We’d like to announce Farangis Yegane’s exhibition FOR EXAMPLE MITHRAS – PART TWO which is gonna be opened on the 28th of February in the Museum Schloss Fechenbach in Dieburg Germany. The museum holds one of the most precious findings of the Roman Mithras cult, click here to get to the relevant page of the Dieburg Museum’s site.
The duration of the exhibition is: from the 1st of March til the 16th of May 2010.

www.farangis.de

Is it you yourself who decides about what you consider to be your “right”? It’s an inner process, isn’t it, that you believe you ought to have a right to breathe, a right to walk wherever you want to, a right to say whatever you feel like saying.

There is another layer of the term “right” that is not an inner process but that marks instead that what the society, or the whole human world considers to be a “right” or your “right” respectively. This form of a “legal right” – lets ground it upon the basis of a generalized form of all legal human rights taken together as, so to speak, a “generic” type of a right the humans actually “grant” you, themselves as a group, or a group within the human group – this generic type of an exclusively human right (our current “legal right”) can be detached and even really be something different than the type of right you give yourself.

Without the outer form of a right that is given to you as a person or that is in contrast NOT given to any other living sentient being, you or any sentient being still has their inner sense of what I would call a right. It’s not so that a sense of right (which has something to do with rights and wrongs, as strange as we may think this would be) is something that only exists if you are told what is wrong and what is right. A sense of what you personally may consider a right is something dependent on the beings socialization, on its social contexts. And yes, I do call the behaviour of nonhuman animals amongst other nonhuman animals too a form of social behaviour.

Now if people say “rights” are nothing natural in the case of “animal rights”, and Animal Rights can only be granted on a more or less arbitrary basis, they are wrong insofar in which one can easily realize that all rights in the purest form are something that has to be dealt with on a subjective and a socio-ethical plane.

Rights are natural, because rights stem from self-experience and social interaction. Legal rights on the contrast are quite arbitrary.

I feel a bit guilty that I haven’t been posting on here recently. I was for a large part busy finishing our first book project in German about Iran, Iranian culture, humanist concepts in Iranian culture and mythology. Please check out http://www.irankulturpolitik.com in that context.

Other than that I worked on several small sized drafts for my political and philosophical essays about Animal Rights theory. And finally two other tasks are currently keeping me busy. We are preparing two projects for Farangis.de that I am gonna post about at a later date, and my insect protection initiative usually needs some special attention in the autumn and winter time.

I redid the design of this page in a “crazy” way a bit. The unfortunate thing now is, that some of the important context that I got posted on here seems to be “insulted” by the childish looking new design. I hope you, the reader, can apologize that.

If you are reading this and you happen to be into active revolution in the fields of Animal Rights, Humans Rights, Environmentalism : I am eagerly looking for creative contributions. If you feel your thoughts match ours somehow, then please contact me at mail [at] simorgh [dot] de .

* I found this youtube valid xhtml generator: http://www.tools4noobs.com/online_tools/youtube_xhtml/. Neat stuff!

URGENT: A KURDISH POLITICAL PRISONER IS SCHEDULED TO BE EXECUTED ON NOVEMBER 11 IN IRAN

Tuesday 10 November 2009

Iran Human Rights, November 9: According to sources in Iran, the Kurdish political prisoner Ehsan (Esmail) Fattahian (28) is scheduled to be executed on Wednesday November 11 in Sanandaj. According to these sources Ehsan Fattahian has started a “dry” hunger strike since Sunday November 8., in protest to the scheduled execution.

Ehsan Fattahian is convicted of “moharebeh” (at war with God) and connection with a Kurdish opposition group.

According to a statement by Amnesty International, Ehsan (Esma’il) Fattahian’s lawyer has been summoned to attend his execution on 11 November at the prison in the city of Sanandaj, the provincial capital of Kordestan. Ehsan Fattahian was detained some time between April and August 2008. Reports suggest that he may have been tortured in detention. Branch 1 of the Revolutionary Court in Sanandaj sentenced him to 10 years’ imprisonment to be served in exile, after a trial in which he was denied access to a lawyer. Both Ehsan Fattahian and the prosecutor appealed against this verdict, and in January 2009 Branch 4 of the Kordestan Appeal Court overturned the initial verdict. Instead he was sentenced to death for “enmity against God” in connection with his membership of an illegal armed opposition group – believed to be the the Kurdistan Independent Life Party (PJAK. This new sentence is believed to have been upheld by the Supreme Court.

Accordign to Amnesty International’s statement two other Iranian Kurdish men Habibollah Latifi, arrested in October 2007, and Sherko Moarefi, detained in October 2008, are also feared to be at imminent risk of execution, possibly in reprisal for a spate of assassinations and attempted assassinations of officials which took place in September.

