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14·1 day agoJust don’t go there. There’s no due process currently over there, at least for foreigners.
If you absolutely need, send a robot instead of yourself. Much less hassle. :)
Follow-up: thanks to everyone who did something. Today, I received an update from the Qasim Child Foundation (run by Mehdi Ghatei).
He informed that via several donation campaigns, both outside of Iran and inside, the sum of blood money to the family of Goli Kouhkan’s husband has been raised - and during negotiations, they have agreed to drop their demand somewhat and grant forgiveness.
Mehdi mentioned that the goal had been reached without using the donations he gathered, and offered to refund my donation. Since my donation was small, I asked him to use it to help other people in unjust situations.
I hope Goli Kouhkan recovers from the traumatizing situations she has gone through, and manages to re-establish her life.
If you think of Kadyrov, he’s visibly very unwell. Watched a video of him condemning a Ukrainian drone strike recently. Barely keeps his eyes open and reads like a robot.
In the first 2 years, we waited for use of armoured vehicles to hit their monthly rate of production. This has largely happened, the reserves of armour that USSR built up have been spent by Russia. Vehicles that still stand in parking lots require deep renovation (slow and costly). So this prediction has largely come true.
In the first 3 years, we waited for Russia’s sovereign wealth fund to empty, ending Putin’s ability to shelter the economy against the cost of war. This now seems to have largely happened, as the central bank is selling reserves of gold. It follows that more appropriate things to sell are scarce.
We also waited for Russia’s inventory of civilian planes and railway locomotives + carriages to degrade due to lack of spare parts. This has not fully come true. Planes fly less, railways transport less, but they smuggle spare parts from third countries.
We have waited for Russia’s oil and gas revenues to fall, and they have fallen, considerably. At current levels, under Ukrainian “sanctions by drone”, Russia has to cut other budget lines to finance the war - and it has cut or frozen other budget lines (social security, health care, education, almost everything - war makes up approximately 40% of the government budget).
We have waited for the wages of soldiers to drop, and for soldiers to understand that inflation will make the money they got worthless. This has only partly happened - several regions have announced that they cannot pay large one-time compensations to people going to war.
We have waited for a crisis in Russia’s economy, and in some sectors there already is a crisis. Purchases of new cars, real estate and agricultural equipment have fallen sharply. Many companies have reduced work weeks (reduced pay), owe employees wages, or cannot service their debts.
If Putin overplays his hand and economy does collapse, this does not automatically mean his replacement. He’s a dictator and has a KGB background, he knows to expect rebellions and can supress them. He knows to expect a coup and may prevent one.
Eventually he’ll be replaced. We can’t influence or predict the personal characteristics of his successor, but whoever replaces him will very surely want to end the war, and doesn’t have to save face while doing that.
However, Levada’s polls - arguably the only polls which could indicate the real state of Russian society - do not indicate the ground shifting yet. They indicate that people are universally tired of the war, but not yet willing to end it by returning land to Ukraine.
For example, the “country is going in the right direction” indicator currently stands at 65%. Surfing on waves of war propaganda, it topped at 75% last year (rising from a low of 48% before the war - explains why Putin needed the war - to secure his own power), but it’s in a downward trend.
So, sadly, propaganda is still working, but it’s not working as well as it used to. In the “battle of the fridge and TV” (for people’s opinion) sadly the TV still prevails.
A few frustrated notes from Estonia. Not first hand information, but visiting Ukrainian soldiers noted at a militrary exercise: “why don’t you have appropriate amounts of drones? if they attack you, they’ll drone you to death”.
One part of the answer honestly seems to be “we’re dimwits, but trying already” and the other part seems to be “we don’t want to buy the current generation of sports drones, and sincerely hope that the next generation of dedicated war drones [which a random person can fly with 15 minutes of training] will be ready really soon”.
A few meta-notes about the note: the local defense ministry holds various development competitions. So poorly that if I was involved, I would hide my face and cry into a pillow. Yes, companies do participate and develop drones. Local companies make pretty nice drones, some quadcopters, some medium range surveillance aircraft, some combustion powered strike drones, but the ministry does poor work and is visibly overwhelmed. In recognition of them, I must say that recently their announcements have been emphasizing that they’re looking for low cost, fast production and potential of mass production.
