Good morning Iraq
Those who follow events of Iraq should really go watch (or re-watch, if they saw it long ago) the movie 'Good Morning Vietnam' . I couldn't help making links.
I love it when Robin Williams shouts into emptiness 'but we are here to help.' and when the director allows the young Viet Cong to speak for himself 'You are the enemy'.
None gets to prove the other one wrong.
I saw Apocalypse Now a while ago but it belonged to past. Didn't apply to anything in the present time. This one though have something to say about our times.

I changed my idea. He is so pathetic. If I ever get a 20 second chance to meet Khatami, I will spend it on a long deep sigh for him.I will probably shed a couple of tears for him as well.

Recently I have thought a lot about what I would do if I ever got a 20 seconds chance to talk to Khatami face to face. After reading this I am left with no more doubts.
If I ever get 20 seconds in private with Mr. "reformist" president of the Islamic republic of Iran I will slap him really hard on the face. That will take about 2 seconds. Then I will spend the remaining 18 seconds to watch his stupid mouth bleed.

LUFTHANSA IS MESSED UP AND CHEAP

First they didn't deliver one out of two baggages of M when she arrived in Dallas on 24 July. Then they made us call several places to find someone to listen to us. They gave us 3 different phone numbers and 3 different fax numbers, one of which did not even exist. Then they refused to pay M. liability for the necessary items that she had in her baggage and she now had to buy again. Then they made us fax the list of baggage contents with their estimated value 3 times to 2 different fax numbers.
Finally, a couple of days ago they sent us the letter announcing that the baggage could not be found accompanied by a check of $640.
Honestly the stuff in that baggage was worth at least four times this number. plus the were invaluable items in the baggage such as an old hand-woven table cloth (termeh) handed down to M from her great grandmother, our wedding candle sticks, and about 30 photos of M. from her childhood and teenage-hood (no negatives). They say this check has been written in compliance with IATA convention.
Why should the little guy like me or my wife feel lost in disputes like this? Why shouldn't the laws and conventions be written in a way that the big deal corporations who are responsible for the loss feel the pain?
I mean, what on earth I can do to get the big arrogant Lufthansa to listen to me?

Being TA is much better than being RA. I am switch back to being a TA (teaching assistant) 5 semesters of being RA (research assistant). It is a time consuming job specially when I have to supervise 5 lab sessions each week and grade lab reports for more than 80 people. In the meanwhile, I have to find time for my research work. Yet, I am happier than before. Unlike when I was RA, I get people to talk to and interact with, a few hours a week. It feels much better.

Notes in haste
1. South California is a beautiful place. I had visited Orange county and its vicinity before but this time we had so much fun together with M (my wife). In 10 days we visited Coronado Island (next to San Diego), Lass Vegas, and camped 3 nights in Yosemite national park, not to mention a few beaches and beach towns along the way from Anaheim to San Diego. I will post a couple of pictures as son as I develop them.

2. How could we travel with empty pockets is another story.

3. So many creasy and often stupid stuff have happened recently. How dare white house to expect help from the UN. Worse of all, did you here that the republicans in the congress are planning to force the White House to make sure every investment for rebuilding Iraq comes from either Iraqi oil or international investment? (I heard it on channel 8 news). You know, the similarity between these politicians and old whores is that both know no shame. Only the latter is quite harmless. Shame, shame.

4. I have so much to write about but since M arrived my life style has changed and I often have another thing in priority. I need to make myself more organized.

5. Our apartment looks at west and gets so warm in the afternoon. last month electricity bill was $105.97. My expectation was around $40.

6. We have to go shopping now. there is no meat or onion or fruits at home. Rokhsat.

I hope no genetics knowlegable read this

Some say before the end of this century, sex will be only a means for pleasure. People will not resort to sex and natural pregnancy for the purpose of reproduction. Babies will be produced in laboratories primarily from sperm and egg received from couples. But over time genetic engineering tools and advance cloning techniques equipped with sophisticated computer programs will be employed to combine genes from two (or more?) people to compose a baby as they wish. What gender would you rather for your baby? Which one of you guy's eyes it should have? what about its chins? or its nose? or mouth? Do you want it to be as poetic as its mom? or as inquisitive as its dad (I am just assuming opposite sex parent for the sake of simplicity. The idea will work as perfect for same sex parents)? etc. etc.
I was brainstorming on this idea the other day and I came down to the issue of economical and political aspects of human reproduction centers. How will different societies run such centers?

