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Iran students stage first large anti-government protests since deadly crackdown

bbc.com

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Re: Iran students stage first large anti-government protests since deadly crackdown

#151

Post by justsomehnguy »

Wytwwww wrote: post #67
regularization wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> non-violence Armed Baloch and Kurdish groups have been boasting of firing on Iranian police. The police are firing back. Hard to call them non-violent when they openly boast about armed attacks. Who knows where they are getting their weapons, with western countries also openly declaring their intent to destabilize Iran.

> with western countries also openly declaring their intent to destabilize Iran As opposed to standing idly by when the regime 'stabilizes' the country by murdering thousands of people? It's well past the stage where non violent protest or resistance stopped being a viable option..

Dear American, kindly solve your own internal issues first and then - maybe - you can talk on how to "help" some other countries on the literal other side of the world TYM.

Re: Iran students stage first large anti-government protests since deadly crackdown

#152

Post by don_esteban »

Galaxeblaffer wrote: post #78
weakfish wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idk, I’ve never seen any left wing folks actively support the Iranian regime. I think the difference is what you noted, the US support for Israel vs. intervention in Iran. I, and many I know, would love to see the Iranian regime fall, just not via US regime change which tends to make things worse.

One big thing your missing is that there simply is no way imaginable that a regime change can happen without the US, it's simply impossible at this stage. I can certainly understand why many if not most Iranians want the US to intervene, it's simply the only way regime change is ever going to happen.w

I have lived through regime change in Eastern Europe in 1989. A year before the change, one cannot imagine the regime change. And yet, it did happen. Bloodlessly (except Romania).

Any external meddling would have probably made it much bloodier.

You can be assured most Iranians do NOT want US to intervene. How many Americans want China/Russia to intervene to 'help' you get rid of Trump?

Get off your high horse and use a bit of empathy and common sense.

Re: Iran students stage first large anti-government protests since deadly crackdown

#153

Post by zozbot234 »

Erem wrote: post #149
zozbot234 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(2) is not a problem if you enact equivalent civil rights acts in every state. There would be plenty of political support for doing this today, including in the Sunbelt - which there wasn't in the 1950s.

I think “equivalent” would be the challenge here. When people need to know at all the nuances of what bathroom and restaurants they’re allowed to use, and what train cars when business or pleasure takes them across state lines it becomes a pretty large tax both for the individual and for interstate commerce at large

The bathroom issue is especially silly. Just mandate that public restrooms have to also include gender-neutral single-occupant bathrooms, that anyone can use as they desire.

Re: Iran students stage first large anti-government protests since deadly crackdown

#154

Post by AnimalMuppet »

Roark66 wrote: post #146

I applaud their bravery in remaining non violent, but I'm not sure that is the best strategy as the state showed their willingness to just kill everyone. Would organising an armed resistance be more effective? The state dissappears people. Have them organise and dissappear the leaders of the revolutionary guard or at the very least help another state (like Israel) to target them. Non violence works only in democracie…

Nonviolence works where the rulers have a conscience (or at least where those who carry out the rulers' will do).

Would armed resistance be more effective? How many guns can they get their hands on? I don't know the answer to that, but my expectation is, not many. (I am open to correction.)

Re: Iran students stage first large anti-government protests since deadly crackdown

#155

Post by pphysch »

Betelbuddy wrote: post #30

I cant imagine the courage that is needed to take part in these protests. Most here, the most revolutionary act they will ever participate on in their life, is criticizing their boss choice of Azure as cloud provider...

[flagged]

Re: Iran students stage first large anti-government protests since deadly crackdown

#156

Post by JumpCrisscross »

pydry wrote: post #108
Wytwwww wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with western countries also openly declaring their intent to destabilize Iran As opposed to standing idly by when the regime 'stabilizes' the country by murdering thousands of people? It's well past the stage where non violent protest or resistance stopped being a viable option..

>As opposed to standing idly by when the regime 'stabilizes' the country by murdering thousands of people? Do you demand an invasion of Israel? Because your moral principles seem to demand an invasion and subjugation of Israel.

> your moral principles seem to demand an invasion and subjugation of Israel

There is absolutely no requirement for consistency in geopolitics. Advocating for a position on e.g. Gaza or Iran isn't undermined because that person isn't expending equal efforts on injustice in another theatre.

