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
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?