Slashdot Mirror
Iran Moves To End "Facebook Revolution"
We've had a few readers send in updates on the chaotic post-election situation in Iran. Twitter is providing better coverage than CNN at the moment. There are both tech and humanitarian angles to the story, as the two samples below illustrate. First, Hugh Pickens writes with a report from The Times (UK) that "the Iranian government is mounting a campaign to disrupt independent media organizations and Web sites that air doubts about the validity of the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the nation's president. Reports from Tehran say that social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter were taken down after Mr Ahmadinejad claimed victory. SMS text messaging, a preferred medium of communication for young Iranians, has also been disabled. 'The blocking of access to foreign news media has been stepped up, according to Reporters Without Borders. 'The Internet is now very slow, like the mobile phone network. YouTube and Facebook are hard to access and pro-reform sites... are completely inaccessible.'" And reader momen abdullah sends in one of the more disturbing Ask Slashdots you are likely to see. "People, we need your urgent help in Iran. We are under attack by the government. They stole the election. And now are arresting everybody. They also filtered every sensitive Web page. But our problem is that they also block the SMS network and are scrambling satellite TVs. Please, can you help us to set up some sort of network using our home wireless access points? Can anybody show us a link on how to install small TV/radio stations? Any suggestion for setting up a network? Please tell us what to do or we are going to die in the a nuclear war between Iran and US." Update: 06/14 18:32 GMT by KD : Jim Cowie contributes a blog post from Renesys taking a closer look at the state of Iranian Internet transit, as seen in the aggregated global routing tables, and concluding that the story may not be as clear-cut as has been reported.
WTF is "after the age of HAM"?
The ham UHF digital voice repeater that is sitting next to me connected to a Linux gateway begs to differ with you.
73, w7com
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
I think that what momen abdullah is asking can be achieved using ham radio. Look for PSK31 for low-bandwith digital communications. Maybe "truckers" in Iran are using CB radio? You can use that as well, maybe hack it a bit. Anyway, building a simple 80-100MHz FM band transmitter is very easy to build, just hook it into a power amplifier for better coverage.
Look at the first search result on google for "fm transmitter", this is what i found. seems easy enough to build with easily attainable components.
4Z5TX
This election would have had little impact on foreign policy, but the Iranian president does have a lot of leeway on domestic matters. Under Ahmadinejad, inflation and unemployment have skyrocketted. Rather than try to take action to fix it, he just lies about the figures (easy to do, when you control the media). That was really a key issue in the "election".
Of course, not having a Holocaust denier as president would probably help foreign relations a bit as well.
(Yes I know he never comes out and denies it. He just "questions" it. A lot.)
I thought the idea of kicking out a dictatorship and allowing a democracy to flourish was a good idea.
Yeah... that rarely works. You can't forceably make a democracy from the outside. A country has a dictatorship for a reason: when fear is the only path to stability. This is understandable in places where there are major social problems such as ethnic or religious strife combined with low standards of living. A dictatorship achieves stability at the cost of freedom.
A better idea might be to work with the dictator to improve the standard of living. Bring in education and technology in exchange for diminishing the brainwashing. Once the society rises to a standard of living where they are enlightened enough to live in peace, under the rule of law instead of the rule of the fear, then democracy can begin.
Ironically, the idea of invading other countries for humanitarian reasons is a very leftist concept. And one that George Bush denied during his bid for the presidential election. He said something like "If we'd just leave people alone, they might not hate us so much. We should stay out of their business." But the warhawks flipped his opinion 180 degrees, and the "conservatives" followed them. To this day, I am amazed when I hear American Republicans support the war. It is the exact opposite of their platform, but they blindly follow it even against their own philosophy.
If the people of Iran want to get rid of their government, they can do it themselves.
If they want help, I could understand the UN deciding to assist them. That is similar to what happened in Afghanistan - the UN forces assisted the Northern Alliance against the Taliban. But that is different from ousting the dictator without having been asked to assist.
I actually found this line very intriguing. Is it really possible to set up an autonomous network using any sort of commodity wireless routers? It might be a not bad idea at all in a densely populated metropolis. Probably none come with the firmware allowing to do that, but there might be open firmware alternatives. So, 3 questions:
1. Is it technically possible to connect two wireless routers together to form a network?
2. Is there readily-available software needed to set up a centralized/hierarchical network in this way?
3. P2P?
I am Momen Abdullah
Please give me more info or links about Ad-Hoc WiFi Mesh.
they are saying election is stolen, because in azerbaijani parts of iran, ahmedinajad got 55%+ vote. never in iran's history ANYone other than an ethnic azerbaijani got that kind of vote there.
let me put it in american context - ahmedinajad getting 55% vote in azerbaijani parts of iran means barack obama getting 55%+ vote in any part of redneck midwest with little black population.
