rosie is roxy is roshan

spilling the beans..craig..

first of all, the beans have already been spilled in so many different ways that it's pretty much a matter of public record by now for anyone who doesn't want to blind themselves to the facts of what I've endured here (which are many, btw, the liberal left goosesteps just as nicely as any other group...). in any case, as regards the progressive ostracizing, implicit or explicit, of the non-iranian voices, or should i say voice, here...

it wasn't always like that, craig.

at the end of 07, in the "wild wild west" there were so many extreme voices, colorful, volatile voices. such a rainbow. there were ulta-shaahis and brooding genius poets (i do not refer to the juniorr high school creative writing class level poems so--called which abound on this site). there were independent spiritual voices (meaning not Bahai or Christian or anything like that, independent voices who'd come to their own personal spiritual cosmology over yearss and years of exploration0. so many voices, and strident ones, too, that all voices had equal validity. and that was a very healthy place for non-iranian voices who chose to to be here and be not only heard but also valued.

rosie t. was foremost among those non-iranian voices, uquestionably. an drosie never could've achieved that had she been iranian. could never have been a mediator, or a kind of..symbol, almost a mascot..as a kind of..diva.

and that's what makes rosie's, and by extension my, story so tragic here. because that prominenc e and respect and also controversy which i generated as rosie because of my americanness (on top of my me being me) that our fearless leader sought out my close friendship...

and it's also the reason it was so easy to marginalize me, and the reason why he did it. for power.

so i was constantly rewarded then punished, my work chronically suppressed, and when you're not featuring what is clearly among the top work onsite and not infrequently the best work, and it comes from a non-iranian, there is going to be at some point a subtle, even sub-conscious feeling, that that work is not important.

and hence by extrension it is inevitable that that will have some kind of trickle down effect, where other non-iranian voices start to also seem questionable. it can't be otherwise, because rosie t. was just too..prominent, too..important actually..so it's kind of like clinton's stupid blow job sort of disgracing the entire democratic party in the eyes of many...

and in tandem with the highly successful "purge" over time of those extreme, colorful voices...

and you have to remember that rosie t. had deep conviction in this website as a vehicle for global iranian non-iranian communication, and that was also part of why j. sought me out, he believed in that at the time...and well it's interesting to note that shortly after he  began his campaign against me he changed the mission statement of the site to, a website for iranians and those interested in iran, to a website for iranians..

 and again, trickle down. you see if j.'d let me be as important and among most read writers here as i was, no one could attack fish for being american, implicitly or explicitly, because when she'd be on my threads, i wouldn't let them, and then they'd...stop. And I do mean stop because when ALLOWED, rather than OPPRESSED, i know more about mediation and how this website works and how to work IT than any single person here. Except j. And we..tie.

and a, i mean..what can you say when work like this is unfeatured on a continual basis? it's one quarter, exactly one quarter of the 25 pieces I wrote over the past year that were not featured which i consider important (all 25, yes, but these the most..)

//iranian.com/main/blog/rosie-roxy-roshan/different-kind-death#comment-173885

and if you want to respond craig, i assure you he won't give a sh-t. in fact it will tickle his fancy to know that i'm still hidden here somewhere on this obscure grotto of a blog talking about him...because...

it's all about power for him. all. all. from the minute he wakes up until he has his couple of hours shut eye each night and then wakes up again going clickety clickety clickety clack with the keys, all, every single moment of it, is about power, craig, nothing more..and castrating and suppressing rosie was all about power too.and.. 

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and well, my love, in case for some bizarre reason you happen to be combing this obscure grotto of a thread, what can i say but...

more power to you.

and much adieu about nothing.

Sorry to see you go, AF

Sorry to see you go, AF :(

I guess its kind of inevitable that nobody except iranians will feel welcome on this site sooner or later. 

wait up!

call me darling 212-529-8016. or e-mail me, as usual. i'd planned to just answer the last two blogs and already i was seriously jonesing-so...so...so...

