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In Iran, Blogging May Be Punishable By Death
An anonymous reader writes "In Iran, crimes such as apostasy (leaving a religion, in this case Islam) and armed robbery are already punishable by death, but a new bill in Iran aims to add to the list 'establishing weblogs and sites promoting corruption, prostitution and apostasy,' effectively giving the government a free hand in silencing bloggers. The internet is widely used in Iran, despite its previous attempts at censorship. Will this change as the censorship grows more rampant?"
When every single Iranian I meet traveling abroad, without exception, apologizes for the actions of their government and expresses their shame for the theocrats in change, I wonder how long things can stay the way they are there. Doesn't Iran have an unusually high proportion of young people, and doesn't that often bode revolution?
I'd like to point out the irony of this post being submitted by Anonymous reader
Yeah, that'll work. The mullahs want kill their own people for posting things to the internet (and for women dressing in Western clothes...) and some naive TWIT thinks we can TALK to them. Dumbass.
It very well may not work, however, are you prepared to pay $15/gallon for gasoline (assuming you are in the U.S.) if Iran is attacked by the U.S. military? Iran has stated they will respond with military action and one of their actions is to block oil exports through the Straits of Hormuz. If that occurs you know damn well commodity traders and actual purchasers of crude oil will pay $200-$250/bbl which will cause obvious increases in gasoline prices. We must talk to them first and if that fails then do we go in militarily to solve any problems. The problem with that though is it will have a ripple effect, one of which is the price of oil. There is no winner in the battle with Iran. Everyone loses. Iran may be destroyed but they know we survive on oil and they are the 4th largest exporter so economically we could be destroyed too. If the U.S. goes down economically (moreso than we already are recently) then world markets follow suit because of the economic interdependencies of world gov'ts.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
The new bill proposes death penalty for "disturbing the nation's psychological security", a broad, catch-all phrase that also specifically includes "establishing websites and blogs distributing un-islamic and indecent material" (i.e., porn, or anything that can be tagged 'un-islamic').
The bill already has 180 signatures on it (including that of the Speaker of the House), and with the current parliament's setup, is guaranteed to pass. Even the minority so-called 'reformists' are likely to vote for it considering the consequences of not doing so.
Fact: Already, Iran has the second highest rates of capital punishment after China, and by far the highest rate of capital punishment per capita in the world.
Fact: The Islamic regime still executes children (i.e., those under 18). At times, it waits until they are 18 before carrying out the execution, at times (like last month) it even doesn't follow that.
Fact: After years of pressure, the Islamic regime still carries out capital punishment by the mediaeval and inhumane way of stoning the condemned, for certain crimes such as adultery.
Fact: Ethnic minorities (Kurds, Baluchis, Arabs) are heavily discriminated against in Iran. They absolutely have zero representation in the government, even in the local governments of the provinces where they form the majority of the population.
Fact: Iran, despite artificial appearances, is NOT a representative democracy. All candidates for all elections are vetted by a 12-member Council of Guardians, which defeats the purpose of an election. That is how the regime has kept power in its grips for the past 3 decades.
The international community (including the ineffective and outdated Security Council) which claim to have adopted the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect in 2005, need to define the criteria that would trigger a response from the international community. Does this doctrine only apply to cases where hundreds of thousands of people die? (i.e, Darfur? even in that case the international community is only grudgingly and hesitantly acting). Isn't jailing, torturing and killing of hundreds of journalists, labour union leaders, students, ethnic minorities, EVERY YEAR FOR THE PAST 30 YEARS, enough to trigger a response? (I am not in favour of bombing ANY country, as that will not solve any problem, but surely something has to be done, no?)
