Cyrus Farivar

Editor’s Note: This is a English translation of an interview originally done in Persian by Kamtarin, published on September 21, 2010. I did not translate this interview myself, nor have I been in direct contact with Kamtarin nor Ozra Kiarashpour, Hossein’s mother, but my Derakhshan family source did confirm the authenticity of this interview and the accuracy of the translation. —BEGIN TRANSLATION— Salman, a writer with the website Kamtarin, conducted an interview with Ozra Kiarashpour, the mother of Hossein Derakhshan…

Hello Cyrus, Here is the comment I can provide at this time: Since learning of Hossein Derakhshan’s arrest in November 2008, DFAIT officials have been in contact with Iranian authorities, including by diplomatic note and through high level meetings, to seek consular access. Iran does not legally recognize dual nationality. As such, Canadian- Iranians are considered to be Iranian under local law. The consular assistance that may be provided by Canadian consular officials to Canadian-Iranian nationals is very limited. This…

A member of Hossein “Hoder” Derakhshan’s family has confirmed to me that he is awaiting a sentence in his trial in Tehran, and that the prosecutor is seeking the death penalty.

In recent days there has been a great bruhaha over Haystack, the anti-censorship software aimed to help Iranians inside of Iran. On September 2, 2010, Evgeny Morozov, a journalist colleague of mine, and online columnist for Foreign Policy magazine, wrote a thought-provoking piece about Haystack. In it, he called into question how Haystack works and argued that in fact, Haystack may be dangerous to Iranians, given that no one knows precisely how Haystack works except its two creators Austin Heap and Dan Colascione. …

So July 20 was my first episode hosting Spectrum, and July 27 was my first one hosting all by myself! You can listen here: July 20: [audio:http://cyrusfarivar.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/01-Spectrum_-Viennas-UN-AIDS-conference-German-data-protection-and-the-science-of-forgery-detection-in-London.mp3] July 27: [audio:http://cyrusfarivar.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/01-Spectrum_-A-new-gesture-based-user-interface-German-e-books-and-an-Italian-autonomous-vehicle-treks-to-China1.mp3] Feel free to subscribe to the podcast here (and leave me a review on iTunes!), or listen to archived shows on the show’s page here. It’s been a blast to plan and produce these shows! It’s hard to believe that after years of working at home and having a commute…

Wow! I can’t believe it! The February 2010 Tour de Taco won the East Bay Express’ Best of the Bay 2010 award for: Best Bike Tour. (That said, I’m not sure how many bike tours there are in the East Bay, but heck, I’ll take it!) As the EBE writes: Sometimes when you hop on a bike, you just want to ride — around the block, through the neighborhood, until you get tired and find yourself lost and in search…

Sevgili Dostlar, My piece on the Mesut Özil and modern Turkish-Germans aired on The World yesterday. In it, I interview Prof. Dr. Claudia Riehl of the University of Cologne, Susanne von Würzen (thanks, Courtney!), Mehmet Aydan (thanks, Begum!), and Cem Özdemir. Also, don’t forget my editor Patrick Cox’ language podcast, The World in Words! [audio:http://cyrusfarivar.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/062820105.mp3]

After many months of nearly no information about the status of Hossein Derakhshan, various Iranian websites and his family are reporting that his trial began on Wednesday in Tehran. Very little new information has been released beyond this fact, although I managed to get this quote via email from an source close to Derakhshan’s family: “One trial session was held and although no family members were allowed in, but the family remains optimistic that no serious issues exist in his…

Since earlier this year I’ve wanted to change the theme of this blog. I felt that it was time for a change — after all I’ve had this blog on WordPress for around five years, and mucked around with Moveable Type before that. Way back in the day I started blogging on LiveJournal — heck, I didn’t even hear the word blog for the first time until Fall 2000. And so now, with major help from Chirag Desai I managed…

So I get that people want the iPhone. I get that it’s a really sexy, really popular handset. I’m not convinced that I’ll buy one just yet, but I signed up for T-Mobile’s email updates about it, and just yesterday got this: But seriously T-Mobile (Germany’s exclusive iPhone provider), do you really need SEVEN different plans? In fact, there’s so many, that they need two pages to fit them all. Here’s the first four: I won’t go over all of…