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?"
"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 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
Short answer: Who cares?
The conventional wisdom is that the Iranian people overthrew the Shah back in the late 1970s, when his regime became too secular and too iron-handed. They then established an Islamic republic, under the ayatollahs.
A few years later, when there were still Iranian students in US colleges and universities, the students whose predecessors had been frantically demonstrating against the Shah were themselves frantically demonstrating against Ayatollah Khomeini and his cronies. Some things don't change.
When, and if, the Persians decide they are sick and tired of oppressive government in the name of religious purity, they will remember how to fix that problem. Until they do that, it is THEIR problem, not ours.
Yeouch! Language wars on Orkut are quite the worst type of flamewar. It usually doesn't affect the communities I'm part of (mostly college-based), but many general interest communities aren't able to speak a common tongue even if they advocate one in the community rules. The trouble is usually when there's a serious discussion in language X, and someone gatecrashes with a message in language Y. All messages after that are in language Y, and nobody is able to read the whole discussion and make sense of it.
On a different note, it had been several weeks since I checked my Orkut account. I logged in today (this story on Slashdot reminded me) and found I could not do anything without the server returning internal error messages. If this keeps up, it may soon die of its own accord, language and Netcraft be damned.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
I guess none of you have ever lived under a Theocratic government. When I said We have been fighting for the past 10 years of our lives, I was reffering to the Iranian Student Movement not me by myself. I am just heading to university. "In The United States of America" Maybe this might help you understand a bit better about Ahura Mazda (Ahoo-raa Maz-daa).
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.
http://www.news.uiuc.edu/news/04/0809firewall.html
Don't take a vacation in Cuba, that's communist and evil. But feel free to sell advanced computer and networking systems to China. That's cool.
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.
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.
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.
Oh, and woman aren't just "battered".
Iranians and international community expressed outrage at reported execution of the 16-year-old Ateqeh Rajabi on vague charges of un-Islamic behaviour.
However, informed sources revealed that Ms. Ateqeh was sentenced to death by the judge, a cleric, because during the "trial", she expressed outrage at the misogyny and injustice in the Islamic Republic and its Islam-based judicial system.
"The lower court judge was so incensed by her protestations that he personally put the noose around her neck after his decision had been upheld by the Supreme Court", the sources reported.
Plenty of pictures. They string her up using a standard construction crane and leave her their hanging for everyone to see.
Friday 27 August 2004 in the Germany-based internet newspaper Iran Emrooz, Dr. Hoseyn Baqer Zadeh, an Iranian human rights activist observed that the laws of the Islamic Republic are the "most inhuman, segregationist, insulting and discriminatory" against women.
Your insight into the why Bush would not invade is based on false premise in regards to natural resources. As for Iran in it's current state, they are and a clear and present danger just like N. Korea due to their Nuclear ambitions and hostitility toward America. N. Korea aside, Iran is run by Islamic fundimentalists that would like nothing more then to see the distruction of America. And based on the suicidal actions of these fanatics, we have much to fear!
Iraq had a reason to be liberated because the minority sunnis muslems were given power by Saddam to control the rest of Iraq. Obviously now that Saddam is out of hte picture, the remaining sunnis loyal to Saddam will do anything to regain their power by sabotaging the democratic efforts now put into place. What is important about this war is two-fold.
1. Remove the threat of Saddam and the flow of money going to al qaeda.
2. Set into motion a democratic example to the rest of the middle east where the people are held accountable for their countries actions.
Number 2 is very important. Because the Iranian government is currently backed in favor of the majority of it's citizens. So should Iran ever use a nuclear device hand it over to a terrorist orginization (war by proxy), we would have the sovereign right to retaliate in kind. In other words, politically we would not be hindered to use nuclear weapons to remove both N. Korea and Iran in the event of such actions being needed.
Life is not for the lazy.
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)
I'd like to add a third option- do nothing. Iran is ripe for another revolution; with something like 60% of the population under age 18, every year sees more and more protests against the Iranian government. The harder the mullahs push, the more likely it becomes that their people will push back.
The result of all this dissent all this is an Iranian civil war, which could have any of a number of outcomes. But given the relatively pro-US stance of the dissidents this time around, and the fact that the US military is in a position to help them, there may be some cause for hope.
Then again, none of this might happen. Or it might take decades. With or without American help, the dissidents could fail, or they might not want our help. They could overthrow the mullahs, and replace them with something worse (from an American/blogger point of view). Aren't international politics exciting?