1. Centralist or socialist countries: This countries will regulate the process of human reproduction by putting the h.r. centers under government control. Government will announce related anual plans in terms of more necessary gender, sort of talents needed, etc. each year. Applicants will have to submit written requests and wait in a queue for their turn. If the gender they ask for is not approved then they have the option to cancel their request (paying related fees) or to go for the other gender. Each new baby, in addition to parent genes genes, will have some government supplied genes or gene modifications to comply with specific future needs of the society reflected in the government's latest version of 'roadmap for social improvement' report.
At one point the government decides to modify genes of the new babies so that they will not be capable of natural reproduction when they grow up.

2. Liberal capitalist societies: Artificial reproduction will be a profitable business. Two giant companies Baby Plus (their slogan: When it comes to babies we mean business TM ) and New Age Superman (Slogan: We can make a superman out of you TM ) compete in this field. BabyPlus ridicules New Age Superman for being sexist while New age Superman accuses BabyPlus of being too materialistic and emotionless in their creed.
Government will tax reproduction applicant based on desired gender to balance the percentage of men and women in the society. Discarding natural reproduction capabilities in created babies will be scientifically possible but human rights activists will argue for a long time whether to grant freedom of choice to parents to decide if their child should not have such ability or to leave the freedom for the human to be.

P.S. I was just kidding.

Uday and Qusay Hussein, Saddam Hussein's two sons, suffered more than 20 bullet wounds each in their final stand against American forces, US military pathologists said today. The Gaurdian

Do Americans see what they are doing? They have given these two guys the kind of tragic hero's ending. The story that was released by the American officials has every element that pro-Saddam activists in Iraq can use to make a very touching heroic tragedy about their death and successfully spread it among Arabs. What kind of propaganda is it? One can make a classic greek tragedy out of it.

Uday and Qusay were hidden in a house around Mousol.
* The bad guy's heroic story would say: They didn't give in. They didn't escape. They remained in their country to form a resistance movement and fight the invaders.

Americans were informed of Uday and Qusay 's presence in that house by some locals.
* The traitor character.

A group of soldiers 200 men strong, equipped to their teeth surrounded the place.
* That is natural in a tragedy isn't it? The enemy outnumbers the hero!

They tried to contact the people in the house but the residents of that house didn't respond.
* The heroic tragedy will go: Those brave men didn't surrender. They'd rather die.

They called for a helicopter.
* The story will go: Even with 200 fully armed soldiers they were still afraid to face our heroes and look them in the eyes.

Each of Uday and Qusay's bodies received 20 bullets.
There was a 14 years old among the dead. ...
* Just imagine how much the bad guy can put in his tragedy to make it a long lasting epic around these two evil persons death. It will make them look inevitably like heroes.

What will the good guys do if such counter propaganda really occurs? If the pro-Saddam people in Iraq call that story a symbol of Iraqi resistance? An Iraqi Alamo?

People who have studied Saddam's character say that his big dream was to be remembered as a heroic, noncompromising Arab leader. Right now he is likely to wish to die like a hero and since the fall of Baghdad Americans often times sound like they wouldn't mind to give him just that kind of finish.

Something tells me it is increasingly important for Americans how to finish these people and what kind of stories to tell around their death.

Hush...
She is asleep. She has jet lag. Hush...
She does'n know this blog yet. No one who knows me in person knows that I keep a blog.
I am going to tell her this evening.
But now quiet. Let her sleep for a couple of hours.
hshshsh ...

I suddenly recalled an article that I had read years ago in Iran-e Farda monthly that said according to some big deal western socialist socialogist*, totaliterian regimes do not open up or fall solely by internal pressure. It claimed that foreign pressure is always necessary to bent or break such systems. I've got to find more details about that theory but I don't even remember the name of that socialist socialogist. It will be an interesting study with conjunction to the current situation in Iran and all this Iranian analysts/intellectuals/bloggers such as Eyeranian who warn foreigners (read Americans) not to intervene in Iran's affairs.

* Thanks to Babak.

