Archive - 2008 - Article

For your next president

As the California primary comes closer, it is incumbent that our Iranian-American community come show up at the election polls and vote for a candidate which takes a stance against military confrontation with Iran. Unfortunately, many of the Republican and some Democratic candidates have not taken this position and continue to leave the military option on the table. It is important for us as Iranian-Americans to vote in the California Primary, given that it is the state with the largest number of delegates and the state most likely to determine the next US President>>>

هشت قدم

همان گونه که داشتن معیارهای معتبرمی تواند موجب برگزیدن همسری دلخواه و برخورداری از یک زندگی آرامش بخش بشود، نداشتن معیار گزینش می تواند در مورد انتخاب همسر به حسرت و پشیمانی بیانجامد ، می دانیم که اگربرای بدست آوردن چیزی هزاران تلاش کنیم ولی ندانیم آن چیز چیست و چه مشخصاتی دارد، هرگز بدان دست نمی یابیم. حتی اگرهم بفرض محال پیدایش کنیم آن را نخواهیم شناخت. بنابراین باید دقیقا بدانیم چه می خواهیم تا دچار سرگردانی و اشتباه نشویم.>>>

Claim

They say there is nothing like the wind

to tempt you away from here.

They say abandon your ways

haven't you had enough of fear?

>>>

Defying conventional wisdom

I just returned to the United Stats from an exciting short trip to Iran. One thing that grabs your attention more than anything else when you travel to the major cities in Iran is overcrowding, best displayed by chaotic traffic and the proliferation of residential high-rises. Almost everyone complains about this social evil and how the presence of others in big cities like Tehran has made his or her life miserable and how other people do not deserve to live in Tehran>>>

Caramius

Yea…I remember it well. I had wished for him ever since I was incarnated onto earth 68 000 years ago for the first time. But his conception by the ‘Holy’ took a long time and his essence took even a longer time to take form. Caramius was born at the break…at the break of the first light. Just like myself and just about this time. I can still see the flashes and the absolute light surrounding everything. I am not talking about the kind of light that the sun produces…no…it was another kind of light. It had substance…the light was heavy…it had warmth…it even had a smell>>>

Never mind the bomb

The irrefutable fact is that the Jihadist belief of Islam itself poses existential danger to the world. Beliefs energize and direct actions. Beliefs are as indispensable as the air we breathe. Even an atheist is a believer, with his own system of disbelief. Not believing in anything is mental breakdown. There is something about humans that demands a belief. A belief can be anything or a combination of many things; it can be well-defined and even rigid, or a loosely put together hodge-podge with considerable latitude>>>

Secret Words

Tell me the secret words

The big worlds of walls, people, a desk in a small room

Life hanging from a thread called time

So fragile, so lost

Ticking away your thoughts

Tell me before I go >>>

The Return

...>>>

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 >>>