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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.'"
What does any of that have to do with the Iranian government censoring a website? You actually believe that such an act of information control is in the best interests of the citizens of Iran?
No wonder you posted anonymously.
How's that been working for you lately? Before answering, you should probably consult your Homeland Security Potential Terrorist Interaction Manual for the proper response, Citizen. Remember, the threats are amongst us.
...Steve
No, the poster is reacting to the idiocy of the post. In a world with Putin grabbing power in Russia, North Korea investing in nukes while its people starve, Iran's theocracy feverishly working on bombs, Syria slaughtering its citizens, etc, calling the US "everything that's wrong with the world" is so moronic that it evokes outrage.
No, just like the guy who can't grasp that the idea was bad, you've STILL got this idea that they have a right to an opinion on Iran because they live in the US.
And somebody, I *think* it was one of those naughty middle east countries, I can't quite remember which, has to pay for those twin towers! Right?
Over, and over, and over, and over again...
And now it's to the point where they think they can blatantly push their propaganda and nobody will call them on it. They just stand and crank the war-machine in plain view and we are supposed to go "hmm yeah, democracy and shit, we're awesome"?
It's OK Bender, there's no such thing as 2.
Gitmo. Corporate p0wnership of your election process. Countrywide/BofA and the bank and wall street bailouts. Not one bailout bankster in jail. The clamp-down on the OWS movement, which is a fundamental free-speech issue.
There's 5 to get you started. The shutdown of the "virtual embassy" is small potatoes in comparison. It was also a really, REALLY dumb idea to begin with. After all, it would be easy enough for the Iranian authorities to track who accesses it, make a list, check it twice, find out who's been naughty ... same as the US has been doing for a couple of decades with Echelon..
Um....the CIA and British operatives worked together to make the coup happen. The British government was extremely unhappy that Iran had nationalized their oil production (nullifying the contracts they had). The Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat) is a decent jumping off point on this one. A lot of what we see in the region is a legacy of British Imperialism and attempts by the CIA to control the political landscape. It's not very dissimilar to the CIA training and funding of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia to change the politics of that region (French Indochina) as well. We saw how that turned out...
This is not to say that we can excuse all actions by a people, but we would do well, I think, to consider the legacy of Old World Imperialists and the Super Powers when viewing the geopolitical landscape. Further, it is perhaps as unwise to consider a people synonymously with the actions of their government as it is to consider our own way of doing things--whichever way that is--as being necessarily superior to any others. Patriotism is a laudable trait. Nationalism is a fetish that the world could do without.
The "Electronic Embassy" was "gamed" to begin with.
If you want goodwill on the path to normalizing, you don't do it by sidelining diplomatic channels and messaging unilaterally. That's hostility - not diplomacy.
If the US State Dept wanted full relations with Iran, they could open up shop tomorrow. But everyone there knows that Israel would cut off their lobby-enslaved testicles. The barriers to entry are US and Israeli.
The "Electronic Embassy" was created TO BE BLOCKED
Now, the "evil Iranian government" can be used to generate a thousand obfuscating talking points - and to frame Iran for "blocking dialogue" - when in fact, it is the US which has PERPETUALLY refused relations and negotiation.
This is a ruse. Iran is not some Western Asian version of North Korea, propagandized with some false lampoon of the US that dominates popular imagination.
As I indicated in the earlier story, there is little or nothing that Iranians need to know about the US, that they don't already know, either by watching satellite TV (which every Iranian has) or by calling their cousin in LA, which half of all Iranians have.
Iranians tend to be the most Amerophilic people you will encounter - but the US has been able to do extensive damage to that impression in the past few years. They seem to be on the path of eliminating all good graces.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
From http://iran.usembassy.gov/
"In democracies, respecting rights isn't a choice leaders make day-by-day, it is the reason they govern."
"When a government hides its work from public view, hands out jobs and money to political cronies, administers unequal justice, looks away as corrupt bureaucrats and businessmen enrich themselves at the people's expense, that government is failing its citizens," stated U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during the opening of the multi-country Open Government Partnership (OGP) Forum last week.
-- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton
I would argue that the U.S. has already failed its citizens.