well, the curtain is closing my friends

nah, don't worry.  i'm not going to do a dying swan scene or post a blog.  but i'm outta here.  asked JJ to delete my registered names but he said he doesn't delete names anymore.  gives everyone an option to return at will.  and perhaps i will at some point and time.   but for now, this is more harmful than helpful.  try as i might, i keep forgetting that these are iranians, not americans or even iranian-americans... at heart.  all this iranian-american stuff is for show only.  first chance they get... it's US-bashing time.  and that's called freedom of speech...LOL.  but if someone criticizes iran... it's anti-iranian.  i'm sorry.  but no-can-do.  i AM american and i'm tired of these MF's dissing me because of it.  dissing MY country.  and most of them live here.  and i'm supposed to suck it up.  i've tried to deal with it on a person-by-person status but it's clear that those lines are slowly vanishing.  those that i had respect for at one time are just better at showing a facade to the public.  is it a coincidence that two of the most focal NON-iranians are the ones whose accounts have been closed?  zion and PC?  yes, samsam was too but by the same person and for the same reasons.   and that reason is?  difference of opinion.  no more, no less.  and that several others are victims of personal vendettas?  i saw, first hand, how it was done to others and recognize the signs.  how they treat each other is shameful.  it's no wonder they treat non's as bad as they do.

hypocracy and double standards are THE game of the day.

it's ugly my friends.  U G L Y.  husband is pissed.  at them for being the ugly and hate-filled people they are.  and at me for exposing myself TO that ugliness.  he'd much rather i keep my mouth shut against injustice and racism and just post on the "nice" posts.  such as food and gardening.  yeah.  right. 

they can paint it any color they want but racism is virilent here. and anti-semitism.  and anti-americanism.   

i am disappointed and depressed to the max.  i do have a vested interest in iran and i do respect the iranian people and culture.  but my opinion of iranians in general has reached such a low due to this site and certain activities, behavior and attitudes that i've decided i've let a few bad apples ruin the basket and that i need to step back.  step back and try to focus on the real iranians i know and love.

IC is an addiction.  the first few days will be the toughest... :-)  but just like anything else, i'll substitute a bad habit with a good habit.

i'm sure i'll be back and i'll look for y'all.  and as always, roiban, you know where to find me behind the scenes.  i hope you'll stay in touch.

PC... keep your head down.  there's an ugly wind a'blowin' and your old favorite friends (said extremely facetiously) are apparently captaining this particular boat now. 

peace out.  truly.

AF

"and PC... what about you?  was it referred to you or did you find it on your own... and how?"

That's a really long story! Heh... I won't bore you with the details. I actually started reading Iranian blogs before I even knew this place was here. Some of the bloggers were contributers here. That as back in the days when contributions were by submission and approval only, and feedback was via email. So that's how I found out about this website - bloggers referencing posts they made over here. To be honest I liked it a lot better before the change in format. The quality of the things that got posted was much higher, and of course the ugliness in the comments wasn't there because there were no comments.

Oh, and Rosie I also had fun browsing through "Iranian Personals" a few times when I saw that add popping up here. It seemed like it was there all the time, and maybe it was. That was right after i got divorced and I was thinking about signing up, but I never did :)

thanks.

everyone seems to have their own opinion as to why someone else is here.  as if everyone has to have a motive or an agenda.  sometimes it's just what it is... no more, no less.  my reason, as everyone knows, is by marriage.  that, in some cases, seems to be the sole reason for people to be antagonistic.  just the thought of an iranian married to an american irritates people.   not all.... by NO means... feel this way.  but you can't help but sense it.  and resentment because we're vital outspoken women on top of that.  that's why you hear the "you don't belong here" crap.  like they own this site instead of jj. 

bottom line, again, is that there is potential for this to be a very vital communication tool for iran and the west.  too bad it doesn't present a more positive front for newcomers.  you can read about persian poetry, gardening and cats anywhere.  you can't find a forum like this anywhere. 

the first time i found out about the site was in the summer of

2004. i was taking an intensive inntermedite course in persian at ohio state univrsity and was on iranianpersonals.com. i was in touch very closely with several men and one of them told me to come here and read an article. you can find the story about it and the link to the article under the old rosie to. account. it'sabout the qajars and pornography. i didn't come back much but then a man i was gettingin volved with on the site, a filmmaker, i wrote about him andhis film for persian heritage magazine, they'd asked me to submit an article i had a lot of cnnections then. and after that he told me to submit it here. that was in december of 04. it was the first time i had any contact with javid and i remember it very very well. thee was always this kind of lethal. electricity. it doesn't matter anymoree what i say about him and me or where. no one will read it and the few who do--well i doubt it's going to make or break craig's life.

 anyway i was published here end 04 nd beginning 05 and then the man and i, well, it didn't go anywhere. slowly i withdrew from anything having to do with iran and i burnt all my bridges with some very importnt contacts. by beginning of 06 it was over.

