On the one hand I'm really excited that Iraqi people have been able to start the path to a potentially democratic political system, on the other hand I'm really upset that this will embolden neoconservatives and will be seen as a confirmation of their dangerous plans for the world.
What the hell is French consulate in Toronto doing?
They don't let you apply for a visa unless they give you an appointment, which in turn should be booked only through an online form on their website, no emails, no phone, no fax, nothing. And they won't send you a confirmation email either.
Now, I applied last Friday for an appointment and haven't heard anything from them. What kind of service is this?
I am going to miss the UNESCO conference and I don't have even an appointment for giving my visa request to the consulate. This is crazy.
In no other country but Iran you'll hear politicians use "Orkut" and "Yahoo Messenger" in their sentences.
Nasser Nassiri, a radical MP last week called for a ban on Orkut and Yahoo Messenger, both extremely popular among Iranians, and suggested the parliament will start work on a bill to officially ban them. As always, the reason was to destroy the ethical foundations of the society.
Now another radical but connected MP, Emad Afroogh, who is the chair of the cultural committee of the parliament, has officially denied that they are going to ban Orkut and Yahoo Messenger.
However, people's comments have it that the Iranian Telecom has already filtered Orkut. OpenNet initiative guys have confirmed it in an email to me.
What a lovely dysfunctional and chaotic country Iran has become.
I really believe it's time to use the momentum that "freedom for repressed people" rhetoric of Bush has created and ask for some of the stupid parts of the US embargo on Iran that only harm the free speech of the Iranian people to be lifted.
We should bear in mind that two groups benefit most from a silence Iran in the international scene: Iranian militants and American neo-conservatives. Without an active and outspoken Iranian public, both these groups would easily manipulate the reality of Iran only to progress their radical agenda.
Best recent examples of such stupid measures by US companies as a result of the embargo policy are:
I think the whole thing deserves more attention from the American liberal media and, honestly, it's a perfect topic for editorial writers of liberal newspapers, such as New York Times. Can anyone help?
I like and respect Seymor Hersh a lot, but someobody please remind him to stop pronouncing Iran like "Eye-ran," this is "e-rawn" or at least "e-ran." Or yuo can show him the CNN ad with Chrisitan Amanopur.
While I admit that my last entry, especially its title, was a bit exagerated, I'm still looking into the story to figure out what exactly has happened.
On a hosting-related forum, you can find some of the emails exchanged between The Planet and one of the blocked costumers.
However, it's still a question to me that whether The Planet has terminated every account by anyone who has declared to be Iranian, or is it only limited to one or two specific accounts, which might have really violated the terms they'd accepted.
I'm also trying to find out if there has been any other similar termination of service on other hosting companies, if they declare they are Iranian.
But the bottom line, to me, is that all these restrictions are mostly limiting the free speech of ordinary Iranian people. Imagine a day when no American hosting copmany let any Iranian have an account. Wouldn't that only help the regime to silence its repressed people? Does the US really want to make a North Korea of Iran?
The following are the tickets The Planet and at least three Iranian costumers (c19559noor, c13333oxyg and c14849iran) have exchanged:
--------------------------------
Service Termination Notice
Existing Details:
------------------------------------------(fcastle-01/13/05-18:11):
Customer,As per our Terms of Services (www[dot]servermatrix.com/terms.html)
your services will be terminated 48 hours after the opening of this
ticket. Please take this time to backup and copy any pertinant
information you may have on your server(s).This is non-negotiable and is final.
- ServerMatrix reserves the right to discontinue service to any
subscriber it deems, in its sole discretion, violates any condition of
service including the Acceptable Use Policy, Data Center Rules and
Procedures, and Terms of Services.Thanks.
--------------------------------------
(c19559noor-01/14/05-04:15):
Dear Sir
Can I know the reason?
also we have get some of our servers from theplqanet.com
is this Termination include thoase servers?
Thanks
------------------------------------------(rcarter-01/14/05-08:58):
The termination will include any and all services you have with us.We apologize for the inconvenience but unfortunately, this is all the information I can give you.
Thanks.
__________________
Second one:
(fcastle-01/13/05-18:06):
Customer,As per our Terms of Services (http://www.servermatrix.com/terms.html)
your services will be terminated 48 hours after the opening of this
ticket. Please take this time to backup and copy any pertinant
information you may have on your server(s).This is non-negotiable and is final.
