Iran: A Nation of Fearless Bloggers
IRAN: A Nation of Bloggers was included in a recent ReadWriteWeb post as an example why Facebook’s new “commitment to openness,” except where prohibited by local laws, doesn’t hold much value for it’s members living in countries such as Iran and China.
IRAN: A Nation Of Bloggers from ayrakus on Vimeo.
For full-screen mode: click the arrows in the bottom right corner of the player
The aesthetically stunning short includes some intriguing metrics:
- Half of Iran’s 70 million people are under the age of 25 – members of a generation that is opposed to the current regime. To express their views, many young Iranians have turned to blogging.
- As a result, Iran is the third largest country of bloggers.
- In 2005, there were over 700,000 blogs in Iran (100,000 actively maintained).
- Despite the risks involved and strong government opposition, the number of Iranian bloggers continues to grow.
This film is a stark reminder of the potency of freedom of speech - something I personally often take for granted.
My blog is “The Fearless Blogger” – certainly more an aspiration than a declaration. An endeavor in “Act as If”.
In my world, fearless blogging means taking the plunge to write openly and candidly, to write about whatever makes me feel inspired, to trust my intuition and write from the heart – without regard for attracting readers, subscriber numbers or SEO. In my sheltered world, the biggest fear I face – the obstacle I need to overcome to feel justified in claiming my domain - is the fear of being judged.
In my world, blogging is a means to become fearless.
This movie puts that in perspective. In their world, taking the plunge merely to attach their own name to the opinions they express means Iranian bloggers risk imprisonment or death.
In their world, one must be fearless to blog.
For more information:
Iran + Blogging = Motionographer (Details about the film)
Stop Torturing Us: Another Iranian Blogger is in Detention (1/20/09)
List of Iranians’ blogs
Committee to Protect Bloggers (tag: Iran)
Reporters Without Borders (search term: Iran)
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excellent post. what a stark reminder for us all. the cost of freedom. i always appreciate it when someone tells me something i don’t know. you just did.
i would like to have heard more from you during your two week stint on chuck’s project. i know you were sick, but i wonder, sometimes, if, (that was a lot of commas) when someone is intentionally in the spotlight, if there muse doesn’t suffer. this happens to me.
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Great post — really makes you think when you see stuff like this. And these bloggers definitely deserve more of our attention.
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@jenx67 I’m glad you’re enjoying the blog! I would have liked for you to hear from me more during the two weeks too – appreciate the feedback. I’ve definitely had my moments where over-thinking has somewhat muted my muse (post on that subject in the works!) but this was actually a combination of already less-than-ideal timing made even worse by getting sick. (I’d mixed up the dates Chuck sent me and thought I’d be starting this week, which would have given me a week to recoup from my travels. I was probably being over-ambitious thinking I’d be able to wear my blogger, doting aunt, NY tour guide, and tourist hats successfully AND then come back to write some killer blog posts as it was . . . once I got sick I was lucky to be able to wear my “get out of bed each day” hat!)
Hopefully people who stopped by from Chuck’s site found enough here to keep coming back – I’ve got a backlog of blog ideas I’m bursting to share!
I spoke recently to a medium (a visual artist) who had attended a large meeting hosted by psychic Sylvia Brown. I didn’t understand this at the time, but this one video completely explains what she was telling me. Sylvia told the audience that this generation may be the bravest generation in our history. The souls that have come forth to live in our time have volunteered because extreme bravery is needed for mankind to transform itself into the future. If you look at all those Iranian bloggers, that’s a massive, measurable force that is declaring itself, silently, that it is not stoppable. I know Chinese bloggers would face the same extreme governmental opposition. I think dictators are tiny, insecure, pathetic little men who, instead of marshalling the talented to serve everyone’s highest needs, fear those who may be superior and squash them instead. A tiny example of that from our own history is portrayed in the film Iron-Jawed Angels, which reminds us of the fierce battles, including imprisonment and torture, that women fought in order to help us win the right to vote in the USA. Each generation has heroes that help it transform the world. Looking around us at what the youth are doing around the world to transform their oppression into freedom, I am joyful to be a witness to the birth of a new, better world, and I honor the “information warriors” at the front lines of this battle of ideas.
Stark, yes. But also very encouraging, and I pray that the revolution continues to grow. I hope very much for freedom from oppression for Iranians as well as the Chinese and others.
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I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more from you in the future.