The 8th Return of Cartoonists to Iran

Tehran hosts the 8th international cartoon biennieal.

If you are talented and interested, apply by October 22, 2007

(The cartoon to the right is by Angel Boligan from Mexico.)

Here's a little history of cartoon in Iran.

A Petition

To sign.
+
A general strike on September 11, 2007

A Lesson for the King

Iran's Flower Export

Iran's Fauna came as a surprise, perhaps.

But did you know that Iran exports half a million dollar worth of flowers per month? I did not! I didn't even know that Tehran has a flower market! However, everytime I am in Iran I am astonished by the low cost of the most glamorous bouquets that the flower shops (virtually present at the corner of every block) offer.


Currently, the Arab states in the Persian gulf are the primary customers of Iran's flower, but South Asian and European markets are being explored.


More pictures of amazing Iran, by Shahram Razavi

Iran's Women Taxi Service

This is not about restriction, nor segregation; it's about safety and creating economic opportunities.

Watch this video, and see for yourself how such services help women navigate their way into the social sphere! CNN also has a little clip on this. But as usual they spin it wrongly!

In any case, another evidence that Iran's Amazons are taking charge :)

Please also read RickB's take on this.

Iran's Wild

If you like ecotourism you might be interested to know that "Iran is host to some of Asia's most diverse animal wildlife. Its Caspian coastline, arid central deserts and fertile plains are the habitat for a vast range of creatures."

This prize-winning book is the first and the only comprehensive work on the fauna of Iran, by Eskandar Firouz--a former Director of the Department of the Environment in Iran.

Click on the image if interested.

An Iranian-American in Iran (1)

I made a series of posts of my own brief experience during my recent emergency visit to Tehran, as I rushed to be present for my dad's bypass surgery (He is just perfectly fine, my 67 years old hero!)
Iranian Experience (1)
Iranian Experience (2)
Iranian Experience (3)
Iranian Experience (4)
Iranian Experience (5)

I hear things have changed since then; the gas is rationed, the dress code toughened, the US-Iran tensions worsened, the prices heightened, the students burdened ...

Instead of hiding my head in the sand and sulking, I am going to look for stories from people like me who are in Iran. This story by Nina Farnia is the first of this series.

Farina is an Iranian-American single woman in Tehran. A casual encounter with a man on the topic of grocery shopping motivates her (Tehran Avenue) story in which she ponders about Tehran's encounter with globalization:

Yesterday, I was walking in Park Shahrara in the early afternoon, and saw a man carrying a bushel of sabzi khordan. Sabzi khordan is hard to find in the afternoons during the summer, unless one is an early riser. I stopped the elder. “Sir, where did you get that sabzi?”
“I bought it this morning at the fruit stand across the street, put it in the fridge at work, and now I’m taking it home. Take half of what I have here for yourself,” he responded.
I, an Iranian from the U.S., was shocked that someone would offer me half of his own. I immediately responded, “No thank you sir, I’ll find my own. Thank you so much.”
But he kept telling me to take his. “Please, take half of mine, you’ve been at work all day too, haven’t you? Take half of mine.”
I, of course did not take his sabzi, assuming I could find my own. My Americanness would not allow me to accept someone else’s offerings.
I have been in Iran for a month. From every direction, young and old, rich and poor, I sit and listen to stories describing how horrible post-Revolutionary, post-War Iran has become: “There is no more safety in the streets”; “Everything has become too expensive.” Complaints about the government, President Ahmadinejad, the dirty Tehran air, the rising gas prices, the packed metro, the lack of opportunities for young people, these are all never ending. Keep reading ...

Destigmatized: The Bomb!

The Anniversary's coming up! On 6 August 1945, a number of eyes in the Japanese city of Hiroshima turned skyward at the drone of a US B-29 bomber flying across the cloudless sky, accompanied by two other aircraft.

Has any American ever felt any shame that this country was the first to massacre indiscriminantly with their jolly new nuclear technology, brought to fruition by the Nazi('s) scientists who were lured by America?

