Iran Developing 'Halal' Domestic Intranet 248
An anonymous reader writes "The WSJ reports that Iran is beginning a crackdown on Internet use by its citizens, creating new blocks against foreign content and stepping up surveillance of browsing habits. Internet cafes in Iran have 15 days to set up security cameras and start collecting information on customers, and people are finding it increasingly difficult to use social networking sites. The new restrictions are likely being implemented now to head off dissent and protests about the upcoming parliamentary elections. According to the article, 'The network slowdown likely heralds the arrival of an initiative Iran has been readying—a "halal" domestic intranet that it has said will insulate its citizens from Western ideology and un-Islamic culture, and eventually replace the Internet. This week's slowdown came amid tests of the Iranian intranet, according to domestic media reports that cited a spokesman for a union of computer-systems firms. He said the intranet is set to go live within a few weeks.'"
Okay, that's the U.S. But what about Iran? (Score:5, Insightful)
creating new blocks against foreign content and stepping up surveillance of browsing habits
Sounds familiar for some reason.
Re:Okay, that's the U.S. But what about Iran? (Score:4, Interesting)
Check out this great and inspiring talk by the Tor project: 28c3: How governments have tried to block Tor [youtube.com]
There are more Tor users in Iran (second-largest IIRC) now than in Germany!
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Yeah, there's a lot of pot calling the kettle black going on here isn't there? "It's only evil if they do it" seems to be the ridiculous message we are expected to accept.
But all this talk about Iran makes me ask "why is Iran an enemy of the US?" Iran is an enemy of Israel to be sure. But I would really like to see it spelled out for me one day what it is that makes them an enemy. When we are talking about China, the former Soviet Union, Cuba or the like, we can paint pictures of authoritarian governmen
Re:Okay, that's the U.S. But what about Iran? (Score:5, Informative)
why is Iran an enemy of the US?
Might have something to do with this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves_in_Iran [wikipedia.org]
Also, this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax [wikipedia.org]
This too:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Revolution [wikipedia.org]
Re:Okay, that's the U.S. But what about Iran? (Score:5, Insightful)
As a US citizen you can still travel to Iran freely for business and tourism (for now). Technically they aren't an enemy (unless you buy the whole "Axis of Evil" rhetoric). The problem is that "we" don't want the Nuclear club getting any bigger, and when people say "would destabilize the region" they mean "Israel is likely to nuke Iran back to the stone age in a preemptive attack". This would cause several arab and muslim states to strongly consider nuking Israel, of note Iran and Pakistan. Syria doesn't have nukes but they wouldn't need a lot of convincing to start lobbing bombs across the border. It's a small region (think New Jersey) and they don't need to go very far.
If you look at the activity that's been going on lately, we sent an expensive spy drone over in to Iran, a missile research lab just outside of Tehran mysteriously exploded, and both the Chinese and the US both launched some high tech gadgetry in to space that orbits over Iran every few hours. Whatever they see down there must be pretty fucking juicy if we've talked the entire European continent to stop buying Iran's oil (1/5th of total current production) in the middle of a global recession.
So yeah, as always in this region there are a lot of things going on here -- Iran is a huge country (population 75 million, geographic size, wealth) with Nuclear ambitions, doesn't like Israel, and we don't want them getting the bomb. We are trying to protect Israel* via economic sanctions against Iran and stabilize the region, Iran is fighting for their ability to defend themselves and is holding the world's economy hostage.
*Why? This is the real question. Zionism sounds like a dirty word (it's not), but that's my guess
Re:Okay, that's the U.S. But what about Iran? (Score:5, Informative)
Did you read a wikipedia article three months ago while half asleep, or is this some sort of elaborate troll? You're going to need to cite your theories. The Palestinians never migrated anywhere, they're the de-facto indiginous people of the region. If I said that the Aborigines migrated to Melbourne from Singapore after the British colonized Australia, my statement would be about as factual as yours. The Palestinians were part of the Ottoman empire and had inhabited the region for the last 1000+ years.
What on earth is this about "we'd rather not have [Israel] take over the middle east" -- the reason Israel is armed to the teeth is because the whole region rejects british imperialism and they would have pushed the jews back out long ago if they didn't have western backing (foreign aid + arms deals) to stay in the area. The jews were attacked as soon as they set foot in the region, this isn't a new thing, and they were aware they weren't wanted there. Go check out "The British Empire in Colour", there's some great original footage of jewish immigrants building forts on their newly settled land to protect themselves from the locals. It looks like something out of a British Colonists vs American Indians documentary. The Palestinians didn't want them there to begin with, and still don't want them there. The British were the ones with the bright idea to agree to displacing the locals and letting westerners colonize the area. Somehow the US got dragged in to it.