Why do I blog so light lately
The summer semester is approaching its end and I have delayed papers to write and I have been in the process of moving into a new apartment and buying furniture and stuff (used of course) and I have only left some few short comments here and there recently with so many ridiculous spelling mistakes and cannot focus on writing anything useful for this blog and best of all,

my wife will arrive tomorrow :-)

Mortazavi's route to success
As a judge Saeid Mortazavi shut down numerous newspapers and put many journalists behind the bar. The entire country of Iran hated him. So, he got promoted to Tehran's public prosecutor.
Now he has allegedly murdered an Iranian-Canadian journalist and the world hates him. Good thing he is not an ayatollah otherwise this time he would have gotten promotion to become the head of Iran's judiciary system.

Sorry Tony, I still hate that war

Few days after Saddam was ousted I wrote in this weblog that even finding WMD could no longer justify that war. Simply because Saddam didn't use them to save his own neck let alone using them for terrorist purposes inside other countries.
Personally, I hated that war because:
1. Starting a war in the name of liberty is the worst type of hypocrisy.
2. I hate and am scared of the crule idea of preemptive strike.
3. The US ignored and humiliated the security council when it opposed the US. By doing so, America set a very bad example for the small countries. Previously, the US had vetod many of the security council's resolutions approved by the majority of the members. In some cases the US was the only opposing member. The first time France promised to veto something, the Americans simply abandoned the council and got so mad at the French!
I may be happy about Saddam's destiny. We may even see a better Iraq in the future but ENDS DO NOT JUSTIFY MEANS. 'preemtive strike' is a very evil idea in long run, regardless of what comes out of it in short term.

Those early street protests in Tehran a couple of weeks ago acted like a small fire that prevented the big fire of Jully 9. Don't you think?

'The war on the web '
In Google type 'weapons of mass destruction' then click the 'I'm feeling lucky' button. Read the page that will apear carefully. Then take a look at this article in the Gaurdian.

Laleh and Ladan Bijani - the conjoined iranian twins- both died after two days of operation to separate them :'(
source The Guardian.
I had seen them several times in my school days in Iran. We went to the same university.
What a sad piece of news to start the morning with.

Why they crack
This is from the June 30 issue of the Time magazine , page 29, under the title of "In Cosdoty Why They Crack" source.


The U.S. government maintains that it has not used physical torture in its interrogation of alleged 9/11 planner Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. So why would the al-Qaeda operative give up his colleague Iyman Faris to the feds? Because, experts say, eventually everybody cracks. The only variables are how long someone holds out and what pushes him over.

Inflicting bodily harm can actually be a poor method of extracting information. A detainee is likely to be so eager to end his pain he will confess to anything, even untruths, notes Rick Smith, a retired 25-year veteran of the FBI.

The most efficient technique is to break down a detainee's defenses, Smith says, then build up his trust. The first step is achieved through a combination of physical discomfort and psychological disorientation. A captive might be subjected to extreme heat or cold, deprived of light or dark, made to squat in painful positions, questioned and fed at irregular intervals, kept awake for hours on end. Most important is confinement in isolation, divorced from all that is familiar. "Human beings want to control their environment," says Ilan Kutz, an Israeli psychiatrist who has treated former captives. "If you can't control it, you lose the coordinates of the self." This, of course, is the plan. It sets the stage for a good cop — bad cop strategy in which the captive comes to depend on the supposed ally as the sole means of comfort and is thus likely to offer information to please him.

Loners, who are used to having few emotional connections, take longer to crack; so do those with deep beliefs, who can find nobility in suffering. Whatever the background of a detainee, as soon as he capitulates, he is likely to tell all. Says Kutz: "The interrogators can say, 'You're ruined to everyone on the outside. You might as well tell everything and let us help you.'"


Extreme heat or cold? deprive of light or dark? made to squat in painful positions? fed at irregular intervals? If these are not torture then what is torture? HELLO!!!
Thanks Lord I lived to understand the true definition of torture.

Life is beautiful

During the past two days all teaching and research assistants in my school received two surprising emails from the administrative assistant. Below you can read parts of those two emails.

1.
Effective September 1, 2003 TAs and RAs will have their employee health insurance premiums increase from $0 to $143 per month for employee only and the cost for any dependents will be double the current premium cost.

2.
Here is information I just received from the Graduate Dean's office regarding Fall TPEG, stipends and orientation.

Good Afternoon All,
I'm sure many TA's and RA's have been asking about the TPEG and stipend amounts. We now have information for the Fall 2003 semester.
The Texas Public Education Grant (TPEG) amount for TA's and RA's for Fall 2003 will be $250.00 - half of what we have been dispensing.

