In Iran, government is privatising filtering! A company, “Delta Global”, gets exclusivity from Iranian government to impose filtering on virtual world. Irony of story is that American softwares are used to block Iranian sites & blogs! American companies say that Iran uses their softwares without permission or payment. Probably Iranian government thinks filtering softwares are Linux kind softwares!!
Blogger Said Hatami [1]( link in Persian) who has given instructions and address in his blog [2]how to escapeblogrolling [3]filtering, says his new address gets filtered too. In Global Voices there was a writing by Rebecca MacKinnon [4], which talks about American companies and filtering in Iran [5].
A new book about Iranian blogs hit book stores [6]: “We are Iran: Persian Blogs” written by Nasrin Alavi. Hoder [7], a Toronto based blogger, writes about the book:
“Now we could show the world that Ahmadinejad is not representing Iran. We are what the new Iran is these days”.
Reza who left a comment on Hoder’s writing says:
“We are not Iran . Iran is full of those who support Ahmadinejad and voted for him”
First review about book appeared on BBC Persian site [8]:
“There is no introduction in book and we can not understand her method…Writer gives a black & white image of Iranian blogs (blogestan) and failed to represents pluralistic image of Iranian blogs (Blogestan)”.
Alavi writes in Financial Times [9]:
“It is still not clear if Iranian blogs are merely a place for the beleaguered to let off steam or a modern-day Gutenberg press that will usher in an age of democracy. Perhaps the greatest legacy of the republic is its children, whose voices can be heard clearly in the Iranian blogosphere”.
Ramadan [10] ended in Iran among confusion! Most Muslims insist on the local physical sighting of the moon to mark the beginning and end of Ramadan. Great Ayatollahs [11] announce the end of Ramadan with one day difference from each other. Hojreh [12] ( link in Persian), an Iranian cleric, has done a research on his blog to show where origins of this confusion are.