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Re:Come on, elrous0 (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, okay, that was a cheap shot. But I couldn't resist. And while the U.S. is certainly no Iran when it comes to repression, it is good to keep in mind that there is a slippery slope that's all too easy to slide down into once you get going. Right now the government/coporatocracy in the U.S. doesn't face any real threats, so it's easy to be generous with freedoms. But what would happen if something like the Occupy movement really started to gain ground and actually started shutting down cities and firebombing corporate HQ's? Would the powers-that-be hesitate to start using some of that power we've given them to start suppressing internet access here? It's already happened here at least once [wired.com], on a smaller scale.
Re:Come on, elrous0 (Score:5, Insightful)
But what would happen if something like the Occupy movement really started to gain ground and actually started shutting down cities and firebombing corporate HQ's?
Why would they have to shut down cities or firebomb corporate HQ's?
The treatment of "Occupiers" in public parks (or pseudo, "it's a park on private property that is required to be available to the public 24/7 by terms of agreement with the city" bullshit) was a good indication of how it goes down.
Step 2 has been SOPA.
Last time we had a movement like OWS, they were the Hoovervilles and the Bonus Army, and just like today, the Republican response (courtesy of Herbert Hoover) was to send in troops to beat them up.
Re:Come on, elrous0 (Score:4, Insightful)
and just like today, the Republican response (courtesy of Herbert Hoover) was to send in troops to beat them up.
Republican? Try Political response. Republican, Democrat, it doesn't matter and hasn't mattered a damn for years now.
While I agree with a large part of your statement, don't put this on any one particular group - aside from rhetoric, there is no fundamental difference between the two parties.
Obama is a moderate Republican and Romney is a moderate Republican - regardless of with which parties they affiliate themselves.
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http://www.primermagazine.com/2008/learn/10-words-you-mispronounce-that-make-people-think-youre-an-idiot [primermagazine.com]
See the part about "intents and purposes."
Re:Come on, elrous0 (Score:4, Funny)
I thought it was "all intensive porpoises". Though I don't understand what dolphins have to do with the US internet.
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Everything, of course. Have you never read Alice in Wonderland [adelaide.edu.au]?
‘If I’d been the whiting,’ said Alice, whose thoughts were still running on the song, ‘I’d have said to the porpoise, “Keep back, please: we don’t want you with us!”’
‘They were obliged to have him with them,’ the Mock Turtle said: ‘no wise fish would go anywhere without a porpoise.’
‘Wouldn’t it really?’ said Alice in a tone of great surprise.
‘Of course not,’ said the Mock Turtle: ‘why, if a fish came to me , and told me he was going a journey, I should say “With what porpoise?”’
‘Don’t you mean “purpose”?’ said Alice.
‘I mean what I say,’ the Mock Turtle replied in an offended tone.
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Iran continues its death spiral... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is Iran doing this to itself? It's so needlessly self destructive. Just stop it. Behave yourself, the sanctions will come off, and we can all get along. Aggressive posturing, locking your people off from the world, and developing variants of nuclear technology best able to produce weapons grade material... what is the point of all this? Best case you'll get a bomb and then what? Hundreds of years of MAD as the rest of the world contains you? That sounds like loads of fun. If you just stopped all this we could normalize relations to everyone's benefit.
Re:Iran continues its death spiral... (Score:5, Informative)
Not the Iranians, their rulers (Score:5, Insightful)
I doubt Iranians want any of this. But the three power blocks have to posture and jockey for position, and this is what happens.
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Man, the Iranians have it really bad. I mean, it's not like the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches keep trying to outdo each other in new levels of stupidity over here in the good ol' U S of A!
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Actually, the lobbyists are just the hired hands for our single branch of government - the wealthy (many of whom are not located in the continental USA).
Re:Not the Iranians, their rulers (Score:5, Insightful)
with a President who, just like a Republican candidate, has to pretend to be a religious fruitcake to keep power.
You haven't been paying much attention to Ahmadamnutjob or his Republican counterparts lately, have you? It's obvious they actually believe their religious fruitcakery. There's no pretending involved.
Especially that Santorum guy. Wow. He's basically Ahmadamnutjob in a sweater vest.
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However, I think that you overemphasize the distinction between the three power blocks. In order to have significant power in either the Revolutionary Guards or the "civilian" government you must be a member of, and have a power base within, the "religious authorities". Your summary implies that the three groups are competing for power, w
Buy their oil, and leave them alone (Score:2)
That is my philosophy. We dont' understand them, they don't understand us. Oh well.
Just leave them alone. We have our own backyard to clean up.
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Hmmm. You know, if China quietly told the US it intended to invade Iran, somehow got permission from Russia, Germany, France, and Britain to do it, and could somehow convince the Pentagon that it could pull it off without getting Israel nuked in the process... it would be politically awkward (to put it mildly), but almost an epic win for the US.
