We're all Egyptian

HAIFA, Israel, 26 December 2006 (BWNS) -- The Universal House of Justice, the highest governing body of the Baha'i Faith, has addressed a message to the Baha'is of Egypt in the wake of a 16 December Supreme Administrative Court decision in Cairo that upheld a discriminatory government policy regarding the Baha'is and their identification cards. The policy places the Baha'is in the untenable position of either having to make a false statement about their religious beliefs or give up their state identification cards. The cards are essential to accessing most rights of citizenship, including education, financial services, and even medical care.

Courtroom account - Denial of IDs to Egyptian Bahais

Read this courtroom account of the denial of IDs to Egyptian Bahais. Complete with photos and video! Reading the comments of some of the court-goers, it makes you think you are reading Dawnbreakers 2.0... (for those that aren't familiar, Dawnbreakers is a first hand account of the early days of the Bahai Faith, days filled with intense persecution.)

If this is your first time hearing of the case of the Egyptian Bahais, the Egyptian government requires that your religion be displayed on your ID. This ID is like our driver's license here in California, you need it for everything. The Egyptian government only allows three choices for religion - Muslim, Christian & Jew. So the Bahais are marginalized as second-class citizens because they must either go without identification or deny their belief.

(I found the link while reading Bahai Blog.)

Kramer

My friend Badi found this hilarious mix of Seinfeld clips commenting on the Michael Richards incident.

Thanks Badi!

New Rapper: Lupe Fiasco

There's a new rapper out there who I would like to recommend to you: Lupe Fiasco. If you like the Roots, I think you'll like this guy too. Most well known for "Kick, Push" (a song about a skateboarding date), a lot of his songs are more socially conscious. Check "Hurt Me Soul" for instance. Apparently Jay-Z thought Lupe's skillz were equal to his five years ago. (Don't believe me? Read it on his web site.) You can also check him on Myspace.

Audio files of Bahai Talks

Cool site with audio files of Baha'i talks.

Don't see Babel

Don't see Babel the movie. It's horrible. In fact, don't even rent it. OK fine, go ahead rent it, now that I've piqued your curiosity.

I should explain - the director, Inarritu, is known for telling a story from three points of view. (21 Grams, Amores Perros) Usually the movie is shot from three different points of view and he chops up the progression of time in the movie as well to make things interesting (the beginning in the middle, the end at the beginning, etc). In Babel, the director tells three stories that feel almost completely separate, each treating a different social ill. So the movie felt disjointed to me and neither of the three separate stories felt resolved. Plus the soundtrack was horrible. It was so bad I felt ill actually. Well, I'm pretty sure it was the music, not what I had for dinner...

Food

If you are a food lover, check out Yahoo's new food web site.

Kite Runner

If you haven't read Kite Runner yet, I highly recommend reading it. It's a tragic story about the life of a man who leaves Aghanistan at a young age due to political turmoil. It's a moving story of betrayal and redemption and I'll wager that no one has read it without at least getting a little misty eyed. I thought of this quote from the Bahai Writings while reading it: "He should forgive the sinful, and never despise his low estate, for none knoweth what his own end shall be. How often hath a sinner, at the hour of death, attained to the essence of faith, and, quaffing the immortal draught, hath taken his flight unto the celestial Concourse. And how often hath a devout believer, at the hour of his soul's ascension, been so changed as to fall into the nethermost fire."

(Baha'u'llah, The Kitab-i-Iqan, p. 193)

It's Hammer Time

The Azads ran into MC Hammer. Check it out.

Bahai calendar

The U.S. Bahai community has a very nice Bahai calendar you can print out and put on your fridge. Click on the PDF. (Thanks Kev for the find.)

Aref: African. Persian. World Citizen.

Check out this video about Aref: African. Persian. World Citizen. It's well done, by Bahai filmmaker Ryan Haidarian. This short is about Aref, a black child in Botswana who was adopted by an Iranian Bahai couple. Incidentally he is the little brother of a friend of mine who I went to Cal with (Negar A.). Shout out to Roya for finding this!

Jajah.com - Free & Cheap international calls!

This post is to recommend Jajah.com. Farshid recommended it to me, so I can't take the credit of finding it. It's very simple - go to Jajah.com, enter your own phone number, the number you want to call, and press send. The system then calls your phone and connects you to the destination number. The phone call quality was great - better (and 2.5 cents cheaper) than the 1019898 service you can use from a landline. (Depending on the country, 1019898 might be cheaper. Just add 1019898 before the international calling code, country code, then number.) With Jajah.com, calling El Salvador costs only 7.5 cents and to call Israel is just 2.5 cents. To call China it's free! And if you all register and call me, it's also free, regardless of where you are!

Here's the line from the Web site:

The JAJAH Free Global Calling Plan applies to land line and mobile calls to and within the United States; Canada; China; Hong Kong; Singapore and Taiwan and it applies to landline calls to and within Australia; UK; Germany; France; Italy and most other European nations. It applies when both call participants are registered JAJAH users. In countries where free phone calls are not available, or if someone is calling a non-JAJAH member, calls are simply subject to JAJAH’s ultra-low rates: http://www.jajah.com/info/rates/.

HCD Art

Check out Mr. Dunbar's paintings. Truly incredible. You can see some older paintings here.

