Week end and weekend.

Been slogging through on-line traffic school (*rasserfrassem*405 at 8 am on a Sunday*%&*^*&^#@!*) so this weeks been a bit thin.

First of all, The Smith (Click the PDF link for the full article) has an interesting human interest article on what the Iranian people are really like as opposed to their government. Perhaps a necessary read in the middle of “Iranian Nuclear Terrorist” ramping up in the media right now, if only to remind one that the Iranian people are human beings just like ourselves.

"I struggle to make a living,” a Tehran engineer told me. “The government stifles us, and they want us to believe it is America’s fault. I’m not a fool.”

Amir, who is 30, feels the same way. “In my school, the teachers gathered us in the playground and told us to chant ‘Death to America.’ It was a chore. Naturally, it became boring. Our government has failed to deliver what we want: a normal life, with good jobs and basic freedoms. So I stopped listening to them. America is not the problem. They are.” It’s increasingly apparent that Iran’s young are tuning out a preachy government for an alternative world of personal Web logs (Persian is the third most commonly used language on the Internet, after English and Chinese), private parties, movies, study, and dreams of emigrating to the West. These disenchanted “children of the revolution” make up the bulk
of Iran’s population, 70 percent of which is under 30.

The article goes on to sketch out Iran’s turbulent history throughout the 20th century how all those events have played out into making Iran what it is today (one of the interviewees was one of the kidnappers from the Iran Hostage Crisis of 1979-1980). How Iranians today see what were good ideas and what were mistakes.

“During the Constitutional Revolution, we talked about the separation of religion and state, without really knowing what that means,” historian Kaveh Bayat told me in his book-filled Tehran study. “Our understanding today is much deeper. Now we know that it is neither in our interests nor the clergy’s interest to rule the state.” Or, as a physician in Tehran put it to me: “The mullahs, by failing, did what Ataturk could not even do in Turkey: secularize the populace thoroughly. Nobody wants to experiment with religion and politics anymore.”

The article speaks of Iran “being at a crossroads” and from what I have read here and heard in my class (we discussed Iran this last week) I would agree. It seems to me that in ten years or so, Iran will take care of itself. Offensive action against it would simply alienate its people.

“Hossein, like many Iranians who served in the war, resents America for supporting Iraq in the conflict: Washington provided Saddam Hussein’s regime with satellite images of Iranian troop movements and cities, looked the other way as Iraq used chemical weapons on Iranian soldiers and, in 1983, sent then businessman Donald Rumsfeld as a presidential envoy to Iraq, where he greeted Saddam Hussein with a handshake. But Hossein, who served as a frontline soldier, said he’s willing to forgive and forget “as long as America does not attack Iran.”

Not to mention that an invasion of the unified Iran (they are a single ethnic group) would be 100 times more difficult than it was in the fragmented Iraq.

This issue also has a historical perspective of Winston Churchill as well as a spread on the fur seal crisis.

On a more amusing note: Finding The A-Team: A Stuffo (howstuffworks.com) Experiment Can the Golf Ball Liberation Front be not far behind?

I have tickets to both the BGN (Busch Grand National) and Cup races this Sat. and Sun, respectively. I don’t know if I can make it out to the races on Saturday (too much on my plate since I no longer have my evenings free), but Sunday I will definitely be tailgating all day and will have a race report for everyone on Monday.

Someday I really want to go to see a truck race, but they scheduled this one for Friday. Hey NASCAR guys! Can’t you guys squeeze it into a weekend somehow?

In the meantime, I hope everyone has a great weekend with fun and safe races these three days and best of luck to the 8, 6 and 38 teams! Especially the 8 team for whom tracks like Fontana are the trail by fire. Kick-ass guys!

Note to Sushi re: NASCAR Illustrated. Trust me, I know exactly how you feel. Being female and a member of the “Jr. Nation” it always takes work to be taken seriously as a racing fan rather than a fangirl.

And I don’t despise Kurt as much as everyone seems to either. *shhhh!*

"No, No, No, No. I did not crash the airplane, I simply relocated it with extreme predjudice..."