A Voice of Two Cities

Alright, who was I kidding?
SNTC's moved to another field of dreams.

SNTC's been transmorgified; email me for the changes!

Okay, time to pack up Say No To Crack's organization and move it.

When we find our new home, we'll send a postcard.

The thought that most prematurely floats to the top of my mind after reading this is a thought that usually identifies itself after I realize that someone has been executed for a crime, or placed into solitary confinement for months on end. Certain realities, like the act or expression of paedophilia and its impact in our society are, to a degree, as specific I can get in terms of those thoughts. The thought's presence is not as important as the portent of its ideas and dilemmas are; for instance, child pornography and its causes, effects, problems, and solutions.

I strongly urge myself to discover new perspectives on the thought of crime and punishment in our society, especially in light of the case of some paedophiles. In imagining the causes and effects that impact my world when the media suddenly hound on this issue, it is equally debateable whether this type of propaganda-like nuance of "innocence versus inhumanness" will really help the child who was victimized and continues to be in light of the crime being revealed?
Will it actually take us a step towards finding out why the man sexually confronted a child?

Most of the concept of children revolves around the projection of their vulnerability, lack of responsibility or disassociated view of 'reality' (usually, sex does not matter). And, as a case in point, they are called innocent; lacking maturity, or, gullible. They still believe that Prince Charming's real name is Charming.
At the same time, women in most cultures of the world, and even in American culture, are projected as being the soft (or weak), innocent, guileless being who is an object of lust. The opposite of the conniving, powerful, and sexually dominant male.

In effect, the image of children and women (although boys are more often abused as children than men in adult relationships) as a target is even more inflated by this damned idea that they ARE the symbol. That just because society portrays them as the symbol of the word "innocence", they must, evidentally, act or project themselves as one for the "non-innocent". Then, we may see why there is this blurring of lines for paedophiles.

Why is it that most people, men and women in general (including lesbians, sexually and socially), are attracted to a wide-eyed, full-lipped, soft-skinned, hairless woman on purely surface based bias than to a normal, average, hairy woman? And why is it that children are even more attractive?

There could be more than one answer here. Or even more questions.

Another writer discusses this in eloquent questions too ;)

Here's an idea;

A simple, soft, feminist-upping sweatshirt for those of you who just love a girly-looking statement on the conservative view of Iran's nuclear energy proliferations.

(JUST NUKE IT! © could be another Top 100 sales hit)

You've got to love consumerism when it just can't help being so loveable.


It comes in more girly-looking colors like baby-blue and white for those of us who get squeamish when we see pink but still opt for 'feminine' colors.

I think the underlying theme here, from the majority of the Blogs (abtahi, khanoumhana, alpar, ashoob) is the overwhelming vote of no-confidence from the Iranian people and it's Diaspora at large against the nuclear/atomic energy proliferations of the Iranian government.

The idea that is being spread here is that the energy is for the people, and the majority of Iranians would agree that this energy is not for the people. Some may like to say that people do not know what's good for them, which is why the government makes the greater decisions for them, but that is not true. Iranians who are educated and well read on this issue realize that it is a political and demographic tactic to ensure the IRI's continuing continuing power struggle within the Middle East against its image of weakness and back-door dealings with the West.

Those Iranians who don't know what the processes and implications of the atomic energy policies and plants entail in a real world context would not know the butt end of a heating rod from a toilet pipe...but they do know that the gas and energy minsitry has trouble getting gas to their homes in the winter and they wonder how atomic energy is going to change their municipality skills.

“I would like to ask a question of the people of the world: is there anyone
who can listen and understand what I’m saying? Is there any one who can save us?
To be gay and Iranian is worse than anything else! Do you think it is in my
hands to change my gayness? I am not god, able to change myself. Are we made
this way just to make you laugh? I think we gay Iranians have no future. We are
marginalized and persecuted. Should I stay here in Turkey to die in isolation,
or go back to Iran and be prepared for execution? Save us! Help us!”
- Mojtaba, "a
soft-spoken young man, is from Shiraz, a city of some 1,100,000 people in
southwest Iran"

The greatest fear that the IRI plays on is the darkness behind those veiled eyes.
Here, you can read and contribute yourself, ideas, and financial support to the group that voices their concerns to the world.

In Picture #7 of the photo campaign to free Jill Carroll, you see her wearing the traditional Arabic/Muslim Hijab, or the veil.

It only sheds more light onto the fact that this hostage needs to be freed. Her picture is a tool, that is being used wisely. It is a display of human emotion, happiness, shared between Christians and Muslims. Albeit, she is wearing a veil which is not part of her cultural tradition, but it is a part of her existence. She wore that veil better, in terms of how much hair it shows, than most women correspondents in Iraq would have.
Obviously, she has a great respect for Islam that does not reach the hearts of those people who captured her.

In many ways, my first encounter with Denmark was one that I will probably never forget and rarely revisit.
On a very cold midafternoon, after an eleven hour flight on an airplane and another impeccably straightened, stiffened, and exhausted chair I landed in Amsterdam. My first memory of the airport was that it was very big, almost innumerable tunnels going this way and that, sometimes even reaching out beyond the windows where one could see an arm-like extension of the terminals going for what seemed like miles. I landed there, as a kid, and held my duffel bag against my chest, walking as fast as I could to keep up with my flight 'babysitter'. A pack of well concealed playing cards pressed up against my chest and various pencils, notebooks, and loose chocolate candy wrappers crushed themselves in an effort to accomodate my vise-like grip.
As we walked, I noticed her cleanliness, and morbid insistence on looking directly at the space in front of her nose , which I had seen before in my short experiences through life but never tasted when there was a slight air of xenophobia hanging between us.
I was sure that god, or God -had in good humor- left me a very pretty attendant who, being Dutch, would adore my oh so 'Americanness' and consequently ask me all about my adoring set of Barbies, my fascination with horses, and then hug me and send me away into the arms of my loving family; just like the nurse in the Sound of Music.

