Why I'm against the new french law

The french parliament yesterday, finally approved a billing, making it a crime to deny the Armenian genocide.
First of all, I must say the whole idea seems stupid to me. I even have problem with denying holocaust being a crime. For me it is very simple. It is as if somebody comes and tells you that earth doesn't exist and you put him in jail for saying that loud. It is just like a Galileo situation except the inverse. somebody says earth is flat and it is the center of the universe and you put him in jail. Denying a certain fact, even if it is a hundred percent proved is just a stupidity not a crime!
And in the case of Armenians, it is not as if they haven't done similar things on the other side of the border in the very city where I was born. It is a complicated historical event which should be studied and further studies may very well prove that Armenians are right but passing laws like this will only worsen the problem. People should be free to talk about their thoughts even if it means it hurts the feelings of others. Is it now a crime in a western country to deny god, so say someone is gay, to ridicule somebody else, even if it is the president of United States?
It is opposed to the very idea of freedom of speech. When there are unquestionable evidents to a historical fact those evidents should be enough to prove somebody is speaking nonsense. Why making him the center of attention by putting him in jail. Then this would even validate Khomeini's Fatwa to condemn Salman Rushdie to death. Then they can say that according to their laws Rushdie has made a crime and he should be penalized and the penalty for his crime is death!
In every sense that I'm thinking about it, it just makes me wonder why and how could they do this! And you know what the funny thing is? This law potentially makes all the people of Turkey criminals. How weird is that! I've had a lot of Armenian friends in my hometown. This town is a good example of how the people from different ethnicity and religions can live along in peace, Kurds, Azeris, Asyrians, and Armenians and then suddenly somebody from outside comes and tries to defend the right of one of these groups against the others and every thing is ruined.
I'm sure I must be missing a point. Else, how is it possible that they are neglecting all these simple similarities and analogies with similar situations which now are just seem strange to us to just think about them.

Friends

So, now, I can say I'm a bit free after three rather tough exams. Specially the last one which was a Probability and Stochastic Processes exam. It was such a long time that I hadn't really been challenged myself in an exam. It was either too hard or too easy but this one really felt good, specially the last question which really felt intelligent.
I'm now sitting in HUB! yeah, that is right, there is a building(the nicest building in campus) in Penn State called HUB. And I'm enjoying the wireless connection to chat with friends and write this.
Now life is going more smooth. I finally bought a laptop, although it came with an almost disaster: my external hard disk crashed with all the music and files and movies I had inside. But now I can have some amount of entertainment in my room while I'm alone.
Now, my group of friends are divided into five groups. Other than my Iranian friends and French friends, I have made a new group of friends:Chinese! And I've already asked them to teach me some Chinese, but it is the hardest thing I've yet experienced. The fourth group comes from the fact that I can speack turkish and there are a lot of them here so it is really good to be able to communicate with them in their own language and it is a good practice for me too. The fifth group is again my very good, very friendly group of Indian friends which I find very nice people. Today, just an hour ago I made a new Indian friend. He got so friendly with me, at the end he even invited me to his apartment for a round of poker with his friends.

without title

I have really started studying, a thing I didn't believe I could do! But fortunately with the exams here being amazingly easy I don't have a hard time. And as I haven't bought a computer and I'm busy studying I don't really feel writing anything in here but I have a lot of things to write about.
So soon, after I buy my new laptop I'll begin to write them I hope.

Is it getting better or do you feel the same?

I haven't been able to write a post with a political theme recently. As I can't find enough time to write in all my blogs I have transferred my more personal posts to here so my posts about trying to criticize our world have been overshadowed.
But yesterday, after Bush and Ahmadinejad gave their speeches in UN general assembly and after reading an article in our campus's newspaper in today's issue I thought to go back to what this weblog used to be.
I'm thinking about writing an answer to this article. Unfortunately I started by reading it with a prejudice. I can bring excuses that I don't see any other views other than attacks on Muslims but that doesn't make me to lose my independence of mind and judging every thing by what it really is.
Anyway, I'll try to put up something related to that opinion but as I'm simply an engineering student and I don't have any real journalistic experience specially in writing in English so I would just write some babblings in here.

Eternal sunshine of a ...

It is weird how a simple email can change your day thoroughly.
This morning for me began with checking my emails in the main library of campus( I don't yet have a computer of my own and as I said before for the time being I'm broke ). An email kept me smiling for two hours, then that changed to thoughts and worries on how to reply to it and then excitement on how the outcome will be.
It is weird.

