In Iran, Blogging May Be Punishable By Death

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?"

How is this regime possible?

When every single Iranian I meet traveling abroad, without exception, apologizes for the actions of their government and expresses their shame for the theocrats in change, I wonder how long things can stay the way they are there. Doesn't Iran have an unusually high proportion of young people, and doesn't that often bode revolution?

Re:How is this regime possible?

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?

The problem you may be having is with your sampling group. Unless you happen to be traveling to Iran itself, the people you are meeting are travelers themselves, and possibly of a different overall mindset than hardliners, who would be less likely to travel. (I base this on my father, an American, who stoutly refuses to travel anywhere requiring a passport, simply because it's "not America")

Re:How is this regime possible?

Actually, it's a Dodge, with a McCain bumper sticker. And he hates Obama for whatever reasons Fox News tells him to.

Re:How is this regime possible?

It went well until their moderate, democratically elected government was overthrown by the CIA and had it replaced by The Shah. Apparently democracies aren't allowed to exist if they aren't pro-US.

Re:How is this regime possible?

But, we (the US & GB) put the Shah's father in power through a coup in 1953 - toppling the elected Prime Minister, Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh. Feel free to read how and why that little operation was accomplished here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Reza_Pahlavi#Oil_nationalization_and_the_1953_coup [wikipedia.org] and here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d [wikipedia.org]'état

But for our intervention, where would Iran be today?

Re:How is this regime possible?

I'm old enough to have been in college when the Shah was deposed. Just prior to the revolution we had Iranian Secret Police (the Savak) all over campus. One was a gentleman "named" Salah who was given fake credentials and joined our lab - he was supposed to be working towards his Ph.D. in Endocrine Physiology - but had not clue one - consequently he contaminated our lab, our lab's Prof, me and two other grad students with I-131.

I was the lucky guy to show "hot" first since health physics always ran a survey after we ran an Iodination process. The problem was that I did my work in a cold room and all of my materials were sequestered there - but my Thyroid and then our lab showed hot in a routine post-experiment radiation survey. It clearly wasn't my Iodine that had contaminated the lab when 100% of it remained in the cold room where I ran my assay.

Salah had faked an experiment and had not reported his use of the radioisotope - so, my hot Thyroid lead to the discovery of Salah's real reason for being "on campus" and he pulled a vanishing act. That was in the fall of 1977 or early winter 1978.

I knew quite a few Iranians at the time and this guy was bad news all around. After I showed up hot I heard about other "fakes" planted around campus - all pursuing advanced degrees and all backed by the Iranian government. They were there to intimidate Iranian nationals suspected of disloyalty and possibly to arrange for things to happen to their targets. This was a major state university with thousands of foreign students in undergrad, advanced and professional programs.

If we agree to quit f**king with people around the world we might just have peace and, even a little prosperity.

But Ahmadinejad has his OWN blog...

This can't end well... well, for HIM anyways. I imagine it will end very well for the people of Iran.

http://www.ahmadinejad.ir/

Freenet now

It is time people start learning and using Freenet more.

Everywhere you look, politicos are pushing freedom-restricting legislation for the intertubes.

Considering they would execute me..

..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:Considering they would execute me..

In soviet it was political ideology. In Iran it is religion. In Zimbabwe it is skin colour.

And in the US it's "terrorism".

Remember, Iran 'was' a Secular Democracy

The United States and Great Britain have only themselves to blame for the current troubles with Iran. If they had left the democraticly elected govenment inplace instead of overthrowing it in the 1950s and puting a 'tin pot dictator' in charge we would not have this problem today.

Why are we getting upset *NOW*?

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:mm

Separation of church and state anyone?

Yeah, it's almost as if the First Amendment doesn't apply to Iran...

Re:mm

More proof we need to go in there and help them to be more like us. Then they will be happy and free, just like we did in Iraq when we helped them back in 2002.

This was a triumph
I'm making a note here
HUGE SUCCESS
It's hard to overstate my satisfaction
Neoconservatism

we do what we must because we can
for the good of all of us except for the ones who are dead
but there's no sense crying over every mistake
you just keep on trying until you run out of oil
and the polics gets done and you make a neat Middle East
for the people who are still alive

I'm not even angry
I'm being so sincere right now
even though you broke my heart and voted me out of office

Re:mm

OK i guess this will be modded as flamebait, but perhaps it's US's responsibility to just stop messing with other countries altogether, no breaking, no fixing, just leaving them alone.

Re:No, not quite

Iran had a legitimate democratically elected government at one point and we interfered: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax [wikipedia.org]

So yea, they are partially to blame but so are we.

Re:No, not quite

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:mm

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God; that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship; that the legislative powers of the government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore man to all of his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties. "
Thomas Jefferson

The Founding Fathers very explicitely set up a secular state, a state with complete religious freedoms and a state free of any potential government religious coercion. That means that a Jew, atheist or Hindu has equal rights before the law and has a right not to have any particular religion pushed on him by the government. Attempting to redefine what the Founding Fathers meant is a pretty weak tactic, particularly when their views on religious freedom and on the noxious mix than religion and politics make is so well known.

Re:mm

Ideally I have no objections to a sovereign country being run by whatever system they like, with one important caveat; the freedom of anyone to leave if they so desire. A necessary component of that freedom would of course be the ability to gain accurate information about the rest of the world. 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. That is why it makes such reactionary laws. Of course the Iranian people are beginning to notice how much better life is in the western world, which is why they are making such criminally dangers blogs.

Re:Ok, that's it

Yeah, killing thousands of people and destroying their country will help establish a peaceful democracy!

Re:So, let's TALK to them!

Yeah, that'll work. The mullahs want kill their own people for posting things to the internet (and for women dressing in Western clothes...) and some naive TWIT thinks we can TALK to them. Dumbass.

It very well may not work, however, are you prepared to pay $15/gallon for gasoline (assuming you are in the U.S.) if Iran is attacked by the U.S. military? Iran has stated they will respond with military action and one of their actions is to block oil exports through the Straits of Hormuz. If that occurs you know damn well commodity traders and actual purchasers of crude oil will pay $200-$250/bbl which will cause obvious increases in gasoline prices. We must talk to them first and if that fails then do we go in militarily to solve any problems. The problem with that though is it will have a ripple effect, one of which is the price of oil. There is no winner in the battle with Iran. Everyone loses. Iran may be destroyed but they know we survive on oil and they are the 4th largest exporter so economically we could be destroyed too. If the U.S. goes down economically (moreso than we already are recently) then world markets follow suit because of the economic interdependencies of world gov'ts.

Re:So, let's TALK to them!

I notice you had to qualify your statement with "in the Middle East".

Re:What a politcally correct headline...

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:Too bad Bush's war against "tyranny" is helping

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.