On one hand, it would put China in direct control of much of the world's oil. On the other hand, China would buy most of Iran's oil output *anyway*.
It would nicely a
Re:Iran continues its death spiral... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's kind of an "in one ear, out the other" thing. Like when you get down into Muslim theology, the concepts of dar al-harb vs dar al-islam, the fact that Mohammed - a rapist, a pedo, not to mention a liar who repeatedly broke treaties - is the idea of the "perfect man" whose example Muslim leaders are expected to follow.
Nobody wants to believe it when they hear what comes out of the mouths of Iranian leaders, or Palestinian leaders, or Muslim Brotherhood leadership in countries like Syria or Lebanon or Egypt, because it means some pretty awful things. Kind of like how the world didn't want to think that the Nazis were REALLY that bad when Chamberlain was negotiating with them (how'd that turn out again?).
Personally, I'm not one to believe that all Muslims are bloodthirsty, nor hate-filled. But there are enough of a minority that are to do some really nasty things in the world, and it's a religion in desperate need of something akin to the Protestant Reformation that Christianity went through to inject some much-needed sense and throw out a lot of the nastier stuff.
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Re:Iran continues its death spiral... (Score:4, Insightful)
Did I say it was easy? No, but the reforms that happened - and not all of them happened all at once, nor cleanly - wound up massively cleaning up the Christian religious problems. Throwing out a ton of corruption, and leading up to the rise of secularization and separation of church/state that the US, Canada, and most of Europe now take more or less for granted (Ireland/England being two notable exceptions).
Re:Iran continues its death spiral... (Score:4, Interesting)
What I'm scared of is we have Cold War 2.0 in the Middle East. With troops already in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Iran posturing in the Straights of Hormuz, it wouldn't take much to push the US to shift the carrier fleet over there and up the proposed trade embargo to a compete military blockade. I would personally not like that to happen; We've spent enough on pointless wars. However, we're dealing with political leaders who believe in religious fundamentalism. All bets on a measured and diplomatic response to any situation are off when you come up against that level of outright lunacy.
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With troops already in Iraq and Afghanistan
Not to be pedantic, but there are no longer US troops in Iraq.
it wouldn't take much to push the US to shift the carrier fleet over there and up the proposed trade embargo to a compete military blockade
I disagree. The USA has no desire to cut off 5% of the world's oil production, not to mention seriously pissing off the Chinese (who get 20% of their oil from Iran). The only thing that would incite a complete military blockade of Iran is a nuclear test.
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Re:Iran continues its death spiral... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Apparently you have not been listening. The majority of Iranians are just as pissed off about this as you, and wish their government would stop it.
And yet, every time there's a chance to show it and tell their government "knock it the fuck off", they... go to rallies calling the US the Great Satan, Israel the "little Satan", and calling for Islamic theocracy.
However, their government has more guns and the standard of living hasn't descended to levels in Egypt or Syria yet. It'll get there soon, and then the
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for disobeying his orders when she told him not to date a non-Muslim guy.
Curse my editing. Should have read "when she told him she wanted to date a non-Muslim guy."
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To reply to your post; I never said that Iranians didn't hate Western democracy. They can hate their current political leaders and America at the same time; They're not mutually exclusive activities. I don't know what they want, but I do know they don't want what they have right now.
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I think that becomes the problem, though.
The majority of Iranians may "dislike" their current theocratic regime, when it stops them from doing perfectly normal, human, inconsequential things like choosing a certain haircut, or women wanting to wear makeup, or a thousand other things. But they are willing to put up with it because these are "religious authorities" telling them so. And they are willing to go along when these same religious authorities tell them that anyone not of their sect of Islam, much les
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It's not the Iranians, it's their government.
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Yes. Iran gov't found it to be very tricky business. On one side - improve education to match the standards of the developed nations. On the other side - keep people contained to Islamic dogmas.
That's just impossible: highly educated people tend to be libertarian.
But at least one thing Ayatollah got right [wikipedia.org] is to not try to forcefully prevent the brain drain nor prosecute or condemn those willing to leave Iran.
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That's just impossible: highly educated people tend to be libertarian.
Citation??? There are so many important philosophers, economists, scientists, etc... who were not Libertarian. Now if you had said that "highly educated people tend to be less religious" then sure... but Libertarian? Do you not realize how many highly educated socialists there are?
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That's just impossible: highly educated people tend to be libertarian.
Citation??? There are so many important philosophers, economists, scientists, etc... who were not Libertarian. Now if you had said that "highly educated people tend to be less religious" then sure... but Libertarian? Do you not realize how many highly educated socialists there are?
Sorry, I haven't realized that thanks to US political propaganda the word is so loaded.
I meant of course "libertarian" in its original sense [reference.com], not the loaded one [wikipedia.org].
