Naïve Noam

Don’t you miss the good old days when Noam Chomsky was a humble groundbreaking linguist? These days the MIT professor is increasingly an apologist for Islamists (last year he met with Hizbollah). Now, in an excerpt from Interventions, his latest book, he writes that Washington is bent on “demonising” the Iranian leadership in order to pave the way for US-led assault. How, he must be asked, can you demonise people whose power, after almost three decades, remains pegged to death, torture and imprisonment?>>>

Little Mother of Abadan

Fati is the mother of orphaned beggars of Abadan, and unfortunately Abadan has lots of beggars many of whom are orphans. Passing through any street and back alley you will see hands that are extended towards you and mouths that are glued to your hands. “Fati” the 14-year old girl, who herself has two needy hands, has gathered many of the needy, abandoned, and homeless kids around herself and in effect has formed a small organization of beggars. This organization does not train beggars but rather helps the homeless children, and at times with a bite of food and a pair of shoes saves a life.>>>

More power

As a 39 year old Latina I travel in two worlds, Hispanic and American culture. I speak English and Spanish fluently, my French could use a lot of help. I have decided to learn Farsi and Arabic. I am going to the university and hope to finally graduate this summer. I have made so many great friends from many cultures. Moving from a small city in Texas to a Metropolitan city was the best decision of my life. It was such a relief to leave the narrow minded town I lived in for 16 years. I am amazed at so many of the similarities between the traditional Iranian culture and that of the Hispanic traditional culture. Yes, there does exist a double standard in dating for the different genders>>>

Nothing, nada, zilch

Iran has a GDP of less than $2000, $1200 of which is from oil. For the past 30 years, the Islamic bastards did not do a damn thing to build any type of an industrial or service base. Nothing, nada, zilch. South Koreans or Japanese, without a liter of oil or a cubic meter of natural gas built world class industries and became industrial power house in 30 years. What did the Islamic Republic or Iran do? Japan is #1 in auto and consumer goods industry. Korea is #1 in semiconductors & ship building and fast approaching #1 in electronic consumer goods. Korea's bioengineering industry is ahead of the U.S.and France.>>>

Grandma’s garden

Riding up Sumach, one of the smaller streets in Toronto, all of a sudden, I felt transported in time and space. Back to my childhood I was, when grandma used to water her garden in southern Tehran after a sweltering day in the summer. The smell of bedewed flowers and dripping leaves had brought back so many memories of a long distant past. Those were the days, when in my carefree childhood I would spend hour upon hour on the swing set up from atop the sturdiest tree of grandma’s garden. I remember how Farshid, my British-Iranian cousin, had come for a visit one year -- of course, with Uncle Farhad, for he was but a child of seven at the time -- and how we used to fight over who would gain temporary control of the garden.>>>

Reza Shah vs. Ataturk

Yes, Reza Shah did confiscate privately owned land but he did not take it from the poor peasants whose earnings were plundered by their powerful and greedy landlords who had, in turn, obtained the same land by force and without giving a fare share to its native farmers. He took the land off the hands of the feudal landlords who had mushroomed around the country and were seeking to disintegrate it for the benefits of their foreign masters. And no, Reza Shah, unlike his friend and ally Ataturk, did not preside over the total alienation of his country's literary heritage by blindly adopting a foreign script that had no connection with its rich literary past be it poetry or prose. And unlike Ataturk in his days as a member of the fiercely nationalistic Young Turks, Reza Shah had no hands in the ethnic cleansing of a major community.>>>

Agreeing to sharply disagree

Mr. Imani seems to collapse his political hatred for the Iranian government with anti-Islamism, presuming that the two are not mutually exclusive. In his entire article Mr. Imani attacks Ahmadinejad for resembling Hitler. Ironically, in his distate for Ahmadinejad and Hitler, Mr. Imani has done nothing more than demonstrate that he is more similar to them than they could possibly be with each other. At least Ahmadinejad never called Judiasm an evil religion. It’s never a good thing when a dictator appears more tolerant than you are>>>

Hit machine

As I held the record in my hand that day in Gargantini and turned it around (yes, I’m the type that reads everything written on a record, you should too, you’d already know what I’m getting to here), I noticed something at a glimpse of an eye that I had not thought possible until that day: An Iranian name on the back cover! Oooh, interesting. “Elton” Farokh Ahi. Hmmm. Elton? No wait, there’s another one. Ardeshir Farah. Very interesting. Who IS that? And they’re the main ones, “Elton” Farokh Ahi made the record!>>>

Shouting match diplomacy

The bi-lateral meetings of mid-May and last Tuesday in Baghdad between U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, and Iran’s ambassador to that country, Hassan Kazemi-Qumi, were the sole talks at the ambassadorial level in more than two decades. This could be viewed as a change of attitude, however temporary, in the Bush Administration. If in the aftermath of the first meeting Crocker was cautiously upbeat about the outcome, in the press conference following the second he unleashed a salvo of unfounded claims that Iran is funding, arming, training and even planning the operations of the Iraqi militia against the U.S. and Iraqi troops>>>

The initial conditions

The most popular way to describe the Chaos Theory is that a butterfly's wings fluttering might create tiny changes in the atmosphere that ultimately cause a tornado to appear (or, for that matter, prevent a tornado from appearing). The flapping wing represents a small change in the initial condition of the system, which causes a chain of events leading to large-scale phenomena. Had the butterfly not flapped its wings, the final outcome and its consequences would have been vastly different. Gently pressing the spot between side of his right foot and and top of his toes, I said: "Look son, if you want to get power and accuracy you simply have to shoot the ball with the front third side of your foot. Toe-poking it will give you zero control.">>>

Whisky and coke

It was late night in Tehran. I was sitting at my laptop thinking what I could do to entertain myself. Porn would be so out of the question. The lines are probably monitored. Imagining a police showing up at Mamani's door step with photos of Kirs hanging right out -- the thought gave me shivers. I thought of the late night parties we had in Melbourne. I missed getting smashed and rolling in the hallway of my student apartment. There was this time I had thrown a party at my flat and I remember being the best host I could be, however my friends had other interpretations of the night, they were too drunk so they said I was laying on the concrete door step while it was raining and apparently they had tried to pull me over the fence to avoid embarrassment>>>

A house I call Iran

I was surprised by the kind smiles I received from my hosts when they opened the door for me. This was hardly what I expected. They welcomed me with such warmth, kissing my cheeks and embracing me as I was lead to explore the dimly lit interior of their home. Richly decorated, it contradicted all that I saw from its exterior. Magnificent carpets of all colors and motifs, murals and frescoes on walls depicting historical scenes and daily life throughout the ages. The painted brown eyes of a turbaned man in one of these paintings stared at me firmly, as if attempting to converse with me about his time. The past was as active as the present in this mythical home. The architects had done a splendid job, as well as its decorators. Supposedly fashionable western elements did not exist here, for the residents stood firm to their beliefs and the flavor of originality in design that they were given from their forefathers.>>>