Archive - 2010 - Article

The World Map

It looked beautiful. I'd heard something about cliffs or rocks over there, and I pictured a canary flying over them, looking down. A lot of places looked beautiful on a map. They looked like mine too. I had been born in Iran and then gone to England and then come to America, and Jeddi's family had come from India to America, so those were special places on a map for us, but there was something about all the places that made them seem like ours, like they were all waiting for us to come there, and they would be ours even if we didn't>>>

Revelation Revealed

Hear me roar...
Can you see me lying on the ground?
Can you feel my pain as my chest asunder?
Can you hear my silent cry?
Can you feel my young heart stopping? >>>

دختر خلف آب

ساناز حرفش را خیلی راحت، روان و طبیعی بیان میدارد، گویی دو پند فروغ را، که دفتر حاضر را نیز به پاس آنچه از فروغ آموخته به او تقدیم کرده، به خوبی به کار بسته است: یکی اینکه شعرت را صادقانه بگو و نه فاضلانه، و دیگر اینکه سعی کن با ریتم کلمات یک حرکت کلی به وجود بیاوری که شنیدنی باشد، یعنی در گوش تبدیل به یک نوع وزن شود. اما راحتی و روانی کلام ساناز باعث میشود که خواننده گاهی از مصرعی به مصرع دیگر بغلتد و جلورود بی آنکه به آنچه خوانده یا شنیده توجهی عمیق و نقادانه نشان دهد>>>

Horse

My father and I took a photograph a long time ago, but someone has cut him off the picture. What remains is the sight of a frightened girl – me -- sitting on a frightened horse. And the rest is only a fantasy. But if I close my eyes, I might recall the missing pieces and I might create that moment again as a whole. We’re surrounded by green waves of the Caspian Sea. The level of the water reaches the animal’s thighs and my feet. An arm (my father’s) holds the harness tight and I’m leaned forward, smiling>>>

«منشوری» برای جنبش سبز

سخن آقای موسوی البته هنوز در قالب گفتمان جمهوری اسلامی و قانون اساسی آن جریان دارد و با یک گفتمان سکولار که لازمه یک حرکت ملی و دموکراتیک است دارای فاصله است. ولی در درون این قالب، او بیش از هر زمان دیگر به ارزش‌های دموکراتیک نزدیک شده و بر آن‌ها تأکید می‌کند. علاوه بر این، آقای موسوی سعی دارد با تأکیدات مکرری از قبیل این که ایران متعلق به همه ایرانیان است بر جامعیت ایرانی جنبش سبز تأکید کند و بر واقعیت تکثر در درون جنبش سبز انگشت بگذارد>>>

Happy Medium

Now that the election is a year old and over, and the protests have proven to have been nothing more than an accidental flicker, all but off now, we can all finally relax and revel in it's gloriously pre-determined result. And maybe it's still too soon to be writing this, but I've been waiting a whole year to write this, chomping at the bit to get to this piece, since I was one of those crying for people in Iran NOT to vote, and didn't have any faith or emotional investment in either result. Seeing as it was never an honest true reflection of a free people>>>

تاج درختان کاج

میپرسم اینجا
آیا قلبی در انتظار بی تابی کرده
وجودی آه کشیده
زیر این کاج بلند به وقت آرامش لاجوردی
دلی درخضوع طپیده؟ >>>

اهداف، راهکار ها و هویت جنبش سبز

از دروغ، تخلف و تقلب به کار گرفته شده در انتخابات، سوال “رای من کجاست؟” زاده شد و شما مردم، روشن و بی ابهام به شیوه ای مسالمت آمیز در راهپیمایی تاریخی و بی نظیر ۲۵ خرداد ۱۳۸۸ این سوال را پرقدرت و بلند فریاد زدید و جز کسانی که جهل و خرافه و منفعت پرستی و دروغ چشم و گوش آنها را بسته بود، در سطح ملی و جهان همه آن را شنیدند و دیدند. ولی پاسخ چه بود؟ جز داغ و درفش و کشتن و به حبس کردن و زنجیر به تن برهنه زندانیان زدن و حمله به خوابگاه‌های دانشجویی؟>>>

A Movement, not a Coup

Partisans see the Green Movement as a sign that Iran is on the verge of a massive democratization. Critics see it as an exaggerated hiccup, barely more important than the student protests of the late 1990s, which amounted to nothing. Which interpretation is right has implications for US foreign policy. If the regime is tottering, the Obama administration can afford to batter it with sanctions and ignore it, hoping to help it fall. If it is strong and enduring, then it will have to be dealt with and probably direct negotiations are called for>>>

Beyond Conspiracy Theories

The fall of Mosaddeq and the role of foreign forces and Iranians are still debated among scholars and politicians alike. Fifty seven years after August 19, 1953, the debate remains as fresh as the day that changed Iran. Darioush Bayandor has come up with a new book "Iran and the CIA: The Fall of Mosaddeq Revisited", in which argues the issues surrounding the events that led to the coup d’etat from a different perspective. Mr. Bayandor was an Iranian diplomat who held various posts at the United Nations during the Shah’s government>>>

Oily Relations

Roger Howard has a simple thesis: that it is Iran's natural resources, and not its nuclear program, that should inform the reaction of the West to its manipulative foreign policy and ambition for regional domination. In other words, by pursuing sanctions and other punitive measures, the United States may be misjudging Iran's real weapon (ample natural resources) and undermining its own power. The US trade embargoes on Iran benefit only the US's rivals, who will cheerfully take advantage of the vacuum through investments and trade partnerships. >>>

زنان ناجوانمرد

از هفت سال پیش سریال تلویزیونی «سکس و شهر» نوشته‌ها و خاطرات یک زن روزنامه‌نگار ساکن نیویورک را به درون خانه‌های آمریکای شمالی برد. دیری نپایید که ادعاهای حق به جانب و شاکیانه‌ی قهرمان اصلی و سه دوست مؤنث دیگر او در این سریال نسبت به مردان، هم نظر زنان را به خود جلب کرد و هم خشم توام با کنجکاوی مردان را برانگیخت>>>

Mr. Khamenei is no good

For many years, Sayyid Ali Khamenei has ruled the country ostensibly to establish a virtuous society, promote equality among Iranians, provide prosperity and security in this world and ensure salvation in the other, and fight for egalitarianism and the cause of the downtrodden abroad. In practice, however, he has promoted wickedness instead of virtue; a cult of personality instead of equality; poverty, arbitrary rule, and engineered elections instead of prosperity, security, and the rule of law; and international brinkmanship and support for terrorism instead of peaceful diplomacy. Mr. Khamenei is no good for Iran; worse for the world; and a disaster for the religion>>>

Revolutionary rot

Too often we underestimate the sustainability of morally bankrupt regimes that have mastered the art of repression coupled with financial co-optation. In the cynical words of a scion of a powerful clerical family, who told me once: "When you have control over the oil revenue, you can run this country with a few million supporters and 20,000 people who are willing to kill and die for you." Maybe, though that formula did not work for the shah. There is some wisdom in the old adage that Iran's largest political party is the hezb-e baad, the "party of the wind." Iranians have historically gravitated toward where the most powerful political winds are blowing>>>

Dear Mahmoud

June 12th was the anniversary of the day that you and your military junta staged a coup. Fed up with previous four years of your presidency, our people came out in masses to vote and IR leadership decided to ignore this and choose the path of undemocratic means to dismiss their hopes. You know it. We know it. The world knows it. You were selected. If not – if you really claim to have earned the landslide 63% votes of that 85% high turn-out – why then, ever since, your government is using the most harsh methods to suppress the peaceful dissents?>>>