Editor: Myself

Some different sad news about the quake

- Shargh Newspaper reports that entrance to the city of Bam now needs permission and only journalists, aid workers and the police can enter the city. The governor of Kerman has said that the decision is made because of the fear of thieveries. They steal tents and other donated equipments and later sell them in other cities.

- A reporter has said to the Coordination Committee of the Women NGOs' website that there are fears in Bam for children who have lost their parents to be sold. There are also reports of women who have been raped in the city. It's said that some 800 prisoners, mostly dangerous murderers and drug traffickers have escaped Bam prisons and wandering in the city. Although the order is back to the city now by the heavy presence of the Army. However, there are reports that some of the trucks carrying aids have been attacked and aids have been stolen.

- The most interesting one is that the president Khatami, said he intended to go to Bam in the first hours after the quake, but "experts didn't let him" because of unmentioned reasons. So he then entered the city on the third day after the quake, and of course, along with Ayatollah Khamenei. The reason is very clear: Khamenei didn't want Khatami to appear among the people of Bam earlier than him, and since the city was not secure enough for him to enter, he had made Khatami to wait and go with him at the same time.

When people have different needs than the state

Nothing could ever show the real sense of diconnectivity and distrust between Iranian people and the Islamic regime, and its deeply dysfunctionality better than a devastating quake. Everywhere you go and every blog you read, there is talk about the political implications of such tragedy going on.

People inside and outside Iran are desperately trying to gather donations, but they don't want to give the money to the government. They'd rather give the aids directly to the International organizations or trusted NGOs and persons in Iran whom they are sure have nothing to do with the regime and its institutions. For instance, Shirin Ebadi, the Nobel laureate has stepped in and announced measures to directly gather people's aids. This amount of distrust and disconnectedness has never been see before.

However, the reason is pretty clear: When a government can run the whole country only by the oil and gas income, it doesn't have to answer its people's needs; it only thinks about its own needs. (In 2004, Iran will have $16 billion revenue from oil export, while it only depends on approximately 18% of citizen's taxes.)

So it's not important for the government that tens of thousands of lives are lost in road accidents every year, or millions are living in homes poorly resistible against any earthquake bigger than 5 Richter, or millions are open to different kinds of cancer because of the poisonously polluted air of Tehran, etc.

But they are pretty concerned about their own power and the threat from their own enemies; so they are always ready to spend a whole year of oil income, $16 billion, to achieve nuclear technology to use it as defensive weapons.

Why such a state ever bothers to care about the people's needs when it doesn't need their taxes and therefore their votes? Unless the power gets in the hands of real elected people, and the state is run by people's taxes, nothing will ever change; the state will have its own goals (to defend itself) and people have their own (to simply survive).

Iranian bloggers for Dean?

Bush doesn't look unbeatable as time goes by. While Howard Dean is getting stronger by the grassroots support of young Americans who are normally out of the whole U.S. political sphere, but this time think they can make a real difference by voting for a guy called Howard Dean.

Aside from the similarities that I see in the way Dean is gaining support with how Mohammad Khatami was elected six years ago, I guess we, Iranian bloggers, should start helping Dean's campaign and instead, demand a few things about our country and its citizens around the world. After all, the U.S. President influences the whole world and it's not irrational for other nations to at least voice their views on the next U.S. President.

Iranian weblog are now a big network of educated people all around the world. I estimate that around 30%-40% of them live in the North America or Europe. Some of them have even more readership than many of the printed local papers and magazines, published in Persian. They can shape a whole new group of supporters for Dean's campaign in the U.S., because of their influence on educated, trusted, and independent people.

Therefore I believe by supporting Howard Dean, who is very likely to eventually be the Democrats' nominate for '04, we can actually help ourselves. What do you think?

Saddam must survive the execution to reaveal a lot of things

It's understandable that many Iraqi's want Saddam to be executed. But I totally disagree with the, because it's not only them who should decide about the fate of Saddam. He has a huge file of war crimes against Iranians during the '80s war and we, as Iranians, have the right to decide about his fate as well as Iraqis.

