Suddenly, Iran is aflame with protest

It's the lack of internet that will cause this protest to fail as the protesters are all murdered. They can't communicate between themselves to call ahead where the carnage is. I guess this was just too early a protest. The satellite internet proposed by (I think it was...) Elon Musk would solve the problems of an internet shutdown.

 

Seems like a drastic move to shut down the net because of a few subvwrsives.

If that happened in the US dome shady **** would be at hand from our rulers . Like you see in states like n. Korea and communist china or any dictatorship who has some worries.

 

And It would not have been worth the 100,000 American dead it would have taken to remove the red army from those lands.

 

That's what I have been thinking about. What you will need though is a receiving station.
Currently these are super expensive - but Starlink hopes to bring the price down to
about 250-300 US dollars. These will be about the size of a pizza box. If you could
smuggle them into the country you can communicate between you house and the
satellites, direct. So it will be down to the costs and the risks, so I don't expect many
people will have this internet.

 

It wasn't a few subversive. There is a small army of such people increasingly armed and trained by cross-border support in Iraq, who use the rather porous border between the two countries to smuggle explosives and weapons. And while the rest of the protesters weren't foreign terrorists or subversives, the initial protests against the hike in gas prices were quickly overtaken by protesters representing what I have said elsewhere is roughly 20-30% of the population who are either interested in or willing to risk a violent overthrow of the current regime. The majority in Iran, a large majority, simply feel no sympathy or support for such agendas.

 

Someone said the subversives were few in number intimating that most Iranians were not subversive .

Shutting down the net made me consider that more people were involved.

But what happens in iran is none of my biz nor any other american .

Americans live in a disemboweled republic and they need to fix that before they critique iran.

Of course acting like china or n.korea by shutting down the net llooks like 1984 and dystopian and yet much about America looks dystopian

 

I can't imagine the sanctions will be viewed other than negatively by most Iranians.

 

They tried and got LBJ...

 

Yeah, well--oil revenue per Saudi is dropping. What will happen to Saudi Arabia when the world switches to other forms of energy?

And when the oil money runs down?

The Saudis need to clean up their act.

 

The shut down of the internet shows the regime took the protests, and the activities being undertaken under its cover, seriously. And for good reason: they were quite dangerous activities. That shut down doesn't show 'majority support'. The majority-minority distinction is mainly relevant to establish 'legitimacy'; it has little to do with whether you can draw a serious enough movement to throw an entire country into chaos and disorder. Even a large enough minority, in Iran's case the 20% I alluded to in one my earlier messages here, will give you sufficient grounds to cause such implosion.

Besides this 20%, however, and another 10% that can be steered in their direction, there are the 70% who are definitely not inclined at all in any of these direction. And who go to great lengths to show the world what they think, even if the 'western media' usually doesn't cover them. And what I like to do is tell you the the things about Iran which the western media doesn't tell accurately.

Millions of people demonstrated against the protests across Iran yesterday. Their numbers obviously dwarfed those who were in any way associated with the protests. The latter group who protested, however, even with the internet shut down in Iran, had their voices heard in the US and across the world. The former, however, despite constituting much larger numbers of people, are basically ignored. And the difference in how these divergent voices are treated has to do with US and larger western foreign policy attitudes and agendas.

 

So, 20% or 30% of Iranians are "either interested in or willing to risk" the overthrow, even violent overthrow, of the government, but "a large majority" of Iranians are strongly opposed. The government shut down the internet to disrupt the activities of the 20-30%?

Why in your opinion are the 20-30% upset with the government?

 

Beneath political attitudes and allegiances, are a host of other issues, including cultural and economic ones. The economic grievances, however, aren't the primary distinction between the 20-30% and the 70% who are opposed to this group. Those Iranians with the most legitimate economic gripes are disproportionately represented within the ranks of the 70%, even if they also fill some of the crowd that makes up the 20-30%. The main distinction arises from the extent to which they are influenced by westernization and westernized agenda?

There are westernized Iranians who are nonetheless very much opposed to the 20%. Who, sometimes, make up the most vocal voices against the 20%. So westernization is not by itself, therefore, a deciding ingredient and I want to stress again: even among westernized Iranians, the 20% would still be a minority! Besides being westernized, you need to have reason to 'trust' western political agendas more than the agendas of those within Iran who are westernized but who are opposed any revolution or any violent overthrow of the regime and who are generally against US/Israeli hegemony and imperialism.

In numbers, most of those who have more "faith" in those 'westernized political agendas' are simply not aware/educated enough when it comes to the anti-imperialism narratives of 'westernized" Iranians who oppose the "westernized political agendas". They are attracted to westernization by its liberating aspects and, having picked the social or political media they support on that basis, they also tend to then follow the footsteps of the larger political agendas that are being pursued by them. Agendas, which regardless of covering, is meant to destabilize and overthrow its regime (or to cause an implosion in Iran, as ultimately all western governments are well aware that the regime has a strong base of popular support and can't be overthrown and replaced by another regime neatly). This group is mainly young, they are struggling economically (especially in keeping up with what they imagine are the standards in the West), but most of them would still be considered part of Iran's middle class.