To quote the dictionary:
libertarian
noun
1. a person who advocates liberty, especially with regard to thought or conduct.
[...]
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[[citation needed]]
Everything they've been saying is that they have a right to defense (they do) and protect themselves. This is what India and Pakistan did, quietly, about 15 years ago. Now, they may have ulterior motives (they've stated before that they wouldn't mind turning Israel into a glass parking lot) but nuclear deterrence is something any nation* should strive for, and we're less than 20 years off from ICBMs being an off the shelf part/system that nearly every country will have. India and
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Why is Iran doing this to itself?
Because the theocrats are in control. The Mullahs, if you will.
Behave yourself, the sanctions will come off, and we can all get along. Aggressive posturing, locking your people off from the world, and developing variants of nuclear technology best able to produce weapons grade material... what is the point of all this?
The point is, as with all despotic regimes, control of "their people." There's a major flaw here in failing to take into the lengths to which a despotic regime
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But Mohammed created a religion that divides the world into "us" and "not-us" (dar al-Islam and dar al-Harb) with a primary mode of interaction consisting of antagonism and violence
That sounds like Christianity for most of it's history... until separation of church and state prevented Christianity from starting more wars.
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You may be right, but that doesn't make the analysis of how the leadership of Iran operates any less valid, does it?
Re:Iran continues its death spiral... (Score:5, Interesting)
"Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Render_unto_Caesar... [wikipedia.org] I would argue the concept of separation of church and state *began* with Christianity. This explains it's viral nature and why it has been able to survive and even flourish under governments who are quite hostile to it. The fact it got coopted by the state says more about politicians than it does about religion.
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But Mohammed created a religion that divides the world into "us" and "not-us" (dar al-Islam and dar al-Harb) with a primary mode of interaction consisting of antagonism and violence, and that's the perspective by which the Iranian theocrats view anyone who isn't of their particular sect of Islam.
Iranian fundamentalism is being fed with constant sanctions from the other side. One has to also consider that Iran as a whole not yet completely over the Iran-Iraq war. And we in West are not helping Iran to get over.
Otherwise, the dar al-Islam and dar al-Harb doesn't seem to be much different from jew and goy, a non-jew.
Re:Iran continues its death spiral... (Score:5, Insightful)
First what is good for the majority of iranian is not necessarely good for the current leadership..
Second foreign influence in Iran do not have a very good track record, so it is not "that tempting".
You can look at the situation in North Korea where it's even crazier, but obviously there are enough people benefiting to control the rest.
And maybe closer to your home: why are the US doing this to itself ? It's so needlessly self destructive. Just stop it. Behave yourelf, you do not need to put 1% of your adult population in prison, and rob the rest of all their saved, current and future cash with shemanigans like subprime financing, inflated student loans, etc.. what is the point of all this ? Best case a couple of manager get more money that they could possible spend in their lifetime, and then what ? Hundreds of years of eroding of civil liberties while the rest of the work shakes it's head ? That sounds like loads of fun. If you stopped all this you could have a nice life and everyone benefit.. ... not gonna happen real soon now ...
And you know what
Re:Iran continues its death spiral... (Score:4, Insightful)
The US problems are nothing like the problems in Iran. US problems stem from greedy people just being greedy. Iran problems stem from morons believing in horrible ideas that are illogical and tend to violate human rights. Really, like the fucking heavens opened up and a voice boomed out that said "LOCK DOWN YOUR INTERNETS BECAUSE I SAID SO" Religion is poison. If you spend time obsessing about it, you are tainted.
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As far as I'm concerned, no deity would stand for its blessed creations being stifled.
If Allah blessed them with brains, why would he then command they be restrained?
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It is exactly the same thing, agreed life in Iran is worse than in the US, but there are much less differences than you think between the ideas of the majority of the US citizens and Iranian citizens.
"The voices said" : Homosexuality is really very very bad, nonono => no to gay mariage in the US, being gay is " choice" (yea after all they could just all because priest and not have sex...), etc ... in Iran the government offers "free" operations to "solve the problem.
"The voices said": Drugs are bad, ok i
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It's interesting.
In both cases, the citizens are being ass-raped by the government.
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Re:Iran continues its death spiral... (Score:4, Interesting)
Why is Iran doing this to itself? It's so needlessly self destructive.
Super simplified answer is, "They're Shia." It is essentially doctrine that everyone's out to get them. They don't trust anyone. Also, the country is run by religious zealots who truly believe that's it been all downhill since the Fatimid Caliphate in the 900s. The educated class is seen by the leadership as both traitors and heretics who must be rubbed out.
