An Update on Iranian Censorship

I've encountered two new cases of censorship from the Islamic Republic in the last two days:

1. Journalists are warned not to report any problems related to fuel rationing as BBC reports. I checked out a few newspapers yesterday (both reformist and conservative) and I found out that is correct. No stories. It's not that difficult to hear the real news, though, here in Tehran. You should just get out of the house.

2. To my surprise, today I found out that del.icio.us is filtered out. I cannot imagine why, especially because other social bookmarking websites I know (reddit, digg and technocrati) are not filtered.

UPDATE: I'm hearing that at the "fuel night" mobile service providers had been ordered to shut down SMS services. You see, they're well aware of the importance of text messages in Iran.

How to Set Fire to a City in Two Hours

I've recently had much difficulty updating my blog for two reasons. First, I'm heavily engaged with my final exams; and second, for some reason I can't access blogger. It seems there's something wrong with my Internet provider. I'm now using a proxy server to access blogger.com.

Anyhow, this recent piece of news was so much of a surprise that I couldn't help _not_ to write about it. Last night the government announced the fuel rationing will start from this midnight! I'm reading in the newspapers that even the Traffic Director of Tehran Municipality has not been notified of the government's decision. Now, we in Iran are getting used to arbitrary decisions of the Islamic Republic officials but this one was unexpected even for us. I've heard from the time of the announcement people have rushed to gas stations so that they can get some more fuel before the rationing starts officially. The government announcement indicates that people cannot get more than the announced amount (3.5 liters per day for private vehicles) even for a higher price.

There has been much turmoil in Tehran last night and this morning. The protectors have set fire to several gas stations, and there are HUGE lines in the remaining ones. I took this photo from one such line of cars. The cars on the right side of the street are waiting in a line to get to a gas station some two kilometers ahead.

The huge line of automobiles disrupted the traffic and I had to spend much more time to reach home.

On my way to university today, I felt something is wrong as soon as I reached the street. There were far more people and vehicles in the streets than usual, and then the cab I took charged me a higher price than previous days. I was listening to music all the time so I couldn't hear what people were saying around me. On the way back, I decided to took off the headphones and see what is going on around me. Soon, I noticed everyone is talking about rationing gas. I think this is a serious wrong step by Ahmadinejad administration. I'm personally against almost everything he does, but this one seems to be beating himself. His administration is one of propaganda. The state-run media are trying to ignore the turmoil. Today's headline of the hard-line daily Keyhan, for example, was about another one of the supreme leader's endless talks! One short column described everything about fuel rationing in two paragraphs like nothing important has happened; and just next to the same news-stand that the large number of unsold copies of Keyhan were stacked, everyone was talking about the _real_ news.

Thirty Years Ago, In a Galaxy Far Far Away

Thirty years ago, in a galaxy far far away, a movie came to change the world. I congratulate all Star Wars fans on the 30th anniversary of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.

Learn, the Direct Way

Today, I took part in a seminar about teaching Esperanto using the direct method ("rekta metodo", in Esperanto), that is in Esperanto and not in one's mother tongue. This method is usually known as the Cseh method ("Cseh" is pronounced "che") after its creator, Andreo Cseh. It was surprising to me to see how well a language can be taught without any tools (even books) and in the learning language itself (in this case, Esperanto). After some thought, I realized it is the very method everyone learns his/her mother tongue with.

In such Esperanto events, it is generally forbidden to use a language other than Esperanto (although, we did forgo this rule many times!). In Esperanto culture, to speak in one's mother tongue in Esperanto events is called "to crocodile" (in Esperanto, "krokodili"). We even had a crocodile to punish the wrongdoers!

The crocodile watched over us not to use a "nacia lingvo"!

The second part of the seminar is being held tomorrow. I am looking forward to it.

Shargh Is Back

Today, I was walking past the newsstand on my usual way to the university and like always having a glance at the headlines, when I saw something shocking: Shargh. Shargh ("East") was a reformist daily that was closed down by the government some eight months ago. The major reason for the closure was this cartoon:

My non-Iranian readers may find it difficult to understand the meaning of the cartoon. President Ahmadinejad claimed that he felt there was a light around him when he was addressing the UN General Assembly last year! As we enjoy one of the world's least tolerant governments here in Iran, the newspaper was immediately ordered to be shut down, and since the representatives of the mighty Allah never make mistakes, they definitely had the right to do so!

