CIA Should Learn from Mullahs

Now I am almost sure that all the presidential election game in Iran was really a game to show it to the world. They appointed their desired president, Mahmood Ahmadinejad, in a way that none of the participants (actors) could understand what really is happening. After 2nd of Khordad in which Khatami won the election by people will, regime decided that this case should not happen again. Thus in this round they hide their desired candidate and let people to get mistaken in understanding who is the agent. Most thought it was Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, but it was showed that even this old politican was deceived. They used anything they could to attract people toward polling stations to show them to the world. (Moein was disqualified but the qualified by Rahbar, it made some shock. Conservative and hardline groups were seemingly undecided on theier desired candidate. Hashemi was seen as an already-won.) But hiddenly they ordered Basij and Sepah to vote for Ahmadinejad, and this order along with deceive made him the first-round winner with Hashemi. Some people thought it was plan of regime to put them along each other so that people vote for Hashemi who is thought moderate compared to hardliner Ahmadinejad, but the plan was reverse. Along with the previous tasks, they put Hashemi's age and wealth and 8 years before khatami in contrast to Ahmadinejad who says he want to vanish gap between poor and wealthy. In a single sentence, it was by no means a free, democratic election.

Now, Ahmadinejad is not our president, but only a poor agent of the system. I hope the world can hear the rael voice of Iranians.

(I voted for Moein for the first round and Rafsanjani for the second.)

Mullahs, Nuclear Power and the Mr President Threats: A Multiple Dilemma

My essay entitled as above, just published in Iranians for Peace (Direct Link). It is a weblog dedicated to the Iranian people who are against a military attack on Iran. You can read in this weblog the views of Iranians around the world, and comments of both Iranians and non-Iranians, about the current issue of US threats on Iran. Also there is another weblog, No War on Iran, on the issue.

No War, Please

I sit in front of my computer and connect to internet; the Persian blogsphere is announcing of the probable attack of the USA against Iran. There are some petitions to stop this thinking of military invasion, this one to UN General Assembly and this one to George W. Bush.

I sit in front of my computer, in a cold winter night, in my warm room; but I’m afraid and I feel cold. The news of war frightens me. I remember the years that I was a school child, when my country was included in a bloody war with Iraq, we were frightened: are we the next target of Iraqi bombs or missiles? Nothing is more frightening than living in fear.

I click on a link and read an essay in Frontpage Magazine in which it’s written of Iranians welcome to possible USA military action against Iran. I read all the lies—the truth is that there is no staying at home to see that speeches of George W. Bush, and there are no discussions of welcome to USA troops in taxis and buses. Also no so-called Civil Disobedience Movement, which sounds more foolish than making any sense. No one here—at least among the people I know—welcomes a war.

I am writing to a world who reads these lines: I, as an Iranian—a 27-year-old boy who is not satisfied with the current government of Iran and seeks a way to have a better living, perhaps in a foreign country—with all of conflictions in today Iran, can’t tolerate another invasion to my mother land. I don’t want to see my Iran destroyed under bombs and missiles, and people died or injured or lost their families or homes, in a war between Iranian government and USA government in which only innocent people would hurt.

My country has lots of potentials to get better which any war would vanish all that potentials. OK, I’m not with this government; I want respect, good salary, social and political freedom, etc., but I’m sure that a bloody war can't give me these sort of things in a beautiful package, like a gift.

Thus, in the name of all the lives in Iran who deserve to be alive, I ask Mr Bush and all of his alleys to stop thinking in a war way, and ask the world to show a reaction before the USA get serious in doing any harsh action.

We "google-bombed" Arabian Gulf!

Hey! We succeeded in google-bombing Arabian Gulf! Simply search the google for arabian gulf and see the first result! "The gulf you are searching for does not exist!"

We want the world know about our action, to hear our voice! We have emailed lots of news agencies, newspapers, news-websites, radios and TVs around the world. There is a sample of our emails:

Dear Sir/Madam;

I am writing to inform you about what I believe is an extremely newsworthy item.

