Observer

It was few months that there were construction works going on in a store on Ste. Catherine in Montreal near the corner of Crescent (Downtown). They even had to close a part of the sidewalk in front of the place for a while. It wasn’t a wonder as a lot of stores just open and close so quick that people even don’t notice there existence!

Tonight when I passed in front of that store I was amazed by what I saw! A new Apple store here in Montreal with all its typical things that Apple stores have everywhere; the big Apple sign, the glass staircase, glass entrance through which one can see the whole store from outside.

The store is going to open officially on Friday, July 25th at 5 pm on 1321 Ste. Catherine west. This is going to be the 7th Apple store in Canada, the second in Quebec.

Well, hope that Montrealers enjoy the Apple products like iPods, laptops, and iPhones more as they can buy it now directly from Apple rather than FutureShop or Best Buy!

There have been a lot of blog posts and news about Ahmad Batebi, the way he fled Iran, reasons, and facts. I am not going to comment on any of those discussions. He has been spending the best time of his life in prison for 8 years and I believe that it is totally his right to choose the place he wants to live in peace and no one should expect that he should have stayed in that horrible situation for a longer time.

My point is about his interview with the New York Times newspaper in which he explains the way he fled the country, went to Iraq and from there to United States. In that video, at the 4:20 minute, he says “When I entered the airport [in US], I saw that everybody had a different clothing on, in Iran, people are forced to wear what the government tells them they should wear.”

Come on Mr. Batebi! come on New York Times! You know that this is not true! With lots of videos on the internet, with a simple search, you can simply see that in Iran, poeple are not WEARING SAME CLOTHS. I agree that it’s not the same as in western world, because of the Islamic regime there, but that doesn’t mean that the Iranians are not fashionable people (see this video).

The problem is that, when you lie about one fact that I am completely aware of, then I will doubt about everything else you say. Lets be more honest!

Enjoy your stay in United States…

George Sheehan says: “Success means having the courage, the determination, and the will to become the person you believe you were meant to be.” I think I got the meaning of this quote few days ago when I ran into a link on the Internet about a person who I knew for sometime.

About 14 years ago, the national mathematics Olympiad competition in Iran was held in Shiraz, my home town. I attended the closing ceremony to support the contestant from our high school, especially one of my very close friends (who ended up receiving the silver medal meaning that he would not be on the team for the international competition).

For the first time there, I heard the name of Maryam MirzaKhani. She was a student from one of the high schools in Tehran (Farzanegan). She got a GOLD medal and the first rank in that competition with a significant difference between her and the second person. As a person studying in the same field (mathematics) I became interested in following her news; I was eager to know how she is going to do at the international competition in Hong Kong that year (1994). Without any surprise, she scored 41 out of 42 in that competition and she received the gold medal. Iran’s team ranked 8th in that Olympiad.

This was just the beginning for Maryam Mirzakhani. The following year, she left no doubt about her capability of repeating her great performance in Hong Kong; She scored 42 out of 42 in the international Olampiad competition in Canada in 1995. This gave her rank 1 among 412 contastants!

It was years that I hadn’t heard about her till few days ago when I saw this article in the USA Today. And when I googled her name, I found out that after finishing her BSc. studies at Sharif University (a very top university in Iran), she had received an admission from Harvard University where she had completed her PhD studies. she is now an assistant professor at Princeton University at the age of 30!

This story has some shocking parts as well; I recalled that she survived a car accident in 1997 when she was on a bus which was taking Sharif University students to the south-west part of Iran to participate in a student competition in Ahvaz! Some of her friends were achingly killed in that tragic incident.

Well, I am sure that she had the courage, the determination, and the will to lead her to the position that she is now in . For me, she is an example of those poeple who makes me feel better about humanity, the more of them I see in this world!

A surprising thing for me when watching American news channels is to see that the smallest event in United States will affect the coverage of much important news happening in the world. I am not even talking about the presidential primaries that these days have become the top news in major American news networks like CNN, ABC, Foxnews, etc. Even a crane crash in New York City, makes CNN to forget all about the war in Iraq, earthquake in China, crises in middle east and give all the news time of the whole morning to that event!!

Hopefully, on Sunday, I saw a small change in this behavior and that was through a new show named GPS on CNN hosted by Fareed Zakaria. It aims to focus more on international matters. Although the show was interrupted few times by Wolf Blitzer and his team who were reporting on Costa Rica’s primaries, they had enough time to held a talk about current events in the world (Iran, China, Hammas, …) and a face to face discussion with Tony Blair.

I will be watching this show on Sundays at 1:00 pm hoping that what they claim about the show “to cover non-American news which have been overwhelmed these days by the events in United States” turns to be true!

A few years ago, in friendlier times, the Senator and I talked about the Cuban missile crisis. At a crucial moment, John F. Kennedy received two messages from the Soviets — one bellicose, one accommodating. He chose to ignore the bellicose message and very likely saved the world. “You probably would’ve chosen the wrong message,” I teased McCain. “I probably would have,” he laughed. He was joking, but given his behavior of late, you’ve got to wonder…

Read the complete article of JOE KLEIN entitled “Straw-Man Diplomacy” here.