A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
No bio...
User ID: 645
what do you think is going to happen
It's hard to say as I don't know what the extent of the "stimulus" will be. I just want the regime to change, I don't know what kind of push is needed or where it will go.
Iran has significant brain drain as education levels are high and emigration's unrestricted. I see between 3 and 5 million emigrants for a population of 80 million 2010 and ~90 million today. I'd guestimate emigration up a bit, just for Turkey (official numbers in the ...5 digits), which has big communities of Persian speaking shop keepers, lawyers, hostels, restaurants etc. then massive communities of Azeri Iranians, who receive expedited Turkish citizenship. (N.b. much of the Islamic Republic's leadership are Azeri. Azeri Turkish and Turkey Turkish are like British and American English. There are more Azeris in Iran than Azerbaijan.) Particularly in the last few years, international students have stopped going to Turkey, yet the universities catering to them have stronger enrollment than ever, all from Iran. In the case I knew intimately, 1 of 200 foreign students in a department were Iranian Azeris (the other was Persian.) Anyway, the commonality is that most people of means or ability leave.
All things being equal, I'd expect some sort of secular military government, where the army puts down the IRGC. I'm not sure who'd lead it. Because Trump killed the liberal political movement, which spent its capital to push the nuclear deal through. Nowadays, there doesn't seem to be much of a political base, as the youth are depoliticized/have no faith in change. I believe people are less "political" than in Russia on average, where people will at least riff of crazy ideas and conspiracies. Many people try to build identities around pre-Islamic Iran, being totally Western or... But most just don't. There are interesting parties like the technocratic "Executives of Construction" with low electoral support.
Anyway, I'm not sure what precisely would cause the regime to change. I don't believe the current US government is terribly competent or able to nudge things along, but Israel's success is shocking and impressive. Perhaps something can come out of it. Continued airstrikes degrading the security state and ideological forces, but not state forces, could lead to the military or civilian-military forces overthrowing the current regime. However, I've seen a few strikes on army bases, but have no clue who/what was targeted. It could easily devolve into civil war or see the state continue, as is.
re: the liberal movement, Rouhani (though a cleric, with a Scottish PhD with a credible plagiarism claim) campaigned on rebuilding relations with the West, personal rights etc. which saw the civilian administration asserting itself against the IRGC. After that project was destroyed, the regime brought back the morality police etc. Although these days, you still see women walking around without a hijab in Shiraz, Tehran etc. Yet to some extent, the current president Pezeshkian is a moderate (fun fact, he proposed free Turkish education in Iran) relative to his opponent, but nowhere near as much as Rouhani or Khatami, still he (as well as many politicians) opposed the governments reactions to protestors at different points, calling the repression unconstitutional etc. (before backtracking...) He's had women vice presidents (besides many governors etc.), and even a Sunni!
Sometimes the US pays lipservice to the fact that there's a civilian government and state military with a clergy and militia on top, but doesn't actually focus its efforts fighting the ruling clergy.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
30d ago
Latin, Russian, Spanish- they all just come out and say things
Classical Latin had a rather small vocabulary (and little direct ability to discuss the abstract, instead personifying or loaning from Greek) but Russian and Spanish are very rich and less direct than English (though many are functionally illiterate, though if anything that means Spanish speakers have more room for crude innuendo...)
defenders of the proposition that rogue/irredentist regimes
You're responding to a post where I say foreign militias are holding the regime in place, which the people don't support. How do you construe that as defending?! Even the "30%" (I think that's a motivated number, but directionally correct that a majority aren't) of Shia in the country don't support the regime, with grand Ayatollas opposing Khamenei. I'm a am pro-regime change in Iran. @Hadad
Two understood it the same way, so my writing is the common denominator, but... I don't understand.
Most Iranians are not religious and do not support the government, which sics foreign militias to oppress them. I speak Persian and have spent much time among them. Every couple of years there are massive riots, with thousands of deaths, as people fight back.
