No.
Kuwait Takes Some Small Steps...
- Thread starter superstring01
- Start date
No.
DiamondHearts
Registered Senior Member
I have been to Iran, and I have never seen anyone arrested for that. It is a complete fabrication. One designed to vilify the Iranian government and its people to gain support for an invasion.
SAM, It is unfair to debate moderators on this forum as they have a tendency to start issuing warnings against you. This is how my problems with Skinwalker stalking my posts and deleting them began.
SAM, It is unfair to debate moderators on this forum as they have a tendency to start issuing warnings against you. This is how my problems with Skinwalker stalking my posts and deleting them began.
countezero
Registered Senior Member
I have been to Iran and never seen something, therefore it doesn't exist. Wow. What a powerful fucking argument. . .
No shit.
The comparison of Iran to Kuwait is relevant because the macro issue that developed was the treatment of women in the Muslim world in states that claim to be Islamic. This seems rather obvious. Meaning, there is no opening here for you to air all your uninformed gripes about the United States.
I think he's perfectly in order.
I've read this thread with amazement and wonder and seen how Sam (and to a lesser extent, Diamond) has all but achieved what she always sets out to do, and that is derail any discussion or criticism of Islam with pointless diatribes about the United States. If that doesn't work the above can always fall back on the whole "you're an American" and "you don't live in these places" motif. It's quite sad really.
Her ability to throw in canards and relate the unrelated is only beaten by her innate ignorance or bias on many of the issues she rambles on about it in nearly every thread I've encountered her. Sometimes I think bandwidth was invented for people like her, because they would never attract an audience for the kookiness otherwise.
No shit.
The comparison of Iran to Kuwait is relevant because the macro issue that developed was the treatment of women in the Muslim world in states that claim to be Islamic. This seems rather obvious. Meaning, there is no opening here for you to air all your uninformed gripes about the United States.
I think he's perfectly in order.
I've read this thread with amazement and wonder and seen how Sam (and to a lesser extent, Diamond) has all but achieved what she always sets out to do, and that is derail any discussion or criticism of Islam with pointless diatribes about the United States. If that doesn't work the above can always fall back on the whole "you're an American" and "you don't live in these places" motif. It's quite sad really.
Her ability to throw in canards and relate the unrelated is only beaten by her innate ignorance or bias on many of the issues she rambles on about it in nearly every thread I've encountered her. Sometimes I think bandwidth was invented for people like her, because they would never attract an audience for the kookiness otherwise.
DiamondHearts
Registered Senior Member
Of course people who have a vested interest in vilifying Iran will never listen to anything challenging their stereotypes. Americans need to get out more and visit these countries they constantly talk about. They will find out that their rhetoric is simply false.
This particular repression tends to come and go in waves, so depending on when you were there you might not have noticed anything.
But during crackdowns, hundreds of women are detained every day in Tehran alone:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18277927/
And detentions like this are a consequence of abuse of power by the people in power. And can happen anywhere without accountability or punishment. After all, if you're in power, you can make anything into law.
Does this happen in Kuwait?
DiamondHearts
Registered Senior Member
Waves, news to me. It seems completely ridiculous considering Iranian society. Many women don't wear full chador. It just shows what Westerners are capable of believing and how easily they can be manipulated by their media and government.
Indeed.
The question, then, is how did these guys get into power, and what sustains them there?
And specifically, how repression figures into that.
Not really. The Kuwaitis seem more interested in going after cross-dressers (and, presumably, homosexuals) than women's hair:
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2008/03/30/kuwait-halt-dress-code-crackdown
Indeed. They are far too modern and sophisticated to continue to allow themselves to be repressed by fundamentalist thugs.
And many more wouldn't wear veils, or long sleeves, or jackets, etc. if they weren't forced to by the morality police.
Well we're not allowed to talk about that.
That's quite possible. But nothing novel, it happens all over the world. I would say more, but I'm restricted from giving examples of cross dressers and homosexuals committing suicide or being cracked down on outside Muslim countries.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlQHz0acSrs
Also, here's the Al Jazeera coverage:
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2007/04/2008525142720801481.html
I just said, a few posts back, that the crackdowns come in waves. That's generally how repressive regimes operate: terrorize people once in a while, and they tend to stay in line for a time.
There was decent progress on this front, during much of the 1990's.
This most recent crackdown was intended to reverse that.
I have Iranian friends and I've heard of it being done.
Moreover, I just pointed you to a bunch of photographic documentation of it being done.
You showed me a video of pics showing cops talking to women, including women cops. And a news article where the head of the judiciary disagrees with the practice while the reported views of the people seems to be that it should be done everyday!
Don't get me wrong. I lived for four years in Saudi Arabia and have spoken to many Iranians, while it may be weird to you and me, the majority of the women and men consider the veil as a necessary accessory. Unless the women change their minds, its not going to bring about much change.
And for some reason, the trend from the 80s is reversing everywhere. More women are veiling now than used to 20 years ago. I recently discovered an ex-Muslim friend of mine occasionally wears one. It makes her feel more with it, apparently. No one in her family wears one.
In Mumbai of course, it doesn't matter
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superstring01
Moderator
Mod Note: Your feed back is appreciated, but the comment that was made had NOTHING to do with the conversation. It added nothing to the debate and provided no material that furthered the discussion. The only purpose it served was to make Americans feel bad for participating: as if the Americans on this board were defending the USA's bad behavior, which we/they were not.
As the conversation progresses, naturally it may lead to other issues, which is fine. But if--for example--in the middle of the conversation about rights in Kuwait or Iran, I say [to a Chinese member, who's involved in the discussion], "Well, this doesn't even compare to what your country does to the Tibetans..." or some such, I've purposefully attempted to derail the debate in order to keep the discussion from progressing in due course. It serves no purpose and is a puerile attempt to make the Chinese participant somehow feel bad for participating.
Following this logic, NOBODY here would have the right to debate, because we are all from countries/cultures that have done terrible things.
The debate we were having, in fact, had NOTHING to do with American international policy. If it did, then I would shrug it off.
I've also said, that the USA is pretty indefensible on about a million things, so I have no problem accepting the well-deserved black-eyes that get dished out to my country. If it's appropriate to the conversation, by all means, let them fly. But they weren't and this was the second time such tactics were employed.
And, according to that article: the judiciary and others did not take kindly. They were called on it and we are seeing the result: "moderate reformist" candidates are back. Just because there is a separation of powers, doesnt mean that one branch cannot act unlawfully or do something bad. The important point is how that is rectified.
Its because threads like these pop up constantly in stark contrast to threads about what happens in other parts of the world. Like I said before: it doesnt matter whether women are being raped, beaten or murdered in their own backyard, some people will become knights in shining armor bent on saving the poor Muslimas from the clutches of the evil dra..ehh, I mean Islam. Its this obsession with Muslim countries. If you keep on talking bad about Muslim countries, expect to get some flak back about your own country, about your own backyard.
superstring01
Moderator
Perhaps you didn't notice all the anti-western and anti-American threads that exist in this forum? It's a common theme and one that I'm okay with. There's a lot of bad shit in the world, and addressing it shouldn't make some people squeal like babies.
~String
Ofcourse, even though there arent that many, just the same when you attack a country or a religion based on 1 thing, expect to be notified about all the other bad shit in the world.
countezero
Registered Senior Member
Of course Iran is vilified to some extent in the press. And of course most Westerners don't know squat about it and how it operates. But to sit here and read Muslim people standing up for a nation that most other Muslim nations want nothing to do with simply because the source of criticism is Western is incredible. If there is such a thing as Occidentalism, we are certainly witnessing it here in this thread.