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
Point 1
Hussein was no threat to the US. He had no weapons of mass destruction, no plans to invade other countries and was well contained.
There has been only one link between Hussein and Al Queda, and that fell apart because they both have completely different ideologies. There was no flow of money from Iraq. However, a much more credible case can be made to show a flow of money from Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Point 2
An imposed democracy shows nothing but a threat. There is no carrot, just stick. A democracy would be far better than the dictatorship of Hussein, but the one imposed by the US has no legitimacy and unless elections are shown to be fair and well attended (this must be done by the UN - the US has zero credibility in this matter) then the result will cause dispute.
The current state of Iraq is a total shambles. The reasons for war were never true, so they were changed after the fact. That the count of Iraqi dead is kept secret shows that either there are staggering numbers of dead, or that the US gov't just doesn't care about them. Either way, this is heinous. Estimates give about 100,000 dead, making the year under the US worse than any year under Hussein.
There were good, moral reasons to go to war against Iraq, and the brutal regime deserved to be brought down. The war has achieved that end, but the means used were terrible, and may not justify the end. Time will tell.
Exactly how should people "do it *themselves*", when they don't have the power to do it? I assume you live in a 1st world nation like the USA or Europe? We have the luxury of running water, electricity. Many parts of Iraq don't have these things. We also have the luxury of the news media. Yes, they may be slanted, but they _all_ would swoop on a story where our rights were being trampled on by the government. The people of Iraq _didn't_ have any of these luxuries we take for granted.
Exactly how do you expect a father, mother and small child to fight back against Saddam and his regime? They would all have been slaughtered. For all the cries that we are only there "for oil", we have been serving a purpose. Stopping Saddam and the other terrorists that have threatened the people of Iraq and the world.
The first democratic elections in the history of Iraq are about to happen! Many people have been threatened by terrorists that if they vote in this election, they and their families would be _murdered_. Imagine if that happened in the USA. Imagine that if you _didn't_ vote for BUSH you and your loved ones would be killed.
Your life and security is SOOO much better then the majority of the people of the world and you don't even appreciate it. I served in the US Marines back in 1991 (Gulf War). I have seen how these people are forced to live (especially women). It is not pretty. The actions of the USA may look ugly now, but wait 5-10 years and see what happens. Iraq will be a democratic nation were the people have a voice! A first in the history of the nation of Iraq.
The world may be calling the USA names now and saying we are only there for oil, however they will see what great things will come to Iraq and the Iraqis from democracy.
I am so tired of people dumping on the USA about what we do. We as a nation and as a people have given our lives for the freedom of the world, more than any other nation on earth. We don't ask for praise, but a little respect will do. We saved the French when they couldn't save themselves and look at the respect they give us now. We stopped the Germans when they lost their minds and wanted a "pure" world. Look at the respect the Germans give us now. We stopped most of the tyranny in the world and introduced DEMOCRACY. Yet we still hear shit about how we do too much or not enough. As a former Marine, I say we, the USA, stop helping the world for 50 years and see the shit they get themselves into and let the world "handle it *themselves*".
Yet, the instructions are in there, and then they become law. Ever try to change a law that was implemented by God?
As if this is unique to Islam? Shit, the Jews have the Torah, and there's a fundamentalist movement in Israel which believes the nation should live by it, stonings and all. Not to mention all those that defend the death penalty in the US based on the famous "an eye for an eye" phrase in the Bible.
Seperation of Church and state is a really really good idea.
It's just a damn shame that even the US seems to have forgotten that lesson.
Again, what here is so unique about Islam?
Of course, you know very simple and obvious fact. Yet you try to mislead people.
Err, no, you just missed the point, which was: blaming the religion for the acts of a violent, self-righteous minority is simply unfair, whether it's in the Middle East or Central America. ie, blaming Catholicism for the Cocaine trade is as stupid as blaming Islam for the various acts of terrorism carried out in it's name.
Excuse me? But did you just say someone SHOULD be killed for insulting a religon?
Wow, nice deflection. The actual point, which you appear to have missed, is that only one religious leader called for the death of Salman Rushdie, and no other country agreed. Yes, believe it or not, the Ayatollah does not, in fact, speak for all of Islam. Shocking, I know. Much like all those terrorists don't, in fact, represent the vast majority of adherrants to Islam.
Not true - many of the honour killings of women in countries like Africa or in some muslim societies are carried out and encouraged by women. Mostly Mothers-in-Law against the wives of sons that they feel are not worthy.