The Islamic Republic of Iran is a theocratic quasi-communist authoritarian rule of a select few with military and economic might and power, over the a population of 70 million which have been suffering with no respite. We need to put aside our 16th century nation states ideas and stop turning a blind eye to such cases of cruel injustice. It is the duty of each and every single one of us, as citizens of this world, to actively seek to terminate the ruling arrangements in countries such as Iran, Burma, North Korea and Zimbabwe. A a democratic and prosperous Iran is a key to a long-lasting Middle East solution. A well-governed Zimbabwe is an absolute ingredient of the global fight against HIV. We need to realise that we are citizens of the same world, that we all face the same problems, including climate change, proliferation of nuclear arms and fundamentalist terrorism, to name a few. We need to realise that it is our responsibility, as citizens of this world, to act in cases of humiliation (Iran) and starvation (N.Korea) of a nation by its corrupt government.
We need to remind the Republicans, that military operations are not the only solution, and we need to remind the Democrats, that isolationism is a self-defeating answer.
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Our meddling is the reason for their current situation. I would encourage you to read up on the events that brought about the Iranian revolution for starters.
That country is something WE ALREADY FUCKED UP. Perhaps it's our responsibility to fix it.
OK, I know that the subject line is trolling but look at it this way, it almost seems at times if some actions of the world and even own our politics are just the opposite of whatever Bush declares just to be "opposite of Bush".
Regimes like this exist for the same reason that Iraq existed for so long. Western nations don't necessarily have the stomach to put an end to them. We have lapsed back into the thirties where people were more concerned with their well being and as long as the rest of the world left them alone they couldn't care what happened to these "other" people. See it costs nothing to ignore other people "over there". Works the same for Europe as well as the United States.
Life is grand with our cellphones, computers, lattes, and satellite TV. Why should they care? Oh, because festering wounds like this breed organizations who see nothing wrong with targeting civilians. Countries like this focus the ire of their people outward so they continue the oppression internally. All the while declaring it is to crack down on people looking to harm them.
No uprising? Gee, go figure. We can't even get enough people to peacefully kick out the Democrats and Republicans from office here and yet if you read blogs, message boards, and sites like this you would think the world is ending. The difference there in Iran and similar countries is that the government has already shown its willingness to kill its own people.
Here is a better question that needs to be asked of world leaders, why in the hell is China hosting the Olympics? Constant threats to Taiwan, which they will probably overrun in a few years, trampling rights in Tibet, and needless to say that little incident a lifetime ago in a certain square.
Simple answer. Its far easier to turn away. Its far easier to look inside our own borders and pretend the world of bad people really doesn't exist. Yes, there be monsters and covering your head under the sheets only works for so long. Then again occasionally that pesky world gets enough gumption to do something drastic like flying planes into buildings. It will happen again because while we don't have the stomach for wars these people do.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Ideally I have no objections to a sovereign country being run by whatever system they like, with one important caveat; the freedom of anyone to leave if they so desire. A necessary component of that freedom would of course be the ability to gain accurate information about the rest of the world. The only governments that must force it's people to stay are governments that know they are inherently inferior to the governance in other countries. Iran knows that it's power structure is based on a shitty way to live, it knows that it is culturally inferior. That is why it makes such reactionary laws. Of course the Iranian people are beginning to notice how much better life is in the western world, which is why they are making such criminally dangers blogs.
We are all just people.
The CIA, you mean?
In Iran, Blogging May Be Punishable By Death
Wrong. Bloggers who set up blogs to promote apostasy, promiscuity or "corruption" may be opened up to the joys of the death penalty in future, not anyone who's "blogging."
The headline as factual as saying, "In the USA, Touching Another Person May Be Punishable By Death." There are lots of other situations in which you can touch people than in the act of killing them.
Now IDIOTS, come on and say this has nothing to do with ISLAM.
Yeah, tell the Christians in the past that got killed for heresy that only Muslims kill people for their religion. What's the difference the Islam and modern Christianity? The forces secularization from the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, that's what. So, yes, this has not so much to do with Islam as it does secularization.
Don't forget about moral values.
"Can't have fags and pot smoking hippies ruining our country for all us real Americans, can we?"
