Month: August 2009

The Show Trials Begin

Juan Cole processes the big news out of Iran this weekend:

The trial of 100 leading protesters against the announced outcome of the June 12 presidential elections commenced on Saturday, complete with pitiful coerced recantations. Amazingly, former president Mohammad Khatami's web site openly denounced the trial as just that, a show trial. Khatami's problem was always that he was insufficiently willing to stand up to the hard liners, and that he is being so blunt and confrontational suggests to me that he has reached the end of his patience. He is likely furious about the regime torturing his own associates, such as his former vice president Mohammad Ali Abtahi, into a confession.

Cole calls the following details from Abtahi's confession "heartbreaking to read":

[Abtahi] said that the 40 million votes cast in the election could have secured Iran's stance and its "democratic" system in the region or even in the world. He criticized the reformist leaders, Mir Hoseyn Musavi and Mohammad Khatami, as well as Chairman of the Expediency Council Ayatollah Hashemi-Rafsanjani for their reaction to the election results. His voice appeared to lower when he was naming Rafsanjani.

Abtahi said after the 12 June presidential election, the reformists tried to insinuate the "illusion" that there was a "fraud" in the election. Abtahi said that it is impossible to have "fraud" when there was an 11 million [vote] difference […]

Asked if his current position was under the effect of his imprisonment, Abtahi said the situation in the prison helped him to reach a conclusion about the recent incidents. Abtahi said he had no problems and concerns in the prison and praised his "courteous and polite interrogators."

Jihadist Murder Watch

Eight Christians are burned to death in Pakistan by Jihadists after a rumor that the Koran had been defiled:

Hundreds of armed supporters of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, an outlawed Islamic militant group, set alight dozens of Christian homes in Gojra town at the weekend after allegations that a copy of the Koran had been defiled. The mob opened fire indiscriminately, threw petrol bombs and looted houses as thousands of frightened Christians ran for safety. “They were shouting anti-Christian slogans and attacked our houses,” Rafiq Masih, a resident of the predominantly Christian colony, said. Residents said that police stood aside while the mob went on the rampage. “We kept begging for protection, but police did not take action,” Mr Masih said.

An Anti-Gay Shooting Spree In Israel

Wockner is on it. A masked gunman opened fire at a center for gay youth in Tel Aviv, killing two, wounding eleven and leaving Israel's gay community terrified for their safety. The killer is at large. A moving account of the funeral of one of those murdered in cold blood is here. One of the victims, Nir Katz, seems a remarkable fellow:

“Nir came out of the closet when he was 20, and since that moment wore the flag of gay pride on his sleeve, believed in what he was doing and always walked with his head held high,” his sister Chen told Army Radio Sunday.

The place targeted was somewhere for gay youngsters grappling with their orientation. One of the victims was 17 years old:

The immediate family of 17-year-old Liz Trubeshi, the second victim of the attack, remained in their home Sunday and asked to be left alone by the media. But some family members and friends did talk. “This is very difficult for me,” Trubeshi’s aunt, Silvi Shalom, told Web site NRG. “Liz was a wonderful and beautiful child, with blue eyes… she was a little girl who hadn’t done anything to anybody.” “She was the victim of an insane, crazy person, and we don’t know how to carry on,” Shalom said. “We just can’t grasp it.”

More on those murdered here. The mourners called for displaying the rainbow flag as prominently as ever. The only response to this kind of violence is courage. Israel is one of very, very few places in the Middle East where gay people do not have to live in mortal daily fear. If they snuff out that beacon, the darkness will spread.

Words To Drink By

Tom Shone mulls over the wages of writerly drunkenness:

Certainly, for those who trade a little too heavily on darkness, the Ozzy Osbournes of the literary  world, the transition can be a rocky one. Stephen King says he cannot remember writing “Cujo”, he was so loaded; but after his family staged an intervention in 1987, emptying the contents of his garbage onto his living-room floor—cocaine, beer cans, Xanax, NyQuil, Valium, marijuana—he quit, and the result was a marked slackening of tension in his work. One of the things that made “The Shining” such a great novel about falling off the wagon was that King didn’t know that was what it was about—it was written from inside the belly of an obsession. Once he worked out what the real monster in the closet was, his work took on a therapeutic air, more concerned with the exorcising of internal demons than supernatural ones; it became baggier too, as if the elimination of one indulgence had forced a sideways move into another: the writing became drinking by other means.

Provincetown writers have tried hard to counter this trend. That's all I have to say. And if you want evidence that drunks can write, and I mean really write, just read Henry Fairlie.