Through the collaborative effort of thousands of Iranian bloggers, a google bomb has been successfully implemented to voice concerns over the growing use of the wrong term of 'Arabian Gulf' instead of the Persian Gulf in media.

If you search in google.com for the query 'Arabian Gulf', you will see that the first result is a page that we have set up to voice our protest against the use of this term.

What sparked this massive movement was National Geographic's decision in including the term 'Arabian Gulf' in their latest edition of the world Atlas as an alternative to Persian Gulf.

This caused a spontaneous protest which led to several online petitions and also successful implementation of the google bomb.

To view the petition with more than 33000 signatures so far, visit:
http://www.petitiononline.com/persian/petition.html

To see where the idea of the google bomb started, and also to read more about its concepts, look here:
http://legofish.com/weblog/000777.html

Thank you for your attention,

Sincerely,
...

There is one and only one, always-Persian Gulf!

You can't vanish our "always-Persian" Gulf!

I did never expect the National geographic--with all of the valuable material publishes about our nice planet--to try to vanish our historical, strategic Persian Gulf from the history and geography of our planet.
It's not arabian gulf or "الخلیج العربی"! There is one and only one, Persian Gulf, "خلیج فارس".
Don't you want to sign the petition?

Filter filter everywhere

(message I get after trying to connect to http://i.hoder.com via Sepanta internet card)

They’re filtering us. They’re making us filtered. They’re controlling us. They’re making us controlled. But they think. They think in a wrong way. Or better to say they don’t think. They just make mistake. Islamic Republic of Iran is just a mistake. A mis-decision. A wrong action. They are, however, governing us. And the costs of their mis-decisions and wrong actions we should pay.

Raid after raid. Attack after attack. And now, internet is on the target. It’s the black spot. The gun is triggered.

I have been using internet card Sepanta, which comes in 5, 10, or 20 hours. I usually buy 10 or 20 hour cards, which cost 30000 and 58000 Rials (about US$4 and US$7), respectively. Before that, I used to buy Alborz internet cards, that was a little cheaper than Sepanta, but lower speed and longer time behind the busy line to connect. Alborz got disconnected after 2 hours of continuous use, but most important of all, one day it made filters on the websites, according the order of ICT ministry. Watching it has got filtered my favo-sites, I searched for a good card to replace it. Sepanta, which one of my friends told me about it, was really cool.

Sepanta had (and has) no waiting cause of busy line. In the very first call it connects, remains at a good speed (in scale of a dial-up connection of course!), and doesn’t get disconnected until you close the connection. You can remain connected and love your web surfing as much as your card time allows. It had a very good quality, and above all, no website was filtered under Sepanta. You see: it HAD, it WAS. It is not a good card anymore. All of these are just cause of that stupid governors and decision-makers (mis-decisionmakers) of Iran.

I don’t have access to lots of my favo-websites and weblogs. They have even filtered about all of the known filter-breakers yet. They make me crazy. I can’t see even my own weblog (sometimes)[Is blogspot.com completely filtered? I don't know yet. Now I should use Ctrl+F5 to see my updated posts, otherwise I get my old weblog posts, which shows there is a proxy in the ISP that makes a cache of visited sites. The same is correct for Persian weblog editormyself.com]. I get Access Denied page. I get Page Was Not Found page. I get nowhere. Sepanta is no longer my favo-card. But there is no favo-card in Iran any longer. The stupid government has decided to filter more and more, as minister of ICT told today to Persian-language Shargh newspaper. They just make us carzy for a while, until they focus on something else to deny people-access to, to insert pressure on people.

One day they say they’re going to remove all satellite dishes from Tehran roofs, other day they confront young drivers cause of loud voice of their cars’ cassette- or CD-players. And now it’s web’s turn. Turn to turn. Ends to nowhere.

If these kinds of access-denying and making things forbidden for people had anything to do, we shouldn’t see lots of people dieing and getting blind cause of drinking manipulated, toxic alcohol drinks (just recently more than 20 people died or severely injured after drinking counterfeit alcohol drinks in the southern city of Shiraz (the hometown of Perspolis Palace and its ancinet King Cyrus the Great)). [Selling, buying, owning and drinking alcoholic drinks are forbidden according Iran's law.]

