The tweets of Tehran
From Kirsty Wark:
Last night Review's editor Liz Gibbons and I went to see an extraordinarily moving short "scratch" play at The Royal Court in London called "The Tweets of Tehran". It was a fortuitous last minute change of programme on the launch night of the theatre's "Rough Cuts" season of plays related to Article 19 of the UN Convention on Human Rights.
The actor/director Ramin Gray had searched through the thousands upon thousands of "tweets" on Twitter about the Iranian protests, and in a matter of days had constructed a selection of them into a brilliantly coherent and moving play ().
I say fortuitous because we had already decided to devote Review this week to a discussion about cultural representations of modern day Iran in the wake of the post - election crisis.
Our guests, the Iranian academic Baroness Haleh Afshar, the author of "Lipstick Jihad" Azadeh Moaveni, and the journalist and author Jonathan Freedland are revisiting the Oscar-nominated film Persepolis, and the bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran, and viewing the new film Shirin by the Iranian arthouse director Abbas Kirostami, in which we watch Iranian women as they watch a movie of a 12th Century Persian story.
We'll also discuss new work from artists working in Tehran, and we'll explore the phenomenon of the world watching and reading about protests on the internet. That's where the The Royal Court play comes in.
We'll also talk about a new film, Burma VJ, about the men who risked their lives to record the Burmese uprising in 2007.
Comment number 1.
At 2nd Jul 2009, Steve wrote:Interesting that there seems to be so little interest in "Tweets" from Honduras. Perhaps that's because the 91Èȱ¬ regards protesters who take to the streets in support of the democratically elected leader as fanatics.
e.g.
"with hundreds of protesters chanting the president's name have proved that he has his fanatical supporters."
In contrast, protesters in Iran are described as "very courteous".
Why are Hondurans chanting their presidents name "Fanatics" whereas Iranians chanting Mousavis' name are "very courteous"?
An interesting bit of impartiality from the 91Èȱ¬ there.
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Comment number 2.
At 2nd Jul 2009, streetphotobeing wrote:Well lets hope Kirsty is ok with the any Persian name pronunciation, or Barrie may have have a word or three of an encomion or not.
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Comment number 3.
At 2nd Jul 2009, streetphotobeing wrote:Ive just seen Barries post nos 2 on Thursday 02 july 09
Oh dear his at it again and before the program.
Naughty Barrie.
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Comment number 4.
At 3rd Jul 2009, JadedJean wrote:'HOUSE RULES'
"It was a fortuitous last minute change of programme on the launch night of the theatre's "Rough Cuts" season of plays related to Article 19 of the UN Convention on Human Rights."
The UN was a Western powers creation and largely promotes Western interests. It uses human rights (the tilt of Western Liberal-Democratic constitutions) to undermine systems of governments which are more duties tilted (Soviet style and 'theocratic' constitutions). It's one thing to campaigh for universal peace and goodwill, and other to use this (including arts steeped in this) to increase one's hegemony and markets.
Iranian protestors - Note how the footage of people throwing 'missiles' at the police was descriebd as peachful or at most 'angry'. No ivestigation until Ahmadinejad called for one into the shooting, but the Western media leapt on the speculation it was Basij... Would that happen here or would there have been an investigation?
Anyone who does not consider the Western reporting as having been obviously biased/inflammatory is unable to recognise propaganda, and anyone who is prevented from pointing this out with concern, is being subjected to censorship or the whims of fashionable 'House Rules', as we tend to call censorship. To have inclusion/exclusion criteria on the basis of someone possibly being 'offended' is veiled press censorship - what else shall we call it as challenging opinions and beliefs is by desigh 'offensive'.
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Comment number 5.
At 4th Jul 2009, ellazed wrote:Thank you for giving Iran coverage - it's not the only news in the World but it is so critical at the present time to raise awareness. And bravo for the PressTV interview - I've posted so many polite pro-protest comments on their site - and they all get suppressed.
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Comment number 6.
At 5th Jul 2009, neilninepercent wrote:If I said anything 100th as rude about any Brtitish politician, except UKIP & BNP members, as the 91Èȱ¬ do nightly about dinnerjacket they would censor the comment as possibly defamatory. Even knowing that that it was 100% proveable truth such as that all leaders in Parliament are personally ................................
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