Bomb,bomb, bomb | Bomb, bomb Iran

Ever since tRump started campaigning, I have been blogging here and telling anybody who wanted to listen to me that he merely crudely distills the same message that most of the Republicans have always expressed more euphemistically.  Every once in a while, even those "statesmen" let their guard down and adopted a tell-it-as-it-is, which is tRump's winning electoral approach.  One of those was about Iran.

Unlike President Obama and the Democrats who wanted to to work a way out of the hostilities, most Republicans were hell bent on bombing Iran back into the stone age.  It was such a sentiment that then candidate Senator John McCain expressed when he sang about bombing Iran.  Recall that campaign moment?

tRump is making that Beach Boys cover song come true!

As a wimp, a wuss, a pacifist, war is never on my mind.

Of course, as most young boys are, I too was once fascinated by wars and battles.  Back in grandma's village, I eagerly listened to what later turned out to be exaggerated accounts of an extended family elder's service in the military during the Indo-Pak war that birthed Bangladesh.  As a teenager, I read books and watched movies that were set in the context of WW II.

And then I grew up.

It started with the excerpt from All Quiet on the Western Front that was required reading in school.  Suddenly, war began to make no sense.  Mohandas Gandhi's pacifism appealed a lot more to me.  But, it was not any immediate Damascene Conversion to pacifism.  I continued to oscillate back and forth through my late teens and early twenties.

By the time of the Iraq War during the first Bush presidency, I was a committed anti-war nutcase.  And have been since.

Reading Ernest Hemingway and re-reading Joseph Heller and others cemented my pacifism.  War is hell. So much so that even movies that featured violence appealed less and less to me.

But, wars continue. Wars are good for business and politics.  There are now new chants for yet another war against yet another country in the Middle East that has been in the Republican radar for a long time.  That context compels me to blog about war and peace.  There are others who tweet about their direct experiences, like this lengthy thread (and the comments there that I urge you to read.)

19/
They thank us, but they bite for war-hawks that want to put us in harms way for various, often very murky reasons. Before you get hung ho for war, consider that the human costs aren’t only tallied in death or injury but also in destroyed families and the theft of joy.

— JAFERD, MD (@Supermansings) January 4, 2020

Eid Mubarak!

"What did you cook for Eid?" I asked my sister.

Of course, there is no Eid celebration in the traditional Hindu household.  But, she played along.  "I should have cooked mutton."

The month-long Ramadan fast comes to an end.

Here's a thought: Have you asked yourself how people in Yemen or Syria might observe Eid when they are in the middle of terrible wars?  Especially in Yemen, which the United Nations has declared as one hell of a humanitarian crisis?

First, a recap of conditions in Yemen:

Yemen’s civil war has already led to what the United Nations described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis — at least three million displaced by fighting, a cholera epidemic that is now the largest outbreak ever recorded, and eight million people on the brink of starvation.

You think people there were thinking about Eid in such a situation?

Source

And, guess what?  Saudi Arabia, which is where Islam began, and the country leading a coalition in order to fight the proxy war against Iran, decided that such a humanitarian crisis is not enough.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and UAE-backed Yemeni forces launched an assault to retake Hodeidah, a Houthi-held port city through which 70 to 80 percent of commercial and humanitarian supplies enter Yemen.

Why is this a big fucking deal?

“A military attack or siege on Hodeidah will impact hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians,” Lisa Grande, the U.N.’s humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, warned in a statement  before the offensive began. “In a prolonged worst case, we fear that as many as 250,000 people may lose everything — even their lives.”

The misery is well into three years now:

The Saudis and Emiratis intervened in the war three years ago with hopes of a quick victory over the Houthis, whom they see an Iranian proxy. Instead, the two nations have been stuck in a quagmire.

Perhaps you wonder what the US is up to here.  After all, America rarely stays away from any opportunity to bomb the shit out of brown people, as George Carlin liked to say.  Right?  Especially when we now have a President who hates brown-skinned shitholers and he also hates Iran.  So, this Yemen war is a twofer:

With little public attention or debate, the president has already expanded US military assistance to his Saudi and UAE allies – in ways that are prolonging the Yemen war and increasing civilian suffering. Soon after Trump took office in early 2017, his administration reversed a decision by former president Barack Obama to suspend the sale of over $500m in laser-guided bombs and other munitions to the Saudi military, over concerns about civilian deaths in Yemen.

But, don't ever think that Obama was any angel of peace.  I have blogged a lot about that when was the President.  In this August 2016 post, for instance, I worried that Obama's legacy will include droning the shit out of brown people!

While who is the Oval Office might make a difference in domestic affairs, when it comes to dropping bombs over brown people, it is a free-for-all.

From 2009 to 2016, the Obama administration authorized a record $115bn in military sales to Saudi Arabia, far more than any previous administration. Of that total, US and Saudi officials signed formal deals worth about $58bn, and Washington delivered $14bn worth of weaponry.
Much of that weaponry is being used in Yemen, with US technical support.

trump has merely taken that to a whole new level!

Like much of his chaotic foreign policy, Trump is escalating US military involvement in Yemen without pushing for a political settlement to the Saudi-led war. His total support for Saudi Arabia and its allies is making the world’s worst humanitarian crisis even more severe.

So, at best, it will be a subdued Eid celebration in Yemen :(

Bomb, bomb bomb. Bomb, bomb, Iran!

Today is when the star of the trump reality show will announce his decision after teasing the viewers with "will he?" questions.  Recall how the star announced his decision on the Supreme Court nomination, or about pulling out of the Paris Accord?  It is all about the ratings, the substance be damned!

It will be a huge surprise, an awesome twist, if the star announces that the US is committed to the Iran deal.  That will be an unexpected plot twist, immensely more head-turning than JR returning to Dallas!

In all this drama, which is a complete contrast to the years of no-drama-Obama, let us not forget one fundamental aspect: Most Republicans have always hated working with the Iranian government.  The Republicans have no qualms working with our frenemies, especially Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.  But, Iran they hate.  It is simply that trump states everything in crude terms what seasoned Republican politicians say in polite language.