However, like President Khatami, I doubt that the Bush Administration and the EU would like to uncover their silence and strong support to him even when he gassed Iranian soldiers.

I'm very glad that Michael Moore has finally spoken about the long forgotten facts of the Iran-Iraq war. Reading his piece about the history of the US support for Saddam is a must. Although he has missed the part of German and French in all those war crimes. After all, Chirac was a close friend to Iraq in the `80s and it was the French who revived the rusty army of Saddam by their new fighter jets etc.

Watch Irréversible at your own risk if you are a woman

Watched Gaspar Noé's Irréversible on DVD yesterday and I should say that I really liked it. Actually I always wanted to see it since it was screen at Cannes 2003, but never got a chance to catch it on Carlton theatre in Toronto, which is just in our 5 minutes walk distance. Last week at Jason's, he talked about it and reminded me of it. It was a pretty scary movie and I am happy that Marjan wasn't home to watch it--or in fact she heard Jason not to ever watch it.

I liked the cinematography, the crazy camera movements in the first half, and in the second half in another way; loved the soundtrack that in part was made by Daft Punk's Thomas Bangalter; moved by the subtle but amazing visual effects; and I really liked the performances, especially by Monica Bellucci.

Aside from her great look and body--and honestly, breasts-- the fact that she was so real and natural as a young beautiful French woman, really stunned me; because in all her English speaking movies and even Malena (witch was an Italian production, but by a Hollywood taste) she is either a complete slut bitch, or a sad and depressed woman. So I had rarely seen her smile, laugh, or any sense of humor. She is always such a serious bitch/widow in those films that you can hardly find her a good actress. But here in Irréversible she proves she is really a talented actress who happens to be exceptionally beautiful.

Hope my wife doesn't read this, but if anyone asks me to define femininity, I just point to Monica Bellucci. She truly is femininity.

Links:
- Some reviews on Irreversible
- BBC's Interview with Caspar Noe
- IndiWire's interview with the director
- Guardian's interview with Vincent Cassel, who happens to be Bellucci's real husband
- Buy the DVD from Amazon.ca
- Buy the DVD from Amazon.com

Note:
- I changed the title a bit because I don't want to sound like a sexist.

Interview in BlogsCanada

Jim Elve of BlogsCanada is trying to get the attention of Canadian public and media to the phenomena of Weblogs. He has adopted a mockery design that looks like typical Canadian government websites and has been trying to collect the biggest directory of Canadian blogs.

He and his son Jesse interviewed me last week before the whole Geneva Summit, Saddam's capture and Sina's leave happened.

You can find my general view about the Iranian society these days and of course some of my ideas for the Parliament nomination campaign in this two-part interview. The second part will be online tomorrow.

Sina escaped Iran, with family

The Good news is that Sina Motallebi, the famous Iranian blogger who spent about three weeks in prison for his writings on his weblog and in reformist newspapers, has left Iran to Europe, along with his wife and little boy. He actually has started blogging again.

Update:
- I just talked to Sina on the phone. he was perfectly fine and so excited to be able to write again. His wife, farnaz, who herself was a well-known journalist, is with him and they are both Ok. He is now trying to decide where to stay and what to do next. So please if you can be of anyhelp to him and his family, don't hesitate to contact him directly at: sina_motallebi at- yahoo -dot com

Ask those in Tehran hospitals with no kidneys about Saddam, as well as from Rumsfeld and Chirac

Nobody was happier than most Iranians seeing Saddam looking like stinky homeless men--except for Iraqis of course.

I broke into tears when I saw the most brutal dictator in the world was captured, who once was a close friend to both Mr. Chirac and Mr. Rumsfel--at the same time.

It was a time that the whole world, including Muslim Arabs in the middle-east, were backing to weaken the rouge revolutionary Iranians who had happened to inherit the most powerful Army in the region and a strong, 'anti-imperialistic' faith, mixed with Islamic radicalism. Saddam crossed every conventional border to win the war, including widely use of chemical weapons which still suffers hundreds of thousands of young soldiers, now in their 30s. But nobody, even Europe, dares to look back at that part of history.

