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."
Think of the Children (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah it's good to see that families are the same the world over. Even in Iran parents don't want to take responsibility for raising their own children.
-Grey [wellingtongrey.net]
Re:Think of the Children (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Think of the Children (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, I'm a parent. My two daughters know all about pornography. They CHOOSE not to look at it because they think it's gross and crude, rather than have my beliefs imposed on them by telling them it's "WRONG". Some people like pornography. Others don't. Turning something into a "taboo" or criminalizing it is not a rational way of dealing with the world. I swear to you that if your kids LIKE pornography, there is nothing at ALL you can do to prevent it. They'll do it behind your back. At school. At a friend's house. Are you going to lock them up? Talking about this stuff with your kids is far more rational than pushing for a law that makes it "illegal" and hoping the government will do your job for you.
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Interestingly, this is also the right approach to take with cars, alcohol, guns, and Elrond Hubbard books.
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L. Ron Hubbard - Science Fiction writer who founded a religion on a bet with a bunch of other sci-fi writers and got carried away with himself. (Also wrote westerns.)
No, I prefer Elrond Hubbard. Some things just should be different, and that's one of them, I think.
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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
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This dialog always goes:
The parent post is just step 3. Isn't it interesting how the pe
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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
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Yes, because obviously children don't need to be taught anything at all by anyone at any time, as they come into the world just knowing everything already, with fully developed moral, aesthetic and social awareness.
Heaven forbid that as their mere parent you should dare to interfere with this
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Here's a little hint: if something's so pervasive that it is not possible for you to shield your kids from it without getting the government to ban it, it's probably something they should ge
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The trouble with "niggers"...
The trouble with "spics"...
The trouble with "chinks"...
The trouble with "gringos"...
Now the word for the day is "raghead" is it? You know, every cultural, political, religious or ethnic group will have its extremists. These are the few that tend to put the majority in a bad light - but only for shortsighted persons like yourself. You sir, are PAR
Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Slashdot (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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First link on Google for the quote [positiveatheism.org]
Ryan Fenton
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*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
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I suppose I should be thankful that he spelled "lose" correctly...
'The prisoner died in a position known as "Palestinian hanging" ' [foxnews.com].
'When the men lowered Jamadi to the floor, Frost told investigators, "blood came gushing out of his nose and mouth, as if a faucet had been turned on."
Yes, it's officially condoned: "...the decision to deport Arar was made at the highest levels of the U.S. justice departm [cbsnews.com]
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'When the men lowered Jamadi to the floor, Frost told investigators, "blood came gushing out of his nose and mouth, as if a faucet had been turned on." . [newyorker.com]
The interesting things you can read in those links [foxnews.com]
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And the other one is of course Iran.
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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.
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I believe they did, in fact, do this. It was called the 1979 Iranian Revolution [wikipedia.org], if I recall correctly.
Leave it to a Chomskyite to glorify an otherwise utterly trite observation, made countless times before, and by more insightful individuals at that.
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I believe they did, in fact, do this. It was called the 1979 Iranian Revolution, if I recall correctly.
Well, of course yes, there was eventually a revolution. I was talking about the odd protest though. The Shah had a secret police called SAVAK which was trained by CIA. They ruthlessly repressed any opposition to the Shah. SAVAK had a large number of student spies, even operating in the US.
Leave it to a Chomskyite to glorify an otherwise utterly trite observation, made countless times before, and by more insightful individuals at that.
Really? I think its a pretty interesting observation. Most people do not think of things in that way. i.e. That the public are effectively viewed as an enemy by government. Occasionally they use violence, e.g. i
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I don't find this one trite, but I do find it essentially incorrect. For example, Mao's one great weapon was the propaganda organs of
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Your argument is the equivalent of saying that "all leaves are green" is false because some flowers are green. Sure totalitarian states use propaganda too, but that doesn't stop it from playing a different role in a democracy that is more analogous to totalitarian uses of violence.
Your example of a
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Especially Chomsky. A brilliant man.... 50 years ago...when writing about linguistics.
The Anti-Chomsky Reader [amazon.com]
Re:Iran is in good company (Score:5, Insightful)
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Are these by chance the same s
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America, Israel and Iran (Score:3, Insightful)
These three nations are deliberately provoking each other to war. Lets get rid of some pretensions. It's about resources, nothing to do with spreading democracy or a War on Terror. It's all about control of resources, particularly oil.
The Iranians know that America can't afford another conventional ground war, Iraq is already destroying the US economy. Iran is using Israel to provoke the US into overextending itself, there's a load of talk about replacing Israel with an Islamic state which is pure provocation to Israel, who retaliate by announcing that Iran has a nuclear weapon programme able to produce a bomb within 3 years. Both are trying to get the US involved. Which is quite convenient for the US because Iran has huge oil reserves and they're planning to sell them for Euros, not dollars. Doing so will cause the US economy further damage, causing the dollar to slide further.