Newyork, Newyork

Start spreadin' the news, I'm leavin' today










I want to be a part of it, New York, New York










These vagabond shoes are longing to stray











Right through the very heart of it, New York, New York














I wanna wake up in a city that doesn't sleep










And find I'm king of the hill, top of the heap











These little town blues are melting away

I'll make a brand new start of it, in old New York

If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere

It's up to you , New York, New York

Fallaci

This morning while browsing the news, the first thing that hit ny eyes was the news of the death of Fallaci.
Oriana Fallaci in my opinion was one of the greatest journalists of the last half a century and her interviews with famous political figures had brought her world fame.
But for me, she was more known by her book "A letter to a child never born" although I never read the whole book. The only copy of this book in our library in our house was a very old book with papers so old and yellow that it was hard to read the book without damaging it. But my mom was a big fan so I got to hear a few of her quotes in this book and later came to read some others. Although, due to the recent images of Islam she was criticizing Islam in a very radical way but her intentions to make a world a better place should be appreciated.
The surprising thing is I don't see anyone so conserned with her death and the her news of death is just one among the usual daily news which come and go without anyone noticing them.

Broke

Nothing much to say.
Most of the days because of the internet I remain on Campus until late at night. For the past two days, I got home at 1am. But the reason wasn't studying at all! Wednesdays is the European Students Club nights and we gather in a bar and just try to have a drink and have a good time. And yesterday while shopping at 9pm with my very dear friend in Penn State, we were invited to join some other iranian friends, again in a bar. It was really fun. Although I love hanging out with my french friends but my level of connection is limited due to my lack in French language, but with my iranian friends every thing is much simpler and so having fun gets much easier too.
And the last bus going from downtown(where all these bars and the campus is) to my apartment leaves at 00:30, so now the last bus driver knows me as I am his only passenger and it is just like having a personal ride. He even drops me just in front of my apartment as the last stop.
I was a bit frustrated with the way things work in here, comparing for example with France. I haven't been able to get a cell phone yet because first they were saying they need SSN otherwise I must put a 500$ deposit and now that I have my SSN it is the same thing with my credit history. What do they expect from a newcomer?!
And even worse is the fact that I won't be payed until the last of this month. So when somebody like me comes here who has to find an apartment and buy a lot of essential daily needs and has to stay on his own for almos 45 days, he has to be like a millionaire! What do they think? Am I sitting on a gold mine? I just hope(fingers crossed badly!:D:P) that I can manage it somehow until the end of the month.

Karaoke

Now I'm settled in a three bedroom apartment with two other guys occupying the other two bedrooms. We hardly see each other( in the order of once every few days) but the guy whose room is just opposite mine is a bit weird. In this two weeks he has hardly come home sooner than 4 in the morning. During the first week he was bringing his friends too making a lot of noise at that time early in the morning(or late in the night?). He has placed one of his friends' stuff in the kitchen making it virtually unusable. But I'm a person who can live with all this and never even mention it(and I really don't know even mentioning it here might be a good idea, but I do it just for shere fun of it! so see it as a funny situation). I can sleep while someone else is listening to the music, or doing a noisy job, or working with the lights on. Even being untidy can be bearable until a certain point, as long as he is aware of the situation.
But how about this? To wake up by your roommate's sound, singing along a Karaoke, loudly in Chinese, 5 in the morning might sound amusing but adding it to the fact that it is not an even voice so that I can tune my self to it and go back to sleep and this happening twice during this week can make it a little annoying. Maybe I'm getting old, who knows!

For now...

For now, I'll just put some photos of my current surroundings. When I find time and get out of excuses for not writing anything, I'm going to tell you about my new Electromagnetics course and how it is with the new professor.


French Friends:


Persian Friends:


Unfortunately my Indian, Chinese, Turkish and some other french and Iranian friends are missing in these photos. So that is it for now!

Start the engine

The classes have finally and officially started. Today, I decided to write my observations from the somewhat strange experiences I've had in these three days, beginning with the most strange and craziest of them, the Advanced Engineering Electromagnetic which there is no escape from.
I believe that Electromagnetic is the toughest course in the whole EE courses. It is so vast and deep that it should be put in several course(which it has been actually) but still, looks scary. The teacher is an Indian professor with a very thick nice accent and an strange sense of humour. Just in the first class he called us a brave lad to have taken this course with him(I already was scared, guess how I felt afterwards). The Digital Communication course has also a very humorous teacher. I always get a good laugh in his class. He is an American professor which makes fun of every one in the class but in a very pleasant way. The third one is the most crowded one. The stochastic processes course is every one's either major or minor in the coming candidacy exam. And the candidacy exam which is supposed to be in the end of this semester seems a bit frightening. I have to be well prepared.
And just like the good old undergrad days where we used to do a tough homework for every course every week, this has started again for me in my PhD studies! Actually it felt really good when I sat down on Sunday and managed to solve the electromagnetic problems.
Another good thing which has happened to me is that for the first time during my long period of studies I managed to make it for the very first day of schedules (most importantly the orientation). I remember going two days late to school in the first year of elementary. Then showing up two weeks late for the registration in the university. And three weeks late in my masters because of visa delays. But this time everything went well and I got here on the first day of orientation and did most of the paper work done in the first week, got acquainted with the campus and most importantly met lots of good people and made friends with them, specifically among them my french friends, and some Indian and Chinese students I met. And the fact is as they are in different areas of study I would have never met them or even walked pass them in this huge campus if I had missed the orientation.
But the only thing which made me a little worried was the housing problem during the first week. As it seems a huge number of students have applied for Penn State and they have accepted a great number comparing to previous years, so almost everywhere on campus and off campus was full by the time I got here, and as I didn't know anyone it took me a few days to realize that the situation is harsh. Fortunately on the fourth day by the help of Orkut(which can actually be of a great help some of the times) I found a familiar face which was in the same year with me in university in Iran but in a different major, so we only had a physical education course with each other during which didn't quite get to know each other. But as soon as I sent him a message he treated me like an old friend and saved my a.. by helping me find an apartment using his car.

Petit Robert

One of the special things about here is that there are so many squirrels in the campus and in the first days you just want to stop and look at them chasing each other or eating nut on top of the trees(This one I love!). When I first saw one in New York in University of Columbia campus I excitedly told Rasta "look! Squirrel!" and he just went "yeah, whatever!" And now after less than two weeks these creatures that my french friends have renamed them "Robert"(!!!) are just part of life and there is no scape from them. Every five steps you'll bump to one of them. But I just found my favorite which I would call "Le petit Robert" or "MiniRobert"! And why is it my favorite? Because it is hard to see and rare. It is much faster which makes it less cute because you don't have time to admire its cuteness and it has a shorter tail and dark stripes in its back. but the problem is the probability (is it obvious that I have probability course this semester AGAIN?) of seeing one of them to the other ones is in the order of 1 to 500.

oh! sorry! the hell with squirrles, I'm here for much more serious things, (let it go man!...)

Stay tuned!

French Fever

Remember the Blog Fever that ran through the iranian youth a few years ago and everybody eventually started to write a weblog and started whining about the world? wll, it seems that something similar is happening in France. While I was there I kept writing my blog but I didn't hear anybody talk about blogs. Now in here I see my new friends from France have started to write weblogs and they do a much better job in writing about every detail and taking pictures to show what they write about. I just wish you knew French to understand what Nicco and Alice and others have written. I don't have all the blog addresses yet but I'll try to get them and put them here. I might even start writing my own french blog soon if I find the courage. It's been in my mind for a while but I didn't think I could write it without so many errors. But now, despite that, I might reconsider and start writing my fourth blog. We'll see!

One week before the unleashing of hell

Life has started. Two days ago I finally found a place in an apartment where two other bedrooms are already occupied by some other guys that seem a little weird but I hope (I just sincerely hope) that nothing serious comes up in the following year. It's a bit far from campus but it is a nice place, except the buses which this morning I had to wait an hour and 15 minutes in order to get on a bus. That photo is the entrance to my place.

And then on last saturday with some very cool and friendly french exchange students I went sightseeing in Washington. Additional photos are in Flickr.
And life begins...



I'll have a hell of a difficult job this semester with 20 hours of Reseach Assistanship and preparing for the Candidacy exam by the end of this semester in one of the most horrible areas of electrical engineering(advanced electromagnetics) I just don't know what awaits me in the coming months.

