Iranian Government Cuts Off Internet Access Again 374
AlbionTourgee writes "It is reported that Gmail and Yahoo mail at least have been blocked in Iran, along with many English-language sites. While news of demonstrations seems to be getting out of the country, the government appears to be trying to prevent people within Iran from communicating and from learning what's happening. It remains to be seen whether TOR and Freenets can be effective to combat this sort of effort to block communications, and whether the general circulation of information about the protests around the world will help."
Re:Protests (Score:3, Informative)
Allah is the name of God in Arabic [wikipedia.org], so you're saying that God will see himself eye to eye.
Re:Silly Mudslums (Score:4, Informative)
My handful of quarters as an atheist who studied these two religions:
You're wrong. I've studied both the bible (several versions of it) as well as the Qur'an. Islam differs from christianity in a very important and fundamental way; it literally and bluntly, with no room for reasoning, divides humanity into two camps: the good (the muslims) and the bad (the 'kafir'; the non-muslims); and literally, page after page, calls for the shedding of the blood of the kafir in the form of "conversion, 'by free will' or 'by sword'". Christianity differs here in the fact that nowhere in its holy scriptures does it divide humanity into camps, and nowhere in its holy scripture does it call for bloodshed of non-christians. What it does, however, is call for the bloodshed of those who DISGRACE and VIOLATE christianity - which is a very important difference to make note of - whereas the Qur'an calls for bloodshed of ANYONE simply not being muslim, regardless the person. (and, no, the christian crusades were not called upon by the bible or the religion itself; the crusades were ages of abuse of the religion, in its own name.)
End rant.
Re:Tor can be blocked as well. (Score:5, Informative)
Actually a lot of population of Iran is well educated and some what more liberal than a lot of Arab nations.
You might have seen the protests on the streets a while back. I think you may be under estimating the actually people. Now the current government is lower than what I scrape off my shoe but I think the people are better than you believe.
I got another block story (Score:5, Informative)
Iran? The fundamentalist run Islamic republic has banned Yahoo and Google?
Try this, a NATO member, EU member designate, secular (still!) neighbor of Europe and having actual part in Europe country, Turkey has banned Myspace in addition to Youtube today. Yes, Myspace, that "personal blog" or more like "music demo" site.
Keep watching Iran and China though...
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Silly Mudslums (Score:3, Informative)
Jesus killed Mohammed:
The crusade for a Christian military
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/05/0082488 [harpers.org]
He found his lieutenant, John D. DeGiulio, with a couple of sergeants. They were snickering like schoolboys. They had commissioned the Special Forces interpreter, an Iraqi from Texas, to paint a legend across their Bradley's armor, in giant red Arabic script.
"What's it mean?" asked Humphrey.
"Jesus killed Mohammed," one of the men told him. The soldiers guffawed. JESUS KILLED MOHAMMED was about to cruise into the Iraqi night. ...
The Iraqi interpreter took to the roof, bullhorn in hand. ...
"Jesus kill Mohammed!" chanted the interpreter. "Jesus kill Mohammed!"
Re:Tor can be blocked as well. (Score:4, Informative)
Actually a lot of population of Iran is well educated and some what more liberal than a lot of Arab nations.
At least the people or Tehran, and the other larger cities of Iran, have a fairly high educational level. Though the large rural areas of Iran still have a much lower average level of education and standard of living. Consequently the people of Tehran tend to be more more liberal and westernised, while the inhabitants of the districts tend to be more dogmatic in their believes. At least this is the way things have been presented to me; though personally I have not visited Iran to verify.
Re:Tor can be blocked as well. (Score:4, Informative)
Well, as long as there is any way at all to get data out of the country, you can get everything trough that hole. It does not even have to be slow.
If I have to, give me a day, and I set up a TOR router trough a (deliberately misused) obscure low-level protocol like ICMP or BGP.
And if they actually block all communication, my last message will contain a encrypted info, where on the outside of the border to set up a can-amplified wlan router (of course still strongly encrypted), so I can do the same on the inside, and become the master tor gateway to the outside. The first I'll do, is agree on where to put more such gateways.
Sure, this may be very dangerous. But I expect life in such a country to become worse than dead anyway. Why else would they block communication?
Re:We don't care (Score:5, Informative)
These endless conflicts also are not ours.
You might want to read up a little before making such blanket statements. These Wikipedia articles should get you started:
Re:This is their right. (Score:5, Informative)
Rights, inalienable or otherwise, really don't mean a lot to the person holding all of the guns.
That's why the civilian population should be armed.
You can parrot on about your rights as much as you want, but they'll just shoot you in the head.
Yeah, they can shoot me. They can shoot my neighbor and his neighbor as well. Eventually though the population will start shooting back -- provided we are talking about a country where the population has already been disarmed in the name of "safety" or some other such nonsense.
Re:yes, that's tragic, but (Score:4, Informative)
Well, I thought your post was awesome.
To the cracked-out moderators: According to CNN, Iran disappeared the moment Whacko died. The media was covering all the slaughter in Iran up until Whacko died. Then it was Whaco Jacko 24/7, and now it's back to the Emmys or the whatever it is.
Or, for those with the attention span of a gnat:
Hey moderators, I respect your decision and I'll let you finish, but Punto's post is one of the best posts of all time.
Re:Tor can be blocked as well. (Score:3, Informative)
Actually a lot of population of Iran is well educated and some what more liberal than a lot of Arab nations.
Iran is not an Arab nation. They are persians.
Re:Tor can be blocked as well. (Score:3, Informative)
Yes I think the current government was elected not by the people but by voter fraud.