Iran

Publishing and still more waiting.

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The printer finally shipped a book to me. A book, not my book, so I’m back to waiting. Strange business, publishing.
While I’ve been waiting, I’m polishing another novel, and have it almost ready to go. It is set in Toronto, with side trips to Rome, Venice, Florence and Dubrovnik. A lot of fun to write. It’s working title is HIDDEN.
I’ve started planning another, which occupies my thoughts much of the day. This one will require more research, especially into the world of art restoration.

Sakineh Ashtiani still sits in that Iranian jail, awaiting her stoning sentence to be carried out. Latest news is at this link:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/d5bpwvs

Sakineh

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Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani may not face death by stoning, says prosecutor | World news | The Guardian.

The attempts by the Iranian government to “spin” this story become ever more convoluted. This piece in the Guardian brings the news up do date. First of course, she has not been executed, and the prosecutor of her home province has recently suggested that the original sentence of death by stoning may be changed. Change to what, he didn’t say. In recent weeks, she has been taken out of prison, to her home, in order to”confess” on television. The government has arrested two German reporters for trying to interview her son. Now she is said to be suing these two men, a suit that wouldn’t likely be settled until after her execution.

I don’t know if the people of Iran believe these outrageous statements and postures. Certainly I see no reason to believe that anything that is officially allowed is likely to be the truth. The Iranian people have had their revolution subverted, their rights subtracted, and now live in a land of subterfuge. I hope one day they can reclaim their rightful place as heirs to a glorious civilization.

Off to Spain

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I have been watching a lecture series on DVD, produced by The Teaching Company, taught by Professor Brooks Landon of the University of Iowa,  entitled Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writer’s Craft. This is my first exposure to a university level course in writing, although I have taken other on-line practical writing courses and attended workshops, and read books on the subject, all practical, none with the in-depth discussion of the sentence as an art form, not considering just its function, but the way in which phrases and clauses, vowels and consonants play against and with each other. I’m enjoying this series, although some of the concepts are so new to me, that I will watch it a second time, take notes, do the exercises and explore at greater length some of the concepts, as well, I might add, as learning the new vocabulary, not included in the language I learned in medical school. It seems a practical course in many ways and it is great fun.

Sakineh: She’s still in that prison. I see that the Iranians have accepted five hundred thousand dollars as the price of an American woman accused of spying and released this week. Some people in Oman arranged it, so we are told. I wonder what it would cost to buy the freedom of Sakineh and the others.

Spain: I’ve spent the last few months trying to learn some Spanish, using the course supplied by RosettaStone, enough to be polite, and not assume that everyone that I meet speaks English. I did the same with Italian several years ago, finding that it took at least two years to gain enough language to communicate a little. It becomes more difficult as I get older, or so it seems. We’re leaving shortly, so this will be my last posting for a while, unless I have access to a computer somewhere along the way.

Madness in Iran

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Iranian woman could be executed this week, son says – The Globe and Mail.

It’s so horrifying, it’s hard to keep writing about it. I can’t imagine living it. Sakineh remains in that hell-hole of a prison, at the mercy of authorities who have no sense nor compassion. Ramadan ends so her son, who hasn’t seen her for weeks, believes she will be executed sometime after Thursday.

An idiotic British newspaper publishes a picture purporting to be Sakineh without a headscarf. It isn’t; it’s another woman, but the sadists in that prison lash her 99 times, again. How much can one woman endure? The Iranians do all this in the name of religion. I don’t believe it. I think the people in charge have the same sadistic, murderous minds and souls that Nazi concentration camp guards had, and in a better world, they would be the ones in the prisons.

The British newspaper bears considerable responsibility. What did the editors think would happen to Sakineh when they published that picture? Or do they share the same sadistic mind-set, oblivious to the suffering of their victims?

