In Iran, Blogging May Be Punishable By Death 495
An anonymous reader writes "In Iran, crimes such as apostasy (leaving a religion, in this case Islam) and armed robbery are already punishable by death, but a new bill in Iran aims to add to the list 'establishing weblogs and sites promoting corruption, prostitution and apostasy,' effectively giving the government a free hand in silencing bloggers. The internet is widely used in Iran, despite its previous attempts at censorship. Will this change as the censorship grows more rampant?"
Re:How is this regime possible? (Score:5, Insightful)
Iran = Let us do what we want and you do what we say or the US will come get you.
US = Let us do what we want and you do what we say or the terrorists will come get you.
Politics of fear: it works. Sadly.
Re:How is this regime possible? (Score:1, Insightful)
Yes, but the government has been good at the odd killing/arrest spree to calm the students down.
And of course at just the right time America does something (say invading Iraq) that the Iranian government spins to up the anti-US sentiment which helps them stay around.
Freenet now (Score:4, Insightful)
It is time people start learning and using Freenet more.
Everywhere you look, politicos are pushing freedom-restricting legislation for the intertubes.
Re:How is this regime possible? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ok, that's it (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, killing thousands of people and destroying their country will help establish a peaceful democracy!
What a politcally correct headline... (Score:2, Insightful)
In Iran, crimes such as apostasy (leaving a religion, in this case Islam)...
Because you know, there are so many non-islamic states that murder their population for leaving the state religion.
Re:So, let's TALK to them! (Score:0, Insightful)
Do you really think the medieval mullahs who believe and promote this kind of crap [memritv.org] can be REASONED with?
Yeah, you probably do. "Peace in our time", right?
You are one naive and hopeless waste of protoplasm.
Re:How is this regime possible? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ok, that's it (Score:2, Insightful)
Well then, looks like my life is complete. I can die happy now.
Re:How is this regime possible? (Score:3, Insightful)
It is entirely possible that Iranians who somehow managed to get out, or were forced out, are not a representative sample of the overall population.
In my case, I know a few Persians, and off the top of my head... one escaped with his parents who were associated with the Shah somehow. One was highly educated and decided to get the hell out. One is gay - staying in Iran obviously not a good idea.
Re:How is this regime possible? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So, let's TALK to them! (Score:4, Insightful)
I notice you had to qualify your statement with "in the Middle East".
Re:mm (Score:2, Insightful)
Separation of church and state anyone?
Non-separation of church and state is not necessarily bad but most (if not all) "states" which do not have the separation are also dictatorships therefore giving non-separation movements a bad connotation. Despite what many want and think, the U.S. was never intended to institute a true separation of church and state, at least that's not what the U.S. Constitution says we should be doing. If a state punishes its citizens for not conforming to state religion then, yes, it is bad and should be dealt with. That isn't freedom, especially freedom of religion, and it isn't separation either. Making laws to ban all public display of religion is also not freedom of religion which is what proponents of separation in the U.S. are fighting for. But there is nothing wrong with a state *having* a religion which is what our (U.S. that is) Constitution was trying to accomplish.
Those who chastise the U.S. for not keeping a separation of church and state do not know what true separation is. We now have yet another example with this story about Iran who wants to kill those who do not conform to the state religion. If those who chastise the U.S. would live in Iran for a year they would realize that what the U.S. has is not the same and was never intended to be a state-sponsored religion (the Founding Fathers knew they didn't want that because they were escaping that) but yet a country *with* a common religion (with some minority religions too, which is fine). That is true freedom of religion. People are always quick to chastise the U.S. government and hail other, foreign governments as better, but yet I don't see anyone such as celebrities, who are famous for criticizing the U.S), moving to Iran or Venezuela. I mention Venezuela because some celebrities in the last year or so were giving props to Hugo Chavez for his dictatorship.
Mod me flamebait or troll or whatever makes you feel better just because you may disagree.