But, unfortunately, that was not what happened. What happened was me, and my unrelenting mouth, spewing all of my favorite stories and ideas and thoughts hoping to see what she would say. Still, cluthing the duffel bag in case she did turn into some howling, slobbering Medusa I slowly realized that she was more in-tune to the dazzling array of invisibly entertaining molecules in the air than to the small child trying to make friends.

Of course, when I realized that, I huffed, puffed, and tried to blow that little piggie's house down, but ended up in a small metal chair in the children's waiting room until I was picked up.

Later on, when I retold my story to my relatives, they nodded almost knowingly, shaking their heads as if it were something they had seen before or could understand. And they did. The Dutchmen did not like my relatives, for reasons that could be considerably variated but amounted to the nitty gritty fact that they had darker hair and darker eyes and were evidently olive-complexioned.

To me, they were very pretty.
But at that time, I chalked that observation up to a irrelevant experience that I would never repeat again by avoiding snobbyish looking women -and men, for that matter.


Much later, when I was older and revisited the land of the Giants (the Dutch are the tallest humans, as a group, in the world) I came up with other, more reasonable explanations for that woman's reaction to a small child.

I was comitting the crime myself.

Evidently, after living in Iran for quite a while (without my duffel bag in tow) I became my own Medusa. In the land where woman range from all colors underneath the red sun, fair-skinned, golden haired 'morgh's or women ('hen's) are comparatively more beautiful than, say, a 'sabze' or a olive-complexioned girl. Especially in the northern regions of Iran.

Now, as a child, you are born into a society as a stranger. A complete stranger. You grow up to assimilate into the society by imitating those around you, and by adding or detracting from your character those behavioral traits that you, yourself, don't need. And, as a new-born, or someone who was completely alienated by and from the Iranian society, I considered my dislike of olive-complexioned girls to be a direct cause of the socially accepted norms of beauty in the Iranian society. I was taught that a girl should be rosy cheeked, and fair haired. If not, she should try to be. And so, I came face to face with one of my many Medusas. Watching her sprout from in between a childlike garden was scary, but at least I was able to see it. Certainly, it could not be ignored, this new reason behind the mask that the woman wore in Denmark. She was not at fault, for inheriting her society's dislike of the less-than-acceptable. The less-than-human.

I am no less, but more human that I was a few years back. But, the experience of the norms and labels of beauty in Iran gave me the tools to recognize why and how our gardens sometimes spoil from our personal Medusas.

---

On another note. The news is that a Dutch Immigration minister, Rita Verdonk, has denied asylum to gay Iranians because they will not be executed if they are returned to Iran.

She believes that the two young men, who were executed this year in Mash'had, were only executed because they were purportedly witnessed to have raped a minor. The case has no real hard evidence, and the jury was -obviously- out on this one...because there is no jury in Iran.

However, because they 'had' raped a minor, she claims that these gay Iranians have nothing to be afraid of. All they have to be afraid of is gross human rights violations (rape, murder, and systematic abuse), secretive, closed-door cases, and a long, dark, wet prison cell.


She also ordered Iranian Christians -converts- to be returned to Iran. On the same basis that they did not have any threats to their lives based on that fact alone.

The nightmare is that this news groups the Iranian Christian converts with the Gay Iranians. It tackles two entirely different issues and jurisprudential crises with one fell swoop. It lumps homosexuality, with conversion, two of the many socially discriminated-against behaviors in Iran.

Iran is simply too dangerous for them.

I hope that Jill Carrol, the journalist who was working in Iraq, will be freed by the time people read this post.

Here is a photo-campaign to free her.

Right now, I'm sitting in an Islamic meeting discussing the important, critical issues that have impacted their thoughts on a daily basis. My own thoughts interact and collide with theirs.

Here are some of the ideas that they've discussed. But first, the background of this group is a perspective of perennially secular Muslims, in California.

These are a group of children to adults.

*
Someone said that if I were a Muslim and changed to a Christian, my persona would not change. My self would not change.

Tradition causes rifts in the religion of Islam. At times, we acquire traditional customs into Islam and at times we integrate Islam into culture.

The Quran depends on how you read it; who wants to use it how. One person wants one thing , the other wants another.

You can't just read the Quran and say that "so and so is going to happen if I do this"; instead, you have to take the experiences that you've had and then reflect by reading the Quran.

Reading the Quran can change the direction of your life; it can affect your goals, change them.

Don't look at the Quran like a historical document; look at it as a guideline to life. A lifestyle.

History repeats itself, and reading the Quran can shine light on the future by knowing what happened before.

For Taliban, Islam is a goal, not reaching God. They would kill to abide by the rules, but wouldn't know how to make sense of those rules outside of their own immediate environment.

Islam is a vessel, not a rule.

Islam means three things; proof of your worship, your acts of islam, and your thoughts

The most simplest thing in the Quran, or the most detailed, are the simple verses in it. God says, "I made the fly" so, how come a god this big isn't embarassed to admit that he made such a primitive creature? He is so gracious.

Humans can't do anything compared to god. They still haven't been able to make DNA or cells.


....

Reza Aslan, a research associate at the University of Southern California and author of No God but God on Public Diplomacy, says in response to whether or not Iran has violated any NNPT laws:

"No, this is of course the awkward part of this whole thing, is that despite years of lying and cheating and hiding the scale and scope of their nuclear program they have yet to technically violate, violate the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty now. I think that is an indication that the treaty needs fixing. But, nonetheless, I think that Iran believes that it has an inalienable right, as a signatory of the NNPT to continue its enrichment for what it claims is peaceful purposes...It's hard to really figure out whether that's the case or not.
And...in particular I think Iran...over the last couple of months, particularly with this nuclear trade deal that the United States is signing with India -which of course is not a signatory of the NNPT and does have nuclear weapons, in violation of international law-
I think that just feeds the perception in Iran, that there is a, a double standard applied to their country. I think it's just going to harden that sentiment in the Islamic Republic."

