Suddenly, Iran is aflame with protest

It's easier for people to blame something when it's coming from some foreign country.

Think about all those countries who complained about British/French colonialism, being controlled by some foreign power, and now the common people are worse off than they were before independence.

 

No, you completely misrepresented what this article talks about. 70% of science and engineering major students in Iran are women. That does not mean that Iran has more women with academic degrees than the US (your initial claim). Not as a whole and not even proportionally.

 

But quite good, dont you think? In your Allied Saudi Arabia its zero

 

False also.

 

In Saudi Arabia they don’t need to worry about it because their king will take care of them. They have a lot of people with degrees in religion and they have so much money they import people from India, China and even Germany to do the thinking - from washing their toilets to engineering.
Why not compare academics of Iran to Israel?

 

Why not? I will compare Iran, academically, not just to Israel (which trails Iran in science production and in medals in academic Olympiads) but the entire MENA region, including countries with comparable population as Iran. In academic Olympiads (mathematics, physics, chemistry, etc), in science production, and in number of university students, I am not aware of any nation in the MENA region that compares favorably to Iran. I will give you the stats shortly.

 

Which academic area do you want to focus on? Tell me and I will open your eyes.

I will start with mathematics.

Iran is the only country in the region to have even finished first in the world in the math Olympics and its overall record is the best in the MENA region as well. Israel (14 Gold) trails Iran (45 Gold) by a good margin, but so does Turkey (19 Gold). All the other MENA countries combined don't have as many gold medals as Iran. With almost all of the rest not having a single gold medal, including Egypt (0 gold medals), Saudi Arabia (0 Gold medals) etc.

Check the stats for yourself.
https://www.imo-official.org/results_country.aspx

In terms of the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in Mathematics, the Fields Award, two Iranians have won the Fields Award (making Iran rank 8th in in this regard in the world) while only 1 Israeli has won this award.

What discipline interests you? Physics Olympics? Chemistry Olympics? Overall academic and scientific production in the world? Number of university students? Or do you want to look at some subjective western rating that basically tells you about which countries are being isolated and which countries embraced by leading world powers?

 

I was born and raised in Ukraine before I immigrated to the US when I was a teenager.
Ukrainian school had stronger sciences and math classes that what I saw in the United States. Having said that, I find an average American to have better awareness about anything than an average Ukrainian. While Ukraine is considered pretty strong in those fields, their overall quality of education is much worse. My theory is the lack of civics and business classes. That’s why that country is much worse than western countries. Apparently learning a bit of business and general law helps Americans become more responsible and ethical towards each other.
Math and sciences, while extremely important in general, are only an incomplete picture. In my last 2 years of high school in the US I learned quite a bit about civics, quite a bit more than what I learned in old country. Take a look at North Korea - their math and sciences are strong too, but their population is scared to death to even doubt their leadership.

One thing I think the US is lacking is some kind of mandatory civics service that would serve as conscription (absolutely no service in a war zone), but that service would involve young people working with corps of engineers on some large scale projects. I think 6 months is enough and would give young kids even better worldview.

 

Iran will overthrow the Mullahs sooner or later. They are simply too intelligent and proud to continue a system created in the 9th century. The Mullahs know this too which is why they are so hard line. All we have to do is let it happen. Can you imagine what would happen when they emerge from this nightmare? The streets of Tehran will be filled with happy Iranians for weeks on end.

 

Thanks, but I think you are mistaken about Iran's system. It wasn't really created in the 9th century. Iran's entire ideology is about rejection of what you allude to, whether its religious ideology, its historiography, its system of government, its politics, its culture. What you are right about is this: Iran's 'system' of thought failed to advance much after the 17th century, Iran (like the rest of the Persianate Muslim world which included the Ottoman empire) fell behind the West, and Western civilization did seriously eclipse Islamic civilization from the 18th century onward. The relative backwardness of the latter compared to the former then made 'modernization' and 'advancement' seem synonymous with "westernization". While learning from the true lessons of Western civilization, and adopting those lessons when they are useful to progress and development, is an important ingredient in charting a path of success for Iran and the region as a whole, the copy-cat westernization (that doesn't even allow the true western enlightenment for its westernized subjects) isn't the right path for Iran. And it was rejected by the Iranian revolution.

Iran is a proud country. That is why it stood up to Rome when being Roman was in vogue (and fought Rome for 800 years to refuse to be a part of its empire), refused to become Arab when being Arab was in vogue (even after Iran had been conquered by the Arabs, Iranians becoming practically the only nation conquered by the Arabs that didn't become "Arab" despite becoming "Muslim", with the Persian renaissance of the 9th-10th centuries charting Iran's own path again), didn't want to be a part of the Ottoman empire (even though by then, the Ottomans themselves had become a Persianate society) or to be a Sunni when being Sunni was in vogue (adopting a Shia religious doctrine that not only rejects the legitimacy of all Muslim rulers and their caliphates, but is distinguishable from Sunni Islam becomes it is flexible and dynamic when it comes to interpretations of religion), and why it doesn't want to be a follower of the US or the West or any other camp now. It wants to chart is own path. I wish people would simply let it be and let it chart is own path, freely and fairly, without burdening its experiment with so many attempts to unravel it.