Anyhow, as I said, the good news is Shargh is back again. Shargh used to be (and is again) the flagship of Iranian moderate dailies, and probably the most popular among them. Now, after Shargh (and also Hammihan after a seven year ban) has joined the line of moderate dailies again, I guess we should expect another wave of shutting down publications, maybe soon, and this cycle goes on and on!

[Note: Although, I noticed the return of Shargh today, the first issue after the ban has been out on Monday.]

The President and Bananas

Today's lunch at university's self-service restaurant was quite good. Guess why?

It is a well known fact that there are "special" occasions in Iran on which everything becomes good; everyone tries to make people happy; all government officials think about the problems of people; public services run smoothly; and, in universities (like other state run institutes) the quality of meals becomes much better! A good example of such occasions is just before an upcoming "election" (they call it an election, not me!), but we're not near an election. So why there was even a banana with our lunch?

It's simple. We had a "guest": the "popular president of the nation", Mahmud Ahmadinejad. Now, one might wonder how he dared to enter another university after he was heavily protested against in Amirkabir University and called a dictator by the students. Did he imagine it would be any different in Elm-o-San'at? No. He is definitely aware of the hatred of students towards himself. And, as one might expect, he didn't show up in the public. Isn't it ridiculous that he visited the university without actually visiting any students? And I don't mean students wanted to see him (we'd rather to see a monkey in the zoo!) but everyone felt it would be great to demonstrate another Amirkabir.

And, by the way, this "popular" president of ours always pretends to be a mere teacher whose only earning is from teaching. It struck me if it is his job to teach students here (and yes, it is a shame, but he is a faculty member of our university), why should he be welcomed by placards? Doesn't that confirm that he actually doesn't attend any classes?

Everyone's Excited

Ubuntu website is almost down! I guess there are thousands (or millions) of people around the world who are refreshing the main page (and the download pages) every few seconds. Everyone's expecting the release of Ubuntu 7.04 (codenamed "Feisty Fawn"). The release is due today. Everyone's excited! I can't help not to refresh. I think I should go and read something, just to be away from my computer.

New Blog

I'm trying to further my knowledge of Esperanto, so I decided to write a new blog in Esperanto. This blog will remain my first priority, but I'll do my best to have good posts in the new blog, too. Remember that my Esperanto writing is far from perfect. Please bear with me, and let me know my mistakes.

You may find the new blog here.

The Pre-Norooz Meeting

Twelve years ago on a day like this, on March 9, IREJO held the first "antaŭ-noruza renkontiĝo" or "pre-Norooz meeting," to celebrate the coming of the Iranian new year. From that time, there have been more pre-Norooz meetings (although not every year) celebrated in Esfand, the last month in the Iranian calendar. The meeting have been held by IREA in the last few years, but this year again we, the new IREJO, decided to hold the meeting ourselves. We chose the same date for the meeting when the first "renkontiĝo" was held: Esfand 18.

About an hour before the beginning of the program I arrived at the door of Mr. Habibpoor's gallery. As I left the taxi, I saw Soheyl and Farmehr coming. We could easily find the apartment.

The label reads "bonvenu" which means "welcome" in Esperanto.

Elaheh had already arrived there with the "haft sin" table she had promised.

"Haft Sin" is a major tradition of Norooz. (Sorry for the low-quality photos. It seems I need some time to get used to my new cell phone's camera!)

We prepared the memorial cards we wanted to give our guests.

Inside the card you see the large word IREJO, to which is attached a few symbols of Norooz along with the Esperanto green star. Under it, it is printed "Bonan novjaron! 1386" which means "Happy New Year! 1386".

After the cards were ready we quickly made other preparations. We started on 17:10. I was the host of the program. I started by welcoming the guests in Esperanto and then in Persian, then I invited Mr. Mamduhi, current president of IREA, who talked about human communications, languages, and Esperanto. After him Mr. Shafi'ee, the vice-president of IREA gave us the IREA Year Report and also introduced the newly elected Komitato (literally "committee", the legislative body of Esperanto organizations). In the third part of the program, Mr. Torabi (one of the founders of IREJO and later IREA, a chief member of the Komitato, and the editor of Irana Esperantisto quarterly) talked about the future programs of IREA. During his speech something unexpected happened!

Little Alma does not like to be apart from her father for a long time!

After Mr. Torabi's speech we had a not-so-short break. This break is the main reason for which the renkontiĝo is held; after all, it's all about meeting each other. During this time, the guests had time to talk (some of the guests come from other cities and we can meet them only on such occasions), and of course to eat!

