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Iran Continues to Censor Internet Communications
eldawg writes "Iran has recently been in the news after electing a 'hardliner' president. But even previous 'liberal' Iranian governments have been putting together a sophisticated Internet filtering system to prevent their citizens from visiting 'questionable' websites and censoring dissent. An earlier posting at Slashdot outlined the crackdown on blogs, chat rooms and email communications. A more recent research paper from the OpenNet Initiative provides an update on the censoring activity in Iran. Reports indicate that the Iranian authorities are specifically targetting 'content in the local Farsi language using a filterning second only to China.'
We know Cisco has played a large role in bulding the 'Great Firewall of China' but is the Iranian initiative homegrown?"
The ONI report mentions Secure Computing's SmartFilter as the primary means of filtering, http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/cmp/20050 624/tc_cmp/164902259but the company denies ever selling a license to Iran.
Just saying...
Get your Unix fortune now!
The problem with 67cshdocs.com is that he is an Army physician.
If you are in the Army, they pretty much can tell you what to do (or what not to say).
Unlike the general population that can say anything it wants.
Besides, the truth about the Iraq war and the lies it was/is based upon is clearly evident to anyone who is not a Dubya fanboy.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Right, because the liberal environmental terrorist wackos are all about giving you freedom instead of forcing you to obey their edicts about land use?
There are a lot more socialist and communist we-want-to-run-your-life liberal wacko's out there than there are many of the peace-love-and-rock-n-roll just leave everyone alone crowd anymore.
Especially the farther you get into politics, since politics tends to attract the control types, while the non-control types don't seem to desire the power as much.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
The average joe in Iran *hates* the mullahs. Unlike most other Arab governments (which encourage people to blame and hate the US for all of their home-brewed problems) the Iranian government has no easy scapegoat. (And 36 years of economic deprivation is a lot to answer for) That's why the people in power are so afraid of revolution.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
"Don't get me wrong, there are tons of liberal wacko's too"
Can anyone tell me how liberal became a derogatory term in the U.S. ?
I find this very strange every time I see it here.
Where does the money come from... most likely the WTO. The last thing I heard were that the elections weren't actually fraud. Instead the scheme was brilliant. I'm not sure how all the extra convicts even voted, that wasn't part of the plan. In areas where Bush was predicted to win, they just added extra polling boths. In areas where he expected to loose, limit the polling boths so people would more likely not want to wait and line and walk away. And this strategy is completely legal. I think we need a few ammendments to fix this...
Thank you, thank you, thank you - for enlightening us to the fact that the mainstream media in the US is unsupportive of the Bush administration.
And here I was thinking that they were thoroughly complicit in constructing the (utterly fictitious, but politically vital) mental association of the average American citizen between the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the need to invade a country that had not the slightest connection to it.
What on earth was I thinking?!
Pretty much it's George McGovern's fault. He was a Senator from South Dakota.
He ran against Richard Nixon in the 1972 election on a peace at any costs platform, and proposed a generous minimum income welware program. He lost to Nixon even though most people personally detested the man even before his scandals hit the bigtime.
And he lost, in a big way. McGovern lost by 22% in the popular vote and only carried two states, losing there 520 votes to 17.
He ruined the name of "liberals" in America, by going as close as possible to out and out socialism.
So now, liberal means "socialist", which people equate to "communist".
This happened in the primaries in South Carolina. John McCain unexpectedly beat Bush in the previous primary. McCain, a republican, was getting lots of votes from independents and democrats. McCain was also a vet from the Vietnam war and highly respected because as a prisioner of war, his father who was an navy admeral could have gotten him freed. But McCain said he would rather stay in a prision than compromise his country or their values. You can take that either way, as supporting something good or bad, but the one thing you can not argue is he was a man of conviction. When it came time, his opinions really meant something to him. And South Carolina has one of the largest populations of veterans in the USA. Bush was worried they would vote for McCain, because he actually served and paid a high price for his service.
