August 25, 2008

Help us find an ARTE documentary to save some Iranian e-Journalists

Almost 4 months ago, a Persian website broke a piece of news: "ARTE satellite channel featured a Dutch documentary which documented Iran Traffic Police Forces' bribery, whose scenes were gathered through sophisticated hidden camera methods." As expected, that piece of news was published so widely among Persian websites.

Administrators of the original website did not provide a sample of the documentary neither did they refer to an authentic source for it. After a while, Iran's Traffic Police (NAJA) sued them. Now they have to bring an authentic source for that piece of information to the court. The problem is that their original source had been a word of mouth from a Swiss man whom they can't locate anymore. Now they are trying to find a clue to that documentary.

At the first glance, it seems that the documentary (if it really be a product of ARTE) should be Deutsche, not Dutch. In addition, original information reveals the name of producer as Van Versen, though this spelling might be misleading thanks to lack of a standard transcription procedure.

So, it's a rather complicated story! That would be a big favor to them if the original documentary is found or some authentic information about it may be isolated. Help us do that.

August 12, 2008

My Latest Academic Degree


Last week Iran's Interior Minister provided a fake doctorate degree for MPs (read more here, and a sample of his fake degree may be found here). An Iranian blogger has asked others to prepare similar degrees. Here is mine, big thanks to Ardeshir Tayyebi.