Archive - Mar 12, 2008 - Article

Why I want Obama to win

I backed the war in Iraq even though I have always been a democrat. My reason for cheering the Americans when they invaded Iraq was simple: I was hoping that the American success there would ignite unrest in Iran and bring about the fall of the theocratic regime. While I disagreed with Bush’s policies in every other area I was pro-war. I was a liberal hawk, as a friend pointed out, giving me the very American comfort of a label. Now, like most people, including Hillary Clinton, I have come to realize that the war was a mistake. It was a mistake because Americans don’t know how to be an occupying force in a time when information and ideology travel freely and ruthlessly>>>

No need for another revolution

Revolution seems a good thing, theoretically speaking, but historically speaking it has usually been a not-so-rosy moment in time when injustices took place, lives and relations got shattered, and societies were shaken to their cores, very often taking them a very long time to recover from the trauma. Revolutions in Russia, China, France, Iran and about anywhere else hardly brought anything extraordinary. Their peers who missed the revolutions did quite well, and usually much better. It is complicated to evaluate what would have happened if there was no revolution but one thing is certain that neither the French revolution nor Communist revolutions of Russia, China and other places, nor the Islamic revolution of Iran brought anything to be proud of>>>

Back from the dead

Backstage I told actress Bella Warda that I thought her character, the resilient Mahin Ashtari is in very good hands. If you haven’t been backstage after a play, prepare for a jolting experience. There is strong magic in speaking to someone--still in costume and sweating from the ordeal--who has just returned from the story world. This is something film can never do. As I waited to congratulate actress Sepideh Khosrowjah, she was still the ambitious yet easily dominated character, Shafagh Gooya. The fact that as playwright Khosrowjah created Shafagh and all the other characters in the comedy belonged to the reality she was just coming back to>>>

Friendly fire

The Pentagon has announced that the 41-year navy veteran and commander of US Central Command (CentCom), requested permission to retire and Secretary Gates approved his request. Last week, Thomas Barnett of Esquire Magazine published a revealing piece speculating on the possibility that Admiral Fallon might be pushed out because he “was the strongest man standing between the Bush Administration and a war with Iran.” Gates was quick to call a press conference to announce the retirement and dispel the notion that there were any policy differences between Fallon and the administration>>>

Shaherezad in Santa Monica

This play is about the love relationship between Shahram, an Iranian poet living in exile, and Shaherezad, an Iranian activist who had been in prison for 11 years during both the Shah and Khomeini's regimes. They both had lost their partners, Ezzat and Hamid, in Tehran execution fields in the 1980's. In Act I, they meet in Santa Monica, California, and fall in love. But in Act II, difficulties arise and in Act III, Shahram has to accept the fact that Shaherezad has begun to date an American professor, Sean >>>