Consider, for instance, Mitt Romney.  He toadied up to trump by sharing frog legs for dinner, in the casting call for the role of Secretary of State.  Romney (like most GOP politicians) thought he could go about executing his preferred policies as trump clowned around in the White House.  trump tossed him away like a used condom. Remember that?

Romney's immigration policies are no different from the ones that are being implemented by the trump administration hand-in-glove with the GOP Congress.  This is a man who as a candidate asked the undocumented to self-deport.  As a candidate, he trashed the economically unfortunate as takers, and wanted to shred the safety net--exactly what is being done now, under the fearless leadership of his running-mate, Paul Ryan.

So, later today when trump announces that the US is nuking the Iran deal (yes, pun intended!) expect most of the Republicans to applaud him.  His rock-solid base will enthusiastically back him, and might even claim that this is exactly what Jesus would have done.  If chaos and wars increase, then the chances of the second coming increase, right?

The title of this post?  That's what the "elder statesman" John McCain sang back when he was the GOP candidate for the presidency.  Don't ever be fooled by these maniacs!  Apparently McCain's dying wish is that trump should not attend his funeral.  Strange politics!

But, seriously, won't it be one hell of a plot twist if trump announces his commitment to the Iran Deal? ;)

Universities as the United Nations

Three decades ago, about this time of the year was when graduate school in America was becoming a realistic probability.  In those dark ages before the internet, I had some anxiety-filled days waiting for the envelope in the mail.

I distinctly recall one evening in a hotel in Trivandrum, where my supervisor and I had gone to in order to meet with a few hospital staff--biomedical equipment were just about entering the Indian market and we were selling and servicing a few pricey ones.  The supervisor wanted me to split the room with him, so that he could use his per diem to buy alcohol.  I agreed--what else can an underling do!  That night, I could not sleep.  I kept walking up the window, looking out and worrying what might happen if the graduate school in America didn't work out.

Everything worked out fine.  When I gave the quit notice, my supervisor said that he knew I would not stick around for long.  He said that he observed me by the hotel window in Trivandrum!

I reached the building at USC that was all too familiar to me from all the correspondence: VKC--Von KleinSmid Center.  There were flags of various countries flying in the inner yard--flags of the countries from where students had come to USC.  It might have as well been the United Nations.  That building was home to me through all the years that I was there.

The one on the left, with the globe on top, is VKC

For the first time ever, I met students from countries that are now in the list of countries that have been banned by this president.  From Iran. From Somalia. From Syria.  Countries that are now in the banned list; what a fucking disaster this president has created!  It immensely aches my heart.  This is not the America that I had in mind three decades ago.  As the author of this essay notes:

For more than 75 years, the United States has been the destination for ambitious, talented, and leading young scholars who have wanted to live and work with the best colleagues and students. They have assimilated into an incredibly creative and adaptive set of universities. American-based scholars also collaborate with foreigners, bringing nations closer together.

 The author asks an important question: "Is this history about to end?"  That question aches my heart even more.

scholars and students may soon begin to self-select out of a chance to come to the United States. More than 70 years ago, Robert Hutchins, then the president of the University of Chicago, observed that the problem with witch-hunts was “not how many professors have been fired for their beliefs, but how many think they might be.” If the United States becomes less appealing to scholars from abroad, they may well stay home, depriving America of their talent. Fear and uncertainty have become the order of the day. Executive orders or legislation that represses immigrant groups often, historically, morph into laws against American citizens. None of this bodes well for those interested in studying, teaching, or conducting research at American universities.

What a loss it would have been if I had not met Shahab, who was from Iran!  Other names I no longer even remember--like that woman who was the first (and, to this date, the only) person I have talked at length who was from Somalia.  What a fucking disaster this president has created, and it barely six weeks in!

Off with the head!

As I get older, I find myself to be more and more against violence.  Especially violence that is the state-sponsored kind.  It is gross. It is inhuman. To call state-sponsored violence beastly is an insult to the predators in the wild.

It is even more fucked up when it is the passionately religious who seem to be more supportive of state-sponsored violence in democratic societies.  It is bizarre when, for instance, those who are ready to kill people using the government machinery are also the ones who use the imagery of Jesus to tell us how we should live.  I suppose Jesus never talked about peace and love!

And hence the odd situation that the US, with all its bible-thumpers, continues with the death penalty.

the U.S. has ended up in some rough company, particularly when it comes to the death penalty. In the past generation, the number of countries that have stopping using the death penalty has doubled, from about fifty to about a hundred. Of the fifty-seven member states of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, and of the thirty-five member states of the Organization of American States, only the U.S. carried out executions last year. The countries that executed the most offenders were, in order, China, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United States.

Take a look again at the company that we keep: China, Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia.  Puke-worthy about how we treat life!  The US is a religious country alright, as much as the theocratic Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan are.  As the late Christopher Hitchens wrote (I quoted him in this blog-post from more than five years ago)

The point of the penalty was that it was death. It expressed righteous revulsion and symbolized rectitude and retribution. Voila tout! The reason why the United States is alone among comparable countries in its commitment to doing this is that it is the most religious of those countries. (Take away only China, which is run by a very nervous oligarchy, and the remaining death-penalty states in the world will generally be noticeable as theocratic ones.)

Whether or not the US is loved around the world, what the US does--not the rhetoric--is keenly watched by everybody.  Therefore, when the US government machinery kills its own people, then it is a convenient justification for other countries to kill their own people.

In August at a rally in Istanbul, after the failed coup attempt in Turkey, the BBC reported, the country’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said, “They say there is no death penalty in the E.U. … Well, the U.S. has it; Japan has it; China has it; most of the world has it. So they are allowed to have it. We used to have it until 1984. Sovereignty belongs to the people, so if the people make this decision I am sure the political parties will comply.” He said that the Turkish people might want to restore the death penalty to punish those responsible for killing hundreds of citizens during the attempted coup. That has not happened yet, but, if it does, its purpose, Erdogan suggested, will be a display of cold-blooded power.

Now that we in the US too will have a strongman president, the likes of Erdoğan will be all the happier to kill their own people, and will feel justified to do so.

the voters—the populists—continue to back the death penalty, as does the President-elect. (Donald Trump notoriously called for the execution of the Central Park Five, fourteen-, fifteen-, and sixteen-year-olds who were charged with a high-profile rape and beating, in 1989. Even though the five were later exonerated, Trump, during this year’s campaign, reiterated his belief in their guilt.)

