Slashdot Mirror
Iran Cracks Down on Internet Sites
Dan Brickley writes "It appears that Iranian ISPs have been ordered to block a large number of popular Web sites, including weblogging, community, chat and email services. Web (particularly weblog) use has been increasing rapidly in Iran, with 64000+ weblogs published by Iranians via various sites. As of today, if the news is correct, the majority of these may be inaccessible to their authors, as will the email (eg. Yahoo) services they use to communicate with friends, colleagues and family worldwide. See stop.censoring.us and hoder.com for more details. The newly expanded blocks include PersianBlog, Blogger and the Google-hosted Orkut 'social networking' site, where Iranians come third after Brazil and USA, representing 7% of all users. How can we get our Iranian friends back in the Web?"
We could invade and liberate them. We're right next door. Then the Iranians could write about how happy they are on their blogs.
Invade.
I for one welcome our new internet warlords
Complete control of information is required to stay in power. Lets hope that the people can get around this.
Hmm...
They can use a proxy to surf the web.
.01 cent
just my
Why are these ISPs trying to get rid of paying customers again? I'd bet that a large percentage of their users would have no use for the Internet without blogs and such.
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
"How can we get our Iranian friends back in the Web?"
/. is blocked?
I was going to say, "Liberate them", but someone beat me to it.
This would never happen in a system like here in the US. Corporations would never stand for blocking of site sthat they could advertise on. Besides, big money in convincing people that they need faster, bigger, more expensive machines and services so they can "stay connected" and all that.
I wonder if
[ping: Iran, can you hear me now?]
Sugapablo
[o]_O
Go take a look at blogger some time. Seriously. There are a zillion blogs on there now, it updates so fast that you could post your own blog and not make it to the "Latest Updates" page and catch your post before more than 500 new items scrolled it off the screen.
If everyone has a voice, no one really has a voice. Any single voice will be drowned out by many thousands of "Gee, this is my blog, I thought it would be a good idea to start one because my cat is so cute. I'll post pictures of my cat and I love Jesus."
The main thing is that the Iranians have access to medical information, educational information, and worldwide news outlets. None of those are being squashed, even by the fundamental, right-wing Muslim leadership. They know that having good quality information is key to improving the quality of life in their country.
Dissent is the only thing prohibited, but I doubt there is any country in which real dissent is permitted.
I wouldn't be surprised if a fair number of Orkut users don't miss their "Iranian friends" as much as you might thing. There's been a lot of bitching about them and the Brazillians from the English-speaking Orkut users. Can't say whether the complaints have any merit or not, but I've heard them in more than one place.
Wasn't there a bit of a student uprising in the late 90's in Iran? What happened to that? Is there any way we can help support a grass-roots rebellion in Iran? Overthrow of the islamic fundamentalists is the only solution for Iran.
"The Internet reacts to censorship as damage and routes around it." - John Gilmore (frequently misattributed to Howard Rheingold)
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
How are you going to feel when the mullahs providing the moral impetus to suicide bombers get nuclear weapons?
Surely there will be many "Liberate Them" comments, but can't the citizens of Iran communicate their dislike to the ISPs or the government?
How can we get our Iranian friends back in the Web?
Right, because it's not cool to mess with a country's political system by invading them and liberating them from a dictator, thereby "imposing our will" on a foreign country that doesn't want it. But it's just fine to try and subvert a dictatorial government and impose our sense of liberty on its people. Because, it's like, the information, dude... The information wants to be free, dude...
So, is it worth killing and dying to get these people their rights back? GWB already has a hardon for the arabs; this might be a good excuse. Now all we need is some satalite imagery of packets being blocked.
Let's send the kids of poor people over to Iran to die and free thoes packets! GWB already loves sequels; look at Gulf War 2 as an example. He could go talk to Sadam and figure out how he fucked up in the Iran/Iraq war. Then GWB could launch an invasion of Iran from Iraq. It'll be just like the 80s agian. Only this time, USians will be dying.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
Easy... (help) depose the current regime.
..the change should come within primarily.
How ? Now that's the not-so-easy part. I fear the Bush administration might speed that along, but.. *eyes Iraq*
How can we get our Iranian friends back in the Web?
Folks, it is human nature, and particularly in the American nature, to be sarcastic and flippant. This is mostly true of younger folks, who make up the vast majority of this site's readership. I expect a flood of nasty comments based on this quote in the article. Don't take them seriously.
A more genuine response (one that will actually be acted on) is one that expresses a concern for the rights of others.
(OK, all of you free Europeans are now free to follow up and criticize my assertion. In your native tongue (and not German). Enjoy.)
I have found a loophole, and am back onliNO CARRIER
How can we tell them not to censor the web when we censor just about everything here at home. I mean, yes, the web is pretty well uncensored in the US, but TV isn't, and neither is radio. In fact, there's no free non-censored medium in America. You have to pay for Internet, Cable, Satellite TV, or Satellite Radio in order to have the right to free speech in a country who's first amendment to the constitution guarantees that right. How can we expect Iran to have free speech/expression if we don't really even support it?
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
Commercialization! We need to bomb them with S.I. Swimsuit issues and Brittany Speares CD's.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
Yeah, there have been about 1000 US troops killed in Iraq in the last 18 months or so.
And how many thousands of Iraqis? When a car bomb explodes that kills 2 US troops, it's major news. When the more common event of a car bomb killing 50 Iraqis happens no one notices.
(Oh and using "USian" is bullshit - the vernacular is "American". Gawd, why someone who probably defends Islam as it shackles women and stones gays uses "USian" is beyond me...)
Why is the religion of peace directly responsible for 28 out of the 30 violent conflicts raging in the world today?
Why is the religion of peace responsible for the vast majority of chattel slavery in the world today?
Why is the religion of peace responsible for the vast majority of terrorism in the 20th and 21st Centuries?
Why are the practitioners of the religion of peace routinely slaughtering unarmed practitioners of every other religion wherever they can get away with it?
Why does the religion of peace call for the murder of anyone who converts from the religion of peace to another religion?
Why do so many of the believers of the religion of peace look forward to the opportunity to rape 72 virgins in heaven if they die while killing innocent women and children of other religions? Is it a god they worship, or just sex? If a god, then shouldnt heaven have more to do with him than their libidos?
Why do the leaders of the religion of peace routinely issue fatwas (death warrants) for anybody who questions their holy book of peace and their holy prophet of peace?
Why is the religion of peace responsible for the sexual mutilation of millions of little girls and the savage oppression of women?
Why did millions of the practitioners of the religion of peace laugh, cheer and dance in the street because 3,000 innocent men, women and children were murdered by seventeen men who supposedly hijacked the religion of peace? And why dont the real practitioners of the religion of peace condemn the supposed hijackers of their religion? Why the deafening silence? Why the smiles? Why the cheers and high fives?
Perhaps I just dont understand this whole PEACE thing. Did the definition of the word change, or is somebody just blowing a lot of smoke?
Medieval (mediaeval) societies don't need the net.
Once they have their own Renaissance and put religious fundemetalisum in its place they will rejoin the 21C.
Robert
I'd find it pretty easy to believe that Google is in cahoots with the US Gov't as far as information sharing and data mining go.
Orkut is a great way to find networks of people who are unfriendly to the Iranian regime. Skilled data miners can sift through the social networks and identify people to become CIA agents/informers/whatever.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
we should just kill 'em all. It'd be easier, and we'd get rid of some more fuckin religious nuts.
Or rather, let the Iranian government do this. Let them put their fists down, inconvenience and stiffle their own people, but with just enough proxy servers and new services opening cracks that the people are always getting a taste of what's available to them.
At some point, everybody in their country will understand what's between them and what they want.
Tweet, tweet.
our friends? What the hell are you talking about? Unless The Great Satan is the new cool replacement for dude and I just didn't know.
Ya know what would be cool? some kind of p2p way
to access the web. The p2p network should run over
port 80, and when i ask for any webpage i want
to visit, any random (idle?) node could reply to
my request and serve as a proxy for me.
And NO! i DON'T mean windows 98 botnets =oP
Well, just bomb them into democracy. This worked in Vietnam, Korea and Iraq, so I guess another campaign of liberation and christening by our American friends will do the trick once more.
Mod this -100 (fascist), please.
Reports are in that Billy Mathews's, age 12, mother is blocking access to certain sites she deems inapropriate. "He was really into this Slashdot thing where they show pictures of a grown man's (deleted) being spread open. And don't forget that porn... it'll make him go blind." she was reported as saying.
Billy was unavailable for comment but his press secretary released this statement: "Thats fine, when I'm 18 I'm so gonna look at all the porn I want. Until then I'll just use anonymous proxies. lol!!!!!111 omg wtf shes coming in my room... [end of signal]".
