If you are reading this right now, you have more luxury than someone in Iran could ever hope for right now. If you are watching TV or a video on youtube, updating your status on Facebook, Tweeting, or even texting your friend, you are lucky. If you are safe in your home, and were able to sleep last night without the sounds of screaming from the rooftops, you need to know and understand what is happening to people just like you in Iran right now.

They are not the enemy. They are a people whose election has been stolen. For the first time in a long time, a voice for change struck the youth of Iran, just as it did for many people in the United States only seven months ago. Hossein Mousavi gained the support of millions of people in Iran as a Presidential candidate. He stands for progressiveness. He supports good relations with the West, and the rest of the world. He is supported with fervor as he challenges the oppressive regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

On Friday, millions of people waited for hours in line to vote in Iran's Presidential election. Later that night, as votes came in, Mousavi was alerted that he was winning by a two-thirds margin. Then there was a change. Suddenly, it was Ahmadinejad who had 68% of the vote - in areas which have been firmly against his political party, he overwhelmingly won. Within three hours, millions of votes were supposedly counted - the victor was Ahmadinejad. Immediately fraud was suspected - there was no way he could have won by this great a margin with such oppposition. Since then, reports have been coming in of burned ballots, or in some cases numbers being given without any being counted at all. None of this is confirmed, but what happened next seems to do the trick.

The people of Iran took the streets and rooftops. They shout "Death to the dictator" and "Allah o akbar." They join together to protest. Peacefully. The police attack some, but they stay strong. Riots happen, and the shouting continues all night. Text messaging was disabled, as was satellite, and websites which can spread information such as Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, and the BBC are blocked in the country. At five in the morning, Arabic speaking soldiers (the people of Iran speak Farsi) stormed a university in the capital city of Tehran. While sleeping in their dormitories, five students were killed. Others were wounded. These soldiers are thought to have been brought in by Ahmadinejad from Lebanon. Today, 192 of the university's faculty have resigned in protest.

Mousavi requested that the government allow a peaceful rally to occur this morning - the request was denied. Many thought that it would not happen. Nevertheless, first a few thousand people showed up in the streets of Tehran. At this point, it is estimated that 1 to 2 million people were there. Mousavi spoke on the top of a car. The police stood by. For a few hours, everything was peaceful. Right now, the same cannot be said. Reports of injuries, shootings, and killings are flooding the internet. Twitter has been an invaluable source - those in Iran who still know how to access it are updating regularly with picture evidence. People are being brutally beaten. Tonight will be another night without rest for so many in Iran no older than I am. Tonight there is a Green Revolution.

For more information:
PICTURES:
here and here
NEW INFORMATION:
Here - near constant updates
Here - ONTD_political live post
ON TWITTER:
@StopAhmadi, @ProtesterHelp

دنیارابگوییدچطورآنهاانتخاباتمان دزدیده اند
Tell the world how they have stolen our election

- original post by one_hoopy_frood

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My heart goes out to these people. I want to be there. I want to fight for something this right. This, this, this. Is why it pisses me the fuck off when people don't appreciate what we have.

THINGS YOU CAN DO TO HELP

# The most obvious thing to do is stay informed. Keep an eye on reliable sources on Twitter, refresh blogs and news sites that are covering the stories.

# If you are on twitter, retweet information from reliable twitters, but REMOVE THE USERNAME if they are in Iran. People have died because of the lack of responsibility by fellow tweeters and the media in this front. They can be tracked down by the government of Iran.

# Spread the information elsewhere. Repost this article or write your own on Facebook, Myspace, Tumblr, or anywhere else you can think of. If you write your own, make sure you are concise and accurate. Link to your sources for people to learn more.

# Change your location on Twitter to Tehran or Iran, and your time zone to GMT +3:30.

# DO NOT auto-refresh and take down websites, even if you are asked. It slows down the internet for the rest of the people in Iran.

# If you make a proxy DO NOT post it publically, otherwise it is useless. Send it in a direct message to a trusted source.

# DO NOT spam the hash tag #IranElection with useless things to "confuse the government". This does not help at all.

Meh

I should write things. As in, I should take up blogging again. In the past year, it seems I lost interest in chronicling my own life – and that’s not to say I lost interest in my life altogether, but simply that writing down things seemed to suddenly lack in justification.

So in short – the semester ended with joy galore – my grades are sufficient for the next step – and GAWD, I hope I don’t spend too much time loitering around before I graduate, because as much as I love the academic world, this is my second degree, and I’m not getting any younger, damnation be done!


But it’s been good, remarkably so. Mainly, I loved the papers and the studying, and I loved the classes. I’m failing terribly at my reading list, though, since the summer started. Two reasons explain this:

1) I found a full-time temporary job at a college, which is awesome but takes up reading time.

2) I seem to fail at going to get said books, and read other things instead. For example, I finally finished Kostova’s Historian, which was excellent and really took over my brain, and I’m now completely engrossed in Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran. I wish I’d read it sooner – it would have been a helpful contribution to my paper on oriental feminism, though perhaps that would have filled it with too much material. I also have Alexis Zorba half-started. I fail at following plans.

Also, weather, stop raining. It’s not pleasant and it kills my Internet. And please, friends who don’t have a summer job? Don’t ask me out late on week nights. I just won’t do it.


My mother seems to have taken up the obsession of helping me lose weight. In the process, we’ve been working out every morning, which is great for my body and terrible for my sleep, as I can’t seem to bother myself with going to bed earlier. One of the down sides of going to the pool for laps a 7Am is the Very Obese Old Russian Streaker. I swear, her body is a vision of horror. Another one is quinoa cake. Really. Forget all about flavor, all ye who enter here. The perk is the cute lifeguard who waves at me every day. And smiles. He’s totally adorable.

