Books

Stupid, and proud of it

Through centuries of living, learning, experimenting, experiencing, innovating and gaining vast knowledge, man has evolved to the next level. Today we are guided by our conscience and act with humanity; we no longer are bound by “one book”, rather we have many books to choose from for any aspect of our lives. Hitchens writes: “Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind … and the soul. … Religion spoke its last intelligible or noble or inspiring words a long time ago, … the devotions of today are the echoing repetitions of yesterday, sometimes ratcheted up to screaming point so as to ward off the terrible emptiness.” >>>

Irrational eyes

The picture that Jose Saramago presents of the blind is more repulsive than any Eugenicist dares to draw. The reader asks himself if this writer before writing his book had ever met a blind person or after publishing his story, has he ever received feedback from a blind reader? It is ironic that Mr. Saramago intends to write a book in order to criticize a kind of ideological/spiritual bias by which human society is divided into "us" and "the others", but the result is Blindness in which the author has slipped into one of the worst kinds of bigotry>>>

Our blended imagination

In my eighth year as a child growing up in Iran, I spontaneously composed a stanza, a poem, observing the falling of snow, when something took over and I knew it was poetry I was jotting down in a nylon-covered notebook. That notebook remained in the piles of things left behind. This was the country in which I recited over and over again “The woods are lovely, dark and deep, / But I have promises to keep, / And miles to go before I sleep, / And miles to go before I sleep” for our fifth-grade English class. In the fourth grade, the entire class would stand up from our wooden benches and recite an homage poem to mothers. At home, it was Sohrab Sepehri, “Wherever I am, let me be / The sky is mine / … Our work is perhaps / To run after the song of truth/in the distance between the lotus and the century.”>>>

ex-super power

Americans are fascinated with bigness. We believe we should have the best and the biggest of everything. Only ten years ago, the United States was at the top of the world’s biggest lists in most categories. That is the thing of the past according to Mr. Fareed Zakaria the author of a book entitled; The Post-American World. Consider the following facts: “The tallest building in the world is in Taipei, The world’s richest man is Mexican. Largest publicly-traded company is Chinese. The world’s biggest plane is built in Russia and Ukraine, (the) leading refinery is under construction in India, and (the) largest factories are in China. The biggest movie industry in terms of both movies made and tickets sold is Bollywood, not Hollywood. Of the top ten malls in the world, only one is in the United States; the world’s biggest is in Beijing” according to Mr. Zakaria>>>

دوزخ روی زمین

من در دهه‌ی ۶۰ خورشیدی، ده‌سال در زندان‌های اوین، قزل‌حصار و گوهردشت به سر بردم و نه تنها خود مورد شکنجه‌های سیستماتیک قرار گرفتم،‌ بلکه از نزدیک شاهد اعمال آن بر دیگر زندانیان نیز بودم. علاوه بر تجربه‌ی شخصی و ارتباط نزدیک با صدها زندانی سیاسی زن و مرد آزاد شده، از تجربه‌ی پنج ساله‌ی همسرم در زندان‌های جمهوری اسلامی نیز برخوردار بوده‌ام و تقریباً تمامی کتاب‌های انتشار یافته درباره‌ی زندان‌های جمهوری اسلامی را خوانده‌ام. در این تحقیق من با اتکا به پیشینه‌ی مذهبی و شناخت نسبی‌ درباره‌‌ی کارکرد مذهب و چگونگی عجین شدن آن در تاروپود فرهنگ مردم ایران، تلاش کرده‌‌ام آن‌چه را که نظام جمهوری اسلامی ایران تحت نام اسلام، قرآن و مجازات‌های شرعی در زندان قزل‌حصار بر روی گروهی از زنان زندانی اعمال کرده، به قضاوت عموم بگذارم. >>>

The weak against the strong

“My own conviction is that the mere tyranny of an autocrat would hardly have driven the patient and tractable people of Persia into revolt had tyranny at home been combined with any maintenance of prestige abroad or any moderately efficient guardianship of Persian independence. It was the combination of inefficiency, extravagance, and lack of patriotic feeling with tyranny which proved insupportable; and a constitutional form of Government was sought not so much for its own sake as for the urgent necessity of creating a more honest, efficient, and patriotic Government than the existing one.” >>>

Before it's too late

Nemesis is Chalmers Johnson‘s third volume from his "inadvertent trilogy". Edith Hamilton, an expert in ancient Greek mythology, says Nemesis stands for “righteous anger.” The first of this trilogy was Blowback, the term, invented by the CIA, refers to the unintended results of American actions abroad. In this incisive and controversial book, Chalmers Johnson lays out in vivid detail the dangers faced by our overextended empire, which insists on projecting its military power to every corner of the earth using American capital and markets to force global economic integration on its own terms>>>

