Editor: Myself

Distance from War

This is pretty interesting: the more distant Iranian people live from Iran, the more they are likely to oppose to the U.S.-led war against Iraq. most of the people inside Iran have pro-war attitude, although this doesn't neccesarily mean that they agree with whatever Bush plans to do in middle-east.

Blogtalk Paper

Here is my accepted proposal to BlogTalk conference in Wien, Austria:

Weblogs, an Iranian perspective

By Hossein Derakhshan*

During the past 20 months, more than 10,000 Persian weblogs have been emerged. Their authors mostly live in Iran, where the number of Internet users hardly exceeds a half million. This means that blogging is extremely popular, even comparing with developed countries, this ratio (0.02%) is quite unusual.

These webloggers, including many young women, write freely about a wide range of topics, from personal diaries to social and political criticism. However, many of them do not use their real names.

Some specific genres can be recognized among them, such as: poetic and literate, technological and computer-related, soft-pornographic, personal diaries, political criticism and activism, etc.

The popularity of weblogs among young Iranians, suggests that great changes has happened in Iranian society during the past two decades, at least among the new generations of middle-class residents of big cities. It shows that they are carrying new values and promoting new lifestyles, which is very rare among older generations, who were trying to hide their personal feelings and opinions from the others. Individuality, self-expression, tolerance are new values which are quite obvious through a quick study of the content of Persian weblogs.

Weblogs have functioned in numerous ways for different parts of Iranian internet users:

• They have provided first-hand reports from several events such as students protests;
• they have helped young people find new dates or know more about potential dates, in lack of legitimate dating services;
• they have helped parents to get to know more about their children’s values and norms;
• they have provided Iranian immigrants outside of Iran with first-hand information about the new and unofficial Iran (new values, new lifestyle, new slang etc.);
• some of well-known webloggers have been hired by newspaper publishers to write for them, something they had never had a chance;
• they have attracted several of top officials and politicians as their regular reader, in some cases they have commented on some posts in some weblogs;
• they have popularized the concept and use of utf-8 standard as the ultimate standard for putting Persian texts on the Net;
• they have hugely increased the total volume of searchable Persian content on the Internet, both directly by their own content, and indirectly by popularizing the idea of full utf-8-friendly Persian websites;
• they have shifted the attention of many young users from chat-rooms toward reading and writing weblogs;
• they have encouraged a number of groups of webloggers to gather and publish e-zines (such as Cappuccino, a weekly e-zine with more than 50,000 visitors per month) based on their experiences as webloggers.

The tools which Iranian webloggers tend to use consist of "Blogger" and "Persianblog", which functions very similarly to Blogger and is completely developed in Iran. Moreover, "ASPRider", a decentralized tool that is run on users own servers and requires ASP and SQL to run, is becoming popular. (Win32 web servers are much more popular among Iranian hosting companies.)

There are a few other tools that have been created around the idea of weblogs, for example there are a number of tools to list and organize Persian weblogs (such as Blognama.com), there is a client-side application to notify regular readers about updated weblogs, etc.

Enabling readers to post comments publicly, placing counters to track the number of visitors, and using pictures and background music, are among other popular trends.

Most popular weblogs have an average of 3,500 visitor per day and 100,000 per month. Almost 60% of visitors of popular weblogs come from Iran and others come from North America, Europe and Asia.

Hossein Derakhshan, aka hoder, is a journalist and multimedia developer. He has written about techincal and cultural aspects of Internet in "Asr-e Azadegan" an "Hayat-e No" dailies, before he immigrated to Canada on Dec 2000. His Persian online diary (weblog), "Sardabir: Khodam", has inspired many Iranians to publish their own weblogs on the Net. He keeps an English weblog as well. He now lives with his wife in Toronto.

New year card

Although it's too late, but I couldn't help psending my Persian new year card this year. Perhaps it won't match the mood of next Norooz. Happy 1382 again.

The American Rome

Lewis Lapham, editor of Harpers has recently spoken in University of Toronto.
He likened the current state of democracy in the U.S. to late-stage Rome. Rome had a republican period in which democracy and public discourse were treasured. Over time, this morphed into the Roman Empire where militarism and dictators ruled.
He says, "It's easier to send aircraft carriers to the Persian Gulf than to address real problems in America such as hungry kids, crowded prisons and corporate thieves."
The video of the speech is available.

Why not Iran?

Iran might be the only muslim popluated country who hasn't protested to the war at all. There has been no major (or even minor) street protest against the war.
There are two reasons: First, nobody has suffered from Saddam's regime more than Iranians. The eight-year war which Iraq started in 1980 costed lives of 600,000 Iranians, who were mostly young volenteers who joined the war to help the weakened former-Royal army because of the revolution. Iraq used chemical weapons on Iranian forces as many as 40 times in the last years of war.
Secondly, people are so tired and fed-up with the current religious regime that they sometimes say they'd like to be liberated by the Western countries.

