Committee for veteran weightlifters also dissolved after the two athletes take photo at championships in Poland.

Iran has banned a weightlifter from sports for life and dissolved a sports committee after the athlete greeted an Israeli counterpart on a podium.

Mostafa Rajaei, a veteran weightlifter, finished second in his category in the 2023 World Master Weightlifting Championships in Poland and stood on a podium with an Iranian flag wrapped around him on Saturday.

On anther step of the podium stood Maksim Svirsky from Israel, who finished third.

The two athletes shook hands and took a picture together, which led to the Iran Weightlifting Federation banning Rajaei from all sports for life due to what it called an “unforgivable” transgression.

    • TheLepidopterists [he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      Even if you include 'killed by police' (or, in some cases, killed by militia) this stands true.

      US pigs killed nearly 1100 people in 2022 and we're not even getting into all the social murder committed by our for profit medical and housing industries. I can't believe I'm seeing this whitewashing of American government malfeasance from a Hexbear user.

        • TheLepidopterists [he/him]
          ·
          1 year ago

          Well you edited your original response right after seeing this but your original comment talked about how the US only killed 18 people last year but these foreign countries in the middle east were more violent and killed hundreds, and how, even if you include police brutality this still "stands true."

          It's hard for me to include your exact words since you took steps to obscure them but I think if you're honest with yourself you can admit you were downplaying the violence committed by the US on its populace relative to Iran.

            • TheLepidopterists [he/him]
              ·
              1 year ago

              The edit was to edit the number of people Iranian police killed during the Jina Ahmini protests

              Nah, you're lying. I do specifically remember you comparing official execution numbers of Iran, Saudi Arabia and America (~600, ~100, and 18, respectively) to try to make it sound like the US was less murderous. I don't know why you're doing this but you're being dishonest in a way that both paints the US to look less violent than it's foreign enemies (and it's allies too, as long as their foreign enough. They're certainly not as bad as Iran though, right?) and then obfuscates the fact that you're doing that and I don't know why a multiple year old Hexbear account would do that but I do remember the general thrust of the original comment.

              EDIT: actually I was wrong, we can confirm that you're lying, look at this quote from GarbageShoot's response to you

              For instance: In 2022, Iran had minimum 596 executions (likely more), Saudi Arabia had 146, the US had 18,

                • TheLepidopterists [he/him]
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  I mean you decided to start comparing them and literally every time you do you insist that the US is less internally violent in a significant way.

                  You literally said that Iran executed 30 times what the US did and that the ratios still stand if you include American extradjudicial police violence, then when everyone got mad at you for lying about that you made an edit which removed the original comparison.

                  You also go back and forth between "of course I'm not saying the US is one of the less violent countries" and "I can't believe Hexbears think some countries aren't more violent" (in response to you downplaying US violence vs official enemy state's violence, or the violence of our allies in countries that most Americans are racist against).

                  Though executions are a shit metric anyway because US doesn't use that for political control it uses the police extrajudicially. Whereas obviously executions are used for political control by, say, Saudi/Iran.

                  Then why did you say that the difference still stands when police violence is taken into account?

    • GarbageShoot [he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      For instance: In 2022, Iran had minimum 596 executions (likely more), Saudi Arabia had 146, the US had 18,

      The US had in excess of a thousand killings by cops that were officially reported that year as well (likely more that were unreported, and I have at least some evidence for my claim).

    • redtea@lemmygrad.ml
      ·
      1 year ago

      If you're talking about violence used to uphold their rule, you can't separate domestic and foreign violence. All those people living, working, and dying young in atrocious conditions outside of the US for US prosperity, all those people gunned down in the dark or in protests against their government's subservience to the US, and all those people murdered in wars and 'conflicts' and by sanctions to further US interests must be counted.

      Otherwise you're doing that thing where you redefine violence in such a way that distorts the picture. It doesn't matter whether you now explicitly mention the US because by nature of a comparison, the US is implicated, anyway. Likewise, replace US for every other government in the above equation for the true figures of how violent a state is in its own protection.