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Iranian Government Cuts Off Internet Access Again
AlbionTourgee writes "It is reported that Gmail and Yahoo mail at least have been blocked in Iran, along with many English-language sites. While news of demonstrations seems to be getting out of the country, the government appears to be trying to prevent people within Iran from communicating and from learning what's happening. It remains to be seen whether TOR and Freenets can be effective to combat this sort of effort to block communications, and whether the general circulation of information about the protests around the world will help."
They have internet in Iran?!
Jews control everything, didn't you know?
All they have to do is block the known Tor entry points or set up their own hacked TOR routers.
There really isn't any technical reason why Iran couldn't stop covert communications over the Internet they could even go to a white list system if they really needed to.
The only thing preventing is their own population. I just don't think they would tolerate becoming prisoners in the their own nation.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
well.. It seems tor is showing is usefullness for us, these that love freedom.
maybe could be a good idea to start building a system better than tor, for.. you know, if theres something like a race arms, and tor is blocked / detected. :-I
-Woof woof woof!
They are the Government of that country, whether or not we happen to agree with their policies. If they want to ban automobiles and have everyone ride around on horses, it is their perogative. We can get our undies in a bunch as much as we want, and hem and haw and harrumph about the situation. They are a sovereign nation and may make their own laws as they please. If you don't like it, revolt. Oh that's right, you don't live there but would like to impose your views and laws on them.
Unfortunately, given the current socio-economic state that the US and it's allies are in, Iranian leaders -- very possibly not being the caricatures many americans would assume them to be -- may be making a large bluff in this and other moves it has made. The US can ill-afford a continued string of wars in smaller powers that do not offer a consumer incentive; i.e. any war that doesn't have us retooling our auto companies to make tanks, telling our people that if they ride alone they ride with the ayatollah. If we're to go to war, it needs to be a manufacturer's war, not a war of attrition fought by a people that have sufficient stores of it's most important tactical resource (people) to not care about when it "wins".
Iranian leaders, if they have any semblance of intelligence, knows that we cannot call their bluff unless a larger ally steps in and makes the war "interesting". For now, despite the horrible situation in Iran, the best thing that we can do is encourate the Iranian people, and let them know that their voices are being heard, that they have the power to revolt and change their own destinies. Most of all, that if they take the initiative, we will respect any free government they impliment in the aftermath.
But we cannot help them with guns. We cannot help them with bullets. We cannot help them with manpower. Any fight we make on their behalf, is fighting their cause. Every bullet we fire at an oppressive Iranian government, we fire at Democracy. If we have learned anything from Iraq-ganistan, it is that a policy of policing the world leads to later generations of peoples turned from ally to staunch enemy with the memory of american guns killing their people outweighing the memory of american guns killing their enemies.
May God and Allah see eye to eye in this conflict.
-1, Disagree is not a valid option. Troll, Flamebait and Offtopic are not a substitute.
The only people who do care, are gullible, interventionist Americans.
I'm fed up with the Middle East. The region is this planet's equivalent of a high school oval. It's the traditional venue that pretty much everyone goes to when they want to have a fight. There is conflict of some sort happening there constantly, on a literally second by second basis.
These endless conflicts also are not ours. The rest of the world very rarely has any real stake in them, for the most part. Oil is about the only legitimate interest anyone else has there. Semitic monotheism, and who owns a particular mosque or church or whatever, is utterly meaningless as a legitimate incentive for war.
If the Iranian government wants to completely exterminate its' constituency, let it. If the Arabs and Jews want to mutually remove each other from human memory, let them.
At least if that were to happen, the rest of us might finally get some peace and quiet.
Why is this tagged nukem? Lots of Iranians are extremely hot, like princess Princess Jasmine from Aladdin - they are largely Persian. We have one at our lab and she says about 70% of Iranians hate their government but are being oppressed (people disappearing in the middle of the night kind of thing). They need liberating more than Iraq did (though that's not too hard) and they probably would WELCOME a liberation instead of blowing up! In fact that's what they're scared of most - not being liberated by America but being blown up by America because their government is an asshole.
Their religion tells them to oppress and be oppressed...
Uh, I don't think that's true. At least not from what I've read in the Qur'an, there wasn't anything detailing what's going on in Iran right now and saying that that is how you must run your nation state. In fact, if you look at a lot of laws like the extreme forms of Sharia they are more founded on what leaders after Muhammad's death decided he meant. In my mind I liken it to the perversion that several Popes have put in place ... in the name of The Bible. Despite the Popes calling themselves Christians, they spent their lives very comfortably unlike Jesus Christ. Similarly certain leaders today call themselves Christians and Muslims yet do not live their lives like either Christ or Muhammad. Usually it's not safe to compare religions like this but I'm trying to illustrate that these historical religious figures suffer distortion today across the world in Iran and the United States. Perhaps one is worse than the other but your criticism of "mudslums" religion telling them to be oppressed is no more apt than me saying that Christianity tells Christians to be oppressed. Indeed, speaking for any religion that has hundreds of diverse sects is a ridiculous act in and of itself.
