The Leader of the Friday Prayers in the religious city of Mashhad, Ayatollah Seyed Ahmad Alam Alhoda, stated regret because Iran’s team in the opening of the Olympics was led by a woman.
“This was against the Islamic values as well as those of the establishment and the revolution and what the government claims to be accomplishing”, he stated. He added, “Putting a woman on the front is telling the world that we are not for the promotion of the Islamic values”. “As I have also mentioned before, the attendance of the Iranian women in the international events and exhibiting them outside Iran is against Islamic values. However, not only we are sending them to the events, they are put on the front as well”, he was reported saying [Persian].
Related: More about the Iranian women who will compete in the Olympics in Shahrzad’s blog: Iranian Women In Olympics. Do make sure you subscribe to her feed if you’d like to get a first-hand look at Iran presented from the point of view of an Iranian lady.
Recently, while chatting with friends from inside Iran, it has become very common for them to just vanish, only to come back and say that there has been a blackout.
I am losing my mind and this blog is the only place where I can let off steam.
Trying to send an email, right when I was attaching a file, my connection was lost. Then, just when I got connected back, there was the blackout. We turned the emergency unit on, then we lost the connection to the Internet, then we lost the emergency power, and then the power came back on, but not the Internet….
I was in the line waiting for gas for my car. Right when it was my turn to fill up the tank, there was a power loss. Everyone rushed to the next station and that was how I ended up wasting two hours only for getting some gas.
Whichever government office and company I contact for whatever issue I am told that they are having a power loss, tomorrow their network will be down and the power loss will be the deal for the day after that.
At school, I had spent half an hour running my code when there was a power loss and I had to start over. Worst of all, the professor would not understand it!
The other day, I came home after four hours of boiling up at work, because there was no power and the air conditioning unit was off, and there was no power at home either.
I am done with this. There are blackouts every day and night. Ahmadinejad is really making all of us insane. He just wants all of us to become insane.. Close it off! Just tell us that the country is closed and that no one is supposed to do anything.
… You just put any person in this situation and they will become insane. Last night, my husband was saying that he’d rather see them be honest with the people and tell them that the blackouts are because of the sanctions. “People will understand that this is the cost of being independent”, he was saying. I, on the other hand, have no intention of becoming independent. What is the deal? There was the noise of rockets and bombs around when I was born, then there was the sanctions, and now we have the sanctions and there are talks of war. Someone has to ask God why he has created us!
Mahmoud Farjami, a well known Persian blogger, reports that the daughter of one of his acquaintances is denied entry to the UK despite the fact that she needs urgent care to save her eye.
In an open letter to Jeffrey Adams, the British Ambassador to Tehran, he describes that an Iranian girl has lost the sight of one of her eyes and that Iranian physicians have warned her family that she is to have the same problem with her other eye if she does not receive help. While the physicians have stated that they are not able to even stop the progress of the illness, her father is told that a new technique developed in the UK could be helpful to her. Therefore, her father, although being a low-level government worker, has handed out the regarding document to the British Embassy in Tehran and thanks to donations and help from both inside and outside the country he has managed to collect the demanded 6500 GBP in the bank. His application, however, has been denied because it is not understandable to the embassy how a person with a 136 GBP-per-month salary has managed to collect such an amount.
Farjami writes,
[Mr Ambassador,] I am ready to provide you with more information and I am accessible through the email address m_farjami@yahoo.com.
He states that he will contact media sources if the actions taken by the embassy lead to her not receiving medical help and thus losing her eye sight.
Wordpress.com, although being a very popular blogging service, is under attack by the filtering system in Iran.
The filtering system generally targets a whole website. The issue of wordpress.com, however, is a bit different. In fact, rather than filtering the blogs, the ssl-enabled control panels are being filtered. This inhibits the users from updating their blogs and, according to persianweblog.ir, this measure has resulted in a sheer decline in the rate of updates of Persian blogs which are hosted on wordpress.com.
As a countermeasure, Persian users of wordpress.com have started using anti-filter tools and proxies for accessing the control panels of their blogs. Due to the nature of these tools, this endangers the privacy and security of these bloggers (because proxies use identical IP addresses for different users, thus confusing security protocols and enabling hackers to gain access to restricted sources, including the control panel of a blog).
Similar to the worldwide blogosphere, or maybe even much deeper and more faster, the Persian blogosphere is adopting the new tools and is mastering the new technique, in order to increase the efficiency and to enhance the quality of the content in the Persian blogosphere. In a piece just published in Gozaar, I go through this process and give a brief introduction into the new face of the participatory media.