the absolutely only contact i had with iran was this site for almost two years. i'd check it periodically, just in case...just in case...i got interested again. i wanted to keep my finger on the pulse. i started getting a little excited about iran again when ahmadinejad visited columbia fall 07 because it's my alma mater. i came here immediately after watching the debate on video on computer to check out what the buzz was and there was this blogging...and well i was shy to participate because i wasn't iranian but it was all such a mess, everyone yelling and cursing and screaming..that, believe it or not, i jumped in just to try to help out. it was under soraya's thread. they were sayig things to her that i didn't understand because her politics was so similar to mine, i didn't understand what all the fuss was about. then i realized they didn't understand that she just has a kind of global liberal left outlook that is worldwide so i thought i'd try to explain it within that context. and maybe they'd cool off and surprisingly they did iso i sayed on. to be a kind of mediatoron the politcal threads.

and then suddenly i was rosie t. and then suddenly there was javid..and the rest you know, more or less...

_________________

j. makes 50K pryear onsite. it was 30K til he got wayne as business manager. the fighting onsite doesn't really affect the number of the redership that much. some people are attracted to it, they find it amusing, mostly iranian expats. others are repelled by it, some iranian, some not. it all evens out in the end. six of one, a half dozen of the other. that's not what concerns me. what concerns me is the impression it gives to non-iranians of iran, not j's pocketbook. andnot his status in the global expat community either. he is what he is and he's been that for a long time andit will never change. an icon of iranian expat pop culture with a liberal lefty taste to it. he will always be that and this site will always be its home. as i ften would say

politics and pop popitics and pol.

and this "jj" so-called of whom you speak. this..media event called "jj'.

i never refer to him as jj btw. only j. it's short for jahanshah. i don't know anyone called jj. i only know an event called jj.  a medi phenomenon.

it's all very interesting and i wonder

what exactly JJ is expecting for the future.  i'm sure he's only just now realizing even minimal financial success from the site.  it's all about advertising baby.  i wonder if there is any participation from members of the site.  i mean, you've got your google and dating sites but what about members?  i wonder how many actually put their money where their mouth is... so to speak.  :-)

i doubt there is EVER going to be complete harmony and to be perfectly honest, i doubt there really should be.  but there is no question that the ugliness IS going to hurt the site in the long run.  that is, IF JJ wants to be recognized as a serious website.  not much anyone can do about that but it is a shame.  people simply need to be more responsible.

just curious.  how did you, rosie, find the site?  and PC... what about you?  was it referred to you or did you find it on your own... and how?

I didn't think you were being smart-assy,

I just didn't know why you asked the question. I was pretty clear that I was just doing it more or less arbitrarily, as things came to me. Now I have to say that for every hit i found on the first page, there were two or three that I didn't.

On the other hand it is kind of strange that iranian film, poetry, painting, music and contemporary art all rank one or two., or both.

On the other other hand when I did this last year Iran was number six, which I felt was absolutely astonishing,but this time it wasn't anywhere near that, it didn't come up til page 6 or something like that.

I just googled "google rankings" lol an there are sites that explain how the ranking works. I don't understand them, you probably would. (On the other hand I had the common sense to do that lol-I really truly am). What I did understand is that ranking is determined by number of pages in the site and number of links to the pages. This site is vast and they never delete anything either, no matter how old it is. So that would have something to do with it.Alos because it's reader generated, it has tons and tons of links. Everyone's always posting some stupid youtube video or other for whatever stupid reason.

I didn't see anything about paying google to have high rankings, but someone told me once that you have to, and it makes perfect sense. And they were also talking about making sure certain key words came up high, which would explain the "ranian" part to some extent.

Anyway, the point is that there is no point, I don't understand it. But one thing I can tell you for sure is that javid and his LLC don't have a whole lot of money. They really don't. So wht I'd assume is that they pay as much as they possibly can to put themselves in the high ranking range, and I guess they also focus on certain keywoards.

What I'm trying to say is that whatever they may pay google only puts them in the league with other very large sites, and is the common business practice. If they weren't large enough, they wouldn't be able to pay, and once they get large enough, that will then keep on growing exponentially (is that the write word?) and they'll get larger and larger. I mean both in terms of readership, number of pages (due to its being reader-generted)m number of links and hence rankings.

So the point is still the same. It's a very highly ranked site. it reallly is. But not really for political, historical and acadmic topics, the first obviously because they have so much competiton and next two because they aren't really the site's focus.But for cultural issues, yes. But agian, that would also have to do with the selection of certain keywords.

