Blogs & Ecology

Here is another story about how blogging can change lives in a positive way and attract attention to invisible parts of this world.

Abdul Mohammad She’rani, a young Iranian teacher in a very remote village in Iran, blogged about his very small school and his four students in a small Iranian fishing village of Jamalabad Kalu near the southern port city of Bushehr.

Abdul Mohammad She’rani with his four students.

Iranian bloggers, like many other bloggers , from the four corners of the planet participated in Blog Action Day on 15th of October to talk about poverty.

Dreeam writes [fa] about families with low income who can only look at rich ones. The blogger writes:

I have pity for people around me who had dreams but now their dreams became nightmares and they have problems making a living… Oh God, why is there so much injustice in this world?

Freekeyborad writes [fa]:

Antony Loewenstein, a Sydney-based freelance journalist and blogger, has recently published his new book: The Blogging Revolution. This book talks about the impact of blogging on six countries: Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, China and Cuba.

He says:

Global Voices reported in August that Drs. Arash and Kamyar Alaei, two internationally renowned Iranian HIV/Aids specialists have been jailed in Tehran since June.

Unfortunately, they are still in prison and have had no legal representation. The Alaei brothers stand accused of planning to overthrow the Iranian government.

While Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinjad, addressed the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday declaring that “the American empire” and “Zionist regime” [Israel] are nearing collapse, pro-democracy Iranians and 3,000 people mobilized by a coalition of mostly Jewish groups, protested against Ahmadinejad's threats toward Israel and Iran's human rights record.

Ali Kordan, Iran's new Minister of the Interior, has recently been under fire for presenting a “fake” Ph.D. degree from the prestigious Oxford University in the United Kingdom. Several websites, including the conservative Alef have published a scan of Kordan's “Oxford Honorary Doctorate of Law Degree”.

Esfandiar Rahim Mashai, the Iranian vice president for tourism and the director of the Iranian Cultural Heritage Organization, has been under fire after he declared that Iran is “a friend of all people in the world, even Israelis and Americans.” He said almost the same thing a few weeks ago, but “corrected” his comment by saying that by “Israeli people”, he did not include Zionists and Jewish immigrants. Now 200 legislators in the Iranian parliament have asked President Mahmoud Ahmadinehad to dismiss him.

An Iranian cleric named Ali Reza Jahanshahi was arrested about two weeks ago, shortly after beginning a 960 kilometer (590 miles) protest walk from the southern Iranian city, Sirjan to Tehran. The cleric was protesting corrupt land appropriation in Sirjan, and complained the government was not doing enough to stop it. Jahnashahi was arrested after walking about 30 kilometers near the city Abadeh.

Mehdi Yahyainejad is the founder of the very successful Balatarin site. Balatarin (which means ‘the highest' in Persian) is a community website through which users can post links to webpages of their interest, with an emphasis on the Iranian audience. The underlying idea is a mixture of reddit, digg, newsvine, and del.icio.us.

Green blogs are a valuable source for understanding Iran's nature and environment, its problems and challenges. Green bloggers actively take part in campaigns to protect nature and animals. They publish articles, stories, and photos, and they organize conferences and demonstrations. In this post, we look at green activism in Iran through the eyes of bloggers in last year.

Here are some photos of artistic environmental activity to protest against the destruction of nature and hunting of animals.

Art and Environment

Cyrus Farivar is a USA-based blogger, journalist and writer. He is currently working on a book about the impact of the internet on society. Cyrus writes about internet impact on Iran, Senegal, South Korea and Senegal. He was recently in Iran and has taken several photos of Iranian carpets, food, buildings and nature too.

Q: You visited Iran recently after many years. Was it a cultural shock? Was there any difference between what you imagined, and what you came to know about Iran in reality?

May Day is the day workers around the world rally for better working conditions and higher wages. In the Middle East, bloggers mark the day with posts and photographs reporting what happened, what the day means for them, and why it is a reason for celebration.

Turkey:

Our first stop in in Turkey, where Erkan Saka says Labour Day celebrations were met with excessive force by police. Posting pictures of demonstrators being chased by police, he notes:

Like last year, there was an unproportional use of police power.

He further adds: