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.