Iran considering the death penalty for 'offensive' bloggers.

Uhh, if we are to avoid propaganda I think we should avoid American websites running stories about Iran.

And vice versa.

And no offense, but that site clearly has an agenda. There's a big picture on the right showing grateful poor Afghani people shaking hands with American soldiers.


[edit on 26-3-2009 by Lazyninja]

reply to post by Clearskies


Yeah, it really stinks when dictators interpret religious philosophy to societal and political ends, saying you can't do something because it goes against the majority religious text...I'm glad that it doesn't happen in this country. It would probably be a slippery slope leading to all sorts of bad things.

Let's say (and this is purely hypothetical), a leader in this country were to use fringe interpretations of the Bible to stop people from living with their respective, consensual significant other; or from receiving available medical treatment; or from learning empirically proved facts; that could lead to all sorts of crazy laws and restrictions.


**"Two wrongs don't make a right"**

Here's a question ATS.

So no anti-govt. blogs or else you get the death sentence perhaps or something else.
Isn't that an odd law to be enforced for a country that has an armada of ships all around it?
Iran is pretty much completely blockaded right now..... or almost.

They are sitting ducks, but no anti-govt. blogs?????
Why would sitting ducks even worry about blogs?

reply to post by GENERAL EYES


That would be grounds for a dual.

[edit on 26-3-2009 by Perseus Apex]

It's Iranian law in an islamic state, let them do as they wish.

I have one question though, will it include trolls?

Seriously though, this is an Islamic country, with strange laws and regulations. If you dont want that sort of law in your own country, then you have to do something about it.
Doing something about it, does not include clicking on reply/quote on the end of a forum, but actually getting involved in countermeasures to these types of actions.

Either get away from the computer and make your voice heard, or just 'tut' next time they pass another law eroding another one of you civil liberties

reply to post by gimmefootball400

My question is how would they enforce a law like this if it is ever brought into legality by Ahmadinejad without the proper equipment to do so? That is if they don't already have monitoring equipment in place to track internet traffic.

By nothing more than tattletales and informers. And I am sure a nice juicy reward of some sort for 'those who inform in the name of Allah'. Doesn't matter if it's true or not.....

reply to post by GENERAL EYES

I understand the majority of the "not my problem" is most likely a defense mechanism to the reality of such types of news and our inability to really do anything about - heck, I'm guilty of that cop out myself from time to time. I'm not perfect either.

We are more or less living in the stone age. Having fancy toys, that have blinking lights, and noises that go beeb, hasn't kept too many people from not hitting each other over the head with the equivalant of a rock.

It hasn't always allowed us either to put technology to a good use.

The X-box for instance. There is an entire generartion of Americans that you practically need a suregeon to disconect them from it. Young men especially are so addicted to electronic games, slickly packaged for their stone age sensibilities, that feature war, theft, murder, rape and violence, that half the young men addicted to it would rather play with it, than their girlfriend or young wife.

A young wife that in many cases by the time she is 40 would rather sit on her own computer blogging and forming virtual social networks than talking to her husband who 20 years later, still hasn't really found a way to get off the couch or disconnected from the TV.

That is if he didn't end up getting disconnected from the TV because after 6 straight years of playing Heilo in virtual teams of 4 he is wired into electronically by audio communications through his X-box to communicate with, against other teams of 4 to do the same, he has decided as a result of this passion to try out the real life version in the U.S. Army or Marines, and has sadly found out that real war, with real rocks, isn't always quite as fun and nonlethal as the rated m for mature video interactive virtual version, that his brain far from being fully grown in his essential frontal lobes, which does not happen until the age of 26, was not really as mature as the m on the box suggested it was.

Yes, technology it sure does produce some wonderful things.

Propoganda being one of them of course.

Ultimately we as a society permit the X-box, and it is all tied in to free speech. As recent years have shown us, you are freer to speak about some things as opposed to another. No one puts a gun to your head, or a noose around your neck as of yet for it. Yet the people most easily swayed by propoganda seeking their own validation in life by ascribing to it, find the ultimate validation in deminishing others who don't, through ways often just as intimidating to many though as seemingly benign as an X-box.

Over the years, voicing my own humanity has caused people to accuse me of all sorts of unwarranted and justified thing, when my right to free speech and free and independent thought does not mirror what the anchor on CNN, the politician on the Bully Pulpit, or the Priest from another emparts to them.

In Iran's case they have no right to free speech because of the theology by which they govern themselves by. A choice that they made at first through a revolution to cast of the idealogy we in the U.S. had imposed on them with rocks, for the sake of a plentiful cheap oil, and to ensure it's flow because of our support for another psuedo theocracy, psuedo democracy in that same vital oil producing region of the world.

Even then we marched right back in, with rocks of our own, and allies with rocks of their own too, to bash their heads some more, until we forced their ousted dictator back on them, only to have them revolt and overthrow him not even a year later.

