Archive - 2008 - Article

انحلال تبعيض

تلاش برای «رسيدن» به دموکراسی و گذاشتن قطار تحولات و تطورات اجتماعی بر روی ريلی که به دموکراسی منتهی می شود نوعی «مبارزهء سياسی و فرهنگی» است و در دل تاريخ و منظرهء مبارزات اجتماعی جای دارد. باز، از نظر من، خود اين مبارزه برای رسيدن به دموکراسی يکی از تجليات مبارزهء بزرگ تری است که شايد بتوان آن را موتور حرکت پيش روندهء تاريخ بشر دانست؛ و آن چيزی نيست جز مبارزه برای امحاء و برانداختن «تبعيض های اجتماعی». >>>

Young women...

Young vitalities
Making the incidents
Meeting the promises
Creating the opportunities
Avoiding disappointments
Through their young souls
Embracing the challenges
Resenting the old traditions >>>

YeeHa! for covert action

The film starring Tom Hanks as Charlie Wilson, portrays the brash action by a Senator who raised as a child frightened of imminent attack by the Soviet Union during the nuclear Cold War era (one of the damaging effects of "duck and cover" ad campaigns on this generation), takes it upon himself to push his counterpart buddy "idealists" in the CIA to covertly support the Afghan rebels to fight the Soviet Union with training and equipment. This is successfully spun as a heroic tale of Yankee ingenuity and dogged American determination. What bothers me about this kind of storytelling is that it tidily evades the real problems that this kind of illegal covert action leaves in it's wake>>>

Right time, right strategy

Vahdati: My contact with Iranian women activists goes back to 2003, when I started writing for Women in Iran. The website was founded by Shadi Sadr and a group of women journalists and activists (womeniniran.net). Although it started mainly as a women’s news site it had other sections such as “Tajrobeh haye zananeh” (Womanly Experiences) which was my favorite section and I started writing for it. At the time Faezeh Tabatabaei was in charge of the column and encouraged me to continue writing. Soon, I started writing articles for the site as well>>>

Ax the tax

I am going to pay some taxes in January about which I've been having nightmares for a couple of months already. Then I found out that Mike Huckabee proposes to abolish the IRS, in favour of CONSUMPTION TAX!! When I heard this I thought it was a joke, but it is actually true. And Mike Huckabee has just won the Republican elections in Iowa. Great news! I hope he wins'em all and becomes president. I'm not very sure about a FLAT consumption tax, but I am definitely in favour of abolishing income and all other similar taxes>>>

Mom, I have dreamt his Release

Dreams were my passion, my solitude
Passing of the day was precious as it brought me glorious black
Has it been too long I wonder,
Will I ever return to that far away land?
Would I remember how to step off a window and not fall
But soar, so softly, so crisply…
>>>

Donald Duck in Ancient Persia

Strangely "Donald Duck in Ancient Persia” grew out of interest in horror films. Though Disney illustrator Carl Barks was no great movie-goer, he saw several horror classics which contributed to the stories eerie atmosphere. A quest to raise the dead, spells muttered over a magic pool, a frustrated marriage, and honor slaked by death – these are all motifs from Boris Karloff’s classic Horror flick The Mummy (1933); and the spooky old mansion on the hill looks like The Old Dark House in another Karloff movie. Even the mad scientist, with his high forehead and deep-set eyes resembles that veteran horror actor. >>>

Road to democracy

I am under the impression that some people are in search of a democratic Iran without the consideration of the geopolitical and/or sociopolitical situation. Some Iranians are stuck in a mindset that the religion of Islam is the cause of all evil in the Iranian struggle to advance and that Iranians were “defeated” because of the introduction of Islam into their society. For many, the IRI represents a government that promotes the same religion that corresponds to the downfall of the great Persian Empire and its advance society >>>

The enemy within

One would expect that if there is one country in the world in which women have become equal to men, that country is America. In fact, the number one question of twenty first century is, why does America remain the only industrial nation in which a woman has not been allowed to become president, or even vice president when even in many developing countries that has happened many times. Therefore, the anti-women factions mentioned above, with some of the big media at their service have managed to neutralize the women's struggle for more equality or place it on the back burner>>>

شبحی در خانه

کودک آزاری معقوله ای است که بحث در خصوص آن ، شنونده را منزجر می کند. کسانی که خود در طیف آزاردهندگان کودکان نیستند ، می اندیشند که چگونه ممکن است کسی بتواند نیاز جنسی خود را با کودک بر طرف سازد و از طرفی وحشت از همه گیر شدن و بر ملا شدن این موضوع باعث شده تا این مقوله در کشورهای نامترقی به تابو تبدیل شود. آنچه در این میان بسیار نفرت برانگیزتر است رشد و گسترش تجاوزهای خانگی است که بسیار کمتر از کمتر ، در مورد آن بحث و تحقیق می شود>>>

گرگ باران دیده

قطره ای از صخره های خاوران
در درون جان خود نوشید ه ام
خاک پای حافظی را بی دریغ
همره باران خود بوسیده ام
در خراسان در پی بز های خود
با دم کوبادها نالیده ام

>>>

Common humanity

Bam 6.6, a documentary about the Bam earthquake of 2003 in Iran, is finally readied for release on DVD. Here's an interview with the producer/director, Jahangir Golestanparast. The production chronicles the ordeal of American tourists Tobb Dell'Oro and his Jewish fiancée, Adele Freedman, after they are buried under the rubble. It highlights how grief-stricken Iranians make a special effort to treat the couple's injuries and comfort Adele afterwards. Mr. Golestanparast is scheduled to show and discuss his film at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC at 7 pm on January 9 >>>

Love and the Revolution

Ezzat! January 7th is your anniversary. Fifteen years ago your heart stopped beating. I felt it in my heart and the earth stopped moving for me. It was late afternoon. Inside a booth I put some coins in the phone and heard your dad's voice, "She called us. First a man asked my name and then she talked." He did not remember what you had said. I took a deep breath full of trucks' exhaust in Darvazeh Qazvin Street and said, "I already know. She is gone forever. Her heart doesn't beat anymore." Where did I go? I don't know. 'Two days later, I met with your father in the park next to the railroad station. We walked together. The sidewalk was full of war refugees with their big bundles. He handed me your vasiet-nameh (will), and I cried. >>>

Two thousand five hundred years old

The last time I saw Dr. Khanlari was in 1987 when he told me that studying literature belonged to another time. “It is a different world now,” he said. At the time I was a graduate student in literature and his advice to me was to start on a different path while I was still young. Parviz Natel Khanlari was a great man—so great, in fact, that a mere listing of his accomplishments does him no justice. People still argue whether his most important contribution was his journal Sokhan (unparalleled to this day in the talent and rigor it fostered), his country-wide literacy projects (leading to a considerable hike in literacy rates), his role in standardizing and producing text books (the accessibility and quality of which we all took for granted)...>>>

Who cares?

“I AM ANGRY?” Is it even important how I feel? What I want? What I write about? Does my anger even matter when Britney Spears’ 16-year-old sister is pregnant? Could I possibly have something provoking to say when Paris Hilton just lost all of her inheritance to charity? Can I possibly have something more enraging to be angry about when so and so just got engaged and the other couple from last year's wedding filed for a divorce? I mean who cares what I have to say? Everyone has so much to worry about already. JC Penny's “16-hour post holiday sale” is ticking down and Macy's has that “two days only end of the year, new year special” going on right now so why would anyone in their right mind be reading this instead?>>>