Blog
Spot the irony
Amir Bayani
10 May 2012
In a reaction to cabinet’s recent decree on the Press Law, managing editor of conservative Mehr News Agency, said that the government tightens the flow of information on a daily basis.
Khamenei seems to be the latest victim of internet censorship in Iran. Don’t be surprised! Khamenei's "fatwa" on the illegality of using anti-filtering tools in Iran was itself blocked in the country, some 30 hours after it was published on Iranian websites. The ruling was seemingly filtered because it contained the word "anti-filtering," which triggered the country's censorship system to automatically block it.
Halaal Internet Update
Minister of Communications and Information Technology Reza Taghipour has written to the head of the Central Bank, asking him to instruct banks not send statements to e-mail addresses administered by foreign providers. He also demanded that banks only accept national e-mail addresses from customers when they open accounts. Furthermore, governmental organisations were also banned from using non-Iranian email service providers.
Iran’s Olympics Bid
This link takes you to a collaborative mapping project aiming at building a database of bloggers who have been threatened, arrested or killed for speaking out online. Iran is leading big-time! Given the population of the country, the statistics per capita is mindboggling!
On a similar note, Iran made it to the top-ten censored countries according to Committee to Protect Journalists latest analysis.
If only we could channel all these efforts into the London Olympics, Iran would beat China and the USA in terms of number of medals.
Gay-friendly communities
In a quick and timely response to Obama’s backing of same-sex marriage, the government of Iran too moved towards a gay-friendly community. While gender segregation had already started in Iranian universities, the Iranian TV and Radio Broadcasting Programs are soon joining the scheme. You may be curious how? Well, to start with, only male hosts can interview male guests in their shows and the same applies for female hosts and guests.
Hopefully, only men will watch the former shows, while women will stick with the latter, which would guarantee every viewer a nice spot in the afterlife.
Sacrilege!
I am sure you all remember Peyman Aref who was flogged for blogging against Ahmadinejad. In a similar case, a student activist was arrested a few days ago in Iran for “insulting” Ahmadinejad in his Facebook page. Mahmood Shokraye, an Iranian cartoonist was also sentenced to 25 lashes for publishing a caricature of a local MP. To show solidarity with Shokraye, Iranian cartoonists started drawing new caricature of the MP and shared it online.
And these remind me of a comment I read somewhere that went like this: “If you are offended by a cartoon, what does it say about you?”
Off with his head
Ayatollah Safi Golpayegani, a Shi’ite cleric based in the holy Iranian city of Qom, has issued a death sentence against rapper Shahin Najafi for apostasy. The sentence was issued after Najafi released a controversial song called “Naqi.”
