Slashdot Mirror
Iranian App Helps Users Avoid Morality Police (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Young people in Iran are using a new app called Gershad (a contraction of 'Gashte Ershad', or 'guidance patrol'), to avoid the 'morality police' by sharing the location of checkpoints with other users. At checkpoints strict Islamic dress and behavior codes are enforced, and their ad hoc nature can make them difficult to avoid. Hadi Ghaemi, the executive director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, said of Gershad, "This is an innovative idea and I believe it will lead to many other creative apps which will address the gap between society and government in Iran."
They're simply enforcing Iran's version of political correctness. As stalwart adherents of PC here in the west, we should welcome such diversity in the behavioral expectations forced on people for the sake of the insecure and easily offended.
A counter-revolution, to be more precise. Preferably, one that outlaws Islam - in the same way Communism was outlawed in Russia after 1991.
Do you know ANYTHING about Iran? WTF? The Islamic government is genuinely popular. They TRIED to have a revolution a few years ago and it went nowhere. It failed even though Western leftists changed their Twitter pages backgrounds to green in support. I know, I'm as clueless as you - how could such a move have failed?
You want to know something really chilling? Ahmedinajad won in the 2005 election because he pulled a Bernie Sanders - he promised to give free (oil) money to ordinary folks. The man is legitimately popular and he has Morality Police on the streets, with the full support of the people who voted for him. It can happen here, people.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
If we've learned anything from the Arab Spring it's that most of the people living there favor these types of religiously oppressive governments, so any overthrow of the existing power structure is more likely than not to end up with something worse taking its place. If Iran were destabilized right now, they'd end up being partially controlled by ISIS. As bad as Hussein or Assad might be, at least they kept a lid on that shit.
I think a good chunk of the Middle East might be sliding towards some hopeless cycle for the foreseeable future because anyone intelligent enough to see why that kind of system is bad is likely to leave for other, less oppressive countries. The people who could be a catalyst for reform aren't there any longer to make improvements and it's no surprise that they don't want to stick around when it's relatively easy to move elsewhere and end up in a country where you won't be killed for your religious beliefs or stoned to death for your sexual preferences.
Stop comparing GDP to spending. The USA isn't a communist nation and therefore the GDP has no basis on government spending. Currently theMIC composes of 30% of the budget and 35% of the reveune. The current 4.1 trillion budget is over estimated on tax reveune by 10%. Which will be closer to 3.5 trillion. Possibly less.
The GDP is only useful, if the government nationalised every industry. Let me know when the government does that. Until then stop being an idiot and compare government revune(taxes for the stupid) to spending. That paints a much bleaker picture were our debt is 5-6 times our current income.
Ask a Bank to give you a loan when your debt is 5 times your income.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
I somehow have the feeling that it's more like with the US political spectrum running from "very devout" to "insanely devout" Christian in any and all political offices.
Have you ever seen a US politician not end his speech with some phrase invoking god?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.