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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

#281

Post by mc32 »

dxdm wrote: post #266
mc32 wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s an ideological issue. Many people if they could would move to one of such ‘imperial powers’ which means it’s not much of an actual issue. Most Europeans seem to be fine being under the EU where they don’t get to vote those bureaucrats in.

> Most Europeans seem to be fine being under the EU where they don’t get to vote those bureaucrats in. The political power in the EU comes from the national governments (directly and via the European commission) and the EU parliament. The members of parliament are elected. The national governments are also formed out of elected parliaments. There's also a body of administration and bureaucracy that comes out of these…

I didn’t say authoritarian rather there is a supra national body that dictates policy down to sovereign countries whether the countries agree or not. It has similarities to colonial powers. You have local laws and customs but the colonial power can overrule and supersede those.

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

#282

Post by owenversteeg »

baxtr wrote: post #73

Maybe it’s selection bias but: The saddest thing about Iran I’ve noticed is the stark contrast between the current state of the country and the intelligence of the people I’ve met from this country.

This discussion comes up from time to time on HN. I actually think the country _has_ accomplished a lot given their geopolitical situation. Just to list a few things in the 21st century: 1) they had years of (at times fairly successful) proxy wars with three of the most militarily powerful US allies until the recent collapse, 2) a nuclear program, 3) the largest ballistic missile attack in history against the US, and 4) the most significant development in modern warfare (the Shahed drone.) Imagine any other relatively poor country, sanctioned and hated by the West, with substantial brain drain, ruled by an anti-Western theocracy for nearly fifty years; they wouldn’t manage a tenth of that. Imagine what they could do if they set down their weapons…

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

#283

Post by dxdm »

mc32 wrote: post #281
dxdm wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most Europeans seem to be fine being under the EU where they don’t get to vote those bureaucrats in. The political power in the EU comes from the national governments (directly and via the European commission) and the EU parliament. The members of parliament are elected. The national governments are also formed out of elected parliaments. There's also a body of administration and bureaucracy that comes out of these…

I didn’t say authoritarian rather there is a supra national body that dictates policy down to sovereign countries whether the countries agree or not. It has similarities to colonial powers. You have local laws and customs but the colonial power can overrule and supersede those.

This is a similarly bizarre claim, for the same reasons as before. You have not really thought about how representative democracy works, or you misunderstand or wilfully misrepresent it.

In the end, your argument can be used against the other levels of government. National governments of not directly elected officials and bureaucrats and remote parliaments dictating to whole regions, who lord it over cities and communities, who oppress individual people, who should not have to cede a bit of their sovereignty to anybody else to decide or act on their behalf.

Nothing is perfect, nor is the EU, but with your line of thinking, you effectively deligitimize every practical way of organizing government as "colonial".

Maybe that's what you want, maybe you misunderstand and don't care if you do. There are many reasons good and bad to dislike the EU. Yours just appears to be nonsensical.

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

#284

Post by literalAardvark »

feb012025 wrote: post #267
baxtr wrote: post #73

Maybe it’s selection bias but: The saddest thing about Iran I’ve noticed is the stark contrast between the current state of the country and the intelligence of the people I’ve met from this country.

It's genuinely hard to parse reality from propaganda when it comes to Iran. There are plenty of travel vloggers on youtube who visited over the past few years (before the June war obviously). The state of the country seemed quite beautiful to be honest. I have a hard time thinking it's a total disaster right now

"water has run out" is a binary event

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

#285

Post by ch4s3 »

coredog64 wrote: post #258
therobots927 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of like how the US built Phoenix and LA in the middle of the desert, and allows farming in the desert as well, setting the stage for a near term water crisis in the region when the Rocky Mountain snow melt gets cut in half?

The Salt River enabled the Phoenix area to be an agricultural power house long before Columbus arrived in America. The Pima practiced irrigation agriculture and were using their crop surpluses to trade far and wide. What's problematic is Phoenix agriculture is the focus on extremely water hungry crops like alfalfa and not really the presence of agriculture in general.

> What's problematic is Phoenix agriculture is the focus on extremely water hungry crops like alfalfa and not really the presence of agriculture in general.

This is entirely an artifact of arcane water law in the US. Any rational allocation would make alfalfa untenable there.

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

#286

Post by vkou »

breppp wrote: post #249
vkou wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Egypt has always had one foot in each camp. The US' treatment of Cuba is the better example. It's doing none of the things the parent poster listed, yet it's still treated by the US as a pariah state. Uncle Sam doesn't care about how you treat women, or whether you have elections, but he deeply cares about you taking some corporation's stuff 70 years ago . That is the original sin that can never be atoned for. (For a…

Cuba and the US were very close to normalizing under Obama IIRC. What do you think about Vietnamese-US relations?

They are only fine because Vietnam is useful to the US as a regional counterweight to China.

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

#287

Post by Braxton1980 »

dkga wrote: post #5

I grew up in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, a region full of natural resources and, thankfully, aquifers and natural water reservoirs. However, centuries of extraction mismanagement and, more recently, over exploration of mineral resources puts these water resources into jeopardy. (Other problems include mining in open pits and with sludge dams that led to two of the worse environmental disasters in the world i…

The real crime is the people who benefitted from it and their families won't face mob justice.

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

#289

Post by feb012025 »

literalAardvark wrote: post #284
feb012025 wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's genuinely hard to parse reality from propaganda when it comes to Iran. There are plenty of travel vloggers on youtube who visited over the past few years (before the June war obviously). The state of the country seemed quite beautiful to be honest. I have a hard time thinking it's a total disaster right now

"water has run out" is a binary event

Nobody would be alive if it the "water ran out" in that case...

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

#290

Post by ch4s3 »

geraneum wrote: post #274
ch4s3 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mossadegh was elected but was also illegally trying to dissolve parliament. >at the very least it disproves your unspoken assertion that the Iranians are primarily to blame for their problems I'm very clearly stating that the Shah in particular was highly likely to have removed Mossadegh either way due to a multi-decade power struggle between the Pahlavi dynasty and the parliament /prime minister. The Majlis as a riv…

> Mossadegh was elected but was also illegally trying to dissolve parliament. You’re being too liberal with meaning of “illegal” here. There was a referendum to dissolve the Parliament then.

A referendum held outside of the legal process after he probably lost the previous election.
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