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

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

#201
post #142
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We (the US) just bombed Iran last summer. We are moving the largest buildup in decades of armament and materiel to Iran's doorstep RIGHT NOW, and it seems extremely likely we are about to bomb them again. What exactly do you want to happen here? In your view, am I taking the side of the Ayatollahs because bombing isn't enough and we should be nuking Tehran instead? It's telling that perceived tacit support of an Iran…

It's possible, of course, to oppose the Ayatollah as a dictatorial regime and oppose excessive American intervention.

It's not, really, if you are now ignoring all of the dictatorial theocracies that we support enthusiastically, and focusing on the ones that America is looking for an excuse to intervene in.

And this is not a "why focus on this thing when there are other things" fake argument. These protests were engineered by people with the intention of intervening, and a lot of that engineering the involved manipulation of western media narratives and the creation of fake organizations to become sources of information. It's not coincidence or luck that you're focused on Iran; people were sitting around planning an invasion of Iran and part of their planning was "How can we get the public to focus on Iran enough to give Congress cover to ignore another Executive war?"

The actual narrative, undisputed by even the people involved, is that

1) a currency crash was intentionally instigated in Iran by the West, which caused protests. We have bragged about this.

2) Many of the educated Iranian middle class joined these protests to argue against the regime in general, which they always do.

3) US and Israeli-supported terrorist organizations took advantage of those protests (like a black bloc) to start burning down buildings and burning cops alive, armed by the west and networked through smuggled Skylink terminals,

4) the US and Israel bragged that the protests were materially supported by covert western intelligence in order to push the crackdown to atrocity levels, and to eliminate even the general public's support for the protests (which would be some restraint to the government.) They literally said that many of the protesters were Mossad agents. You might as well be saying "please kill them." It's as if Al Qaeda announced that they were materially supporting and completely infiltrating BLM protests, and when many BLM activists were arrested, they were carrying Al Qaeda satellite terminals and arms smuggled from Pakistan.

(The Iranian middle class was even out, because they aren't traitors, they just don't want to live in a theocracy. The West are who turned Iran into a dictatorship by replacing Mossadegh with the Shah. The West helped Iraq use chemical weapons against Iran. We care nothing about Iranians, we just want to steal from them. We're thieves, and we're consciously moving to a economic strategy of piracy in order to take advantage of our navy.)

5) The US moved as much navy to bear on Iran as it did when it invaded Iraq, and said that unless some magic words were said that nobody knows, it would invade.

You might be comfortable being manipulated like this, but I am not.

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

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the only viable solution becomes giving the movement its demands. This interpretation reeks of Western naivete. Students were not merely arrested — they were gunned down en masse in the streets and even in hospitals. They were provoked by the U.S. president, who promised support to take on the institutions, but that support never materialized. The likely endgame of this current gunboat diplomacy is similar to Venez…

> interpretation reeks of Western naivete The author is "an ancient and military historian who currently teaches as a Teaching Assistant Professor at North Carolina State University" [1]. > Students were not merely arrested — they were gunned down en masse in the streets and even in hospitals Non-violent doesn't mean peaceful. People died in our Civil Rights protests. People died in the Indian independence and the Ph…

This article is on my to-read list and I am a great fan of Mr. Devereaux's work. But I also feel like promoting non-violence outside the context of western democracies is misleading and potentially dangerous. Maybe he addresses it somewhere in the article but I have yet to read it so forgive me if he does.

But how does he explain the failure of peaceful revolutions in Belarus or China?

My understanding of social dynamics is that being peaceful only works as long as it gains you more supporters than you lose by government action against the movement. Some governments give in but if not, at some point, the scale tips and violence or surrender are your only options.

In Belarus, I knew they were fucked as soon as I heard that police support the protests by putting down their guns and joining the protesters.

They gave up their ability to use violence and therefore became as irrelevant as the other protesters. They should have kept their guns. They should have tried to use their openly armed protest to incite other armed people to also join. At some point, the potential violence would materialize but hopefully at that point, enough of the armed people would be on the side of the protest.

Maybe the dictator would give up if he saw the situation spiraling out of control (and hopefully be executed as punishment anyway).

Maybe the dictator would try to flee and get caught and executed ("gunned down"). Maybe his bunker would get overrun.

Maybe someone close to him would try to get favor from the protesters and kill him.

But all of those potential outcomes were closed off if people opposing him didn't have enough guns.

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

#204
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Myanmar Did they? It was occasionally in the news but that's about it.

Yeah fair, it's not like there were massive campus protests.

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

#205
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

>That crowd only seems to care if they can actively oppose Israel or the current administration Can you think of any motivating reasons for the crowd to focus on Israel specifically? Last I checked, the American government isn't sending billions of dollars of weaponry and political cover to the Iranian government, so that is one massive reason why protesting Israel makes more sense. >have not made a peep about the th…

> I don't protest to signal my moral outrage, I do it to effect change in my elected leaders.

How'd that work out for you?

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

#206
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[flagged]

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

#207
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Arabs are about 2% of Iran’s population [1], and most of the rest will be insulted if you called them arabs to their face. Many see themselves better than arabs, and many more are mad about the arab occupation that brought Islam to take over the then-dominant faith of Zoroastrianism. The average Israeli doesn’t hate the average Iranian. Israeli social media is full of posts about how people hope to one day visit Tehr…

Is it fair to call it colonialism instead of occupation?

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

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to only have a good track record in places with a democratic tradition. Some dictators have figured out you can just imprison and kill the opposition, and keep doing this until there is no more opposition. The Khomeini government is not going to just say "oh, you're right" and change. Neither will the Kim or Putin governments. Sometimes - sadly - violence is the least worst answer.

Don't say sadly. Don't further the indoctrination that violence is bad. It is a tool, it cannot be good or bad. States are the most prolific users of violence (even more when you also count potential/threatened, not yet materialized). Anyone who wants to claim that violence is bad has to oppose the existence of states. Violence is risky, dangerous, unpredictable, costly, etc. But those are practical and legal, not mo…

But if violence is useful or even necessary, how can we pretend to be saintly pacifists?

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

#209
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That crowd only seems to care if they can actively oppose Israel or the current administration Can you think of any motivating reasons for the crowd to focus on Israel specifically? Last I checked, the American government isn't sending billions of dollars of weaponry and political cover to the Iranian government, so that is one massive reason why protesting Israel makes more sense. >have not made a peep about the th…

So you want you elected leaders to save Palestinians (perfectly reasonable), but don't want your elected leaders to consider doing something out when thousands are being massacred in the street? You really think if the US wasn't supporting Israel, no one would have cared about Gaza?

> So you want you elected leaders to save Palestinians

I don't want that. I want them to stop paying Israelis with our money to kill Palestinians. If they want to do atrocities, they can do it on their own dime.

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

#210

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…

Protest of any kind only works in systems where the rulers aren’t insulated from the sentiment of their populace by a steady stream of natural resources money.
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