KlutzyTraining
1mo ago
when? What was bombed? 8 months ago, two remote nuclear sites with precision bunker busters from B-2s?
The first strikes in Iran were more than an hour before the school was struck. Why was there no government plan to evacuate schools near military installations in the event of Iranian targets being bombed? (At least the schools in former military buildings!)
Or, why was such a plan not followed?
It's not like the Iranian government had zero clue that the USA was considering bombing targets in Iran. There was a long buildup to this as you pointed out.
Children are educated on military bases throughout the world.
Do you think those children would continue being educated on military bases, when those military bases were at active risk of being bombed? Use some common sense, please.
This is all pointless mimicry of being a person, going through the motions of an argument. I don't even think you're being disingenuous. That's require more self-awareness.
This comment isn't remotely in good faith on your part.
KlutzyTraining
1mo ago
Let's review some basic facts.
-The children were being educated in a former military building.
-This building was close to a military installation which would be a likely target in an active war.
-Iran was being actively bombed before this horrible catastrophe occurred. There was every reason to believe the military installation could be a target.
-Despite knowing all of this, the Iranian government chose to continue to have those children attend school nearby, in a former military building, risking their lives to a possible mistake such as this. If there is even a one in a million chance of a mistaken bombing, why the fuck would you continue to place children in that building??? Did the Iranian government have THAT much faith in the precision targeting of the US military?
-The Iranian government quite recently demonstrated a willingness to kill thousands of their own citizens, and also blocked the internet access of Iranians so the atrocities could not be fully documented and shared with the world. They demonstrated that they could accept the deaths of thousands of their own citizens, in order to cling to power.
(None of these facts is in serious dispute, as far as I know. Let me know if I am missing any crucial details.)
Unless my understanding of the facts is wrong in some critical fashion, I think everyone should assign at least 92% of the blame to the Iranian government. The best case scenario is that they practiced extreme negligence with the lives of their own children.
When London was being bombed in World War II, they correctly shipped their children out to the countryside where it was a lot safer. If there's any possibility that your children will be harmed, that's the obvious thing to do!
And the worst case scenario is that the Iranian government knowingly placed children in harm's way, expecting that if they put enough children in harm's way, some of them might get harmed. And in this scenario they knew from watching the Gaza war that when children get harmed, it presents a massive propaganda coup for the side associated with the child victims, no matter how negligent that side has been.
And why is it a propaganda coup? Because almost everyone is either ignorant and doesn't bother to investigate the facts, or else they are eager to blame literally anything on the US government (or Israeli government), even when what occurred has absolutely no positive value for the US government or Israeli government and is clearly a mistake. After all, who wants to blame the side which "lost its children in a horrible way? what good person would ever blame them for the deaths of their own children???".
And yet, the only way to get the Iranian government, and other governments, to stop negligently or deliberately jeopardizing their children, is to harshly punish them every time they risk the lives of their own children.
(And should the US government be more careful? If it's at all practicable, then yes. Not just to protect innocent children (even if the government of the children refuses to protect them), but also partly because most people are either morons that don't bother to assess basic facts, or else to avoid giving the anti-American propagandists- including the ones inside our country- any fresh material.)
This is a difficult thing to quantify, so forgive me, I turned to ChatGPT5.2-Thinking to attempt it in a vaguely neutral way. I asked the question "How many negative statements or claims or inferences or anything resembling criticisms from critics are made about ____, in total, in the pasted text below?" For both individuals and their introductory sections.
ChatGPT concluded that there were 41 negative statements about Trump, and only 20 about Khamenei. There's a real density of negative inferences about Trump, which Khamenei doesn't get.
I would personally consider some of the "negatives" about either of the men to be neutral or even positive. But especially regarding Trump, to me the phrasing and emphasis seems meant to create a negative impression in the reader (especially the typical reader on Wikipedia).
Part of what was galling to me was how many of the negative claims about Trump could have been made about Khamenei, or some variation on them, and yet Khamenei's much worse "offenses" were ignored.
