Suppressing Speech by Blackmail, the Iran Story
A few hours ago Daniel Pocock published a story more about women and politics than anything tech-related. But there are parallels to be found there; in GNOME, for example, women don't have a voice (they get gagged, sometimes physically) and in Debian many women are transgendered and the rest are just girlfriends of male Debian Developers. When Debian wanted to stage a seemingly legitimate election it needed to have more than one candidate running; so eventually the female partner of a geek rose to the challenge (had no coding skills at all, no technical history in Debian) and lost to the "incumbent German".
In Pocock's story, the status of Iranian women is explained as follows:
As publicised all around the world, the women's football team from Iran is currently touring Australia.
Their final match takes place today, International Women's Day and then they will be placed on a plane back to Iran.
At their first match, they refused to sing the national anthem.
At their second match, they saluted and sung the national anthem.
Experts have widely observed this change in behaviour was due to coercive control.
The state of Queensland was the first state in Australia to introduce laws on coercive control. The police have an obligation to uphold the law. The women's final match is in Queensland.
The security team who came from Iran are living in close proximity to the women in the same hotel. This is a domestic relationship for the purpose of Queensland law. The hotel bookings and travel companions are all organised for the women. They can not go anywhere on their own. Therefore, it is a form of domestic interdependency and the law applies to each woman in this case.
When alerted about a domestic situation, the police have an obligation to act. At the very least, police are obliged to make a welfare check. They will not do so unless people ask them.
State TV in Iran has clearly stated the women are "wartime traitors". In most cases of coercive control, the evidence of such threats is hidden from public view. In this case, there is a threat that women who speak up while outside Iran will be subject to criminal persecution under the laws for treason.
In 2013, Australia's then Labor government published a video humiliating female asylum seekers from Iran.
I joined the ALP in 1997 and when I saw the video humiliating women from Iran I resigned immediately. My resignation was leaked and published by Crikey. A full copy of the email is below.
This is what Debian and GNOME people attempted to do to Techrights by making extraordinary threats for 2+ years (while trying to hide such threats by misusing "WITHOUT PREJUDICE"). In a sense, Debian and GNOME exercise control over people in the same way the Iranian regime does. It's OK to strangle women, but it is impermissible to talk about men who strangle women. █