So what happened? The primary system was ran by volunteers, ordinary people who show up at the polls so people can vote. Bush had people register to voluneteer at polling places in black communities, where there were more democrats. When it came time to open the polls, none of the volunteers showed up. The polling places never opened, instead there were signs telling people to drive to the next county to vote. McCain lost that state, and all the steam from his last win. Bush went on to win with one of the largest war chests ever.
If McCain would have won South Carolina, he would have been able to raise more money. Bush would have lost some potential donors money. McCain went on to win other states after that, Michigan and others, but never could raise enough money to continue.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Although some American companies are completely unethical, the overwhelming majority abide by some minimal standards of decency. Back in the days of apartheid in South Africa, all American companies (except one) doing business there agreed to abide by the Sullivan Principles, which pledged fair treatment to South Africa's blacks.
We need to take the same moral fortitude in dealing with both Iran and China (including Taiwan province). When we slap sanctions against he Beijing government, we should also slap sanctions against the Taipei government. Taiwan and mainland China are one in the same, as far as morality is concerned. When American companies curtailed investments in China just after the Tiananmen Square Incident, Taiwanese companies actually accelerated investments into mainland China, leading to today's massive cumulative Taiwanese investment of $100 billion into mainland China.
You'll want to have a look at two recent Supreme Court rulings, then, in which the generally left-aligned statists such as Stevens and Ginsburg allied with "moderates" to officially sanction a vast expansion of government power.
One, they ruled that the Federal government has jurisdiction over anything that *affects* interstate commerce. This is practically any activity on the planet, given how indirect they allow the chain to be.
Two, they ruled that "public use" for the purposes of forcibly seizing property goes not only towards the obvious roles (turning private land into public land, such as for public roads) but justifies taking from one private owner and giving to another, if *some* benefit can be argued on behalf of the state such as an additional dollar of tax revenue.
These decisions essentially steamroll over the concepts of private property and federalism.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
i travel to iran often with work and slashdot is one of the few sites that i check that can still be accessed.
the filtering there is hardcore.
in april there was a political clash with some local arabs and a few were killed - the net to our city was cut off entirely for 6 days or so. no one knew what was wrong, or could give us any info. i eventually found out from a friend that works at the local ISP that the govenment had ordered the cut.
2. you're wrong.
1. I said If things continue as they are, in 20 years
You answered the statement you WANTED to answer by saying
There simply is not censorship here even remotely similar to the horrible things that take place elsewhere
I was not using the present tense - YOU WERE. I was saying that IF THINGS CONTINUE ALONG THE PATH THEY ARE AT PRESENT, we won't have much, if any alternative press in this country.
YOU decided that I was saying that the USA is like Iran TODAY, and responded using such a presumption. Why? Because you're a typical ninny.
2. You're wrong.
Have you been arrested and thrown in prison and then beaten for suggesting you do not like the president? I don't think so.
No, but many people have been arrested and then beaten or tortured or faced with asymmetrical application of state force for much less. Proof?
Here:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0407-06.ht m
Take a look at her face and tell me that isn't torture.
http://www.constitution.org/ghansen/conghansen.htm
He wasn't tortured? He wa a former CONGRESSMAN (even)!
http://web.amnesty.org/report2005/usa-summary-eng
Oh - I guess you didn't read the Amnesty International Report, either...
I could go on and on about the evils of the American Government, but I won't. Suffice to say, you're wrong. RIGHT NOW most of the torture and fascist repression our government does (but not all) is visited upon our victims through proxies - client states and corrupt governments supressing their people in the interests of the local ruling class who support the insane and destructive American lifestyle and get rich in the process.
SOME of the torture is handled here, and is dished out as described above.
Make no mistake about it: the USA is quickly sliding into a new and unique form of "pseudo-democratic fascism" in the form of a 1.5 party state. The "winner take all" structure of the election system prevents third parties from getting any real daylight, and the power duopoly has been so eroded in the past several years by the neocon thugs in the Republican party that it is more of a monopoly of government by and for the corporations.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.