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From stealth blackout to whitelisting: Inside the Iranian shutdown

kentik.com

141–150 of 154 posts

Re: From stealth blackout to whitelisting: Inside the Iranian shutdown

#141
post #139
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

weakest point is fire guns on one side and no guns to speak of on the other side. To understand the scale of Iranian killing - for 23 days of protests up to 20K people killed - that is half of the killing rate in Ukraine war which is a full scale war with a 1000km battle line and more than 1M of soldiers shooting at each other.

okay I can't wait to see then how this works out in the USA where guns can answer from all directions. Is this you're implying? what is discussed here is lack of internet, not the fact that fcuking regime obnoxiously killed thousands of protesters shooting them in the face like rats. Is this what you came here to read, because it's not all over the internet and quite apparent for everyone? But, wait, this is Iran ran…

Revolutions have been succeeding long before internet. They did usually have had guns though.

Re: From stealth blackout to whitelisting: Inside the Iranian shutdown

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apartheid isn't only about race. It can be about genre. It obviously exists in Iran. There's also a long history of Persians vs Arabs, an weaponised islam.

Do you mean Sunni vs Shia? I don’t think that is a reasonable statement by you. Will you also apply that term to Ireland?

I don't apply the term to everything I mentioned Arabs because they are the occupying force in Iran. They even brought Iraqis to repress the population. That is today but there's also a long history in Iran/Persian. Ireland also has a complex history but I don't know enough about that.

Re: From stealth blackout to whitelisting: Inside the Iranian shutdown

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iran treats Jews as second class citizens and prevents them from all leaving.

I’m sure you have proof of this. Prevents them how? Iranians have been traveling in and out of their country for decades.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/07/pr...

Re: From stealth blackout to whitelisting: Inside the Iranian shutdown

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want things to change we need to start going after the source of the governments power, the people that vote for them. T

Even if 90% of the country marks the box against the regime, they’ll still announce a 90% 'landslide' victory. Voting doesn't matter, when you print your own outcome

What percentage of the Iranian population supports the government? 10%? I doubt that

Re: From stealth blackout to whitelisting: Inside the Iranian shutdown

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think OP was implying punishing voters.

What is "going after [...] the people who vote" supposed to mean?

Boycotts of businesses, cutting off family and friends, etc

I said "we" as in the people not the government

Re: From stealth blackout to whitelisting: Inside the Iranian shutdown

#146

Very tangentially (For those prone to normie-sniping :) https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/1/19/in-iran-the-us-...

Jeffrey Sachs in other places has admitted Trump cannot think in terms of strategy so ascribing any strategy to whatever the U.S. has been doing in Iran is a categorical mistake and the entire article appears to be a case of p-hacking to try and fit the facts to the authors’ pre-determined narrative.

True but remember J D Vance, just to pick a convenient example, probably has a stronger finger on the pulse

Re: From stealth blackout to whitelisting: Inside the Iranian shutdown

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starlink is illegal in Iran. Being a foreign journalist is a huge red flag in totalitarian countries, making it harder to smuggle in illegal devices than for the average citizen or visitor. And because journalists are probably under surveillance by the regime, it's harder for them to obtain Starlink terminals in the country than for the average person.

The government was ignoring Starlink until it was being used by western clandestine agencies & Israel to foment violence and burning down property. People were being paid for each act of violence they committed, by those spy agencies. The Iranian government then used Chinese tech to block Starlink, shutdown the external internet and the violence stopped.

> People were being paid for each act of violence they committed, by those spy agencies.

Do you have evidence of this? At least in the USA, mobs angry at the government will conduct arson and property destruction without being paid a dime.

Re: From stealth blackout to whitelisting: Inside the Iranian shutdown

#148
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

As someone not from the west, I can relate to your viewpoints. While Iran and Venezuela, for example, may be flawed democracies, the west forgets that those who came to power there did so after a popular uprising and revolution. And just because the west doesn't like the current leaders there (for asserting their sovereignty on economic affairs), I am often bemused by the lack of political understanding of many weste…

Venezuelans voted for the party alliance led by Machado and support the removal of Maduro [1].

Iran looks more complicated. Pretty much the only insight we get is from the diaspora and cosmopolitan people from Tehran. There seems to be a very significant armed force clearly in favor of the Ayatollah, so removing him without their complicity will likely lead to turmoil.

1. https://x.com/atlas_intel?lang=en

Re: From stealth blackout to whitelisting: Inside the Iranian shutdown

#149
post #141
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

okay I can't wait to see then how this works out in the USA where guns can answer from all directions. Is this you're implying? what is discussed here is lack of internet, not the fact that fcuking regime obnoxiously killed thousands of protesters shooting them in the face like rats. Is this what you came here to read, because it's not all over the internet and quite apparent for everyone? But, wait, this is Iran ran…

Revolutions have been succeeding long before internet. They did usually have had guns though.

Sure. Revolutions of the past mostly. Some had succeeded with less bloodshed also. But let’s think for a moment / internet is the first thing going down when modern revolts ignite - not only in Persia, but also in India, Africa, Mianmar and others…

So perhaps being able to organise is much more challenging to the status quo than having a pistol in every house. I would also argue 21st century revolutions are perhaps a little different from others before.

I can easily imagine a very massive cyber revolt where communications are brought to a standstill for the ruling elite. But while imaginable is hard to enact in practice and someone else in the comments noted many top Iranian officials had an IT or engineering backgrounds which makes them better prepared and the whole effort much more challenging.

Re: From stealth blackout to whitelisting: Inside the Iranian shutdown

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone not from the west, I can relate to your viewpoints. While Iran and Venezuela, for example, may be flawed democracies, the west forgets that those who came to power there did so after a popular uprising and revolution. And just because the west doesn't like the current leaders there (for asserting their sovereignty on economic affairs), I am often bemused by the lack of political understanding of many weste…

Venezuelans voted for the party alliance led by Machado and support the removal of Maduro [1]. Iran looks more complicated. Pretty much the only insight we get is from the diaspora and cosmopolitan people from Tehran. There seems to be a very significant armed force clearly in favor of the Ayatollah, so removing him without their complicity will likely lead to turmoil. 1. https://x.com/atlas_intel?lang=en

I find it disingenuous to attribute the popular vote to Machado. The candidate that represented the alliance was Edmundo González and it was for him that the voters cast the vote. He is perceived by the public as a centrist / centre-left. He is someone who has worked under both Hugo Chavez and Carlos Andrés Pérez. Machado might have helped swing some right-leaning voters to him, but it is doubtful if Edmundo González could have managed to swing the left-leaning voters to vote for her, if she was the candidate herself.

As for Iran, you need to look beyond the perspective of "repressive" regime or an "army run" nation. It is only culturally "repressive" when you compare it to the western cultural norms. For a muslim middle-eastern country, it is actually quite moderate. And it is the only middle-eastern nation that has a functioning stable hybrid-democracy while most of the other middle-eastern countries are run as kingdoms by their Shieks (supported by the west). Moreover the Ayaotallah does have a huge support base amongst the religiously inclined, who do belive that their country's political system should have an Islamic influence. To understand this better, just look at the right-leaning politics emerging in the US and Europe about preserving the country's Christian culture - many of them are elected on that platform and if they come to power, can anyone say it is undemocratic? Further, it is important to understand that the Ayatollah is the equivalent of a Pope to the Shia muslims. Imagine the politco-religious turmoil that will take place in the west if an attempt is made to get rid of the Pope from the Vatican. I am sure many Iranians don't want to mix religious with politics. But I can assert with confidence that they are currently in the minority.

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