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."
Fucking grow up. (Score:5, Interesting)
Amnesty International Iran [amnesty.org]
Take your jaded world weariness and shove it up your ass. The USA has problems, but comparing it to Iran with a smirk and a shrug is the opposite of helpful.
Re:Blogging in teh usa (Score:1, Interesting)
I agree that the USA is less oppressive the Iran. However, both the Dixie Chicks and the Iranian bloggers were receiving death threats for their views. I'd say that's pretty scary in both cases.
What's interesting to me is the question "Did expressing their views make a difference?" Did the Dixie Chick's opposition to the Iraq war prevent the Iraq war? Are the Iranian bloggers effecting change in Iran?
As far as I'm concerned, the real measure of freedom of speech is not how much is spoken but how much is heard.
Re:Fucking grow up. (Score:5, Interesting)
Currenly, every western democracy has problems but in comparison to countries like Iran their problems are nonexistent.
Re:Think of the Children (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Slashdot (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree with you. There is currently no comparison. But that is not a reason for complacency or self-congratulation either.
Calling people 'unamerican' for not sharing the government's view of things or the president stating that atheists are not citizens and certainly not patriots is edging right up there. It's not that far from uttering that statement and enforcing it, especially now that habeas corpus has been suspended for whoever the president decides are 'enemy combatants'.
We are kept from becoming Iran by the thinnest of lines. It galls me that probably two the biggest factors in the Republican's losing the legislative branch are sex scandals and the fact we're doing poorly in Iraq. The president's horrible abuse of power, condoning of torture, and his statements like those about atheists probably weren't that important to most voters who switched sides.
Most Americans seem to think that it's just fine if we become Iran as long as they don't have to actually think about any public figure having any sort of sexuality or see any sort of evidence that can't be ignored that our star is falling in the world.
Iran is in good company (Score:5, Interesting)
I've worked with a number of people from around the Middle East and all of them said that Saudi Arabia was far worse than Iran. Perhaps it would be wise to tackle the most oppressive countries first.
I have no idea whether Iranian police normally herd student protesters into "Free Speech" Zones well away from President Ahmadinejad, as is common practice in the US. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone) or whether the Iranian government enforces huge protest exclusion zones in Tehran, using the threat of terrorism as some kind of bizarre justification. In the UK there is a half-mile protest exclusion zone around parliament, which was introduced in 2005, 2 years after a million angry citizens marched outside Parliament in full view of the media. Maya Evans, a woman who read out the names of dead soldiers within the zone was arrested, charged and convicted of breaching the "Serious Organised Crime and Police Act" by staging an unauthorised protest. I think it was Chomsky who said "The worst enemy of a government is its own population". It's certainly beginning to seem that way.
Re:Fucking grow up (2006 not 2003). (Score:3, Interesting)
Your Amnesty International link seem to be to the 2003 report. It would probably also be a good idea to provide the links the US reports as well, since you are (presumably) doing a comparison. A good summary is that you don't want to be in the wrong group in either country:
Iran:
amnesty international [amnesty.org]
human rights watch [hrw.org]
US:
amnesty international [amnesty.org]
human rights watch [hrw.org]
It's also worth remembering, whenever Iran is being discussed, that the present government is a fairly direct outcome of Operation Ajax [wikipedia.org], in which the US and Britian overthrew the original (and very progressive) Iranian democratic government and installed a very brutal dictator (the Shah) because Iran planned to nationalize its oil (which was the result of, amongst other things, them being denied the right to even audit British Petroleum's books).
Unless of course... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Slashdot (Score:0, Interesting)
Re:Fucking grow up. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Slashdot (Score:3, Interesting)
*nod* Firebombing Dresden was a tactic we used to get Hitler to target civilians rather than military installations. *think* If I felt we had a clear strategy or some idea what we were doing, I could perhaps forgive a bit of spilled milk to get there. But I don't think we do.
I've heard anecdotes of prisoners in our various torture prisons who aren't there for any particularly good reason. We can't, in fact, muster even the tiniest shred of evidence for their incarceration.