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
These encrypted anonymous programs have become very popular lately and should help preserve freedom and anonymity worldwide:
f orge.net
http://tor.freehaven.net
http://freenet.source
As a start, familiarize yourself with the increasing falsity of the statement "the internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it." (also visit http://sethf.com/pioneer, about a guy who recognized this.) Creating a censorship-resistent regime is brutally complicated, thanks to several factors: increasingly advanced censorware (sometimes authored in the U.S.) that is used by libraries, companies, governments, and such--that uses proprietary algorithms and filters. Protocols such as Bittorrent or LimeWire can be blocked, ports can be blocked, schemes such as Publius (Google it) are difficult to use, proxy servers such as the Anonymizer can be blocked, possession of encryption software can be made a crime, and so on. Come on Slashdotters, let's drop the "nuke 'em back to the stone age mentality" and use our wits to help a population that increasingly wants their government to go democratic and ease relations with the U.S.
Yeah, right.
How can we get our Iranian friends back in the Web?
The real question is why should we? I know this is highly ideological, but I think this was the real problem with the liberation of Iraq. You cannot give people freedom and democracy when they don't want it. When I say they don't want is because to this point they did not revolt, protest or overthrow the goverment. Sure, there has been some opposition but not enough or on a national scale. For this reason, iranian and others should fight for their rights themselves.
"Complete control of information is required to stay in power."
Is "complete control of information" anything like "perfect security"?
I can't see their site. Maybe it's censored?
Slashdot - Mutual Assured Discussion
Iran is a young country. If I recall half of the population is under 30 years of age and restless about the situation. Of course, the mullahs want to start a war to get their people behind them.
I don't think there is a need for an invasion. Iran will change itself. Just let the weight of the extremism bring this to an internal boil.
It must be tuff when the government in Iran cracks down. You know sending in thugs with sticks to your local campus to kick your little ass.
Why the Russians help build nuke plants in Iran while their own soldiers are being shot in Chechnya by the same extremists is beyond me.
Oh well, progress is not linear.
What's even worse is that they will be less likely to reform their government if they expect the US to come in and do the job for them.
Maybe if Iraq goes well then they can reform their government.
i think writing a software that gives a (random) list of public proxies and is updated in a p2p sort of network could work for the poor fellas.
I am an Iranian Student. To be honest with you, we have been pushing for a regime change during the past 10 years of our lives. With this last move of our Government, it clearly states that our hard works are finally paying off and it shows how afraid they are.
I would also like to thank you all from the buttom of my heart and on behalf of the Iranian society for your great concern, and I want you all to know one thing. We are different then Arabs! We live in 2 seperate worlds. Victory is ours. God Bliss America. May Ahoora Mazda be with you. Thank you
"If Iran acquires nuclear weapons, then it's everybody's problem."
Fanatics with the bomb. The bomb simple means that the Iranians can say "mind your own business", and mean it. They still have to want to fix their society, unless you suggest something stronger.
with love.
I am gong to post as Anonymous Coward.
I am not the same guy who started the other post.
I was logged in yesterday, and then I started reading the thing about Isreal. There was an article about how hard it was in Isreal, boo hoo hoo, for Isrealis. And this started a major flame war.
I logged out because I wanted to say how awful it must be for non-Jews who are not Isreali citizens.
Why would I do this as Anonymous Coward? Because neither the Jews nor the Palestinians are rational when discussing the situation in Isreal/Palestine.
So you are wrong, some people do have real things to say and they choose to do it as Anonymous Coward because they don't want to be flamed by irrational hate mongers who might be on either side of an issue.
Personally I think that the Isrealis put up with a lot of crap. But in some ways they bring it on themselves. I used to be more on the Palestinian side until I saw them cheering on the roofs as the missles came from Iraq during the first Gulf War under Bush the 1st.
Isreal is a theocratic psuedo-democracy where if you are a Jew you have better rights than if you are not. And yet most Isreali Jews live a large part of their lives in the comfort of their American second homes. As far as I know the Palestinians don't have this luxury.
Oh, and in case you wonder, I am neither an Anti-semite or an Anti-Islamsist. I wish that they would stop their stupid war and make peace finally.
Should I have posted this with my real user name?
Of Course not!! I would be modded down forever then.
"This statement intrigues me. Please define "real dissent.""
Something that uses all natural ingredients.
...put religious fundemetalisum in its place they will rejoin the 21C.
Something the Americans should try at home.
I suppose they could just vpn into a box not in Iran then surf the web. ipsec or something like that. Tunnel around them. Problem solved..
they weren't all fired up.
might have been just fed up with the old.
doesn't mean that all of them love the new.
if there's third of them not liking the current system.. that's an awful lot of people - and the system 'needs' them to shut the fuck up or risk giving them power, the people who want a CHANGE are probably the one's affected by this block.
but still, that's the problem when you live with in a majority decides society, majority usually decides it's better than the rest.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
1) Ten years as a student, I hope you mean since when you were a child, because 10 years of post secondary education is pretty freaking long.
2) Whether or not they are afraid of you, they are the ones with the power. Keep that in mind. Unless you are in the military with your dissenting friends, those tanks are going to roll right over you instead of turning around and facing the Parliament buildings.
3) Happy Skyline Nissan to you too!
Please, tell us how you really feel.
How can we get our Iranian friends back in the Web?
How about revolution?
Coderz 4 Life
""The Internet [well.com] reacts to censorship [rikk.com] as damage and routes [linas.org] around it." "
I'm just going to stick a big old finger right in the middle of this saying.
Routes over what? Controlled by whom?*
*Seriously people. Please try to think these things through. People's lives one day may depend on you.
Of course, refuting the assertion that Palestinians and other Arabs have taken to blowing things up would be impossible...
Why is the religion of peace directly responsible for 28 out of the 30 violent conflicts raging in the world today?
Why is the religion of peace responsible for the vast majority of chattel slavery in the world today?
Why is the religion of peace responsible for the vast majority of terrorism in the 20th and 21st Centuries?
Why are the practitioners of the religion of peace routinely slaughtering unarmed practitioners of every other religion wherever they can get away with it?
Why does the religion of peace call for the murder of anyone who converts from the religion of peace to another religion?
Why do so many of the believers of the religion of peace look forward to the opportunity to rape 72 virgins in heaven if they die while killing innocent women and children of other religions? Is it a god they worship, or just sex? If a god, then shouldnt heaven have more to do with him than their libidos?
Why do the leaders of the religion of peace routinely issue fatwas (death warrants) for anybody who questions their holy book of peace and their holy prophet of peace?
Why is the religion of peace responsible for the sexual mutilation of millions of little girls and the savage oppression of women?
Why did millions of the practitioners of the religion of peace laugh, cheer and dance in the street because 3,000 innocent men, women and children were murdered by seventeen men who supposedly hijacked the religion of peace? And why dont the real practitioners of the religion of peace condemn the supposed hijackers of their religion? Why the deafening silence? Why the smiles? Why all the cheers and high fives?
Perhaps I just dont understand this whole PEACE thing. Did the definition of the word change, or is somebody just blowing a lot of smoke?
Your argument means that the US-led invasion of Iraq is no one's business except for those actually fighting there.
How about what goes on in Iran?
Most of the Iranians weren't even alive in 1979.
Do you think that your hate mongering is cute? It is not. We are already in a bad situation with Iran and your stupid crap just makes it worse.
I have, over the years, had my own issues with Iranians. But guess what, I was smart enough to realize that I needed to get over it.
Even in the book "not without my Daughter" there were Iranians who helped the American mother smuggle her child to safety.
Cyrus the Great was a Persian. If was not for him then the Jews would never have been allowed to return to the Levant and recreate their nation and rebuild their temple.
Don't be so diseased in your thoughts. And if you are so diseased, don't be so diseased in your adding to this blog.
This is a very important issue. Iranians deserve the same freedoms as anyone. In many ways the Persians invented internationalism. Sure they have a stupid totalitarian theocracy. But so did England under Cromwall. Do you wish the English ill too because they once had a dumb ass form of government run by the Puritans? Oh, and for your info, when the Puritans were finally run out of England they came to Massachusetts and started this mess here.
So, can't you see that there are great things in the future for Iran? Don't be such a dumb ass.
Please refute the points the poster makes instead of labelling it a troll and ignoring it.
It might be beneficial to kick Iranians off the net entirely. I receive a report every hour without fail that an IP address owned by Iranian ISP's are scanning each and every port on my system non-stop until my firewall finally gets around to blocking the address. As well as daily reports that an Iranian IP Address is attempting a brute-force break in, which is promptly cut off by my firewall.
Although I get an occasional problem from Russia or Korea, they're not anywhere near the frequency of the attack attempts from Iran.
... and in the DRM, bind them.
But if you refute the points, the Troll wins...
History has many examples of Theocracies being crushed by popular resistance. The English through the Puritans out of their asses.
The Swiss eventually overcame their stupid Calvinism.
The Popes were finally religated to a small piece of land in Rome.
So I am sure that time will march on and Iran will once again be a free nation.
Until that time do not dispair.
God Bless Iran.
Yes, we can help them by staying out of it. Nothing hurts the cause of the reformists there more than being seen as aligned with the "Great Satan," and nothing gives their enemies more ammunition than perceived interference on our part.
The mullahs are corrupt, inept, and not very popular. They remain in power mostly by rallying around a constant, self-inflicted state of pseudo-crisis with the U.S. (This is the same strategy Castro uses. When did the "revolution" end, again?)