Bush or Saddam

I wish I hadn't gone through the brutal war Saddam imposed to us for 8 years, so I could hate Bush more than Saddam. Nobody except Iranians really knows what a blood-thisty beast is this man.

Happy 1382

Happy new year to all Iranians and Persian speaking people all over the world. Hope the new your will be a better year for Iranians inside Iran.

Rosenbaum protests Kambiz Kahe's arrest

Here is the letter from Jonathan Rosenbaum, well-known Chicago-based film critic, on recent arrest of Kambiz Kahe, Iranian film critic and a number of his colleagues:

For years, I've been appalled at the treatment of all Iranians entering the United States, who get routinely fingerprinted--a process that has only gotten worse since George W. Bush has come into office. It shows the lack of interest and even contempt of some Americans towards other cultures, and it expresses the insane notion that people like Abbas Kiarostami and Jafar Panahi and Mohsen Makhmalbaf--and, yes, Forough Farrokhzad, Sedagh Hedayat, and even Rumi, if they were stilll alive--are all marked as potential terrorists.

But now I've heard that four Iranian film critics who clearly love art--including Mr. Kambiz Kahe, who interviewed me in Tehran when I recently visited there, and was treated with such hospitality and kindness--have been arrested by the Iranian government because of their love of art. I find this hard to fathom. I know that Iran is a country where art and spirituality are revered, and yet evidence of this reverence is now being taken to represent some form of corruption. I'm sad to say that this reminds me of the worst aspects of George W. Bush--xenophobia, intolerance, fear of the unknown, distrust of thought--and I am appalled and disturbed to see it manifested in a country known for its respect for art and thinking and spirituality.

Jonathan Rosenbaum
14 mar 2003

MeFi Post on Kambiz Kahe's arrest

Just posted something about kambiz Kahe and his collogues's arrest on MetaFilter.

Nowrooz on CBC

Thanks to the lovely Jian Ghomeshi, there will be a special segment on Play (Arts and entertainment weekly show on CBC) about Iranian new year or Nowrooz.

Would-be beautiful younge women

Pictures of little kids are all over on the life and family magazines, for printing big pictures of women on the cover a magazine is forbidden.

Iran after Iraq?

There is no wonder why Iranians haven't protested to the war at all. Ironically, they hope the same thing happens for Iran, meaning Western countries someday will rescue a nation tired of a religious tyranny. Although personally have no idea what will happen if U.S. and allies operthrow the current regime. the quiestion then would be: what will be replaced and who can guarantee that the whole thing won't be repeated?
Recent results of the latest election shows than less than 20 percent of big citie's population has participated. Reformists are quite worried about the outcomes of such low participation, but hardliners and conservatives are both confident that there is nothing to worry about.
Meanwhile, I think, western media are preparing the public to talk about Iran after Iraq, using the nuke issue and a revived talk about the role of Iran in 1994 bombing in Argentina which could easily be linked to the now famous world wide terrorism.

Email vs. Phone

Look how Internet has entered people's lives in north of Tehran. They write their friends' or foes' email addresses on the walls, instead of those old-fashion telephone numbers. (Location: Yakhchal St.)

Donation box

There is joke about these boxes which are to collect donations for the poor. It's based on the fact that God will protect us if we donate to them. But someone who had donated in one of those boxes but got hit by a car afterwards, warns a passenger who tries to drop a coin into it: "Hey, don't do it! It's broken, use another one." (It's actually funny in Persian you know)
Update: Revised it thanks to Ahmad

persian Memeufacture

Finally a trend reporting website for Persian community is launched thanks to John Wehr and his great Memeufacture. I hope other tools such as blogdex, Popdex, daypop etc. do the same thing, not only for Persian, but in other major languages on the net.

Good old days of working

Staff of Arts and Entertainment section of now-banned newspapaer, Hayat-e No, are eating Sangac bread and Iranian cheese in the afternoon

film critic arrested

Kambiz Kaheh and 4 other film crtics have been arrested according to the local media. I know Kambiz by person and I am sure he has no political agenda whatsoever, let alone acting as an opposition memebr. New reports suggest that he is under pressure to say that he was the head of a group "deceiving" young women.

Universal Secret

Our own Victoria has her own secrets, a beauty salon

Beauty and the conservatives

After the shocking results of recent city councils' election, with less than 12% participation in Tehran for example, reformists are almost silent. meanwhile ineteresting news are coming out of smaller cities. Like in Amol, Bahareh Shahidi, a beautiful young student who has been elected along 6 men, all pro-conservatives, is encouraged to leave the council and to resign. They even have threten her if she doesn't do so. Security officials have told her not to appear in public for now. (via WomeninIran)

Satelite TV

A large number of people have satelite dishes and have access to hundreds of TV channels from all around the world, including Arab countries like UAE. This one I guess was an American series with Arabic subtitle.