White Balloon

Daily Journal of Mahaan, an Iranian-American student residing in USA.

Friday, November 27, 2009

Film: Whatever works

Whatever Works, the new Woody Allen's film has it all: A satire of life, love, social politics, etc. Technically not at his best, but the screenplay has so much of Allen's masterful dialogues and plots. It certainly made my Thanksgiving night memorable!!

Friday, November 06, 2009

Texas Shooting

There is a lot of talks about the Texas shooting. I keep thinking about the way that this incident is going to be portrayed. What are its long term effect. It can be played either way:

1. This incident shows the deep social wounds that America has carries as the results of the two wars. It shows serious unease with the trend of events in these war. This guy might be a Muslim, but more important is that his concious is rising against our actions in those two wars.

2. This incident is going to trumpet the anti-Muslim sentiments in this country. Feelings like "we should not trust these guys", "The bottom line is that these Muslims are never going to be one of us and fight with us". You can even push it to "Obama is muslim, don't trust him... All his plans are to kill america, americans, bluh bluh...".

Not sure which way the arguments and analysis will go. The early talks indicates both of them, but a lean towards the 2nd direction. Or it might be just shut up in the next few days with not much analysis... But what strikes me is the power of media and flexibility that exist to portray a tragedy like this.

Thursday, November 05, 2009

Scary Middle East Developments

I have a strong suspicion that the Middle East is going for a new round of large scale confrontation. Things are quite cool and smiles and handshakes and photo shots are going on. But underneath Iran and the west are re-arranging their cards and are getting ready for the scenario of "what if all these talks fail?"

Just looking at the trend:
1. US is working on stronger oil and gas emabargo against Iran. Specially working on cutting the gas supply to Iran
2. Iran is working on Yemen and Lebanon. Yemen is mainly to weaken Saudis efforts to pump the oil from the backdoors in the Red Sea instead of the Persian gulf. Lebanon is the same old story... Their arm gifts to Hezbollah was just discovered.
3. Now Russia is mainly aligned with US and France in the Nuclear discussions. The single card of Iran is currently China.
 
Weblog Trackback by HaloScan.com