Airborne Toxic Event's Song for Neda

Airborne Toxic Event's Song for Neda

The Call - ندا -Neda, originally uploaded by greggchadwick.

Gregg Chadwick
The Call - ندا -Neda
36"x48" oil on linen 2009

Reza Aslan discusses Neda's legacy on NPR Morning Edition

Reza Aslan discusses Neda's legacy on NPR Morning Edition. #iranelection @ASLANmedia Neda's legacy on NPR







The Call - ندا -Neda

Neda's Mother Mourning at Her Grave

July 31, 2009
Behest Zahra, Tehran 7pm
Iran - Neda's mother mourning on her beloved daughter's grave مادر ندا در سوگ دختر بی گناهش


The Call - ندا -Neda

"Neda is not dead. This government is dead!": A Day of Mourning in Iran & Around the World

Behesht-e Zahra / Tehran today - July 30, 2009 / Zahra Rhanvard (Mousavi's Wife) #iranelection #neda #sohrab


The Call - ندا -Neda

40 days after Neda Agha Soltan's murder, thousands of Iranians have gathered at the graves of those killed by Ahmadinejad's government. Today, at least 3,000 mourners pushed past riot squads to lay flowers on Neda's grave. A chant heard at Behesht-e Zahra cemetery today declared, "Neda is not dead. This government is dead." The Los Angeles Times reports that the security forces, after an initial flurry of arrests in and around Behest Zahra, retreated from the growing crowd. Noted Iranian filmmakers Jafar Panahi, Mahnaz Mohammadi, and Rokhsare Ghaem Maghami were briefly arrested then released.

Enduring America reports:

Etemade Melli has an account of Mehdi Karroubi’s appearance at the memorial, including the resistance of mourners when security forces accosted him, and of his speech. The English translation, courtesy of Mani:

Karroubi walked towards Neda Agha Soltan’s resting place, surrounded by a large group of people. The special forces attacked him and tried to disperse and separate the people from “the reform sheikh” [Karroubi] by beating them with clubs and pepper spray. The police encountered stiff resistance from the people, and Karroubi held his ground and stated strongly that he is staying in this place.

Karroubi sat beside Neda Agha Soltan’s grave and accompanied the people by reading the Fateheh [the prayer for the dead] for Neda. The Prayer was read with protest intonations. Afterwards Hojjatoleslam Hadi Ghaffari joined Karroubi and spoke to the people for a few minutes. During Karroubi’s speech, the security forces had a conflict with the people and arrested some individuals. These forces were confronted with slogans like “let him go, let him go” and flowers by the people [police presumably released those arrested].

Mehdi Karroubi, after spending an hour with the people, moved to the exit and his vehicle, accompanied by a large number of people chanting

From the Los Angeles Times: "Thousands of protesters continue to mourn Neda Agha-Soltan and other protester deaths in Iran. Amateur video taken near Behesht Zahra cemetery shows an endless sea of mourners chanting Mir-Hossein Mousavi's name, waving green pieces of fabric, and holding up victory signs."








Today in Tehran - July 30, 2009 - On the Metro to Behesht-e Zahra Cemetery
From the Los Angeles Times: "Protesters have been making use of the metro system, which runs next to Behesht Zahra. Here, protesters riding the metro chant "Death to Russia" and "Death to China" to the tune used to support the Esteghlal soccer club in Tehran."

What's next in Iran? Khamenei will officially endores Ahmadinejad as President on August 3rd, the inauguration at Majlis will be held on August 5th. Huge protests are expected

Much more at:
IRAN: Crowd of thousands overwhelms security forces
the latest from iran 30 julymemorial-day

Iranian Singer Maral's Haunting Song for Neda

Neda
Sung by Iranian Singer Maral

As the protests simmer and rage in Tehran, the arts in Iran are exploding and seeking solidarity with the outside world. The response to my paintings concerning the recent events in Iran has been strong and dialogues have begun to emerge. The website Bar-Ex picked up my interview on my paintings for Iran and I was privileged to hear a broad array of new important music from Behind the Iran curtain.

