Iran Blocks, Unblocks Access to Google

morpheus83 writes "Iran has blocked access to the Google search engine and its Gmail email service as part of a clampdown on material deemed to be offensive. Hamid Shahriari, the secretary of Iran's National Council of Information did not explain why the sites were being blocked. Google, Gmail and several other foreign sites appeared to be inaccessible to Iranian users from Monday morning. Iran has tough censorship on cultural products and internet access, banning thousands of websites and blogs containing sexual and politically critical material as well as women's rights and social networking sites." That didn't take long. Iran has now unblocked Google claiming the censorship was an error.

Comments

Censorship is the last resort of a failing regime

[The_Fire_Horse]

As has happened many times before, What starts as a simple censorship of a website ALWAYS turns into more nastier things while the 'people in charge' are trying to control the masses.

How stupid are these governments - really. Do they honestly believe that the problems of their country can be solved by stopping someone having a GMail account, or preventing them looking up camel porn on google?

Iran is in a desperate attempt to return to old school biblical times (great if you are not a woman - "Iran has tough censorship on internet access .... as well as womens rights") and are now clutching at straws - it can only result in resentment from the citizens.

Unblocked

[gravos]

Actually, it has been unblocked.

Re:Unblocked

[deftcoder]

How do you 'accidentally' block a site nationwide? Does Iran only have 1 ISP or something?

Re:Unblocked

[UnHolier than ever]

No, there are twelve. However, I would expect all of them to use the same blacklist provided by the government.

Good for them

[ratnerstar]

I think it's a great idea. After all, Google can give you plans and instructions for making a nuclear weapon! We wouldn't want that information to fall into the wrong hands.

That's the least of the problems with Iran today

[dusanv]

Censorship of Google is the least problem there today unfortunately.

Information needs to be free

[downix]

The loss of information is a step in the direction of cultural collapse. If you constantly treat your citizens as children, you either a) stop being productive or b) get a bunch of very angry citizens.

Iran, you might have a culture that demands things, but if you force them onto your population, you will create resentment, resentment becomes anger, and anger begets revolution. Remember the Shah? The current government is running along the same path, and will meet with the same end.

Re:You can't "slap a Jap" anymore

[MyLongNickName]

Wow. I have seen a couple instances where you take fact A add it to fact B and come up with false conclusion C. This is another one.

Fact A: The US has a history of stereotyping other cultures
Fact B: The US executive administration wants to go to war with Iran.
False Conclusion C: We are not allowed to paint Iran as bigoted, sexist or totalitarian.

The fact that the US has problems does not correlate to Iran being pure as the wind-driven snow. In fact with all of our problems, I'd much rather live here we have the opportunity to fix our problems.

Re:You can't "slap a Jap" anymore

[faloi]

In the obvious run up to the war with Iran, it seems like the media is all too happy to paint them with the bigot, sexist, and totalitarian brushes. We are doing this with China. We did this with Iraq. Now, with Iran in our sights, they also get the black tar treatment.

Oddly enough, I find it hard to be sympathetic toward a country that hosts a Holocaust Denial seminar. Maybe I really am part of the problem.

Re:Censorship is the last resort of a failing regi

[JustNiz]

Th US has to stop trying to be the world police. Why should Iran just expect the US to jump in? They should grow some balls and try standing up for themselves.

unless iran deserves to be tarred

[circletimessquare]

it's really this simple: make a list of your complaints about governments in the west

now judge the government of iran on the basis of those criticisms

in other words, on the basis of the principles on which you vocally criticize the west, you should be loudly criticizing tehran

"And if you buy into any of this at all, you're the problem with this country."

ok, there's a criticism of yours: the drumbeat up to war, the propagandizing of a populace towards conflict

dude!

ever since 1979, the government of iran has been on propaganda full alert about demonizing the decadent immoral great satan of the west. constant rhetoric, demonstrations, down with the great satan. all through the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s

so on YOUR BASIS for criticizing the west: dmeonization of another people for a drumbeat up to war, on YOUR BASIS!: tehran comes out orders of magnitude worse than any criticism you could level at london, paris, washington dc, etc

using YOUR RATIONALE, you should be 10-100x angrier at tehran than any government in the west

so go to the front of the line sir, and hurl some of your venom at tehran, unless you want to forfeit your claim to intellectual honesty

