Kamangir (Archer)

Video of the Day: Persepolis 2 - Safeguard the Innocent

Kamangir | August 21, 2008 | Category Features, Human Rights, Iran, Islamic Republic, Lead Story, Video of the Day

Another marvellous piece of work by the Mideast Youth TV (also available in Persian). Good job guys!

(Direct Link to Video)

“I regret the fact that a woman led Iran’s Team in the Olympics Opening”

Kamangir | August 8, 2008 | Category Features, Human Rights, Iran, Islamic Republic, Lead Story

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.

“Close off the Whole Country!”

Kamangir | August 4, 2008 | Category Features, Iran

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.

Maryam writes,

Close off the Whole Country!

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!

British Embassy in Tehran denies Visa to a Patient in Need of Urgent Care

Kamangir | August 2, 2008 | Category Human Rights

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.