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Notes on Tajikistan

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Re: Notes on Tajikistan

#191

Post by ffgjgf1 »

holoduke wrote: post #71
jajko wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia has no allies. Every single 'compatible' nation ran the hell away from them as soon as it become marginally possible in late 80s, and in typical russian victim fashion west and US specifically is to blame. Just look at what they are doing to their supposed brothers in Ukraine, for one old man's greed and twisted view on reality and his legacy, 0 other reasons. This is how they treat everybody, including other…

[flagged]

> But there is more than that

Sure, there are more details. Fundamentally that doesn’t change anything at all that much. At no point in the conflict Russia had any interest in a peaceful solution or actually protecting the Russian speaking population in East Ukraine (the opposite, they just wanted to turn them into some sort of perverse “martyrs”. Then again not particularly surprising considering that the Russian society is effectively a deranged death cult..)

> I blame the west for that.

Oh no.. whatever will we do.

Re: Notes on Tajikistan

#192

Post by thriftwy »

mopsi wrote: post #155
justsomehnguy wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hitler and they jointly invaded everyone in Europe between Germany and Russia Wow, I didn't knew Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are located between Germany and Russia. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Map_used...

Here's a helpful map visualizing how Russia and Germany divided Eastern Europe in the secret protocol[1] to the Hitler-Stalin pact: https://i.imgur.com/DvCrPWB.jpeg As to the "Judenfrei" status, that's a great deal due to the executions and mass deportations[2] that Russians unleashed after invading in 1940. First they banned all Jewish organizations, even fraternities and tennis clubs. Then they started targeting th…

Soviet nomenclature did consist of Jews to significant extent. At times more, at times less, but it's disingenous for you to mention Jews being overrepresented among the victims without mentioning they were also overrepresented among Soviet officials, including high ranking ones.

Of course, it weren't these random religious small business owners but people significantly conditioned by the socialist regime, which they participated in creating.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Parrot_Speaking_Yiddish the movie highlights that fact: a Soviet military officer occupying Lithuania in 1939 turns out to be Jew, which does not preclude him from internment of the movie protagonist, also Jew and Polish army soldier at the time in the plot.

Re: Notes on Tajikistan

#193

Post by surfingdino »

mkoubaa wrote: post #139
feoren wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the bedrock of religion is forcing your beliefs upon others. Hence the tension. It's like the paradox of tolerance.

And yet religious freedom begat liberalism, not the other way around

This doesn't mean religion ought to receive any special treatment going forward. It is a way of looking at the world, but requires belief which is in opposition to other beliefs and they all are in opposition to scientific approach to understanding ourselves and the world we live in. It is also a way of imposing and enforcing morals that cannot be questioned unless one is prepared to face grave consequences. The "priest" of are predominantly men, who are under no obligation to follow the morals they preach and indulge in the "sins" they condemn without fear of prosecution. In the end, when the veil comes off it's about power, money, and sex. So no, no special treatment of religion ought to be allowed in a secular society. And secular societies ought to have laws and mechanisms preventing them from takeover by religious groups.

Re: Notes on Tajikistan

#194

Post by thriftwy »

mopsi wrote: post #149
thriftwy wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's always funny to me how facts about previous allegiance are withheld with impunity, apparently in hopes to confuse a distracted reader. I can forgive people for forgetting to mention that Baltic states were part of Russia for centuries before they were re-annexed by the USSR in 1945. Indeed I can see how people had 20 years of independence and weren't fans of being included into a socialist utopia. But, just yest…

> I can forgive people for forgetting to mention that Baltic states were part of Russia for centuries before they were re-annexed by the USSR in 1945. Indeed I can see how people had 20 years of independence and weren't fans of being included into a socialist utopia. There's fair bit more history than the 20 years of independence squished by Russians in 1940. Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were always very di…

Before early XX century most of the globe was comprised of countries who looked like that.

> the main language used in administrative affairs was German

> to portray Georgia as a mere "province of Russian Empire" is ridiculous given that they are so distinct that you cannot even read what they write

Please don't tell me that many Englishmen could read Devangari script or that many Frenchmen could read (pre-Latin) Vietnamese.

You may not like it today, but these territorial claims were seen as completely valid.

