Tehran ahead of Europe in the blogging stakes!

A couple of PR and international political tit bits…

Via Buzzmachine

AP reports on Iranian bloggers who are facing a crackdown by the government. Some have already been imprisoned on jumped up charges while others restrict their posts to innocuous, non-political material.

According to AP,

However, the most interesting thing in the article is found in the closing paragraphs which reports that:

“Despite the crackdown, most Iranian bloggers say the government is not interested in eliminating blogging. Instead, they believe authorities want to use blogging to further their own goals.

Farid Pouya, a Belgian-based Iranian blogger, notes the government has just launched a competition for the best blogs. The subjects: the Islamic revolution and the Quran.

“The government has observed carefully and learned that blogs are important … and they want to capitalize on that,” he said. “They want to lead the movement, they want to control it.”

Interesting isn’t it? Aside from Tehran’s desire to control bloggers … a hard-line, Axis of Evil nation (TM G. Bush) is embracing blogging!

Meanwhile, Nevillle Hobson reports that most of Europe ’s business leaders haven’t got a clue about blogging!

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Reading Eric Hobsbawm’s amazing history of the 20th Century, Age of Extremes, I came across a startling fact. Apparently, during the Cuban Missile Crisis - possibly the closest the West came to mutually assured destruction – America’s removal of its nuclear warheads from Turkey (in exchange for the Soviet removal from Cuba) wouldn’t have affected the US’s strategic nuclear capability at all. America's hard-line stance was, in essence, a major PR exercise to bolster Kennedy’s public standing and America’s international presence!

Tehran already engages the second most stringent internet censorship after China (relying on US commercial software ironically!).