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May 30, 2005
USE?
The French said No (or Non?). I am glad they did. Although people seem to have awfully short time memories lately, it was still refreshing to see that the French recognised the madness that would be "The United States of Europe" and acted to stop it.
Giscard d'Estaing, the former French president, was assigned to the task of heading the commission to create a "European Constitution" back in 2002. I remember his interview with the Guardian then, where he claimed that the whole thing is just an exercise, that he and others can never think of replacing the European individual governments.
Now, two three years later, they are actually taking this seriously. An EU Cabinet, EU minister of War (okay, Defence), this is crazy. Forget about the markets and multi-nationals and corporations, just the idea of having one person in charge of war is scary enough. This is an amazingly sensitive moment in history. This is when we, as human beings, are deciding whether a world-wide economic policy is going to determine our future. What if this whole thing is wrong? What if, by any chance, we dare and re-insert culture and individuality into economy? I know, economists shiver when they hear the word culture, but it exists.
I am not in favour of continuing 1000 years of bitterness between France, Germany, England, and Spain. I am very much in favour of peace and borderless Europe. But is it really a good idea to decide everyone's fate based on economic policies decided in Brussels by likes of Junker and Giscard d'Estaing? Is it the right decision just to say yes to a United Europe in order to put up some resistence against the United States of America (that's what it is, a reactionary vote on part of the "Yae" sayers, just to say no to the USA)?
I hope the Dutch, the Danes, and the Swedes stop this madness. No to USE!
More about this:
French 'Non' puts EU in turmoil
Posted by Khodadad at 03:33 PM | Comments (3)
May 28, 2005
Eyes Wide Shut
I have a good friend called Hamid Reza. He is very young, and very tall, and very cool (who said I don't know my adjectives?)! He is also an artist, of the kind I love (cartoonist) and loves movies.
Anyway, the reason I am telling you all these is that I have discovered that Hamid also has an English weblog. He writes about movies (hence the name of the weblog) and also puts some of the comics he draws for a children's magazine online (the latest one is an introduction to the movie Sin City). He lives in Iran and for those who are interested in learning about some aspects of pop-culture in Iran, he can be a great source.
Keep up the good work pal!
Posted by Khodadad at 10:32 PM | Comments (2)
May 22, 2005
Is Lucas a Sith?
Saw the "new" Star Wars movie (Episode III) last night. Only George Lucas, and only the Hollywood's cult-of-personality system, could make a bad movie like this into a "hit".
Yes Mr. Lucas, you probably have read one book about Roman History and the fall of the Republic (Roman History for Dummies?) and had a catchy idea about presenting some philosophical ideas through a futuristic, in fact teleological, film. But that was 30 years ago, and it resulted in 2.5 good films ("Episode 6" was not that good).
Now, you are riding on nostalgia! Okay, yes, the special effects were great, and we certainly needed a sort of link between the goody two shoes Anakin Skywalker and Big Bad Darth Vader, and you presented it (although I did it better in my imagination, and with less cheesy dialogues!). But man, how hard is it to higher a screen-writer of some respect up in Skywalker Ranch? You can just pay for their Southwest ticket (ca. $180 max!) and import them from the screen-writer-wanna-be fertile land of Los Angeles!!
If it wasn't Star Wars, if it wasn't George Lucas (we still are nostalgic about our childhood George) and if it wasn't because of the constant references to characters in the original movies, this would have been labled a very bad movie.
In all fairness, it was less horrible than Episode II and less shamelessly commercial than Episode I. But whenever Anakin tried to get romantic with Padme, the whole audience laughed and said "oh, spare us" loudly!
R2D2 provided some comic relief, which is not surprising, since he did not have to put up with the horrible and childish dialogues, and so did Yoda, who by ignoring the grammar, made the dialogues at least interesting.
George: "screen-writing we must learn, our audience as fools we not must take..." May the farce be with you...
Posted by Khodadad at 11:20 AM | Comments (1)
May 21, 2005
BBC, I love you!
BBC, the British Broadcasting Agency, has been an influential source of news for over 70 years. From spreading the English "public school" accent to making amazing television series like "I, Claudius", whatever you say about a company with roots in the Imperial British propaganda, you cannot deny its services.
Now, in the age of the internet, BBC has given us its amazing website. I am not sure why, but the BBC site is a collection of unbelievable amount of knowledge. Their history section is a wonderful, and in a sense, unrivaled, site. The language site, with great language teaching tools, is certainly unique (it has an interactive section for learning Scottish Gaelic for crying out loud!). Other sections just need to be explored. Click on and lose yourself in the amazing ocean of material.
I love the BBC!
Posted by Khodadad at 12:28 AM | Comments (2)
May 17, 2005
Exactly
Have a look at this article. It says exactly what I believe and have said for a while. The author has obviously not read some of the already published works about the subject (The Myth of Continents or Beyond Binary Histories or The Colonizers' Model of the World), but she still makes the good point.
