channel4 special from Iran.

[kraf001]

last week channel4 had a special on Iran, reporting everyday from inside Iran. you can read the reports here (http://www.channel4.com/news/special-reports/iran.html)


they also had some interesting videos from inside Iran:

Fashion in Iran (http://www.channel4.com/player/playerwindow.html?id=3603&vert=news)

Ali Larijani interview (http://www.channel4.com/player/playerwindow.html?id=3575&vert=news) (perhaps the best one)

A basketball rapprochement (http://www.channel4.com/player/playerwindow.html?id=3587&vert=news)

Inside Bushehr (http://www.channel4.com/player/playerwindow.html?id=3577&vert=news)

Hostage to fortune (http://www.channel4.com/player/playerwindow.html?id=3579&vert=news) (good take on the hostage crisis)

Nose from Iran (http://www.channel4.com/player/playerwindow.html?id=3623&vert=news)

Fleeing to the city (http://www.channel4.com/player/playerwindow.html?id=3595&vert=news) (probably the best answer for ppl who are puzzled about Ahmadinejad winning the election)


over all I have to admit this was a very good (again not flawless) take on Iran...

[Mastermind]

Too bad they are all headed for the nuclear kind of cauterising nose jobs if their lunatic Prez dosent get a brain.

[kraf001]

Science over ethics? (http://www.channel4.com/player/playerwindow.html?id=3618&vert=news)

[soprano]

Damn thats to bad because they got some fine Bitches in Iran i wish that was a tourist spot!!!!!!!!!!

[kraf001]

Damn thats to bad because they got some fine Bitches in Iran i wish that was a tourist spot!!!!!!!!!!
unless you are from Israel I don't see a problem for you going to Iran as a tourist!!

[kraf001]

check Jon Snow's blog (http://channel4news.typepad.com/news_from_iran/jon_snow/index.html) for his personal experience in Iran...

[kraf001]

When sanctions bite (http://www.channel4.com/player/playerwindow.html?id=3652&vert=news)

[Mr.K]

the rich people can do pretty much anything they want to

[kraf001]

this one was pretty funny (also thought provoking when you think about the ignorance of channel4 ppl):




Julian Rush: I have been in Iran for seven hours. I'm face down with a mouthful of snow.

It's my birthday.

We'd landed just after dawn to an unusually crisp and bright morning in this heavily polluted city. The snow-capped mountains north of Tehran looked stunning.

Six hours later we're at around 3,000 metres at a small ski resort in those mountains. It's Friday afternoon; it’s the weekend here, the equivalent of Sunday afternoon and wealthy Tehranis are at play and we are filming them.

“I think I should go on the one behind you.”, I say to cameraman Graham Heslop.

“But maybe it would be better if we went together, it would balance the weight of the camera.”

“All right, if you think so.”

It’s academic anyway. The ski-lift chair is hurtling towards us. Unsynchronised, we both try to sit in it. We make contact and…

Two bronzed Iranian ski instructors unfold Graham from the slope like a cardboard mouse from Tom and Jerry. He’s winded, but we’re both OK. The camera though, is not. Tape spews from the cassette, the backplate is bent, there’s a loose wheel inside the tape transport.

Now this is really serious. We can’t do Iran Week with just six minutes of film of skiing Iranians. Without a camera we’re stuffed.

And with a broken camera we can’t hide the indignity and embarrassment of our escapade from our colleagues. We know they’ll laugh themselves stupid.

Over barley soup in a small ski café Graham starts tinkering. He rewinds the tape so we haven’t lost the picture. He’s on the phone to London. The camera hit the icy snow very hard he says.

“But you’re in Iran!”

So we have to explain Iran is not just desert. Skiing is a popular sport here. But after a word of advice and another tinker the loose wheel is restored to its rightful spindle.

We’re back in business. It’s going to be an interesting trip.

[soprano]

unless you are from Israel I don't see a problem for you going to Iran as a tourist!!

Yea but because most of those chicks are muslim i doubt they give in,besides if her FAther found out i'd be one *****less devil AMerican!!!!!!

[kraf001]

Yea but because most of those chicks are muslim i doubt they give in,besides if her FAther found out i'd be one *****less devil AMerican!!!!!!
you stereotype too much... that only makes your life harder, if I can get laid in Iran while living there without getting into trouble then a tourist should have less problems ..

[soprano]

you stereotype too much... that only makes your life harder, if I can get laid in Iran while living there without getting into trouble then a tourist should have less problems ..

REAlly man how much did shim cost ??????????????

JUST breaking balls lol!!

[kraf001]

REAlly man how much did shim cost ??????????????

JUST breaking balls lol!!
LOL haven't reach the level of desperation to pay for ***!