I am reminded of the band "The Plastic People" and the works of playwright Václav Havel in Czechoslovakia and their artistic efforts to break down their Iron Curtain. In Iran today we have the singer Maral who has created a haunting and powerful song for the memory of Neda, who was murdered last month by the Basij on the streets of Tehran. Fittingly, Maral also lends vocals to the band,"The Plastic Wave."

In Maral's lyric "Neda screams through her eyes of her pain" as Maral "cries of her own pain through Neda's name."
The word Neda means "the call" in farsi or at times evokes the idea of "the voice."

I wrote Maral not long ago and expressed to her my dream that one day soon she may sing her song for Neda beneath my painting The Call - ندا -Neda in a newly free Iran.


The Call - ندا -Neda
Gregg Chadwick
36"x48" oil on linen 2009
Courtesy- Look Gallery, Los Angeles

Much more at:
Bar=Ex - New Iranian Music

Photos From Today's Protests in Iran - July 9, 2009

"Our private lives continuously intersect with the history of our time."
-Huston Smith

July 9, Tehran #iranelection

July 9, Tehran #iranelection, originally uploaded by .faramarz.

Protests marking the 10th anniversary of the 1999 student killings (by the basij) at Tehran University

More photos from July 9, 2009 can be found here:
Photos of the 10th anniversary protests in Tehran

Reports ppl coming out of their homes, standing in their own streets, shouting Allah Akbar and death to the dictators. #iranelection #gr88



RT @oxfordgirl Basij reported to be in retreat for first time, perhaps not happy being led by Khamenei son?! #iranelection #gr88

From the New York Times:

Update | 12:07 p.m. The New York Times has received two e-mail messages from a witness to the protests on Thursday in Tehran, whose name we will withhold for that person’s safety.

This first e-mail message was sent just over one hour ago:

The phones are completely out. I’m hiding in an international hotel…. riot police wanted to break in but the managers convinced them. The crowd is running in the thousands, starting in Enqelab where riot police and basij started beating people. Saw one middle-age woman with blood stains. Then they pushed up kargar st to laleh park, squads of 25 police would run up the streets with batons beating people. I hid in a clock shop, like many other people who would hide in street shops and come out once these attack squads went up the streets.

Fires of trash are burning in main streets. Everyone honking, women and men of all ages out, even kids in cars (most families have driven their cars and blocked the streets). No phone so hoping there will be internet later. One 55-year-old housewife said to me proudly “This is Iran. We are all together,” in front of Fatemi street where the crowd stretches as far as the eye can see, but again crowd is moving because riot police is moving as well as the basij on motorcycles. Lots of people chanting “Down with Dictator!” and “Moussavi! Moussavi!” and “God is Almighty.”

This second e-mail message was sent to The Times about 40 minutes ago:

The crowds are too huge to contain. Riot police running up and down Fatemi Street beating people, barely got out of the way. The crowds just get out of their way and come back. Saw two undercover Basij, one was actually a late 40s businessman in a suit, whipped out a collapsible metal baton and started beating someone with a camera. He was beaten until the baton broke, another Basij came on motorcycle to help but crowds started surging and booed them away. Someone threw a water bottle but otherwise crowd is peaceful — keep chanting “Please Stop!” and chased the two Basij away.

Then riot police came back up. More fires in the street as trash and various containers are burned. Tear gas everywhere, no gunshots yet I think but again undercover Basij everywhere. Again I stress crowds in thousands and this is just one street. One 27-year guy in black shirt said “We don’t want war. We just want freedoms. Here, [he signals getting shot] no matter. Down with the dictator,” and people joining in the chant. Also [chanting] “God is Great!”

The main theme is that people are surprisingly non-violent. They seem very hopeful and energetic. People from all levels of society are out. No one is throwing rocks but people have been setting fires in the street.