Here fromPenn State

It is now more than a week that I'm in the States. I spent four days with my family in Istanbul before coming here which was a very enjoyable and beautiful trip. Then on friday, August 18th I flied directly to New York which took almost 11 hours. Surprisingly there was an Iranian in my right seat whom I had a mutual friend with and in my left seat there was a turkish man living in US and as I knew enough to speak both languages,persian and turkish I didn't have a hard time keeping my self busy. Then I spent three days in New York with a childhood friend of mine, Rasta and fortunately he had enough time to show me around which was very helpful in seeing the city efficiently and I covered most of the places in Manhattan. And finally last monday, I went on a bus trip to come to State College in Pennsylvania where I'll be living for the coming four years.
I've found quite some friends in here, including a very cool guy from Sharif University, Tehran in the same year I was, a classmate from the same days in Sharif, a cool group of exchange students from France and a few very friendly Indian students. So I guess other than having to study hard I won't have a hard time starting the life here. The only thing which remains to be solved is a place to live! As it seems, most(almost all) of the places in town are full and even finding a roommate doesn't seem as easy as it seems.
So stay tuned for more news from State College,Pennsylvania. I'll also try to put some photos in here or in my flickr account as soon as I can.

good bye my love, GOOD BYE...

Behind and Beyond

I'm leaving Toulouse and France in 2 days. To be honest I didn't have any hard feeling about leaving but that had to wait just a few minutes while I took a look at the photos I have taken of here. Specially other than the people which we meet everywhere what I'm going to miss the most is Canal du Midi. This canal in my opinion is the most beautiful and characterizig thing in here.
Other than this sudden feeling of sadness I don't have any regrets. I have achieved everything I came looking for. First of all, I found a meaning and direction for my life, a thing that I had lost while I was in Iran. Also, in the period of these two years that passed I got two master degrees. and most importantly I traveled a lot. I saw some limited parts of a beautiful country called France. I did a tour around Europe which I always wanted to do, visited Munich, Salzburg, Viena, Budapest and the most beautiful cities of Italy and Spain. I visited twise Norway and payed a short rapid visit to Belgium and Netherlands. I found some good friends from around the globe and also found a more global view of what the humanity is all about. One of my future tasks which I want to seriously work on will be to spread this view to reduce even just a little this ever increasing hatred going on in the world.
I'm going to visit my family for the first time in two years and after that will go to begin a new life and a new adventure in US. So what new may come...

What is he doing

What is he doing? What will he be able to gain possibly with everybody in the regime ignoring him? What is Khatami thinking when he says he won't help him? What is going on? Somebody please tell me. We don't want a Bobby Sands in Iran! I doubt his death would change anything if not worsen it.

I wrote the above lines quite a long time ago. It was when Khatami, without naming Ganji, said "This man himself should help himself". It was very depressing to hear these words. It was sort of like the last bullet to the body of the dying reformist movement at the time. Now we have a new president with very radical ideas and a country we have no idea where it is heading to. In my recent trip around Europe I met a lot of people and almost in all the cases our conversation ended up me explaining the political situation of Iran to them and in a few cases defending Khatami with all my heart. Looking overall he really brought a lot of good changes to our lives. There will pass a lot of years until we fully realize his services to this country.
And adding to all of this, I have to note that now with Iran being in such a critical situation Ganji is also out of prison at last and is beside his family after spending those dangerous days in prison with his life in danger because of the hunger strike.

Europe Tour

Hi! I came back from a relatively long trip three days ago. I did an almost one month, 27 days, travel around Europe. It was everything I would have imagined it to be. It was not only a great experience to see all those places that I just had heard of them and be in the most beautiful places but I met a lot of new interesting people and I surely learned a lot.
I'll write my travel notes in my Persian blog but meanwhile I'll try to put a brief description of every step of my trip. But to give you a general idea I'll just tell you where I went now. As you know I live in south of France in a city called Toulouse. It was going to be our graduation ceremony at the end of March in Paris. So I thought why not seize this chance and continue to see other places as well. I took a back pack and after Paris started by visiting "Mont St Michel" and the region of Normandie in north of France. Then I continued to Munich, Salzburg, Vienna, and Budapest. I came back to Vienna and from there continued to Venice, Florence, Pisa, Siena, Rome and Naples. After that it was almost finished so I returned to Nice and visited Monaco and Cannes for a few days before returning to Toulouse. And now here I am.
I have also taken some 3000 photos from which I have selected 600 of them and I'll try to put them gradually on Flickr with adding some notes to some of them if I can find of course enough time to do all this.
There is another strange thing I notices after coming back to Toulouse and that was concerning my English blog. For some unknown reasons there have been some 400 viewers in a period of just a fez days in the last of March. I don't know why but it felt good and encouraging to write regularly again.
So until tomorrow or a few days later.