Here were the statements selected by ChatGPT for each of the men. I've pointed out some areas where Khamenei could have potentially been described in a similar manner to Trump, but wasn't:
Khamenei:
he was “only a middle ranking cleric” at appointment (such a trivial negative to count)
he was “not even an Ayatollah” before appointment (again, trivial, at least to most audiences)
he achieved the position through “state media, patronage networks, and the security apparatus”
he transformed the IRGC into a tool for “domestic control”
his rhetoric included “calls for Israel’s destruction”
his rhetoric included “antisemitic tropes”
Iran (under him) was involved in “proxy wars” with Israel and Saudi Arabia
he is labeled a “hardliner”
he “sidelined … political dissidents” and other factions (oh, he merely sidelined them)
he “eas[ed] restrictions” only when regime stability/legitimacy was threatened implying tactical repression
his leadership was associated with “expansion of state militarization”
his leadership was associated with “consolidation of power” in the Supreme Leader’s office (associated with... some vague thing)
people were put on trial for “insulting” him, often with blasphemy charges
those sentences included “lashing”
those sentences included “jail time”
“some of them died in custody”
critics viewed him as a “repressive despot”
critics said he was responsible for “repression”
critics said he was responsible for “mass murders” (they merely said it? or did it actually happen?)
critics said he was responsible for “other acts of injustice”
Trump:
imposed a travel ban on seven Muslim-majority countries (Khamenei never supported any travel restrictions?)
expanded the Mexico–United States border wall (does Iran never enhance its border security?)
enforced a family separation policy on the border
rolled back environmental regulations (never happens in Iran?)
rolled back business regulations (never happens in Iran?)
withdrew the U.S. from climate agreements
withdrew the U.S. from trade agreements (never happens in Iran?)
withdrew the U.S. from Iran’s nuclear program agreement (Khamenei having any role in nuclear program issues which precipitated his death is not mentioned in Khamenei's intro)
started a trade war with China (Iran never has tariffs or adjusts its trade policy?)
downplayed COVID-19’s severity
contradicted health officials
attempted to overturn the 2020 election result
actions culminated in the January 6 Capitol attack (to me, most of these descriptions are either overstated, or missing crucial context)
impeached in 2019 for abuse of power
impeached in 2019 for obstruction of Congress
impeached in 2021 for incitement of insurrection
found liable (civil) for sexual abuse
found liable (civil) for defamation
found liable (civil) for business fraud (I guess Khamenei can't be said to have ever done anything illegal or morally wrong, since his cohort controlled the judiciary and the religion)
found guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records
first U.S. president convicted of a felony
federal felony indictment alleged retention of classified documents, later dismissed without prejudice
federal felony indictment alleged obstruction of the 2020 election, later dismissed without prejudice (you can sort of see how every single plausible negative thing is being crammed into the introduction)
initiated mass layoffs of federal workers (did the Iranian government never fire anyone? And you see there is no mention of the positive intentions of this kind of action. In fact, the positive intentions are perhaps never mentioned for any of Trump's actions, as though he just went around trying to do bad things, for absolutely no plausible reason whatsoever.)
imposed tariffs on nearly all countries at the highest level since the Great Depression (no mention of the international context that these nations typically had higher tariffs than we had...)
administration actions included targeting political opponents and civil society (ah, but it's not possible that Trump was himself ever targeted...)
administration actions included persecution of transgender people (Khamenei never persecuted any sexual minorities, eh?)
administration actions included deportation of immigrants (Iran never ever deported anyone?)
administration actions included extensive use of executive orders (I guess this is acknowledged for Khamenei, lol)
these actions drew over 550 lawsuits challenging their legality (I guess Khamenei couldn't be challenged in this way...)
pursued a legally controversial campaign to attack alleged drug traffickers (I'm sure drug traffickers are treated kindly in Iran!)
ordered a military intervention in Venezuela that captured Nicolás Maduro (I don't believe there's anything in Khamenei's introduction which acknowledges Iran's roles in supporting other nations and organizations which engaged in violence)
authorized American involvement (alongside Israel) in a major attack on Iran
that attack resulted in the assassination of Ali Khamenei
comments/actions characterized as racist (Khamenei was surely a beacon of tolerance)
comments/actions characterized as misogynistic (we all know how much the Iranian government encourages women to live freely and at a bare minimum with head uncovered, right?)
made many false or misleading statements to an unprecedented degree (Khamenei was a real George Washington?)
promotes conspiracy theories
actions described by researchers as authoritarian
actions described as contributing to democratic backsliding
ranked by scholars/historians as one of the worst presidents in U.S. history
KlutzyTraining
1mo ago
Random- I happened to be reading the Wikipedia entry for Khamenei, when on a whim I thought to compare it to the Wikipedia page for Trump.
Even if you just read the summary introduction, the tone and facts emphasized for Khamenei are vastly kinder to him than they are for Trump.
But this is fundamentally insane. Khamenei has had thousands of people killed (including recently!). And he was crucial in Iran's long-term support of terrorist groups that have killed huge numbers of people in the Middle East.
Is there really no recourse for this? Are Americans absolutely forced to have one of our major sources of information (heavily used in schools) basically running propaganda operations on behalf of religious extremist dictators of governments that encourage "Death to the USA"?
