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Iranian writer is sentenced to 12 years after tweeting a dot at supreme leader

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Re: Iranian writer is sentenced to 12 years after tweeting a dot at supreme leader

#21
post #13

[flagged]

"CIA front" is a weird thing to say. It's openly funded by the US Government, so it's not like Radio Free Europe's affiliation is a secret or a conspiracy; we don't need to exaggerate for effect here.

Anyway, his lawyer also spoke to a newspaper in Iran, so I think it's hard to argue that he was arrested and tried for something. Whether it was specifically for the dot thing is, I guess, the main thing that one could speculate on, if you were particularly distrustful of the sources.

Re: Iranian writer is sentenced to 12 years after tweeting a dot at supreme leader

#22
post #15
post #6

Look up what for people in Belarus are being locked up daily since 2020. Emojis, likes, simply caught with preview of the news cached on their phone... We call border crossing, either on land or thought airport, a "Belarusian roulette", because your never know... And it is not prominent people, just regular folks. And it is not in completely different culture - it is a very close to western traditions country, right…

I work on an organisation that does anti-corruption reporting. We have some software for that and the search box has "Vladimir Putin, TeliaSonera" as a placeholder example. Few months back a new hire quit on his second day when he saw that, because he was afraid he might get into trouble since he has to regularly travel to Russia (he was from, eh, somewhere in Eastern Europe or the Balkans or some such – I forgot). W…

Stifling thought crime does indeed seem best by punishing even trivial offenses. The gestapo cannot be everywhere, so encourage people to self censor or else.

Re: Iranian writer is sentenced to 12 years after tweeting a dot at supreme leader

#24
post #12

What is the message that the dot tried to convey?

your bully replies to your tweet with a single period. you don't know precisely what he means, but you do know he's bullying you. You and your bully are adversaries, he's adversarying you. I'm not saying that Shanbehzadeh is the bully, I'm sure it's vice versa, but if you respond to your bully's post with a single period, prepare to get your ass kicked in school the next day.

it might be fun to play the legal game "but what law did I break" in a country with rights and rule of law, but in a country without it...? I'm pretty sure Shanbehzadeh knew what he was risking.

Re: Iranian writer is sentenced to 12 years after tweeting a dot at supreme leader

#25
post #15
post #6

Look up what for people in Belarus are being locked up daily since 2020. Emojis, likes, simply caught with preview of the news cached on their phone... We call border crossing, either on land or thought airport, a "Belarusian roulette", because your never know... And it is not prominent people, just regular folks. And it is not in completely different culture - it is a very close to western traditions country, right…

I work on an organisation that does anti-corruption reporting. We have some software for that and the search box has "Vladimir Putin, TeliaSonera" as a placeholder example. Few months back a new hire quit on his second day when he saw that, because he was afraid he might get into trouble since he has to regularly travel to Russia (he was from, eh, somewhere in Eastern Europe or the Balkans or some such – I forgot). W…

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Re: Iranian writer is sentenced to 12 years after tweeting a dot at supreme leader

#26
I've been thinking a lot recently about where I would personally draw the line on what sorts of speech should be criminal.

If someone publicly called for specific violence (ex: "let's all meet at Joe's house to burn it down—I'll bring the lighter") that feels to me like the sort of thing that would be useful to do something about instead of waiting for the actual crime to be committed.

But publicly stating that you support a violent act that somebody else did? Criticizing widely accepted beliefs? Expressing that you don't like a particular sort of person? I don't see how we could possibly criminalize anything like that without neutering the ability for a society to come up with new ideas.

Tim Urban's "What's Our Problem" has a great framing of this question: the sort of discourse needed for a high-rung "idea lab" requires that people are about to speak publicly in ways that appear to be "spreading lies online" (one of the crimes Shanbehzadeh, the Iranian writer, was apparently charged with). Without that freedom we all descend into tribal barbarism that leaves us stuck in the current set of ideas we happen to have right now.

Re: Iranian writer is sentenced to 12 years after tweeting a dot at supreme leader

#29
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source? What are the fines for using a banned service in the US?

The only ways for a service to be banned in the US are by court order (i.e. judge says the site has to come down) which carries no penalties for visitors, and sanctions in which case visiting is generally still OK but paying the site is a no-no. In general, users never face fines in the US even for visiting "banned" pages.

>In general, users never face fines in the US even for visiting "banned" pages.

You might be oversimplifying. Yes, the US does have particularly free speech, and especially for listening to it. But using kiddie porn sites, president threatening sites, ISIS recruiting sites, US govt leaked secrets sharing sites, perhaps ghost gun or bomb making sites, stalking ex girlfriends... I think a good bit of that has legal consequences for people under many circumstances. Evidence used to convict you is not much different than... evidence.

Re: Iranian writer is sentenced to 12 years after tweeting a dot at supreme leader

#30
post #2

And if you dare to use Twitter in Brazil, you will be fined a year's salary. ... how authoritarianism shapes public discourse

Source? What are the fines for using a banned service in the US?

In 2006, a satellite repairman in New York City was imprisoned for allowing people to watch the television channel al-Manar, which is run by a political party which holds over 10% of the seats in Lebanon's parliament - Hezbollah.
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