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Afghan Government Turns To Iran For Internet
Barlaam writes "Renesys describes new evidence that the Iranian national telecommunications provider, DCI, is selling (uncensored?) Internet connectivity to customers in neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan. 'The Internet connectivity outreach that we now see in the global routing tables seems like continuing evidence of Iran's long-term strategy: aggressively pursuing bilateral infrastructure and investment projects with its neighbors, in ways that will increase Iran's regional influence after the Americans have moved on.'"
As I've learned from television,
Hold it ... I found your problem.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Who else should be providing Internet access and building local business ties but neighboring countries? In this case, Iran looks like they're being a good neighbor. It's time to move beyond this prejudice against Iran. They've been the victim of US (and British) Corporate interests for numerous decades ... and if they dare to object or fight back, or otherewise look after their own interests,
they get demonized.
Recall that the CIA overthrew the Shah to protect interests of what became British Petroleum (BP):
The Iranian government of the time was just trying to control its own oil. Naturally, the people of
Iran weren't keen on the CIA coup. And US/British Corporates weren't happy with pushback on their plans
to steal all that oil wealth. So here we are ... Iran does something innocuous and the western establishment
press still wants to find a way to blame them for something (what?) while spinning the West as blameless.
It will, if you see the world through 20th century cold-war goggles. Filling a vacuum; political, military, economic, etc., was the name of the expansion game. This is simply more of the same. We could choose to see this move as ground lost to the communists... er, "Islamo-facists" (that is such and idiotic term...), or we could take a deep breath and realize that communication of that type is a thing to be exploited for commercial and cultural gain. Any bets?
Someone trying to make a buck off of providing alternate internet routes. How unusual.
As for the article itself, you have got to be kidding me - "aggressively pursuing"? Why not just post a photo of the cheque from the US State Department?
If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.
3^2 * 67^1 * 977^1
They might not be being a *good* neighbour - I mean, doing this is going to be in Iran's interest - but it's in the interest of Iraq and Afghanistan too to have internet feeds from multiple political entities. Regardless of how America is treating them now, it is not a good idea for Iraq or Afghanistan to be 100% reliant on them.
Investing in network connectivity with its neighbour is just crazy. They should be busy invading countries thousands of miles away.
Or possibly FOX News?
Just because the United States has an embargo in Iran, doesn't mean everyone else in the world has to have one as well. Besides, the mullahs in Iran don't particularly like Afghanistan either, they almost went to war with the Taliban in 1998. I thought this site was for "news for nerds", not biased political pieces bordering on propaganda.
While I agree that the west has fucked with Iran a lot, the analysis the article makes isn't the crazy, anti-Iranian spin you're making it out to be. Iran absolutely wants to become the regional hegemon of the middle east, and this is a way to increase their ability to do so. Whether or not that's innocuous is up for debate. I lean on the side that feels Iran being a hegemon is ok as long as that means they give way to control by their democratized populace instead of being run by secret police and a theological council. But having a government that's run on a religious level calling shots over a sphere of influence is a step backwards to incorporating the middle east into the larger world.
You might not have an issue with the Ayatollah asserting his unilateral authority against the general will of the people (see the Green Revolution), but I do. Remember: the CIA-made puppet government was overturned by scholars and students acting in Iran and abroad, with the population expecting democracy afterwards. Then the theocrats gained power by thuggery (each street had a block captain to point the thug squads in the right direction) and the scholars started disappearing. I don't want those people making regional security calls Monroe-doctrine style
I am become
The Shiite muslims overthrew an externally-imposed government after the Iranian President was assassinated - possibly at the request of the US, but that information won't get released for 10 more years at the very best. I regard the state of affairs in Iran as basically part of a standard pattern that repeats throughout history - when a government is created through violence, it will maintain itself through violence and it will usually collapse through violence. This cycle will be repeated endlessly until enough people take the risk of being peaceful.
(It is the main reason I mistrust the 2nd Amendment - you will never have enough people willing to take the risk of being peaceful when they perceive there to be a quick and easy way out of their problems. The only way out of the quagmire is neither quick nor easy and depends on the renunciation of force, not the use of it.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Hold it ... I found your problem.
Are you saying there's not a team of expert thieves being modern-day Robin Hoods? That there's not a CTU protecting the president from outrageously complicated assassination plots? That angels don't get sent down to earth to correct their mistakes? That aliens aren't disguised among us? That a man can't be reborn as a car?
I'm not saying that all, you can't trust what you see on television. I read it all in the National Enquirer.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Look at the map. When you are a landlocked country you get your connectivity from your neighbors. I suppose they could run cable all the way over to western Afghanistan from Pakistan. Would you want to sole-source all your connectivity from Pakistan? The other choices aren't worth mentioning.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Indeed, there is a country with a religious police, which outlaws practicing any religion but Islam, regularly executes citizens for moral crimes, and is a monarchal theocracy that does not hold elections and is accused of widespread human rights violations. They are about to close an arms deal worth 60 billion dollars to buy a fleet of the world's most advanced jet fighters and helicopters and related equipment. Their mosques preach violence against the west, and indeed, they send foreign fighters to Chechnya, Afghanistan, and Yemen to train for militant jihad.
