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.

  • FoolishFool [she/her]
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Usually take Iran's side on stuff, but this is kinda pointlessly petty tbh

    • dbilitated@aussie.zone
      ·
      1 year ago

      the Iranian government? the one killing citizens who speak out against it or women who don't wear a headscarf?

      • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago

        the one killing citizens who speak out against it

        Truly, the most dastardly invention of the Iranian government was killing people who oppose it. No government before or since, especially not in the West, has steeped to such lows.

          • 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]
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                    edit-2
                    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.

    • figaro@lemdro.id
      ·
      1 year ago

      Hey! So I very much understand wanting to take the side of people who are oppressed in some way.

      I think a way to do this without supporting oppressive regimes is to specifically support the people, and not the government.

      Your comment was unclear, and because of that people are taking it as you supporting the government of Iran. I think most sane people agree that they suck. The people though - they are some of the kindest people I have ever met, and do not deserve the violence that they have experienced.

      • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        I think a way to do this without supporting oppressive regimes is to specifically support the people, and not the government.

        On Hexbear we have seen this line of reasoning a hundred thousand times and so we just laugh now whenever we see it; I thought you were making a joke until I saw your instance.

        The cause of so much of the suffering of "repressive regimes" like Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, the DPRK, etc is specifically because of the sanctions that the West puts on it that are designed to impoverish the people and try and make them overthrow their government, because they refuse to engage in the global economy according to the United States's rules, and not really because of those "regimes" themselves. Of course, it's taken for granted that what the United States wants is what everybody should want, but considering the billions being exploited abroad for tiny wages in hostile working environments for the West's benefit, perhaps America's "international rules-based order" isn't the best for anybody except for the West themselves! Of course, America has all the military bases, and those countries do not, and bullets and bombs tend to be quite persuasive.

        For liberals, which I assume you are, these sanctions exist in a weird doublethink space. Working through it, liberals basically end up saying something contradictory like "The suffering that the people here are experiencing is because those countries are Bad. We need to put sanctions on Bad Countries. The sanctions aren't what's causing the suffering, it's the Bad Countries' fault (which thus implies sanctions don't work and have little to no effect), but we still need to put sanctions on them to punish them (thus implying that sanctions do have some negative, disciplinary function)."

        Sanctions both do and do not function depending on the rhetorical frame you're taking at any particular time. When you're talking about the repression that Iranian women feel and why that sparked the protests, the sanctions will never be mentioned - this is purely Iran. When you're talking about the fact that Cubans struggle with food insecurity and don't have enough fuel and sometimes some of them protest or complain, then what caused those shortages is, again, never mentioned - it's purely the Cuban regime. If, on the other hand, you're talking about how repressive regimes must be punished in general, then westerners online clamour and shout for sanctions, sanctions, sanctions.

        This is why we laugh about such "support the people, not the government" rhetoric a lot of the time. Of course, in the case of Iran and similar countries, they aren't left-wing and so we only really have critical support (in the sense of "they are better than those they are opposing, but they are not good in a vacuum") and there is genuinely nuance about how the Iranian bourgeoisie are worsening conditions by exploiting the people, and repressive religious institutions, etc, but by and large American sanctions are the larger factor. In the case of Cuba, or the DPRK, such a line about supporting the people, not the government is quite ridiculous. Liberals (usually of the chud variety) who just come right out and say what they really mean - that, yes, the sanctions are explicitly designed to make the population overthrow the government so that Western compradors and corporations can loot it of its resources and exploit its people - are horrific monsters, but at least slightly refreshing compared to the mental knots that most liberals tie themselves in to not say that line explicitly, invoking "restoring democracy" and "fighting authoritarianism" and other such meaningless cliches instead.

          • MultigrainCerealista [he/him, comrade/them]
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            In future we will add a disclaimer:

            CONTENT WARNING THE FOLLOWING REPLY REQUIRES THAT YOU CONSIDER YOUR ASSUMPTIONS AND THINK CRITICALLY

            Is that a reasonable compromise?

            This way you can maintain your thought free information bubble and we can still point out the ways in which mainstream propaganda shapes your world view, and you can just comfortably ignore it.

          • SoyViking [he/him]
            ·
            1 year ago

            I made a comment on a Hexbear post and somebody from Hexbear replied back and now I'm angry.

          • Farman [any]
            ·
            1 year ago

            So you are unwigling to learn or just have problems reading?

          • Egon
            ·
            edit-2
            3 months ago

            deleted by creator

              • GreatWhiteNope [she/her]
                ·
                1 year ago

                We would never say “libtards” and we don’t have to. Liberal is enough of an insult on its own.

