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Iran Set To Block Access To Google
legolas writes "The official state online censorship body in Iran has reported that Google and Gmail are going to be blocked effective immediately, ostensibly in response to the contentious videos that YouTube is hosting. This comes as Iran is preparing the launch of their 'Halal' intranet to replace the current direct (albeit highly censored) access to the global Internet. While there have been several state-organized protests for the film 'Innocence Of Muslims' in Iran, the public in general doesn't seem bothered by it."
This poll seems timely: http://www.gallup.com/poll/148763/muslim-americans-no-justification-violence.aspx
People react to the culture in which they're brought up. And even in the Middle East, it's a small proportion of Muslims acting in the way rightists here want to depict all Muslims as.
As an atheist, I have no dog in this fight, except one: I want to live in a peaceful world. Six years ago I wrote this journal entry. I'm more fearful today than then that a new Hitler will arise, and no less convinced that the chances are equal that such a Hitler will come from the West as they are from the Middle East.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
After Stuxnet Iran started buying up networking equipment like crazy to make their own version of the Great Chinese Firewall. Eventually they were going to segregate all outbound communications. Considering the amount of information people trust to Google and the fact that the US Government can access the information if they ask for it (Google has little choice but to comply) there is little reason not to filter their services out completely. Plus if users are forced to use Iranian Internet services the Iranian state can then access all personal user information regardless if it is encrypted en route or not.
Iran already tried to address this by forging certificates for man-in-the-middle attacks.
Have you been to Iran? I was just there two months ago. The majority of the population hates their government, but they are too scared to do anything about it.
Every Iranian I've ever met has been erudite, intelligent, moderate and truly delightful. The Iranian people are oppressed by Islamists who justify their power by appealing to Islam. As long as Islam holds sway over a billion+ people, injustices like the Iranian theocracy will perpetuate.
in the United States. Large swaths of the country are deeply religious, by which I mean some stripe of Christianity. They have grown increasingly suspicious (if not downright scornful) of scientists and educators who challenge their views and threaten to corrupt the views of their children. I suspect that many of these folks sincerely see unrestricted search engines and an uncensored internet as tools of the devil. How far would public opinion have to tip before *all* searches are "safe" searches, and the "sanitized" web becomes the norm?
It seems unthinkable. But when 46% of the U.S. population earnestly believes that humans were created in their present form within the last 10,000 years, you have to be open to what happens if that number goes to 56%, or 96%.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/05/americans-believe-in-creationism_n_1571127.html
Koans and fables for the software engineer
ok... can we have your IPv4 addresses.
Every Iranian I've ever met has been erudite, intelligent, moderate and truly delightful.
This is consistent with my experience. I have the utmost respect for every Iranian I have personally gotten to know.
Then again, every Iranian I've ever met (a few dozen) took huge risks to escape the regime in Iran and request asylum in the U.S. Unless you have wide experience in Iranian cities and rural areas, the people we have met are more extreme than the general population, in much the same way that the steam that rises from a boiling pot is hotter than the water in the pot. I absolutely believe that in Iran, as in Russia, the masses do not believe the state propaganda being produced to keep a paranoid minority in power, but it would be a mistake to assume that the majority of people in Iran are like the ones who escaped. By definition, they're different because they didn't escape (for whatever reason).
It's also important to remember that being erudite, intelligent and moderate doesn't preclude one from being complicit with more radical ideas. About 15 years ago a relative in New York doing business with a factory in Pakistan asked me work with a technically-proficient relative of the owner of the factory to set up a modern communications channel to replace the expensive fax and telex method they'd been using for years. I was expecting difficulty in communicating concepts and file formats because I had no idea what kind of equipment they were using. As I talked with my counterpart in Pakistan, who happened to be a military officer, I was struck by how erudite, intelligent, moderate and practical he was. I liked the guy. We very quickly figured things out and saved both sides a lot of time and money. A year later, when Pakistan tested its first nuclear weapon, he was the military spokesperson quoted in all the English-language newspapers announcing the test. I am sure he was opposed to the test and the increased tensions with India that would result, but that didn't stop him from being used as the mouthpiece that spread fear around the world in the spring of 1998.