[kilroy1911]

To kraf001:

what is the general mood of iranian people? I know that there are a lot of young people in Iran and their talent and abilities are sometimes blocked by revolutionary generation from 1980s now in power. I have some questions about normal civil life in Iran, because in western media there are just concentrating on foreign policy issues and and crazy public exhibitions of your mad president:-)) Although in some newspaper there are quite interesting articles about situation in Iran - which seems to be quite positive - young and not very religious people who wants to live in a secular country - similar to "western" society, just the religion is different. According to these newspaper, Iran today seems to be similar to communist bloc in 1980s. A dictatorship before the collapse... Is it true or is it just a very small group of people?

I dont want to talk about politics just about "normal" things of life: western movies? books? magazines? internet? computer games? western music? satelite TVs? alcohol? ****ography? etc... Is it allowed, censored? completly restricted?
I am from a former communist country and during communist times we have almost no access to independent media and normal things like music, jeans or comics must be smuggled into the country and later sold on the black market... Whats the situation in Iran?

[kraf001]

Your question is a very hard one to answer. What makes it even more difficult is that you draw comparison to former soviet countries which are generally very different from Iran through culture and history so it makes it very difficult to reach common conclusions when you have different set of premises.

One thing that ppl should consider when talking about social aspects of Iran is that it is a very big society and you have a lot of different sects. There are a lot of divisions as you have ppl from different religions and ethnic groups. It makes it hard to come up with concrete arguments and very hard to categorize. For example after Persians, next big ethnic group are Azeris (a Turkic branch) so when you want to comment on conservative and liberal parts of society you should take into account that a liberal Persian is very different from a liberal Azeri. Same goes for ppl from different religions, main ones being Muslims (Sunni and Shiaa), Christians, Zoroastrians and Jews.

Iran’s population is mostly under 35 (more than 75%) and most of them are normal kids. It is not like other Islamic states and government already gotten over the fact that we don’t have enough devoted Muslims in the country. Then you have your Muslim families but even they have their own divisions. Most of them already coped with the idea of accepting that they are a minority in the society and seek a mutual respect but you also get very conservative Muslims that would love to dictate their beliefs to everyone. A good model of Islamic society in Iran is the Iranian government. You have hardliners like Ahmadinejad and you have liberals like Manouchehr Mottaki (Iran’s FM) or Haddad Adel (head of parliament).

Nearly 80% of Iran’s population lives in big cities and the rest are spread around the country in villages and small towns. Some villages are very primitive (specially the ones in central part of the country, like the one shown in the channel4 clip) and then you get the very open ones specially the ones near the borders. What is important about Iran’s society (and it is a fundamental difference between Iran now and ex-Soviet states) is that Iranians already went through a revolution against dictatorship so they were already heavily supplied with revolutionary and democratic materials. Iranian revolution is wrongly shown as an Islamic movement which is not true and that is because West (US in particular) backed Shah it is more convenient to show they supported the Shah against an Islamist movement.

If you watch documentaries from revolution you’ll see that you had revolutionaries from any part of the society. You have women in Hijab and women in European outfit together shouting “death to Shah”. Iranian revolution had a lot of leaders and groups, each one with a separate agenda. What happened was that the closer we got to the revolution the more of these opposition figures got eliminated by Savak or other revolutionary groups which led to success of Khomeini.

Anyways the point was that no matter what the current government does they can’t stop ppl from gaining knowledge about such revolutionary ideas as the material is already widely spread in the society be it books and cassettes or just ppl telling what they kept in mind. Add to this the fast improving media tools like Satellite TVs, VCD, DVD, internet, etc…

Satellite TV has been widely available to Iranians in analogue form since early 1990s and in digital form (of course with more channels and special Iranian channels from LA supporting exile oppositions) since late 90s. At the start there were some attempts by Rafsanjani’s government to ban and stop its growth but they abandoned such tactics as proved to be useless a lot like VCRs, I remember when I was a kid and VCR was a new thing, there were 2 versions back then the smaller cassette which was Betamax system and the bigger cassette ones VHS, the former got popular in Iran at the start but then ppl started using the latter. Anyways state TV used to broadcast programs that criticized VCRs and warned families from its negative effects but now they are not just produced inside Iran, the same state TV is giving them away as prizes in the numerous TV shows they have.

Iranian state law says that satellite TVs are banned and police can take away your device and fine you 50 dollars. But in reality this (http://www.iranian.com/Anyway/2005/December/Images/dish.jpg) is the situation in Iran even in a poor neighborhood like that. You can even find ads on newspaper regarding installation and repair of satellite dishes. Just like a lot of other official laws this one is not enforced either. What I think is that Iranian government is benefiting from stuff broadcasted about Iran on Western media. Iranian ppl are mostly aware of level of freedom that ppl enjoy in Western countries so the government doesn’t risk anything by letting ppl watching it more BUT there are so much biased and negative stuff about Iran on Western media that brings ppl closer to the government than other way around.