Of course, in the US, politicians who want to reach the Oval Office dare not oppose the death penalty, especially because of the racial dimension of the punishment.  Remember what happened to Michael Dukakis?  Or how Bill Clinton had to prove his mettle to the White Christian voters by putting to death a mentally-impaired black man?  Yep, the US lives according to Jesus's words!

The only ray of hope is the trend of remarkable fall in the number of executions and death sentences.  Aziz Ansari joked that for racism to go away, we simply have to wait for the racists to die--the younger generation is a lot more progressive than the middle-aged and older whites are.  Similarly, we simply have to wait for another generation to exit the world for the US to end the horrible practice of state-sponsored killing.  And maybe by then we will also stop electing the likes of the worst human being ever to reach the Oval Office.

Real men are never afraid of sex!

Back in the old country, we boys and girls operated in gender-segregated worlds.  The school was coeducational, but boys and girls dared not to speak with each other.  It was not until the reunion thirty years later that we were able to even understand how much of a missed opportunity it was to get to know fellow-classmates for the wonderful (or, in some cases, the unpleasant) humans we were and are.

I suppose that segregation was nothing but a reflection of the traditional fear of sex.  And that fear of sex meant that the lives of girls were a lot more tightly circumscribed compared to the relative freedom that we boys had.  Even in the most enjoyable parts of childhood that had nothing to do with sex--like bicycling around or playing outside even after sundown--we boys were freer than girls.

College life was no different--men and women kept to their own kind.  It did not mean that the men ignored the testosterone that was rushing through their bodies.  After all, biology is biology.

At least all those were decades ago.  That was a world before the internet.  We didn't really have an idea of how young men and women in different parts of the world dealt with their biological triggers.  Now, the proverbial genie is out of the bottle.  Which is why a report like this, from another part of the world, seems so bizarre to me:

More than 30 college students were arrested, interrogated and within 24 hours were each given 99 lashes for attending a graduation party that included men and women, Iran’s judiciary has announced.

WTF!

College graduates got together to celebrate and to party, which then resulted in 99 lashes each?  That is 99 lashes more than what they deserved.  How terrible!  What happened at the party?

more than 30 female and male students — the women were described as “half naked,” meaning they were not wearing Islamic coverings, scarves and long coats — were arrested while “dancing and jubilating” after the authorities received a report that a party attended both by men and women was being held in a villa on the outskirts of Qazvin.

WTF!

Torquemada, er, the prosecutor, adds this:

We hope this will be a lesson for those who break Islamic norms in private places

WTF!

In "private places."  Adults--college graduates.

If these college graduates wanted to live alone?  Apparently it is not a crime.  But:

In Semnan, several “polluted singles houses were cleaned” and 97 people, including 10 women, were detained.
Col. Mojtaba Ashrafi of the Semnan police told the news agency that the raids were carried out over a 48-hour period, after the authorities monitored for several weeks 58 homes in which single people were believed to be living.

WTF!

I am quite prudish myself.  But, what adults do is none of my concern, as long as they don't force me to do what they want to do.  Why should it bother the bearded mullahs that college graduates might want to live alone and party with their friends?  Maybe the old men didn't ever go to coed schools!

We have all become Death, the destroyer of worlds?

About this time in August, every year I have posted about nuclear weapons since re-starting this blog.  Why?  Simply put, I find the world's continuing fascination with nuclear weapons despite the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to be shocking, awful, pathetic, and tragic.

Take a look at the following data:

Source

Every one of those is way more powerful than the relatively tiny bombs ("Little Boy" and "Fat Man") that the US dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the world has almost 16,000 of them!

Seriously, how many of those weapons do we need?

The bombing of Nagasaki; image source

In this op-ed titled "Nagasaki, the Forgotten City," the author writes:

About 74,000 people in Nagasaki died instantaneously or within five months of the bombing. Only 150 were military personnel. Another 75,000 people were injured, and these numbers do not count those who fell ill and died from radiation-related conditions in the decades to come.
Initially, purple spots appeared on their bodies, their hair fell out, and they developed high fevers, infections, and swollen and bleeding gums. Later, cancer rates surged. The survivors, known as hibakusha, lived in constant fear of illness and death.

Only 150 of the 74,000 were military personnel!  It is one thing if an earthquake or a typhoon caused utter destruction to property and life.  It is another when we humans manufacture such destruction.  So many of the horrors in history were results of human decisions.  What a tragedy!

To counter growing criticism of the bombings, American leaders established a narrative that the bombings had ended the war and saved up to 1 million American lives by preventing an invasion of Japan. (These postwar casualty estimates were far higher than pre-bomb calculations.) Most Americans accepted this narrative.

Of course, a patriot never, ever questions the government's narrative, as the war-criminal, scoundrel, Dick Cheney always reminded us!

In a related op-ed, the same author writes:

Immediately after the bombings, high-level U.S. officials publicly — and adamantly — rebuffed news reports about the bombs' horrific aftereffects. Gen. Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bombs, dismissed these reports as propaganda, even as he sent teams to measure radiation levels to ensure the safety of U.S. troops about to enter both cities. Later that year, Groves testified before the U.S. Senate that death from high-dose radiation exposure is "without undue suffering" and "a very pleasant way to die."

A"very pleasant way to die."  Read that again. And again.  The horror of that sentence seems worse than the deaths themselves!  

I will end this post with the famous words uttered by Robert Oppenheimer:

We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, "Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." I suppose we all thought that one way or another.

"Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran"

The politics of the Iran deal discussions interest me so much that I even follow the administration's Twitter feed on that, which has a Twitter ID that says exactly what it is about, unlike my Twitter ID.

It bothers me a great deal when the Obama administration and the opponents alike convey to the American people--and to the rest of the world--that Iran is like a cancerous blob out there and that the entire region and the world is in jeopardy if we don't act now.  It bothers me because to the average person listening to all that, or reading about it, Iran all the more becomes a distant and abstract entity, instead of the nearly 80 million people living there. A population that is almost twenty times Oregon's but we have plenty who laugh with--and not at--the crazies like "bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran."