The subtexts that you are pinning on me are your own invention, I just say about unfaithful representation of history in the press.

Re: Notes on Tajikistan

#195

Post by lordofgibbons »

theanonymousone wrote: post #189

Not so new fact that many here may already know: The (in?)famous -stan suffix, coming originally from Persian, is an etymological cousin of State, Street, Statistics, Strategy and Stadt. In Iran, provinces are called Ostan and some Ostans' names end with -stan (e.g. Ostan of Kurdistan). By the way, since it's not clear from their names, it may be worth noting that Tajiki and Persian are two dialects of the same langu…

The -istan suffix means "land of". Similar to ScotLand, IreLand, etc.

So Tajikistan means: the land of Tajiks, Afghanistan means the land of Afghans, Kurdistan means the land of Kurds, etc

Re: Notes on Tajikistan

#196

Post by ffgjgf1 »

pythonguython wrote: post #62
_DeadFred_ wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When your police are free to abuse girls all the way up to abusing them to death for not wearing hats like Iran is, I'm pretty sure that's extremism.

And in the early 20th century pahlavi’s regime beat women who chose to keep wearing the hijab. Religious extremism in the form of salafi Wahhabism isn’t common in the country, nor is militant jihad. It’s theocratic authoritarianism. I think the difference is worth noting.

> extremism in the form of salafi Wahhabism isn’t common in the country

It’s not like the SA government (as a whole) was ever particularly that keen about the extremism part. Fundamentally they are not that different from Iran in most ways. They started from very different positions of course (secularism never having been a thing in the Arabian peninsula). SA is at least kind of moving into the right direction in some areas when it comes to women’s rights (even if at an extremely slow pace).

> It’s theocratic authoritarianism

Probably closer to theocratic totalitarianism..

Re: Notes on Tajikistan

#197

Post by RecycledEle »

> all rolled into one beautiful, weird, dysfunctional country, and I couldn’t get enough of it.

I do not see dysfunctional countries as beautiful. I prefer well functioning countries where things get done and people understand each other.

I guess the author likes to see people suffer?

Re: Notes on Tajikistan

#198

Post by dang »

adhamsalama wrote: post #186
dang wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Religious flamewar will get you banned here, regardless of which religions you're for or against. Please don't post like this to HN again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Interesting. So why haven't you said the same about those other comments about Islam?

When people get a mod response they often jump to the conclusion "the mods must be against me / my side". This is understandable but not accurate. We've moderated and/or banned many accounts doing religious flamewar against Islam, just the same as any other religion.

If you see some posts where people are doing that and didn't get moderated, please don't take that to mean "the mods don't care" or "the mods must tacitly support this". Far more likely is we just didn't see it. We don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here.

If you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, you can help by flagging it or emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Re: Notes on Tajikistan

#199

Post by ffgjgf1 »

adhamsalama wrote: post #183
aprilthird2021 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a lot of Westerners don't realize is this kind of sentiment is exactly why Islamist parties and political groups are so popular in the Muslim world. If your only choice is extremely socially conservative, democratic groups like the Muslim Brotherhood (or worse) or a literal Kim Jong Un alike, then it's pretty obvious who you'd choose. This is resorting to extremism and terrorism, it's just conducted by the army…

Democratic groups like the Muslim Brotherhood? Care to explain that one more?

They want to democratically abolish democracy. What’s undemocratic about that?

Re: Notes on Tajikistan

#200

Post by dang »

gromneer wrote: post #182
dang wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Religious flamewar will get you banned here, regardless of which religions you're for or against. Please don't post like this to HN again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[flagged]

I understand how and why such feelings come up—it makes a lot of sense given the cultural context and the history. But I'd ask you to pause and consider taking 'yes' for an answer, i.e. to consider that we might genuinely intend to treat all sides, including yours, fairly and equally. I've been telling HN users that they can't attack Islam (same as any other religion) for as long as I've been a moderator here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10590568 (Nov 2015)

It's easy to run into a few (maybe only one or two) datapoints and jump to "these assholes are just like all the others". That's how sample bias (and whatever bias this is: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...) work. But if you do that, you'll miss many cases where someone is on your side and has good will towards you. That's not in your interest—it just leads to more of the same. How about let's for something else.

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