Tell HN: A hacker's life is in danger, your awareness may be life saving
In Iran, he is one of the most famous people active in the field of programming and computer education. In his personal blog[0], he has been writing about technology and society for years. He has also a YouTube channel[1][2] to teach and encourage Iranians to programming and Linux, and a podcast[3] that has been explaining technology and science news along with his comments for several years. All this in a country with a dictatorial government where standing in the right place has a heavy price.
His arrest occurred on October 5, a few days after the recent nationwide protests[4] began in Iran. Arrest at home with beating. The reason for this is not yet clear, but it is probably due to his efforts to increase awareness of the society about Iran's internet censorship system, and his positions against a company called ArvanCloud. Many claim this company help the government of Iran in implementing the internet censorship's system (something like Great Firewall of China). In Jadi's own words, this company has made it possible for the government to turn the Internet into an intranet at any moment and block people's access to international services. Something that happens in every demonstration in Iran including right now.
The reason I am writing here is to raise awareness about him, which may lead to his release. All this may be nothing more than a false hope, but it is what I can do. From the news he covered in his podcast, it could be guessed that he is one of the regular readers of Hacker News. Perhaps hearing your support here will boost his morale behind bars in Evin. The prison which is also known as Evin University due to the number of educated political prisoners [5].
[0](Persian) https://jadi.net/
[1](Persian) https://www.youtube.com/jadimirmirani
[2](English) https://www.youtube.com/geekingjadi
[3](Persian) https://castbox.fm/channel/%D9%BE%D8%A7%D8%AF%DA%A9%D8%B3%D8%AA-%E2%80%93-%D8%AC%D8%A7%D8%AF%DB%8C-%D8%AF%D8%A7%D8%AA-%D9%86%D8%AA-%7C-%DA%A9%DB%8C%D8%A8%D8%B1%D8%AF-%D8%A2%D8%B2%D8%A7%D8%AF-id22150?country=us
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahsa_Amini_protests
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evin_Prison
118 comments
[ 626 ms ] story [ 675 ms ] thread1: https://www.amnesty.org/en/donate/.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sattar_Beheshti
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omid_Kokabee
2. If you know someone influential from country that Iran trades with, let them know. It is bit difficult as no country in Western world trades with Iran. And China doesn't give two shits about human rights abuse, same with India. South Korea and Turkey are the largest importer after those.
3. Upvote so that chances of someone who could help with first two could see this thread.
4. Don't talk only to "influencers" — also talk to your co-workers, your neighbours, your internet community. Raise awareness.
5. Don't just "talk to". Ask. Ask (exiled) Iranians what they think about the situation.
I was traveling around in Iran for some months, and one big takeway for me was that there is a huge gap between the highly educated, incredibly friendly and open-minded population and their cruel medieval rulers. I still don't really understand the historical situation in which the mullahs were able to come to power.
Easy. There was US sponsored coup against democratically elected government. It strengthened monarchy which was then seen as illegitimate by large parts of population. It also made the same parts of population dislike and distrust Americans.
So when there was yet another coup, many people supported it. A lot of those people ended up on the bad side of mullahs (like politically or career oriented women). But original support was support "against" rather then pro.
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 simply stopped counting when the government got a favorable result. It wasn't that different from the elections in Poland in 1947 or in any Eastern European country where socialist/communist parties 'won' the elections
This us destroyed our leadership and we hated their goverment more interpretation is something I had from Iranians who later run away. They were happy about government going down, not happy about replacement. But the original government being seen as foreign imposed and illegitimate was strong feeling.
Eastern European countries also distinguish between "this was crappy but our thing and even had some democratic tilt" from "Russia/Germany supported full coup or came to colonize".
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)?
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
No one outside of Iran can solve their problems for them, just like no one outside of the US can solve US problems.
In large part due to the aforementioned censorship and surveillance.
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.
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.
Facebook, Twitter, Reddit et al are modern censorship platforms. I know that saying that violates liberal dogma, but it's true. You could probably even go so far as to say cancel culture is a censorship platform, particularly when it's misused.
The problem with censorship is that it stifles intellectualism. Intellectuals have always cut against the grain and said crazy shit in essays, much like I'm saying now. It's the sort of crazy shit that challenges your worldview, and it's natural to want to downvote, report, and have that content removed from your platform of choice.
But intellectualism is the only thing that can create a revolution.
And politically-correct censorship is getting all the intellectuals silenced (along with all the actual idiots).
Now, what's it mean to "stop supporting censorship?" Everybody agrees that, as private platforms, these companies have the right to moderate and remove any speech that they choose. The problem is that they're also seeking protections under Section 230, which says "Internet companies that don't moderate their content can't be responsible for their content." This creates a dilemma, especially when these companies have created an oligopoly surrounding online speech.
We need legislation that establishes the public forums and discussion areas on these providers as public utilities so that their users receive first amendment protections under the Constitution. This still allows them to remove content that violates the first amendment - like incitement - but would otherwise reclaim the internet as the world's largest mass free speech zone.
If this is an example of the "intellectualism" you're championing, then honestly nothing of value was lost.
Whether or not "nothing of value was lost" depends on how much you value the freedom of Iranians.
Personally, I only downvote content that violates the rules or is spam. Since a downvote is the first step to having content hidden, downvoting things just because you disagree with them makes you a censor. That's not a good thing to be, yet the companies offering downvotes know about and encourage this behavior. Don't you ever wonder why? State actors routinely use these tools to silence their critics, and yet you play ball.
But trying to derail a thread about an actual dissident to focus on cancel culture and deplatforming is obnoxious and worth the crits you're taking, IMO. If that serves some dark CIA agenda, I guess I'll have to take that risk.
