'Moment of Fury', Morvary Samaré
Sweden • 2005–2006 • 10mins
Iran: after the revolution of 1979 when Ayatollah Khomeini came to power, there was an impetus to question and, in some cases, re-orient social values. This is the case in most revolutions. Eventually the dust settles; a nation works out where its concensus lies. But twenty-five years later, where does Iran stand on the question of human rights? In 1999 Ahmad Batedi, a young student, participated in a demonstration for freedom of speech and, in a moment of fury, raised a bloody t-shirt from the ground. Because of this act, he was imprisoned indefinitely. This film was inspired by him and his action on that day.

Yassamine Mather:
The victims of the conflict between US-UK imperialism and Iran’s reactionary clerical regime are ordinary Iranians, says Yassamine Mather, a member of the editorial team of Critique, Journal of Socialist Theory; Centre For the Study of Socialist Theory and Movements, Glasgow University.

Also see:
'Political Islam’s Relation to Capital and Class' by Ardeshir Mehrdad and Yassamine Mather
http://www.variant.org.uk/25texts/politicalislam25.html
'Crisis of Islamic Fundamentalism in Iran' by Yassamine Mather
http://www.variant.org.uk/18texts/18iran.html

Discussion at Document 4: International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival following a screening of 'White Gold – The True Cost of Cotton', with Craig Murray, Britain’s outspoken Ambassador to the Central Asian Republic of Uzbekistan 2002–04: a prominent critic of Western policy in the region.
Listen to MP3 : http://www.variant.org.uk/audio/Craig_Murray.mp3

'White Gold – The True Cost of Cotton'
Sam Cole • 2005 • 8 mins
White Gold - The True Cost of Cotton, reveals the extent of the enviromental damage and human right’s abuses caused by the cotton industry of Central Asia, mainly to supply European demand. The draining of the Aral Sea and the extensive use of child labour are directly linked with Uzbekistan’s billion dollar cotton production.

Document 3 : International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival inaugural public talk, in collaboration with Glasgow School of Art, by Robert Fisk on his new book 'The Great War for Civilisation : The Conquest of the Middle East'.
Listen to MP3 : http://www.variant.org.uk/audio/Fisk.mp3

Rarely have first hand reporting and history been so powerfully combined than in Robert Fisk’s epic story of tragedy and betrayal in the Middle East. As his narrative of bloodshed and cruelty unfolds in Iraq, Afghanistan, Algeria, Iran, Palestine and other battlefields, the carnage of September 11th, 2001, and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime take on a new and frightening meaning.

Fisk, who has met Osama bin Laden three times, has been on the battlefront of the Middle East’s conflict for 28 years and his devastating accounts of human suffering are now read around the world.

In the tradition of all foreign correspondents, his eyewitness testimony of the horrors of modern warfare – in the tradition of the great reporters of the Second World War – is laced with both suspicion and anger. This is no chronology of Middle East history but a passionate outcry against the lies and deceit that have sent soldiers to their deaths and killed tens of thousands of men and women – Arab, Christian, and Jew – over the past century.

It is also a chronicle of journalists at war, of the rage, humour and frustration of the correspondents who spend their lives reporting the first draft of history, of their occasional courage – and sometimes their deaths.

It is also a deeply personal memoir which moves from Fisk’s own presence on the front line in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s to the experience of his father, 2nd Lt Bill Fisk, in the trenches of the Somme in 1918. In the months that followed the First World War, the victors drew the borders of Northern Ireland, Yugoslavia and much of the Middle East; Robert Fisk has spent his entire career watching people within these borders die.

The Great War for Civilisation – the legend on the back of his father’s 1914-1918 campaign medal – is a masterpiece of adventure and tragedy, softened with both humour and compassion. It is the story of the violent world that is shaping our lives – and our future.