Sadegh Zibakalam, A One-Man Multitude

Common sense in Tehran, from Professor Sadegh Zibakalam, about the stupid, wasteful, unncessary, and dangerous Iranian nuclear program, and on the idiotic malignancy toward Israel by Iran. The Iranians could, after all, with justice,  could see themselves, and present themselves to the world, as the one Muslim state in the region that can recognizes the Jewish state as natural, just, and welcome in the Middle East, by reminding itself, and the world, of the fascinating and often unhostile links between pre-Islamic Persians and the Jews of Judea.

________________________________________________________________

“One-man multitude” is a phrase borrowed, not for the first time, from Nabokov’s description, when he was working on his commentary to his translation of Eugene Onegin in the long-tabled Reading Room at Widener, and finding himself near someone playing a radio:

“I remember how once, between terms, not at Cornell, a student brought a transistor set with him into the reading room. He managed to state that one, he was playing “classical” music; that two, he was doing it “softly”; and that three, “there were not many readers around in summer.” I was there, a one-man multitude.