How About "Hit and Rooz"?

Via BoingBoing, we learn that many Iranian bloggers are protesting a Net crackdown there today by changing the names of their sites to "Emrooz," a site banned by authorities. Marc Johnson wrote about the websites the Mullahs don't want you to see in a piece for our August ish.

Comments

[matthew hogan]

Shareef don't like it, rockin' da Caasbah, rockin' da Casbah

[Bill]

When are we going to invade these guys? Does anybody else think that if we had to "liberate" one of the "Axis of Evil" countries after Afghanistan, that it should have been Iran. I think winning the "hearts and minds" of the Iranians would have been easier. Is there any country in the world other than Iran where you can hear a young person refer to the US as the "great savior"? I think Iranian youth like America more than Americans. How about we send young lefties to Iran, and take an equal number of young Iranians in trade?

(This thread is dead. Maybe my comments will liven it up. I can think of a few H&R regulars that would love to flame me for my sentiments above.)

[Rick Barton]

The situation in Iran is very fluid. Iran has real internal pressure for a freer society and a public discourse that is open in a way that was very unlike Iraq, Cuba, the Soviet Union until the very end. The reformers complained that the "axis of evil" speech hurt their cause. Note also that Iran has real elections. Those in power limit there effect when the wrong folks win, but they can't completely negate them.

If you want to help, go to their chat rooms:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=Iranian+chat+rooms&btnG=Google+Search

Listen to what they have to say and tell them about the wonders of free enterprise and civil liberty. Tell them that the US government does hideous and stupid things that most private citizens would never do. Relate to them our struggles against the expansion of power by our own government and how much better it is to fight against state power when individual liberties are guaranteed

There are many Iranian entrepreneurs and others over here who travel back and forth and communicate with the Iranians back home. Some in the Iranian government complain that are a bad influence on the polity of Iran. Good! Let's encourage more of it. Our government should let more of them in. History provides many examples of tyranny wilting when it interfaces with liberty.

But, it's sure that the hands of anti-Americans in Iran are strengthened by aggressive, hostile US government action