Senate Iran — now discussing the nuclear deal and Congress

Iran's foreign minister is here at the moment and addressed our Parliament. On the topic of human rights, Dr Javad Zarif said:

"I am happy we discussed important issues including human rights. We need to have a more serious approach to human rights where human rights does not become an instrument of political pressure but, rather, for Iran as a country, as the only serious country in the region that holds elections and people can vent their frustrations at the ballot box instead of through violence and extremism, we hope that the improvement of human rights, which is a duty for all of us, towards our citizens and towards the international community should be and could be carried out more impartially and without political considerations."

I'm just going to leave this without comment for now.

 

I can't tell if that's a shot at US Republicans, or Israel. Or why not both?

 

Bit of both. Israel's not, by inference, a serious country. And to the American right who act like Iran is a dictatorship with no human rights to speak of.

In his defence, whilst their human rights record isn't great, the American right are profoundly ignorant on a daily basis.

 

Fitting that you should up this thread, Ender Sai. I came across this podcast/audio book reading of an article from Polygon about the game industry of Iran. I figure the Venn diagram intersection of people passionate about games and gaming, and who happens to read this thread cosists of you. Perhaps you'll find it interesting.

Edit: If you prefer the written article, click here.

 

I guess we have to rename this old thread. It might get a new lease on life, and be renamed many times again.

This is confusing:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/16/world/middleeast/iran-sanctions-extended.html?_r=0
and
http://www.allenbwest.com/allen/boom-house-votes-419-1-defy-obama

Two radically different interpretations of the same event. For the New York Times one, it's business as usual. Keep calm, don't panic, nothing's happened, we will not change. For the second one - the one I came across on Facebook - it's clearly a first step towards war.

Donald is probably sweating beans already. What's he going to do? Listen to the advice? Some of his voters will be packing their pitchforks. Disregard the advice? Make the Middle-East even messier? Some of his voters will be packing their pitchforks.

 

Well yes, because one is the NYT and the other is on the league of Brietbart

 

The discrepancy is something that should be addressed in the US.

 

So long as dem Ay-rabs in Eye-ran continue to support terra, not be dem-o-cratic, and be Muslamic, Murica needs to skip sanct-shuns and go straight to war! Bomb the Middle East so it's a glass cray-ta.

 

Muslamic...love it!

 

I've never felt more like there are people in your country who would be outfoxed by a brick than when discussing Iran.

1) They're not Arabs
2) They're democratic
3) They're not in the Middle East
4) It's not "Eye-ran", it's "Ihr-ahn"
5) OK yes, Iran does through its Pasdaran support listed terrorists.

 

I'm gonna have to say that's sidetracking into snobbishness. It's not terribly important for the average person to know that Iranians aren't Arabs, or that they're not in the Middle East, or the proper pronunciation of the country. What is important for them to know is that war must be a last resort, and that we cannot inflict excessive and disproportionate punishment on our enemies without squandering our moral credibility and our claim as leader of the free world.

 

...it's not important to get people's ethnicities correct?

 

Yeah, no. Snobbishness is me saying "the Lebanon".

The rest is just de-mystifying a nation that's not the enemy it's been painted as. By respecting them enough to get fundamentals right and understand the Persia/Middle East dichotomy (hint: the Mideast doesn't want the Persians as a regional leader...)

 

If you can't get the basics right, it follows that the more complex things will also have problems.

 

Well, in the same way that the Chinese are democratic, in that they have democratic processes to choose some of their politicians, however these politicians are chosen by an overarching authority. Most people would not even deem this sufficient to even be partly democratic. The Democratic Index deems it to be 2.16 (Authoritarian) below China, Russia and Belarus. It is also deemed 'Not Free' by the Freedom in the World report by Freedom House. The best I can say about Iran is that it an authoritarian oligarchy, depending upon whether you deem the Supreme Leader or the Guardian Council has ultimate power.

What Americans should know about Iran is that the population is particularly secular for having lived under an authoritarian theocracy. This makes Iran's population a natural ally.

 

What, blogs and tabloids? Don't you have those in Europe? (Yes.)

Allen West was a colonel in Iraq who got into trouble for torturing an innocent cab driver for information he didn't have. Col. West, of course, says he did the right thing. He was elected to Congress for his valor. So a site bearing his name is never going to be on the NYT's level.

 

DarthPhilosopher Well we both know that the only legitimate version of democratic is the Western European/North American one right?

And as you note, the younger populace of Iran is slowly changing that country.

 

Well that doesn't really make sense. If the population fundamentally doesn't have the ultimate say in the choosing of their leaders then no it isn't democratic. If you want to extent the definition of democracy so as to make it so vague as to mean any elected officials (irrespective of who is allowed to actually run), then China, Russia, Belarus, the Soviet Union Vietnam and Cuba are all democracies. But that will only serve to make the definition of democracy, and what is meant by it, so vague so as to be fundamentally pointless.

Which is good because they actually do have a functional democratic system buried within the oligarchic theocratic shell.

 

I'm not saying a democracy. I'm saying nominally democratic (in part, even indirectly or in small part). I'm just saying the west always thinks it has THE answer, the right answer to everything.

 

Well that's good, but fundamentally pointless to establish in my opinion, since virtually every modern state is at least nominally democratic (Iran being one of the least even among these). And while agree that the West probably shouldn't try to model every state on the Western model, I think that abiding by Human Rights laws is probably a good universal to start with (which includes political rights).

 

what are you talking about and/or from, Philosopher?

Strictly speaking anything less than direct participation isn't democracy, in that the Greek root words mean loosely "the people to rule".

Thanks to concepts like representative democracy your ideas are woefully outdated but hey, it's ok to dismiss practices because they're different from our normative values, you Yank you.

 

Well...yeah. That hasn't always worked out so well has it? This is what I'm talking about. Basically this idea that if it isn't Western, it's bad. And I'm not going to suggest that human rights violations are great but we don't have to rattle our sabers either over every single one. Sometimes that leads to worse consequences for everybody, including those we would ostensibly try to help.

 

Shane, let me help:

"ITT Darth Philosopher continues trend of proving username misapplied by insisting liberal democracy = only democracy"

 

Yes, I know that technically Iran is a Islamic democracy. I was calling out the fact that stating Iran is a democracy and thus undermining many people's understanding of the Islamic Republic is fundamentally disingenuous, because for all intents and purposes it is completely unlike any Western idea of democracy. It's like stating that the Soviet Union or China are democracies - yes they are technically democracies but unlike any in the western sense and thus unimportant when assessing them. In other words it's giving a false sense that Iran can't be that bad because it's democratic - something that doesn't take into account it also has many elements of a de facto dictatorship.

Yes, but we shouldn't just take a relativist stand.

 

Why did you take a paragraph to convince me I was right WRT you and liberal democracy?