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Trump has given a "red line" to Iran about killing protestors, but we still aren't seeing US involvement as deaths move into the thousands, reportedly. If the regime follows through with its claims, it will be executing many if not most of the thousands it has arrested.
I have an essay on my view that the US/West/Israel should clearly intervene in the Transnational Thursday thread, but the Culture War dynamics strike me as interesting in that it's not really Culture War Classic material. Traditionally, the Left has been soft on Iran and the Right has been hawkish. Iran has tried to kill Trump and Trump officials, as revenge for the Soleimani assassination.
There's a strong anti-interventionist Right and Left. During the 12-Day War, Trump went from tweeting about regime change, to abruptly demanding cessation of hostilities, which Israel and Iran complied with. (I think had the war continued the regime would already have fallen, given how easily Israel was bombing them.) This is something that's already kicked off, unlike the Maduro rendition. My understanding is that action got more popular in the polls having succeeded, though it's an open question what Venezuela's fate will be.
The Right strongly criticized Obama for declaring a red line in Syria, and then backing off. In hindsight, I think it would have been correct to have intervened against Assad. Here, I think there's a clear cost-benefit analysis case, whether you care about the plight of the Iranian people or the amoral realist power dynamics for America First Global Superpower Edition.
Trump really needs to intervene militarily here now. Destroy the Revolutionary Guards headquarters and take out their top brass. This minimizes deaths of Iranian people. Falsely telling the Iranian people that he'd help so they risk their lives and die only for Trump to later back out and allow the regime to continue would be an abject moral failure.
If Trump can properly fix Venezuela, Iran and Cuba by replacing their regimes with sane governments he'll genuinely deserve the Nobel peace prize.
The Iranian government is approximately sane. They need their religious fervor in order to (1) sustain their already low TFR, (2) incentivize high births among the intelligent [who otherwise would leave or not have so many kids], and (3) encourage bravery among the men who will certainly be dying against Israel this century. It doesn’t hurt that (4) it also promotes alliances with other Muslims in the region. Without Islam, Arabs would be a lot less resistant to the idea of America and Israel completely destroying them. If you were dictator of Iran and had the best interest of Iranians at heart, IMO you would be forced to retain the religious component of their governance, even without considering the huge gains in life satisfaction that come with religiosity. (And even the veil — women having to wear a modest veil likely increases their happiness given the longterm problems that come with the culture of appearance-obsession that plagues Western women).
The idea that “secularism” is sane for Iran is silly. The idea that democracy is remotely viable should be disproven per the long history of America interfering with democracies.
The Iranian Government has massively screwed up the economy and water resources due to trying to be self-sufficient. They are running out of water, because so much of it is being used to grow rice and sugar cane. They are running out of electricity because they have encouraged crypto mining without growing power supply.
It's this economic malaise, with high inflation which is driving the protests. Most people don't like the religious strictness, but they tolerate it for safety and a stable economy. When those things are being swept away, of course they are protesting and demanding change.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=OQj-56i76Sc
https://youtube.com/watch?v=-qL0IWvliqc&pp=ygUaaGlzdG9yeSBvZiBldmVyeXRoaW5nIGlyYW4%3D
Iran’s desire for self-sufficiency reasonable. What happened just today with rice imports illustrates this neatly:
https://archive.is/K0mlp
IMHO the average American is blind to the utter bloodlust that many Zionist donors have against Iran, and how thoroughly Trump is committed to these Zionist billionaire donors. They would be fine starving the Iranian people just like they were fine starving children in Gaza. This is what makes the pretext of caring about the Iranian people so perplexing to me. Who can believe this? It requires terminal-level gullibility to believe it when we can look back at a quarter century of bloodshed, 400,000 civilians killed directly through American intervention, in Syria alone a mass migration crisis involving five million people… we even funded Islamist groups to accomplish this!
Ah poor Iran, hated by the Jews for no justifiable reason.
Are we still going with that myth?
Which internationally-recognized aid organizations have concluded that starvation in Gaza was a myth? Israelis believe Americans are this gullible, that they can just call something a myth and that makes it so, and they can call something true and that makes it so. There’s a reason America’s approval of Israel has been plummeting. Let me guess, the Norwegian Refugee Council is Hamas?