Is any American ashamed at the ease with which America is discussing the possibility of using the atomic smart bombs in this new version of the world war? Discussing? My no! Hillary thinks Obama's childish to think a president can avoid them!

America's German inheritance is in fact interesting and significant; is it not?

Perhaps we should dig deep to understand why our Western democracies fall so frequently on this same shameful path ...

P.S. Well, there is a lot of great information in the comments; most of which, somehow reaffirm the point of this post. There seem to exist a consensus that the A-bomb is not a BAD thing and it can be beneficial; and that America's doing the world a great favor by developing and using its weapons! Some suggest that America's A-bomb saved Japanese lives because the EVIL Japanese government was training all these kamikazes to defend their country to death! How dare any government asks its population to fight for their home? America needed to go and bomb two little cities to teach Japanese to surrender immediately so it saves more lives. Sweet little Truman!! Well no wonder the world is in such a state of chaos!!!
America's philanthropy is quite remarkable: it has also saved a lot of Vietnamese and Iraqi lives from EVIL communism and Evil Saddam!!
(Democrat's hands is/will be just as blood stained as the Bushists's. Because, this is America!!!)

Bravo America!

HeeeeHaaaw!

Post PS. Unintentionally, my post script above seem to have offended a few of my friends. I wish to apologize to those who consider my rhetoric an offense against America, the country. I wish to clarify that the point of this post, and the conclusion at which I arrived in the post script, is begging the question of our relationship to technology and our philosophy of war and our attitude towards warfare. The finger pointed at America is pointed at our collective post WWII culture. We have too easily blamed the bulk of the WWII on Nazis of Germany, without completely and coherently examining that which we (no matter in which corner of this world) have shared with them prior to the war; and what we continue to share in terms of philosophy.
If you ask me who won the WWII, I would say America. But, has the conqueror faced herself in the mirror of reality? And, has the conqueror wondered about the ways in which it has contributed to the rouge attitude of many other nations that are merely emulating an American paradigm of powerplay? The main question of this post is, how has America contributed to so many nations pulling out from the non proliferation treaty?

I personally think that, had America declared national shame about the atomic explosions in Japan, had it declared "never again", had it been genuine about its advocacy of peace, the world would have had a more respectable model to follow. Our historical revisionism provides factual explanations for our deeds, but by posing as objective and scientific, it depletes our subconscious from a genuine faith for peace.

The Art of Stone and Water

Meet Ahmad NadAlian!

Born in 1936, in a small town, Sangsar in Iran, Nadalian has become an artist of the world. Nadalian has majored in painting in Tehran University's prestigious faculty of Arts (1988) and has a PhD in philosophy from University of Central England.

His Web site introduces him as: "A human who loves stones and water, Ahmad Nadalian moves like a fish transgressing international borders. Nadalian has traveled widely, leaving graphic messages on all continents bAntarctica in the form of etched stones, thousands of them, large and small, on which he has inscribed or painted fish, crabs, nautilus spirals, and human hands, feet, and faces."

His fame became global when he presented his River Art Project in the 50th Biennale of Venice. Since then, he is invited to many countries by different art centers and his work is scattered in Italy, Germany, USA, Spain, France, Uzbekistan, Bangladesh, Lebanon, Australia, Burkina Faso, Chad, Egypt, Netherlands, Switzerland, Russia, Japan, India, Brazil, China, Greece, UK, Finland, Morocco, South Korea, Ireland, Brazil, ... where many of his work remains hidden in nature, archaeological treasures to be discover

In review of his work, writer and art critic John Grande writes:
"Nadalian is an Iranian sculptor whose life's work involves engendering respect for living creatures and the natural environment. To achieve this, besides living with nature himself, he established sculpture grounds in a peaceful environment in natural surroundings. Water is a living element that contributes to his sculptures, and many of the symbols he engraves and sculpts are derived from ancient mythology and the rituals of pre-Islamic civilizations(--Life-affirming rituals that are part of the philosophy of ancient Iranian mysticism, according to NadAlian himself.)

