I have no idea what is life in Iran and Syria, but in my case this is how it goes. I live in Kazakhstan, which is a developing post-USSR country. Our economy largely grows thanks to exports of crude oil, and to lesser extent, natural gas, uranium, textiles and livestock. Our country is heavily de-industrialized comparing to USSR period. Politically our country is a mild dictatorship - we are on 137th place on Democracy Index (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index), listed as "authoritarian regime". By comparison, Syria is 157th and Iran is 159th. Let's take some other international criterion, measuring economic, social and cultural development in Kazakhstan. We are on 68th place on Human Development Index (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index), with Iran being 88th and Syria being 119th. According to ROSSTAT (Russian statistics agency), in my country 26.7% are most in need, 66.8% have low income, 6.4% have lower than average income and 0.1% have average income.
Now you hopely have a slight idea, what is it to live in Kazakhstan. Now the question is how easy it is to get the best from FreedomBox. There is no plug computers in our shops, i failed to find any. According to Amazon policy (https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_nodeid_596184_restrict?nodeId=596184&#restrict) it does not ship electronics to Kazakhstan, Iran and Syria. Ebay shipping depends on seller, but i'm not sure about any successful shipping of electronics in my country through Ebay. Anyway shipping is always expensive. Last time i bought paperback books from Amazon, shipping cost was almost the same, as the cost of all books combined. I also failed to find plug computers on Russian and Ukrainian online shops, but i don't think if they were there, it would help Syrians and Iranians. So basically the idea is it is impossible to get plug computer in Kazakhstan without workarounds, and judging by all the factors, it should be even harder to get it in Iran and Syria, but your mileage may vary. The way i want to get it is through my friend, who currently study in UK. He will bring my first DreamPlug in February. How to make plug computers available in countries of capitalist periphery is a major question on its own, and i don't know the answer to that. Possibly, the only solution is to make plug computers vastly popular in capitalist metropolis (developed countries), so there would finally be plug computers in computer shops in my country. _______________________________________________ Freedombox-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss
