Iran Set To Block Access To Google 279
legolas writes "The official state online censorship body in Iran has reported that Google and Gmail are going to be blocked effective immediately, ostensibly in response to the contentious videos that YouTube is hosting. This comes as Iran is preparing the launch of their 'Halal' intranet to replace the current direct (albeit highly censored) access to the global Internet. While there have been several state-organized protests for the film 'Innocence Of Muslims' in Iran, the public in general doesn't seem bothered by it."
Re:Before we get the usual gaggle of fascists (Score:5, Insightful)
Trying to save this from a First Post Godwin,
Mr. H. is passe. That's not precisely how the next threat will manifest. The world is too networked for that. I don't have time to read my 1,000 pages for Citations Needed, but basically Mr. H. got as far as he did because of the specific places he was in geography-time.
Now, we might see another Charismatic Dangerous Leader, yes. But you can't go just marching along, not today. So the next Bad Guy will be more of a Loose Cannon that needs to be talked down Game Theory style, with VERY clever diplomacy.
Re:No big loss (Score:4, Insightful)
This was to be expected regardless of this video (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Before we get the usual gaggle of fascists (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure about those equal chances. People in the West don't fear for their lives when they espouse anti-authoritarian or anti-religion views. This tells me there are more barriers in the West to some imaginary future Hitler. Now, you can say those barriers aren't good enough for you, but the difference is there and the equivalence is false.
Re:Before we get the usual gaggle of fascists (Score:5, Insightful)
The above jibber-jabber you replied to is siding with Iran even though he didn't say so.
By implying that a new "Hitler" could rise out of the West while all the signs are pointing towards the Middle East and the surrounding area - Iran, Pakistan, Yemen, Egypt, Libya.
Shutting out Google / YouTube is not the only thing Iran is doing.
Iran is also banning Female Students from taking courses in 77 subjects, including English Literature, Nuclear Science, Sociology, Philosophy
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-09-22/iranian-women-banned-from-77-university-courses/4275764 [abc.net.au]
It's a totally fucked up world under Islam and more often than not the "new Hitler" will come from a fucked up world, not from places like the West.
Re:I wonder if someday this could be done here (Score:1, Insightful)
Get over yourself. First start by citing a source that isn't the left wing version of Fox news. Next realize that there are a small but vocal group that represents this fringe element. I know tons of Christians and I don't know of a single one who has a problem with evolution being taught. To be honest I don't know of a single one that has said anything against evolution.
I know you'll be modded up and if anything I'll be modded down but your post is pretty much trolling. Let's be honest here, if the Christian right really had that kind of power do you really think that abortion and homosexuality would still be legal?
Re:Before we get the usual gaggle of fascists (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Before we get the usual gaggle of fascists (Score:3, Insightful)
It takes generations to remove hate from a culture, but it only takes a few years to generate it.
Re:Before we get the usual gaggle of fascists (Score:5, Insightful)
But the original Hitler came from the west not from a fucked up place.
What exactly do you suppose you would call Germany, post WW1? Hyperinflation isnt typically the mark of a great place to live.
Re:Before we get the usual gaggle of fascists (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm no expert on the subject (I know everyone else is), but I seem to remember Hitler arose in a battered, lagging nation, suffering from years of retribution over WWI. And before the inevitable, "oh well our economy kinda stinks", you'll have to work pretty hard to convince me that the state of our nation's psyche is anywhere near postwar Germany.
Meanwhile, Gallup says Obama is in the lead, beating a contender that (all hyperbole aside) does not resemble a maniacal dictator with ambitions of taking over the world and breeding a race of aryans to rule for a thousand years. At worst he's an insensitive 2000's-era business mogul looking to enrich his somewhat-similar buddies. At best, he's a political panderer with the ideological spine of a wet noodle and little real prowess to back it up, just doing what looked like the next stop on his career path.
If you want to find a Hitler, I think you'd have to look somewhere pretty poor (not: I can't have the new iphone 5 for another 6 months), where once there was wealth, with a raging hard-on for the outside world. Then find the intelligent, convincing, hard core political leader that presents himself as a "true believer" fighting for his people.
I know we hear some pretty nasty stuff on TV sometimes, but the idea that we're nearing anything close to building a Fourth Reich in earnest seems really silly. Our hot-button issues sound like, "shouldn't gays have all the same marriage priviledges as straights?!" and "is capital gains tax too low?!" or "I think marijuana should be legal!" It all sounds like a far cry from, "are muslims really human beings, or sub-human creatures we should blame for 8% unemployment?"
I dunno... like I said, I'm no expert in geopolitics. That's just how it all looks to me.
Re:Complete and utter pandering BULLSHIT (Score:5, Insightful)
"It's no worse than other religions, look at Christianity."
"But Christians don't get all weird about iconography, no rioting over cartoons."
"Christians get weird about other things, that's just one idiosyncratic example."
Look, the problem isn't with Islam or any other single belief system. Or any other single belief for that matter, this is about people in power maintaining their power by pushing a topic with broad public support. Usually that support comes from ignorance or gullibility. Look at all the things justified "because terrorists" or "child pornography" or "pedophile rapist home invaders, who are lurking around every corner." You don't solve this problem by ranting about Islam, you solve this problem by, somehow, convincing people that they need to be less gullible. This is why you so often hear people talking about education as a long term solution to corruption and other ills, and why dismantling public education is often such a high priority among the corrupt. Iran isn't keeping women out of schools out of misogyny, they're doing it to keep people tractable.
The point is: enough with the Islam/Christian bashing. Or religion in general. It's a red herring, there to distract you from the real problem.
Re:Before we get the usual gaggle of fascists (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, this is clearly a problem of "rightest" depiction of the actions of Islamists.
Bounty on Salman Rushdie increased to $3.3 million - Iran will pursue makers of anti-Islam film: vice-presidenthor [vancouversun.com]
Pakistani minister puts bounty on anti-Islam filmmaker's head [theage.com.au]
Egypt's president elect Mohammed Morsi says he will try to free Blind Sheikh [telegraph.co.uk]
Mohammed Morsi, Egypt's president elect, on Friday appealed for the release of one of Osama bin Laden's closest associates, a call sure to alarm critics worried about the direction he will take the country
Interview with Father Zakaria Botros, 'Radical Islam's Bane' - An interview with the Coptic Orthodox Priest with a 60 million dollar bounty on his head from al Qaeda. [catholic.org]
More: Michael Coren Interviews Father Zakaria Botros 'Radical Islam's Bane' [youtube.com]
Allied Menace [danielpipes.org]
"Here are two brother countries, united like a single fist," said socialist Hugo Chávez during a visit to Tehran last November, celebrating his alliance with Islamist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Che Guevara's son Camilo, who also visited Tehran last year, declared that his father would have "supported the country in its current struggle against the United States." They followed in the footsteps of Fidel Castro, who in a 2001 visit told his hosts that "Iran and Cuba, in cooperation with each other, can bring America to its knees." For his part, Ilich Ramírez Sánchez ("Carlos the Jackal") wrote in his book L'islam révolutionnaire ("Revolutionary Islam") that "only a coalition of Marxists and Islamists can destroy the United States."
You want to live in a peaceful world, and al-Qaida and assorted Islamists want you to live in a Muslim world [spiegel.de]. I expect that neither of you will get your wish unless enough people prefer any peace, even the peace of the graveyard, or the "peace" of slavery, to the long term struggle to defense genuine peace a freedom.
Key phrase (Score:4, Insightful)
And why should it. The large majority of the muslims just don't give a shit - like the large majority of the christians didn't give a shit when "Life of Brian" was released in theaters a few decades ago and the far-right protested by shutting down cinemas, burning books etc. The only way for the whole world to escape this religious stupidity that holds us back as a species is through technology and, I'm afraid, consumerism. Just load the middle east with a few million smartphones and tablets and watch them turn into the obedient "I don't give a fuck about god & associates, give me my new ipad" crowd we've all become
Ironically... (Score:3, Insightful)
...notwithstanding the fact that the Western media continues to paint the Middle East as a war torn, savage region of deserts and oil, the place is actually rather green (albeit warm), and 99% of the populace are generally happy with their individual lot, and peaceful. It's the disgruntled (for whatever reason) 1% who incite, most likely, IMHO, encouraged by Western influences* ::coughCIAcough::. Those same Western influences control Western media, so when unrest does happen, the cameras are already there. It's not a case of convenience, it's staged to deliberately destabilise the region and keep guns moving and blood money flowing.
OK, here's the list, in case you missed it:
CIA (and their list of "friendly" or "useful" individuals, al Qaeda)
MI6 (stop saying MI5, that's Internal Intelligence)
Puppet Governments (such as installed in Georgia - what, you didn't know the current President of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, is a former New York lawyer?)
Common Purpose International ("leadership training" - which involves nudging, NLP, and is also used to find and neutralise leadership elements where such traits are not desired, by any means necessary)
Re:Before we get the usual gaggle of fascists (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem areas in the American fiscal environment are pretty well known. I don't think anyone would seriously try to blame Muslims for them as it would be obvious nonsense.