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This does leave them in a quandry, not unlike the Nazi quandry in WWII. In order to function in a competitive way in modern global society, you have to master technology. Technology cannot be mastered by the stupid and uneducated and ignorant and culturally isolated -- it requires education and open communications. Education is the universal anodyne to religious beliefs of all sorts.
This is a pretty serious Catch-22. A r
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Riveting tale old chap.
Re:Iran continues its death spiral... (Score:4, Insightful)
clearly you're kidding... but the thing is that it forces our hand. We've been in a position to kill them all from the very start.That we don't is a matter of politics and morality.
But from a strictly military perspective we could wipe them out to the last screaming child.
Why poke that in the eye with a stick?
What Iran is doing slowly but surely is eroding their political and moral defenses that guard their nation from annihilation. Their military is irrelevant. It is no defense. It would be like clubbing baby seals either way. In fact, the death blow would look identical either way.
What defends Iran is the international outrage over doing such a thing unprovoked and the moral goodness of the American people to find such actions abhorrent.
What Iran is doing progressively is building justification for some sort of military action against them. And morally... they're slowly justifying some sort of strike as well. In effect, they're slowly raising the guillotine blade that when it falls... will at best strike off the head of their nation. At worst, there will be collateral damage.
Re:Iran continues its death spiral... (Score:5, Interesting)
What Iran is doing progressively is building justification for some sort of military action against them. And morally... they're slowly justifying some sort of strike as well. In effect, they're slowly raising the guillotine blade that when it falls... will at best strike off the head of their nation. At worst, there will be collateral damage.
You fail to think of it from the perspective of the Mullahs.
What they are trying to do is get the US to react. To attack Iran, so that they can rally "the Muslim world" into a WW3-type "Islam vs The World" war that they believe to be inevitable and that they believe they will win.
These are the same assholes who have said, quite publicly and numerous times on record, that if they had access to a nuke they would have absolutely NO problem nuking Tel Aviv, and wouldn't give a crap how many Arabs they killed in Lebanon, Syria, the Palestinian territories, Jordan, and Egypt because their immediate goal of wiping out "the Jews" would be achieved, and there would still be over a billion Muslims in the world.
The "fine line" being straddled right now in international diplomacy is, how the fuck do you separate Iran from the rest of the Muslims such that when war happens, it doesn't devolve into a religious WW3?
Re:Iran continues its death spiral... (Score:5, Insightful)
It won't work.
First, most of the muslim world doesn't see Iran as a natural ally. Islam is very factional. Think of it like the old division between catholic and protestant only worse because their fanatics are more wild eyed then a 15th century cardinal.
Second, the Arab princes are allies even if occasionally duplicitous ones. They are afraid of Iran and will help us bring it down so long as we're gentle about it.
Third, even if they did unite the whole muslim world against us that's not actually a very credible military force. When was the last time you bought something that said "made in "? Probably never because they have almost no industrial capacity. That means they have no ability to wage a modern war.
Oh sure, they can plant IEDs if you let them get close. But if you waged a WW2 type war against them none of that would work. Do you think we let german civilian hang out around our entrenchments during our invasion of germany? Every man, woman, and child had to keep their distance.
I stress this only to point out that if Iran got what you say they want... it would be the worst thing that has ever happened to Iran.
I don't know what they're thinking. It's possible that like the Japanese, they've misunderstood our nature. The Japanese through years of diplomatic negotiations came to believe that the US was weak willed. That we would always take the easy out to avoid war. They gathered this because we didn't respond to small provocations. We let it go. And that implied to them that we would respond uniformly in that manner. Osama Bin Ladin also came to a similar belief. In both cases, they miscalculated in that US responses changed radically after their respective attacks.
Why the change? Because in both cases they burned out their moral and diplomatic protection. This is what guards Iran. It isn't her soldiers or missiles. It is the US's own opinion of itself and the impression of other relevant nations. If Iran does something that poisons it's moral standing and diplomatic standing enough that an attack is justified in the US's opinion... it will happen.
This is what Iran must prevent. It isn't hard to do... But Iran appears to be going out of their way to make attacking them easier. It will be the end of their government. And all resistance will do is increase the suffering of their people.
Re:Iran continues its death spiral... (Score:4, Interesting)
+1 Interesting. I don't necessarily agree with all you said, but it is thought provoking. Two points I disagree with:
even if they did unite the whole muslim world against us that's not actually a very credible military force.
1) The problem isn't with the actual military - it's the insurgents that cause the issues. The U.S. invaded Iraq pretty easily, but they dealt with a 10+ year war of attrition which I wouldn't say they won. *NOBODY* would have a hope in hell of occupying all the Arab nations simultaneously.
When was the last time you bought something that said "made in "? Probably never because they have almost no industrial capacity. That means they have no ability to wage a modern war...Oh sure, they can plant IEDs if you let them get close. But if you waged a WW2 type war against them none of that would work.
I think the wars in Afgahnistan & Iraq ARE the modern war. It's not military vs military, it's military vs insurgents. I doubt a WW2 style war could happen again strictly because of the nuclear option being so prevalent and the networked media giving us so much information that large scale mass destruction would turn the tide of opinion pretty quickly.
Re:Iran continues its death spiral... (Score:5, Insightful)
As to the insurgents, they're only an issue because we try to pacify their regions rather then hitting them with total war. Were Japanese or German insurgents a problem for allied forces? No. Because it would not be tolerated. The instant something like that became a problem, the whole region would be depopulated. Not killed... just moved.
The Islamists think we have treated with them very cruelly and harshly. But the reality is that there are few enemies in our history we have treated better.
Beyond that, I'm making a moral argument here. Something the islamists like to believe is that the west are demons. That we are immoral and blood thirsty. The problem with that is that if we were, they'd all be dead. So I make the military argument in part to stress the importance of the moral argument. It is the morality that defends the islamic world. OUR morality. There is no force of arms on earth that could stop us. We would roll over their military as if it weren't even there. What holds us back are certain political considerations and our own sense of revulsion at the very idea of such an act.
The insurgents if we were immoral wouldn't be a problem because we'd just shoot them all. Insurgents only get close because they pretend to be civilians. If you treat all civilians as hostiles then insurgents can't get close because disguising themselves as civilians is useless.
As to the future of war... keep in mind that every generation believes the next war will be like the last war. They're always shocked to find they're different.
Don't make assumptions... stick with what is strictly possible... not what someone will do or won't do... but rather what they can and cannot do...
The problem the islamists have is that the West is restrained by what they won't do not what they can't do... where as they are restrained not by what they won't do but what they can't do. They have morally justified using children to kill children. They have morally justified attacking innocent civilians in distant cities that have done them no injury. What did the people of New York do to the people of Afghanistan? Nothing. If anything they helped them against the Soviet invasion. And yet they justified the attack.
Where as the US in all it's righteous fury was restrained not by what it could not do... but by what it would not do even in its pain and rage.
The Islamic world is shielded by no art of their own making but by moral codes of the West's own value system. That system is not well understood by the islamic world. It has lines and layers. It is not a good idea to go spilling ink all over the system without at least grasping its significance.
It's a PR campaign (Score:3)
Re:Iran continues its death spiral... (Score:5, Insightful)
> There's no "moderate" Muslims out there- those you think are that are practicing Taqiyaa or they're Apostate.
Maybe, but that happens to account for the overwhelming majority of them. The fact is, most Muslims are about as religious as most Christians and Jews -- it's cultural background noise they mostly buy into because they grew up surrounded by it, and maybe feel a tiny bit guilty if they don't at least pay lip service to.
The Bible commands Christians (and Jews) to do lots of silly, abhorrent things for seemingly stupid reasons, and the overwhelming majority of Christians have no problem ignoring the more embarrassing parts. Why is it so difficult to give Muslims the same benefit of doubt? Remember, to an average Turk or urban Egyptian, Americans are foaming-at-the-mouth Jesus-crazed lunatics. Muslim extremists are better at doing global public relations to make support for their cause look widespread, but we have plenty of (nominally) Christian loonies of our own roaming around America.
Most Americans don't seem to grasp that the Mullahs in Iran are in basically the same legal position as the RIAA/MPAA in America -- they own the courts & run the government, but normal people hate them... especially young Iranians. And attempts by Iranians to fight them are usually about as successful as attempts by Americans to fight the MPAA & RIAA -- lots of skirmishes, occasional random victories, but mostly a trail of personal devastation (cue up John Cougar Mellencamp's "Authority Song").
The point is, Iran is a very awkward situation. It has a government that's extremely belligerent to the rest of the world, and a populace that's largely powerless to do anything about it because the Mullahs effectively have veto power over everything. The best thing the US can do is to maintain the status quo... kick Iran down every time it gets uncomfortably close to having nuclear bombs, and basically just wait for the Revolution generation to die off and get kicked aside by younger Iranians who'd rather be a secular, nominally-Muslim-ish republic.
A full-blown nuclear war with Iran would be a horrific human tragedy that would likely wipe Israel (and Tehran, and a dozen or so other cities) completely off the map. Nobody sane wants that to happen. MAD worked against the Soviet Union, because the Soviet Union's leaders were basically sane & shared most of the same goals as their counterparts in America. They didn't want to see their countries get destroyed, and didn't want their families to die in horrible ways.
The same can't necessarily be said about Iran. I personally think Ahmadinejad just wants to have a big nuclear penis to wave in front of Israel's face, and that he personally wouldn't go through with a suicidal attack that would likely result in the deaths of a quarter of Iran's population... but the big danger is that whomever *replaces* him after he tells the Mullahs, "Erm, no. I'm not going to go through with it" might not be quite as secretly-sane.