Re: Iran students stage first large anti-government protests since deadly crackdown

#157

Post by pydry »

Rover222 wrote: post #63
conception wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally in global politics if you are just killing your own people everything is cool. People don’t really get into it until you cross borders.

People seemed to care about the Myanmar and Chinese genocides. Muslim victims. Non-muslim oppressors. But Central Africa, Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, etc? Extreme suffering. But the activists don't activate.

Activists tend to care most when it is their government participating in inflicting the suffering.

The people taking a dump on those activists for how they "allocate" their activism not only dont care about the suffering their government participates in, they usually cheer it on.

This can be seen the most clearly in the case of the gazan genocide.

Re: Iran students stage first large anti-government protests since deadly crackdown

#158

Post by JumpCrisscross »

don_esteban wrote: post #113
Wytwwww wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So there are no circumstances where armed rebellion is justifiable and the only legitimate type of resistance to state violence is literally trying to drown the state forces in bodies of non-violent protestors? At a certain point there ceases to be a middle path between violent resistance and complete surrender. > Protesters which foreign states (China or Russia) This type of relativism is dishonest. Of course US is…

Uh, sorry, no. At the moment you start arguing by 'The Iranian regime is objectively evil, period', you have totally lost the plot. The statement 'The USA regime is objectively evil, period' is much more justifiable. Measured, e.g. by the number of people it has killed (both directly, and indirectly by sanctions and support for brutal dictators - e.g. Pinochet, but also Saddam while he was waging war with Iran). Medd…

> Meddling in internal affairs of other countries has a terrible track record, the world would be so much better off without it

Wishing away "meddling" is on par with wishing away war. Nice in theory. Practically impossible in practice. (Sovereignty has a Schrödinger's element to it. You really only know you have it when you test its boundaries. And the only test of sovereignty is against another sovereign. The world is littered with sovereigns meddling in each others' affairs and those who aren't sovereign.)

Re: Iran students stage first large anti-government protests since deadly crackdown

#159

Post by lich_king »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #154
Roark66 wrote: post #146

I applaud their bravery in remaining non violent, but I'm not sure that is the best strategy as the state showed their willingness to just kill everyone. Would organising an armed resistance be more effective? The state dissappears people. Have them organise and dissappear the leaders of the revolutionary guard or at the very least help another state (like Israel) to target them. Non violence works only in democracie…

Nonviolence works where the rulers have a conscience (or at least where those who carry out the rulers' will do). Would armed resistance be more effective? How many guns can they get their hands on? I don't know the answer to that, but my expectation is, not many. (I am open to correction.)

> Would armed resistance be more effective?

I mean, with dictators, that's usually what it comes down to. But it often takes years or decades of unrest and repression before someone with enough guns decides they want to be on the right side of history.

It's a fascinating if morbid process we go through every now and then... sort of, building consensus by sacrificing livelihoods and lives.

Iran is one of the most oppressive regimes remaining on this planet, so I really hope this does it. The problem is that revolutionary governments are usually not dumb and do their best to make sure that another revolution can't overthrow them too easily - hardline loyalists with benefits in the military, etc. So this probably ends with a military intervention by other countries or some other sequence of events that will spell even more misery.

The whole history of the Iranian revolution is pretty wacky. It's easy to take a knee-jerk position that "the West did it", and we definitely set some pieces in motion, but Iran wasn't really hurting prior to the revolution, which is why it caught everyone by surprise. The shah made a number of political missteps, there was some sentiment against the UK and the US, and people wanted change... but almost no one wanted a theocratic dictatorship instead. And yet...

Re: Iran students stage first large anti-government protests since deadly crackdown

#160

Post by weatherlite »

pydry wrote: post #107
Wytwwww wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So there are no circumstances where armed rebellion is justifiable and the only legitimate type of resistance to state violence is literally trying to drown the state forces in bodies of non-violent protestors? At a certain point there ceases to be a middle path between violent resistance and complete surrender. > Protesters which foreign states (China or Russia) This type of relativism is dishonest. Of course US is…

>So there are no circumstances where armed rebellion is justifiable What circumstances has Iran created that demand armed rebellion?

How about killing 30k people (vast majority unarmed as far as I can tell) in a week or two?
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