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Tell HN: A hacker's life is in danger, your awareness may be life saving

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Re: Tell HN: A hacker's life is in danger, your awareness may be life saving

#91

Post by pencilguin »

whearyou wrote: post #72
watwut wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still don't really understand the historical situation in which the mullahs were able to come to power. Easy. There was US sponsored coup against democratically elected government. It strengthened monarchy which was then seen as illegitimate by large parts of population. It also made the same parts of population dislike and distrust Americans. So when there was yet another coup, many people supported it. A lot of…

What about the part where they purged and executed every one of their allies - socialists, liberals, even opposing cliques in their own theocracy - after the overthrew the Shah?

They learned that from Stalin. He even purged all the communists.

Re: Tell HN: A hacker's life is in danger, your awareness may be life saving

#93

Post by krapp »

trhr wrote: post #89
krapp wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Hate speech can't exist on the internet, because words on a computer screen cannot physically threaten you." If this is an example of the "intellectualism" you're championing, then honestly nothing of value was lost.

I edited to remove this, because it detracts from the point, despite the fact that the Supreme Court has specifically ruled that ALL hate speech legislation in the U.S. is unconstitutional. Whether or not "nothing of value was lost" depends on how much you value the freedom of Iranians. Personally, I only downvote content that violates the rules or is spam. Since a downvote is the first step to having content hidden,…

You're not being persecuted by state actors. Your views, as far as I can tell, aren't even that heterodox.

But trying to derail a thread about an actual dissident to focus on cancel culture and deplatforming is obnoxious and worth the crits you're taking, IMO. If that serves some dark CIA agenda, I guess I'll have to take that risk.

Re: Tell HN: A hacker's life is in danger, your awareness may be life saving

#94

Post by tgma »

pessimizer wrote: post #87
yieldcrv wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1979 The prior government was installed by the US because the government before that wanted to audit BP - the oil company - and cant have that! The only citizens extreme enough to correct this happened to also be religious extremists and now they run the country ever since

> The only citizens extreme enough to correct this happened to also be religious extremists That's not what happens; it's that in these neo-colonialist situations, all secular dissidents can be imprisoned and murdered (with US help), but religious dissidents can't safely be. So when the revolution succeeds, the religious take over. Same thing happened with Morsi in Egypt.

It's not exactly that simple: Islamists (and religion in general) is also perceived to be an antidote to Marxism. At the height of the Cold War and bordering Soviet Union, the west resorted to creating and supporting religious groups "Mujahedin" in Afghanistan (Taliban v0.1) and Khomeini in Iran.

The Late Shah of Iran is on record constantly warning about "Red regression" (referring to Communists) and "Black regression" (referring to Islamic fundamentalists) as threats of the nation and the 1979 revolution succeeded by them joining forces (and the commies got the axe afterwards). Funny that in the western world, we are seeing the extreme left/woke anti-Americans and the Islamists join forces again too, despite being cut of very different clothes: the general American left narrative is silent on issues of Islam (particularly bad when it comes to women and LGBT) as it contradicts their own narrative of fighting "Islamophobia". I doubt this ends well.

Re: Tell HN: A hacker's life is in danger, your awareness may be life saving

#95

Post by trhr »

krapp wrote: post #93
trhr wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I edited to remove this, because it detracts from the point, despite the fact that the Supreme Court has specifically ruled that ALL hate speech legislation in the U.S. is unconstitutional. Whether or not "nothing of value was lost" depends on how much you value the freedom of Iranians. Personally, I only downvote content that violates the rules or is spam. Since a downvote is the first step to having content hidden,…

You're not being persecuted by state actors. Your views, as far as I can tell, aren't even that heterodox. But trying to derail a thread about an actual dissident to focus on cancel culture and deplatforming is obnoxious and worth the crits you're taking, IMO. If that serves some dark CIA agenda, I guess I'll have to take that risk.

It's not derailing, you're just too interested in playing political football to understand the worldwide implications of these platforms handling moderation.

The U.S. Constitution grants some of the strongest guarantees of free speech in the world. Most other nations have laws limiting speech that would violate our Constitution. Forcing these platforms to play by our Constitution is a big win for the entire world, because Facebook routinely over-moderates topics of public interest in places like Iran, too.

https://www.oversightboard.com/decision/FB-P93JPX02/ https://www.oversightboard.com/decision/IG-2PJ00L4T/

They are censoring people _everywhere_, but American snowflakes would rather protect their sensitive ears from unpopular opinions than allow everyone to speak freely everywhere in the world.