Nadalian's art is expressed through a variety of media, including rock carving, environmental art installations, ritual art performances, figurative paintings reminiscent of ancient drawings, video art installations, web art works, and interactive pieces requiring public participation. Nadalian spends most of his time in the mountain region of Damavand in Iran, and his River Art is Nadalian's Haraz River project, near Mount Damavand.

Located near the village of Ploor, 65 kilometers from the Teheran- Amol road, Nadalian designs sculptural form direct in nature; on the riverbanks are human figures, hands, feet, birds, goats, crabs, snakes and fish. Symbols of the Zodiac, the sun and the moon surround these designs, reminding the viewer that the images are not merely representations of nature, but symbolic concepts. What Nadalian intends is for the spectator searching for the artwork to perhaps discover something more valuable than his stones in nature. (Read Grande's interview with NadAlian.)

The real axis of evil

Israel has reached the wall and "Iran’s radical president is sinking fast, and he knows it. Now, there’s only one man who can keep Mahmoud Ahmadinejad out of the unemployment line:

George W. Bush."

Nazis attack Iran

... writes Margaret Kimberley

"The Americans think it is ridiculous and libelous to accuse them of acting like Nazis - and then they do. The planned attack on Iran, a people we know no better than we knew the Iraqis, will be a slaughter for which the world will hold the American people accountable. The Democratic assemble of presidential candidates - with the exception of Rep. Dennis Kucinich and former Sen. Mike Gravel - are all down for the debacle. Blood seems to be as much a part of the campaign menu as money. The only party that profits from this is the Israeli lobby, the biggest game in town.
...
Americans take great offense when their actions are compared to those of Hitler's Germany. When Democratic Senator Richard Durbin correctly stated that interrogation methods used at Guantanamo were akin to those used by the Nazis or Pol Pot's Cambodia, he was vilified by Republicans and Democrats alike. He was eventually forced to make a public retraction on the Senate floor. God forbid that Americans should be compared to Nazis.
...
...
Senator "Holy" Joe Lieberman wants war with Iran. His sick dream is now on the road to becoming reality because of an amendment to the Defense Authorization Act that he sponsored. The amendment states as fact that American soldiers have been killed and wounded by Iranian attacks in Iraq and requires periodic intelligence reports of Iranian activity in Iraq. The fix is already in, as the old saying goes. Every report will assert that Iran is behind every bombing, shooting or report of bad weather in Iraq. The amendment passed unanimously, 97-0.
...
Just as Joe Lieberman stoked the fires of war in Washington, Avigdor Lieberman, a member of Israel's parliament, claimed that NATO gave Israel permission to attack Iran. Lieberman is quite an outspoken racist who has called for the mass killing of Arabs living in Israel. It is an odd coincidence that he made his claim just as the American Lieberman got his ducks in a row to begin the countdown.

The Nazi comparison is accurate even when applied to Israelis or to American Jews like Joe Lieberman. They can be called fascist if they promote fascist ideology. The two Liebermans shouldn't be allowed to use the suffering of their own people to mask their own evil doing. It wouldn't be the first time that members of an oppressed group gladly joined the ranks of oppressors if someone else was the oppressee.
...
The world will ask Americans what they knew and when they knew it. Did they know that Iranian president Ahmedinejad never said Israel should be "wiped off the map?" Did they know that Israel is a nuclear power under no threat from Iran? Did they know that the U.S. is holding Iranian diplomats hostage? Ironically, outright lies and deliberate omissions in government and in the corporate media will allow most Americans to truthfully say they had no idea their government had turned them into war criminals."

