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?"

Comments

How is this regime possible?

[CRCulver]

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?

Re:How is this regime possible?

[grolaw]

I'm old enough to have been in college when the Shah was deposed. Just prior to the revolution we had Iranian Secret Police (the Savak) all over campus. One was a gentleman "named" Salah who was given fake credentials and joined our lab - he was supposed to be working towards his Ph.D. in Endocrine Physiology - but had not clue one - consequently he contaminated our lab, our lab's Prof, me and two other grad students with I-131.

I was the lucky guy to show "hot" first since health physics always ran a survey after we ran an Iodination process. The problem was that I did my work in a cold room and all of my materials were sequestered there - but my Thyroid and then our lab showed hot in a routine post-experiment radiation survey. It clearly wasn't my Iodine that had contaminated the lab when 100% of it remained in the cold room where I ran my assay.

Salah had faked an experiment and had not reported his use of the radioisotope - so, my hot Thyroid lead to the discovery of Salah's real reason for being "on campus" and he pulled a vanishing act. That was in the fall of 1977 or early winter 1978.

I knew quite a few Iranians at the time and this guy was bad news all around. After I showed up hot I heard about other "fakes" planted around campus - all pursuing advanced degrees and all backed by the Iranian government. They were there to intimidate Iranian nationals suspected of disloyalty and possibly to arrange for things to happen to their targets. This was a major state university with thousands of foreign students in undergrad, advanced and professional programs.

If we agree to quit f**king with people around the world we might just have peace and, even a little prosperity.

Re:So, let's TALK to them!

[glitch23]

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.

Re:mm

[Original Replica]

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.