Editor: Myself

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The following part of Bush's answer about his faith really turned me off. This is what exactly Iranian clerics say when they want to get people's vote. I'm so sorry for Americans that their leaders are getting much more like Iranian clerics or what they usually call as Mullas:

BUSH: First, my faith plays a lot -- a big part in my life. And that's, when I answering that question, what I was really saying to the person was that I pray a lot. And I do. And my faith is a very -- it's very personal. I pray for strength. I pray for wisdom. I pray for our troops in harm's way. I pray for my family. I pray for my little girls.

Prayer and religion sustain me. I receive calmness in the storms of the presidency. I love the fact that people pray for me and my family all around the country. Somebody asked me one time, "Well, how do you know?" I said, "I just feel it." Religion is an important part. I never want to impose my religion on anybody else. But when I make decisions, I stand on principle, and the principles are derived from who I am.

I believe we ought to love our neighbor like we love ourself, as manifested in public policy through the faith-based initiative where we've unleashed the armies of compassion to help heal people who hurt. I believe that God wants everybody to be free. That's what I believe.

And that's been part of my foreign policy. In Afghanistan, I believe that the freedom there is a gift from the Almighty. And I can't tell you how encouraged I am to see freedom on the march. And so my principles that I make decisions on are a part of me, and religion is a part of me.

By the way, I had no idea that the word Liberal is like a swear in the U.S. as it is in Iran among conservative clerics, prior to coming to Canada.

Omid Memarian arrested

Omid Memarian, a young journalist, blogger, and an NGO activist, is the latest victim of the new wave of the heavy-handed crackdown on Persian political websites and Internet journalists in Iran.

You can follow the news on Net crackdown in Iran through stop.censoring.us.

Cheney was in Tehran in 98-99?

It's a widespread rumor in Iran that Cheney has himself been in Iran in 98-99 and has even once been in a Tehran hospital for a sudden harst problem. Is there any journalist interested in this?

Persian blogging turns three on Nov. 5

If you are a journalist, please be reminded that on 5th of November, we'll celebrate the third anniversarry of Persian blogging. There are now at least 70,000 active weblogs in Persian. They've also had signifact social, cultural and political implications for the Iranian society.

If you are interested to read more, please take a look at what is published about them in English.

Bush has harmed democracy in Iran

As mush Kerry looked knowledgeable, confident, and focused, Bush seemed like a nervous teenager, looking for some help. His mimic was exactly the same as when he heard about the news about 9/11 attack in that school: desperate, helpless, on the verge of breaking down to tears.

As Seymour Hersh said the other night in the Daily Show, neocons have almost done a coup in America, hijacking all basic principles of this nation for their own corporate interest.

Nothing is more ironically revealing than George W. Bush is the first MBA president of the United Stated.

As for Iran's nuclear issue I have to say that Bush not only has done anything to curb the Islamic regime's desire to achieve nuclear weaponry, but also helped the radical fractions by his empty threats against Iran while the more moderate parts were actually helping American troops in Afghanistan.

Bush did a big contribution to the bitter defeat of reformists in the internal political struggle which has had no consequence but assisting the Revolutionary Guards to capture the entire political arena and to accelerate their effort to make their nuclear weapon to defend themselves.

As an Iranian, I believe Bush has been very harmful to the process of democratization of Iran and I'd vote for Kerry, if I could.

CIA runs "Spider's web" in Iran, radical paper claims

Ok, this is really crazy!

Kayhan, the famous newspaper, close to hardline conservatives and the representative of the most radical supporters of Khamanei (i.e Revolutionary Guards and unofficial security organization run by the Leader's office), has published an editorial by its editor-in-chief, Hossein Shariatmadari, "exposing" a network of Internet journalists and bloggers, inside and outside Iran, who have shaped a CIA-led, sophisticated network in order to undermine the Islamic Republic of Iran and organize large attacks against it.

The article is called "Spider's Web", referring to verse 41 of a chapter called Spider which says "The parable of those who take guardians besides Allah is as the parable of the spider that makes for itself a house; and most surely the frailest of the houses is the spider's house did they but know."

In it, Shariatmadari, who has a long history of involvement with security operations against scholars and intellectual, has named dozens of individuals and websites which, he believes, form a network constructed and led by the CIA, with offices in Europe.

The most alarming part of the piece is where it has named many younger Iranian journalists (with their initial first name and full surname) who still live in Iran, including the recently arrested journalist/blogger/technicians such as Babak Ghafoori Azar, Hanif Mazrooie, Shahram Rafizadeh and Roozbeh Mir Ebrahmi among many others

Based on previous experiences, Kayhan always illustrates the whole picture after each of these scenarios get started by several arrests. So we all should be worried about the fate of the young innocent journalists that, probably just for bad luck, have been fitted into this desperate scenario that tries to find the CIA's hand behind the entire politically active part of the Persian Internet.

What are the implications? First, it proves, at least to me, that our recent protest has been so effective that have made them react this desperately and harshly. Second, it shows the fact that hardliner conservatives see Internet as a threat to their interests and therefore act against it, proves it as a potentially powerful medium for promoting democracy and freedom of expression which deserves more attention from the Western countries and media. Third, it displays that the number of internet users in Iran (between 5 to 7 million) is big enough to worry conservatives about its influence. So they probably start policies that limit access the users to Internet and in this regard, Shaare 2 project, gets a whole new meaning.

Personally I'm so happy to see the effort I begun 4,5 years ago in Asr-e Azadegan paper by starting a daily column introducing Internet to journalists and average Iranians have been so fruitful. The miraculous technology of internet enables individuals do things that would have required big political organizations a few years ago.

I'll write about the content of the article more soon.

Update:

- Given the importance of Kayhan's editorials, and the fatwas they published yesterday against "harmful" websites, I expect the Iran-based reporters of Western press and media pick up the story. This is really serious, even though it's just the beginning of it.

- Some important parts of the article:

• The command center of this network is in the U.S., but middle range centers are located in Europe where they facilitate the relation of the command center with members in Iran. The European operations are managed from somewhere in the building of Prague-based Radio Farda.

• Most harmful operation of this network is done through websites, newspapers, and two radical reformist groups. Emrooz and Gooya news are the major websites among them.

• Some individuals who are related to Emrooz and Gooya and live outside Iran include: Abbas Ahmadi, Dariush Sajjadi, Farshad Bayan, Jamshid Asadi, Ahmad Salamatian, Nima Rashedan, Hossein Derakhshan, Alireza Nourizadeh, Majid Mohammadi, Sina Motallebi, jamshid Barzegar, Ebrahim Nabavi, Masoud Behound, etc.

• Some of the members who live in Iran include: Babak Gh., Farhad R., Nima R., Bahman A., Jila B., Shadi S., Omid M., Shahram R., Jafar G., Roozbeh M., Jalal Kh., Hanif M., Mehdi D., etc.
• Some journalist members of the network have been sent abroad with the help of government officials and have started to write the worst things possible about against the regime, top officials and religious sacred religious figures and concepts. they include: Ali Bastani, Jamshid Barzegar, Camelia Entekhabifar, Saeed Razavi faghih, Nooshabeh Amiri, Mehdi Khalaji, Nima Tamadon, Keyvan Hosseini, Farin Asemi, Majid Mohammadi, etc.

• Using blogs and chat rooms, the internal members of the network seduce innocent young people and when attracted, they introduce them to prostitution houses and other places for decadence.

• Here is how the operation takes place: After receiving tips from inside Iran, the command center in the U.S. sends out orders to the middle stations in Europe and thorough them to members in Iran. After the Iran-based members write about those topics, websites and newspapers pick them up and then, based on those published reports, Western news agencies and American, European, and Israeli officials start a wide-spread attack to the Islam, regime, and its top officials.