Does it not matter anymore that a country's government is different from its people?  Shouldn't we be respectful of the nearly 80 million people in that country, and those of Iranian descent who live in the US and in other countries?  Imagine me bashing the billion Indians just because I disagree with Modi's politics.  Or, lumping together the billion Chinese into one blob because I hate the Communist Party and its politics.  It depresses me that we are completely dehumanizing the nearly 80 million people of Iran and making demons out of them.

That kind of an atrocious representation of Iran always makes me think of a friend. An old friend, who died a few years ago. Cancer got him :(

Shahab was from Iran, and was one of the many who were forced to exit the country after the theocratic revolution in 1979.  His exit was a story of struggling his way through sympathetic Eastern European countries, then to Western Europe, and finally to the US.

We had quite a few lunches together, and occasional dinners too.  I learnt a lot about Iran and some of the cultural aspects there.  Through Shahab, I even came to know about a religion called "Mithraism," which apparently was a serious competitor to Christianity back in Rome. It was fascinating to find out how much Mithraism, Hinduism, and the Zorastrian faith have/had in common, and how Christianity itself has a lot of common ground with Mithraism.

Shahab's parents--his mother, in particular--were big fans of Indian movies, even from their years in Tehran. He said something along the lines of: "my mother could not understand a word uttered in the movies.  But, she laughed when the heroine laughed and cried when the heroine cried, and enjoyed the songs."  Of course, the older Hindi songs were unlike the contemporary ones--the older songs in Hindi often reflected the Persian cultural heritage that the Mughals brought with them.  His parents were also rice eaters and Shahab joked that if there was no rice served at parties that his parents went to, well, after they returned home they would eat a little bit of rice :)   

Shahab was more a creative arts person than the architect/planner that he was in his day job.  I suspect that he enjoyed the arts infinitely more.  I remember going to the exhibition that he had of his photographs, in the library at Beverly Hills.  The guy was in his elements, and significantly different from his persona at work, and more like the person he was at the lunches and coffees we had.  One of the sites still has links to some of his works, along with an email address to contact him. (That is from where I grabbed the photo.)  I suppose you never cease to exist in the internet.

The next time you hear somebody bashing Iran, ask yourself whether "all options are on the table" appeals to you anymore and, if it does, then find out whether the 80 million there do not matter to you.  Think about Shahab.  Picture him in your mind.

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength

As I get older, I am forgetting the details.  As a good chunk of life fades in the rear-view mirror--I know, I shouldn't be looking there--I am glad that I am able to recall whatever it is that I am able to.

The principal of the wonderful school--where I always longed to look at that girl--had plenty of laudable goals that were always badly executed.  We students had many mean jokes about him, and continue to do that even now whenever we get together.  One of his goals was that students ought to be interested in local and global current affairs.  Thus, during the weekly assembly under the morning hot sun, we students stood there as one of his hand-picked favorites read a few news stories for a couple of minutes.  (No, I have never been any teacher's favorite..Not anybody's.  Not even my parents' favorite. The story of my life!!!)

One day, the guy who read it out uttered "Mr. Ayatollah" while referring to the then-new leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini.  The news junkie that I was even back then, I thought it was bizarre that he said "Mr. Ayatollah."  Those were beginnings of the Iran-Iraq war and not a day passed without the The Hindu providing reports on the war, and that war was a big reason why "Mr. Ayatollah" was often mentioned at the news reports during the weekly assembly.

The war, coming on the heels of the revolution that forced the Shah of Iran to flee the country, continues to haunt the world's affairs, especially the ongoing negotiations over the nuclear deal, writes Robin Wright:

Iran suffered more than a hundred and fifty thousand dead between 1980 and 1988. In Tehran, it’s called the Sacred Defense. In the final stages, U.S. aid to Iraq contributed to Iran’s decision to pursue nuclear capability—the very program that six world powers are now negotiating to contain.

Keep in mind that this was not a war that Iran launched.  It was Saddam Hussein's war.  And, in the realpolitik of American "diplomacy," Saddam was "our son of a bitch."  Ah, yes, the twisted and tangled webs that we have woven and into which we are now trapped!

Back in the eighties, Western intelligence agencies questioned whether Iran’s eighteen-month-old revolution could survive for even a few weeks after Saddam Hussein’s surprise invasion. Tehran scrambled to mobilize remnants of the Shah’s army, the new Revolutionary Guards, and almost anyone, of any age, for a volunteer paramilitary. Tehran’s Holy Defense Museum has pictures of thirteen-year-old kids and eighty-year-old men who signed up. (Three per cent of the dead were fourteen or younger.)
Instead, the war dragged on for eight years.

 The CIA got rid of a democratically elected government in Iran so that the US and its allies could install in power the Shah of Iran who would serve as "our son of a bitch."  When the Shah was thrown out two decades later, we looked across the border and encouraged the madman Saddam.  Robin Wright narrates how that messed up things:

In 1988, for the final big Iraqi offensive, the Reagan Administration spent months advising Baghdad on how to retake the strategic Faw Peninsula, where the Shatt al Arab waterway flows into the Persian Gulf.

I was curious about the location of the Faw Peninsula.  Unlike the final year of my high school, I now have Google at my disposal, which easily informs me where this peninsula is:

Wright says this battle got worse, thanks to the madman Saddam.

Iraq also used U.S. intelligence to unleash chemical weapons against the Iranians in Faw. U.N. weapons inspectors documented Iraq’s repeated use of both mustard gas and nerve agents between 1983 and 1988. Washington opted to ignore it. At Faw, thousands of Iranians died. Syringes were littered next to bodies, a U.S. intelligence source told me; Iranian forces had tried to inject themselves with antidotes. The battle lasted only thirty-six hours; it was Iraq’s biggest gain in more than seven years. The war ended four months later, when Iran agreed to a cease-fire.

The apologies that the US owes to people all around the world! :(

Iranian officials told me that the theocracy debated countering Iraq with chemical weapons, but opted against it. However, aware that Baghdad had a nuclear-weapons program, Iran decided to resume the nuclear research-and-development program initiated by the Shah. After the war, Tehran decided to keep it.

