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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

#51

Post by ceejayoz »

philipov wrote: post #46
christiangenco wrote: post #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 s…

> 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. But isn't that exactly the point of policies like this? They're intended to dissuade new ideas, such as ideas about who should be in charge of society.

With fairly rare exceptions, most folks are just quibbling over where to draw the lines. Some things - death threats, defrauding people - are clearly both speech and over the line, and letting them go unchecked also "dissuades new ideas".

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

#52

Post by nradov »

feedforward wrote: post #30
OKRainbowKid wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's not what happened. Javed Iqbal wasn't imprisoned for allowing people to watch Al Manar. He pled guilty to received payments from Al Manar. Hizbollah is a terrorist organization, regardless of their political status in Lebanon.

https://www.justice.gov/archive/usao/nys/pressreleases/Decem...

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

#53

Post by aftbit »

feedforward wrote: post #30
OKRainbowKid wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

His name was Javed Iqbal. The charge was "providing material support to Hizballah". He plead guilty and was sentenced to 69 months. The government's story was that:

"From approximately 2005 through 2006, IQBAL, through a Brooklyn and Staten Island-based satellite transmission company he helped operate, HDTV Limited, provided satellite transmission services to al-Manar, in exchange for thousands of dollars in payments from al-Manar. IQBAL provided these services knowing that al-Manar is Hizballah's television station."[2]

It's hard to work out exactly what this means.

Another article[4] does some sleuthing and claims that Iqbal had an FCC licensed earth station that was uplinking in the Ku-band to "ALSAT". That implies that he was actually repeating the al-Manar broadcasts onto a satellite that had a footprint over the US.

The Investigative Project on Terrorism links[5] to some documents for the case, including the original indictment[6]. Some of the "overt acts" listed in this indictment included signing a contract in Lebanon in which his company agreed to provide broadcasting services for al-Manar in exchange for a fee. Additionally, he was charged with providing access to these broadcasts to satellite customers.

I wonder if he would have gotten in trouble if he had only done the latter - helped consumers to tap into al-Manar without actually being part of the technical broadcast chain.

Very interesting case, thanks for the rabbit hole!

1: https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/25/nyregion/25tv.html

2: https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/newyork/press-releases/200...

3: https://www.justice.gov/archive/usao/nys/pressreleases/Decem...

4: https://www.tvtechnology.com/news/fbi-raids-backyard-interna...

5: https://www.investigativeproject.org/case/190/us-v-iqbal-et-...

6: https://www.investigativeproject.org/case_docs/us-v-iqbal-et...

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

#54

Post by mapt »

christiangenco wrote: post #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 s…

A liberal prohibition on violent speech is an aspirational privilege of a people who have solved all their social problems to such a degree that the credible threat of violence is never necessary for justice or progress. Or an aspirational privilege of an aristocracy who have solved all of their material problems at the expense of everybody else, and demand militant proactive protection of their hoard and their personal safety.

In our history, the credible threat of social violence has been absolutely necessary for justice & progress on numerous occasions. It's why we have everything from civil rights for racial minorities to voting rights for women to labor rights for workers to generous benefits for veterans.

The establishment response to somebody like a Martin Luther King is mockery and condemnation, and only when fear of a Malcolm X led uprising becomes salient does the political capital to sue for peace, form.

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

#56

Post by eigenket »

throw10920 wrote: post #49
eigenket wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you point to something happening in the UK you think is similar to this? Edit: I guess there's this [1] which free-speach maximalists would probably disagree with. Personally I think there's a line between free speech and calls to violence at which point its reasonable to prosecute people. She tweeted calling for people to set fire to buildings where migrants were being housed. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/arti…

[flagged]

Are you lying or misinformed?

He didn't get 3 years in prison for telling people to go out and protest, he told people to “set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards”.

Setting fire to a building full of people isn't a protest, it's attempted murder.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/northampton-bbc-...

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

#57

Post by [deleted] »

feedforward wrote: post #30
OKRainbowKid wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#58

Post by boomboomsubban »

parhamn wrote: post #50
boomboomsubban wrote: post #36

I'm not defending Iran over this, I fully expect his imprisonment to be for a reason I would consider bullshit, but this article doesn't present much evidence that the two events in the title have any connection. He tweeted a dot, at some point after was arrested. Technically the article never says the dot is related to the arrest, but it's certainly implied.

> Technically the article never says the dot is related to the arrest, but it's certainly implied. Given the last sentence of the article is "The prosecutor’s office in Ardabil alleged that Shanbehzadeh had been in contact with Israeli intelligence officers and was arrested when trying to leave the country, according to Voice of America." it's not even implied.

It seems implied. Anybody only reading the headline or not giving it a thorough enough reading would probably think the dot is relevant to the sentencing.

Even carefully reading it, the dot takes up significantly more of the article than what Iran claim the charges were.

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

#59

Post by ants_everywhere »

christiangenco wrote: post #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 s…

> without neutering the ability for a society to come up with new ideas.

The goal isn't always this instrumental one. There is also freedom of conscience, which (like the US freedom of religion) isn't about generating new ideas.

But wrt to the goal of generating new ideas you also need to consider all ways of making it too expensive to access information. There's the 1984 approach of violently preventing the spread of information. Then there's the more Brave New World aligned approach of flooding all communication platforms with distracting nonsense and lies.

The second strategy scales a lot better. A lot of people are stuck in a mindset where you can shut down a few printing presses and kill an idea. That's the old war. The new war is much harder and we mostly haven't even begun to be honest with ourselves about it, let alone found any good answers for what to do about it.

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

#60

Post by _cs2017_ »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #36

I'm not defending Iran over this, I fully expect his imprisonment to be for a reason I would consider bullshit, but this article doesn't present much evidence that the two events in the title have any connection. He tweeted a dot, at some point after was arrested. Technically the article never says the dot is related to the arrest, but it's certainly implied.

Does it mean that for getting high quality news, NPR has become just as garbage as an average media outlet?
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