Although the Iran-Iraq war was the war between two groups of dictators whose entire existence was based on the war. (Ayatollah Khomeini used war to get rid of his internal opponents, as well as Saddam) However, there was a huge history of anti-Persian feelings among Arabs and anti-Arabism among Iranians involved.

Now, patriotically speaking, nothing is more painful than seeing Palestinians grieving for Saddam, while our whole foreign policy is stupidly tied to the issue of Israel-Palestine. Not to mention that Yasser Arafat was a big supporter of Saddam during the war with Iran, as well as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait, UAE--and France.

It was France that revived the low-tech, soviet made army of Iraq after it was almost destroyed by the Iranian US-made army. I still don't forget that all we could here were Mirages, Sokhos, Migs as Iraqi fighters. if it wasn't for the support and silence of the US, Europe and Russia, Saddam couldn't resist the faithful, strong and patriotic Iranians (with a cover of Islamic radicalism of course).

He is now in the US custody, helpless and miserable. But however we have problems with the regime of Mullahs, we shouldn't let the world forget that they once were backing the same brutal man. I'm delighted to see Iranian government intends to open a case against him for the war crimes during the bloody eight year war--maybe it leads to some big scandals, especially in Europe. They weren't as anti-war activists as they are now. Ask thousands who have lost their voices, kidneys, lungs, etc. and waiting to see an end to their painful lives in hospitals in Tehran.

Links:
- Military analysis of Iran-Iraq war, Federation of American Scientists
- Iran, biggest victim of chemical weapons
- Saddam's chemical victims still suffering in Iran, Reuters

Interview with BBC News Online on the censorship in Iran - Full draft

Aaron Scullion from the BBC Online News had asked me a few questions about the Net censorship issue for the story he was trying to write. The story went online titled Iranian bloggers rally against censorship and it received a lot of attention from the blogosphere.

Note that this was done one day before the press conference.

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1. What was the source of the story you gave us on Sunday (no actual names neccessary)

I received about 3 emails that week from my readers in the weblog and then I read it on a few other Iranian weblogs.

2. Have you any idea what the situation in Iran is now, in terms of web censorship? Has this posting, and subsequent conversation, had any effect.

It's very complicated because there is no single and centralized policy or blacklist in Iran.

On one hand there are a number of powerful service providers who have been allowed to operate almost totally by their own resources. So for example, they were using satellite connection for their down-link and awfully slow modem connections through the telecommunication company of Iran. Later, a few of them were allowed to use two-way satellite connections, because the government didn't afford to give them more download bad with.

But due to security and economic reasons, the government has been trying to improve the infrastructure so nobody actually needs a satellite dish. But still, those organizations such as IRIB (Iranian TV and Radio) who are directly controlled by the Supreme leader, not the government have not complied with the government's regulation to centralize the downlink and uplink connections.

At the same time, government has installed cheap filtering software to control the data. But since they haven't been able to convince all big ISPs to use government's uplink, some of the ISPs still don't use the TCI software and instead, because of the fear of being closed down, have installed and run their own filtering system, with their own blacklist which is more conservative than the actual blacklist.

The situation now is that the government is trying to help some big wholesaler ISPs to be built by private sector (or Internet connection provider or ICP) so they can only deal with a few big clients, and not thousands of small ISPs. But the final agreement with the nominated ICPs is not done yet which leads to a basically centralized two-way connection and filtering.

Since then the government benefits the confusion. They say they only filter the websites that a committee realizes are against the Islam and the interests of the country. They have also recently said that if anyone's website is actually out of the blacklist and blocked by mistake, TCI would resolve that. However, the blacklist has not published yet and ISPs who get the blacklist say it has the "Secret" stamp on it.

3. Were you surprised by the response to our story?

Yes, I had tried to do the same thing in my blog and since it was in Persian, I got a lot of comments about the new websites thet have been filtered. But I didn't expect that a quick call for comments in Summit's blog, in English, could be so much welcomed. People must have be very frustrated. This is their only way to reach the global community. All other ways of communication in Iran are either heavily censored and controlled, or as in satellites TV, are one-way connection. Internet is their only way to raise their voices.

