"The Gaza Bombshell"

This is an older article about Hamas-PLO politics and the intriguing role of one Mohammad Dahlan. It's a fascinating read.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/04/gaza200804 


"After failing to anticipate Hamas’s victory over Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, the White House cooked up yet another scandalously covert and self-defeating Middle East debacle: part Iran-contra, part Bay of Pigs. With confidential documents, corroborated by outraged former and current U.S. officials, the author reveals how President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever."

Iraq is in flames, but at least we have Nancy Ajram

I saw a dream a few nights night so severe I actually gasped awake. I don't ever remember startling awake before. I dreamed of the Iraq invasion. I don't remember too many details but I do remember the blood flowing like rain, demons in the sands, and cannibals lurking in the urban desert. When I told my Iraqi friend of my dream, she reminded me that we were on the eve of the anniversary of Iraq war.

It is on the ninth anniversary of the Iraq invasion that the Arab people sit infatuated with videos of Nancy Ajram and the latest styles coming from Milan and Paris -- filling their quench for narcissism. For sure, this last year has been a phenomenal year of change and uprising as the conscious youths of the region rose up against corrupt dictatorships.

Yet, the forces of counterrevolution are much stronger than expected.

The Saudi monarchy poured in billions of dollars to stop the spread of revolution at all cost, sent it brigades of illiterate thugs to beat the Bahraini people and assist the Khalifa family in tearing down places of worship. They fear the piety of the Bahraini people and the power of Islam. They are in power not for the sake of Islam as they claim but because they lust for power and greed. The Saudi monarchy lies at the heart of many of the regions political problems. They are deceitful and utilitarian and have shamed the position of guardianship of the haramain.

The cries of the Syrian children are not forgotten either. The Baathist regime has little legitimacy based off of it's founding principles and its use of strong armed tactics to stay in power. Yet, the situation is not so clear cut and moral as many try to make it out to be. The presence of heavy foreign interference has changed the nature of the domestic demands of the people. Despite the legitimate requests of some of the disenfranchised Syrian people for more accountable government, the situation has escalated with significant armed opposition within the country undertaking severely brutal tactics. Of course, government forces have engaged in similar atrocities. Simply advocating for the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad will do nothing to help the future of Syria because it doesn't address the roots of nation building and identity. The project of nationalism is not an easy one to undertake and while getting rid of a one-party state is certainly a step in the right direction, that alone will not solve Syria's problems.

At the end of the day, these issues are moral ones. The counterrevolution is also in our hearts. Humanity is at war against itself because of the devil within. Desire, lust, greed and love of position and power blind the heart. We are human beings undergoing a spiritual experience yet many are willing to risk our moral standing before God in order to feel materially secure. There are real concerns here and people are not acting irrationally, yet, this is a foolish decision. In the end, how long does one expect to stay alive to benefit from ill gain?

All Silk Roads Lead to Tehran - By Neil Padukone | Foreign Policy

All Silk Roads Lead to Tehran - By Neil Padukone | Foreign Policy

"Washington needs to decide how many more terrorists must be bred, and troops, dollars, lives, and years expended along the Durand Line to keep validating this perception. As Brazil, Turkey, India, China, and the rest of the world work to capitalize on Iran's undeniable potential, it would serve the United States well to follow their lead."

I like Ron Paul

I like Dr. Paul because he stands for some of the best aspects of the American intellectual legacy: freedom, liberty, autonomy, and prosperity. He may be a bit ideologically pure, but I'd much rather have Ron Paul running the country than any other of the candidates in the field. Our civil liberties are under grave threat and our country is being marshaled by humongous bureaucratic leviathans that take on a life of their own, beholden not to what is always best for America as a whole -- which is best determined mostly at a local level -- but is captive to the moneyed interests which are masterful at manipulation and extorting rent from the American tax payers.

Santorum is batshit crazy if he believes the ridiculous things he is saying. Or maybe he just likes the lines certain interest groups [Israeli lobby] give him to mislead the American public. 

Great interview on Jay Leno:

Ahmadinejad in Latin America (repost)

This is an article from Juan Cole's excellent blog, Informed Comment

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has begun a four-nation tour in Latin America that will include Nicaragua, Cuba, Venezuela and Ecuador.

In part, the trip is for propaganda purposes. With the European Union joining in an Israeli-inspired US boycott of Iran’s Central Bank, which in essence translates into a boycott of buying Iranian petroleum, Tehran is desperate to underline that it still has friends in the world. Most of these are in Asia, but Latin America still does have regimes that will defy the US attempt to isolate Iran.

In one sense, these are not important countries geopolitically or economically. But an embargo strategy of the sort that the US is pursuing depends heavily on there being no significant leaks.

Venezuela has $4 billion worth of joint projects with Iran. (This article stresses a military dimension, with Revolutionary guards posted to the Iranian embassy in Caracas and a comparison to Soviet policies in Latin America, which led to the Cuban missile crisis. I see these Iranian moves more as an aid to espionage than being military in character.) Venezuela is also significant because in 2009 it established a joint bank with Iran, which allows Iranian financial institutions to interface with other banks via Caracas. Some in the Israel lobbies in the US Congress have urged financial sanctions on Venezuela in order to close this loophole. But that step would make it difficult for the US to pay for Venezuelan petroleum, a significant source of America’s oil imports.

