My wife and I applied for tourist visas to Iran. Today we had our applications denied - in just 5 days. Apparently, this is normal for some countries. This shows a clear anti-Bangladeshi policy on behalf of Iran. They don't want tourists to go from Bangladesh to Iran. Perhaps they consider us 'meskin' (poor)?
We are a Muslim country - so Iran should welcome exchanges between brothers and sisters. Or is all that talk of Muslim brotherhood just talk? How can Muslim countries know each others' cultures if we are not allowed to travel freely to Muslim countries?
I hope the current ambassador will persuade the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that they should promote understanding between Muslim countries - including Bangladesh.
Showing posts with label Iran. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Iran. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Western Sanctions Terrorism
Timeline: Plane crashes involving Iran | Reuters: "Following is a timeline of aircraft crashes involving Iran in the past 10 years:
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
14 crashes in ten years: that's quite a record for a wealthy country. In dirt-poor Bangladesh, there hasn't been a single plane crash in the last ten years (and more).
'Iran's civil fleet is made up of planes in poor condition due to their old age and lack of maintenance.
The country has been under international sanctions for years, preventing it from buying new aircraft or spare parts from the West.' Thus observes the BBC.
This is western sanctions terrorism.
In Iraq, the west murdered 1.7 million children with sanctions in 1991-2002. This is how they kill people: covertly. Even the Economist came up with only a one and a half page report on the genocide (September 14th, 2002, p 39). The west is a murderous and genocidal civilisation, that has been at it for 500 years.
We must stand up for the Iranians: these sanctions are inexcusable. Innocent men, women and children are being killed in these plane crashes. How long will this go on? It has already gone on too long.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Terrorism by Sanctions
tehran times : 77 killed, 33 injured in Iran plane crash: "The Iranian airline industry, which is heavily reliant on the second-hand Russian planes, has suffered from a series of plane crashes in recent years due to its aging fleet of passenger jets seriously affected by the Western sanctions banning the sales of planes and spare parts to Iran.
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
These 77 people who were killed in the Iran plane crash were murdered by the United States and its allies.
Iran is prevented from buying parts from and doing business with western suppliers. As a result, planes crashes are a regular phenomenon in Iran. What pleasure do the American people get in murdering Iranian men, women and children? What has Iran done to America? This is terrorism.
America armed Saddam and abetted in the murder of thousands of Iranians defending their liberty and country. Today, no foreigner can engage in financial transactions with Iran. I asked here in Bangladesh how I could send money to Iran from Dhaka; I was told that I couldn't. I wondered why, and I was told that dollar transactions have to go through New York.
Some of my happiest days were spent learning Farsi at the Iranian Cultural Center in Dhanmandi. What nice people they are! And what culture! Slowly, I began to be able to read Persian classics with the help of my teacher, Dr. Kulsum. Rumi, Sa'adi, and Omar Khayyam became accessible in the original. How can western literature compare or compete with Persian classics?
The only comparison possible is with Latin literature (and no doubt Greek, which I cannot read): there is a similar terseness and nobility of expression, both being Indo-European languages.
As for American literature, the less said the better: it is a derivative of a derivative culture, being derived first from English literature which in turn was derived from Greco-Roman literature. No one who has read Virgil's Eclogues will ever feel passionately about Wordsworth and Co. again, never mind the pathetic Whitman and Dickinson.
And yet the Iranian Cultural Centre hardly draws people who pass by without notice or pause: even the Alliance Francaise is full of young people learning another derivative language like English.
We prefer the murderers to the victims, however great.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Zahra's Paradise - Zahra’s Paradise
Zahra's Paradise - Zahra’s Paradise: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"
It is impossible to feel any sympathy for Iran's middle- and upper-classes. They hate Arabs and Palestinians; they hate their government for building hospitals in occupied Palestine; for supporting Hamas and Hezbullah - in short, for supporting the Umma. And, of course, they love the Great Satan.