This sort of thing is endemic amongst both men and women in these types of societies (and they aren't purely Muslim societies either - within those countries, all the religions tend to support things like honour killings. Tribal Africa is a good example).
A very weak comparison would be the backlash against feminism and equality for women in the workplace that took place (and still takes place) in the Western World - most of the backlash has occurred from within the ranks of the fairer sex. Bizarre, but sadly, basic human nature.
This is absolutely sickening, for any number of reasons: murder of a person, murder of a woman, murder of a child, state condoned murder, piss poor judicial system where a malicious judge can actually take part in the execution, no seperation of church and state, the fact that the victims own families often carry out this kind of thing themselves (honor killings), etc.. it's endless, picture yourselves in her position where your family and entire society want you dead to satisfy their fear and dogma (and imagine them being completely remorseless and self-righteous too).
But in defence of the parent of this thread (although I'm not sure that's where he/she was going with this): you can't exactly liberate a people from themselves. If a people are at a stage where most of them are all for this kind of ignorance, what do you do? There are 'honor killings' in the modern western world. The problem lies with the people, and a country's government is a reflection of it's people. You would have to take over Iran and make it a new state/province/territory. If enough of their own people wanted it to be different, then they would have made it different.
Off topic tangent:
There's a little theory I have (would fit in the 'what do you believe but can't prove'): all human political systems are equivalent: they are always hierarchical, capitalistic, and democratic. It's just a question of what form the elements take, what they call their leader, the currency type (not necessarily monetary), and whether you cast your vote with ballots or with bullets (and your life). Of course being able to cast votes with ballots is a luxury afforded because our predecessors (in various revolutions) already voted with bullets so we could vote with ballots. Think of it this way: what stops someone from taking over a large western country and declaring themselves dictator: an implicit vote with bullets (i.e. military power). You don't like your king? Revolution. It's kind of like voting, only more involved.
And to the reply comparing cows to this 16 year old girl. I think killing cows is wrong, killing a 16 year old girl is much more wrong.
Female genital mutilation is not an Islamic thing. It's an African thing. African Pagans still do it, and so do some African and Egyptian Christians.
Bullshit. I come from Africa, and I can tell you for certain that genital mutilation is mostly practiced in my part of the world by Muslims.
PS: Egyptians are Africans, last I checked. Let me guess - you're an Arab Muslim, right? Nothing like blaming the abjad ("darkies") for the failings others identify in your people, is there?
1. A few of your rebukes cite past historical sins in christian societies ("our" societies) as analogies to the the acts of radical moslems coming from the respective societies ("their" societies).
A common argument made by many apologists is that "they" as a society are still evolving and going through the same problems we went through. To back up this argument "our" past errors are cited. Of which certainly we know quite a few. (BTW how much do we (or even they) know of their past? Is is openly dealt with?)
While it may be interesting discussing the merits of this theory, it begs the question: does that mean "they" are less capable then us, inferiour even? That we give them some leniency, kindly treat them the way we treat confused and troublesome children?
To the point: does that mean we don't criticize them the same way we critizes our own religions, our own politicians and our own clergy? We don't hold them up to higher standards?
I certainly hope not. I would hope that they don't either.
For this reason we as individuals should not refrain from criticizing failings of others and hold our standards to everyone equally high.
2. You cite a few examples of extremists in our societies, show that we have our own bad apples. Again a good point, maybe it would be good to just run a tally to see if we have the same density of extremists as they do...
But it shows a fault in their societies themselves: these kinds of opinions and actions do not come out of nowhere. People in their vincity know and tolerate this interpretation of Islam and maybe even their actions. Of the violent examples (IRA, ETA) you stated, I would assume that "our" offenders had to conceal their identies. They had to be carefull not to be discovered or betrayed. One just doesn't have the impression that radical islamic terrorists worry much about being betrayed by people that know of their opinion and deeds.
3. All comparisons you make are only qualititave comparisons not quantitative. To "sexual mutilation of millions of little girls and the savage oppression of women" you counter "sexual mutilation of infant boys" (you certainly mean sexual abuse by very sick clergy men in the US, you certainly aren't speaking of circumcision are you?)
It would be laughable to assume the numbers could be compared. Also in the US the church is being held responsible (morally as well as legally) for the sick deeds these men have made and the almost equally sick decisions the church has made to hush-hush it over the decades. This owning up to mistakes does not take place in their societies.
