STORY

The Spider Killings (14)

“Ah well” she sighed to herself “Where will all this cloak and dagger stuff lead me in the end?”

by laleh haghighi
13-Apr-2008
When Roxanne finally got back to her hotel room, she realized something was amiss as soon as she entered. To a non-observant eye, the room looked just as she had left it: Her suitcase open in the corner with half the clothes still inside, unpacked; Her laptop open on her desk, with some papers and pens strewn around; and her handy coffee mug and ashtray full of cigarette butts still on the windowsill, her favorite spot in any room to have a quiet smoke. Roxanne looked around and she was sure that someone had been in her room. She could not put her finger on it but she just knew it was a fact. Had someone searched her room in her absence? Searched it looking for… what?>>>

IDENTITY

نجات هويت از چنگ ايدئولوژی

هويت اسلامی جديد ماهيتی صرفاً ايدئولوژيک دارد

by Esmail Nooriala
13-Apr-2008 (3 comments)
باری، بنظر من می رسد که در بيشتر جوامع پيشامدرن، يا جوامعی که نيش مدرنيت را چشيده و از نوش آن محروم مانده اند، يکی از جدال های انديشگی در بين متفکران وابسته به گروه هائی که بر سر مدرنيت با يکديگر دارای تضاد عقيده و هدف هستند پيش از آنکه جنبهء سياسی داشته باشد، گاه حتی بی آنکه خود بدانند، به مسئلهء «هويت» بر می گردد که ظاهراً پديده ای فرهنگی است تا سياسی. در واقع، در صحنهء حيات سياسی و اجتماعی، هر گروه، ضمن انجام فعاليت های سياسی خود، داعيهء آن را نيز دارد که «مردم» دارای هويتی هستند که گروه مزبور بهترين معرف و مؤيد آن است. در عين حال، مبارزه گروه ها عليه يکديگر نيز، بجای اينکه مبارزه ای مبتنی بر «برنامه» باشد، کارش به مواضع فلسفی و فرهنگی آنان در مورد «هويت» می کشد. >>>

PARTY POLITICS

دموکراسی و تحزب

نظرات مهندس احمد زیرک زاده در باره دموکراسی و تحزب به مناسبت صدمین سال تولد وی

by Homayoun Mehmaneche
13-Apr-2008
کتاب خاطرات مهندس زیرک زاده معرف تاریخ و فلسفه نهضت ملی است. او از تکان های شدیدی که نهضت مشروطیت به فرهنگ و زندگی مردم ایران داده بود آغاز می کند و مینویسد: "حرکت به اندازه ای شدید بود که امواج ضعیف و فرسوده آن باز هم سال ها بعد از خاموشی هسته مرکزی هنوز صدها کیومتر دورتر از مرکز جنبش، اثرات تکان دهنده و تحول انگیزی دارد" . "نه تنها من بلکه هر بچه ایرانی به مجردی که حرف زدن یاد می گرفت با اسم باقرخان و ستارخان آشنا می شد. اولین درسی که در مدرسه به او می دادند شرح انجمنها، کمیته ها، قرائت خانه ها و کتابخانه هائی بود که با خون دل مردم ایران تهیه می گردید و مبارزات و اقدامات رجل و سرداران مشروطیت سرلوحه تمام کتابهای درسی مدارس بود". >>>

POETRY

Unentitled

I knock my head against false ceilings

by Sheema Kalbasi
11-Apr-2008 (3 comments)
I have not found the key to myself

the one that will get the high gates

to swing wide open and the lights

to come on all at once >>>

BAGHCHEBAN

کاشکی...

در هر چهار شنبه سوری از تابش سرخی ی آتش بر چهره های کودکانمان گرمی و جانی نو خواهند گرفت

by Samineh Baghcheban
11-Apr-2008 (5 comments)
نامه ای است تلخ و غم انگیز.......نمی توانم خودم را نگاه دارم.... یعنی کسی که این همه عاشق بهار و نوروز بود می بایستی در آن روز به خاک سپرده شود؟ نه ، بر عکِس برادرم من نمی خواهم که هر شب چهارشنبه سوری و هر روز نو روز باشد. اصلا می خواهم بهار را پاره کنم و بریزم دور... و باز فکر میکنم که آیا ثمین این را می خواهد؟ او که آرزویش زنده نگهداشتن چهارشنبه سوری و نوروز است این را از ما می خواهد؟>>>

CLINTON

Vote Malihe! Vote Hillary!

Vote for me and I will fight for Senator Clinton

by Malihe Kigasari
11-Apr-2008 (40 comments)
I am not a politician, but I have decided to run for a seat in the Democratic National Convention in Denver. While Iranian-Americans have been successful in academia and in business, they have not focused on politics. I seek to fill this gap and work towards giving a voice to the Iranian community in the Bay Area. As a loyal supporter of Senator Clinton, who has traveled to campaign for her in Nevada, Texas and soon in Pennsylvania, and helped to raise campaign money, I have been a dedicated volunteer in the coordinated effort to elect a Democrat to the White House>>>

