Saturday, May 28, 2005

A footnote for previous post

I think there is some unclear sentences in my previous post which are mostly because of my lack of knowledge in english language. Here I want to explain what I meant by circle of security. What I meant was actually circle of trust! Right from the early years after the revolution the leaders have always put out groups or people which were no more trustworthy. The same thing can be seen in Russia(and how Stalin managed to filter all the people which he thought were on his way to power, among them Trostky, one of the main leaders of revolution) and in France(Robespierre killed everyone who he thought was a traitor and he was also trapped in his own policy). But the top circle of trustworthies in Iran is a one way road. You can go out but you can never come back. I don't know if I could make myself clear enough or not. I'll just say one more things: The Guardian Counsil has disqualified a man who was himself a former member of that counsil and a former presidency candidate! If these people aren't good enough to enter the high rankings of power then who is? There is no one esle left!

Satrapi

I finished Satrapi's first book. I've started reading the second one. I don't know about the rest of the world but her books especially her Perspolis series are very famous in France.

I am a person who is born after the revolution or as they might say I'm a "Child of Revolution" or even maybe the child of war, because I was born two years after the revolution, few months after Iraq invaded Iran to begin an 8-year war. So I have a lot of memories from those early years of revolution as a child but not as clear as my parents might have. The only thing I have seen is the regime of after the revolution and I have been under the influence of what they have taught us, so I don't have anything to compare what I have seen with. But these books are written by a person who in a critical age as a young girl has witnessed both before and after the revolution. So the good thing about these books is that it is a first hand story of an important event and it is told in a simple language so that even a person from another country can easily understand and feel close to it. And although I may not belong to that period but I have a lot of similar experiences in my school or in the streets and inside my house. I think every Iranian can write a book and has a different unique story of her/his own from those years.

But one fact that I can mention in here is that our revolution was like Cronos(Saturn) as like every other revolution which I have studied in history, it turned over his own children and ate them. And it still continues to do so after all these years, only this time the circle of security is getting smaller and smaller. It is so small now that I think it consists of less than fifty people and I can't imagine how this is supposed to continue! What next? Are they going to turn back on themselves and commit a political suicide? In the mythology at last Cronos was killed by Zeus, the future god of gods and son of Cronos himself! But this time there won't be any Zeuses around. But probably a Simorgh might arrive, who knows what lies in the future?

(Simorgh is a legendary Iranian bird with everlasting life and extremely powerful forces which helped Rostam(Iranian version of Hercules) in lots of his dangerous journeys. Simorgh can also be interpreted as "si morgh" which means thirty birds. So it is not very clear that is it one bird with unusual powers or a lot of small birds which have combined there powers?!)

Saturday, May 21, 2005

Media Power - part 2

My shoulder is not completely well yet but I decided to finish this so continuing from the previous part:
He told me that people of the world had two completely different views of Iran before and after revolution which both was wrong. He had visited Europe before revolution when he was just a little boy. In Germany, they had asked him if they have an oil well in their house in Iran. The irony was they were a rather poor family. That was what media was showing from Iran: a country of one thousand and one nights with people having oil wells inside their houses and everyone living happily ever after. But that was as always just an extremely simplified and untrue image of a country which like every other country had many different layers and when suddenly one of these layers came to explode in 1979 everyone was shocked because that wasn't what the world was thinking that a people of such a country might do.
After that, several big errors from both sides made everyone in the world against a country which once a lot of people admired it. And the natural outcome was the 180 degree turn of media in the image they were showing of this evil country with everyone mad in it. And as always they are still not right. They always filter the news they are going to show and they always show everything on the basis of what they think previously about it. So in an area where there shouldn't be any feelings allowed in decisions, in lower layers of their work we can easily see that they prejudge the subject of their work. And what is the result? Everyone in the world is ignorant about the other parts of the world and unfortunately everyone is suspicious to the others. And this makes us the center of many misjudgments. It is really hard to be born in two very unfortunate categories: Muslim and Iranian.
And if you search the web for these two the most probable words you'll find are "terrorist", "axis of evil" and "hostages".

Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Media Power - part 1

During the weekend I took a trip by bike to go along the "Canal du Midi" to the Mediterranean sea with a friend of mine. As my hand was aching very badly it took us 14 hours to go a distance of 150 km. After that we spent the night in a small city called Bézier and finally the next day we came to a beautiful coastal city called Séte. It was undescribable!

As we had a lot of time during our cycling we talked about a lot of different things. One of them that I found it quite interesting was a discussion about Azerbaijan, Iran and the problems these two have in the world. My friend is from the city of Tabriz in Azerbaijani part of Iran. It is the biggest city of Azerbaijan, north and south, and it used to be the second big city of Iran, where the king's oldest son used to live, but now it is maybe the third or fourth largest city.

He told me that people of the world had two completely different views of Iran before and after revolution which both was wrong. He had visited Europe before revolution and when he was just a little boy.

I was going to complete this in a few days but unfortunately some part of my shoulder's muscle has been ripped! I exactly don't know how to describe this medical situation in here but anyway, now I can't type one-handed quite easily and I also don't want to leave this weblog without any posts for too long, so I add this unfinished post here and I hope that I would be able to finish it by next week. And by the way this thing happened to my shoulder before going to cycling and it was because of another cycling session!

Monday, May 02, 2005

Lac de Peyrelade

Yesterday I went mountain climbing with my friends. This one was really fun. It had everything one could desire from a complete mountain climbing. Hard parts, snow, beautiful weather, more beautiful scenes, a lake on the peak, perfect food, nice company, throwing snowballs, sliding on snow, feeling the good smell of flowers and lying on grass beside a river. But any low point? Of course! I feel burning all over my skin because of the sun! My face, my arms, even my head! But that is also part of fun! Isn't it? :))
And the pictures!