Blogging in Iran Takes Courage

netbuzz writes "This morning's Boston Globe has a thought-provoking profile of Iranian bloggers who are risking everything, quite literally, to bring a modicum of openness and truth to a society where the former is not tolerated and the latter strictly defined by government/religious authorities."

Comments

Fucking grow up.

[s20451]

Human Rights Watch Iran
Amnesty International Iran

Take your jaded world weariness and shove it up your ass. The USA has problems, but comparing it to Iran with a smirk and a shrug is the opposite of helpful.

Re:Fucking grow up.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm...

It seems to me that this is an article about Iran, not the US. The US gets plenty of criticism in articles about its policies, but to criticize the US in an article about Iran speaks only about trying to justify worse abuses by comparison. It seems you are the one who is blind. You see any international story about abuse and use it as your soapbox against US policies. But by doing so you ignore the abuses the story was about.

Re:Fucking grow up.

[vertinox]

The USA has problems, but comparing it to Iran with a smirk and a shrug is the opposite of helpful.

Oh least we forget who put the Shah in power. So indirectly, our Government... Which is supposedly in the hands of the US people... Installed a dictator who was terrible enough for a people to wish a revolution that replaced him with a theocratic leadership.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Revolution

So yeah. At home we aren't as bad as Iran, but we had a great big hand in causing them to turn into the country they are today. I suppose I could get into the issue of the Iran/Iraq war which we tried to fix our mistake by arming another which we had to fix ourselves 20 years later.

And now we are paying for it on a daily basis.

Re:Fucking grow up.

[iMMersE]

Bzzt. "Since 1990 Amnesty International has documented 47 executions of child offenders in eight countries: China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the USA and Yemen."

Read about it here

"The USA and Iran have each executed more child offenders than the other six countries combined and Iran has now matched the USA's total since 1990 of 19 child executions."

That's right folks, Iran has caught up with the USA. CAUGHT UP!

Re:Fucking grow up.

[Darlantan]

You, sir, are wrong.

Here, let me pick apart the major points of your short troll:

1: The problem here is that these people, by and large, have not been proven to be terrorists. How would you like it if you were randomly grabbed off the street, called a murder, and thrown in prison? Here in the US, we used to believe that people were innocent until proven guilty. Obviously you don't.

2: Torture is not an effective means of getting reliable intel from people, despite what TV has told you. Torture IS very good at getting people to do what you want them to do. While the second statement may appear to counter the first, it doesn't. Torture attempts to force compliance through pain, threat of death, or extreme discomfort. When successful, the victim will do whatever they think you want, if it means you will quit torturing them. This includes signing false confessions, even admitting to things they know are untrue. If tortured enough (and HERE's a classic example) you can get someone to admit that 1+1=3. If you know enough beforehand to catch false statements and continue torturing the victim until you get a reliable answer, then you basically know the answer beforehand anyway. If you don't, then how do you know when to stop? The first answer may be unreliable, and so may the third, fifth, 86th, whatever. If they DO give you the correct information at some point, how do you know?

Re:Iran is in good company

[Stonehand]

A cynic might suggest that there is a difference between criticizing a president who is largely a loudmouthed figurehead, and something more substantial such as criticizing the Guardian Council or the very structure of the Iranian government in so far as said Council has the most of the actual power. The Council may be happy with letting Ahmadinejad take some heat, if it makes themselves look more reasonable and their own power is unquestioned.

Proxy access in Iran

[patrick0]

I spent 3 weeks backpacking around Iran in May last year.

Their blocking system is fairly limited. Each ISP implements its own set of manually updated filters (not a central blocking system like China). I was trying to access certain sites -- www.sitename.com might work at one place but be blocked at another, though at the other net cafe sitename.com or IP address would often work just fine. I found the blocking policy inconsistent, though not that many sites were blocked (mainly gay sites were blocked).

Because of the Iran/Iraq war the population is very young -- 70% of Iranians are under 30 according to the Iran Lonely Planet guide. I imagine that'll mean plenty of blogs, whether insightful or the usual blog trash. People were quite politically aware and well educated. The news media seemed no more biased than Fox News in the US!

It's a beautiful country and well worth a visit. Persepolis is amazing. Tehran was like any other big city -- lots of expensive houses, cars and more liberally dressed women. The latest model mobile phones were available everywhere. I was offered alcohol quite a bit (especially by taxi drivers). It's illegal for Muslims to drink but the Christian and Jewish population are able to drink. Incidently, Iran has the highest Jewish population in the Middle East outside of Israel.

I didn't know much about Iran before visiting, I'm just glad I went. Unfortunately if you're American/British it's difficult (though not impossible) to get a tourist visa unless you're in a tour group. I presume this is due to reciprocal restrictions applied by the UK/US on their citizens.

The last few years there have been fairly low in terms of tourism numbers and people were incredibly friendly to me - offering to take me to their homes for dinner and so on. Plenty of people were critical of their government but were just as critical of the American govt.

Funnily enough I just visited Israel last month and had a 45 minute interrogation because I'd visited Malaysia (a very westernised 70% muslim country). I'm glad I wasn't using the passport with the Iranian stamp in it!

I took photos of the nuclear installation between Kashan & Abyaneh despite the taxi driver panicking I'd get caught (you're not allowed to take photos of military installations). Though you can get a much better view of the place through Google maps!