In Iran hijab (women's head and body covering) is obligatory, But people can choose their Hijab. We have 2 kinds of Hijab: Manto and Chador. Wikipedia defines chador as A chador is a full-length semi-circle of fabric open down the front. It is thrown over the head and held shut in front. A chador has no hand openings or closures but is held shut by the hands or teeth or by wrapping the ends around the waist. This chador covers all the body.

The other Hijab is the Manto. Manto is just a long shirt. It's more open than the chador and less Islamic. Many Iranian women use it as obligatory Hijab and for sure, government prefers Chador and tries to make people use it instead of Manto. It uses propaganda ("good people wear chador"), Islamic orders ("Chador is the real hijab") and even more harsh pressures (In some places just like universities, hospitals, ministries, police stations and ... you HAVE TO wear chador to enter). And also people believe that "If you wear chador you will have more freedom". Lets have a look through the visor of an photographer ;) these photos are nominated for Kaveh Golestan award, and are took by Kian Amani here is the collection


A couple (girlfriend and boyfriend?) are sitting in a park (central Tehran). They chatting and getting more familiar ;)


but remember ! you are in an Islamic country and all the people HAVE TO obey the Islamic rules. So we need ...




.. "Police Park"s (read it "Park's Police"). These people get money to be aware of the people's morality. They ask you for your ID cards at first and asks you "Who you are?", "Does your partents know you are here making love with a boy ?", "Show me your ID cards !".


Ahh... poor girl !


You had to say "I don't have any ID cards" or "I don't have it with me!". Showing the cards is the worst thing because the man (police?) will take it and you have to obey every order to get it back. you have to follow him !


As I said. Now if you are lucky you have to pay the bribe and if it's not your day, you have to go the police station and judge(!) will decide about the future events !


It seems the boy has started the "negotiations". I wish we had the next photos but they are walking toward a less crowded alley ;) Something around 10 euros may dissolve the situation ;) But there are other ways. You can wear Chador and...


Do as you like !

(one other point: "bad man" wears jeans but the "good Muslim" does not)

Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (called Sepah or Sipah)definition in Wikipedia is the pro-islamic militia of Iran and is separate from, and parallel to, the Iranian army. This military group announced that they are holding a seminar called "Women and Internet in the Third Millennium" !
This is last part of its Directors' message:

Women on one hand are responsible for treating their children and on the other hand as a spouse have moral responsibilities .
So paying attention to the condition of women's society is very effective in the whole society.
We really appreciate those researchers , scientists and attached people who help us with achieving this goal

Many cyberactivists and journalists are angry about this. We say in a country in which many many feminist and womens organizations are filtered (you can not access to those site in Internet) and you can not even google the word "women" because "It contains pornographic results", how you can conduct an conference by the censorship forces called "women and internet in the third millennium" ? and look at the fun part: if you search for the name of conference in any search engine you'll blocked by the "Access to this site is Denied" message because the name of the conference contains the rude word "women" !

We can not do anything about this because Sepah is very dangerous, nobody is brave/silly enough to demonstrate there and we do not even have the permission to enter the salon! We only can send emails to the head of the conference and ask "how you can call a conference women and the internet in the third millennium while the word women and many many womens sites are censored on the Internet ?" and for sure, he will not answer. But we are doing so because we believe that it is good for him TO KNOW THAT SOMEBODY DOES NOT BELIEVES IN HIS LIES.

Kaveh Golestan was an Iranian famous photojournalist who murdered three years ago in Iraq. Nowadays his family and friends gives an annual "kaveh golestan" award to photographers in the memory of the man who said

" I want to show you images that will be like a slap in your face to shatter your security. You can look away,turn off,hide your identity like murderers,but you can not stop the truth. No one can."

Kaveh Golestan

This year, the "one photo" sections winner is Mansour Nasiri for his photo from Police attack to women's demonstration in HafteTir sq.. This is the photo:



I am glad that a photo from this event is the winner. This will lead to more media (Internet) coverage, although this year "ministry of Islamic guidance" did not let "kaveh golestan" organization to exhibit the photos in a public place or even publish the photos in a collection as a book.

