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Iranian Students Protest as Anger Grows

wsj.com

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Re: Iranian Students Protest as Anger Grows

#41

Post by valianteffort »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #29
regularization wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iran had a parliament until they wanted Iran to control its own oil, whence the US and UK overthrew Mossadegh. They had ayatollah Borujerdi wreck the democracy. Also Kashani who helped oust Mossadegh, and then later supported Khomeini. The US recently worked to oust the secular leader of Syria to replace him with an ISIS leader. Actually al-Sharaa was on the US wanted terrorist list, only removed three months ago. Ma…

Sure. Not sure what about any of that says Iranians are incapable of governing themselves as a democracy.

Iranians are protesting because their economy is collapsing from targeted attacks by the US/West.

Foreign media records them and says they are trying to depose the theocracy, propaganda to justify a military incursion.

Wild claims of civilians being killed by the regime, with zero evidence, manufactured from thin air. (WMD's in Iraq, White phosphorus in Syria)

Average person now thinks it's their duty to to send American sons to die in the sandbox for another generation.

The only winner here, israel.

Re: Iranian Students Protest as Anger Grows

#42

Post by [deleted] »

ifwinterco wrote: post #38
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Honestly very hard to say It really isn't. Inflation at a fraction of Iran's prompts governments to change in any democracy.

What I mean is two things are true at once: 1) Iran's government has not done a good job of running the country and is therefore genuinely unpopular among a significant percentage of the population. 2) Iran's current government has powerful enemies (US, UK and of course a country in the Middle East all really hate the Iranian regime) and those enemies are actively trying to destabilise it. So it's really hard from th…

[deleted]

Re: Iranian Students Protest as Anger Grows

#43

Post by polotics »

Herring wrote: post #31
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Democracy wont survive in iran until the govt want their oil to be depleted by western war hungry demons Yet somehow Brazil, Mexico, India and hosts of other non-European-origin-majority resource-rich democracies exist. That said, maybe the limiting factor on democracy is agency. If a culture blames outside forces for all of its woes, there is nothing it can–within that worldview–do to self improve. So it won't. If…

Yeah if anything the US is the real victim here, we constantly have to go cleaning up things over there at great expense.

This is a super-interesting point of view. Thank You!

May I ask what source(s) of information and knowledge have made it possible for you to develop such a very clear conception of the complexities of the technologic, economic, politic, social, and cultural aspects of the question?

Re: Iranian Students Protest as Anger Grows

#45

Post by guyomes »

Herring wrote: post #7

Good luck to them. None of the Arab Spring revolutions have gone well. 0/6

According to the book "A Convergence of Civilizations" from Youssef Courbage and Emmanuel Todd [1], the Iran revolution actually happened at the end of the 70s. And indeed, the political situation is not stable yet. The authors argue in the book that historically, it can take from 30 to more than 100 years before a country gets a stable democracy after a revolution.

Notably, the book was written before the Arab Spring revolutions, and yet, it predicted them rather accurately. The main thesis of the book is that a revolution arises when most of the men and most of the women in a country can read.

[1]: https://cup.columbia.edu/book/a-convergence-of-civilizations...

Re: Iranian Students Protest as Anger Grows

#47

Post by throwaway27448 »

nickff wrote: post #15
throwaway27448 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the economy is terrible and getting worse we could always stop punishing the people of Iran for their government...

And the government could stop murdering people.

So could ours. But wishes were fishes there would be no room for water.

Re: Iranian Students Protest as Anger Grows

#48

Post by throwaway27448 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #34
regularization wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, a clearer way of saying this, as you do, is the West imposed crippling sanctions just prior to all of this, as Trump sends aircraft carriers to the Gulf.

> a clearer way of saying this, as you do, is the West imposed crippling sanctions The world doesn't revolve around the West. Nobody in America caused the IRGC to engineer a water crisis. Nobody asked for them to murder students in an internet-connected age, like the single thing you do not do if you want to calm things down. Sanctions have made Iranians poorer. But so has their gerontocratic theocracy pursuing autar…

So why don't we apply the same reasoning to the other authoritarian theocracies in the region that are just as oppressive? This whole idea that Iran is somehow uniquely bad just stinks to high heaven, and we have caused the people of iran to suffer for decades for it. I don't think Iran is the uniquely evil state between the two of us. (Not that the US is the cause of all evil, of course, but we certainly have caused many orders of magnitude more harm to the iranian people...)

Re: Iranian Students Protest as Anger Grows

#49

Post by JumpCrisscross »

ifwinterco wrote: post #38
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Honestly very hard to say It really isn't. Inflation at a fraction of Iran's prompts governments to change in any democracy.

What I mean is two things are true at once: 1) Iran's government has not done a good job of running the country and is therefore genuinely unpopular among a significant percentage of the population. 2) Iran's current government has powerful enemies (US, UK and of course a country in the Middle East all really hate the Iranian regime) and those enemies are actively trying to destabilise it. So it's really hard from th…

> it's really hard from the perspective of being in a western country to work out how much of the protests are genuinely endogenous to Iran and how much is an intelligence operation, because it's clearly not 0%

Intelligence assets are generally covert. It's incredibly difficult to engineer a protest–particularly in a repressive regime–out of nothing. Like half of the CIA's history in the Cold War was trying and failing to do this.

Re: Iranian Students Protest as Anger Grows

#50

Post by JumpCrisscross »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #48
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a clearer way of saying this, as you do, is the West imposed crippling sanctions The world doesn't revolve around the West. Nobody in America caused the IRGC to engineer a water crisis. Nobody asked for them to murder students in an internet-connected age, like the single thing you do not do if you want to calm things down. Sanctions have made Iranians poorer. But so has their gerontocratic theocracy pursuing autar…

So why don't we apply the same reasoning to the other authoritarian theocracies in the region that are just as oppressive? This whole idea that Iran is somehow uniquely bad just stinks to high heaven, and we have caused the people of iran to suffer for decades for it. I don't think Iran is the uniquely evil state between the two of us. (Not that the US is the cause of all evil, of course, but we certainly have caused…

> why don't we apply the same reasoning to the other authoritarian theocracies in the region that are just as oppressive?

They're either our allies, aren't pursuing nuclear weapons and/or aren't actively destabilising everything in their vicinity.

America calling for regime change in the Middle East is fraught, and I'm honestly not yet on board with direct action (though that's about as influential as what shade the moon is tonight). But Iran is "uniquely bad." It's also uniquely imperialistic in the region, up there with to Israel.

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