In an act that has probably sealed their doom, the Islamic religious government of Iran brutally murdered a young woman by shooting her in the heart as she stood next to her father at a protest march. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of Iran has threatened the protesters with violence and death. This weekend he delivered on his promise when one of his thugs murdered a woman in front of cell phone cameras. These cameras have enabled the world to watch the brutal horror that comes from a religious government. The girl is Neda Soltan, a 26-year-old philosophy student. She does not know it, but the blood that runs from her in the video is probably going to drown Iran’s government in relatively short order.
Category Archives: Politics
Iran Protests Are Irrelevant
The rallies and protests in support of opposition presidential candidate Hossein Moussavi or current president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran are totally irrelevant. The president of Iran is purely a middle-management position that reports to the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenie who is an Islamic religious leader of a theocratic state. The protesters in the current uprising are arguing for their votes to be counted in a meaningless election which does nothing but support a theocratic regime that rules the entire country by their interpretation of the word of god. The religious government of Iran completely suppresses anything that might pass as free speech, it treats women like animals who have no rights and who count as only one half of a man. It also threatens to wipe other nations off the face of the globe.
If I were a crowd of a few million protesters in Iran (after all, crowds often act as a single entity), I would not bother about protesting presidential votes. I would remove the Supreme Leader and the Guardian Counsel completely and by any means necessary. I would eliminate the religious government entirely. Only then would the protests have any meaning. Only then would there be any possibility of a free election. And only then would I take the protests seriously. It’s all or nothing, folks. If you don’t like your government, get rid of it. Meanwhile, you’re just a side-show.
Author Toni Morrison Talks About Free Speech
In a time when we have a president who is actually attempting to hide photos purported to show United States military personnel allegedly raping prisoners during torture sessions in Iraq, author Toni Morrison is speaking out in support of free speech. The two things are related because of the government’s use of fear to justify hiding the photos of brutal criminal conduct by U.S. personnel.
Over the years, Morrison, author of Beloved and Song of Solomon, has had several of her novels threatened with being banned for their content.
Here’s a sampling from an Associated Press article about the launch of the Free Speech Leadership Council which includes Toni Morrison:
Morrison said the problem was fear — fear of information, dating back to the book of Genesis and the fatal temptation of the Tree of Knowledge.
“Knowledge is bad” is the Bible’s message, Morrison said, while being interviewed by author-humorist Fran Lebowitz. “It is sinful. It will corrupt you and you will die.”
Freedom of speech and information is under far greater threat these days than most people seem to realize. It is extremely important for well-known authors to discuss the issue openly.
The photo is from AP’s Seth Wenig.
20-Year Anniversary of China’s Public Massacre
Twenty years ago, on June 4, 1989, the Chinese government ordered its military to kill the unarmed peaceful student protesters for democracy gathered in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. The army then shot the students and ran them over with tanks. In its murderous effort to suppress any form of free expression or protest, the Chinese government and its military murdered the people in Tiananmen Square while the entire world watched. China is now preventing any sort of commemoration or discussion of those events or the twenty-year anniversary by almost completely shutting down internet access to any material that could possibly mention the murder of Chinese people in Tiananmen Square.
You can see the police with umbrellas blocking the view of the BBC news cameraman in the embedded video. The entire square is closed to the press on this important day in Chinese history. The government does not want anyone in China to know anything about or understand what happened in 1989.
It is an honor to have a web site banned in China. Candlelight Stories receives a large number of visits from China and is actually used in English classes there. However, Candlelight Stories urges the citizens of China to wake up in the morning and completely overthrow and eliminate their oppressive government. It would be enlightening to see the government officials of China dragged by Chinese citizens into the middle of Tiananmen Square where the world could serve as witness to the end of this horrendous period in Chinese history. Why any company or country does any business at all with the brutal despots ruling China is a complete and pitiful mystery to any rational thinker. And people who site see in China would have probably been perfectly comfortable touring concentration camps in 1944.
Now, China, press the red button and ban me.
President Obama Moves Toward Fascist Ideas
Watch liberal MSNBC commentator Rachel Maddow in this video. Watch the whole thing. She’s leading us through what may amount to the most terrifying fascist speech ever delivered to the people of the United States. The sitting president is moving toward setting up a legal structure that will place people in ‘prolonged detention’ BEFORE they have committed any crime or have even been charged with a crime if they are determined to be a possible danger to the United States. Maddow points out how this is the exact premise of the science fiction film Minority Report which was based upon a Philip K. Dick story. This is a well-known liberal commentator who says at the end of the video that this Obama speech is ‘one of the most radical proposals for defying the Constitution that we have ever heard made to the American people.’
The American Civil Liberties Union has responded with short statement.
The bottom line is that this president is shocking human rights and civil liberties organizations all over the world with his rapid move toward fascism. These are largely liberal organizations that once looked upon Mr. Obama as a welcome change from eight years of assaults on civil liberties. They and many liberal voters in the United States are profoundly disappointed and legitimately horrified at what they are hearing from this president.
So, if you write or say something that makes someone somewhere in the Obama administration decide that you might be some sort of danger in the future, you could be arrested and held in a new separate legal structure that could keep you imprisoned indefinitely – forever.
That is a profoundly un-American and illegal idea.
Word Bullets are Destabilizing Guatemala’s Government
The Guatemalan Twitter user named Jean Anleu Fernández who was arrested for making a Twitter post that suggested people should remove their money from the Banrural in order to help break the backs of corrupt politicians has been released from jail and placed under house arrest. In the video above, you can watch as he greets his friends and makes a Twitter post while in handcuffs. In one of the most fascinating recent examples of the battle for free expression we are watching a normal guy get persecuted by a Western nation for simply posting his thoughts on the internet. He has been charged with inciting financial panic and attempting to cause a run on the bank. I actually think his idea for pulling money out of the bank is a very good one and I fully support his idea. Why not? If Guatemala is so afraid of a run on its bank, then it either needs a new bank or a new government. Perhaps both. I think that, on the basis of what we are seeing in Guatemala, both the bank and the country’s government should be eliminated as quickly as possible. The barrage of worldwide outrage toward Guatemala’s government via the internet is illustrative of the power of ‘word bullets’ to destabilize and destroy governments. This is a fearsome power in the hands of ordinary internet users all over the globe. It is this power that is the great weapon in the hands of all free people. But it is also the power that will cause a dangerous reaction from governments seeking to eliminate this potent popular weapon. I think that we are on the brink of the greatest assault on freedom of expression in history and that the assault will come primarily from free Western nations. We are seeing it already in attempts like U.S. congressional representative Linda Sanchez’s bill to criminalize the posting of opinions on the internet that may offend anyone at all or emotionally injure a potential reader. There is absolutely no difference between her attempt at legislation to eliminate freedom of speech and the behavior of the Guatemalan government in arresting a man for suggesting that people withdraw their own money from a bank.