- ServerMatrix reserves the right to discontinue service to any
subscriber it deems, in its sole discretion, violates any condition of
service including the Acceptable Use Policy, Data Center Rules and
Procedures, and Terms of Services.Thanks.
--------------------------------------
(c13333oxyg-01/14/05-01:01)::O :O :Oreally whats up???
i didn't do anything :O really whats up???? please help me, i don't
know whats my fault.i think this is misunderstanding :(
please, please, please don't cancel the server, i read that terms.
which part.....Best Regards, Omid
--------------------------------------
(c13333oxyg-01/14/05-01:10):I don't violate to anyone :(
Really i don't, maybe my serrver cracked :(please tell me WHY i should go out of business :( after canceling that
i must go die!!!! be sure that I, myself don't violate anyone. I am
the only that have access to server, but maybe they cracked it :((rcarter-01/14/05-09:04):
Unfortunately, we have no other information to provide to you.We apologize for any inconvenience.
--------------------------------------
(c13333oxyg-01/14/05-09:34):what do you mean "no other information"????you are going to close my account (with two servers) and don't have
any information?!!!am i do anything wrong?!! so please tell me :(
--------------------------------------
(c13333oxyg-01/14/05-10:17):who knows information!!??
could you please give me a number and a name to call him/her??i'm waiting......
Best Regards,
Omid(rcarter-01/14/05-11:16):
As noted above:This is non-negotiable and is final.
----------------------------------
Third one which belongs to ISNA:
---------------------------
(fcastle-01/13/05-18:07):
Customer,As per our Terms of Services (http://www.servermatrix.com/terms.html)
your services will be terminated 48 hours after the opening of this
ticket. Please take this time to backup and copy any pertinant
information you may have on your server(s).This is non-negotiable and is final.
- ServerMatrix reserves the right to discontinue service to any
subscriber it deems, in its sole discretion, violates any condition of
service including the Acceptable Use Policy, Data Center Rules and
Procedures, and Terms of Services.Thanks.
--------------------------------------
(c14849iran-01/14/05-09:40):Dear Sir/Madam,
Hello,I saw your ticket 2 hours ago, I was wondering why you want to terminate our service? we agree all terms and conditions and work legal on our server.
Please send me back your response, I'm waiting for your response.Yours Sincerely,
Ahmad Reza Yousefi(aparidy-01/14/05-05:54):
I am forwarding this ticket to our security department to answer any further questions you may have. Thank you for your patience.
--------------------------------------
(yousefi-01/14/05-06:09):Dear Sir/Madam,About 5 minutes ago I talked with Joseph in your technical support Department. It's very important for us to know what's happening? as you know it's too difficult to change our server in only 48 hours because our server is running without any interrupt. Please send me back your answer as soon as possible and tell us the reason.
I as mentioned before we accept all terms and conditions and don't violate any terms.Yours Sincerely
Ahmad Reza Yousefi
--------------------------------------
(yousefi-01/14/05-07:43):Dear Sir/Madam,I'm waiting to get your response as soon as possible.
Yours Sincerely,
Ahmad Reza Yousefi
--------------------------------------
(c14849iran-01/14/05-11:09):Dear Sir/Madam,
Hello,Would please tell us what's happening there? I was wondering why you want to terminate our service? as you know it's too difficult to change our server in only 48 hours because our server is running without any interrupt. Please send me back your answer as soon as possible and tell us the reason.
I as mentioned before we accept all terms and conditions and don't violate any terms.Yours Sincerely
Ahmad Reza Yousefi(rcarter-01/14/05-11:15):
Unfortunately, there is no other information I can provide you.We apologize for any inconvenience but as noted above:
This is non-negotiable and is final.
Thanks.
UPDATES:
As if being censored by the regime hasn't been painful enough, now US based hosting copmanies have started to shut down private and governmental Iranian accounts with a short notice. (Source: BBC Perisan)
The latest victim is the students news agency (ISNA) which is ordered by its host, The Planet, to leave in 48 hours with no chance for furthur negotioations.
In other similar incidents, I've heard that many registrars such as GoDaddy doesn't allow Iranians to register domain names either. (See their official press release.)
I wonder whether this is what president Bush considers standing with a nation for their freedom. Who else is using these websites other than mostly secular, freedom-loving Iranian youth?