A simple example is Saudi Arabia, when ppl see Saudi Arabia getting away with everything yet Iran is confronted on the smallest matter on Western media it doesn’t take a genius to see that Iranian government is not being criticized for its bad human rights record and it is for its unfriendly approach towards

Iran doesn’t have a copy right law to protect Western products like software, movies, music, books and etc.. they are simply not allowed in Iran but in reality again it is just a myth, you can watch latest movies, listen to latest music and get the latest books very cheap and easy without taking any risk (this of course includes **** but with digital satellite TVs, less ppl buy **** as they can just buy a pirated decoder card for their satellite receiver and unlock all the **** channels provided on satellite TV for free) . They are just too widely available to be controlled so government has already given up on that. Of course you have your rare raids by Basij forces to places that these are being sold but they are result of a spare of the moment decisions made by those fanatics and not an official government policy.

Overall I never had a problem in Iran watching my daily box office movies and listening to my System of a down. I could get 5 latest movies delivered to my door every week in Iran and monthly it would have cost me as much as you pay to go watch a single movie in cinema. Also Hollywood movies are shown in cinema and state TV but they are censored for their ****** content. Just this month (that is the Persian New Year) TV is showing Hollywood movies all the time (even Mr and Mrs Smith!!).

Iranians in general are very open to drinking alcohol as it only got banned after the revolution and you can’t expect ppl to give up their addictions in one night. Alcohol in Iran is banned (except for non-Muslims, they are allowed to have and consume it but they are not suppose to sell it to Muslims) but again like most other things which are banned it is widely available. If someone wants to drink any kind or brand of alcohol he can just make a phone call and someone will deliver it in 15-30 minutes. The down side is that you can’t drink it publicly. Only last month police found more than 180,000 bottles of spirits in a storage house in Eastern Tehran, add to this high number of imported stuff the higher number of homemade alcoholic drinks and you’ll have a clear idea of how common alcohol consumption is in Iran.

Aside from the Western music imported to the country, Iranian youth are taking important steps towards producing Iranian music in Western style. Iranian rap and rock bands are all over the place. Not all of them can get permission from government to release albums and have concerts but that doesn’t stop them from becoming famous. They don’t only sing in Persian, recently they have started performing in English too. For example a band called “127” which is underground in Iran became famous enough to do a Europe tour a while back. here (http://www.127band.com/miss-you-live-at-arezzo-festival.wmv) is some footage from their show in Italy.

Like I said at the start this is a very broad subject and can’t fit it in one post. I don’t know how useful what I wrote is but you can always ask more questions and I’ll try to answer.

[kilroy1911]

Thank you very much for reply! It was very interesting reading about the curent situation in iran and it seems to be very different from official media coverage of iran. Only some more "intelectual" magazines and newspaper here are showing this face of Iran. Many other media, inclouding private and state TV stations are showing only the Ahmanidejans Iran... which isnt very friendly:-(

Question is: I know that there are presidential and also parliamentary elections in Iran. Do you think, that we can see a "liberal" goverment in Iran supported by masses of young voters??

Have women in Iran right to vote??

Is it correct to suppose, that current anti-israeli and anti-US sentiment in Iran is just a matter of politicians and hard-line supporters, which are very visible in media but not so numerous in general iranian population?? I suppose, that young generation which doesnt remember the days of US supported Shah may be more friendly towards the west...

[Supe]

Excellent post Kraf.

I'm reading Robert Fisk's - Great War for Civilisation and he devotes quite a few pages to the Iranian revolution, the Iran-Iraq war, the sinking of tankers, Iraq, the role of Arab nations, Western complicity and hypocrisy, emerging use of mustard gas/nerve agents and the shooting down of the Iranian airbus. Also of course the Khomeini's regime crimes - the execution of thousands of politicals (some vile characters partook in exercising the will of the regime - and I suspect their own bloodlust) repression against dissidents, use of child soldiers etc. Fisk characterised Iran at the time as a Necrocracy under Ayatollah Khomeini. I haven't yet synthesised all the information but it is a gripping read (and a mighty tome). I'll definitely be re-reading it.

[NKVD]

they also had some interesting videos from inside Iran:

Fashion in Iran (http://www.channel4.com/player/playerwindow.html?id=3603&vert=news)

Masturbated and came.

