Feelings: Where the River Ends

I was just reading an interview with Jorge Hirsch, a Professor of Physics at University of San Diego in California, in which he basically suggested that the United States would probably break a six-decade long taboo and use nuclear weapons against Iran. You might say that there is nothing particularly new about this assertion. Well, there isn't. And it needn't be in so far as these few lines are concerned. Whether Professor Hirsch's comments stem from a deep understanding of the current situation, or from a Physist's unraveling power of speculation, is not something for me to discuss. Nor is it in my capacity to comment on the sources and the facts which led the venerated Seymour Hersh to write his rather controversial article in the recent edition of the NewYorker. In fact, the only thing well in my capacity to discuss, and strangely enough, perhaps the only thing I would like to talk about, is the way I feel; the way any ordinary, sane Iranian may feel about all this: to be the subject - or the obejct, for that matter - of a discussion, which involves 'breaking the nuclear taboo'. How do I feel then? Well, I should be fine. I should be fine so long as the word 'Iran' is just two vowels, two consonents, and a bunch of maniacs. The problem is, for me at least, it isn't... (to be continued)

Stupidity: The Ocean of all Oceans

1. "... our history is emphatically the history of progress ... the greatest and most highly civilized people that ever the world saw.., which have spread their dominion over every quarter of the globe ... have been the acknowledged leader of the human race in the career of political improvement.."

2. "... ours is the country of action. Love of conquest? No, proselytism. What this country wants above all is to impose her personality upon the vanquished, not because it is hers, but because she holds the naive conviction that it represents the type of the good and beautiful. She believes that she can render to the world no greater benefit than by presenting it with her ideas, her manners and her fashions.."

These lines are -both- more than a hundred and fifty years old; and yet how astonishngly relevent they look today. The first one is written by British, the second by French. A third has been written by Romans; a Fourth by Greeks; a Fifth by Germans; and the latest by Americans... Idiocy, as if it never reaches the bottom; as if it never ends.