Mediterranean sea..

One hypothetical question came to my mind today, If you look at the Mediterranean south shore, Arab countries of north Africa from Egypt to Morocco have a much longer coast with this sea than any other ethnicity such as Italians, French or any other European country. Now if based on that fact, these Arab countries start calling it Arabian sea and teach that in their school books and put in their treaties, would National Geographic or any other organization in Europe or North America dare to change the name?

Arabian Gulf? "no i dont think so" says Google

This Arabian Gulf issue has really occupied the headlines of Persian Blogs, and now our first bomb has worked perfectly! Google bomb that is. Some friends created this website and called it Arabian Gulf and we sent it around and so many Blogs gave link to it and in less than 48 hours , it is now the top entry in Google for who ever searches “Arabian Gulf” on this primary search engine. Just search it on Google, I am sure you will laugh…good job guys..

This time, defending national pride..

As you can see in the post below a few days ago, I mentioned how destructive and concerning racist approaches are in our society. Just hours after that post national geographic published its new Atlas and made some appalling changes in the map that are far beyond the word “Arabian Gulf” in the parenthesis being added to Persian Gulf. Naming the three Iranian islands “occupied” and renaming the Iranian Island of KISH to the Arabic name of GHEIS, is a clear indication that just like the passed efforts, there is a political agenda favoring Arab countries of Persian Gulf and especially UAE behind this change. Many Iranians have participated in showing their disgust and disappointment toward such move and have sent individual e-mails and signed petitions addressing National Geography Society. All this in my eyes is a normal reaction by a nation that has witnessed its pride being undermined and humiliated in the international community, on one hand because of the actions of its insane and backward theocratic government and on the other hand by the racist elements in the Middle East like Sadam Hossein that called Iranians; “bugs” and their creation “God’s biggest mistake.” Despite what this nation has gone through in 8 years of war and 200 years of occupation in 6th and 7th century by Arabs, we have to demonstrate that we are merely defending our territorial integrity and rich history in this case, therefore our protests must remain clear of any racist comment and should emphasis on the fact that national geographic must refer to UN maps for its Atlas. Calling Iranians Islands “Occupied” is a very inappropriate interference in a discredited claim by a country that was not even created when these Islands were part of Iran. All this aside, I came a cross an article by an Iranian friend of mine in a respected web log, Free Thoughts on Iran, in it he argued that since Iranians don’t have a bright record of group work and cooperation on any thing and hardly ever agree on one issue or another, therefore all this fuss and spirit of national identity is rooted in a historic hatred that Iranians have against Arabs. As some one that only few days ago had already condemned such feelings, I shall say that defending national pride, historic culture and heritage with a reminder in the side that racism must be condemned and fought against at all times, is one very healthy cooperation that a nation can practice and must be encouraged not downgraded. Of course we have a long way to go, but if my friend Yaser is, rightfully so, concerned about Iranians not being “persistent”, “patient” and “devoted” , he should take advantage of such rare opportunity that brings us all together, help give substance to the this mini movement and help it rich a victory and present it to all Iranians as an indication that working together without silly and cheap rivalries can produce results and we have to the same in other important matters such as women rights and human rights in our country. The Persian Gulf is an extremely important symbol for us and we will have to defend it.

Anti-Arab?

I don’t know how many people are part of, have seen or heard of “Orkut”, For those who haven’t, this is simply a networking website with some new features and cool design offered by Google. One Can create his/her profile, upload pictures, add friends, look for old friends, create communities and invite others with common interest to be part of, write testimonials, become ones fan and etc. You can have a profile inside Orkut only if one member invites you to. There are thousands if not millions of people on there, I my self have about 150 friends on my list and have joined several communities such as “any one but Bush!!”, “Forough Farokhzad” The Iranian poet and etc, today however I was invited to a rather disturbing community created by some fellow Iranians called: “Anti Arab Iranians” and some extremely fascist and racist comments were posted by the owner and unfortunately and NOT surprisingly, over 1000 Iranians had joined the community. Apart from the fact that Google perhaps has some responsibilities here to remove communities that promote hatred but I like to talk about/address Iranians who create such a non sense and who joined it. Is it a shock that some people express the feeling of hate for Arabs in Iranian community? NO, we all know the historic backgrounds of this story, The great Persian empire being attack by Arabs 1400 years ago and we were forced to become Muslim but we never gave up our own language and culture..blah blah blah.. or more new ones such as: Iraq invasion to Iran and the support of the Arab leaders was thrown behind Sadam Hossein , claims over our land by UAE ,Islamic Republic’s extreme pro Palestinian policy that has hurt Iran’s national interest and etc.., But lets pick another country, Britain for instance, interfering with Iran’s politics since 200 years ago, separating Afghanistan from Iran, occupying the country along with Russians in 1941, taking our oil for 60 years almost free, organizing a coup deta’ against the only democratic and nationalist Prime Minister(Mosadeq) in 1953, Supporting Sadam… the list goes one guys, but does that mean we should hate all British people? Don’t get me wrong I my self would suggest an aggressive and offensive policy toward Arab leaders to protect our national interest, but how in the world is all this aANY justification for such fascism against people of Arab race? Do we have any idea how damaging to our reputation would such approach be? How could we possibly hate normal people that are victims of dictatorship themselves and have no role in the policies of their leaders? I hope people who created that community on Orkut would pull is down and if not Google should act, as an Iranian I am ashamed of this action.

Finnaly I am writing as well..

Three years ago when I met Hossein Derakhshan in Toronto he had just started his Persian Web log, he explained the idea and encouraged me to start my own and share my experience in prison back in Iran as one of many students who went through that ordeal in the recent years. I agreed but never really did it simply because I never learned how to type in Persian and was too lazy to learn it. But ever since, I have been a loyal and daily reader of so many web loges both in Persian and English, and always mentioned this modern phenomena in my interviews here and there as an indication of the fundamental disagreements that the new generation of Iran has with the values imposed on them and that they take every opportunity to express their dissatisfaction with the state of affairs in all the social, cultural and political aspects of it. Why did I finally start? Well the inability to type in Persian stands, but my English has improved enough, so here it goes an English Web Log –at least for now, maybe bilingual later on- from an Iranian-Canadian boy, who will turn 26 on Feb 11th 2005, Ironically the exact day that Iranian revolution against the dictatorship of monarch succeeded and transferred the power in Iran to a religious dictatorship. Why did I start writing today? Because I am a citizen of this world with particular concerns for my home land, and some thing I saw a few hours ago frustrated me,so I called Hossein to ask him to write about the matter, in response he got really mad and said: “you lazy! Why cant u just start your own web log and write the same thing?” So I wrote about it , it is called: "Anti Arab"