His final statement,
"I think we have to recognize that there is nothing any country in the world could do to convince Iran to stop enriching Uranium on its own soil"

I would like to know if anyone has references that are studies, or essays or reports on these issues. Certain pieces, like poems and short stories are acceptable.

Impact of chat and chatting on the younger generation of the 21st Century; sex, education, and identity.

Urban "mania" as superimposed on relatively rich and otherwise White suburban areas.

Movies that celebrate the triumph of good vs evil in stark black and white symbology and characterizations for young kids. Lord of the Rings. Harry Potter. Even Star Wars Episode III.

On writing in blogs; transformation from thinking of feelings to explicating and indulging one's self in the act of expressing them to others.

Integration of people through the internet on topics that were once discussed mainly by men like Henry Kissinger but are now hand-me-downs of the next-door-neighbor type.

The proliferation of resources spread out in thousands of organizations, affiliations, corporate exchanges, journals, internet databases and the segregation of generalization in history from the specialist work.


...

Eh

Re:
Origen of Alexandria and Apokatastasis

Origen was a philosopher whose work was in parallel with early Gnostic and late Hellenistic learning. At the same time he was completely at odds with the Church's word, a heretic for believing in the principles of transformation and rehabilitation (redemption, in Christian terminology, is the return to good during the visible life, or real life; Origen believed redemption was a return to good that continued even after the visible life).

Mr. Behi, a writer from within Iran, explains a very important term in the handy Getting to Know Iran Guidebook (one size fits all):

We, Iranians have a very common habit that we can not help not to expose, and that is a pride we have to our history especially to the ancient glorious era of the Persian empire. When chatting with non-Iranians, we can not help it not to lecture them about the great history we had in our land and this happens as soon as they ask a question from us about Iran whatever it is. It happened to me many times and I found myself explaining the fact that we had this and that in our history, Insisting to correct the wrong impression of many of the Europeans that our language is not Arabic but Persian and smile from ear to ear when their eyebrows were rising in surprise. I can not help it as an Iranian but all the time, I feel it is silly to divide history by the present borders as it is to divide Earth as such.

One of the top priorities if an attack on Iran is palpable would be to understand and develop a sense of association between persian pride of their heritage, and the sense of victimization or subordination they feel from post-Islamic Iran.

You can see for yourself, even Mr. Behi displays that ever feeling of pride and then slumping reality of denial.

II was thinking of writing this story when I went through a writer who talked about the perceived threats to masculinity and the ever metrosexual jesus;

I decided not to continue my writing, for reasons of personal and emotional well-being. It seems that the struggle for women and men is always like the two sides of a tree, that when the sun hits it, there is always one light side and one dark, and as the earth circles the sun, the light side goes to the other and the dark side equivalently the same. But, no matter how much the tree turns and twists, there is always one side blinded and the other, simply, in the dark.

I hate to leave my thoughts like this, tracing them for so long through the night, thinking of the many scholars, artists, directors, poets, and even friends who've come up with so many distinct versions of sex and violence and society. It is a reminder of my mortality that when I wake up every morning, it is by chance that I haven't died yet, and have one more day in which to think about life as it is. As it is, my thinking hasn't necessarily brought me to the answers or the process that would give answers.

I have too many questions. Especially about sex and the roles that are assigned to sex. Again, my questions always end up being "what, what, what" because even those who are convinced that a man is someone who drinks beer, grabs ass, and watches football games
don't know how they came to be such men, or how to combat those men who can't fit into these categories or are unwilling to.


Here's that piece;

"Should I hope that there will be a Men's Awareness Month? A month that would celebrate men who have stood against the "grain" of their masculine brothers and taken on the role of Human instead of man?

Yes. I should. We are a changing world, and that means change for a whole category; men with women, instead of women alone, or blacks alone. Pushing forward the agenda of Women as a women's issue is relevant but it just isn't the case. Men are the co-habitators of one-half of this world, and women believe that their half is subservient to that half. Although women may be dominated by a patriarchal society in countries like the IRI, I don't believe that this is what I need to see in our country now. What I need to see is a Men's Awareness month, where issues that men face are tackled."

According to the Yale Herald article, Hashemi, who will graduate in 2009 like many other First Time Freshman of his caliber, will be taking political science classes that are not geared towards a degree but rather to having mature, and motivated students represent Yale in their futures as well as to fulfill all the Yale requirements as if they really were getting a degree.

Of course, the Yale Hearld paints him out to be the horn-rimmed librarian that just loves "furry bunnies, walks on the beach, and cozy moments shared with my significant other"- always...what is the word? Politically correct. That's it. He's "seeking to learn and be educated"

A close friend of the genius Hezbo is Rezvi, who coincidentally also graduated from an Ivy League, and he says this about Rahmatullah's ever endearing love for the smell of new books as you open them, “He has views, but his views are about how to improve things, like education. We talk about how to deal with the future and the problems in that part of the world,”

I wonder what kinds of problems they talk about, especially in that cryptic way in which Rezvi mentions "the future and the problems in that part of the world". Oh, we are talking about Afghanistant, the south Asian countries, and the Middle East, right?

So, we are talking about the problems that women face, I imagine, because Rezvi did study in an Ivy League, he should know the difference between a problem as Islam sees it and a problem as someone like Jackson Katz would see it;

Does Hashemi discuss the finer points of gutting a pregnant women from the lower belly up or from between the breasts down to her groin?

