Global Voices Online

Human Rights, Non Violence Library & Christmas

Farid Pouya · 16:44

Cheraghyekhamoush (Turned off lights) talks about Ahmadinejad’s, recent proposition to Europeans about human rights. According to Iranian President, whose government is under pressure for human rights abuses, Iran can send delegation to European countries to report about human rights including political prisoners, women’s rights and so on in European countries. Europe, in its turn, can send its own delegation to Iran. At the end, world can judge both reports!!!! Bolgger says why we don’t start observation in Iran where 100 newspaper were banned in a couple of years or why nobody wants to report about Ganji and other political prisoners. Blogger asks will Iranian journals have right to publish European reports about human rights abuses in Iran or only journals will publish Iranian delegation’s point of views. The last but not least, he says, according to Iranian government, European can visit our political prisoners without any problem but they forget that Ganji’s wife was not able to visit her husband for months!!!!!

Fanous, a collective blog, has launched a non violence library. In their library you can find books, such as Gene Sharp’s ‘‘From Dictatorship to Democracy”, in Persian and English, to download and links to institutions such as Albert Einstein institution. It is a kind of peace promotion blog.

Apparently there are other peace seeker bloggers such as Abtahi, former Vice President, who talks about Christmas:

“Besides the fact that Jesus Christ is a great prophet respected by all of us, his main slogan is peace and friendship which humanity more than ever needs it at present. The nature of religions is basically inviting people to kindness and friendship. This is contrary to the situation existing now when violence has become the voice of religions”.

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From the Jordanian Blogosphere

Roba Al Assi · 01:43

“Jordanian Director, Amin Matalqa displays his martial art skills on the top of a building in downtown Amman, Jordan” by Laith Majali

A new year is here, so first off, happy holidays from the Jordanian blogosphere.

Interested in an opinion on where the Arab blogosphere is heading? Head over to Sabbah's Blog, where Haitham Sabbah shares some of his views and observations.

Zeid Nasser takes a look at the information technology scene in the past year saying, “The issue of cyber crime would have to top anyone's list in 2005… Here’s a safe prediction for you: This mess will continue into 2006.” Isam Bayazidi reports about the state of Arabic Wikipedia, “The Arabic Wikipedia had reached few days ago, which is a pretty significant event as Arabic wikipedia now joins another 35 wikipedias in different languages that are over 10,000 article in size.” Meanwhile, Zeid Nasser wonders about Wikipedia- “So is Wikipedia a source of reference, or just a great big game?”

Times are also changing fast, so how does a country like Jordan react to change with all its impacts, whether it is inflicted by terrorism or simply the evolution of trends? Rami AbdelRahman studies post bombing Amman after several months away, “Mr. Zarqawi, whoever you are, you got what you wanted, our freedom is already evaporating, ridiculous paranoia is definately Amman's new mentality!”

On a linguistic side, Ameen Malhas of Banzeen wonders about the new language phenomenon taking the Arab world by storm- Arabizi, a form of speech that mixes Arabic with English; “Should we romanticize and say that Arabic must be saved (I lean towards this option with a need for modernizing the language), or should we be completely pragmatic and move towards this new ‘Arabizi'?” Wael Attili meanwhile looks at the architectural side of Amman, studying the new glass and aluminum buildings of Amman, a city known for its white stone houses.

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