The Stoning of Soraya M.

Score: 6 (10 is max.)

Summary: Astonishing real story of a woman falsely accused of adultery in the sharia Iran of 1986 after the Islamic revolution dictatorship. Based on best seller by Iranian French journalist Freidoune Sahebjam.

Review: Soraya (Mozhan Marnò) lives in a dead end small shah Iranian village with his four children and separated from her husband, Sahebjam. His husband, an ex prison officer, wanted to marry a 14 year old girl but he didn’t wanted to pay for both wives.
For this reason, Soraya finds refuge at her aunt’s, Zarha (Shohreh Aghdashloo) who treats her like her own daughter and veils for her interest and safety.

Under beatings and verbal violence, he ostracizes his wife and places his two sons against her and everybody he knew at the village. Two other key players in the village, the mayor and the spiritual leader, will help the husband to create a plan so this one can gets rid of the woman abiding the sharia laws. The spiritual leader himself was an ex convict, never making it to the religious school and always threaten by Sahebjam if the mullah doesn’t fulfills his will.

The stoning set is ready

After a neighbor’s wife sudden death, Soraya is impelled by the mullah to go and serve the left alone widower. In this perfect set, Sahebjam will accuse Soraya of sleeping with the neighbor, what all she did was faithfully serve the neighbor as indicated.
According to Islamic law, the husband will need another witness in order to go forward with his plan of killing his wife, and this will be the poor neighbor, after he was threaten by the mullah of sending his differently able child to a mental institution.
The set is set, the mullah calls the regional revolutionary guards to retain Soraya, while the whole village prepares with joy to the fun event for all the family of a dilapidation or stoning, God forbid, all according to what G’d (Allah) “wants”.

Husband providing stones for all attendees

Meticulously they would gather and testify, falsely against Soraya, so the process can begin. And so it does, among the excited villagers: kids gather with diligence stones of the proper size, the mayor will measure the distance from the ditch dig and where the killers are to stand when throwing the stones.

One by one, they are given stones by the mullah beginning with Soraya’s father, her husband, her two sons, the mullah, and the rest of the village. All filled with hatred and “Allah hu Akhbar!”, all celebrate this carnival of blood and cruelty claiming to follow G’ds will.

The villagers gathering for the festival of blood

In the midst of this, the following day, a journalist will step into the village in order to fix his car flat tire. Zarha will contact him and record in a cassette a narration of the murder of her niece. The mullah and the mayor wanted to retain the young journalist for they knew Zarha told him the whole story, so they frisk him and only then let him go. Zarha would wait for him at the exit of the town with the audio cassette with the recording in her hand so when her confident passed by, she gave it to him, to the astonishing eyes of the whole village. Thanks to this, French-Iranian journalist Freidoune Sahebjam’s will publish in 1990 “La Femme Lapidée”. The book was banned in Iran, but the whole story of the murder of Soraya M. is no longer a local Iranian one.

Aunt and niece

Critic: I remember Shohreh Aghdashloo in 2003 “House of Sand and Fog” as the wife of the ex Iranian shah colonel, and then I knew I was in front a a character actress. Though, as many foreign personal working in Hollywood, many of the parts played fit the American stigmatization, and thus in these two movies, Shohreh plays as well an Iranian woman, of a strong character and will, intelligent, independent after her husband passed away, and smart enough to play with the only tools left to a woman after the Islamic revolution. She put down the mayor’s offer of remarrying her and preferred to keep her autonomy. She will fight against the wrong doings of her primitive and otherwise barbarians co-religionists. She will stand against the mullah, when he comes to Soraya asking her to marry him after she divorces Sahebjam.
If I were the director, I would have taken as topic of this movie, a real woman cheating on his husband and still the movie will be cruel. I wonder whether we are justifying the cruelties of the sharia laws appealing to the fact that she was innocent, otherwise, “it would be fair to stone her”

Other pictures related to the topic:

From upper left on: real iranian stoning, somali stoning. Bottom left: Somali stoning, sizes of stones in manual, middle eastern stoning. Center: real Soraya Manutchehri at age 9.

Videos:

1.- Trailer

2.- Interview with Shohreh Aghdashloo (Zarha):

3.- TV interview with director Cyrus Nowrasteh:

4.- Another interview with movie’s main character, Zarha:

http://www.mininova.org/get/2651204

This is the story of a noble people, the Navajo, native Americans, and how time and again they were deceived by greed and evil, personalized by the White man, as usual. The documentary will examine the events surrounding the pass of the law PL 93-531 in 1974 that had in mind to relocate some 10.000 Dine (Navajo) native Americans from the land they lived in peace at with their Hopi neighbours. This is an Oscar winning Award documentary related by Martin Sheen and beautifully dressed by the music of Laura Nyro. The story comes way before the seventies, it actually did begin when Europeans came into the land and conquered by the sword every peace of it, with no sensitivity about its resources and peoples in it cohabiting. Ever since then till these days the white man, its governments and corporations gain control of these lands through deception and lies, dishonor and treason, for exploitation and greed for any transcendent things is all that the white cares about, and if in the process he has to starve to death woman, children and elders he will do, and in this process he will kill himself also and every drop of humanity and decency that could have been existed in him. And then, after he gathered the courage to kill himself as an ethical human being, he will show no mercy when he has to take with him as many other humans as he can, for nothing will cause him more pain than the one he has already inflicted in himself.