Iran wants a guerilla ground war to bring the US to it's knees, Israel wants the US to give Iran a kicking for them, with a nuclear response if necessary and the US wants to make sure the oil remains tradable for dollars, so preventing soaring inflation in the US. So, everyone's spoiling for a fight, which is very dangerous, this is how world wars start.
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Yeah, but... that assumes that we have no choice but to be influenced by them. The US doesn't have to get involved in the Middle East at all. How about this for a start? Cut off the billions a year we're sending the Israelis-- they've never done a damned thing for us besides used us as muscle to keep the Arabs down so they could kee
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The threat of mutually assured destruction is pointless if one of the parties doesn't care if they die, so long as they take out the enemy. You can be sure that if Iran had nukes, they would most certainly be aimed at the US. America may not be their prime target, but you're definitely on the list.
But our g
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.
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he annual costs of the Iraq war are on the order of $100-150 billion.
And yet, funnily enough, you're running a deficit of around $600 billion. The $120 billion or so spent specifically on the war isn't the only spending dedicated to the war. You'll have noticed your interest rates creeping up. That's going to continue as long as the war lasts, and beyond. That's damaging to the economy. Since the 70s, America has exported much of it's manufacturing capacity and is already borrowing heavily to fund existing lifestyles. The lenders are now becoming unwilling to fund a lifesty
Technical solutions all seem to be gone (Score:3, Informative)
Unless of course... (Score:5, Interesting)
Blogging in Europe can also take courage (Score:2, Insightful)
That may very well land you in prison for a long long time.
Free speech and thought ought to reign supreme everywhere, but it doesn't. No matter what the opinion or message is, who it may offend or who may get generally upset by it - nothing should be banned from being printed, stated, or otherwise communicated. N
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!
Re:Blogging in teh usa (Score:5, Insightful)
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I hope you don't call any TSA officials an idiot [usatoday.com]. Wouldn't want to have the cops come and "inconvenience" you.
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So the Dixie chicks were stoned and hanged from a crane by their fans rather than the government?
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 organiz
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You can't possibly be serious. So, their latest album (Taking the Long Way) only sold a few million copies instead of ten million (Fly)? What does that mean? A few less trips on the private jet?? Such courage that must take. As opposed to, say, someone who will go to jail for expressing their opinion.*
* Note: not libel or slander; or trespassing, vandalism, or destructio
Re:Blogging in teh usa (Score:4, Insightful)
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If I say "Kill _____" that's not free speech, it's incitement to do violence.
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what are you talking about?
The Dixie Chicks exercised their freedom of speech without any repercussions from the government. Their fans and the other artists also exercised their freedom of speech without interference. Everyone involved expressed themselves as much or as little as they chose to without any interference or influence from th
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It isn't as if people don't like celebrities using their fame to push a cause--all the cou
This is Mother Fucking Free Speech (Score:3, Insightful)
Look, if you are a celebrity, you are taking a risk every time you come out and make a political statement. It isn't like you are analyst with access to CIA intelligence or an
death threats=bad (Score:2)
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If the consequences were just "disgust," or people not buying their records, I take no issue with that. I don't buy Ann Coulter's books, for example. But death threats are not among the consequences that are okay for speech you don't like. Death threats, by definition, are signs of a pretty serio
Re:Can we send some of our muslims over there? (Score:4, Funny)
Middle-America?
pray for the rapture (Score:5, Funny)
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:Fucking grow up. (Score:5, Insightful)
-Grey [wellingtongrey.net]
Re:Fucking grow up. (Score:5, Interesting)
Currenly, every western democracy has problems but in comparison to countries like Iran their problems are nonexistent.
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State sponsered murder is nothing to be proud of regardless of any supposed "process".
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Re:Fucking grow up. (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing in either of those links has anything to do with exercising freedom of speech in the United States or Iran. To claim the United States has a free speech record as bad as Iran based on those links would be like accusing someone of murder based on the fact that they stole a car once (obligatory slashdot car analogy).
Is there a reason you bring it up other than to prop up emotional rhetoric with an irrelevant appeal to emotion?
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Re:Fucking grow up. (Score:5, Insightful)
Here, let me pick apart the major points of your short troll:
1: The problem here is that these people, by and large, have not been proven to be terrorists. How would you like it if you were randomly grabbed off the street, called a murder, and thrown in prison? Here in the US, we used to believe that people were innocent until proven guilty. Obviously you don't.