4. Why do you think people used Daily Summit to speak out? Did they want to get a message to the delegates at WSIS?

Absolutely. They know this is a UN-related summit and the official blog of this Summit is important enough to grab the attention of other delegates and participants, including the media. They also know that the Iranian officials are very defensive against these kind of things and if there is enough public pressure, they'd definitely change their attitudes. Especially EU delegates could have a great role in this. They can add this subject to their list of topics they have during their talks with Iran. They once forced Iran to suspend the stoning law, and they can do it for the Net censorship as well as other things.

5. How do you think so many people found out about the story so quickly?

Weblogs. Despite all censorship, I still have around 5,000 visitors everyday, half of them from Iran. What I wrote and asked was linked to and copied in many other Persian blogs (there are over 100,000 of them now), so people were informed about it. Weblogs in Iran are a decentralized network of free information and that’s why the officials do not like them very much. Especially those popular ones that provide social and political commentary.

6. Could you tell us what response, you've had personally, from fellow bloggers - and especially people who disagree with you?

I'm in tough position these days. On one hand I am very active to be a part of the efforts to improve democracy and freedom of expression in Iran using the Internet, (for example I've trying to launch a collective symbolic nomination on the Net), on the other hand I have to report about these activates and try to make it into popular Western blogs and possibly media.

So many people in Iran think that whatever I do is self-promotion and therefore sometimes they do not co-operate and try to show the world how I exaggerate things in order to get some publicity for myself. Some of the comments in the Daily Summit displays that feeling.

Also, many people in Iran have got used to seeing their basic rights denied by the regime and they are kind of too hopeless to respond to any of these activities. But when they feel their voice could be heard, they raise it. Daily Summit blog was one example.

7. Anything else you think we'd be interested in?

My next plan is to step up pressure on the major ISPs so they publish the blacklist. (Thinking of flash-mobbing their offices in Tehran or Google bombing them. Not decided yet.) Once it's officially out there, we can focus on the TCI and the censoring committee, hopefully with the help of Western media, to get the word to EU foreign policy officials.

New look for BBC Online and BBC World

I'm so happy that BBC Online has got rid of that ugly olive-ish color on all it's pages. Their top banner, now with this black thick line, looks much more comfortable now than it used to be. (I didn't find any explanation on these changes. Wish they had written soemthing about it.)

At the samw time, BBC World (the TV newteok) has gone through major graphical changes. the entire typography has changed, the music and the short animations (what do they call them by the way?) have totally changed, and one of their main studios has a complete new look now.

All these changes are for good, except for one: They have moved their nice and little BBC World logo-stamp from the top\-left side of the screen to the bottom-left and they have not only made it much bigger, but also have added a red background. So you now see a huge BBC World logo, with a byline of bbcnews.com almost all the time.

The funny thing is that many of the programs have designed their title's layouts according to the previous size and place of the old logo, and now with the new one, they look so amature, and even simetimes they are covered by it.

By the way, does anybody know what is this ugly and noisy teaser that advertise for other BBC World shows between the programs? Does the whole world see the same thing or it's just for the North America and other people in Eroupe or Asia see something else?

Who said technology can't help democracy?

Aaron Scullion, from the BBC News online, finally managed to give us some publicity on our collective effort to protest to the Net censorship in Iran.."Iranian bloggers rally against censorship" focuses on how Iranians used the official blog of the Geneva Summit on Information to post comments about the issue of the censroship by government on political websites.

Meanwhile, Mr. Khatami, the President, is going to have a press confrenece and again the Simmt's blog has decided to do a great role by asking people to post their questions for Mr. Khatami and other members of the Iranian delegate. The press conference will be webcast live.

I don't know how to thank Cara Swift for her great support to this cause and the chance they gave us to raise our voice in their fantastic blog.

This is the best evidence of how a simple blog, in the right time and right place, can be used as a strong tool for political change--this is what technology can help democracy. isn't this what the whole summit is about?

By the way, my questions for president Khatami are the following:

• There are confirmed reports that your government has censorsed (or as they put it, filtered) several Iranian news websites and weblogs, with no sexual content. Your minister of telecommunication, Mr. Motamedi, has recently said that they only filter websites that are in a blacklist. Is that true? Do you approve filtering political websites that critisize the regime?