If you want to see the other photos from this competition, visit golestanaward.com photo gallery but keep in mind "بعدی" is "next" so you have to push the red Persian word below the photos (just before the >> sign) to go to the next page. good luck !

China's government is same as Iran's government: They are afraid of PEOPLEs opinions and this BLOG thing is a gret threat. Reuters writes in China moves towards "real name system" for blogs:

"A real name system will be an unavoidable choice if China wants to standardise and develop its blog industry," the official Xinhua news agency quoted the Internet Society's secretary general, Huang Chengqing, as saying.

"We suggest, in a recent report submitted to the ministry, that a real name system be implemented in China's blog industry," Huang said.

wow.. This reminds me my government; "We have to develope, so there is no choice exept this limitaion".

As I said befor (One other reason to love Netherlands) recently I was in Netherlands and I continued my job: How is access in Amsterdam. I've just updated the Fedora Core 5 Linux on my laptop and took an screen shot. Here it is:



As you can see this is 8 mega bits recieve (and 1 mega bits send) line. My host said that this connection costs her around 20 euros each month.

Ok ! know I'm back in Tehran. I'm one of the lucky people with an ADSL access at my home. I have to mention that "being lucky" means paying 1/20 of my montly salary for this connection: 20 euros. Let's update the laptop again and have a new screenshot:



wow.. At best, this is an 128 kilo bit per seccond line and I'm paying 20 euros for it. Don't forget that this line is filtered and you can not search for "women" on it or check to "youtube" or ...

Recently Leila and I traveled to Netherlands ans spent 10 days in that beautiful country. We really enjoyed and learned. Thank you all guys ! I really liked the cultural diversity and acceptance of others (cultures and people). I also enjoyed the friendly atmosphere and museum like cities.
And there is one more reason to love Netherlands: RSF.org, Worldwide Press Freedom Index 2006 :

Northern European countries once again come top of the Index, with no recorded censorship, threats, intimidation or physical reprisals in Finland, Ireland, Iceland and the Netherlands, which all share first place.

I know. I know that I've not seen other countries but I really liked this one ! If you are from other countries and jealous, invite me to your country so I'll write my opinion ! :D

Photo says it all :



Should I add any notes ? haha... This photo is taken from Islamic Rebublic of Iran TV. In our constitutional law, government has a monopoly on TV and RADIO channels and no one may start one except government.

Cool ! Although I'm not into religion leaders but I always interested in Dalai Lama because of his active role in human rights.

As you may know Iranian women's rights activists have initiated a landmark campaign to collect one million signatures to demand an end to legal discrimination against women in Iranian law (It is obvious that this meaningful and gramartically correct sentence is not written by me ! I've copied it from Nobel Women's Initiative News site).

After police crushed down our legal demonstration, this is our new way to have contact with people and the world and let them know about our brutal laws. This is a GREAT project and I think this mission is very difficult to accomplish, but we have to work, we have to try and we have to build the future ;)

What a shame ! Mahmoud Khorsavi (head of the organazation which regulates communications in Iran) have send a letter to all the ISPs and ORDERED them "not to give anybody an Internet connection faster than 128kbps" !

Nobody knows the reason and nobody in the government dares to say a reason. It is just an order. But in a country in which governmet has full control over all the media and in a country in which websites are filtered and in a country in which having a sattelite reciever is illegal, limiting the Internet bandwith to 128kbs can mean one thing: you have no right to download a movie, you can not watch TV / News on the Internet and you can not publish or listen radios or podcasts.

What people can do ? I don't know right now. we have to chat and talk with friends to see what can we do.

Everything was stopped for weeks ! At first I've started this weblog to write about Iran but bad news happend and happend and I wrote bad news and bad news ! In additicion I'm not that good at english (specially at writing english) so I've got tired and stopped.

These days I'm in Netherlands and talked with many many great people. Once more I'm brave enough to continue ! I'll continue this weblog ...