... much less most of "The Middle East." Because we weren't paying our media outlets to disperse that, we were only rewarding them on shock reporting mostly spurred by the Iranian hostage crisis. That's all we saw of Iran on the news and for a while that's all Iran was to us, a hostage crisis ... not a country with millions of citizens doing a lot of the same stuff we do here in the states.
I might also warn you that Western media (especially in the United States) concentrated on only the bad things from "The Middle East" from the 1980s to the 1990s. Although it's recently become much better, I read a book by Edward Said called Covering Islam that itemized a few publications and looked at the hilarious slant. Granted, he cherry picked those works and the book was not as even handed as I had hoped, he did point out to me that I do not know the average life of a regular citizen in Tehran
My work here is dung.
Sorry, no. Moral relativism is complete bullshit. Some things are morally wrong ABSOLUTELY. One of them is supressing your populace's ability to communicate. I'm sick and tired of people justifying morally corrupt behavior just because it's state-sanctioned. Sorry, forcing women they have to wear a head-dress is absolutely not acceptable. Denying them basic human rights is absolutely not acceptable. Persecution of homosexuality is absolutely not acceptable. EVEN IF ALL THESE THINGS ARE STATE SANCTIONED. I'll take that one step further and say that it is even absolutely morally unacceptable for a radical state to possess nuclear weaponry, even more absolutely morally unacceptable for such a regime to have such unabashed hatred based on another people's religion.
The difference between a state and a mob is that one controls the military and one does not. Simply being a group does not magically grant anyone moral superiority or the ability to redefine basic human rights. Saying that its ok for ANYONE to do that is fucking retarded, and something that is continued by apologists. Your moral 'relativism' is the reason why atrocities like this are allowed to perpetrate.
My handful of quarters as an atheist who studied these two religions:
You're wrong. I've studied both the bible (several versions of it) as well as the Qur'an. Islam differs from christianity in a very important and fundamental way; it literally and bluntly, with no room for reasoning, divides humanity into two camps: the good (the muslims) and the bad (the 'kafir'; the non-muslims); and literally, page after page, calls for the shedding of the blood of the kafir in the form of "conversion, 'by free will' or 'by sword'". Christianity differs here in the fact that nowhere in its holy scriptures does it divide humanity into camps, and nowhere in its holy scripture does it call for bloodshed of non-christians. What it does, however, is call for the bloodshed of those who DISGRACE and VIOLATE christianity - which is a very important difference to make note of - whereas the Qur'an calls for bloodshed of ANYONE simply not being muslim, regardless the person. (and, no, the christian crusades were not called upon by the bible or the religion itself; the crusades were ages of abuse of the religion, in its own name.)
End rant.
tell me again, how is this different than the bill to allow the president of the united states to "shut down the Internet" in case of emergency? or is this simply a case of different intentions?
Iran? The fundamentalist run Islamic republic has banned Yahoo and Google?
Try this, a NATO member, EU member designate, secular (still!) neighbor of Europe and having actual part in Europe country, Turkey has banned Myspace in addition to Youtube today. Yes, Myspace, that "personal blog" or more like "music demo" site.
Keep watching Iran and China though...
Sadly, no. I was raised Jewish, but I was never let in on this supposed conspiracy.
You just need to write to Chief Bloomenbergansteinenthal of the Jewish Justice League in NYC. That or make aliyah to Israel. Everyone here just gets welfare checks from the proceeds of the Zionist media conspiracy (remember, it's "Zionist" now instead of "Jewish") to make a living! After all, what else can be done with nothing powering the economy but agriculture, tourism, and hi-tech?
The United States government saying ANYTHING about Iran silencing dissent is hypocrisy of the worst kind.
What makes you think I have anything to do with the United States Government? Nice bit of redirection ya got there though.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Well, I thought your post was awesome.
To the cracked-out moderators: According to CNN, Iran disappeared the moment Whacko died. The media was covering all the slaughter in Iran up until Whacko died. Then it was Whaco Jacko 24/7, and now it's back to the Emmys or the whatever it is.
Or, for those with the attention span of a gnat:
Hey moderators, I respect your decision and I'll let you finish, but Punto's post is one of the best posts of all time.
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.