Iranian President new Blog
I know I haven’t written for a while, but I found a certain piece of news about a new blog for Ahmedi Nejad the Iranian president. It seems that the blog was announced in official news agencies. Now I must admit that the Iranian blog movement had always fascinated me. What amazes me is how it was “embraced” by the government in Iran in a way that no other country did. I even read earlier last year that the ministry of culture organized a “Blog Awards”.. imagine this, it is amazing..
The way I see it, it is the smartest middle-eastern country when it comes to dealing with blogs.. instead of “blocking” it, and making it a taboo, they made it “pro-government”.. so the “anti-government” voices in the blogosphere will just fade in the waves blogs that are pro-gov. Now that’s smart.. The number of blogs in Iran today are in the 100s of thousands last I heard from my friend Hoder when he was in Amman. Now, I am not sure if the Iranian experience on blogs could be implemented in other countries, and infact I am not sure I want it to.. So far we are enjoying the government ignorance, blindness, or dismissal of blogs, it gave us a space that we might not have if they paid attention…
So let them stay away o ghanilo..
Hails Isam basha,
I just spent the past half hour or so trying to find a decent Persian-English translator online, (since google translate still doesnt support it), but alas, no luck.. :(
I find the bit where you mention the Irani government embracing blogs quite interesting, because i was under the impression that Iran had a reputation for heavily censoring its blogs in specific, and its webtraffic in general.. Now I cant say that i know much about the specifics, primarily because my sources are really just the occasional reports on CNN and BBC websites. Still, It would be quite intresting to sit back and observe what kind of changes this move will have on the Irani web front.
I ran an innocent whois on the service.. hosted on IIS 5, ironic isnt it.. hehe