Follow the events at:
New York Times Lede Blog: Latest Updates on Iran Election Protests

U2 Scrolls Rumi Poem During Barcelona Concert

Update:
U2 Now Scrolls Rumi Poem Azadi in Solidarity With Artists 4 Freedom

The Irish rock band U2, during a concert for their new album No Line on the Horizon, bathed the concert hall in Barcelona in a rich green and scrolled what appeared to be Rumi's The Song of the Reed Flute or alternately titled in a translation by Philip Dunn, Manuela Dunn Mascetti and R.A. Nicholson - On Separation and Words. Video of "Sunday Bloody Sunday" with Rumi's poem can be seen at: U2 and Rumi

Krista Tippett writes that "In the Song of the Reed, Rumi reflects on the human spirit through the metaphor of the ancient reed flute or ney that is popular in Middle Eastern music. This poem opened the Masnavi, Rumi's compendium of rhyming couplets that explored issues of Sufi theology and the spiritual journey."

I post the poem in full in solidarity with the struggle in Iran:
( Please buy the book and Coleman Bark's heartfelt translations of Rumi also belong on your bookshelf.)

On Separation and Words
- Jalalu'ddin Rumi - 13th century Sufi

Listen to the reeds as they sway apart,
hear them speak of lost friends.
At birth, you were cut from your bed,
crying and grasping in separation.
Everyone listens, knowing your song.
You yearn for others who know your name,
and the words to your lament.
We are all the same, all the same longing to find our way back;
Back to the one, back to the only one.

Everywhere I told my story,
to the sad and the happy.
Everyone came close, but only
with their own secrets, never knowing mine.
My secret is hidden also from me,
for the light shines only outward.
The body and soul are intimate friends
but the soul remains secret from us all.

The sounds of the reed are like fire not wind,
and without the fire we are nothing.
The fire of the reed is the fire of Love,
the passion and heat of Love is in the wine.
This reed bends to spent lovers and friends,
its song and its word break the veil,
Both danger and delight, satyr and repletion,
the reed engorges and depletes, both.
The sensible are deaf, though the mindless listen,
the tongue wags only for the ear.

Our sadness spreads the days short, for time
walks hand-in-hand with painful thoughts and fears.
But let these loathsome days go by, who cares?
Stay in the moment, that holy moment,
your only moment, until the next-holier still.
We are thirsty fish in His blissful water,
like the starving buried in the feast of His sustenance.
So young our understanding, so mature
our surrounding-say less, learn more, depart.

And sons break free!
When will you let go your ambitions?
How much of the ocean fills your jar?
More than a day?
But the eye-never full-
yearns more than the heart-replete,
The oyster-shell forms the pearl only
when already filled.
Only the garment of love banishes desire and defect,
the panacea of ills,
As the garden-flowers fade, the bird's song dies.
The Beloved contains, the lover invades,
for the Beloved ignites the lover's pyre.
If love recalls, the lover swoops to the ground.
How blind my eyes when Her light is extinguished?
How will you see in the mirror
if the dust is so thick?
Love commands the word
for this is the marrow of your eyes.



From the Book of the Mathnawi by Rumi translated by Philip Dunn, Manuela Dunn Mascetti and R.A. Nicholson in their volume The Illustrated Rumi, published by Harper, San Francisco. The wonderful edition includes a forward by the brilliant religious scholar, Huston Smith.



Below is the transcript of a conversation between Rumi scholar Fatemeh Keshavarz and Krista Tippett, host of Speaking of Faith from American Public Media:

We’ve selected more of Rumi’s poems for you to hear and read on our Web site, speakingoffaith.org, along with images and explanations of the whirling dervishes. I’m Krista Tippett, and this is Speaking of Faith from American Public Media. Today, we’re dipping into the ideas and spiritual background of Rumi, a 13th-century Muslim mystic whose poetry is celebrated by an array of modern readers.

Ms. Keshavarz: (reciting) Listen to the story told by the reed of being separated. Since I was cut from the reed bed, I have made this crying sound. Anyone apart from someone he loves understands what I say. Anyone pulled from a source longs to go back. At any gathering, I'm there, lingering and laughing and grieving, a friend to each, but few will hear the secrets hidden within the notes. No ears for that. Body flowing out of spirit, spirit out from body, no concealing that mixing. But it's not given us to see, so the reed flute is fire, not wind. Leave that empty.

Ms. Tippett: There's a theme that is part of that, that runs all the way through, about separation and longing as part of — well, not just the spiritual life, but being human, and also a kind of sense that the separation and the longing themselves are a kind of arrival.

Ms. Keshavarz: On one level, you have to get on the road. You have to get started, you know, just like the earth that, you know, have to plow the earth, you have to get moving. On another level, time and again he reminds us that the destination is the journey itself. So there isn't a point where you say, 'OK, I'm here, I've reached, I'm done, I'm perfect. I don't need to do anything anymore.' In the incompleteness of that, the need to move forward is inherent in that incompleteness, in the process of going forward that you make yourself better and better and you, in a way, never reach. So the separation is the powerful force that keeps you going. If you ever felt that I have arrived I've reached, this is it, then you wouldn't go any further.

Ms. Tippett: You know, and I think it is counterintuitive in our culture — not that we necessarily think this through very often, but we think of desires and longings as something that we need to find something to meet, right?

Ms. Keshavarz: Yes, yes. And we want to meet it really fast.

Ms. Tippett: Yes.

Ms. Keshavarz: Exactly.

Ms. Tippett: Because somehow the feeling of longing and separation from whatever it is, especially if we don't know what it is we want, that that is unsatisfying and there's something wrong with that. And yet what Rumi is saying is that, you know, the longing itself is redemptive and is progress, kind of.

Ms. Keshavarz: Yes. And the longing itself — and also not to understand exactly what that longing is, in itself, is very productive. I think one idea or major concept that the Sufi tradition and Rumi in particular have to contribute to our current culture is value in perplexity, the fact that not knowing is a source of learning, something that propels us forward into finding out. Longing, perplexity, these are all very valuable things. We want to unravel things and get answers and be done, but as far as he's concerned, it's a continual process. We can't be done. And that's good.

Ms. Tippett: I also have a feeling that Rumi is saying we also, though, at the same time need to be intentional about what we choose to be perplexed by. Does that make sense? I mean there's this poem: "Stay bewildered in God and only that. Those of you who are scattered, simplify your worrying lives. There is one righteousness. Water the fruit trees and don't water the thorns. Be generous to what nurtures the spirit and God's luminous reason-light. Don't honor what causes dysentery and knotted-up tumors. Don't feed both sides of yourself equally. The spirit and the body carry different loads and require different attentions."

Ms. Keshavarz: Yes. Yes. I think the energy can't go in all directions completely in control and you have to choose because you have one life. You have to spend it wisely. So absolutely, he would say choose, be selective, recognize your own value. At another point he says, 'You are an astrolabe to God, you know, don't use yourself for things that are not worthwhile.'

But I want to linger a little bit on that idea of being scattered because that's a key concept in Sufi thought. And actually it's something that the Buddhists also talk about a lot. And that is our mind just jumps from one thing to the other and, you know, the Sufis call it the onrush of ideas into our minds. And in some ways, if we allow it, it takes us over, you know. You know, what am I going to do about that credit card? You know, how am I going to — what do I do about this student paper, you know, whatever else is that you're concerned with, my family, my kids, my future. So it all invades your life and so in a way you're pulled in all directions. You're scattered. So one of the purposes of his poetry and one of the concepts the Sufis talk about is to collect that scatteredness.

More on Rumi at:
The Ecstatic Faith of Rumi

Buy the books at:
The Illustrated Rumi
A Year with Rumi: Daily Readings
by Coleman Barks
In digital form: Rumi: Bridge To the Soul
by Coleman Barks

"Rumi's poetry feels like it belongs to all. When Rumi died in 1273, members of all religions came to the funeral. Wherever you stand, his words deepen your connection to the mystery of being alive."