We live in a world that is becoming more and more politically correct, sometimes to the extremes (HERstory???????), so I think asking people to be politically correct and stop using the terms "Middle- Near- Far- East" should not be that hard. Say West- Central- East- Asia!
Posted by Khodadad at 10:31 AM | Comments (1)
May 13, 2005
UCLA Marathon Reading
The title might sound like what every graduate student is doing: marathon reading. We are all fast readers who are always trying to finish up some reading so we can get to the next one.
However, the specific matter is a programme set-up by the UCLA Dept. of English and it happens every year. This year's programme was a marathon reading of One Thousand and One Nights. It started at 12:00 PM Thursday, May 12, 2005 and ended just today, Friday, May 13th, 2005 at 1:00 PM! Twenty five hours of reading. Different readers read stories and chapters out of the book, and people camped out on the lawn the whole night. It was a fun event, and although I did not stay the whole 25 hours, I still liked the whole thing!
One Thousand and One Nights contains some of my favourite stories. Stories of Haroun Al Rashid wandering in the streets of Baghdad and solving people's problems, fantastic stories of Sindbad, and ginies who pop-up every where.
It was a good day, and the reading was also appropriate. I will certainly participate in the next years event, which, I am hoping to convinve the organisers, should be from Icelandic Sagas (Heimskringla?)!
Posted by Khodadad at 01:31 PM | Comments (3)
May 11, 2005
Nothing, to no one
We imagine a certain harmony in our world. We assume certain values are universal. We hope that some historical mistakes have been recognised and universally condemned.
Our modern, or post-modern thinking, makes us believe that we are living in a world where these facts are accepted and acted upon. Some mistakes are too grave to be repeated.
Then again, it seems like we are mistaken. We live in an idealistic bubble. Intelectuals are nothing but idealists who keep on hoping that others understand, but sadly, the world is populated by people who rather not see, and worst yet, they defend it.
I am not very encouraged about being alive.
Posted by Khodadad at 11:43 PM | Comments (1)
May 07, 2005
Kingdom of Heaven
I went to see this new movie, Kingdom of Heaven, by Ridley Scott (who has done Gladiator and Blade Runner before this).
It belongs to the new trend in "historical" movie making (13th Warrior, Gladiator, Alexander) which is bent on presenting a mixture of fiction and history. This means that while the movie is set in real historical settings (Ibn Fadlan's mission to the Bulgars, Marcus Aurelius' reign, and Alexander, respectivly), the actual adventures of the movie are fictional ("heros" of the film are not actually known historical characters). It does not necessarily mean that these people did not exist, they could have existed, but they also need not have to.
Orlando Bloom's character as the son of a Crusader lord was convincing (although sometimes a little too perfect to believe, but hey, it is Hollywood!), and the bits that were taken from history (the reign of the last king of Jerusalem, Battle of Kerak, death of Reymond...) were actually accurate and quite well done.
The movie was also trying to be culturally liberal and actually showed a rather fair view of the camp of Saladin and was certainly very complementary to him and his politics.
Of course, since I have to have criticism (it's part of my nature, I will get sick if I don't do it!:), I have to say what bothered me about it. Well, we all know that Crusaders did not speak English, not even Richard the Lionheart did (he couldn't, he was French), but in the movie, all Crusaders speak perfect, Oxbridge accented English!! On the other hand, Muslims speak a broken up, heavily accented English which makes it hard to understand their speech.
In the view of the fact that the language of the Crusaders (French) is actually "dubbed" into English for us to understand, making them quite articulate and smart sounding, why are we listening the King of Egypt and Syria and Jordan and Lebannon speaking in broken English, not even managing to express a simple sentence correctly ("waay dey waiting?")? He sounds more like a recent immigrant to America who has not learnt English than one of the greatest Middle Eastern personalities in history. Couldn't he just either be speaking English (like all others, after all, in this movie, French and Germans and Italians all speak English), or couldn't they do it in Arabic and we get the subtitles?
Well, not everything can be perfect, but in short, nice try Ridley Scott!
Posted by Khodadad at 02:12 AM | Comments (4)
May 01, 2005
Late Antiquity
Yesterday, there was the UCLA Late Antiquity conference. I presented a paper on "Sexual Communism: A New Look at the Rebellion of Mazdak". Everyone who was there said that it went well and at least since I do not just hang my head down and read my paper, but rather look up and present the paper, it was not boring!
I think my arguments were convincing enough, at least I convinced the people at the conference!
It was a nice environment, and I am sure I am going to send proposals for the next year's conference as well. We were also very well treated with lunch and also a great dinner in a restaurant. Thanks to the Regents of the University of California!
Then, to top it all off, I went with a bunch of my friends to this funny movie called "Kung Fu Hustle", I recommend seeing it, it is a nice spoof of Hong Kong movies.
Posted by Khodadad at 11:17 AM | Comments (3)