FDR knew that the funding mechanism for Social Security had to change long term, and it has never been done. And please spare us from nonsense about wars and defense spending being the problem, because they aren't. Rapidly increasing social welfare spending mixed with soaring debts, and an economy that is frozen by government meddling (such as helped create the housing and mortgage meltdown) and unable to produce jobs, growth, and income, is what will push the United States over the edge, if anything.
Chart of the Week: Federal Spending on Defense vs. Entitlements [heritage.org]
What Happened to the $2.6 Trillion Social Security Trust Fund? [forbes.com]
Who doesn’t pay taxes, in eight charts [washingtonpost.com]
Public-Employee Unions Gone Wild [nationalreview.com],
The Path to Economic Disaster [nationalreview.com]
And lets not forget the Euro crisis - if Europe collapses, it might very well drag down the US. Once again, it would be pretty clear what happened.
If there is a new "Hitler", he is very unlikely to come from conservative America.
Bad socialist habits coming to America: Obama's Creepy Cult of Personality [investors.com]
America's 'Fascist Moment' [nysun.com]
. . . . contemporary liberalism descended from the ranks of 20th-century progressivism, and "shares intellectual roots with European fascism."
When Mr. Goldberg uses the term "liberal fascism," he is not offering a right-wing version of the left's smears. He knows it is a loaded term. What he is talking about is the historical idea of fascism: a corporatist and statist social structure that creates a deep reliance of its subjects on the government and engenders a sense of community and purpose. In American politics, this tendency toward statism has always been much more at home on the left than on the right.
It is impossible in a short review to do justice to the rich intellectual history of American liberalism that Mr. Goldberg offers to his readers. He has read widely and thoroughly, not only in the primary sources of fascism, but in the political and intellectual history written by the major historians of the subject.
Readers will learn that the very term "liberal fascism" came from the pen of H.G. Wells, the famed socialist author who delivered a speech at Oxford University in 1932 that included hosannas to both Stalin's Russia and Hitler's Germany. "I am asking," Wells told the students, "for a Liberal Fascisti, for enlightened Nazis." Democracy, he argued, had to be replaced with new forms of government that would save mankind, producing a "'Phoenix Rebirth' of liberalism" that would be called "Liberal Fascism." Like the activism, experimentation, and discipline that made the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany new dynamic societies, the West too could reach such a plateau by adopting the new soft fascism that suited it best.. . . .
Indeed, America, as Mr. Goldberg writes, certainly had a "Fascist moment." It was not, however, during the current presidency, but one that extended from progressivism through the New Deal. Mr. Goldberg traces the American roots of liberal fascism to the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, who saw i
Obama is Hitler (Score:3, Insightful)
Obama is Hitler and no not because of Health Care and all the sillyness the right claims. People voted for Obama mostly because he was not the other guy. Anything but Bush. "Democracy" is at its most dangerous NOT when an obviously dangerous madman runs for power but when the voting public is willing to accept ANYONE but the regular guys.
In France, Hollande has been in power for 4 months and people are already dissatisfied because he hasn't turned the economy around. And the reason he was elected? Because he was not the other guy.
In Holland, the SP let the polls until it came to vote for rent-subsidie and mortage-tax-deduction and the PvDA and VVD became the big winners but a lot of people already protesting that the policies these two will enact will cause the 4th year of less spendable income for everyone but the very rich. People who barely understand politics think that it was good the PVV lost a lot of seats but forget that the only reason he did loose votes was because Geert Wilders totally failed to deliver on his anti-islam retoric.
In Greece, extreme right is gaining which might make you think that an economic downturn leads to rightwing, but PvDA is socialist and so is Hollande, so explain that?
The fact is that when it comes to crunch time, people will vote for safety if they still have a tiny amount of faith in the system and there is no charismatic alternative but when they lost faith in all the existing parties, there is room for a new star to rise. Even if that turns out to be a super-nova that will burn everything.
Microsoft is Hitler. MS didn't win dominance on the desktop because it was the best option but because all the other options failed (Apple, IBM, Amiga etc etc). Then an outsider can have a shot.
It is only so long before the musical chairs of western politics or the mid-eastern same guys in charge for decades with only the head changing can continue before people are willing to try any alternative no matter how crazy their policies might seem. It doesn't help if people start believing that a president can turn the world economie around in just 4 months (France) or even 4 years (America).
The fact that Romney even has a chance with his insane policies and total lack of any humanity whatsoever says enough.
Part of the problem in democracy is that it has no accountability. How many in Dresden voted for Hitler? Will America stop all government handouts to all Romney voters?
No? Then people will continue to vote for whoever they bloody well feel like it at the moment and damn the consequences.
Re:Obama is Hitler (Score:2, Insightful)
People voted for Obama mostly because he was not the other guy. Anything but Bush.
Bush had his two terms. It wasn't possible for him to run for a third.