Considering they would execute me.. (Score:5, Insightful)
..simply because I've had a boyfriend, I don't think this is particularily surprising. It is a supressive theocracy. Like other theocracies it has no qualms with torturing and even killing innocent people in order to silence criticism. This is common in dictatorships religious or not. The fundamental problem is the dictatorial rule and the regime's complete lack of limits in terms of what lengths it will go to in order to protect its own survival. Soviet was the same. Zimbabwe is the same. The only difference is what excuse these regimes use to justify their crimes. In soviet it was political ideology. In Iran it is religion. In Zimbabwe it is skin colour. What they have in common is that they kill and torture people in order to make the public afraid of organising opposition, their official reasons (religion,economics,race,culture) for doing so have little to do with their actual objectives. It's all about supressing dissidents, all other reasons is smoke and mirrors trying to obscure the true nature of the regime.
Re:What a politcally correct headline... (Score:5, Insightful)
They kill robbers, and talk about killing apostates. Other countries kill murderers, and want to kill rapists. There is a difference, but it's not a fundamental difference. It's only a matter of being more moderate or more radical. The values that determine what is a crime and what should be punished by death is slowly changing.
A civilized country doesn't kill their people, period. A civilized country doesn't impose religion on their people, in an way.
Some countries are getting more civilized, for some others it's harder. Anyhow, history has taught us that war doesn't accelerate this process, and some times it makes it go backwards.
Re:mm (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Too bad Bush's war against "tyranny" is helping (Score:5, Insightful)
Dictators usually use the technique of identifying a terrible enemy that only their regime can save country x from.
Not only dictatorships actually, but generally its what dictators do.
The fact is that if Iran stopped saying things like they want Israel to be wiped off the earth, and threatening the west, the problem almost certainly would go away. That's not going to help the regime stay in power though, so they won't want that.
Note that if they really wanted a way to end the tension, Ahmadinejad could have gone another way then declaring that the holocaust was a lie in a worldwide broadcast speech. They want this tension, it serves them well.
They almost certainly realise that the US is extremely wary of invading them, so they know that this technique may serve them for generations to come. The exact same method worked in North Korea. Sure the country's fucked, but the ruling faction are seriously rich, and quite powerful locally.
Unless of course some trigger happy nation or president decides its time to end the argument with a few large nukes. I *really* hope that doesn't happen, because the result may well be bad for the entire worlds population, but sooner or later some jerks going to think its the only way out. Then the question will be who is able to hold said jerk in check.
What worries me is that if the Islamic states continue down this fundamentalist route, they are going to cripple their countries economically as well as scientifically. Given that they were the originators of most of our mathematics and astronomy, that's a tragedy of epic proportions.
As it stands there hasn't been any meaningful scientific research from a middle east nation for decades. Thats bad news for them in so many ways.
Mankind will never advance to the stars if we have two civilisations on the planet. One technologically advanced, and the other technologically illiterate, with each hating the other. That is an untenable situation.
Re:Apostasy? (Score:4, Insightful)
Shariah is the only laws that hasn't changed since the time of Prophet Adam (peace and blessings be upon him and his family).
Unfortunately, the world those laws are applied in has changed. They are in desperate need of an update.
Re:mm (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:mm (Score:4, Insightful)
That was at times contradictory and at others, incoherent i think.
Your challenge is to "move to iran" if we complain? Why? Because we should shut the fuck up and take what we can get and be happy? No.
I also question your various claims about the intent of the constitution with regards to separation of church and state. There are some choice quotes from the time period from various figures involved in the forming of the U.S government who hint and in fact come out and say that there was an intent to keep church and state separate, and that it is reflected if not outright stated in the first amendment.
Re:Ok, that's it (Score:4, Insightful)
Poster - when talking about Iran:
I for one am sick and tired of Xian twats going on and on about the "end times." Tell you what - we'll ship you ALL to one spot, and you can kill each other to the glory of your individual gods.
What we REALLY need is a cure for religion.