Deprive them of fuel. Let the fire burn out on its own.
Hey Dan, Michael, let me give you a little hint: You can't. Or, as Stalin once said of the Pope, "How many divisions does Slashdot have?"
The Islamofascist Mmullahs ruling Iran have made it quite clear they're immune to such chimeras as "international pressure." What are you going to do, impose sanction? Yeah, that worked so well with Saddam.
Given a regime where critics of the regime have to flee for their lives, and where they executed retarded rape victims for the "crime" of having sex, what makes you think any actions short of armed revolution will get their Internet access back? Who are they going to listen to? Kofi Annan? Get real.
There are only two things which might actually allow Iranians to get back their Internet freedoms:
1. A full-scale liberation invasion by U.S./coalition troops, a very difficult and probably quite bloody task, or
2. A "decapitation" strike that takes out the Islamist religious leadership, possibly some high level military assets, and probably as much of their illegal nuclear weapons infrastructure as we can locate.
The chances of either being undertaken right now are slim, and the chances of the majority of Slashdot digirati support such a move are close to zero.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
There was an article on Tor back in December. Seems like a nice simple solution to these kinds of things and works on many different levels besides just web browsing. Just so long as you can get a program to work with SOCKs
They can use a proxy to surf the web.
Whatever happened to those distributed annonymous webproxy projects that were started several years ago? I seem to remember one done by the hacking group Cult of the Dead Cow (the makers of Back Oriface) but I never really saw anything materalize.
The problem with normal proxy services (anonymizer.com, etc) is that they can easily be blocked by government black lists on DNS and IP addresses.
Whether you agree with war or not, this guy is willing to put his neck on the line for what he believes...which is freedom. You know, that thing that the US is known for.
I can't believe all the morons who post on slashdot and get modded up just because it's popular to bash Bush and the US and Christians, and in general anything that stands for good and does what it believes to be right.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
You sound very confused. Do you think it is OK for one state to pay for suicid bombers to bomb innocnents in another state? Well, Sadam paid Palistinians to blow up Jews. $25 thousand to each family that sent a child to blow themselves up along with some Israelis. Don't you read? How about history, ever take that subject in school?
There's plenty of censorship here. It just *looks* like it isn't censorship because we have different values than the Iranians, a different view on what reasonably limited free speech is.
America will not invade Iran because they have nuclear weapons and I think GW kinda likes how things are working over there-
Adding a religious element to American politics seems to be working for him.
Not unlike how American companies helped China build the great firewall of China, American companies come through in the true freemarket spirit and supply the censoring demand:
http://stop.censoring.us/archives/011082..php
I dunno if Bush would go for it. After all, I'm not sure if there's oil to conquest in Iran (like the only reason there was a "war" -read, slaughter- in Iraq)? We gotta find an excuse for the monkey to cash in on it, first.
I think a country needs to "liberate" itself. The US had numerous bloody wars to get to the point to where its at. If enough people are against a topic in a country, they need to overthrow the powers that be themselves, that's all there is to it. Same thing goes to the whole "woman being battered" in a few of the middle eastern countries. Sure, I think its wrong, like anyone. But that's *my* belief, not necessarily theirs. These people have a whole set of beliefs that they have, too. They've been living with it for quite a long time. If a number of people wish to change things, they must do it *themselves*, not rely on the support of a country halfway around the globe that should be taking care of its own problems instead of spending billions overseas. If they do it right, they'll change things for the better and the beliefs just might stay around for awhile.
Sure we could try to do some recruiting, but I bet it's awfully hard to recruit anyone when they realize that signing that paper is pretty much guaranteed to get you an all expense paid trip to Iraq with substandard equipment. And the government hasn't been particularly interested in expanding the regular army since Regan was in power. It's pricey to maintain a real standing army in times of peace.
Nope, the world's policeman is busy. Call someone else.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The company behind the technology is kind of lame, it's insanely expensive and it would be pretty slow however I doubt the government could do much to stop an Iridium phone with the data kit.
When punk rock is outlawed, only outlaws will have punk rock.
Kind of funny, in an ironic way, that a story against censorship would attract so many censors. Truly, the Slashdot moderation system is a failure.
Umm.. by helping people in another country overthrow their government arn't you participating in what these days is called 'aiding a terrorist organisation?' The problem with every country around the world passing laws against 'terrorism' and 'aiding terrorism' is that the world 'terrorist' has no universal meaning. Most times it is defined simply as "any organisation that is opposed to the current government."
How we know is more important than what we know.
Libraries? Some may have content censors but that is sexual censorship only, not political (you could still post political messages from them).
Also, a lot of people access the internet from work - where of course they pay nothing.
And if you have a laptop there a myriad of free WiFi hotspots.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Think we could Slashdot the Great Firewall of China while we're at it? ;-)
Iran is a different case. Their revolution has been much more recent. I'm not sure how popular the government is in Iran-but I suspect their ruling group is larger than in the old Soviet Union. Also, I expect the Iranian government is willing to maintain itself in ways the old Soviet Union was not.
However, the technologies have changed too. For example, wireless internet technology has advanced quite a bit. If there is popular resistance to the Iranian governments internet regulations, technologies like Mesh networks might be rather difficult for the Iranian government to be effectively control.
If folks want to really do something, creating technologies that governments have trouble regulating may be the route to help here-however, it isn't just Iran that has issues in this respect. A net the Iranian government can't control, is one no government can control.
"Hey Dan, Michael, let me give you a little hint: You can't. Or, as Stalin once said of the Pope, "How many divisions does Slashdot have?""
"The chances of either being undertaken right now are slim, and the chances of the majority of Slashdot digirati support such a move are close to zero."
Well we can always make the RIAA/MPAA give us free movies, and music. And how about that new Slashdot, with the current HTML and CSS support? We rock.
I'd like to assert a point that probably won't be appreciated or understood by many. I believe that we do not have the right choose wether or not the people can access their "weblogs." It's not that I don't believe in human rights; I do with all my heart but I believe just as strongly that the US sticks it's nose into other people business too much. If we don't act it is likely that actions like this will pile up to the point when people in Iran feel the need to revolt. Civil war is the proper way for a government to be changed and protesting in the proper way to specific law.
How can we get our Iranian friends back in the Web?
Let them earn that right for themselves.
The government wants to protect it's members from possibly changiong its mind and realizong how poorly off they are, and from learning. Knowledge is power. I am against it, but in my opinion, why didn't they do it sooner?
ModLife.Net - If it ain't modded, what's the point?
Well, this all may be true, but didn't much of the initial funding and technology for the oil exploration in Iran come from U.S. businesses?
Not saying this is a complete excuse for everything that happened.... but it's a point conveniently overlooked in most of these arguments. If the U.S. really had business interests (EG. investments) in oil production, and then that was completely taken over by Iran's govt. and the U.S. basically kicked out of the equation - wouldn't it make sense the U.S. would make a retaliatory move afterwards?
Yeah, that's it asshats, Troll the guy who says it like it is.
Simplistic fucktard moderators with their high and mighty mod points. Can't answer with a post because I'm fucking right, have to answer with their temporary 5 points of power.
Bring it butt monkeys, mod me to oblivion if you want. I eat this kind of shit up for breakfast!
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
Get your free web proxy here
For those that often post of the US as a "totalitarian" state, please consider that we can post just about any damn thing we like anywhere on the internet. There is no government control of what you read or post. (There may be government monitoring, but that is a different story...)
Even in places like Iraq where some consider us a "dictator in residence" please note that anyone can run a blog any way they like, without censorship. Even if they are critical of the US in the region!
Please, before you post again about what a facist government the US the the terrible repressions US citizens suffer take a look at places like Iran with real repression. The US has some annoying laws that have been passed but we are a LONG ways from being a truly repressive place.
I know I'll just get flamed eight ways from Sunday for posting this, but it simply had to be said. In order to protect my own sanity (and free time) and encourage other posts I'll encourage other more silent people to come out of the shell and respond to any flamers I might get.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Since we did such a good job with Iraq I don't think we'll be so successful. Iran is much larger than Iraq (Iran is approximately 25% of the continental US). There are a lot of people there as well (70 million) and 65% of those are 25 or younger.
I recently returned from a trip to Iran. In all four cities that I visited, I was able to access my Yahoo account and even SSH into my work servers to fix a couple of little issues. Internet access was dog slow, and there were many ads on Yahoo that were blocked (mostly dating ads). However, people have access to pirated satelite TV and as much porn and outside news as their heart desires.
All ya gotta do is pay the government a little fine whenever you get caught and you're clear (at least that's what my family was telling me).
The underground parties are insane. They have any sort of drug you could want and plenty of alcohol (which is illegal). Come to think of it, a few years back, if you went to a party chances are girls would just come up to you and french kiss you without saying a word. Turns out they were copying rap videos and trying to be more like Americans.
Iran is a very proud nation. From what I've learned so far, they embrace other cultures. It is here that we can encourage them further to overthrow their repressive regime.
You can't force someone into freedom, it has to come from within.
