Who am I going to vote ?!?!

To be honest, no idea yet, but deffinetley I am going to vote either to Karoubi or Mir Housein Mousavi.

Mir Hossein Mosavi
Text : I am an Iranian, Mir Hossein Mosavi

Mehdi Karobi
Text : If there is no Iran, what's the worth of living

robotic exam ...

I am going to the Robotic exam right now ...

wish me luck ... :-(

Persian Gulf not A-R-A-B-I-A-N Gulf !!!

Iranians are signing a petition to stop the world media to use the false name of A-r-a-b-i-a-n gulf who is advertised by rich Arabians in the southern parts of Persian Gulf ... Lately some cheap western politicians have shown interest on using this false name(British Defense minister while giving a report to British parliament about their soldiers entering illegally to Iranian waters and being captured by Iranian armed forces). Iran officially does not reply to letters that call this gulf anything but Persian Gulf.

To: International Media

February 19, 2008

Dear Administrators of Google Earth,

We, the undersigned, through this letter, protest your irresponsible, unscientific actions, and demand an immediate and unconditional deletion of “Arabian Gulf” from Google Earth.

Arbitrarily designating the Persian Gulf as the Arabian Gulf is an irresponsible violation of all historical and International standards and would undermine the integrity of Google Earth.

For the records, the name Persia has always been used to describe the nation of Iran, its people, and its ancient empires since 600 BC. It is derived from the ancient Greek name for Iran's maritime province, called Fars or Pars in modern Persian, Pars in Middle Persian and Pârsa in Old Persian, a word meaning "above reproach.” Persis is the Hellenized form of Pars, and through the Latinized word Persia, the other European nations came to use this word for the region. This area was the core of the original Persian Empire.

Since ancient times almost all foreigners referred to the entire country as Persia until March 21, 1935, when Reza Shah Pahlavi formally asked the international community to call the country Iran — a name that the people of Persia, themselves, used to refer to their country since the Sassanian period. "Iran" means "Land of Aryans". In 1959 some Persian scholars protested to the government that the name change had separated the country from its ancient civilization. Therefore, the late King Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi announced that both Persia and Iran can be used in Western languages.

Without disparaging the Arabs, Iranians are proud of their non-Arab heritage and strongly resent any attempt at denigrating or changing any aspect of their Iranian heritage. And the Persian Gulf occupies a pivotal place in the Iranian history and culture. Furthermore, Iran abuts the Persian Gulf for 2,000 Km, while about a dozen recently-created Arab Sheikhdoms and emirates border the Gulf on the other side.

The historical and geographical name of the Persian Gulf has been endorsed and clarified by the United Nations on many occasions and is in use by the UN, its member states, and all other international agencies worldwide. The last UN Directive confirming the name of the Persian Gulf was (reference ST/CS/SER.A/29/Add.2) on August, 18th 1994.

The worldwide Iranian people are deeply affronted by this arrogant designation of “The Arabian Gulf.” We demand, in the strongest possible terms, that you take immediate steps to restore the rightful name of the Persian Gulf to the waterway on Google Earth and delete any other arbitrary name. We hope that this notice would suffice and obviates the need for litigation.

Sincerely,

To sign :
http://www.petitiononline.com/sos02082/petition.html

Iranian presidental election 2009 ...

Presidential elections will be held in Iran on June 12, 2009.[1] It will be the 10th presidential election to be held in the country. The current incumbent is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is running for re-election. Re-formist wings have announced two candidates. Former Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi and the former Speaker of the Majlis Mehdi Karroubi is another Reformist who has taken part as candidates for presidental election 2009. There is also a 4th candidate whose name is Mohsen Rezayi. He has announced that he is running for election indepentley but he is counted as a conservative from the right wings.

