Dec. 18, 2005
Nowadays, Iran’s new ultra-conservative Minister of Culture is exercising his hard-line policies on the country’s media. In a speech during a media festival that was attended by conservative crowds, Culture Minister Saffar Harandi declared that to get a license to start a publication would require the applicants to show that their publication is different from existing ones and is thus unique. “If there are thousands of publications which are all different from each other, then they are fine. Otherwise, even ten are more than needed,” he said, implying that the criteria for granting licenses would be based on the Ministry’s determination whether a publication is offering something new, as defined by the government, or not. This is another new for Iran’s media. (...)

Dec. 9 2005,

While the country and especially the journalistic community of Iran is in grief over the terrible air accident last week that killed over 115 individuals, the public continues to press for answers to the event. Some of the passengers had been in contact with their relatives during the last moments of the flight of the military aircraft bound south of the country. It was noteworthy that the military committee established to investigate the accident as instructed by the Leader, immediately announced the victims as martyrs and provided 30 million Rials in compensation for the surviving family members of the victims. (Continue...)

Sep 17, 2005, Roozonline daily
A member of the central committee of the Hezbe Motalefe Islamic party (Islamic Coalition Party) once again called for combating civil society groups in Iran. Hamid Reza Taraghi, who holds no government or other official positions in Iran, has come out like a decision maker and this time called for a complete reshuffle of civil society organizations. (...)

Aug 28, 2005

Emad Afrough, chairman of Majlis’ (Parliament) Cultural Committee called it a risk to confirm Pourmohammadi, president Ahmadinejad’s nominee as the Minister of the Interior. This is the government agency entrusted with providing peace and stability in Iran’s 28 provinces. It is also the administrative arm of Tehran in the countryside. “He comes from a place (meaning the Ministry of Intelligence) which has incidentally demonstrated weak internal supervision”, Afrough said, a reference to the Intelligence Ministry that eventually acknowledged responsibility within its ranks for murdering Iranian dissidents inside and outside the country just a few year ago.(...)

Aug 22,2005

Ten days after Ansar-e Hezbollah declared, through its statement, its advocacy of changing the status quo through violent means, former president Seyed Mohammad Khatami in his first post presidential talk, condemned the spread and re-organization of dogma and pseudo religion in the country. Ansar-e Hezbollah had been formally absent from Iran’s political scene during the last years of Khatami’s presidency, only making occasional albeit destructive presence, because of its rejection by the Khatami government. But it announced its come back which it attributes to “the creation of a new government and the completion of the missing link of the Islamic Revolution”, a reference to Ahmadinejad’s presidential victory last June. (...)

Aug 18, 2005
“By appointing individuals to government Ministries, some perhaps have wrongly concluded that the appointees need not engage in policy planning and intellectual engagement, but simply to implement what the president has thought through.” These are not the words of opposition politicians in Iran or reformists, whom conservative newspaper Kayhan calls individuals who “cannot speak calmly, judge fairly and talk without being angry”, but the words of the chairman of the Culture Committee of the Majlis (Iranian Parliament) when speaking about ideologues and ideology driven politicians.(...)

Aug 14, 2005
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are ineffective patches whose formation the future government will try to prevent and create suitable replacements for them.” These are the words of a high ranking official of Hezbe Motalefe-ye Islami (the Islamic Coalition Party). Such statements are made at a time when civil society activists in Iran are seriously concerned about the continuation of civil activities after the work of the new government begins its work. (...)

 26 July, 2005

An interview with Deborah Campbell,Board member of the Canadian Association of Journalists

The 24/7 media environment has information firing at us from all directions, but how much do we really know? The state of the media is a concern for many experts, including Deborah Campbell, a Canadian writer, journalist and cultural critic who recently visited Iran to explore the culture first-hand. Campbell is the author of This Heated Place, an acclaimed literary exploration of the conflict in Palestine. She is also an associate editor at Adbusters, a world-renowned magazine of cultural criticism with subscribers in 60 countries. She is an executive on the board of the Canadian Association of Journalists and president of the association’s Vancouver chapter. Last spring she spoke at Harvard University on the subject of media blind spots. During our interview she talked about the death of serious journalism and a media culture where it’s more of a crime to be boring than to be wrong—and where every story could be made more marketable if it contained a supermodel. (...)

24 July, 2005
In recent years much has been said about the notion that the period of heroes in Iranian society has passed. Perhaps President Khatami’s emphasis that he is not a hero has added to this trend. In my opinion the presence or absence of individuals who are raised to the status of a hero depends on idealism and look to the future, rather than the realities of a society or the trends in it. In fact, we like our society to be at such a developed state that socio-political change would not need supermen and their extra-ordinary deeds. (...)

 ۱۹ July, 2005
“A friend of mine was telling me that I had abandoned her and other mutual friends since I had become a weblogger. I know of a well known weblogger who is in the process of divorce.” Believe it or not, these are the writings of an Iranian weblogger.In her writings, this weblogger describes the process of establishing a virtual reality “social” network in cyber space, indicating how it has been replacing real relationships and the problems that follow. The totality of these individual and group “relationships” in cyber space which bring about cooperation, set the emotional connections, and bring joy, sadness and kindness, in fact bring a total new life experience to its players. Participants openly raise questions and get answers to their problems or issues. (...)

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