There was a time when “becoming a blogger” was as easy as logging into blogger.com and creating an account. This fortunate player in the era of participatory media would then write down his or her thoughts and publish the masterpiece. The next few hours and days would pass with our hero waiting for passer-byes to read, ponder, and post a reply upon the content. This was how blogging was defined in the early days - Read the rest of the article in Persian or in English.
Knowing Ahmadinejad’s love of photoshop, his calls for Israel to be wiped off the map may indeed be only a matter of playing around with Photoshop, than actually sending nuclear missiles down the path (the missiles might end up being painted paper as well).
So, this is how Ahmadinejad will annihilate the Jewish state, according to Gooya News.
Will you be surprised if I tell you that the picture they used for the front page of the state-run ultra-right newspaper Kayhan was in fact two years old?
Maybe all the worries about the new missile drill by the Islamic Republic are just overreaction. What would you think when you realize that neither Fars News, nor Mehr News or ISNA published any picture of the event. Add to that the fact that one of the pictures the state-run IRIB published actually looks too much like a picture taken at a drill which happened two years ago.
As I also briefly mentioned in the previous post (see: Kamangir is Back), I have started working on Project Profiler (see the development log here).
In short, Profiler attempts at discovering the map of the Persian blogosphere, through analyzing the connections between the Persian bloggers in different social networks, including Friendfeed.com, which I have been focused on for the last couple of months. This project will also use the reports now being regularly published by Project Didish.
As a short presentation, here, two preliminary graphs generated by Profiler will be posted. As of know, there are 717 entries in the database, each representing one Persian blogger. These bloggers have been discovered through friendfeed.com.
The first graph shows that from the 566 blogs registered in the database, 171 are on wordpress.com (30%), 122 are on blogspot.com (22%), and 58 are on blogfa.com (10%). Interestingly, about 186 blogs are on their own domains (33%) (also see the corresponding pie chart in the latest Didish report).
The second graph shows the ten services used by the most bloggers registered in the system. Red bars indicate filtered services, while green and magenta denote services which are accessible in Iran and those about which mixed reports have been given, respectively. The category “blog” is included in the mixed reports because many leading blogs are indeed filtered. More detailed analysis of this issue will be carried out in the coming phases of the project.
Profiler not only aims at producing a large detailed map of the Persian blogosphere, it will provide information about connections, usage statistics, and trends in this online society.
Effective tomorrow, anyone who wears stripped pyjamas will be executed for acting against public and private safety*.
p.s. From now on, this blog will be dedicated to apiary in alpine heights, the positive effects of cucumbers in getting rid of stomach gas, modern sewing methods, making flowers with flour, the importance of a diploma in migrating to Canada, and games for cellphones.
p.s.2. We might actually go to Siberia, because Tehran is getting too warm and the danger of execution is becoming too imminent.
p.s.3. Or in fact, maybe we just die….
p.s.5. Maybe, for the whole summer we just sit and not do anything, except for scratching our butt.
p.s.6. And if scratching our butt is violating the internal or external safety, we just stop doing it.
It really seems like in this country, that I am just hating more at any minute, we are the problem. The fact that we live here, our existence, that is becoming a problem. The situation is just becoming so bad that leaving the country is becoming the only solution. I really wish that these ignorant Iranians would just die out [for not standing up against the regime].
* Refers to a common reason mentioned by the regime for prosecuting people: “acting against the public safety”
The date on the last post in this blog used to read “June the 13th” for almost a month. This was quite a change for this blog, which used to be updated more than once on almost every day for over two years. Things had changed, but better, less tense, days are ahead.
First, there was my studies. I finally did my Candidacy Exam on yesterday (the first step toward becoming Dr. Kamangir). It was a success, well almost, and I will have a lot more free time before defending my thesis, which is completely irrelevant to the stuff I post here (see more about my thesis in here).
Second, following a lot of discussions, and deliberations of course, I had shifted a lot of the time I spend blogging to the Persian companion of this blog. The reason is that, put briefly, what will bring the regime to its knees is not the CNN or FoxNews bashing it. It is the Iranians who are the problem, and the solution at the same time. It was in the news a week ago that a brother strangled and then stabbed his sister because she asked for the permission to get married to a man the family did not like. This, unfortunately, did not happen on the surface of Mars. It happened right before our eyes. The problem is not Ahmadinejad. The problem is the Iranian youth who argue “Well, we have different values”. To deal with these “values”, the language is Persian, not English.
