The Iranian Blogosphere

M

MicroBalrog

New member
Friends! Netizens! I am addressing this letter to all those who care about liberty. About freedom of speech. Of expression. Of protest. I am writing you because there are some who might soon not be able to write anymore. The bloggers of Iran.

"What?" - you exclaim - "Iran has a blogosphere?" No. It doesn’t. But not because the Iranians are too poor or ignorant for computers - but because the Iranian government is busy stomping it out. Right up until June, 2004, Iran had a flowering Internet community. Five million users. 100,000 bloggers. And then…

But last June the Iranian judiciary put in place a more sophisticated filtering system that blocks Iranian access to political Web sites and blogs. (Derakhshan's traffic immediately dropped by half.) Then in September, officials got serious, arresting, interrogating, and even jailing some of the country's bloggers, according to human rights groups. Two of those writers, Mojtaba Saminejad and Mohammad Reza Nasab Abdolahi, remain in prison.
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Let me explain to you what this means. You may blame Bush of being a "dictator.’ You may call the EU a "police state". But whatever your political position is - those countries are still a pale imitation of this. The FBI and the GSC are not knocking or your door. Mojtaba Saminejad and Mohammad Reza Nasab are now in prison - because they live in a real police state. They may be tortured. Or starving. We don’t know.

Those two people went to prison because they believed in freedom. Do you believe in freedom? Do you believe, well and truly, that Mojtaba Saminejad and Mohammad Reza Nasab deserve to be free? Now tell me - why are Mojtaba Saminejad and Mohammad Reza Nasab unable to speak - yet Sayyeed Ali Khameinei - their torturer and prison guard - is able to maintain his voice?

His site - http://www.leader.ir/ - has not been shut down. He is not in prison. He is walking free and eating well even as his victims suffer.

Friends, here is my offer. At 12:00, Noon, Teheran Time [GMT +3;30] June 17th, 2005, we silence Sayyed Ali Khamenei.

It can be done simply - log on to http://www.leader.ir/ at that time - and reload your browser multiple times. This would have the effects of a true DNS attack - and yet it is fully legal. You may if you wish send an email to your closest media outlet about this .We should be heard. Mr. Saminejad and Mr. Nasab should be heard. Sayeed Ali Khameinei, their torturer, should just shut the **** up.

Please check for news at:

http://shutupsayeed.blogspot.com/
 
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I'm on board.

I check TFL almost daily, I'll be watching to see if this takes off.

What about other Iranian official websites?
 
What? Educated people using computers in a primitive and repressed culture like Iran? I don't believe it. Must be a radical Muslim lie calculated to have us believe that radical Muslims do not really run Iran.
 
Goron: We need to concentrate it on one place, it's rather hard to get enough people to do such a thing in the first thing. We need to distribute information of this, umm, "attack" as fare as possible before June, 17th.
 
Free Speech

Anyone remember how many in government were talking about how troubling Free Speech can be sometimes? :mad:

It's not surprising in a place like Iran, but make no mistake: there are many who would love to see the same sort of tyranny enacted right here in the US. :eek:
 
Yes, MB, I'm getting off-topic again. Sorry! :o

Much as I believe in your project, I'm going to be on a woodsy retreat where the women outnumber the men by a good margin. :D Not a computer to be found anywhere out there...

See you all in the Fall-
 
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