FARROKHZAD
Fereydoun Farrokhzad's grave moved to more prominent spot in Bonn cemetery
by Parsi's Friend
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The recent news about the change of leadership at the "Sepah Pasadaran" got me to thinking about how absurdly inefficient the current Iranian defense structure is. Take a country with a limited amount of resources available to allocate to its defense needs, then find yourself forced to split those resources between two identical organizations (the "Artesh", and the "Sepah") created, in parallel, to meet the defense needs of that country?!?!
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FREE SPEECH
بزرگترین آفت دروغ از بین بردن و سست کردن اعتماد بین افراد است
حسین درخشان ...دست به جعل زده است و از خود چیزی ساخته و به من بسته است. برای من جالب است که کسی که فحاشی مردم را به خود منتشر می کند تا مثلا آزادمنشی خود را به رخ بکشد تذکر حقوقی مرا ادیت می کند. او نگران است که روشهای غیراخلاقی اش با نقد حقوقی و اخلاقی همان اندک تاثیری را هم که ممکن است در بعضی اذهان داشته باشد از دست بدهد. بسیار با معنی است که او اگر هر کامنتی در هر جای وب بر خلاف خواست و نفع او باشد رسما می نویسد و اعتراض می کند و خواهان برداشتن آن می شود اما کامنتی را که در برابر رفتار ناجوانمردانه او گذاشته می شود و در آن هیج اصلی از آزادی بیان و احترام به مخاطب مخدوش نشده کوتاه می کند.
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MEMOIR
A book of first Persian Gulf War (Iran-Iraq War 1980-1988)
It was the second day of winter 1986. The sun had already set and the snow-spotted Alborz Mountains to the north of Tehran were still visible behind a haze of smoke hovering the city. Two nights earlier I had toasted the birth of the Iranian god of Mehr (Mithra: god of the Sun) in a cave in the Alborz with some fruits and nuts along the longest night of the year in an inn in the City of Mashhad; and now I was at Khazaneh Bus Terminal in south of Tehran taken a seat by the window of a bus full of uniformed men like myself bound for Khuzestan in southwest of Iran wondering whether that would be my last trip from that terminal or it was just the beginning of a series of such trips that I had to take to the war fields in the south and west to fight an endless war regarded holy by many, unholy by many.
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POLITICS
براستی چراست که دست از سر اين «امام» بر نمی دارند؟
گاه شرايط آنگونه ايجاب می کنند که رهبر فوت شده را بصورتی شگفت آور به ميان بازماندگانش برگردانند تا مشکلات و اختلافات را سريعاً حل و فصل کند. و از آنجا که احضار ارواح نه ممکن است و نه پذيرفتنی، نزديکان رهبر از دست رفته بايد او را از طريق بازگفتن خاطره های خويش بازسازی و احياء کنند.
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This summer, I was thinking about AZADI word. When you look for it in Iranian literature and discussion you find a huge vacuum! So I’d like to propose you a new version of EI Iran. May be it could help to start a discussing letting us to define what is AZADI for Iranians!
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JOURNALISM
Robin Wright lies and Washington Post calls it journalism
Someone please tell me if Robin Wright is a journalist or Haleh Esfandiari's PR manager. How dare she can get away with such a blatant lie that "Esfandiari and the [Woodrow Wilson] center have long denied receiving any U.S. funding for the lecture series she runs." The about page of the Woodrow Wilson Center reads "Approximately one third of the Center's operating funds come annually from an appropriation from the U.S. government."
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Two-part video clips on Iranian rappers feel about living in USA. I feel like they have a lot to say which we can learn about them.
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TENNIS
A wonderful and memorable U.S. Open in New York
by
shoosh >>>
ROCK
PART 1: “it’s not the music. Kiosk is more about the poetry"
"We’re not Pink Floyd" he says. "Why do they expect us to be Pink Floyd?" Those are words from Arash Sobhani, singer/songwriter of Kiosk, the Iranian rock band that has been making quite a name for itself in the past two years. Since the days I wrote and published the conversation we had on Orkut in November 2005, the band has made a major leap in making itself known to the general public, and quite successfully, I might add. As I also run the Kiosk fan community on Orkut, the release of their second album a few months ago gave me the opportunity to have a second conversation with not only Arash, but also with Babak Khiavchi, head of Bamahang Productions (Kiosk’s record label) and Ahmad Kiarostami, the director of the now famed Eshghe Sorat video.
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EXTERMINATION
Iranians are now cockroaches and Iran is a roach infested sewer
What do you do with a cockroach? You kill it, most likely. How guilty do you feel if someone dropped one of those exterminator bombs in a hole infested with roaches? Not really guilty, you may even thank them or at least feel relieved. Well, Iranians are now cockroaches and Iran is a roach infested sewer. This cartoon appeared in both
Investor’s Business Daily and
The Columbus Dispatch. What really gets my goat is not the racist, stupid nature of the cartoonist, Michael Ramirez. No, not at all, I expect that such individuals exist. The real tragedy here is born of us, Iranians.
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Let me assure you that I'm not writing at the behest of any certain group or organization but solely on behalf of our shared humanity in the meager hope that I may arouse some level of moral decency at your paper that would offer an apology to the 70 million Iranian people you have offended.
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