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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

#101

Post by wwtrv »

watwut wrote: post #98
wwtrv wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 late…

Yeah, I agree I'm not justifying the coup in any way. However I fear that democracy in the region sometimes tends to produce somewhat undemocratic governments. Egypt was a pretty recent example (in some ways extremely similar to want happened in Iran ~60 years ago) they got rid of a somewhat secular dictator and immediately voted in an islamist wannabe-dictator into power. Was a western backed military coup the right answer to that? I don't think so, but I can't really think of any better (realistic) outcome.

The Mullahs in Iran didn't even fairly win the election in 1980 or 1984 making their regime less legitimate than that of Morsi's. But it's pretty clear that they were the most popular politic force in the country. They possibly still are. I wouldn't be particularly surprised if the majority of Iranians still believe that all women should wear hijabs, criminal should be publicly hanged from construction cranes and blasphemous/secular journalists should be jailed. If that's what's the point of having a "democracy" in such a country? Wouldn't a secular/progressive dictatorship be preferable (assuming it's even possibly for it to exist)?

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

#102

Post by ethotool »

pessimizer wrote: post #88
trhr wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can't light the spark for them, but we can help fan the flames.

The last thing we should be doing is fanning flames in matters of life and death. Especially from the couch.

Absolutely. Please, enough suffering. I can’t imagine what the families of prisoners must be going through right now. It’s a nightmare. I really hope Jadi is freed soon.

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

#103

Post by trhr »

krapp wrote: post #99
trhr wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

In other words, "Free speech doesn't always help so free speech can never help."

Look, we're not gonna find common ground on this. We'll just have to build a new, decentralized internet, and then you can keep Facebook.

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

#104

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

vkou wrote: post #61
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their problem is an oppressive government and people who can't get organized enough to make a difference, very similar to the US. Thanks for bringing the parallels in the US to my attention. Really, I had no idea that the US was so similar to Iran. You are doing this this topic a great service by not using hyperbole.

Suppose that there was an American handball player who was incarcerated unfairly, say, for bringing Schedule 1 drugs for personal use into the United States, how exactly would/should anyone outside of the United States apply public pressure to secure their release?

>incarcerated unfairly

Yea, I don’t know what I would think about that. Perhaps if the scenario was someone bringing illegal drugs into a country, knowingly violating that countries laws, having been to that country before and been told what was illegal, and then to top it off that person had publicly mocked and criticized the free country they had come from previously - I‘m not sure I could muster the will to care if they are released or not.

I wouldn’t have empathy for someone knowingly breaking any foreign country laws with arrogance.

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

#105

Post by PhasmaFelis »

melony wrote: post #30

This thread will make things worse. When you raise a person's profile, the state won't stand idly by. You will end up with another Assange or Snowden. If this thread snowballs, the Iranian government will make an example out of him purely for the sake of it. In other words, your virtue signaling is going to get him killed. If you truly care, for whatever reason, reach out to your contacts in the country and grease a…

Could we please stop calling any expression of differing views "virtue signalling"? It is actually possible for people to vocally disagree with you sincerely.

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

#106

Post by fragmede »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #105
melony wrote: post #30

This thread will make things worse. When you raise a person's profile, the state won't stand idly by. You will end up with another Assange or Snowden. If this thread snowballs, the Iranian government will make an example out of him purely for the sake of it. In other words, your virtue signaling is going to get him killed. If you truly care, for whatever reason, reach out to your contacts in the country and grease a…

Could we please stop calling any expression of differing views "virtue signalling"? It is actually possible for people to vocally disagree with you sincerely.

I mean, it's a useful phrase because that lets me know the person saying it is a worthless human being with no virtues. If they had any virtues they'd also be trying to signal theirs, but since they don't, they complain about the meta.

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

#107

Post by consumer451 »

tgma wrote: post #94
pessimizer wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 regressi…

> Funny that in the western world, we are seeing the extreme left/woke anti-Americans and the Islamists join forces again too

Going to need a citation there good sir.

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

#109

Post by daemoens »

consumer451 wrote: post #107
tgma wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 regressi…

> Funny that in the western world, we are seeing the extreme left/woke anti-Americans and the Islamists join forces again too Going to need a citation there good sir.

Yeah there an incident of Muslims protesting LGBTQ+ content in Dearborn schools/libraries just a week or two ago. The left protects groups like Muslims because it's the right thing to do, regardless if that group can be hateful towards certain groups. The majority of Muslims used to vote for Republicans until 9/11, because Republicans continued to generally be against them while the Democrats stopped after realized hating a whole group over the actions of less 0.1% of them was actually bad. The Muslims I know mostly vote Republican locally, and Democrat nationally.

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

#110

Post by phist_mcgee »

ninefathom wrote: post #20

I've had the privilege in the past of working with a small number of Irani technology professionals, and I found these particular individuals to be some of the most capable and well-rounded in the entirety of my experience with the global technology field. The idea of any of those individuals sitting in prison for political reasons turns my stomach.

Adversity breeds strength.

Imagine learning to program with no access (or highly disrupted access) to google, stack overflow and github.

Where you have to download web pages for later use in case your internet is cut off.

Where random power outages can suddenly interrupt you many times a day.

Where using a vpn can be used against you in a criminal case.

I can imagine that anyone who perseveres through those kinds of obstacles to become a programmer would have some pretty tremendous grit and would build them into a great developer.

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