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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

#371

Post by don_esteban »

watwut wrote: post #352
vkou wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Russia is not a Western country. Russian culture, as it is practiced in the country's power centers, both historically and today is absolutely Western. It may not be liberal western culture, but guess what, there's no shortage of Western countries that have been, or are, quite illiberal. For a simple example, MAGA is western culture. United Russia isn't at all different from it, it just has a different coat of pain…

The only thing that can make Russia "western" is if you equate white and western. MAGA is western, because it is American. Russia is not western, because it is neither europe nor america. And they themselves consider themselves east. And did for over a hundred years.

If you have traveled a bit around the world, and first hand experienced different cultures, you will recognize that Russia of Moscow/Petersburg and other big cities is much closer to 'west' than to 'east' of China/India/Japan/Mongolia/Indonesia.

Maybe not western enough for you, it does have a distinct flavour (but then Sicilia is also distinctly different from Sweden), but still much closer to Europe than to Asia proper.

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

#372

Post by xphos »

lokar wrote: post #3
regularization wrote: post #2

[flagged]

Are you arguing the protests did not happen? That they did not happen as reported? That they did happen as reported, but it should not have been reported? What is your point?

I'm sitting waiting for my hotel room to be available in Glasgow Scotland today next the a giant BBC headquarters where I read a bunch of anti BBC protest art on the connecting bridge. There is a certainly a visible anger with BBC reporting. But I agree with you that while being funded this is incredibly factual reporting.

This students are brave and deserve a government free from the regime but a government also of there own making

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

#373

Post by ipv6ipv4 »

fortzi wrote: post #230
pessimizer wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Sorry, but it sounds crazy to me, I don’t know what to make of that. Do you care about those people or not? Sorry, unless I’m missing something, what you said just sounds like a cop out.

That's because it is a cop out.

When talking about Israel, it's always couched in terms of universal human rights. When confronted with their lack of advocacy for the human rights of practically anyone else, their cognitive fallback is that they only care for what they feel the U.S. government is responsible for, and that it's not really about universal human rights, and never was. Then, when no one is paying attention anymore, they swing back to being avowed universal human rights activists who just happen to be condemning Israel.

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

#374

Post by fortzi »

vcryan wrote: post #263

You really can't trust any western news about Iran. For whatever reason, western powers want to start a war with Iran so badly and the media is always ready to help start a war.

> For whatever reason…

Seems like you acknowledge your own lack of understanding of the subject (admirable!). Why then do you make such bold claims?

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

#375

Post by breppp »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #262
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What changed? Is it demographics - like are there larger numbers of young people who aren’t for a theocracy? Some internal factor opaque to western media. Their economy's in the shitter, perhaps. Or the so-called water shortage. Though what it could be exactly, that western intelligence wouldn't be willing to trumpet from the mountaintops, I could not say.

> Though what it could be exactly, that western intelligence wouldn't be willing to trumpet from the mountaintops Germany used to have great Middle Eastern intel, but they either lost it or got better about leaks. American HUMINT in the Middle East is notoriously awful, so I'd err on the side of us being as confused as everyone else.

I think intelligence like historiography is extremely bad at detecting processes as they are happening, as it cannot understand behaviors of humans that are not part of large bureaucracies it usually researches. Therefore, intelligence in general usually fails in anticipating revolutions

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

#376

Post by Rover222 »

bigyabai wrote: post #247
fortzi wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you should ask a few Palestinians before making such statements. Polls made by respected Palestinian surveyors show immense support for Hamas by Palestinians [1]. If you dig inti the polls, you’ll find great support in continuing the armed conflict. I’ll add: to the last man standing. While I agree with you that Hamas and the Palestinians are not one thing, Hamas would not be able to operate the way it did (and…

Even still, that data does not refute the parent's point that you are making a false equivalency. Polling Israeli or US citizens on the extremist groups they support would be similarly dishonest; organizations like ICE, Blackwater and Irgun cannot be fairly conflated with their respective populations regardless of how the majority feels.

Palestinians voted Hamas into power by a large majority. It's not some fringe extremist group. It's mainstream Palestinian culture.

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

#377

Post by ordu »

injidup wrote: post #167
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #7

“To simplify greatly, the strategy of non-violence aims first to cause disruption (non-violently) in order both to draw attention but also in order to bait state overreaction. The state’s overreaction then becomes the ‘spectacular attack’ which broadcasts the movement’s message, while the group’s willingness to endure that overreaction without violence not only avoids alienating supporters, it heightens the contrast…

> 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…

You are responding to a short quote from the article. This quote works with some assumtions, which are also discussed in the article. It is not naivete, the article is an interpretation of facts, including those when non-violent protests didn't work. We can disagree with the interpretation, but even if I know a way to do it, we just can't do it dealing with this small quote taken out of the context.

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

#378

Post by breppp »

jfengel wrote: post #260
fortzi wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iran is not an adversary of Israel, as much as the IRGC is.

Any subsequent government isn't likely to be a friend of Israel, either. They might decide to stop actively funding attacks and put the money to better use, but I wouldn't be so sure of that. It's the basis of a lot of ally relationships that they will want to maintain.

Why? a non-religious Iran would have difficulty maintaining alliances with islamist organizations such as PMF and Hezbollah that were used to slaughter Iranian protestors. Also, like Syria it would probably pivot to a US-led alliance

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

#380

Post by don_esteban »

davidgay wrote: post #229
philwelch wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This works against relatively liberal governments. It didn’t work for the Tiananmen Square protestors in 1989 or for the intermittent Iranian protestors of the past couple decades because those regimes were willing to suppress those protests with overwhelming force. Fortunately, the Iranian protestors are likely to have some overwhelming force on their side soon.

I don't think the other governments that collapsed in 1989 in the face of public protest could be honestly described as "relatively liberal".

"relatively" can cover a lot of ground :-)

From my naive observation, the regimes of Eastern Europe had lost their will to perpetuate. (Everybody saw, including party apparatchiks, that the people in the west have better lives. Or at least better goods. :-) )

The cynical take would be that the (smarter) communists in power prepared themselves for the transition, positioning themselves to benefit after the change.

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