ok it's Iraq but it's interesting

Here is a link to a blog put up by Morgan on a different Blog. There are a number of entries that tie more to your topic than theirs. Enjoy.

Iran Tracks Down the Porn Industry

In its biggest crackdown of pornographic web sites, Iran has arrested 26 men and women on a wide array of charges from producing adult and child porn content to mocking Islamic beliefs.
The arrests, made by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards also mark another operational change for a complex military organization. Looking into activity of these IR Guards, I found that they not only make long-range missiles and run businesses in Iran, but they are also accused of supporting militants from Iraq and Lebanon and trying to militarize Iran's nuclear program.
The special guards new proactive approach on morality has closed down 90 porn sites, all based and run from Iran. They also have a type of make-shift website (I'll post a link at the bottom) that has regularly updated the details of the operation by publishing and broadcasting what it says are the "confessions" of the people accused of managing the sites.

It also has the terrifying statistic that over half of internet users in Iran have admitted searching for porn and about one third of them do it every day...

One of the porn boss heads operation run out of Tehran was recently accused of promoting orgies and incest, illegally uploading sex clips of young girls, and ridiculing Shia Islamic beliefs such as the death of the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad.

Another person arrested is accused of writing hardcore erotic stories, a taboo in a strictly censored country...

When searching the reasoning behind the big crackdown on other pro IR guard cites, one website eloborated on a psychoanalytical accessment on Iranian's reasoning behind these crimes against Islamic fundamnetalism. Mahmood states here that Iran has a very young population, many born after the 1979 Islamic Revolution that toppled the US-backed Shah, and brought to power a theocracy that opposed to Western values and liberties, while the colonial powers have brought too much of their dirty liberalism to stop its spread and scope.

Mahmood also emphasizes how the strict control of piety is difficult to enforce, however. Especially when it comes to the internet, I found it difficult to imagine how the IR guards can try to topple something as difficult as internet porn. Undoubtedly this trend can only become larger as an increasing amount of availibility will come to the country in the future, how will their measures escalate then? Iran's internet users number around 12 million now, and have been growing exceedingly in the past 2 years.


p.s. The website also claims that access to porn websites is blocked in Iran currenlty and will be sustained as vehemently as possible, which is a strange if not impossible claim to make.

Iran's Big Little Secret

(click on title for article)
Prostitution in the Persian Gulf has skyrocketed recently, and the number in Iran is staggering. In Tehran alone, there are an estimated 84,000 prostitutes, and an estimated 250 brothels. However, sexual slavery in Iran has become an international endeavour, so to speak—thousands more women are sold into sexual slavery abroad.

Most of the women and girls who are sold into prostitution are from rural areas, and are often sold by their parents to support drug habits (look at the post below this one). What's particularly sickening is that quite often, these young women are then bought at auctions. There are also scams in which Pakistani men will marry young, poor girls, then take them across the border into Pakistan and sell them to brothels.

Because prostitution is so lucrative for the ones who run it, many of whom are corrupt politicians or connected to them, it will be hard to quell the growing tide of human trafficking within and going out of Iran. In a country that outlaws pornography, one can still own slaves.

Afghan Opium, Iranian Drug Addicts, and a Worldwide Epidemic

Though a bit dated, this Washington Post article provides an interesting summary of Iran’s problem with opiates. About 60% of Afghan opium travels through Iran on its way to other foreign markets and, according to this Guardian article, there has been a fivefold increase between 2003 and 2008 in the amount of opium passing through Iran . But before the opium leaves the country, much of it is consumed as heroin and other opiates by the country’s huge population of drug addicts (200,000 known addicts; 2-4 million estimated users).

Although opium is not new to Iran – the elderly have traditionally used it for medicinal purposes – the use of opium derivatives among the young has really skyrocketed in the past decade. The reasons for this are several. First, when the Taliban forbid the production of opium in 2000-2001, this caused the price of opium to increase dramatically, and many stopped smoking and swallowing the drug and started injecting the comparatively cheaper heroin form. (It’s worth noting that at least in 2005 a hit of heroin was cheaper than beer or a sandwich.) Second, there is a “baby boom” generation that is now coming of age and there are nowhere near enough jobs available for them. Unemployment-related depression is a huge impetus to begin drug use and, according to the article, it is only exacerbated by the conservative lifestyle that has been forced upon this young generation. Without a vibrant club, music, and bar scene, there is very little entertainment to fill people’s free time and so they turn to the thrill of a drug high.

It seems that the government did not concern itself too much with this high rate of heroin consumption until HIV/AIDS began spreading through the drug-using community (about 2/3 of Iranians known to be living with AIDS were infected by contaminated drug paraphernalia). The government now offers subsidized needles and free methadone to drug addicts in an effort to combat the spread of the disease.

Unfortunately, it seems that Iran has been much more reluctant to deal with the sexual transmission of AIDS. Condom use is not encouraged, which is really a public health hazard when 70% of 15-20 year olds in Tehran are engaging in pre-marital sex. And as others have noted there is a huge problem with prostitution in Iran and that, combined with a large number of IDUs, makes for the perfect storm. No doubt drug users solicit the services of sex workers and perhaps some of these young women have taken up prostitution as a way to fund their drug habit or have been driven to drugs by their inability to find a job outside of prostitution. I think that if the government really wants to avoid the kind of exponential explosion in AIDS cases that countries like Russia have seen, they need to stop the prudery and start educating people about safer sex practices. Whether that will happen in a country as nominally conservative and religious as Iran, I don’t know. But the fact that drug use is no longer criminalized in the same way that it once was (after the Revolution, hundreds of thousands of drug users were thrown in jail) gives me some hope that the government will take a more pragmatic attitude toward sex education in the future. After all, what kind of moral reputation will Iran have if it falls victim to AIDS? And how can Iran hope to maintain its military might if the younger generation is weakened not only by drug use but by AIDS?

