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Iran Cracks Down on Bloggers
Wired News is reporting that dozens of Iranian Bloggers have been met with harassment by the government and some have even been arrested for voicing dissenting views in recent history. The article takes a look at some of the bloggers who are fighting for their rights and how. From the article: "The Iranian blogging community, known as Weblogistan, is relatively new. It sprang to life in 2001 after hard-liners -- fighting back against a reformist president -- shut down more than 100 newspapers and magazines, and detained writers. At the time, Derakhshan posted instructions on the internet in Farsi on how to set up a weblog."
These people would be helped by a project like Tor. http://tor.eff.org/
Obligatory list of persian blogs
Wiki article
A few that I personally like.
Political blogs:
Brooding Persian
Iranian Truth
Eyeranian
Funny
Shirin
Negar
Lost in Texas
Ok fine this is mine sometimes I think I am funny
And a note on the numbers, I have no clue how they came up with that but I have a hard time believing any of it. Blogsbyiranians list any blog that Hossein comes across and it has a list of 100-200. My personal opinion is that there are about 5000 active persian blogs. Oh and cause I know someone will ask for it. some iranian porn
Vidi, vici, veni. (I saw, I conquered, I came)
Faith Freedom site of Ali Sina
TheReligionOfPeace
EuroJihad (in polish)
Cox & Forkum (funny drawings)
JihadWatch
PravdaOIslamu (in czech)
Saudi blogger
Egyptian blogger
Hizb-ut-Tahrir Islamic site
I agree with you 100% but at the same time I have to stand by my believe that by attacking freedom of speech is the only way for oppressors to retain control. I live in Communist Romania until 1989 and a moved to the US in 1997. I experience oppression first hand. Anne Frank reminded me at the isolation that the communist dictators put my family and me in. Anne Frank basically kept a blog that wasn't allowed to be seen to anyone else so that her family can stay away from the Nazi harm.
Elections does not imply democracy.
Nor does democracy imply elections.
Sometimes you need constitutional safeguards to prevent the majority from voting away their freedoms. Kind of like how it is illegal in Germany to hold referendums of government policy to a national vote or how the electoral college system was supposed to work in early America.
And then you can have the extreme possibility where a dictator actually enforces freedom, rights, and equality to an extreme, but seeing that has never happened in the history of mankind due to the bad nature of men in power... Representative republics seem to be the best answer to our political problems.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I'd rather you don't speak about the sharia unless you know what you're talking about.
For those who didn't click the link,it says that the girl was hanged because she killed one of the men who tried to rape her.
Ask any Islamic scholar to judge the situation, and he will say that she did what she did in self defence and that it was totally within her rights.
blame the Iranian judge all you want, but don't attribute it to sharia.
Hitler was democratically elected. People gave up their power to him afterward. Here in the US, it is possible to be part of the political machine of any party. It rarely happens but some back woods schmo can become president.
As for the two party system, we seem to like it that way. We like either/or scenarios. But third parties can come to power. They always have. They just need to be popular enough. We started out almost a one party system, Federalists, but quickly the Democratic-Republicans arose to opose. Then came the Whigs and the Federalists faded away, then came the Republicans and the Whigs faded away. It's been Democrats and Republicans ever since, though there have been third parties, mostly built on a personality - Bull Moose, Reform Pary. There are a lot of 3rd parties now that have limited support. The Green Party gets most votes for pres due to personality, the Libertarian party has most candidates in office for actually party/platform support. Maybe one of these, or another will rise, the question is, which one will fade away? The Democrats used to be the Democratic-Republicans maybe those two parties should stop the charade and just adopt the old name.