Iran Human Rights urges UN, EU ad the international community to put pressure on the Iranian authorities in order to halt Ehsan’s execution.

SOURCE: www.iranhr.net

DOWNLOAD / VIEW FLIER ANNOUNCEMENT

When do we need it?
NOW!

THURSDAY NOVEMBER 12

11AM Press Conference
(NY Avenue Presbyterian Church, 1313, NY Ave. NY, Washington DC)

MARCH TO THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

1:30PM Delivery of letter to Attorney General Eric Holder at the Justice Department

We demand that the Department of Justice conduct a civil rights investigation into the 28-year conspiracy — organized through police, prosecutorial, and judicial criminal misconduct — to railroad Mumia, an innocent man, to death. As US Attorney General, Eric Holder has the duty to monitor and remedy racist and corrupt practices in law enforcement and to safeguard our civil rights. He can challenge the Philly DA’s outrageous pursuit of Mumia’s execution and Governor Rendell’s promise to sign the death warrant. A civil rights investigation could lead to Mumia’s release!

Co-sponsors (in formation): ICFFMAJ, Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (NYC), Peace and Justice Foundation, Families United For Justice in America, WESPAC, International Action Center, Campaign to End the Death Penalty, Nat Turner Rebellion, Black August Planning Committee, National Lawyers Guild – NYC Chapter, Iglesia San Romero (UCC), ANSWER, The Jericho Movement (National), Albany Political Prisoner Support Committee

FOR MORE INFO AND TRANSPORTATION:
NYC 212-330-8029, Philly 215-476-8812, Washington DC 301-762-9162

SOURCE: www.freemumia.com

Desire of a male ideal. Speciesism often plays a crucial role in such a desired image: hunter or slayer is being adored my his object-of-love (a woman or another man).

http://janwandrag.com/maletrouble/chris.html

The ideology of hunters and their sympathizers takes the inward form of a secret cult, on the outside the hunting ideology constitutes a pillar of the homocentrist society. Life at its best equals a process of hunting. You hunt as a destructive act, and you hunt for fun. You’re the ruler of those who must fear you, and you are a ruler of those who nourish upon your prey, metaphorically, ideologically and practically/physically.

The idea that “nature” can provide you with a spot for where you can lay in ambush: http://www.christiansiekmeier.com/urban/Dickicht.html

Hunter or hunting-idealizing artists, a whole batch of extreme speciesists named together in their pro-hunt + arts context

http://justinjamesreed.blogspot.com/2007/07/erika-larsen.html

http://justinjamesreed.blogspot.com/2007/08/hunting.html

Now I should contrast this section of the big speciesist fraction of the contemporary arts world with the relevant grassroots political side of life (And I assume that the ‘grassroots political side of life’ expresses something more impactsome to the human ethical development than speciesist anthropocentrist/homocentrist destructivity).

Check out some of the iconography of the HuntSabs:

http://www.badgerland.co.uk/seeing/links/other_animals/anti_hunt.html

http://www.nwlacs.co.uk/lancashire_hunts.htm

http://www.huntsab.org/history.htm

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_aNPZgIE44Ns/R1FImn718SI/AAAAAAAAAlI/i1njMXUxA3o/s1600-R/huntsab.bmp

http://www.eco-action.org/dod/no10/sabbing.htm

The foundations of the rights of all life, don’t lie in first giving or first creating those rights. The foundations of rights are intrinsical to life (in its interconnected and in its individualized condition).

It’s necessary to develop enough will to differentialize on the theoretical and the practical plane, in order to find solutions of how to respect the dimensionality of the inherence of the rights of all life.

Palang Latif

The Islamic Republic of Iran will hang tomorrow 14 Baloch
Reza Hossein Borr

The Islamic Republic of Iran will hang tomorrow early in the morning at 6. 30, Iranian time, fourteen young Baluch on the  fabricated charges of corrupting the earth and fighting God in a public park to stage a show for exhibiting its credentials as the worst killer in the Iranian history.  The Iranian Fars News Agency reported that the relatives of the victims have been invited to go and watch the show of hanging.  It’s not clear who the victims are as the full identities of the men who are supposed to be hanged have not been yet exposed to the public.  Abdul Hamid Rigi, the older brother of Abdul Malik Rigi, the leader of People’s Resistance Movement of Iran, Jondollah, is among them.

