Blogging in Iran Takes Courage 310
netbuzz writes "This morning's Boston Globe has a thought-provoking profile of Iranian bloggers who are risking everything, quite literally, to bring a modicum of openness and truth to a society where the former is not tolerated and the latter strictly defined by government/religious authorities."
Re:Fucking grow up. (Score:5, Informative)
Oh least we forget who put the Shah in power. So indirectly, our Government... Which is supposedly in the hands of the US people... Installed a dictator who was terrible enough for a people to wish a revolution that replaced him with a theocratic leadership.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Revolution [wikipedia.org]
So yeah. At home we aren't as bad as Iran, but we had a great big hand in causing them to turn into the country they are today. I suppose I could get into the issue of the Iran/Iraq war which we tried to fix our mistake by arming another which we had to fix ourselves 20 years later.
And now we are paying for it on a daily basis.
Re:Fucking grow up. (Score:5, Informative)
Read about it here [amnesty.org]
"The USA and Iran have each executed more child offenders than the other six countries combined and Iran has now matched the USA's total since 1990 of 19 child executions."
That's right folks, Iran has caught up with the USA. CAUGHT UP!
Dixie Chicks (Score:2, Informative)
Is running over CDs with a bulldozer analogous? That's what happened at a rally arranged, not by "their own fans", but by Cumulus Media, which controls 262 radio stations nationwide.
Clear Channel stations, not Dixie Chicks fans, banned them from the airwaves. Clear Channel owns 1,225 radio stations. That's almost as effective as government censorship, without the icky court battles. Clear Channel denies any involvement in the anti-Dixie Chicks rallies organized by many of their stations (but nobody else's).
Reference: The Columbia Journalism Review [findarticles.com].
Clear Channel vice chairman Tom Hicks is a longstanding very good friend of George W. Bush.
>the Dixie Chicks were not put to death
I take little comfort in the fact that nobody has carried out the death threats.
Technical solutions all seem to be gone (Score:3, Informative)
Torture is counterproductive (Score:1, Informative)
No matter what "intellegence" you get from a subject of torture, it is not going to be helpful because the subject will tell you whatever you want to hear. If you ask someone the location of a terrorist cell, and they actually don't know, they are as good as dead in a place like Guantanamo. This lack of knowledge may not save their life, but on the other side of the electrode is the American soldier who is asking the questions. Whatever blubberings this victim may give you will be totally counterproductive and will not help further any military objective, they will be garbage intellegence. And we all know,
Garbage in = garbage out.
Try asking nicely.
Re:Iran is in good company (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Fucking grow up. (Score:2, Informative)
How's your map reading? http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4 /Operation_Desert_Storm.jpg [wikimedia.org]
I make US forces about 200 miles into Iraq. You?
Saddam Hussein didn't attend the ceasefire ceremony, but his military commanders did sign the ceasefire. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/middle_east/ 02/iraq_events/html/ceasefire.stm [bbc.co.uk]
Once again, Saddam did not kick the inspectors out. He tried to kick the US inspectors out (and succeeded for about six weeks in 1997). http://www.un.org/Depts/unscom/Chronology/chronolo gyframe.htm [un.org]
The inspectors were later withdrawn due to non-cooperation, and also because they were at risk from the Desert Fox bombing campaign, which was designed to force Saddam to allow the inspectors into the buildings they had been barred from.
And Saddam did not violate the ceasefire, the terms of the ceasefire simply read 'get out of Kuwait and don't come back, and give us a list of your minefields while you're at it'. The anti-WMD UN resolutions actually predate Desert Storm (see 612), and it's those Saddam violated by refusing to cooperate with UNSCOM.
People do have such memories don't they? They forget the US invaded Iraq in Desert Storm, they forget the UN inspectors were not kicked out, they forget what it was that Hussein was supposed to have done wrong
And sadly there's no real evidence that the Iraqis were building their military up, just failing to get rid of the old one in sufficiently transparent a manner. Why? Possibly because Saddam was stuck trying to convince his very pissed off neighbours to the east and south that he was still a big bad dog.
Re:Think of the Children (Score:2, Informative)
Many years ago, there was a king. He was very rich, he lived in a nice castle and had anything he wanted. Anyhow, one of his wives fell pregnant and he consulted a soothsayer.
The soothsayer predicted that his son would see a poor man and a sick man, and on so doing would give away all his wealth.
The king was shocked at this, and went to extreme lengths to ensure that his son be brought up without ever seeing anyone poor or sick.
Many years passed. The prince grew older, and as a teenager sneaked out of the castle with some guy who worked there. He'd never been out before, and teenagers being what they are, he desperately wanted to see the world. They went into the city, and while they were walking they passed a man begging in the streets.
"What's he doing?" said the prince.
