Blindness

I usually don’t read fiction. I think I just don’t know how to appreciate it. Whenever I pick up a book of fiction, I just want to know what happens next and how it all ends. I ignore all the power of imagination that the writer has put into developing characters, details of events, and how the characters interact and think, etc. That is the beauty of the fiction and I just zoom through all that. So, when a good friend of mine suggested reading “Blindness”, a book by Jose Saramago, the 1998 Noble prize winner in literature, I kind of reluctantly picked it up, but was immediately drawn into it.

Saramago’s writing in this book has a unique style. All the characters’ conversations, thoughts, events, the writer’s own commentary, are all strung together in sentences, that flow like a stream, but so powerful and so clear that the reader feels caught up in the middle of it all. It makes the reader hear what the characters are saying and thinking, and experience the events with them.

The plot is also quite unique and strange. A contagious illness of sudden blindness spreads through the population quickly. This sudden disaster gives such a shock to the society that the normalcy of life goes away and everything starts to fall apart. Order is replaced by chaos, and the society goes toward a complete breakdown and disintegration. The survival instinct brings out the worst in the human beings, but in the middle of all the darkness and turmoil, you can still see traces of human sprit prevail, that which makes us different from instinct driven animals.

I highly recommend this book.

Happy New Year

First day of spring is the Iranian New Year, Norooz. I wish this year is a year of Peace for everyone. To learn more about the history of Norooz and the customs around this occasion, read this article.

Global Domination

Military domination and Economic domination two sides of the same coin

Apostasy

According to the lawyer for Mojtaba Sami’nejad, a jailed Iranian blogger, Mojtaba is charged with Apostasy, a charge that carries a death sentence under the religious law in Iran, a law that reminds us of the terror of Inquisitions of centuries ago, and should have no place in 21st century.

Although in Koran, there is a direct statement that says there is no compulsion in accepting the religion, it has not prevented the religious authorities to create strange and contradictory laws regarding Apostasy. They call for a death sentence for a man, and a life sentence for a woman if convicted of Apostasy. Their strange law also prevents those born or raised in Muslim families to "repent" to avoid the harsh sentence.

Unfortunately, U.S. government’s involvement in protesting against human right abuses such as this one is self serving and is done not for the sake of human rights, but to further the Bush Administration’s agenda of total domination over Middle-East and its Black Gold of oil, and it usually has an opposite effect. But the protest of international community, including U.S. citizens and non-governmental organizations can have a positive effect in preventing Islamic regime in Iran impose harsh sentences on Iranian dissidents and prisoners of conscience such as Mojtaba Sami’nejad.

Please help publicize this case in any way you can. There is also this report from International Pen organization with more detail about this case and other similar cases. You can also sign this internet petition to protest against this human right abuse in Iran.

Disinformation

In the world of espionage, two obvious tasks are spying on other side and keeping the other side from spying; but there is a third task: feeding wrong information to the opponent to deceive him. For this task to be effective the messenger must be credible, like the spies of the other side themselves are recruited to feed back wrong information. British intelligence service claimed it had every German spy on its payroll during WWII for this purpose.

So, in the age of information, it must come as no surprise that these old techniques of the espionage world are now practiced in the governments of so-called modern democracies as a way of control. A little after the September 11th terrorist attack, it came out that U.S. military was planting disinformation in the mainstream news media in the forms of legitimate news items as part of their so-called war on terrorism, the Office of Strategic Influence (OSI) it was called. There was some grumbling among journalists that their integrity was compromised, OSI officially closed down, but its practices were generally justified as a necessity of war and as another legitimate weapon for defeating the enemy, the weapon of deception.

But now it is becoming more and more apparent, that these practices of disinformation are getting a more wide-spread use. From the paid commentators that pushed Bush’s agenda in the public opinions, to now these Public-Relation video segments produced by U.S. government disguised as news items and presented by media as real news.

In the societies that want to keep the appearance of freedom of press and democracy, there is only one way to make the interest of few appear as the interest of many, and that is to manufacture the public opinion by bending the truth, distorting it, and creating an alternate reality for the millions of their captive audience. In the age of information, news media has become the “trusting” double agents feeding the unsuspecting side, the people, disinformation.

A Letter from George

Dear Concerned Iranian,

I know you expect me to ease your concerns and tell you that I will exhaust all diplomatic options and all those nice things, but no, I am going to be honest with you here.

When God called on me to be the president of the most powerful nation on earth, he wanted me to fulfill His mission, to defeat the wicked ones, the evil, by my sword. As my bible says: (Job 27:7,14) "May my enemies be like the wicked, my adversaries like the unjust!... However many his children, their fate is the sword; his offspring will never have enough to eat.”

You may not understand, but ask your Ayatollahs, they’d understand. We think alike, the Ayatollahs and I. But, my God has granted me bigger guns.