Re:Censorship is the last resort of a failing regi

[dbolger]

That logic can be applied both ways. Imagine right now, on Tehrandot.org:

"I heard on Al Jazeera last week, from an American protesting in Washington, that there are a large contingent of the population is is pro-peace, and who are looking for better relations with the rest of the world. But if that's the case, why has there been no real groundswell to remove the current government?"

I'm looking at this from an outsiders perspective, but it seems to me that in both countries (United States and Iran), there are a reasonable, sane majority of people just trying to get on with their lives, who are being pushed into war by a vocal, fundamentalist minority.

Rational people on both side look out, and see only the extremists. Joe Washington doesn't want war but everything he hears regarding Iran is negative - they want to wipe out Israel, they want to build nukes. Joe Tehran has a generally pacifist outlook too, but when he reads about America, it is usually because of attrocities like Abu Ghraib, or some other massacre. Time passes, and the crazies on both sides get louder and louder, while the rational people - constantly exposed to this propaganda, start to feel that even though they want peace, the "other side" is giving them no choice but to go to war.

Armed Citizens In the Modern World

[WED Fan]

They should grow some balls and try standing up for themselves.

Yeah, that works. So, we'll see some guy with his grocery bags standing in front of a Russian or Chinese supplied tank, stopping the entire Iranian Army from running down protesters that "grew some balls".

Have we seen this before?

In an age where the government has much more firepower than the armed citizenry, its difficult for citizens to rise up like they did in 1776.

Back then, with the exception of a Navy, the people in the American Colonies were a lot more closely matched with the British. What they lacked, they were able to get through guerilla action. Hell, back then, even privately owned vessels were armed.

Modern tyrannies are better armed than the citizenry, even where the citizens are permitted to own firearms. Back then, a handfull of armed farmers could take over an artillary battary, and use it. Now, farmers might be able to knock a plane out of the sky. Or disable a tank, but, the average farmer, tribesman, stockbroker, pimp, is going to be hard pressed to come out on top when a division of tanks comes at him while jets providing support for the ground troops create a no-mans land where neighborhoods stood.

Yeah, your idea worked for the students in China.

Re:Armed Citizens In the Modern World

[Deadplant]

hey should grow some balls and try standing up for themselves. Yeah, that works. So, we'll see some guy with his grocery bags standing in front of a Russian or Chinese
supplied tank, stopping the entire Iranian Army from running down protesters that "grew some balls". I get the feeling neither of you know much about recent Iranian history.

The Iranians are quite capable of overthrowing a government. They did so relatively recently (1979ish) when they overthrew the CIA-coup-installed US-backed douche Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (aka the "Shah").
Sadly the revolutionary forces had too many religious wackos and too few young liberal students and the poor bastards got stuck with a theocracy/democracy/republic. Kinda like the USA but with a different(worse; ya, i said it**) religion.

There is of course very little chance of another revolution soon because no sane person would overthrow their own government while it is under imminent threat of invasion/pre-emptive nuclear attack.
In fact, there is nothing quite like an irrational, powerful and belligerent enemy to strengthen the position of a bad government.

** just to be clear, all religions suck-ass and have no business anywhere near a government.

Re:You can't "slap a Jap" anymore

[TommyMc]

Yes, but by not adhering to your "False Conclusion C", you're alienating the people in Iran who are reasonable and, being a part of their total population, who are in the best position to effect change.

I was in America visiting family when the mass-media collectively decided they 'hated' the French, and between the outright bigotry of the right wing Radio, and the 'jokes' of the Television comedians very very few people actually addressed what the French government had said..

