Musk says Starlink will ask for exemption to US sanctions on Iran Elon Musk has said his satellite internet business Starlink will ask for an exemption to US sanctions on Iran. The statement was made on Twitter in response to science journalist Erfan Kasraie, who described Starlink's service in the Western Asian country as a "game changer for the future." Animosity between the States and …
Let the Iranians and Afghans drown in their own stink!
We've already seen that if the government cracks down hard enough people will cave and attempt to survive without freedom. The Iranians will probably sacrifice a couple of police officers and execute a few instigators to get things under control.
It's a tried and tested recipe. Give the people a little bit of what they want and at the same time kill any possible rebellious elements.
Its not the people of Iran's fault they have dicks in charge. Its like saying "Let the Chinese drown in their own stink". Its not the Chinese fault for having Winnie the Pooh, I mean Xi, in charge and brain washing them. If you gave them access to the Internet without the "great firewall" maybe, just maybe you could open a lot of their eyes to the bullshit that comes out of Xi and the CCPs mouth.
If I could I would pay for Starlink terminals to be dropped by balloon all over Iran (and Myanmar, N Korea etc.) I would also drop many automatic decoy terminals to make electronic surveillance more difficult. The only problem remaining is getting the majority to believe, or at least consider, the "propaganda" from the Great Satan and his friends.
"If I could I would pay for Starlink terminals to be dropped by balloon all over Iran"
Fine and dandy, but even if the people can connect with the satellites, what do the satellites connect to? They need line of sight to ground stations with a connection to "the internet". Yeah, yeah, they're putting up sats with laser side links, but very few have them and it then can become the bottleneck.
The satellites on the last few launches have had laser links. Places far from a ground station have a connection when the satellite above has a laser and there is a chain of satellites from there with lasers to one near a ground station. At present that is going to be intermittent and depend on where the terminal is but connectivity will improve as each new batch of satellites reaches their target orbit.
The other side is the satellites need a spectrum license to transmit from the country they are over. As they are launched from the US, the US government gets blamed if they do not enforce that requirement. If the US decide to allow Starlink to transmit without a license over Iran then others will decide they have just as much right to transmit over US territory. I have no idea what it would take to convince the US government to break that treaty.
If the Chinese or Iranians dislike their leaders they should get rid of them or start a civil war. Simple as that.
This is also the reason I'm a great proponent of the American Constitution's Second Amendment (right to bear arms). The idea behind it is that citizens may overthrow their government if it becomes oppressive. In Iran and North Korea we've seen what not being able to oppose the government can lead to.
We invaded Afghanistan in November 1878 to fight Russia. Three failed attempts (1839/42, 1879/81 and 1919) Sound familiar? And eventually withdrew in 1919. Vowing to never return. The latest debacle started in 1959 when the USSR controlled PDPA violently overthrew the elected government. After 2 decades of brutal repression the people rebelled against the government and in 1978 the USSR intervened to support the ruling PDPA. The rebellion was financed and armed by the USA and the UK. The USSR gave up after a year and went home and 3 years of civil war followed, until until the fall of Kabul in 1992.
This was followed by 4 years of infighting between mujahideen rebel factions, ending in 1996 after the Taliban and al-Qaeda took Kabul. and then the The Afghan Civil War from 1996 to 2001, again between Islamic factions.
So the USA then had to invade, just to make things worse.
“A confidential trove of government documents obtained by The Washington Post reveals that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable”
“A 2009 report in the Nation cited US military officials who estimated that between 10% and 20% of the money from Pentagon logistics contracts in Afghanistan – hundreds of millions of dollars – went to the Taliban. “Afghanistan’s intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security, had alerted the American military to the problem,” reported the Nation. But 10 years later, the payments were allegedly still happening.”
Corrections.
"The rebellion was financed and armed by the USA and the UK."
Partly financed and armed by US and UK. China provided loads of weaponry.
Saudis had major part in financing and Afghans greatly received private donations from other Muslim countries.
"The USSR gave up after a year and went home"
Soviets forces crossed borded in 1979 and started withdrawal in 1987, so well over 1 year before giving up.
He knows there is zero chance of Iran's mullahs would allow their citizens uncontrolled (and unsnoopable!) access to the internet. He wants Biden's administration to deny it so he can blame them for not supporting the right of Iran's people to freely access information and portray himself as a champion of freedom.
"He knows there is zero chance of Iran's mullahs would allow their citizens uncontrolled (and unsnoopable!) access to the internet.'
It's questionable to how many Iranians would have the money to use the system (and pay for a computer, etc). The Mullahs could allow it and simply require everything go through an in-country downlink station where a nice shiny firewall will be installed as well as some monitoring and recording tech. People would have to apply to get the hardware through an exclusive government agency and anybody in possession of a non-sanctioned unit would be put to death (or worse).
So what was the reasoning again? Personal information freedom? Good luck with that in Iran.
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...as in the case of Meng Wanzhou, Huawei CFO, who was detained in Canada for almost three years before the US agreed to release her in late 2021 in exchange for some concessions by the Chinese company.
It might be best to put this in a different way, since as it stands, it implies the Americans are in the kidnap and shake-down business.
The US can be just as bad as any other despot. Ed Snowden didn't want to put down roots in Russia, but after his passport was revoked, he couldn't go any further. He said he would stand trial if he was allowed to put forward a defense, but has been told bluntly that he would definitely not be allowed to say anything about the nefarious deeds of the TLA's. A life in Russia or a life in a dank federal prison? I'd make the same choice he has. Julian Assange. Others whose names we may never learn.
The conspiracy theorists with comments about the Clinton's detractors meeting atypical ends could be correct.
"Wait... Julian Assange chose a life in Russia?"
No, of course not, but if he's bundled off to the US and made to stand trial, he's also likely to not be able to put forward a defense due to "national security" issues even though the cat is well and truly out of the bag. They want to put him on trial very publicly, not give him a fair shake.
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