I would wager the CIA backed and installed regime of the Shah, and the bloodly and rutheless reign of the Savak is still far ahead of the Ayotallas on the X-box score.

The people chose a theocracy with strict laws that the majority had faith would govern them without the corruption of a weak foreign vassal and his that were based on more whymsical and harder to identify things.

Just as here in our own country we can foolishly elect a zealot to the right, or a zealot to the left, to give us the illussion that we might safely and securely live under the rule of the laws they too impose.

We have our dissidents, just as they have theirs, and while our fundamental government style is very different, each with flaws that can be imprisoning, deadly and stifling to some, each one of these two nations, the U.S.A. and Iran share something important in common.

Any American is free to emigrate to another country, just as any Iranian is free to emigrate to another country. Yes, economic and family ties might make us virtual prisoners, but those prisons exist solely within our own minds.

The person who yearns for freedom can always have it, or die freely pursuing it, that choice is each human beings alone.

There are things I am legally not allowed to do that if I had my druthers I would, that I feel hurt no one, but my government here in the United States feels that they do. Where you might say, should you be on the outside of this system looking in this is terribly unfair and come to alter this by force of arms, or commerce, this does not mean the new law or system you created just for me, because you would have it for you, works well for the majority, who allowed it and favored it.

It made you feel better, and me feel better, but it made far more many people feel worse and less safe, and secure in their future.

Just like right here in our own country some to the right worry that their future is less secure and they are less safe because they are ruled by every changing laws that come from the left, just as the left feels less secured when ruled by the right.

Ultimately each human being has a decision to make in regards to living in the stone age or moving beyond. Do I put down the rock and first find peace and perfection and pure love in myself, and accept that my journey to this was born of my own right to determine and as a result was quicker or slower than some other who might have voluntarily resigned to put down their rock and throw it no more, or do I put my rock down but keep it close at hand in case I haven't quite figured out that real change towards peace can only happen one rock and one person at a time, because I feel I am there or close enough to there, where that rock still might come in handy to bash the other human who has not quite reached my stage, to prod them and punish them individually or collectively for what I still see as an offence, because I still have not reached the perfection I imagine, nor truly feel the pure love I purport to feel and have and use wisely, or do I just keep clutching my rock looking for reason after reason to bash someone else into the level of flawed thinking I have dellusionally created an illussion that is perfect in me, but is really just perfect for me, and my rock kept in hand or close by my side.

People are damned if they do and damned if they don't in this process, and in reality we each just seek a level of hell where the heat is comforting enough to keep our rock from being to hot to handle.

There is no doubt yours and my own, and everyone's heart is trying to seek the right direction.

A direction to a place we will all get to in our own volition, by our own path, all in good time, and you will know when you get there when no rock is tempting, or judgement is forthcoming, but just the love in your heart that is there ready to listen and show it and give it to that person who asks for it.

Iran isn't asking for our help. Neither is the majority of it. In fact our help collectively as a nation is what turned them to theocracy.

Should anyone really want my help to leave behind their rock I am happy to oblige, and lend a hand up or over, but to carry that wait one has to put their own rock down first, and ask the one they help to leave theirs behind.

Originally posted by gimmefootball400
I can see having severe penalties for drug-related activities,

Drug laws are obsurd. Im born into a world that grows naturally these plants, that we ignorant humans call drugs, yet jungle people seem to live peacefully with such issues. Get a life and a soul, realise that the "crime" aspect of modern drug issues are not drugs, its a preexisting condition called being a lame -A**, guns dont kill people, people kill people. Blogs are like thoughts, thoughts will be next to be monitored by microchips and nano-bots? The world of 1984 being imposed will ruin humanity and enslave them to people who deserve what they ask for.

Iran is a paradigm of backwards thinking, basing a state on a religion is folly. As they example. Iran needs to learn how to be tolerant beyond the stramlined fascists controlling it hypocritacly enjoying that which they ban for their people.

HAIL AMERICA AND SUPPLY SIDE ECONOMICS.

No one, absolutely NO ONE should be surprised by an article like this. Iran is a nation based on on the principals of a religion - Islam. As the story says, fasad is one of two things in Islamic religion that allow for lawful execution of a citizen. And if you read the story correctly, it is not all blogging that is punished, it is blogging that they say "undermines the authority or stability" of the state.

If the Iranian government feels that dissentive blogging constitutes a fasad then they are within their right to implement whatever laws they see fit to implement.

From a human rights perspective, yes, I think it's reprehensible for executing people just for speaking out. I believe in free speech. But I also live in a country where free speech is a freedom that I have, guaranteed by our forefathers.

We as foreigners and members of any other religion have absolutely no right, NO RIGHT, whatsoever to judge them based on implementing laws that they deem to be proper based on their own religion.

You don't like it? Fine. Call them names. Be mad. Call it a travesty of human rights and free speech. But seriously - what else are you going to do about it?