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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

#331

Post by magic_hamster »

CommanderData wrote: post #114
tachalorah wrote: post #52

CIA and Mossad with their usual hobby.

Israel wants Iran destroyed so badly, interesting it suddenly loves Iranians now after it bombed them indiscriminately killing many civilians just last year. HN'ers hopefully arent stupid to fall for obvious propaganda?

The ones killing Iranians indiscriminately are the Iranian police.

Let's see your sources about Israel killing all these Iranians in the last conflict. Israel was too busy hunting ICBMs and had no interest in killing Iranians on the street.

Yeah, waiting for those sources to show up.

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

#332

Post by buran77 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #141
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…

> As support for state repression of the movement declines (because repression is not stopping the disruption) and the movement itself proves impossible to extinguish (because repression is recruiting for it), the only viable solution becomes giving the movement its demands. Public support for the Iranian state has been around zero among the population for years now, the problem is that the Iranian government has pro…

> not without serious external aid shifting the power balance.

I second that non-violent protest alone is a moral high-ground stance that has little effectiveness without an external force amplifying the leverage. The assessment quoted above is strangely superficial taken at face value.

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

#333

Post by don_esteban »

jazz9k wrote: post #191
justsomehnguy wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dear American, kindly solve your own internal issues first and then - maybe - you can talk on how to "help" some other countries on the literal other side of the world TYM.

I'm cool with that. Let them fight their own battles...but also don't ever ask or expect the US to help. The problem with your stance is that too many people want it both ways: They don't want the US to intervene, but then also want support in terms of money and special treatment for people emigrating from these countries (and blame the US for the deaths that occur for a terrible government).

You know, maybe it would be just enough if you do not actively work on making their life miserable (sanctions and inciting instability).

There were almost no Syrian refugees before operation Timber-Sycamore. Thank you USA, our dear friend and freedom-sharing soulmate, for unnecessary refugee crisis in Europe (and another one from Ukraine). With friends like that, who needs enemies. Also, as the above two examples (and Biden's Inflation reduction act, and Nuland's 'f*k Europe'), it is not a Trump thing, its USA thing.

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

#334

Post by ghc »

ViktorRay wrote: post #317
ghc wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure European aristocrat Leo Tolstoy would be astonished to find himself lumped in with an Indian as being non-western.

Tolstoy was Russian. Russia is not a Western country. And Tolstoy was influenced by non-Western philosophical and religious figures.

While Russia is not quite a western country, the European upper classes around St. Petersburg and Moscow were no less "western" in philosophy and thought than people from nearby Latvia, Ukraine or Finland.

Tolstoy delighted in Schopenhauer, a western philosopher who he based much of his later ideas on. And yes, Tolstoy was later influenced by eastern thought, and was famously a Sinophile, but that is, again, a western tendency common among upper class europeans of the period (along with Japonisme).

Furthermore, "War and Peace" is often called one of the greatest works of "western literature". It's even included in Encyclopedia Brittanica's "Great Books of the Western World".

Just because the Russian Empire wasn't universally western doesn't mean large groups of people within were not. My own great grandparents came to America from St. Petersburg and considered themselves western.

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

#335

Post by martin-t »

buran77 wrote: post #328
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> feel like promoting non-violence outside the context of western democracies is misleading and potentially dangerous The article discusses "efforts, in a sense, directed against the state itself, both violent approaches (what we might call ‘terroristic insurgency’) and non-violent approaches (protest)" ( Id. ). > Maybe he addresses it somewhere in the article but I have yet to read it "The ‘center of gravity’ – the…

His is a very idealistic take which weirdly omits that every major example of non-violent protest working to topple a regime involved some foreign super power spending trillions of dollars to wage very much violent wars for the purpose. The insight that he's missing in so many words is that you need to crack the door open just enough for a foreign (super)power to want to come barging in for some reason. Non-violent p…

> learn from failure to coup-proof themselves faster than the population can keep up

Institutional memory is longer than individual memory. What drove this point home for me was an article about how the police on London can predict whether a protest will turn violent and that they know how to corral people depending on which outcome they want.

But for now, institutions still at least rely on individuals to retain the experience/memories/skills and individuals have their own agency and can leave the organization or die.

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

#336

Post by ebbi »

magic_hamster wrote: post #323
zyxzevn wrote: post #203

[flagged]

Nice try, Khamenei. Good to know you managed to power on your router today and visit HN. Seriously though, Iran has repeatedly declared that the U.S. and Israel should cease to exist. It funds militant groups across the Middle East. It claims its nuclear program is for “peaceful purposes,” yet has produced highly enriched uranium at levels far beyond what is needed for civilian energy - levels that could only be used…

Your comment seems to suggest you support the idea of Iran regime going down?

Yet in the same breath, you criticize Iran for saying that 'US and Israel should cease to exist'.

Given Israel currently has nuclear weapons, Israel is currently committing genocide (helped and funded by the US), the atrocities that Israel have committed over the last 70 years (setting aside the fact that it is an apartheid state, and is an occupying force, continuing to steal Palestinian land to this day), and the fact that the US has killed more innocent civilians in recent history (Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan) than Iran has...

Why the double standard?

And before I get accused of being a Khamenei supporter (Westerners tend to not like nuance on these topics) - I hate the Iranian regime. I agree there needs to be a regime change. At the same time, I also think there needs to be a regime change in Israel, as no government since it's inception has been for peace - the only PM they had that was doing the bare minimum towards it was killed by an Israeli.

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

#337

Post by vkou »

ViktorRay wrote: post #317
ghc wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure European aristocrat Leo Tolstoy would be astonished to find himself lumped in with an Indian as being non-western.

Tolstoy was Russian. Russia is not a Western country. And Tolstoy was influenced by non-Western philosophical and religious figures.

> 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 paint and supreme leader.

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

#338

Post by ViktorRay »

ghc wrote: post #334
ViktorRay wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tolstoy was Russian. Russia is not a Western country. And Tolstoy was influenced by non-Western philosophical and religious figures.

While Russia is not quite a western country, the European upper classes around St. Petersburg and Moscow were no less "western" in philosophy and thought than people from nearby Latvia, Ukraine or Finland. Tolstoy delighted in Schopenhauer, a western philosopher who he based much of his later ideas on. And yes, Tolstoy was later influenced by eastern thought, and was famously a Sinophile, but that is, again, a wester…

That’s very interesting! Thank you for the thoughtful reply.

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

#339

Post by pydry »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #156
pydry wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As opposed to standing idly by when the regime 'stabilizes' the country by murdering thousands of people? Do you demand an invasion of Israel? Because your moral principles seem to demand an invasion and subjugation of Israel.

> your moral principles seem to demand an invasion and subjugation of Israel There is absolutely no requirement for consistency in geopolitics. Advocating for a position on e.g. Gaza or Iran isn't undermined because that person isn't expending equal efforts on injustice in another theatre.

If your modus operandi is simply that of a thug then no, there is not.

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

#340

Post by mjmsmith »

martin-t wrote: post #286
mjmsmith wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 mor…

I suspect this kind of nuance is lost on the sort of people who think having qualms about the use of violence is the same thing as pretending to be saintly pacifists.
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