Maybe, he's thinking about applying a political science theory to the way the bobble-headed children study in Afghanistan, or STUDIED, under his former friends?

JOHN FUND ON THE TRAIL

Here's a copy of the article for those of you who didn't click on the link. It's from the Wall Street Journal Opinion



Jihadi Turns Bulldog
The Taliban's former spokesman is now a Yale student. Anyone see a problem with that?

Monday, February 27, 2006 12:01 a.m.

Never has an article made me blink with astonishment as much as when I read in yesterday's New York Times magazine that Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi, former ambassador-at-large for the Taliban, is now studying at Yale on a U.S. student visa. This is taking the obsession that U.S. universities have with promoting diversity a bit too far.

Something is very wrong at our elite universities. Last week Larry Summers resigned as president of Harvard when it became clear he would lose a no-confidence vote held by politically correct faculty members furious at his efforts to allow ROTC on campus, his opposition to a drive to have Harvard divest itself of corporate investments in Israel, and his efforts to make professors work harder. Now Yale is giving a first-class education to an erstwhile high official in one of the most evil regimes of the latter half of the 20th century--the government that harbored the terrorists who attacked America on Sept. 11, 2001.

"In some ways," Mr. Rahmatullah told the New York Times. "I'm the luckiest person in the world. I could have ended up in Guantanamo Bay. Instead I ended up at Yale." One of the courses he has taken is called Terrorism-Past, Present and Future.

Many foreign readers of the Times will no doubt snicker at the revelation that naive Yale administrators scrambled to admit Mr. Rahmatullah. The Times reported that Yale "had another foreigner of Rahmatullah's caliber apply for special-student status." Richard Shaw, Yale's dean of undergraduate admissions, told the Times that "we lost him to Harvard," and "I didn't want that to happen again."

In the spring of 2001, I was one of several writers at The Wall Street Journal who interviewed Mr. Rahmatullah at our offices across the street from the World Trade Center. His official title was second foreign secretary; his mission was to explain the regime's decision to rid the country of two 1,000-year-old towering statues of Buddha carved out of rock 90 miles from the Afghan capital, Kabul. The archeological treasures were considered the greatest remaining examples of third- and fifth-century Greco-Indian art in the world. But Taliban leader Mullah Omar had ordered all statues in the country destroyed, calling them idols of infidels and repugnant to Islam.

Even Muslim nations like Pakistan denounced the move. Mr. Rahmatullah, who at the time claimed to be 24 but now says he was lying about his age and was actually two years younger, cut a curious figure in our office. He wore a traditional Afghan turban and white baggy pants and sported a full beard. His English, while sometimes elliptical, was smooth and colloquial. He made himself very clear when he said the West had no business worrying about the statues, because it had cut off trade and foreign aid to the Taliban. "When the world destroys the future of our children with economic sanctions, they have no right to worry about our past," he told us, according to my notes from the meeting.

He smiled as he informed us that the statues had been blown up with explosive charges only after people living nearby had been removed. He had no comment on reports that Mullah Omar had ordered 100 cows be sacrificed as atonement for the Taliban government's failure to destroy the Buddhas earlier.

As for Osama bin Laden, Mr. Rahmatullah called the Saudi fugitive a "guest" of his government and said it hadn't been proved that bin Laden was linked to any terrorist acts, despite his indictment in the U.S. for planning the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. He said that if the embassy bombings were terrorist acts, then so was the Clinton administration's firing cruise missiles into his country in an attempt to kill bin Laden. "You killed 19 innocent people," he told us.

After the meeting I walked him out. I vividly recall our stopping at a window as he stared up at the World Trade Center. We stood there for a minute chatting, but I don't recall what he said. He then left. I next thought about him a few months later, on Sept. 11, as I stood outside our office building covered in dust and debris staring at the remains of the towers that had just collapsed. I occasionally wondered what had happened to Mr. Rahmatullah. I assumed he either had died in the collapse of the Taliban regime, had been jailed, or was living quietly in the new, democratic Afghanistan.

From newspaper clips I knew that his visit to the Journal's offices was part of a PR tour. He visited other newspapers and spoke at universities, and the State Department had granted him a meeting with midlevel officials. None of the meetings went particularly well. At the University of Southern California, Mr. Rahmatullah expressed irritation with a question about statues that at that point hadn't yet been blown up. "You know, really, I am asked so much about these statues that I have a headache now," he moaned. "If I go back to Afghanistan, I will blow them."

Carina Chocano, a writer for Salon.com who attended several of his speeches in the U.S., noted the hostility of many of his audiences. "A lesser publicist might have melted down," she wrote. "But the cool, unruffled and media-smart Hashemi instead spun his story into a contemporary parable of ironic iconoclasm," peppering his lectures with "statue jokes."

But sometimes his humor really backfired. At a speech for the Atlantic Council, Mr. Rahmatullah was confronted by a woman in the audience who lifted the burkha she was wearing and chastised him for the Taliban's infamous treatment of women. "You have imprisoned the women--it's a horror, let me tell you," she cried. Mr. Rahmatullah responded with a sneer: "I'm really sorry to your husband. He might have a very difficult time with you."

A videotape of his cutting remark became part of Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," and infuriated the likes of Mavis Leno, wife of "Tonight Show" host Jay Leno. Mrs. Leno helped found the Feminist Majority's Campaign to Stop Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan and devoted countless hours to focusing public attention on the plight of Afghanistan's women and girls. "I will never, ever abandon these women," she often said before the Taliban's overthrow. Here's hoping she has saved some of her outrage for Yale's decision to welcome Mr. Rahmatullah with open arms.

In his interview with the New York Times, Mr. Rahmatullah, said that if he had to do it all over, he would have been less "antagonistic" in his remarks during his U.S. road tour. "I regret the way I spoke sometimes. Now I would try to be softer. A little bit." Just a little?

