Here is a well-done AlterNet report on the Iranian weblogs, titled 'Building Blogs':
Persian blogs represent a grassroots movement that is paving the way for Iran's political awakening. These thousands of online journals show their tyrannical government that social change is inevitable. "If the Supreme Leader was a fan of reading blogs," Derakhshan said, "Iran would be a different country." Moreover, these genuine Iranian voices are trying to tell the rest of the world that not only are the people of Iran ready to embrace democracy, but that they are fully capable of bringing about this change themselves. Iranian bloggers are ready to open the bridge, the café, the window with the West and start an international dialogue.
The global web blog community is being called into action to lend support to two imprisoned Iranian bloggers.
The month-old Committee to Protect Bloggers' is asking those with blogs to dedicate their sites on 22 February to the "Free Mojtaba and Arash Day".
Arash Sigarchi and Mojtaba Saminejad are both in prison in Iran.
Source: BBC
Canada, to me as a brand new citizen, is very much about independence and diversity. This is also what blogs are mainly about. So you would think blogs should be a hot thing in Canada, which is not really the case yet.
For this, I mainly blame the Canadian media who seem to be not getting the idea of blogs yet and have even a negative attitude toward blogs in general.
So I hope the Northern Voice conference gets some good Canadian news coverage and it paves the way for more similar conferences and more public awareness about weblogs.
Blogs can contribute a lot to the Canadian society.
It's not very comfortable to see the sponsoring company's name on Northern Voices conference participants' name tags is bigger than participants name.
You probably think neither it's nice to complain about a conference that has paid for your ticket, hotel, etc. But I should say that it's not the case here. They didn't pay for any of the above, at least not for me.
On the other hand, they were kind enough to squeeze me into one of their panels, even though they had already wrapped up the whole conference. I owe this to the Seb Paquet and Brian Lamb.
I'm absolutely amazed to see how even educated, middle-class Iranians who still live in the country, openly support the toppling of the Islamic regime by the Bush administration.
One sound explanation could be that Iranian media have hugely failed to show a true and realistic picture about the meaning and the consequences of US invasion of Iraq and about the current situation in Iraq, especially in Baghdad.
Not that they haven't tried to do so, but they have always been so full of regime propaganda, exaggerated and distorted anti-Western content that nobody trusts them anymore.
People tend to do the exact opposite of what the state media suggests or asks them. This must be really depressing for the top Iranian officials and I think the supreme leader has no one to blame but himself.
What a lovely and beautiful city Vancouver is. The sky is blue, houses and buildings are actually designed and have big and good-looking windows, people are progressive, trees are everywhere, the buses use electricity, streets are full of trees, amazing mountains are in the north, food is great, and briefly, it's an amazing place for those who love the nature and just want to read, write, etc.
I've yet had a chance to wander in the city the way I always do, because of a nice friend I'm staying with at UBC residence, who has rented a car. But I have to start it soon. I have to leave on Monday and there isn't much time left to walk, discover and breath.
Is there anywhere you think I should definitely see?
I'm going to Vancouver tomorrow for Northern Voice conference and will stay three until 21st of February. It's actually my first trip to Western Canada and I'm really excited about it. Having been raised in city with lots of mountains, I've really missed them here in the flat city of Toronto.
There will possibly a separate session with Iranian blogger/blog readers there which I'll announce here soon.
I'm seeing positive signs of the reform movement's revival, particularly in Jebhe-ye Mosharekat party.
In an American-style move, and for the first time in Iran, they've introduced a candidate for the vice-presidency, a spokeswoman, and have asked for people's contributions for their campaign in an ad in Shargh Newspaper. They've also launched a new daily newspaper, called Eqbal with a very small editorial staff, and have re-launched the Emrooz website too.
Their gathering in Tehran has apparently been successful too. Here are some pictures, including the blue-dressed Elaheh Koulai who was the only MP who refused to wear Chador in the parliament.
A friend has written in his blog that very top officials (based on my persoanl experience form the days at Asr-e Azadegan, probably National Security Council) had banned all papers from publishing the Persian translation of Seymour Hersh's piece about U.S. possible attack to Iran.
This is how the Iranian regime prevents political discourse. And you may already know, no paper in Iran has an op-ed section. There are some political columns spread out in the paper -- most of them analytical though, rather than opinion pieces -- but there is no specific space for such debate to happen.
Believe it or not, Internet is providing this space.
UPDATE: - Shargh newspaper today has published the interview with Rafsanjani on its frontpage (PDF File), titled "I can resolve US-Iran problems," without mentioning the main story. Now it's officialy Rafsanjani's propaganda tool.
USA Today has published a very interesting piece about Hashemi Rafsanjani and the possibility of his running again for president.
The article looks like good publicity for him at first, but what Mehdi Hashemi Rafsanjani, his son, has said to Barbara Slavin, the report, can shatter all his father's hope for another term, if proved with some evidence.
His son, interviewed here last week, says the family is not eager to see Rafsanjani run again because "we have everything" already. But Iran needs him again, Hashemi says.
And then this, which is really unusual:
Rafsanjani's son says that, if elected, his father will change Iran's constitution to reduce the power of Iran's supreme religious leader and make the position a ceremonial role akin to "the king of England."
The latter can easily get him and his father into serious trouble, because he has talked about limiting the power of Khamemeni which is the ultimate taboo in today's Iran.