I think that if they don't like the consorship, they can protest with their authorities, or move to a free country like the USA for which most of them hate anyways. Ironic huh?
It isn't a lie if you belive it.
It appears that Iranian ISPs have been ordered to block a large number of popular Web sites
...It also appears that 90% of Slashdot's
readers (ie, the American portion) don't
really give a damn about Iranian ISPs, nor
could most of us find Iran on a map.
As a result, expect numerous misguided comments about "freedom of speech", possibly "freedom of religion" from those informed enough to realize that Iran vaguely has something to do with that nasty Islam thingee.
And for those who would mindlessly mark this a troll... Welcome to the real world. Now go ahead and hit the "Moderate" button, from the comfort of a safe place to websurf, sleep, eat, and debate the legitimacy of US involvement in the Middle East.
Smuggle tor into the country?
...at Tempura House, a shelter for lightly battered women.
"Perhaps I just dont understand this whole PEACE thing. Did the definition of the word change, or is somebody just blowing a lot of smoke?"
*sigh*
Does anyone think around here anymore?
Islam is a religion, not a person. People chose to follow a religion, or not. Some even follow it, without "following it" (there's a word for that).
The UK controlled all of Iran's oil resources prior to Mossadegh. After the CIA overthrew Mossadesgh, the US received 40% of Iran's oil revenues in compensation.
As for nationalizing oil resources, every country in the Middle East has done that since 1953. Despite this fact, the big Anglo-American oil companies still make huge profits from their involvement in Middle Eastern oil.
I can't go to
Veillesswhores.com?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Two words: Regime Change.
Or you could ask the UN to do something about it. But of course, unless there's Oil-for-Food bribes involved, they're not likely to do anything about it.
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
Look at what we got instead:
What in the fuck are you talking about and how does this relate in any way to Iranians losing their blog privileges?
And just out of curiosity why am I supposed to care that Saddam (that's two "d's" like in "dildo", didn't you take spelling in school?) paid Palestinians to blow up Jews in Israel? Isn't that something that Israel is supposed to care about? I'm not Jewish nor am I an Israeli citizen so how does this apply?
Israel should have capped Saddam a long time ago if they knew this was happening. If they can fly in and pop a reactor and be gone before anyone knows what they've done then they can certainly take out one Iraq dictator.
"A disruption in communication can mean only one thing.... invasion"
Uh oh, it's coming!
>..the change should come within primarily.
Are you serious?
NO CHANGE in the past century or this one came from within. Just look at the 'democratic movements' that keep losing elections then staging coups.
4 eastern european countries in 4 years (Belarus didnt fall for it but itll come).
Planning, financing and training for these didnt come from within. The within part is usually the politicians who benefit from selling out their country and then castrating it with debt from the mafia...uhh, world bank.
But hey, some people still believe in WMD's and the lies of Kosovo and Bosnia, so if you get a hardon from thinking that change from within is real, be my guest.
Yeah, the word is Apostasy. The penalty is death.
fucking iranian isps are massive spam sewers. Fortunately their net backbone is small enough that they cant do the level of damage that china or korea can as far as spam goes.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
The internet is dangerous for the Iranian government, because it can run arbitrary applications (email, blogs) that people are using to get around the government's restrictions. However, the government still has control over the infrastructure and is now exerting it.
However, wouldn't it be possible, given enough Wifi-enabled devices, to create an entirely rogue Freenet-style network to publish web pages, run applications, send email, etc.?
In that case, there would be no infrastrucutre for anyone to place restrictions on, but it could perform any actions that the internet was capable of, just more slowly, I would think. Anyone know if software exists to build such a WiFi network?
i am really beginning to think some people's brains are just wired differently than mine. here is a subject matter everyone seems to agree on: censorship is wrong, and here we have an egregious example of it from the iranian government
and yet i scan the comments here and what do i see? anti-american sentiment
how does that work?
is the usa a friend of iran? does the censorship by the us government not look like a molehill in your mind compared to the mountain of that going on in iran?
i honestly cannot fathom how some people think: iran does something evil... therefore, let me criticize the usa
i'm not saying the usa doesn't deserve criticism, not at all: the usa does plenty wrong that needs to be examined and castigated
but what i am saying is that criticizing the usa in the context of what iran does is simple, pure lunacy. it's alternately hilarious and horrifying to me how some people can have so little understanding of concepts like: perspective, scale, context
people really have to stop obsessing about the usa. no, really, you look like a fool. a fair criticism of blindly pro-american people is that they are obsessed with the usa. but some of the posts here only prove to me that the same obsession lives in the heart of anti-american sentiment too, to the same level of monomaniacal stupidity
guess what pro-american and anti-american people: there is more to the world than the just usa. really. the world does not revolve around the usa. for real. there are other cultures and peoples and governments out there. no, really. the world does not orbit the united states. for true.
you'd think this simple painfully straightforward observation would be dumbfoundingly patently obvious and stating it would a cause for laughter and going "duh!" but then you read some of the comments in this thread. it's absolutely mystifying the obsessive one-dimensional idiocy of those talking about the usa in this thread. when the story is about the abuses of the iranian government?
utterly dumbfounding, this one-track obsession. please, some of you need to wake up. some of you need to ditch the fashionable propaganda of the times and try thinking for once
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Which part of the constitution specifies that freedom of speech doesn't apply to sexual material?
Freedom of speech does apply to sexual material. And happily you are able to post whatever you like in that regard from a library. It's viewing that can be more problematic.
It's only when you try to view SOME (not all) sexually explicit sites that you might be blocked. They can't block them all of course, and there are anon proxies they do not block - so you have options.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm pretty sure the loss of a few blogs is less damaging to the average Iranian than the loss of their life, which is something that's bound to happen if the US try another one of their 'liberation' stunts. Look at Iraq, where people are still dying nearly everyday because of Islamic militants setting off car-bombs to kill American troops and Iraqi 'collaborators'. Do you really want that to happen in Iran for the sake of a few blogging sites? At least with Iraq, Saddam had a proven track record of genocide against his own people, so perhaps the Americans had a good reason to invade, but the fact is there is still bloodshed of innocent people going on nearly everyday. With Saddam you can turn round and say "but he killed thousands of Kurds, that's far worse than what's going on now". What are you going to say about Iran when the death toll continues to climb long after Bush declares 'victory'? Are you going to complain about how those evil dastardly Iranians stopped their people reading John and Jenny Doe's blog post about how their toddler's potty-training?
As for executing a retarded rape victims, that's not much worse than the US executing people found incompetent to stand trial, people suffering from severe mental illness and people professionally adjudged to have the mental age of an 11-year-old child. I could probably find more, but I remember that press release distinctly and had it bookmarked. Admittedly those people had committed crimes rather than been the victim, but it's really not that big a step. Lastly, don't get me started on the 'illegal nuclear weapons infrastructure' comment - you've got the biggest nuclear stockpile in the world, who are you (as a country) to call any other nation's nuclear infrastructure illegal? Does DRM come on tactical warheads now? Seriously, this is no reason to be blowing up anyone - it's just not worth it... and doesn't China have the 'Great Firewall of China' and executions for frivolous crimes? Oh, I forgot, they're too big for good ol' George Dubya to go after.
George W. Bush: Always picking on the little guy.
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
Perhaps the UN could provide free WiFi hotspots for bloggers from its vast fleet of high-end Range Rovers.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Ok I am glad everyone all of a sudden cares this much about the bloggers in my country. But a few facts.
* I can't get to hoders website right now but I don't belive that anyone has verified the web blocking.
* While blogging is popular in Iran it's not the next great revolution. It's a way for people to talk, browse for porn and do all the other things most college students do in the US.
* The Iranian people are capable of figuring out a government for themselves. When theycouldn't take the Shah anymore they dealt with him.
* As the student demonstrations showed a few years ago the regime still has a lot of backers, eventually Iranians will figure out what they really want and how much they care about fighting for it.
In the meantime you can get a list of some english blogs written by iranians over at http://blogsbyiranians.com/
it appears to be down at the moment since I suspect it's hosted at hoders server but there is always the google cache if you want to look at it right now.
Vidi, vici, veni. (I saw, I conquered, I came)
Does this really surprise anyone? This is what happens when you live in a country run by psycho religious fanatics.
Praise Jesus. Kill all Muslims!
A dead Muslim a day keeps Satan away!
Well said! I totally agree.
(Of course, the moderators seem to think you're a troll, but I think that there's actually a lot of truth in what you said.)
People that supported/support the current Regime are old/elders who have ideals that:
- The wife stays home, takes care of kids, the Dad works and brings money
- All women should hide skin
- Alcohol leads to chaos
And more similar bullshit that north americans followed back in the time of WW1 when things were like that here (Remember in Simpsons where the guy takes the picture of the women showing her ankle and drools?)
Thing is, today in Iran, a pretty big portion of the population is the new generation, young citizens that are getting really fedup with the regime's censorship technics and lack of freedom. They are the ones in the universities who are aware how life is outside. Problem is, what choices do they have? Currently their only way out of this as I see it is another Revolution but one where most should get involved so we could see some result. This is a problem in Iran that needs to be solved by Iranians for future Iranians. GWB is not needed! It may not happend today and it may not happend tomorow but I'l bet my last monopoly dollar that there will be one.
