The absurdities of censorship
Although Facebook is banned in Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei has his own FB profile, and he even "likes" Facebook. Go figure. The world of un-freedom is full of such sort of absurdities. In countries like Iran and China, the media are under strict control, but people would always find ways to bypass the firewalls, and they would always be at least one step ahead of the authorities.
One of the most notable countries in that respect is China. All media are directly submitted to the orders of the Propaganda department of the Chinese Communist Party. Which, of course, also has a FB page of its own. The new government has recently concentrated media control under this single huge department, and it would be easier to answer the question what's allowed by the new legislation, rather than what is forbidden.
And so: it is forbidden to criticise the government, to even mention the words "human rights" and "democracy", to discuss the personal life of the Chinese politicians... After the latest elections, the new Chinese president noticed that the world media were paying too much attention to his public appearances with his wife. The Propaganda department of the CCP soon expressed their displeasure with the media attention, and they instructed the local media to stop feeding material to their foreign counterparts.
Foreign channels like BBC and CNN are of course banned in China, satellite television is banned, Google and Youtube are also banned. But of course, tens of millions of Chinese internet users are easily able to download and install illegal software that would allow them to bypass the internet firewall. Things have reached to a point that even some government officials are compelled to use such software to bypass... the bans they themselves have imposed! Including access to Google.
A similar situation exists in Iran, where the authorities are doing efforts to create a local version of the Internet, "Halal Internet", the clean Internet. Because all media in Iran are supposed to only serve the Islamic values.
There are absurd stories coming from Iran, related to this ban. For instance in some places even the word "dance" and all derivatives are banned from use (because, you know, dancing is the Devil's work). And that has forced a famous Iranian photographer to entitle a photo of a dancing lady, using such euphemisms as "joy" and "jubilation".
Satellite TV is of course banned in Iran, too. But the authorities are simply helpless to remove all the satellite dishes from people's roofs. And so the first thing you'd see after flying low over Tehran would be... a sea of dishes! Meanwhile, the book companies use a neat trick in their fight against censorship. They issue the more "dangerous" books after dating them back in time, because until about a decade ago (before Ahmadinejad), such publications were still allowed.
In China, Iran, and partly Russia, the media are usually controlled through two channels: through direct order from above, and through auto-censorship. But there is a third way that dominates the public space in many post-communist countries. In those places, media control functions through the concentration of economic levers of power in the hands of a few. But still, at least no one openly blocks foreign channels or the Internet there. That is why it is an act of stunning short-sightedness on part of some Internet users to praise and pronounce blessings to regimes such as the Castro regime in Cuba, or the regime of the Ayatollahs in Iran, or Chavez' regime in Venezuela. It seems to be very fashionable around the Internet these days to hear anti-capitalist slogans, which in some absurd automatic way proclaim various dictators to be the "good guys" just because they are opposed to the liberal West - even though they are so eager to impose total censorship on everything in their countries, including the Internet itself. I'm sure most of us can see the enormous irony in that.
One of the most notable countries in that respect is China. All media are directly submitted to the orders of the Propaganda department of the Chinese Communist Party. Which, of course, also has a FB page of its own. The new government has recently concentrated media control under this single huge department, and it would be easier to answer the question what's allowed by the new legislation, rather than what is forbidden.
And so: it is forbidden to criticise the government, to even mention the words "human rights" and "democracy", to discuss the personal life of the Chinese politicians... After the latest elections, the new Chinese president noticed that the world media were paying too much attention to his public appearances with his wife. The Propaganda department of the CCP soon expressed their displeasure with the media attention, and they instructed the local media to stop feeding material to their foreign counterparts.
Foreign channels like BBC and CNN are of course banned in China, satellite television is banned, Google and Youtube are also banned. But of course, tens of millions of Chinese internet users are easily able to download and install illegal software that would allow them to bypass the internet firewall. Things have reached to a point that even some government officials are compelled to use such software to bypass... the bans they themselves have imposed! Including access to Google.
A similar situation exists in Iran, where the authorities are doing efforts to create a local version of the Internet, "Halal Internet", the clean Internet. Because all media in Iran are supposed to only serve the Islamic values.
There are absurd stories coming from Iran, related to this ban. For instance in some places even the word "dance" and all derivatives are banned from use (because, you know, dancing is the Devil's work). And that has forced a famous Iranian photographer to entitle a photo of a dancing lady, using such euphemisms as "joy" and "jubilation".
Satellite TV is of course banned in Iran, too. But the authorities are simply helpless to remove all the satellite dishes from people's roofs. And so the first thing you'd see after flying low over Tehran would be... a sea of dishes! Meanwhile, the book companies use a neat trick in their fight against censorship. They issue the more "dangerous" books after dating them back in time, because until about a decade ago (before Ahmadinejad), such publications were still allowed.
In China, Iran, and partly Russia, the media are usually controlled through two channels: through direct order from above, and through auto-censorship. But there is a third way that dominates the public space in many post-communist countries. In those places, media control functions through the concentration of economic levers of power in the hands of a few. But still, at least no one openly blocks foreign channels or the Internet there. That is why it is an act of stunning short-sightedness on part of some Internet users to praise and pronounce blessings to regimes such as the Castro regime in Cuba, or the regime of the Ayatollahs in Iran, or Chavez' regime in Venezuela. It seems to be very fashionable around the Internet these days to hear anti-capitalist slogans, which in some absurd automatic way proclaim various dictators to be the "good guys" just because they are opposed to the liberal West - even though they are so eager to impose total censorship on everything in their countries, including the Internet itself. I'm sure most of us can see the enormous irony in that.