Iranian government admits Canadian journalist was murdered

[HEyHEY]

OTTAWA - The Iranian government has admitted that Montreal photojournalist Zahra Kazemi died of a brain hemorrhage as a result of blows she sustained during detention.

Canada has demanded the prosecution and punishment of the security agents responsible for the beating death.

Jean Chrétien also called on Iran to return Ms. Kazemi's body and to hold an inquiry into her death after she was arrested on June 23 and branded a spy for taking photos during protests outside a prison north of Tehran.

"If crimes have been committed, we're demanding of the Iranian government to punish those who committed the crime," the Prime Minister told reporters in his hometown of Shawinigan, Que. "If it is the case, it is completely unacceptable that the journalist go there to do professional work and be treated that way."

http://www.nationalpost.com/home/story.html?id=FBC2C466-11CB-48E1-9541-E36418FE5DA1


Fucking assholes, I say Canada seeks some serious action.

[FlashHarry]

1. Iran is a prime candidate for a "democratic revolution."

Most of the population is under thirty, and many of that group are thirsty for western culture. They can glimpse it, too, thanks to their myriad satellite dishes and Internet connections. One of the dumbest things Bush ever did was to include Iran in his "axis of evil." A nation on the brink of Westernization has been pulled back, united in their contempt of our embarrassingly cloddish 'leader.'

I hope the next president will export democratic principles to Iran through trade and discussion, rather than through threats and isolation.

[iverglas]

3. culture

Democracy activists in Iran are actually not "thirsty for western culture" (although young people may be as vulnerable to the sales pitches as anyone in the west is). The many whom I have known have a very strong and clear vision of their own, and while it may look "western" in its emphasis on democratic values, the west doesn't have a monopoly on them.

And Iran really just doesn't need a US president to export democratic principles to it. The situation in Iran at present is pretty much a direct result of what the US exported to it in the past -- tyranny. Iran isn't just a vacuum waiting for the US to fill it.

Iran has a very long and strong culture and is not really in need of anyone else's; in fact, one might call Iranians "cultured". It is indeed diverse in that respect, just as most countries are (hey, we have Alberta). And it has become a backwater, developmentally, as a result of foreign (US) intervention in its affairs and its culture, and the by-now well-known and predictable fundamentalist reaction by some of those diverse internal elements to such intervention.

The Shah imported the "culture" without the values -- in fact, in complete contempt of the values both of the west and of his own society -- and that was pretty much the problem. I don't want to make too much of a mountain out of what may have been a misspoken molehill, but nobody really wants someone else's culture, and many people take very unkindly to having it foisted onto them. Iran really is a good example of a people who are quite able to run their own affairs without adopting anyone else's ways, if they can get out of the colonialism/reaction loop.

.

[iverglas]

2. Evin Prison

The prison was once used for the Shah's enemies, and then for the Ayatollah's. I have known people who were imprisoned there. It is one of the hellholes of history, not yet consigned to it. Kazemi was arrested while taking pictures of it, and suffered the fate that hundreds before her had suffered.

It gets a bit more notice when the victim is not Iranian ... but only a tiny bit more if s/he is still not USAmerican, I see.