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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Iran is offline and has been for three days after the government responded to widespread protests by killing the internet.
Anti-government protests started on Friday when the authorities announced a sudden 50 per cent increase in fuel prices. The protests quickly spread to over 100 cities and towns, reflecting deeper hostility to the authoritarian establishment. That establishment responded by cutting off the internet to 80 million people on Saturday night.
As a result it has been increasingly difficult to follow what is going on inside the country or how many people have been injured or killed. The government has acknowledged three deaths, but there have been at least eight reported and more are expected.
Even with the price increase Iran’s 13 cents a liter gas prices remain among the cheapest in the world, but the decision to raise the price was just one more sign of Iran’s faltering economy, in part due to continued sanctions on the country.
Iran’s response was depressingly predictable - its National Security Council instructed all ISPs to cut off internet access out of “national security interests.”
Despite the ban however, citizens have quickly discovered that Iran runs two internets: a public internet and a separate network that the government and universities are tapped into and which is still operational.
[...] In a worrying sign of what may really be going on, however, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said in an official statement on Monday that it was planning to take “decisive action” against any further protests, raising the possibility of dozens of deaths as has happened repeatedly in recent years.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @08:46AM (16 children)
Issues like this are so hard to follow.
Iran in particular we effectively created the current government. Iran had a nice secular government in the 1950s. That nice secular government wasn't friendly with our oil interests, so we overthrew them by staging a CIA backed coupe. In their place we stuck a disliked pro-western (surprise surprise) authoritarian monarchy. That monarchy was overthrown by real people in 1979. In his place they established the hardline Islamic anti-Western theocracy that exists to this day. It's like the CIA constantly forgets that Newton's Third applies as much to politics as it does to physics - for every action, there is an equal but opposite reaction.
Especially in the day and age of mass misinformation campaigns with media collusion, it's pretty much impossible to have any clue what's happening in any area where there are US interests. And unfortunately given our tendency to poke our noses into everything, that means pretty much the entire world. So is this a real revolution? A CIA backed revolution? A mixture of the two? Same story in places like Hong Kong, Venezuela, and so on. Spain at least seems genuine, yet like most other protests happening around the world gets next to no coverage. I imagine most people don't even know it's happening. It's just these protests that have strongly favor US geopolitical interests (such as in Hong Kong) that get extensive, and absurdly biased, media coverage. Go figure.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @09:06AM
"... our oil interests ..."
That is, British interest, i.e. British Petroleum, BP. You know, the guys that spewed tons of oil in the Gulf of Mexico several years ago.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @09:11AM (6 children)
Instead of protesting, people should actually vote. And work within the system to make it better. Emotional outbursts do nothing, but end up in Syria-like quagmires and general bullshit all around. These are suppose to be smart people. Yet they protest like idiots for stupid, predictable reasons. But it's always easier to tear things down than build things up.
Hong Kong protests is a prime example of "idiot protesters". WTF do they expect to happen now? Take what you reasonably can and declare victory. Don't overreach - you'll get squished.
Iran is another - protesting because price of gas goes up?? Just increase prices for transport accordingly. Iran has much larger problems than oil/gas -- WATER mismanagement. You can live without oil. You can't live without water. Priorities!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by takyon on Wednesday November 20 2019, @09:17AM (3 children)
Does Iran have free and fair elections?
Are Iranians protesting simply because of gas prices or was it the straw that broke the camel's back?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @03:18PM (1 child)
I'm starting to realize it was never democracy that has produced the results it has. It's been collections of people generally being able to put aside their differences to work together. Democracy was just a proxy for this underlying phenomena and a natural result of such. In modern times I think we're seeing what happens as that willingness to work together starts to fade. It's the same reason that you never saw democracy arise organically in most places outside Europe. It's also probably the same reason that the original democracy, in Greece, was quite short lived. The system is nothing particularly unique or surprising. "Hey guys, we want pizza. Screw that, we want hamburgers. How do we decide? Vote." Probably something that's been done since the day of the first disagreements. What was lacking was not democracy, but cooperation on a very wide level that enables democracy to function.
