Carnet de voyage

Faut qu'ça bouge !

Il faut une bonne motivation le matin pour enfiler tout ce harnachement et sortir de sa chambre ! Alors avançons : direction Tabriz.
Eric fait décidément preuve de beaucoup de patience vis-à-vis de Marine qui, réfugiée derrière des lunettes noires en plus de tout le reste, est méconnaissable et semble en vouloir à la terre entière.

Nous arrivons à Tabriz qui était la capitale de l'Azerbaïdjan au 3e siècle puis sous les Mongols.
Nous y achetons Téhéran News, un journal en anglais, car nous n'avons plus d'informations (TV, radio ou journal) depuis Hama en Syrie et parce que, dans certaines circonstances comme celle-ci, on a un petit pincement au coeur en pensant à la France. Ce journal, pris au hasard parmi les quatre publications disponibles en anglais, ne nous rassure pas pour autant et nous commençons même à être inquiets au sujet de ses lecteurs (voir article).

Fort heureusement à ce moment critique, en nous rendant à l'Office de Tourisme en fin d'après-midi, nous faisons la connaissance de Nasser Khan, le guide officiel de Tabriz.
Il semble de bons conseils et déploie une énergie impressionnante pour aider chacun de ses protégés. Sa bonne humeur et ses mots rassurants redonnent le sourire à Marine.

Comme une maman poule, Nasser aime être entouré de tous les touristes rencontrés la journée au bureau et leur donne rendez-vous pour la soirée.

Nous nous joignons à lui pour une promenade nocturne dans les quartiers branchés où nous avons l'occasion de rencontrer une population plus jeune et visiblement plus ouverte. Nous passons aussi cette soirée avec d'autres voyageurs dont, à défaut de filles, Constant, un artiste sculpteur français qui passe cinq ou six mois par an sur les routes et que nous espérons retrouver plus tard à Goa.

Teheran Times, octobre 13, 2003

Which Europe ?
By Kian Mokhtari

Over 93% of present day Iran lies on the Iranian plateau geographically. In fact large swathes of Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Turkey, the Republic of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikkistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India contain ruins, historic buildings and monuments serving to remind all of where Iran once stood and distinguished past.
Although Greek philosphers and historians did their venomous utmost to sully the memory of this great nation in the western version of history, recent archaelogical finds and detailed studies are beginning to paint a totally different picture of the ancient times, putting paid to many inaccuracies in recorded history (...).

It is strange that Greece's famed "golden age of mathematics" only ever happened after the rape of the Persian imperial libraries at Persepolis and Susa by Alexander of Macedon. The librairies are purported to have contained upward of one millon tablets on sciences including astronomy and mathematics.

Another interesting issue is the model of democracy. It is a total historical charade. Archaeologists excavating ancient Greek cemeteries have discovered that the Athenians population in anciant Greek times was made up of approximately 45 percent slaves, who had no rights whatsoever. Thirty percent were free women who were also not entitled to own land or vote (...). This leaves the other twenty-five percent of free males of whom sixteen percent were underage boys and unable to vote. The other nine percent were the only Greeks eligible to vote, but from them only those rich enough could take part in the democratic process. The rich make make up only two percent of the current European population; if we apply this to our calculation, ancient Greece begins to look more like an autocracy. (...)

The Greek actually took pride in being of North African origin. They considered themselves the descendents of ancient Egyptians. Their volumes of classics makes this abundontly clear. Alexander of Macedonia was warmly welcomed by Edgypt on the assumption that he was the illigitimate child of an Egyptian priest from the temple of Amon at Karnak who had served as a holy attendant to the court of Alexander's father, Phillip of Macedonia, while Philipp was away fighting yet another bloody battle. Alexander's mother had as one might say a bit of a reputation in the anciant world you see!

Even generic studies carried out in Europe in the last five years have proven beyond all doubt that all Europeans are related to just twelve men who trekkled over to Europe some 40 000 years ago from the cradle of civilisation itself, the western provinces of Iran. The very 12 knights celebrated in the Germanic version of history, one could even speculate, before the Jewish historians dismissed the idea as pure fantasy post WWII.

Surviving Sumerian tablets excavated in Babylon (modern day Iraq) depict a great flood that took place in distant times. The flood was probably the result of an earthquake or volcanic eruption tearing apart the barrier between the Mediterranean Sea and the low-lying fertile plains to the east that form the basin for the present-day Black Sea. The tablets make no mention of Noah, although there's an ark inscribed on one of them. But a very interesting thing happened about 2500 years ago. Judea was invided by Babylon and the Jews were taken into slavery there and put to work. Many Jews on account of their education were employed at the grand library in Babylon where you'd imagine they'd have had access to the tablets of Gilgamesh that tell the story of the flood. It is feasible to ponder whether a learned Jewish slave librarian adapted the story of the flood to serve Jewish history when in fact Northern Arabs fron Syria or Iraq may be the only true descendants of Noah.