The Islamic Republic of Iran that exposed its nature in killing dozens of people in recent demonstrations after the biggest fraud in the history of elections, will continue to arrest, torture and execute the innocent people of Iran on fabricated charges as it executed 23 young Iranians few days after the elections on charges of murder and drug trafficking.  Three of them were the Baluch political activists that were involved only in peaceful demonstrations is in Karaj, near Tehran.

The Islamic Republic of Iran staged another show few days ago in a public conference hall and forced Abdul Hamid and few others to confess on the charges and crimes that they have not committed.  The security forces invited a large number of Baluch dignitaries in the conference hall to hear their confessions.  The same political campaigners were forced to appear on television and confess.  It seems that the Islamic Republic of Iran is in the business of extracting confessions from innocent prisoners who have been tortured for a long time to confess to public. Roxana Saberi, an American-Iranian journalist who was arrested in Iran few months ago, was forced to confess. She announced after her release that she has been forced to confess to matters that she had not committed but she accepted the suggestions in the hope of getting released or getting better behaviours. She was told that if she accepts the suggested allegations then she will be released and therefore, she accepted all the suggestions and confessed.  Among different charges that she accepted to confess was being a CIA spy.

The fourteen young Baluch also have been forced to accept that they have been agents of CIA.

The fourteen young men which are claimed to be members of the Jondollah have been campaigning for the legitimate rights of the Baluch people who are Sunnis in a majority Shia country.  The Baluch people have been systematically oppressed since the beginning of the revolution for seeking equality of rights and opportunities with other Iranians.  According to the constitution of the Islamic Republic and other laws that have been passed by Iranian parliament, the Sunnis are prohibited from becoming supreme leader, president, minister, deputy minister, army general, ambassador, or any other high official.  The official religion of the state has been declared Shiism which is a radical opponent of the Sunni people.

The cruelties of the regime were exhibited in the recent elections and demonstrations after the biggest fraud in elections.  The Iranian people went into the streets in millions and protested against the fraud and demanded the cancellation of elections but the government decided to crush demonstrations and impose Ahmadinejad as the president.  The demonstrations still continue in different parts of Iran.

The Baluch people have experienced the same cruelties in the last 30 years but the news of the crackdown on the Baluch people has been always concealed.  Now the Iranian people and international community can imagine that what kind of crimes the security forces committed in Baluchistan where no journalist is allowed to go and no political party is permitted.  The province is completely isolated from the world and the silence can be heard time to time when the security forces attack some armed Baluch in some corners of Baluchistan.

The fact that the Islamic Republic of Iran has decided to stage an entertaining show from the hanging of fourteen young Baluch can clearly show the kind of policies that the regime has pursued and implemented in Baluchistan.  They want to create maximum fear among the Baluch people and force them into submission of the most inhumane behaviours. Like many other Baluch that have been hanged in public, the fourteen young Baluch will join eternity with big smiles.  They know that they will become part of the Baluch history, legends and heroes.

Neda,
When your blood
Shed the love worshiping ground of Iran
Still, I thought he was dead

The blush burst of the sun
On the impatient sky
At dawn, suddenly
Reminded me
Of his raised long cracked glass
Overfilled with the blood of Iranian youth
Commemorating Mohammad’s invasion
1,400 past years
And his grim smile toasting
At each cry of Allah-o Akbar

It is now another lovely day
And you are absent at your philosophy class
I wonder if it had made any difference
If you’d double majored in history
Would you had seen the innumerous Neda’s blood
Dripping from his fangs?

Davoud Bahrami
June 22, 2009

Neda Agha-Soltan Salehi ( go for example to https://twitter.com/AVoiceForNeda )

MUST SEE: Iran: Where is “here?” insights by a young Iranian http://bit.ly/ytNcg #iranelections a video from june 19th

IRAN : 30 years total oppression : view PPS file http://tinyurl.com/l4j57z 1,95MB Power Point Slides, very sensitive material #iranelection

Again: What the world didn’t want to see for 30 ys: IRAN FREEDOM: iran – no more hanging http://tinyurl.com/mojux3 youtube #iranelection

This is https://twitter.com/PeoplesVote image and background.

NAACP.org : www.iamtroy.com #TroyDavis

SAVE THE DATE: JUNE 19-26 : Week of Witness for Troy Davis http://bit.ly/m417h (PDF) @amnesty #TroyDavis

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL: Reopen the Troy Davis Case http://tinyurl.com/p26ugt @amnesty #TroyDavis

naacp.org : NAACP Launches Campaign To Save Innocent Man From Execution Troy Davis Could Die Within Weeks http://bit.ly/QYRCj #troydavis

Sojourner’s Place: blogging for Troy Davis…much obliged! http://tinyurl.com/ok9mpw