When I linked to this on my Persian blog, I was sure they would easily deny it. But now I wonder if the reporter has a recorded tape from her interview with Mehdi. Because if she has, this single interview could bring down Rafsanjani and ruin all his ambitions for the future election. And that is exactly what Khamenei wants.
By the way, is there anyone in the U.S. who still believes Rafsanjani's promises and wants to work with him? I hope you all take a look at his resume, which USA Today has carefully picked:
Rafsanjani also has a dark side. He has been linked in the Iranian press to the killings of dissidents during his presidential terms.
In 2000, Rafsanjani ran last in parliamentary elections for a seat from Tehran after a journalist, Akbar Ganji, accused him of involvement in the deaths of 80 writers and dissidents. Rafsanjani and his family deny the accusations. But a former intelligence officer who could have testified against him, Saeed Emami, died in prison under suspicious circumstances in 1999. Ganji was sentenced last year to 10 years in prison for "spreading propaganda about the Islamic regime." ... Among the victims was an Iranian intellectual, Ali Akbar Saidi Sirjani, who died in prison in 1994.
[A]n arrest warrant was issued in Germany in 1996 for Rafsanjani's intelligence minister, Ali Fallahian, for organizing the assassination of three Kurdish dissidents in Berlin in 1992. Rafsanjani was also president in 1994, when Iranian agents blew up a Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, killing more than 80 people, and in 1996, when Iranian-backed Saudi Shiite terrorists blew up the Khobar Towers housing complex in Saudi Arabia, killing 19 American airmen. Iran's alleged involvement in the Khobar Towers attack is one of many reasons for deep hostility toward Iran among U.S. government officials.
I just came up with -- I obviously believe -- a brilliant idea for the upcoming presidential election in Iran which I will post about it in Persian soon: Shirin Ebadi for president and Ezzat Sahabi for vice-president.
Don't preach me about the impossibility of women running for president based on the Iranian constitution. I already know that. But constitutions are flexible based on how judges (and in this case the Guardian Council) interpret them.
I'm really excited about this and going to start pushing it as much as I can. Maybe it suddenly happens, who knows.
To me, it's really a win-win situation. They either allow them to run in which case they absolutely win, or they won't get the Guardian Council's ok, which is very bad for them now after this tremendous amount of global pressure. Any thoughts?
Note: Jahanshah Javid told me that he has never posted comments on this or any other weblog. Any comments claming to be from me are false. I did not write the remarks about Ebadi posted here on February 8.
I have a strange feeling that Iranians and Americans will finally sit down around table and will directly start to solve their mutual problems. Many may know that Iran is already working with the U.S. in a wide range of topics especially about Iraq and Afghanistan.
I sense that Iranians are ready to give up on their uranium enrichment if they are accepted in the WTO and probably some other economic incentives that Europe can offer -- or has already offered -- but without the agreement of the U.S. is impossible.
The latest evidence for me was Ali Larijani's remarks yesterday. "In order to increase the country's revenue," he said to Fars news, "we have to reach the global market."
Maybe it's wishful thinking, but I think these Iranian neo-conservatives can break a lot of old taboos because Khamenei deeply trusts them. The taboo to directly talk to the U.S. could be on top of them.
Very harsh words, but nothing new said Bush about Iran in his fifth State of the Union address. What are his specific plans to stand with the Iranian people who are already standing for their liberty? It's not his first time to send the same direct message to Iranians. So what he is going to do?
The other thing, which really bugs me is that how can you say Iranians are the primary state sponsor of terrorism while not even a single Iranian has been involved in any act of terrorism after 9/11? And how dare he talks about the reform in Saudi Arabia while almost all Islamic terrorist groups around the world are funded by rich saudies, many of them with storng ties to the Royal family?
Despite all internal rows, Iran has still the most democratic political system in the middle-east, except for Israel. And speaking of the reform movements in the mid-east countries, the genuine reform movement in Iran was absolutely the strongest in the region.
Bush had the chance to stand up with the Iranian reformists while they had still a mass popualar support, the same way he did with Ukranians. But instead his neocon friends chose to support a group of expatriates, mostly monarchist Iranians, who, unlike their exaggerated claims, had no influence among the Iranian public and effectively watched the hardline conservatives shut down the entire reformist movement. Now it's dead and Bush was partly responsible for that. He could've done a lot more than sending messages and giving money to the corrupt monarch.
Oh, and the Iraqi women. That was cheap and cheesy, man! (Very Brukheimeresque) I don't like when some people allow powerful people to use them this easily and this much scripted.
However, I really sympathize with the Texan woman who had lost his son for Bush's lies and failures in Iraq. It's really tough to lose your son for somebody eles's lies and not even realize it.. Why such innocent and simple people should be ruled by these evils?
I wonder when the CNN and others would come up with an adjective other than 'frivolous' when they want to talk about those lawsuits? Won't they understand that by using conservatives' terms they are empowering them?
These terms are like Trojans; they have little conservative soldiers inside them that will come out and fight your own arguments. Just don't use them, please.
Expect a lot about Iran, directly or implied, in Bush's State of the Union tonight.
Meanwhile, some Iranians have started pre-emptive measure against a possible attack (invasion is I guess out of sight now). A blog called No war in Iran and an online petition with the same topic are among the first.