T’was the Fight Before Christmas

The second year we were married, Francois decided to invite my parents for Christmas. “I want them to experience a French Christmas meal,” he said, displaying the enthusiasm he reserves for elaborate menus. My parents were more than happy. My father called the next day to give us their flight information. “We arrive at noon on Dec. 25,” he said, “at Oakland Airport.” “That’s the wrong airport!” I said. “The airport near you guys was too expensive,” he explained. “They’re arriving when?!? Francois asked, rather incredulously. “And why are they arriving at the wrong airport? Tell them to change their flight.“ >>>

Going down the tube

Chalmers Johnson writes: “Most Americans do not recognize-or do not want to recognize-that the United States dominates the world through its military power. Due to government secrecy, they are often ignorant of the fact that their government garrisons the globe. They do not realize that a vast network of American military bases on every continent constitutes a new form of empire... Our country deploys well over half a million soldiers, spies, technicians, teachers, … in other nations… . Whole sectors of the American economy have come to rely on the military for sales.” >>>

Among so many Eves

The poems in this collection are no more than forty-two lines long, yet they all make their message palatably clear to the reader in a short amount of space. These are poems of longing and loss, yet they all honor the esteemed place poetry holds in Persian culture. In addition, these female poets are reveling in their right to freely speak their minds and transfer their hearts onto the page—certainly not a small feat in the eleventh or even the twenty-first century... With so many Iranians living abroad as a result of the Cultural Revolution, a poetry collection such as this one is made all the more important, strengthening national pride, and also applauding Iranian women writers across genres and across the ages>>>

Extreme makeover

Kader Abdolah, or Seyed Hossein Sadjadi Ghaemmaghami Farahani as his real name is, writes Dutch novels since 1993. He arrived in The Netherlands in 1988 as a political refugee and bravely started a career as a novelist. His column “Mirza” in the Dutch daily newspaper “De Volkskrant” shows the way he perceives social developments in The Netherlands through the eyes of an immigrant, an Iranian and sometimes a(n)(ex-)Muslim.... His “The Quran and the Messenger” is a simplified version of the Quran combined with the story of the prophet’s life, in a twin series. Mohammad becomes an actual person in this book, which makes it very different from all other writings by Muslims in which the prophet is portrayed as an infallible being.>>>

ایمانژا

هرچند ما ایرانی ها امروز در همین لس آنجلس ترجیح میدهیم با بچه هایمان به زبان انگلیسی صحبت کنیم اما انگلیسی ها و فرانسوی ها و همین پرتغالی ها از صدها سال پیش تر به اهمیت حفظ زبان برای بقای فرهنگ پی برده اند. آنها طی قرون گذشته پیش از هر چیز دیگر ، زبان پرتغالی را در کشورهای تحت استعمار خود رواج داده اند. همین امروز بعد از سالهای طولانی که از استقلال "هند" می گذرد – زبان انگلیسی – هنوز هم زبان اول این کشور محسوب می شود. در الجزیره و بیروت و حتی ویتنام زبان فرانسه زبان رایج و معمول مردم است و در آنگولا از کشورهای قاره آفریقا – زبان اصلی مردم پرتغالی است! >>>

روان ملی ما

در کشورهای مردم سالار همه مردم قانونا برابرند و در ابراز اندیشه‌ها و احساسات خود آزاد. به همین دلیل در این سرزمینها«ملت» مفهومی‌ست که از هاله‌ی آرمانی درآمده و واقعیتی اجتماعی به خود گرفته است. اما در کشور ما ملت هنوز یک مفهوم آرمانی‌ست، زیرا یک گروه خاص(در گذشته سلطنت طلبان و امروزه ولایت فقیه گرایان) بر شهروندان ایرانی حکومت می‌کنند. تا هنگامی که ما ایرانیان نتوانسته‌ایم در پیشگاه قانون برابر باشیم و آزادانه نمایندگان خود را برای نهادهای تصمیم گیرنده انتخاب کنیم، هنوز ملتی«در خود» هستیم و نه «برای خود». چرا که اجازه نداریم آزادانه در تعیین سرنوشت خود تصمیم بگیریم و مجبوریم فرمانبردار گروهی خاص باشیم. >>>

Democracy for all?

Paul E. Erdman’s colossal #1 bestseller novel -- The Crash of 79 -- was published in 1976 while the recent fuel crisis was very fresh in Western memories. It was an exciting novel, translating complex world monetary and economical issues into simple language for every reader to understand. Using real life personalities, as well as current affairs of the time, it made its message convincing and even made the false portray depicted by the Western propaganda machinery of the Shah of Iran during the 1970’s, more plausible. Nevertheless this calamitous prophecy written three decades ago has never been more pertinent than today>>>

Purim

Purim is one of the most Persian of Jewish festivals. The story is essentially about how Haman, the Amalekite vizier (not a Persian), tried to abuse his power to massacre all Jews and how this was thwarted by the courage of the Jewish Queen Esther, the wisdom of his uncle Mordechai and the decree of the King Achashverosh of Persia (usually identified with Xerxes) who commanded that Haman and his offsprings be executed on the same platform they had prepared for Mordechai>>>