Archive - Oct 7, 2007 - Article

Girls just wanna have fun

About this time last year, I was having tea with my teenage cousin Shirin in Tehran. We were celebrating the good news in the papers that day. Her name had been published among the list of admitted students to her “first choice” university. Her hard work had paid off and it was time to have fun. Iranian fun. She invited me to take part in some of the leisure she’d sacrificed to a yearlong preparation that was devoted primarily to studying and thinking about her future. Her offer impressed me - neither she nor her friends were the slightest bit embarrassed by my hot pink scarf with sparkly gold embroidery. I wore the Britney Spears of hijab. >>>

Emergence of a united front

As President George W. Bush is increasingly becoming alienated from the American public and internationally is turning into a pariah, the leaders of such independent nations as Zimbabwe, Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Iran respond forcefully to his heartless and mediocre rhetoric and his ongoing search for finding terrorists inside the U.S. and overseas. Just like the authorities in Israel, he ceaselessly looks for new ìHitlersî and invents many if there are none, to justify the systemís thirst for territorial occupation and murderous campaigns against the peoples of Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine and maybe even Iran.>>>

Stop whining

We can’t force people to like us, nor should we be able to. There are millions of Debra Cagans living amongst us in America, and we cannot change all of their minds. Hating for them is as essential as breathing. Unless they have someone to look down on, they would drown in the misery of their own pathetic lives. Some people are just that way. They have got to have someone to kick around, belittle and demean, so that they don’t have to think about just how tragic their own lives and personal circumstances are. We just happen to be Debra Cagan’s whipping-boy.>>>