Group items tagged

Ahwazi Arabs have not been included in Iran's economic development and prosperity derived from oil exports, according to a 2007 Human Rights report published by civil rights organisations in Europe in coordination with the Belgium–based Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation.

I do not think there is an official will to marginalise Iranian Arabs or deny them their basic rights

administrative inefficiencies are often wrongly blamed on religious or ethnic discrimination

Note to mainstream media: Iran cannot construct nuclear bombs with uranium enriched only to less than 4%. It needs to be enriched to something like 90% to make a bomb. So all the silly articles on Friday about how iran now has enough enriched uranium to make a bomb are just illiterate.

Since last week, Blue Host, the hosting service which is used for this very blog [and Kamangir as well], and the number one recommendation for Wordpress hosting by Wordpress itself, has adopted a policy of suspending its Iranian users. In some cases the bloggers have been given a short notice in order to back up their data and leave. This is despite Bluehost’s good reputation in the blogosphere. The matter of fact is that many of these bloggers, including Arash Kamangir who blogs at kamangir.net, have no connection to the Iranian administration and have had to take use of a foreign hosting service in order to freely express their opinions. The important factor is that Bluehost is not committing any illegal action. What is being done is exactly what article 13 in Bluehost Terms of Service mandates. The article does explicitly mention Iran among the sanctioned countries, Sanctioned Countries presently include, among others, Balkans, Belarus, Burma, Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Cuba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, Iraq, former Liberian Regime of Charles Taylor, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, and Zimbabwe…Each Sanctioned Country, all governmental, commercial, or other entities located therein, and all individuals located in any Sanctioned Country are hereby prohibited from registering or signing up with, subscribing to, or using any service of BlueHost.Com.

The Persian Bloggers who use Bluehost are dispersed all over the world and produce content for people from Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and other countries. The action taken by Bluehost, while entirely legal, will harm the Persian blogosphere.

While not all countries in the Middle East and North Africa filter the Internet, censorship across the region is on the rise, and the scope and depth of filtering are increasing. Testing has revealed political filtering to be the common denominator across the region; however, social filtering is on the rise.

Based on ONI testing results, Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, and the West Bank do not currently filter any material; however, none of those are without regulations.

Bahrain, Iran, Syria and Tunisia have the strictest political filtering practices in the region.

TEHRAN, Iran – Iran has blocked access to Facebook, prompting government critics on Sunday to condemn the move as an attempt to muzzle the opposition ahead of next month's presidential election

Iranian environmentalists are using online media tools to save different cultural monuments such as The Si-o-se Pol or “33 Pol” (bridge of 33 arches) an architectural masterpiece in the heart of the Iranian historic city of Isfahan (Esfahan). A battle is ongoing between authorities that want to develop a new metro project and concerned citizens from across Iran who fear the damage it might cause.

The Senate has authorized up to $50 million for the development of Web-based tools to help Iranians evade their government's attempts to censor the Internet. The Victim of Iranian Censorship Act, or VOICE Act, was added to the Senates Defense authorization bill Thursday evening as a response to mass protests following Iran's disputed June 12 presidential elections and concerns that Western companies have sold Iran technology used to monitor dissidents. Internet-based tools such as Facebook and Twitter have become key means for Iranians to communicate with each other and the outside world about protests over what many believe to be a fraudulent victory by incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The U.S. legislation would require President Obama to issue a report on "non-Iranian companies, including corporations with U.S. subsidiaries, that have aided the Iranian governments Internet censorship efforts." Such identification would make it easier to pressure firms to cease such business with Iran.

the Voice of America has an office devoted to anti-filtering technology and anti-censorship technology, but its total budget is less than $5 million. It has invested in a Farsi-language version of the Web browser, Firefox, embedded with TOR, a program originally developed by the U.S. Navy, which cloaks the users Web browsing from state monitors.

when there is money, people will come, and you are seeing a lot of companies retooling themselves to become circumvention providers.