Archive - Article

Epiphany

Uprooted
from Persian gardens
of my dawning bed,
I was a cypress tree replanted
in eternal ice of Montreal, muttering
Gilles Vigneault’s "Les gens de mon pays"
for the saffron sun, sidewalk café sitting
in summer’s shade, reading my mother’s
letter from Tehran >>>

Making music, not war

On Saturday, June 28, when the fear of looming war against Iran was on the rise, here, in Prague, Iranian and Israeli musicians came together to perform in a warm and memorable concert in a prestigious and the oldest Czech world music festival, Respect, in a Woodstockesque flavor and atmosphere. Saeed Shanbehzadeh, a maestro of Ney-Anban (or as we call it in southern Iran: Ney-Anbooneh), after an hour of playing Bushehri ethnic music together with his 15 year old son Nagheeb, a very skilled drummer and percussionist, invited two Israeli percussionists participating in the festival to join them and let the people listen to an improvisation>>>

Obama's Jimmy Carter Disaster

President Carter's misguided approach to raising human rights (catered to fundamentalists and communists) in the context of US-Iran relations, led to the Shah's fall. Iran then became a theocratic abyss, whose radical fundamentalists tolerated far more abuse and torture of political prisoners than the Shah ever had, and supported a stream of terrorist acts and causes. The individuals who comprise Iran's theocracy are now the worlds, as well as the vast majority of the Iranian people's greatest enemies. Now, Barack Obama has said that he is inclined to meet with the internationally controversial Iranian President at the right time after due preparation and advance work by US diplomats>>>

Banking on God

Khums and Zakat are two charitable sums paid respectively by Shiites and Muslims collected by religious authorities in charge of them. Although, they are primordially supposed to be contributed among poor Seyyeds (descendents of the Prophet Muhammad) and the poor in the community.To some extent, they cover the questions of financial support for Jihad and terrorist activities in and out of the Muslim community, legitimacy of booty, and the financial benefit of the collectors, in Iran, the clergy. Booty (Ghanima / Ghanaemis taken by Mulims from “Infidels”) is legal after paying Khoms / Zakat. However, the lands which have been seized as spoils of war belong to the Muslim society>>>

بی سیر یا با سیر!

آقای علی اشتری را به جرم جاسوسی محاکمه و به اعدام محکوم کرده اند. تا اینجای مطلب هیچ چیز غیر طبیعی وجود نداره. این که یک جاسوس محاکمه بشه، طبیعیه. این که جرمش سنگینه، طبیعیه... اما بالاغیرتن "فریب خوردگی" این جاسوس، یک پایش میلنگه! اگه آقای علی اشتری یک دختر چهارده پونزده ساله ی خوشگل مامانی بود، خوب، می گفتیم "فریب خوردگی" تا اندازه ای طبیعیه. ولی آخه با این پیشونی بلند که تا مغز سرش رفته (واژه ی "کچل" در مورد کسانی مثل من که هنوز چند تار مو روی سرشون هست، واژه ی مناسبی نیست!) و با این بینی درشت (همین الان دوباره تو آینه نگاه کردم، دیدم سزاوار نیست بینی آقای اشتری را "خربزه ای" خطاب کنم!) خلاصه این که این منار را به کدوم جای کدوم گنجشگ بدبخت فرو کنیم که بگنجه؟ >>>

استقلال، ديروز يا فردا؟

دکتر مصدق، که بزودی به چهرهء اصلی ملی گرائی ايران تبديل شده بود، با بدست گرفتن رهبری «جنبش ملی» علم استقلال خواهی را برافراشت و از آنجا که در ميان گيره های استعمار امپرياليستی و استعمار استالينيستی قرار داشت ناگزير به مفهوم استقلال ضد استعماری نوعی معنای انزواجويانه و منفی بخشيد که در فرمولبندی سياسی او به نام «موازنهء منفی» معروف شد و ذهنيت يارانش نيز، در بلند مدت، در تنگنای همين تعريف باريک باقی ماند؛ حال آنکه اگر نيک بنگريم می بطنيم که سياست موازنهء منفی تنها يکی از انواع شکل های مبارزات استقالال طلبانه است و هر جنبش ضد استعماری لزوماً دارای ميژگی های نفی گرايانه نيست. استقلال به معنای انزوا و سختی کشيدن ناشی از آن نيست، بلکه می تواند حضور باز و همه جانبهء ملتی را در صحنهء بين المللی به ذهن متبادر کند که روی پای خويش ايستاده است، خود دوست و دشمنش را بر اساس منافع ملی خويش بر می گزيند و هرگز دارای دوستان و دشمنان دائم نيست بلکه، بقول چرچيل، دارای منافه دائم است>>>