Let's be precise: according to independent pollsters everywhere, Ahmedinejad would have won the election anyway. It was just the scale that the regime wished to expand. For, the truth is, Iran is split between an America-loving middle-class and an Iran-loving people. An Iranian journalist once asked me "Why doesn't America drop a nuclear bomb on Cuba?" She meant to say that America is so good that it refrains from nuking the small island. And this was a journalist talking. No wonder her paper was banned! America won't use nukes because then others will up the nuclear ante, simple as that. Besides, Cuba's too close to shore...imagine all the noxious radioactivity killing the fish on the Miama beaches.
John Locke observed that revolutions would be rare events, for he was advocating them. He was wrong. Today, revolution has become a habit - and with it coercion. In Kyrgyztan, there have been two revolutions in five years. In Bangladesh, there is perpetual revolution. Thailand is having a long-drawn-out revolution after regime change in 1992. The removal of Estrada in the Philippines was a shabby middle-class triumph.
As for elections, they are there to be rigged. Take the US election of 2000. According to S.E.Finer, rigging elections is one of the pathologies of democracy. In Bangladesh the Carter Center and the EU actively connive at rigged elections. The 1994 election in South Africa was rigged. In Africa today, western governments turn a blind eye to rigging - because there's just too much of it around, and without rigging there would be even more violence.
The Iranian middle-class has plainly become ungovernable. If they want paradise on earth, then they should wait for paradise - including Zahra.
It is impossible to feel any sympathy for Iran's middle- and upper-classes. They hate Arabs and Palestinians; they hate their government for building hospitals in occupied Palestine; for supporting Hamas and Hezbullah - in short, for supporting the Umma. And, of course, they love the Great Satan.
Let's be precise: according to independent pollsters everywhere, Ahmedinejad would have won the election anyway. It was just the scale that the regime wished to expand. For, the truth is, Iran is split between an America-loving middle-class and an Iran-loving people. An Iranian journalist once asked me "Why doesn't America drop a nuclear bomb on Cuba?" She meant to say that America is so good that it refrains from nuking the small island. And this was a journalist talking. No wonder her paper was banned! America won't use nukes because then others will up the nuclear ante, simple as that. Besides, Cuba's too close to shore...imagine all the noxious radioactivity killing the fish on the Miama beaches.
John Locke observed that revolutions would be rare events, for he was advocating them. He was wrong. Today, revolution has become a habit - and with it coercion. In Kyrgyztan, there have been two revolutions in five years. In Bangladesh, there is perpetual revolution. Thailand is having a long-drawn-out revolution after regime change in 1992. The removal of Estrada in the Philippines was a shabby middle-class triumph.
As for elections, they are there to be rigged. Take the US election of 2000. According to S.E.Finer, rigging elections is one of the pathologies of democracy. In Bangladesh the Carter Center and the EU actively connive at rigged elections. The 1994 election in South Africa was rigged. In Africa today, western governments turn a blind eye to rigging - because there's just too much of it around, and without rigging there would be even more violence.
The Iranian middle-class has plainly become ungovernable. If they want paradise on earth, then they should wait for paradise - including Zahra.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
From whence the hereafter?
One of the first things to strike a reader of the Old Testament is the total absence of the hereafter - there's no life after death. When Moses dies, he just dies; he isn't resurrected somewhere else. That's the end for him. Finito.
To the recalcitrant, God (or, rather, Yahweh) never says "If you don't do what I say, I'll send you to Hell!"; nor, to the obedient, does he proclaim, "Since you have done my bidding, I shall send you to Heaven!" There simply is no Heaven or Hell.
Instead, to the recalcitrant, Yahweh says, "Listen to me or else I'm going to make your life a living Hell"; and to the obedient, He says, "I'm happy with you, so you shall have good food and nice clothes and lots of land, etc. etc." This is all the more surprising since the Egyptians believed in a posthumous existence, and the Jews were said to have spent a great deal of time in Egypt. But, of course, Egyptian polytheism would have been abhorrent to them.