Re:mm (Score:4, Insightful)
The question is whether or not this is a casual relationship. Given that the elements in the USA which seem to be the ones advocating chipping down this barrier even just a little bit pretty much want to do that to other civil rights, I think there probably is. Religion, ultimately, wants to base its existence on "things are this way because we said so", which is ultimately incompatible with human-centric, rational governance.
No argument, of course, about USA versus Iran. We're talking level 2 versus level 100000. The Iranian theocracy are nothing but a bunch of murdering thugs.
Re:How is this regime possible? (Score:3, Insightful)
Current regime and Government in Iran should be like a dream for a War monger. If Iran was a sane regime with some kind of democracy, how would you explain if you declare a war on them? Current idiots are great for giving reasons.
Re:Considering they would execute me.. (Score:5, Insightful)
In soviet it was political ideology. In Iran it is religion. In Zimbabwe it is skin colour.
And in the US it's "terrorism".
Re:mm (Score:3, Insightful)
Separation of church and state anyone?
Yeah, it's almost as if the First Amendment doesn't apply to Iran...
Just like it applies less and less in the US.
Re:How is this regime possible? (Score:3, Insightful)
Haven't you read any of the records released by the Russians? Nothing would have stopped the collapse and the internal strife of that failed "union" had worn the nation so thin that what we did mattered little.
Reagan's unprecedented arms escalation was the final straw - but he was far from the guy who defeated the USSR - he just happened to be in office when they self destructed (sort of like what the US is doing right now).
In 1977 Jimmy Carter set us on the road to energy independence - and if we had followed his lead we wouldn't need to import oil. King Ronnie the First dumped that series of programs right after he broke up PATCO. So, today we have $4+/gal gasoline, no unions left with any power and the average family hasn't seen an increase in real purchasing power since 1980.
BTW, try a spell checker and using shorter sentences.
Remember, Iran 'was' a Secular Democracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Why are we getting upset *NOW*? (Score:5, Insightful)
Many or all of these things are already punishable by death in Iran if you do them without the internet. Go over there and start distributing literature trying to convert people from Islam to another religion, and you've got a potential date with the executioner.
Hence, it is not blogging that they are making punishable by death. They are simply closing a loophole that may have let yo escape punishment by using blogs instead of, say, print or radio.
If we are going to be upset, we should be upset at apostasy being a capital crime at all, not that they have noticed that blogs can be used for apostasy and are closing that loophole.
Re:What a politcally correct headline... (Score:1, Insightful)
Because we humanely silence people with life imprisonment, or make an example of them with financial ruin. They silence and make example of people with death.
And we don't do it over silly things like worshiping the wrong invisible man, we do it in the case of important things like sharing music with friends; producing inexpensive medications that can't be patented, unfairly competing against our wonderful pharmaceutical companies that give us so many cures; parents that have the audacity to think they can educate their children better than the state; or going to a hospital without insurance.
These are the much more serious issues they could be focusing on, and compassionate sentencing really leaves the government looking much better.
William Lynch may have had some ideas about control that were effective for strong body, weak mind. But with so many great desk jobs out there these days, it is so much easier to get rid of both and tax them to death. Slavery fails because that puts the burden of food and housing onto the employer. Today, poor people only have themselves to blame. They could really learn from us. [Christian God] Bless America!
Re:mm (Score:4, Insightful)
Separation of Church and State is by definition secular, since the definition of secular State is one that is not entangled with religion. But if you are implying that it is contrary to or not based on religion, I disagree. The concept in the U.S. developed when the country was almost entirely Christian. James Madison credited Martin Luther's two kingdoms concept, but that was a development of the general two swords approach that was traditional in Western Christianity.
Certainly the modern U.S. version has much more separation than the original medieval one. But the justification is at least as much religious as secular. I'll be speaking from the Reformed perspective. Reformed Christianity is particularly concerned about the impact of sin on human lives, and finding ways to structure society to best protect against it.