Third, I am spending a lot of time on my projects on the Persian blogosphere. Didish and Feedcounter are becoming benchmarks Persian bloggers use to compare each other against. With that, today is in fact the day I am launching project “Persian Blogger Profiler” or in short “Profiler”. The aim of this project is to collect all the information I have gathered from the Persian blogosphere into one relational database. The data collected through this project will be used for producing the larger graph of connections, friendships, and interactions in the Persian Blogosphere.
So, Kamangir is back and, as we say in Persian, I’ll be keeping the lights on (sort of implying that I will be posting more regularly).
This fantastic video has been created by members of the Middle East Youth. Do watch it, knowing the chance of it coming to existence by those shown in this video is almost as probable as you winning the lottery right now, without having bought a ticket.
The Kurd activist Farhad Hadj Mirzaei has been under arrest since last winter.
The Student Committee of Human Rights Reporters reports that the interrogators have applied harsh methods of torture, including electrical shocks and sleep deprivation, on the inmate, in order to take a forced confession out of him [Persian].
A week ago, his father wrote an open letter in which he mentioned that Farhad’s arrest took place when he left home for a dentist appointment. He claimed that his mother has undergone massive trauma after his arrest and that fracture in Farhad’s hands and legs has incurred as a result of the torture methods applied on him. Farhad has reportedly been the only source of financial support for his extended family [Persian].
There are unverified reports that Farhad may have been involved in a political kidnapping and ransom collection assault. While there is no evidence to suggest that this is in fact the case, the increased number of the inmates under torture and fear of execution has made the community unable to show the appropriate reaction.
Earlier today, nine women rights’ activists were arrested only to be released after a few hours [Persian].
Chris De Burgh, who happens to be one my most favorites, recently went to Tehran to do a joint song with the Iranian group Arian. In his website, the work is described as,
This is an exciting project as it is the first collaboration between Western and Iranian artists.
It also so happens that Arian was for a long time a favorite band for Azadeh and I. So, enough with all this, this is what they did together. Lovely, isn’t it?
My main argument in the talk was that the Persian blogosphere is now on the verge of adolescence and has well passed its infancy and childhood. To analyze this huge community, I argued, crude robot-based crawling methods do not yield meaningful results, due to the fact that splogs and seasonal blogs have cluttered the scene. To tackle the problem, then, I suggested using blogger-operated tools such as link sharing.
The anniversary of Operation Liberation of Khoramshahr is approaching. Independent of all the arguments against the war and how the Islamic Republic to many people’s understanding prolonged the war to establish itself and silence the opposition, the brevity and sincerity of those who fought and fell for their country should be honored. They fought an army armed to the teeth while they were not even wearing boots, and the blame for that is both on Saddam and those who backed him as well as on the regime of Tehran.
It is a lot fun to buy a condom in Iran! Of course, I agree with you that not only it is a hard thing to do, but also it could cause trouble for you. But, just for the sake of argument, let’s look at it differently. Imagine you entering the pharmacy and as if you are looking for some Acetaminophen, you go there and loud and clear, in front of everyone, you ask “Do you carry condoms?” The question of course will be different than, for example, asking for baby pads, because you’ll be asked for the type and size and make and flavor. And yet there is the chance that they sell you some stuff with pepper flavor and ultra smooth surface, something you’ll have to keep doing it for a day or two before the thing comes out.
Enough with the fantasy, they always put a guy in charge of selling condoms, because the assumption is that no lady will ever be cheap enough to buy condoms. And, obviously, ladies are not allowed to sell condoms to men they do not know, because they might think about the guy`s little thing for a moment! Such a disaster that would be! So, you go to the pharmacy and look for a guy. Let`s think that there is this guy mopping the floor and there is just one lady at the counter. Then, you`d smile at the lady and point to the man and announce that you`ll only talk in his presence. It is actually for your own benefit, because if you tell the lady that you are looking for a condom there is chance she`ll hide behind something and not come out till you are out the shop. Because, you are looking for condom, therefor you are going to have sex (shame on you!) and you are not wearing a ring, so not only you are contaminated with some disease but also you are a pervert.