It's like a positive feedback cycle whereby a couple of people start to get a few cheap laughs and suddenly it's 'ok' to do so, so every one does else joins in, because we all know it's easier to point and laugh at someone who's been stereotyped as different than it is to actually be creative. The same thing has happened with Steven Hawking in the UK where a few jokes were well received because people laughed whilst asking disbelievingly "Can they say that?", whereas now they're so ubiquitous its just become a game of laugh at the disabled guy.

Anyway, I digress. My point is that if people really want to change things then they should be formulating arguments against why "bigotry, sexism and totalitarianism" are bad things, because although it seems obvious to us it's useless unless you can put it in a social or historical context. Some will claim that there's a 'politically-correct' conspiracy to stop people from having fun, but I don't buy it. Surely, when the majority of sheep in a given culture turn irrationally against a population (read:not a political viewpoint but a diverse group of people) it is the job of the intelligent people (which, I'm sure if you asked 1000 /.ers, at least 999 of them would think they were) to stand as the voice of reason. I wouldn't expect any less of intelligent Iranians in this position as I would of intelligent Americans

Or maybe I'm just naive..

a MILLION dead Iranians

[Scrameustache]

I heard on NPR last week, from an Iranian who had returned from visiting family, that there is a large contingent of the population that is pro-American and is looking for better relations with the rest of the world. But if that's the case, why has there been no real groundswell to remove the current government?

Because their government, as awful as it is, stands between them and the enemies of their people. It just so happens that they know for a fact that the US and its imperialist buddy the UK have proven beyond the shadow of a doubt to be enemies of the people of Iran:

In 1951, a nationalist politician, Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh rose to prominence in Iran and was elected Prime Minister. As Prime Minister, Mossadegh became enormously popular in Iran by nationalizing the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (later British Petroleum, BP) which controlled the country's oil reserves. In response, Britain embargoed Iranian oil and began plotting to depose Mossadegh. Members of the British Intelligence Service invited the United States to join them, convincing U.S. President Eisenhower that Mossadegh was reliant on the Tudeh (Communist) Party to stay in power. In 1953, President Eisenhower authorized Operation Ajax, and the CIA took the lead in overthrowing Mossadegh and supporting a U.S.-friendly monarch; and for which the U.S. Government apologized in 2000.

[...]

With more than 100,000 Iranian victims[73] of Iraq's chemical weapons during the eight-year war, Iran is the world's second-most afflicted country by weapons of mass destruction-- second only to Japan. The total Iranian casualties of the war were estimated to be anywhere between 500,000 and 1,000,000. Almost all relevant international agencies have confirmed that Saddam engaged in chemical warfare to blunt Iranian human wave attacks; these agencies unanimously confirmed that Iran never used chemical weapons during the war

Donald Rumsfeld met Saddam Hussein on 19 December - 20 December 1983. Rumsfeld visited again on 24 March 1984; the same day the UN released a report that Iraq had used mustard gas and tabun nerve agent against Iranian troops.

Re:You can't "slap a Jap" anymore

[vertinox]

Oddly enough, I find it hard to be sympathetic toward a country that hosts a Holocaust Denial [go.com] seminar. Maybe I really am part of the problem.

Actually, due to the fact that the US is partly responsible for the current Iranian government (Operation Ajax blowout with the Shah) I would have to say us Americans are part of the problem. We replaced a socialism sympathizer with a dictator who brutally ruled his people and then we get all uppity when he gets replaced by a theocratic revolution. Then we back Saddam in hopes that he'll take care of the problem and it all goes to hell.

Things would have been find and we wouldn't be talking about Iran's nuclear program today had we not interfered with a legal election.

Speaking of which, in theory, 9/11 would have never happened because we wouldn't have been arming Saddam against the theocratic Iran which later lead to the invasion of Kuwait which lead to Osama getting all pissy about American bases in Saudi Arabia.

This is what we call "blowback". We've been over there for 50 years interfering, overthrowing people, supporting dictators, and selling weapons to everyone and you wonder why they hate us.

I don't approve of Holocaust denying and hope that Israel will be recognized as a sovereign nation by all, but to say we didn't make this bed in Iran and share some responsibility of it is just not learning history correctly.