• Have you read the weblog of your deputy, Mr. Abtahi? What about other Persian weblogs? What do you think about Persian weblogs in general?

and one for Mr. Motamedi, the minister of Telecommunication:

• You've talked about a blacklist in your last press confrence. Why don't you publicize this blacklist so we can file for complains if our website is filtered by mistake? How can we ever know that without having that list?

Hope Cara and her freinds get the chance to ask them.

To be a reporter and an activist at the same time is a tough job

Not a single press for Net censorship yet, while we've managed to collect about 200 comments from Iranians who've experienced censorship.

There a couple of possibilities for this lack of attention:

1. It's not loud enough so they haven't heard it
2. It's not important enough for them when Iraq and Terrorism capture the news
3. The media, don't think the news is true
4. They think I'm exaggerating things in order to promote myself

Whatever the reason is, I should say that I'm really pissed off and disappointed. On one hand Iranians inside Iran have got used to seeing their basic rights denied by the system with various excuses and they don't bother anymore; on the other hand people outside Iran are pretty much pre-occupied with their education, family, work, and their basic needs; so they don't care much about these kind of stuff anymore. The result is that a few number of people like me, should perform two roles at once: to be activists and be part of things, and to observe and report them to the world.

I'm glad that there are some people like Matt Haughy* who understand this tough position, but I'm really tired of being a "stick, both sides shitty", as they say it in Persian.

* He had asked me "not to promote myself" on the MetaFilter and I explained to him that sometimes I'm part of the things that are done and if I don't report them, nobody actually get to know about some of them. He responded that he understands it.

Help Iranians fight Net censorship during the Geneva Summit

Latest Update:
- I've got emails saying that Google Cache is opened again. Some persian weblogs (FarsTec and Panjereh) have also posted about this.
- Over hundred iranians have written about their personal experience on the issue of Net censorship. Cara Swift, from the Daily Summit blog, had asked them about the real situtation of Net censorship in Iran and had provides some links and background information.
- Ali Parvaresh, an Iranian blogger who lives in Iran, has more.

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The toppest Iranian officials, in charge of Information and Communication Technology, are actually in Geneva for the World Summit on Information Society, and will deliver their speeches at the summit.

Having just watched a Michel Moore film, The Big One, I suddenly realized this is our biggest chance to do some actisivm on the issue of Internet censorship. Maybe with the help of our Iranian and non-Iranian friends in Switzerland, and of course the European press, we can raise our voices to the officials who are cleverly covering up the big amount of censorship that are doing since about a year ago.

So, again, I decided to start another weblog, titled Stop Censoring Us, dedicated to news and developments on the important issue of Net Censorship in Iran, and of course helping to organize some public smart protests in Geneva, and on the Net.

Just until I set-up the weblog, I'd like to let you know about some recent developments:

- Apparently, Iranian Telecommunication Company, the main Internet Provider in Iran, has completely filtered Google's Cached version of web pages.

- Minister of Communication, Mr. Ahmad Motamedi, has recently said that a blacklist of Iranian weblogs and news websites exists and all major Iranian ISPs, who are actually the Internet access wholesalers, must only block those websites and nothing else. (The list hasn't officially published yet. So how can we know which ones are being blocked "illegally" and which ones "more illegaly".) He has also mentioned that he personally doesn't like the censorship, but added that a committe outside the ministery is deciding about the list. He has talked about new softwares that the ministery have recently bought to make the censorship more effective and precise.
Source: http://isna.ir/news/NewsCont.asp?id=314744&lang=P

- Complete list of members of Iranian delegate: (30 of them are titled as Driver, also two of the close persons to the Presidential office are registered as Chefs!)