Penn

I wanted to write a post yesterday and explain that life doesn't seem as bad as it seemed in my previous post about fears. Actually I didn't mean to sound that way at all. I just wanted to express some of my worries in my life beside knowing the fact that I have to fight them and this is what life is. What would life be without occasional or even daily problems to solve? But these were all before this afternoon when I finally got a letter from an admission office actually starting with a "congratulations"! And life seems much brighter now! Actually to be honest, despite all the fun I had in these last days I was getting a little lost and frustrated again and I was worried I might have lost the way. It is not all clear yet but there sure is a lot of energy and hope now. And who knows, these texts might soon come from United States instead of France.

Cassini-Huygens

Yesterday evening was one of the greatest evenings I had in a while. It was an evening with the three project managers of the space satellite Cassini-Huygens which was sent to explore Saturn and Titan, its biggest moon and the only moon in the solar system possessing an atmosphere around it. Let me start with the only downside of it. It was the fact that the host was kept calling them the first men on Titan, and at one point actually comparing them with Buzz, Neil, and Edwin. Hearing it for the first time was kind of amusing but when he felt like having fun with what he had come up he used it in his every line during the last ten minutes of the program which was certainly annoying- and for everybody!
The presentation was titled "The Cassini-Huygens: One year later". It was presented in French and in "Cite de l'Espace" (Toulouse's Space Museum) and it was organized also by ESA. The three top engineers of the project presented the mission in turns and with really interesting details and then came the best part. We went to the planetarium and started watching a half an hour exclusive movie about Saturn and its moons. It was so great and amazing, at the moment I wished the time would stand still or the thing that was going on would go forever. It was like being in a dream. I know this seems too much but I can't explain it. Although I was in the same place two weeks ago and watching another amazing show of the stars but this was something extraordinary, giving you the feeling that you are floating and flying in the sky going anywhere you like and stopping by the beautiful planet and its moons to admire their beauties.

Islam vs. Secularism?

Robert Fisk: "Those Danish Cartoons, Don't Be Fooled This Isn't an Issue of Islam versus Secularism"

God's open letter to Iraninans

From Shahrzad's persian blog :

Honestly, I'm sick and tired of listening to you people whine. You fail to recognize how busy I am. I put in 24-hour days, every fickle day. I have to oversee the operation of all existence. I have to manage the relationship between time and space. I am busy maintaining solar systems, black holes, comets, asteroids, planets, the milky-way, blah blah blah...It's not bad enough that I have to prevent your shitty little planet from smashing into Neptune or getting sucked into the sun, I have to constantly listen to you people bitch.

What do you want from me? What else could I possibly give you Iranians?

I picked the best prime real estate on Earth and handed it to you. I gave you beautiful vacation spots in the north of the country, magnificent mountains in the west, an exquisite desert in the east and a perfect passage to oceans in the south. I gave you ravishing lands, clean air,
lushes trees, fruitful soil, and roaring rivers. I gave you riches that were the envy of humanity. I gave you resources others would kill for.
What did you do with it? Nothing. You sat on your lazy asses and let it all go down the drain. I put an ocean of oil underneath you to power the world. But you people were so inarticulate, you didn't even appreciate it.
Others came and plundered it. I made you smart, creative, and innovative. Did you ever use your brains? Hell no! You just let it all go to waste. And those among you who did use your brains were immediately shunned or eliminated by your own compatriots. You bought used, wasted, consumed, purchased, drained, exhausted natural resources and contributed nothing in return. While I watched other nations create, invent, change, produce, discover, contrive, you people went through life clueless. Oh, and another thing: I'm tired of listening to you people blame all your deficiencies on other nations. They took your oil? Tough shit-- you didn't deserve it.
They took your lands? Big deal-- what good did you do with it anyway? They stole your resources? Oooh, it breaks my heart. I have had my eyes on you in last 3000 years and I have not seen people as lazy, cunning, lying, cheating, and ass kissing as you. You're most unkind to your own kind. You always chose the easy way out, minimum pain, maximum gain. What did you do with those brilliant poets, artists, scientists, thinkers, and savants who appeared among you? You managed to push them under the water to avoid feeling inadequate. Well, this might come as a shock to you, but it doesn't work like that. You see, I created humans to be productive not to
sit around and watch life go by. Others achieved, you didn't. End of story. So from the Office of the Chairman of the Board of Existence to the citizens of Iran, read my lips: Please quit whining. I have a universe to run and there is nothing else I can do for you.

