Censoring Iranian (and Palestinian and Houthi) news sites is un-American

By Kent R. Kroeger (June 28, 2021)

On Tuesday, June 22, the US government “seized” several Iranian, Palestinian and Houthi news websites, alleging their involvement in spreading “disinformation” and calling them a “threat to national security”.

DUBAI, June 22 (Reuters) — The U.S. Justice Department said on Tuesday it seized 36 Iranian-linked websites, many of them associated with either disinformation activities or violent organizations, taking them offline for violating U.S. sanctions.

Several of the sites were back online within hours with new domain addresses.

Writer’s note: It should be acknowledged that the websites blocked by this U.S. action were on servers owned or controlled by U.S. companies — hence, a violation of U.S. sanctions against Iran.
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There was a time when another country — the Soviet Union — had the genuine ability to, for all practical purposes, destroy my country in an all-out nuclear war. [That ability, in what is now Russia, still exists today — but somehow the threat doesn’t seem as palpable as it did before the downfall of the Soviet Union.]

The Soviet Union was a legitimate superpower, hostile to the U.S. and its allies, and armed with around 5,000 nuclear warheads in the late 1970s (with a good number pointed directly at the U.S. mainland).

As a teenager at the time in Cedar Falls, Iowa, I was able to connect my Heathkit shortwave…