I think it is remarkable that Iran didn't unleash its chemical weapons against the Iraqi forces.  

The Iraq war still haunts Iran—and shapes the theocracy’s positions at the negotiating table—partly because tens of thousands are still dying from chemical weapons, according to the Society for Chemical Weapons Victims Support. Years after the war ended, Iranian doctors noticed a pattern of patients reporting chronic pulmonary, skin, and corneal conditions associated with mustard gas. They were diagnosed with what is now known as low-dose exposure.

Wright notes this:

During my recent visit, Iran was gripped by news that the bodies of a hundred and seventy-five military divers had been recovered in Iraq—three decades after their capture by Saddam Hussein’s forces. The men had reportedly been buried alive after their wrists were tied together with wire. Tehran released gruesome pictures of the recovery, and of the decayed and bound corpses still dressed in diving gear.
The country was consumed with mourning yet again—even young people, born after the war ended, were deeply moved.

 To think that the US encouraged Saddam all those years that he was in power!  For what?

 As the country’s diplomats prepared to return to Vienna for the nuclear talks, [Mohsen Rezai, who commanded the Revolutionary Guards during the war] declared, “Iran’s enemies stood by Saddam for the whole eight years of the Sacred Defense.” It was clear that he included the United States among them.

Soon after the war ended, Saddam was no longer "our son of a bitch." 

It is unfortunate that we have never truly given peace a chance.  Oceania will always be at war, ably helped by its Ministry of Peace, wrote George Orwell in that memorable 1984. 

Perhaps it is time to start another war. Maybe against Eurasia; after all, Putin is not "our son of a bitch."

Tamil Nadu fishermen in Iran? Complex maritime geopolitics!

A couple of days ago, I read this headline in The Hindu:

‘Ensure release of TN fishermen from Iran jail’

I am fairly familiar with the South Asian and Middle Eastern geography and, thus, was intrigued--after all, it is a long way from Tamil Nadu to Iran.

Consider the following map:

Tamil Nadu's coastline is way in the south, across from Sri Lanka.  If it were a news item about Tamil Nadu fishermen in Sri Lankan jail, I would have thought it is merely the latest of a long-running maritime issue between these two countries.  But, Iran?

There had to be more, and there was:

 The detained fishermen were the sole breadwinners of their families, and were engaged as contract labourers in fishing boats by a private company based in Saudi Arabia.
In the course of their work, they ventured into Iranian waters and were arrested. Without access to legal aid, they were tried and convicted by an Iranian court to undergo six months imprisonment and pay a fine of $ 5,750 each, she said.
“The fishermen continued to languish in jail, even after serving the term, for want of resources to pay the fine. They had not even been able to contact the Indian Embassy,” Ms.Jayalalithaa said.
The Embassy, she said, did not make effort either to establish contact with them or provide legal assistance.
It also did not put any pressure on the employer company to secure their release by settling the fine amount.

Of course, in many of these international incidents, there could be a lot more than what meets the eye.  But, it sounded rather odd that the Indian government and its embassy did not act in this context.  

I held back the first sentence in that report to highlight how bizarre this is--the sixteen fishermen were arrested back in December.  December!  More than seven months ago.  Which means that they have served out their sentence, but can't get out of the prison because they can't pay up?

I have been watching out for any update since then.  Nothing about the Indian government though.  But, there was this:

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa on Tuesday ordered of Rs 1 lakh financial assistance to each of the families of the 16 fishermen from the State who have been imprisoned in Iran. Announcing the aid, Jayalalithaa pointed out that she had urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to take steps to help secure the release of the fishermen by paying the fine levied on them by the Iranian court.

One lakh rupees is about $1,700.  The fine amount is $5,750.  The diplomatic inaction is all the more intriguing.

Meanwhile, in Nagercoil, family members of the jailed fishermen hailed Jayalalithaa’s gesture.
“After hearing about my brother’s arrest our mother fell ill and now she is bedridden. The CM’s assistance will be a great relief for our family,” said Sahaya Rani, sister of jailed fishermen Jeya Seelan from Colachel.

It is not beyond anybody's imagination as to why Iran wouldn't have done anything otherwise.  In December, Iran was preparing for the elections that were held later in June.  Any out-of-the-ordinary foreign presence would have been suspicious.  More so when this is a story of Tamil fishermen under contract with a Saudi company.  Imagine Iranian navy personnel questioning the occupants of a ship flying with Saudi papers, when Iran and the Saudis have a history of bad blood between them.  And the people "spin" a story of how they are fishermen from Tamil Nadu; wouldn't you also throw them in jail under the suspicious circumstances?

If it were a bunch of IT professionals, then would the Indian government have let nearly eight months go by?  It is one heck of a crazy world in which we live!

On the fucked up politicians and media pundits ...

When presenting the students with a broad overview of the linkages between demographics, economics, and geography, I noted that Iran has a fertility rate that is even lower than that of the United States.  I reminded them that Iran is a country governed by Islamic clerics, and that is it pretty much a theocracy.  Yet, women there are increasingly choosing against having children or perhaps having only one child, so much so that the fertility rate there is well below replacement levels.

As that was sinking in, I added that such a real portrayal of Iran reveals to us how bizarre the representation of Iran is in the popular media and by demagogues, who project Iran as some kind of a primitive country, where people have lots of kids so that they can send quite a few over to the US as suicide bombers.

Linking the thoughts to an article we had discussed on the liberation of women, I noted that Iran is a country where a higher percentage of women go to college compared to their counterparts here in the US.  I shared with them the recent news item about Iranian colleges curbing female students from a few disciplines because they want more men in those fields.

It in unfortunate, I told them, that we have been even prevented from getting to know Iran. I told them they can get more on these kinds of topics in advanced courses. 

That is where my Iran spiel ended. 

I wish I weren't that square and professional in the classroom.  I wish I could have told them in plainer, simpler words: fuck all those politicians and the media who are hell bent making sure that the average American would view Iranians only as monsters.

Fuck them all, is what I should have said.

But, I walk around with some old-fashioned sense of professionalism and decorum in the classroom!

