DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — When Ellie, a British-Iranian living in the United Kingdom, tried to call her mother in Tehran, a robotic female voice answered instead.
“Alo? Alo?” the voice said, then asked in English: “Who is calling?” A few seconds passed.
“I can’t heard you,” the voice continued, its English imperfect. “Who you want to speak with? I’m Alyssia. Do you remember me? I think I don’t know who are you.”
Ellie, 44, is one of nine Iranians living abroad — including in the U.K and U.S. — who said they have gotten strange, robotic voices when they attempted to call their loved ones in Iran since Israel launched airstrikes on the country a week ago.
They told their stories to The Associated Press on the condition they remain anonymous or that only their first names or initials be used out of fear of endangering their families.
Five experts with whom the AP shared recordings said it could be low-tech artificial intelligence, a chatbot or a pre-recorded message to which calls from abroad were diverted.
It remains unclear who is behind the operation, though four of the experts believed it was likely to be the Iranian government while the fifth saw Israel as more likely.
Only the second most terrifying story I’ve read today
It’s like how there’s between someone being killed in an accident and someone being murdered. Intent is a factor.
If you target civilians and kill civilians with the goal to terrorize a population, then you’re terrorist. If you target a military asset with the goal to defeat an enemy fighting force then you’re taking a military action even if you accidentally kill civilians.
And no, wars are not supposed to fair. It’s not a sport with rules and referees to make sure everything is fair both sides. This is real life not a Call of Duty game. If you’re fighting against a superior military force you’re not being brave, you’re just getting a lot of people killed for nothing.
Non-violent resistance has a higher probability of success and fewer people die even if it fails. That’s the path to a Palestinian state the violence of Hamas has been a complete failure. That should be obvious.
Nothing Hamas has done has improved anything for Palestinians. They just killed a lot of people and got Gaza destroyed.
Terrorists are bad.
This is the part where genocidal freaks, like yourself, claim that Israel, and the US, don’t target civilians. Got it. That is of course a laughably inaccurate characterization of US and Israeli policy.
I also love it when the people with all the power proclaim the wonders and efficacy of peaceful resistance. How convenient for the entrenched power. I’m tempted to call out the origin of the United States, which was violent resistance to an oppressive regime. Funny how we find that story inspiring, but deride anybody else’s struggle to escape our own oppression.
It’s not a person. It can’t be reasoned with.
When you look at Gaza does that indicate that violent resistance is super successful?
You’ve been reading too much stochastic terrorism stuff.
You mean that time some slave masters wrote some pretty words about freedom and equality and absolutely nothing changed for the slaves they owned?
I have some ancestors that had to flee political persecution during the American Revolution. When they said they tarred and feathered the “traitors” do you buy that bullshit? The slave masters that founded the United States eliminated political dissent using public torture. Oppressors always label any dissenters to be traitors. Donald Trump does this too.
You were indoctrinated into believing a fairy tale about the foundation of your country so you’d worship “founding father” the same way they worship “big brother” in 1984. The American Revolution changed who had power, it didn’t change anything about the lives of regular people, and certainly didn’t improve anything for the slaves.
I’m from Canada and the founding principle of my country was “we have to work together or the Americans will invade us.” We have more rights than Americans Do you want to guess how many revolutions and civil wars we had to get to where we are?
Most people couldn’t vote in America for much of it’s history. Tell me which revolution resulted in women having the right to vote in America? What revolution ended segregation?
Stochastic terrorists have told you a narrative that violence always works and non-violence always fails. History isn’t on your side unless you read it from the point of view of wealthy land owning slave masters. If your goal is to increase rights and freedoms, non-violence is more effective. If your goal is to get power so you can oppress people then sure, I guess violence works for that.
You are aware Hamas tortures people to death if they speak out against them, right? I guess you just want to always side with the oppressive assholes of history that use violence to gain power.
Oh, I forgot about the time that nonviolent protest ended slavery in the US. Sorry ‘bout that.
In the British Empire, slavery was ended by the abolitionist movement, which involved a lot of labour unions. The British Empire ended slavery a generation earlier than the US did, this was accomplished through non-violent resistance. The British Empire went from the biggest slaving empire in history to being the biggest anti-slaving empire in history. The ending of Amistad where the Royal Navy is detroying the slaver base? That happened… except it was many different bases they destroyed. The Royal Navy put an end to the international slave trade.
It’s weird how history is isn’t it? The British Empire was both evil and good at the same time. Seems things are more complicated than nation good or nation bad.
I forgot to mention before, that one “oppression” that your founding fathers chaffed at was the fact that Britain had treaties they made with indigenous people that fought on their side in the French and Indian war. This meant the 13 colonies were prohibited from expanding westward. Your great Founding Fathers fought for the “freedom” to genocide Indigenous people so they could expand their slave plantations westwards. Great guys!
Anyway after slaver was abolished in the British Empire, an abolitionist movement started growing in the US. One Abraham Lincoln was in that movement and he got elected President. His goal as President wasn’t to end slavery immediately though, but to move the country in a direction where it would eventually end… a generational kind of transition.
Southern states didn’t agree with this government policy so the violently rebelled with the cause of slavery forever. As the war went through the democratic process of what was left of the US, they made the Emancipation Proclamation. When the South was defeated they were forced to end slavery. Abraham Lincoln was shot by a violent protester.
Of course it didn’t really end there. Jim Crow laws segregation and all. But those were put to an end by the Civil Rights movement, a non-violent resistance movement.
So no, slavery was not ended by a violent resistance movement. There was a significant violent resistance against the ending of slavery though.
Are you sure you’re not pro-slavery? You seem to always be picking examples of violent resistance movements that were pro-slavery.
Sorry but history just isn’t on your side on this. Violent movements tend to have violent people leading them. When they “succeed” you have a country being run by violent people. This isn’t likely to lead to good results for the people living in those countries. It certainly hasn’t had a good result for the people of Gaza having violent people leading them, has it?
So you agree the place the protocols LARPers live should be returned to the Hamas people?
The way you apply labels to people to dehumanize them makes it difficult for me to understand what you’re even asking. Like do you call all Palestinians “Hamas people”?
Only when im talking to a protocols larper. That’s what you guys always seem to call them.
Ah so you dehumanize both Jews and Palestinians. So you’re a white supremacist type of antisemite.
And which kind of antisemite are you?
I’m not? Weird question, guess you just ran out of shit to say. Anyway, I think we’re done here. Try to work on not dehumanizing people when you get upset over things. I hope you can become a better person.