Archive - Jan 2008 - Article

The Return

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A night at the Oscars

Beating all the odds, it was the 36 year old Iranian born, Pantheon Xeroxes and her 110 minutes documentary called “Iran, the Land of Hydraulic Cranes” that won the Oscar last night for the best foreign language film... Born in Tehran as Zahra Hazrati Islampanah, she fled Iran at the tender age of 25 as a passenger in a British Air Lines flight from Tehran to Stockholm. Upon arrival she dyed her hair blonde and changed her name to Pantheon Xeroxes to better blend with the Swedish crowd>>>

Offering for a cause

The reality is that the suicide bomber is taking part in an act of self-sacrifice. He is killing himself (and the mostly innocent around him) as an offering to the gods. The gods in this case are nothing but his cause or the cause of his people. He and his people live in a time of unprecedented calamity. Unlike the subjugated peoples of the past, the suicide bomber is aware of his predicament and also knows the perpetrators. Thanks to the Information Revolution, the oppressed are no longer blessed by ignorance. They are world-savvy and often educated. By offering himself the suicide bomber is attempting to convince the gods to change for the better the circumstances under which he lives>>>

Sacrificing the innocent

After the coming to power Mohammad Reza Shah, intense criticism of his father's rule began. The clerical establishment, like ants, began to wreck the nation’s democratic foundation and every aspect of modern life, enlightened thought, progress and liberty, became a toy in the hand of repressive powers in Iran... After the 28 Mordad coup d'état in 1953, the mullas insisted on their significant share in the revolt, and this was only possible by suppression of the Tudeh Party and Baha’is. The furtive and renowned preacher, Hujjatu’l-Islam Muhammad-Taqi Falsafi, has stated in his memoirs that his sermons against the Baha’is took place with the prior consent of Ayatollah Borujerdi and Muhammad-Reza Shah>>>

«ناکجا آباد»

تصور و اميد به فردای «بهتر» نه تنها امروز «بد» را قابل تحمل می سازد بلکه، بصورت «رانش» بسيار کارآمدی، زمينه را برای خروج از اکنون و حرکت به سوی آيندهء بهتر فراهم می سازد. بدين سان، صرفنظر از اينکه محتوای «ناکجا آباد» را کدام جهان بينی و آئين و دينی بسازد، خود وجود اين تصور حاصل روياروئی انسان با جهان هر دم ديگرگون شونده است و آرزوی او برای اينکه بتواند از پای بندهای وضع موجود برهد و خود را به وضعيتی برتر برساند. >>>

Strait facts

Iran's release of the video taken on the morning of Sunday January 6th in the Straight of Hormuz, clearly debunks Pentagon's hype of depicting a routine patrolling operation by the Iranian Navy as an act of unfathomable aggression against the United States. Timing of this so called 'provocation' incident in the Persian Gulf just before Mr. Bush's trip to the region was also very convenient as he went on reminding the world and all the client Arab states in the region during a press conference in Israel yesterday that they must fear this menacing "threat to the world peace" and prepare for a joint U.S./Israeli action to deal with Iran>>>

Values, not bombs!

Is president Bush trying to strengthen his alliance against the Iranian regime during his visit to the Middle East? In Iran, with its current dog-eat-dog internal political affairs, president Ahmadinejad is too busy trying to keep his head above water while his political opponents try to drag him down. Too busy perhaps to notice how discontent the Iranian people have grown. The system of the Islamic Republic is in a state of crisis. The fact that neither Khatami nor Ahmadinejad has been able to realize unity even within the ruling elite shows this. For over two decades, the main resistance to that system has come from within Iranian civil society>>>

Hollywood’s war on terror

Wouldn’t it be funny if one day, when all our current political concerns have vanished into the mist of time, we are brought back to life and judged by disheveled archaeologists whose faces are layered with dust? How would we fare if they used our filmography to divine our collective mind the way we use cuneiform tablets to guess at the zeitgeist of the ancient Sumerians? The answer to that question would depend on which shelf of footage is exposed in the dig. We would do quite well if our judges relied on Hollywood’s critique of the American posture at the outset of the 21st century >>>

The man who would be King

There was even a Café on Takht-e-Jamshid called the Havarti Café, I believe, which had a fern grotto and waterfall inside it. You could step in out of the heat, the hustle and the bustle of traffic and noise and there inside was this quiet secret little world. There were other magical restaurants like this as well such as Xanadu and Serena. The latter had a big buffet set up indoors and then you carried your plate out into a fairyland of a garden with landscape lighting softly up lighting the bushes and trees and fountains quietly making it dreamlike in the moonlight…. with the tables and chairs sprinkled about on the grass>>>

Death & Revolution

A death-worshiper sees death as the only solution to all problems of life, and his permanent war cry is, "Kill or be killed." We find death worship not only in the desire of the people for martyrdom but also in the methods and slogans of their struggle and sources of their inspiration during the 1978-79 Revolution in Iran. Especially, when the clergy who officiate the ceremony of death become politically active and after the "outside the zone" movement in Summer 1978 and "the nights of poetry" in Fall of the same year, gradually take the leadership of the revolution>>>

In our face

Human mind, that wondrous grey matter housed perspicacity, given time, has the uncanny flexibility to acclimate to almost any horror it encounters. It is a defense mechanism that the mind through rationalization, beguiling trivialization, begrudging justification or an outright denial preserves some semblance of sanity and avoids what is loosely termed ”loosing it”. The operating factor for this innate mechanism is time. Ingrained value system need time to adjust and go though a series of steps. The fuse box of mind trips and reboots with a higher threshold for yet more horrendous events to be pacified- all along tweaking that which is the essence of what is generally labeled human values>>>

He's not that stupid

I'm a little bit late on this subject, but having in mind the nature of the subject, and that its participant, Mr Ahmadinejad, is still in power, it is not late at all to have another glance. Either this man is crazy, or he is just an idiot (which one is worse for a president?!) is a matter for psychologists to discover. I think all he wishes is to gain some fame while it lasts. Iranian presidents aren't really powerful after-all. I don't think he is so stupid. He is simply playing the outrageous because he doesn't have anything to lose. So, let's go through the statements that made him famous>>>

To Mr. Plasterk

Iranian students are banned
to learn technology
that can
give them the knowledge
of nuclear science.
Discrimination?
"Noooo..." they say!
"It's just precaution"

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Mind it!

Although there are many reasons we should believe that Iranians are very bright, intelligent, and ambitious people as individuals, but based on my limited observation and in contrast to my usual way of thinking I respectfully have to admit that most of us are socially stupid. Forgive me! I try hard not to generalize since it is the generalization that is the root cause of our social stupidity. To know how I have reached to this conclusion I should go back and give you some background materials>>>

Leila and me

We talk about the Shah here all the time but we never talk about Leila. I wrote a poem about Leila once. It was exactly three years ago, at the time when I went under. I went under because of a Persian Male--one of those with eyes of Eternity and kohl, who oozed Hafez from every pore in veiled dank misty rivers. You know the type, but at the time I didn’t, and so I fell in love. And he fell out and I went under. Into a very dark place. And when I came back, I’d written this poem. Or this poem had written me>>>