Now, Christianity is supposed to be an epilogue to the Mosaic story: but the question must surely bother one - where one earth (or elsewhere) did the notions of Heaven, Hell, resurrection, the Devil and so on and so forth come from? They couldn't have come from Judaism. From Christianity, the ideas penetrated Islam.
One explanation that's been offered is that the dualities - good God, evil Satan, nice Heaven, awful Hell - came from Zoroastrianism, that is, they are Iranian influences. Zoroastrianism posits a struggle between Evil and Good as personifications. Good and Evil battle each other, but the former is assured of triumph. God's omnipotence is thus only temporarily limited.
There is resurrection as well, and a crossing of the Bridge of the Requiter: it takes the good to paradise, but the evil fall into Hell. After death, the soul meets its own religion (daena) in the form of a beautiful girl; but the wicked soul encounters a hag.
To the recalcitrant, God (or, rather, Yahweh) never says "If you don't do what I say, I'll send you to Hell!"; nor, to the obedient, does he proclaim, "Since you have done my bidding, I shall send you to Heaven!" There simply is no Heaven or Hell.
Instead, to the recalcitrant, Yahweh says, "Listen to me or else I'm going to make your life a living Hell"; and to the obedient, He says, "I'm happy with you, so you shall have good food and nice clothes and lots of land, etc. etc." This is all the more surprising since the Egyptians believed in a posthumous existence, and the Jews were said to have spent a great deal of time in Egypt. But, of course, Egyptian polytheism would have been abhorrent to them.
Now, Christianity is supposed to be an epilogue to the Mosaic story: but the question must surely bother one - where one earth (or elsewhere) did the notions of Heaven, Hell, resurrection, the Devil and so on and so forth come from? They couldn't have come from Judaism. From Christianity, the ideas penetrated Islam.
One explanation that's been offered is that the dualities - good God, evil Satan, nice Heaven, awful Hell - came from Zoroastrianism, that is, they are Iranian influences. Zoroastrianism posits a struggle between Evil and Good as personifications. Good and Evil battle each other, but the former is assured of triumph. God's omnipotence is thus only temporarily limited.
There is resurrection as well, and a crossing of the Bridge of the Requiter: it takes the good to paradise, but the evil fall into Hell. After death, the soul meets its own religion (daena) in the form of a beautiful girl; but the wicked soul encounters a hag.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
After the Revolution
"Iranians are too sophisticated to be ruled for ever by a clutch of old men in turbans. The regime has been illiberal and authoritarian. It is often vicious in its suppression of opponents and its disregard for human rights. Iran has the highest rate of judicial executions per head in the world."
- The Economist, 20th June 2009
The Germans were too sophisticated to be ruled by a short corporal. They were illiberal (to put it mildly) and authoritarian (ahem!).
The excelled in everything: from sophisticated composers ranging from Bach, through Beethoven and Brahms, and – whoops! – Wagner, to philosophers like Kant and Nietzsche.
Yet it took a less sophisticated people – the Russians – to stop them.
After the Iranian revolution, the revolutionaries found they had no plan: no one had thought of what kind of regime would replace the Shah's. The only people who had a blueprint – and one from heaven – were the mullahs. Otherwise, the nation would have descended into chaos.
It has been estimated that 11% of Iranians took part in the revolution; the corresponding figure for the Russian revolution is 9%; and for the grand daddy of them all, the French revolution, it is 6%.
All three revolutions had one thing in common: no one knew what to replace the previous regime with, except the mullahs, the Bolsheviks and Napoleon.
- The Economist, 20th June 2009
The Germans were too sophisticated to be ruled by a short corporal. They were illiberal (to put it mildly) and authoritarian (ahem!).
The excelled in everything: from sophisticated composers ranging from Bach, through Beethoven and Brahms, and – whoops! – Wagner, to philosophers like Kant and Nietzsche.
Yet it took a less sophisticated people – the Russians – to stop them.
After the Iranian revolution, the revolutionaries found they had no plan: no one had thought of what kind of regime would replace the Shah's. The only people who had a blueprint – and one from heaven – were the mullahs. Otherwise, the nation would have descended into chaos.