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, because Facebook routinely over-moderates topics of public interest in places like Iran, too.
https://www.oversightboard.com/decision/FB-P93JPX02/ https://www.oversightboard.com/decision/IG-2PJ00L4T/
They are censoring people _everywhere_, but American snowflakes would rather protect their sensitive ears from unpopular opinions than allow everyone to speak freely everywhere in the world.
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.
EFF also has an article. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/10/stop-persecution-irani...
(I think I'll go back to largely ignoring it, satisfied that HN is a perfectly adequate 'jumping off point' for everything worth reading, with perhaps better global coverage of the worthy stuff.)
I find that very interesting, since in the national and local newspapers I read in the United States, the Iranian protesters have been extensively covered. There were multiple stories each day at the beginning, and even now at least two or three each week.
In what country are you? Which newspapers are letting you down?
vs almost daily for the last while (week? month?) on CNN.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33398134
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33371121
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33140237
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33106196
This last one was also about Jadi.
I'm not quite there yet myself, I sometimes fall in the bad habit of news surfing for fun, but I found the wiki portal to be sufficient to keep reasonably informed.
There is absolutely no value to knowing every single accident, disaster, political incident, etc happening in every country around the world today.
I’m not supporting clickbait, just debating the value of a list of events with zero context.
If the west cracked down on Iran's powerful grifters half as hard as it is going after Russian oligarchs, the regime would be under a lot of pressure. The oligarchs, in comparison, don't seem to mind - they are more afraid of Putin.
its unlikely Iran government cares about opinions on the HN.
I understand that you are desperately trying to help him but you need to think very carefully about unintended consequences in these situations. I don't have specific advice I would want to post here.
I do have a question that has been on my mind: these protests seem to be spontaneous and the crackdown spastic - I don't get how people like Jadi allowed themselves to be caught in the first place as he has the skillset to avoid detection.
Why did he ever post anything under his real name? How did he not see the arrest coming? Why is everything so disorganized at this seemingly late stage?
Anyway, I wish him and you the best of luck.
P.S. - There is a lot of interesting none-philosophical reading material produced in the US and elsewhere during the counterculture era that you might find extremely useful more directly than the well wishing going on in this thread.
P.P.S - For people who are taking this as some sort of debbie downer comment understand that there are reports not only of teenagers being incarcerated but show trials and impending death sentences. Sadly, you can expect some people like Jadi will be made an example of - this isn't a game.
The idea of any of those individuals sitting in prison for political reasons turns my stomach.
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.
If you truly care, for whatever reason, reach out to your contacts in the country and grease a few palms. Those countries are poor and easily bribed. But if you raise too much awareness, then his freedom would be beyond bribes and diplomatic pressure.
Source: I am an Iranian
Calling it the "Islamic Revolution", as state-sponsored history books do, is crass revisionism.
Because the US wants to back something it can control, not a popular movement. The US government backed Iran's prior cruel and sadistic minority.
The prior government was installed by the US because the government before that wanted to audit BP - the oil company - and cant have that!
The only citizens extreme enough to correct this happened to also be religious extremists and now they run the country ever since
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.
The Late Shah of Iran is on record constantly warning about "Red regression" (referring to Communists) and "Black regression" (referring to Islamic fundamentalists) as threats of the nation and the 1979 revolution succeeded by them joining forces (and the commies got the axe afterwards). Funny that in the western world, we are seeing the extreme left/woke anti-Americans and the Islamists join forces again too, despite being cut of very different clothes: the general American left narrative is silent on issues of Islam (particularly bad when it comes to women and LGBT) as it contradicts their own narrative of fighting "Islamophobia". I doubt this ends well.
Going to need a citation there good sir.
Or the extreme lack of coverage of Iran protests in the major US newspapers despite their unprecedented scale and spread across the world (dare it looks anti-Hijab and exposes Islam as a threat) as another example.
I'm surprised you see this as a controversial claim. Here's how an Iranian women's right activist discusses how she's alienated by the Feminist crowd because she is against forced Hijab in Iran, making Islam look bad: https://www.hbo.com/real-time-with-bill-maher/season-20/29-s...
This behavior is par for the course of the contemporary western left narrative. A western country behaving like France restricting Hijab to some degree gets many times more exposure than Taliban and Islamic Republic mandatory Hijab.
Looks like you’ve been taking in a lot of ideological media. Do you have a reality-based citation?
I attached a link to an interview describing concrete circumstances. Did you watch it before making your assertion, for example?
If you suggest that is not representative or whatever please make your claim specific. Otherwise it must be you that cannot see reality when faced with it; I cannot take your comment seriously.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/martin-nie...
What we can do is try and support everyone who is taking action to better their place in the world. If all we have is our attention and our voices, that is what we MUST use.
Even if just to tell Iranians that we hear their voices and support their cause.
Also, people participate in protests because they feel need to do something and are willing to take the risk. It is the "I can't stay passive anymore" statement and feeling at large.
And there were succesfull protests. That is how communism ended. That is how Ukraine protests kept it democracy back in 2014 (rather then allowing it to become Belurussia). And Iran had succesfull revolution too, through that one brought religious dictatorship.
Whoa, wait a minute. Where?
Communism in Europe imploded on itself because of western pressure, weakened Soviet Union and dysfunctional economy. Protests were just a manifestation.
he is not doing anything illegal, he just wants a better life for everybody including the guys who jailed him and their children. His best bet is that some of those guys would understand his motivations and help him.
Now he probably does not fully understand the regime motivation and how the police state lives in a paranoia. Not because he's stupid, because sometimes the only way out of a situation is to trust your opponent with your own life. Sometimes you do what your guts tell you to do
It feels weird, like a lot is going through my head but realistically I can't do anything.
If you will ever read this jadi, hope you're safe and thanks for your teachings. <3