NOWRUZ

Joy of cooking

Adventures in Nowruz baking, with or without youngsters in tow

17-Mar-2008 (2 comments)
This year, by sheer luck, I came across something wonderful, an item that could make a great Nowruz present for young parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and anybody who is in touch with young Iranians. It is Najmieh Batmanglij’s new book, Happy Nowruz: Cooking With Children to Celebrate the Persian New Year. In the tradition of Batmanglij cookbooks, this book offers excellent presentations of beautiful pictures, historical background, nostalgic memories, and of course pretty robust and fool-proof recipes. It is filled with decorating and cooking ideas we can share and do with children, celebrating our traditions and creating new memories. I should say that though I enjoy cooking very much, I have never warmed up to the idea of baking, feeling like a miserable failure every time I have tried it! >>>

PHOTOGRAPHER

The truth in black & white

Kaveh Golestan's best work in a book

10-Mar-2008 (one comment)
The real breakthrough in Kaveh Golestan’s career as an independent photojournalist occurred during Iran’s 1979 revolution. He was honoured with the Robert Capa Gold Medal in 1979 for his coverage of the Islamic Revolution. His photographs from Ruhollah Khomeini’s arrival in Iran in late January 1979 and first public appearances at the Alavi school in Tehran were published in Time magazine. In the summer of 1979, he travelled to Kurdistan, West Azerbaijan, Khuzestan and Turkmen Sahra in the province of Khorasan and documented the first deadly confrontations between Kurds and Turkmens and the recently established armed forces of the Islamic regime>>>

BOOK

Shock & awe(ful)

Chilling study of modern torture

26-Feb-2008 (4 comments)
This book does more than describe complex patterns of torture techniques and offer explanations for their distribution. Torture and Democracy is also designed as an accessible and reliable sourcebook for citizens. No one these days is particularly surprised that torture has its supporters even in democracies. Since September 11, 2001, American officials have acknowledged using well-known coercive techniques on prisoners, and some influential Americans have justified torture in certain cases. And since Abu Ghraib, the world has become familiar with iconic images of American torture. Most people, though, don't know about the painful but clean tortures that now characterize so much policing around the world >>>

LOVE STORY

Vis & Ramin

A masterpiece told in a language that is lush, sensual and highly inventive

19-Feb-2008 (5 comments)
Vis & Ramin is one of the world’s great love stories. It was the first major Persian romance, written between 1050 and 1055 in rhyming couplets. The plot, complex yet powerfully dramatic, revolves around royal marital customs unfamiliar to us today. Shahru, the married queen of Mah, refuses an offer of marriage from King Mobad of Marv but promises that if she bears a daughter she will give the child to him as a bride. Vis and Ramin had immense influence on later Persian poetry and is very probably also the source for the tale of Tristan and Isolde, which first appeared in Europe about a century later. The plot, complex yet powerfully dramatic, revolves around royal marital customs unfamiliar to us today >>>

WAR

The threat is still there

Interview with Stephen Kinzer

18-Feb-2008 (136 comments)
How likely do you think war is with Iran? KINZER: I fear that this prospect is still very real. The recent National Intelligence Estimate makes it impossible for the US to hope for broad support for new sanctions on Iran. This could mean that some people consider a military strike the only remaining alternative. People in the White House might decide that Iran is a looming threat that must be contained before it can rise. Manufacturing an incident, either in Iran, Iraq or the Gulf, would be easy, and it could become a pretext for war.>>>

BANOU PARSA

زنی که دو بار اعدام شد

نقدی بر کتاب خانم وزیر – جعل بزرگ تاریخ

17-Feb-2008 (34 comments)
کتاب خانم وزیر تالیف منصوره پیر نیا آخرین شاهکار در بدنام کردن یکی از خوش نامترین زنان آزادی خواه، روشنفکر، دانشمند و مبارز ایرانی است که نامش در تاریخ اجتماعی نه تنها زن ایرانی، بلکه در جهان نیز می درخشد. شیوه محاکمه و اعدام این زن لکه ننگی است جاویدان بر پیشانی حکومت اسلامی. خانم فرخ رو پارسای را تنها به این دلیل که هرگز حاضر نشد در جلسات دادگاه یا حتی به هنگام اعدام چادر بسر کند در یک گونی بزرگ نهاده، سر گونی را محکم گره زدند و او را به دار آویختند. این واقعه ننگین البته در پرونده عدالت اسلامی ابدی است. آیندگان اگر هیچ چیز از کمالات و مبارزات آزادی خواهانه بانو فرخ رو پارسا که من و ما شاهد آن بوده ایم نخوانند و ندانند فاجعه اعدام او یادشان نمی رود و چه بسا زیر تاثیر این رویداد به دنبال شناخت حقایق تاریخی که او و پشت سر او ما ساختیم برود.>>>

TARGET

Intellectual shield

David Barsamian, with Noam Chomsky, Ervand Abrahamian, and Nahid Mozaffari

15-Feb-2008 (17 comments)
"Targeting Iran" is a collection of three interviews conducted by Alternative Radio founder David Barsamian with the Iranian scholars Ervand Abrahamian and Nahid Mozaffari, and Barsamian's most frequent interlocutor over the years, Noam Chomsky. It is a valuable book in that it covers, in less than 200 pages, many of the essential questions regarding the geopolitics of the Islamic Republic and the ominous specter of a U.S. military attack on Iran>>>

IRAN-U.S.

