Kamangir (Archer)

An Iranian looking at Iran as a foreigner…

Archives for the ‘Lead Story’ Category

Do Not Be A Dinosaur Blogger - My Article in Gozaar

By Kamangir • Jul 18th, 2008 • Category: Blogging, Features, Lead Story, media

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 [...]



Mahmoud’s Fantasy: Video

By Kamangir • Jul 12th, 2008 • Category: Features, Humour, Iran, Islamic Republic, Lead Story, Picture of the Day, Video of the Day

A compilation of the “fake Iranian missile contest” from all over the web (originated at boingboing). See the frames here.

(direct link to the video)
Frames and music copyright of owners.



Magnificent Missile Test, Pictures of which do not exist

By Kamangir • Jul 11th, 2008 • Category: Features, Islamic Republic, Lead Story, media

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?

Front Page of Kayhan, July 10th, 2008, “Iran fires 2000-Km Missile, Israel: We are not going to start a fight with Iran”

Picture published on November 2006

The Two [...]



Boosting the Morale with Old Pictures

By Kamangir • Jul 10th, 2008 • Category: Features, Islamic Republic, Lead Story, Picture of the Day

If you thought the Islamic Republic had only once made the “mistake” of using old images for propaganda (see: Iranian Missile Drill: Pictures do not Lie!), well, they seem to have plans to go ahead with it for some more time (on top of using Photoshop of course).
In today’s pictorial report of the state-run television, [...]



Iranian Missile Drill: Pictures do not Lie!

By Kamangir • Jul 9th, 2008 • Category: Features, Iran, Islamic Republic, Lead Story

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 [...]



Filtering and Web 2.0: Project “Profiler” Launched

By Kamangir • Jul 8th, 2008 • Category: Blogging, Didish, Features, Iran, KiBeKi, Lead Story, Profiler

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 [...]



Kamangir is Back

By Kamangir • Jul 4th, 2008 • Category: Blogging, Didish, Features, Iran, Lead Story

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 [...]



Persian Blogosphere: On the Verge of Adolescence

By Kamangir • May 23rd, 2008 • Category: Blogging, Didish, Features, Lead Story

I had a presentation today in the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy 2008 Conference, on a panel titled “Breaking the Silence: Iranians Find a Voice on the Internet“, about some of the results of the work I do on analyzing the Persian blogosphere (Project Didish).
My main argument in the talk was that the Persian blogosphere is [...]

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Seven Valleys of Love - Collection of Works from Iranian Female Poets

By Kamangir • May 19th, 2008 • Category: Features, Iran, Lead Story, Women

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 [...]



Analyzing the Persian Blogosphere: New Results

By Kamangir • May 15th, 2008 • Category: Blogging, Didish, Features, Iran, Lead Story

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 [...]



Lacking Reasons to Hate Israel

By Kamangir • May 8th, 2008 • Category: Features, Israel, Lead Story

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 [...]



Ahmadinejad and wiping Israel off the Map, A Persian Perspective

By Kamangir • Apr 27th, 2008 • Category: Features, Iran, Islamic Republic, Israel, Lead Story

“Are you sure the Islamic Republic/Ahmadinejad have asked for Israel to be wiped off the map?” This is the question I have been asked by so many people over the course of the last few years. While I became more and more concerned why so many people kept asking the same question, I kept [...]



Goats and Dolphins: Journalist under Fire and the Conservative Reformists

By Kamangir • Apr 24th, 2008 • Category: Features, Iran, Lead Story, media

Three years ago, around these days, Masih Alinejad was banned from entering the Parliament [Persian]. At the time, Alinejad worked as the parliamentary correspondent for ILNA, a media source close to the reformists. When she published reports that indicated that contrary to their claims of “living an ordinary life”, the MPs do enjoy a [...]



Dress for Sale on eBay for saving a Mother from Execution

By Kamangir • Apr 20th, 2008 • Category: Features, Human Rights, Lead Story, Picture of the Day

Akram Mahdavi is another victim of unjust and unequal laws in a country where, for the most part, the legal system considers females only half human, and where women’s rights, as well as their cries for help are routinely and systematically ignored, trampled upon, and even ridiculed. The now 32 year old mother of [...]



