Yesterday’s General Assembly Vote can be historic. The US & Canada, the clumsy allies that they are stood by while the world …

What exactly did the world do? Will we remember the vote next year? Do you remember the UNESCO vote the year before?

I hope that this vote gives the Palestanians momentum. I hope that it gives Israel a warning.

But hope is a thing I’ve decided to do without, as much as possible, and so I will simply sit on the sidelines and observe.

What people, and the media, forget to mention however, is the historic position IRAN took on the issue. Granted that an Iranian UN representative’s views can’t be taken for a significant policy shift, given how layered the Iranian leadership structure is. It also comes when the Iranian establishment’s relationship with Hamas is less than rosy. But Fatah had Hamas’s blessing in taking the vote to the General Assembly floor.

However, when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s words are MISTRANSLATED regarding Israel, Western media, political establishments, etc EXPLODE. But when in a HISTORIC move, Iran votes for a Fatah led initiative, OPENLY supports the Saudi Peace Plan (which directly acknowledges the state of Israel) … not a word is said. Hardly a sentence is uttered. Not a single fuck is given.

Why the complete and total media blackout surrounding it? They’re not, gulp, biased now, huh?

What would it feel like to be the world’s punching bag?

Come on, give it a try, give it a go, punch all you like, hurt all you want, cut all you wish, punch as hard as ya feel like it … you know why?

Because the world … just won’t give a fucking DAMN!!!!

Just imagine how the world would have responded differently if instead of Gaza, it was … Albuquerque or Bruges that was continuously and routinely slaughtered by a rogue, violent regime. Would innocents be “collateral damage? Would presidents and PMs call restraint on “both sides”?

The extremism inside Iran, the brutality and fascism outside of it have just left me speechless and at a loss for words.

What is there to say? What is there to do?

But rage has an unequivocal way of waking the senses. Screams come from deep INSIDE of you and hit the walls of the universe … with no consequence. For those questions I have NO answers. For my own rage and anger, I seek to find a few.

Today I purchased drugs for a diabetic cousin who no longer has access to her drug in Iran. I was lucky enough to know an Iranian drug store owner who was willing to accept cash for drugs offered to me under the counter, lucky enough to know a person willing to take them to her by the end of the week … luck has a funny way of working sometimes, huh? and a cruel, cruel way of not. For I am sure that there are thousands of cousins out there whose stars weren’t aligned this morning.

Today I read of the 100+th death in Gaza as the world watches in silence, in complete & utter indifference, in total oblivion. Yes, I’m sure the US president  has “regrets for loss of life”. But he can take his regret and stick it up his a** as it is HIS government, HIS artillery, HIS veto power that give the Israelis the go ahead  to kill and destroy EN MASSE with NO consequence.

Today I write with RAGE. Rage that always exists in some form or other, anger and disillusion that I carry with me every minute of every waking day. Anyone who has followed my journeys on this blog would know that in my own small way, it has been an attempt to change this rage into conversation, into words, into poetry … as best as I am able. As badly as I am unable.  I have learned to walk, talk and eat with this anger, to carry it on my shoulder as one does a never growing, disabled limb.

And yet, sometimes, the images in the outside world grow so dark, so evil, so monstrously macabre that the limb simply stops to function.

WHY do we live in a world where victim and victimizer are turned upside down? Where day is presented as night and night as day? When people living in the world’s biggest open air prison are subject to indiscriminate slaughter and NO one stops to wince? When a country is ILLEGALLY forced to endure WAR time conditions, elaborately called “sanctions”?

Call Obama, Harper, the lot of these murdering, monstrous fascists by what they are: KILLERS & murderers dressed in Armani suits. We in the Middle East are too used to these killers and murderers. We can smell them from thousands of miles away. So please, the next time I see you carrying a sign of Khamenei with devil ears, if he’s not sitting beside Obama in the picture, I will fail to take you seriously. Not only will I fail to take you seriously, but you are only a walking symbol of why we endure the pain and suffering that we do: blindness from the ignorant, cruelty from monsters.

The people living in America, Canada, etc today can simply NOT imagine what it is like to go to sleep one night and die under bombing. They can not imagine how it must be to die in a battered hospital after being attacked on the fields with nerve gas. What it must be like to have a sick child whose drugs you can no longer afford or find.  They can not imagine what it is like to have your entire life go up in flames and shadows and death. And so the LOT of us become criminals by our acquiescence, by our silence, by that blind, ugly prejudice that you may not even speak of …

but the rage you do not feel, and the anger you do not express and the tears you do not cry are your green light to let the fascists burn the earth with no consequence.

