Iran powerless to stop revolution by proxy

[Last.Exile]

Six months on from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed election victory, reports of gunfire and beatings are still coming out of Tehran almost weekly.

In the past 24 hours there have been reports shots have been fired in Tehran, as security forces have yet again clashed with student protesters.

In an attempt to prevent the protesters from getting organised, the government has been shutting down communication lines, but it seems to be making little difference.

Before Iran's disputed elections this year, publicly criticising the leaders of the country was almost impossible, but there was a chink in the Government's armour that's now being exploited.

Despite the deliberate daily intimidation, of police vans and armed guards constantly lurking the streets, the Iranians were already perfecting ways of getting their message out.

Now that protests, violent clashes and government crackdowns are regular events, those methods are helping the young Iranians organise protests and fight on the propaganda front.



Early hints of quiet opposition

"You can find me on Facebook," a man called Mehdi told me last year. I'd met him in the desert town of Yazd in central Iran and, in the typically hospitable nature of all Persians, he'd helped me translate the Farsi writing on my bus ticket.

"I thought those [social networking] sites were banned in Iran?" I said.

"Yes, but you can still view it through a proxy site. It means the government cannot see that you are looking at a banned site."

I asked him to show me what he meant, so we went to his work and he fired up a computer.

Mehdi showed me a number of different internet sites where you view a site within the site - hiding what you're really looking at.

He even confidently typed "Iran's nuclear installation sites" into a search engine within a fake websites and up popped a satellite map of reported nuclear sites. I found out that the young Persians also use these sites to download illegal Farsi rap which is critical of the President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

All over Iran, students are using these proxy websites and servers to send images of the protests to the outside world and keep in touch with one another.

Early this morning I spoke to a 21-year-old Tehran University student, Ashraf.

Ashraf confirmed the reports that the government has shut down the mobile phone network and blocked access to political sites and satellite television.

Satellite TV was already illegal in Iran, but in another daily act of defiance most rooftops have makeshift dishes propped up by bricks. Police occasionally raid homes and apartment blocks, confiscate the dishes and fine the owners, who then go out and put up a new one and keep watching.

Ashraf says the government has now found ways of blocking the satellite signals.

He says now all the channels, including BBC Persia, the US-sponsored Voice of America, and others including Arabic movie channels, just don't work any more. So the only option is to watch state-controlled media.

....

Ahmadinejad's Facebook Fan Page



I guess things are still in an uproar.

[Fluffy]

Sad, just sad.

[PistolKid]

When will people learn that dictatorships never work... the people will ALWAYS overthrow you and prevail. No matter what. The citizens outnumber the government.

[Alex]

It doesn't mean the citizen's will always have the courage to get up and Fight the Power.

[Fluffy]

Everyone should know that even if you have Dictatorship established, They will overthrow you or your sons will screw it over for your empire.

[lolKieck]

Those people don't care about their workforce or anybody, I bet there will be civil war in Iran someday, and America will support the rebels I think.

[Steel]

Yer, fucking america will get their nosey arses involved.
Not to offend any american players i talk to, because i like ya, i just dont like the nation on a whole.

[lolKieck]

Like Afghanistan, the rebels were getting their arses kicked by Hinds, so America sent them some Stingers and Russia had a lot of crashed Hinds then.
America will give out guns, attachments to them, rocket launchers I bet. Get on SF so we can talk.

[Fluffy]

Lol.

[ㅎㅎLocke]

In theory dictatorships work, in reality people want freedom.

[Fluffy]

In theory dictatorships work, in reality people want freedom.

In Theory, Communism is suppose to be a win win, where everyone works together to help each other for the country. In reality, it is a twisted dictatorship.

[Chaos]

It seems like school's crack down better on proxy sites, it's still easy to find one though. School's have RAT's in every computer that all staff have access to, I'm thinking invasion of privacy.
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_Administration_Tool
Sorry to change subject, lol