Is It Offensive to Joke about Bombing Iran?

By Kamangir • Apr 18th, 2008 • Category: Blogging, Features, Iran, Lead Story

After I published the post “Why bombing Iran is a Must” in Persian, I received a lot of angry responses. The outrage was to the extent that I deleted the Persian post and apologized from the readers. The same day, later in the evening, a group of us gathered in our apartment to talk about [...]

 
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Woman waiting for Her Execution and “Discount” from a Hosting Company, The “Iranian Connection”

By Kamangir • Apr 11th, 2008 • Category: Blogging, Features, Human Rights, Iran, Lead Story

If you have not guessed how the case of a woman on the death row could have anything to do with “discount” a hosting company offers to its customers, well, that’s what I call the “Iranian Connection”.



Why bombing Iran is a Must

By Kamangir • Apr 7th, 2008 • Category: Features, Humour, Lead Story, media

Camels do not run on nukes. That, alone, is sufficient to prove that the Iranian theology is pursuing nuclear bombs.

This is the article I wrote for the joke version of The Manitoban, the University of Manitoba students’ newspaper.



On Discrimination in the US and in Iran

By Kamangir • Mar 31st, 2008 • Category: Features, Human Rights, Iran, Lead Story, Video of the Day

The sign reads, “No service to people with loose veil, not even to our old customers”. This sign I wish was rare in Iran, but it isn’t. The fact is, there are stickers which carry the same message and are printed by the Police. These stickers are widely used all over Iran and their use [...]



Islam or Islamic Ideology, which one is the problem Mr. Wilders?

By Kamangir • Mar 27th, 2008 • Category: Features, Human Rights, Islam, Lead Story, Video of the Day

Geert Wilders’s famous video finally found its way to the Internet. The much anticipated 15-minute video carries footage of Islamic leaders cursing the west and its values and advocating for Islam and its ways. The footage gives subtitles for the various languages spoken in it, the Persian parts of which are accurate. I wasn’t [...]



Happy Persian New Year from Kamangir

By Kamangir • Mar 24th, 2008 • Category: Features, Lead Story, Personal

Given the number of posts I used to publish here, in the last couple of years, it just sounds too quiet in here now. I do know this and I do hope to have your support for the time when English Kamangir is going to become more active.
The fact is, I have to finish up [...]



Ten Topmost Persian Blogs, and more

By Kamangir • Mar 5th, 2008 • Category: Blogging, Features, KiBeKi, Lead Story

The first report of project KiBeKi (Generation 1) is available. According to this report, the ten topmost websites in the Persian blogosphere are…



Has this blog been deserted?

By Kamangir • Feb 25th, 2008 • Category: Blogging, Features, Lead Story, Personal

The matter of fact is that this blog has not been updated frequently in the past couple of months, at least compared to the rate of update which it saw last year around this time. This, however, does not mean that I have deserted this blog.
The Persian companion to this blog, at persian.kamangir.net, is almost [...]



Connection Graph of the Persian Blogosphere

By Kamangir • Feb 22nd, 2008 • Category: Blogging, Didish, Features, Lead Story

On February 16th, I published a report on the statistics of the Persian blogosphere (see: Statistics of the 100 Hottest Persian Blogs/Websites). That report, as well as this one, are all results of project “Didish?”. In this report, not only we’ll take a look at the hottest Persian sources on the web, but also the [...]



Statistics of the 100 Hottest Persian Blogs/Websites

By Kamangir • Feb 16th, 2008 • Category: Blogging, Didish, Features, Lead Story

This post is another, much more extensive, report about the results of project “Didish?”. In short, in “Didish?” I gather information about the most liked Persian blogs/websites. For more information please refer to the post “Statistics of the Persian Blogosphere, a Report“.
As a companion to the previous post, here, you can acquire detailed information about [...]



Statistics of the Persian Blogosphere, a Report

By Kamangir • Feb 12th, 2008 • Category: Blogging, Didish, Features, KiBeKi, Lead Story

Through analyzing links shared by Persian bloggers, I regularly search for the hottest points in the Persian blogosphere (a brief introduction to the methodology is given in here, for more information please send me an email or leave a comment). This report is based on 171 sources and over 30,000 shared links. The Persian translation [...]