The current "hate" is of the sort "I don't want a ground zero Mosque just like a Japanese wouldn't want Disneyland Hiroshima"
The Nazi kind of "hate" is of the sort "Retards and cripples must die, because they are inferior. Jews must all die, because they are monsters"
If you think that these two attitudes are remotely similar, then you are horribly sensationalist.
The endless arguments on Slashdot seem to go like this: "Muslims are violent because Islam is bad."
"It's no worse than other religions, look at Christianity."
"But Christians don't get all weird about iconography, no rioting over cartoons."
"Christians get weird about other things, that's just one idiosyncratic example."
Look, the problem isn't with Islam or any other single belief system. Or any other single belief for that matter, this is about people in power maintaining their power by pushing a topic with broad public support. Usually that support comes from ignorance or gullibility. Look at all the things justified "because terrorists" or "child pornography" or "pedophile rapist home invaders, who are lurking around every corner." You don't solve this problem by ranting about Islam, you solve this problem by, somehow, convincing people that they need to be less gullible. This is why you so often hear people talking about education as a long term solution to corruption and other ills, and why dismantling public education is often such a high priority among the corrupt. Iran isn't keeping women out of schools out of misogyny, they're doing it to keep people tractable.
The point is: enough with the Islam/Christian bashing. Or religion in general. It's a red herring, there to distract you from the real problem.
There is a huge gulf between media reports of life in Iran and the reality. I was there for two weeks this month and wrote a short blog post on the internet censorship. http://kanahakkliha.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/iran-in-2012.html
The reality is the censorship is considered to be a complete joke - freegate or tor just goes right through it. The government is just wasting their time. Facebook, youtube and twitter are all "blocked" but everyone uses them. It only gets annoying when you're accessing wifi from a mobile device and don't have a VPN already set up.
There's a site called blockediniran.com which is pretty accurate - http://www.blockediniran.com/?siteurl=google.com it shows that google.com is not blocked yet (but, for example, it can't understand that m.smh.com.au is a website). However, when I was there, every other country variant of google was blocked - google.com.au, google.co.uk, google.co.nz etc, and blockediniran confirms those.
enough with the Islam/Christian bashing. Or religion in general. It's a red herring, there to distract you from the real problem.
"If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people." -House
I get and fully agree with your point about gullibility being the real issue. However what you're proposing (ignoring the religious part of the matter) sounds a bit like saying that instead of getting treatment for an illness a person should simply switch to a healthier lifestyle and the disease will magically fix itself.
Complicity to auhtority is an integral part of most religions. And I'm not talking just about muslims here. Members of the abrahamic religions usually gorw up in an enviroment where they are told that their view of the world is the correct one and everyone else - no matter what kind of reasoning or evidence they might use - is wrong. Likewise they are most often than not told that questioning anything told to them by their religious leaders is wrong. No adult would swallow all of this without questioning it but the mind of a child is extremely gullible, especially when it comes to information coming from his/her own parents so they come to accept it as the norm.
Don't get me wrong. The problem isn't that these people are stupid. The problem is that they've been told to never question anything that comes from a position of authority, no matter how much they dislike it. Many of the Iranian people probably disagree with the regime but - just like they're afraid to question the existence of God (in public) - they're afraid to question their leaders, no matter how vastly they might outnumber the people in power. Some people see and understand this but they tend to escape from the country instead of risking their lives (and the lives of their families) by trying to speak up because they also know that the majority of their fellow men will - out of fear - be demanding their public execution rather than standing with them.
That is essentially what organized religions are used for by both religious and govermental leaders: as a tool to control people and make them obidient and fearful. So while I agree with you that the true problem is indeed gullibility: I don't agree that religioin is a red herring because as far as I can see the vast majority of these people wouldn't be so gullible if it wasn't for their religion and religious upbringing.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead