STORY

How the sun came to be

[The writer is 10-years old]

by Jina Falahati
16-Mar-2008 (14 comments)
Long, long ago, before time began, before you or I were in the world yet, before your parent’s, parent’s parents were born, in the deep forest Foofoo, in the heart of New Zealand, there was quarrel between the lion, the zebra, the kangaroo, the elephant, and all the other animals in the deep forest Foofoo. It was all about the sun, they didn’t have on. Mind you, they didn’t even know what it was, until the lion declared: “Why can’t I see my beautiful feathers, it’s no good having no light.”>>>

AIRPORT

در فرودگاه

کاری که آمریکا و انگلیس و اسراییل و فرانسه دارند با کشور من و شما امروز می‌کنند.

by hoder
15-Mar-2008 (39 comments)
قرار است سوار هواپیما شوید. در نتیجه باید از قسمت بازدید بدنی امنیتی و دستگاه‌های بمب‌یاب و فلزیاب فرودگاه رد شوید. همه‌چیزتان را درمی‌آورید و در دستگاه اشعه ایکس می‌گذارید و از زیر دروازه‌ی آهنی فلزیاب رد می‌شوید. موفقیت آمیز است و چراغ سبز به شما می‌دهد. ولی یک مامور لباس‌شخصی از دور یک دفعه می‌آید و نمی‌گذارد ماموران عادی امنیت فرودگاه به شما اجازه بدهند بروید به طرف گیت‌تان. می‌گوید که این کافی نیست و شما باید ثابت کنید که اسلحه با خودتان ندارید. می‌گویید: بابا، دستگاه خودتان چک کرد و گفت من هیچ فلزی با خودم ندارم. تو دیگر چه می‌گویی؟ او اصرار دارد که شما باید لخت شوید و تنها با شورت دوباره از زیر دروازه‌ی فلزیاب رد شوید.>>>

VIEW

Are you prepared for some truth?

A silent majority exists in Iran and beneath that silence lies a deep hatred for this regime

by Mohammad Alireza
15-Mar-2008 (26 comments)
Voting for the Majlis was a pointless exercise and by participating one has cast a vote for this farce, this hoax, this kolah bardaari. The act of voting means that one's vote could contribute to change. The fact that whichever way Iranians vote will have no effect on the situation in Iran means there is no point in voting. There is no such thing as democracy in Iran as the form of political Islam practiced in Iran is inherently a totalitarian belief structure created to control a society through superstition, violence, and brainwashing>>>

WORDS

فرهنگ شخصی : ج

اگر از جمعیت ایرن جاهلان، جلادان و جاسوسان را کم کنید چندتا جنازه باقی خواهد ماند؟.

by Troneg
15-Mar-2008 (2 comments)
جهنم : محلی در آن دنیا خیلی گرم که آدم را شکنجه میدهند و بر گفته ادیان همه آدمهای گناهکار به آنجا میروند. مشکل این است که در این دنیا هم همچنین محلها وجود دارد ولی برای آدمهای بیگناه و اگر برگفته ادیان هر کس که میرقصد و آواز میخواند گناهکار است و به جهنم میروند . من ترجیح میدهم برم آنجا که همه آدمهای با حال هستند. جمهوری: حکومتی که در آن همه مردم حق و حقوق برابری دارند. معمولآ بهترین رژیم است ولی اگر به آن یک صفت اضافه کنند مثل جمهوری اسلامی منظور این است که همه با هم برابرند ولی مسلمانان برابر ترند و اینجاست که خراب میشود. >>>

IRAN-US

Weighty Agenda

Cheney's Middle East trip

by Simon Henderson
14-Mar-2008 (8 comments)
On March 16, Vice President Cheney departs on a Middle East trip that will take him to Oman, Saudi Arabia, Israel, the West Bank, and Turkey. Coming less than two months after President Bush's trip to the region, the vice president's itinerary is intriguing. His undisclosed agenda with "key partners," in the words of the White House announcement, is likely to include the peace process, the price of oil, Iraq, and Iran. And among those issues, Iran will likely be the most mentioned, especially given this week's controversial resignation of Adm. William Fallon as the top U.S. commander in the Middle East -- a move attributed in part to differences on Iran between him and the White House>>>

MUSICMAN

Emissary of Love

A Conversation with Kourosh Taghavi

by Mersedeh
14-Mar-2008 (2 comments)
There once was one; and then there were none. Under the blue dome of the evening sky, apart from the presence of God, there was absolutely no one…. Nestled between the Caspian Sea and the Alborz Mountains, in the city of wolves, lived a little boy with his grandfather. The little boy loved to hear stories and his grandfather had many to tell, and so they spent most of their days together. Years passed; the boy grew up and left home to live adventures of his own; chasing legends and dreaming of giants. Along his journey, he spent many nights under the blue dome of foreign skies, far from his city and far from anyone to guide him.>>>

STORY

The Spider Killings (8)

Tired of playing by the rules, of being good and decent, honest and pure

by laleh haghighi
14-Mar-2008
Sharif always left the Imam Reza shrine with regret. It was the most grandiose homage to God that man had ever built. Sharif was sure of it, although he had scarcely ventured out of his native city except to serve at the front during the war. The enormous domes of the two mosques, one gold and one turquoise, stood proudly over the city, which squirmed beneath their shadows. In between, a gargantuan web of hallways and corridors, fountains and courtyards, not to mention the many buildings housed in the complex, the religious schools, the museum, the library…>>>

ECONOMY

Can you say stagflation?

