31–40 of 266 posts
As nntaleb postulates, once a dictatorship starts giving concessions, it is on its last legs. Therefore I do not believe this news.
That's significant. The ayatollahs came to power thanks to big popular support (audio cassettes of khomeini). Now a popular uprising is specifically against religious restrictions. In the meantime empirically the army has all the power of the sword. That's a step towards sidelining the ayatollahs. I guess we will see if it will evolve toward a military dictatorship (as I predict), a democracy, or the existing religio…
Perhaps Lebanon as well but the country has been non-functional for a long time. Every other country including every western ally is a de-facto dictatorship of some form or the other.
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That's significant. The ayatollahs came to power thanks to big popular support (audio cassettes of khomeini). Now a popular uprising is specifically against religious restrictions. In the meantime empirically the army has all the power of the sword. That's a step towards sidelining the ayatollahs. I guess we will see if it will evolve toward a military dictatorship (as I predict), a democracy, or the existing religio…
You do realize I assume that in the whole of middle east, Israel and Iran are the only reasonably functional countries where people get to elect their government to some extent and the people leading the government actually change based on the vote? Maybe that's why the governments hate each other :-) Perhaps Lebanon as well but the country has been non-functional for a long time. Every other country including every…
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Well they elected religious extremists who weren’t particularly keen about democracy either. I think democracy is more than just majority rule. Of course El-Sisi’s regime is not much better..
So instead of a flawed democracy we rather support a military dictatorship.
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Not sure everybody understands the F in this context. "F" means paying respect, something gamers comment in video games because in some games you press a button to express that. It's not short for 'fuck'.
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Not sure everybody understands the F in this context. "F" means paying respect, something gamers comment in video games because in some games you press a button to express that. It's not short for 'fuck'.
As nntaleb postulates, once a dictatorship starts giving concessions, it is on its last legs. Therefore I do not believe this news.
This is also a reform that doesn't change the laws, it's just facade, as many had predicted.
As nntaleb postulates, once a dictatorship starts giving concessions, it is on its last legs. Therefore I do not believe this news.
Hard to say something complex like a dictatorship gets overturned by just one variable. I much more favor the view laid out in "Revolutions: A Very Short Introduction" by Jack A. Goldstone. > There are five elements that create an unstable social equilibrium: economic or fiscal strain, alienation and opposition among the elites, widespread popular anger at injustice, a persuasive shared narrative of resistance, and f…
I don't believe that all five conditions have to be met in order to see a revolution. In plenty of places like Portugal in 1974 or South Korea in the 1980s, situation was much less dire than in Iran today.
As nntaleb postulates, once a dictatorship starts giving concessions, it is on its last legs. Therefore I do not believe this news.
Lots of dictatorships make concessions and continue to stick around: take Cuba with its market reforms of the 1990s and 2000s, ditto North Korea. But I don’t believe this news either, but simply because I haven’t seen any reporting that independently verifies the claim being made.