End blackout in Iran

Hello everyone,

Please read the email below and consider donating to Avaaz organisation to help Iranians get back on the Net to reveal the truth about the brutal oppression in Iran. Hundreds of Iranians have been beaten and murdered already. Without safe ways to talk and write to each other, Iranians will face horrifying consequesnces from the Iranian government.

Donate here: https://secure.avaaz.org/en/iran_break_the_blackout
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Email:

The brutal crackdown on Iran’s streets is succeeding. Lethal shooting, beatings and mass arrests have driven millions off the streets, and a communications blackout is preventing them from communicating with each other and the world.¹

Ruling clerics are in crisis talks -- many are criticising the crackdown and calling for reform.²

We urgently need to help Iranians get back on the internet to have their voices heard in Iran and the world. Secure and anonymous "proxy services" are helping people to bypass regime controls and get online -- but they're overloaded and running out of funds.³ A small donation of just $10 can provide bandwidth for hundreds of secure emails - if 10,000 of us donate in the next 72 hours, we can help break the blackout:

https://secure.avaaz.org/en/iran_break_the_blackout

Proxy services provide people with a single link at which they can freely access the internet. The link is changed every time the regime blocks access to it. With 10,000 donors, we can scale up the proxy services massively -- providing more servers, bandwidth and advanced technical support.

The next two weeks are crucial. As Iran’s secret policemen cast their net far and wide, secure channels of communication are also critical to avoiding the crackdown. Scores have been killed and hundreds of human rights advocates, journalists, bloggers and peaceful protesters imprisoned. Although many more remain free, without safe ways to communicate they will face terrible risks.

the truth will come out only if Iranians can communicate freely with each other.⁵ The clerical councils engaged in closed-door crisis talks are paying great attention to the voices being raised in their society.

From: Paul, Ricken, Milena, Graziela, Paula, Luis, Brett, Iain, Rajeev and the whole Avaaz team

Meme from quasilover Part 1

The steady:

A tie between Les Miseables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame/Notre Dame de Paris. Loved the book AND the film versions of HoND.

The novel Les Miseables has characters that border on being 4 dimensional. It's as if they'll leap out of the book and start talking to me. When I read it, it's as if I'm living in the book with the characters, breathing their air, fighting their fears and being swept away by their love or hatred of life.

Adored the  compassionate and brave Valjean, and Fantine, who made sacrifices for her child that nobody should be asked to make. Was thrilled and horrified and moved by Inspector Javert, who is arguably the best character I have ever read. He has remarkable strengths (such as cunning, unbending honesty and iron courage) and fearsome coldness. Javert's ending *makes* Les Miserables (I won't spoil it for you though).

HoND was marvellous. Both the book and the film. Book had beautiful prose and was better composed, but it was more challenging and tragic (it's a Hugo novel. I knew what I was in for). Disney film version was easier to watch and enjoy. Stunning animation, memorable characters, sweeping music (especially the song Hellfire. I think the lines from the novel 'He (God) made the Devil so much stronger than a man" really add to the song's atmosphere). Plus the cameos of Disney characters from other films (like Belle, Pumbaa, Aladdin's carpet appearing during Quasimodo's song Out There) made me chortle.

The old flame you don't see very often any more but whom you still really enjoy getting together with for a few drinks and maybe a pleasant nostalgic romp in the sheets:

The anime Gundam Wing. Still like the characters, but the anime seems to have lost its grip on me. Not sure why.

Gundam Wing makes up for its flaws by having weird and wonderful things though (Dorothy's eyebrows! Duo resembling a priest with a braid! Gundams failing to self destruct!) 

The one who seduced you and fucked you over and broke your heart in a million pieces and laughed about it:

The anime and manga versions of Death Note. Argh, Death Note! It could have been beautiful between us! You had brilliant plot twists, and a fiendishly evil and clever protagonist! But nooo, your fascination factor had to go down because you replaced one awesome character with two less awesome ones! Plus the sexism did not help (there are very few female characters, the female characters are owhere near as smart as the male ones. And the competent 'good' female characters are either (a) sidelined/rarely appear (like Hal Lidner or (b) dead (Naomi Misora).

The mysterious dark gothy one with whom you used to sit up talking until 3 a.m. at weird coffee houses and with whom you were quite smitten until you realized he really was fucking crazy:

Wong Kar Wai's movie 2046. Spellbinding cinematics and flawless acting. Body language and music that says what words cannot express. But oh, the plot! So hard to follow (Searching for the plot was like looking for something in a fog). The little that I understood of the plot was interesting enough (man tries to find traces of the woman he loved and lost in the various women he meets in his life).

Meme from quasilover Part 2

The one you spent a whole weekend in bed with and who drank up all your liquor, and whom you'd still really like to fuck again although you're relieved he doesn't actually live in town:

Les Liaisons Dangereuses, a novel by Choderlos des Laclos. Fascinating, sexy but disturbing novel. Set in 18th Century France, it's about 2 antagonists (Valmont and Merteuil) who aim to seduce and bring about the downfall of a girl betrothed to the man who left Merteuil (I swear, ice practically flows through this woman's veins).

The fact that it was written during the 19th Century doesn't lessen its shocking impact, not even on modern day readers. Not a comfortable read, but I won't be forgetting it anytime soon. Doesn't surprise me that the book was actually banned and *burnt* (and rumoured to have been read with plain covers by Marie Antoinette).

The alluring stranger whom you've flirted with at parties but have never gotten really serious with:

Um. The novella Carmilla, by Sheridan Le Fanu. Pleasantly spooky and sexy, but I've never been obsessed by it. Fans of horror, you may be interested (or already know) by the fact that the novel Dracula was influenced by Carmilla.

The one you hang out with and have vague fantasies about maybe having a thing with but ultimately you're just good buddies 'cause the friendship is there but the chemistry ain't:

Eh...The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas. Great characterisation and marvellously zany ideas, but it's lost its appeal. Maybe I've read it too many times.

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy was a contender for this too. Seriously, Tolstoy? A little less rambling, a little more action please!

The one your friends keep introducing you to and who seems like a hell of a cool guy except it's never really gone anywhere:

The Disney film Enchanted. Everyone around me was like, "See it! See it!" I saw it. I liked it, but I didn't love it. It's like a comfy pair of slippers. Comfy and nice, but nothing gut wrenching, soul searing or out of the ordinary. And I love things with an extra dash of passion, pain and high stakes.

The one who's slept with all your friends, and you keep looking at him and thinking, "Him? How the hell did he land all these cool babes?":

Anything by Dan Brown. Really, his characterisation doesn't grab me. And argh, the countless historical inaccuracies in the Da Vinci Code! The history nerd in me laid down and cried when I saw them (the rest of me actually enjoyed the puzzles). I can *see* why Brown's popular (plot twists, fast paced action, puzzles piled on top of each other). Brown's writing is just not my thing.

The one your friend has fallen for like a ton of bricks and whom she keeps babbling to you about on the phone for hours, and you'd be happy for her except you just know it's going to end badly:

Hm...can't think of any, to be honest.

The ones you repeatedly cheat on your steady with:

Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels. 'Nuff said! :D

Hellsing was a pretty good runner up for this too. ^_^ Oh, Hellsing, you make it so hard to be faithful to my Steady...