Ciao baby!
Your creator,
G. Al Mighty
God@Heaven.org

Sum of all fears

An unexpected fear has slept under my skin these days. I don't know what to do about it and I try to run from it. It is not very serious but I fear that this fear might grow. Each of the things that add to my fear separately is nothing but to have the burden of all of them in my shoulders might become unbearable in the coming days unless I can find a way out of at least one of them.
My scholarship has ended last month and despite my hopes I found out yesterday that they might not renew it. I don't want to talk about it with my family whom I have already got a lot of help from. That leaves me in a very hard position. I have to try and find a PhD proposition with funding very soon and very fast, otherwise my stay in France, my possible admission from US and my future studies and even my sister's whom I try to find an admission for in France are all under serious doubt. These are all parts of my fears. My visa expires at the end of February and although I am registered in the university I have to show them that I have financial support, if not I have to return to Iran and kiss everything goodbye, probably even my future and start a daily sad life in a country with a very unpredictable future and very limited freedoms.
Right now, the only thing I can do is to write my fears to calm myself down a little bit and then start thinking my way out of the options I have which are quite a few but very unclear choices. If I only knew about the possibility of my admissions in US that would have helped but I only sent four admission requests (I gave up USC in the last minutes) and to be honest, I don't think the probability would be high.
I have some other fears as well but I am not sure if I can express them all in here. For example my studies in "Research Master"(a special program in French which is considered to be the first year of PhD studies in France) which I don't know where it is heading. The other fears are more personal (actually the previous ones were personal too) but the most impersonal fear of all is the fear of what my country is heading to. The future is under a very dark cloud and nothing less than a miracle can clear it.
At last, as usual I have hope and I know that this will pass too. Everything will eventually become what I wanted and what I was destined to and of course that requires my hardest efforts. This is life! What is it without ups and downs and the barriers in the way? A meaningless experience, isn't it?

Just when you think

Just when you think there is at least somebody among the powerful countries of the world- or poor countries if we come to that-who can think and act reasonably and be a leader in the world, well, a simple thing happens to remind you that you are still living among human societies that haven't learned much in the last 10000 years or so and don't have much difference with their ancestors in dealing with their enemies.
Have you read what just Jacque Chirac has said about confronting with terrorist supporting countries? Now at least we are not the only nation in the world who our president would speak nonsense and threaten other countries. Bravo monsieur Chirac!

Carole

I am hearing the news of the protests and violence in 'Cote d'Ivoire' and I am a bit worried. When something happens in a country where you hardly know anything about it, that is just news but when you know someone there, it becomes a real issue. A danger that you actually can feel it and it turns into a personal thing. During my summer job in a company in here I had a colleague who was a student from 'Cote d'Ivoire'. Her name was Carole. I think I once wrote about this but anyway, now that things are getting worse in her country it is worth mentioning. It was just in the middle of her summer internship when she suddenly quit without saying anything to anyone and we didn't hear from her until two weeks later, when she sent a letter to one of her friends saying that her father wanted to get into politics and participate in the parliamentary elections and she had to go back and stop him from doing that. At the time I thought her actions were a bit exaggerated, a little like the things we see in movies but now, with all this I suddenly feel how she had felt and it becomes real.

La ville Louvre

I'm just watching a documentary film about Louvre museum called "La ville Louvre" meaning the City of Louvre. It is about the museum when it is closed to public during those times that redecoration or preservation and restoration is being done inside museum. And because everything is done with human force and no machines are present sometimes I can't watch it because of the way they handle the paintings or statues in there! Sometimes it looks very frightening. And this film shows everything and after a while it feels as if you're watching the activities inside a city, an old city surrounded by city walls.

