Iran Developing 'Halal' Domestic Intranet

An anonymous reader writes "The WSJ reports that Iran is beginning a crackdown on Internet use by its citizens, creating new blocks against foreign content and stepping up surveillance of browsing habits. Internet cafes in Iran have 15 days to set up security cameras and start collecting information on customers, and people are finding it increasingly difficult to use social networking sites. The new restrictions are likely being implemented now to head off dissent and protests about the upcoming parliamentary elections. According to the article, 'The network slowdown likely heralds the arrival of an initiative Iran has been readying—a "halal" domestic intranet that it has said will insulate its citizens from Western ideology and un-Islamic culture, and eventually replace the Internet. This week's slowdown came amid tests of the Iranian intranet, according to domestic media reports that cited a spokesman for a union of computer-systems firms. He said the intranet is set to go live within a few weeks.'"

Comments

Re:Iran continues its death spiral...

[jpapon]

I hate anyone and everyone who claim to have knowledge of "God's will". All that means is that they couldn't come up with a logical and reasonable explanation for their actions, so they say that "God wants it".

Re:Okay, that's the U.S. But what about Iran?

[Shadow99_1]

'Protecting' Israel comes down to many things, most relating back to it's creation at the end of WW2. At that point in time Allied (US/UK) forces held most of the middle east and their was considerable jewish migration due to the holocaust. No one nation really wanted alot of Jewish refugees to take care of and since we controlled the majority of what is now called the 'middle east' we decided to give them a 'homeland' there rather than support refugees internally. We also slowly returned most of our held territories there back into independent countries.

This worked for a time, but when we first wanted to pull out of Israel and let them go their own way their neighbors all decided to attack the created jewish nation in their midst. To add to that their was the Palestinian migration into Israel from what I want to say was Saudi Arabia and escalating smaller acts of war by Israel and their neighbors over the years. These things have forced us to keep our 'hands in the pot' or risk a much larger scale of combat. Israel is quite likely to have the must modern and strongest military in the region, but we'd rather not have them take over the middle east and such a thing would be an extremely bloody war. It's also likely to be a war involving 'WMD's' on the order of mustard gas missiles from the islamic nations (Iran certainly has some and have been trying to build nuclear weapons for ages).

So instead we continue to support Israel and so keep some control over a highly volatile region. If nations like Pakistan and Iran didn't seem to be run by nuts easily the match for any american wackos it would be far easier to just let them do what they want.