Iran is a beautiful country, and an important part of our shared history. It is incredible that a sophisticated society has been suppressed for so long.
To my Iranian friends, I hope the day comes soon when you can safely start building a better future in Iran.
I think that the biggest problem with Iran right now, is that there is no clear opposition party.
South Africa had Mandela, India had Gandhi and Chile had Aylwin. We only have "Reza Pahalavi" being pushed by United State and Israel. He is nowhere qualified to run the country and hasn't stepped a foot there for decades.
None of these movements are going to succeed, unless someone from within the country forms a strong party and unifies everyone.
Either way, I'm afraid that Iranians are going to be suffering for a long time.
I can't even see what's the end game for this. Nobody is going "Oh okay, we thought your regime was illegitimate before, but now we love it!" It just hardens the resistance. Unless maybe they're thinking they can kill them all. In which case the country shrinks and dies of old age in coming years.
I suppose either things continue for the next decades like they have for the previous few, which I guess is the most likely, or the regime gets overthrown which I find hard to see happening without foreign military intervention.
And the response to this brutal crackdown from our brave and virtuous progressive activists has been a collective shrug of indifference, with some exceptions where those pillars of moral rectitude have taken a bold stance... in support of the fascist theocracy that has massacred its own people.
During the Gaza conflict it was highly suspected most of the outrage was manufactured by organized propaganda networks and spread into the mainstream. During this conflict and the Sudan conflict we can see it confirmed, zero attention in the mainstream because its missing the influence of an organized propaganda network creating, disseminating, legitimizing and boosting a narrative. Isreal and the CIA are terrible at modern day youth propaganda they should boosting this like crazy.
The people who kill iranians are the same who finance hamas. Think it's easy to eliminate hamas without hurting civilians? I've heard there was no carpet bombing.
I’m not sure why and I’ve never heard it articulated, but based on overwhelming evidence, progressives will not criticize Islam, Islamic regimes, or cultural practices.
I feel strongly about this issue. I don't feel it's divisive, it might be dismissive but my point in the comment is factual.
Edit: Take a look at The Intercept as an example. Protests began three weeks ago. The only posts TI has on Iran basically amount to "Israel bad" and "Son of Shah likes Israel and Israel is bad, therefore son of Shah is bad". That's it. This is a moral failure of the highest order and it underscores, for me at least, that most of these faux-progressives' activism is purely performative.
I get you -- when I was doing investigative reporting about policing and technology, the Intercept's energy was basically "great pitch, but we want you to do 8mo more work before we'll talk; good luck not being able to afford rent in the meantime".
But, friend, with love -- shit talking about what people are doing or not doing is not the answer. Lead by example.
> But, friend, with love -- shit talking about what people are doing or not doing is not the answer. Lead by example.
Why do you assume I'm not doing? Having said that, my options are limited to obtaining the lion and sun flag and participating in a demonstration. Quiet solidarity in other words. Shit talking about people who have a platform and are not using it because Israel is absolutely valid and legitimate.
That by the way is the danger with a singular obsession with one conflict, which, objectively, is not even the deadliest conflict in its region, let alone the world. Everything is either viewed through the Israel prism, as in "we're not going to express any solidarity with Iranian protesters because the fall of the theocracy might benefit Israel", or, it gets ignored entirely because there's no clout to be gained on social media.
Just to be clear, I never said I disagreed with you. But I've seen a lot of infighting happening in these spaces that stems from shit talking -- people who can no longer work together anymore because of how the shit talking bifurcated the work instead of building layers between.
> This is a moral failure of the highest order and it underscores, for me at least, that most of these faux-progressives' activism is purely performative.
It is worse than that. Faux-progressives will also play into antisemitic conspiratorial tropes that this was all perfectly and precisely planned.
Wouldn't your energy be better spent doing what you think the should be doing rather than complaining about them not doing what you think they should be? Take some agency in the world.
If you hadn't noticed we've got our own fascist theocracy attacking its own people in the western world. We're trying to avoid giving it any more energy with vaguely-defined popular policy goals. And staying out of another country's affairs, regardless of how evil those affairs are, is a valid moral pillar.
Now perhaps there is an interesting academic discussion about whether if we had done more to direct Demented Donnie towards Iran, that he wouldn't be attacking the rest of NATO trying to steal Greenland to create some dipshit's idea of a legacy. But that is hardly definitive with the kind of moral clarity that you're asserting.
Are you referring to the theocracy that is massacring another nation's people? Asserting an opinion on that is a bit lower on the scale of international intervention, right? And from what I've seen, most of those arguments are in terms of stopping our own countries' support of that country - not for outright intervention in that country.
Apologies, I deleted my comment because I felt it wasn’t contributing to the discussion, and since I’m not an American I don’t wish to pontificate about either Trump or ICE.
I will say however, as someone born in a country ruled by a totalitarian regime, that the US is nowhere near that, and claims to the contrary offend me personally because they trivialize authoritarianism and totalitarianism.
Why wouldn't you place more importance on making sure existing freer countries don't descend into new autocracy and totalitarianism? From my perspective it's not a trivialization, but rather a legitimate concern about where we're headed. And so far over the past year, these types of concerned predictions have been shown to be quite correct.
Like sure, it's certainly possible that we will have a domestic US outcome of "mission accomplished" sometime over the next couple years, ICE is drastically wound down and goes back to only being at the border, there is a full accounting of whom they deported and to where, the US citizens and lawful residents who were harmed by their extremely-urgent overzealousness are compensated for their damages, and so on. Just from everything we've seen, it's not very likely.
