Iran Removed From All Major Travel Sites
airliners.net
airliners.net
Who's putting up a wall now?
It's funny that when it came to USSR and China, we believed that people-to-people contact would improve relations. Why doesn't the same apply to Cuba and Iran?
I'm not sure where Cuba fits in with my little theory though.
[citation needed]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Americanism#Iran
Not all Iranians dislike Americans, but to say that there aren't any who would like you dead, is naive.
The door swings both ways, though!
BTW, as citizens of a democracy, we are all responsible for the geopolitical actions of our government.
I mean, why would Iran dislike us? We didn't go help the UK overthrow their government and install a dictator or anything... OH, WAIT A SECOND.
It's not like we invaded both their neighboring countries and set up permanent military bases.... OH, WAIT...
The US does not have the moral high ground, but to think that just because you disagree with the government that most Iranians will just look past that... I don't think that's a safe bet.
Yeah, both their neighbouring countries who they were mortal enemies with. They should have been pleased about that, if anything.
Their influence in Iraq has skyrocketed, one of the many reasons the Iraq war was such an idiotic idea.
Are you kidding me? Have you seen the Rick Steve's special on Iran? I'm bringing RS up because anecdotal evidence wouldn't fly much around here. But please open your mind and take a look.
Every account I've read of travel in Iran has been very positive. It is a much safer country to travel in than, say, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, etc.
The 2010 statistics indicate a homicide rate of 21.9 per 100,000 population. That's as bad as Brazil, worse than Kenya, and slightly worse than The Democratic Republic of Congo. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentiona..., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Washington,_D.C.).
For perspective, the city I live in has a murder rate of 1.9, only slightly higher than the national average.
For example, while Brazil has a per capita homicide rate of ~23 per 100,000 the state of Alagoas has a homicide rate of 60.3, and the Federal District has one of 34.1.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Brazilian_states_by_mur...
Sure, parts of Brazil are a war-zone, as are parts of Mexico in the bitter battle over drugs, but that just skews the average up for the rest of the country, meaning Washington D.C. is worse than many parts of Brazil.
To start splitting hairs, I bet there's parts of Washington D.C. that are on par with the worst parts of Brazil.
Sure the Marine probably should have known better than to visit Iran having a government background, but if it was really a nice place to visit, shit like that wouldn't happen.
http://c90adventures.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view...
Edit: to clarify, 'no fly zone' has a specific meaning that doesn't apply here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-fly_zone
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine%E2%80%93American_War
And a despotic government with no interest in war, just the subjugation of their own - and they'd still be a democratic secular republic if it weren't for the CIA orchestrated coup in '53 that resulted in the 79 coup, overthrowing the shah puppet govt.
Iran has been funding and aiding al-Assad in the Syrian civil war. Hamas was, for awhile, funded almost entirely by Iran. Hezbollah has also largely been funded and supported by Iran. There is evidence that Iran provided weapons to the Iraqi insurgency during the Iraq War.
Here's a whole wikipedia article on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_and_state_terrorism
However, my government have contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Your assumption that Iran would have done worse things if only it could have appears to be completely without basis.
Then I must have misunderstood your point. Could you clarify what you are trying to say with "Iran has not been an aggressor in a war in the last 150 years. How does that compare to your own country? I know it puts mine to shame."
It is clear to me that Iran possesses the motive to put the US to shame when it comes to being violent and oppressive, but it does not have, thank goodness, the means or opportunity.
> Your assumption that Iran would have done worse things if only it could have appears to be completely without basis.
Not at all. Look what it does when it does have the means and opportunity. Rushdie's fatwa has already been pointed out to you, and you can look at everything that Hezbollah is doing around the globe under the orders of Khamenei.
But also, if you look into the history of those nutty groups, they started out largely against the occupation by Israel and, "indirectly", the US. They were the fruits of unrest in the region stirred, then by Israel, and now by the US.
If it's of any lesson, there will be more nutty groups coming out of this mess.
And one by my partner on traveling as a foreign woman in Iran: http://www.sarahandniall.com/2011/09/traveling-as-woman-in-i...
Should the rest of the world place economic sanctions on the US?
Please recall that the US backed Saddam against Iran once upon a time.
I can't say I like what the US is doing with drone strikes and repeated, unwinnable wars, but don't think for a minute that Iran would be a beneficient world hegemon. The world would be an awful place to live.
