There are no camels in Tehran!

This video from CNN gives a better picture of Modern Iranians. Most of my colleagues who are PhD students and are supposed to be more informed about the world have a very distorted image of middle east including Iran (on one occasion I was asked whether there are a lot camels in Tehran!) which shows how ignorant the western world is. I think most Iranians are very familiar with western culture while westerners have absolutely no idea about that part of the world. This assymetry, in my view, causes a lot of missunderstandings for them.

A Post in Memory of Mohammad Mossadegh and a Requiem for Humanity

I saw this photo of Mohammad Mossadegh, the prime minister of Iran in late 40s and 50s and was removed from power by a coup d’état, supported and funded by the British and U.S. governments and I felt a deep pain in my heart. Mossadegh was probably the brightest hope for democracy in 2500 years of monarchy in Iran but was brought down because superpowers needed to control the middle east. Somehow I feel the cause of all my suffering in the Islamic Republic was those wrong and aggressive foreign policies of those politicians. It’s painful that we civilians have to pay for politicians pursue of power. It is a shame for modern humanity to live like this.

US President Truman and Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh

America’s Hate Group Map

I just read this news piece on CNN.com and found this map by a bit googling.

I really like the idea of creating a free environment for organized religion and hate groups. Hate groups are not a good thing but like drugs and prostitution they should be legal so you can monitor them.

P.S. Here is the actual “hate group report”.

Daniel Lemire on science policy

A second academic blog post on science policy today. This time, it’s Daniel Lemire, a Canadian computer scientist. I remember reading in this book that science itself is probably the least studied phenomena of our time.

James Boyle on Science Policy

Nice article in Financial Times by James Boyle. This paragraph was especially interesting to me.

Where are those links for the scientific literature? Citations are one kind of link; the hyperlink is simply a footnote that actually takes you to the desired reference. But where is the dense web of links generated by working scientists in many disciplines, using semantic web technology and simple cross reference electronically to tie together literature, datasets and experimental results into a real World Wide Web for science? The answer is, we cannot create such a web until scientific articles come out from behind the publishers’ firewalls. What might happen if we could build it? We do not know. Think of the speed of innovation that the open Web has unleashed. Then imagine that transformative efficiency applied to science and technology rather than selling books or flirting on social networks. This bill would forbid us from building the World Wide Web for science, even for the research that taxpayers have funded. And that is truly a tragedy.

Bluehost.com contd.

I finally got to talk to the “Abuse Department” in bluehost.com! the first conversation I had was with a woman. No let me correct that it was with a horrible woman. I asked her about section 13.1.B of their terms of service which says:

“Each individual which is a National or Citizen of a Sanctioned Country is hereby prohibited from registering or signing up with, subscribing to, or using any service of BlueHost.Com, regardless of where said individual is located.”

She told me that the problem was the IP address which I used to register the website which was from Iran and now they have to close the account to comply with American government regulations. My question was that this section in the Terms of Service will give them the right to shut down the service again but her answer was “Sir! I will not go through the Terms of Service with you!”. I think she repeated this sentence before cutting the line for like 10 times. She was really horrible. Bluehost.com used to have good service and I was considering staying with their service but after talking to her I just hate that company. She was so horrible and so full of herself…

Thankfully, she was not the only employee in the “Abuse Department” (I want to congradulate anyone who came up with this name). I eventually got to talk to a man who seemed a lot calmer. He told me they did not do any background check on their customers and this was just to keep the government happy. He also refused to provide detail about that specific section and said he was not a lawyer and not familiar with these. I think they just want to keep the opportunity open for themselves just in case they want to close some site down.

I still think that specific wording is some form of discrimination but I am not sure if it is possible to follow it legally. It doesn’t seem like something that I have time for anyway.

But what I do have time for is to tell everyone what Bluehost.com did to me and try to raise awareness about those abusive Terms of Service and that horrible woman who said she was Vice President of Abuse! Now, doesn’t that seem like a very very sad job?

Two faces of oppression!

There is a familiar page in the internet for Iranians which is the following:

If you are in Iran and you go to a website that is not in full accord with what the governement wants you to see then they show you this nice page instead. The governemt has a sophisticated filtering software with a big big list of websites to filter. The list includes a wide variety of websites ranging from sexdotcom to BBC Persian TV!

Now in the “Free World” part of the universe there is a second type of repression which only applies only if you have the misfortune of being born in the uncivilized part of the world. I already told you that my website was shut down by bluehost.com because I was of Iranian nationality. Now when you go to my old website you will see the following:

I am very disappointed. Isn’t this a mild form of racism?

I feel very bad for other Iranians like myself who try very hard and leave that country in search of a peaceful life only to find many obstacles on their way.

There lies a bigger, more fundamental problem here. That of dividing a tiny planet into islands and calling them countries. The war between dangerous politicians kills harmless civilians.

Explaining The Lost Times: How civilians die in a war between states

It has been quite a while since my last post in this blog but I can explain why. I did not abandon writing.

I had registered a domain in my domain and bought a hosting plan with bluehost.com, so I moved this blog to the new address and started writing there. But this did not last!

I received an email from bluehost.com saying that since my condition did not comply with section 13 of their terms of services they will delete my account in 10 days! Section 13 of that contract says that as an American Company, bluehost.com, does not work with Iranian citizens or anybody in that geographic location. Apparently they realized this one year after selling me the hosting plan and just decided to take action about it today… This is awful and I am outraged! This is completely unfair.

I think this is a good example how foreign policy affects civilian lives and it is no different than some civilian getting killed in war between two countries… This is not the first time that my nationality causes trouble for me or slows me down in my life and it will not be the last time. Through the years I have seen many friends who have lost much greater opportunities being rejected in visa offices and being fired from their workplace. The world is being too simplistic in this regard and no one seems to care.

Being of this or that nationality is completely decided on chance and it should not affect peoples life. Every one of us on this planet belong to one race and shall be treated as equal. How the world is run seems so funny and unfair to me. No one reflects on our story and how we are affected by a war between politicians.

It seems very ironic to me that bluehost.com terminated my account, a few hours after I posted this speech by Robert Kennedy on my blog. I post the complete text of that speech here, once again, in a faint hope for change:

This is a time of shame and sorrow.  It is not a day for politics.  I have saved this one opportunity to speak briefly to you about this mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.

It is not the concern of any one race.  The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown.  They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed.  No one – no matter where he lives or what he does – can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed.  And yet it goes on and on.

Why?  What has violence ever accomplished?  What has it ever created?  No martyr’s cause has ever been stilled by his assassin’s bullet.

No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders.  A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of the people.

Whenever any American’s life is taken by another American unnecessarily – whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence – whenever we tear at the fabric of life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.

“Among free men,” said Abraham Lincoln, “there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lose their cause and pay the costs.”

Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire weapons and ammunition they desire.

Too often we honor swagger and bluster and the wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach nonviolence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them.

Some looks for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear; violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleaning of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.

For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly, destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is a slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.

This is the breaking of a man’s spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all. I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is there a single set. For a broad and adequate outline we known what must be done. “When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies – to be met not with cooperation but with conquest, to be subjugated and mastered.

We learn, at the last, to look at our bothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community, men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear – only a common desire to retreat from each other – only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this there are no final answers.

Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is now what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of human purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.

We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of all. We must admit in ourselves that our own children’s future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.

Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanish it with a program, nor with a resolution.

But we can perhaps remember – even if only for a time – that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short movement of life, that they seek – as we do – nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

Surely this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our hearts brothers and countrymen once again.