[0] https://time.com/7345092/iran-protests-death-toll-regime-cra...
> "A Tehran doctor told TIME on condition of anonymity that just six hospitals in the capital had recorded at least 217 protester deaths, “most by live ammunition.”"
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019–2020_Iranian_protests
> Starlink was being jammed, Rashidi said, although the extent varied from one neighbourhood to another.
Basically a 12V battery-powered Wifi+3G(+Wimax maybe) antenna for clients and an outbound Ethernet port to plug to some illegal internet socket. Make it open-source, able to be built with a little ingenuity and low cost.
We're basically talking attritable devices being needed and protocols which make them useful - i.e. something you can release that stands a chance of getting information out before its destroyed and where the users are nowhere near it when it's launched.
EDIT: I mean realistically you basically would want to just toss a handful of cheap USB memory sticks out across a city.
So if we're being realistic it's just more USB-C OTG devices. Ideally what you want is it to become standard for USC-C memory sticks to have a USB-C port on them so they can be daisy chained and copied stick to stick if given a power source so they're easy to copy and spread.
thinking about it in terms of "getting caught" might be the less ideal way to approach it - think of it in terms of building a more reliable system, which is a goal everyone can get behind.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone_ad_hoc_network
The original but now defunct?
Seems similar to Briar but it has an iOS client.
Though in US I think you can try publishing the code and blueprints as a book and claim the First Amendment, following the PGP story. May or may not work.
Ideally Starlink wouldn’t be involved.
British India (three modern states) had a population of 400 million at the time of its independence from Britain. That was famously a coordinated, nation-wide movement.
Indonesia was around 200 million people at the end of the Suharto dictatorship and its transition towards democracy.
British India could be good example - but there's a case to be made that it was overthrow of an external colonial rule that never integrated with the local population, so not sure there is a good parallel with the Iran situation.
Indonesia - this appears to be a really good example, along with Phillipines (1986). So what's different about Iran - why the repeated failures there?
Iran Goes Into IPv6 Blackout
Thanks Elon.
Elon?
How is this Elons fault?
Starlink is the only way to get internet in Iran.
X have clips and videos posted as the few social networks that have it. This content is not suitable for instagram or facebook.
SVT (my swedish news) have had segments on this with reporters, not in the country, but she is in Lebanon. She is arab biased, but they are reporting on it.
Asmongold (worlds largest youtuber right now and an Elon fan) is one of the few having long 45min-2h segments about the Iran protests on his stream right now?
But you are so blind your kneejerk reaction is to blame Elon Musk lmao
Larger and larger swathes of the world population are coming under the purview of governments and corporations that are technologically strangling the free flow of information over the intertubes. China, Russia, India, Iran, UK, US (corporations a.t.m.) are the prominent examples.
Just having a resilient software stack is no longer sufficient. An open source hardware stack AND infrastructure is critical.
Eventually there will be need for an open source manufacturing base as well. Even if it is only at the level of 1980s computing, that is better than nothing.
The world needs some big thinkers to start working on this yesterday. A civ resilient project to avoid the dystopian futures or something like the dark ages coming back.
Comment in question:
It's ironic to watch the contradictions unfold
On one hand, nobody actually knows what's happening in Iran, yet everyone has a rock solid opinion, complete with intricate details, as if they'd just left a classified briefing
On the other hand, those same confident voices all want the same thing: a leader who'll privatize Iran's oil for Western companies, align with US policy, open markets to Western finance, and prioritize defense contracts over local development
Funny how that works
Some random farmer from Ohio is obsessed with Iran for some reason
Your comment wasn’t censored, your fellow readers flagged it because they thought it was bullshit.
Does anyone know enough to comment?
The loopback to "its all the wests fault anyhow" is so tiresome from people like you.
"appoint" lmao
You think since the revolution in 1979 any election has been real? Yes in b4 the Shaha was bad too. etc. waah waah.
At some point, you grow up and pick a side. Ruissia, Iran, China and rouge states, vs The West, EU and USA.
Iran is the world’s top state sponsor of terror, per the US State Department. The IRGC and Quds Force fund, arm, and direct groups like Hezbollah ($700M/year), Hamas, Houthis, and Iraqi militias. They’ve been linked to assassinations (e.g., 2011 Saudi ambassador plot), bombings (Bulgaria 2012), and cyberattacks on US/EU infrastructure. Even during economic crises, Tehran spends ~$1B annually on proxies. Recent examples: UK arrested Iranians in 2025 for plotting attacks on Israeli sites (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2wqy5ejdjo); Houthis’ Red Sea strikes use Iranian drones/missiles. Sanctions and court rulings (Khobar Towers, 9/11 facilitation) confirm their role.
That’s not a side anymore.
I most certainly said nothing of the sort. I watched a documentary that claimed that many years ago and I asked if it was true. Go and post your vile rubbish on Twitter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Khatami
Read for yourself and decide 1) was Khatami a reformer, helping to make Iran a better place. I mean relatively better of course!