Re: Tell HN: A hacker's life is in danger, your awareness may be life saving

#96

Post by pedalpete »

ShredKazoo wrote: post #49

This appears to be a good subreddit for following protests and other developments: https://www.reddit.com/r/NewIran/

Awesome. I was commenting to a friend yesterday that it seems the news attention on Iran has dropped in the last week. Of course, our news cycles only have so much attention span for far away places, though somehow they can continue to talk ad nauseum about a potential conflict with China, or a Jan 6th.

Re: Tell HN: A hacker's life is in danger, your awareness may be life saving

#97

Post by pedalpete »

mathspaniel wrote: post #40

Please do not do this. There is nothing that anyone on HN can do to help, and raising awareness may bring undue attention from the Iranian authorities. Although I'm sure this wasn't your intent, this thread amounts to rubbernecking of an incarcerated man in a perilous situation.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/martin-nie...

What we can do is try and support everyone who is taking action to better their place in the world. If all we have is our attention and our voices, that is what we MUST use.

Even if just to tell Iranians that we hear their voices and support their cause.

Re: Tell HN: A hacker's life is in danger, your awareness may be life saving

#98

Post by watwut »

wwtrv wrote: post #90
watwut wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still don't really understand the historical situation in which the mullahs were able to come to power. Easy. There was US sponsored coup against democratically elected government. It strengthened monarchy which was then seen as illegitimate by large parts of population. It also made the same parts of population dislike and distrust Americans. So when there was yet another coup, many people supported it. A lot of…

The problem is that the majority of people in Iran seem to support the islamists, that was the case since and before 1979. I'm not trying to justify the coup but there is no way most people would consider the elections in 1952 to be democratic by modern standards. Mossadegh ignored half of the votes (primarily in rural areas), all the MPs elected in Kurdish areas were barred from taking their seats. They actually sim…

When you replace bad democracy by outright dictatorship on command of foreign country, because foreign country is loosing money ... they you don't get points for complaining about original democracy being bad. And what you empower will be radicals who will be supported by everyone who hates you.

This us destroyed our leadership and we hated their goverment more interpretation is something I had from Iranians who later run away. They were happy about government going down, not happy about replacement. But the original government being seen as foreign imposed and illegitimate was strong feeling.

Eastern European countries also distinguish between "this was crappy but our thing and even had some democratic tilt" from "Russia/Germany supported full coup or came to colonize".

Re: Tell HN: A hacker's life is in danger, your awareness may be life saving

#99

Post by krapp »

trhr wrote: post #95
krapp wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not being persecuted by state actors. Your views, as far as I can tell, aren't even that heterodox. But trying to derail a thread about an actual dissident to focus on cancel culture and deplatforming is obnoxious and worth the crits you're taking, IMO. If that serves some dark CIA agenda, I guess I'll have to take that risk.

It's not derailing, you're just too interested in playing political football to understand the worldwide implications of these platforms handling moderation. The U.S. Constitution grants some of the strongest guarantees of free speech in the world. Most other nations have laws limiting speech that would violate our Constitution. Forcing these platforms to play by our Constitution is a big win for the entire world, be…

Forcing Facebook et al to become nationalized so they can't legally moderate content as they wish wouldn't somehow lead to an intellectual revolution in Iran - authoritarian governments already block Facebook and other Western platforms, and if they didn't, those governments would still insist that they follow local laws (including censorship laws.) So we would be flooded with Iranian propaganda, anti-semitic memes and shit that we couldn't legally stop, while Iran would still be persecuting dissidents.

Re: Tell HN: A hacker's life is in danger, your awareness may be life saving

#100

Post by [deleted] »

pedalpete wrote: post #97
mathspaniel wrote: post #40

Please do not do this. There is nothing that anyone on HN can do to help, and raising awareness may bring undue attention from the Iranian authorities. Although I'm sure this wasn't your intent, this thread amounts to rubbernecking of an incarcerated man in a perilous situation.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/martin-nie... What we can do is try and support everyone who is taking action to better their place in the world. If all we have is our attention and our voices, that is what we MUST use. Even if just to tell Iranians that we hear their voices and support their cause.

[deleted]
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