After that, I introduced Soheyl as the official speaker of IREJO to the audience. Soheyl talked about what the new IREJO has done since this Fall and what we plan to do. He also informed the participants about two programs IREJO is going to hold: Charshanbe Suri, and an excursion to Taleghan this Norooz.

The renkontiĝo finished by awarding prizes to a few active members, and finally having a group photo.

Here are a few more photos from the meeting. As the host of the program I didn't have much time to take photos. Others have taken more photos which I may post later here.

Note: I know you may have had difficulties understanding this post because I didn't describe all of the terms I used about Iranian traditions. That's because I'm going to have more detailed posts about these traditions in the next few days.

A painting of L. L. Zamenhof, the initiator of Esperanto. Ahmad and Elham brought the painting. I didn't have time to ask them who the painter is, though.

"Haji Firooz" also took part in the renkontiĝo!

A "Sabzeh". The placard reads "Happy Norooz" in Persian and Esperanto.

New Cellphone

I forgot to tell you about my new cellphone. After a lot of deliberating I finally bought a black Nokia N80. With a stylish design, 3 megapixel camera (plus a VGA front camera), great Music Player, excellent connectivity options (including Mass Storage and PictBridge modes), wireless LAN support, and driven by a 3rd edition series-60 user interface it seems to suit my needs well. I replaced the in-package headset with another one with a remote control to enjoy the music player the most.

I celebrated the WLAN support with connecting to the Internet during Dr. Barangi's class (Electric Circuits 2) and ignoring the boring topic!

Islamic Bureau for Censorship

A few days ago I had a post about the rumors I had heard about registering websites/blogs, recently required by the government of Iran. At that time, I could not find the website it was said people have to register their websites in; I finally found it: samandehi.ir ("samandehi" literally means "organizing"). As the website says, all websites and blogs with a top-level domain name has to be registered with the Bureau for Organizing Iranian Websites within two months beginning from January 28, 2007. As I have read, the term for having a top-level domain name has been silently added after the huge amount of protest from bloggers (and it is not reflected in the bylaw, yet!).

I spent some time reading all the information in the website and I found the entire plan enormously ridiculous. The bylaw, as presented in the website, defines an "internet sites" as "all centers in the Internet network that provide www and FTP services" (I'm literally quoting the phrase used). I cannot translate all the bylaw here for your amusement (it's quite long) but, accept it from me, everything about the website and the plan (including the very text of the bylaw) looks completely amateur and apparently shows the knowledge of the "governors" about the Internet itself.

An amusing point among all I read in the website, was that nowhere I could find anything about who this law applies to. Does it apply to Iranians? To those who live in Iran? To those who provide Persian language content? Or something else? No answer. And together with the fact that the government has announced that access to non-registered websites will be blocked, it can be used to block *any* website easier than before. Also notice that the bureau has complete power over the matter and does not even need the decision of a court.

Another issue that has been a matter of much discussion by Iranian bloggers is the location of the web servers that are going to store the important information the information the bureau collects (the information which even includes which database servers the website uses, if any). The location of the web servers can be easily tracked by looking up the location of the IP addresses obtained by a "whois". The web servers are located in China and the U.S.! Keyhan's justification of this is funny, too. (Keyhan is a hard-line Iranian daily). Keyhan believes this is a mistake made by "tracking the incorrect IP (Internet Provider)". Apparently, the Keyhan reporter does not have the slightest idea what IP and IP addresses are.

It seems the Islamic regime is strengthening its place as the greatest enemy of the Internet (only after China), but probably we'd better call it the most frightened government from the Internet (and the power of its citizens), and I believe "The Islamic Bureau for Censorship" makes a much better name for the bureau than "The Bureau for Organizing Iranian Websites", and it follows the tradition of calling the state-run agencies, "Islamic" ones. What do you think?

I'm a Free Man Again

Well, at least as much free as one can be in Iran!

Side Note: I really don't think that I'm going to pass Engineering Mathematics, but it's not important now!

No More Math Tonight

I have about 11 more hours to study for tomorrow morning's exam, and you know many students do use such time to read more, but I don't. Although I'm not yet quite sure if I know enough to pass the exam, I simply can't study more. Whatever I do, my brain does not like over-studying!

Tomorrow, I'm going to be a free man again!

Is Your Website Officially Registered?

I have read in several news websites (including BBC and The Guardian) about a recent announcement by the government requiring the owners of all Iranian websites and blogs to register their websites/blogs with the authorities. I could not find any information on this from domestic news agencies, though. I cannot say, such thing is impossible (nothing foolish is impossible when someone like Ahmadinejad is in power), but it seems completely impractical to me, especially about bloggers. Many Iranian bloggers already blog anonymously; others can go underground as well. I saw Several bloggers have added a banner reading "I won't register my blog" on their blog header.

