazis.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=554201962695917482

I loved this documentary with Rageh Omar...It was spell-binding TV. Well researched and nuanced. Some really good face-to-face interviews. Thanks for the link.

Cranius wrote:

hopelesshomo wrote:Go watch this BBC documentary. It's a full length movie, but even if you only watch part of it, you'll get the idea. Just because their president is fucked, just like ours is, is no reason to buy into the full on propaganda blitz. these people aren't the Nazis.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=554201962695917482

I loved this documentary with Rageh Omar...It was spell-binding TV. Well researched and nuanced. Some really good face-to-face interviews. Thanks for the link.

So many thanks for this. As the google image search results posted above show so nicely, we (the West) have so few images of Iran. It's humanizing and critical. Sparky is spot on, as usual, in questioning where this "embrace by the left" exists. Ahmadinejad is being painted as a new Hitler, and Iran as a next target for Bush & Co. I absolutely want as many vantage points as possible and no, I don't trust sound bites on the nightly news to give me a well-rounded picture as to whether a threat exists or not.

Again, thanks to all for the links.

nice pictures, but almost every non disaster country has nice areas where rich people can frolic. Even 3rd world countries have areas that look like paradise. Mayamar included

Hexpane wrote:nice pictures, but almost every non disaster country has nice areas where rich people can frolic. Even 3rd world countries have areas that look like paradise. Mayamar included

The same applies to the US and UK.

But I think that this misses of most of the posts here, which is to break down currently held stereotypes. As they guys above say, watch the BBC documentary for a wider look.

It's too easy to sit back and state, "well, those photos are not-representative." You can never get a fully representative set of images of a place (unless you get hold of anAleph).

That is not to say that it does not help to learn more about a place. And, again as stated above, since the imagery we tend to associate with Iran is almost wholly negative, it seems churlish to immediately jump on any contrary depictions.

I'll stop now as I'm becoming a broken record on this.

Sorry, forgive me if I find the need to protect human rights consistently to be important.

I just find it hard to consider a regime that executes children to be normal.

Maybe embrace was too strong of a word to use. However, some (though I don't know their political leanings) cheered wildly at his anti-Israel rhetoric during his speech at Columbia. I don't care if you support Israel or not. Don't cheer for people that condone or work complicitly with regimes that condone the execution of children. period.

For the record, I think a lot of people in Iran do genuinely want change. Again I do not support military action against Iran at all. I do not think Ahmadinejad is a new Hitler. I just want people to stop acting like the human rights abuses in Iran are propaganda cooked up by Bush and that everything is hunky-dory over there. They are not.

Here's a slide show for you:
These were minors

These were some of Iran's non-existent homosexuals (Also teenagers)

Hey she's 16, what a great country. So great, the judge was only too glad to put the noose around her neck,


Yes, I am well aware of other countries' human rights abuses (U.S. and Israel included) but this is a thread about Iran so Iran's human rights abuses are highlighted.

o_d_m wrote:I just want people to stop acting like the human rights abuses in Iran are propaganda cooked up by Bush and that everything is hunky-dory over there. They are not.

Here's a slide show for you:
These were minors

These were some of Iran's non-existent homosexuals (Also teenagers)

Hey she's 16, what a great country. So great, the judge was only too glad to put the noose around her neck,

Yes, I am well aware of other countries' human rights abuses (U.S. and Israel included) but this is a thread about Iran so Iran's human rights abuses are highlighted.

Apologies o_d_m, but again I have to ask where in this forum, or indeed in mainstream Western liberal press are these human rights abuses being denied?

If anything, as you are demonstrating, they are being highlighted almost incessantly.

Again, why do you feel the need to reinforce this single-image of Iran as a country full of executioners and homophobic murderers? All this thread is trying to put across is that that already prevalent image is only one negative part of what makes up the country.

There have been numerous threads on visiting places in the UK, France, US and other Western countries which are not being threatened with invasion, and we do not seem to feel the need to post photographs of still-extant human rights abuses perpetuated by those countries.

I am sorry to over-egg this point, but it does annoy me this inability to consider Iran and Iranians as a heterogenous people and society with very good and very bad aspects, and the whole spectrum in between.

This constant need to dehumanize... I am sure that that is the opposite of your intentions, but that is what comes out from this continual battering of any alternative depictions.

It's refreshing to see pictures of Iran that depict everyday life instead of hanging parties or mosque courtyards and city squares crowded with angry protesters hoisting posters of banners and religious leaders, burning flags and chanting "Death To America."

The Iran in these photos actually looks like a nice place, a modern country with a sophisticated culture, scenic parks, stately architecture and beautiful people.

I think some Americans object to these kinds of photographs being presented in this way, because we trust our eyes not to deceive us and these images clearly illustrate that the Iranian people--whom we've been told are vicious enemies who seek to destroy us--are in fact not so very different from ourselves.

That realization is very uncomfortable for anybody who generally trusts our government to do the right thing and believes in the doctrines and actions of the executive administration. It's kind of a nagging doubt that forces us to consider the disturbing possibility that our own government has lied to us on a grandiose scale with the intention of motivating us into an ongoing state of war, for some other reason than to neutralize an imminent threat to our safety.

So the immediate reaction to pictures like these is to suspect that they're "staged" or "posed", they depict only a small privileged fraction of Iranian society, or that they are otherwise out of context from average daily life in Iran.

I bet flowers grew in Nazi Germany, too.

I'd like to see more hair on the women and less hair on the men.