Cold Time's Up!

Recently I heard the chorus of "Sar oomad zemestoon" (Cold Time's up!). I was really impressed. I suspected it had been an old work of Iranian left movement before revolution, I was not sure though. Last night I came across an article in gooya.com [persian] which'd reviewed the book "I AM A REBEL" of A. Samakar. Samakar says "...brought the song to me and I ordered him to distribute it..." Samakar, as reveals in the title of his book, has been a leftish activist in Shah's time. He had planned to assisinate Shah but was arrested before action.

Sar oomad zemestoon [Naghmeh.com]

I still don't know who made this song. If you have any idea give a comment please.

Shah: Iranian King. The revolution of 1979 overthrew the king (M. Pahlavi) and put an end to 2500 years of Iranian kingdom.

Neocons made the war

Ha'aretz, the liberal Israeli newspaper has a very interesting article about a Washington-based circle of neconservatives who put forward the doctrine of war against Iraq and pushed the administration into the battle:

"In the course of the past year, a new belief has emerged in the town: the belief in war against Iraq. That ardent faith was disseminated by a small group of 25 or 30 neoconservatives, almost all of them Jewish, almost all of them intellectuals (a partial list: Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, William Kristol, Eliot Abrams, Charles Krauthammer), people who are mutual friends and cultivate one another and are convinced that political ideas are a major driving force of history.

In other part of the article, Thomas Friedman is qouted:

"It's the war the neoconservatives marketed. Those people had an idea to sell when September 11 came, and they sold it. Oh boy, did they sell it. So this is not a war that the masses demanded. This is a war of an elite. Friedman laughs: I could give you the names of 25 people (all of whom are at this moment within a five-block radius of this office) who, if you had exiled them to a desert island a year and a half ago, the Iraq war would not have happened."

White Men's Burden [Ha'aretz]

If you read the article you may figure out that William Kristol is kind of central figure of necons working in The Weekly Strandard, the Washington-based right-wing magazine. Here is his brief bio. (read the side bars)

Liberation

My Clock

No, nothing is wrong with my computer's clock. I am really posting these junks almost in the morning. The fact is that I am far behind in my courses. I gotta stay up late to catch up. Simple! But even at 4a.m. I can’t help reading the news. A...nd I have promised to myself to write everyday (or every night).

Rayan was here with me up until 3 I think. For the first time, this evening, he suggested not going to gym. "He is really shocked" as April 26th (his MCAT) is getting close!

There are also rumors that we (me, Rayan and ??) are planning for a trip to California in May. (?? will be revealed soon)

CAN protests-April 5th

Campus Antiwar Network, a national network of tens of student organizations, has been organizing a nation-wide student-core protest in Chicago, Washington DC and Oakland (UC Berkeley) for April 5th. CAN's last massive protest took place on March 5th before war began.

Today, UICNOWAR met to discuss ongoing events and future activities. Attendees, mostly Americans, have comprehensive understanding of the current issues. Although antiwar atmosphere is quite visible through the conservative eyes of the UIC community, number of people attending the meeting is far from a considerable representative of the university. The more people are dependent to anything related to economic, public or political power, the less they dare to express themselves in public. It was just yesterday that MSNBC, NBC, and National Geographic fired Peter Arnett for his interview with Iraqi TV.

In today Iran, ardent reformists reply to conservatives, who claim there is "freedom of speech" in country, that "yes, there is freedom of speech but there is no freedom after speech!" Well, it is not fair to say that this fully applies to US, but what I see and what I hear from people is quite familiar. A fear of expressing yourself in public.

Diplomat

M. J. Zarif, Iranian ambassador to the United Nation, once again (last time, in Charlie Rose) is making the case against the ongoing war in the most articulate terms (Washington Journal- C-SPAN). Well, it is not hard to reason the falsehood of this war, yet his articulation is noteworthy.

He is, by any standard, a modern and capable politician. For more than 20 years, coupled with a non-presentable foreign policy, Iranians lacked professional politicians who could be influential in lobbies and public opinions in order to defend the minimal rights of their country. One might say that Iranian foreign policy did not care playing a role in international community.

Since May 23, 97, however, with the election of president M. Khatami, who gave a new image to Iranian government in international community, foreign policy turned to consider the rule of the game in diplomacy. Appointment of Mr. Zarif to UN ambassador, I believe, is part of the new policy.

He arrived in the United States saying he would legitimatize lobbing. The statement was in line with the general theme of Mr. Khatami's foreign policy and his proposition of "dialogue among civilizations" and appeared to be a new tactical approach to resolving the long-existing conflict with US.