Yesterday morning, I experienced transnational censorship,
firsthand.
While researching Iranian oil output (‘vis-à-vis Asian buyers
circumventing the EU embargo), I stumbled upon a Tehran
Times piece, titled “Asia’s
Imports of Iranian crude to regain levels prior to EU ban.”
Attributed to Reuters, the article was bullish on the
Islamic Republic’s export recovery, as Japan and South Korea
accelerate energy purchase.
Here’s the trick. The copy that’s live on the Tehran Time’s
website is conspicuously absent 325 words from the
version posted at Reuters.com. (Understanding editors are often
forced to “adjust” copy from news agencies like Reuters and AP,
I’ve contacted the TT to confirm the decision making
process.)
The section that’s been erased from copy at the Tehran Times
begins, as follows:
Still, the recovery will not return Iran’s exports to last
year’s levels, as buyers have to ensure they have cut shipments
sufficiently to stay eligible for a waiver from the sanctions
imposed by the United States. Washington has given waivers to the
top four Asian buyers that come up for renewal later this year.
Even after the resumption, Japan’s purchases will be about 25
percent lower than a year ago, while those by South Korea will
about 20 percent less. Though India’s MRPL is able to raise imports
because of its new facility, it plans to cut shipments by 20
percent this year.
These are sobering statistics when you consider that Asian
markets consume
more than half of Iranian oil exports. Thus the deletion of the
gloomier figures, and corresponding analysis. (For the record,
The Tehran Times is not a “government” news outlet.
Rather, it’s a private English language daily, created in 1979 to
“export the
ideas of the revolution.”)
As you might have guessed, the Iranian government wields a blunt
edge when it comes to the suppression of information that’s
potentially harmful to governance or insulting to a medieval
construction of Islamic mores. A vast spectrum of media is subject
to restriction – television, print, media, radio, film…even art
galleries and cultural exhibitions. You name it, they’ll edit,
expunge, or otherwise eliminate it.
Since the Green Revolution, some of the world’s most popular
websites have been off limits. Reporting for The Guardian
in 2010, Robert Tait wrote
that edicts have been issued against sites such as Amazon.com, YouTube, Wikipedia, IMDB.com and The New York Times.
Anyone who attempts to access these sites receives a simple
negation: “The
requested page is forbidden.”
Jamillah Knowles, of TheNextWeb.com,
reports that stiff moral values and an iron grip on dissent
have cut off the Iranian people from approximately one quarter of
the internet. She writes, specifically:
In the news sector 32% of the world’s top news sites are
blocked. Currently, BBC
News, The
Guardian, Fox News,
The Huffington
Post and the New
York Post sites are blocked, but
interestingly CNN, Reuters, and Bloomberg are still
accessible.
As reported last December, Iran is now constructing a “national”
internet that would effectively detach Iranian cyberspace from the
rest of the world…Wide Web. Similar to the parochial intranet
architecture raised in North Korea, Iran’s project would
consist of an insular data network offered within the sovereign
borders of the Islamic Republic. It would also represent a whole
new take on political censorship.
(Of interest, the website viewdns.info has compiled a
raw list of websites that are censored in Iran and a test function to determine
if a particular site is firewalled, with a tip of the hat to Ms.
Knowles.)
This is most unfortunate. Ultimately, the ruling regime will not
fall absent international electronic subterfuge – not of the
Stuxnet-sort. 2009’s Green Revolution was catalyzed by a diffusion
of electronic information within a virtual public square. Consider
then, a nation of 75 million souls where more than two-thirds of
that population is under the age of 30. These 50 million young
Iranians don’t remember Khomeini’s revolution, but they know plenty
about civil oppression, mounting poverty, and increasing isolation
from the international community.
Now imagine these young men and women are suddenly and
completely severed from the internet…from that virtual public
square that allows them to long for something better. It makes my
trivial experience with The Tehran Times pale in
comparison.
Writing in the 19th century, manufacturer and British
MP, Richard Cobden, wrote of commerce as the “grand panacea.” In
his words:
“Not a bale of merchandise leaves our shores, but it bears
the seeds of intelligence and fruitful thought to the members of
some less enlightened community; not a merchant visits our seats of
manufacturing industry, but he returns to his own country the
missionary of freedom, peace, and good government – whilst our
steam boats, that now visit every port in Europe, and our
miraculous railroads, that are the talk of all nations, are the
advertisements and vouchers for the value of enlightened
union.”
With apologies for the paternalism of the latter, we’ve entered
an internet age. Substitute “commerce” for “information.” The
dissemination of ideas and identities will ultimately unseat
illiberal and illegitimate regimes. Ideas are simply more powerful
than bombs or computer worms. Today’s “grand panacea” is
communication, plain and simple. Attempts to censor such exchange
speak to an inherent fear, made manifest in states such as
Iran.
Once upon a time, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty was developed
to provide
news, information, and analysis “where the free flow information is
either banned by government authorities or not fully developed.”
Lucky for us taxpayers, the internet has largely privatized that
mission.
Time to win the war of ideas. And keep the proverbial
lights on in Iran.