You don't know that. By definition it will not have happened if it was prevented. The point is not that you will start shooting. Rather it's that you could.
Moreover there's a fundamental issue in the US that quite a large proportion of the population supports what is going on. This varies by location of course but that just exacerbates the issue - there are places in the US where the vast vast majority of people have no objection to what is happening.
I didn't say "it's working" I said "you don't know that it's not working". It's a claim that your logic is faulty. I then proceeded to outline a plausible theory which conflicts with your claim.
The example fails for the same reason. There's no way to rule out the possibility that there would be more rights violations in said countries if people possessed fewer arms on average. There's also no reason to expect violations to go to zero, only for them to be deterred to some extent on average.
It's similar to the MAD doctrine. That doesn't predict no war, just less war and smaller wars in general. It doesn't even predict no use of nuclear weapons, merely that any use is rarer, more judicious, and more deliberate.
I used to think similarly as well. But realistically speaking, the military weapons and civilian weapons are just too far apart nowadays. The military would absolutely smoke us compared to the intent when it was written into the bill of rights.
The power of military weapons is great if you want to bomb buildings and burn down bridges, but there is no point fighting your own people just be crowned King of the ashes.
Estimates for counterinsurgency are that an occupier needs ~20 soldiers for 1000 occupied civilians. The US army has 1.3M troops - the entire might of the US military would be needed to pacify just CA alone, and that would leave the rest of the country virtually defenseless. It's easy to bomb a building from a jet; it's much harder to kick in doors and arrest dissidents _even if_ there is no armed resistance.
The hard truth that allows democracy to survive is that it is not possible to govern without the consent of the governed. It is certainly not possible to occupy a rich, productive region and have it remain rich and productive unless the occupier has overwhelming force.
It was my understanding that the Ukrainian government handed out small arms and various destructive devices to resistance fighters during the initial Russian invasion. That they were able to impede the advancing forces until their assault stalled due to bad supply lines dooming their attempt at a Gulf War style takedown of the country.
Is that accurate or just Ukrainian propaganda like the Ghost of Kiev?
I'm surprised there haven't been more people "exercising" the second amendment in light of what ICE is doing.
Granted, I'm not in the U.S. so I don't know what it's like on the ground, but I'm surprised to not hear about any armed resistance despite how gun-happy many Americans are.
I am not surprised: the sort of person most likely to exercise their second-amendment rights is probably also the sort of person to support what ICE is doing.
Its remarkable to see the propaganda shift from “these are unarmed protestors not terrorists with guns” to “they are terrorists and they should have had more guns”.
I’m just glad President Trump didn’t start Iraq War 2.0 with this unrest as his WMD excuse.
That isn't what was said though. Rather that perhaps if the protestors had been armed they wouldn't have been massacred so easily.
Do I become a terrorist if I defend myself against government agents who are attempting to murder me? Certainly said government agents would label me as such but hopefully a neutral third party wouldn't.
I’m sure there is more overlap between gun ownership vs non, but I’d argue the overlap from both groups is vanishingly small. Plenty of liberals own guns, and also a lot of people that would not identify as liberal are extremely anti gestapo. Even most of the original MAGAs are not in support of the current state of affairs.
The answer to whatever perceived (unfounded) overlap between gun owners to potential ICE agents is not to encourage or condone more prejudice and ostracization of the people who do not fall in both categories via speech that lumps them in with the others anyway.
That's a very disrespectful way to recognize and appreciate them.
Many of us own guns precisely to defend ourselves and our countrymen in the event of civil chaos. That's what the second amendment is for.
Most true leftists I know are armed. Don't forget what Karl Marx said about an armed populace. We are in some serious shit and this kind of divisive attitude is not productive.
Let us know when you take your guns to defend Minnesota. Or are the actions being committed there by the government not a sufficient amount of "civil chaos" for you to take action? I just wish gun owners were honest. You're not here to defend anyone or anything. You just like to make small holes in paper targets.
Individual vigilante action is not the answer. Collectivization, political organization is. Guns are for self-defense and armed conflict. I can't solve this problem on my own, until there is mass collectivization then I'm only an individual and cannot just go around taking on a rogue authoritarian government. That's absurd. Besides, I personally have physical handicaps, I'm not Batman. And I spoke for leftists. I cannot control what other people do. But divisive crap like this is not helping to unify anything.
> I just wish gun owners were honest. You're not here to defend anyone or anything. You just like to make small holes in paper targets.
You literally know nothing about me and are making assumptions about how I think and operate based on a single fact you think you know about me. That is textbook prejudice. All you're doing is showing that you don't understand the point of the Bill of Rights or what checks and balances it takes to uphold a fair government.
I'll pull the Karl Marx quote for you.
“Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary”
Those people placed their lives in the hands of the U.S. President when he promised that help was on the way. Help never arrived, and they were slaughtered like cattle.
For a commander‑in‑chief, as well as the military leadership, I find this behavior dishonorable.
I will always be a friend of the American people, but it gets harder each day to watch the irreparable damage unfold the president is unleashing on the whole planet. Midterms will show what Americans are made off, you still have a choice and a voice. Use it wisely.
To my Iranian friends, I hope the day comes soon when you can safely start building a better future in Iran.
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