The point of this is that votes have nothing to do with really making meaningful change.
- 'Here we'll decide by democracy. Vote if you'd like to leave the EU!'
- 'WTF you imbeciles? You weren't supposed to say yes. No we're not leaving, you uninformed ignorant peasants.'
- 'Hey I agree Guantanamo Bay is an awful place and thing that goes against everything our nation stands for. Vote for me and I'll close it on day 1!'
- [1500 days later] 'Oops my bad. I can't close it. I'm only the president and with a majority in both the house and senate, after all. Oh yeah, but what I can do is pass a new law [wikipedia.org] to enable me to throw American citizens in there if need be for arbitrarily long times without trial or charge. Don't worry, it's for your safety and I think the founding fathers would really appreciate the wisdom behind this. It was none other than Ben Franklin that said, "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety are really smart people." Indeed his wisdom, really gives one the chills.'
But of course you can make change. But change doesn't come from acting like a monkey in the streets. It comes from understanding what the other guy wants and then cooperating to try to create some meet in the middle. And in the grand scheme of things we all want the exact same things. That's not to sing Kumbaya - obviously there are some people who this world would be much better off without. But I think now a days people are just labeling everybody who doesn't agree with them down to a tee to be those people. It's like we jump straight from "Well I didn't get exactly what I wanted." to "RIOT!!!"
And people don't seem to understand that those who are in power just cannot concede to such things, even if they want to. It would incentivize that behavior in the future. E.g. if Hong Kong gave the protesters what they wanted at this point, all it would do is tell them that anytime they want to get their way they just need to go hurt a lot of people and destroy a bunch of other peoples' property. Hong Kong runs a democratic election. Pro-china party wins!?!? RIOT!!! You don't get change like that, you end up repeating exactly what happened in the past where "discovered" democracy only to have that entire civilization collapse and end up being supplanted by the quite regressive, but incredibly successful, feudal systems from which most of us now descend.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @07:36PM
Pro-china party wins!?!? RIOT!!!
Trump wins!?!? IMPEACH!!! and a few riots too, just for the hell of it, why not?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Thexalon on Wednesday November 20 2019, @05:33PM
Not really: All candidates for elected office have to have the approval of the Guardian Council, an unelected group of ayatollahs. And if it comes down to it, the armed forces also answer to the ayatollahs, not the elected officials.
From what I can gather, a lot of the problem has to do with a lot of younger Iranians wanting a secular democracy, while older Iranians who were alive in the 1970's and/or fought in the Iran-Iraq War are still pretty loyal to the regime. A lot of the youth want to be able to drink, smoke, and bang freely, and the strict moral laws they're living under don't allow for that (although my understanding is that there are some who do that sort of thing anyways despite it being illegal).
Unfortunately, those younger people longing for freedom are screwed for the foreseeable future, due to what's going on internationally: The Russians consider the current Iranian government a strong ally, and the Israelis and Americans by all appearances would rather have the status quo than a secular democracy.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @11:06AM
What if there are no secular candidates?
(Score: 2) by EEMac on Wednesday November 20 2019, @12:13PM
Out of bread?? Let them eat cake! [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Wednesday November 20 2019, @02:45PM (7 children)
I can see why.
Kleptocracies don't have a good survival rate.
Really? There's plenty more media sources in the world than those that allegedly collude with the US.
Sounds like there's no point to listening to what you say, because it's impossible for you to know anything.
Look at how many normal people showed up for the revolution. That's the metric that matters. If a "CIA backed" revolution happens to bring out a zillion people, then it's a for real revolution.
And same answer, should you choose to think about it.
Stuff that is important to "us" gets covered? Who knew that would happen?
Yet again, we have this pointless search for US cooties in the actions of a bunch of people trying to make themselves freer. So what if it's partially CIA-backed? This would be a better use of the CIA and US resources than replacing one kleptocracy with another.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @04:05PM (6 children)
I'd recommend reading and responding to things holistically. Makes it much easier than going line by line without context of the whole, and is like to improve your reading comprehension.