Not a small part of the nonsense that’s going on is how funds may be granted for development. Current EU rules state that for a project to qualify for aid, relevant work may not be started. That’s crazy. Companies don’t request state aid to accelerate development because they looked at the blue sky and thought “at that point in future, we’ll run short of something and request state assistance”. They discover it first hand, so at that point, they are no longer eligible for assistance. It’s a joke.
Regardless of this joke of a system, a few local companies have new air defense systems ready and capable of hitting targets.
As for the local military… well, we don’t have strategic nuclear weapons here, just ordinary artillery and a few HIMARS-es here and there. They do seem to guard their bases because a few drones have been forced to land and their operators have been detained for questioning.
As for buying things from abroad, unfortunately I have to curse. Local idots have decided to buy so many things from a particular genocidal Middle Eastern country that I’m ashamed. The systems, if they arrive, will likely work, but we’ll be paying through the nose and have a dependency on the good will of a wanted war criminal. If the war criminal doesn’t approve export contracts, we’ll cry a river. I hope things are much better in France.
Quick, bring out the bicycle meme.
The US has a president who’s gone to great length in demonstrating that the US is unreliable and could be treacherous.
For example, why should Denmark or its allies (the entire EU and NATO) buy weapons from a country whose president has indicated that he dreams of annexing Greenland?
The situation currently is such: Ukraine needs weapons right now, and will happily use European money to buy US weapons. But purchases where multiple alternatives are viable, and there’s no hurry? Countries have started preferring their own weapons, or those of countries that are in the same boat.
Here in Eastern Europe, if offered a choice between a hypothetic identical US missile and a Swedish missile, I would consider it likely that supplies of the US missile may be absent at a critical time, while supplies of a Swedish missile will surely increase at a critical time. They’re under the same umbrella and will help patch it if someone tries breaking it.
Attempting to make contraceptives expensive in the 21st century makes me grin. Let’s try to make water expensive in a sea.
They might prevail by enforcing a 500% tax on the most effective contraceptive: smartphones. :)
However, more realistically - until people feel secure about their future and feel that having children is not a setback or big risk…
…and have time and tools to find likeminded partners and build relationships (current dating sites are miserable tools in the West, not sure about what they have in China, and participants in a corporate rat race don’t have time)…
…and until people have education to maintain and fix those relationships…
…until then, hasta la vista government (try again after figuring things out).
Is it because it is not PC to call a culture primitive?
If you know its history and are absolutely sure that your evaluation is correct. But I have the feeling that you haven’t checked Iranian history - because historians don’t tend to put Iran in the same sentence with that.
So, I would add some notes. Islamic extremism has not been in power “for 1500 years” in Iran - it has been in power since 1979. Iran has political problems. And let me tell you, political problems can quickly bring down a society that might otherwise have its problems under control.
Did folks call Germany “primitive” when Hitler rose to power? Nope, they used other terms. Do we call Russia “primitive” because of Putin? Will we start calling the US “primitive” if Trump manages to become a dictator? Do we call China “primitive” because they have a one-party dictatorship? Nope, we don’t.
They’re advanced societies facing difficult problems of various sorts. They are also extremely unequal societies - some people in the capital have modern life, but some in the periphery don’t even have jack s**t.
Iran could be spending its time selling satellite launches if it wanted, but has an Islamist theocracy in power. Any candidate can be disqualified in the elections if the grand ayatollah doesn’t like them. Iran does various extremely shortsighted and I would really say… extremely stupid things. Like fighting proxy wars with Israel and then fighting real wars with Israel, depending on Russia for ammunition and then supplying Russia with ammunition against Ukraine…
…but “stupid” and “primitive” are not synonyms.