P.S: A paragraph in the US State Departmetn's "Overview of State-Sponsored Terrorism" reads:
Terrorist Use of Information Technology
Terrorists have seized upon the worldwide practice of using information technology (IT) in daily life. They embrace IT for several reasons: it improves communication and aids organization, allows members to coordinate quickly with large numbers of followers, and provides a platform for propaganda. The Internet also allows terrorists to reach a wide audience of potential donors and recruits who may be located over a large geographic area.
In addition, terrorists are taking note of the proliferation of hacking and the use of the computer as a weapon. Extremists routinely post messages to widely accessible Web sites that call for defacing Western Internet sites and disrupting online service, for example. The widespread availability of hacking software and its anonymous and increasingly automated design make it likely that terrorists will more frequently incorporate these tools into their online activity. The appeal of such tools may increase as news media continue to sensationalize hacking.
Thomas Friedman's last paragraph in his column, An American in Paris, about why Bush is so popular Iran is exactly what I had said before here: Iranians love anything their regime tries to demonize.
The other reason is that almost all of a dozen satellite TV channels, beamed from California and run by conservative and right-wing Iranians, are constantly portraying Bush in an exaggeratedly unrealistic way.
As if he is the ultimate savior of Iranian people, from the repressive and dysfunctional Islamic regime.
Despite their possible denial, the large amount of positively-biased information about Mr. Bush has even affected the educated middle-class, and many of them are now supporting Bush based on a completely distorted image these satellite TVs provide.
Rumors have it that many of them are funded by neo-conservative groups.
That's it. In the first half of his speech, I suspect, Bush was clearly speaking about Iran, without naming it. And this is very worrying. Given the new information disclosed by Seymour Hersh about the U.S. already starting covert action inside Iran, I have no doubt he will step up pressure on Iran in his state of the union speech.
As an Iranian, I have to say, who doesn't like peace and freedom? But what Bush has brought to Iraq is not -- and will probably never be for a long time -- freedom and peace. So were I sure by invading Iran, innocent civilian wouldn't get killed by American "smart bombs", public facilities wouldn't be looted, and women and children wouldn't be raped or kidnapped, and overall the country would be in a better shape than it is today, I'd probably support an invasion or the sudden regime change.
But the truth is war won't bring peace and all the things Bush says about expanding the freedom in the world through soldiers are nothing but neo-cons' wild dreams.
He is not even honest about those promises, because there are many countries worse than Iran in terms of level of democracy, freedom and human rights. How many times have you heard him talking about the nation of ultimate slavery and tyranny, North Korea? How about the corrupted Kingdom of Saudi Arabia? Or the quasi-dictatorship of Pakistan? They are definitely farther from democracy and tolerance than Iran, where, at least, the majority of its people are getting more and more secular everyday. Can we say the same thing about the people of all those friends of Mr. Bush in the region?
Tags: iran
Podcasting is my new passion. So here it is, my first podcast in English, which is basically just a test. (What the hell is podcasting?) I'll try to make a real one next week about serious subject matters related to Iran and Persian blogosphere etc. So please subscribe to the feed and keep in touch.
Here is the feed for my temporarily titled "Radio Hoder":
http://hoder.com/podcast
Meanwhile, you can also listen to my first podcast in Persian which is much longer and has more substance as the first show. Podcasting could be the next media revolution in Iran and I'll try to introduce and promote it as much as I did for blogs.
By the way, the music you are hearing in the begining and the end of my English podcast is a by Hossein Alizadeh, the greatest traditional Iranian musican of all time. I'll write about it more later.
I really have to go to this UNESCO conference on Freedom of Speech in Cyberspace which will be held in UNESCO headquarters in Paris, on 3-4 February.
At least to embarrass the Iranian delegation which will be arrogant enough to take part in such conference, even with its horrible record of freedom of speech in Cyberspace, and also to inform the UN and its members about the vast and heavy Net censorship in Iran. (I'm even prepared to do this trip on my own expense, if no other funding can I find.)
Since my Canadian citizenship is still in the process, I have to use my invaluable Iranian passport -- again -- and to apply for a Type C Scheme Visa. But I worry issuing the VIsa takes longer than February 2nd and I miss the whole thing.
So does anyone know someone who might be of help, especially in the French councilor in Toronto or in the Embassy in Ottawa?