Read the entire article on Scoop

The Conference of Birds

"There's so much more to flying than just flapping around from place to place! A... a... mosquito does that! One little barrel roll around the Elder Gull, just for fun, and I'm Outcast! Are they blind? Can't they see? Can't they think of the glory that it'll be when we really learn to fly? "I don't care what they think. I'll show them what flying is! I'll be pure Outlaw, if that's the way they want it. And I'll make them so sorry..." (Read the book online)

The title is borrowed from Mantegh Al-Teyr by Farid Al-Din Attar (the 12 century Persian philosopher/poet/scientist) which is in deed the precursor of Bach's Jonathan. (if you can read Persian, look for Attar on http://www.persopedia.com/)
(early 17th century depiction of Attar's conference of the Birds by Habib Allah)

In Iran, Jonathan the Seagull was beautifully translated by Soudabeh Partowi, and published under "Parandeh-i be nam-e Azar-baad" (a bird called Azar-baad; Azarbaad could be considered a polyseme. It is a Zoroasterian name, literally meaning something like "sustained flame" or the "ablaze-wind"; the latter rather a wordplay).

It's my birthday ...

If you come to see me
bring a lantern

The Sound of Kindness

17th Century paintings
Above, from Hasht-behesht Palace.
Below, from Chehel Sotoon Palace.

Iran celebrated The Woman's Day by holding a women music festival "The Sound of Kindness".
Iran's female musicians, with the exception of a few, have traditionally been vocalists. In early years after revolution, the female musicians suffered a setback brought about by Islamic restriction under strict orders of Khomeini. Towards the end of his life, however, he moderated his views and permitted classical and traditional music to be played and taught in public. Suddenly, music instructors popped like little mushrooms.
Although segregated as solo singers, women are pushing the boundaries of performance on stage. The recent female music festival was held under Ahmadinejad's renewed Khomeinist zeal against music. Thus I find it important to take note of it now! Unfortunately, I do not have access to reports and reviews. The pictures are obtained from the Payvand News. Any additional reports or information is appreciated.

blame-blame/bomb-bomb

In case you wonder the title is the sound of 4th of July fireworks ... nope! For whatever reason, after a relative media calm about Iran, the NYT has launched it's blame-blame bomb-bomb campaign against Iran this morning.

Greg Mitchel warns against NYT's amnesia: in Consider the Source!

...

In other news:

The United States representatives propose to support an Iranian terrorist group: MKO! and this comes just as the EU makes a move against the MKO's armed opposition to the Iranian Government

The MKO has terrorized Americans
The MKO has terrorized Iranains
The MKO has terrorized the MKO members!
The Iranian regime massacred the young and at times teenage MKO members in the Evin Prison (and else where) in the mid 80s.
The MKO joined the Iraqis in invading Iran (Operation Mersaad) in the mid 80s.
The MKO was disarmed after American invasion and the fall of Baghdad.
The Iranian government granted amnesty to the MKO members who wished to return to Iran; but also stated that they would be interrogated upon return.

As (since Mersaad Operation) I hold the MKO below contempt, I will not dedicate any time more than I have to them. Feel free to google them up.

Happy 4th of July!

Does America need nationalism?

Thanks to my friend, Nunya

Can King Abdullah walk without holding hands?

And now catch a View From the Moon

Women & Bikes: the freedom machines

The Islamic Republic of Iran has devised an "Islamic bicycle." This new vehicle comes fully equipped with a cabin to conceal parts of a female cyclist's body.

Why, you may ask?

Because it stimulates sexuality, in both sexes, easily. And because the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, announced in 1999 that "women must avoid anything that attracts strangers , so riding bicycles or motorcycles by women in public places causes corruption and is thus forbidden."

In short piece in the USA Today, Farzaneh Milani draws attention to the 19th-century America, where the newly invented bicycle, which was also used by women, was seen as a threat to the social order and a provocation to promiscuity.

Like Milani, I think that the recent bicycle ban, and the Islamic bicycle are more of the same futile attempts to control Iranian women. I just wish these old men and their vigilantes stopped making fools of themselves! If their pressures were to work, Iran's car racing champion would not have been a woman.

But Iranian women such as Poupeh Mahdavinader have shown their power on bike wheels (even though she has had to endure racial slur in the UK!)

Of course, they may export their Islamic bicycle to other Muslim countries, like Saudi Arabia, where women are even deprived of driving a car.

If you click on the picture "The day I became a woman", you will learn about another Iranian film. This one is somewhat surrealist. A nice one though. And applauded by many a festivals around the globe.