After islamic extremists came to power in the 1979 revolution, they broke down Iranian society in many directions. Executions were widespread, terror was used to subdue opposition, women’s rights were trampled on, many things happened. Thing went wrong, got entrenched in the state of being wrong, and remain wrong to this day. :(
The regime before the islamists was the Shah (king). He had already been ousted and there had been parliamentary democracy in Iran, but the shah came back to power with UK and US support. He also terrorized the population through his secret police. The shah was hated and propped up by foreign powers - a ripe fruit for Islamists to pick and eat.
Before the shah, Iran had a problem with left-leaning populism and government-parliament relations, but I think this was their smallest problem. The last democratically elected PM (Mosadegh) was somewhat populist and wanted to nationalize the oil industries (wanted to hurt Western business interests), which would have been OK, but he also had problems with the Parliament, which was definitely not OK. With some Western assistance, he was couped out of power, which, in my books, spent Iran spiraling out of control.
That’s a brief summary of what’s been going on in the center of society, in the Persian speaking regions (I apologize for gross simplification, but I can’t summarize Iranian history into a single post, they have so much of it and it’s not simple - and not primitive).
In border regions, however, we observe different processes. Persians (Iran’s majority population) have easier access to what little justice their system can ensure, while minorities (the Azeri, Kurds, Arabs and among smaller groups, the Baloch) are marginalized and cannot get just treatment.
Iran is a former empire and has a considerable number of people who’ve been conquered at some time. Some of them want independence (ask a Kurd in private and you’ll hear). Society is neglecting them. If there was peace, and not islamic theocracy but democracy like in the 1950-ties, minority groups would likely have better living conditions. But as things are… sigh. Minority groups get the highest levels of poverty and oppression.
I would put it differently.
The graph represents immigration. That is another topic, if you read the title carefully (see: “public life”).
Recent / notable incidents of violence against women in politics, in Sweden, can be fairly blamed on far-right actors who are (perhaps by coincidence or perhaps not) also failing to discuss immigration normally, because discussing things rationally is not their slice of bread. Some parties’ ultra-fans have a culture of threatening and intimidation.
I know it first hand without being in Sweden. Here in Estonia, we also have a party of that sort, with all the bells and whistles (anti-vaxx, pro-Kremlin, anti-immigration¹ and of course pro-authoritarianism). And their supporters can’t argue with a person much more often than an ordinary party’s supporters. I sincerely hope that party goes below the election threshold soon. They already split because of internal culture (failure to tolerate disagreements).
¹ anti accepting Ukrainian refugees, since there is nearly no other immigration coming here, unlike Sweden which has been considered an attractive destination
P.S. I should note that Sweden has its share of integration problems (which they try to solve, and will likely pull the brakes if they cannot), but as a result of immigration, Sweden experiences less of the demographic problems which press Eastern Europe (read: our population pyramids in Eastern Europe are top-heavy, predicting serious issues with financing of public services in future, their population pyramid in Sweden is relatively square).
Out of curiosity, what does the diagram represent? I wonder what value has increased to about two thirds of 18% (and what is the 18%) between 1945 and 2015?
1945 - I can tell what happened over here on that year. Tens of thousands of Estonians took boats and sailed to Sweden, because they knew that Stalin’s regime had extremely unpleasant surprises waiting for them. Without a clue about the context, I would guess that’s the blue bar in 1945.
Also, I think your graph is missing the point. Lööf was sure as hell unsettled when psychiatrist Ing-Marie Wieselgren was killed at a political festival, by a guy who arguably intended to kill Lööf.
Wikipedia tells us a bit more:
After stabbing Wieselgren, the attacker was tackled by a pensioner and was shortly thereafter arrested by police.[5] The arrested perpetrator was a 33-year-old man who had previously participated in events organized by the neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement and had written for the neo-Nazi newspaper Nordfront.
So, apparently the motive was political, but I don’t think you expected it was this one.
Polarization is really stupid, it makes people talk, campaign and vote about identity issues (parties start to have ultrafans who want to beat each other up), when their best interest would be served by discussing other topics. Fortunately the Swedish electoral system does not support unhinged levels of polarization.
No problem, it was easy. :)
P.S.