• Some members who have or have had positions in the government include: Mohammad Ali A., Isa S., Mostafa T., Behzad N., Mohsen M., Mostafa D., Masoud H., etc.

- The articles has lots of funny stuff, totally made up to support this absurd, fantasy network, especially its technical explanations are sometimes absolutely off.

Iranians write to Americans

Last week I wrote about a letter that Iranian activists, scholars and journalists had written to American intellectuals for the 9/11 anniversary, critisizing Bush's "War on Terror". Now I've obtained the English translation of the letter, which is titles "Lack of Democracy Breeds Terror."

Shargh newspaper on PBS's Wide Angle

Watch Red Lines and Deadline, the PBS documentary about the Shargh newspaper in Tehran, at 12 AM tonight.

The left-handed over-optimist

- What kind of hand shaking it was? Allawi was shaking hands with Congressmen with his left hand and the face of a huge baby. His right hand was free by the way. Maybe he has watched Khamenei too much.

- Tony Soprano's of Iraq is repeating the same things Bush says about Iraq. Everything is fine, no matter what -- until mid-November.

- I loved those noises he made while speaking. Sort of mid-eastern coughs. (What they are exactly called?)

- Did you see he credited himself to resolve the Najaf crisis, as if Ayatollah Sistani was a carrot!

- I have a feeling that Sistani knows that the re-elected Bush is harmful for the whole region and he would eventually mobilize Iraqi people against Bush.

By the way, Sistani is not nearly radical as Khomeini when it comes to politics. People who fear he build a Iran style theocracy do not know their fundamentally different political theories. Sistani comes from the mainstream of Shia school who have always been against Khomeini's theory of Ruling Clerics (Vilayat-e Faqih). In this sense, Khomeini was seen as a total rebel among the majority of grand ayatollahs and other top clerics.

Country-wide Intranet

This country-wide Intranet that the Telecom officials in Iran are talking about worries me. They probably have concluded that filtering has not been effective enough and are seeking the ultimate solution: disconnecting ordinary Iranians from the Net, while they can access anything with the Iran-wide Intranet.

The project is called Shaareh 2 by the way.

Bush's false arguments

It's funny how similarly Bush and Khemeni live in fictional worlds when it comes to portraying situation in Iraq and Iran.

I'm also sick of Bush's argument that the world would be a better place without Saddam Hussein. There are many world leaders that the world would be better off without them; does it justify attacking and invading them just because of that?

Moreover, who should decide which world leader should go? In other words, what if any country decides the world would be better off without another leader. Does it give them a reason to attack that country unilaterally?

Badge of honor

There are a few newspaper in Iran that when they personally attack someone, it's been perceived by everyone as a badge of honor; and I received my first one yesterday.

Jomhouri Eslami wrote yesterday:

Goverment newspaper, Iran, in its "what's up" column supported a political campaign that is defending the freedom of websites on the internet. Introduced someone named as Hossein Derakhshan, it wrote the he [Derakhshan] had asked every blog to specify some space to reformist [website's] contents.

Hossein Derakhshan was working for chain newspaper, including Hayat-e No, until a few years ago and then moved outside the country and has started a website there which has written the harshest swears to the regime's officials and has much insulted sacred [concepts and figures of] Islam.

In his diaries, he takes pride in drinking [alcohol] and having fun.

So this shows our protest has done the damage we intended. They are frustrated.

Moreover, everyone needs this sort of honor to be respected by other people. Hundreds of Iranian scholars and intellectuals have recieved them from hardline Islamists in Kayhan, Jomhoori-e Eslami and Iranian TV and radio (IRIB).

Letter to America

Dozens of Iranian scholars and intellectuals have written an open letter to American scholars and intellectuals, criticizing Bush administration's "War on Terror", and their simplistic and hypocritical attitude towards the world.

Here is the English translation of the letter:

Continue reading "Letter to America"

Bloggers protest against crackdown

A big campaign has been organized by Iranian bloggers to protest against the recent arrests and the violent crackdown on the Internet.

A big number of them have decided not only to copy the news from banned websites into their own blogs, but even to symbolically change the name of their blogs to "Emrooz", the banned website which still operates, on Monday.

Hundreds of Iranian bloggers have announced their support for the protest and the number is growing rapidly. However, the protest needs some publicity by Western media to be enough effective.

Update:

- Persian media have picked up the news with great interest: BBC Persian, Radio Farda, Iran Newspaper (in Tehran), etc.

- Abtahi, the blogger vice-president, has supported the protest in a new post titled "Emrooz" and has said that Mostafa Tajzadeh, the top reformist politician behind Emrooz website, is totally impressed by the wide-spread support of the Persian blogosphere.

- Ignasio has gathered a rather big list of participating blogs with quotes from them in Persian.

- Mostafa Tajzadeh, the man in charge of Emrooz, has thanked all who participated in the protest. I'll try to summerize it later in a separate post.

- Initial reaction by the hardline conservatives appeared in Jomhouri-e Eslami, the radical newsppaer as a personal attack to me, which, in Iran, is seen as a symbol of honor and many respected intellectuals and political activists have recieved it.

Crackdown on reformist websites: round-up

Here is a round-up to the serious crackdown on a few Iranian reformist websites:

For the past few months, some judiciary officials in Iran have shown ultimate determination to shut down two reformist news websites, Emrooz and Rouydad.

First they officially ordered the Telecom company to filter them, then after a few months, since the websites hadn't stopped operating, they stormed their ISPs and arrested some technicians helping them.

Later, they arrested a few young journalists somehow related to the websites (among them two well-known bloggers, Babak and Shahram).

Last week they arrested the father of Sina Motallebi, well-known Iranian blogger who was himself arrested last year for three weeks which created a big splash both in the blogosphere and the mainstream press. After a few months, he fled to Netherlands where he started to write about his horrible situation in detention and described the ugly interrogation methods used by Iranian secret police and judiciary agents in great detail.

It's said that Saaed Mortazavi, the same judiciary officials who has allegedly been directly involved in the death of Canadian photographer, Zahra Kazemi, is leading all this crackdown. It was also him who first ordered to filter the two reformist websites last year.

Meanwhile, the results of a recent poll show that internet is the most trusted medium among Iranians.

Update:

- Hardline consrvatives are very concerned when it comes to foreign press. So please help us spread the word in the blogosphere -- by linking to the post or to other related resources -- and give the news maximum exposure.

Internet: Iran's Most Trusted Medium

Results of a recent interesting poll shows why hardline conservatives are so determined to shut down oppisition websites.

According to ISNA, the nation-wide poll shows that among various media, people have the most trust in the internet (45.5%), followed by Iranian TV and Radio (43.7%), satelite channels (25.2%), press (23%), and foreign-based radios (20%).

This could partly explain the recent aggresive crack down on reformist news websites.

Man who stood up against the tyranny

I just finished the wonderful work of Stephen Kinzer in All the Shah's Men and I should say that more than any book or article in my native language, Persian, it added to my knowledge about the roots and processes of the 1953 coup.

As an Iranian, the book shed light on many details that either I didn't know about, or I had suspiciously taught in the history books in the school. For example I didn't know about Truman's objection to intervention in Iran. Neither I knew there hadn't been a full consensus in the Britain about the way Anglo-Iranian company was treating Iranians.

But one thing that really shocked me was the fact that how cheaply BBC was being used by Churchill's political to act as a messenger. (They had arranged the regular BBC announcer to say something else to show the Shah of Iran that Roosevelt was really who was claimed he was. See the footnotes.)