 

You do realize that having a degree in religion is like a degree in "Lord of the Rings"?

That said, Saudi Arabia has no money left. Its virtually bancrupt.

 

You know... Stone, glass house...

https://borgenproject.org/top-10-facts-about-poverty-in-germany/

 

You should read your own link. Being poor in Germany would be middle class in USA.

1. e current average household net income per capita is equivalent to $33,652 a year. Germany is a member of OECD countries that comprise 36 world’s developed countries. The average disposable income per capita of OECD member countries is $30,563 a year on average, which means German is far better than the average in this regard.
2. Data from October 2018 indicate that Germany’s unemployment rate was at 3.3 percent. This is a decrease from the July when the unemployment rate was at 3.4 percent.

 

Germany is a shithole country.

 

While subversive acts by a few foreign sponsored agents, and protests under slogans which are rejected by a majority in Iran, are being claimed to represent the 'voice of the Iranian people', we had much larger demonstrations nation-wide in Iran condemning these actions which were basically ignored by all those who want to pretend to care about democracy and human rights in the West! Before I post some of the pictures of these demonstrations in my next message, let me say this as clearly as possible. Even US polls show that the most popular figure in Iran is the person who is a symbol of everything that the foreign sponsors of some of these protests stand for, namely Iran's activities in the region. The head of Iran's Quds force is General Soleimani and even western poll show him being the most popular figure in Iran, with 82% of the people in the last poll taken by the University of Maryland indicating they had a favorable view of General Soleimani.

What's more, the graphs below should make the actual views of the Iranian people, and not self-appointed spokesmen for them (whose views are overwhelmingly rejected within Iran), crystal clear as it relates to the main objects of the US/Israeli/Saudi campaign of 'maximum pressure" on Iran. A campaign whose tactics might not be supported by Democrats in the US, or by the Europeans, but many of its objectives including placing limits on Iran's ballistic missile program, isolating Iran from its allies in the region and cutting its ties to them, and severely limiting (even more than what the JCPOA provides) Iran's civilian nuclear program, are actually supported by all of them. Which then means the following: the war against Iran is a war by much of the Western world (with support in many respects by even Russia and to a lesser extent China), with most Arab states fully on board and some among its main cheerleaders, against (not the regime, which compromises on these issues more than what the Iranian public prefer) but a clear majority of the Iranian people.

No one who supports a war on what the majority of people in Iran want is supporting any 'notion' of democracy in Iran!

 

Here are more graphs to show actual public opinion in Iran, based on the latest scientific polls taken by the University of Maryland. Responses that I also attest represent my view of what most Iranians (excepting a few self-appointed spokesmen for them parroting western views and interests) prefer based on my own experience living and working in Iran until recently.








Under the totality of the circumstances, and with a history of seeing trade and sanctions used as a lever against Iran to put pressure on it, the people of Iran favor:



Even as they also would prefer:

 

Trump tariffs are pissing them off

 

The University of Maryland not only received funding from Iran, it also employs the former Iranian diplomat Ahmad Kazemi-Moussavi, who is also a visiting professor at the Fairfax Institute, a school of the Muslim Brotherhood linked International Institute of Islamic Thought.

I'd like to see who are the authors of the poll and what was the methodology.

 

You can claim whatever you wish, use whatever labels you like, but the facts are clear and the methodology used is also clear and above reproach.

 

People often bring their generalizations from other, more familiar, cases to discussions about Iran. For instance, most people do realize that Iran's main enemies in the region are Israel and Saudi Arabia, with the US the "Great Satan" in Iranian discourse. Most don't realize, however, that many Europeans are almost equally bad when it comes to their actions against Iran. Sometimes even worse. The French in particular.

Here is an article today showing the French trying to compete with the Americans for Saudi petro dollars in a conference in Bahrain. And then a graph from the same poll by the U. Maryland to show that the Iranian people actually understand who they can trust a little more and who they can't trust at all.

https://www.seattletimes.com/nation...r-criticizes-us-over-unanswered-iran-attacks/

 

Yep, facts are very clear.

https://globalmaryland.umd.edu/offices/global/umd-teams-u-tehran-survey-iranian-public-opinion

Not quite a Maryland University poll, then. is it?

 

You can characterize and label it as you wish. It is a reliable poll of public opinion in Iran. The most reliable, although any poll of public opinion in Iran by any group that follows a scientific methodology will produce the same results.

 

My understanding is that because of US sanctions, the University of Maryland is no longer allowed to work on its polls with Tehran University. I will double check that but that would be true unless they have been given a 'waiver' by the Trump administration, which would appear unlikely! But those who are interested in the methodology and facts, and not spin and labels, can start here. The links in the article take you to where you need to go.

https://cissm.umd.edu/research-impact/publications/iranian-public-opinion-under-maximum-pressure

Iranian Public Opinion under
 'Maximum Pressure'

 

As if there aren't yellow vests movements in the EU against the increase of cost of living, that goes hand in hand with vandalism riots and looting.

 

Here's more: