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Every day musicians around the globe upload a message in a bottle, and we are the lucky recipients. Once an hour up pops a new cover of “Blackbird” on YouTube. I put some on Blackbird Fly. Also “Moon River” in You Heart Breaker, “I Will” in Your Song Will Fill the Air, “Ue O Muite” in I Look Up As I Walk, love songs in Meet Me in Montauk and Beatles covers in Love Them? We Still Do.

New post on Politics Daily / Woman Up:

They would have had not a chair, really, or even an empty place at Katharine Weymouth’s health care reform “salon.” Her dining table would have been crammed full, since there’s no shortage of politicos willing to ante up the $25,000-per-lobbyist admission price for dinner. But for patients – the people most affected by health care reform – sorry.

Read the rest on AOL @ Empty Chair at the WaPo Salon.

New cartoon by Trussell & Trussell on AOL’s Politics Daily: A Reporter Walks Into a Bar…

Happy Independence Day!

My new post on Politics Daily / Woman Up:

To my colleague Melinda Henneberger on the subject of The Washington Post’s pay-to-play scandal and her dropped jaw: Word!

We all remember watching President Nixon taking off in his helicopter after resigning. We remember Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford, as Washington Post reporters Bernstein and Woodward, sweating it out in “All the President’s Men,” a film that holds up well and stands as a riveting chapter of journalism’s heyday…

Read the rest on AOL @ Presstitutes: All the News That’s Fit to Pimp.

New cartoon by Trussell & Trussell on AOL’s Politics Daily: Cancer Sticks R Us.

New cartoon by Trussell & Trussell on AOL’s Politics Daily: Fun While It Lasted.

Saeed Shahram’s score for the 11th Annual Festival of Khane Cinema:

New cartoon by Trussell & Trussell: Parsing Mark Sanford.

New cartoon by Trussell & Trussell on AOL’s Politics Daily: Parsing Obama.

My new post on Politics Daily / Woman Up:

The path of Neda Agha Soltan, ندا آقا .سلطان , is not well trod, but it’s clear. These days the names Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King are rolling off of everyone’s tongues. MLK and Ghandi are indeed the stars of nonviolent resistance, but a more apt comparison might be Nazi Germany’s Sophie Scholl…

Read the rest on AOL @ Dying for Freedom.

Trailer for the 2005 German film Sophie Scholl: The Final Days:

Last words of Sophie’s brother Hans Scholl (1918-1943) “Long live freedom!”

Es lebe die Freiheit!
Sophie erinnern daran erinnern Neda

طولانی آزادی زندگی

به یاد داشته باشید سوفی ندا به یاد داشته باشید

nedascreenshot

ندا آقا سلطان Neda Agha Soltan 1982-2009

My new post on Politics Daily / Woman Up:

We don’t know much about Neda Agha Soltan  ندا آقا سلطان We know she was 26 years old. Some reports say she was a philosophy student. We do know that on June 20, 2009, she was watching a protest in Tehran when she was shot to death.

Because today’s world is radically different from that of the Chinese students in Tiananmen Square, we all saw Neda look right into the camera after friends lowered her to the ground. Then we saw her bleed. We saw her eyes go blank…

Read the rest on AOL @ The Changing Face of Martyrdom.

Read more about Neda in my blog post Young Girl Dying in Iran.

Read about another young woman who risked her life some 60 years ago on my blog post Dying for Freedom.

womaningreenMy post on Politics Daily ends with this:

Yesterday I saw a photograph of a woman protester. She wore the traditional Muslim attire, accented with a green headband. One of her eyes was blackened, either by a personal skirmish or, more likely, makeup, in a show of solidarity. She was smiling.

New cartoon by Trussell & Trussell on AOL’s Politics Daily: You May Want to Look Away.

My new post on Politics Daily / Woman Up:

Rest in peace and all that, but he was not a good father. I’d rather not go into details. But one day, when I was a little girl, he brought me a tiny pink eraser from work. I’d been begging for weeks, God knows why…

Read more on AOL @ Un-Father’s Day.

nedagrave

Grave of Neda Agha Soltan

The young woman’s name is ندا آقا .سلطان Neda Agha Soltan.

She was a 26-year-old student. She’d studied religion and philosophy, but was most interested in music and travel.

On June 20, 2009 she was watching a protest with her music teacher. At 7:05 PM she was standing on Kargar Avenue at its intersection with Khosravi and Salehi Streets.

Although initial reports implicated a sniper on top of a building, other witnesses said Neda was shot by a Basij militiaman riding a motorcycle. A doctor on the scene who tried to help said in a BBC interview that within a minute, she was dead.

nedasoltanlarge

Neda Agha Soltan ندا آقا سلطان

On the video a male voice says, “Neda, don’t be afraid. Neda, don’t be afraid.” And then, “Neda, stay with me. Neda, stay with me!”

My post about Neda on Politics Daily / Woman Up: The Changing Face of Martyrdom. And another one here: Dying for Freedom.

An English translation of BBC Persia’s interview with Neda’s boyfriend Caspian Makan appears on The Huffington Post. Caspian revealed that Neda was not firmly behind either Mousavi or Ahmadinejad. She simply “wanted freedom and freedom for all.”

In this video he talks of Neda’s last moments:

Learn more about recent events in Iran:

The latest (July 9 #23) Green Brief by NiteOwl

Why We Protest

Nico Pitney’s blog The Huffington Post

Iran Revolution

The Lede New York Times

BBC: Iran

Iran Election Crisis: Ten Videos by Ben Parr

CNN Iran Election Fallout

Why Obama Is Cautious Olbermann & Prof. Ghazvinian

Iranian Riots

Tehran Bureau

LaraABCNews Twitter

The Guardian: Iran

The Crisis Is Just Beginning by Gary Sick

Tribute to Neda and all the brave people of Iran:

What do Iranians want? Pretty much what we all want:

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