Today, when he is asked if Afghanistan would be better off if the Taliban were still in charge, Mr. Rahmatullah, has a mixed answer: "Economically, no. In terms of security, yes. In terms of general happiness, no. In the long-term interests of the country? I don't think so. I think the radicals were taking over and doing crazy stuff. I regret when people think of the Taliban and then think of me--that feeling people have after they know I was affiliated with them is painful to me." Note that the government official who represented the Taliban abroad now claims to have been only "affiliated" with them.

Even though he evinces only semiregret for his actions in service to the Taliban, there is evidence that he has become quite a charmer. After the fall of the Taliban, he resumed a friendship he had developed with Mike Hoover, a CBS News cameraman who, according to a 2001 Associated Press story, had visited Afghanistan three times as a guest of the Taliban. Mr. Hoover inspired Mr. Rahmatullah to think about going to the U.S. to finish his studies. "I thought he could do a lot as a student/teacher," said Mr. Hoover. He persuaded Bob Schuster, an attorney friend of his from Wyoming who had gone to Yale, to help out. As the Times reported, "Schuster called the provost's office to ask how an ex-Taliban envoy with a fourth-grade education and a high-school equivalency degree might go about applying to one of the world's top universities."

Intrigued by Mr. Rahmatullah, Dean Shaw arranged for his admission into a nondegree program for special students. He apparently has done well, so far pulling down a 3.33 grade-point average.

There is something to be said for the instinct to reach out to one's former enemies. America's postwar reconciliation with the Japanese and Germans has paid great dividends. But there are limits.

During a trip to Germany I once ran into a relative of Hans Fritsche, the top deputy to Josef Goebbels, whom the Guardian, a British newspaper, once described as "the Nazi Propaganda Minister's leading radio spokesman [whose] commentaries were among the main items of German home and foreign broadcasting." After the war he was tried as a war criminal at Nuremberg, but because he had only given hate-filled speeches, he was acquitted of all charges in 1946. In the early 1950s, he applied for a visa to visit the U.S. and explain his regret at having served an evil regime. He was turned down, to the everlasting regret of the relative with whom I spoke. She noted that Albert Speer, Hitler's former architect, was also turned down for a U.S. visa even after he had completed a 20-year prison sentence and had written a best-selling book detailing Hitler's madness.

I don't believe Mr. Rahmatullah had direct knowledge of the 9/11 plot, and I don't think he has ever killed anyone. I can appreciate that he is trying to rebuild his life. But he willingly and cheerfully served an evil regime in a manner that would have made Goebbels proud. That he was 22 at the time is little of an excuse. There are many poor, bright students--American and foreign alike--who would jump at the opportunity to attend Yale. Why should Mr. Rahmatullah go to the line ahead of all of them? That's a question Yale alumni should ask when their alma mater comes looking for contributions.

President Bush, who already has a well-known disdain for Yale elitism from his student days there, may also have some questions. In the wake of his being blindsided by his own administration over the Dubai port deal, he should be interested in finding out exactly who at the State Department approved Mr. Rahmatullah's application for a student visa.

Copyright © 2006 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

READ

So, everyone now knows about Seyed Rahmatullah Hashemi, who's government, the Taliban regime, brought the world into a chaotic struggle for a war against terror on September 11, 2001.

Not only did his government harbor those who helped bring down the WTC towers, they also were a major cause of the rise of terms like "the axis-of-evil" in George W. Bush's words, which pointed to Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as the enemies of this war on terror.

All the writers and scholars discuss the war-on-terror in vivid terms, using images of Americans being attacked on home turf by turban wearing mullahs and fascist murderers raping, pillaging, and slowly destroying democracy and the west.

However, this hasn't yet happened. What has happened is that Yale, the Ivy League university that ranks in the highest levels of academic achievement in the world, accepted the ambassador of the Taliban Regime in Afghanistan to its school.

I guess this is diversity,this is the equal rights of all men. But I think there's something missing here. Now, I can imagine a thousand and one missing pieces here, for instance, why they will accept someone like this devil's advocate.


Here's some links

The Wall Street Journal
If you read the Wall Street Journal, this is an opinion that goes into detail about the case and Yale's own words; after Harvard accepted soemoen of the same caliber as Hezbollah (ooops! I meant, Rahmatullah) Yale decided that they would not "make the same mistake again" and hired this mutant of a genius instead.

ZaneIrani
I like her.

On friday, before the ceremonies began, we were all sitting around the table. Two of us furiously working at the saffron, crushing the red herbs against a marble grade. It was the custom, for the daughters of the family, with sleeves rolled up and a canvas of golden skin showing, to bend over the saffron and crush it to perfection.

Each daughter was given a mortar and a small sack of saffron, which was delivered by the neighbor who was also helping in the ceremonies. At the dark, wooden table both girls moved in a rhythmic motion, crushing the saffron into a fine powder. The red of the saffron reminded them both of sensual and soft thoughts, bared to their self-conscience by a reminder that red was also the color of the devil they feared those thoughts and put them away working at their saffron, again.

Of course, no one had ever actually told us that we had grown up to be two beautiful girls, but it was made apparent by the new light in the neighbor's eyes as he approached the room. His feet stopped at the entrance of the room, the smell of the stew cooking in the giant pots making his nostrils twitch with anticipation. But, what had amazed him most was how the two little girls, shrieking and yanking at his coattails with goofy grins and innocent, wide eyes had suddenly turned into two women. The first, his eyes told him, was Soheila, the littlest one, and the prettiest of the two. Her golden hair, almost a honey color wrapped about her soft waist. When she looked up to the neighbor, smiling, her wide eyes sparkled a deep blue, aknowledging the old patron as she would her father. Of course, her sister was much darker. A par of braids extended down to her shoulder blades, as dark as the brown mud that surrounded their backyard, and eyes that were black in the light, but moody and tense as she spotted him. The neighbor extended the sacks and left them on the ground.

