Talk:Iran protests

Role of CIA?
A comment by Jon Hellevig on my Facebook page:
 * ''That's not how it works. As you told yourself people entertain a range of conflicting grievances, often they cannot even pinpoint what's their specific beef with life. And it is here that the CIA steps in, to coordinate the different grievances and channel them in one common riot, or when they are successful, uprising. They give money, advice and resources to the promising protest leaders their headhunters have identified. That's what they did in Yugoslavia, Georgia, Tunis, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, and countless other countries, indeed in Iran 1953, and that's what they are doing in Iran again

-- Petri Krohn (talk) 12:45, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Role of people ?
I have no idea. Iran before Islamic revolution was very different (at least geopoliticaly; people do not really change). So there was a change, and a harsh one. Or maybe it was harsh to begin with, but now under new leadership. If things are really harsh, people stay very low. A large demonstration in USSR may be 7 people, or that sort of number. Because consequences are not just a suspended email account, and not only for themselves; and that created fear. Very few anywhere will proceed, even if many feel the same. Those Soviet demonstrations were both backed by the West and genuine. This is a very subtle line. (Human rights were invented by Andrey Sakharov. He was supported, but he was very genuine. It always was a little bit about actual humans, and a little bit about changing society--that is what he actually proposed, fix communism using human rights. Subsequently, it became industry. You can kill with anything if you want, including with human rights. Ebadi talks about all this in her earlier quotes. I do not know much about her. There are some obvious things, but what it is really, I do not know). --Resup (talk) 14:09, 5 January 2018 (UTC)