I know this because I have family in Iran's Capital Tehran that are trying to find ways to get out of the country because they are missing all the freedom that is taken away from them from those bearded a*saholas. Currently, people living there have no liberty.
Theres no clubs, theres no night life.
It's hell for tourists. If you are caught with a camera or taking pictures in the cities you are screwed bigtime and will be questionned
Anything remotely fun must be done in secrecy.
You can't just say "They got what they wanted" Because what the population wanted back then surely isn't the same as what they want today.
A revolution will happend one day or another in Iran to overthrown the mullahs. I'd prefer that than GWB getting involved.
I wouldn't piss in your mouth if your throat was in fire but I'd surely "tubgirl" in it.
The youth of IRAN, the 50% of the population that is under 24 want nothing more than to overthrow this damned regime!! We are sick of the bullshit the mullahs throw at us. Most of us hate religion, unlike most Americans, that think they are somehow venerable because of god's love. Don't go blaming this country's problems on the people that are trying to save it. If it weren't for US and UK meddling since the early 1900s, we wouldn't be in this mess!!! YOU were the ones to foster distrust! You were the ones that overthrew our *elected* president and installed a dictator masquerading as a monarch! You were the ones that sold weapons to IRAQ in the Iran-Iraq war and fed the deaths! Start taking responsibility for your own mistakes!
In a country where speaking against crime is considered taboo and females are kept in veils, exercising your right to speak and communicate is a 'crime' in itself. As far as I understand, these 'islamists' who control the Government wants to check the spread of 'westernisation' in their country. This is not restricted to Iran only. Even in countries like Pakistan, government exercises strict control on communication media.
aka corepirate nazi execrable et al.
/.PostBlock devise.
talk about censorship, or call it something else.
reminds of of the insidious
all is not lost.
consult with/trust in yOUR creators. making the wwworld safe(r) using newclear power since/until forever. see you there?
Just send letters to the Prussian consulate in Siam via aeromail on the 4:30 autogyro.
There will always be moronic moonbats who denounce anything the U.S. does as self-serving and tyrannical, ignoring the injustice everywhere else in the world. The same fucktards denouncing the vote counting in Florida were calling Saddam's election a fair democracy (only Saddam was on the ballot, and your vote was public record). These same idiots denounce the liberation of an entire country as unilateral aggression (over 40 countries is unilateral?), and in the same breath scream for a "people's revolution" to put a communist dictatorship in power.
The scary part is the population of these half-brain assholes seems to be growing.
-- Will program for bandwidth
Fucking religion. A pox on this world. A fucking mental illlness. And don't think I'm just talking about Islam. Christianity, holy fuck, what a huge stifling pile of fucking bullshit. Praise Jesus! | God! | Allah! | Muhammad! | Mork from Ork! | George Burns! | an F5 tornado! | what the fuck ever! And don't forget to murder some human beings while you're praising your "Lord" O faithful religion follower and brainwashed idiot. Hey, even people who *ack* worship make believe motherfuckers like Allah and Jee-zuz need to be able to blog, read Slashdot, and surf for free pr0n too, right? Gimme an amen!!! Halla fucking looyah!!!
You want free access to the web and media in Iran. The Iraninans will have to kill all the mad turbans off. You have to remember this is a counrty where they hang 17 yearold girl with a mental age of 8 because her parents sold her into sex slavery.
If you don't like what I write don't be a CS and mod it down. Refute it.
Yea I can't spell. So what is your point?
It's true we still have a lot of freedom, but that doesn't change the fact that we have are still losing freedoms we have had. We should not base our sight on what we have over the oppressive regimes, we should look at our past and remember what freedoms we lost and take them back! Be vigilant!
using domestic violence as an example... you're a few decades out of date.
It USED TO BE in the US that the woman had to press charges against the man in order for the police to make an arrest. I know this not only from a law enforcement background, but from personal experience.
One of my next-door neighbors growing up was a terrible alcoholic and wife-beater (he was also a physician. What a disgrace to the profession... but I digress). I can't remember how many times we called the police, because we could hear him beating her (things breaking, screaming, thuds, etc). The guy used to beat the living tar out of his wife... bruises, black eyes, cuts... I've seen better-looking barfight victims. She, however, would never press charges, and the guy got off every. single. time. We could have "minded our own business," but we felt an obligation to do something. I was but a lad, so I couldn't understand the dynamics involved... Needless to say, all their kids, save one, are now in prison.
It took decades, but a sea change eventually took place. These days, Domestic Violence is a crime not only against the individual, but against the state. This allows the police to make an arrest whether the victim wants it or not.
Sometimes the situation is bad enough, or the people co-dependent enough, that they literally need help to get out of their situation. I'm well aware of how that sounds... so spare me the vituperation for being patronizing. That said, I don't think the Iranian people would resent being free... and any way we could assist them in that effort is arguably the right thing to do.
Of course, it goes without saying that we'd probably be ahead to first exhaust less-violent means of assistance.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
rest assured: the mullahs are watching. If you can help the people in Iran, please find a private way of getting it to them.
Loose lips sink ships.
I've been going through the comments and most of what I read is about invading Iran because they're censoring the net. How is that any better?
Can we criticize censorship without bringing an invasion into the equation? And heck a few years ago, I remember a time where many around here made comments favorably or unfavorably towards one US policy or another and yet the anti-american label was rarely used to reply to such comments.
people really have to stop obsessing about muslim countries. the world doesn't revolve around them. there are other cultures and peoples and governments ou there.
It really stinks. You criticize something in a foreign country, all of a sudden they wanna invade it. You say something bad about a US policy and you're labeled as anti-american. wth happened?
Looks like that domain name is available... It sure seems like women from that area are under-represented in the pr0n available... Or is it possible that I don't know where to look? Is there a persianthumbs.org/arabthumbs.org/indianthumbs.org out there?
--AC who believes in diversity/variety in internet pr0n
the link show over 170 years of experience! wow, programing before electricuty. Cool!
Tell me, were the steam powered computers dificult to keep clean?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
But they are getting louder, and seemingly crazier.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think whatever non-secured mode used, it will be blocked very soonish, because it's easy to catch every plaintext containing those banned URLs or words. ...
But is there such a secure tunnel to open proxies? Not questioning technical problem, because I often use ssh tunneling
saying "um" doesn't make you sound intelligent. (From one pedantic shithead to another.)
Slashdotters: You are all a bunch of faggots.
Do you hear me, you repulsive faggots? NO DIGG.
How about detonating a nuclear weapon in Bam. That should do the trick.
Hmm...
The president tells me that we have freedom. That we love freedom. That others hate freedom. That we must force them to embrace freedom. That we must make those who choose to live their lives differently understand what freedom is all about.
That's good enough for me.
Your "freedom" of speech might cause people to doubt that. It would actually hurt freedom. You don't want to do that, do you?
Are you a freedom hater?
Here's a flame:
You know its logic like yours that I don't understand.
You complain at repressions US citizens suffer... take a look at $wherever, there its much worse.
You complain about lack of freedom of speech, well in $wherever, you'd be killed for expressing dissent.
or...
You're complaining about working at walmart? People in $wherever would kill to have a job like that.
You had to stand outside in the rain until 4am to vote? Well in $wherever you can't even vote, so be thankful.
Just because there's someplace that's worse isn't an excuse to not strive to make things better here.
The methods are always the same, as is the mindset of those who institute it: Change the law, then use the law to threaten. It's a well entrenched routine in the West, even if it rarely makes headlines.
you had me at #!
When usa invades, im sure they have the address of that judge and will Bust A Cap into his sorry ass with a 5000lb bomb !!!!
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
http://tor.eff.org/overview.html
Tor is a network of virtual tunnels that allows people and groups to improve their privacy and security on the Internet. It also enables software developers to create new communication tools with built-in privacy features. Tor provides the foundation for a range of applications that allow organizations and individuals to share information over public networks without compromising their privacy.
Codito Ergo Sum
I demand linkage to ann coulter porn!
Based on the assumption that the information in the article at (http://hoder.com/weblog/archives/013115.shtml) is true, I think this kind of thing happening in the world should be a kick in the pants to democracies around the world; "Yes, look, it really does happen - some governments attempt to suppress the **FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION** between citizens and the rest of the world." Seeing this should make us ever vigilant with our own governments to make sure we never give them the power to censor us!
Canada recently concluded a supreme court case where the Little Sisters Bookstore fought the good fight and beat back the darkness http://www.littlesistersbookstore.com/court.asp
Americans, watch out for that Patriot Act! http://www.epic.org/privacy/terrorism/hr3162.html
Remember Jefferson: "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!"
No, really. It is!
Demonstrant's Open Source Tools
Try Primedius they seem to support free speech.
http://www.primedius.com/safeList.htm/
Hussein was a wussy. Easy pickings.