A hint of fear … sprinkled with some magic fairy dust: I have to admit, that without exception, that is my first gut reaction to entering Iran and nearing passport check.

Obviously, with the thousands and thousands of political prisoners they are torturing already, no one is going to come after a twirpy blogger with a twirpy nickname. My blog is blocked in Iran, but that too by random chance I like to think, than any serious consideration of me as a big bada** revolutionary who poses “threats to the regime”.

Even still, the fear, (or hint of) gripes at me, remotely contemplates being taken away into the dungeons of Evin and laughs at itself for being so gullible like those “other” Iranians.

Alas, it is not meant to be. I politely say hello to the passport agent, hand in my documents, get them back and begin the ride to my least favorite part of the entire trip.

ARGH.

My second reaction upon passing the passport check-in counter after arriving at Imam Khomeini International Airport. Get ready for the zoo …….

No, not Iran, but baggage claim which is surrounded by glass, where relatives stand with flowers, chocolate and tears on the other side. I Always feel uncomfortable knowing that I am being watched as I attend to my baggage, swear under my breath that IKI has no porters (as of 2009), that I will have to carry my two suitcases, my bagpack, my carry-on and my two bags (tobacco purchased at duty free, of course!) I am here to stay a while after all, who knows how many cigarettes that will mean?

As I stand in the long line to the customs, I try not to look the other way, not at the glass, so I do not have to make eye contact. I am filled with too many questions, too much fatigue, too many worries (no, not about Evin, but of the familial sort) to want to make eye contact, to force a grin or a smile.

The great wall of China, the Berlin wall, the Separation Barrier in the West Bank, … I try to remember as many separation barriers as I can, all made for different reasons, some more legitimate than others (and yet some with not a shred)  - it puzzles me how something as thin as glass can create such dichotomy. The waiting parents, grandparents on one side. The tired, groggy traveler on the other. And in between them a world of longing, stories, separation.

I reach the baggage x-ray scanner which I am dreading, I have to lift the suitcases once again, retrieve from the other end … at least it will be the last time.

My suitcases are hard to miss, with the graffiti sprayed all over, making certain I don’t end up with some old sucker’s black Samsonite again – or vice versa. I am about to retrieve my suitcase for the last time, when suddenly, I hear someone calling me. “You, with the colorful suitcase, take your bags to customs.”

WTF?!

In all of my 20 something years, in all of this travelling back and forth, I have never, EVER been called to customs. Could have gotten away with an alligator in my bag, and they would have never known it.

WTF?!

I pick up my suitcase, and for one minute, am compelled to just follow everyone else to the exit. Who’s going to notice? There’s no one around me. I start walking to exit, until I see a man with a badge looking at me. I look back like a dumb kid. “ummmm, sorry Mr. I think that man in the back said something, I’m not sure I heard him.”

“He said for you to go to customs. The other way.” He sincerely believes I am lost – aren’t we all?

And so with my tail bewteen my legs, I head over to the “customs office”, which is basically the end of the long hall, dreading most of all having to pick up my suitcases again to put them on the metal counter.

By habit, I always stuff the top of my suitcase with tampons, pads and underwear, thinking that if someone out there on this journey decides to take a peak, s/he will decide otherwise upon opening the bag. I always over stuff my bags with sanitary pads, fearing some sort of countrywide shortage or tampon famine.

“Khanom, chamadoon ro baz kon.” [lady, open the suitcase] the customs agent politely asks.

I open them, and sure enough, a burst of lady’s unmentionables falls out.

While I am opening my bag, he starts writing a fine for the man beside me. “100,000 Tomans [$100 when I got to Iran, half of that now], go to the Melli Bank counter, pay your fine and come back.”

The man isn’t willing to budge. “I don’t have anything but a $20 bill on me!” he gripes. They start arguing. Then whispering.

My ears are as sharp as a wildcat right about now. They settle on a comprise: the man hands the agent a 50,000 Toman note, and back takes his bag, walks toward exit. The customs agent shoves the bill in his pocket, rips the fine and moves on to his next victim … moi.

Problem solved.

As I listen in on their conversation, I try to think of what I will do: argue with him? pay my fine? bribe him like the other man just did?

I decide on the middle option: pay whatever I have to pay at the bank, and not a single dime for bribes.