Even then, much of the Shia clergy opposes the regime; Khamenei isn't even a marja let alone the first among equals nor most popular religious leader within Iran itself. To concede a bit, at any rate they're friendlier than the Saudis and Emiratis, Shia are far more compatible and friendly with our world (but again, religiosity's similar to Czechia. Here's a survey giving 30% as Shia, only 40% as Muslim at all.)
strictly bans Western music and most other Western cultural output - @Hoffmeister25
Khatami relaxed that, already. Besides nowadays, everyone has a VPN. You can talk to plenty of Iranians right now, even with the attempted internet lock down, even if this isn't real. Personally, I'd only wish success to someone banning Disney, rap etc.
To react to your bailey, @The_Nybbler haven't many in this community opposed this government and arana imperii, ascribing modernity's ills to it?
It would help to identify our enemies first. Iranians are friendlier to Western Civilization than Israelis.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
1mo ago
I would have guessed it's another Iraq, but it's two of them.
Iraq's population has nearly doubled since 2000, like Afghanistan and Gaza. So Iran is actually 4 2003 Iraqs.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
1mo ago
if [Afghanistan] had only half their population
Afghanistan's population more than doubled during American occupation, from 20 to 42-5 million. The Gaza strip similarly went from 1 to 2.1 million, at the same time.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
1mo ago
for alcohol or drug addicts
https://lukesmith.xyz/articles/modern-freedom-means-being-a-slave-to-impulses/
ayatollah overthrew the shah
Though the Iranian regime (and neocons) prefer this narrative, communists (and fellow travelers) and friends overthrew the Shah, then islamists stabbed them in the back (cf. the Bolsheviks). The Shah had thousands of communists in his prisons, not islamists. Khomeini was only invited back to Iran, after the Shah lost power, by the new civilian-military government. It took them a few years (until 1982) to definitively wrestle control, executing most of the military leadership and various leftists. Worse yet, the US helped Khomeini enter. Two examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Mojahedin_Organization_of_Iran#1979_Iranian_Revolution_and_subsequent_power_struggles and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tudeh_Party_of_Iran#Islamic_Republic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_guerrilla_groups_of_Iran
Tangentially, Mossadegh also backstabbed the communists:
Next the royalist officers moved to overthrow Mossadeq. On August 16, three days after the shah left for the Caspian to take a “rest cure,” Colonel Nasiri of the Imperial Guards arrived at the premier’s doorstep with a royal decree replacing Mossadeq with Zahedi as premier. The attempt, however, was a complete fiasco, for the pro-Mossadeq chief of the army, tipped off by the Tudeh military network, surrounded Nasiri and his Imperial Guards as they approached the premier’s residence. The following day the shah fled to Bagdad, the and the Tudeh crowds poured into the streets, destroying royalist statues. In some provincial towns, such as Rasht and Enzeli, the Tudeh took over the municipal buildings. The next morning, Mossadeq, after a fateful interview with the American ambassador, who promised aid if law and order was reestablished, instructed the army to clear the streets of all demonstrators. Ironically, Mossadeq was trying to use the military, his past enemy, to crush the crowd, his main bulwark. Not surprisingly, the military used this opportunity to strike against Mossadeq. On August 19, while the Tudeh was taken aback by Mossadeq’s blow against them, Zahedi, commanding thirty-five Sherman tanks, surrounded the premier’s residence, and after a nine-hour battle captured Mossadeq. Acoustical effects for the event were provided both by Sha'yban “the Brainless,” who led a noisy demonstration from the red-light district to the bazaar, and by the gendarmerie, who transported some eight hundred farm hands from the royal stables in Veramin to central Tehran. - Iran Between Two Revolutions - Ervand Abrahamian
Warhammer books were packing heat
Generally, they're not particularly memorable 4 hour reads. But the first 2 Fabius Bile books (Promogenitor, Clonelord) are solid. Maybe Eisenhorn? The Infinite and the Divine! Fehervari's Requiem Infernal has some of the best prose in the past 100 years (mixed with vague, wordy evocativity) and sits with you for weeks after; his others are good too.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
1mo ago
The whole movement is bankrupt. While I theoretically understand "imperfect instrument" or "who cares about corruption if they still solve problems", it's literally not clear that MAGA is better for libertarians, conservative christians or anyone with a desire for intergenerational stability.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
1mo ago
Poland have scaled back their farm worker scheme
It was mostly Ukrainians at the start, too.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
1mo ago
Libya stabilized quite a few years ago (with 2 governments) although this week Haftar intervened in Sudan. Now, it's not great (HDI etc. lower than under Gaddafi) but
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
1mo ago
Stephen Miller's reach goal is 3,000/day, which, if we're generous and assume that government workers get in a whole 52 weeks a year, would be 156,000/yr
day =/= week
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
1mo ago
While I did not find any neutral specific numbers, my gut feeling is that shipping a container by railway is several times more expensive than by container ship.