At first the white man came in and took the fertile lands for himself leaving the arid ones for the Indians, killing in the process as much Indians as he could, mixed with the thrill of a legal carnage, for there is nothing the white man likes the most than killing with a license. Then obliged the Indians to drop their weapons and promise never to fight and so they did the natives, for unlike the white man, they do believe in honor, truth and the power of your word.

Later on the white man inducted the natives to take the tomahawk and fight, when it served the interest of Washington, for they wanted them to be the code people in WWII and latter Vietnam.
But when they came back, the white man again discovered an interest in the lands of the Indians, now for what lied beneath it: gas, uranium, coal and oil. As in the way Washington acts, they sold the right to exploit these sacred land for low prices, Interior Secretary James Watt gave the order in 1983, bought the rights of exploiting the resources, giving the owners a mere 2-3 % of its value, and in exchange they left a polluted environment filled with toxic substances and wastes to totally destroy the land from its roots, to show others that there where the white man passes no root will ever thrive.

Most of the labor in the tribes had to finally work for the mines, like the Peabody Coal, and would end their days with lung cancer and raise their children raise of malformation to twice the US average due to all the toxic agents left behind.
This is only one of the examples where the white man in order to raise his children and send them to the best universities, he has to buy the politicians and journalists silence so they close their eyes when the white men annihilates all the good and gentleness. Peter La Farge, a native american songwriter, put in words and Johnny Cash and latter Bob Dylan put it in accords with “The Ballad of Ira Hayes”, where the war hero comes back to meet his slow death in the land dried by the white man.

Down the ditches for a thousand years
The water grew Ira’s peoples’ crops
‘Till the white man stole the water rights
And the sparklin’ water stopped.

http://www.mininova.org/tor/330297

Narrated by Joaquin Phoenix, this is an eye-opening documentary about human cruelty inflicted upon animals, and about the hypocrisy of humans, who unhealthily, immorally and abusively consume everything  that comes from animals, conduct experiments that aren’t lifesaving on them, use them for entertainment purposes, skin them, etc.,…and all in a mass-production way, so as  “to cut expenses”. For example, “let’s keep skinning the foxes but without the expensive anesthesia”.

We humans are hypocritical because at the same time we involve ourselves in this carnival of the senses, we turn our heads and intentionally ignore others’ suffering, we will eat our foie gras but will comfortably choose not to khow how it was “produced” and will even say “why would they show us these things on tv?”. Well, if we have what it takes to enjoy the foie gras, we better have the stomach to deal with the torments the duck goes through, just to be served on our adorned platter. The next time you eat anything that is made of cows, be aware that it was most probably de-horned without any anesthesia, that it was given antibiotics, and that its excruciating death was as slow and Dantesque as you can imagine any death in a torture chamber to be.

Animals skinned alive for our clothing

We are a global species and are the end consumers of all of these products originating from the animal world. We know very well that animals are helpless when it comes to defending themselves against us, more sophisiticated elevated sense of being. We also know that the indifference and insensitivity we have developed over the years toward the suffering of our fellow-animals, will only lead us to be bound to do the same against under another human, or as Leo Tolstoy put it: “As long as we have slaughtered houses we will have combat fields”; For you cannot be the same individual after you cut a small’s animal testicles with your bare hands, or when you burn an animal alive, or when you skin another animal alive, or when you see animals agonizing from pain after the blows you have inflicted on them. We are what we eat and what we do, and no painful death can go unfelt  in the meat we eat.

slow painful death so we can eat a steak, totally concious in video

Next time you go to a zoo, don’t buy a ticket when they tell you “that it’s educational”, for there is nothing that you can learn from an animal in captivity, it is either a physically or mentally sick animal.

Also, the next time you visit San Fermin or a rodeo, acknowledge the fact that you are  a sadist, or that you don’t mind watching another being’s suffering till death just for you to “have fun”.

The nest time you visit a circus, bear in mind that you are only watching how an animal was taught to perform under physical constraint and fear of physical punishment, only to perform tricks for your eyes. Do not be surprised if the animal eventually retaliates.

The next time you take your usual Bayer aspirin or the product of any other corporation, Colgate or the others, keep in mind the great number of animals that have been systematically tortureed, even when they know that if a testing on an animal had positive results, they will still have to test on humans.

Next time you see someone from Al Qaeda decapitate some journalist’s head, be aware that he probably “practiced” previously with animals, so that you and I can eat them.

It is in our hands to decide whether we should cause so much suffering, torture, agony and slow death during the lives of animals so that they may serve to feed us, dress us and entertain us.  If there is a G-d out there, I definitely do not think that he would ever take all of this that we are committing, for granted.