Both girls turned back to their work, this time, the dark-haired one, Ronak, felt trapped by his body standing near the doorway. For some unexplainable image began to show itself to her. As her hands continued its rhythmic push and pull over the saffron, his body seemed to eclipse the sunlight, a silhouette of resilience where the sunlight wavered. The shadow that he cast against her face was cold, indifferent to her but the sunlight's failed attempt to peek through from behind his larger frame scared her. Eyes closing, she turned her head to the mortar, a drop of sweat forming behind her ear and sliding down her neck caused her to frown. The crease of her forehead an unknown feeling to her smooth skin.

The neighbor, having stared at their supple movements, caught his breath short. The sound of feet approaching, the girls' mother, stopping his already outstretching hand. The fingers of his right hand shook, shivering with a vacanct expression that was not there, but gone, touching the skin of their arms and stroking the hair from the nape of the golden one.

He left soon, after greeting the mother and commenting on the rich smells from the kitchen.

"You have such fine skills, such good smells come from this kitchen when you cook, Aziz. And such pretty children to help with it. They've grown so."

The mother, grinning from ear to ear, fanned herself with her hand laughing at his comment on her cooking skills. What struck Ronak, was the absence of her mother's tight lip at the mention of their names. It should have been a small smile, and a overly lascivious thank you to signal his leave; that would mean he had been inappropriate with her daughters' presence, but today was not the case.

Today was the ceremony, the day in which Ronak and Soheila's older brother was engaged to the daughter of a doctor, a friend of the family's.

Insides the house, there had been a commotion all day long. The rooms had been swept clean with the servant's help. Each room was placed with lush carpets, designed to portray the flourishing fruits of the spring. Each carpet had a theme, one of tiny swallows and blossoms, others of more flowers and symbols of luck. The carpets were lined with pillows, that the guests would sit on, cross-legged, and enjoy the festivities on.


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Note to self; characters, carpets, dress, birds

Honestly, we work and work until the day we are about spitting fire and balding at unusual places and suddenly realize that, "Hey, I'm still earning less money that that caputz over there because of some holy-art-thou rules of social dominance that basically state if you aren't hiding a pair of balls underneath boxers (or panty-hose, for that matter) you are as surely not going to be earning as much as if you were!"

As much as I would not enjoy discussing the finer details of that, there is certainly a great respect for those women who did. If you recognize who Betty Friedan is, then you may know what she helped to introduce to humanity, and if you have no clue, here are some resources:

Note Written by Melissa
Her piece reflects on the environment in which most women are still revelling in, years after Betty Friedan.

Real Media Presentation
Discussing what Friedan's vision and explorations accounted to in the view of David Horowitz.

Research
Self-authored books as well as critiques, magazines, and clips.

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Because it is March, and only an agonizing few days from the impending referral of Iran to
the Security Council in the UN, it will be one of the priorities of this year to focus on the Women's Awareness Month (and Men's Education), especially as it coincides with the news unravelling from New York.

Of course, we will be having more focus on the relevancy and the high-stakes case of Iran in the UN, but it is fair to bring forward the matters of the women in Iran as well. They will need the support, most especially of the West, if there really are going to be changes in the next decade.

Some people share my sentiments when there is talk of the mothers in Iran. That they set the examples for their future children, and that the better their tools and resources, the better their examples.

Feeling: Overly joyed by this month's topic of choice, Women's Awareness Month. I will be celebrating it, as I do everyday, with a much more approachable and friendly manner. Certainly, most people of my age would appreciate a moment to step back from the politically correct and assess what exactly it is that they want to correct and how exactly it is they are going to correct this.

Women's Awareness Month is not about lesbians. It is about subjects that concern both genders -and even those who haven't yet found a gender :). And it is not about degrading the male half of the human population. Even those men who defend women and their search for resolution in this world can be assured that they are not losing their masculinity, or their manhood for that matter. They are just losing their ignorance.

Gender is the equivalent of a a label, like a political party, that all members have to join in on their respective sides and hurl insults across the line at each other in an attempt to assert each side's omniscient right to domination of the other. Often times, it won't be just an insult. It will be a pie in the face, or even a fist in the face.

As many women in Iran may know, either through personal experience or the witnessing of someone else's, violence from men or the implication of its use is a reality that they must endure for the sake of absolute ignorance. It is no joke when you hear, see, or are involved in a violent incident between couples. First, witnessing or even having a part in these outbreaks of inhumanity causes deep psychological trauma, loss of security, and even teaches others the "quiet syndrome" or a tolerant attitude towards violence. Second, when there is a tolerance, ambiguity, and trauma in the situation of the women involved, there are no battered-wives homes for them to turn to when they need to begin a process of learning, and healing (no 1-800-help lines either).

Anyone else remember the House of Reyhaneh? There was, in Karaj, another home for battered girls who ran away from violent and oppressive regimes within their own homes. They turned to this government-approved home for learning and healing only to be disappointed and finally turned out into the streets by the same people who had promised to show them the guidance and the care they had not asked for but should have had when they were first brought into this world. Most of these girls came from abusive households where they were under substantial physical and mental discrimination by brothers, husbands and fathers.

In the IRI, the legality of a domestic violence case is amounted to a simple slap on the hand and a court order that simply "warns" the perpetrator of future consequences if they happen to abuse their spouse again- that's if the spouse is still alive then. At times, even, the wife is accused of acts that would be inflammatory to a Muslim man's. That, by some infallible independent chance, she comitted herself -voluntarily- to being a victim by going against her husband's grain.

