Open letter to Mr Khamenei in Farsi by an Iranian professor, translated here to English.

Washington Times article about a planned interview with bin Laden in Iran. I don't rate WT's credibility very high, but sometimes news makes good fiction too. :-)

Iranian economy article from the Asia Times... saying nothing will change.

"... at present, different teams of international financial sectors are visiting Iran to help implement reform programs; but, one by one, they have all become convinced that this show of reform is just that - a show."

Prediction: If "nothing" happens tomorrow on Students' Day, nothing will happen for a long time. Khatami broke his tradition and isn't talking to students.

It's Eid-el-Fitr, and everywhere on the streets people are sitting behind desks with boxes for collections. Remember the poor people at this time, so they can have sweets to celebrate the end of Ramazan.

Also picked up the Economist, again, and saw the most ridiculous censorship I've seen so far (well, OK, maybe the black squares topped it). There was a picture of the August 2000 convention Tipper and Al Gore kiss (p45 of November 23 edition) and the censor had used Nikko to cover the mouth area of both parties. It is so weird... so much like America in some ways - any violence is OK, but any form of "love" being shown and it gets an R or NC-17. Here there's no classification scheme, only banned or not banned, so kids can watch any kind of violence. Of course Tipper and Al are married... but if I think too hard about this I'll go crazy, so I'll stop! Suffice it to say it's somewhere between America and the Taliban.

(The picture was almost exactly like the AP version same cropping, same angle, same kiss, just the Economist one is a few seconds before.)

Ramazan is ending (whew).

An article on the Alavi foundation and a story about a film made about the flipside of "Not Without My Daughter" - "Without My Daughter", directed by Alexis Kouros. I can't find any of his films on IMDB. But he made "Waiting for Godot at De Gaulle" about the unbelievable story of Mehran Karimi Naseri.

According to Afarinesh, quoted in Iran News Khatami may not speak to Iranian students on Students'' Day, December 7. Who knows when Ramazan will end, that is, when Eid-el-Fitr will be? Will political factors influence it?