Delshodegan

I just watched Delshodegan. Another lavish production of the Ghajar years, by Ali Hatami, about whom you will perhaps never hear unless you are an Iranian. I am not surprised that he is not discussed in the international forums that are all crazy about the Iranian cinema. Nor is Baizai. These directors are not catering to the facile digestion of the universalist postmodernists, although their style is full of such elements as well. Yet, they demand engagement with folklore, language and history. Someday, there will be an Iranian who will write about the importance of Hatami's work in reconstruction and preservation of the Iranian national heritage on celluloid during the years of chaos: revolution and war.

Anyways, this film, Delshodegan, is about the Iranian classical musicians in Ghajar era and their struggle to release their first record which takes them on a journey to France. It's an artsy film. Neither aims to nor succeeds in being entertaining. It is sensational. And a delight to eyes and ears.

So much of Iran is underexplored, a hidden jewel ... it is a collective loss ... I detest all those who have cut it off the world ... and have muddied it ... I wish I had access to enough material to write about Hatami. I don't because I am so far from Iran. For now, I just watch bad copies of his work on video CDs, and imagine how it would have looked on film and sigh: who will replace him?

I never have feared death
even though its hand
is heavier than vile
My fear all
is to die in a place
where
the wage of the undertaker
is higher
than the price of
a man's freedom

Excerpt from Ahmad Shamlou

and my favorite sketch of Kathe Kollwitz

Sister, remember?

For more poems see http://www.shamlu.com or http://www.shamlou.org. The wikpedia entry spells his name as Shamlou.

(Not mine. Click on the image for source.)

take two.

Stones

Mirrors

Bridges

Flowers

My weekend photos

It's interesting how the colors turned out as I uploaded the images on blogger. For original colors, click on images. eeerm ... actually all the colors are mangled. Oh well this is joint art, by me and the color coding process of google :)

BrainDrain

Disgruntled still, that my fellow Iranian colleagues were not granted visa to attend a scientific meeting in the USA, I woke up to news about the slurring comments of a McGill professor of chemistry (David M Ronis) an opponent to reinstating the membership of 14 Iranian scientists in the American Chemistry Society (ACS)

So they are toughening their sanctions and trying their pressure tactics and then lamenting the huge cost of Iranian brain drain, overlooking, of course, the Anglo-American contribution to the brain drain in countries such as Iraq!

While most of the blame about the alarming rate of the Iranian brain drain falls on the IRI's failing economic an cultural policies, few critiques talk about the direct role of American sanctions on science and technology (and thus economic) development in Iran.

It is also ironic that the US of A happily absorbs the scientists' exodus! Like most scientists, the greater majority of Iranian academics have little existentialist quarrel with politics, as long as the political system funds them to address their research interests. A factsheet of the success rate of the Iranian-American community, puts in perspective the advantage of Iranian brain drain towards West.

According to a study by Ali Mostashari and Ali Khodamhosseini from the Iranian Studies Group at MIT, the 2000 US Census indicates that

The Iranian ancestral group have educational attainments that greatly surpass the national average. In general, the percent of the Iranians over 25 years old who have obtained a bachelor’s degree or higher was at 57.2% in comparison to 24.4% for the rest of the U.S. population. With more than 27% of Iranian-Americans over the age of 25 having a graduate degree or above, Iranian-Americans are the most highly educated ethnic group in the United States. With respect to the gender differences Iranian males and females are both more educated than the U.S. average values. Percentage-wise, Iranian-Americans hold five times the number of doctorates than the national average.
...
The per capita average income for Iranian-Americans is 50% higher than that of the nation, while family average income is 38% higher. ... The percentage of Iranian Americans living in homes valued more than $1 million is nearly 10 times that of the national average.
... (PDF

(for more information see the research reports at Iranian Study Group MIT)

