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December 3, 2003 * The right you don't deserve Unfortunately not all thoes who came to the US, came for freedom. Many like you and your parents came only for a luxury life, and the mind set that America is evil and must be destroyed [Facing the music]. Please keep your shitty mind set in check when doing campaigns for "peace". If you have the right to criticize the governmnet, first consider what you have done or doing as a contribution to this country and then start complaining. I tell you, you have done nothing for this country. You only now how to criticise the government that have give you the right to live in this country. This is the right that you don't deserve to have. Your parents like other Iranians only new how to complain to shah and destroyed him only to find another kind of dictatorship to sit in his place. Why? Bbecause we Iranians only know how to compalin and accuse other countries of our problems. We didn't do anything to make our country better. Did people get freedom of speach after revolution? no. It got only worse to the degree that we can't even complain the way we did during shah's time?! So please first start a campain to make life better for people and do something that will bring goodness to people, and then complain to government for what it is doing. Does "peace" mean that we should let Some crazy Government throw atomic bomb or chemical bomb on us? Its good to sit and be peaceful. but is it wise to wait for other governments to destroy us? we live in a mental hospital where people are fighting the whole time. being peaceloving dosn't mean that nobody will attack you. war is not good but its better to defend yourself when one is trying to kill you. sometimes you have to attack first. (See reply below) * Keep leaders in check In reply to above, your response is unexpectedly and unnecessarily harsh. while i respect that your perspective differs from mine, telling me to keep my "shitty little mindset in check" is hardly the way to get me to see yours. if you're trying to be critical, you've succeeded on only a very superficial level. if you're trying to be persuasive, you've failed to do anything but turn me off. that said, i'd like to respond to your other accusations, if you haven't closed your mind entirely to what i have to say. i feel as if you hadn't read my essay at all [Facing the music]. my parents came to america because they DO believe in the american system: "in search of a better life, they came to the U.S. hoping to live the American Dream. my parents didn't buy the anti-American hype they were being fed at home. They had faith in American democracy." they weren't revolutionaries in iran. they had a better standard of living there than they have ever had here. but they still prefer it here, in a country that at least plays lip service to civil liberties, than in iran, where the mention of liberty is a cruel joke. as for what i have done for my country, you have nothing to go on other than a 500-word essay. it's presumptuous and spiteful of you to assume that i do nothing but sit around and complain. i agree with you that one of the biggest faults of our culture is our tendency to simply complain, and never act. i will say that another fault is our unwillingness to cooperate, simply because we refuse to hear another point of view, and quickly get defensive when someone's perspective is different from ours. we are all would-be leaders, never followers. we are never content to let another person guide us because we assume that we can do it better, but then we refuse to actually do anything at all. finally, regarding my personal protests: the colossal mistake that was vietnam would never have ended as quickly as it did had the younger generation exhibited not their opposition to it. if i truly believed for even a second that our action toward iraq was in self-defense, even pre-emptively, i wouldn't have opposed it so strongly. but in reality, this administration was working in its own self-interest, as politicians always do. in a true democracy, it is the responsibility of the public to keep its leaders in check, not their own minds. without the freedom to express all opinion, we are little better than the fascists that control iran. * Brilliant This is a brilliant article!! [Facing the music] * Intentions count for little I have to say that for a man that deplores cheap shots, ad hominems and vulgarity, your unpleasant comments [Cheap shots] on my one article ["Iruni-baazi"], which mentioned some Qajars in passing, have been mostly personal and abusive. You are not, whatever you may think, an arbiter or taste and vulgarity. I can assure you I have received a better education and upbringing than most members of your clan, and met enough Qajars and mini-Qajars in London and Tehran to make this a confident assertion. You will see from the response to your articles that your laudatory passages on the Qajars have failed to convince this small, but relatively eloquent, sample of the Iranian public. The article I wrote asked - and I look forward to your scholarly and well-researched response to the question - what Farmanfarma had done for Iran that a very ordinary great-grandson of his should constantly ridicule and criticise Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. Please also include why we as a nation are indebted to the Firuz and Farmanfarmayan families, to Nosrat ol-Dowleh, that communist Maryam Firuz, or various family members that have recently started cashing in on their names, writing memoirs and novels. It would be good too if you could, if at all possible, rehabiliate that Zil ul-Sultan [The game at Ghamishlou], the very symbol of despotic abuse and sinister buffonery. Ahmad Shah may have meant well [Persia's honor], but intentions, as you know, count for little in politics unless they are turned into palpable reality. Nobody will thank Khatami, Bazargan or Sanjabi for their paltry efforts, whatever their intentions. I look forward not so much to a princely as a scholarly response. (See reply below) * Debate among reasonable men Dear Mr. Vassigh, (Reply to above) Had you written this letter or opinion piece instead of what you did in fact write in your earlier piece ["Iruni-baazi"], I would at most have asked you to be willing to reconsider aspects of your position in light of different possible views on the people you mentioned. Instead you chose to make a vulgar and unfair remark about them and all Qajars. In our culture, unlike this very vulgar American culture, one does not speak in such terms about others unless one intends to insult and get a laugh at others' expense who cannot defend themselves anymore. Given that you have taken the trouble to write to me, I imagine you a man of honor. I also imagine you a reasonable man. If the shoe were on the other foot, would you not at least protest the vulgarities and object to the character assassination? I know that you would, given your annoyance at this unnamed Farmanfarmaian who set you off because of his alleged critical remarks of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. The substantive part of your remarks can be debated among