THAT WAS THE POINT! We'd roll in, knock off Saddam, help set up the Iraqi democracy IN THE MIDDLE OF THE MIDDLE EAST, and they'd show the rest of the region how it's done. The Iranian dictatorship is supposedly about where the Soviet Union was in its final years, so an indirect push--say, fellow Shias next door getting their own consensual government--has a decent chance of pushing the Iranian government over the edge. Plus the Iranian dissidents didn't want us to intervene militarily, unlike the Iraqi dissidents. 'Twas a good plan. Plus the North Korean military has over 10,000 dug-in artillery tubes pointed at the South Korean capital (the nuclear ICBMs they're working on are for blackmailing Japan, they're redundant otherwise), which means a strictly conventional weapons attack on NK just wouldn't do.
What we didn't figure on was the sickening enthusiasm the Former Soviet Useful Idiots would show in teaming up with the Islamic Fascists. I realize that modern liberalism is the ideology of Western sucide, but GET A CLUE ALREADY! If the Iraqi democracy succeeds it could bring down all the neighboring dictatorships, even Saudi. Now could y'all stop writing propaganda for the terrorists? (That means you, Dan Rather, so eager to be fooled by the 1971 edition of Microsoft Word...)
I don't know where the hell you Americans get your news.... It is a shame to see the recent American generations have wasted the great heritage of America which were once democracy, pluralism, and freedom. The recent American generations from the world's viewpoint will leave pornocracy, violence and dis-information behind for its next generations. Many people are so dumb that think they cannot replace oil. America could and has the potential to replace oil with new alternative, but you have let your government to raise the majority as idiots... and feed them with whatever dis-information. Keep your taxes in home and build heaven in home, instead of hell outdoor. This piece of news is simply not true, and I don't know where the hell is the source. Even in the article, it says...if the news were true... but I live in Tehran and see nothing like this... regain your lost freedom (from greed, selfishness, etc.)
It's very simple: In the world of Slashdot, mods mod you down because they don't agree with you. And it's apparent many are liberal asswipes from the way they mod so flagrantly biased for left-wing ideoligies.
If the US attempts another invasion hot on the heels of their last revolting effort, the rest of the world will rise up and slap them so hard they might finally get a clue. We've had 60 years of their murderous bullshit and there is no reason to tolerate any more.
you had me at #!
a farsi based bible study web page of ours is also blocked. No matter what other people believe in, anybody should have a chance to decide for him or herself what to believe. You can help and start mirroring farsi-bible-studies.com
Um, South Korea was democratic BEFORE the Korean War. The US controlled it after WWII, remember?
The Korean War was fought because North Korea's Kim Il Sung wanted a united communist Korea.
South Korea's a bad example for US/UN bombing working or not working at instilling democracy since it was, you know, already instilled.
i cant access stop.censoring.us ... am i being censored? i am in sydney, australia
Since when do you represent 90% of Slashdot readers?
Arrogant prick.I have a friend in Iran that I've talked to for years, and I'm afraid that this might mean I can no longer do so. Does that mean it's not my problem?
The whole "too far away, too different, why do anyth ing about it" response is a crock of shit. Guess what, what happens halfway across the world is still happening on your world. Whether or not it greatly affects you much of this still remains a tragedy to the human race.
I think what you might say is that "the issue would be most properly dealt with by Iranians." That much would be true, as there are little other ways to directly and effectively deal with the problem without causing a greater problem (see: Iraq).
Maybe if the rest of the world gave more support to this though, gradual change could occur more smoothly/swiftly. But the truth is, most of the world doesn't know what happens, and most of the world doesn't want to because they believe as you say "not our problem."
It's pretty easy to ignore an issue until it becomes "our problem," but perhaps if we paid a little more attention to those "not our problems" then the world might be a little better for everyone?
Good job I am not president. The entire continent would be glass by now, so would a large portion of the planet. Fuck religion, it's the scurge of the planet and stops us from progressing.
Always has been, and apparently always will be; while dumbfucks pay 15k for an image of the virgin mary (deliberate lowercase) on a toasted sandwhich. Kretins.
When will the world understand there is no god (dl),
Fuck islalm, fuck christians, fucks catholics, you are all in the 15th century. Fuck all of them.
Give me 11 dimensions and a rational universerve anytime, let the moronic religious die in their hell (which, of course, does not exist)
Oh yeah, And fuck the "devil" there isn't one, I've checked.
People have told me I'll be surprised when I reach hell, I've always repsonded "no, no I won't, and neither will you."
Fuck religion, it's something created by man for small minded individuals.
Who else amongst us calls "bullshit!" ?
Well, let's try to be fair to the Iranians, even the fundamentalists. The people who hijacked the planes were Sunni radicals from Arab states, not Persian Shiites.
"OH SHIT, THERE'S A HORSE IN THE HOSPITAL!"
Go back to playing counterstrike.
What was it that our current President said about a website that made fun of him?
"There Ought to be Limits to Freedom."
And didn't he also try several legal challenges to that website to try to limit their freedom to say what they wanted?
You are absolutely right, that its not anywhere approaching the levels that Iran is doing. But personally, I'm not altogether impressed just because my democracy wins when compared against a yardstick like the theological dictatorship of Iran.
Could you please cite a figure for the number of people denouncing the vote counting in Florida who
- were;
- weren't;
calling Saddam's election a fair democracy? (Citing individual examples of people in the first category isn't sufficient to prove your point; I strongly suspect they were in the minority of people complaining about the vote counting in Florida.)Could you do the same for the number of people denouncing the "liberation" of an entire country as unilateral aggression who
- are;
- aren't;
screaming for a "people's revolution" to put a communist dictatorship in power? (The same note about individual anecdotes vs. real data applies.)ok, here's the deal, basically poeple don't like america invading iraq because of what america said.. basically if america said HEY ASSFUCKING DICTATORS!, WE'RE COMING FOR YOUR ASSES! noone would have had a problem, instead they made up all this bullshit about WMD's and terrorists.. basically just bullshit. If America wants to liberate the world, that's fine, just do it properly. Don't make up stupid bullshit.
stage a revolution. it wouldn't be the first time.
the site you are referencing isn't anti-Islam, it's anti-Radicalism. Second, your "Top 10" list can mostly be applied to ANY religion, and notably ANY government.
The only solution is a lot of dead insane mullahs. Details of execution are left as an exercise for the reader. I hope the Iranians manage it soon. Those madmen with nukes are likely to get a lot of people killed.
Thankfully everyone's favourite hidden cam gallery is still up (totally safe for work). Iran is having a few problems at the moment, the highly conservative part of the government is squashing the other half and most of what happens with the police is down to how much you bribe them with money or sex. Hey Khomeini, suck my dick.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
"I dunno if Bush would go for it. After all, I'm not sure if there's oil to conquest in Iran"
h ttp://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0872966.html
Never fear, Iran has extensive reserves of both oil and natural gas. The country possesses about 913 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 100 billion barrels of oil. These figures represent a significant chunk of the world's reserves.
However, destabilising such an important and reliable source of oil and gas by invading it (or "conquesting" it, if you prefer) may not make for sound economic policy.
http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0872964.html
Th reason you hear so much about American "totalitarianism" is because most of the people posting on Slashdot are American. A small amount of repression in America is more relevant to the average Slashdot poster than a large amount of repression in some far away place like Iran.
Disclaimer: This was written by someone here a few years ago, that's why I post as AC. I forgot who wrote it, and /. searching is a joke. As was the parent, probably. Anyway, here goes:
But if you want to play it that way, let's have the full, accurate list shall we? And let's just see where these countries are today...
France 1942-45 Republic
Germany 1942-45 Federal republic
Belgium 1942-45 Parliamentary democracy
Netherlands - 1944-45 Free
Italy 1943-45 Republic
Japan 1942-45 constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary government
China 1945-46 Free from Japanese, conquered by communist dicatorship.
Korea 1950-53 Republic, see South Korea
China 1950-53 Communist tyranny
Guatemala 1954 Constitutional republic
Indonesia 1958 Republic
Cuba 1959-60 NO BOMBS community tyrants take over
Guatemala 1960 Constitutional republic
Congo 1964 Thank the Belgians
Peru 1965 Constitutional republic
Laos 1964-73 Communist tyrany
Vietnam 1961-73 Communist tyranny, and how about them French?
Cambodge 1969-70 Multi-party democracy
Guatemala 1967-69 Constitutional republic
Grenade 1983 Constitutional monarchy with Westminster-style parliament
Lybia 1986 - Dictatorship
El Salvador 1980s - Republic
Nicaragua 1980s -Republic
Panama 1989 - Republic
Iraq 1991-99 - Give us time
Sudan 1998 - Authoritarian regime
Afghanistan 1997-2002 - Republic
It's a pretty great list. In fact, it looks like getting bombed by the U.S. is a great way to end up with a free country.
Use a two-way satellite service provided by a foreign country. I am aware that some people/organisations in Iran are doing this already.
Camera/Shy
Really, an entire religion is radical? Can you generalize what a Billlion and a Half people think? Is Christianity radical? To be pedantic, you mean Islam would be 'reactionary', you're on the wrong end of the political spectrum.