2: Torture is not an effective means of getting reliable intel from people, despite what TV has told you. Torture IS very good at getting people to do what you want them to do. While the second statement may appear to counter the first, it doesn't. Torture attempts to force compliance through pain, threat of death, or extreme discomfort. When successful, the victim will do whatever they think you want, if it means you will quit torturing them. This includes signing false confessions, even admitting to things they know are untrue. If tortured enough (and HERE's a classic example) you can get someone to admit that 1+1=3. If you know enough beforehand to catch false statements and continue torturing the victim until you get a reliable answer, then you basically know the answer beforehand anyway. If you don't, then how do you know when to stop? The first answer may be unreliable, and so may the third, fifth, 86th, whatever. If they DO give you the correct information at some point, how do you know?
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No two people will make up the same story, and even if they agree beforehand, they'll disagree on too many points.
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What the hell does that mean? What is with people thinking that if they support the war or torturing of people that they are more patriotic than those who don't. I'm sure everyone believes in the country we live in, we just don't believe in the people leading it. Ask yourself this, if Clinton was doing all things that Bush was doing, would you "believe in our country"? I'm guessing not.
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A chill went through my spine as I read this statement. Build a time machine and go back to the Spanish Inquisition, that's where you belong.
"The ends justify the means" - no they don't (Score:4, Insightful)
Or, a history lesson: empires rise and empires fall. Be nice to people on the way up, and they might be nice to your children as your country declines in importance.
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They might be. But they won't.
Karma is a very satisfying idea... and indeed every religion embraces it to some degree, because we like to hear about it. But you and I both know it isn't true. That's why we have to go so such lengths to construct artificial karma systems, such as money, laws, slashdot . . .
Have you been paying any attention? (Score:5, Insightful)
No they don't, because the ends, as in the effect, are a consequence of the means, as in the cause.
So if the ends you want are peace and democracy, and your means are violence and torture, then the ends you get are a non-stop insurgency, civil war, and lawlessness that will at best settle into a theocratic state run by the personal militias of religious extremists.
Are you paying attention to the news? What you are seeing is cause and effect. Are these the ends that you desired? No? Well guess what -- that's why the ends don't justify the means, because you don't get to pick what end your means will achieve! Wishing that torturing random people accused of being terrorists will bring peace and harmony doesn't make it so, and if it isn't obvious to you at this point it never will be because you are deliberately avoiding anything resembling a fact.
Well let me clue you in a little: Abu Ghraib had consequences. Very bad, very tragic consequences. While hardly the lone example of your misplaced philosophy, the fact is that those means have seriously damaged our ends, such that they are probably unachievable. The ends, whether you like it or not, stemmed directly from the means, and hence those means cannot be justified.
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You are very correct that the ends are met by the means. They are NOT identical to the means. At all. If history teaches us anything, it is that violence is REQUIRED to create peace in a violent situation.
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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 pictur
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"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster." --Friedrich Nietzsche
We could
A few words for YOU: (Score:2)
Wh
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[1]Not really the right word. But I hope the context reveals my meaning.
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Re:Fucking grow up. (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems to me that this is an article about Iran, not the US. The US gets plenty of criticism in articles about its policies, but to criticize the US in an article about Iran speaks only about trying to justify worse abuses by comparison. It seems you are the one who is blind. You see any international story about abuse and use it as your soapbox against US policies. But by doing so you ignore the abuses the story was about.
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The United States did not enter Iraq in the first Gulf War.
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?
The first Gulf War ended with a cease fire (that Hussein never signed but it served as a provisional end to the war);
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]
when Hussein kicked the UN inspectors out of the country, he violated the cease fire and therefore aggressions should have resumed.
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/u [un.org]
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!
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Their days of playing hopscotch were long over, methinks.
These folks were just under the arbitrary cutoff of 18, had comitted acts that were on examination heinous enough that the death penalty was sought by the state, and were tried and convicted by jury.
It is easy to believe they were beyond redem
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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.
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I'm sorry, is the parent suggesting that the US fixed Iraq?
All the Shah's Men (Score:3, Insightful)
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],
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Or are you expecting to be up-modded, congratulated, and generally receive social approval?
Wake me when the answer to the first is a non-rhetorical yes.
In the meantime, while life in the US isn't perfect, after six continuous years of screeching I'm getting a serious "crying wolf" vibe.
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We aren't going to live in a country where no shit ever happens, anywhere. If you take the worst of the worst, and base your opinions on nothing else, you can make anywhere look like a cesspool. I'm increasingly of the opinion that's what's going on.
How many years are we supposed to hold our breath for the jackboot of fascism to fall on all the brave posters of Slashdot, be
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I haven't heard of any singers being arrested, or audited, or denied visas for anti-Bush comments. Some singers have lost market share as a result of airing views that shocked their customers. That's the risk you take in a free market, nobody has to buy your stuff.
If you piss off a large enough segment of the market, advertisers won't want to have their products associated with you, because they think it will hur
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Of course...I dunno. You got me thinking now, and I'm about to go to bed... There's not much we can do but be ourselves; do the things we believe in, and things will balance the way they balance. Hopefully they'll balance in a positive manner.