181–190 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.
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.
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You can’t compare the outcome of the first past the post system of the U.K. and USA and the dictatorships of China and Russia that ensure the dictator will never peacefully transfer power to a rival.
I don't want to defend the Chinese government, but the transitions of power in China have been peaceful since Deng Xiaoping.
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Well, if you've been following Iranian elections you might reach the opposite conclusion... Now, I'm no fan of the Iranian regime, but I doubt you can make trustworthy conclusions about what the public wants from sampling posts on social media. (I wouldn't say that even elections are the end-all of what "the public wants".)
I wouldn't attach any meaning to an election that didn't allow most candidates to run, had the lowest turnout in history, and still ended up with a significant amount of blank/invalid votes, despite that being explicitly forbidden.
Sorry, I am teasing but I want to highlight that the problem with pre-selected candidates is a widespread problem undermining democracy in many places. Same applies to Hong Kong were China heavily influenced candidate selection.
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Different sure, but different in its resistance to reform? Nah.
There is a huge difference. The US has a stated procedure on how to reform the election process. It’s outlined in the constitution and has been invoked several times in the history of the republic. The idea that all flawed systems are equally flawed is a really weak argument and one that is used by oppressive forces to further their purposes.
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Well, we took their agency away and removed a government that at least wasn't outright killing women for wearing pants. This is also a great way to produce extremists, which then moved into the power vacuum created by throwing their governing system into chaos. We've done it a number of times in South America as well. I'd say there's enough data points to believe that we punted them into the downwards spiral that the…
Is it fair to characterize the 1979 revolution as extremist without qualification? We find it extreme by our own standards, but by most accounts Khomeini was very popular in Iran.
The royalist regime installed by the CIA in ‘53 replaced a popularly elected social democratic government. I won’t say the shah was ever popular, but there was not massive opposition at first. In part due to repression, and in part due to increased liberalization (e.g. rights for women), industrialization, and increased wealth (which I believe would have happened with the prior regime as well).
But those other factors don’t increase linearly or automatically and soon repression was the only way the Shah’s regime stayed in power.
To many people the Revolution seemed at first like a breath of fresh air. After all it overthrew the hated regime. This is the classic difficulty for all movements (from free software to regicide): different paths intersect and then diverge. Khomeini was indeed quite popular (though far from universally) but his followers were the largest (practically only iirc) organized opposition and so, like the Bolsheviks/Mensheviks (despite the name, the Bolsheviks were in the minority), they pushed the guys at the top of the hill off, and maintained their own balance up there.
Compare that to the French Revolution where there was no faction large enough to do this: they pushed out the Ancien Régime but then muddled around aimlessly and violently until someone was able to secure the high ground.
So Khomeini was “popular” in the sense that lots of people were favorable to his movement in the moment, but not “popular” in that the movement had a widespread base of support. Like the prior regime, after a short honeymoon they could not rule without repression.
Unfortunately there is no external opposition that could come in and restore democracy. So a complete overthrow of the current regime is quite unlikely.
"Iran state television is reporting that the morality police has definitely NOT been removed" https://twitter.com/borzou/status/1599396059251253249
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No, you don’t get executed in the US for saying “down with Biden/Trump/whoever.” This “all imperfect systems are equally imperfect” is utterly detached from reality.
You are right in the US you can say that. But showing how the govt is criminally scheming against the people gets you in jail just as much. Ask Assange. > This “all imperfect systems are equally imperfect” is utterly detached from reality. I wanted to say they are similar in resisting reform. Sorry if that was not clear.
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.
This is a strategic move by the Islamic Republic and they timed it carefully because there are calls for another round of protests just in a few days. The government hopes to mitigate public unrest by giving them false hope.
I'm Iranian and have witnessed the government killing and imprisoning children (e.g., a 9 year old boy who was in a car with his father, not even protesting). There's a reason the UN is now investigating human right violations by the regime. To this regime, people are just statistics—just a couple years ago, the government massacred more than 1500 people on the streets and didn't blink an eye. In fact, right after that, they continued the JCPOA negotiations with the West.
Many Iranians wish our country didn't have oil and gas so that other countries would leave us alone. The free and abundant resources of money only make the regime corruption worse. At least in a dictatorship that struggles with income, some attention would be paid to construction and manufacturing. But the (non)Iranian regime has just been stealing the nation's wealth for over 4 decades, essentially funneling it to Swiss banks. Maybe that's why the Switzerland refused to sanction the Islamic Republic just like Germany and Britain.
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> what people want when they put their lives on the line to make a change [removed: a reference to The Troubles] A minority of people can feel very, very strongly about something without the majority of people feeling that way. > [the] part of the population [that supports the Iranian regime] is generally a smaller part Happy to believe that, but where’s the data? That some people are clearly very angry at the monstr…
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