Also you have to notice that I narrowed the search on a few of them. For instance, Farah Diba didn't come up, so I added Pahlavi, Ahmadinejad didn't come up so I added idiot lol. And so on.

It's just a highly ranked site,that's all. It's irrelevant how much they pay to keep it up there, if you think about it, because they can only pay more when they have more advertisers and so on, which means when they're already doing well enough.

It's just highly ranked, that's all.

Wasn't being smart-assy

I don't know what you mean by you don't know where I got my stats.

I was just wondering if you'd done some complicated analysis or not. I don't even know how to do that myself but there apparrently are ways to get the real stats for what search terms people use, which is good since "placement" on Google doens't seem to necessarily be legit! Not that I'm accusing google of anything, but even when I'm searching for legit (non-political) stuff,Ii get all kinds of weird and irrelevant results, and most of the irrelevant ones are commercial websites. Not that there's anything wrong with paying Google to put your site in a result list where it doens't belong *cough*

Well I just tried it and it's already changed..

the first hit for google for "iranian" is the website itself, iranian.com, which is excellent for the website I guess.

The second hit for "iranian" is the one that you have on "iranian musicians". It moved up from your number three to two.

The one that you got ranking number  two about "iranian society" is no longer on the top page.

I don't know what you mean by you don't know where I got my stats. I just googled all kinds of things. i did google Iran and iranian poetry, film, etc. but for some reason it never occured to me to google just "iranian"'

I haven't the foggiest idea why.      

I only listed when the

I only listed when the website  came up as a hit on the first page of google.

Rosie, I'm not sure how you are gathering your stats but try typing "Iranian" into google and see what happens? :)

My top 3 results:

1. Iranian.com | Nothing is Sacred
   May 15, 2009 ... Iranian society is begging for modernity and acceptance ... The assumption that the Iranian theocracy is unchangeable leaves no room for any possible ...
   www.iranian.com/ - 61k - Cached - Similar pages -

If the ratings weren't so high

I(okay it's verbose but it's breezy and silly so don't worry, I think you'll enjoy the read..)

 would totally agree with you. But let's say I were curious about Pakistani poetry, or Egytian music, or Indian film and i came across a source like this one under the same name as top-ranked on google. And that of course made me know right away that it was a much loved and respected site among that population. And I found my article and I said hey this is pretty cool, let me check out the site and see what else they have, and I went to the homepage (I do this all the time, I'm sure you do too), and just skimming it I sai,d wow this is a scmorgesbord, and the political articles seem pretty professioonal, and there are all these newsfeeds...and everything else under the sun. Honestly I would just think well you know this must be the cross-section of a middle-class, well-educated Pakistani population. Until proven otherwise. So then I'd continue my search on that Pakistani poetty on google,,and what would I ifnd? Books from Amazon, scholarly analyses, reviews from newspapers, and so forth. But I wouldn't find anything like this forum because it simply doesn't exist. So this is what I'd rely on as my sampling, until/unless I realized through the writings or in the about us, that it's a Pakistani or Turkish or Bolivian American website. That would only mbolster my conclusions- because the sampling is narrowed. I'd feel more confident saying oh okay this is more or less what educated middle-class Aremnianc or Croatian or Vietnamese Americans are like, that makes sense., I'd think.

Look, it's like being in a shopping center. I've been in shopping centers in Berlin and Santo Domingo, and on Long Island. The people dress, behave, cccarry themselves very differently. That's the impression I got and it's accurate enough. I don't include though, very wealthy cities like Munich or Milan becase I know that's an upper class sampling. Anyway rich people behave the same everywhere. LOL

As for the erotic art article, well they find the article, they get curious, then they snoop around the site. And they see what they see, and that's what they base their conclusions on. And trust me, form my own websearching, when I see there are threads, I'll spend more time on the threads than the articles themselves,precisely because I know I'm going to get a real glimpse at who reads that publication. In other words, I'm nosey.

Look the bottom line we both agree on. There's a certain burden of responsibility here for reflecting Iranian Americans and iranians in general  to the world, and in fact on the Internet probably the largest because it's so highly ranked, so diverse, and it's the ony one that's really reader-driven. To be honest with you, I think one of the reasons people do whatever they do hereits because people think ti's just an incest fest. like Jahanshah calls it, 24/7party. I mean do you remember those threads on Gaza? Do you think people were thinking at all that they arei nvolved in  shaping world opinion on Iranians? No. But they were. If I came here websearching Iranian erotic art and snooped on the homepage in January, I'd ssay oh my god, I had no idea Iranians were so interested in Israel/Palestine. Over half the articles and blogs and newsfeeds here are about that (they were),How strange. I wonder why? So I'd look..and..

do you remember how revolting the discussions on those theads were? Well I'd think okay, educated middle-class Iranians (or expat or American Iranians) are rude, beligerent, intolerant of each other, opinionated,inflexibe, volatile, dogmatic.,.

and you know wht? If I were of a humanitarian or political type, I'd pobably say let me focus my energies on sri Lanka or Darfur or Venezuela..or..or...other hot spots.I'd figure, these people and Khomeini and this jerk Ahmadinejad--no wonder.