Please sign the petition http://www.freesakineh.org

Three assaults on women

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Iran death row woman Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani to be hanged not stoned | Mail Online. The Daily Mail reports this morning that Sakineh was subject to a mock execution on Sunday. The attitude that allows for death by stoning apparently has stirred Sakineh’s captors to further sadism. They remind me of the perpetrators of serial murders, torturing their victims to get the most enjoyment before they kill them. I wonder if her jailers achieve sexual satisfaction from their actions as the serial killers do.

The Iranian media has labelled Carla Bruni, the wife of the President of the French Republic, a prostitute. This was apparently in retaliation for a letter she wrote in support of Sakineh. No free speech for any woman anywhere is their creed.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/africa-mideast/poison-gas-confirmed-as-cause-of-sickness-at-afghan-girls-schools/article1692235/?cmpid=rss1&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+TheGlobeAndMail-Front+(The+Globe+and+Mail+-+Latest+News)

The Globe and Mail reports that poison gas has been confirmed as the causative agent in the episodes of sudden illness amongst schoolgirls in a largely Pashtun area of Afghanistan. The boys in the same schools, who go on different days, were not effected, nor were any all-boys schools. A fine bunch these Taliban, poisoning children. I wonder if the leaders giving these orders are Afghani fathers.

Writing

Finally finished reviewing the proofs for The Facepainter Murders. It should come online today, if all goes to plan. Look for it as an ebook at http://www.writewords.com.

My current project involves converting a first person novel into a third person, in time to submit to Penguin UK which is opening for submissions, targeting non-agented writers, creating an opportunity for me, if I can finish before we go to Spain.

I notice Michael Ignatieff is calling for folks to return to “the big red tent”. I wonder if he’s been reading John Ralston Saul’s A Fair Country, in which Saul talks about Canada being an aboriginal country, and the aboriginal philosophy of “the big tent”.

Iran

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The Guardian reports this morning that the deaths by stoning of the (mainly) women in Iran’s prisons are being quietly change to death by hanging. The article, goes on to remind us of the appalling state of justice in that Republic. The cases include that of a fifteen year old child bride, accused of her elderly husband of adultery, condemned not only to die by stoning but also to live for three years under that sentence because she was not yet eighteen. What a mockery.

Meanwhile Sakineh herself is tortured into reading a “confession” on television. Her lawyer is now in Norway, having been arrested in Turkey and offered safe haven in that country of EU officials intervened in Turkey. He of course can and is speaking to the press.

Please keep up the pressure on Iran. Sign the petition at http://freesakineh.org/

Ottawa Notebook – The Globe and Mail.

The census, still in the news. Earlier this week Tony Clement complained that he felt all alone in the census fight, with so many groups against him. Apparently he thinks he is the only one with revealed truth on this issue.

Then, the government, throwing a bone to Quebec, moves questions on language to the short form, because they couldn’t be assured of accurate data in a voluntary long form! Now do these people actually ever listen to themselves?

Writing

I spent an entire morning this week talking to Sean, at Microsoft for Word for Mac about a  strange problem with my manuscript. All the quotation marks were reversed. Sean couldn’t solve the problem for me and finally, I did a manual review and changed them all. As to the service from that department, it was great. Two phone calls back, the first to give me an update on the progress, and two days later to tell me that despite their best efforts there didn’t seem to be a solution.

Now comes the slogging part of writing — reviewing the galley proofs.

Sunday Roundup2

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Writing

My latest book went to the publisher some time ago. Two errors, both mine, merged to give both the editor and me headaches. First, I had sent the wrong version, unedited and unrevised. During May and June I had worked on the manuscript and then carefully saved it — to a usb drive. I didn’t remember that and sent the most recent one on the computer. The next mistake was in using Word. I didn’t know that there was a small button in the reviewing toolbar that I had to click in order to accept all my edits and create a final version. The editor received a file full of corrections, strike-throughs, and sidebar comments.  Once the Microsoft tech told me what to do — success. The publisher, Arline Chase of Write Words Inc. and  Cambridge Books, has been great about it and I have sent along the revised  version to the editor.