Much more at:
The Song of the Reed (part one)

U2 - Sunday Bloody Sunday in Green for Iran (Live 02 July 2009 @ Camp Nou, Barcelona)

U2 - Sunday Bloody Sunday in Green for Iran (Live 02 July 2009 @ Camp Nou, Barcelona)

July 7, 2009 Video in Milan Can Be Found Here:
U2Goes Green Again for Iran in Milan

Much thanks to Bono, the Edge. Larry and Adam

Also a must read from Der Spiegel Online is an interview with Iranian theologian and philosopher Mohsen Kadivar:
Iranian Regime Critic Mohsen Kadivar
'This Iranian Form of Theocracy Has Failed'

Poems for the People of Iran by Simin Behbahani, Iran's National Poet

Simin Behbahani, Iran's national poet


A Poem For Neda Soltan
by Simin Behbahani, Iran's national poet


from NPR Simin Behbahani, Iran's national poet, spoke with NPR's Davar Iran Ardalan from Tehran on Friday June 26th. She recites two poems inspired by the protests -- one dedicated to the people of Iran and the other dedicated to Neda Agha-Soltan, the young woman mourned around the world because her death during last Saturday's protests was viewed by millions on the Web and TV.


A Poem for the People of Iran







Much more at:
Andrew Sullivan at theAtlantic

Video Interview With Dr. Arash Hejazi Who Aided Neda Agha Soltan As She Died

Below I have posted the full text from the BBC, again to help circumvent the massive censorship and lies coming from the government in Iran:

Thursday, 25 June 2009 19:13 UK

Iran doctor tells of Neda's death

"We heard a gunshot. Neda was standing a metre away from me... I saw blood gushing out of her chest"

The doctor who tried to save an Iranian protester as she bled to death on a street in Tehran has told the BBC of her final moments.
Dr Arash Hejazi, who is studying at a university in the south of England, said he ran to Neda Agha-Soltan's aid after seeing she had been shot in the chest.
Despite his attempts to stop the bleeding she died in less than a minute, he said.
Dr Hejazi says he posted the video of Ms Soltan's death on the internet and images of her have become a rallying point for Iranian opposition supporters around the world.
He also told how passers-by then seized an armed Basij militia volunteer who appeared to admit shooting Ms Soltan.
Dr Hejazi said he had not slept for three nights following the incident, but he wanted to speak out so that her death was not in vain.
He doubted that he would be able to return to Iran after talking openly about Ms Soltan's killing.

Neda Agha-Soltan was shot in the chest
"I was there with some friends because we had heard that there were some protests and we decided to go and take a look," he said.
"Anti-riot police were coming by motorcycles towards the crowd."
Dr Hejazi said he saw Ms Soltan, who he did not know, with an older man who he thought was her father but later on learned was her music teacher.
"Suddenly everything turned crazy. The police threw teargas and the motorcycles started rushing towards the crowd. We ran to an intersection and people were just standing. They didn't know what to do.
"We heard a gunshot. Neda was standing one metre away from me. I turned back and I saw blood gushing out of Neda's chest.
"She was in a shocked situation, just looking at her chest. The she lost her control.
"We ran to her and lay her on the ground. I saw the bullet wound just below the neck with blood gushing out.
"I have never seen such a thing because the bullet, it seemed to have blasted inside her chest, and later on, blood exiting from her mouth and nose.

Ms Soltan has become a rallying point for protesters around the world
"I had the impression that it had hit the lung as well. Her blood was draining out of her body and I was just putting pressure on the wound to try to stop the bleeding, which wasn't successful unfortunately, and she died in less than one minute."
Dr Hejazi said he first thought the gunshot had come from a rooftop.
But later he saw protesters grab an armed man on a motorcycle.
"People shouted 'we got him, we got him'. They disarmed him and took out his identity card which showed he was a Basij member. People were furious and he was shouting, 'I didn't want to kill her'.
"People didn't know what do to do with him so they let him go. But they took his identity card. There are people there who know who he is. Some people were also taking photos of him."
Dr Hejazi said he knew he was putting himself in jeopardy by talking about what happened.
"It was a tough decision to make to come out and talk about it but she died for a cause. She was fighting for basic rights... I don't want her blood to have been shed in vain."
He added: "She died on the streets to say something."
Dr Hejazi said he did not believe he could now return to Iran.
"They are going to denounce what I am saying. They are going to put so many things on me. I have never been in politics. I am jeopardising my situation because of the innocent look in her (Neda's) eyes.

Much more at:
Andrew Sullivan at theAtlantic