just min0r stuff, right jim?
the press sucks.
cnn sucks
where is the news 0n iran?
where is the news 0n iran?
News on Iran? Please elucidate.
What has FUX News told you this time?
What has FUX News told you this time?
“In a world whose absurdity appears to be so impenetrable, we simply must reach a greater degree of understanding among us, a greater sincerity.”
Re: where is the news 0n iran?
Don’t you know the’re not living up to the treaty that Lord Donald broke.
Okay... There's all kinds of things wrong with what you just said.
Re: where is the news 0n iran?
No wes, this is a legitimate major story, and it is receiving significant press coverage; not as much coverage as the third impeachment of an American President in US history...(about which you've have basically nothing to say) but certainly more than the no-effect yellow vest crap that you keep trying to use as a diversion...just min0r stuff, right jim?
More:With Brutal Crackdown, Iran Is Convulsed by Worst Unrest in 40 Years
What started as a protest over a surprise increase in gasoline prices turned into widespread demonstrations met with a systematic repression that left at least 180 people dead.
Iran is experiencing its deadliest political unrest since the Islamic Revolution 40 years ago, with at least 180 people killed — and possibly hundreds more — as angry protests have been smothered in a government crackdown of unbridled force.
It began two weeks ago with an abrupt increase of at least 50 percent in gasoline prices. Within 72 hours, outraged demonstrators in cities large and small were calling for an end to the Islamic Republic’s government and the downfall of its leaders.
In many places, security forces responded by opening fire on unarmed protesters, largely unemployed or low-income young men between the ages of 19 and 26, according to witness accounts and videos. In the southwest city of Mahshahr alone, witnesses and medical personnel said, Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps members surrounded, shot and killed 40 to 100 demonstrators — mostly unarmed young men — in a marsh where they had sought refuge.
“The recent use of lethal force against people throughout the country is unprecedented, even for the Islamic Republic and its record of violence,” said Omid Memarian, the deputy director at the Center for Human Rights in Iran, a New York-based group.
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Altogether, from 180 to 450 people, and possibly more, were killed in four days of intense violence after the gasoline price increase was announced on Nov. 15, with at least 2,000 wounded and 7,000 detained, according to international rights organizations, opposition groups and local journalists.
The last enormous wave of protests in Iran — in 2009 after a contested election, which was also met with a deadly crackdown — left 72 people dead over a much longer period of about 10 months.
Only now, nearly two weeks after the protests were crushed — and largely obscured by an internet blackout in the country that was lifted recently — have details corroborating the scope of killings and destruction started to dribble out.
The latest outbursts not only revealed staggering levels of frustration with Iran’s leaders, but also underscored the serious economic and political challenges facing them, from the Trump administration’s onerous sanctions on the country to the growing resentment toward Iran by neighbors in an increasingly unstable Middle East.
The gas price increase, which was announced as most Iranians had gone to bed, came as Iran is struggling to fill a yawning budget gap. The Trump administration sanctions, most notably their tight restrictions on exports of Iran’s oil, are a big reason for the shortfall. The sanctions are meant to pressure Iran into renegotiating the 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and major world powers, which President Trump abandoned, calling it too weak.
Most of the nationwide unrest seemed concentrated in neighborhoods and cities populated by low-income and working-class families, suggesting this was an uprising born in the historically loyal power base of Iran’s post-revolutionary hierarchy. [This represents a considerably greater threat to the regime than the protests against the rigged election that re-elected Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which were carried out mainly by upper-class college students; a much smaller group.]
Many Iranians, stupefied and embittered, have directed their hostility directly at the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei, who called the crackdown a justified response to a plot by Iran’s enemies at home and abroad.
The worst violence documented so far happened in the city of Mahshahr and its suburbs, with a population of 120,000 people in Iran’s southwest Khuzestan Province — a region with an ethnic Arab majority that has a long history of unrest and opposition to the central government. Mahshahr is adjacent to the nation’s largest industrial petrochemical complex and serves as a gateway to Bandar Imam, a major port.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/01/worl ... eaths.html
Part of the reason this story is not getting more coverage is because much of it is unfolding in parts of Iran where it is difficult if not impossible for western journalists to access....(much like the slaughter of the Kurds in Syria by the Turks, that your hero facilitated)
I don't think there's any question but that internal political threats to the stability of the Iranian regime are A Good Thing For US and western interests, and also for undermining the destabilizing influence it has been able to project in the region...
The more this band of lawless cutthroats has to focus on it's own internal challenges, the less attention and resources it will have to devote to international mischief making...And of course if the unrest grows to the point that it brings about genuine regime change, so much the better...
Of course the same can also be said of Putin's Russia...
Would you support that wes; serious internal challenges to Putin's rule?
Your hero sure wouldn't...
Re: where is the news 0n iran?
Trump had a hard time deciding on whether he wanted to say anything about the protests, and then had a hard time deciding whether or not he supported the protestors:
Trump cleans up his comments about the Iran protesters
President Donald Trump on Tuesday cleaned up earlier comments indicating a lack of support for protesters in Iran, telling reporters he misunderstood the question.
During a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron on the sidelines of a NATO meeting in London, Trump raised eyebrows when he was asked about protests that have raged across the country for weeks and provoked a violent government response resulting in civilian deaths estimated to be in the hundreds.
"I don't want to comment on that. But the answer is no. But I don't want to comment on that," he answered cryptically in response to a question about whether he supported the protesters. The answer would have marked a massive split from his top diplomat Mike Pompeo and the special envoy for Iran, Brian Hook.
But at the beginning of a bilateral meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Trump clarified his comments, almost immediately before a message of support appeared on his Twitter account.
“A question was asked just a little while ago about supporting the people of Iran, and they are going through a very tough period — we do support them totally,” Trump told reporters, “and have supported them from the beginning.”
He went on to explain that he thought the previous question related to whether the U.S. was providing financial support, adding that while that had yet to happen, he wouldn’t rule it out.
"The question was asked do we support them, I thought, financially. And we haven't supported them. I don't know that we've ever been actually asked to support them financially,” he continued. “And you know, somebody asks, maybe we would. But we support them very very seriously. The people that are protesting in Iran. They’re looking for their freedom, and we are fully in support of them.”
"If you don't have a seat at the table, you're on the menu."
-- Author unknown
-- Author unknown
Re: where is the news 0n iran?
It's just inherently very tough for Trump to criticize an authoritarian regime for cracking down violently against protests from it's citizens (even in a case like this, with a regime that he himself has descried as an enemy) since that's behavior that he generally doesn't have any problem with...
As a rule, governments cracking down violently on peaceful protestors is something he's good with; I'm sure he wishes he could get away with the same thing here...
As a rule, governments cracking down violently on peaceful protestors is something he's good with; I'm sure he wishes he could get away with the same thing here...
Re: where is the news 0n iran?
You mean the news about Trump planning to call up and deploy more troops to the middle east because of Iran?
and while we're at it, how many troops came back from Syria after the Kurds were displaced--damn few (less than 100); guess we had to keep them there for the oil, right?
and while we're at it, how many troops came back from Syria after the Kurds were displaced--damn few (less than 100); guess we had to keep them there for the oil, right?