Iran Blocks, Unblocks Access to Google

morpheus83 writes "Iran has blocked access to the Google search engine and its Gmail email service as part of a clampdown on material deemed to be offensive. Hamid Shahriari, the secretary of Iran's National Council of Information did not explain why the sites were being blocked. Google, Gmail and several other foreign sites appeared to be inaccessible to Iranian users from Monday morning. Iran has tough censorship on cultural products and internet access, banning thousands of websites and blogs containing sexual and politically critical material as well as women's rights and social networking sites." That didn't take long. Iran has now unblocked Google claiming the censorship was an error.

That's the least of the problems with Iran today

[dusanv]

Censorship of Google is the least [iranfocus.com] problem there today unfortunately.

You can't "slap a Jap" anymore

[BadAnalogyGuy]

At some point along the line we Americans got a bit funny about making fun of other people. Some call it political correctness, others call it cultural sensitivity, and even others call it complete hogwash. Whatever it's called in your neck of the woods, times have changed, and tactics for dehumanizing the enemy have changed.

In the obvious run up to the war with Iran, it seems like the media is all too happy to paint them with the bigot, sexist, and totalitarian brushes. We are doing this with China. We did this with Iraq. Now, with Iran in our sights, they also get the black tar treatment.

And if you buy into any of this at all, you're the problem with this country.

Re:Unblocked

[deftcoder]

How do you 'accidentally' block a site nationwide? Does Iran only have 1 ISP or something?

Re:Censorship is the last resort of a failing regi

[JustNiz]

Th US has to stop trying to be the world police. Why should Iran just expect the US to jump in? They should grow some balls and try standing up for themselves.

Armed Citizens In the Modern World

[WED Fan]

They should grow some balls and try standing up for themselves.

Yeah, that works. So, we'll see some guy with his grocery bags standing in front of a Russian or Chinese supplied tank, stopping the entire Iranian Army from running down protesters that "grew some balls".

Have we seen this before?

In an age where the government has much more firepower than the armed citizenry, its difficult for citizens to rise up like they did in 1776.

Back then, with the exception of a Navy, the people in the American Colonies were a lot more closely matched with the British. What they lacked, they were able to get through guerilla action. Hell, back then, even privately owned vessels were armed.

Modern tyrannies are better armed than the citizenry, even where the citizens are permitted to own firearms. Back then, a handfull of armed farmers could take over an artillary battary, and use it. Now, farmers might be able to knock a plane out of the sky. Or disable a tank, but, the average farmer, tribesman, stockbroker, pimp, is going to be hard pressed to come out on top when a division of tanks comes at him while jets providing support for the ground troops create a no-mans land where neighborhoods stood.

Yeah, your idea worked for the students in China.

Re:You can't "slap a Jap" anymore

[neoform]

While you're right, the problem is that we're focusing on Iran because of the people higher up want war with them.

Why not take a look at all the other horribly run countries in the world? China is acting far worse towards it's people than Iran is.

They're Right!

[brianerst]

I've got a stupid little blog that digs a bit of good-natured fun at self-evident research results.

In a "recent" post [blogspot.com], I included a link to a picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger. It's not even posted to the blog - it's just a link.

Well, hot damn! I start getting hits from all over the world, especially Asia. And what are they for? You got it - they're lookin' for hunky body builder pictures! And the first one was a Google hit from Alborz in Khuzestan, Iran looking for pictures of weight lifters.

I actually have a (different) post on the blog that mentions a town in Iran by name (Masshad, Iran). How many Iranians stumbled on that post? Zero!

Looks like the Iranian government is right - their pervy little citizens just use Google to find hot pics of buff studs.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. After all, how else are we going to find that picture of Vanessa Hudgens... um, for "research"!

Re:And yet

[operagost]

Tell me: exactly who do you believe is in charge of the legitimate government of Iraq? Hint: we're not at war with them.

2 things

[circletimessquare]

1. iran has been doing exactly what you say the west is doing, since 1979, with orders of magnitude more effort: drumming the constant war drum against the great satan of the west. so why don't you condemn that? do you know what intellectual honesty is? or is only the west capable of being criticized? which brings us to #2:

2. it is ethnocentric to only criticize the west. that the west is only party that can be held responsible. this is soft racism: those poor iranians, they can't be held to the same standards as us. no, that's bullshit: iranians have the same rights and responsibilities that i do

you either have one standard for judging all governments of the world against, or you have no moral and no intellectual valid basis for criticism at all

Re:Armed Citizens In the Modern World

[MightyMartian]

In cases where "the people" are united in their desire for a new government (e.g. Eastern Europe after the collapse of the USSR), all the jets and tanks in the world won't keep the old government in power. On the other hand, in cases where a dictator can succeed in polarizing the country (often along ethnic lines - e.g. Iraq) then a dictator can stay in power for a long time.

There's a key difference between the Iranian situation and the democratic revolutions in the former Soviet Bloc. In the latter case, the Soviets pretty much pulled out, leaving no meaningful military apparatus to block the revolutions. It was rather more akin to the Roman pullout from Britain than anything else.

In Iran's case, you have a well-organized security force capable and willing of incarcerating and murdering anyone who gets too uppety, and a pack of theocratic masters who see themselves as God's own hands, thus equally willing to use the security forces to do their will. In between is an elected but ultimately subjugated political system.

At the end of the day, and this has held true throughout history, people worry first about their families and themselves. While I'm sure most would love to see the Ayatollahs and the killers they employ brought down, it's quite an extraordinary thing for the average man and woman to put themselves and their dearest on the line to do it. It was done once in the last thirty years, and what they got was as bad as what they had, so I suspect revolution isn't a coin they're that interested in.

I suspect that it is ultimately the economy that will be Achille's Heal of the current Iranian regime. The Guardian Council doesn't want anyone too reformist taking power, so it encourages people who, to put it mildly, lack any skill or vision in fixing high unemployment and collapsing industry and infrastructure. Sure, they can get a guy Ahmadinejad who will make all the right anti-American noises, but the guy is an utter incompetent. I mean, Iran actually has to import gasoline.

At the end of the day, the failure of the Iranian economy will be what brings the Ayatollahs down. They can make all the nuclear bombs they want, make all the threats against Israel they want, but even with the oil revenues, these guys cannot make Iran function properly. They're a pack of religious fanatics and psychotics, and they are, with every step, alienating the business class and the (would-be) middle class, and at some point they won't even be able to sustain their military investment. When that happens, interesting things may happen.