NUCLEAR

Intent on annihilation

Iran’s independence and sovereignty is threatened with false allegations made by U.S. and Israel

by Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich
10-Apr-2008 (62 comments)
How can a morally bankrupt nation induce the world to punish a law-abiding state and by so doing, violate not only international law, that of the nonproliferation treaty (NPT), but the Geneva Conventions? Sanctions are warfare. It cost Iraq over half a million innocent lives, a genocide, in preparation for the ‘shock and awe’ that was to come. America and her co-conspirators violated all Geneva Conventions when the sanctions were imposed – lives were snatched -“collateral damage” they called it. This rogue state, America, in violation of all laws, God’s and man’s, is dictating to the world>>>

POINT

Behind the lies

What is the truth about Muqtada al-Sadr’s connections with Iran?

by yasmine
10-Apr-2008 (12 comments)
On Tuesday April 8 General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, made the latest in a long string of accusations against Iran and its “destructive” role in Iraq, including its financing of militia groups. He implied Iran had supported the Mahdi army in the recent battle for Basra, conveniently failing to mention Tehran’s support for the US occupation government in Baghdad. Ironically the same false claims are being used by Tehran apologists to ‘prove’ Iran’s credentials as an anti-imperialist force supporting the Iraqi resistance. However, the realities of the current inter-shia conflict are more complicated>>>

STORY

The Spider Killings (13)

Those damn gharb-zadeh, westernized, women. Sharif had never liked them

by laleh haghighi
10-Apr-2008
The phone rang and Peyman gestured to Roxanne to stay while he answered it. After a couple of minutes, with her friend still on the phone, engrossed in what seemed to be an important conversation, Roxanne got up again and waved. She mouthed the words “I’ll be okay!” on her way out, despite Peyman’s frantic hand gestures pleading her to wait for him. It was around ten o’ clock and the streets were deserted. The click-clack of Roxanne’s heels on the pavement sounded aggressively loud in the silence of the night. She had parked her car a couple of blocks away>>>

POETRY

What do you think?
by Farinaz Aryanfar
10-Apr-2008 (3 comments)
I think I am thirsty
before I start begging
give me a glass of kindness…
Do you think love is like thirst?
that if you fulfill me with your sips of affection
I will no longer drink your love?>>>

CARTER

A Mother’s Story

From a book on the hostage crisis and the October Surprise

by Brian Josepher
09-Apr-2008 (9 comments)
Barbara Timm, or BT as she prefers, shook her head in disgust. “I didn’t like Jimmy Carter from the very beginning,” she said. “I didn’t vote for him. I voted for Ford. Jerry was a Michigan man and I lived then in Milwaukee. It seemed right to vote for a Midwesterner, one of our own.” President Gerald Ford, it should be noted, died on December 26, 2006 at the age of 93. Four months later, I interviewed Barbara Timm, along with her son Kevin Hermening. The interview took place at Bank One Ballpark in Phoenix, Arizona, BT’s city of residence since the late 1980s. Timm, Hermening and I – and some fifty thousand baseball fans – attended Opening Day of the baseball season, the Milwaukee Brewers versus the Arizona Diamondbacks>>>

IRAQ

McCain is right

Obama and Clinton are wrong

by Ben Madadi
09-Apr-2008 (45 comments)
I know that it was the US who invaded Iraq in the first place and I know that it was the US whose huge mistakes in Iraq caused the deaths of many innocent Iraqis (far fewer than those killed because of Muslim extremists), but this is also another reason why the US has the moral obligation to stay in Iraq and create a stable democracy and a prosperous society. It can be done, but it may take time. It can be done because also Iraq has oil. It is as simple as that. But without the US keeping the thugs, terrorists, and foreign troublemakers at bay, it is very possible for all the losses that have occurred so far to be in vain>>>

DIVERSITY

This is where I call home

San Francisco is home to many ethnic groups

by Feshangi
09-Apr-2008 (5 comments)
"I don't wanna go there! It looks too ethnic. I don't like this! It tastes too strange." I have heard these sayings before and their hundreds of variations, putting down whatever that is out of the ordinary, whatever that does not line up with the mainstream. I am bored with the mainstream. It is a light cream color over white. It is lifeless. You look and probe but you find nothing to excite your senses. Boredom weighs over your entire being and you feel deader than a dead man, being busy to be dead, while you, being bored to be alive, if you catch my wandering drift>>>

POETRY

Sin

Sin
by Forugh Farrokhzad
09-Apr-2008 (3 comments)
I have sinned a rapturous sin
in a warm enflamed embrace,
sinned in a pair of vindictive arms,
arms violent and ablaze.
In that quiet vacant dark
I looked into his mystic eyes,
found such longing that my heart
fluttered impatient in my breast>>>

LOVE

Salt of the earth

Nilofar Shidmehr's poetry

by Ari Siletz
08-Apr-2008 (14 comments)
In Shidmehr’s vastly imaginative novella, Shirin and Salt Man, a modern day Iranian woman named Shirin plans to elope with the mummy of an ancient salt miner preserved in brine and discovered in 1993 in Iran. She is not as fortunate as Nezami’s Farhad. Her insanity is not from love, but from neglect. She married the abusive Khosro, and now remorse has driven her to adultery with the pile of salted bones she imagines to be Farhad. Shidmehr’s Khosro is not a king like Nezami’s Khosro. Though the romantically obsessed heroine married him for his kingly name, he really just works at the ministry of Islamic Guidance >>>
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