Persian chronicles put the origins of the Jewish race in northeast Africa, in modern-day Ethiopia. The surviving records speak of raids by ancient Ethiopian tribes on the Egyptian Empire's trade routes into Southern Africa. Egypt took action and defeated Ethiopia in a bloody campaign. The chronicles state that an entire tribe inhabiting an island in or off the coast of Ethiopia was offered up as part of war reparations to the Egyptians. If the flight of Moses and the Jews from Egypt into Israel is indeed an accurate story, then the origins of Jewish people is in Ethiopia and the term Semitic only applies to the Arabs, since Semitic means from Sem or Shem, son of Noah, who led all on board Noah's Ark to shore when it finally reached land according to legend.

It is astonishing how Europeans lap up any old ridiculous ravings of some half gone mad ancient Greek philosopher as historical fact in what seems like a desperate bid to offer their cultural identity some kind of legitimacy. The artifacts they brought back included alleged bits of Jesus Christ's cross; hence there is firm recorded precedence for such behavior within Europe.

Iran and Mesopotamia predate all know cultures other than Egypt's. Therefore almost all social habits and systems including democracy must have predated Greece and originated from there. Evidence is emerging of city-states on the Iranian plateau with true one-man, one-vote administrative systems that predate the first Persian Empire by several millennia.

Marco Polo is another historical fake. The man probably never got further than Azerbaijan. He returned after his travel with a forty-page travelogue. Anyone who has taken the time to read Marco Polo's book must know that it is over two hundred pages long. The reason being that he entrusted his script to a professional writer named Rustichello of Pisa, a writer of romances who proceeded to beef up the tales with a titillating rather than informative narrative. For a man who was supposed to have been in China for seventeen years, Marco Polo did not pick up even a few Chinese or Mongol words or names of places, seemingly having relied entirely on Persian pronunciations of Chinese words. Almost all Chinese names in his book are Persian or Arabic equivalents. But the rub is in when he claims he took part in the siege took place three years before Marco Polo even allegedly got to China. The second is that two Iranian siege engineers called Ismail and Ala Al-Din actually built the machines. Records of the payment made to engineers detailing their work have actually survived in China's national archives. The rest of Marco Polo's narrative is a poor translation of Rashid al-Din (1247-1317), an Iranian historian who never claimed to have traveled to China: he compiled his work from the sources available to him. Marco Polo never mentions chopsticks as eating implements, one of the first things you would imagine a European traveler should notice. His geographic directions are similarly inaccurate and confused and last but not least, there are no reliable records of a European traveler reaching the court of the Mongol ruler Kublai Khan let alone being appointed by the Khan to the post of governor of Yangzhou for three years as Marco Polo claims in his book !

Since the day Europeans started copying Arabic and Persian manuscripts of the Hellenic philosophers, the Western world has been trying desperatly to create the myth of a self-generated Europe that emerged without the help of other religions, cultures and civilizations. Europeans are just as guilty as the Jews in erasures of history: the most notable being the erasure of Islam's influence on the formation of Western civilization. There are many parties who will continue to perpetuate the myths, fictions and stereotypes initially drawn by Marco Polo for their own political ends.

Denial in psychology and psychiatry is an ego defense mechanism that operates unconsciously to resolve emotional conflict and to allay anxiety by refusing to perceive the more unpleasant aspects of external reality. Freud described it as a primitive defense mechanism. Is is considered maladaptive when it becomes delusional. The European denial of the firm evidence emerging with regards to their beginnings matches in intensity the Jewish denial of its Black African roots. Both camps have evidently become delusional to the point where they simply refuse to face what they perceive as unpleasant aspects of external reality. Their delusive state is apparent in their respective national behaviors. Denial often leads to compulsive violence in people and violent military action accordingly continues to play a prominent role in the Western and Israeli foreign policies.

If you'd imagine for argument's sake the Western world as the son, then the holy mother is a little corner of the Middle East called the cradle of civilization, a spiritual mother who has been demonized and abused for no reason other than the lopsided images of her, constructed from her son's prejudices, fears and misconceptions.

The great civilizations of the world are the result of centuries of cross-cultural exchanges and borrowing. The fewer the number of cultures that are destroyed, races that are forced to the brink of extinction and religions that are rubbed out today, the lighter the burden of regrets will be for the future generations. The human race might look back one day and regard our present time as the coming of second Dark Age; a time when plagiarism and allegation is all that is required to justify war, sanctions and unjust containment of entire nations whose contributions throughout history have formed the very basis of human development and have eased its progress.

Publié par Eric & Marine