Score: 10

If there is an educational and informative documentary work, Zeitgeist is its name. A deep research into our current monetary system based on enslave, scarce and above all profit for the benefit of CORPORATIONS. Names like Exxon, Texaco, WalMart, Merrill Lynch, CityGroupInc, Morgan Stanley, CNN, CBS, FOX, MacDonalds, AT&T, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, etc,… All  these nice entities are the real owners of our global world and won’t think twice to send their economic hitmen and try to brive heads of state in order to let them into his country and exploit his resources.  Once the specific foreign leader bribed, the companies get into the country, exploit its resources by a small fraction paid of the real cost of it. Thus, the profit is all for the corporations and the targeted country is left as before but this time with no natural resources and a bunch of corrupted new rich men leaders.

If the leaders refuse to be bribed… accidents happen, CIA fashion. If the CIA cannot do it, the Army will, and then you will find that what it was supposed to protect and defend its citizens is now fighting for corporation interests instead of values. Just to exemplify this: Before 1980’s Afghanistan produced 0% of the world’s opium, after the US/CIA backed Mujahideen won the Soviet/Afghan war, by 1986 they were producing 4-% of the world’ heroin supply. By 1999, they were producing 80% of the total market supply. But then something unexpected happened, the Taliban came to power and by 000 they had destroyed most of the opium fields. Production dropped from 3000+ tons to 185, a 94% reduction. . On Sept. 9th 2001, the full Afghan invasion plans were on G. Bush’s desk. . Today, after the US invasion, US controlled Afghanistan provides 90% of the world’s demand breaking records nearly every other year*.

These same corporations are the ones that killed the electric car, which by the way, it is a known solution since the beginning of last century just because it doesn’t go on petrol, thus we have no profit there, so they banned the use of the batteries (that are also under their control) in these cars. These are the people that wont blink while deforesting the amazons or as Bayer, who wouldn’t have remorse after selling in Europa what was previously banned in the US, a medicine that had been proved cause of aids in many patients. This people aren’t neither interested in well being and environment, but in proliferating, keeping people watching American gladiator and made them think that technology put them on the unemployment.

And here is where it comes www.thevenusproject.com: a new way of thinking and acting for today’s generation. On an era where technology success surrounding us in our daily chores there is no excuse to make the change the corrupt system where we think our politicians will take care of us in this democracy and push forward our interests. Reality is much different: those leader have pending bills with those people that actually placed them on the top, yes, you guessed right again, the corporations, those entities that pay for Obama’s election campaign and right after he won, will pay a visit to his office. And this is how the current system works.

This same corporations control the media, so they can keep you with their news, right where they want you to think. And here is the way we can improve our situation in order to make things change: do not support this corporations by buying their news, by consuming their products, electricity or water, try to be as much self dependent as possible, for in this materialist world we all know what happens when an article/idea is not consumed: they stop producing/exploiting it, it dies and they will have to come up with something the people wants. That is what happened when they started boycotting the city bus companies in southern US for the where were part of the racist system against African Americans. And what are the options? As mentioned, planet friendly technology together with environment protecting energies like tides, helical, waves, solar and thermo, all of them long knocking on our doors.

I found this piece of investigation not only a must-see, but a must follow. There are some grey areas where I may object, such as simplifying all religions and make one from all of them, saying that we are all the same. Score: 9

* Source: Washington Post, “Afghanistan Opium Crop sets record” and UNODC report “The Opium economy in Afghanistan”

Garbage Warrior is a fantastic documentary abou t the life project of an american architech in New Mexico, Michael Reynolds. After completing his formal studies he becomes aware that modern architecture does not build having in mind man neither his enviroment. This will make him, together with global warming and the need for sustainable housing, get into a journey of creating housing without the need of having any cooling, heating, running water. His houses will provide all these and more: even fruits and vegetables from the green houses he designs and buids. This passion for becoming stronger by being less and less dependant on electricity, water and others that come from the resources providers companies. He came up with the revolutionar idea of isolating from cold and hot by using garbage tires filled with dirt and soda cans. Both will provide thermo isolation from cruel winters cold and from dessert high temperatures. Water will be gathered from at the roofs from night moisture and birds and vegetation will habitate inside the house compound. Electricity will come from solar panels and wind power. His dream attracted some hardcore followers who today live at the same project spot with him, each at his own house. The sad part of his dream as asual were the orthodox authority who wanted, as storsionist, a cut of the cake, meaning: “either you pay us or we hunt you”. The board of architects, or something named like it, took from his his architect license. The local government, came out saying his houses are illegal so he cannot build more of them. It took him several years to Michael to get back what it was his. I felt some kind of sadness while watching how an optimistic, positive and progressive individual is being hunted by the legal mob. Score: 7

This is the second time I watch this fine documentary about the case of 15 years old African American named Butler, who happened to be black and be found at the wrong place after someone else had committed a murder on a white old tourist at the entrance of the Ramada Inn in Florida. Corrupted police office detectives didn’t happened to be in the mood for labor at the same morning and looked for an easy victim to play the part of the killer. Murder on a Sunday Morning is a dramatic and real case on how officers of the law were wrong, how the only witness and husband of the murdered woman lied to the court and how the sheriff’s office collaborated to put an innocent black man behind bars without any remorse. I saw the resemblance here with the case of “The Hurrricane” and how these things really HAPPEN. Score: 8.