He gets to my suitcases. Starts tearing the first one apart. Throwing things everywhere. Of course, 70% of the content is gifts. with tags attached. He shakes his head some more, “you’re only allowed to bring in $80 a year, per traveller, this is clearly more than $80.” Although he’s come to that conclusion already, he goes to the next suitcase. Starts tearing into that one too, like a hungry bear after dinner. What always pisses me off most about customs agents, anywhere in the world, is their complete disregard for how much work goes into packing – so that things don’t break, wrinkle, gift boxes don’t bend. And the hours and hours of work you’ve put into it – gone, just like that, as they impatiently dig through your luggage like the Tasmanian Devil himself, digging unwanted holes, rigging unneeded pits.

“This is clearly more than $80″ for what seems like the 50th time. EIGHTY dollars? When my frigging plane ticket alone costs $1450? I respond: “I never heard of this rule, why don’t you ask airlines to handout leaflets, like other countries do? How am I supposed to know?”

“It says on our website.”

He bends down to get his fines, and asks for my name. I give it to him, completely baffled and disoriented by now. “You pay the fine or your suitcase will be confiscated” he warns. He calls his colleague, to ask for a pen, and as they are conversing, I call out “kafar” more than a few times under my breath. The third time, I say it louder: “you call this the country of Islam? You’re all nothing but Kafars” [infidels] I say again.

At this point, I realize I clearly need a course in anger management. I am completely disoriented. Even though I’ve seen bribes and zirmizi [under the table cash] many times before, I can not believe that this man is writing me a fine, for stuffing my bags with the cheapest gifts bought on a thin student budget.

I even mutter “jakesh” [cock sucker, dick puller, pimp? Possibly the worst swear word I know in the Persian language] at one point, loud enough for them to hear, as the person to my left clearly does. Although if they do hear me, they are polite enough not to take notice.

“What’s the matter?” the other colleague asks.

“I’m a student, here to visit my family, I have gifts for my relatives, and no one ever told me the $80 limit. How was I supposed to know? Why don’t you hand out papers like other countries do? How are we supposed to know this stuff?”

“Go to our website, w-w-w-i-r-i-c-a-g-o-v-i-r he says very slowly. It’s all written there. See that lady over there? She brought a cat into the country, and she has to pay a 300,000 Tomans custom fee. It’s all rules and regulations.”

“But I don’t have a fucking cat!” I cry.

He looks at me, bewildered for a moment. “Let me see what I can do.”

He comes back a minute later, and says: “ok, ok, I know you’re a student, pay only half. Pay 50,000.”

At this point, my sweet mother has entered customs. I give out a sigh of relief that she’s here, and that she wasn’t here earlier, to listen to her sweet, darling girl call a customs agent in the Islamic Republic of Iran a “cock sucker”.

I explain everything and she turns to the customs agent and says: “you’re going to fine a student? for rules you failed to inform them of?”

He repeats the website, looks down, rips the fine and says: “ok, ok, go ahead, I know you’re a student, you don’t need to pay anything.”

Just like that, without any further pomp and flair my welcome home ceremony comes to an end.

The following is a translation of events as described by a “student”, a fellow participant of the UK Embassy raid in Tehran as told to snn.ir, a state media outlet.

What seems clear to me is that the in-fighting between the Iranian fascist uber-elite is a cause of this mess, but I wouldn’t doubt that there were genuine, imbecilic people there angry at the recent round of sanctions imposed on Iran by the British government. Once again, authentic anger at IsraelEUS is being used and abused to take us down a spiral of possible war (and more sanctions, at the least).

Somebody tell this guy: maybe you don’t have that much time to lock doors and windows when you are fleeing?

With Thanks to Naj @ Neo-Resistance for providing the link to the original article.

—————————-

There were notices about a religious ceremony in front of the embassy at our school.

I got there around 3:30, and the ceremony had started an hour before, around 2:30. Already, people were on the walls of the embassy holding Ashura flags [Yesterday marked the beginning of the month of Ashura, a month of mourning in the Shi'a calendar].

It appeared as if some people had entered the embassy beforehand, had brought down the flag of the UK and had replaced it with an Iranian flag.

It appeared that people were quite distraught with the actions of the British [government], and that’s why they had stormed inside. I tried and succeeded to get in with the second round of protesters storming the embassy.

When we entered, not much was going on except for 3 computers that had been thrown to the ground from the windows.

