81–90 of 266 posts
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So do China, North Korea or Russia. Sometimes there are even multiple parties. Is there a chance that the people in power (at any level of government) get voted out?
Ha, your comment got me thinking: is there a chance Democrats and Republicans will ever be voted out?
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.
Al Jazeera too: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/12/4/iran-prosecutor-gen...
RTE: https://www.rte.ie/news/world/2022/1204/1339880-iran-moralit...
and plenty more besides.
I have no idea if it's a sincere declaration (like, maybe they'll still enforce these laws but using regular police instead of the morality police, for example) but "Iran claim to be suspending the morality police" is a statement that appears to be true.
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For reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta... That was 70 years ago. Are countries, their people, and their policies immutable? If this was a genuine question and not the snide remark that it appears to be, then a good place to investigate whether or not the UK government has any support for it or not would be to check out BBC Persia. De jure the BBC are not a government entity, but t…
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1953/08/16/archives/mossadegh-terms-...
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Cuba actually has a democratic process, believe it or not.
Many dictatorships actually do. The question is more like "is it a process that only exists on paper?". If an election ends with a 98% approval of the supreme leader (or whatever the designation), then it's probably rigged and just for show...
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There are no real elections in Iran, since every significant challenger to whomever the Supreme Leader decides to support will be disqualified (e.g. Raisi's election).
You should consider doing research. Even Wikipedia gives a good start. As everywhere, maintaining power is a balancing act and has flowed between factions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Principlists https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Reformists https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_pragmatists
https://www.niacouncil.org/news/disqualifications-clear-path...
"The morality police [...] were established under president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, [and] began patrols in 2006." I didn't realize they were formed that recently; I thought it would have been created at the start of the regime. Yashar Ali (@yashar) on Twitter has been covering these protests extensively. I'm waiting for him to comment on this, but it doesn't appear he's awake yet.
There was no hijab law for the first 5yrs of the regime. The normal police officers were to enforce the hijab law afterwards. It wasn't effective enough so they came up with the idea of having "hijab patrols" by the so-called morality police.
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There are no real elections in Iran, since every significant challenger to whomever the Supreme Leader decides to support will be disqualified (e.g. Raisi's election).
You should consider doing research. Even Wikipedia gives a good start. As everywhere, maintaining power is a balancing act and has flowed between factions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Principlists https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Reformists https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_pragmatists
In general is the Hindustan times pretty trustworthy? I mostly know about SE Asia, China and North Korean news sources outside the typical English language EU stuff, but sometimes I see things like this and am not sure if I should trust them and wait a bit and my usual source for anything adjacent to the Middle East or India (Al Jazeera) often lags on things I'd expect them to report much quicker if they actually support democracy and free expression and not just whataboutism.