…The guy who sells condoms will treat you differently, compared to when he is selling pampers, for example. When you ask for condoms, he`ll be at his worst mood. Why exactly that is, I have no idea! The guy has bought condoms and has put them on display, he has put up two huge posters, and then, when you go there to actually buy a condom, he treats you as if you are buying grass; he won`t look at you and won`t smile. He`ll give short answers to your questions and if you be a bit too friendly he`ll jump over to wherever the lady is hiding. At the end, if the cashier is a lady, the guy will put the condoms in a black bag, he`ll then take the cash and will hand it over to the lady behind the counter, as if that`s necessary for preventing microbes you are carrying, because you have supposedly had sex, to the lady. And the bag is exactly what they use when they sell ladies`pads, to stop people from knowing that the person is actually a real lady who does have periods. Similarly, no one should know that you can have an erection…
In her newest book, Seven Valleys of Love, Sheema Kalbasi looks at the works of Iranian female poets from Middle Ages Persia to present day Iran. Sheema is fluent in both Persian and English, to the extent that she does fine writing in both languages. When asked by the Persian Radio Farda why she focused on female poets, she replied, “as opposed to eight thousand male poets, only four hundred female poets are mentioned in our history. Thus, it is necessary to move on from Saadi, Khayam, Roumi, and Hafez and add material like this to the curriculum inside Iran and outside”.
Those Days
Those days
Poetry
Was my room
And wherever I felt unsafe
I gravitated into its eternal sanctuary.
These days
There aren’t any rooms
That can harbor me against the crowd
and behind every window
inside and outside every room
a two-faced clown sneers.
Although, recently I have been quiet about my blogging projects, including Didish and Feed Counter, I have been steadily working on the twins.
The aggregation module in Didish is now a local tool, as opposed to the previously-used web-based Gregarius which was strangling Kamangir’s host as the number of links grew bigger. The project’s interface is now extensively more elaborate, at last using a php-based dynamically-rendered presentation.
For those looking for more information, collected over the pace of longer periods of time, the latest trend report can be found here.
As a companion to Didish, Feed Counter collects information about the readership of feeds in the Persian blogosphere. Recently, input from Persian bloggers has helped extend the database of this project. The latest report can be found here.
This was the short version. For the longer version follow the links and if you didn’t find what you were looking for, please drop me a line.
On September 2005, Azadeh and I boarded a plane at Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport and traveled all around the globe before we landed in Winnipeg. It is fair to say that the land we started rebuilding our life on belongs to the people now politely referred to as the “aboriginals”. There is no need to look at the statistics; you only have to walk in the streets north of Winnipeg to see how off the society the original inhabitants of this land are. This observation will be complete when you talk to some “Canadians” and how much pissed off they are of “these people who reproduce to rip off more of our tax money”. Does that mean that I hate Canadians? Obviously not. Does that mean that I think the aboriginals are sub-human? Definitely not.
Imagine a Canada not surrounded by the Oceans, but by millions of Inuit ready to fight the European “occupiers”. Imagine an Indian leader having said “if each one us spits once, we are able to wash these bastards off our land”. Imagine cash and weapon coming from all around to fight off the “bastards”. Does that sound familiar? Yep, that would be called Israel and the leader will be the late Ayatollah Motahari of Iran.
The “occupiers” of Canada, including Azadeh and I, have been fortunate enough that none of the above has happened, that the first waves of immigrants were able to “push the indigenous people up north”, putting it very gracefully. Then, we came down the staircase and to the new city which embraced us and gave us new hope.
Does that mean that I think morality is not a factor in global affairs? I don’t know. Do I imply that we have the right to be where we are? Maybe. We are living here anyways. Do I mean that the same applies to Israel? Well, no European has had Canada being mentioned as the promised land and they are here. Israelis at least have the name mentioned in their “holy book”.
I wouldn’t want to be a Palestinian living in a refugee camp for sure, similarly not an Inuk living in a dusty reserve, if I could choose. Nevertheless, I don’t see what makes Israel anything more than a Canada established on the peak of a volcano.
A council employee in Japan has been punished after officials discovered he had logged more than 780,000 hits on porn websites at work in nine months (BBC).
BBC also adds that, “At his peak, the worker was looking at almost 10,000 pages a day” and Reuters reports that he has been “spending up to three hours a day”. Telegraph then goes as far as claiming that he “saw 780,000 porn websites in 9 months”. Finally USA Today realizes that these numbers do not match up.
I think what has happened here is the confusion of “page hit” and “browsing an actual page”. Right now, you have caused dozens of “page hits” on Kamangir’s server, one for every element on the page. That does not mean that you have watched thirty or forty pages on kamangir.net. Not that even this would make this man less of a porn freak.
The Leader of the Friday Prayers in the religious city of Mashhad, Ayatollah Seyed Ahmad Alam Alhoda, stated regret because Iran’s team in the opening of the Olympics was led by a woman.
Wordpress.com, although being a very popular blogging service, is under attack by the filtering system in Iran.
The Kurd activist Farhad Hadj Mirzaei has been under arrest since last winter.
It was in the news that,