"Join the military; it's the greatest service you can possibly do for you country."
Independence day and the focus on the military gets me a little riled up. I have a (college educated) friend who works full time for Americorps building houses for poor people. He gets paid $600 a month for hard full-time work when he could be making 10x that much at a "real" job. He makes a difference at home instead of projecting hard power abroad against the will of the people. How's that for serving your country?
weren't all that upset over living under Saddam. Granted, a lot were, but most were not, and ownership of full auto AKs, and even RPGs, was a normal as owning an ipod are here. Walk into any gunstore there, throw down the cash, and walk out, yet no large scale mass revolts. As your general dictators go, he was well down the list, nothing like that cretin in north korea or the so called zimbabwe leader, he was modernizing his nation, the infrastructure was a lot more intact then than now and public works were common, women had more rights than in most moslem nations today (he just wouldn't put up with radical jihadists at all, that's why a lot of the other moslen leaders didn't like him, he was more secular than most of them), and so on. He just committed the ultimate crime of threatening the petrodollar by insisting on taking only euros for oil, and also was blatantly in support of native Palestinian rights over imported European rights in the occupied zionfascist nation-zone. Those two are the primary reasons the invasion started, plus the oil idiots thought it would be a cakewalk and back to normal stealing the oil in a few days. They didn't count on actual nationalistic resistance there. All the other excuses are pure neocon horsecrap. They used 9-11 and illusory "nigerian yellow cake" and "dangerous aluminum tubes" and "omg he has a radio controlled plane and will be spraying the entire nation with biowarfare agents" and all those other fairy tales as a poor excuse to fake out the mouth breathing drooling beer guzzling football addicted public and their boo ya! mercenary forces. Ya, he had chemical weapons, the vast bulk of which were gotten originally from the US illegally. We weren't supposed to ship them anyplace, we were supposed to be destroying them all, but we did while he was on "our side" during the iran/iraq war, they were official old US army stocks for the most part. They were blown in place in bunkers during desert storm and made a ton of army guys and iraqis sick as can be, although they still deny it to this day even though back then you could find pictures of it and you heard a lot of firsthand accounts of it from returning vets who were there and participated in it. And that is a lot-not all, but a lot- of the "gulf war syndrome", they were just forced to breath chemical weapons residue and then told it was all in their heads.
OK i guess this will be modded as flamebait, but perhaps it's US's responsibility to just stop messing with other countries altogether, no breaking, no fixing, just leaving them alone.
That's right, we leave them alone. Then, the western Euro-trash and other self-righteous leftists like Amnesty International will be able to beat us up for not doing anything.
It's like Darfur. The same asses that want us out of Iraq, and don't want the US or Israel to touch Iran, want the US to do something there - like throw millions of dollars at them. Yeah, like that will do a lot of good.
Effin' leftists are truly brain-damaged and intellectually bankrupt. If they're so damn sure they're right, let them fix the problems of the world, without US taxpayer's dollars.
I generally agree with the sentiment of your post but I'm not convinced it's that clear cut. Also it's just a shame with the likes of Zimbabwe where the population voted overwhelmingly for freedom the international community still refuses to act.
I don't think it's as simple as you say though, it's arguable Afghanistan has gone a fair bit better than Iraq because there was more will amongst the population to be freed from the Taleban than for the Iraqi people to be freed from the Iraqi regime but I think that's only a small part the story. The issue in Iraq isn't that the people didn't want the Iraqi regime removed, it's that there are two factions with a strong hate for each other that the Iraqi regime kept supressed in more violent ways than are acceptable by Western forces, despite the methods applied by the Iraqi regime leading to greater overall stability and lesser overall deaths.