I know you might have heard me talk about freedom and democracy, but let me tell you what this is really all about. Oil is a creation of almighty, stored under the earth for His children, His chosen ones, to take. Who made you the sole heir to this God-given, precious, sweet smelling, velvety black gold of power and wealth? (Oh, how my mouth waters just thinking about it).

I used to run an Oil business, so I know something about it (Some say my business was a failure, but I beg to differ, if it was such a failure, how come I made a heck of a lot of money from it?). We will do anything for Oil. Look at history, look what we did to Mosadeq, look how we carved up Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and what we are doing to Iraq. See what we tried to do to Venezuela (Chavez thinks he got away, but his time will come soon enough). What do you think makes you so special?

Learn from Saudis. They may not have freedom or democracy, but see how they embraced our corporations and our military. Some of my best friends are members of Saudi royal family. They are good loyal friends, I say jump and they say how high. My family has done lots of business with them.

My intelligence people tell me that if you have any nukiller weapons program, you are probably still years away from making the bomb, but that’s not the point. Saddam didn’t have nukiller weapons, but we invaded Iraq anyway, and Israel has lots of them, but do you see me invading Israel? So, I told Rummy to cook me some intelligence and bring me battle plans (I love this guy so much, it makes Laura jealous sometimes).

Let me sum it up. Make no mistake about it, you either belong to us or you are against us (that’s what I wanted to say in my axis-of-evil speech, but those goddamn speechwriters edit every sentence I write).

You may not have liked what I told you, but I am a straight talking Texan (I was actually born in Connecticut, but was “born again” in Texas). I told you as it is, and I know I am right, as my bible says: (Job 27:6 ) I will maintain my righteousness and never let go of it; my conscience will not reproach me as long as I live.

Sincerely,
George

Universal Values

Once in a while, I come across westerners who express their horror at the state of human rights in Iran or in Middle-East in general, and then proceed to give me a speech on the values of western democracy and way of life and how we should save these societies, etc. The well-meaning ones, of course, advocate peaceful ways, and others with you-are-with-us-or-against-us mentality have more aggressive options in mind.

My reaction is usually along the lines of pointing out the miseries that the west has inflicted on the world and how it threatens the survival of our planet to show that the western way of life does not define progress. Every society should be free to make their own choices and charter their own way for progress.

This response, in the context of responding to a condescending view of a westerner with a superiority complex, makes sense. But I always feel that there is a danger of falling into the trap of cultural relativism and such. There are some fundamental and universal values according to which we can define progress, and the fact is that the Middle-Eastern societies as well as many so-called western democracies do not adhere to these values. In the western societies, maximizing profit at all cost is the dominant value, and everyone is “free” to participate in “the game”; although, by design and with few exceptions, there is a guarantee that only the privileged few will succeed in benefiting from it at the expense of the rest. Whoever does not want to “freely” participate, of course, is forced to “freely” participate!

In the eastern societies, a set of values rooted in religion and old traditions and cultures which enforces some kind of hierarchical order at the expense of freedom of thought and expression, is the dominant set of values. It also benefits the privileged few, but perhaps with a different slant.

While the dominance of western culture of greed must be opposed if we want to have a chance to survive, we ought not to give legitimacy to the despotism rooted in our eastern cultures either, just because they appear to stand up against the aggression of the west. The enemy of our enemy is not necessarily our friend. So, it is important to recognize the universality of human rights as spelled out in the universal declaration of human rights, whether it is perceived as a western idea or not, or whether it is abused by western rulers to justify their aggression. Of course, the perception of Human Rights as a western invention is problematic, as many of the ideas are indeed rooted in the eastern culture and history, but regardless of its origin, it just needs to be highlighted and promoted to become the dominant way of life everywhere, now.

After all, it was the Persian Poet Sa’di (from my hometown of Shiraz :)) who wrote these words about 700 years ago:

Humans are limbs of the same body,
Created of the same essence.

If calamity of time inflicts pain in one,
Others will not remain at rest.

If you have no sympathy for suffering of others,
You don’t deserve to be called human.

(- Golestan-e Sa’di, Richard Francis Burton Translation, with slight modification)

Harboring Terrorists

It is interesting to see how the story about the capture of Saddam Hussein’s half brother reported and changed over the past few days.

First it was reported by AP that Iraqi security forces captured him, then a U.S. military spokesman said that he was captured and will be turned over to Iraqi government without saying who captured him. Then AP reports again that it was the Syrians who captured him and handed him over to Iraqi forces, but not just that, the news is qualified with this statement : “… ending months of Syrian denials that it was harboring fugitives from the ousted Saddam regime..” suggesting that Syrians were protecting him and suddenly decided to hand him over. Are there any evidence of Syrians harboring Iraqi fugitives? None is given in any of these reports nor in the follow up reports by Washington Post and San Jose Mercury news, etc, but the same line is repeated in all of these reports.

