As nntaleb postulates, once a dictatorship starts giving concessions, it is on its last legs.
Therefore I do not believe this news.
Therefore I do not believe this news.
But I don’t believe this news either, but simply because I haven’t seen any reporting that independently verifies the claim being made.
Is there a chance that the people in power (at any level of government) get voted out?
Still, there are glimmers of hope now and again. Like Ross Pero running as independent or the Bull Moose party.
It’s a dumb argument for sure, but now (i.e. post-Brexit referendum) I can’t help but think it’s a valid dumb argument…
Here you get two votes (one for the candidate of your district and one for the party. The second vote determines the number of seats while the first one makes sure a local guy gets one if them).
This is much more difficult than just listing candidates in the order you like them and "make sure you include anyone you can somewhat stomach".
Yet I've not heard if anyone being "confused (in the sende that they don't know what to choose) by the German system.
Some people might not fully grasp the system but that's ok (after all most will be intellectually able to understand it).
The thing is those things either don't work (as in those examples) or they do and just replace one of the major parties in whay becomes a new, generally stable 2-party alignment.
To get out of that, you need to weaken the electoral system elements reinforcing duopoly, the most direct way being to adopt some form of proportional representation (e.g., STV), at least for most (e.g., all state and the federal House of Reps) legislative elections.
Even the commonly offered proposal of ranked ballots methods in single-member districts doesn’t really address the problem (PR, whether by STV or other mechanisms, also destroys the ability to significantly distort by gerrymandering.)
Was Xi Jingping an open rival to Hu Jintao? Given Xi Jingping has purged his rivals from the levers of power, do you see any possibility that he'll peacefully stand down in 5 years to someone who is ideologically opposed to his government?
I don't think Xi Jingping was really an open rival to Hu Jintao, but the nature of these sort of authoritarian governments is the rivalry is not really made open until the point at which the power transition happens, even if it obvious to those behind the scenes. A rival usually careful cultivates political support while openly declaring support for the leader until he has enough support to gain power. Certainly the way Xi Jingping has behaved toward the Hu Jintao/Jiang Zemin faction and the policies he has pushed indicate he is rivals with them.
But really, the main point of my comment was rejecting the assertion that it is impossible for peaceful transitions of power to occur in countries like China. As long as a country has a norm that removal from leadership does not lead to physical harm, peaceful transitions of power are possible. I'm not trying to create a false equivalency between these governments and liberal democracies.
In reality of course this means nothing, given they are all required to be part of the "United Front" led by the CCP.
Al Jazeera too: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/12/4/iran-prosecutor-gen...
RTE: https://www.rte.ie/news/world/2022/1204/1339880-iran-moralit...
and plenty more besides.
I have no idea if it's a sincere declaration (like, maybe they'll still enforce these laws but using regular police instead of the morality police, for example) but "Iran claim to be suspending the morality police" is a statement that appears to be true.
This is a strategic move by the Islamic Republic and they timed it carefully because there are calls for another round of protests just in a few days. The government hopes to mitigate public unrest by giving them false hope.
I'm Iranian and have witnessed the government killing and imprisoning children (e.g., a 9 year old boy who was in a car with his father, not even protesting). There's a reason the UN is now investigating human right violations by the regime. To this regime, people are just statistics—just a couple years ago, the government massacred more than 1500 people on the streets and didn't blink an eye. In fact, right after that, they continued the JCPOA negotiations with the West.
Many Iranians wish our country didn't have oil and gas so that other countries would leave us alone. The free and abundant resources of money only make the regime corruption worse. At least in a dictatorship that struggles with income, some attention would be paid to construction and manufacturing. But the (non)Iranian regime has just been stealing the nation's wealth for over 4 decades, essentially funneling it to Swiss banks. Maybe that's why the Switzerland refused to sanction the Islamic Republic just like Germany and Britain.
and then reflect back on the BLM protests...
> There are five elements that create an unstable social equilibrium: economic or fiscal strain, alienation and opposition among the elites, widespread popular anger at injustice, a persuasive shared narrative of resistance, and favorable international relations.
With those in mind, Iran doesn't seem that close to a revolution, yet.
I don't believe that all five conditions have to be met in order to see a revolution. In plenty of places like Portugal in 1974 or South Korea in the 1980s, situation was much less dire than in Iran today.
Iran economic conditions are created mostly by the west imposing sanctions.
Popular anger is a minority yet, we see it a lot because it benefits the western propaganda, I'm quite sure it's not as widespread in Iran, not because of censorship alone, but because the majority still believe that the real enemy is the western corruption.
We've seen it in Afghanistan, a war created by the US without a real motivation that Obama transformed into a liberation of the afghan people which in the end turned into bringing some woman from Kabul with their kids to the west to live like western women, leaving behind their traditions and husbands while the majority of the people lived in small rural villages and hoped for the Talibans to return and bring back their way of life. And it finally happened, for two reasons
- it costed too much, despite the people always saying that freedom has no price, it obviously has one and it's not very high
- American soldiers were dying for the cause and there was nothing of economic value on the table to die for
We should stop meddling with other people's revolutions, if Iran will revolt it should be because Iranian people have done it.