"He is poor", said the palace aide, "He has no food, he is hungry."
"No food? That's terrible!"
And so they continued. Before long they met a leper, covered in festering sores.
"What's wrong with him?" asked the prince.
"He is a leper", said the aide. "He has a terrible illness which makes him look like that."
"An illness? Terrible!"
They walked on. But as they did, the prince couldn't stop thinking of the poor man or the leper. He'd never seen anyone poor or sick in the palace, and it shocked him to think that there were those who were worse off than him. When he returned home, he knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to give all his great wealth to the poor and needy, such that they might have a better lot......
Re:America, Israel and Iran (Score:4, Informative)
Iran isn't simply provoking Israel, its President is making statements suggesting a threat of genocide [bbc.co.uk] that even various Arab governments condemn. Maybe you can understand why the Jewish state might be sensitive to that [ushmm.org]? Or, maybe not [telegraph.co.uk]. I can't imagine you advocate them accepting annihilation just to keep the peace.
Europe has been taking the lead [cfr.org] on the Iran problem*, and is failing. Is that because Europeans want oil priced in Euros, a nuclear armed Iran (soon) with missiles capable of reaching Europe (now), they are simply feckless, or maybe the Iranian government is run by fanatics who have an agenda of their own that they value above Europe's carrots & sticks?
Wars tend to start when one country attacks another. Iran has been sponsoring terrorism across the region, providing arms to Iraqi insurgents, and is making threats against other countries. That isn't a recipe for peace.
By the way, how does suicide bombing work into this? Since we "know" that religion isn't involved, but oil is, how do they convince suicide bombers to do it? Do they offer to bury the bomber's remains in pure kerosene or something?
* Yet more evidence of US unilateralism.
Re:Have you been paying any attention? (Score:3, Informative)
So that law Bush signed wasn't policy either?
There have been asphyxiations during CIA interrogations, and many allegations of torture and abuse outside of the specific incidents of Abu Ghraib. If at this point you think that those things which you can find pictures of on Google Images are the most that has occured, and a law authorizing the President to decide what is and is not torture when they were known to already have an extremely liberal definition is just hot air and not indicative of policy, then I have to say you're very naive.
Japan, Italy, and Germany are presently peaceful democracies after suffering severe violence and occupation for up to seven years. Germany did have a short lived but violent insurgency (the Werewolves) that was put down. Germany seems to have come through it OK, the Nazi pagans didn't take over. The coup attempt by the Japanese Army didn't have legs either.
Thank you. Referring to the time 60 years ago when the U.S. new how to actually accomplish something and reconstruct a nation really puts the current failure in Iraq in sharper relief.
Do you think Japan would have done as well if MacArthur had gone in with absolutely no plan on what to do, no understanding of the culture, and no intention of trying to fix things that were blatantly broken? Rumsfeld said he "doesn't do nation building". Well, nation building is the job he got, but he "didn't do" it in the sense that he didn't have a plan for it.
The coup, by the way, occured before the Emperor surrendered and was an attempt to stop him from doing so. The reason peace prevailed there was because the people were loyal to the Emperor and he told them to lay down arms, and MacArthur was wise enough to retain a ceremonial position for the Emperor, saving face and not giving the people a reason to revolt to protect him. Those poor soldiers stuck on Pacific atols still fighting the war twenty years later? That would have been every Japanese had things been slightly different.
If the current Admin. understood the differences beteen WWII and Iraq II better than you do, maybe Iraq would be going better. Sadly, they think "it worked before, therefore it will work now even if we have no idea what makes now different than then" is sound logic.
Iraq has just reached its one-year election anniversary, the Iraqi economy is strong and growing, the Iraqi security forces are leading increasing numbers of operations, and Iraqi tribes are turning on Al Qaeda in Iraq which has lost at least 7,000 terrorists killed or captured. If the Iraqi people, government, and the Coalition Forces can start getting a handle on the surging sectarian violence, much of which seems to be emanating from Al Sadr's militia which may be spinning out of his control, Iraq could do well.
And a year later, those elections, which were supposed to solve everything, have proven to be largely irrelevent. The current government is as widely held as corrupt and incompetent as the U.S. appointed one before it. If all you wanted was an election irrespective of the situation surrounding it then Saddam held elections too that were also useless outside of appearances.
Did you read your article on the economy? Yay, economic indicators are going up due to the influx of foreign money and oil money. Is it being felt by the average person? No, unemployment is at 30 to 50 percent, and Iraqis are burning through their savings. That might make the economy look good because there is more money churning, but it does not make the prospects of the average Iraqi look good. Still I'm glad that even if they can't walk in the street without fear of being abducted and tortured for wearing the wrong clothes in the wrong neighborhood, at least we've ma