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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

#281

Post by thbb123 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #257
jfengel wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even setting aside my disagreements with the current President, the US has an atrocious track record when it comes to following through with support. Why on earth would they believe him?

> Why on earth would they believe him? One, we have no evidence they did. The claim that kids put themselves in front of guns forty days ago and again today because of Trump's tweets is extraordinary. Two, if they did, it's because they're desperate. I can't imagine Iranians actually want the shah back. But they know rallying around the shah's image pisses off the regime. In that way, it's actually smart to wave his…

If anything, they'd want something like Mossadegh back, which is not to please Trump at all

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

#282

Post by hollerith »

remarkEon wrote: post #280
pessimizer wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The case for intervention in Iran is much stronger, from the perspective of the United States, if you zoom out and realize that a larger fight in the Pacific is brewing and it would be wise to remove a player from the board who would happily provide access to fuel and refining capacity to PRC. Not saying I agree with this, necessarily, but it helps to steel man the more sophisticated cases when you are trying to unde…

>it would be wise to remove a player from the board who would happily provide access to fuel and refining capacity to PRC.

Washington has an easier way to do that: namely, to use its navy and the Sentinel Islands (controlled by Washington ally India) to prevent the transit of tankers from Iran to China.

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

#283

Post by remarkEon »

dataflow wrote: post #27
Rover222 wrote: post #15

[flagged]

> Not that I'm a political activist, but I'm constantly disturbed that all my friends who posted non-stop about supporting Palestine have NEVER made one mention of supporting the Iranians protesting that regime. There are many extremely significant differences between the situations Iranians and Palestinians have been in. The only similarity you're looking at is the number of deaths, it seems. But Iranians and Palest…

I think the reasons are a little more complex. The geography and history dimensions are plainly and obviously different, but criticizing Iran is wrapped up in layers of criticism of political Islam, which is harder to do for the people who tend to prioritize the plight of Palestinians. The Islamic Republic of Iran is the logical end state of the governing ideology of Hamas, and it's probably just easier to ignore the inconsistencies here than to emphasize with what's going on in Tehran right now.

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

#284

Post by reliabilityguy »

zyxzevn wrote: post #203

[flagged]

> Based on independent journalists in Iran, the protests were related to economic problems.

This was true in the beginning. Now every protest chants “Javid Shah”, “death to Khamenei”, etc, which are political chants.

> And they have an Apartheid system.

The only apartheid system that allows the minority they discriminate against to achieve highest positions as judges, academics, celebrities, etc.

> And they are actively depopulating the original population.

This is not true. You can simply check how number of Arabs grew, and in many cases, outpaced in their growth the Jewish population.

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

#285

Post by martin-t »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #208
martin-t wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Why would you want to, unless you live in a domain of indoctrination ("echo chamber") that pacifism is good and anything else is bad?

I always find it useful to ask "why", whenever someone tells me their beliefs. Children do it and adults sometimes tend to find it annoying because they realize they cannot justify their beliefs but being children, they are easy to dismiss. Harder to dismiss an honest question from an adult.

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

#286

Post by martin-t »

mjmsmith wrote: post #214
martin-t wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"Sadly" means "it's unfortunate that it got to the state where violence is necessary".

That's a good way to think about it but unfortunately, human language is so imprecise that IMO many people will leave with the conclusion that "sadly" means "using violence makes me sad and implicitly is therefore bad".

Ideally we'd live in a society where laws are a complete and consistent description of a valid (also complete and consistent) moral system. That's not the reality.

(If it's possible at all because morality operates on reality while legality operated on provability - a subset of reality which can be proven to a neutral third party.)

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

#287

Post by energy123 »

jfengel wrote: post #252
injidup wrote: post #167

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…

Even setting aside my disagreements with the current President, the US has an atrocious track record when it comes to following through with support. Why on earth would they believe him?

They didn't. It's called a Schelling point to solve the coordination problem. You don't get the luxury of picking and choosing your Schelling points a la carte. They come rarely and when they come you have to act or the window passes.

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

#288

Post by dataflow »

Rover222 wrote: post #218
dataflow wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think if Biden was taking a lot of the same actions the Trump admin is taking, people would support it a lot more (Venezuela, If Biden repeatedly shot boats that he alleged carried drugs without evidence and then shot survivors again for good measure until he eventually went and captured Venezuela's de facto head of state, people would support him a lot more? Really?

Yeah, of course democrats would support that much more than with Trump doing it. Same goes the other way of course. Republicans would be much more against it.

> people would support it a lot more

> democrats would support that much more, Republicans would be much more against it.

More people ≠ more Democrats

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

#289

Post by e-khadem »

zyxzevn wrote: post #203

[flagged]

[citation needed]. Not really though, you're just spewing the regime's propaganda. You might as well directly quote Khamenei on this one. I'm really restraining myself by not swearing at this comment.

Have you seen a dead body in your life? Have you seen a street stained with blood being washed with high pressure water? Have you seen parts of the brain of a fellow citizen on the sidewalk, the same guy who was standing next to you 30 seconds ago? 36'000 people were killed in just two nights. It was like 5 battles of D-Day, but in a shorter amount of time.

And you are conveniently forgetting the fact that most of the people came out when Reza Pahlavi requested a mass protest.

And then you portray it as if the people had no agency in this, they didn't know that 1500 were killed in the 2019 protests. And a similar number in 2022-2023 over Mahsa Amini, for protesting the actions of the "ethics police" killing a young girl over a few strands of her hair.

In the end, everyone is responsible for this other than the actual tyrants running the régime and the blood thirsty mullahs doing the actual killing.

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

#290

Post by jjtwixman »

kelipso wrote: post #116
jjtwixman wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Silly comment, in this case reporting facts about protests is indistinguishable from "manufacturing consent".

This article is made for a certain crowd, with a certain type of gullibility. Since the nypost has a different audience, we get to see a bit of comedy like this “Iranian forces hack out wombs of female protesters to hide horrific sexual abuse: report” (1). Babies in ovens (2) will be next right? 1. https://nypost.com/2026/02/20/world-news/imprisoned-iranian-... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony

Which part of the BBC article is fabricated?
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