I had just found me a new source of income to earn about $400 per month to pay for the additional costs that we will have when my beloved wife arrives. I was so exited that we will have a smooth start and she will even be able to go to college. All in all these emails will add at least $1200 per Semester to my expenses. With this new expenses I have to pay all the additional money that I may earn from the new source of income to school to maintain the current status. You know, I am beginning to like George Bush. He is truly a compassionate man. He tries hard to make sure American tax payers' money will not end up in the pockets of irrelevant lousy foreigners like myself. That is the true fairness I suppose, with the standards of a compassionate conservative. Now, there might be some american teaching or research assistants also that will be hurt by this new costs but that is a small sacrifice Bush administration is happily ready to make. Viva tax cuts.

On a completely irrelevant note, just last month the news was out that the school of engineering and computer science had hired a new dean with a salary of $250,000 per year.

Without a title

Alef)
I couldn't help taking a look at the car before ringing the door bell. Parked in front of the door, it looked nice enough for a Toyota Corolla 95 . A tall beefy man with unshaved beard opened the door. my 6 feet bag of bones looked so tiny beside him. His Middle Easter appearance confirmed the Arabic accent that I had detected in our short phone conversation. We didn't waste much time and headed for a test drive. He said he only had about 30 minutes to catch a class in SMU.
In the car I started a more friendly chat. I wanted to know more about the car in the middle of conversation. He was going to SMU for a part time MS program in management. It turned out that he had made his BS degree in my school in early 90s. He was as talkative as many other Middle easters. He was a frank man who didn't care much if the way he stated things would upset others.
"Where are you from?", I asked.
"Syria", He replied.
"Oh, I have been to Damascus twice."
"Really? how did you like it?"
"It was a nice city."
I didn't tell him how small and poor Damascus looked to me and how that ugly night club into which I only wanted to take a look out of curiosity, ripped me off $100 in less that an hour.
"So, where are you from?", he asked.
"Iran"
He tried to show up his information about my country by talking about the chances of an American invasion and the positions of reformer and hardliner politicians of Iran in that matter. He didn't show signs of being in rush anymore. I was now driving in the 635 highway, trying to push the accelerator as much as I could. But it was rush hour and too many cars didn't allow a high speed.
He had been in the US since 1978 and could remember the days of hostage crisis.
"During the hostage crisis these Americans told me 'you fukin Iranian go back home'. I told them 'I am not Iranian, I am Syrian. They said 'We don't care. You fukin Middle Easter, go back home'. I told them 'fuck you! you go back to Europe.' This country does not belong to anyone, you know. This country belongs to God."

After finishing the test drive, we talked a little bit about the price but I didn't waste much time on it. The body of the car had shaken while diving in the highway. I decided not to buy it.

Be)
My uncle got stuck in America after the 1979 revolution for political reasons. His two brothers (my other two uncles) returned but he stayed because his friends convinced him that his life would be in jeopardy in Iran for being a communist activist. He was affiliated with the American underground branch of a very extremist Iranian communist party. His job was to gather supporters among the Iranian students in the states. A graduate of mechanical engineering, he worked as a printing factory laborer, ice cream seller and similar small jobs until the 1987 general amnesty made him an American citizen. He married his Iranian girlfriend and established a decent life in South California. He has worked for the Orange county post office ever since. Today, he laughs at his communist past and is very happy that he stayed, when he compares his good economical situation with his two brothers who lived in Iran all these years. His elder son is a wild 15 years old teenager. When I go to South California to visit, he never gets tired making fun of me. I am his weird cousin.
"How did you manage to come to America? Crossed the border with a bag-pack? What will you tell the cops if they catch you? hehehe."
After September 11, as my uncle told me, he and all his teenage friends were very frustrated. They wanted revenge, or they wanted to feel powerful again. They wanted to feel safe again, or maybe they just didn't know what they really wanted. All you could say was that they were very frustrated, according to my uncle. One evening he finally started talking. He said many things. Among all he said my uncle could remember this:
"Those people are all terrorists. That region is all trash. We've got to nuke them. We've got to get rid of them all at once."
I kind of like this cousin. He is very verbal. He can make good poems and songs on the fly. He is a kind that could become a successful hip-hop singer. His own ambition though is to become rich by becoming a lawyer.

Jim)
What to tell our children as to where do we come from?
For our own rights we beg, behind the closed doors of exile.
My free translation of a line of a song by Dariush, the exiled Iranian singer who has spent the past 25 years in Los Angeles.