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.
Complete control of information is required to stay in power. Lets hope that the people can get around this.
Some kind of open distributed web proxy might do the trick.
Sounds good, how about tor http://tor.freehaven.net/
if a single (or even multiple) tor proxies get blocked, it will just go through a different one.
it works nicely for me
hrmmm... I wonder if it would get through the "great firewall of China" just as easily
I will not give in to the terrorists. I will not become fearful.
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
Technical problems require technical solutions.
Political problems requre political solutions.
Don't use law to stop file sharing in america.
Don't use proxys to stop legal action in Iran.
THe problem is a political one and we need a political answer. The people of Iran need to make it heard that they want blogs and such. Only they can secure their own freedoms. The best thing that we as a free people can do is offer assistance in helping their government learn that free speach is good.
We could invade Iran (again) or we could train Iranians to hack but the reality of the issue is that beyond this, all we will do is put a band aid on a huge wound.
July 1999. The mullahs slapped them down. Hard.
Interestingly, Iran was the only middle eastern country to have spontaneous pro US demonstrations after 9/11/2001.
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.
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
Why does the religion of peace need special instructions on how to act civilized?
You mean like 10 Commandments or something? Why do Christians need this?
Why is the religion of peace directly responsible for 28 out of the 30 violent conflicts raging in the world today?
Hmm, really? Please enumerate them. Christianity seems to have its hand in a lot of them too.
Why is the religion of peace responsible for the vast majority of chattel slavery in the world today?
Really? Care to cite a source? BTW, the Southern Baptist Conference was pro-slavery throughout the civil war. There is NOTHING in the Bible condemning slavery - in many places slavery is condoned. Are you sure slavery is something inherent to a religion, or is it more likely poverty and economics?
Why is the religion of peace responsible for the vast majority of terrorism in the 20th and 21st Centuries?
The same reason Christianity was responsible for it in the preceeding 18 centuries. Because. Now, if you would care to substantiate this allegation, I'm all ears. The IRA, FARC and ETA have killed a lot more people in those centuries than Islamic terrorists but they just haven't been getting the press coverage since 9\11...
Why are the practitioners of the religion of peace routinely slaughtering unarmed practitioners of every other religion wherever they can get away with it?
I think what you meant to say was "SOME practitioners". Again, this can equally and justifiably be said of Christianity as well. When the Army of God or Eric Rudolph kills abortion doctors or some blond-haired, blue-eyed boy next door blows up 168 people in a federal building, you don't seem to blame all Christians or all Americans do you?
Why does the religion of peace call for the murder of anyone who converts from the religion of peace to another religion?
Oh you mean like these guys? Yeah, your right...what kind of sick religion is THAT?
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?
Would you care to show where it says ALL muslims share this belief? Or have you been watching too much Fox News...The Church of the Creator thinks that the White Race was Gods true choosen people and can even quote the Bible to back it up...doesn't make it so and doesn't mean All Christians think that way. Don't mistake the beleifs a a sick minority with the whole religion.
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?
You mean like Christianity did for hundreds of years upto the begining of the 19th century...Catholic AND protestant? Think of about 5 centuries of Jews and witches being burned at the stake. Better yet, read up about the murder of Hypatia in Alexadria. You know its is bad, but again, if Jerry Falwell claims that 9\11 happened because America pissed of your God doesn't mean ALL Christians think like that...
Why is the religion of peace responsible for the sexual mutilation of millions of little girls and the savage oppression of women?
But sexual mutilation of infant boys is ok then? Christianity has not exactly been a beacon of equality for women either, save the last 40 years of so...
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 th
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
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)