Most of what I met in Iran, the tolerance and the spiteful but non-chalant attitude from women, I could understand. These were women who grew up as children before the Regime wanting to ride bicycles, and being told that "only boys ride bicycles," and after the regime still facing these social fallacies. Wanting to go swim in the pool with a swimsuit, and being told that "girls are chaste and chastity requires us to cover our bodies," while boys would go swimming showing all the skin their masculinity allowed them. Some have told me, friends and family, that they grew up helping their tired mothers cook four or five dishes of food, setting the table, and after grueling hours in a hot kitchen watching as the men ate their food only to be invited by the men to sit and eat (it's called taarof, or the act of faking an invitation). Even to this day, I remember watching women clean up the table as their fathers and brothers and some lazy sisters sat on the couches watching nubile, young bodies dancing to L.A based persian music on the satellite. This was the result of years of hardwork from the leadership.

In a sense, the patriarchal attitude of the society in Iran is based, in part, on the concept of Islam and marriage; that a little girl is property before the age of nine that is handed from the father's home to the husband's home after going through her menstrual period. Many will argue that this is not the case in marriage anymore in Iran, that there is a legal age for girls, and it's set at 18, but this is easily argued in the rural areas in Iran. Girls, on average, are married at very young ages in rural Iran, especially when they are a few years past their puberty, around 14 or 15 years of age.

Not only are women vessels for procreation and an endowment to the proliferation of Islam, they are also a concept of subordination to the dominance of men. Instead of choosing to solve the problems of the women in Iran who face battering, child abuse, and other cases of discrepancy, they are merely schloffed off to the world of hidden femininity. They are the side of humanity that is "excitable...prone to emotional excitation", or "they are a field to be plowed and tilled to a man's desires."

Again, the way in which violence and abuse is reinforced is by reiterating a perspective of women that alienates them even further from the perspective of men.

A good way to illustrate this is to use a more American metaphor; Men will be big, smart, and decisive but brooding intellectuals who hop out of Rambo weilding their phallic presence over the covert, vacillating unnamed Female who faints at a whim and swoons at the announcement of the next Tupperware convention.

So, instead of facing the proverbial causation of violence by awareness and deliberation on the part of women, there is more attention given to the "what" of a woman. How many times do we have to remind ourselves that if we want to change something we need to know "why, why, why" and then "how, how, how"

How do we prevent violence against women? Of course it's essential to have a basic understanding of what a woman is, but in general, that is what laws are for. Laws define what and who we are, or can be, within broad boundaries. For instance, a woman is someone who should never be battered in a domestic situation by law, ever. A woman is someone who should be given freedoms of employment, marriage, education, and entertainment equal to a man's by law, or at least she should be given the right of way to gain those freedoms. A woman would be someone who is deemed, by law, to stand up for her rights.

In other words;
A woman, by law, should be worth the same amount of money that a man is worth when she is killed in a car accident. A man is worth about 30 million Tomans, which is equivalent to 30 thousand dollars. But a woman is worth the same as a young boy's, 12 million Tomans.

It will be harder and harder for these old traditions and norms to be broken by the future generations, especially as the gap between the more westernized world widens from the traditional and midieval world of the middle east. As time goes by, it will be a bigger challenge for many youth to destroy the stereotypes about women and to remember that women should not be fighting alone for their rights, men are responsible too.

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Here are some important quotes that I should look at later, but unfortunately, have no time to talk about now. This is an article by Parvin in the faithfreedom.org organization. Here's one of my reads.

"if a woman murders a man his family has the right to a sum paid to the next of kin as compensation for the slaughter of a relative. By contrast, if a man murders a woman, her murderer must, before retribution pay half the amount of a man's blood money to her guardian".

"To rape women prisoners, especially virgin girls, who are accused of being against the regime, is a normal and daily practice in the Islamic Republic's prisons, and by doing so, the clergies declare that they adhere to the merits of the Islamic principles and laws, preventing a virgin girl to go to Heaven. Mullahs believe that these are ungodly creatures and they do not deserve it, therefore they are raped to be sure they will be sent to hell". The report of the Special Representative of the Commission of the Human Rights of the United Nations in the Islamic Republic of Iran, 1992.


"The specific task of women in this society is to marry and bear children. They will be discouraged from entering legislative, judicial, or what ever careers which may require decision making, as women lack the intellectual ability and discerning judgment required for theses careers." Ayatolah Mutahari,(one of the principal ideologues of the Islamic Republic of Iran) on "The Question of Veil"

Note: This is a theme in line with adult domitarcies -;)- and or it may not belong to your friendly neighborhood three-year old.


Coitum a posteriori, lead the way! (After ruthlessly abusing my body with caffeine, sugar cookies, tea, and an industrial amount of cooking- which can also make you hot and sweaty)

Sex is important to a sexual relationship. "Just as salt is important to Ashe-e-Reshteh," you are compelled to add a little sex to spice up that life of yours. Sex does not mean the woman lays a la vache style while the man seeks to plough her from the south. It is defined by its degree of eroticization, the degree of pleasure or stimulant that it arouses in the partners.

Eroticization, in terms of a woman's body, is getting to know her every crevice and curve.

And it is possible that all places on a woman's body are erotogenic "zones" in which a little stimulation can result in satisfactory relaxation. The conch-shelled shape of the ear, for example is a morsel of a buffet for a woman(some, unlike me) from her only too eager Tamerlane.

But, the most important erotogenic zone, certainly a priority in the case of sex concerning penis to vagina penetration, is the anterior wall of the vagina (which does have nerve endings!- in case there were any philocentric obscenities lurking in those evil minds) or as popular culture calls it, the ever infamous G-spot.

If you can't tell which is which, then you probably shouldn't be snooping down there anyway.