This is also a reform that doesn't change the laws, it's just facade, as many had predicted.
Have you followed in the past few days the "debate" about stay-at-home orders in the Middle Empire? "Last legs" there?
I am not naive enough to think this is the case here, but say theoretically at some point someone with power in such a government has a human moment and actually wants to give some concessions, say because they have a daughter and can empathize or whatever.
Shouldn't we in the collective West be making it so that it is a no-brainer for this person to give this concession, without having to think about how Western governments are going to capitalize on the move to show 'weakness of the regime' etc.?
I do not believe overthrowing governments works, if simply because there will always be a feeling then among some parts of the population that it is a puppet, subservient government to whomever helped it win and that they deserve a 'native' government. This fuels a cycle of overthrow and counter-overthrow and does not actually help the people up their standard of living. Sanctions are in the same vein, only making the people suffer.
As such, I believe the only reasonable course of action is to make such governments give concessions over time and encourage them to do so via positive reinforcement. They need to arrive at democracy just like the West had time to do.
Like most Arab elite, the Persian elite are preoccupied with the Anglosphere
If you believe that there's no opportunistic involvement of the various Western governments here, (to the determent of the actual Iranians protesting btw), I have a bridge to sell you.
I am a citizen of the West and as such I am somewhat indirectly responsible for its actions, so I feel its important to call it out, since its my money also financing its actions.
One thing to consider is that the grand theft of state monies by the IRGC largely goes to Western banks.
Can you point to any? Knowing the expat Persian community where I live in Germany, the movement against the regime is very much coming from Iranians. It's Iranians on the streets in Tehran without headscarves, Iranians being shot and killed, Iranians marching and organizing demonstrations.
I don't know why people always assume only one thing can ever be true in a given situation. I never suggested it's not an organic movement or that it's not Iranians protesting. That does not mean the West doesn't take advantage of all it can for its own regime change goals. You get articles by U.S. officials saying they want to overthrow Iran fairly openly, say John Bolton, you get U.S. officials speaking at events organized by anti current Iranian regime organizations that themselves are of questionable morals, this is not hard. The main thing is amplification. There are protests in China that are genuine, but overall relatively small, yet they get amplified in the West to seem much bigger.
Why do you think that is? The neocons have certainly desired regime change.
I am going to repeat myself but I am not a fan of the current Iranian government by any means, yet I do not believe overthrowing governments works, if simply because there will always be a feeling then among some parts of the population that it is a puppet, subservient government to whomever helped it win and that they deserve a 'native' government. This fuels a cycle of overthrow and counter-overthrow and does not actually help the people up their standard of living.
We should either support the rights of women globally, including among our Gulf allies and act out of moral principle, rather than some geopolitical chess play - or if we're unwilling to challenge KSA, Egypt, UAE etc. then just shut up about the issue.
Hum... I suggest you take a deeper look at this.
Modern liberalism is an obvious progression of the ancient variety, and it's really ironic that we are talking about Iran.
The motivation may be unrelated to how it is seen in the West. We might just be overestimating our own role and importance in Iranian affairs.
Also, certain regimes will always portray its domestic opponents as puppets of foreign interests, regardless of what anyone says or does.
My stance is the exact opposite, it's that they do have agency but that the constant articles in the West celebrating a chance for some sort of regime change actually gives the Iranian government the ammunition it needs to make them appear sponsored/non-organic.
It makes it worse that the West does in fact have a history of regime change in Iran, (that had, as its ultimate consequence, helped to install the current gov. there).
If we appeared a lot more indifferent towards changing the regime as such, while supporting the rights of women on moral grounds everywhere, incl our allies such as the Gulf states, we'd have a lot more credibility and removing agency from the protesters by the Iranian authorities would become a lot harder than it is now.
But still after your clarification, I see nothing wrong with west cheering the revolution. a) It is our side b) It is impossible to enforce 'not cheering', one slip is enough to be used against you, see Musk and Russian propaganda.
And regarding the Gulf states, I also do not like this. But one has to pick his battles and better (for us) getting our oil from them than from Russia.
Hmm...could you clarify? The human rights situation in the Gulf is much, much worse in the Gulf. Would this be because they're easier to get in line?
The reason we're no longer on OK terms with Russia is because of Ukraine, yet we're actively helping the likes of KSA and the UAE to do much the same in places like Yemen.
I don't know how we can claim to want to not buy oil/gas from Russia based on moral grounds, yet continue our trade with the Gulf and yet still claim some sort of moral high ground.
I also only give to charity when I'm not broke. Not everyone is Mother Theresa all the time and that should be OK. It's not 0 or 1.
It barely matters. Diplomats do try spin things that way, but the government's problem is that they can't stop the protests inside despite having already killed hundreds of protesters, foreign media is pretty far down their list of concerns. In Tehran women are walking around without headscarves in blatant defiance of morality rules and the government is growing desperate.
Recent talk of maybe relaxing morality rules are a desperate attempt to placate the protests, not put on a show for the West.