Atena Farghadani is a 28-year-old Iranian artist. She was recently sentenced to 12 years and 9 months in prison for drawing a cartoon.
This cartoon, that she posted on her Facebook page last year, depicts members of the Iranian parliament as animals. It was drawn in protest of new legislature in Iran that will restrict access to contraception and criminalise voluntary sterilisation. Atena’s charges include ‘spreading propaganda against the system’ and ‘insulting members of parliament through paintings’.
“While in prison last year, Atena flattened paper cups to use them as a surface to paint on. When the prison guards realised what she had been doing, they confiscated her paintings and stopped giving her paper cups. When Atena found some cups in the bathroom, she smuggled them into her cell. Soon after, she was beaten by prison guards, when she refused to strip naked for a full body search. Atena says that they knew about her taking the cups because they had installed cameras in the toilet and bathroom facilities – cameras detainees had been told were not operating.”
She was released in November and gave media interviews and posted a video on YouTube detailing her beatings, constant interrogations and humiliating body searches. She was then rearrested possibly in retaliation for speaking out and has been imprisoned ever since. In January, Atena went on a hunger strike to protest the horrible prison conditions. Her health suffered dramatically, and after losing consciousness and suffering a heart attack in February, she was forced to eat again.
The quote used in the comic is taken from the speech Atena gave at her trial. It has been translated into English by the Free Atena Facebook page. You can read the whole thing here.
Time is now against her, she has just two weeks to lodge an appeal. Michael Cavna, comic journalist for The Washington Post, has launched a campaign appealing to artists to help bring awareness to Atena’s case by creating their own artwork in support of Atena and using the hashtag#Draw4Atena. Can a bunch of artists and a hashtag really make a difference and put pressure on the Iranian Government to release Atena? Probably not. But just remember that Atena is currently in prison enduring horrible conditions, and if her appeal isn’t successful, she will be there for another twelve years. FOR DRAWING A CARTOON AND POSTING IT ON FACEBOOK. Don’t we owe it to her to at least try?
Alot worse actually happens out there.. once Being a soldier (which turned me into an activist) showed me..
The Card Player has been released on Blu-ray via Scorpion Releasing. It’s available exclusively at Ronin Flix for $29.99, including a limited edition slipcover featuring Yannick Bouchard’s new artwork.
The 2004 Italian giallo film is directed by Dario Argento (Suspiria, Deep Red), who co-wrote the script with Franco Ferrini (Phenomena, Demons). Stefania Rocca, Liam Cunningham, Silvio Muccino, and Verra Gemma star.
The Card Player includes both English and Italian (with English subtitles) soundtracks. Special features are listed below.
for all we see that is going bad, never forget that we are making so much progress
in large part we are making progress because we have seen the bad, identified it, opposed it loudly, and changes are starting to be made instead of ignoring it as just a part of the way things are. many foul things that once were not noticed are being dragged into the sunlight where they cannot hide in silence
stay angry at injustice, but hopeful that changes are happening
‘All that you need to know about boars can be summed up in the fact that if you wish to hunt them, you must have a specially made boar spear. This spear has a crosspiece on it to prevent the boar from charging the length of the spear, driving it all the way through his own body, to savage the human holding the other end.’
-Boar and Apples, T. Kingfisher
fuck OFF
Note that pigs are also HUGE. So, yes, they ARE slightly larger pigs.
So I grew up in the city and have never seen a pig in real life and I just googled it and WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS
I thought they were like labrador sized, like, fat labradors, not mini-cows.
every time I see this post there are more people discovering how fuck off huge pigs actually are and I love it I thought this was a thing everyone knew but clearly not and I’m laughing
This is me with our Tamworth boar, a heritage breed closer to their wild cousins than the Yorkshire above. I am a fully grown, average sized human. He was a gentle sweetie who, sadly, is no longer with us. His name was Mr. Big.
FUCK OFF
Forever laffin’ at people who don’t understand how enormous, terrifying, and tenacious wild boar are.
They’re like if bears had knives protruding from their closed mouths and Didn’t Know When To Quit. Their survival instincts when they’re wounded aren’t “run away and minimize injury” it’s “take the thing that hurt you down with you” They also make sounds like someone crossed a pig with an alligator.
Their head and neck alone can be like the size of an entire human torso.
Also forever laffin’ at people who think pigs are tiny, ‘cause we designed those things can get in the neighbourhood of a thousand pounds in ideal circumstances.
It’s like when people assume Tuna must be small because they’ve only ever experienced them in hockey puck form.
Like seriously why the fuck y'all think everyone FREAKED THE HELL OUT when Dorothy fell into the pig pen in Wizard of Oz? It’s because pigs are HUGE and weigh a shitton and would crush her in an instant.
also dont they eat like, basically anything?
YUP. Pigs will eat people, if given the chance. They dgaf.
That’s why boar hunters use a team of very tenacious dogs to hold the boar so they can be speared without fucking you up. The dogs wear body armour.
I’ve heard stories of people shooting boars, and if it didn’t kill them, it just pissed them off.
how the hell did we ever domesticate these things?
…“how the hell did we ever domesticate these things?”
Very carefully, I would imagine.
WIld boar babies are rather cute, like living humbugs…
…but the adults and their ferocity have been associated with warriors for thousands of years, from Mycenaean Greece (a helmet made from sections of boar tusk)…
…through Celtic Europe (reconstructed carnyx war-horns and standards)…
…Ancient Rome (the crest of Legion 20 “Valeria Victrix”). A couple more legions also used a boar as their crest - I wonder did they squabble over which was the “right” one the way a couple of Swiss cantons had a little war over whose bear was best…?
…then Anglo-Saxon and pre-Viking helmet crests…
…right up to the late Middle Ages (here the white boar badge of Richard Duke of Gloucester, later Richard III of England)…
…and the blue boar badge of the Earl of Oxford,
more usually represented by the De Vere arms, quarterly gules and or, in
the first a molet argent.
After Richard was defeated at Bosworth in 1485, there was a run on blue
paint as inn-signs were changed to reflect new loyalties since Oxford
was on the winning side…
It gets mentioned in the movie “Snatch”, the book/movie “Hannibal” and the webcomic “Lackadaisy Cats”, among numerous other fictional sources, and IRL it’s suspected to be the reason why numerous missing persons have stayed missing.
More here (another comment to this same OP) and here (slightly different).
Here’s some boar-hunting armour for dogs, ancient…
…and modern…
…and the modern one looks very like a simple style of ancient…
So when Odysseus’s old nurse recognizes him by the scar he got from the boar-tusk slash that almost killed him… now you get the resonance.
This post…it just really went places on me.
I hope you read this entire post, and that it made your entire day so much better, even if just for a few moments, like it did mine.
On this day, 23 November 1969, leading Black Panther Fred Hampton spoke at a meeting organised by the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom at the University of Illinois. Among those in attendance was Luis Kutner, a lawyer and co-founder of Amnesty International. Unknown to Hampton, Kutner was an informant for the FBI, who reported on the meeting to his handler, and claimed that Hampton was “ranting and raving” and said that President Nixon was “a member of the ‘capitalistic establishment’” and that “Nixon must die”. Kutner said that he was telling the FBI this because of “its possible violation of Federal law”. A few days later, the FBI had Hampton, aged just 21, drugged and murdered in his sleep.
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