4. Your rebuke to the point concerning the videos was shown to be false in the above poster: http://www.snopes.com/rumors/cnn.htm
5. Concerning Oklahoma City, the Pope and the Archbishop. They sent their condolences (search it with google, I did). I can imagine the Pope sends his condolences each time a catastrophy happens. Dito the Archbishop. But I am also certain that had the bomber cited "The Christian-Catholic God" as being his moral compass that the Pope would have publicly condemned this man. As would have all christian priests in their churches. Openly, they would have gone to great efforts to avoid any possible misunderstanding and to make clear that they have absolutley no sympathies for this kind of act. Unfortunately to often moslem-arab imams are the moral compasses and inspiration for terrorists. Why is it so hard to hear all other imams publicly condemning this? If these people have hijacked their religion why are they not publicly shunned and denounced? How is it that these people can use their churches for their agitational-inspirational meetings? Where is the public opposition?
Why do they not insist that it not be called 'jidah' anymore? 'Jidah' means 'struggle' for the faith in oneself and with
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sigamajig...
I'm the sr. sysadmin for Anonymizer and we have a contract with VOA to provide free proxy service to Iran.
/. with it...Rob hates me). Added features for the Iran proxy is full time SSL, URL encryption, Farsi language support, and we switch the proxy website about once a month (every time the Iranian government blocks us). We perform checks on the service from within Iran to see if our site is actually blocked (yes, it works), and we maintain a database of all known e-mail addresses that we can detect as being located in Iran. Every time we switch the proxy site we send an e-mail informing them of the new free proxy location so the citizens of Iran can find it. The sites are also broadcast via radio and TV into Iran by the VOA. To be honest, we're usually about a day behind the blocks, due mostly to time zone differences.
It's based off of PrivateSurfing (which you can try out for free at the Anonymizer homepage, sorry you can't surf
The systems that run the Iran proxies are dedicated and used quite heavily. Much more than any of the servers that we have for everything else. The loadav is pretty high, and we're working on upgrading them in the next few months to increase capacity.
Most of our customers are under NDA so I don't mention where I work much, but the VOA is one of our very few public contracts due to it's anti-censorship nature.
Maybe the IRA groups aren't really at it because of Christianity issues. So how then can you spin around and say that Al Qaeda REALLY does it for Islam? Bin Laden said he wanted to punish America for Palestine (he sped up the deadline because of it), that sounds Political to me.
No, "Jack and Mary" aren't going to carry out suicide attacks. But neither is your average "Muhammad Akbar." Are you saying those names as if each was a terrorist? First of all, not all terrorists who claim to be Muslim do suicide attacks. The FLN of Algeria didn't, and neither did the PLO. Suicide attacks are recent in that conflict. Second, many different terrorists have carried out suicide attacks; the Japanese Kamikaze, the Marxist Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka, etc.
FARC is communist, they carry out terrorism in the name of their ideology. Bombings, hijackings, landmines, and guerilla warfare with the death of many many innocents, all justified by their communist agenda. No, its not a jihad, a TRUE Jihad in Islam would never stoop so low. Go read the stories of the sahaba and the hadith from the prophet Muhammad (pbuh) concerning the battles of Badr and Uhud and see what qualifies. Mainstream Islamic scholars around the world including in the West, like Hamza Yusuf and Tariq Ramadan, vocally condemn terrorism, they say it has no place in Islam.
Bin Laden is doing what he does for political reasons. He's stated on numerous occasions that he is against the US for siding against the Palestinians, and he wants the US out of Saudi Arabia. Thats all political, and he gives it a religious overtone. The IRA does the same thing. Would they agree with you if you told them they weren't acting in a Christian manner? Al Qaeda would disagree with me if I told them they weren't acting Islamic, but who cares what they say if most of the rest of the world knows they are wrong.
Iran claims to be an Islamic state, but the Sunnis may not agree with them. The Vatican city claims to be a Christian state, but the Protestants may not agree with them.
How did Iran lead in terrorism? Aside from the hostage affair, I don't know what you're referring to. I didn't see them do acts like the PLO, and I didn't hear about them fighting with anyone other than Iraq.
It's only hypocrisy if they are comparable in the relevant respects.
Who decides relevancy? If their religion/culture thinks women are a "lower" form of life, like animals, who is to prove them wrong? The Old Testiment explicitly gives men dominion over women. In those cultures you don't argue against the scriptures.
Table-ized A.I.