It has been estimated that 11% of Iranians took part in the revolution; the corresponding figure for the Russian revolution is 9%; and for the grand daddy of them all, the French revolution, it is 6%.
All three revolutions had one thing in common: no one knew what to replace the previous regime with, except the mullahs, the Bolsheviks and Napoleon.
Friday, June 19, 2009
People power in Iran?
"Iran’s rural population has historically been very deeply apolitical". This, according to the Economist, is wrong: 66% of poor and rural voters vote as against 33% of the urbanised middle class. But never mind that.
A 'class' analysis doesn't take that modern fact into account: the agent provocateur. In this brilliantly researched article by Seymour Hersh, he shows in vivid detail how America has been priming the pump in Iran:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/07/080707fa_fact_hersh?currentPage=all
Also try : Iran mosque blast plotters admit Israeli, US links: report:
They also admitted carrying out "one or two minor operations," the agency said, without providing further details except to say the group launched military operations a year ago.
http://tinyurl.com/5row5r
Besides, we know that people are dumb: they must and will be led and manipulated. Leo Strauss's Iron Law of Oligarchy has always held true.
"They are openly, and in millions across the country, questioning the legitimacy of the establishment, represented at the moment by Ahmadinejad. The people, in short, have moved beyond Mousavi". Millions of people out of a population of 70 million, most of whom are above 15? That doesn't sound like "the people" to me: it sounds like the impressionistic and ill-educated Gucci class of Iran.
I have seen it happen time and again in Bangladesh: a couple of people take to the streets, and they call it a revolution, when the vast majority is farming or fishing.
The writer mentions the misery index: inflation plus unemployment. Inflation has always done nutty things to people, especially the middle class because they see their savings eroded; unemployment creates the hooligans who take to the streets.
What the writer failed to mention was the multiplication of the number of university students: whenever this happens, society becomes unstable. An educated middle class is the worst calamity that can befall a nation: it led to the violent break-away of East Pakistan from West Pakistan in 1971, to the anti-British attacks of the Bengal terrorists earlier.
A wise government, like Malaysia's and Indonesia's, would have kept tertiary education down to a minimum and maximised primary education. However, sooner or later, tertiary education becomes necessary, and then you have lunatic movements like 'reformasi' and Tiananmen.
A 'class' analysis doesn't take that modern fact into account: the agent provocateur. In this brilliantly researched article by Seymour Hersh, he shows in vivid detail how America has been priming the pump in Iran:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/07/080707fa_fact_hersh?currentPage=all
Also try : Iran mosque blast plotters admit Israeli, US links: report:
They also admitted carrying out "one or two minor operations," the agency said, without providing further details except to say the group launched military operations a year ago.
http://tinyurl.com/5row5r
Besides, we know that people are dumb: they must and will be led and manipulated. Leo Strauss's Iron Law of Oligarchy has always held true.
"They are openly, and in millions across the country, questioning the legitimacy of the establishment, represented at the moment by Ahmadinejad. The people, in short, have moved beyond Mousavi". Millions of people out of a population of 70 million, most of whom are above 15? That doesn't sound like "the people" to me: it sounds like the impressionistic and ill-educated Gucci class of Iran.
I have seen it happen time and again in Bangladesh: a couple of people take to the streets, and they call it a revolution, when the vast majority is farming or fishing.
The writer mentions the misery index: inflation plus unemployment. Inflation has always done nutty things to people, especially the middle class because they see their savings eroded; unemployment creates the hooligans who take to the streets.
What the writer failed to mention was the multiplication of the number of university students: whenever this happens, society becomes unstable. An educated middle class is the worst calamity that can befall a nation: it led to the violent break-away of East Pakistan from West Pakistan in 1971, to the anti-British attacks of the Bengal terrorists earlier.
