Iran

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EACLucifer
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Iran

Post by EACLucifer » Sat Sep 17, 2022 8:04 am

Mahsa Amini, a young woman brutally beaten by so-called morality police after they accused her of not wearing the forced-hijab "properly", has died of her wounds. They murdered her for showing more hair than they preferred. She was twenty two.

A couple of months ago, a man was arrested in New York. He'd been scoping out the apartment of womens' rights campaigner Masih Alinejad, a staunch critic of the Iranian regime's human rights abuses. A loaded Kalashnikov was found in his car. Reportedly, this was a plot to murder her, and came on the back of a possible kidnapping plot the year before. This was just part of the Iranian regime's oppression of womens' rights activists. Masih Alinejad is able to continue her activism in exile, but others are not so lucky. Many have been sentenced to draconian terms in Iran's awful jails, including noted human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, who was sentenced to thirty eight years in jail and a hundred and forty eight lashes for defending women charged under the regime's brutal "modesty" laws.

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Re: Iran

Post by EACLucifer » Tue Sep 20, 2022 8:21 pm

Protests widespread across Iran. There's been gunfire in the south, and elsewhere a twenty-three year old protester was reportedly killed by regime gunfire.

People are flipping and burning police cars, and there's death to the dictator chants right across the country, including in Tehran. Women are taking off and sometimes burning their hijabs, and in at least one video young men are fighting to protect them.

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Re: Iran

Post by jimbob » Tue Sep 20, 2022 8:44 pm

EACLucifer wrote:
Tue Sep 20, 2022 8:21 pm
Protests widespread across Iran. There's been gunfire in the south, and elsewhere a twenty-three year old protester was reportedly killed by regime gunfire.

People are flipping and burning police cars, and there's death to the dictator chants right across the country, including in Tehran. Women are taking off and sometimes burning their hijabs, and in at least one video young men are fighting to protect them.
I still don't understand how the Iranian regime has been so stable for so long, with elections that sometimes elect people opposing the regime, but to a position without power. I have been saying that to an Iranian colleague for about 15 years though.

The anger must be building. And often it is a single spark (see the self-immolation that set off the Arab Spring)
Have you considered stupidity as an explanation

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Re: Iran

Post by EACLucifer » Tue Sep 20, 2022 8:58 pm

jimbob wrote:
Tue Sep 20, 2022 8:44 pm
EACLucifer wrote:
Tue Sep 20, 2022 8:21 pm
Protests widespread across Iran. There's been gunfire in the south, and elsewhere a twenty-three year old protester was reportedly killed by regime gunfire.

People are flipping and burning police cars, and there's death to the dictator chants right across the country, including in Tehran. Women are taking off and sometimes burning their hijabs, and in at least one video young men are fighting to protect them.
I still don't understand how the Iranian regime has been so stable for so long, with elections that sometimes elect people opposing the regime, but to a position without power. I have been saying that to an Iranian colleague for about 15 years though.

The anger must be building. And often it is a single spark (see the self-immolation that set off the Arab Spring)
In terms of major elections the candidates are all pre-vetted by the mullahs, meaning there isn't anyone good to vote for at all.

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Re: Iran

Post by IvanV » Wed Sep 21, 2022 10:58 am

EACLucifer wrote:
Tue Sep 20, 2022 8:58 pm
jimbob wrote:
Tue Sep 20, 2022 8:44 pm
I still don't understand how the Iranian regime has been so stable for so long, with elections that sometimes elect people opposing the regime, but to a position without power. I have been saying that to an Iranian colleague for about 15 years though.

The anger must be building. And often it is a single spark (see the self-immolation that set off the Arab Spring)
In terms of major elections the candidates are all pre-vetted by the mullahs, meaning there isn't anyone good to vote for at all.
Jimbob is clearly thinking of President Khatami, who was particularly contrary to the Guardians Council. The Guardians didn't initially use the vetting system to completely rig elections. Only a relatively small proportion of candidates applying were prevented from standing in the earlier periods, and relatively liberal candidates were available. But when they got Khatami, they realised that they might be a rather more "careful" over who they let stand, and greatly increased the proportion of candidates failing vetting.

It turned out that Ahmadi-nejad was not exactly what they wanted either. So now they have got even more "careful".

But they are a bit clever and do give the appearance of some choice. When Rouhani was elected, he was seen as not quite as conservative as the alternative, though plainly nowhere near Khatami.