KlutzyTraining
3mo ago
It's another good question.
Since I come from a leftist activist background, I basically fall back on the types of suggestions that leftists make to increase "representation" in other areas:
-Advertise more in those spaces
-Increase representation in the media
-Reduce any hostility in the workplace for those kinds of people, if you reasonably can
-Make them aware that they have legal rights
-...and if all else fails, simply accept that if people don't want to do those jobs, even when fully aware of the opportunities, then so be it. People can't be forced to do things they don't want to do. But you can at least make the opportunities available and raise awareness.
Note that the Biden admin generally did not use federal taxes to buy guns for illegals and paid them a federal salary to engage in behavior where they were somewhat likely to shoot people, so we might want to hold Trump's ICE to slightly higher standards.
If we actually care about innocent people dying, then no, we shouldn't care any more about someone that dies at the hands of ICE, than someone that died from some criminal the Democrats let out on the streets. And there are VASTLY more people that die from those Democrat causes, than at the hands of ICE.
If the left actually cared about innocent people dying, their crime and immigration policies would be vastly different. But from what I can tell, their focus is mostly on making life easier for convicted criminals, and known illegal immigrants.
Also, we do not generally rank murders by how innocent their victim was
Most members of the public do this, actually. Most people don't care that much if some gang member is killed by some other gang member. They care a lot more if some innocent child dies. This is perfectly logical and normal.
"He was a bad person, the world is better off without him" is not an argument we let anyone make in court, and I see no reason why we should let ICE make it.
I'm not saying the people that confront ICE are bad people (though I think that they are misguided). I am mostly noting that someone that gets in a confrontation with a member of law enforcement wielding a weapon is knowingly taking on a big risk. They are not 100% innocent in the situation, like Iryna Zarutska and other victims were.
And since members of ICE are humans, and all humans make occasional mistakes, these incidents will keep happening as long as the left goads on enough people into getting into confrontations with LEO.
This is a major part of why the left is so incredibly complicit in these deaths. It isn't just that the left deliberately imported millions of illegal immigrants and forced the voters to elect Republicans to clean up their mess, it's the fact that they keep goading suggestible people into confronting ICE. These incidents will keep happening as long as the left keeps doing that.
Can ICE policies be improved? Sure. But it's actually a lot harder to perfect that side of the equation, than for the left to stop creating these problems and confrontations in the first place.
I think you would need a new SCOTUS for that. Citizens United clearly established that companies enjoyed free speech. Seems kinda hard to exempt media companies from that.
What I'm proposing would be massively beneficial to conservatives, and SCOTUS does lean conservative.
BTW, I'm not suggesting at all that corporations should be forced to make ANY specific changes to their speech. I am only suggesting that corporations should be forced to engage in fair hiring practices, and then expect that as the personnel changes, the speech will likely change, too, once conservatives finally get a fair shot in the workplace in the media, academia, and government.
Are you sure you are on my side of the pond?
I am an American, and I feel deep sorrow at once-astonishing Europe's slow slide into irrelevancy, so I will probably stay here.
Imagine millions of liberal college students hate-watching Fox News so that they can force them to carry their viewpoints.
Amusing :). I'm sure Fox News would be completely happy with that outcome, though, and so would most conservatives, to see liberals finally get more exposure to conservative viewpoints. (Studies show that liberals are generally much more ignorant of conservative media and viewpoints, than the reverse.)
There are a ton of other options, and the audience only reachable by traditional TV is growing smaller every year.
The audience for traditional media is still absolutely vast. And all "new media" would also be included. And in some cases it would help to protect the left!
My understanding is that the military is already fairly split by voting preferences among active-duty military, e.g. https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2020/08/31/as-trumps-popularity-slips-in-latest-military-times-poll-more-troops-say-theyll-vote-for-biden/.com
In general, in all nations, the military is a fantastic candidate for balanced ideology, since coups require the support of the military in 100% of cases (the support of the media is also essential).
But if the military is always split relative to the nation's voting preferences, then it's really hard to take over the military as a part of a coup of the government. It's a great way to protect democracy.
And regarding the police (and ICE), a great way to get the left to stop attacking law enforcement so much (and to hopefully improve community relations and improve the skewed perspective most leftists have about law enforcement), would be to get more leftists working in law enforcement. I'm sure there would be some negative effects, too, but there are some big major positives about ideological balance in law enforcement.
Do you really want aome of these organisations to reflect the voter base, rather than the base of people who want to work in that field?