Here’s a helpful list to get you started: 1) American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), (2) A.M. Qattan Foundation, (3) A New Policy, (4) ACT Alliance, (5) Action Against Hunger (ACF), (6) Action for Humanity, (7) ActionAid International, (8) American Baptist Churches Palestine Justice Network, (9) Amnesty International, (10) Asamblea de Cooperación por la Paz, (11) Associazione Cooperazione e Solidarietà (ACS), (12) Bystanders No More, (13) Campain, (14) CARE, (15) Caritas Germany, (16) Caritas Internationalis, (17) Caritas Jerusalem, (18) Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD), (19) Center for Mind-Body Medicine (CMBM), (20) CESVI Fondazione, (21) Children Not Numbers, (22) Christian Aid, (23) Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP), (24) CIDSE- International Family of Catholic Social Justice Organisations, (25) Cooperazione Internazionale Sud Sud (CISS), (26) Council for Arab‐British Understanding (CAABU), (27) DanChurchAid (DCA), (28) Danish Refugee Council (DRC), (29) Development and Peace – Caritas Canada, (30) Doctors against Genocide, (31) Episcopal Peace Fellowship, (32) EuroMed Rights, (33) Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL), (34) Forum Ziviler Friedensdienst e.V., (35) Gender Action for Peace and Security, (36) Glia, (37) Global Legal Action Network (GLAN), (38) Global Witness, (39) Health Workers 4 Palestine, (40) HelpAge International, (41) Human Concern International, (42) Humanity & Inclusion (HI), (43) Humanity First UK, (44) Indiana Center for Middle East Peace, (45) Insecurity Insight, (46) International Media Support, (47) International NGO Safety Organisation, (48) Islamic Relief, (49) Jahalin Solidarity, (50) Japan International Volunteer Center (JVC), (51) Justice for All, (52) Kenya Association of Muslim Medical Professionals (KAMMP), (53) Kvinna till Kvinna Foundation, (54) MedGlobal, (55) Medico International, (56) Medico International Switzerland (medico international schweiz), (57) Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), (58) Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), (59) Medicine for the People - Belgium (MPLP/GVHV), (60) Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), (61) Médecins du Monde France, (62) Médecins du Monde Spain, (63) Médecins du Monde Switzerland, (64) Mercy Corps, (65) Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA), (66) Movement for Peace (MPDL), (67) Muslim Aid, (68) National Justice and Peace Network in England and Wales, (69) Nonviolence International, (70) Norwegian Aid Committee (NORWAC), (71) Norwegian Church Aid (NCA), (72) Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA), (73) Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), (74) Oxfam International, (75) Pax Christi England and Wales, (76) Pax Christi International, (77) Pax Christi Merseyside, (78) Pax Christi USA, (79) Pal Law Commission, (80) Palestinian American Medical Association, (81) Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF), (82) Palestinian Medical Relief Society (PMRS), (83) Peace Direct, (84) Peace Winds, (85) Pediatricians for Palestine, (86) People in Need, (87) Plan International, (88) Première Urgence Internationale (PUI), (89) Progettomondo, (90) Project HOPE, (91) Quaker Palestine Israel Network, (92) Rebuilding Alliance, (93) Refugees International, (94) Saferworld, (95) Sabeel‐Kairos UK, (96) Save the Children (SCI), (97) Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund, (98) Solidarités International, (99) Støtteforeningen Det Danske Hus i Palæstina, (100) Swiss Church Aid (HEKS/EPER), (101) Terre des Hommes Italia, (102) Terre des Hommes Lausanne, (103) Terre des Hommes Nederland, (104) The Borgen Project, (105) The Center for Mind-Body Medicine (CMBM), (106) The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (GCR2P), (107) The International Development and Relief Foundation, (108) The Institute for the Understanding of Anti‐Palestinian Racism, (109) Un Ponte Per (UPP), (110) United Against Inhumanity (UAI), (111) War Child Alliance, (112) War Child UK, (113) War on Want, (114) Weltfriedensdienst e.V., (115) Welthungerhilfe (WHH).
Are they all anti-Semitic, or what?
I'm sure there is starvation in Gaza. Israel's claim is that Hamas seizes aid shipments which prevents them from reaching normal Gazans. Whether or not this claim is true, I can't say, and I can't really find any sources that haven't already picked one side or the other to prove or debunk it.
The US / UN did not find evidence of that. There we also easy ways to circumvent that were it happening, like thousands of aerial aid box drop locations or excluding certain men from receiving aid based on the facial recognition software already in use in Gaza. Hamas stealing aid isn’t even something that could be feasibly done in secret as 2% of the population stealing all the aid from starving people would be obviously discernible from drones.
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