Buddha converses with the rosy dawn, speaking in thrills of joy that in depths of height feel a grief of love;

"You will grasp the broadest ideas, the general importance of ideas. You will hear the syllables spoken as on the crest of the wind, and you will smile, modifying the occurence of each sound until at last you attain the ability to tell each color from its most dearest shades, and each shade delved into by its mother colors and at last, you will attain the enlightenment in which you were born of."

The Dawn, stretching forth her fingers in joy and wanting eagerly to stroke Buddha's cheek, Her entire being soliciting a physical pleasure, destroying all fragments of sensibility, but instead, she lay back against the night, combing her ocean of hair through his sleeping limbs. But, she thought of the Buddha long afterward.

And did not find him again.

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On a less phantasmic whim, I've been very naughty (;), and very busy with work. It seems there is a constant list to classwork and the textbook references to bases+nucleotides+polymerase in our bodies. That no matter what I do, I can never associate my identity with my limbs and their mitotically challenged systems.

However much I feel convinced by the media that I am a person - that what people see people get- I am not my two hands nor my two feet, but rather, use them to better express my real self's needs and gives.

A promenade on the arms of my ever loyal browser, and a blue moon at that, led to the Garden of Shima, and there, it was so lush and foresty...Beautiful vines scrawled along the length of the ground and up the sides of the brush, reaching towards images of blossoming flowers and a blue-blue sky.

Somewhere along the trip, there was a picture of Shima dancing, in Iran, wearing a very modestly cut dress and smiling at a man who could otherwise have been her father (Her father-in-law); pregnant, and nonetheless, sober.

However, she talks of Ghelyoon, which is the equivalent or worse than cigarettes; alcohol which is illegal and punishable by lashing at least 70 times; and above all, feminine skin.

Otherwise a sensible scene - IN AMERICA- this strangeness would be exactly the moment when my loyal browser and I suddenly squawked with confusion.

Is there something wrong with this post that Shima's put up? In any rational world, we would say yes, but again, Iran makes rationality a national crime. Why is it that a pregnant, "lokht" woman in terms of IRI law, so easily puts up her picture, pictures of her family (who probably don't know that she put the picture up), and then proceeds to explain that there was alcohol in country that daily whips, hangs, and rapes women who have displayed skin, drank alcohol, and danced with men?



When I compare this with my friends who go by pseudonyms, use fake pictures, and never ever mention a family member's real name LET ALONE POST THEIR PICTURES, it makes very little sense to see this.

It would make more sense if I could figure out what sort of hormones she was on while pregnant, and get ahold of them myself.

A great human rights activist and social studies Phenomena says this about Pakdasht

" "Pakdasht crimes will never be forgotten. The depth of these problems and incidents should be heeded at the regional and national levels. As long as issues of the sort are not attended to in a comprehensive and effective manner, we cannot protect the society as expected."

He goes on to reiterate that, if the root-cause of such ugly incidents is not heeded,

"our future moves will not be trustworthy".

Referring to the shocking crimes committed by two men in Pakdasht, he noted,

"The people who committed these crimes were enveloped by violence and revenge and were merciless. It must be seen what conditions led to the emergence of such people and that how many of the same might still be in the society of whom we are unaware.”

And finally, a last emphasis and a warning to all that,

"Otherwise, incidents of the sort recur and people soon forget about them until they happen again and then society wakes up."

(Just kidding, this was no other than Dr. Chocula himself, Khalibaf)

The hanging of Mohammed Bijeh, who was the main perpetrator of the violence committed against the 28 or so victims was probably the climactic surge in public attention that was paid to this sad but eventful day in Iran. However, the mainstream media chose to ignore the otherwise obvious occurence of such crimes and the systematic brutality that most men within Iran committ against their female counterparts be they wives, sisters, or mothers. I know that there is a social crisis in the male population in Iran, that they are struggling with a terrible appettite for identity that is easily hidden behind the grotesque manifestations of male patriarchal systems, female subordination and discrimination, and gender/economic issues.

Links and references are always appreciated.

How will I bring up my child if the little creature is a boy?

Will I teach him to smile with his eyes or with his mouth?

Will I teach him the language of a cold hand?

Will I teach him the language of the Elephant Man?

How will I tell him that I did not know?

That he was two when his father was a "no show"?

That he was four when his mommy fled through a dark door?

That he was 25 when I finally came around,

only to witness Death and its loyal Hound.

My wish to all of my wordly compatriots is to review, one last time, the movie "The Wizard of Oz."

The cinematic children's tale functions as a climactic moral streak into what we may also call the human condition. As you watch the scene near the end of the film when Toto pulls back the curtain and reveals an anomaly of what should have been a great, towering figure as the Wizard, you see instead a disheveled, "barely there" character with rosy red cheeks reminiscent of a boy-child's, scraggly hair pointing in every cosmic direction, and two buggy eyes frantically searching for the nearest door of escape.

Sadly, there are no doors of escape; what lay behind each door through which the Wizard existed had, instead, been opened, accosted, ridiculed, and morally subjugated. He stands there, a simple physique lacking the masculine uproar, and meekly listens to Dorothy as she poutingly enlightens him that he is a "very bad man." However, the tragic and undisturbed emotion that flows from the dialogue peaks in a cacophony of masculine truth from his admittance that, "I am not a bad man, I was only a very bad wizard."

To understand the Wizard, I personally seek to "overstand" what he so innocently, and vacantly explains to her. That "overstanding" in which the crisis in the human condition is the crisis of the identity. The crisis of joining the Man and the Wizard, joining the identity with the mask that wears it, or the mask with the identity that wears it. Is it really what we need to question, or concern our already disturbing lives with? Or will we simply chalk it up to Darwinian epilepsy and sweep the dirt where we will "never" find it again...