Josh and Jessica in Honduras

My brother Josh and cousin Jessica are volunteering for six months at a Bahai-inspired orphanage. Check them out here.

Kaiser Permanente

So I work for Kaiser Permanente, America's first Health Maintenance Organization (HMO). My project is a new software application that is part of a larger effort to transform KP to be more competitive in relation to other health care providers. Read about it here.

Pimp your ride

If you are a fan of the "Pimp your Ride" show on MTV, you'll love these rims. You can project an image onto them or a message for the car driving next to you, all controlled by an on-screen computer.

Alia

Hi!
Originally uploaded by Badnam.

How cute is Alia!

Salsa dancing @ Elham's wedding

CIMG2469
Originally uploaded by Badnam.

Check me out salsa dancing at Elham's wedding with Fiana. Click on the photo for more pics.

ABS and Elham's wedding

Here are pics provided by Sharaf - the first one is me and Mo at a mexican lunch break during last weekend's ABS conference in Burlingame.




The others are from Elham and Kiro's wedding at Bosch Bahai School in Santa Cruz:

Me and Badi


Me and Sharaf


Crazy boys wedding photos

Justino Bandito

Justino Bandito
Originally uploaded by BlakeRead.

Check out pics of my recent trip to Mexico with our fearless leader Blake and friends. This is a pic Blake took of me sporting my hanky with the mariachis playing in the background. I also posted a few photos here.

Mazra'ih wall

Mazra'ih wall
Originally uploaded by .Leili.

Check out this amazing photo from Leili! Click on the pic to see mo!

Josh and the rents

Josh and the rents
Originally uploaded by justportillo.

Click on the photo to check out pictures of Josh's high school graduation. Look out world, here comes the latest, and probably coolest, Portillo.

No the baby is not mine

She was born to Shabnam and Badi

Baby Alia

Baby Alia
Originally uploaded by justin a. portillo.

Baby Alia is here! Click on the photo to see more pics!

Introducing Miss Alia Azad!

Miss Alia Azad -

Born - June 8, 2006 - 11:03 am - 7# 7oz -

Parents are ecstatic!

Glass

Glass
Originally uploaded by peisser.

What a kewl photo of Israeli balls. Peisser, you're the man. Click on the photo to see more of Peisser's amazing photos.

Insights.Bosch 2006 photos

Courtesy of Sanaz

Lots more photos here.

Mozart had a mullet

I thought this was funny....

Ladan's B-Day

Some friends met up in San Francisco not too long ago to celebrate Ladan's birthday. She put some pics up here.

Conversation with Dylan

This is a conversation my mom had recently with my little brother Dylan:

"Mom you are my heart and soul, you are my strength and greatest weakenss, (pause) well actually, my whole family is my weakness, but you are my greatest weakness." I asked him how I was his greatest weakness and he said, " If anything were to happen to you I would be so weak, I love you so much! Infinity, love and light."
then a few mintues later he says, " I dont like being the youngest, I want to be 17 and getting my drivers license and going to college, (pause) well actually, I want to be older than Justin, what does he do? Well I have to wait forever, a whole week and then a month until I am older than Justin and that is too long!"

Me on South Park

Make your own here.

Courtesy of Peter.

Maame's visit

Maame was in town back in March visiting her relatives. Here is a pic from her visit. She stopped by for lunch and we had yummy wraps at a restaurant outside city hall in downtown Oakland.

Berkeley Law Conference

I went to the Berkelely Law Conference recently after a friend of mine signed me up. I was considering law as a profession once upon a time, and recently began to re-consider it. However, this conference was helpful in allowing me to cross LAW off my list. Way off. I sat through the conference proceedings cross-eyed and almost went blind from boredom. (No offense Elham! Law is great... for you. ;) The best part was hanging out with friends. Here are some photos that Samira put up. (Can you see me sleeping?)

New Year's Bike Ride

In attempt to deliver some updates on my life since my blog went dark, let me first remind you all to come to the Insights Young Adults conference (see my last post). I am helping to plan it, but maybe I shouldn't tell you that, as some of you will no doubt impute that my involvement is a legitimate excuse to avoid Bosch and the Santa Cruz area entirely. Wrong I say! The conference will be fabulous...

Anyhow, enough digression. These are photos of a bike ride that I went on with Kasra, a very good friend of mine, in the rural outskirts of rural Davis, California. This was New Year's weekend and the torrential downpour almost overran the levies in Sacramento, which we are told, are the second most flood prone after New Orleans. Photos couresty of Kasra Eliasieh.

Insights Young Adults Conference - Bosch, April 14-16, 2006

Birthday

I recently celebrated my birthday with friends in San Francisco at a restaurant called Bissap Baobab, a Senagalese place that is REALLY good, with a kewl crowd and fun music. I look like I am having an epileptic fit in the photo, but don't worry, I am not. Samira Samadani posted her photos from the night here.

Parisa and Sasha's Wedding

My family recently attended the wedding of Parisa Maghzi & Sasha Voight in San Francisco. The wedding was very nice and simple, held at the Bahai Center, only 100 people, and had the ambience of a Bahai devotional meeting - tranquil and loving.

Here is a picture of my family. Unfortunately my mom only took the camera out to photograph us, and we don't have a single photo of the wedding itself or the bride and groom. But the photographer has a website with tons of photos. Click here to be taken to his web site. Pick "Parisa" from the event list and enter the password "weddings".