Archive - Sep 6, 2010 - Article

Strange Allies

The summit meeting between Israeli and Palestinian leaders in Washington testifies to the serious attention the Barack Obama administration is devoting to this enduring middle-east conflict. But even these vital negotiations are overshadowed by an issue with a potentially greater destructive capacity: the future of Iran, and the calculations of the United States and the wider international community in relation to the country's nuclear programs and plans>>>

Cheap Thugs

Where does religious sincerity, or for that matter, religious hypocrisy, morph into political solidarity? Or pushing your question further, why are what are clearly political protests assuming a religious form? Afterall, the dispute over the elections was a political dispute. Why give it a religious dimension by chanting Allahu Akbar? Is that a sign of conformity with the Islamic Republic’s religious pretenses and hypocrisies, or, on the contrary, is chanting Allahu Akbar a way to take political protests one notch higher and strip the Islamic Republic of religious legitimacy? My hunch? The latter>>>

Democracy Begins at Home

My first lesson of true democracy came from an old neighbor in the early 1970’s. I was trying to explain why I felt so homesick. “Back in my town people knew me, I knew them. They would say hello on the streets and I would run into friends here and there. Many people in town knew my family. But here I’m nobody!” To which my neighbor said, “Oh, Zoe, everybody is somebody!” Everybody is somebody. Wow! Still, it has taken years to un-educate myself, erase the wrong lessons and come to understand that, no matter who you are, your existence is significant in some way>>>

حاج خانم و ویاگرا

رستوران شیک بود و غذای خوبی داشت. حاج خانم تند و تند غذا میخورد و تند و تند بینی اش را پاک میکرد. من تا یاد قیافه ی بدترکیب هلموت، با دندانهای مصنوعی اش میافتادم که عشق پیری اش جنبیده و با یک زن لهستانی مینی ژوپ پوش سی و هفت ساله روی هم ریخته، حرصم درمیآمد؛ آن هم درست موقعی که زنش رفته بود مکه؛ حج تمتع! پری پیش از این که حاج خانم شود، از «ضعف» هلموت حکایتها و شکایتها داشت>>>

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