Rail is surprisingly more efficient than many forms of shipping (e.g. barges).
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
1mo ago
no one thinking this was something that needed to be changed.
They were better. Abandoning them's just one more sign for how far this godless, corrupted, festering society has rotted.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
1mo ago
tubing ... recently stopped to focus on his family.
Luke Smith had left the internet for 2-3 years, until (sadly) returning a few weeks ago, with a bigger beard, to declaim the evils of the internet.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
1mo ago
Protectionism is often the disease. Rather than erroneous regulation enabling complacency, the solution is becoming more competitive. That means simplifying the regulatory environment, improving logistics and encouraging similar businesses in the same area.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
1mo ago
Your numbers are off and your explanation is more confusing. The $1.8T deficit is more than 25% of federal spending. (Debt issues are far worse if you include more local government.) Interest payments are 15%. As others noted, it would take 10 years to pay off the debt, if all current tax revenue only went to that. In reality, we'd have to cut spending by 30+% and spend the rest of our natural lives paying down the debt. None of this will happen. The government will simply inflate it away as it has done before.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
1mo ago
you could easily reduce spending by 10% and not to pay this interest payment and be in the same situation
What?
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
1mo ago
In Morocco I got about 150 likes per day and literally didn't have time to look at 3/4ths. I think online dating is evil and have never otherwise tried, so nothing to compare.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
2mo ago
The problem with free markets is that they require a modern state.
The movie "Becoming Jane" sees a lawyer talking to a judge:
- Why are you here?
- To learn the law
- Which has no other end but what?
- The preservation of the rights of property.
- Against?
- The mob. Therefore order is kept because we have (the army? prudence? I forget how it goes past here and the transcripts cut off)
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
2mo ago
calculus ... as a rigorous concept
Infinitesimals just make sense and can be taught to 6 years olds. It was only in the 1830s when rigorous limits were popularized, which overshadowed infinitesimals until 1960 when Robinson formalized them. So, not quite low hanging fruit, all in all.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
2mo ago
about National Weather Service cuts
Relatedly, the site rewrite's been put on ice: https://beta.weather.gov/
Yes. I chose my words carefully. N.b. I don't "hate Jews" as someone above assumed. I just see that Israelis and Israeli media doesn't cargocult and follow the West, seeing it as the best thing in the world, as Iranians do. I can easily find statistics (which correspond with my (admittedly probably, but not intentionally motivated) beliefs and first-hand anecdata that Iranians are less religious than Israelis, with demographic trends only accelerating this, considering Hasidic demographics etc. who are not inline with what you call "Western cultural norms". But I oppose these "Western cultural norms" and see them as anti-Western^TM. I believe their pushers hate my people.)
Well... Maryam Molkara convinced Khomeini to issue a fatwa in 1987, so that in Iran the government will (forcibly) pay for your sex change, so it's not gay, anymore. Only Thailand "leads". Overall, there's a cottage industry of cosmetic surgeons, with 2.5 million nose jobs per year.
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