-Top biggest delegates in the World Summit on the Information Society:

1. Malaysia 137
2. Romania 116
3. France 108
4. Canada 101
5. Cuba 88
6. Japan 85
7. Russia 80
8. Iran 79
9. Nigeria 69
10. Gabon 66

Let's start shaping debates, not be shaped by them

This articles was first appeared on Free Thoughts on Iran

Mainstream Western media have long forgotten Iran as a major factor of political change in the Middle East. They only remember Iran during the elections or if something nasty happens. They used to be more interested in Iranian internal issues when they were hoping that out of the entire reformist movement, something big would happen, but now seems as if Iran has lost its importance, except for the nuclear issues. But part of the reason for this has been our own selves.

The sad reality is that Iranian intellectuals and writers figures have never been actively involved in shaping debates--or at least participating in them.

Aside from a few, mostly Right-wing columnists such as Amir Taheri, have been writing op-ed pieces for major western newspapers.

There are numerous educated Iranians, especially from the younger generation, who are enough qualified and capable to raise important issues about Iran by writing articles, stories and opinion columns in western media. But it seems they suffer from two things: lack of confidence, and lack of journalistic connections.

I believe it's time to overcome these two barriers, especially while we have overcome the huge and strong barrier of language, which, in my opinion, has been the biggest reason of the problem for the last decades. Therefore we only need to find the confidence and the network we require to be able to shape important debates on Iranian issues.

The solution to both of them, I believe, lies within a favorite term of the recent years in Internet-savvy community: Peer-to-Peer networking.

All of us have different contacts in various publications in North America and in Europe. Should we share them all with each other and create a network of these shared contact, we'd absolutely afford producing a couple of insightful columns with fresh viewpoint every week in various newspapers in magazines. And if we can only keep it going for a while, it not only helps us gain the necessary confidence, but also grabs the attention of the media even without much of networking. Then, after a couple of hard work, it'd be Western editors who desparately need Iranian columnists to write for them, not Iranians.

Free Thoughts on Iran, a collaborative weblog written by some Iranian graduate students in top North American schools, could be a great starting point for such network. We can share our journalistic and academic contacts and begin to frequently send our writings to them. They surely can't ignore the quality pieces that Free Thoughts on Iran members and editors systematically produce. We can start from the local newspapers and magazines, and once we get enough credit, we can start pitching bigger and more famous publications.

Medi Yahyanejad, one of the founders of Free Thoughts, had previously written about this problem and I think this could be a good move to actually try to find a solution.

It's time for educated Iranians men and women to start shaping the public opinions of Western people and politicians by creating debates themselves, and not leaving it to not-necessarily knowledgeable Western journalists. The big heads in the Western press might resist it for a while, but not very long. Aren't we now strong enough not to be ignored?

We may not vote, but we can still say what we really want

What will you do as a citizen when you can't vote for your preferred candidates who have your favorite plans?

Welcome to Iran, where, based on the latest election regulations, no one can stand for parliament elections unless he or she acknowledges the Islamic regime, the rule of Islam (one must be a practicing Muslim), and the concept of unlimited power of it's supreme leader (or simply Wilayat Faqih).

So what happens when a system doesn't let anyone in, except its trusted friends? The answer is something that's been frustrating Iranian Reformists for a while: Nobody votes.

Now imagine when people couldn't express what they really want, they would come out and say it publicly. In other words, suppose that thousands of Iranian announce their symbolic candidacy for the parliament elections, as I already did, and publicly show what they think their plans would be, no matter they'd be accepted as a qualified candidate or not.

So before I start to talk about my own agenda, a few friends and I have decided to build a website in which everyone can easily make a webpage including his or her name, picture, biography and their agenda. (Note: I had this idea from the begining. But it was after a phone conversation with Pedram that I realized I should do it before I actually start talking about my own platfom.)

This way, we can show the world that how different is our expectations and plans from those of Reformists who think are representing the majority of people. They have been blaming people for not caring enough about their fate lately. But when people truly show what they want, the Reformists may realize that they are generally nothing very much different than their opponents.

Iranians demand major changes in the Islamic regime's goals, methods, and behaviors. They do not show up to vote in any election unless they feel they have real choices. At the same time, they don't favor a violent way of change, because they've already suffered enough from the outcomes of a violent revolution.

Additional Resources:
- Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran
- Election rules and regulations (by IranMania)
- News coverage of Previous elections