It is interesting that Khatami continues in freedom operating as an academic, and making his criticisms - no doubt carefully. In some other authoritarian countries, people like him would have been forced into exile, or imprisoned on trumped-up charges, or worse. It seems the Guardians feel sufficiently in control that they can let him be.

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Re: Iran

Post by EACLucifer » Thu Sep 22, 2022 5:07 pm

Multiple deaths so far, and Basij c.nts sent to randomly assault protestors. People are fed up, though. They are fighting back.

There's an example here. Be warned this includes a gratuitous and unprovoked assault on a woman, the reaction of nearby protestors against the presumed Basij thug.

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Re: Iran

Post by EACLucifer » Fri Sep 23, 2022 9:11 am

Deaths reportedly past thirty by this point.

Christiane Amanpour, meanwhile, gave a good example of how western journalists, diplomats and politicians should behave. She was due to interview Raisi*, however, Raisi insisted she wear hijab. Amanpour refused, so the interview was cancelled. There is nothing wrong with journalists wearing hijab - if they choose to wear it for their own reasons. However, western journalists, politicians and diplomats should not be willing to wear it to accomodate the demands of men from a regime that murders women for not wearing the imposed garment "properly".



*aka the Butcher of Tehran, due to his slaughter of political prisoners in the late eighties.

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Re: Iran

Post by EACLucifer » Fri Sep 23, 2022 11:17 am

Girl - not sure how old but she does not look adult - standing up to two of the regime's thugs. The thugs are women this time, but the laws they are seeking to enforce no less misogynist. It isn't only women affected by the regime's oppresive laws and the violent, sometimes murderous enforcement of them; it's also girls, with girls as young as nine subject to state violence if they don't dress a particular way, a way that wasn't the norm before the islamists hijacked the revolution against the Shah.

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Re: Iran

Post by discovolante » Fri Sep 23, 2022 11:24 am

I don't have anything much to add, but my Iranian friend said she absolutely believes women are the ones to lead change in Iran (she is a refugee), for not-surprising reasons of course but looks like she is right and it's horrible that it inevitably has to be so brutal.
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Re: Iran

Post by EACLucifer » Fri Sep 23, 2022 11:41 am

discovolante wrote:
Fri Sep 23, 2022 11:24 am
I don't have anything much to add, but my Iranian friend said she absolutely believes women are the ones to lead change in Iran (she is a refugee), for not-surprising reasons of course but looks like she is right and it's horrible that it inevitably has to be so brutal.
I'm not getting my hopes up. There's been protests like this before, and they were suppressed after hundreds of people were murdered by the regime.

And damn right it should be women leading the charge against the state's imposition of misogynist patriarchy. Happy to see, though, that it isn't just women offended and appalled by the regime's treatment of women - it's everyone.

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Re: Iran

Post by Gfamily » Fri Sep 23, 2022 12:59 pm

There was a very good interview with Shaparak Khorsandi in yesterday's PM programme on Radio 4.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0d21463
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Re: Iran

Post by EACLucifer » Sat Sep 24, 2022 2:41 pm

Things are continuing to escalate. There's talk of protestors driving regime forces out of Oshnavieh.

It would be a very good idea for those countries that can to work out what they can do to assist protestors, and to have plans in place sooner rather than later for what happens if this spirals into civil war or regime collapse.

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Re: Iran

Post by EACLucifer » Fri Sep 30, 2022 3:21 pm

The protests continue.

Meanwhile Iran is on the UN womens comission, in case you were the kind of person who though the UN was something other than a morally bankrupt corrupt disgrace.

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Re: Iran

Post by EACLucifer » Mon Oct 03, 2022 10:28 am

I'm seeing reports of regime forces massacring student protesters at Sharif university. It would hardly be the first time that regime has murdered student protesters en masse.

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Re: Iran

Post by EACLucifer » Thu Oct 06, 2022 4:10 pm


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Re: Iran

Post by jimbob » Sun Oct 09, 2022 7:52 am

Riot police March with the protesters in Tehran

https://twitter.com/ianbremmer/status/1 ... rwqbfvwEjA

That came after this.

https://twitter.com/ksadjadpour/status/ ... u2nMowieeA
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Iranian state TV is hacked with images of those killed in the uprising, the slogan “Woman, life, freedom”, and a message for viewers to “Join us and rise up”.
Have you considered stupidity as an explanation

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Re: Iran

Post by jimbob » Sun Oct 09, 2022 3:55 pm

jimbob wrote:
Sun Oct 09, 2022 7:52 am
Riot police March with the protesters in Tehran

https://twitter.com/ianbremmer/status/1 ... rwqbfvwEjA

My Iranian colleague tells me that that is one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Tehran - so the natural powerbase of the regime
Have you considered stupidity as an explanation

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Re: Iran

Post by Bird on a Fire » Wed Oct 12, 2022 12:36 am

The expression of outright hostility, towards both the regime and individual mullhas, is something new. Bigger better organised and angrier.

