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."
Let's not even talk about Saudi Arabia, where we don't even talk about attempts of censorship since Saudi Arabia always has total censorship of media. Also, if you want to criticize the elections in Iran and interference and ballot-striking when someone is too reform-minded, not that there isn't anything to criticize, why not talk about Saudi Arabia where they don't even have elections. Saudi Arabia doesn't have problems with their electoral process it doesn't have problems at all. Of course, Saudi Arabia always does what the rich people in the US tell it to do, always does what the "US" (meaning the interests of very rich Americans) wants it to so it is rarely criticized. Iran has the gall to kick out the CIA installed puppet and run their own government so they have to constantly be bashed, US puppet regimes like Saudi Arabia which are much worse get a pass. US jailing people for letting people see Al-Manar gets a pass as well. What a fraud. The biggest enemy of a secular, social democratic, pan Arab Middle East has always been the United States. The US wants the Middle East to be one big Saudi Arabia/Egypt/Jordan/Pakistan - dictatorial US/Israel bootlickers whose citizens get sent to madrassas instead of schools. The mujahideen and Hamas were creations (heavily funded and supported) by the US and Israel to fight and destroy the secular, social democratic, pan-Arab forces in their country - have fun sucking up the rewards.
The poster reiterated comments made by Obama. If you don't agree with the comments, don't vote Obama. Don't shoot the messenger.
Actual totalitarian regimes - you mean like the CIA puppet regime in Iran before the Iranian revolution, whose SAVAK tortured so many secular leftists and liberals to death that when the puppet was finally kicked out, the revolution was directed from the churches, to the surprise of everyone (including the USSR)? Totalitarian regimes like the Israel occupation regime over the occupied West Bank that the Palestinians live under? Totalitarian regimes like US supported Saudi Arabia, where censorship and government make Iran look like a paradise of freedom?
I would not make the claim that Iran has completely fair elections or that there is no censorship there. However, the government is widely supported by the population, and the government alternates between hardliners and reformers, both of whom go by their policies. Despite painting Iran as a country full of religious fanatics, there is a large secular professional class there, whom the US claims to support but does exactly the opposite, it tries to destroy it as it has been trying to do for decades. The US government steps in and bans coders like Roozbeh Pournader from coming to do some programming in Google's Summer of Code. It wants Iran to be and to be perceived as a bunch of all isolated religious fanatics.
Right, the millions of people who supported the Ayatollah in 1979, the millions who supported the mass executions of hundreds of thousands of people in the months following and the millions of people who openly and fervently supported the mass human wave attacks of a million unarmed children against the Iraqi army in the 1980's all applaud your liberal guilt and mindless cheering of the common man.
Moreover the the fact that the police in Iran openly execute up to 10 people a day for the crime of 'being gay' or 'getting raped', or simply talking back and they do this with the full faith and support of a majority of the population there only drives the point home more.
If some huge percentage of the populace were against the regime, why is it that it's still around and barely 25% of the population of Iran has any living memory of a country BEFORE the Islamic Revolution? Why is that, oh ye of hand wringing Che T-shirt wearing fucking stupidity?
Why is that?
Ever been outside the US? I have. All you ever hear is "Yankee Go home.....and take us with you"
You see the problem with being spoon fed a steady diet of Revisionist Berkeley Marxist inspired horseshit is it blinds you to the reality of the utter disgrace and dysfunction most of the regimes in the world are. Oh I am sure you have a Hugo Chavez poster and Che T-shirt and you chatter about the evil empire what is America to all your friends down at Starbucks, and that's fine. Being retarded isn't a sin, being proud of it is.
What exactly is nefarious about intercepting an enemy's communications?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
What exactly is "nefarious" about intercepting (or trying to) one's sworn enemy's communications?.. I mean, even if US is behind the recent outages (and splicing an optical cable — under water! — ought to be much harder than an electrical one), there is nothing nefarious about it.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Haha, who but the real Dave would deny his Davehood? You write just like him, and I've seen far to many irate anonymous posts defending him or dissing his 'enemies' in threads he starts. Why is that, Dave?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton