Friday, May 11, 2018
A bit of courage in the tech world!
In earlier decades tech types were often at odds with Deepstate warmaking myths. For instance, electronics types and radio hams had a more realistic view of Russia during the first cold war because we talked with real Russians and knew something about the workings of Russian industry and academia. Engineers are familiar with real Persians and Arabs because lots of real Persians and Arabs study engineering here and stay to work in the oil industry.
This reality-based heresy has been silenced recently, as techies are leading the RUSSIAN_MEDDLING pogrom and cheerfully helping to obliterate both Russia and Persia.
Here's a rare exception, a caution against myths from the TechDirt website.
Background:
Persia's black-robed demons banned the Telegram social media service. Rouhani publicly disowned the ban, saying it's counterproductive.
TechDirt:
The reaction to these bans has, unfortunately, largely been of the shrugging variety. The reputations of Russia and Iran in America being what they are, some of it undeserved, many simply waved this away as authoritarian regimes doing what authoritarian regimes do. With perhaps a dash of Islamophobia mixed in when it comes to Iran, care for the impact on the people there appears to have gone out the window, too. After all, the Supreme Leader chose to block the app, so what is anyone to do? Well, it seems that, counter to the misconceptions many might have about the way Iran works, President Hassan Rouhani has come out criticizing the block on the app, saying both that he had nothing to do with it and that he disagrees with the move. And perhaps more practical than ideological, too. Rouhani had a front row seat to the Arab Spring that occurred in recent years in several countries in Persian and Arab nations. He saw first hand what happened when governments attempted to stave off dissent by clamping down on internet communication tools in this sort of heavy-handed way. I imagine he probably doesn't want his own country to repeat these mistakes.BRAVO for a return to the old tech realism. ¶ 12:52 AM