My former employer contacted me about a well paying contract for one month – it’s a travelling gig, it always is with them. I declined because it made me miss 4 weeks of class in the fall semester, but I feel kind of icky about it, mostly because I miss the crew.


Last but not least, I think the summer is getting to me – not the sunshine and pleasant weather, but the onslaught of public snogging everywhere. I’m sticking to my ‘celibacy is the thing for me scenario’, but --- yeah. Occasionally, I feel almost like I should question that. And then I’m myself again.

Ah, and So is coming in from Boston tonight, though I won't see her until tomorrow. I think it's been something like 3 years since we hung out. Fun times.

Updates and some ramblings

More essays. I turned in two out of the four essays 

I listed in my last post.  The subjects changed quite drastically, thou

gh.So far, I produced: 

• Madness in Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, analyzed in conjunction with Herbert Marcuse's application of psychoanalysis to society, in Eros and Civilization ;
  
• An analysis of Arab Feminism as portrayed in Nawal El-Saadawi's Woman at Point Zero and Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis.

I yet have to produce : 

• A study of the mutual influences of the French and English languages one on another.
  
• A lexicographic analysis of one English word, with a cross-cutting stury of how Woolf (yes, Virginia, again) used it.
  

I've been having good weekends, lately.  In short because I don't have a million years to discuss them... 

I attended La nuit de la philosophie two weeks ago with a friend from university. It was wonderfully stimulating, and of course, I was kind of dead: it is 24 hours of intense conference attendance and philosophical reflection, after all. But it was great.  

Last I had a dinner party with Kiki and her family, which is always fun! I also went to two musical shows: Sherazade les mille et une nuits and Starmania Opera.  While the former was

 only good for someone who didn't understand the very dreadful lyrics (which I did), the latter was wonderful and heart-breaking.  I'm including an extract of Starmania below: 

And yesterday I was over at friend's house to help with a move - today, I'm going to the Cabane à sucre with a bunch of friends.  Basically, the idea is to stuff one's face with maple products: it's spring, it's the season in which maple syrup is prepared, it makes sense.

What I've been doing lately

Paper writing. It seems to almost be all that I do these days.

Since the beginning of the term, this is what I have produced:

• History in Tony Kushner's Angels in America: Millenium Approaches, or the quest for a sexual or a historical identity ;
• A reflection on the development of the Northumbrian dialect between the 8th and the 12th century ;
• Bartleby the Scrivener: an evocation of the Statue of Liberty ;
• A detailed analysis of Ronsard's 9th Sonnet to Hélène, or the protrayal of a love duel ;
• Béroul's Tristan & Isolde, the symbolism of the Mal Pas, or the farce which allows to reintegrate the social space.

I also have the following assignments to produce over the coming weeks:

• A lexicographic analysis of three semantically related words ;
• Madness and marriage in Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway and Charlotte Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper ;
• A study of the mutual influences of the French and English languages one on another.

There is one more larger essay for which I need to pick my topic, but it isn't due for a bit, so I do have time to decide.

Ah, woe is me. I do enjoy what I'm doing, though. I'll post excerpts when I can get to editing the raw bits.

Even if so far, I'm doing extremely well with my work.

The Beaver
My guest map is wonderful ! And you'd all be wonderful to post, all of you lurk mode readers!
Thanks and may the winds of Fate blow your way !

Hm.

I haven't blogged in a while. Not tweeted, blogged. As a matter of fact, I haven't twitted either. I blame mid-term rush.


Because I am remarkably lazy, I'm re-editing an email I recently sent to a friend about my current situation. Pardon the lazy.

I wouldn't go back on my choice to leave my traveling job for the world, even though I'm just about to enter mid-term rushes. To be honest, compared to the demands of my past professional life, it feels very palatable.

I took five classes, this semester. The Department Head is open to evaluating the possibility of sending me off to a Masters program in September. I have two Historical Linguistics classes, one focusing on French, the other in English. It's fascinating how the two languages were interwoven through out medieval history. I also have an epistemological class on Sexuality and Representation - though it may be a bit more abstract, it's fascinating, and I particularly enjoy the readings. Then I have two methodology classes which may be less exciting, but are interesting nonetheless, both in the matter of analysis, one in French, one in English, again. I am rediscovering through all this how I very much enjoy essay writing and research.

And so my life is really much like that of a studious monk, once again, but I am so engrossed and stimulated by what I do that it does not bother me one bit. The occasional weekly evening out with friends participates in the preservation of my status as a social beast. I still live at my mother's for now - the arrangement suits us both.

With mid-term rush over, I'm currently enjoying Reading week - and unfortunately getting distracted with writing fan fiction, which is most terrible, and at the same time very liberating for my inner geek.


I'm linking here to my profile on FanFiction.net. Feel free to read, and even more, to review. Comments, as usual, are love.


The Beaver

Tweets for Today

• 11:40 Good class on woolfe today. Hanging out with the asso folks. I love this department.
• 16:25 Feeling kind of sick, actually. Went through what i set out to do, but why am i grinding my teeth?

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Tweets for Today

• 10:45 Must avoid tweeting about food today. Rly. Social day, today - lunch with my NameSake, and dinner out with Madre Querida. &Must.read.Green.
• 14:14 Now off to readabitanddothings. Ha. Lunch with Namesake was fun, she actually knows about Phonetics and issues relating to pedagogy.
• 20:40 Hmmmm dinner was fun, good convos and all that. And man. I love chocolate.

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