That's a supposition for which you have no support. The fact is that non-religious States have murdered far more civilians in the past 100 years than any religion has.
That's not a defense of religion. It's a simple statement of historical fact.
> That's not a defense of religion. It's a simple statement of historical fact.
It's also completely irrelevant.
That's aside from all this other stuff, of course: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_and_state_terrorism
And the fact that the Iranian way of dealing with peaceful demonstrations in its own country is to use truncheons and snipers.
And the cozy relations between Iran and North Korea, especially in regards to nuclear weapons and missile development.
The Iranians may be, overall, nice people, but their regime is one of the worst on the globe.
The US's history of death squads in Central America is no different. I see no moral difference between the Iranian government and the US government.
Government, no matter whose government, is a brute. At the moment, the US is the biggest brute on the planet targeting smaller brutes. Like all governments, it also appears to be targeting its own citizens.
Let's clean up our backyard before we go bitching about the junked cars in other yards.
[edit: i looked at ita. it says that it supplies kayak and google flights. google flights shows flights to tehran (i checked). kayak does not (according to the article). that does not seem to support the idea that ita is filtering data, unless it is doing so at the client's request.]
http://stackoverflow.com/a/4612221/470339
"you probably want to connect to somebody a bit more down the food chain, with a better API."
Obviously I have no idea how anyone does it, but it seems plausible that it is the data providers rather than consumer-facing sites. Look at the ITA site:
Although a simple comparison the jist of it is no different than being in a standoff: 2 people pointing guns at each other and one side demands, "give me your gun".
Because nukes aren't the problem. Protecting US interests by destabilising Iran is the problem.
Iran is a signatory and it has obligations under that treaty that it is not fulfilling.
And being vigilant on Iran is not just protecting US interests. It's protecting anyone who believes in freedom and liberal values. If Iran had nuclear weapons then it would be the second most awful world power to have them. It would be much worse in practice than NK having them though, because it actively sponsors terrorism around the world.
I have no agenda I am nor pro Iran nor against, because I simply do not have enough facts or knowledge. I hear from the media they are terrible and almost as bad as North Korea... But what if they are not right? Can a US publication come out and say: "Hey Iranian leaders might feel they need nuclear weapons because otherwise they are helpless against an invasion by supreme powers just the Iraq and other nations were". Can a US news outlet make such a claim? Maybe some editorials here and there but the reality is present media is not entirely different than cold war Soviet media. Besides the obvious differences that you and I can both see, differences on agenda setting are not that great when it comes to SPECIFIC issues like Iran.
What would have happened if Iran was left alone? Who knows. What if US policy was to say: fine go make nukes but know the obvious, if you do anything stupid WW3 will be fought over the middleeast (and probably will be the case regardless or somewhere in Asia).
>Iran is a signatory and it has obligations under that treaty that it is not fulfilling.
This point I completely agree with. IF they are a signatory they are obliged...However, does the US adhere to every deal they signed ? Does any nation ? We bend our own constitution when we see fit.
We detain people for infinity without charging them in black prisons.
We fly an army of killer robots over any nation we please as long as they do not have the might or spine to respond and our tied to our foreign aid lifeline - where 1/7 people killed are children and 50% are innocent (according to a recent report also covered 2 days ago here on HN).
So who are we to tell them about obligations and sticking to the rules?
These are very worthwhile questions. I've spent a lot of time investigating this subject and have come to certain conclusions. It would be foolish for anyone to believe me just because I've made these assertions on a forum on the internet, so I would encourage anyone interested to do their own research and come to their own conclusions.
If you want to be sad about the punishment of the innocent Iranian people, be sad that Khomeini's thugs murdered, jailed or otherwise incapacitated all the real liberals during that country's revolution.
Iran and Israel have been the only major sources of stability in the region in the past twenty years, surely that's certainly good. If they hadn't had to endure sanctions then Iran would be one of the shining examples of prosperity in the middle east, however a bloody Shi'ite vs Sunni showdown would have likely occurred by now.
It is deeply sad for the Iranian people who are generally well educated and cultured that they have such a government. The west [EDIT: I really mean the UK and US] has a substantial case to answer in bringing about the Iranian revolution, but it is more of a shame that Khomenei expunged the liberal and secular movements after that revolution.
Sucks to be innocent victom of a conflict that you didn't do anything for it. I can not even do a anything to change either.