These ads really bother me!

Part of the “NEW AND IMPROVED” Iranian.com appears to be a noticeable increase in the bombardment of awful ads. I haven’t been hit by this much shit since the dotcom boom when I tried to buy bananas from webvan.com! Flashing everything from online baghalis, and backgammon, to a date with an Iranian “Angel” (yeah right!), to the unending line up of mediocre Iranian music! Click Here! Click There! Click This! Click Now! Click! Click! Baba Kardi Maro Click Digeh! Since I have yet to click on a single one of these ads, no doubt the new advertising department of Iranian.com is even harder at work, trying to sell even more of them! Increasingly encroaching on the priceless hallowed ground of this site, with an approach to commercialism that makes the real estate market crash look amusing. The motto of the sales department is apparently “Adspace is Sacred”.

It is no SECRET that Jahanshah Javid, the editor of this publication faced a decade + of financial losses and virtual bankruptcy, but like ISHMAEL searching for MOBY DICK, never took his hand off the helm in his undying quest for our freedom of speech. But recently out of desperation, he was forced (or coerced) and sold off close to one half of the very soul of it, obviously to someone whose fingerprints we increasingly now see more and more of, on the right hand side of this page. Coincidentally and possibly contractually, almost exactly one half of the page!

Is there no better way to ensure the viability of this site than these cheap, ugly, and annoying ads, by cheap, ugly, and annoying sponsors, whose only loyalty to the site is in it’s purported (but never proven) ability to sell us their cheap, ugly, and annoying products?

Instead of the outdated kuwaiti-bazari-banner route what about hitting up the esteemed new crop of so called “community” foundations who doltily drip huge amounts of cash uselessly into equally useless organizations who haven’t the faintest idea of what community service is, nevermind wants. Can the esteemed (esteamed?) sales department not put together even a 5 minute presentation that states the obvious and more importantly proven benefits and immeasurable value of Iranian.com? To make them understand what the priority is here?

Just an idea!

We know that the Iranian rich after decades of god (spelled correctly) fortune, realize they are getting close to the next phase, namely being wealthy, and they just aren’t getting good write offs like they sued to, I mean, used to. Dorost Mesleh Amrikaie-ha the rich have been busy clamoring to open up “foundations” to pool their money in order to get rid of their growing “cash flow problem”. One such organization is PARSA whose swanky Bay Area corporate HQ is literally less than 30 minutes from Iranian.com’s apartment! Recently and proudly, PARSA announced with a self congratulatory banquet complete with Hollywood’s delete, I mean elite, Goldie Hawn and her pet token ethnic “Sherpa” in tow, the list of deserving groups and individuals to whom they gave the cash to. Proving how amazingly out of touch at least PARSA is with our reality and priority.

Here are the “Winners”:

National Iranian-American Council: $50,000 to train community leaders on civic participation! Just the “leaders” (whoever they are) mind you, nothing measurable for you and me! For $50k I think a decent series of articles on the topic of civic activism, put on Iranian.com could reach more people in one month than NIAC ever could. Even if it stopped it’s open dialog for “peace” (piece?) with Iran.

Promises Films, Global Moms: $25,000 to make yet another boring film about the plight of women in Iran. This time to send an American to live in Iran for a few months and do some interviews? For $25k I think you could get real Iranian moms in Iran to write the actual truth about women in Iran, certainly a lot better than any American’s increasingly tainted and biased viewpoint.

Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, Persepolis Fortification Archive Project: $25,000 to preserve and publicize thousands of clay tablets, fragments and seals of the Achaemenid Persian Empire? While arguably worthwhile, especially if you are an Achaemenid, still clearly this is a luxury, when Iranian.com and free speech is barely breathing. Plus I thought “Oriental” wasn’t PC.

Iranian Alliances Across Borders, Camp Ayandeh: $5,000 to conduct a camp, which will bring together some 50 Iranian-American high school brats from around the country for a week of building leadership skills and learning about their Iranian heritage? I suggest, we spend it on internships for the youth by working at Iranian.com for a summer, you will learn more about your people from this site than any camp in Maryland could ever teach you.

Children’s Hope International Literacy and Development, Youth Ambassadors of Hope: $5,000 to empower Iranian youth between the ages of 12-25 to create and lead projects and organizations which benefit their communities locally and abroad? Don’t do the job Iranian parents are supposed to be doing! You want to create hope? Show it by supporting Iranian.com!

Stanford University, Persian Student Association – Business Alliance: $4,000 to get this, hold events to focus on a specific business or research topics? I have an idea why don’t you make the first forum a discussion and research topic about how to save Iranian.com! Let me emphasize this, PARSA actually gave money to Iranian Students (none of whom need it) at Stanford!

SO, what are we up to just on PARSA’s 2007 grants alone? My Spongebob calculator says at least $114,000 so far, that Iranian.com ought to have gotten, simply on it’s 10 year proven track record of selfless, priceless service.

But there’s more! In 2006, PARSA proudly and still ignoring the plight of Iranian.com right in it’s own backyard, made its inaugural grant of $210,000 entirely to an irrelevant (Hold on, I’ll show you why in a sec) organization by the name of Ashoka: “to support an Ashoka fellow of Iranian origin from anywhere in the world where Ashoka operates.” BTW, $210,000 in 2006 is a tad more than the $114,000 so far in 2007.

And here’s the why in a sec: Apparently in 2006 (or even 2007) Ashoka did not “operate” in the Bay Area. And even if it did, apparently Ashoka has never heard of Jahanshah Javid. Who is most certainly the most deserving “fellow of Iranian (albeit Abadani) origin”, I know.

There are more than 20 foundations like PARSA out there, spilling their obscene wealth down the drain like drunk Saudis on a road trip to Dubai. Some even literally shooting it right into outer space. If each one of them funded just one year of Iranian.com’s relatively meager bills, we would all be the richer for it. (And the advertisers can go back to Iranian satellite TV)

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