The computer hard drives were missing, someone had taken them before we got inside.

After that, for about half an hour nothing much was going on. We could hear people chanting against the British from outside. About 60 people left the embassy, but 150 to 300 remained inside.

Once the sunset call to prayer [azan] was heard, protesters outside the embassy were more riled up than before, and about 1700 to 2000 people entered. After that, everything became chaotic.

From inside the embassy this is what we saw: a building surrounded by gates, on the right side of the main entrance. A church to the left. There were very elaborate buildings and an exceptional library which held odd objects, like diving gear and … Alcohol was abundant there and in the rooms and in the kitchens … If you want to picture it, try to imagine Sa’dabad Palace [The late Shah's residence which has since been turned into a museum] with more modern equipment. The kitchens were extremely elaborate, there was a room filled with clothes, and refrigerators abundant with all sorts of food, including Haram food, like Haram meat [pork, etc]. There was a small swimming pool at the back of the library building.

Once we exited the private courtyard, we got to the office buildings to our right, filled with clothing and food. It was obvious that that location was the joint administrative work area for the British and Iranian staff. The area was simple but well equipped.

In all the rooms of the office buildings, there were several telephones and walkie-talkies. Even the plumbing and electric sockets were European, and behind these office buildings was a workshop and a repair shop.

The office buildings and residential areas were connected with a wall. The students that had earlier entered had done nothing to the residential area, except for breaking a few bottles of alcohol, but when the chaos started and the masses entered, the destruction began.

[Just today, diplomats from Turkey, Canada, Venezuela, Mexico, etc visited the residential areas and expressed their shock at what they had seen: torn paintings, broken computer equipment everywhere, food splattered all over carpets, writings on the walls, etc]

The students were trying to protect the embassy, but it appeared that there were many people there bent on destroying everything.

We couldn’t tell who these people were or what party they belonged to, but they were obviously not students. Some were just there to throw things and create chaos, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Old Colonial Master [UK] had sent them to create a media spectacle.

What was very surprising was that the doors of all the rooms, houses and cars were left open. In such a tight security environment, this seemed very odd and unnatural.

Finally, around 7:40, Commander Radan [Tehran's deputy police chief] entered the embassy and gave an ultimatum to those inside. Most people left after the ultimatum, but those who refused were dragged out.

The police’s reaction before Radan’s appearance was forceful but polite but afterwards, some [protesters] were beaten and some even had to be taken to the hospital.

The weather in Tehran is arguably pleasant, and all I hear about is how the heck students and families are going to get their UK visas with the embassy being closed in the foreseeable future …

Meanwhile, it’s nice to see that our fellow countrymen are wasting no time in promoting war with Iran, in the event that IsraelEUS decide to forgo one. Well obviously, bombs on our heads are always a lovely, lovely prospect! So thank you! Your voice is a truly valuable addition to the Cain campaign.

And if you haven’t noticed the little left sidebar, I’m now on Twitter!

It’s  mighty hard to use it in Iran, even with the VPN network my sister has set intact. So I don’t know if I can keep it going for long! :-S

Ray the Hermit brought me there. Even though I still have strong reservations about Twitter “leading” the protests in Tehran, and would gladly arm wrestle any idiot who claims this, it is beautiful and haunting how I, an average pedestrian roaming Tehran, and Ray, a self-described Hermit roaming New York, could be so close, almost as if we were on one of our city excursions together.

Hope he is keeping safe … I shall try to do the same.

Iranian State media is using the “student” label to address the hooligans who stormed the UK embassy earlier today. I can’t help but  laugh at the irony of the situation. Ever since the election in Iran, the protesters (many of them REAL students) were labelled “hooligans”, “thugs” and “goons” by state media and now those same outlets are calling the embassy mobsters, “students”.

I sense a bit of linguistic deconstruction going on here …

To give them the benefit of the doubt, I will assume that many of these delinquents have a university card or two in their pocket, but I can still conjure of a dozen other labels to name them with before their “student”ness (or lack of) comes to mind.

But what perplexes me is the enthusiasm with which Western media were quick to follow suit. Following the 2009 selection, Iranian state media was overtly zealous to call demonstrators, protesters, prisoners and activists, “hooligans” and the Western press hardly ever bothered to note this, calling the people out on the street by their rightful name.

What’s up with it this time? Where is the proof that these mobsters are “students”?! And why has the BBC, AP, the Huffington Post, CNN, etc so enthusiastically followed Ahmadinejad’s RAJA NEWS?!