I'm awaiting new information about the issue to be released. This can be the next step in a series by one of the thirteen enemies of the Internet. Maybe next year we will miss the current "great" conditions.

Exam Time

This term's final exams have already begun. I'm sorry if my posts are getting infrequent. I hope I'll have more post after the exams are finished on Monday, next week.

A Visit to Sa'ad Abad

Sa'ad Abad Complex is a group of palaces and facilities located at Shemiran area of Tehran. Before the 1979 Islamic revolution, it was the official residence of the royal family and was also used to host the royal family guests, like foreign officials visiting the country. Sa'ad Abad is currently used as a multi-function complex: some of the buildings serve as public museums, while some others are occupied by organizations like Baseej and Presidency.

Today, I went to visit Sa'ad Abad with my friends from IREA (Iranian Esperanto Association). Here are a few photos from our visit.

A snowman located opposite the fine arts museum!

Ferdowsi statue built out of snow.

Statue of Omar Khayyam, the famous Iranian poet, mathematician, and astronomer, out of snow.

Statue of Maestro Mohammad Reza Shajarian, the famous traditioanl singer, again out of snow.
Shajarian is one of the most well known Iranian artists and probably the greatest singer in the history of the recorded Persian traditional music.

An interior view of the White Palace. The curtains show images of Iranian mythology.
(I did not take this photo myself).

We had to wear these to enter the Shavand Palace (also called Green Palace)

An interior room in Shahvand Palace. Shahvand Palace was the residence of Reza Shah.

Reza Shah's suits. He is wearing these suits in most of his photos I've seen.

Most of the trees in the complex are about a hundred years old.

Omidvar brothers traveled round the world with this car.

Names of the countries they visited (plus the poles) is written on their car.

The Reminder

One of the main themes I wanted for my blog was stories and mythology. I don't know if the readers of my blog liked them or not, but I personally enjoyed writing those posts about Arash and Kaveh. Unfortunately, I have had little time for working on stories lately. I like to read more about each story I want to retell, compare sources and compile the best narrative I can. I have a few candidates, one of which is retelling the story of Siavash, one of my favorites in Shahnameh, but I need some time to think about the retelling and style, and to write several drafts and to throw them away. I'm not a professional, but as I said I like to do the best I can.

This is more of a reminder for myself, than an announcement, of course. I wish the exams started and finished sooner. When something unpleasant is going to happen, well, the sooner, the better!

Freedom Is Good

No, this is not a political post. It has more with the hacker spirit than with them (Don't misunderstand the real hacker for the stereotypical Hollywood types you see in movies or read about in newspapers; They're crackers. See Eric Raymond's famous How to Become a Hacker for more information on "Freedom Is Good" and the hacker attitude itself). I've just left the company I was working for in the last two months and I'm enjoying my freedom.

Now I understand the stress of working for someone else: someone stupid chooses a stupid project for you to work on, and you should maintain a long long list of stupid standards and then present your program for even a more stupid person (the exact "pointy-haired boss" type Paul Graham describes; See Revenge of the Nerds for more info). All of these happens in a stupid environment where they call it a company. And I was the smartest of the programmers (they said) and was assigned those projects that needed a smarter guy!

Now I'm again on my own. I choose my own project (how about an online game, or something fun like that), I can choose my own programming language (My favorites are Lisp, and Python after it), I maintain my own coding standards (isn't it just stupid to call the loop index "intCounter"?) and the working place is "home, sweet home", with the favorite Ubuntu box always at hand.

One can understand heaven only after experiencing the hell!

Plus Five

Today, five new members took part in this week's IREJO meeting. This is very good news for IREJO. We mostly discussed the new website today. We also formed a five member team for organizing the excursions; I am in this team. Forming a music group was discussed, too.

I think IREJO should expect a new brilliant era.

They're All Women!

Today, in this week's IREJO weekly session, the IREJO board of directors was elected. Elham, Farmehr and Sayeh were chosen as the board ("estraro") members, in order, as the president ("prezidantino"), general secretary ("gxenerala sekretariino") and financial director ("kasistino"). This is the first full female board during the history of IREJO. I congratulate them all.

We also briefly discussed the IREJO web site (irejo.org is now registered for IREJO), the pre-Norooz meeting ("La Antaux Noruza Renkontigxo", Norooz is the Iranian new year festival), as well as the upcoming translation and conversation meetings.