I notice that some people (perhaps special rapporteur Mai Sato) have explained her situation to the office of the UN high commissioner for human rights, and the UN has published a call for Iran to intervene in her case.
Iran must halt execution of Goli Kouhkan domestic violence survivor: UN experts
I hope the word of the OHCHR suffices - that Iranian officials take note and prevent her execution.
If I were an Iranian official, no matter how conservative or stuck in old ways, I would remember what happened after Mahsa Amini / Jina Amini was killed, and would carefully steer away from repeating any similar chain of events.
There’s a small legal step that Ukraine needs to do.
It needs to declare a blockade and declare which goods are blockaded, e.g. “all liquids transportable by ship”.
Then, shipping companies will know in advance: “you cannot transport liquids to or from Russia, if your ship looks like a tanker, don’t go” and dangerous drone strikes aren’t needed.
It’s fortunate that no sailors have been lost so far. But without a policy announcement, the discouraging effect is maybe too small and additional ships may try to run the blockade, which could lead to loss of life and environmental harm - which would be bad.
About the donation drive: it seems legit and I encourage people to help her.
I checked the background of the Qasim Child Foundation and they’re a registered charity in Australia since 2020. Here’s one of their letters from 2022 to the Australian parliament, asking Australia to use its influence on Iran. The director of the foundation, Mehdi Ghatei, is a real person living in Australia and originating from Iran.
What I think about the case: if a person has been “married off” as a child, not because of her wishes, indeed against her informed consent, has tried returning to her parents only to be sent away to an abusive husband, and has subsequently got into a fight with her husband after he harmed her and their child - a court should not convict of murder, but at most “provoked homicide” (if self defense is ruled out).
Extracting confessions without a lawyer present, getting signatures from a person who cannot read (what society fails to teach reading and writing?) - all of this is complete bollocks too, of course. But in the state of Iran, so many things are systematically borked that one loses count. :(
P.S.
Blood money might be a matter of negotiation. The family of her husband might even reconsider if offered a tangible large sum short of their demands instead of mere blood, which benefits nobody.
If you cannot provide a good source in your first post, screaming about others not believing you several posts later serves no purpose - you could have avoided that. If you want others to believe you, it’s your job to convince them. Name-calling won’t convince anyone.
Congratulations, I missed something - the article in “The New Arab” references the words of a medic and provides his name - dr Ghassan Abu Sittah. He is a reputable source.
This could have been your first post. Instead you posted a link to your own post on Lemmy, in which this was source no. 7 - which I, for some reason, missed.
You could have also posted a link to this article, but you have so far not done so.
Advise: learn to argue better. Drop the name-calling. Don’t call a person a propagandist if they aren’t. In the best case, you will stress yourself and the other person before getting to the core of information at hand. In a worse case, discussion will stop right there. Provide direct sources immediately. Prefer reputable sources. Don’t provide a wall of links, but a relevant link.
You just spent 3 days to convince me that Israel could be guilty of organ harvesting. I am convinced, they could be guilty. But you could have used your time better, and could have convinced me with 30 minutes by providing direct links to relevant sources. For example, the below link might have convinced me of the plausibility of your allegations in even less time, maybe a mere 15 minutes - because it’s from a reputable source (no background digging needed) and from a different period - not influenced by current events.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/dec/21/israeli-pathologists-harvested-organs
So, your claim is plausible. But don’t claim to know the outcome of a particular incident if you don’t know the outcome of a particular incident - people will think you’re lying and ask you to prove stuff.
In reality, we don’t currently know what happened to the remains of those 2 guys. What should matter more at this time - they were shot after surrendering.
You go do your research or choose to stuff your stinking propagonda you desprately try to spread despite the truth and hundrends of resources and testominies there up your brain and live with it.
Sure, get agitated and start name-calling me, that will help convince me and others.
Thanks for providing the link, however. I reviewed all the links you posted in that thread. Your claim does not have firm evidence.
Source 3 (trtworld): they suspect the possibility, but don’t have firm evidence.