Separating religion from governmental power protects both the Church and the State from corruption. In Christian understanding the need for governments is because of human sin. While real Christianity is based on love and proper intent, because of sin we can't rely on these motivations entirely in ordering our society. In order to safeguard human life, we need to set up structures to protect each other. In setting up governmental structures, we need to be aware that members of government are themselves sinful humans, and thus set up the structures in ways that minimize temptations and potential for abuse, and which provide for the maximum degree of accountability for power.
Separation is a key element of this. In areas that do not do have separation, you can see religious leaders who become more politicians than true religious leaders, and politicians who become hypocrites, and do things that are ill-considered in order to curry favor with powerful religious elements. Separation of Church and State is ultimately a protection for the Church. It is also essential for the Church to be able to call the State to account. Basic principles of auditing say that the auditor has to be independent; he can't be overly involved in the authority being audited. For the Church to play its proper prophetic role, holding the State accountable, it has to be reasonably independent of the State.
There are examples of the problems that occur from lack of independence in both Christian and Muslim-majority countries.
The other major concern is religious freedom. Both Christianity and Islam hold that there is no compulsion in religion. Both have also honored this more in the breach than the practice, some to the extent of finding creative interpretations to deny the principle entirely. But setting up structures to protect religious freedom is something that has justification in both of our religions. HIstory is pretty clear that when you give religious leaders too much power, they soon abandon their principles of freedom, finding it too tempting to use force to keep people from making what they see as religious mistakes. You can see this change happen in the lives of famous people such as Augustine and Luther. To avoid controversy I will not cite Muslim examples, but they are certainly there. The safest thing is not to let religious leaders get political power.
Re:mm (Score:1, Insightful)
Regime change is almost impossible these days because of one very devestating weapon.
The Machine Gun
It would be nice to have these people rise up against the government, but unless you have another country step in to smuggle the rebellion arms than they will simply be slaughtered.
The Chinese have mastered this and the landmark case of Tianamen square makes their point made.
Re:mm (Score:4, Insightful)
Sometimes the most responsible thing to do is accept that something is broken and your attempts to fix it will just make it worse. America can't "fix" the dictatorship in Iran, just like it couldn't "fix" the dictatorship in Iraq. People hate living under a dictatorship, but they hate living under foreign occupation even more.
Separation isn't strictly necessary (Score:3, Insightful)
What is necessary is that religion have no power over the state. Denmark has an official church, many European countries do, but the church has no power to enforce its doctrine through the state so the countries are relatively free at least as far as religion is concerned.
No, not quite (Score:2, Insightful)
No, they are the reason they are in their current situation. They have a ridiculous, violent religion they serve, and they chose to radically overthrow their own government to put that ridiculous religion into power. And, suprise suprise, it turned out not to be a good idea and their government enslaved them the same way all the other middle eastern Islamic states were already doing. Because of their actions, they remain enslaved by their government to this day.
At some point, people have to take responsibility for their own actions. The US didn't like being ruled by a king, so we overthrew the king and took the risk of instituting democracy. It turned out well, in this case. Other countries are ruled by dictators and people do not choose to rise up and remain enslaved. Or if they do rise up, they don't always install a democracy when they throw out the government (in Iran's case, they picked a theocracy instead). That's their choice, the consequences are theirs, and the blame rests on their shoulders. The US is not responsible for what people in other countries choose to do with their governments.
Re:mm (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How is this regime possible? (Score:3, Insightful)
Or maybe you haven't met them?
Re:mm (Score:3, Insightful)
We tried that. Seemed to work from 1918 until December 6th, 1941 [wikipedia.org]. But by that point the rest of the world was so broken it needed to be fixed with a crowbar.
Re:How is this regime possible? (Score:3, Insightful)
Hell, yeah! Burma, Somalia, Yugoslavia, German Jews in 1938... let the nationals deal with their own internal problems, internally.
*boggle*
If Europe had not had the interlocking defense pacts in place then the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand would not have triggered the 1st WW. If the Weimar Republic were not so heavily taxed with post-war penalties Hitler wouldn't have been able to come to power.