As it is, the US Government won’t accept contracts from the Venezuela state petroleum company because the latter helps Iran with gasoline production. I doubt the US government itself did much business with the company so it sounds to me like another symbolic sanction.

The US just expelled the Venezuelan consul in Miami over a Univision investigative report alleging a Cuban-Venezuelan-Iranian plot to hack US nuclear facilities. (Note to the Cuba and Israel lobbies: This story is not very plausible and you wouldn’t want one of its members to be in the US — hackers can be anywhere and like anonymity.)

Iran has sought similar banking cooperation with Ecuador, and has more than 30 economic projects planned there, including building power plants. In 2008, Ecuador’s national bank concluded an agreement with Iran’s central bank and extended it a $120 mn US credit line. Ecuadoran businessmen are afraid that the US sanctions regime will be extended to Ecuador as a result.

Forcing the US and the Europeans to try to close off banking ties not just with Iran but with a large number of countries in order to cut down on leakage makes the boycott policy increasingly unwieldy and unworkable. China, Russia, and Turkey are much more important in this regard, but for Iran, the more friends it has the better.

Iranian trade with Latin America has also expanded significantly, though it is hard to quantify its importance and many memoranda of understanding remain on paper. It has offered Nicaragua a $230 million loan to build a hydroelectric plant, and the Iranian ambassador in Managua says this trip will much expand such projects.

Finally, Iran is wooing Latin America diplomatically because it wants to thwart possible US moves against it at the UN General Assembly, where a global south solidarity against Northern power is often an important dynamic.

Iran is also very much aware that the US views Latin America as its sphere of influence, and so there is a certain amount of taunting involved in this diplomatic and economic push.
Some have read a lot into the absence of Brazil on Ahmadinejad’s itinerary. I am not sure an absence can be seen as firm evidence. You would want to look at bilateral trade and especially financial relations, and at how Brazil votes at the UN. I doubt Brasilia much likes the idea of a US-Europe financial and energy boycott of a country of the global South.

This analyst from Colombia argues that Brazil has correct but not warm relations with Iran. It has not signed on to any big joint projects, unlike Venezuela and Ecuador. President Dilma Roussef is clearly not as eager to support Iran as her predecessor, Lula, had been. In part, she has moved closer to Argentina, which has bad relations with Tehran because it blames Iran for the bombing of a synagogue in the early 1990s. Some Brazilian intellectuals nevertheless argue that Brazil could play an important role in Iran diplomacy, given its own history of developing and then abandoning a nuclear program, and given its closeness to Russia, India, China & South Africa (the BRICS), which reject the US approach of harsh sanctions and boycotts.
In any case, a combination of anti-imperialism, a desire for independence from the US, and Iran’s oil wealth is giving Tehran a continued opening in parts of Latin America.

هویت ساخته شده در قرن جدید

هویت چیز عجیبیست. ما انسانها  در خیلی از موارد هویت را بدون سوال قبول میکنیم. خودمون را ایرانی، دانشجو، یا فعال سیاسی  مینامیم  اما باید پرسید: این پدیده هویت  چیست و ماهیت آن چیست ؟ 

 به نظر من هویت به شرایط محیط وابسته است. ساموئل هانتینگتون در کتابش «ما کی هستیم؟*» مثال جالبی میزند: 

“Identities are defined by the self but they are the product of the interaction between the self and others. How others perceive an individual or group affects the self-definition of that individual or group...

A female psychologist, it has been argued, in the company of a dozen male psychologists will think of herself as a woman; in the company of a dozen women who are not psychologists, she will think of herself as a psychologist”

هانتینگتون ادامه میدهد که هویت فردی غالبا ساخته خود بشر است و انسانها هم ابعاد مربوط به هویت را میتوان تغیر دهند بغیر از سن خود که تغیر ناپذیر است. 

یک بخش مهم هویت متعلق به ملیت است... اما همیشه این طور نبوده. ۵۰۰ سال پیش آنهای که در درون مرز کشور عراق امروزه زندگی میکردن خدشان را «عراقی» به معنای امروزه نمیدانستن بلکه عرب یا جزء قبیله میدانستن. 

دلیل این است که هویت گروهی مربوط به شرایط اجتماعی است؛ وقتی شرایط جامعه تغیر پیدا کند، آن تعریف قبلی هویت گروهی معنی اش را از دست میدهد. در عراق، به مرور زمان، تابعیت  قبایل ازرش و استفاده اجتماعی خود را از دست داد: جامعه مدرنی که بر اساس شهرنشینی شکل گرفت دیگر جایمطلوبی نبود  برای طریق زندگی  کردن قبیله ای.