Read radical news here
WTF is "after the age of HAM"?
Was completely and totally outlawed after the 79 revolution.
The original poster does not realize that they started licensing again, and mere decade ago went from a whopping 3 licensees to 15 licensees in the entire country. I have no more recent figures. Perhaps the slashdot understatement of the week to say they are not quite up to Japanese levels of licensing (licenses as a percentage of the general population)
http://www.qsl.net/oh2mcn/ep.htm
73 de n9nfb
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
>> n the absence of an external interfering force (e. g., the army of the Soviet Union), the fate of a nation is determined by its people.
Wrong. An internal interfering force is even more able to determine a nation's fate. That's the nature of totalitarianism. It is naive in the extreme, and ethically deficient, to blithely assume that unarmed civilians can bring down a regime willing to slaughter its citizens to retain power.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
They did end tyranny by replacing the shah and they did establish a democracy when they voted for Mossadegh - only when that didn't work (i.e. the CIA undid all that and restored the shah) did they resort to more radical means.
Iran WAS a modern secular state. IRAN could compete with many European nations back then! We had a strong industry, we have great education system. The national currency was stable for 15 years, inspiring French economist André Piettre to call Iran a country of âoegrowth without inflation.". Our military was the 5th strongest and our airforce was the 3rd strongest. Iran was an awesome nation!. Mossadegh was not a "democracy lover". He wanted to close the parliament, he printed bills with his own face on it thus breaking the Iranian currency, he forced women to wear hijab again (this was during February) and he left the Iranian treasury empty forcing the Shah to build Iran again from beginning! You didn't back the Shah in any way (PS: I can later go into how awesome your nation is, maybe we should go into all the torture you do yourself and then attack the Shah for). Operation Ajax did not happen. And guess what, the Shah of Iran said that he is not going to RENEW the British oil contract in 1979 - and see what happened - "revolution" (If you don't get it, British and Americans overthrew him for making Iran independent). Either way, the Shah even refused to renew oil contracts in 1973 and 1976, pissing your nation off. So please, next time you write - don't go on wikipedia where a bunch of uneducated americans hang out together writing stuff to make them feel like journalists. Regards
The following is reproduced from the Stratfor website (http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/20090613_iran_text_mousavi_letter).
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Editor's Note: The text that follows is a translation of a letter by Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi on June 13, reported by TehranBureau.com. STRATFOR cannot confirm the authenticity of the letter.
"The reported results of the 10th Iranian presidential election are appalling. The people who witnessed the mixture of votes in long lineups know who they have voted for and observe the wizardry of I.R.I.B. (state-run TV and radio) and election officials. Now more than ever before they want to know how and by which officials this game plan has been designed. I object fully to the current procedures and obvious and abundant deviations from law on the day of election and alert people to not surrender to this dangerous plot. Dishonesty and corruption of officials as we have seen will only result in weakening the pillars of the Islamic Republic of Iran and empowers lies and dictatorships.
"I am obliged, due to my religious and national duties, to expose this dangerous plot and to explain its devastating effects on the future of Iran. I am concerned that the continuation of the current situation will transform all key members of this regime into fabulists in confrontation with the nation and seriously jeopardize them in this world and the next.
"I advise all officials to halt this agenda at once before it is too late, return to the rule of law and protect the nation's vote and know that deviation from law renders them illegitimate. They are aware better than anyone else that this country has been through a grand Islamic revolution and the least message of this revolution is that our nation is alert and will oppose anyone who aims to seize the power against the law.
"I use this chance to honor the emotions of the nation of Iran and remind them that Iran, this sacred being, belongs to them and not to the fraudulent. It is you who should stay alert. The traitors to the nation's vote have no fear if this house of Persians burns in flames. We will continue with our green wave of rationality that is inspired by our religious learnings and our love for prophet Mohammad and will confront the rampage of lies that has appeared and marked the image of our nation. However we will not allow our movement to become blind one.
"I thank every citizen who took part in spreading this green message by becoming a campaigner and all official and self organized campaigns, I insist that their presence is essential until we achieve results deserving of our country."
Careful there, Sparky, you are not as anonymous as you think you are, and as a private citizen, assisting and acting to bring down a government can be considered a criminal act. In most countries, US, Canada, UK, etc, a private citizen cannot be involved in acts of hostility towards another government, even if its an enemy government.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
Given the right circumstances, ANY culture will do evil things.
Sure they will. Every culture has a history that includes some evil acts. That's universal. That does not imply, however, that the "right circumstances" for every culture are identical, or that the evil things a culture would do would be identical--or even similar--to the evil acts of a different culture.
If you take two different cultures, and expose them to identical interventionist actions, you'll get two different reactions. That's simply undeniable.
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.