You might already know that I have a more popular and, therefore, highly active blog in Persian. But since I don't want leave my English speaking readers curious about what I write there, and of course because I don't have enough resources to translate the whole Persian post, I've been providing summaries for all my Persian entries since two years ago.
While you can find the recent ones on the right-side column of this page, the complete archive is available too.
Friends in Iran, journalists and technicians, are saying that judiciary officials have ordered all major ISP to filter all blogging services including PersianBlog, BlogSpot, Blogger, BlogSky, and even BlogRolling.
They have also ordered to filter Orkut, Yahoo Personals and some other popular dating and social networking websites.
For ISPs this means a big loss, since much of their recent sales have been because of people writing and reading blogs and surfing Orkut. So the government is effectively eliminating small and private ISPs by bankrupting them, whiteout paying a political price for it.
As I had said before, I think we can adopt a three-level strategy for fighting Net censorship in Iran:
While still relevant and potentially effective, I believe they are not enough now.
The EU and the US must seriously consider demanding for an end to the Internet censorship during their negotiations with the Iranian government.
We also have to look for ways to beam Internet direcly to Iranian users in Tehran and other big cities via cheap satellite connections.
I call this "open access" and it's actually one of the projects a few friends and I are working on: to use millions of satellite dishes in Iranian houses to access the net, without interference of local ISPs.
UPDATES
- As usual, ParsOnline has been the first ISP to obey Telecom, followed by Datak, based on comments in Sobhaneh.
- Joi wonders about Typepad and LiveJournal. Actually, they have almost no user in Iran. Typepad for it requires credit card -- which doesn't exist in Iran -- and LiveJournal maybe because it's not localized yet.
- Mortazavi ordered recent filtering (from stop.censoring.us)
2004 was absolutely a sad and depressing year. Let's see what 2005 will bring.
Hossein "Hoder" Derakhshan is an Iranian-born blogger, journalist, and internet activist. Since mid-90s, he has been advocating the use of internet, particularly as a means for social and political change in Iran.
His award-winning weblog, "Editor: Myself" (http://hoder.com/weblog), which was started in Sep 2001, has been among the most influential blogs in Persian language and his step-by-step instruction to create blogs in Persian should take much of the credit for inspiring thousands of Iranians to start their own blogs.
Hossein, whom The Guardian called a "key link from Iran's teeming world of Weblogs to the west", has been living in Toronto since Dec 2000, but now spends most of his time traveling. When not worrying about wireless internet access, he updates his blogs in Persian (http://i.hoder.com) and in English (http://hoder.com/weblog), a blog watching internet censorship in Iran (http://stop.censoring.us), and a photoblog at (http://vagrantly.com).
After his unprecedented public trip to Israel in January 2006 and his multimedia coverage of the Iranians living there as a citizen journalist, he has recently launched a project called TehrAviv (http://tehraviv.org), with help from an Israeli friend, to promote peace and understanding between the two nations of Iran and Israel and disarm the radical establishment in both countries.
He also last visited Iran last June to cover the presidential elections for his readers. There he was shortly detained and interrogated by the Ministry of Intelligence before being forced to write an apology to be able to leave Iran a week after he had planned to.
He has spoken at various conferences and academic events including Harvard Law School, The Middle East Institute of Columbia University, Iranian Studies Center at the Tel Aviv University, and Journalism School at the University of Stockholm. His writing has appeared in The Guardian, The New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Die Zeit, BBC News, Open Democracy, etc.
Related articles:
Democracy's Double Standard - The New York Times (Jan. 2006)
By Hossein Derakhshan
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/28/opinion/28Derakhshan.html
Beware the bomber, not the bomb - The Guardian (Feb. 2006)
By Hossein Derakhshan
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1579478,00.html
Blog Spring (Jun. 2005). Wired Magazine
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.06/posts.html?pg=6
Web relations: Iranian blogs his way to Israel. (Jan. 2006). Jerusalem Post
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1138622510033&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull
I'll blog your house down. (Jan. 2006). Haaretz
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=676697
Bloggers of Iran (May 2005). The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/edcut?pid=2947
A Dissident's Diary. (Oct. 2005). UofT Magazine
http://www.magazine.utoronto.ca/05autumn/blogger.asp
Writing Lolita in Tehran (Jun. 2005). Newsweek
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8049628/site/newsweek/