Yugoslavia was the product or WWII and Tito - Balkanization has taken place again and today those nation-states are pretty much what they were before WWI.
Burma/Myanmar has been in or at war since 1824. Not my problem.
The Somali disaster is also, not my problem.
Now, when the Japanese bomb us and the Nazis sink shipping - then we have a war.
If we put some actual work into the UN - and allowed a rational power share - then perhaps an independent military solution could arise for Somalia - but not the others.
Re:So, let's TALK to them! (Score:2, Insightful)
Wait a minute. What's the actual problem necessitating even talking to Iran in the first place? Why can't we just leave them the hell alone?
Re:mm (Score:2, Insightful)
The only governments that must force it's people to stay are governments that know they are inherently inferior to the governance in other countries. Iran knows that it's power structure is based on a shitty way to live, it knows that it is culturally inferior.
But one is not the consequence of the other, and "cultural inferiority" is a rather inflammatory term to be throwing around in an international forum.
The reason countries like Iran have such brutal laws and maniacal dictators is because they're full of religious extremists hell-bent on killing each other over disputes going back centuries. Every time western society is introduced or imposed upon middle-eastern civilization all hell breaks loose, never moreso than this decade.
Apparently it takes a tyrant to keep the tyrants at bay. Writing about it doesn't solve anything anyway. Obviously I don't condone mortal censorship, but they've got bigger fish to fry.
Re:No, not quite (Score:5, Insightful)
So yea, they are partially to blame but so are we.
What's more is that the only reason the Iranian revolution succeeded is that two philosophically opposed groups joined forces under the belief that "mine enemy's enemy is my friend." Namely the religious right (mullahs, et al) and the radical left (student reformers). Together they were able to kick out the american-appointed dictator (the shaw).
But the students and reformers made a fatal mistake. They thought that once the shaw was out, they would be able to deal with the mullahs. They were wrong, The mullahs quickly kicked their former partner's asses - imprisoning many, killing others. So that by the time the dust had settled, the mullahs (whom live in vast palaces now, and enjoy great wealth against the tenants of Islam, for what that's worth) were solidly in control.
So to say that "they chose to radically overthrow their own government to put that ridiculous religion into power" is categorically false. The only reason the mullahs were able to come to power is because the democratic reformers felt they had no other choice. It wasn't the overthrow of the shaw that put the mullahs into power, it was the power-struggle that followed the overthrow that did it.
Re:which shows that most people in Iraq (Score:3, Insightful)
No, you've misinterpreted the situation and some of what you say is outright false. People didn't like living under Saddam, he was still extremely oppresive. The reaction from people immediately after he was overthrown was evidence that they were glad to see him go. The issue is that what he did do well was keep a lid on the different groups that are now killing each other, when he was removed these groups were free to carry out the attacks they'd wanted to carry out all along but couldn't with Saddam keeping a close eye on them.
It's not therefore that people were happy to live under Saddam, just that Saddam had a stranglehold on his citizens. The situation you suggest where people owned AKs and RPGs left right and centre under his regime is fictitious, this was simply not the case. The weapons the insurgents are running round with now are the weapons Saddams army abandoned and left lying around after they were obliterated by the allied forces as well as weapons smuggled in from Iran and Syria. The places where people were armed such as Kurdistan often fought against him but often came off a hell of a lot worse as they simply didn't have the firepower to match (which is exactly why the US right to bear arms so they can overthrow their government if it pisses them off enough excuse is a bit silly, an M1 Abrams trumps your rifle 50 times over). At the end of the day you can have all the AKs and RPGs you want in the world but when a Mig comes flying over the hill and drops 500lb of explosives on you then it really isn't going to help you. Saddam had spies left right and centre so even if people were all armed it was never going to be much use because anyone who dare show any sign of revolt would quickly dissapear.