Removing the question doesn’t remove its entity; this just makes people to seek its answer in many other ways--that are not necessarily safe and danger-free. It’s something that Islamic Republic governors CAN’T understand.

You can judge it yourself!

Watching my Nedstat page on how the people have come to my weblog, I noticed that my post on replacing Larijani has bruought here at least two visitors who had searched Ezatollah Zarghami in Google.

In that post I'd written that this new CEO of Iranian radio and TV organization is even uglier than Larijani, and has nothing friendly in his face. Now you can verify this by looking at this photo which is a TV capture. And on the blue bar on the bottom it's written, "Engineer Ezatollah Zarghami (Deputy of TV and radio organization on parliamentary and cities affairs)."

Don't destroy my history!

(photo showing a broken gravestone in Block 33 of Tehran's main cemetary--Behesht Zahra. more photos>>)

It' called Behesht Zahra, the most important cemetary in Iran that is located in southern Tehran. It has a section called 'Block 33', which is surrounded and separated from the entire Behesht Zahra by a 1.5 meters high wall. Now, Iranian government, after partially destroying Block 33 several times before (for example breaking gravestones), has announced formally that is going to destroy this block completely. The graves of lots of important people in Iran's contemporary history who have been executed during Shah's or Islamic Republic period, is located in Block 33. There are several authors, poets, journalists, political leaders,... among the bodies lying in Block 33.

To protest against this ridiculous action, Iranian web community has decided to create a petition, and has asked all Iranian web surfers to put a logo of the petiotion on their websites/weblogs, or email their friends about that.



I've put the logo here, as well as in my Persian weblog. And I think it is a matter not related only to Iranians, but a matter of humanity; as it is the least right for every human being to have a gravestone after death. And it is a matter of mankind history. So if you are not Iranian but see this action to be silly, please sign the petition and tell your friends about it.

Larijani left Jaam-e-Jam

(photo showing Larijani, by Hasan Sarbakhshian for Vaghaye Etefaghie newspaper)

In Iran, Larijani means radio and television. It is not a Persian word for the audio-visual media, but the family name of the CEO of the only radio-television organization in this country. The CEO of radio-television is appointed directly by Rahbar (supreme leader). And Larijani has been the CEO in Jaam-e-Jam (the street in which organization is located, also another word meaning radio-television in Iran) for more than 10 years, for two continuous periods-- just until today.

Yesterday Rahbar made a visit to radio-television central building, and simultaneously announced (rather informally) the end of Larijani's period. It is said that Larijani is going to be the next president (after Khatami). The man in place of Larijani is someone uglier than him! Ezatollah Zarghami has nothing friendly in his face.

Larijani is one of the most hated people in Iran; as a weblog called anti-Larijani has become very popular between iranians. Anyway, changing people has nothing to do with the grand policies of Iranian radio-television, as they are ordered from a single source. Iranians prefer to have a satellite dish and receiver to access lots of foreign channels, instead of wasting their time by Iranian radio-television programs which majority of them lack the lowest standards of a audio-visual program. for example, telling biased news by ugly presenters (men in beard and women under black veils) is a norm! Or they invite a singer to sing a song with live music, just not to show the musical instruments only cause some Faghihs (high-level clerics who can issue Fatwa--religious order--) believe that watchig them is against Isalm! Oh... the radio-television here just run over our nerves...:)

And for the people who can read Persian, don't miss Shargh's full coverage on the issue.

My Persian weblog

It took a long time since the previuos post. The new Iranian year came, and now we are in the last days of the second month of the Iranian year. Well, and I finally got my end-of-military-service certificate, thanks God! I came back to life, which sometimes seems to be more difficult than just doing military service! (of course SOMETIMES:))

I have created a Persian weblog as well, named "Mosafere Kouchehaye Mahtab" that means "Traveller of Moonlight Alleys". Very poetic, romantic name, isn't it?!
Well, enough for now. I hope to write here more often than before; with good posts. Oh, and I just redecorated here, in harmony with my Persian weblog, and the reloaded, more beautiful blogger. It's got more beautiful, hasn't it?