Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Over 36,500 killed in Iran's deadliest massacre, documents reveal

iranintl.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

551–560 of 844 posts

Re: Over 36,500 killed in Iran's deadliest massacre, documents reveal

#551

Post by tempu20260134 »

tirant wrote: post #285
PlatoIsADisease wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read a ton of philosophy and something I don't really understand is that one nation killing another is more immoral than when a nation does this to their own domestic population. Sure you will get some nay-sayers who say 'a life is a life', if moral particles existed, they might be correct. But for some reason, humanity doesn't seem to care as much. What makes intra-state politics more acceptable to use violence…

I share your opinion. There's nothing worse than a State killing its own citizens, the ones the state had pledged to protect. But actually, the largest mass killings in history have been always performed by States against their own citizens and not by enemy states: - Great Chinese Famine (CCP): 20-30 million dead. - Holocaust (NSP): 6 million - Holodomor (USSR): 3-5 million - Congo mass killings (Colonial Regime + Pr…

Missed the biggest one by British Raj around 100 million [https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/12/2/how-british-col...]

Re: Over 36,500 killed in Iran's deadliest massacre, documents reveal

#552

Post by dartharva »

ares623 wrote: post #2

I can't comprehend how a population can kill that many of their own people. They aren't even an "other" people, which has been the most common scapegoat lately. Same skin color, same religion, same language, same homeland.

Now you see how easy it is for humans to "other" people to kill them

Re: Over 36,500 killed in Iran's deadliest massacre, documents reveal

#553

Post by krunck »

dataminer wrote: post #538

The loss of life is extremely tragic, every single loss is devastating and is a family suffering forever. Hoping that people of Iran get freedom, peace and prosperity.

> Hoping that people of Iran get freedom, peace and prosperity.

Yes, but not the kind delivered in an American/Israeli bomb.

Re: Over 36,500 killed in Iran's deadliest massacre, documents reveal

#554

Post by mrexcess »

epsters wrote: post #311

36,500 dead, 300,000 injured, In 2 days? People are buying this? Unarmed protesters tend to flee when the shooting starts and armed protesters shoot back. And all this without heavy weapons? Do people remember what Gaza turned into get to that toll? The actual final toll number is certainly in the thousands But all the numbers being touted in the western press reek of desperation. Lot of the sources are western-backe…

No different than any other war, the powers that be line up to psy op the public to support it. Interesting to see who the players are that are willing to amplify this overt propaganda. Sadly, looks like HN is front and center, right along with Reddit and basically every other mainstream US-based tech/news aggregator.

Re: Over 36,500 killed in Iran's deadliest massacre, documents reveal

#555

Post by polytely »

starik36 wrote: post #547
noah_buddy wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s very strange to go “why isn’t the left doing anything about this conflict when they cared so much about Palestine?” My government doesn’t fund Iran.

You are talking about US. UK doesn't fund Israel, yet they've had most demonstrations there - still do. Clearly it isn't about the violence (whether in Iran or Israel). It's about Israel.

The RAF does a lot of flights over Gaza so the UK is actually involved, and the big focus in the UK is on Elbit systems who makes parts for the planes that bomb Gaza. The UK government isn't materially supporting the Iranian regime as far as I can tell

Re: Over 36,500 killed in Iran's deadliest massacre, documents reveal

#556

Post by busterarm »

MSFT_Edging wrote: post #383
int_19h wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally this does seem to be true in US. I know several Iranians in US, from completely different social circles, but all of them strongly anti-clerical and not shy about it. Also, as a Russian who left Russia, it's certainly a familiar pattern. Note, by the way, that this doesn't really imply anything about whether those people are wrong to be antagonistic.

> Also, as a Russian who left Russia I've noticed there's two distinct 20th century Russian diaspora groups in the US. Those who came here prior to the fall of the USSR, and those who came after. In talking with the ones who came after the fall, life wasn't glamorous but got truly unlivable in the wake of the collapse. In talking with the ones who came before the fall, they wanted to make money.

There's a group here, largely those expats kids in my experience, that swears they had things better back in Russia and ravenously consume Russian media. I used to encounter them a lot in Sheepshead Bay.

Re: Over 36,500 killed in Iran's deadliest massacre, documents reveal

#557

Post by inglor_cz »

Maken wrote: post #531
inglor_cz wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood why some people get so fixated on one event in 1953, as if nothing else mattered after that. Sure, it had a nontrivial effect. But it also happened in a time when Stalin and Churchill were still alive, there were 6 billion people fewer on the planet and the first antibiotics and transistors barely entered production. Korea was poorer than Ghana etc. It is 2026, three generations have passed, and no…

The current Ayatollah bullshit cannot be explained without that coup d'état. People flocked to the religious zealots because the alternative was a Western satrap.

Sorta-kinda.

It is a bit like explaining the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia (1948) by the Western betrayal at Munich in 1938. It was a factor. But not The Factor. Just one of many.