This is a good question, and I think that ideological fairness should be assessed in the same way that things like gender fairness or racial fairness are often assessed: that as long as you can show that the workplace is not hostile, and that no minimally qualified candidates were rejected, then if there simply aren't enough qualified leftist/rightist candidates that applied, then it's fine if there is a resulting imbalance.
The reality is that a lot of media/academic/government workplaces are massively hostile to conservatives, and a lot of conservative talent is not being admitted nor hired.
-I don't think it's reasonable for Democrats to create a massive mess, and then to expect Republicans to have perfection in how they clean up the mess made by Democrats. And I think that should be one framing that conservatives use- "sometimes bad things will happen when Democrats create a mess and we have to clean it up for them".
-I think conservatives should use incidents like this to raise attention to the fact that the media, and the left (but I repeat myself a bit), comparatively give so little attention to the victims of illegal immigrants and recidivist criminals out on the streets from liberal policies. The people getting into incidents with ICE are much less "innocent" than the random victims of recidivist criminal nutjobs or illegal immigrants let out on the streets by liberal policies.
-Conservatives tend to get into the weeds about whether or not a shooting was "justified", instead of simply pointing out that almost all of the unwanted tragic incidents that relate to politics are mainly committed by the groups which are the chief recipients of liberal sympathies.
Every time the left gives a massive amount of attention to someone getting into a confrontation with ICE and it ends badly, conservatives should be asking why Iryna Zarutska et al didn't get the same level of concern for not seeking out any trouble whatsoever.
-Speaking as a former leftist, if conservatives really want to get the media to not be such overwhelming propaganda outlets for the left, then I think they absolutely must implement 2rafa's idea of jobs quotas by ideology.
The simple reality, and many studies back this up, is that liberals are more bigoted against conservatives, than conservatives are bigoted against liberals. And the level of liberal bigotry is at an all-time high.
-Especially when it comes to the media, it's easy to portray it as a free-speech right. If conservatives can almost never be admitted nor hired by colleges, nor hired for media jobs, then they are cut off from major sources of "speech" in their country. (And colleges often have received federal grants, making it even more egregious that these institutions are taking tax dollars from conservatives, while refusing to admit or hire them).
-I think the jobs quota needs to be portrayed as universal protection for every ideology. And to emphasize that free speech is completely protected, I think quotas should be proportional to the ideology of the audience.
So, if an institution deliberately wants to only cater to a universally left-wing audience, that's fine, then they can hire only leftists, if that is their desire. And conservative institutions would have the same freedom to hire only conservatives, if they want to cater exclusively to a conservative audience.
But I can guarantee that nearly every single media and academic institution in the western world has more conservative audience members (and taxpayer funders), than the number of conservatives the HR-liberals are willing to hire.
-Everyone would then clearly be free to engage in any speech they want. This is just about hiring practices in cases where there is a clear discrepancy in who is getting hired.
But any conservatives by now should see that it's obvious that "policy follows personnel". As institutions have hired more leftists, they have become more leftist in their policies & in their speech habits.
-I would suggest that ideological hiring quotas should also apply for government jobs, which skew massively leftist in practice. Voters deserve a government which matches how they vote!
-Hiring quotas by ideology in government jobs would accomplish a lot of major conservative goals at once: 1. Significantly lower the risk of civil war. 2. Massively expand conservative power. 3. Reduce liberal enthusiasm for spending and for government power in general (liberals will perhaps suddenly lose interest in having their taxes fund lots of conservatives in easy government jobs.).
-A major part of why government jobs have consistently skewed leftist is that government jobs tend to be concentrated in urban areas that lean left. So, government jobs not only tend to be functionally hostile to conservatives on ideological grounds, government jobs also tend to have a massive regional bias against conservative-leaning rural areas in particular.
-"Regionalism" is underdiscussed as a type of bias which badly harms some people. I think this is because "regionalism" mostly harms conservative-leaning groups. A lot of liberals have been very good at making a massive fuss about some types of bias which evidence suggests harms relatively few people (like racism), while ignoring the more common harmful biases which can get wielded against people based on where they live, what religion they practice, or how they vote.
Even if it took them 30 minutes to realize that targets were being bombed, they had plenty of time to leave. A 5 minute walk away and they would probably have been safe.
When I think about my childhood, the schools in my area would all close if there was even a little bit of snow on the ground. (Or even a forecast of some snow.) Snow!
So if American schools can show this level of concern for the safety of children, even when the risks are tiny, why couldn't the Iranian government show concern for their children when the risks were clearly much larger?
Like, unless they were total negligent morons, at some point they must have realized that there was some risk to converting a military building to a school, and they should have a plan to protect children just in case.
More options
Context Copy link