Slashdot Mirror
Iran Shuts Down US Virtual Embassy
bonch writes "Less than 12 hours after the U.S. launched a virtual embassy for Iran, the Iranian government blocked access to the website, directing visitors to a government page proclaiming the site illegal. The White House condemned the move, calling Iran's internet policies 'an electronic curtain of surveillance and censorship around its people.'"
for political reasons.
Unless it wanted to, of course.
SOPA -> http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-11-17/news/30412322_1_ip-act-rogue-websites-sopa
Laundry list of past attempts -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_United_States
(CDA, COPA, DMCA, COPPA, CIPA, COICA, and my favorite named DOPA.)
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
USA isn't as bad as X, therefore USA is good?
I hit my wife with an open hand...it's okay, 'though, because this guy I know hits his wife with a baton and at least I'm better than that.
I am an American and I live in the USA. Don't forget that "the courts" are also part of the government. The federal government often and egregiously oversteps the specific privileges granted to it by the constitution; the courts, supreme and otherwise, often allow this to happen. Our government, the judicial part of it included, have made great strides in the restriction of personal freedom, including the field of censorship.
Don't get me wrong, the USA is pretty cool, and our government is definitely an open-handed beater, but just because Iran's government sucks more, that doesn't mean that our government doesn't suck quite a bit on its own.
I think you'd find that there are a lot of U.S. citizens that are pretty disgusted with the way our country is behaving right now, both domestically and globally, if you actually asked any of us about it. Do you think that we're all over here cheering this crap on or something? There's people protesting in almost every major city in this country right now.
So please explain Iraq. Oh yes and the 1953 coup in Iran that got rid of a democractically elected government. And half a dozen countries in South America. And......
Care to make an explaiantion?
Press TV IS a web site set up for US citizens to read propaganda and it IS still up. You are an idiot.
The Islamic Republic of Iran wouldn't exist without the US. Remember, we destroyed their democracy in 1953 because they were trying to nationalize their oil fields, and kick us out. British Petroleum began its life as Anglo-Iranian Oil, which was known as Anglo-Persian Oil before that. The company was literally founded on the outright theft of all of Iran's oil, along with a handful of American companies that got their cut after Operation Ajax was complete. We installed the Shah, he repressed and radicalized the population with our money and training, and then the people revolted, as they often do.
We helped Britain divide and administer their post-war winnings after WWII that largely has started all of this mess. (Do you think oil-rich Iraq was divided equally into Kurdish, Shiite, and Sunni populations by accident?) We backed Saddam to punish the newly independent Iran after they overthrew our Shah. We participated in the proxy wars which destroyed Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran in the 80s. We allowed Pakistan to develop nuclear weapons -- as in, we certified them as nuclear free every year -- during the 80s in exchange for helping us smuggle weapons into Afghanistan. We backed Mubarak. We were pals with Gaddafi while he was torturing and murdering people because he was selling oil to us, but that was all the way back in 2009. We allow Turkey to murder and suppress Kurds at their whim because they are an ally. We didn't say much about Syria at first because it was one of our blacksites. We're still watching Bahrainis get murdered because we like the sitting government that allows our fleet that we use to project power into that Middle East to have a massive billion dollar operations base.
The US isn't the root of all evil, but in the modern Middle East, it's the root of most of it.
Functionally, companies in the United States block Al-Jazeera. I challenge you to actually watch their CNN-like feed on your local cable station. The best I can do is their half-hour daily news program broadcast alongside BBC America and (that wretched) RT News on KCET in Los Angeles; today I consider Al-Jazeera's reporting premeir among broadcast television.
We at slashdot all know it's easy to intercept and redirect DNS (unless you're in Sweden, those fine adopters of DNSSEC), or insert in a transparent Squid/whatev with a hosts file, but I'm confident at least they're probably not using Websense, years ago I installed the mod_geoip ruleset to deny access to daily updates for requests originating from embargoed nations.
