The Revolution devours its Children: Tehran 1981

Dear Michael, quite a few of Iranian expats living here in Stockholm and other Swedish places are former members or supporters of the left wing political factions. During the time of the last Shah (Reza Pahlevi) they were  sympathic with a progressive or even socialist future for the country. It was in fact their political activities as members of Tudeh or the Trade Unions that made ground for the 1979 abolition of the Shahs power. The Islamic clerics simply occupied quickly the void positions, and in particular they promissed the masses a social, free and righteous political system. But in fact the first concern they had was to eliminate the still present leftist groups, which after the 1979 revolution were “taking a rest” to sort out and do endless debates about the right social and economic plan for the country. The mullahs had less problems, their only concern was to grab all power and to introduces a system of totalitarian, islamo-religious oppression. To get rid of their most influential competitor, the left movement of Iran lead by the Tudeh party, they started in 1981 to round on the leftists and others who had come together with the Islamists to bring down the autocratic rule of the Shah two years earlier and gave them two choices: convert or be liquidated. Jduges at the Den Hague Human Rights Court issued a report recently, stating that “in the 1980s the Islamic Republic of Iran went about arresting, imprisoning and executing thousands upon thousands of Iranian citizens because of their “wrong” faith or their political opinion were in conflict with the regime…”.

You might read more about this events in an article published recently by The Independent.

Take Care,

/ghazal

Skandinavia

Dear Michael, next week a scientific workshop on “Epigenetic factors in Radiation Biology” will be held at stockholm University. I am involved in its organistion. I’m wondering if you will attend the meeting ? Some really good speakers were invited, and I think it’ll be fun.

Take Care
/ghazal

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Ghazal Dear, Thanks a lot for the information. I already received an invitation to the workshop a couple of month ago from M. But I decided to send Y. to present our studies there. You know my reservations to travel to northern countries. In fact there would be only three cases that would be worth for me to visit Sweden.
- A reunion concert of ABBA,
- they award me the Nobel price
- (I tell you later).

good luck with the meeting
Michael

Sade in Munich (prenatal)

Hi Michael, I have recently been back to Munich for a conference. It was a pity we did not met there. But guess what, on my flight from Stockholm we had these on-seat entertainment systems. I was browsing through the music-clips, and found one by Sade. It reminded me of her songs that we were listening together in your car three years ago. On the music clip it said “Munich, 1984″. Whow, I thought, so amazing music was played before i was born. But since the clip does not mention exactly when in 1984 the concert took place, in theory my mom could have been there while being already pregnant with me, and I heard the song prenataly. I found a copy of it on youtube, so enjoy Sade.
Take care
/ghazal

Messages on Meteorites

Ghazal Dear,
You might have already forgotten how scepticial you were about the existence of “Stjaernfallen” or meteorites 3 years ago. But when we were spotting some of them from Persides meteor shower later in August, you agreed that at least it was a great event and that it was worth to spent half of the night out under the sky. And now scientists found out that some of the meteorites that don’t burn completely in the atmosphere, but reach the earth surface, might serve as informative messengers from extreterrestrial planets and tell us something about how habitable the living conditions might be there.

Microscopic picture of the crystaline structure of a mineral from a meteorite supposed to be of Mars origin.

The meteorites that we can see regularily on the night sky, with the highest incidence in August (Perseides) and in November (Leonides) not only gives us the chance to express our deepest wishes, but as researcher from Michigan State University recently discovered also contain mineral and chemical signatures that can signify habitable conditions on the planet from which they originate, such as the presence of water. But they also mentioned that “the trouble is by the time most of these meteorites have been lying around on Earth they pick up signatures that look just like habitable environments, because they are. Earth, obviously, is habitable.

Earth, I am quite sure, is the the most beautiful and exciting of all habitable planets, in particular taking into consideration its 8 billion different people, some of them funny, some silly, some stupid and some brilliant.