However, to study and train in North America, is not entirely disadvantageous to Iran as it also opens the horizon of career opportunities domestically. In Returning to Iran: Challenges and Promises the authors report that

returning to Iran is a decision often motivated by emotional and patriotic connections to Iran rather than rational calculations. Moreover, level of satisfaction differed across participants and correlated with their success in achieving their career goals in Iran. Cultural and structural barriers to working effectively have been the biggest challenges to most participants while emotional ties and outstanding students have contributed to positive experiences.
Nevertheless, it appears that those who were successful in achieving some of their goals with regard to contribution to Iranian society, and had developed a successful career, were happier with their decisions. A few tentative trends which partially explain the successfulness of different initiatives include:
- There are many potential opportunities in the industry that can be successfully used. ... Examples include information technology, consulting, and financial markets. ...
- Entrepreneurship and institution-building remain central to creating opportunities. Despite some increase in recent years (mostly due to international investments and new large firms) there are few pre-specified, well-paying jobs available. Successful people tend to create the opportunities themselves through starting new ventures which satisfy some unmet need. In short, people who are interested in taking the risks of entrepreneurial activity have better prospects of job satisfaction and making a significant contribution to the Iranian society.

- In the academia the structures are more clearly defined and entrepreneurial activity (e.g. starting a new department or program) is less of an option, with the possible exception of new and growing fields such as management and economics. Under these conditions success is harder, and depends on skills and criteria beyond research aptitude, to secure funds, steer the politics of the departments, and do quality research given very limited resources. The chances of doing quality research also depends strongly on the specific area: theoretical and applied research often have higher chances of success than experimental fields where the resource and equipment become a significant disadvantage for Iranian researchers compared to the international competition.

Let's thank the sanctions for that too.

Summertime

Vivaldi's Song by Michael Franks.

Enjoy the lovely song; thanks to Nunya.

Iran Pop in Europe

Arian Band is the first ever band consisting of both men and women singers and players in Iran and the first music group to represent Iranian pop music. Their debut album, "Gole Aftabgardoon" (The Sunflower) was released in 2000. The album had huge success in Iran. The band was recently nominated for the BBC World Music Award.

The Band will take Iran's pop melodies to Europe and North America for a joint summer performance. The band is to perform 9 concerts this September in U.S., Canada and Europe and then finish off with a final concert in the United Arab Emirates. (Payvand News)

Thanks to Brother Tim's suggestion: Here's a sample called Immortal Iran.

Miles for Peace

click on the image for more info.

Women in art, 500 years

Don't muddy the water ...

A poem by Sohrab Sepehri, the iconic poet of Iran's modern(ist) mysticism.

Translated by Jerome W. Clinton.
Source: Words Without Border

Let's not muddy the water.
Imagine that close by a dove
is drinking from it,
or in a distant grove a finch
is washing its wings in it,
or in some village it fills a storage jar.

Let's not muddy the water.
Perhaps this flowing stream runs
by the foot of a poplar tree
and eases some heart's grief.
A dervish, perhaps,
has moistened his crust in it.

A young woman stood on its bank---
the water doubled her beauty.
Let's not muddy the water.

How delicious this water is!
How refreshing this stream!
Those people who live upstream,
how fortunate they are!
May their springs be ever fresh,
their cows always fertile!
I haven't seen their village,
But surely, God's foot is on
their threshing floor and
the moonlight there illuminates
the width of their words.

The walls are low in the village upstream.
Blue there is really blue.
When buds blossom, they know, those people.
What a village it must be!
May its streets be filled with music!

Those people by the stream
Have left it clear.
Let's not muddy the water.

New Crazies

Thus spake Mohammad Elbaradei

"I wake every morning and see 100 Iraqis innocent civilians are dying," he said. "I have no brief other than to make sure we don't go into another war or that we go crazy into killing each other. You do not want to give additional argument to new crazies who say 'let's go and bomb Iran.'"

Asked who the "new crazies" were he replied: "Those who have extreme views and say the only solution is to impose your will by force."

And Cheney says "I'm not a new-crazy" ... well he is an old one now!

And Rice rushes to say me neither!

And then Larijani says No problemo ...

"We are determined to solve Iran's nuclear dossier today. We do not need to kill time because the country has obtained its nuclear capacity and is ready to reach agreement through constructive talks."

Wisdom's in the air!