It is one thing, and correctly so, to view Iran's president as a nutcase.  But, President Ahmadinutjob is not what every Iranian is.  The mullahs and ayatollahs are certainly trying their best to screw up the country, yes, but that does not mean every Iranian is so.

However, listening to the fucked up politicians and pundits, not merely now but ever since 1979, the average American knows only one thing: Iranians are out to destroy the US and we have to be on the alert.

We should tell those politicians and pundits to fuck off.

I wish I had taken up class time to share with them even the little bit I know about Iran.  Its glorious history.  Its contributions to art and literature. About Rumi. About how much the Indian art and culture, even Bollywood, became influenced by the Persians.

Instead, I wore an academic straitjacket, stuck to what the course was about, and merely hoped that students would figure things on their own.  Fuck me too, I suppose!

There is so much of an insane word association game being played by the fucked up politicians and pundits: Iran = Muslims = terrorists.  That is it.

Like how Newsweek equated the riots by a few hooligans to "Muslim Rage."  Fuck Newsweek.

I don't have any dog in this race--I am not a Muslim and, Ahmadinutjob would refer to people like me as infidels. It is not that I am speaking because my religious feelings are hurt, or that my old-country is being disrespected. 

The good thing is that I have an hour-plus driving time when I debrief within myself.

Sometimes, I switch the radio on during those drives.  Yesterday, I am so glad that I turned the radio on at the correct time: Orhan Pamuk's interview on NPR.  In that, Pamuk said:

When I said that or when I wrote that, I meant people like Hassan, the radical angry person in my novel who cannot see a bright future waiting for him. There's no job possibilities, and his sense of himself is low. The anger is the anger of a person who sees that history is being unfolded in some other place. But on the other hand, I also want to underline the fact that all these provocations, these little uprisings, flag-burnings, a small minority of manipulated protesters does not represent the wealth and variety of Islamic cultures and people.
We should not judge Islam by terrorists. All civilizations and cultures produce terrorists. Every time there is a flag-burning, killing or provocative films, I'm worried not because something radical will happen, and this time, some people are killed. We're very sorry for that. But I'm worried about, you know, for the last 35 years, I mean, stone by stone, word by word, I'm trying to build an effective word in which readers both from Turkey and from all over the world understand the nuances, shades, colors of where I belong. You may say Islamic civilization or Turkey between east and west, but once a major thing like bombing and killing happened, headlines only talk about Islam and terrorism, and I should refuse to connect that.

Thus, sanity restored!

If only I could force the fucked up politicians and pundits to listen to Orhan Pamuk, or to read Rumi!
Here is a wonderful verse by Rumi:

Inside the Great Mystery that is,
we don't really own anything.
What is this competition we feel then,
before we go, one at a time, through the same gate?

Why this competition? 

The best responses to Obama's UN speech

This excerpt:

Mr Obama quoted Mahatma Gandhi: "Intolerance is itself a form of violence and an obstacle to the growth of a true democratic spirit." The correct move here was to couch the American defence of the right to blasphemy in the words of a hero of the non-aligned movement whom even the Egyptians might have to applaud, lest they piss off the Indians. Nobody can be against Gandhi! So it's a safe applause line, for anybody except a funky postmodern anti-anti-colonialist like Dinesh D'Souza

Re-read that.  Does anybody come across as the good and principled guy?  Well, other than Gandhi; because, "nobody can be against Gandhi."

The Economist, which is where that excerpt is from, used to serve beauties like this, but it is becoming rare these days.

It is "Iran" and not "eye-ran," dammit!

With the president of Iran, AhmadiNutJob, in New York for his deranged rants at the United Nations, (on Yom Kippur, of all days!) all these talking heads, who are already charged about the nuclear ambitions, are just awfully referring to "Eye-ran" instead of "Iran" and are pissing me off.

I am, therefore, reminded of my opinion piece that The Register Guard published more than four years ago, back on June 16, 2008:

When I moved to Oregon almost six years ago, I was initially puzzled to see the “Orygun” bumper stickers. Since then, I have travelled east of the Mississippi as a naturalized Oregonian, and I now understand the need for such a sticker to highlight the correct way to pronounce the name of our state.

I was recently in Boston for the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers. It turned out that the Boston Marathon was to be held the Monday after the meeting ended, and the geographers’ venue was right by the finish line.

No wonder that on three occasions, strangers at cafes asked me whether I was in the city to compete in the marathon. Their question was absolutely flattering, particularly because the last time I ran for more than a block was many years ago — after I got mugged as I was heading out of the Amtrak station in downtown Los Angeles!

Their follow-up question was to ask where I was visiting from. When I told them “Oregon,” it was not at all flattering when they repeated the same word as “Oregone.”

I wished I had a few of those “Orygun” bumper stickers to slap on to their foreheads right then and there. It was more awful when even academics at the conference said “Western Oregone University.”

I guess we feel slighted when people mispronounce Oregon. We then feel a deep emotion to intentionally mess up their names in return, or worse.

My students think so, too, when I bring this to their attention — which is when I make it a point to remind them that Iraq is not pronounced as “eye-rack” and Iran is not “eye-ran.” I do not mean to suggest that correctly pronouncing the names of these or other countries is all that matters. But correctly pronouncing their names will be a significant first step toward understanding them— particularly when we are the people determining the fate of Iraq, and when we are far from being a beloved country in the Middle East.

Correctly pronouncing Iraq or Iran, or any other country for that matter, is important also because of contrasting effort we put into pronouncing European names. I can’t remember the last time a newscaster pronounced the French city of Lyons as if it were “lions.”

In fact, just to drive home this point, last term I wrote “Lyons” on the board and asked my class to pronounce it. Immediately came the correct response — ironically, from the same student who earlier had said “eye-rack.”

Of course, with a name that is not quite the typical Western name, I have heard it (mis)pronounced in a number of strange ways. The most memorable of them all was when I worked as a transportation planner in Bakersfield, Calif.

A colleague at another agency, with whom I worked on several projects, always called me “Sirhan.” Initially I tried correcting her, and then even joked with her that I am not related to Sirhan Sirhan — Robert Kennedy’s assassin. Despite my best efforts, I was only Sirhan to her.