The Palestinian Prisoners’ Media Office also cited possible organ theft from some of the retrieved bodies. “Preliminary data indicates the possibility of human organs being stolen from some bodies, in a crime that transcends humanity and reveals a systematic criminal practice by the occupation against Palestinians both alive and dead,” the office said in a statement.
Source 5 (Middle East Eye) includes more information about who made the claim. The damage reported to the bodies is not consistent with removing an organ for transplantation.
“When we examined the bodies, we found that large parts were missing. There were half bodies, bodies without heads, without limbs, without eyes, and without internal organs,” he told Al Jazeera, adding that there was a high possibility that Israel stole these organs.
Source 8 (Al Jazeera) describes damage more vividly. It is not consistent with organ removal for transplantation.
Many appeared decomposed or burned. Some were missing limbs or teeth, while others were coated in sand and dust. Health officials have said Israeli restrictions on allowing DNA testing equipment into Gaza have often forced morgues to rely on physical features and clothing for identification.
Now I will say what I think of it. I think your claim is untrue. The condition of the bodies proves torture and executions, but does not prove organ theft.
I additionally note: stolen organs don’t disappear, they are received by someone in a narrow timeframe (which can be matched up later), and there has to be a story told to the recipient. Transplantation has to be done by a team of people. If a crime is being committed, it’s pretty hard to make sure every team member stays silent. Later on, the transplanted organ continues to bear the genes of the person whom it belonged to. If doubt arises about the origin of the organ, genetic testing can confirm or deny a specific person, or give an ethnic profile of the donor, which can be narrowed down to find the family of the donor and ask them about their fate.
Hundreds aren’t needed, a reference to maybe 3 highest credibility reports that you have, would be good to look at.
You should learn a bit of biology or medicine.
Stop bluffing, unless you know what it takes to get an organ successfully transplanted to someone. And I see you don’t.
A really simple rule: if one would intend to get transplantable organs, one would not drop construction material on the person. One would transport the person to a hospital without any delay. Doctors would be the persons telling of which violations are happening.
As things are, both Israel and some other countries (Russia) have the habit of returning the bodies of some prisoners who died under suspicious circumstances without some organs. For example, an Ukrainian journalist’s body was returned without her brain and throat. No, she’s not living in another body, brain transplants are fantasy. She was likely strangled to death and organs removed to conceal torture.
I am currently under the impression that this practise serves the purpose of concealing torture (or other crimes) in several places, with one exception - China.
China has been credibly accused of actually harvesting organs from prisoners executed in prisons. This is feasible for them, since a prisoner after execution can be tested before they are killed, and is immediately available for dissection and cooling of organs, which can then be rushed to an airport for sending to the correct hospital. I have good reason to suspect it’s happening. Needless to say, it’s an extremely serious crime.
However, I have not heard of any successful (no matter whether voluntary or forced) organ donation from a person who experienced circulatory death in field conditions and was transported slowly from a considerable distance. Jenin is in the West Bank. Do you think doctors in the West Bank would accommodate a request from the IDF to remove, test and cool organs for from a shooting victim for transplantation? I don’t think even Israeli doctors would.
If you think differently, I would like to see evidence.
As the thread tells us, IDF committed two war crimes: shooting prisoners and desecrating their bodies. There is no need to spread silly rumours on top of that. Reality is bad enough.
More like “to the last ounce of gold in the central bank’s reserves” (they’re already selling it and it won’t last much beyond 6 months). After that, more soldiers can’t be hired, salaries can’t be paid and more Chinese tech can’t be bought, unless oil revenues recover (Ukraine will ensure they won’t).
There’s also a longer article that explains the background by BBC:
EU backs indefinite freeze on Russia’s frozen cash ahead of loan plan for Ukraine
Context:
As for the concern about markets, I think it’s exaggerated. Nobody in their right mind is expecting to keep their assets in foreign banks if they pursue a war of agression. A reasonable party to a conflict should expect their assets to be frozen and seized much faster than it’s taken.
Also, this seems to reliably remove Russian incentive to threaten or persuade politicians in Belgium. If they no longer hold the keys, harming them won’t get anyone any goods.