HAMSHAHRI: Establishment of an independent central bank from the government in Iran is not an easy task and it needs certain prerequisites. The main prerequisite is adopting unified financial and commercial policies in order to be able to administer related affairs in a proper manner. For example, adopting correct policies and also granting profit-free loans can help low-income strata purchase residential units. To get down to the real nitty-gritty, in our country the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) is responsible for all financial decisions. It looks like above all the CBI should pursue a systematic scheme for profit rates of the banking system. The CBI is also duty-bound to ensure the harmony between monetary and fiscal policies.

Evaluation
HAMBASTEGI: Assessment of the government’s performance over the past year should take place in accordance with the pledges made by the President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during the 2005 presidential race. The main motto of the incumbent government is seeking justice and hence any form of examination of its performance should be based on this parameter. The point is that it must be clarified to what extent the government has been successful in achieving its declared objectives. All in all, when appraising the government’s accomplishments the target should be to check out whether it has fulfilled its proclaimed plans or not and thus all other considerations become irrelevant.

Value
KHORASAN: Poverty is certainly not of cultural or spiritual value in the sense that it is not right to say that anyone who is poor is necessarily more valuable. The opposite also holds, because no one can say that being loaded contradicts cultural or spiritual values. In fact, any form of capital that is gained through legitimate means and spent in productive activities such as developmental and public welfare projects is of definite value. The unwanted phenomenon of capital flight is as important as brain drain for the national economy. It is obvious that when top university graduates cannot find suitable jobs, brain drain will be inevitable. By the same token, it is crucial to pursue a logical plan of attack for investment ventures, as otherwise people of the money would take out their capital to foreign lands.

Cogent
SHARQ: Hezbollah secretary-general, Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah, recently said that Hezbollah could never conceive or perceive that the abduction of two Israeli soldiers would result in outbreak of an unwanted war between Israel and the paramilitary group. Nasrallah’s comment shows that he is a very rational and wise man, because he basically implied that the seizure of the two Israeli soldiers should not have led to 35 days of bloodshed and devastations, death of over 1,000 people and incurrence of a total of three billion dollars worth of damages on southern Lebanon’s economic infrastructures. If it had been 15 years ago, Nasrallah might have deployed another tone and also characterized Hezbollah’s performance as perfect fulfillment of its duties, but under the present circumstances Hezbollah leader chose to adopt a realistic attitude toward the developments taking place in the endlessly volatile region we live in.

Athletes’ performances today are outshining those of yesterday in just about every sport. Not in a gradual evolutionary way that could be logically explained, but in major leaps that make a mockery of past records, or statistical comparisons. Half of those people breaking records, or achieving prodigious results, are found to have done so thanks to performance-enhancing ’supplements’ or drugs É while the other half simply managed not to get caught. Sport heroes and sport goats all sucking from the same illicit udder to achieve wealth and/or stardom.
And why are athletes caught ’cheating’ so adamant in declaring their innocence? Could it be that they resent being penalized for something “most everyone“ is guilty of? It’s not far-fetched to say their conscience is not telling them they’re doing something wrong, so when they defend themselves they appear to do it with true conviction; which tells us they either lack a conscience or their conscience is inoperative.
Somewhere between having a clear conscience and no conscience at all there seems to be a status that places morality in limbo, one that either freezes or anesthetizes our conscience. And, unfortunately, this status is not just one peculiar to fame seekers but the population at large; one that’s prevalent in much of the materialistic and wasteful worldÐ-otherwise known as the “developed world“Ð-one which particularly afflicts the United States.
The Bush administration has apparently done a creditable job in anesthetizing the American conscience in preparation for surgical procedures that permit unchallenged expansion of the empire, internationally; and major socioeconomic restructuring, nationally.
Nine-eleven gave Bush the anesthetics to put the nation to sleep, to get the population ready to go under the knife. And while the long protracted botched-surgery seems to keep going on with no end in sight, the anesthesia seems as effective today as it was five years ago, without any indication that it’s losing any strength. How can we tell?
All we need to do is evaluate what has happened during the last five weeks as the infrastructural mutilation of Lebanon was taking place, and innocent Lebanese were either becoming direct Israeli targets, or the now acceptable “collateral damage“ in human terms. It was obvious from the start that most Americans were just as defensive of any criticism on Israel as the Israelis themselves.
Of course, it was also obvious that the electronic media assumed much responsibility for that. For all the talked-about recent improvement in walking away from being a self-censored media, when it comes to the Star of David, it shines equally as bright as the fifty stars over the field of blue in our flag. It made little difference whether one was listening to hate-spewers at Fox, or was tuned-in to Wolf Blitzer and his comical “situation room“ at CNN, or “progressive radio“ with one of its principal commentators, Al Franken, stating in Air America that he is pro-Israel. Al, pleaseÉ shouldn’t neutrality render a far more progressive stand?
Americans have been told that Israel’s actions were planned and executed with the unequivocal consent of the Bush administration, perhaps even a step beyond consent.
Yet, Americans couldn’t care less. It seemed okay to most that Lebanon would have to pay a price for not having neutralized Hezbollah and its stockpiles of katyusha rockets. This from people whose knowledge of the region and its problems is in most cases nil, or that could even identify the geographical location of the player-nations.
Lebanon has been devastatedÉbut not Hezbollah, or its self-confidence. Israel will no longer be the feared adversary it once was. Not to Hamas, not to Hezbollah, not to all the Arab nations in the region, friend or foe, including Syria. And, definitely, not to Nasrallah--for the Wizard of Middle East Oz has been found out to have little more than a megaphone, notwithstanding the smart bombs and state-of-the-art weaponry provided by the United States. [Comment reserved as to Israel’s nuclear arsenal.]
The losers were Olmert and his war chief Halutz for not achieving their prewar objectives, and by default the Kadima Party in Israel. But perhaps the biggest loser of all was the United States--through Bush and his Motley crew; and an American Congress that has proven to be a collection of dolts.
There is another loser here: the Republican Party. The majority of Lebanese Americans I have known, the entrepreneurial type, have been for the most part conservative and, politically, Republican. Those that I have contacted during the past month would not vote for a GOP candidate today--even for dog catcher. That’s how embittered they are.
But rest assured that things haven’t changed at all. America remains a nation with an anesthetized conscience.
Bes Tanosborn