Are you saying the Qur'an endorses the unlawful killing of a human, aka murder? That's strange, because the Qur'an explicitly commands people not to murder. Where do you see the Qur'an endorse lying, theft, or pedophilia? Why then, do Muslims see those as a sin? You're gonna have to show us proof of this, I'm not going to do your bibliography for you.
Heard of the DMCA? The DeCSS case? Try talking about protection schemes and how to avoid them.
> to block a large number of popular Web sites
> [...]
> How can we get our Iranian friends back in the
> Web?"
Not by dropping bombs on them anyway.
Not having access to 'the web' is not a crime against humanity, its a philosophical issue.. Much as not eating cows is not in other countries..
"we" may not agree, but its their choice..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
This whole worship of cultural relativism makes me sick. How can it be anything but unacceptable that people are beaten and horribly discriminated against just because they happen to be a female? My god people. The intellectual dishonesty is just amazing.
I think it's sick too. Sick and wrong. But, if you march in there with troops and "liberate" the country, do you honestly think the people will be much better off? People will still have the same misogynist attitudes and do many of the same "inhumane, segregationist, insulting, and discriminatory" things to women and other minorities.
The only way for this to change is for their ideas about women and minorities to change.And there are many ways to help this along besides war. Like gp said, "a country needs to 'liberate' itself." I have no problem with the US providing support to a country who is already in that process, but I think the country itself should decide when it's ready to be liberated--not the US.
Dlugar
Computer Go: Writing Software to Play the Ancient Game of Go
The reason I think Iran won't be invaded is because they have a big youth population which, really, does not like the current leadership.
Parts of the Iranian population is turning away from the old way. An invasion might jeopardize that.
This is not about oil.
"So unmerciful is life, that everything afterwards is too late."
The Iranians are not our friends. If Iranians get pissed off enough they will rise up all by themselves and fight for their own freedom. No one should have to do it for them. If 8000 years of history can be used a marker, they won't ever rise up . . . not that I'd care if they did.
ciao.
Good response, well thought out.
"So unmerciful is life, that everything afterwards is too late."
Sanctions were effective, I guess you don't read independent news. As for the rest of your post, well, you're the kind of person we're fighting. You might want to look up "liberation" and "genocide" in a dictionary some time.
you had me at #!
Iran exhibits institutionalized intolerance, and you guys are surprised?
Iran is basically two countries. It is both the Switzerland of the Middle East, with some of the most liberal people in the region, and also it is the most oppressive nation with the most fundamentalist culture anywhere. Iran is at odds with itself, and pretty much guaranteed to have a civil war because of it.
What better way to rile up Americans into an invasion mood than to tell everybody stories about how country 'X' is being unfairly ruled? Just read some of the reactions below.
Information about this censorship issue is pretty sketchy at the moment.
But when it comes right down to it. .
The trouble is that it may well be true, but that the directives would appear to stem from the ultra right-wing end of the Iranian political spectrum, and that end of the scale is controlled by others with an agenda. --Saddam had been installed by the US specifically to be a target when it became necessary to take Iraq, and Bush was similarly installed by the Neocon cabal, and the Neocon cabal are a bunch of rag dolls in the hands of still other groups.
The interesting truth of the matter is that no country is independent of the larger ruling class; public display politics are designed simply to channel the masses and sculpt emotional states and activities with the final goals being understood by only a very few, but which can be hunted down with a bit of work.
The agenda is secret, but secrets leak. -Which, paradoxically enough, is the very reason many people say, "I don't believe in Conspiracies! It's impossible to keep a secret!"
Ahh. There's straight forward logic, and the circular kind. Take your pick. But don't dawdle; Iran is edging toward the abyss. .
-FL
The reason the United States became free was because we were allowed to have guns and overthrow a tyrannical government. Britain and Australia gained their independence bloodlessly, but how much longer would that have taken us? 10 years? 20? 100? Would we still have the Constitution and the Bill of Rights that's kept us around for oh so long?
The number one reason that I am 100% anti-gun control laws of any type is because when Bush or whoever the fsck our leaders are decide to tyrranize us to a point of no return, I want to be able to have my frigging militia go shoot them.
the Political Inquirer
They can make Napalm, C4 and other explosive/incendiary devices from common chemicals now. In many ways, the common man has never had the kinds of options before that he has today to fight back. In the ME it's terribly easy for people who want to, to get automatic rifles and if they're dedicated enough, they can always park a car bomb outside the local court or police station. You know what they need for that? Fertilizer, gas and a stolen car. Be ironic, steal a cop's car. The Iranian people can fight back.
Not saying it'd be easy, but from the reports that I have seen, there are a lot in the government itself who hate the Mullahs and wouldn't really want to fight the people. Hitherto what seems to be the problem is mainly a lack of a good leader to unite those who hate their government.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
When did "I'm worried that the US might be going down the path that might turn us into a totalitarian state" turn into anti-American sentiment? The fact that some people start screaming that you're being so unamerican and should start censoring yourself seems contrary to the entire concept of free speech.
I don't like the current US administration. Does that make me anti-American? The US has a long history of people protesting the power structure from the inside; when did dissent become unamerican? Are we going back to 1798? Should we pass new Alien and Sedition Acts? (Yes, we had examples of dissent against the sitting president as far back as 1798... And some of the dissenters were people like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison; if you're going to start considering this sort of thing anti-American, I have to wonder where you get your concept of America from.) I like this country; I don't like people telling me to shup up and support something just because we're at war...
So yeah, censorship is wrong. Just remember that's what you're doing when you accuse people of having "anti-American" sentiment. (Oh yeah, and it's wrong in Iran too. And Iran has plenty of examples of bad behaviors... As far as this "scale" and "context" and "perspective": why not complain that slashdot doesn't publish stories about all the other evil things that happen in Iran?)
You eat shit for breakfast?
There is a solution to this problem- anonymous proxies exist to get Web users through to blocked sites. I use http://www.spynot.com/ to get through to my yahoo mail accout from work. I suppose the same sort of thing would work for Iranians.
When marching down the street claiming "FASCISM" at George Bush, there exists REAL fascism in the world.
Four different ways: /cgi-executeables, and mods it to be free of the word "Proxy" (My copy here is free of the "P" word- my school blocks anything with the word "Proxy" in the address bar)
First of all, friendly people outside of that country download this free perl proxy and put it in
Secondly, some nice person compiles a list of working HTTP / Socks / etc proxies
Thirdly, they put this on a big P2P client
Finally, some other nice person works out the Iranian government's IPs, and adds those to a peer guardian like blocklist that's distributed with the p2p client.
If they block most non-80 ports, then just use desproxy to get around it.
Finally: PROFIT! (Well, liberty, which is just as good)
My UID is prime. Is yours?
A soldier's life is not a play thing.
Sending soldiers to war -->GIves his life,amputee etc ->>brag about the latest technology with which artificial legs have been made @ slashdot.
WOW.
Why does yahoo do this
Well now. . . I don't think I've ever drunk and posted in my life, and crazy is a very relative term. --That is, everyone in the history of this world who has decided not to walk in time with the masses has been called crazy by boring people who were little thought-of during their lives and quickly forgotten afterwards. Congratulations. Let's not trade places, 'kay?
-FL
And I wager that us-ians would be better world citizens if things shifted enough to where we weren't a political, economic and military superpower. As I cringe at our Iraq situation and shake my head in disgust at the things overheard from a sizeable population of simplistic crisco-eaters I run into daily, I wonder if that isn't our immediate future. There's evidence we're already overstretched militarily, we're certainly not a political leader right now, and economically, we're slippin'.
I agree with your post, but I can also fathom this sort of ignorance: there is a human need to assign blame elsewhere, and the "usa" is coin of the realm these days.
It's the same reason that in the aftermath of the tsunami, people readily wanted to find ways to blame the usa for the tragedy.
It's the same reason that policitians in the usa are quick to commit acts of stupidity in the name of "terrorism".
some balance, some intellectual honesty
for example, the fashionable propaganda nowadays is to talk about the religious crusade of america going to war with iraq, or how america is slipping into a sort of fascism
what?
saddam hussein's baath party is blatantly modelled on stalinism, saddam hussein absorbed neighboring kuwait a la a fascist germany, saddam hussein's methods of internal control are clearly goosestepping secret police and politically motivated massacres
and al qaeda is a repeatedly, clearly, emphaticially stated fundamentalist crusade... no, not some sort of james bond villian: osama bin laden is a real genuine breathing fundamentalist bigot bent on terror and 13th century sharia law... no really! i'm not making that up! that actually means something!
meanwhile, the usa is a stable secular democracy
no, really! it's a stable secular democracy! really!
it's funny i have to say this, considering the things you hear about the "fascist fundamentalist" george bush
i don't like george bush! but i know a potato when i see a potato, i know a duck when i see a duck, and i know george w bush is NOT a fundamentalist, or a fascist, really!
and i will say something like this, and people will be like "you're trying to censor me and call me un-american because i criticize the usa! you're a tool a fundamentalist christian crusade!"
wha???
where did this insane ultrasensitivity come from? this willful blindness to obvious truths?
all i am saying, ALL I AM SAYING, is to look at the usa and cry "fundamentalism! fascism!" when the usa is clearly nothing of those two things... and that it is fighting things like al qaeda and saddam hussein which are just about DICTIONARY DEFINITIONS of fundamentalism and fascism... can you possibly understand how i might find you silly?
if you come at me like this when i say something like "george w bush is not evil, just maybe dumb"...
