Reward for Iranian protesters: torture and rape

From the London Times, reports of the torture and beatings of many protesters:

Ardeshir — not his real name — is one of scores, perhaps hundreds, of detainees who have been raped and tortured by their jailers in the past three months in what appears to be a systematic attempt to break their will. Mehdi Karoubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi, the defeated presidential candidates, accused a regime, which claims to champion Islamic values, of raping opposition supporters.
Times continue to be tough for those seeking reform, as reported by Dr. Fatemeh Keshavarz of Windows on Iran. The battles include cyber-battles, as reported by Dr. Keshavarz, who provided this information in a mass emailing to which I subscribe:

All signs point to the fact that difficult - and decisive - days may be ahead in Iran. But the good news first. For years, Iranians who are ranked as number four bloggers in the world, have been prevented from visiting the sites that the Iranian government has considered containing information contrary to its interests and filtered. Those who devised creative ways to break the filter and get into such sites, are usually in danger of being found and subjected to jail and other punishments. What is most amazing is that the Iranian government considers the existence of undesirable websites as "foreign interference" in its internal affairs.

But there is also some good news of a new work-around to avoid detection and capture (and, often, torture):

Well, this state of affairs may have been ended once and for all. Using Google, an Iranian by the name Mehdi Saharkhiz has come up with an internet tool which he has called the "Green Machine." The Green Machine! Good News for the Greens in Iran

Here is the site that gives you instruction for downloading the Green Machine. According to Mr. Mousavi's facebook, after you download the Green Machine, you can visit any website - filtered or otherwise - without being detected.

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Flickr the Censorer

Flickr is a private company. Therefore, it is free to censor photos and comments, which it apparently does with pride and gusto. Flickr is a private company, of course, so it is no subject to any legal argument regarding "free speech." At some point, however, after tens of millions of people adopt Flickr as their photo and comment community, it does seem to function like a government. But, again, Flickr is a private company and it can do what it wants. We have the same potential problem with many private entities that now control the flow of huge amounts of information (e.g., Google). It will be interesting to see how this situation evolves, especially to the extent that these private companies seek to distort the flow of information for private gain or for capricious exercise of power. It's not like it hasn't happened before--think of the mass media. But also consider the telecoms: one increasingly hot angle on this issue is net neutrality.

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Why institute a blog comment policy that prohibits preaching?

Here at Dangerous Intersection, I recently instituted a new wrinkle to the commenting policy. The new policy prohibits comments to the extent that they constitute "preaching." It goes against my grain to censor. I want conversations at the site to be vigorous and from the heart, even when they get…

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