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Grand Ayatollah Says High Speed Internet Is "Against Moral Standards"
An anonymous reader writes A Grand Ayatollah in Iran has determined that access to high-speed and 3G Internet is "against Sharia" and "against moral standards." However, Iran's President, Hassan Rouhani, plans to renew licenses and expand the country’s 3G cellular phone network. A radical MP associated with the conservative Resistance Front, warned: “If the minister continues to go ahead with increasing bandwidth and Internet speed, then we will push for his impeachment and removal from the cabinet.” “We will vigorously prevent all attempts by the [communication] minister to expand 3G technology, and if our warnings are not heeded, then the necessary course of action will be taken,” he added.
...then there's got to be something to it.
You already know they don't like this because it takes away their control over a population.
Of course they count it against their religion of control and abuse.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
First... moral standards are "his" moral standards.
Second, internet in general connects his people to the world... exposing them to other view points that might distort their indoctrination to his world view.
So what he is saying is "the people of my country might not believe in my values if exposed to alternative view points."
Which is rational. They probably won't. His world view is pretty weak on logic, argument, or supporting evidence. Its just do what I say or the sharp knives come out.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
They aren't the only country wanting to remain in the 8th century, their are still supposedly modern countries that ban teaching or evolution and insist on teaching their kids at school creationism.
When you consider that the US sided with Saddam Hussein to contain Iran, you begin to realize that such things are possible.
Islam is by definition insanity; don't try and rationalize it. To do so would be a maddening endeavor.
Maybe the religious fascists in Iran could be called backward savages, but certainly not the general population. I've known many people of Iranian origin here in the U.S. who were or are part of major scientific establishments. There are also many Iranian students studying in American universities. Also, the recent Fields medal winner, Mirzakhani, is Iranian. So it is extremly myopic to suggest that they are all uncivilized beasts.
Which is part of what drives the radicalism of the Islamic clerics. They have a perverse incentive for keeping things as fundamentalist as possible. They look to what happened to the clergy in Europe, who in roughly a 100 year span went from being basically on top of the social hierarchy to near the bottom, and are scared it might happen to them. In their eyes the situation in Europe was brought around both by the clergy actively supporting reform, but perhaps even more importantly the clergy not fighting back against reform hard enough(read cutting the heads off of reformers). In a society where your social status not only dictates the amount of property you have, but also your access to women, it's not surprising that the Islamic clergy are scared shitless of modernization and are doing everything in their power to stop it.
Monstar L
You don't need religion for that kind of insanity. Do some reading about the dechristianisation of France during the French Revolution. I'll wait.
Nasty, isn't it? Given the evidence, it's difficult to believe that ideological atheism won't lead to irrationality and bloodshed just as quickly and easily as any religion.
Required reading for internet skeptics
I guess there's always a Greater Satan.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
The internet facilitates reason, criticism, satire, and alternate points of view. And yeah porn, fun, shopping and irreverence. All things which an authoritarian theocracy has reason to fear.
Actually, you could have said that about Iran.. until someone fucked it all up. But more to the point, 15 of the 19 September 11 hijackers were citizens Saudi Arabia. I'd suggest you pretty much have it ass backwards.
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middl...
Iran is the mess it is now (from our perspective) directly because the US fucked them over in 1953. We have a bunch of clueless myopic idiots who's first and only thought is to dump more weapons anywhere there's a problem in the world, without giving second thought to how that's come back to bite our asses time and time again. If we quit listening to these numb-nutted war neo-cons, maybe we wouldn't keep finding ourselves in bad situations decades later.... although with the whole Iraq/Afghanistan thing, it didn't even take decades.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
How does it fail to address your point?
I'm an atheist. I also don't believe in unicorns.
I don't campaign against unicorns. I don't really care if YOU believe in unicorns.
Yes, I think you're wasting a whole lot of time, money, and energy believing in something there is no evidence for.
If you start trying to convince me to believe in unicorns, I will debate it with you.
If you start trying to force me to live as though unicorns were real, I will fight you.
If you start chopping off the heads of people who don't believe in unicorns, I think you must be stopped. Not because of your beliefs. Because of your actions.