Greetings, Michael

Single-Gender Education: The Great Disillusion

Ghazal Dear, some days ago we had the pleasure to attend the 200 anniversary of the foundation of the “Max-Joseph-Stift“, the most prestigious girls college in Bavaria and the third highest ranked one in Germany. The daughter of good friends of us is learning at this elite gymnasium since 5 years now, and at the 200 years celebration we really got a nice impression of how well money can be spent to improve school education. The entire evening was choreographed by the girls themself, and it was really a nice show, a mixture of classical and pop and jazz music, theater, a sort of poetry-slam and video-performance of the 200 years history of the school and the building.
So I was absolutely convinced that a college that receives so much extra funding from the gouvernment to provide dedicated high-class training (historically to the daughters of the influential and powerful Bavarian families, but now to every girl who passes the competitive entrance exam) should have a long list of famous alumni, woman who went into politics, arts, science, became famous musicians or writers or journalists, filmmakers, critics, great painters and so on. Than I red an article from the local newspaper about the “Max-Joseph-Stift” and how proud the people from Munich-Bogenhausen can be to host such a renowned place of education on their territory. And as an example they listed some “famous” “Max-Alumni”: Putzi von Opel, Ottilie of Faber-Castel and Hannelore Elsner.
Hannelore Elsner I knew pretty well, because she is a good actress, but not really of world class or international rank. She played a couple of good character roles in sort of low-budget movies (like “Alles auf Zucker”), but did not reach the dramatic stand as Franka Potente or Marlene Dietrich or Hildegard Kneef. So Hannelore Elsner is a good actress, but not a great one. I would say there are maybe 200 actress in Germany in her league.
The first of the “famous” Max-alumni, Putzi von Opel however, I did not knew at all, and now it seems it is because I never was a regular reader of the yellow press. Since apart from beeing the grand-great daughter of Adam Opel, founder of the car-manufacturer, Putzi only became famous for her Paris Hilton life style in the Munich Schikeria, and for organising one of the biggest Canabis dealing networks in Munich. In 2006 she died in a car accident in Spain at the age of 55 years.
The third of the famous alumni from this college, Ottilie von Faber-Castel again did not gained fame for her own merrits, but for being born to a rich industrial dynasty, the pen-manufacturer Lothar Faber. What we can say positively on her is that during the time when she led the company, no major economic hussles occured and she continued to produce good-quality pencils, and the company is still doing this.

So from the 200 years of dedicated elite education for girls, the creme-de-la-creme of the alumni is an TV actress, a paparazzi celebrity and a woman who is famous for being born to a rich family. I am not questioning the potential of woman to reach the highest achievements in any area of human activity; I am absolutely positive they can easily compete with the creativity and commitment of us men. There are plenty of woman in Germany and anywhere in the world who by their genious, their talent and their courage can ashame all machos. Scientists such as Liselotte Meitner, Marie Curie or Rosalind Franklin, a mathematician as Sophie Kovalevskaja, Geneticists as Elizabeth Blackburn, Barbara McClintock or Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard found their places in the pantheon of human discoveries and knowledge.  There were woman in politics such as Rosa Luxemburg, Olga Benario Prestes, Angela Davis or Tanja Bunke, who led heroic fights for a better world. There were fighters against fascism in Germany, like Sophie Scholl of the “White Rose Group” or Libertas Schulze-Boysen of the “Red Orchestra Group” or Ruth Werner. I have no space here to list all the great, gifted writers and poets among woman who stay equally high as their male peers.  And in music and performing arts, the world would look only half as entertaining and productive without singers such as Maria Callas, Montserrat Caballe, Joan Baez, Kate Bush, Sherley Bassey, Miriam Makeba, Sade, Janis Joplin, Edith Piaf or actresses as Nicole Kidman, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Sharon Stone and many others.  But funny enough, neither of them went through a “girls-only-school”. I doubt that the idea to provide a protected environment for girls to achieve education without the harmful influence of boys is doing any good. For the parents it might seem that their daughters have less trouble to get good notes in such a single-gender school, and the students themself might also have the feeling that learning is easier if they are in separate girls classes. But on the long run, they are obviously not performing any better in real life. For the requirements of the real life, when you have to put the text books aside and forget about good marks, when you have to face the challenges of a modern world with its economic, political, social changes, when you have to find a place in the world and have to buildt your natural talents into productivity and raise your creative potential, than an education with the challenges and obstacles of mixed boys and girls classes provide a much better school for life. Of course every family is proud of its daughter, when she comes home with excellent marks, and at the end of term can even perform in front of the entire school playing some Schumanns piano piece or reading a nice essay. But as the English say: The proof of the pudding is by eating, i.e. school is a nice preparation, but sooner or later it should demonstrate its success by the achievements and the standing of its alumni later in life.

First Thunderstorm

Ghazal my Dear, there are different definitions of beginning of spring. Astronomically it is the 21st of March, when you celebrated Norouz. Meterologically, the 1st of March is defined as beginning of spring, and some use a botanical time-table that associates spring with the blossoming of the apple-trees. For me, spring started today afternoon, when the warmth of the last three days was interrupted by a sudden, powerful thunderstorm. Since I can remember, I always was fascinated by thunderstorms, its eruption of energy, the release it brings after too much warmth and the freshness of the air afterwards.
There is no use of taking photos of a thunderstorm; not even a video-film can give the slightest authentic impression of what a good thunderstorm feels like. It has something archaic, some natural power and I remember that I like to call or write people who I love during this thunderstorm and ask them, if they feel the same at this moment.
Take Care,
Michael

Mysterious Moon

Dear Michael, I once went to Pompeij with somebody who was careless enough to fell in love with me. We got lost, after the Pompeij necropolis was closed and walked around through the darkness, expecting every second that a time leap might send us back to year 79 A.D., when the erupting Vesuv burried the town and all its people underneath. The red-orange background is from a photo we did there at sunset, the mysterious moon in the foreground is from tonight.
Take good care,
/ghazal

Iranian Perspective: No need for higher purposes

Ghazal dear, the following reply to a post of Bahmani I could have never written without experiencing the tightness of the relationship between you and your family and feeling how much a resistance this provides against any potential intruder (like myself).

In Iran, the frequently expressed demand to do something for the community/society is a compensatory reflex to the traditional 150% focus on familial relation as the only important ones. Neither the Shahs aristocratic wealth nor the religious dogma of Shia islam could provide any common framework for all Iranians. The aristocracy was always considered corrupt and only interested in rising the power and wealth of their own dynasty, and the islamic religion was from its very beginning alian and hostile towards the historic Persian values of the Archemenidian, Sassanidian and Parthians empires and their culture and faith.
So over centuries, the Iranians converted to their very own family worlds, which provided a sort of constant values, safety, and system of trust, pride, and historic continuity. But the rise of modern societies in the 19th and 20th century required a new social “contract”, and even though in both the capitalist and the socialist countries the economic models were so much different, in both cases the masses “sacrificed” their privat life to the socio-economic requirements. Japans rise to such a economic superpower would have been unthinkable without the devotion of the people to finally commit their whole life for the prosperity of their employer (or formerly to the prosperity of the shogun). In Europe the mostly benevolent dynasties had a similar function, or the republic values in France. All of these provide values systems to the individual, which could easily be transformed into the requirements of modern, anonymous, industrial societies.
But in a society where the main social relationships and values are provided by an extended family clan, this transformation is much more difficult. Because you can easily get rid of your faith (like in Russia) or loosen your devotion to the royal dynasty (like in England, where the Windsors became more or less decorative and cultural institutions), but you can never get rid of your parents, your grandparents and uncles and aunts. Everybody of us has them, and of course they will always try to keep the children, grandchildren, nices and nephrews as close as possible and as obidient as possible. And this in reality made any consense on a national or society scale very difficult. And because people deep inside are very aware of this, they invent the narratives of the hero who devotes his whole life for the sake of the society. These narratives are pure sublementations for the complex of lacking a minimal social responsibility. The second narrative that is reproduced again and again to satisfy this desire for a devotion of the individuum to the socium is the Shia victim mythology. Wunderful and so atractive to please god, if some martyres loos their life not to defend the family, but to spread the religion. These are the prototype of social workers: Giving their own life for the sake of a “higher” institution. But (thanks god) these cult of Shia islamic martyrdom could not supersede in primary family values in Iranian society neither. I was always fascinated by the observation that even though Shia islam has this dogma of the martyrdom, there were never suicide terrorists coming from the Iranian society. My guess would be that these very tight family relationships in which each person is imbedded, the idea to commit one family member to be sent out to give its life away for a “higher purpose” is extremely difficult to justify. The palestinians are always happy to do this, and the Iraqies and the Pakistany are always willing to do this. Iranians not. So they love these fantastic stories of Rustam or of Ali and Hussein, but the verve and absoluteness of this love says much more about their deep-down feeling that they lack such “higher purposes” in daily life.

regards, Michael

Love and Devotion: Exhibition at the Bodleian Library

The idea of Persia has long fascinated Western minds. From the Middle Ages on, knowledge of Persia gradually expanded as a result of increased contact through trade, travel and diplomacy. Writers in Europe, such as Goethe, Chaucer, Dante and Shakespeare, reflected this understanding in the parallels with Persian literature and shared symbolism evident in their plays, poetry and prose.

Love and devotion showcases a rich selection of manuscripts from the world-renowned collection of the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford, along with rare works from the State Library of Victoria and other Australian collections.

Two Princess: Miniature, Bodleian Collection

 

The exhibition celebrates the beauty of Persian manuscripts and the stories of human and divine love told through their pages from the early 11th century on.

Romantic tales were copied and sometimes reinterpreted over time, and reached far beyond the borders of Iran. The universal themes of Persian narrative and mystical poetry appealed especially to audiences in Mughal India and Ottoman Turkey, and eventually to audiences in the West. Transcending time and place, these stories continue to resonate today and to be retold through contemporary literature and popular culture.

Persian poetry from the secular tradition flourished in the princely courts of Iran, where illustrated manuscripts were crafted for elite patrons. Today, these provide viewers with the opportunity to experience examples of Persian calligraphy, illumination and miniature painting from the 13th to 18th centuries, one of the richest periods in the history of the book. Many stories from this period were embraced not only in the princely courts but in all sectors of society, told within families and at community gatherings.

Court Francais in Tehran

 

Instead of an Oscar award: 90 lashes for actress Marzieh Vafamehr

Any other country would be proud to have such a talented actress, and would probably trying to nominate her for an Oscar award. But the authorities of the IRI mullah regime in Tehran have other standards of showing their admiration. Marzieh Vafamehr, playing in the Australian movie “My Tehran for Sale” has been sentenced to 90 lashes. The actress, who was arrested in July and sentenced by the court this past weekend, appeared in the movie without a headscarf on and a shaved head, and the story involved both drug use and an observation of Iran’s oppressive ways.
In a cruel twist of irony, Vafamehr played the lead in the film, also named Marzieh, an actress in Tehran whose theatre work is banned by the government, forcing her to lead a secret life in order to pursue her passions. One night she meets a fellow Iranian named Saman who now resides in Australia and offers her a chance to also escape the everyday fears of being who you want to be that come with living there.