I think you'd be fine to go into somewhere like North Korea and overthrow the government with no real problems in the aftermath not just because the people want to be freed but because the people are all in the same boat and don't really have any qualms with each other - even the majority of the north korea armed forces are only in the armed forces because they want the food it brings and not because they have some allegiance to Kim Jong Il that puts them with opposing opinions to the general population. If however you went into Iran you'd struggle much more because you do have a lot of large factions with opposing views that they're willing to shed blood over. Whatever country you go into there's always going to be a few rebels who will attack the occupiers who have gone in to free the country as a whole but the difficulties in Iraq really are not because of a hatred for the Americans and freedom and a love of Saddams regime but because there were no plans to prevent the warring factions from well, warring.
I suppose it comes down to how you define the cultural prerequisites you mention. North Koreans are hardly creating a revolution to overthrow their government but it doesn't mean they don't want freedom, it just means they're too busy fighting for survival and avoiding starvation to take down their government. Similarly, Afghans for the most part have no problems with freedom, in fact, before the soviets went in they were a pretty free nation, the problems there stem from a minority still holding out against freedom, a minority that unfortunately were the ones who used to hold all the guns. Zimbabwe is another decent example, the people want freedom, they used their vote to show they wanted it, but unfortunately again the government and pro-government mobs are the ones with all the guns again. There's certainly more to deciding whether a nation has the cultural prerequisites for freedom than whether the citizens are fighting for it that's for sure, because sometimes, they're just too busy fighting for their lives instead. In these cases I think we should still intervene because I think there's evidence enough the people want the help.
For the record, I do not think Iran is oppressed enough to justify military action to free them. I do however think North Korea, Burma and Zimbabwe where tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians are dying due to neglect by their government do justify military action to free the people. I also think the people would welcome that freedom, unfortunately, those nations just don't have enough oil to earn the attention of international community. I think it's far more cruel, far more inhumane to let hundreds of thousands die through inaction than to cause tens of thousands to die through action. That's not to say Iraq was justified of course because similar to Iran I do not believe Iraq was unstable enough nor were the people oppressed enough to justify intervention.
In Denmark, Sweden and other European countries the official religion is more or less just a tradition.
Church used to be a powerful force there. But not anymore. Now it's just a shadow of former self.
So it's just easier to let it die peacefully.
Actually, Iraq had fairly good womens right given that it was a Muslim country. Even if Saddam did rule there.
Today however it is a different story, the womens are being threatened by religion fanatics how kill them if they don't cover there face up or work. The list goes on in this matter.
What you are speaking about is Afghanistan, before 2001 it didn't have women rights at all. In many parts of it still doesn't. Even today women rights are almost close to zero, even in the main capital of Afghanistan.
Human rights in Iraq are no better then when Saddam did rule there, thanks to corruption and a broken government that is currently in place there.
U.S can do good, but it can also do bad. Like any other power on the planet. The problem with the U.S is the corporation greed that is currently in place there. Sad to say, this greed has also infested Europe and EU. It is taking it's time on destroying the EU from the inside, but I hope that it is stopped before it does a big damage.
"without US taxpayer's dollars"
Not much of that left, even if leftists wanted US taxpayers' dollars (which they don't, you're just trolling or have no concept of geopolitics, I cant decide which it is) they won't be getting any as they are being spent to exhaustion in Iraq. So take comfort that your dollars are being wasted responsibly.
I hate printers.
"They have a ridiculous, violent religion" Sorry, are we still talking about Christianity here or... "...the same way all the other middle eastern Islamic states were..." So that doesn't include Iraq then - A secular, pro-Western Middle Eastern State; until that is... well, we all know the rest... "At some point, people have to take responsibility for their own actions" And nations have to take responsibility for their actions - those whose actions have greater influence ought to show even more responsibility. "The US didn't like being ruled by a king, so we overthrew the king" The Iranians didn't like being ruled by a king, so they overthrew the king (Shah) "The US is not responsible for what people in other countries choose to do with their governments." That only works if the US aren't actively interfering in the internal affairs of those countries. Like that's ever gonna happen...