Additionally, the existence of Abu Gharib was a horrible move from the standpoint of actually winning the war in Iraq. I wouldn't be surprised if that, more than any other single factor (including the natural inclination of the populace to fall into civil war over religious and ethnic differences) has been what has hurt us in Iraq.
Our leadership no longer knows how to win a war. They never did. They know how to have their strings pulled by various moneyed interests in the US. And none of them care about the war in particular, they just want stability so they can suck out all the oil.
And, as for the war on terrorism, we are doing pretty badly there. We're consistently failing to understand the problem, and seem to be bending over backwards to make it worse. And we favor tactics that harass people and look scary over tactics that actually work.
So, as I said, if we had even vaguely effective leadership, I might be willing to overlook (with some amount of distaste and muttering about how ugly war is) some human rights abuses. As it is, nothing is being done that will end the war in Iraq or the war on terrorism quickly, expediently and with a minimal loss of life.
Lastly, pointing out other people's human rights abuses and using that as a reason we shouldn't care about our own is kind of disturbing. Most of Bush's supporters would claim that they abhorred moral relativism. So your invocation of it is interesting to say the least.
Re:Think of the Children (Score:3, Interesting)
Not to rain on your parade or anything (because I totally agree with your post), but I think there are very, very few people in this world that honestly find ALL pornography (this means all art intended to sexually arouse--this includes soft core and artistic stuff) completely unappealing. My sister can launch into a very convincing anti-porn tirade, but played with her laptop enough times to figure out that she's a huge yaoi fan.
A lot of people out there have been exposed to nothing but "mainstream", plastic, horrible crap only to find out how wonderful and full of joy porn can be from a site like, say, Abby Winters. If sex interests you at all, then there is some form of pornography out there that will also interest you. People who claim otherwise either 1. Have absolutely no imagination whatsoever or 2. Are in deep denial.
Anyway I'm not advocating that you NOT "talk to your kids"--by all means, do!--just don't delude yourself into thinking that they're going to be completely open and honest with you about their opinions on sex and masturbation and porn.
Proxy access in Iran (Score:5, Interesting)
Their blocking system is fairly limited. Each ISP implements its own set of manually updated filters (not a central blocking system like China). I was trying to access certain sites -- www.sitename.com might work at one place but be blocked at another, though at the other net cafe sitename.com or IP address would often work just fine. I found the blocking policy inconsistent, though not that many sites were blocked (mainly gay sites were blocked).
Because of the Iran/Iraq war the population is very young -- 70% of Iranians are under 30 according to the Iran Lonely Planet guide. I imagine that'll mean plenty of blogs, whether insightful or the usual blog trash. People were quite politically aware and well educated. The news media seemed no more biased than Fox News in the US!
It's a beautiful country and well worth a visit. Persepolis [wikipedia.org] is amazing. Tehran was like any other big city -- lots of expensive houses, cars and more liberally dressed women. The latest model mobile phones were available everywhere. I was offered alcohol quite a bit (especially by taxi drivers). It's illegal for Muslims to drink but the Christian and Jewish population are able to drink. Incidently, Iran has the highest Jewish population in the Middle East outside of Israel.
I didn't know much about Iran before visiting, I'm just glad I went. Unfortunately if you're American/British it's difficult (though not impossible) to get a tourist visa unless you're in a tour group. I presume this is due to reciprocal restrictions applied by the UK/US on their citizens.
The last few years there have been fairly low in terms of tourism numbers and people were incredibly friendly to me - offering to take me to their homes for dinner and so on. Plenty of people were critical of their government but were just as critical of the American govt.
Funnily enough I just visited Israel last month and had a 45 minute interrogation because I'd visited Malaysia (a very westernised 70% muslim country). I'm glad I wasn't using the passport with the Iranian stamp in it!
I took photos of the nuclear installation between Kashan & Abyaneh despite the taxi driver panicking I'd get caught (you're not allowed to take photos of military installations). Though you can get a much better view of the place through Google maps!