The rest is history

Video on Iran-U.S. ties and the need for real diplomacy

11-Feb-2008 (59 comments)
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KIAROSTAMI

در پس واژه ها...

برای" گرگی در کمین"؛ سروده های عباس کیارستمی

10-Feb-2008
انسانی با چنین شیفتگی، هر لحظه در آستانه خلق اثری است، تا که گلی صحرایی می شکفد، تا که پرنده ای بال می گشاید، بوی مدهوش کننده یاسی در حیاطی می پیچد-- هر لحظه که چیزی از طبیعت تا او کوچ می کند. و به گمان نگارنده این سرگشتگی، گونه ای از شکیبایی و عشق را می طلبد-- از برای تامل-- که تنها در ضمیربرخی بیداراست. آنچه توجه این افراد را بر می انگیزد و براحساس شاعرانه شان می افزاید، برای دیگران نادیدنی است.>>>

QUESTIONS

تجربه‌اندوزی از تاریخ

نگاهی گذرا به ریشه‌های قتل‌عام زندانیان در سال‌های ۶۰ و ۶۷

08-Feb-2008 (21 comments)
نگاهی گذرا به تاریخ ربع قرن اخیر کشورمان، نشان‌می‌دهد که نطفه‌ی‌ قتل‌عا م زندانیان سیاسی، در فردای انقلاب بهمن و در اولین ساعت‌های بامداد بیست و ششم بهمن‌ماه در پشت‌بام مدرسه‌ی علوی، با اعدام نعمت‌الله نصیر ی، منوچهر خسروداد ، رضا ناجی و مهدی رحیمی چهارتن از امرای ارتش شاهنشاهی که نقش مهمی در سرکوب و کشتار مردم ایران و نقض گسترده‌ی حقوق بشر به عهده داشتند، بسته شد و پیوسته رو به رشد گذاشت! شاید هم ریشه آن را بتوان به یک هفته قبل از پیروزی انقلاب برگرداند؛>>>

WOMEN

Red lines

A small part of a much larger problem

30-Jan-2008 (16 comments)
Currently, over 65% of students entering university in Iran are women and slowly, these women will become a strong force that will make their dissatisfaction with the inequalities in law, society and the family known. Iranian women have not achieved this success easily and this representation is not secure. The current government has planned to reduce the number of women entering universities and has set up obstacles making it more difficult for women to achieve this goal. After the revolution, women who played an important role in the Revolution with the aim of reversing discriminatory laws against women were shocked to find that these laws not only remained intact, but that the human rights that women had achieved before the revolution were also eroded>>>

BOOK

 بدون چون و چرا

حال که جنگ سرد سپری شده است، اسرائیل برای آمریکا بیک معضلِ استراتژیکی مبدل گردیده

21-Jan-2008 (6 comments)
در مارچ 2006 نشریة نقد کتاب در لندن مقاله ای در بارة نفوذ (lobby) لابی اسرائیل در سیاست خارجی آمریکا بانتشار رساند که در میان صاحبنظران مسایل خاورمیانه در اروپا و آمریکا بحث های پر جنجالی را بدنبال داشت. مقالة فوق را دو نویسنده و استاد مجرّب از دو دانشگاه معتبر و معروف آمریکا برشتة تحریر در آورده بودند. ایندو که تاکنون کتابهای متعددی در زمینه های مختلف سیاست بین الملل بچاپ رسانده اند، اینبار به شرح تاریخچه و وسع گسترش نفوذ لابی اسرائیل در آمریکا بطور اخص پرداختند و برخی از سیاستها و خط مشی های سیاست خارجی آمریکا در دفاع بلاشرط از دولت اسرائیل را در این گفتار زیر سؤال بردن>>>

BOOK

The man who would be King

Excerpt from "Tales From The Zirzameen"

11-Jan-2008 (5 comments)
There was even a Café on Takht-e-Jamshid called the Havarti Café, I believe, which had a fern grotto and waterfall inside it. You could step in out of the heat, the hustle and the bustle of traffic and noise and there inside was this quiet secret little world. There were other magical restaurants like this as well such as Xanadu and Serena. The latter had a big buffet set up indoors and then you carried your plate out into a fairyland of a garden with landscape lighting softly up lighting the bushes and trees and fountains quietly making it dreamlike in the moonlight…. with the tables and chairs sprinkled about on the grass>>>

QUACK

Donald Duck in Ancient Persia

Donald Duck in Ancient Persia

Disney illustrator's friendly incursion into the Land of Kings

by Darius Kadivar
05-Jan-2008 (13 comments)

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DISNEY

Donald Duck in Ancient Persia

Master illustrator's friendly incursion into the land of kings

05-Jan-2008
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. >>>