ch4s3 (u/ch4s3) - Readit News

ch4s3 commented on After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up e360.yale.edu/features/ir... · Posted by u/YaleE360

coredog64 · 5 hours ago

The Salt River enabled the Phoenix area to be an agricultural power house long before Columbus arrived in America. The Pima practiced irrigation agriculture and were using their crop surpluses to trade far and wide.

What's problematic is Phoenix agriculture is the focus on extremely water hungry crops like alfalfa and not really the presence of agriculture in general.

ch4s3 · 2 hours ago

> What's problematic is Phoenix agriculture is the focus on extremely water hungry crops like alfalfa and not really the presence of agriculture in general.

This is entirely an artifact of arcane water law in the US. Any rational allocation would make alfalfa untenable there.

ch4s3 commented on After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up e360.yale.edu/features/ir... · Posted by u/YaleE360

cess11 · 6 hours ago

He was as democratically elected as the system at the time allowed and spent basically his entire political career on increasing the power of the majlis and getting rid of colonial interests.

The UK spent a lot of resources conspiring against this project, which ultimately failed, to a large extent because he did not have a solution to the blockade that followed nationalisation of the oil production. Perhaps he also did not expect as many members of the majlis to join the foreign conspiracy as did when the blockade got inconvenient.

It's also not like democratisation followed under the shah, rather the opposite, like the establishment of rather nasty security services and a nuclear program that the later revolutionaries inherited.

ch4s3 · 5 hours ago

> increasing the power of the majlis

Right up until he was about to lose an election, then he suspended counting votes and tried to dissolve the Majlis in alliance with the communist party.

ch4s3 commented on After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up e360.yale.edu/features/ir... · Posted by u/YaleE360

therobots927 · 7 hours ago

Fair enough, it seems like you know a lot more about this than I do. I’ll read the link you sent

ch4s3 · 5 hours ago

I think it’s just a super complicated story. My post above doesn’t even touch the rural urban divide or the role of the Mullahs or Tudeh and the communists. The whole thing was a second from exploding for years.

ch4s3 commented on After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up e360.yale.edu/features/ir... · Posted by u/YaleE360

therobots927 · 8 hours ago

Kind of like how the US built Phoenix and LA in the middle of the desert, and allows farming in the desert as well, setting the stage for a near term water crisis in the region when the Rocky Mountain snow melt gets cut in half?

ch4s3 · 8 hours ago

Essentially, yes. Lots of places manage water poorly. You're basically making my point for me.

ch4s3 commented on After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up e360.yale.edu/features/ir... · Posted by u/YaleE360

therobots927 · 8 hours ago

I don’t think any serious post WWII historians would agree with you. There was a concentrated effort by the UK and US to displace Mossadegh, who was democratically elected by the way. At the very least it disproves your unspoken assertion that the Iranians are primarily to blame for their problems when it’s been proven that the most powerful intelligence agencies on the planet were actively destabilizing their society so that oil revenue would continue flowing into western pockets.

ch4s3 · 8 hours ago

Mossadegh was elected but was also illegally trying to dissolve parliament.

>at the very least it disproves your unspoken assertion that the Iranians are primarily to blame for their problems

I'm very clearly stating that the Shah in particular was highly likely to have removed Mossadegh either way due to a multi-decade power struggle between the Pahlavi dynasty and the parliament /prime minister. The Majlis as a rival power center was largely a result of the Anglo-Soviet invasion which deposed Reza Shah, prior to that the Majlis had functioned in more of an advisory capacity, and Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was always lookign for ways to push back against the Majlis.

It is also important to note that the constitution in place in the early 1950s gave the power to appoint and remove the prime minister to the shah, Mossadegh was recommended to the shah by the Majlis who appointed him prime minister. That is factually how the government worked. It is also important to note that in 1952 Mossadegh stopped the counting of an election that it looked like he was going to lose. In 1953 Mossadegh organized a referendum to dissolve the parliament and vest sole power in the prime minister. This gave the shah the excuse he needed to remove Mossadegh and triggered Anglo-American support for the Shah and Iranian army to remove Mossadegh.

The CIA certainly helped the Shah get generals on side and plan the coup, this is not in dispute. However the idea that Mossadegh was democratically elected is not really true, and the idea that the coup was entirely carried out for external reasons is entirely false.

Ray Takeyh a professor of Near East studies who wrote The Last Shah: America, Iran, and the Fall of the Pahlavi Dynasty (Yale University Press, 2021) holds the position that the coup was internally driven. We also know from declassified document that the CIA thought the coup had failed and that their part was rather insignificant, but Iranian on the ground under their own direction carried out the coup.[1]

[1]https://web.archive.org/web/20150603235034/https://www.forei...

ch4s3 commented on After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up e360.yale.edu/features/ir... · Posted by u/YaleE360

therobots927 · 8 hours ago

When a country with vastly superior resources intervenes in the affairs of a country with less, then it tips the scales in an unnatural way. Do they depend on greedy, self interested members of Iranian society to succeed? Of course. But that doesn’t excuse western behavior at all.

ch4s3 · 8 hours ago

My point is that western behavior has really nothing to do with Iran going on a foolish dam building spree, or over pumping in a foolish attempt to grow water hungry crops in arid mountain plateaus.

ch4s3 commented on After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up e360.yale.edu/features/ir... · Posted by u/YaleE360

hvb2 · 9 hours ago

The number of countries messing around in that region is long....

From the US, Russia and china to local powers like Israel, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Iran themselves.

Either you're a scholar studying the region, if not your comment feels naive at best

ch4s3 · 8 hours ago

Ultimately comments like this deny the agency of people who actually make decisions in these countries.

ch4s3 commented on After ruining a treasured water resource, Iran is drying up e360.yale.edu/features/ir... · Posted by u/YaleE360

smugma · 9 hours ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%2527%C3%A9...

A key motive was to protect British oil interests in Iran after Mossadegh nationalized and refused to concede to western oil demands.

ch4s3 · 8 hours ago

This is sort of a bad and inaccurate summary of a much more complicated situation. Mossadegh was trying to dissolve parliament and was in conflict with the Shah before the British got involved. The Shah was already planning to try by constitutional means (which he had legal power to do) to remove Mossadegh. Would he have done it without British and US backing, is a debate for historians.

ch4s3 commented on Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges news.bloomberglaw.com/ban... · Posted by u/nreece

azemetre · 2 days ago

It is absolutely the the role of government to regulate commerce and establish competitive markets (note the lack of the word free here).

I also have zero faith in tech leadership as they have been the major driver of mass misery across humanity. Not only should they be stripped of their positions in their companies, but leadership should be directly given to the workers.

It's the only way to right to the wrong. If it's good enough for executives (voting for other executives, pay packages, and company direction), it's also good enough for workers.

ch4s3 · 2 days ago

How did iRobot hurt anyone? It seems like Warren hurt their workers by denying them the opportunity to keep their jobs. Moreover the whole home robotics industry no resides in China where the companies are run in an even more authoritarian fashion.

ch4s3 commented on Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges news.bloomberglaw.com/ban... · Posted by u/nreece

azemetre · 3 days ago

It's not US government's job to help bad business leaders, they should do a better job of running their companies than using them as a slush fund.

This company would have probably flourished if it had workplace democracy but instead it was a centrally planned dictatorship and failed.

Maybe that is the real lesson here.

ch4s3 · 2 days ago

It’s not the government’s job to punish them either, and in this case Warren destroyed the jobs of many of her constituents.

Ahh yes workplace democracy, famously tenable for high tech companies.