In times such as this, I am reminded of a Tamil saying that translates: You cannot straighten a dog’s curved tail, because it will revert to the same old position.

Another colleague jokingly suggested that I change my name to Sam Murphy, to get around such problems. Well, there is a good chance I might have become Sam Murphy if I had immigrated in the 1800s, when many names were changed at Ellis Island, often against the wishes of the immigrants themselves.

We had better start getting used to correctly pronouncing names that may not look or sound familiar, even if only out of our own self-interest. One reason is, of course, the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and our standing in the world.

Another reason: In a rapidly globalizing environment, it is China, India, and many non-Western countries where we anticipate lots of changes — economically, culturally, militarily — and these are countries where the names of people and places are often vastly different from what we are used to.

So, here is lesson one: pronounce “Guangzhou”!

Women flying high in the US and India. But, grounded in Iran!

Maybe the end of men is coming sooner than expected!

First, in India:

A first-hand account on the conception of a satellite, its transition into a working reality, and finally its launch into space marked the inauguration of Electronics and Communication Engineering (ECE) Association of National Institute of Technology-Tiruchi (NIT-T). N.Valarmathi, India’s first woman project director to head a Remote Sensing Satellite Project, encapsulated her 28-years tryst with space technology in an attempt to motivate youngsters to tackle the multilevel engineering challenges involved in building satellites. 

There was one even before her:

 Ms. Valarmathi is the second woman to be the satellite project director at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) after T. K. Anuradha, who headed the communication satellite GSAT-12 programme, but she is the first woman to head a remote sensing satellite project.

India's women are reaching new heights in a country that has had quite a few women as chief ministers in a number of states and, of course, as a prime minister too!

Here in the US, the senior-most position of the President's cabinet has been held by women for twelve of the last sixteen years: Madeline Albright, Condoleeza Rice, and Hillary Clinton.  So much so that Foreign Policy notes, in somewhat of a tongue-in-cheek fashion, "Is America ready for a male secretary of state?"

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has visited more than 100 nations during her tenure, flown 897,951 miles, and spent 376 days abroad. By making it to 110 countries in just one term, Clinton broke the previous record for most countries visited by a secretary: 98, held by Madeleine Albright. And although Condoleezza Rice visited fewer countries, she did log more than a million miles in the air. 

 A chuckling advice to the GOP contender:

Maybe as Mitt Romney struggles to gain traction in the presidential race, he will be tempted to engage in some classic special-interest politics and promise to appoint a man as secretary of state. The move would certainly be welcomed by American men who often feel aggrieved and underappreciated in the workplace. And certainly men remain an important minority when it comes to presidential voting (they constituted 46 percent of voters in the 2008 elections).
We just hope a man would be up to the task.

What a contrast these stories from India and the US are to this latest one from Iran!

More than 30 universities have introduced new rules banning female students from almost 80 different degree courses.
These include a bewildering variety of subjects from engineering, nuclear physics and computer science, to English literature, archaeology and business.
No official reason has been given for the move, but campaigners, including Nobel Prize winning lawyer Shirin Ebadi, allege it is part of a deliberate policy by the authorities to exclude women from education.
"The Iranian government is using various initiatives… to restrict women's access to education, to stop them being active in society, and to return them to the home," she told the BBC. 

 It is not Iran's attempts to produce nuclear weapons that ought to worry us as much such prehistoric policies ought to.

As Slate notes:

Like in the United States, Iran’s universities have more female students than male students. Female Iranians are surpassing their male peers in traditionally male-dominated studies, like science and engineering. The trend is clear. Iran’s leaders must think that the only way to prevent the “end of men” in their country is to make it illegal for women to succeed.

Maybe it is a good thing that Iran's ayatollahs want to hold women back--if not, by now Iran would have produced quite a few nukes!.  In any case, whether or not the end of men is for real, the end of these "religious" men is coming. Soon. Real soon.

Déjà Vu. It is about 1979, all over again.

The anti-American protests and the violent killing of the US ambassador to Libya has prompted quite a few commentaries on 1979--from the chest-thumping Newt Gingrich, to this more nuanced piece in the New York Review of Books, which is titled "Islamist Déjà Vu: The Lessons of 1979."

Well, all this is déjà vu all over again for me--because, I wrote a column on how 1979 was a pivotal year, and that we are continuing to deal with those issues because we never really resolved them. (I should have added in that commentary that 1979 was also the first year in Congress for Gingrich--yet another unresolved problem since then!)

Anyway, the following is what I wrote, which was published in the Register Guard back, way back, in January 2008:

With the presidential primaries heating up, commentators are tempted to compare the 2008 election with 1960 - when a young and charismatic John F. Kennedy edged out Richard Nixon - and a few others point out to 1968, when the Democratic Convention in Chicago was the scene of chaos and protests. And, of course, we hear the comparisons to the Vietnam War.

Well, we are focusing on the wrong years and the wrong decade. I can't wait for all the brouhaha to die out so that the candidates, the media, and all of us can focus on the national and international issues, almost all of which were caused by events in one single year: 1979.

If ever there was a competition for which year since World War II will qualify for the title of Annus Horribilis, 1979 could be a leading candidate. First, a list of some of the events from that year:

• Jan. 16: The shah of Iran flees the country, and goes into exile.
• Feb. 1: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returns to Iran, and is warmly welcomed by millions of Iranians.
• April 4: Former Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto is hanged in Pakistan.
• July 3: President Jimmy Carter signs a directive to support the opponents of the pro-Soviet government of Afghanistan.
• July 16: Saddam Hussein becomes the president of Iraq.
• Nov. 4: Americans in the U.S. embassy in Tehran are taken hostage.
• Dec. 25: The Soviet Union begins to deploy troops in Afghanistan.

After ousting Bhutto in a military coup in 1977, Gen. Zia ul-Haq initiated a number of policies that made the country's politics and governance explicitly Islamic. The death of Bhutto in April of 1979 formalized Zia's power over the country and stoked the growth of fundamentalism that was characterized by violence and an inflexible anti-Western dogma.