Tech Support

I needed support from both Apple and Microsoft to solve the problem, and both technicians were great. The wait time was brief and the information clear. It was Saturday evening, so not too much traffic at support, I imagine.

Another outfit that has an efficient website and great service is Rail Europe. I used them to book our tickets from Madrid to Seville in the fall. From booking to the UPS driver at my door took three days, including a border crossing!

Sakineh

Sakineh still waits in that prison in Iran, while they review her sentence for a murder she says she didn’t commit and of which she was acquitted. Through an intermediary she says that the international pressure is embarrassing Iran. I hope that this country, once such a pearl, can be saved, with Sakineh, from the madmen at the top. Please continue to embarrass them and sign the petition. Website follows.

http://freesakineh.org

The census, still.

This week, Sylvia Ostry, former chief of Stats Can and an internationally known economist is quoted in Michael Valpy’s article at the Globe and Mail, as saying it is “shocking” and “ridiculous” that Ottawa should have abandoned the long form census. She was receiving an award for public policy at the Couchiching Conference.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/lauded-economist-slams-census-decision/article1665623/

Why the government is staying with this sorry decision is difficult to understand, unless it is Harper’s ego in play again. Hubris best describes it I think.

Theatre

I went to a summer theatre this week, to see a play, out of John Buchan’s The Thirty-Nine Steps, by way of Hitchcock’s film, filtered through an English music hall. The actors were excellent, but I didn’t enjoy seeing Buchan’s work turned into burlesque.

I hadn’t read the book for many years, so I reread it this week. It’s a cracking good yarn, with lots of adventure in the Scottish highlands of a century ago. John Buchan was also Lord Tweedsmuir and served as Canada’s fifteenth Governor-General from 1935-1940.

One thing I noticed, as I have in Christie, Naigo Marsh, Dorothy Sayers and other writers from England of that period is the pervasive and off-hand anti-semitism. Buchan, though, confines it to a character who is soon murdered, and whose attitude towards Jews is called “strange”.

Now Iran is kidnapping.

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Attorney of Iranian Condemned to Be Stoned Faces Arrest | News | English.

http://www.iranhumanrights.org/2010/07/mostafee-arrest-family-targeted/

Tthe Iranian government wants to arrest the lawyer who has been defending Sakineh and is involved in human rights works. They can’t find him, so they have arrested his wife and brother-in-law who have done nothing, not even been involves in any human rights work. In other words, judicial kidnapping, hostage-holding and extortion. The inmates have taken over the asylum in that poor country.

The continued international outrage may help. Who knows what may be going on in the government and judiciary there? How long with Iranian people put up with this state of affairs? It is appalling. Please sign the petition.

http://freesakineh.org

Sakineh

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Iran stoning case woman ordered to name campaigners | World news | The Guardian.

Sakineh is apparently still alive and being questioned, one fears tortured, so that her jailers may know the names of those who are coordinating the campaign to save her. As well, according to the article in the Guardian, her sons are being warned to keep silent. The message to the jailers has to be that there are hundreds of thousands of us, all independent. Heather Reisman initiated the campaign here, but now it has a life of its own. No coordination, just people who believe that the barbarism has to stop. Please sign the petition. http://freesakineh.org

Saving Sakineh

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Iran’s Sakineh Be Stoned Possibly Today: Despite Total Lack of Evidence :: Hudson New York.

The article above states the belief that the death sentence for Sakineh may have taken place as early as yesterday. Nothing in the press today to confirm that outcome. The writer believes that the execution of Sakineh and all the others jailed and condemned to stoning may happen quickly to decrease the bad press Iran is receiving. I think the even if Sakineh is not saved, the international campaign must continue, to prevent this happening to all the others in the same situation in Iran. Please sign the petition at http://freesakineh.org