              • Egon
                ·
                edit-2
                3 months ago

                deleted by creator

              • BelieveRevolt [he/him]
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                On a personal level, as soon as per-account instance banning is possible, hexbear will take pride of pace in my ban list. And I know what hexbear users think about that - that I’m swimming in a sea of US hegemony propaganda and I’ve got everything wrong and I’m totally fine with that. The judgment of hexbear users concerns me not one iota.

                smuglord

                btw, we don't in fact use ableist insults.

          • UnicodeHamSic [he/him]
            ·
            1 year ago

            Yes, but then how might you learn to be a better person if we, your kind hexagonal comrades, don't help you?

          • TheLepidopterists [he/him]
            ·
            1 year ago

            If you don't want to talk to someone from Hexbear don't reply to someone from Hexbear'd comments for a start.

            Of course since you're not OP it's really not your place anyways to say which instances can and can't respond to them.

          • GarbageShoot [he/him]
            ·
            1 year ago

            The person you were replying to before is also on Hexbear (and so am I, just to save you the trouble of pointing it out). It seems like we're working with inconsistent standards here.

          • Catradora_Stalinism [she/her, comrade/them]
            ·
            1 year ago

            also can we just lose the "hexbear is so hostile for no reason" shtick. Every other instance is hostile and has its trolls, the only difference is that there are for more of us than you.

            • sunbeam60@lemmy.one
              ·
              1 year ago

              With the greatest of respect, and in my personal opinion, hexbear users have the reputation they deserve.

              • Egon
                ·
                edit-2
                3 months ago

                deleted by creator

                • sunbeam60@lemmy.one
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  1 year ago

                  I completely agree civility is a two way street. I also agree that I have started to dismiss users from hexbear apriori. I’m a very courteous person generally and I’m not happy to engage in these discussions with hexbear users (I’ve done it a few times by now and my sole purpose isn’t to convince hexbear users that I’m right, which I never could, but to convince others that Lemmy isn’t just full of “so left-wing you’ve flipped to right-wing” hexbears. In some ways I feel it’s a fight for the soul of the wider Lemmy community. I’m but a drop in that wider ocean, but I wish more people would speak up against the extreme viewpoints you generally espouse. If the tone doesn’t change, I’ll probably drop off and see myself out.

                  • BelieveRevolt [he/him]
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    1 year ago

                    but to convince others that Lemmy isn’t just full of “so left-wing you’ve flipped to right-wing” hexbears. In some ways I feel it’s a fight for the soul of the wider Lemmy community. I’m but a drop in that wider ocean, but I wish more people would speak up against the extreme viewpoints you generally espouse.

                    lmao, distilled full of themselves redditor right here. Muh horseshoe theory both sides enlighted centrism too.

                    If the tone doesn’t change, I’ll probably drop off and see myself out.

                    Oh no. Please don't go.

                  • Egon
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    3 months ago

                    deleted by creator

      • Awoo [she/her]
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        In various circumstances critical support of problematic governments is support of the people when harm to their state by outside actors will bring harm to those people. Most communists have a general understanding that the way Iran is today is in fact America's fault and that the change it needs won't come from outside of it, particularly when the people using various problems as a political weapon do not have the improvement of the lives of the people as their goal but instead various other geopolitical and resource interests.

        The most recent historical example of this would be Syria, with Libya a close second and Iraq a close third. All of which are objectively worse off thanks to western interventionism.

        You can and should oppose interventionism and outside actors fucking with the situation there if you do care about the people, while also not defending the theocracy and support real local political movements for change (ie the ones not funded by NED or various other cia or nato affiliated intermediaries).

        • Acid@startrek.website
          ·
          1 year ago

          I’d only change one thing and say most of the problems for Iran started because of the UK/US being imperialistic and has never recovered as a result

          • Awoo [she/her]
            ·
            1 year ago

            Most communists have a general understanding that the way Iran is today is in fact America's fault

            I'm not sure what I said differently here, I was referring to the historical events of US backed revolution and bombings that led to the existing Iran when I wrote the above. Modern Iran exists because America wanted to stop us socialists from getting power there. Everyone on this website should remind themselves of this when they see anticommunists screaming about "tankies". Anticommunism leads to backing the far right consistently throughout history.

    • AOCapitulator [they/them, she/her]
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yeah usually I find it absurd when anti Israel (Israel, for the lobs reading this, is a murderous fascistic apartheid state actively doing a genocide) stuff is painted as antisemitism, but this is sure seems to be

      • GarbageShoot [he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago

        What makes this antisemitic? As far as I can tell, the issue is that the other competitor was an official representative of Israel, not that they were Jewish