This element in the 20%+10% has several other elements to beef up its ranks. Those include a much larger proportion among Iran's ethnic and religious minorities who naturally aren't as committed or loyal to regime, including groups within Iran who are directed and funded by outside forces (e.g., Kurdish or Arab or Baluchi separatists) and others who are under intense outside propaganda for their allegiance (Azeri Iranians) or those who are legitimately not merely alienated but were (if not now, in recent memory) persecuted (e.g. Bahai's and some others). Add the foreign forces which are Iran's enemies to this mix, the sanctions and other efforts to cause issues within Iran, and several other factors including the unfortunate corruption which has become rampant within Iran's regime, and it is really a miracle that 70% of Iranians are still wise and loyal enough to their country heritage to not fall for those who want to rip it apart!

 

And these 20-30% of your countrymen are led/paid by US/Israel ?
'cause me think that if US/Israel had that much influence over Millions of your ppl - we wouldn't be so hostile to one another....don't you think ?
Anyway these ppl are not just "willing to risk a violent overthrow of the current regime", they are willing to DIE in protest and that's something money cant buy, I wouldn't do it if I was them, they probably hate my guts for being an Israeli but I salute them for their bravery.

 

Obviously, not! No one has ever claimed such a thing! But that doesn't mean this 20-30% aren't followers of media (social media, satellite networks, and other media beaming from outside) who aren't carrying foreign agendas. They often are. And it doesn't mean there aren't subversive, terrorist, elements within this 20-30% who aren't supported directly by outside powers. There are groups within Iran, especially in the border regions of Iran, which are even armed by foreign powers. They are small but they can be very dangerous. There is also the favorite terrorist group of the enemy 'de jour' of Iran, namely the MEK (National Council of Resistance), which was once branded a terrorist organization even in the US, but which after losing its sponsors in Saddam's Iraq, went to work for Israel, the neocons et al. This hated group is to the great irritation of many Iranians (even Iranian living in exile) is being promoted by networks such as "FOX" as the "main opposition group" against the regime. This is like someone calling some terrorist cult in the US the "main opposition group" in the US. (To buttress the credentials of this hated group, the US and Israel use it --- not only to spread misinformation and propaganda -- but occasionally to pass actual intelligence when they don't want to reveal the real sources and methods used as a means to have people pay attention to what this group, which specializes in spreading lies, sometimes has to say about "Iran's nuclear program" etc).

Anyway, as the saying goes: 'truth is the first casualty in war'. Iran has been the subject of a covert and not so covert war waged against it for some time. And telling the truth about Iran isn't exactly a major priority of those waging this war.

 

The Saudis redirected most of their production directly to down stream manufacturing several years ago.. 6 Years ago they created a half million new manufacturing jobs.

Since then they have expanded both Jubail and Yanbu and added another industrial city along with high speed rail.

When were you last in Arabia? The newest blurb on the streets is "where have all the Wahhabis gone".

 

A lot of more liberal people here seem to hope there is a fault line between westernized Iranians who don't have a westernized agenda and the religious types who support the regime. The hope of liberals here is that the religious types will lose enough support that the governing structure will be secularized.

Do you consider a wish that Iran might evolve into a secular democracy is part of a "westernized agenda?" That westernized Iraqis who might advocate a secular government are playing into hands of the 20%?

Are you suggesting the West in general are imperialists, and those Iranians who embrace "westernized political agendas" are in cahoots with the West? As well, what in your view is the "westernized political agenda" Iranians should oppose? Finally, do you see China and Russia as imperial powers?

 

This isn't nearly enough.

Can they change quickly enough to adapt their economies in the next few decades if the changes are made inside a Wahhabism straightjacket?

 

LOL.. You assume a lot. KSA has made huge changes in their economies even in the past 20 years.

 

The changes you described--creating manufacturing cities, presumably set aside to keep foreigners separated from Saudis--are high-cost solutions that won't attract outside capital.

 

LOLOL.. They already have ...

Jubail and Yanbu are Saudi cities. Have you been to either in the past 25 years?

 

My Iranian friend believes the protests were

motivated / manipulated and now "past tense".



Moi

No ​

 

So, the outside capital was invested by...?

 

Aluminium, Dairies, fish and shrimp export.. ???? Fertilizer, plastiques.. what exactly interests you?

 

So, who invested? How much? Building export businesses? Selling to Saudis?

 

Here is what Donald Trump tweeted:


Donald J. Trump

✔ @realDonaldTrump

Iran has become so unstable that the regime has shut down their entire Internet System so that the Great Iranian people cannot talk about the tremendous violence taking place within the country....

Does that make sense?


I don't know why Trump said such nonsense.