Mir Hossein Mosavi
Text : I am an Iranian, Mir Hossein Mosavi

Mehdi Karobi
Text : If there is no Iran, what's the worth of living

President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad
Text : I don't understand the meaning of the text as it is written in Arabic language!!!
As it is mentioned, it is a holly sentence from 1st Shiite prophet ...
Mohsen Rezayi
Text : NO TEXT !

Iranian presidental election ...

In around one month Iran is going to hold presidential election once again, so the people can choose the 10th president of the Islamic Republic of Iran after the revolution in 1979. This picture shows an Iranian boy crying while talking to the the president Ahmedinejad. This is an advertisement for Iranian president who is also a candidate in this election. This picture tries to show him as a survivor of poor part of Iranian society as he earns most of his votes from poor parts of cities. He is known to be a conservative populist between Iranian polititians.

My comment : To be honest I don't understand the text under it as it is written in Arabic(a sentence from Imam Ali, the first prophet of Shiite Muslims). I should also mention that I do not support him, but I loved this advertisement, as it is a real piece of art. Crying boy, president with noded head, simple clothes, ... Every single element in this photo is shouting out the message to the voters ;-) Nice Design :-)

Iranians complain from Norwegian Royal Embassy in Tehran(Iran)

These days Iranians are gathering signatures from Iranians in Norway to complain from Norwegian Royal Embassy in Tehran. The reason is non friendly behaviors from embassy staffs towards visa applicants and denials of visas according to ridiculous reasons. I did sign this complain from bottom of my heart as I(and most of the Iranians I know here) have had this problem with Norwegian embassy in Tehran. I personally didn't have problem with them but once they throw my fathers folder in front of him and yelled at him. At that time I officially wrote some angry letters and complained to the Norwegian foreign ministry and the embassy actually investigated that case very carefully and I was happy with the result.

BUT the problems still remain. The first reasons is that the people are afraid that a complain might have negative effect on their visa process. The 2nd which is even more important in this case is that most of visa applicants are old people(whose their children are living in Norway) and they are not quite good at computer and Internet and they do not know the way to complain to the higher Norwegian officials directly. Typically when such things happens the same old people try to contact the higher officials who are sitting on the 2nd floor of the Royal embassy by ringing the bell and the Royal response is :

Here is not the VISA department & we are not responsible about such cases !

So this means most of old people do not have a way to complain(or they prefer not too, so they would receive the visa) and the ambassador and the polite NON Iranian staffs can use ALL their time to watch Iranian officials acts and would not need to care about the system under their direct management !!!

When it comes to complains the first feedback to the complains is usually(of course not in a written answer but just orally) :

The people who behaved like that are our local Iranians employees and they are not Norwegians !!!

Well I did my best to understand the concept of this logic but I didn't make it !!! The ambassador in Iran is officially responsible as the top manager of the embassy. Maybe it is a better idea that she/he instead of concentrating all her/his time to jump into other cases(women rights, human rights and etc) which are related to Iranian government behavior, would use a little bit of her time to manage the system under her/his direct management ... The reason that Norwegians had nothing to do with insulting the applicants and those staffs involved are local Iranians sounds like a 100% joke as an answer to a complain.

The mass of people who are not satisfied with the Norwegian embassy in Iran(108 up to when I am writing this post) can bring up the question that why there is no end to these bad behaviors by NON Norwegian members ? Is it a lack of good management or is it a clever policy behind the curtain to prevent some extra works for UDI later(the applicants stay in Norway and deny to go back) ?

The complain letter can be signed in the following link :
http://www.imamali.no/DNIAS/dniasportal.nsf/Webletter?OpenForm

Shahab.

Alexander, Eurovision and Arash ;-)

This year was actually the first year that I followed Eurovision and it ended up very intresting ... Alexander from Norway with his ferry tale won with a historic score which was double than Iceland who was on the 2nd step.

The 2nd very intresting point for me was the male singer(Arash) from Azerbayijan who was an Iranian who lives in Sweden and is a Swedish citizen and Azerbayijan became 3rd which is not a bad result after all :-)