Right Wing Nut House

Some news from Iran:

It appears that Iranian ISPs have been ordered to block a large number of popular Web sites, including weblogging, community, chat and email services. Web (particularly weblog) use has been increasing rapidly in Iran, with 64000+ weblogs published by Iranians via various sites. As of today, if the news is correct, the majority of these may be inaccessible to their authors, as will the email (eg. Yahoo) services they use to communicate with friends, colleagues and family worldwide.”

The radioactive Mullahs are cracking down on blogs and bloggers because of what they represent; unregulated free speech.

If you haven’t been following what’s been going on in Iran over the last few months, a remarkable series of events have occurred which have challenged the absolute authority of the religious zealots currently in control in Iran. While the government of President Mohammad Khatami has buckled under pressure applied by the nutball Islamofacists to crack down on free speech, hundreds of courageous Iranian bloggers have continued to find a way to to post their stories.

Back in December at an International Internet Conference, Khatami said this:

Speaking to journalists, President Khatami added, “democracy runs in tandem with freedom of expression, but this does not mean that everything goes.

“Freedom of expression and freedom of thought are the preconditions of a democratic society. But freedom does not mean chaos”. (BBC News: 12/12/04)

Famous last words of tyrants everywhere! “Too much freedom” is a bad thing. Or, more rationally, freedom equals “chaos.”

Here’s an example of Iranian “free speech” in action:

In the U.S., when bloggers fact-check the media — as they did with the questionable National Guard memos on “60 Minutes” — they are hailed as new media heroes. In Iran, when reformist bloggers and journalists fact-check the government — as they did when the ruling hardliners railroaded the last election — they are put in jail and their publications are shut.

That point was brought home recently when the Iranian government, led by Ayatollah Khamenei, moved to block three reformist news Web sites, and then jailed three journalists — Hanif Mazrooie, Babak Ghafoori Azar, and Shahram Rafi Zadeh — the latter two are also bloggers. These moves follow a string of reformist newspaper closures this year, as well as a controversial election in which the ruling party disqualified reformist candidates, resulting in a widespread boycott of the vote.

Amazingly, Iranian bloggers haven’t let this kind of oppression stop them. They’ve continued to post riveting stories on anti-government riots in various cities involving tens of thousands of people was well as reporting on the continuing crackdown involving some of their blogging brethren. This comes from a recent post by Jeff Jarvis:

Iranian blogger Parthisan left a comment below urging us to read his translation of a post by Mohammed Ali Abtahi, the former VP of Iran — renowned for blogging himself — reporting on the imprisonment and torture of bloggers in Iran. It is his report on a committee meeting with imprisoned bloggers, called for by the president of Iran. An excerpt:

1- Physical torture, punches and kicks: “he banged my head to the bench that made my recently-operated nose bleed, and later I found out that they broke my nose”; “they punched us”; “we were alone in single cells for months”; and things of this kind…

ATTENTION MOONBATS: The next time you crawl out from under a rock and start screaming about being “oppressed” please read the above very carefully. Oppression is when you speak your mind and are thrown in jail and tortured for it…unlike in America where if you criticize the government, you get to be fawned over at cocktail parties, are offered a million dollar advance for a book contract that will make you rich and famous, and appear on MSNBC and have Chrissy Matthews kiss your overly ample ass in public.

All this brings to mind current attempts in the United States and elsewhere to “regulate” the internet. Already in Australia, there’s a serious effort underway to curtail internet freedom. And in the US, efforts to regulate internet commerce have taken on added impetus with the ballooning budget deficit and the belief by some lawmakers that a way can be found to tax internet transactions. Now, politicians generally speaking, are not the brightest of bulbs, but eventually they’re going to find a way to get a cut of the expanding e-commerce pie…and that spells trouble for the net in general.

If politicians can regulate one part of the internet, what’s to stop them from developing “standards” or other regulatory instruments to interfere with free expression? For instance, I’ve been known from time to time to use language that would be unsuitable for preteens to read. This is not uncommon on personal weblogs, even amongst some of the larger sites. Would there be some kind of push to develop a rating system for web sites? With the e-porn business topping the $4 billion mark this past year, it certainly is not beyond the realm of the impossible.

This is the crux of the problem. Once started down the “slippery slope” of internet control, politicians rarely know when to stop. And what the Iranian government crackdown on the internet proves is that any justification for oppression can be cited as long as the “people’s interest” is involved.