Slashdot Mirror
Iran May Shut Down Internet During Election
daveschroeder writes "'The Iranian government might block private access to the Internet for the general legislative election on March 14, two Iranian news outlets reported Monday. In 2006, the authorities banned download speeds on private computers faster than 128 kilobytes per second. The government also uses sophisticated filtering equipment to block hundreds of Web sites and blogs that it considers religiously or politically inappropriate. Many bloggers have been jailed in the past years, and dozens of Web sites have been shut down.' It would appear that Iran's own government is more a threat to the nation's internet connectivity than the fragility of the undersea cable network."
So many people in the technology world seem to be worried about censorship of user's rights online, and some must certainly work for the vendors who supplied Iran with the "sophisticated" filtering technology. My question is why are companies supplying countries with a known track record for human rights violations and crimes against people speaking out against the government?
I agree completely. The Colombian government was actually participating with Chavez and France to get those hostages released by the FARC and were making good headway, when out of nowhere the US sent in a delegation to meet with the president. Next thing you know Chavez is kicked out and Ecuador gets bombed. Now there are troops lining up in both Ecuador and Venezuela, and Brazil is calling for public apologies to Ecuador from Colombia. The whole region is now being engulfed in a dispute that seemingly stemmed from US intervention over what appeared to be a large step forward in negotiations with one of the greatest unruly powers in Colombia.
I can't begin to imagine what it is the US has invested in Colombia that would have necessitated Colombia's sudden change of heart.
You're nothing; like me.
But Ahmadinejad is no more the absolute voice of the Iranian people than George W. Bush ... for America.
Or Nancy Pelosi, or Harry Reid, or Hillary Clinton, or Barack Obama, etc. But the point is that those people all have constituencies for whom they speak, and they can do it all day long without fear of being jailed for what they say. That isn't a question of whether Iran's president is or isn't good on foreign policies or his domestic economy... we're talking about a regime that sees fit to shut down the internet during elections.
There is nothing Iran can do, short of revolution, that will ever pacify the United States or Israel
Um, how about ceasing to fund terrorism-using militant religious extremists? How about stopping shipments of cash and arms over the northern Iraqi border and through Syria to people who use them against civilians, blow up police stations, etc? How about simply recognizing that Israel exists, in the way that, say, Egypt, or Jordan have?
Iran actually has a surprisingly sophisticated political system, and unfortunately an extremely large part of it is held essentially unaccountable
So, what good is sophistication when it can't serve the people it governs? Stalin's bureaucracy was sophisticated, too. China is very sophisticated, and far more subtle and clever (than Iran) in how they present their repression to the rest of the world. Sophistication has nothing to do with whether or not a citizen can stand up and say what they want to say, or form a political movement that might challenge the militant theocracy that, in practice, runs Iran and is working so hard to prevent its next door neighbors from developing a secular society that actually functions on behalf of its people.
Unfortunately, their country is at war with both the United States and Israel
No. They like to talk that way, to stir up at least some common nationalistic sentiment among their people, the better to gloss over the repressive things they do in running the country. When you have a hugely unemployed population of young males (who are also told what sort of haircuts they're allowed to have, and whether then can use the word "pizza" or not, lest they become corrupted by evil foreign sensibilities and habits like... having what you want for dinner and calling it what the rest of the world calls it), continuing with the ongoing theatrical exercise in describing a state of war that doesn't actually exist is a timeless classic. Actual war would look very different. And you wouldn't have all of Europe just as worried (and voting the same way in the UN) if this was just the US and Israel that finds Iranian behavior to be alarming. Israel isn't lobbing missiles into Iran. But Iranian missles were hitting towns in Israel just yesterday.
Oh God, not this again.
How many times, and how many variations on "they will soon be gone," and "they will disappear from the map," etc., do you need to hear?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.