Oil Policy Iran and Iraq

This was an interesting article that compared the oil policies of both Iran and Iraq. In an effort to appease their populations, both the government of Iraq and Iran implemented a policy that allowed gas to be sold under half a dollar. This was ill advised because both governments ultimately had to import gasoline (odd, for gas-producing nations) and subsidize it to maintain those cheap prices.

Iraq changed their policy to raise the price of gas to above a dollar in 2006. By the time this article was written, in 2007, Iran tried to implement a similar reform, but riots broke out in response.

As a result, the gas prices between Iran and Iraq varied greatly, which led to a black market for Iranian oil. Sellers took Iranian oil and sold them at cheaper prices to Iraqis. Iran’s economic condition was suffering from these transactions because it was also the Iraqi population that benefited from Iran-subsidized oil.

This article clearly explained to me how a black market is encouraged when governments differently approach the issue of, for example, oil policy. From the perspective of the Iranian-oil dealers, it is interesting how simply jumping a border and entering a different “space” can promise so much more profit than doing the same activity in the previous space. This, of course, is not a new idea.

Space, in this sense, is obviously key in determining black market activity. It was the policy differences of these countries that determined the supply and demand for black market oil.

How to Spot a Persian Prostitute

Unintentionally, I found a great article relating back to geography and space for prostitutes in Iran. Where are they?

Qom may have become a prostitution hot spot due to the abundance of shrines. Young female runaways with no shelter come to the city knowing they can take refuge at holy sites by sleeping in rooms intended for pilgrims. They have no way of making a living, so after awhile they get involved with the sex trade. The city's young theological students and transient tourists form the main clientele.

It is interesting to note how the sacred space in Qom is being used in a very unholy way. Yet, it is prime real estate if one thinks about it. People look like they have legitimate reasons to be going to the shrine. It is free to not only have a place to sleep at night but a place that many people travel through so the girls can find clientele very easily. In Tehran, they stand by traffic circles in the suburbs. Where they are advertising their services are notable, they are public spaces around the city in Qom or outside the city in Tehran. It makes sense in Tehran because of the fact that it is the capital and religious/political spheres are more concentrated there.

What makes this noteworthy is the fact that even though Iran tries to crack down on all terrible things and is proud of the pureness of the country, it is the young theological students that are taking out the women. The repression made them ironically go to holy public places to seek out immoral activity. While it doesn’t talk much of who and where the clients are, it does say something that no place can ever get rid of the oldest profession in the world.

I also find it sad that since the rules are so strict and the unemployment rate reported by Iran in 2008 is 12.5% (probably higher) that women cannot find jobs. They need a means of living and have to turn to this as an option. The British Journal of Verneal Diseases said that Chlamydia was at common in Tehran and a city called Bandar Abbas.

The results indicate that in Iran prostitutes are commonly infected with C trachomatis and are probably a major reservoir of chlamydial genital infection.

If someone is picking up hookers in Tehran, it wouldn't be before long until it spread in other places.

The prostitutes there are very modest and the transaction rather efficient. In other places such as the US, women will go after the men, drawing attention to themselves rather visibly. There is very little subtleness in various Western countries compared the Iranian women. Culture still affects interactions of prostitution in both cases.

The Internet, Pornography and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard

The above link goes to a story in recent weeks that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards in Iran have added another duty to their already hefty work load (aside from the push for nuclear weapons, running Iranian businesses and allegedly supporting militants in places such as Iraq and Syria): fighting organized internet crimes. This includes arresting 26 men and women for their part in producing anything from pornography to mocking Islam, all posted on the internet.

Three of those arrested were Iranians living abroad, allegedly tricked into returning to Iran where they were arrested. Perhaps most interesting, in my opinion, is that the task force within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard say that the group was supported by foreign governments, including the all time favorite scapegoats of the US, Canada, and Israel. Sources, however, believe that the web sites shut down were simply hosted by private companies in foreign countries. Related to the belief that foreign countries actually financially backed the websites is that many in the Iranian government fear "the US, instead of going for a regime change policy through military invasion, is trying to undermine the young population by instilling liberal values, seen as decadent in the Islamic Republic." The fear of the internet in general is also because "the internet has revolutionized young people's lifestyle so dramatically that some hardliners, including conservative bloggers, have called for much tougher regulation and policing of the web."

Aside from the questions of regulating things on the internet, which is not unique to Iran but a common concern throughout the entire world, and the interesting belief that the US would use society to instill revolution, the very fact that Iran created a special task force to combat immoral use of the internet is important. Iranian sociologist Saeed Madani was quoted in the article: "Over half of internet users in Iran have admitted searching for porn and about one third of them do it every day." Even the Guards numbers are fairly high: "one of the busted porn sites had 300,000 registered Iranian users and some of the adult video clips were downloaded at least six million times." There is obviously a demand for pornography (perhaps because of the conservative stance toward sexuality-among other things-in Iran). And the Iranian government sees this as a significant threat to its Islamic society, although I do wonder how accurate those statistics are and why the Guard would admit to those numbers. Oh yes, to blame the US and Israel for ruining the morals of the Islamic Republic of Iran.