That country is Saudi Arabia. And their supplier is the United States.
Iran, on the other hand, has a broken democracy, does in fact protect the right of religions to practice (but not to proselytize), and even has 30,000 practicing Jews and 300,000 practicing Christians with hundreds of churches and synagogues openly operating. Though they are subject persecution by the government, they are guaranteed a small number of seats in their representative government. The Ba'hai faith are widely seen as more persecuted than Jews or Christians, since they are officially outlawed.
Saudi Arabia for some reason has better public relations than Iran, but something tells me there's a reason for that.
Judging from history, our bizarre ethos of "the enemy of the enemy is my friend" has come back to bite us many times. Maybe there will come a day when, after some terrorist act committed by Saudi citizens, our foreign policy will change to a more reasoned stance when dealing with the complexities of Middle Eastern politics.
Oh wait, I forgot. Never forget... to forget.
A quick look at the map shows a language bias of Farsi in the population. Iranians are some of the most prolific producers of web content in that region of the world. And virtually all of that is in Farsi. I don't know the details of how routing algorithms work, but if a majority of users in these regions browse Iranian web sites wouldn't that skew the routing tables towards routers in Iran?
They should have gotten the Comcast Super Combo Deal and save a bundle.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
This reminds me of some 1970s grafitti in Paris.
Someone had written "Mort Au Shah" and someone else had added
"et vive les souris"
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
"Mort au Shah, et vive les souris"
Death to Shah, and long live the mice
Shah sounds a lot like "chats" which means cats. So theres the joke for non-French speakers.
Neighbors? Let's see. I'm from England. That makes my neighbors Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall (it has it's own parliament, so yes it counts), Norway, Denmark and France. Now, children, can anyone tell me which of these has NEVER invaded one or more of the others?
Would I be peaceful if I saw a Russian tank rolling down my street? For starters, I probably wouldn't care. NO country has ever successfully invaded England except when requested to do so by the majority in England. (Strange but true.) Thus, if there was a successful invasion by Russia, it could only be by the democratic will of the nation. As a believer in democracy, I will NOT dictate to my countrymen what I believe to be the right choice for the nation. If the majority wish a foreign takeover, then it is their right to make that choice and I would be utterly in the wrong to oppose it.
Would it be helpful for me to not be peaceful? Well, the Russians defeated the German invasion by throwing themselves at tanks and lobbing petrol bombs down the hatches. The death toll on the Russian side alone ran into the tens of millions as a result. You will also notice that Russia (a country riddled with violence at the best of times) also took a steep turn downwards at that time, becoming infinitely more rabid than it had been before. Those tens of millions who died "saved" Russia from what? They stopped a Fascist dictatorship but only at the cost of creating a Communist dictatorship every bit as large and unpleasant as the one they stopped.
This achieved what?
C'mon, you seem to have an answer, so what is it? What did these (unquestionably brave and heroic) Stalingraders die for, in the end, that they could not have created by living? And had the Russian Revolution been one of peace, rather than bloody conflict and nihilism, would Russia not have been the better-able to stop Germany long before it ever got to Stalingrad? If the autocrats and the populace had worked together, rather than in endless cycle of destruction, modern Communism would never have happened.
Even World War II was merely a byproduct of the senseless destruction of World War I and the mindless destruction wrecked by the Treaty of Versailles. If the nations had been less bent on revenge and more bent on preventing future conflict, Hitler would never have happened at all. In more modern times, the Rwandan massacre was the product of the French colonialists creating divisions and antagonism. That massacre has resulted in subsequent revenge massacres. This is unlikely to stop any time soon.
Now look at a different conflict, that in Northern Ireland. The cycle of violence was largely broken by both sides, resulting in peace that would not have been imagined possible in our lifetimes a mere 20 years ago. Sure, there's some groups still stirring up trouble. You can't stop a flywheel instantly. But so long as nobody works to put energy into that flywheel, the energy coming out will die out. The epiphany by both sides that they could actually work together AND achieve their goals has resulted in something that no amount of wars has ever achieved.
Did the US invasions of Grenada or Haiti produce anything comparable to Stormont? What about those of Iraq or Afghanistan? No?
Ok, what about other conflicts? ETA declared a ceasefire. Not sure if it was entirely sincere, but they did it and the Spanish government ignored it. Result, the violence did not end. One side fighting rather than two didn't change a damn thing. What would have happened if the Spanish government had opted instead for a Stormont-like deal and decriminalized the Basquist politicians? I don't know. I don't pretend to know. What I do know is that they didn't and their decision didn't work - and that like decisions throughout history have never worked. Insanity is doing the same thing, expecting different results.
Maybe Spain wasn't capable of cohesive peace that time round, that had the government done something different it wouldn't have altered the outcome that much. I don't have the in
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)