The rise of a theocratic Iran provided Islamic fundamentalists with a real example that they wanted to emulate everywhere - even if they were Sunni or Wahhabi Muslims, who may not exactly be fond of the Shiites of Iran. One such individual was Osama bin Laden, who led many foreign fighters to take up jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

Bin Laden and Khomeini belonged to different sects of Islam, but shared a common belief that the Saudi Arabian kingdom had become corrupt and was engaging in un-Islamic agreements with the infidels. Protests became increasingly violent in the kingdom, and erupted into a finale at Islam's holiest place - the Grand Mosque in Mecca. On Nov. 20, more than 500 armed dissidents and their families stunned the ruling family by seizing the Grand Mosque.

Even though most of the dissidents died in the armed struggle, the act resulted in religious orthodoxy gaining more influence in society and politics. Further, violence mixed with religion has since then become a frighteningly common occurrence, as we found out on the fateful morning on Sept. 11, 2001.

Here we are in 2008, still reeling from these events that happened in 1979. Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan sum up our current predicament with that part of the world.

Yet after listening to presidential contenders of all political stripes, I am not convinced that our understanding of any of these countries and the underlying dynamics has improved even a tad in the 29 years since Khomeini made a triumphant return to Iran. We continue to make simplistic statements about these countries, their peoples, and their beliefs. It is no wonder then that the United States has not engaged in consistent, systematic and productive long-range actions and has, instead, jumped around from one hot issue to another.

I hope we will all soon drop our collective preoccupation with the elections of 1960 and 1968, and instead challenge the candidates with tough questions about 1979 and its aftershocks. The '60s are so over! 

Thank Iran (Persia) for Bollywood!

There is a good chance that most of the buffoons who chant "bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" don't care to know anything at all about the country's gloriously rich history.  The theocratic buffoons ruining running the country seem to be hell bent on making sure the world would understand Iran only as a country of nutcases.

A long time ago, I read somewhere (where? the older I get, the more I forget such details!) that even as Arabic gained currency in West Asia as the language of science, Persian reigned supreme as the language of culture.  Something like the comparison between French and German, I suppose.

It was a good thing that the Central Asians invading India brought along with them the Persian culture, which then filtered all the way down to memorable Bollywood stars who played memorable Muslim characters with memorable melodies.

Some of my favorites:

Nukes are better than TV sex because ....?

It feels like the topic is Iran everywhere I turn; but, enjoying it nonetheless.  The following sentences in this piece (ht) were way too good not to blog about:

In an interview with the New Yorker several years ago, an Iranian security official candidly assessed the challenge at hand:

The majority of the population is young.… Young people by nature are horny. Because they are horny, they like to watch satellite channels where there are films or programs they can jerk off to.… We have to do something about satellite television to keep society free from this horny jerk-off situation.

One might assume a country that suffers from chronic inflation and unemployment -- not to mention harsh international sanctions and a potential war over its nuclear program -- would have better things to do than discourage its youth from masturbating. Yet the regime continues to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into Chinese censorship technology to create a moral Iron Dome against political and cultural subversion, with decidedly mixed results. Piped-in BBC Persian and Voice of America television are sometimes successfully scrambled, but those who want pornography have no shortage of outlets. That said, the censorship software sometimes get a bit overzealous. One Iranian friend told me of repeated unsuccessful attempts to access his British university's email account from Tehran, only to realize that the school's apparently bawdy name -- Essex -- was prohibited by the regime's Internet filters. 

 And we tremble in fear and shake in our boots over Iran's crazy clerics?  Maybe if they had a lot more sex, then they won't go after the bomb.  Oh wait, that logic does not work for the US, too!  I suppose we are doomed any which way: have sex and have nukes, or don't have sex and have nukes :(

Dealing with Iran: What it means to have all options on the table?

Jeff Goldberg seems to be convinced more than ever about the probable strike against Iran in June:

After the Netanyahu-Obama meeting last month, I thought the White House had bought some time with the Israelis. Though it makes no sense for the Israelis to strike Iran's nuclear sites after November (the political climate, and the actual climate, as in cloud-cover, makes a strike this winter implausible), I thought the Obama Administration had moved the Israeli clock back a bit, to September. But I think we're back to looking at June as a possible (I didn't say probable) month for an Israeli attack.

Here, by the way, is Slate's Fred Kaplan on the subject. I agree with Fred -- I hope I'm not mischaracterizing his position -- that if the Israelis don't strike by November, then they will have, in essence, decided to subcontract out the problem to the Americans:

(I)f the Israelis really are intent on attacking the Iranian nuclear facilities, they're likely to do so before this November's American presidential elections. If they started an attack and needed U.S. firepower to help them complete the task, Barack Obama might open himself up to perilous political attacks--for being indecisive, weak, appeasing, anti-Israel, you name it--if he didn't follow through. It could cost him the votes of crucial constituencies. If the Israelis tried to pressure the United States into joining an attack after the election, Obama would have (to borrow a phrase from another context) more flexibility. So, to the extent the Israeli leaders have decided to attack (and it's not at all clear they have), they are probably thinking: much better sooner than later.

One of several reason I think an attack, if it comes, will come sooner rather than later is a just-aired report from Israel's Channel 10 Television on the Israeli air force's preparedness for an attack. (Times of Israel has a synopsis). The fact that the Barak-run Defense Ministry allowed this report to air (it has the power to censor national security information) suggests something, I think. (And, yes, it could be part of a bluff, but I don't tend to think so. I think the airing of this report was more a signal to the White House and to the Europeans that Israel won't wait very long.)

Images of the day: Iranians and Israelis for peace

I can't imagine a better follow-up to this post about public opinion on warmongering: ordinary people in Israel and Iran "love-bombing" through the web and Facebook.  A couple of images from this Israeli website:

and an Iranian response:

Cool!

So, ... the greatest threat to the world is ...?

It depends.

The answer depends on whom you ask.  In the Arab world (ht)?

73 percent of respondents believe that Israel and the US are the two countries presenting the largest threat to the security of the Arab world, with 51 percent believing that Israel is the most threatening, 22 percent believe the US is the most threatening, and 5 percent reporting a belief that Iran is the single country most threatening to the security of their countries. 

Reminds me of the time that when I was introduced as one coming from America, an Arab immediately said that I was coming from a terrorist country and I was guilty by association!