What fuels the current inflationary expectations is the increasing commodity prices

by varjavand
14-Mar-2008
If you keep track of economic news these days, you notice that the word stagflation is frequently uttered by newscasters and economic analysts. This term was coined by economists to describe an unconventional phenomenon that took place in late 1970s: the simultaneous occurrence of high unemployment and high inflation. The combined unemployment rate and inflation rate, properly called the misery index, averaged over 17% from 1974 to 1981. It has been nearly 8% since 1993. >>>

ANALYSIS

Fatal attractions

The Perils and Costs of a Grand Bargain with the Islamic Republic of Iran

by Masoud Kazemzadeh
13-Mar-2008 (74 comments)
Among other factors, the American failure to stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan has fueled Iran's attempt at regional supremacy to the consternation of many in the region and beyond. The failure of the containment policy, fear that the Islamic Republic will develop nuclear weapons, and the bellicose rhetoric and policies of Iran's new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have given rise to urgent discussions about how best to counter the threat of the fundamentalist regime. The main policies under discussion are regime change; surgical strikes; reconfigured containment; limited, issue-based dialogue; and a "grand bargain.">>>

MY LIFE

Chapter 1: Childhood in Ahvaz

by Saeed Tavakkol
13-Mar-2008 (3 comments)
No one has ever been sentenced to a sever punishment called education as young as I was. “I don’t know how to punish him anymore, I ran out of ideas, I’ve tried everything.” I heard my mother saying this with tears in her eyes to my father the night before my sentence was carried out. I was three years old then. The next morning I was trailing my father with a gloomy face to the Mactab (Those days in our town, house-wives who had some education thought neighboring children under school age for a small fee in their homes. The curriculum was learning alphabets and listening to the teacher reciting Koran)>>>

TRAVEL

Discover the familiar

You might call Iranians the French of the Middle East

by Diyana Ishak
13-Mar-2008 (2 comments)
How "normal" can a nation be that so often exudes defiance and antagonism? With a belligerent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the forefront of most minds when it comes to Iran, what could a visitor expect to find in the county? Do women lead a normal life despite a draconian police ready to punish the most basic transgressions of wardrobe? Does the Islamic conservatism of the post-revolutionary era make for a sheltered youth? Recently, I was interested in answering some of these questions. As a citizen of Singapore, I am entitled to a 14-day visa-free entry into Iran>>>

CANDIDATE

Why I want Obama to win

I truly believe that Obama will be better for not only the U.S but also Iran and the world

by Setareh Sabety
12-Mar-2008 (29 comments)
I backed the war in Iraq even though I have always been a democrat. My reason for cheering the Americans when they invaded Iraq was simple: I was hoping that the American success there would ignite unrest in Iran and bring about the fall of the theocratic regime. While I disagreed with Bush’s policies in every other area I was pro-war. I was a liberal hawk, as a friend pointed out, giving me the very American comfort of a label. Now, like most people, including Hillary Clinton, I have come to realize that the war was a mistake. It was a mistake because Americans don’t know how to be an occupying force in a time when information and ideology travel freely and ruthlessly>>>

IRAN

No need for another revolution

Revolutions that espouse social justice have the tendency to lead to more injustice

by Ben Madadi
12-Mar-2008 (18 comments)
Revolution seems a good thing, theoretically speaking, but historically speaking it has usually been a not-so-rosy moment in time when injustices took place, lives and relations got shattered, and societies were shaken to their cores, very often taking them a very long time to recover from the trauma. Revolutions in Russia, China, France, Iran and about anywhere else hardly brought anything extraordinary. Their peers who missed the revolutions did quite well, and usually much better. It is complicated to evaluate what would have happened if there was no revolution but one thing is certain that neither the French revolution nor Communist revolutions of Russia, China and other places, nor the Islamic revolution of Iran brought anything to be proud of>>>

REVIEW

Back from the dead

On Sepideh Khosrowjah's "In memory of Kazem Ashtari"

by Ari Siletz
12-Mar-2008 (2 comments)
Backstage I told actress Bella Warda that I thought her character, the resilient Mahin Ashtari is in very good hands. If you haven’t been backstage after a play, prepare for a jolting experience. There is strong magic in speaking to someone--still in costume and sweating from the ordeal--who has just returned from the story world. This is something film can never do. As I waited to congratulate actress Sepideh Khosrowjah, she was still the ambitious yet easily dominated character, Shafagh Gooya. The fact that as playwright Khosrowjah created Shafagh and all the other characters in the comedy belonged to the reality she was just coming back to>>>

WAR

Friendly fire

Removing obstacle to a feared White House led pre-emptive military strike on Iran

by Babak Talebi
12-Mar-2008 (37 comments)
The Pentagon has announced that the 41-year navy veteran and commander of US Central Command (CentCom), requested permission to retire and Secretary Gates approved his request. Last week, Thomas Barnett of Esquire Magazine published a revealing piece speculating on the possibility that Admiral Fallon might be pushed out because he “was the strongest man standing between the Bush Administration and a war with Iran.” Gates was quick to call a press conference to announce the retirement and dispel the notion that there were any policy differences between Fallon and the administration>>>
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