The regime really seems to be in trouble.

Is it perhaps time to withhold payments on the nuclear deal, demanding free and fair elections or something?

Otherwise it'll fizzle out in gesture politics, or be very brutally repressed.
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Re: Iran

Post by EACLucifer » Wed Oct 12, 2022 9:46 am

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Wed Oct 12, 2022 12:36 am
The expression of outright hostility, towards both the regime and individual mullhas, is something new. Bigger better organised and angrier.

The regime really seems to be in trouble.

Is it perhaps time to withhold payments on the nuclear deal, demanding free and fair elections or something?

Otherwise it'll fizzle out in gesture politics, or be very brutally repressed.
There's plenty of Iranian activists that will tell you the nuclear deal is awful for them, and that the west should not normalise with this regime at all.

Regime change would do a better job of controlling the nuclear situation than a toothless, worthless deal, and while imposing that from the outside is fraught with problems, there's a damn good case for the west not hindering those attempting to achieve it from the inside.

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Re: Iran

Post by EACLucifer » Wed Oct 12, 2022 9:48 am

jimbob wrote:
Sun Oct 09, 2022 7:52 am
Riot police March with the protesters in Tehran

https://twitter.com/ianbremmer/status/1 ... rwqbfvwEjA

That came after this.

https://twitter.com/ksadjadpour/status/ ... u2nMowieeA
Karim Sadjadpour
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Iranian state TV is hacked with images of those killed in the uprising, the slogan “Woman, life, freedom”, and a message for viewers to “Join us and rise up”.
It is a big deal, but the problem with Iran is that as well as the ordinary security services, and that's what we see here, I think, there's the ones designed to be loyal to the regime and the regime only, and to persecute and fight the ordinary security services if that is what the regime needs. That's the IRGC, which includes the Basij thugs that target protestors. In some ways, it is little like the SS in role and its relationship to the regular military and police.

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Re: Iran

Post by FlammableFlower » Tue Oct 18, 2022 3:51 pm

More grim news from Iran - Iranian security services raided a girls school and forced them to sing pro-regime songs - those that refused were beaten and a number ended up taken to hospital and 16-year-old Asra Panahi died.

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Re: Iran

Post by jimbob » Fri Oct 28, 2022 9:49 pm

IMG-20221028-WA0002.jpg
IMG-20221028-WA0002.jpg (87.21 KiB) Viewed 2466 times
My Iranian colleague - until Covid we used to have breakfast together on Fridays (for <cough> about 19 years) just sent me that photo and says it's very popular in Iran.

He's very secular and says that the vast majority of under 25's are as well.
Have you considered stupidity as an explanation

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Re: Iran

Post by EACLucifer » Sat Nov 19, 2022 5:03 am

We've reached the burning down Shia seminaries stage - apparently the seminary in question was of particular symbolic significance to the regime.

It seems to be a bit of a pattern that hierocracy/clerical fascism sooner or later leads to anticlericalism.

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Re: Iran

Post by jdc » Sat Nov 19, 2022 8:21 pm

EACLucifer wrote:
Sat Nov 19, 2022 5:03 am
We've reached the burning down Shia seminaries stage - apparently the seminary in question was of particular symbolic significance to the regime.

It seems to be a bit of a pattern that hierocracy/clerical fascism sooner or later leads to anticlericalism.
Did I see something the other day about the ancestral home of Ayatollah Khomeini being set alight? Apparently now a museum.

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Re: Iran

Post by EACLucifer » Sat Nov 19, 2022 9:49 pm

jdc wrote:
Sat Nov 19, 2022 8:21 pm
EACLucifer wrote:
Sat Nov 19, 2022 5:03 am
We've reached the burning down Shia seminaries stage - apparently the seminary in question was of particular symbolic significance to the regime.

It seems to be a bit of a pattern that hierocracy/clerical fascism sooner or later leads to anticlericalism.
Did I see something the other day about the ancestral home of Ayatollah Khomeini being set alight? Apparently now a museum.
Yes. While I'm well aware the Iranians I've interacted with aren't exactly average or typical, it's important to understand that there are some Iranians that absolutely hate Khomeini, there really aren't words for how much they hate him.

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