Other things were blunt facts about Ayatollah Kashani's betrayal to Mossadegh by receiving $100 thousands of cash from Roosevelt and later welcoming the Shah at 6 AM at Tehran airport when he returned after the success of the coup. This is exactly the opposite of what they've been trying to teach us in school: that it was Mossadegh's fault that the coup went successful, because he hadn't obeyed or got help from Kashani.

But for Western readers, I'd suggest that the chapter about Shia Islam and its relation with Iranian culture should be the most fascinating and enlightening one. Especially because I was surprised how his view of Shia Islam is close to mine: a totally Iranian version of Islam against the dominant Sunni Islam, embraced by the Arabs.

The book introduced me to a great man I didn't know well before, and if some day I seriously get into politics in Iran and could make a change, Mr. Kinzer gets some credits for it, since he showed me the best role-model any patriot, secular and educated Iranian can have.

Although a secular politician, Mohammad Mossadegh is truly a modern version of Imam Hossein, who never sold his idealism to short-term political and personal benefits, unlike Mohammad Khatami who particularly in his second term destroyed his image as a reborn Mossadegh by not standing up against the tyranny of the religious right, even while he was backed by a strong majority of Iranians.

Notes:

• Churchill had arranged that the BBC would end its broadcast day by saying not "It is now midnight," as usual, but "It is now exactly midnight." Such assurances were hardly necessary, the Shah replied. (page 9)

• Mobs and military units whose leaders were on the CIA payroll would crush any attempt by Mossadegh to resist. (page 6)

• According to one account, he [General H. Norman Schwarzkopf] arrived there carrying "a couple of large bags" into which were stuffed several million dollars in cash. He met first with Roosevelt and then with Iranian principals in the operation, to whom he distributed much money. (page 8)

• Decades of British intrigue in Iran, coupled with more recent work by the CIA, gave him excellent assets on the ground. Among them were a handful of experienced and highly resourceful Iranian operatives who had spent years assembling a clandestine network of sympathetic politicians, military officers, clergymen, newspaper editors, and street gang leaders. The CIA was paying these operatives tens of thousands of dollars per month, and they earned every cent. (page 5)
  

Sina's dad arrested

The angry judiciary officials, said to be led by Saeed Mortazavi, have now arrested Saeed Motallebi, the 62-year-old father of Sina.

In an interview with Radio Farda, Sina told that the unusual, illegal and inhumane incident is most likely because of his posts in his blog in which he had continuously written about his time during the 21 days of detention last year in Tehran.

This is sad, very sad news for all Net activists eith inside or outside Iran. Mortazavi does anything he can to keep our websites shut, but he apparently desont' understand how internet works.

Blogger/Journalists arrested over banner Reformist websites *

They've apparently been helping the website owners to use blogs in order to escape filters and other political pressures. Read more about it on stop.censoring.us.

Bush is only helping extremists like Khamenei

It's funny how Kerry is more and more adopting Howard Dean's messages and style and I believe that only by adopting a more aggressive message and style against Bush's extraordinary simplifications and lies, John Kerry can convince the America that he is a much wiser and honest leader than Bush.

I really liked the idea of Kerry's midnight response and think by showing how he faces Bush, he can show that he is a confident and brave -- but not arrogant -- politician who really deserves to be the commander in chief.

And as you might've noticed, I've begun to write more about US politics and to attack more aggressively to Bush and his agenda. It actually began when a friend had asked to support and Iranian-American who was nominated to talk in the RNC this week and I answered a big NO.

To me, whoever is helping Bush to get reelected, is in fact helping all fanatics in the world gain more power and popularity which will eventually make the world a real hell. The same way hardline conservatives in Iran have conquered the entire political arena in the past couple of years.

So if you are a conservative who supports Bush, don't expect me to be one of those typical expatriates who are nothing except tools for Neo-conservatives to justify their plans to invade Iran or other countries in his middle east.

Believe it or not, I am as much against Khemeni as I am against Bush.