How many times can these types of things happen before it is obvious that there are no mitigating circumstances. This is who they are. They only took it down because some of their own party members (the ones likely getting nervous about the next election) were bothered by it.
I don't doubt your observation, since it does seem to align with what I have seen, but it is possible that the distribution has changed. As you observed, the top 25% (give or take) seem as bright and driven as ever, but if the rest of their peers are falling behind, it could drag the overall average lower.
Because innocent people are dying and western governments are capable of intervening but choose not to.
Your line of argument is an interesting one though. You're tacitly admitting that western protesters don't actually care about innocent Palestinians. They're just using Palestine as an excuse to undermine their governments.
A lot of American support for the Palestinian movement is a proxy for leftist anti-imperialist and anti-government sentiment, yes. Many Americans had never even heard of Palestinians or Gaza or any of it until it went viral on social media.
If the US weren't actively involved in aiding and abetting Israel's genocide of Palestinians, awareness and protest would probably be at about the level it that was for China's persecution of Uyghurs. Not nothing, but also not particularly radical.
> Your line of argument is an interesting one though. You're tacitly admitting that western protesters don't actually care about innocent Palestinians. They're just using Palestine as an excuse to undermine their governments.
That’s not true and definitely not the “gotcha” you’re looking for. Americans protesting on American soil, the actions of the American government supporting atrocities against lives they do care about seems perfectly reasonable. We’re not protesting against Iran in America because there’s no government action we want to stop. The administration already opposes Irans actions and has publicly stated that military intervention is being considered. There’s just a lot less for Americans to be mad at their government in this situation. That doesn’t mean people aren’t upset. They’re just not taking to the streets because there is less of a reason to ask the government to change direction they’re already going in. I’m not sure what is so hard to understand about that unless you’re intentionally being obtuse.
In America at least, we saw protests against some of the things Israel did in Gaza because the US government is supporting Israel. Since the US is not a supporter of Iran, and in fact has been strong adversary for decades, there is less reason to protest here. Plus, we’ve got some serious problems of our own that are keeping us occupied at the moment
It's true that the recipient of the protest might be different, but that's no reason to be quiet.
China in Tibet, China's treatment of the Uyghurs, Russia's war against Ukraine, Kony 2012 etc, there are lots of causes where the local government in whichever country you look at isn't actively involved, yet there was a lot more public noise and campaigns.
I don't know what the answer is, but "my government doesn't deliver weapons to them" hasn't been a reason before, so I don't see why it would be now.
US government policy is completely aligned with the goal of stopping Iran from doing this, there is no reason to protest the US government on this issue.
It's not always a protest against government, sometimes it a campaign of lobbying, sometimes it's international attention.
The US government wasn't a friend of Kony in 2012. Before Trump 2, the US were not that friendly with Russia, yet people protested in many places around the world to show support for Ukraine and to voice their opposition to Russia's imperialistic wars, being aligned with their governments' position.
It's different with Iran. Some of that is likely to be Iran's lower profile, but not all -- it's not like media outlets are not reporting on it at all and you have to get your information from niche sources to hear about events in Iran.
China in Tibet manifestation were mostly thanks to the Dalai Lama. Without a spiritual chief in exile, no one would have cared.
The Uighur is easy: Nike and a lots of western brand used Chinese work camps. In my neighborhood that's what people protested, not really Chinese treatment of their minority, but the fact our brands used slave labor. Nike and all no promised they wouldn't use slave again, the Uighur are still discriminated and forcefully sterilized, no one care anymore in the West.
Russia war against Ukraine is very different, it's the first war in Europe since the 90s, and the first "real" war in europe since 45 (I guarantee you if Ukraine folded in 3 days, no one would have said much). Also, Europe is financing the Russian war economy, which is easy to protest.
Westerners treat Tibetans like pandas, which is why China has travel restrictions into Tibet proper for foreigners. Most westerners don’t know the Uighurs exist, and anyways they are Muslims. Accordingly, China doesn’t bother with travel restrictions into Xinjiang. The fact that they have any attention from westerners at all these days is kind of amazing.
But the protests weren’t limited to Ameica, there were protests all over the world, including in Muslim countries.
And the outrage wasn’t always directed at the government. We don’t see Iranian students in the US being attacked. We don’t see Iranian places of worship in the US being attacked. We don’t see as much outrage in the comments on HN - there were some event justifying it.
Iranian-Americans are almost universally people who fled Iran during or after the revolution, they are almost all hostile to the current ruling regime. Why would anyone attack them over what Iran is doing? Even Jewish Americans haven't been attacked over what Israel is doing in Gaza, despite them having large numbers of dual-citizens and majority support for Israel.
If you get into a situation where you are dependent on any tool for 90% of your engineering output, the maker of that tool has a lot of leverage when it comes to setting prices. So my guess is that if we get into that situation, the AI companies will be able to set prices to make sure they don’t lose money.
As someone who was fully on board with masking during COVID, I never want to wear one again unless there is high level of infection of either COVID or flu in my immediate area. I think a lot of people feel similarly. There just isn’t going to be much support for masking all of the time unless you work in a hospital.
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