The real choice

Is war between Israel and Iran inevitable? To listen to Iran's radical President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or Israel's Iranian-born transportation minister Shaul Mofaz, or even recent reports that Israel carried out a major military training mission over the Mediterranean to rehearse an attack on Iran, you might be left with that impression. Mr. Mofaz's comments last month indicating he would attack Iran didn't help perceptions either. The immediate effect of his statement was a record increase in oil prices – giving Mofaz's Iranian nemeses a windfall of several million dollars... Any serious effort to address the Iranian challenge must recognize the true nature of the conflict. There is nothing apocalyptic about the nuclear stand-off or the Israeli-Iranian rivalry. Rather, these are strategically driven conflicts that can be managed and even resolved through the appropriate level of diplomacy>>>

Yeh toop daram Khal-khali-yeh

Iranians in general are strong believers of the Conspiracy Theory. We thrive on political skepticism and for many years I had blamed that on the intellectuals, who pondered over taboo issues, read forbidden books and stirred suspicion. Much like the main character in My Uncle Napoleon, most of us blamed the British for our country’s problems and believed any misfortune befalling us was caused by outside powers. As I reflect on some old Persian nursery rhymes, hidden messages begins to surface, voices that have been there all along, except no one ever bothered to listen hard enough to hear them. Unlike the spider in Reverent Fulghum’s book, our rhymes fail to teach perseverance and one in particular seems to be aimed at taking away what little autonomy was left us>>>

Listen, please!

We start to have problems with listening to others and hearing them properly, when we are angry with each other. When our ego is hurt and we feel that we have been insulted, we often want to get back at the person responsible and so we stop listening to them. In these circumstances, we sometimes get very carried away and interpret everything that they say in the worse possible way to make them look bad and foolish to ourselves and others, so as to confirm what we think of them. We might even convince ourselves that they cannot be saying anything sensible or kind because then they would have been kind and sensible to us>>>

The Man in the Moon

I had begun my military service as a draftee, and like the other greenhorns out of college, was looking at a two-year tour of duty. A few days before reporting to the base, I went to the barber and asked for a sefr-chahar. He obliged by shaving off the curly afro I had spent years cultivating and I left feeling several kilos lighter. As time progressed, there were further signs of the government’s decay and loss of control. After every weekend, the number of soldiers in our unit dwindled as more and more heeded the call to desert the infidel army>>>

Is the Sky Falling?

Spare us the pain of yet another repetition of the “Chicken Little, the sky is falling” syndrome, as journalist Seymour Hersh so accurately stated about his own writings on Iran... It seems one of the motives in writing this latest ‘expose’ of the Bush Administration’s well-financed covert operations against Iran was best illuminated in Hersh’s discussion and retelling of the Pentagon’s version of the Iranian patrol boat incident back in January 2008. “Weariness with the war in Iraq has undoubtedly affected the public’s tolerance for an attack on Iran, but this mood could change quickly”, writes the investigative journalist, citing the Iranian patrol boat incident as a clear example of the “potential for escalation”. >>>

A Canadian tale

It started on another blue summer day in Lake Cowichan. We were kayaking in the river. The water was warm and transparent. Dina stopped at a small sandy beach to go for a dip. I kept diving in as deep as I could, or at least as much as the pressure in my ears would allow. The sun was illuminating the depths in shafts of light simmering with clarity. I picked up two bottle caps from the bottom and Dina was laughing. "You're always finding things!". On the last dive I saw something sparkle. When I reached it I was almost out of breath but I could see that it was a watch. East European, was the thought that entered my mind when I was looking at it on the beach. >>>

The place to be

Amor Perdido

In a heartbeat
In a smile
In a kiss on the cheek
In a look filled with passion but disguised in friendship
Love was lost
In waiting for a train on a platform
In the loud sound of speakers announcing your departure >>>

Preventive military action against Iran

When considering preventive military action against Iran's nuclear program, one must remember that such an exercise is purely hypothetical at this point. In fact, with some renewed vigor, diplomacy still might succeed in convincing Iran to suspend its nuclear program, as was the case in 2003. Context matters when discussing preventive action against Iran. For example, if Iran's leaders announced they were developing nuclear weapons, leaving the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and intending to test a nuclear weapon, the debate for using preventive military force would be entirely different>>>