Here is my presentation for Les Blogs 2005 which happened last week in Paris:
Weblogestan: How weblogs are affecting Iran (PowerPoint file, 35 KB)
And a simple html version of the same presentation:
How weblogs are affecting Iran
Hossein Derakhshan
hoder.com
Surprise! My picture on Business Week is bigger than the new pope. Even though there is only one brief paragraph about me in its story on blogs.
However a casual interview that Stuart Hughes did with me while I was touring in the BBC headquarters in White City, London, can make up for the few words Business Week had about me and the situation in Iran.
By the way, on my brief and first visit to Paris, I met Chris Dickey, Paris Bureau Chief and Middle East Editor of the Newsweek, after about five years. He had interviewed me while he was last in Tehran during the peek of Khatami and reformist papers, while I was working for Apadana as their website editor and was writing that daily column about the Net in Asr-e Azadegan.
Chris is a real gentleman, in the European sense of word. I also noticed that he is really into gadgets, especially that little video camera that he uses to record small videos. With his modest beard, he looks like an optometrist, especially when he is looking into that little cute camera with his right eye and start talking to you as his interview subject.
Larijani has been officially announced as the preferred candidate of conservatives. However, it doesn't mean that other conservative candidates such as Qalibaf, Rezai, Ahmadi Nejad, Velayati, and Tavakkoli, will withdraw their bids for the race. Most of them are already spending millions on their campaigs.
I've never seen Khamanei , the Leader, be so publically humiliated by people from his own political leaning. This is the practical end of Velayat-e Faghih, I believe.
For the first time, top strategists and staff of Moeen's campaign have invited Iranian bloggers to an informal session to hear what they have to say and try to strengthen their ties with them.
Mostafa Tajzadeh, Mohsen Aminzadeh, Mohammad Ali Abtahi, Hadi Khaniki, Feyzollah Arabsorkhi and Issa Saharkhiz were among the hosts.
Unfortunately, nothing has been published about it in English, but there are several accounts by those who had attended. You can find all of them at the bottom of Panah's semi-official report on his blog.
Readership for Moeen's blog is growing. He is also finding his own style in writing in his blog. I wish there were and English translations of it available.
Mohammad Bagher (baqer) Ghalibaf (Qalibaf) is gradually emerging as the most popular candiadte the conservative can possibly come up with.
As much as Larijani is secretly backed and pushed by Khamenei, and despite his management experience and skills, polls shows that he has little popularity comparing to Qalibaf.
So it strikes me that, if things didn't improve for Larijani, Khamanei would have no choice but to accept Qalibaf as the president.
The challenge, in the conservatives' camp, would now be how to deal with the sudden emergence of Qalibaf who is backed by some young radicals from the revolutionary guards who are not necessarily buying Khamenei's order.
However, the fact that Qalibaf could not have entered the race without the public approval of Khamenei (because he had to resign from his post as the chief of Police), seems to me he is now fully committed to Khamanei.
If this is the case, he would benefit from Khemeni's (secret) money for campaigning and would have to accept a major future role of Khamenei in his government, which includes a significant role for Ali Larijani as the vice-president or the minister of one of the most important ministries.
I'm sure Khamanei wishes they hadn't removed the old system in which a prime minister had to be chosen by the parliament and the president had no real power.
I'm using the amazing WordPress in Sobhaneh (Breakfast), a MetaFilter-allike collective blog.
But since WordPress is rarely used as community blog, there are many administrative problems for which there is no plugin or hack available.
So I was wondering if a nice PHP developer would be interested to write a few plugins or hacks for Sobhaneh.I'm using the amazing WordPress in Sobhaneh (Breakfast), a MetaFilter-allike collective blog.
But since WordPress is rarely used as community blog, there are many administrative problems for which there is no plug-in or hack available.
So I was wondering if a nice PHP developer would be interested to write a few plugging or hacks for Sobhaneh.
Dominic Hughes, BBC News. Somebody should use it in a rap song.
Iranian regime is the best promoter of weblogs.
The latest example is Massih (Masoumeh) Alinejad, the parliament correspondent for reformist newspapers who was banned from the parliament building last week because of the troubles she had made for hardliner MPs.
It took 80 signs to oust her who had revealed financial interests the supposedly God-fearing and people-serving had secretly received as new year gifts and other occasions. Although they said she was banned for being "rude and intrusive".
But now she has a weblog in which she continues to reveal more about the hypocrite MPs.
Global voices speak through blogs (BBC News):
But the blogosphere is a noisy place. There are more than eight and half million bloggers, writing about everything from what happened in Kyrgyzstan to what they had for breakfast.
So the Global Voices website is picking and choosing. It is highlighting what blogger Hossein Derakhshan calls "bridge bloggers." They are bloggers who, according to Mr Derakhshan: "can make a bridge between two languages, or two cultures."
Mr Derakhshan is originally from Iran, but he now lives in Canada and blogs under the name "Hoder" in both English and Persian. He has a large following in both languages.
He says bridge bloggers can serve as cultural interpreters. "These are the people we need to start with to have a more and deeper understanding of what's going on in that other culture," he says.
It's so sad that Peter Jennings has cancer. It's only a few years since I knew him and don't know if he is a good journalist or not. But he has the most relaxing, and yet masculine voice among U.S. anchors. I will defenitely miss him.
Isn't it wierd that journalists of his generation are leaving the scence one by one for different reasons? Somebody should start a conspiracy theory.
There is something I like about American neo-conservatives: They don't differentiate between Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president of Iran, and Ali Khamanei, the supreme leader of Iran, in terms of their involvement in various violations of human rights and accounts of corruption in Iran.
This is extremely important now, because I see many Western journalists are poised (or paid) to see Rafsanjani as a powerful moderate politician who can change Iran toward a more open and less dangerous Iran.
Most of the opposition leaders and intellectuals were murdered under Rafsanjani's watch by his own intelligence and security apparatus.
Enough to say that the Supreme leader never felt necessary to establish an intelligence organization parallel to the one run by the Khatami's government, during Rafsanjani's presidency.
I'm not a big a fan of Mr. sazegara. Despite some of his leadership skills (mainly courage and connections), many in Iran don't find him a trustable politician.
Ordinary Iranians can hardly find it genuine when someone with strong previous ties, both politically and financially, to the core of the regime until eight or nine years ago, suddenly becomes an opposition figure, willing to work with conservative think-tanks close to the Bush administration. They also see this as a betryal to Iranian nationalistic feelings, especially when they suspect someone has joined a force that could seek violent change in Iran for his or her personal benefits.
However, as an outsider, I'm glad to see the Bush administration has finally realized that the self-proclaimed opposition groups, with fake constituency inside Iran, not only have been far from effective, but also has only harmed the U.S. by their unrealistic and most of the times stupid actions. (You may want to watch LA-based satellite TV stations for five minutes to see my point.)
Apart from my personal judgment about Mr. sazegara and his friends, I believe that American think-tanks and decision makers would benefit a lot by getting advice from such figures who -- their credibility aside-- at least have not lost touch with the reality of Iran by living and working in Tehran until very recently.
At the same time, when I see the Americans have abandoned their tough and ideologically charged positions against anyone who has had ties with the Islamic regime in Tehran (Mr. sazegara has been actively involved in the top level military, security, and industrial institutions of the Islamic regime in the early 80s), I don't understand why they still refuse to to engaging directly with the current Iranian leadership.