This is perhaps a small example of how press works here, insinuations and suggestions without hard evidence. This is of course nothing new and by now we must be all too familiar with it. It wasn’t too long ago that Dick Chaney threw around accusations that the September 11th terrorists met with Iraq’s intelligence service, something that was widely talked about in press, talk shows, political analysis, etc. It was later completely refuted, but hardly reported by then. It is the same type of accusations we see Rumsfeld sometimes throws around about Iran harboring Al-Qa’edeh terrorists, the sort of accusation that sticks in the mind of American public as truth and will come handy later when the drums of war start beating louder.

Of course, Iran is harboring terrorists, but not the kind of terrorist that U.S. government is interested in. Iran is harboring assassins and torturers of Iranian dissidents, those terrorist who killed many Iranian writers, thinkers, political activists in Iran and abroad, those who have terrorized the whole nation of Iran for many years. But U.S. government itself is harboring those kinds of terrorists such as members of South and Central American death squads who are living comfortably in Florida, or Texas, or elsewhere in the U.S (Of course, those used to be “our” vicious dogs who we unleashed on anyone and everyone whom we didn’t like. They are now retired in our living room couch. We don’t just throw them out to the dog pound). While many of these terrorists are still living in U.S. with the full knowledge of U.S. government, once in a while, the victims and human right organizations successfully make a case against one of them and force U.S. officials to take action and deport them. Do you see American press report on the deportation of any of these murderers as “ U.S. deported so and so ending years of U.S. denial that it was harboring fugitives from Central America…” ?

Oscar

Having two small children, the movies I have recently seen are mainly kid’s movies, “The Incredibles” and the like. So, I had no idea which movies were nominated for Oscars this year, or what they were about, and, aside from a short section at the end, I missed the Oscar’s ceremony on TV.

yesterday I heard an interview with the Oscar winner in the Documentary Film category, Zana Briski who had made the documentary about the children born in Brothels in Calcutta. The interview made me want to see the film which is about how much a little hope, a little love, a little attention can do to pull these kids out of the cycle of misery and despair that they are caught up in. How little money and resources it takes to make a huge difference in their lives.

It reminded me of a recent report I read about special schools that are created for child laborers in Iran. On a shoestring budget, a non governmental organization has created a school for kids who can not attend regular school because they are working during the day as manual laborers, peddlers, etc.

How many of these children could be pulled out of poverty with the billions of dollars spent on military and senseless wars? Will people come to realize that the idea that capitalism is the system of opportunities and you just need to be smart or hard-working to succeed, implying that the poor are either dumb or lazy, is a falsehood?

Stress and Meditation

A few days ago, I attended a one-hour seminar on how to manage stress. The seminar was sponsored by my employer, probably realizing that the employees were overworked and stressed out.

It turned out to be a sort of infomercial for a more rigorous stress management training course that the speaker and his company were offering; nevertheless, it did turn out to be interesting enough and did have few good pieces of information.

The seminar started with a mathematical formulation of stress, which interestingly simplifies the problem:

S = A – E

S = stress level,
A = amount of Activities one has to do
E = amount of Energy one has.

So, you can reduce your stress by either reducing your Activities or increasing your Energy level. Being an Employer sponsored event, of course, the focus was on increasing Energy and not reducing work. Aside from good eating habits and exercise, which are obvious ways of increasing energy, the focus of the seminar was on breathing and meditation. I always associated meditation with lower energy level and I thought I would need some level of stress to drive me finish whatever work I might be doing, so I listened with some level of skepticism. However, we did go through a 20min meditation session which for me, who really never have tried it before and it was sort of awkward to try in a large room full of people, did turn out to be a very good experience. I was surprised on how much this short meditation helped me focus my energy on what I was doing for the rest of the day and I did feel I had more energy. It reduced the noise of random thoughts and focused my mind, which according to the speaker, was the essence of creativity, to be in the present moment, here and now, without being distracted by the thoughts of past or future.

It sort of reminded me of a poem by Wallace Stevens, which I have recently come across, of all places, in a Persian weblog! I usually do not enjoy poems that are too symbolic or have complex metaphors, but in an attempt to translate it as an exercise in English to Farsi translation, I read an article about it which helped me understand it better, and I liked it. It is sort of related to this introspection and meditation state in which we can collect our mind and focus our thoughts. If you know Farsi, you can read my amateurish translation of it here.

"Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour". – Wallace Stevens

Light the first light of evening, as in a room
In which we rest and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.

This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
[Out] of all the indifferences, into one thing:

Within a single thing, a single shawl
Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,
A light, a power, the miraculous influence.

Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.

Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one...
How high that highest candle lights the dark.

Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.