If you don't think he was, exit now. Now assuming you think he was, the question is did the war on terror hinder him. I'm not an academic but when the sources are obviously biased it can be instructive to see what one side is prepared to concede about the other.
Here is paper written for the US National Intelligence Committee that warns this may be an outcome
https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/warterror_2001.pdf
"Two tentative, and partly contradictory, projections suggest themselves: (a) the more intense and widespread our counter-terror campaign within the Middle East, the more ammunition will the conservatives have to stoke anti-US sentiment within Iran and siphon support away from the reformist camp; "
And here is an article trying to refute that Khatami was hampered by the war on terror, by the Washington Institute for Near East policy which wikipedia says, "is a pro-Israel American think tank"
https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/khatami-...
Which firmly establishes that American politicians and media people were pushing the line that the Axis of Evil speech had hampered Khatami in reforming Iran. Therefore I deduce that some people were indeed stating this as a truth at the time from within mainstream America, and it is not just an anti-american conspiracy. The article tries to refute it of course, but in doing so acknowledges that it is an opinion held at the time. You read, you decide.
> [Jeff Widener] "I had earlier accomplished my mission of photographing the occupied Tiananmen Square so I gave all my rolls of film to Kurt/Kirk who smuggled it back to the A.P. office in his underwear. The long-haired college kid was wearing a dirty Rambo T-shirt, shorts and sandals. Security would never suspect him of being a journalist."
https://archive.nytimes.com/lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/0...
From the AP office, it was scanned (?) and exfiltrated with a dial-up modem, over copper telephone landlines (unsure of the technology. 1980's gadgets).
Remember the people enforcing it (going to businesses and checking their connections) are thick as two short planks.
Iran I expect has a more effective enforcement than the taliban, but the principal is the same - starlink works fine in these countries and downlinks elsewhere (Europe in the case of Afghanistan). GEO providers like Inmarsat downlink in places like the Netherlands.
It’s all rather meaningless as only a tiny number of people have access to these systems, compared to access to the Internet via phones.
In August of 1989, 2 million people held hands to create a chain. This was one of the large protests in human history. It led to the death of communism in Europe. More information in “The Baltic Way” article below.
Revolutions of 1989:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1989
The Baltic Way:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Way
The Solidarity movement in Poland:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_(Polish_trade_union...
That's a really good point. Maybe the tech needs to be in reasonably widespread use prior to when it's needed, then it becomes harder to strangle in the moment. A product in everyone's home and office.
Wi-fi routers with long-range capabilities and automatic mesh fallback in case of isp outage?
Now that the geopolitical situation has changed and funding concerns mostly alleviated, there are 200k terminals in use in Ukraine.
https://circleid.com/posts/starlink-in-ukraine-what-three-ye...
Disconnecting Ukraine at key points in battles would fit with the current administration’s flip flopping approach, but again he is at the front of it and on Twitter slagging off supposed American allies.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/10/why-is-elon-musk-talki...
This may all get weird again as the US seems to have blundered into conflict with Russia over Venezuela so maybe the Ukraine may see some support.
The dishes can be found and disabled ofc.
If it could be "jammed" like that Russia would "jam" the Ukranian ones.
They did, though, in a few places? It was reported as such anyway, again this is not something I'm an expert on.
If the network is only earth bound fixed wireless, the distance might be small enough that the state comes for the operator itself... This raises the cost of running this network from just money to life threat.
Getting many open source satellites up in orbit might not be feasible.
Absolute decentralization is impossible. Reducing capture and increasing resilience is not. That’s a meaningful difference.
Said that, I’m happy with Starlink as an extra actor for a healthy mix of ISPs and networks that brings resilience.
we need a mutual aid web services (MAWS). a sharedflare. everybody's link. etc.
this was an insight of fannie lou hamer and other freedom fighters from the civil rights movement after they had their food stolen/destroyed/poisoned. they were focused on food and education and healthcare but the idea can be applied to technology infrastructure, too.
The goal is systems where authority is fragmented enough that capture (by states or corporations) is structurally hard
It’s weird there and seems to be running now.
Though Russian troops have been pictured with it too.
Like, decide.
I heard somewhere.
Iranians describing how Isam destroyed their country within one decade (the UK establishment is very unconfortable with that truth, for some reaslon...).
Iranians calling on Trump and thanking Elon. That tends to make leftists mad.
Being mad is one thing, but demanding X censor that speech is another. I'm not really involved in this debate so I haven't seen anything like that. Can you provide some examples of any prominent people on the left calling for X to censor that speech?
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/uk-x-elon-musk-grok-ai-sexualiz...
As for T. Breton, it seems they're wanting X to abide by the EU's Digital Services Act, which requires transparency in how a company tries to combat disinformation among other things (protection of children's exposure to dangerous content being one of them).
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/12/24/us-visa-ban-ta...
I still don't see where the Iranian protests or regime change there would factor into this.
Again, typical socialism reflexes: you dont like X, so instead f just not using it, you feel like you need to send us the police to make us not use it...
PS: do you have short and blue hair ? Just a question, don't get too triggered.