Could it be that labeling these thugs as ordinary Iranians, (a label such as “student” gets that across completely) helps the warmonering imagery that has been building momentum in Western press? (and which the IRI goons are only too happy to reinforce?)

Either way, someone tell CNN et al.:

Iranian “students” have either been expelled, detained, suspended, been forced to flee, disillusioned, are watching satellite TV, conversing indoors, hiking outdoors …. doing pretty much everything and anything but breaking windows and ripping pictures of an old, tired queen and her henchmen. There is as much “student” in these thugs as there is in the Football Hooligans who your own press dubs the British Disease. 

It is times like this that I feel very much alone …

Who will put an end to this madness? Or is that what every generation asks itself before its eventual demise?

In times of protest in Iran, you hear the exuberant cries of rallies behind the protesters, offering them useless, albeit enthusiastic support. It doesn’t matter where you go offline or online: Monarchist rallies, sites with the nuttiest commentators ever, like iranian.com to dinner parties, almost everyone is ready to cheer on “the people”, declare their long distance, internet love “for the people”, send their virtual, hearts and prayers to the “people”. Yes, uselss perhaps, and quite irrelevant to what happens on the ground … but heart warming in a cheesy Hallmark-card sort of way.

For those living outside of Iran, this is perhaps a single moment of unity, where those virtual hearts and prayers allow us to feel a connection to “back home”, that allow us to cheat ourselves into believing that we too “have done our part”.

But in times like this, when Iran is hit by a new round of preposterous sanctions,  that will work to cripple the work of millions of ordinary Iranians, those very “people” we were crying for … those same folks, if they find time to take a breather from their Nachos and Prime Time television, cheer on the warmongering of the West, as if IRI’s perfidy justifies the evil perpetuated by their most powerful counterparts in the Western hemisphere.

We can criticize the IRI for its absurd handling of the nuclear issue in light of Western aggression they KNEW was all too real and ready. But that does not in any way justify this aggression.

More peculiar still that this cheer leading is done in the name of “patriotism”.

I don’t believe in “patriotism” so outrageously today associated with support for governments; where allegiance to a country becomes at one with supporting the perfidies of the political establishment … Nor do I believe any land or its people have my unconditional devotion due to blood lines … I do believe in the power of nostalgia, and the power of memory to draw you to the familiar, to ignite in you passion and longing and love. But I would have felt the same had I been born in Portugal, Japan or Chile. That doesn’t prove the moral “superiority” of one geographical space to the other.

But no matter how you choose to define patriotism, I don’t see how anyone living outside of Iran can bring themselves to support sanctions -  when they themselves will be untouched by them. The moral high ground with which many expats cheer on perfidy and evil makes me vomit. Are they a majority? Are they an overtly active online minority?

At school I’d like to think the latter. Students who have just recently left their homeland to study abroad, rarely forget the hardships their families (and they themselves only a few short years ago) had to endure. When you are in school, speaking to students who understand and remember what it is like to walk the streets of Tehran and Isfahan and Ahvaz … the world doesn’t seem too lonely.

But then I visit a forum filled with self-described Iranian “patriots” cheering on this madness, or I attend a dinner party, and it comes back, all over again. I can’t bring myself to support abuse and brutality imposed on any people … Iranian or not … by any government … Iranian or otherwise. How can they support the continued brutalization of their own people, from both ends? It’s all for the “Greater good” they say. “Some day soon it will help the regime fall and it will all be worth it”.

Go to Iran to experience the greater good, and then we’ll talk you fucking, delusional scum bucket.

And for those of you still confused by the latest IAEA report, please refer to the venerable  Seymour Hersh.

Read Hamid Serri, in Informed Comment, talk about how:

Iran’s UN Inspectors are Repeating the Iraq Mistakes

Though I wouldn’t call them “mistakes” necessarily. The word implies a level of misunderstanding or misconception – whereas this feels more deliberate.

One of the most beautiful things I’ve seen lately. Director Meysam Azarzad spends a day at Tehran’s Bazaar and asks local Bazaar men to enact their favorite film scenes … Everything from The Man who Shot Liberty Valance to Forrest Gump to Taxi Driver to Iranian classics like The Cow. The director can also be seen giving them “subtle” directions

You can view the video here.

It’s stuff like this that makes me miss Tehran. You haven’t lived until you’ve sat down for tea with a witty Bazaar salesman …