In case of Iran, there, too, were other factors at play. The general drive of the Shah to be the Iranian Atatürk-like Modernizer, which clashed with the conservative rural population. The abilities of Khomeini, who pursued his goal of overthrowing the monarchy with absolute zeal. (Would Turkey be nowadays a modern state if Atatürk himself faced a similar opponent?) Willingness of France to shelter Khomeini and willingness of some Western intellectuals to fawn over him. Naivete of the Iranian Left that joined Khomeinis movement and hoped to come up on top, only to eventually get slaughtered for being "enemies of God".

Etc.etc. It is somewhat intellectually lazy to just drag out Mossadegh and leave the conversation, like GP did. It also masks other unpleasant facts.

For example, in my opinion, the Western intellectual class of the 1970s made a serious mistake by supporting Khomeini and cannot even bring itself to acknowledge it. I think this was at least as consequential to the eventual birth of the Islamic Republic as the Mossadegh coup. But the more people talk about the latter, the more they tend to forget about the former.

Re: Over 36,500 killed in Iran's deadliest massacre, documents reveal

#558

Post by thisislife2 »

joenot443 wrote: post #445
noah_buddy wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s very strange to go “why isn’t the left doing anything about this conflict when they cared so much about Palestine?” My government doesn’t fund Iran.

I think when westerners like myself notice the disparity in response amongst western progressives between the Palestinian and Iranian situations, they're talking more from a social lens than the geopolitical one. A lot of my peers have been incredibly active on social media the last couple years supporting Palestinians. They've been mostly completely silent on Iran, the imbalance is notable.

What "imbalance"? It is disingenuous to equate the two political situations as the same:

1. Palestine is a settler-colony of Israel, where the Israeli-right currently in power is conducting a genocide of Palestinians in Gaza ( https://www.btselem.org/publications/202507_our_genocide ) while continuing to steal their land and deny them basic rights. ( https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/6/who-are-israeli-set... ). The oppressors and the victims are clear in the Israel - Palestine conflict, and thus it is easy to take a firm moral stand supporting one over the other.

2. What is happening in Iran is either (at best) a power struggle and violent conflict between two groups - the supporters of the Ayatollah and the supporters of the Shah (backed by the west), or (at worst) the start of a civil war. In this case, apart from sympathy for the victims of violence on both sides, it is hard to take a firm political stand for one side because both have a tainted record. (How The CIA Overthrew Iran's Democracy In 4 Days - https://www.npr.org/2019/01/31/690363402/how-the-cia-overthr... ). Note that these so-called "revolutionaries" in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal too went on a rampage when law and order collapsed there, looting killing and doing senseless destruction ultimately destabilising their whole country. (Now Bangladesh is conducting a farce "democratic" election that deliberately excludes a major political party, the Awami League, because the so called "revolutionaries" fear that they will not be able to defeat them electorally. Something similar happened in Ukraine too). When both sides choose violence to capture power, and are hell bent on excluding the "other" from any future "democratic" setup, who really is the one with the "democratic" values and the real victim?

There is no doubt in my mind that the stand of the west (US / UK) here is totally hypocritical (and morally repugnant) if you praise the opponents of Ayatollah as "freedom fighters", while with the same breath you denounce the Palestinians as "terrorists" for daring to fight their Israeli colonial masters for freedom!

Re: Over 36,500 killed in Iran's deadliest massacre, documents reveal

#559

Post by epsters »

hersko wrote: post #515
epsters wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This is a wild take. You think the arab spring, Syrian revolution, Libyan revolution, Iraq war, interventions in Somalia and Sudan etc.. we're all CIA operations at the behest of Israel? Seriously?

I mentioned many conflicts and many countries so this is very broad to cover in one comment but i will try, briefly. I have heard many theories given over the years to justify these interventions - democracy, capitalism, liberalism, oil, minerals, gas-pipelines, gas-fields, neoconservatism, neoliberalism, neo-colonialism, fighting terror, WMDs, fighting rogue states, checking expansionism, checking communism, countering soviet union, countering russia, countering china, oil contractors, defense contractors, petrodollar, maintaining global reserve system, global security, stability, American national security, European security, national security of Gulf allies, shipping lanes and trade routes and finally Israeli national security. How many of those goals were achieved? What did America get out of the Iraq War? Was Libyan intervention a net win for France ? Or Europe? My question is after 20 years, how much of those theories still hold up. Don't get me wrong, many of those things mentioned were indeed motivations and played a part in many of the cases. But ultimately most of these theories crumble in the face of 20 years of evidence. Except the Israel Theory. Reading Israel's national security strategy (outlined in documents like the "Clean break" report and the "Yinon Plan") Suddenly all the seeming 'naive' and 'futile' actions of the west , all the failed intervations, human catastrophes, blowbacks and disasters; they all make sense.

I am not saying all the people, protestors/fighters, parties, involved were mossad/cia agents or all of them arose out of covert action. I am saying that is what shaped them, and ultimately determined their outcome.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yinon_Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clean_Break:_A_New_Strategy_...

Post reply on HN