The point you may have missed, in between the lines: the resources of the CIA enable unpopular groups to grab power disproportionate to their influence, support, or power. In the short run this succeeds, it then trends towards chaos, and ultimately tends to backfire. It's the exact same problem with Machiavellianism in general. The ends do not justify the means because the ends are rarely if ever what we envision. By contrast the means are very much something we get to live through. So I do think the CIA obviously had good intentions with all of their actions, yet now in looking back all they've achieved is screwing up a bunch of countries and creating the very enemies we face today.
As another example of our countless CIA screwups, there's Afghanistan. In 1988 Afghani mujahideen were fighting against the Soviets in Afghanistan. We funneled immense amounts of money (more than $40 billion in total) and provided extensive training to these individuals. This is the exact time and place where one wealthy young man, Osama Bin Laden, built the relations and gained the training that would have him go on to form Al Qaeda. Less than 2 years later that training and funding would start to be directed against us. Thanks, CIA.
Our [probable] efforts to destabilize other nations miss the real problem. China is set to surpass the US by most metrics over the coming decades. Perhaps this is inevitable due to the population differences, but I think a big part of the reason this is happening, certainly as rapidly as it is, is because our progress as a nation has been stagnating for a number of decades now. Perhaps instead of wasting time engaging in black ops and meddling, we might consider simply trying to push for a more productive and effective society stateside. It's a damn shame we're now struggling to get back to the moon, something we achieved with negligible resources (relative to today), now more than 50 years ago!
(Score: 2) by Tokolosh on Wednesday November 20 2019, @04:54PM
A good analysis, except that China will never achieve the status it craves - for the same reasons.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Wednesday November 20 2019, @06:05PM (2 children)
I don't. The CIA has consistently supported brutally oppressive monarchs, dictators and military juntas over freedom and democracy for its entire existence. If your idea for how the world should be organized includes something resembling the Bill of Rights or EU Conventions on Human Rights for everybody (y'know, freedom of speech and religion and trials for crimes and such), then the CIA's actions have been pretty consistently evil. What they show that they want by their actions is a world controlled not by citizens voting for leaders that run countries with the consent of the governed, but puppet dictators who answer to the US government.
Examples of democracies the CIA has been at the forefront of overthrowing and replacing with dictatorships include but are probably not limited to:
- Iran in 1953
- Guatamala in 1954
- Haiti in 1959
- Ecuador in 1961-3
- Dominican Republic in 1963
- Congo (Zaire) in 1963-5
- Brazil in 1964
- Indonesia in 1965
- Greece in 1966-7
- Bolivia in 1971
- Chile in 1973
- Argentina in 1976
- Haiti (again) in 1990
- Honduras in 2009
- Bolivia (again) just this month
They justified all of this as "We have to stop the Russian Commies!" But as you can see, the behavior didn't stop when the USSR ended. And there's a mountain of evidence that the main reason that they've done this is that US businesses don't like the laws those democracies were either passing or threatening to pass. From what we know about their activities, the CIA has consistently supported torture, rape, and murder everywhere it has influence. For example, the torture done at Gitmo was exactly the torture that the US had taught Latin American dictators to do in a program known as the "School of the Americas" at Fort Bragg.
"obviously had good intentions" my ass.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Thursday November 21 2019, @12:03AM (1 child)
Understatement of the week there!
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday November 21 2019, @12:58AM
Bear in mind I was limiting this to places which had established liberal democracies until the US showed up. Replacing, say, a Soviet-friendly dictator with a US-friendly dictator wasn't included.
One of the CIA's earliest activities was tracking down Nazis, not to bring them to justice but to recruit them to work for the US. As far as I'm concerned, everything they've done since has been fruits of a poisoned tree.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday November 21 2019, @05:18AM (1 child)
Consider that the efforts of the CIA to destabilize other nations are probably directly proportional to how much of the CIA had become a Soviet asset.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 21 2019, @06:12AM
Considering that at the height of McCarthyism the second in command of the CIA was KGB...