When the day comes that Tehran can announce its nuclear capability, every shred of international law will have been discarded. The mullahs have publicly sworn—to the United Nations and the European Union and the International Atomic Energy Agency—that they are not cheating. As they unmask their batteries, they will be jeering at the very idea of an 'international community.' How strange it is that those who usually fetishize the United Nations and its inspectors do not feel this shame more keenly.
Christopher HitchensTags: united-nations nuclear-weapons iran european-union international-law iran-and-wmds mullahs nuclear-program-of-iran tehran
Alcohol makes other people less tedious, and food less bland, and can help provide what the Greeks called entheos, or the slight buzz of inspiration when reading or writing. The only worthwhile miracle in the New Testament—the transmutation of water into wine during the wedding at Cana—is a tribute to the persistence of Hellenism in an otherwise austere Judaea. The same applies to the seder at Passover, which is obviously modeled on the Platonic symposium: questions are asked (especially of the young) while wine is circulated. No better form of sodality has ever been devised: at Oxford one was positively expected to take wine during tutorials. The tongue must be untied. It's not a coincidence that Omar Khayyam, rebuking and ridiculing the stone-faced Iranian mullahs of his time, pointed to the value of the grape as a mockery of their joyless and sterile regime. Visiting today's Iran, I was delighted to find that citizens made a point of defying the clerical ban on booze, keeping it in their homes for visitors even if they didn't particularly take to it themselves, and bootlegging it with great brio and ingenuity. These small revolutions affirm the human.
Christopher HitchensTags: reading writing inspiration food christianity religion atheism miracles alcohol boredom wine new-testament brotherhood plato iran oxford ancient-greeks mullahs passover-seder cana entheos hellenism judaea marriage-at-cana omar-khayyam passover symposia
I don't know what God wants, Eshe."
"The mullahs say they know what God wants," Eshe said. "You believe them?" He met her look in the rearview mirror.
Nyx looked back at the road. "The mullahs can't figure out what they want for dinner," she said.
Tags: mullahs
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