A wise government, like Malaysia's and Indonesia's, would have kept tertiary education down to a minimum and maximised primary education. However, sooner or later, tertiary education becomes necessary, and then you have lunatic movements like 'reformasi' and Tiananmen.
twitter in Iranian skies
"and gathering swallows twitter in the skies"
- John Keats
I wonder what percentage of Iranians twitter (the same percentage of birds that are swallows?).
I seem to recall another upheaval (revolution being too strong a world) of semi-people power where those with mobile phones won out against those without mobile phones. That was in the Philippines.
Nothing like that in Iran, of course: perish the twittering thought!
- John Keats
I wonder what percentage of Iranians twitter (the same percentage of birds that are swallows?).
I seem to recall another upheaval (revolution being too strong a world) of semi-people power where those with mobile phones won out against those without mobile phones. That was in the Philippines.
Nothing like that in Iran, of course: perish the twittering thought!
Saturday, February 7, 2009
jamhoorie islamie iran zindabad
The Iranian mullahs may sometimes do what appears silly – such as clamping down on 'bad hijab'; but we must keep in mind that the elite of Iran are very pro-Israel, pro-American and anti-Palestinian (I know, I have many friends among them); and if you look at a military map of the Middle East, you'll find that the only country that has no US military bases is Iran.
Iran has been a close friend of the Palestinians, and the Iranian elite (those tempted to show off their coloured hair in public) hate the mullahs for it.
When American presidents wish to be popular, they kill civilians in a distant country; when Iran's mullahs wish to be popular, they crack down on the elite. Which one is worse?
Far from demonising Iran, we should appreciate its lone attempt to help Muslim countries: it took in Afghan refugees, despite its own economic problems and despite the drugs that came in their wake; it has financed and aided Hamas and Hezbollah, offering the only resistance to Israel's expansionism. It is in constant threat of being bombed by Israel and/or the US.
Iran's planes frequently crash - why? Because America won't let it buy the parts it needs to keep them safe. Despite American and European intransigence, Iran has a great record in promoting health and education. Today, more women are enrolled in universities than during the Shah's time.
I for one know that if Bangladesh is ever bombed by the west, only one country will come to our aid - Iran
Iran has been a close friend of the Palestinians, and the Iranian elite (those tempted to show off their coloured hair in public) hate the mullahs for it.
When American presidents wish to be popular, they kill civilians in a distant country; when Iran's mullahs wish to be popular, they crack down on the elite. Which one is worse?
Far from demonising Iran, we should appreciate its lone attempt to help Muslim countries: it took in Afghan refugees, despite its own economic problems and despite the drugs that came in their wake; it has financed and aided Hamas and Hezbollah, offering the only resistance to Israel's expansionism. It is in constant threat of being bombed by Israel and/or the US.
Iran's planes frequently crash - why? Because America won't let it buy the parts it needs to keep them safe. Despite American and European intransigence, Iran has a great record in promoting health and education. Today, more women are enrolled in universities than during the Shah's time.
I for one know that if Bangladesh is ever bombed by the west, only one country will come to our aid - Iran
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Who saved Israel in 1948? No, not America! Guess again!
Today, western governments fulminate against Iran's president for allegedly wishing the destruction of Israel (through sheer mistranslation).
Where were the western governments when Israel was nearly wiped off the map in the 1948 war? If it hadn't been for a most unlikely saviour (from the present perspective) called Joseph Stalin, who ordered a timely and decisive shipment of Czech arms, Israel would not have been there any longer.
Why didn't western governments lift a finger to help Israel then? This is the question posed by Norman Finkelstein in his book "The Holocaust Industry". His answer may not be wholly satisfactory, but his question is perfectly legitimate.
Where were the western governments when Israel was nearly wiped off the map in the 1948 war? If it hadn't been for a most unlikely saviour (from the present perspective) called Joseph Stalin, who ordered a timely and decisive shipment of Czech arms, Israel would not have been there any longer.
Why didn't western governments lift a finger to help Israel then? This is the question posed by Norman Finkelstein in his book "The Holocaust Industry". His answer may not be wholly satisfactory, but his question is perfectly legitimate.
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