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After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

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Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#151

Post by breppp »

vintermann wrote: post #110
breppp wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far I remember a large reason for the water crisis is subsidizing water for agriculture which does not fit the local climate This is based on some ideological pillar of being autarkic, as the Islamic Republic was generally built upon the fear of outside influence sounds like if 90% of their water goes to agriculture, mostly export, and their country is cash strapped due to their habit of kidnappings, then maybe th…

> This is based on some ideological pillar of being autarkic, as the Islamic Republic was generally built upon the fear of outside influence You say that if it was some cultural oddity, and not a completely understandable reaction and exactly the same any state with "western culture" would have done in the same situation.

I don't say it's a cultural oddity, western culture had its fair share of self-destructive regimes which ideological underpinnings created great disasters, especially in the 20th century

Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#152

Post by dkga »

jna_sh wrote: post #50
stainablesteel wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this same problem is one of the side effects of mining for the metals used in things like solar panels it comes at the sacrifice of many non-western countries and this conversation is never on the table it's such a shame things that could otherwise last for thousands of years will get destroyed by a few decades of mismanagement

Never on which table? “Exporting” environmental degradation is an incredibly widely discussed issue. Especially for South America, due to illegal rainforest clearing for soy farming to feed the NA/EU cattle industry, and lithium mining in Argentina, Bolivia and Chile.

Not just soy farming, a part of which is surprisingly legal in the Brazilian Amazon. Some of the largest problems we have with respect to illegal rainforest deforestation involves logging or, even worse, artisanal gold mining.

Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#156

Post by breppp »

jrjeksjd8d wrote: post #117
breppp wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far I remember a large reason for the water crisis is subsidizing water for agriculture which does not fit the local climate This is based on some ideological pillar of being autarkic, as the Islamic Republic was generally built upon the fear of outside influence sounds like if 90% of their water goes to agriculture, mostly export, and their country is cash strapped due to their habit of kidnappings, then maybe th…

Their country is cash strapped and needs to be independent because of US sanctions. The CIA overthrew the democratically elected government in the 50s which led to the Islamic Republic.

The CIA had supported coups in many countries yet these countries have not kidnapped 50 diplomats, that's probably the single worst thing you can do diplomatically.

Countries as religiously deranged as Iran are close US allies (Saudis), Iran had many chances of changing that in the last 40 years.

Also, that popular 50s coup story of bad imperialists vs good natives does not only seem too simple to be true, it is

Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#157

Post by breppp »

MangoToupe wrote: post #126
breppp wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far I remember a large reason for the water crisis is subsidizing water for agriculture which does not fit the local climate This is based on some ideological pillar of being autarkic, as the Islamic Republic was generally built upon the fear of outside influence sounds like if 90% of their water goes to agriculture, mostly export, and their country is cash strapped due to their habit of kidnappings, then maybe th…

> This is based on some ideological pillar of being autarkic, as the Islamic Republic was generally built upon the fear of outside influence This sure is an interesting way to frame fifty years of organized sanctions

I wonder what Iran has done to receive sanctions

Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#158

Post by corimaith »

YC3498749387 wrote: post #149
immibis wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iran used to be a very prosperous country only a century ago, and then it democratically elected a totalitarian theocratic party. Don't think that it can't happen here too.

That doesn't sound correct. My understanding of the history is that Iran democratically elected a socialist who wanted to nationalize Iran's oil fields so they could keep the oil revenue inside their country instead of giving it away to BP and Exxon. The British orchestrated a coup to install the old monarchy (the Shah), who brought back the British extraction companies and harshly repressed Shia Muslims. Then in 197…

No. Mossadegh was appointed by the Shah (who was still head of state), but his own autocratic actions such as dissolving parliament and giving himself autocratic powers pushed most political forces against him that a confrontation was inevitable. There is a reason the military stood back as he was disposed. Furthermore, the Shah did actually have the legal right to fire Mossadegh, when je ignored that the situation was already extra legal.

I don't know where you are reading history from but listening to random factoids rather than a comprehensive understanding is the worst way to do so.

Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#159

Post by JumpCrisscross »

Waterluvian wrote: post #71
est31 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Machine translation has certainly become better, and that's amazing and wonderful to see. Definitely an amazing thing that has come out of the AI boom. However, it has led to many websites to automatically enable it (like reddit), and one has to find a way to opt out for each website, if one speaks the language already. Especially colloquial language that uses lots of idioms gets translated quite weirdly still. It's…

Early in my career I spent a lot of time thinking that HTML was antiquated. "Obviously they had 20th century ideas on what websites would be. As if we're all just publishing documents." But the beauty of HTML eventually clicked for me: it's describing the semantics of a structured piece of data, which means you can render a perfectly valid view of it however you want if you've got the right renderer! I imagine langua…

> I imagine language choice to be the same idea: they're just different views of the same data

This is a tempting illusion, but the evidence implies it’s false. Translation is simulation, not emulation.

Re: After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up

#160

Post by e-khadem »

MangoToupe wrote: post #133
nradov wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not completely wrong, though. Iran has spent significant resources on a nuclear weapons program, as well as sponsoring foreign terrorist organizations and other military activities. We can argue about whether those things are right or wrong but they really happened and consumed resources that could have been used to improve water infrastructure. Guns or butter.

Believe it or not, other things do happen in the country aside from what is reported on in western media. Claiming this is all they do is heinously ignorant.

Of course. Like embezzlement. I live in Iran and if you want a more detailed picture of the situation I find data provided in [1] well-researched. The executive summary is that one of the military branches really doesn't care about the environment as long as they get more power / money / anti-US proxies.

Also, that "Tehran will run out of water in two weeks" statement came from the president, and some neighborhoods really don't have water for several hours each day. The official advice is to "install water pumps and storage tanks."

[1] Why Iran is Rapidly Dying: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8kSGH4I8Ps

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