Monday, December 20, 2004

What is "Anthropologist" in Farsi?

A great news Monday. The Guardian reports that with 75,000 blogs in the Farsi language, Iran is now becoming a blogging center. In part, this is due to recent crackdowns on print media by the religous judiciary, and the ire it has drawn from young, educated Iranians. Please do take a look.

The internet has opened a new virtual space for free speech in a country dubbed the "the biggest prison for journalists in the Middle East", by Reporters sans Frontieres (RSF). Through the anonymity and freedom that weblogs can provide, those who once lacked voices are at last speaking up and discussing issues that have never been aired in any other media in the Islamic world. Where else in Iran could someone dare write, as the blogger Faryadehmah did, "when these mullahs are dethroned ... it will be like the Berlin wall coming down ..."?

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