And I know there are lots of non-Iranians lurking here. I know it because at first I was shy to partipate here despite my copious knowleddge of the culture, simply because I wasn't Iranian. And if I was shy, can you imagine someone who's just curious or just beginning their study of the topic. And I also know they're here because they tend to pop up on the political threadss specifically about American politics, where they feel more confident to speak up. (Howeverr they are often ignored rather than welcomed...).But they are here, and dollars to donuts most of them found the site by googling. I mean, how could you miss  it?

Hey, look,  Natalia did. And she iis 25 per cent of the four regular non-Iranian bloggerrs not counting related by marriage. Since two have absconded now for months, she is actually 50% And she is about to become 100%. And she found this place by googling...

haha lol It's so funny because in statistics you can't draw conclusions based on too small a sampling and well, four people. But that IS the sampling!

Totlally,

ps evidence vs facts, I'm not sure what you mean.

i'm not sure

its a question of coming to conclusions based on evidence. if you are non-iranian and you stumble upon this site (stumble is not even the right word when the site is ranked first and second on google for very common topics) your conclusions are totally justified.

do you really think so?  let's say you hit on the blog about erotic woman's art.  what justified conclusion is there going be to that?  evidence of what?  extremely varied moral or ethical, beautiful or ugly opinions.  i'm not sure a lay person coming to iranian.com is going to conclusively come to any conclusion. except that there is no conclusion to any policical issue.  :-)

in that this is such a unique forum, i do believe it bears a great burden of responsibility than others.  what you do get to see here versus others is a real exchange.  not just comments following comments. 

is evidence the same thing as facts?  and is a conclusion based on evidence really a conclusion?  hmmmm....

it is not a question of generalizing

it isa question of coming to conclusions based on evidence. if you are non-iranian and you stumble upon this site (stumble is not even the right word when the site is ranked first and second on google for very common topics) your conclusions are totally justified). In these kinds of discussions (the one on Delara on Iranian of the Day right after she died being a magnificent eample)you are confronted with what can only reasonably be construed as the way Iranians are. That is not stereotyping on the part of the reader, i. If they aree going to the top discussed Iranian subject wolwide and see such a long thread like that one on one of the currently most widely discussed topics worldwide on Iran (she was), they are going to figure, well the writers and mdoerators certaainly must know how wwidely viewed the site is, and if that is how they want to present themselves, that is how they are.

These readers don't know that it is almost completely an Iarnian American site, they don't know that it is a site one of whose specific missions is to provide  aa forum for people who would otherwise  have no place to publish (it is), and so forth. These readers conclusions cannot be construed as stereotyping about Iranians.

What they do know, you see, jjust by a cursory glance, is that it is a well-educated fourm (it is) and that it encompasses just about every topic. under the sun so they see that the participants represent a vast cross-section  (they do).

totally.

yes, i totally agree

oh shit.  i used the word "totally" again.  :-)

i absolutely agree with you. but NOW however, i think it IS important to acknowledge the interest generated.  for exactly the reasons you've expressed your concerns.  much the same way many people want to "generalize" about americans or the south (;-), it will definitely reflect on iranian.com.

What I was cocerned about when I wrote it

was not the interest generated but those people who would happen on the site while searching for Iranian topics, rather than those already interested. Very often they will then check out the rest of the site. And it is the name-calling and hostility I was worried about, it both paints a very ugly picture of Iranians--and if the site is ranked numbe one on google,, howw ccn you expect them to think it is anything but a tru picture-- and turns them off to the site so that they won't return.Yes, ,the site attained the high rankings because of the interest of Iranians, but once the rankings are there it will attract an enomous number of non-Iranians.

very interesting

i did a comparable on yahoo.  don't know why but i've always favored yahoo over google.  but the results are very similar.  and while i never really thought about it before, it is a very good indicator of current AND future interest in iranian.com.  it certainly gives me something to think about...lol.