مردم که وقتی داخل شهر زندگی کنن و همه نیازهای مادیشان را بتوانن در داخل شهربهش برسند، هیچ دلیلی نمیماند که خودشان را به یک قبیله وابسته کنن  که بر طبق سیستم روستای یا چادر نشینی  عمل میکند. 

پس تعریف هویت یک گروه تنها وابسته به هویت فردی عضو آن گروه نیست. 

سوال اصلی من این است که چگونه تغییرات بعدی هویت در ایرانیان شکل میگیرد... و چرا؟  ما در یک عصر «جهانی شدن» یا (گلوبیلیزیشن) قرار گرفتیم... این چگونه ارزشهای مردانمان را تغیر میدهد؟ مثلا کسی قائل است که ماهواره تاثیر فرهنگی در جامعه ایران نداشته؟ این جز یک مثال کوچیکی است.  

من پیرامون این سوال یک فکرهای کردم، اما کنجکاوم  که شماها چی فکر میکنید؟

-----------------

این مقاله در واقع اولین پستی هست که پیرامون یک موضوع مهم به زبان فارسی مینویسم، امیدوارم خوانندگان گرامی این بلاگ هم مشکلات فراوان فارسی من انتقاد کنن و هم به موضوع اصلی این بلاگ نظر بدن :)

*"Who Are We"

The Quran as a Miracle

[Disclaimer: please don't accept what I say as a necessary representation of Islam, I'm simply writing down my observations as a regular Muslim curious about these topics. Those more learned than me should absolutely correct me if I make a mistake]

We Muslims believe that the major prophets all had signs, or miracles. For Moses, one of these miracles was parting the sea; Jesus could cure the afflicted. For the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), the main miracle was the Quran. As I argue in this post, in my lay opinion, the fact that Allah's last Prophetic miracle was expressed in the form of written language signifies the importance of high culture, intellect, and deep spiritual understanding of religion as opposed to an acceptance of only the physical manifestations of God's supreme authority over this existence (although that is of course important as well).

As a nascent student of Arabic, reading the Quran and trying to dissect it's grammar is immensely beautiful and engaging. Even before I started studying the grammar, the English translations alone would consistently astonish me and speak directly to my being.

However, many people ask how it is possible for the Quran to be a miracle. Aren't miracles supposed to be impossible? I don't see lightening bolts jumping out from the pages. As a kid, I remember often pondering how something so seemingly simple as ink on paper was such a big deal? Why couldn't commanding thunder and winds, for example, as the Prophet Sulaiman had, been the Prophet Muhammad's miracle? Certainly, then, all would believe -- they could see the power of God.

While I am nowhere NEAR an expert or scholar of Islam, my opinion is that physical miracles such as parting the sea, while certainly astonishing, appeal only to a very limited conception of God's authority and power. Physical miracles, like all miracles of God, are meant for those who can actually grasp the magnitude and message of what is happening. Their hearts must be open, not stubborn and closed to the idea of being convinced of God's signs. Indeed, God often talks about how he showed miracles to unbelieving people -- at their own request and challenge -- and how even after that miracle had occurred, the people would make up an excuse, explicitly reject what literally happened before their eyes and carry on with their lives.

As this Quaranic story illustrates about the people whom the Prophet Saleh was delivering God's message:

They demanded that Saleh prove that the One God he spoke of was truly mighty and strong.  They asked him to perform a miracle – to cause a unique and incomparable she camel to emerge from the nearby mountains.  Saleh addressed his people asking, if the camel appeared would they then believe in his message.  They answered a resounding yes, and together the people prayed with Saleh for the miracle to occur.

By the grace of God, an enormous, ten month pregnant she camel emerged from the rocks at the bottom of the mountain.  Some of the people understood the magnitude of this miracle but the majority continued to disbelieve.  They saw a great and dazzling sight yet remained arrogant and stubborn. 

Allah repeatedly states in the Quran that his message (and miracles) can only be understood by those who have the  capacity (not only intellectually, but spiritually and mentally, etc. as well) to grasp the significance of the signs of God.

So, why, then is the last Prophetic miracle the Quran? As I see it, at the point in time when the Quran was revealed, mankind had transcended the point in their development where physical miracles alone could provide proof of God's existence. The Quran appeals to the highest faculties of man's mind; the Quran is made for all times and all people... it is God's message directly addressed to his believers of all levels. The Quran is a miracle because it is God's untarnished message directly revealed for all humanity -- it is, in short, a sign of Allah.

It seems to me that Allah, by revealing the Quran, is encouraging us to believe by reading and examining the eternal messages the Quran has to offer. The Quran is expressed in written form: it is the template of the Arabic language and the reason we Muslims hold the Arabic language in such high regard. The Quran is the epitome of written Arabic and lays down the fundamentals of grammar, syntax, and overall structure of the Arabic language.

Allah has provided us with a miracle/sign that is accessible for all who seek it -- rather than a physical act, such as parting the sea which is limited to a very small amount of people during a very short period of time.

Thus, the final miracle is also eternal -- a miracle we can attest to every day, the most accessible sign of God on earth.