reasonable men. It has been debated. It is still being debated. The outcomes of open and fair debates are always good. The results always preliminary until new elements are introduced and examined in the light of reason. In that arena I would never object in the way I did, as I do not do so now. Except for your remarks about "that communist" and the “buffoonery” of Zell-eSoltan, the rest of your statements here can be responded to in a spirit of genuine inquiry and discussion. Is Mohammad Reza Shah above criticism? Is there any point in criticizing his actions, his rule, his administration of the country post 1953? Is it possible to have differing opinions on him and his time? Of course. Is it possible to also find aspects worthy of praise, of sympathy? Of course. This would be the way reasonable individuals debate. With facts, with measured criticism, with reason. Is Pinochet, who just yesterday declared himself a savior angel of Chile, indeed such an angel or was he a dictator who murdered thousands of Chileans? Was Franco a savior of his nation? These things can and are being debated. I read your piece as an attempt to settle a score and land cheap shots. Your remarks about the Qajars were not “passing remarks.” I could not let them stand without comment. Not for my own sake. Believe me, the abuse people have heaped on me personally for "daring" to say anything about the Qajars that would not follow the accepted canon of exegesis has been unbelievable. Yet as far as responding to insults against my person, I have never felt it necessary to reply. Abuse against those who cannot speak for themselves anymore, however, is another matter. It is the duty of such a one as I. Blood dictates it. Were you in my shoes, believe me, you would do the same if you wanted to be able to live with yourself. Honor is not a matter to be trifled with. It is all we have left when all is said and done. Whatever your characterization of my answer here to you may be, I hope you read it in the spirit it was presented. In due course, I personally and many others who are presently writing and publishing and will do so in the future more and more, are answering the substantive aspects of your question. I would like to suggest to you a recent book by Anthony Wynn on the Abdol Hossein Mirza Farman-Farma's role in Iran and his relation with Sir Percy Sykes, and a forthcoming book by Dr. Nashat on women in the Qajar era. I would also suggest Sir Dennis Wright's The English Amongst the Persians among many many books I could recommend. Surely none of these individuals owe anything to the Qajars, and, if anything, they have been critical in the past and still are. That is precisely why I suggest them as appropriate reading should you be interested in doing so. I hope you would be willing to give my points as serious a consideration as I have yours. I would like to add that I would never use ad hominems if they were uncalled for. Had you not said those things, I would have never personally criticized you no matter what your viewpoints were. I would have only presented alternative viewpoints. * Strangers in the night? I am kind of a fan of yout web site and I also think you have one of the most complete connections of classics and also contemporary music, and I wanted to congradulate you and also thank you for providing such a beautiful collection for us iranians all ver the world. I also have a question , I think one of our singers has a song playing the "Strangers in the night" music but with farsi lyrics do you happen to know by any chance who is the singer and what's the name of the song? * Dametoon garmmmmmmmmm On the music section: Afarinnnnnnnnn Va dametoon garmmmmmmmmm Va ey Vallaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa... * Mollas running really scared If your readers want the PERFECT example of "the pot calling the kettle 'black'", they should try to catch a web rebroadcast of Rahbar's Eid Fitr sermon delivered in Tehran yesterday. Talk about a group of mollas "running really scared" and trying to buy themselves time and space! The speech was so outrageously dishonest and hypocritical that even the man delivering the message was visibly ashamed of his own lies. To have heard the message given from the pulpit, one would have thought that President Bush had just illegally shut down over 100 news publications and arrested numerous pro-democracy activists on the flimsiest of charges via kangaroo courts?!? The outlandish sermon was so dishonestly intense in its embrace of Iran's "free" and "democratic" electoral process as opposed to the West's "wicked" agenda for democracy and human rights in the region, and so hypocritically self-righteous in its "mazloomeeat" as opposed to the "tyrannical dictatorship" of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and others, that for a second an unsuspecting listener might have thought they were in Bern, Switzerland and not Tehran, Iran! Va salam, * Primate assumptions Hello, Sunlord [Sorry Ms El] I just took a quick peek at your ridiculous article about your Persian teacher and I am convinced that you are nothing more than an arrogant drug addict. You closed the article asking the "fellas" out there if her behavior towards your obviously malicious actions was appropriate, so I will appease your confusion with an analysis that should serve as a healthy and imperative introspection for an unrivaled twit, like yourself. Assuming that your article captures every minor detail that occurred throughout your experience, I'll first say that you completely misinterpreted her behavior like she was one of the cheap Puerto Rican hookers that your probably accustomed to chasing, thus affirming her altered demeanor after you presented her with yet another batch of flowers picked from your boyfriend's garden. Still confused? Allow me to reiterate. In the beginning, you were so confident that she was drawn to you and after the childish inquiring, with which you failed to investigate your own judgment and interpretation of women individually, you miraculously turned into a saint who enjoys doing special deeds for beautiful women around the globe. Of course, they must be beautiful women, because who would take the pains to give a toothless woman of an obese physique the incentive to warm your heart with a smile? Your benevolence is clearly bullshit. So what else can we assume that your motives were in this situation, besides the desire to tear off every article of clothing on her body and proceed to engage in explosive intercourse? This did not occur to you because, like most males, you are pompous and self-involved. I can attest to this fact after reading a few jumbled paragraphs on your retarded article. Also, did you expect her to melt with happiness after reading the stupid card you left with the bouquet? I honestly hope that was a joke because, if not, my notion has been confirmed once more. Each of your assumptions are of primate capacity. Your article serves as nothing more than proof of why males are misrepresented. One may also ask himself, "Why are so many girls turning into lesbians
lately?" Answer: "..BECAUSE OF GUYS LIKE YOU!!!" |
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