[Mastermind]

Thanks Kraf..excellent inside report...much better than any I have read from the "news" services. I now have a completely new view of Iranian people.

[kraf001]

Thank you very much for reply! It was very interesting reading about the curent situation in iran and it seems to be very different from official media coverage of iran. Only some more "intelectual" magazines and newspaper here are showing this face of Iran. Many other media, inclouding private and state TV stations are showing only the Ahmanidejans Iran... which isnt very friendly:-(

well that is a very sad thing indeed, even Ahmadinejad's Iran is not as hostile as it is shown in the media... Iranian government is accused of a lot of things but nobody knows to what extend the accusations are true.. probably a prime example would be the accusations about Iran's involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.. something like this (http://youtube.com/watch?v=Drp6RZ7pCOE&search=iran).. then again you get funny stuff like recently in the same press conference that the US official accused Iran of creating trouble in Afghanistan, Afghanistan's foreign minister said that is bull****!... now Iranian government is not a saint and we can all agree on that but its evil gets way more airtime than any other evil in the world...


Question is: I know that there are presidential and also parliamentary elections in Iran. Do you think, that we can see a "liberal" goverment in Iran supported by masses of young voters??

in Iran ppl vote for parliament, president, assembly of experts and city councils... Khatami who was a very popular reformist figure won the elections twice with very high number of votes... he got 27 million votes in an election that 30 million ppl took part (46 million were eligible to vote) and most of his voters were young ppl... Khatami was a true reformist and he was very successful internationally and established close ties with West, however Clinton didn't approach to him because it is known that president doesn't wield much power in Iran (something that is being widely ignored now that Ahmadinejad is the president, the same ppl who claimed Khatami has no power as a president now claim that Ahmadinejad can become the second Hitler because he is the president)

Khatami in his first 4 years in office had some problems because he needed to get his ministers accepted by parliament which was under the control of right wing but after he won the second elections 4 years later he had more power as ppl again massively voted for reformists in parliament election a year back. so when Bush came into office Iranian reformists were at their full power as they had parliament, presidency, government (reformist ministers) and city councils under control. this could have been a turning point in Iran’s post-revolution history.. an important political/economical success for Khatami's government could have guaranteed them staying in power and Iran going through more reform.

A lot of reformists in Iran were getting ready for talks with US and negotiations to lift some of the imposed sanctions considering the help they gave Americans in Afghanistan. But it never happened and Bush came in with his famous "axis of evil" speech.. I as an Iranian still don't understand the motives behind it, I mean just looking at the reform Iran went through since start of Khatami era it just politically doesn't make sense to treat Iran the same way it was back in 79.. so it kind of gave the message to ppl that no matter what they do the stereotype is here to stay. I don't think we'll see any victory like Khatami's in future elections in Iran as ppl truly feel betrayed by reformist...


Have women in Iran right to vote??

yes Iranian women were always allowed to vote (it is only some Arab Muslim countries that don't let them).. Iranian women played a decisive role during revolution and they were very active involved.. after the revolution because Iran went to war and men were engaged in 8 years of war women's status in the society became even more valuable and they have been a big portion of Iran's work force since then... they are active in politics as well and we had our first female vice-president during Khatami era and we have female members in parliament too... in Iranian state law women can run for any political position even presidency but as the candidates are chosen by guardian council only heavy weight figures from political parties can go through.

the problem (well from equality point of view) Iranian society is facing now is women are overtaking men rapidly for example 60% of university students in Iran are women and the figures are showing it could even go higher. women are becoming more active in originally men dominated jobs and we see more and more female lawyers, fire fighters, police forces, politicians, athletes and artists. the image of oppressed Iranian women is fading away from society very fast. (again this is from a social point of view that deals with the general side of things)


Is it correct to suppose, that current anti-israeli and anti-US sentiment in Iran is just a matter of politicians and hard-line supporters, which are very visible in media but not so numerous in general iranian population?? I suppose, that young generation which doesnt remember the days of US supported Shah may be more friendly towards the west...
in current Iranian society there is a very distinct line drawn between American ppl and American government... (getting into the Israel discussion is hopeless as average Iranian doesn't give a damn about Israel or Palestine, state sponsored rallies shouldn’t be an indication)... American culture is very welcomed by Iranian youth.. music, fashion, movies, games, etc.. are all very popular in Iran... you could easily see this with the way that Americans who travel to Iran are treated... but American government is just too unpopular even worse than mullahs..

[Daniel1115]

Very informative post, Kraf. Unfortunately, as Kilroy stated, our media establishment approaches its coverage on Iran in the same manner as everything else - negativity sells. :-(

Thanks to your very interesting commentary - and readings that I do during my free time - the more I realize our societies have in common.