Agrin

I hadn't been able to write about the movie "Turtles can fly". The reason was neither because I didn't have enough time or that I didn't like the movie. It was because I was faced with an strong and horrible reality that I have lived in a corner of it and have felt part of it. The city I was born and grew up in isn't far from the plots of this movie. In fact, it is located in one of the most beautiful but tragic places of the Earth, in a region where the border of three countries, Iran, Iraq and Turkey meet.
It was not until today, that I saw Roger Ebert has written a review about it and different scenes came to my mind, scenes which were so horrible I was trying to erase them off my mind. I still don't like much to talk about it. I just refer you to the film and to the review which Mr Ebert has written.

Crash

This Crash from what Roger Ebert has written about it seems quite an interesting movie, with a subject that occupies my mind from time to time as well. I'll have to try and find this movie.

CNN banned

Was it just a simple unintended mistake over an insignificant news or was it a very clever way of disturbing the news to achieve some other goals. Nobody might ever know but we can have some guesses. For example why should such an error occur in such a sensitive time and over such a delicate matter? And why should such a media like CNN make that mistake? Any way, sometimes some things aren't very easy to comprehend. This time, out of any feelings for my country or the government ruling over it, and considering only reason, I think they did the right thing in punishing CNN over this behavior.
Link to the English version of this news
Link to the French version

Bullshit!

In one of the tv shows of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, he invites an author as a guest. Keneth Timmerman, the author who has written a book "countdown to crisis: nuclear showdown with Iran" says about Iranians that "They've been killing Americans for 20 years" , then he continues and comments during his interview that
"They [the iranians] literally love us". Jon Stewart turns to him and asks "What about burning the flags?". He doesn’t actually answer that but all in all again this is a very good example of typicalizing foreigners (in this case Iranians) the way they like.
He tries to sound reasonable and tries to show his statements are well credited but what he claims he has done, interviewing some very informative people during past two years is unrealistic. I can strongly say that those Iranians who live in foreign countries and haven't live in Iran in any period during the past 9 years don't know shit about this country or its people even if they call themselves Iranians. Besides, even if those people say something about Iran and claim they have critical information, you have to doubt them. Because in the case of Iran you are dealing with a regime which even the very people inside it aren't sure about its aims and what it really tries to achieve by this weird diplomacy over the nuclear issue and Israel.
And the real bullshit is the claim made about the 9/11, that Iranian regime was behind it and participating in planning it with Alghaeda (the ironic thing is that they had made almost the very same claim about the Iraqi regime before the US invasion). There is nooooooooo way that such a thing would be possible and happen! Even if Iran is against US and planning to endanger its interests around the world, at the same time it is against Bin Laden in every way. Because it is not only US which are considered an enemy by him, but Shiite Muslims (the majority in Iran) are also considered to be traitors, unbelievers and heathens.

The other thing I like to write about if I find enough time is Sean Penn's view of Iran during his visit in Presidential elections which was published in San Francisco Chronicles. He might be an activist in these kinds of events but he is just a Hollywood actor and nothing more. I think his views of Iran which were very on surface (I don't know if there is any expression like this in English and I hope I could express what I had in mind) are nothing compared to the analysis which ordinary people of Iran make of the actions of their government and other governments of the world during their daily talking. But even they can't change anything with these talking. It seems that most of them have given up and waiting to see what happens next.

Being a better person

I feel this blog helps me to organize my thoughts, specially the very important thoughts about the whole cause of us being here which I rarely find enough time to think and concentrate about them. I think in a way this blog helps me to be a better person; The most important reason is that in a daily life we are so busy dealing with our relations with other people that we rarely find a proper time to sit and think of what we think about the world around us and where we are heading. Of course this has some drawbacks. The important drawback in my case is that I don't really think deep before I want to write something in here so some writings may seem unthoughtful or raw. I try to avoid these kinds of writings but clearly it is unavoidable.

Axis of Evil

It appears to me that the major problem we have to deal with is having the concept of Good and Evil and spreading this concept to every human being on earth and dividing them in only these two categories. I hope I don't offend the beliefs of anyone when I say that I believe this is a deviation made in the true nature of Christianity by the Catholic Church. But of course, the whole idea goes back to a much earlier time and the initial religious ideas of the early civilizations especially in India and China. It was in those lands where the starting human civilizations came up with the idea of two opposite poles and everything made of two poles. Sometimes the reality might be simplified applying these concepts but in the overall case this is not a good way of dealing with truth. The truth is always a tricky business and it can't be handled one sided. I wish (probably a very vain wish) the humans would become more understanding of one another.