The fighting in Iraq is largely Shia vs. Sunni. The US troops get caught in it primarily because they're stood between the two factions trying to stop them. There is some specific targetting of US troops by Al Qaeda affiliated groups and similar but for the most part Iraqi's aren't rising up against and attacking the US troops, they're attacking each other. It is for this reason you regularly see reports of "30 iraqi civilians killed at wedding" or similar - attacks like this are quite clearly not attacks against the occupying forces and attacks like this are the most common types. Even with the Mahdi army the only reason they don't like US troops is because they know they're capable of disarming them leaving them unable to hit Sunnis and not because of some hatred of them removing Saddam, in fact, the likes of Muqtada Al-Sadr will only be happy with Saddam being overthrown because it leaves an opening for him to rise to levels of power he could never have achieved under Saddam. The only thing stopping him are US forces and the new Iraqi government, both of which aren't allowed to hit his forces anywhere near as hard and indiscriminately as Saddam might have should he have tried to rise up against them in the same way for fear of condemnation from the international community and further loss of international reputation for the US.
The key to fixing the situation in Iraq is to prevent the militias fighting each other and this is what is happening with the US surge, it is unexpectadly working rather well right now. It's probably also worth pointing out that things are not all that different to Ireland for us Brits. When the factions stopped fighting each other, the factions also stopped attacking British troops.
Re:So, let's TALK to them! (Score:2, Insightful)
Wait a minute. What's the actual problem necessitating even talking to Iran in the first place? Why can't we just leave them the hell alone?
Well the problem is nothing related to what the article submitted is about if that's where your confusion lies. We *could* leave them alone but if they do something stupid then we *will* have to do something about it. Ahmadinejad continuously makes threats against the U.S. that are not shown in the mainstream media. He continuously makes threats against Israel too. Israel may do something unprovoked that could spark WWIII and we would be required to join the battle. It definitely wouldn't be pretty as someone else said. The Straits of Hormuz may not get blocked but when idiot traders and speculators get spooked about oil supply when a hurricane is way over near Africa you can imagine what they would do if shots were fired and Iran was involved. Crude has already gone up about $10 in the last week or so partly because of Iran being in the news again. When idiots determine the price of crude oil, nothing has to actually happen in the world for prices to go up. They just do and strangely enough when the "dust" settles the prices never seem to go back down. That, my friend, is pure speculation at consumers' expense.
Re:How is this regime possible? (Score:4, Insightful)
But for our intervention, where would Iran be today?
Probably still a democracy of sorts. Some of the most bloody US meddling has been in South America though. The US criticises Castro (and he is a dictator albeit pretty benign as they go) yet he is Mother Teresa compared to the dictators the US supported in the region.
As for Iran being oppressive, Saudi Arabia is worse, yet is a close US ally. I used to work for an Iranian who fled the regime there and even they said they would rather live in Iran that Saudi Arabia.
Re:culturally inferior? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:mm (Score:4, Insightful)
Philosophically speaking, it applies to all people, not to just our government; which is why it's appalling when this administration seems to want to apply it only to Americans..and not even all of us.
Re:which shows that most people in Iraq (Score:3, Insightful)
"The reaction from people immediately after he was overthrown"
As reported by embedded journalists paid for by the US DoD. Nope, no special interest reporting here, no siree.
Re:mm (Score:2, Insightful)
There's a beautiful book for you non-muslims if you want to understand the issue of man-made laws vs shariah (divine laws)
Your laws are divine? I would say that my feces are divine too. The problem with you fundamentalists is that you don't realize that your saying your laws are "DIVINE" is an act as subjective as my saying that my feces are divine.
The whole idea of secular laws is to remove this subjectivity. That is the ideology behind secular laws. (Is it too much to ask for?)
If you don't like it you can claim, subjectively, that Islam is the truth, and you can fight senseless over it with us infidels. We can kill each other, if you want. Or we can make do with secular laws.
Re:mm (Score:2, Insightful)
Russia won WWII for Europe - not the US. You might need to rethink what sources you use in your life.
just pull out (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.hbo.com/billmaher/new_rules/20061020.html [hbo.com]