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Public Executions
One of the most dreadful memories from my childhood in Iran are the announcements about public executions. I was fortunate enough to not have actually watched any of them, but I remember the more curious ones of my classmates actually planning on attending some, and then speaking with so much horror about them afterwards. This…
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Autocracies Thrive on Indifference: A Personal Reflection
Autocracies thrive on indifference not fear. And autocrats benefit more from those who don’t care than those who are scared. I know this first hand. It’s true that I was only 6 at the time of the revolution in Iran that ultimately toppled the Pahlavi regime and handed the reins of power to the Islamic…
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Any Price: A Backwards Justification
This was an old conversation from several months ago, when Trump’s department of war crimes in collaboration with another war criminal, Netanyahu, suddenly decided that after totally “obliterating” the entire nuclear capability of Iran a few months earlier, somehow it was only two weeks away from making a nuclear bomb, and that the only way…
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Reflecting on the Reflecting Pool
U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro moved to dismiss a felony vandalism indictment against the former U.S. Olympic canoeist David Hearn. Her office stated the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool damage was due to a botched contractor installation, not vandalism. This is after so much fanfare and headline-grabbing statements in press conferences by Pirro assuring that there was…
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Senate Confirmation Hearings
I’m tired of seeing the Democratic senators asking, during their confirmation hearings, Trump’s sycophantic nominees for cabinet positions or federal judgeships or other important positions of power, that “who won the 2020 presidential election,” only to hear the rehearsed response that Biden was certified as the president in January 2021, or more recently, even outright…