Last time I was in Syria Facebook was blocked at the port 80 level. But ssh forwarding 3128 worked fine, hopefully no one was etherealing 53. Funny it took Syria three years to finally ban iPhones, I lost a brand-new 3G getting out of a taxi in Damascus... the one time I didn't photograph the license plate of the car I was getting into.
Seeing "Persian" instead of "Farsi" struck me as odd, but I suppose I'm the odd one.
calling the US "everything that's wrong with the world" is so moronic that it evokes outrage.
The main difference between all of those countries doing wrong and the United States is that we do evil in other countries, and they do it within their own borders. That's doesn't make us better, it's just a reflection of our status as the world's only superpower and the relative health of our electoral system. We watched Syria and Egypt and Tunisia and Turkey murder for decades without saying much about it, because we found them useful. And back when we controlled Iran with a dictatorship, we shut down the free press just as we did after we invaded Iraq.
Hypocrisy is indeed what is wrong with the world. Grow the fuck up already.
PROTECT IP Act was introduced by Patrick Leahy (D-VT)
Yeah, there's a lot of things going haywire in this country right now, but you know what? I feel pretty confident in saying that I feel safer and more free here than there in Persia. I've never been to the region, granted, but I'm a proud European born imperialist American who celebrates American hegemony. America is not everything that is wrong in this world as the first poster claims, pretty far from it. America has certainly failed a lot of tests, but then my Britain and my Germany have as well, so it's hard for me knock the US for being self interested and imperfect. I would hope that Americans would know about the dark past of Chiquita back when it was called United Fruit and called El Pulpo by the locals it fed on, but most likely don't just as they don't know about the horrible things American companies like Abercrombie & Fitch have done in Saipan. That said, the world is big, but not so big we can't easily find human rights violations committed in other countries by governments, private industries, and state run businesses.
But since we're going to claim in this thread that the US is inciting rebellion in Iran with this site, let's look at some of the horrible imperialistic things that the US has done using this virtual embassy. From a quick glance, there's:
1. A section explaining visas; how they work, what type there are, how to read one.
2. A section for document reqs for birth registration and a PPT application
3. A bookmark of links to various US cabinet and mission websites.
4. Instructions for renewal of passports
5. Information on how to study abroad in the US.
That's all pretty scary stuff, isn't it? There are a couple of things that challenge Iran's fundament human right to control what its residents see and read like annual reports on human rights, trafficking, country reports on terrorism, and an International Religious Freedom Report on Iran. There's also an Open Societies page that seems to paint the US as some kind of defender of women's rights, religious freedom, etc.
Yeah, America has its bad days. So does every other nation in the world that has aspired to be more than San Marino. I know, I know, I'm being unfair in ignoring that one time when San Marino violated its neutrality during WWI as a result of 10 partisans joining the Italian Army. The Virtual Embassy is a good endeavor.
PROTECTIP was introduced by a Democrat
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
[citation needed.]
From http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/24/AR2006082401461.html, is this:
You wouldn't be a(nother) pro-American propagandist liar, would you? Yes, it looks like you are. Couldn't even get the year right on your dissemination, could you?
holding 52 hostages captive for 444 days after invading the U.S. embassy in Tehran and having those actions sanctioned by their Supreme Leader
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'%C3%A9tat
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
The clamp down on the OWS is not a free speech issue. The OWS protestors are welcome to show up every day and protest. They are just not allowed to camp out in public parks/someone else's property unless those places are designated for such activity/they have the permission of the owners. The clamp down occurred because the OWS "protestors" were for all intents and purposes living at those locations. The rest of your points have validity. Including about how stupid this website was in the first place.
Personally I love the quote from the website that sites Hillary Clinton (speaking as a member of the current Administration) saying that behaviors of the current Administration are a demonstration of the government failing its citizens.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
You're right, it's not like the US ever did anything to provoke the storming of their embassy, like orchestrating the overthrow of Iran's democratically elected prime minister, supporting the toruture and murder of thousands of Iranian citizens and installing their hand-picked despot to ensure the US and UK continued to control of Iran's oil for the next 26 years.
I don't care why you're posting AC