[act-ma] [1/21: "Silent Screams" - Free UPandOUT film screening, Thurs, Jan 21 [w/ special guest]]

[Salma Abu Ayyash]

_*SPECIAL*_: We are excited this month to have *Ardeshir Ommani 
*(co-founder *American Iranian Friendship Committee 
<http://www.iranaifc.com>* *(AIFC)* - see below) with us to speak to the 
audience and do Q&A after the film.

/"//Whatever the short-term gains from introducing drone warfare in 
these past years, we are now locked into the 24/7 assassination trade - 
with the US's own set of non-suicide bombers on the job into eternity. 
This may pass for sanity in Washington, but it's surely helping to pave 
the road to hell./" ~UK IndyMedia

Showing Thursday, January 21, in Cambridge:*
**/Silent Screams

/*“/I'm not a very patient person. I just want to rant and change things 
now, but this was my way to say it with a whisper/" ~Karla Hansen, film 
maker

Karla Hansen, a Des Moines area activist and social worker, made 
*/Silent Screams/* after she and her husband visited Iran in spring of 
2009; she was the first American ever to visit some of the Kurdish 
villages they traveled to in northeast Iran.

    "I will carry home to Des Moines, Iowa, a portrait of Iran quite
    different from the narrative depicted by the mainstream propaganda
    machine powered by the U.S./Zionist/military alliance that has a
    stranglehold on America. I am no longer polite about bluntly naming
    bullies. Our world is unraveling at a frightening speed and I have
    lost what little patience I possess expecting that governments will
    change unless a mighty roar is heard from the people.

    My journey took me from Tehran to a small Kurdish village near the
    border of Iran and Turkmenistan, where I was royally welcomed as the
    first American to walk the simple mud paths winding through the
    homes, courtyards and livestock quarters. And, where I received a
    great honor as the village men invited me to film the exclusively
    male ceremony celebrating the engagement of two promising young
    villagers.

    A myth that has been dispelled in my experience is the one that
    holds Iran is a 'police state'. ...

    From Tehran to tiny tribal villages, I have been greeted with
    extraordinary enthusiasm, despite decades of U.S. imperial offenses
    that have touched the lives of each and every Iranian. Misty-eyed I
    apologize at each new encounter for these acts of aggression,
    including the ongoing economic sanctions of nearly thirty years. ..."

On their last day in Iran, the couple was interviewed for a national 
news broadcast. “They interviewed Ismael for an hour, and then me. The 
first thing they said was, “/Why didn’t America investigate Rachel 
Corrie’s death?/’ And all I could do was hang my head in shame,” Hansen 
said. “You know, I can’t explain why an Israeli soldier driving a 
US-built Caterpillar bulldozer killed a young American peacemaker and 
there was no investigation.”

*When/where*

6:40 pm, doors open for refreshments, extras
*7pm, film starts promptly*
243 Broadway, Cambridge - corner of Broadway and Windsor,
entrance on Windsor
http://rule19.org/videos


Please join us for a stimulating night out; bring your friends!
free film, free refreshments, & free door prizes.
[donations are accepted]

* <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwZONTtyquM>Guest speaker: Ardeshir Ommani
*[Ardeshir will be with us, weather permitting; should there be a storm, 
we'll have a back-up speaker from the Boston/Cambridge area. Ardeshir wrote:

/"My wife and I just read your email with great elation! Thank you so 
much for contacting us. We are planning the film-showing of /Silent 
Screams/ in March in the NYC and Westchester area, with Karla here in 
person! ... The only thing stopping us would be a major snow storm."/]

////

Ardeshir is co-founder of the *American Iranian Friendship Committee 
<http://www.iranaifc.com>* *(AIFC)*. Prompted by concern for the 
consequences of an on-going anti-Iranian U.S. foreign policy, the AIFC 
takes steps towards creating an atmosphere that can strengthen healthy 
dialogue and make friendship possible between the people of the two 
nations. We invite all democratic-minded individuals to join the 
committee and help in our efforts at building a movement for promoting 
peace, ending the unjust sanctions, and preventing a U.S.-NATO war on Iran.”

Ardeshir is a "political economist and an activist in the anti-war and 
anti-imperialist struggle for over 40 years, including against the 
Vietnam War. He helped launch the successful *StopWarOnIran.org 
<http://stopwaroniran.org>* campaign. He has written a number of 
articles documenting the U.S. foreign policy toward Iran. He has 
translated many articles into Farsi, which have been published inside 
Iran in the progressive press. In the 1960's, he was a co-founder of the 
Iranian Students Association (ISA), which contributed to the struggle 
against the Shah of Iran, a U.S. puppet. Mr. Ommani returned to Iran in 
1979, at the dawn of the revolution and participated in the 
revolutionary surge of that period. Since returning to the U.S. in 1980, 
he has been very active in the anti-war movement and in the struggle 
against the U.S. war and occupation of Iraq.

Ardeshir Ommani has two Masters Degrees in the fields of Political 
Economy and Mathematics Education. He has been very active in the peace 
movement and in the struggle against the U.S. war and occupation of 
Iraq. He returned to visit Iran in 2006 and 2007, and witnessed the 
tremendous improvements in his country; an article highlighting those 
changes can be read on the AIFC website <http://www.iranaifc.com>.

"/You can't legislate good will - that comes through education./" ~ 
Malcolm X

//// *UPandOUT film series - see http://rule19.org/videos*
Why should YOU care? It's YOUR money that pays for US/Israeli wars - on 
Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Palestine, So America, etc etc - for 
billionaire bailouts, for ever more ubiquitous prisons
//


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