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this confuses those who do not understand.
Please inform us so way may understand your point of view.
Re:Iran continues its death spiral... (Score:5, Funny)
"It is God's Will."
Aww crap. So the old codger finally kicked the bucket? Did he really leave the world to the meek?
on an intranet far far away (Score:5, Insightful)
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Can I pilot the Millennium Camel?
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This is going to be a golden age for Iranian hackers ... just imagine the magnitude of bugs reimplementing the internet!
Aside from the fact that the average person might not have a computer. And that they might get beaten/imprisoned/killed for hacking.
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I look forward to the new technologies that will result from this.
They take away the arms in Poland during WW2, and the Polish build bombs, guns, and APCs (!) in their garages and basements.
They take away the Internet in a country full of energetic, intelligent youths like Iran and we'll instead have coders working on a sophisticated darknet that is easy to use and difficult to track. Stuff like Tor and Freenet are nice but neither can be called user friendly or efficient.
Iran has accepted SOPA (Score:5, Insightful)
and has begun implementing it. The corporations will be pleased!
The good news (Score:5, Funny)
The good news is that soon, we may have some left over IPv4 again.
Re:The good news (Score:5, Funny)
The good news is that soon, we may have some left over IPv4 again.
True. Also think of the speed on this new intranet. Shit ought to be ungodly fast with only three people using it...death to freedom and buffering!
Eventually self-defeating. (Score:4, Insightful)
This gives a strong signal that your ideology doesn't stand up to whatever else is out there. Alright, so it's strongly worded against "the west", for which read American Freedom And Liberty And Democracy (And Republicanism) And Commercialised Happiness For All[tm], which is strongly evangelised by the world's highest tech army, navy, and air force. Before you bristle: Yes, there is a strong case to be made that it is in fact an ideology with religious fervour backing it to match. The lot of you aren't nearly as Christian as you think, you're American[tm] first. Bristle on.
The point, however, is that ultimately such a strong signal of negativism will be self-defeating. They're defining themselves as something they are not, instead of as something they are. The more they have to denounce most of the world to keep to their way, the more of their people will stray from that way and find other ways to life fulfullment. And it leaves lots of attack angles for competing ideologies. Nevermind the Universal Declaration Of Human Rights, that's just the pry-bar. The more you clam up, the more others will poke at you.
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The lot of you aren't nearly as Christian as you think, you're American[tm] first. Bristle on.
I don't know many Americans who would bristle at that. Most Americans strongly believe that "Americanism" is an ideology and way of life, and back it with religious fervor. Most Americans would agree with the statement "We're right, they're wrong" with virtually no hesitation.
halal://persianbabes.allah (Score:5, Funny)
Work around. (Score:2)
Atheism (Score:2, Interesting)
will insulate its citizens from Western ideology and un-Islamic culture
No wonder atheism is on the rise. Religion was a great idea a thousand years ago, but it's time it was consigned to the history books.
Re:Atheism (Score:4, Informative)
"Religion" in this context is just a means of control; you can't do that because God says so, you must do this because God says so and you can't question God's word so get off Facebook. I'm willing to bet that the Mullahs won't restrict themselves to this "halal" Irannet, no, they'll need to be able to check on all that corrupting, un-islamic content to make sure it's still out there and all corrupty - you know, for the good of the people.
Religion is a tool, it can be used for good or evil, help people or harm them, but in general when people in power get hold of it they move firmly into the "harm" category.
Re:Atheism (Score:4, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_firewall_of_china [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOPA [wikipedia.org]
This is what comes from clerics making law (Score:5, Insightful)
Here coems the next one (Score:2)
So Iran is going to be the next state where the people finally have had enough and overthrow the overbearing dictatorship.
You'd think these dictators would get a clue from recent history and simply ease up a little instead of getting deposed by a popular revolution (and usually executed) but they never seem to get it.
Have the freedom protests started in Iran yet?
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They kind of tried a little bit already and got totally stomped on.
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We've been waiting more than 60 years for North Koreans to get a clue and a backbone, yet you think Iranians will wake up after half that time under the most cynically intolerant religious bootheel in living memory? It took being ground into dust by the world's two mightiest powers, with very outsize help from a third power that was no piker, to snap the people of the Third Reich and the militarized Japanese Empire out of their acquiescence to evil. And their respective religious fervor wasn't even driven b
Wrong name (Score:4, Interesting)
They should call it "Crackdown on Internet Piracy" and they would become best buddys with some congressmen.
The current political elite is loosing it's grip. So it is only natural that they start fighting. Same here, same there.
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The current political elite is loosing it's grip. So it is only natural that they start fighting. Same here, same there.