"oh my god! you're censoring me! you're a bootlicking sycophant of the religious right in the usa!"
huh?
all i ask for is intellectual honesty, balance, perspective, scale, context... am i so crazy?
in other words, a level of measured sophistication in your world views, please?
and what i get is this sort of vitriolic, hyperbolic, hysterical hypersensitivty that is not intelligent, it is just alternately hilarious and frightening that people can be so monomaniacally obsessed with everything the usa says and does, especially as regards to calling american actions and statements fundamentalist and fascist, when meanwhile, there are some real palpable genuine examples of fascist and fundamentalist forces in the world today and these people say... nothing
no really: screaming about the usa for two hours and then going "oh yeah, al qaeda is not nice and saddam hussein is bad too" is NOT intellectual honesty!
and yet to say these words i am saying right now, to ask for the slightest bit of balance and sophistication in response to the deluge of fashionable but braindead anti-american propaganda... and clearly, i must be a fetishistic boot licker of george w bush!
huh?
how does that work?
what is wrong with some people that their obsession with the usa clouds their sense of reason and judgment and perspective so passionately?
it's so weird, it's sad, it's hysterical, it's scary... i really think some people must have their brain wired differently than mine, to be so monomaniacal about something in defiance of all sense of reason
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You should not make the suffereing elsewhere seem less by equating what US citizens suffer in comparison! It's the same reasoning that calling someone a "Nazi" is so lothesome, as calling just about anyone a Nazi simply serves to devalue the meaning of the term (though there I can understand the weaking of the term over time, but the general concept stands).
I donate to the EFF and FSF. And I am chomping at the bit to fight things like the broadcast flag, rights that will mean something for countries that do reach the level of freedom we enjoy in the future. But while we are looking ahead we should not forget to look back every now and then and make sure no-one has stumbled along the way.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Have you seen this?
That's hosted in the US BTW. The last I heard the authors of that page were not stuck in a dungeon somewhere awaiting fingernail extraction.
Yes that is a danger, but even there many people post without fear of anything beyond a lawsuit, not physical harm by government goons. At least here it is somewhat more feasible to commit civil disobedience.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
He should be courtmartialed for using his rank for posting political rantings against current policy.
So when does your Article 32 convene?
Because if you don't get brought up on charges for this, it'll be pure luck.
"All the other things most college students do in the US" certainly includes talking about politics. And very frequently students have been on the leading edge of political revolutions. Because they want to change the world and they haven't got any dependants yet. It matters. Okay, I agree invading Iran would be crazy. But it does matter enough to do something about it. Such as the Anonymizer service (I'm surprised the iranians are so inept as to take a month to block it each time though.. I suppose they're not putting the money in, not like China). And if that doesn't work, we can give them something else that does.
So what are you saying? We should change Americas slogan from "Home of the free" to "Hey, at least its better than Iran"
Hi ! ... is horrible listen to this : ... .
I am 20 years old boy who lives in tehran.
If you think filtering Orkut.com or blogs or
1. There is no freedom in iran! no one can talk against thier regime if papers talk about it they close it as they've closed nearly 14 papers of reformer's papers. there is only 1 left ! if people do they go to jail without any courts or anything like it. if anyone talk against them in internet they filter the site and if the one who wrote em lives in iran they catch him and send em to jail!
2.in iran we cannot vote! yeah thats right ! in the last election nearly ALL reformers were DISQUALIFIED before election not (by people by the regime) (people who won 90% of votes in last election) and with 28% of people taking part in election the parliament started its 7th circuit. the parliament guys are trying to make a law for peoples DRESS! called national dress which means EVERYONE MUST wear a special kind of dress otherwise
3.President Khatami is Ms.NO ONE in our country! yeah he can not do anything! he doesnt have the power actually power is in the hands of others...
4.There is a law about NOT LETTING PEOPLE USE SATELITE ! yeah the same story about blogs and net and paper. they have built a 7 channel tv which ADvertise for them and telling lies to people. REAL LIES!
There are more to say but i dont have time and believe me these things happen in iran without any coutries showin REAL reactions. i even dont know if i will be caught by tommorow believe me
I was brought to your chain while meta-moderating, but I feel I must respond to your posits directed elsewhere, so excuse my breaking in late.
> If not, then perhaps you do not think that they rise to the level of being worthy of some random American putting himself in the fight against. If it's that: would you fight if it was your sister who was being infibulated, raped, killed, or their rights denied? If it was your child who died in Beslan? If your friend had been killed in 9/11, or by a suicide bomber, or by an indiscriminate Israeli? Or if it was your value as a non-Muslim being less than half of what a Muslim's are? Or if you were enslaved? Obviously, you would.
I tend to grit my teeth when presented with such arguments. Saying that I'd change my target of effect if I was in different circumstances simply dodges the point. The point is that there are many fights to fight, and the fact that I'd fight your particular fight if I was directly involved doesn't mean that your fight is the only fight worth fighting. More below, hopefully with fewer occurances of the word "fight".
> Then, why is it so hard to fathom that my sense of responsibility, that derives from my own priveleges and luck for being born in the right place at the right time and from my own connection to greater humanity, extends to those people who cannot defend their own rights? Extends to women and children I've never met and will never know?
It's not really your sense of responsibility extending to these parties that led the OP to the "brainwashing" conclusion. It's the implication that this responsibility is somehow more important than resonsibility to fellow Americans, and the idea that the best way to defend these people is by joining the National Guard and physically interposing oneself into the struggle that get you labelled "gung ho". It's the hallmark of the extremist to think that the best solution for him is the best solution for everyone, and your presentation implies that anyone who isn't willing to sign up for guard duty is failing to do so because he's afraid for his own safety. In fact, your last paragraph pretty much states it openly.
> Perhaps my use of a 'slogan' phrases like the Jefferson quote means that I'm incapable of forming my own opinions as a whole - I'm merely swayed by demogogues of ye olde quaint tymes. Despite the other, non-slogan reasons in the post, I simply don't think that's the case: among other things, I'm a 32 year old blue-state born American, well-travelled internationally, well-educated in history, theology and psychology, professionally employed software guy making a six-figure salary, who has rejected marxism, deconstruction, and po-mo moral relativism. Who, exactly, are you to question my intellectual or moral philsophy and choices?
It's not sloganeering that got you that analysis, it's the presentation, as I stated above, that anyone who doesn't follow you to the recruiting station isn't fighting the good fight, and it's because they're afraid. As to who exactly I am, I'm your equal. Did you forget for a moment that this is the ideal you're fighting for? "All men are created equal" applies to both of us, which gives me just as much right to call you brainwashed as it gives you to call me cowardly.
> As for cannon fodder - hardly that, I think - but on the front lines is, definitely, where I would choose to be. And, standing the line between you, your sister, any of the majority of good people of the world and a 'suicide bomber', terrorist, or Islamofascist is where I would want to place myself. If I can save a life (or kill a terrorist, same diff), then I will have made a difference, and being on that line will have been worth it, for me.
That's good for you. Actions do speak louder than words, and doing what you think is right is laudable.
> Sometimes, there are things of value that are more important than one's own skin. This is one of those. Those from whom nothing
If you like to call her a "child" for being dealt with according to the laws, she's also a "child" for having sex, specially according to her land's rules and customs she's taken a big strange risk. Don't get me wrong, for I feel sympathy for her, but everyone there knows the consequences of "acts against chasity" very well. It's forbidden and is against that country's laws and everybody there is well aware of it, and most of the people even consider sexual liberty immoral (more or less like our grandparents). And even then far too many people are still breaking those laws without even being noticed. IMO her case was a rarely unlucky one, I could relate it to her lack of diplomacy, if she provokened the judge by talking of misogyny and such. Iranians tend to be more subtle when dealing with those bigots. Sexual affairs before marriage is not much accepted there (for both sexes, but males tend to have less self-control) unless some libertarians go preaching systematically for their people. Nevertheless, satellite channels do a fine job now. They have a great influence on iranian youths, converting many of them to a Mtv-like culture and mindset, and I must include, most trashy aspects of such culture is being spread among them too. If you wish to compare it to the Western world, well there are definitely a few advantages in their laws against sex. For instance, far less teen/child porn or even normal porn exists there (if we ignore internet you would never come across such material inside the country, unless you intently seek it by asking and networking. It's very "underground"). Females (and males) are not used as objects of predominately sexual value in advertisements and alike. Prostitue is illegal as well. And -flame me if you wish- Homosexuals' propaganda is still not an unleashed politically-correct cause in ther land. And about the shocking polygamy which is ok according to those laws, it's so rare in actual life, you might never learn of one instance among the people you meet, even if you live there for 15-20 years.