No they aren't. The political elite in every government, every society has always had infighting, ranging from "office politics" (for lack of a better term) to outright armed struggle. And it isn't even limited to government. The political elite (or its equivalent) in any organization have infighting to some extent. Its human nature: there is always the desire to consolidate power or wield as much authority as possible. As long as there are multiple elite in an organization, the amount of power that ca
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IMHO: The internet is as destructive for the current form of politics as for the music industry. If we will have a free internet, ways and means of politics are changing massively and render most political capital of the current political generation meaningless.
Since they start to realize it, they start fighting the free internet. Just my POV.
This is not good, (Score:3)
This can only work towards continuing the psychopathic elite control over people and causing problems that otherwise would not exists.
It is by the people of the planet talking with each other that the power of the psychopathic elite lose their power over the people, as the people find there are no ghost in the closet or monsters under the bed in reference to people around the world.
Such censorship and control need to be deteriorated in every way possible..... As a matter of peace.
When you see "US", "China", "IRAN" etc., in the news in terms of insinuating all they people of that country...... you are being lied to. i.e. US is going to war... does not mean the people, but rather the few who think they are a country called the United States and lied their way into a position of commanding war.
The mass majority of the people of this planet are to busy living their daily lives to have time for war. Its only the few who play their game at the expense of the rest of us. And they need to be ended.
And the US ally KSA might do ... (Score:5, Insightful)
... the same, oups wait, no they never had an open Internet.
Iran is on the Internet since approx: 95/96 (ok at that time they had about 19200b/s to connect them to the university of vienna...
KSA started to authorise Internet only around 2001 and only after they had installed a "country firewall"....
But all this shows that Internet is a tool, not a "solution"... Internet does NOT "route around sensorship", people do using the tools at hand, and it is not easy because the means of sensorship are many...
Making in country hosting very expensive and throttling international internet access are the most comment means...
Manipulating the search engine, either because you own it, or through various "preservation" laws another...
Make laws about what you are allowed to say is an all time favorite..
The Jim Crow laws have been repelled, including the laws forbidding to critisize them, but equivalent laws about drug policies, Intellectual properties policies, etc... abound in all the world...
With the effect that even with an "open internet" the info might "be there", but no local person therefore no "locally connected" person can point to it... (thing thai monarchy for an example concerning another "ally")
Only civic movements can change things, and even then "your mileanage might vary", (see the result of the "arab spring", now the new arab winter...)
Good video on governments blocking Tor (Score:3)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=DX46Qv_b7F4
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has done what the CIA couldn't (Score:2)
He's convinced every young person in Iran to hate the regime...
GrpA.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax [wikipedia.org]
Wasn't this the last straw in Egypt? (Score:3)
If I'm not mistaken...and I think this came from the PBS/Frontline eppy about it...wasn't the Mubarak regime's decision to cut the internet the last straw in their revolution? That is...when the cut the internet...things really blew up. Pissed the ppl off big time.
The US "Capitalist" Version (Score:5, Interesting)
In Iran, they build a halal closed internet. Here in the US they let the entrenched media conglomerates control the flow of information by abusing civil law to maintain a de facto cartel.
Iran has a state enforced religious code, in the US they privatize the enforcement to self serving corrupt economic interests that want to maintain the status quo by eliminating competition. Without meaningful competition there is no functioning capitalism.
The difference in only in the execution, not the result. The US version is more sophisticated, and the Iranian version is more crude. That's about it.
The Satanic Technology (Score:3)
. OK, which Satanic US corporation has the contract to deliver this technology and support it?
Security cameras? (Score:2)
I predict a sudden increase in the wearing of niqabs or burqas in Iran. By both women and men.
And.....? (Score:2)
Thank god for burqas (Score:2)
Which means 16 days from now there will be a massive increase in the popularity of burqas [wikipedia.org] among Iranian internet cafe users.
Halal? (Score:3)
A big government program without Pork? Good luck with that...
What I find interesting.... (Score:3)
...is that there has been this "Myth" that nothing can stop the internet. We've all heard the saying: the internet sees censorship as damage and routes around it.
Well I've always had a theory that it would only remain so until the powers that be sat around and figured out how to get the genie back in the bottle. There were those who claimed it could never happen, but I remember looking that the vast majority of the backbone of the internet is controlled by only a handful of companies.
I think a lot of countries have been waiting to see if countries like China and Iran can implement restrictions on the internet and frankly they've done so quite successfully. Has it been 100% successful. No. But it doesn't have to be. It just has to bee good enough to keep those that don't know technology trapped into a small little corner.
It's the fact countries like China and Iran have had enough success at it that we're now seeing it happen in the US, only we're calling it SOPA. Which is what I was predicting to friends and co-workers about 10 years ago that by 2020 the "internet" would become fractured and restricted most likely by law.