[anasawad]

No here you go the numbers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_A ... tion,_2016
Less than 15% of the candidates who ran were denied permission to run.

And no, an election doesn't require that everyone can run, there are rules to who can run to make sure they're qualified for the position they're running for.
Confusing those who were disqualified due to failure in official tests for the offices they're running for, and those who were denied the candidacy does tip understanding the other way around which you're making that mistake.
These tests does matter and focus on knowledge of history, law, languages, policy, economy, and politics, along with religion.
Because it gets a little messy when you put someone who don't have expertise in the basic foundations of the nation and thus risk it running back into the civil conflicts that lasted for over a century which is why the system was designed to prevent.
Its why its called assembly of experts, it requires experts to fill it.
Again, don't confuse liberalism with democracy. Very different things.

And no rule of majority ? when you get 62% of the population declaring to officially support the clerics, that is a majority.

However, this election the reformists movements did win both the assembly and the parliment (it includes several political parties) since its a mixture of academics and some Assyad( high rank clerics and social judges) . And thus managed to get both the majority of votes and majority of seats.
Unlike the ruling party, i.e the clerics, who failed to get the vote this election.

[anasawad]

@Rugoz
And BTW, just to show you how the article you posted is filled with bullshit since its very begining.
99% denied candidacy. Only 800 or so ran including the reformists, and considering the 4 major political parties, 3 of them managed to get close number of seats including 2 of them whom are part of the reformist movements and got near 2 thirds of the seats.
Thats clearly bullshit lies thrown there. Not only there wont be enough candidates to even fill the seats but also, 3 out of the 4 major political parties whom are part of the 18 party reformist movement wouldn't take any seat at all if what that article says is true.

[Rugoz]

The article says 99% in first vetting. Read it.

The clerics reject candidates which could challenge their rule. Simple as that. They're dictators like any other in the region.

Again, don't confuse liberalism with democracy. Very different things.

Democracy cannot exist without some basic civil rights guaranteed. Such as the right to vote and right to run for office (in combination called full suffrage).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffrage

[anasawad]

@Rugoz
sorry, it was talking about the parliment election not the assembly one.
Ok. 3000 members were disqualified from running.
Ok, the number seems to be true, but the percentage is not. Since over 12 thousand people ran for the parliment this past election.
Over 5000 of them were reformist movement, so the 99% number is wrong.
The end results was the list of hope, which is the reformists winning both the position of head of the parliment along 121 out of 290 seats.
Along people's voice coalition winning 11 seats, also reformists. So the reformists won 132 seats out of 290 seats of the parliment.
Compared the ruling party winning 83 seats and ofcourse the independents which a portion of them are with the ruling party policies can score it up to a 100 seats in support of the clerics.
So the clerics basically won around a third of the seats in the parliment.
And they also recently lost the supreme court nomination, and lost the military command.

That doesn't seem like they're dictators, infact, if you watched the news, everyone is already speculating about whos going to get the supreme leader position in late 2019 and early 2020. And also, the article is still publishing false information.

The only thing that the article does actually have a point in is that women are not being sufficiently represented, but it doesn't go further into it.
Because the Azzari turks are currently the largest population group of over half the country's population along with the Arabs and Kurds making the percentage even bigger are conservatives so their women don't run for offices. (Ironic eh !. Turks, Kurds and Arabs are significant voter populations in a Persian nation)
The only women who do run for offices are Hazzari women from the north east, and most of them run for local (in provinces) elections with a minority running in general elections. provinces are like states.


EDIT: BTW, note here that unlike the popular believe outside or specifically in the west, far more people run for offices in elections in Iran and the voter turn out is far higher than most countries.
The US would fade away in comparison to the rate of participation in both candidacy and voting rate in Iran.
78% voter turn out in 2016. over a 100 parties and groups joining the elections, thousands of people running for all sorts of offices.

[MistyTiger]

I am glad that the majority says "No".

It is not easy to make the US become irrelevant.

Ah, the haters gonna hate...

[Tewodros III]

No, this still doesn't make sense. I realise English is not your first language, but try and keep it simple, with a normal sentence structure, like 'subject-verb-object'. Try to explain what you think the Soviets had to do with the Americans converting their economy to wartime production.

Whether FDR and Stalin were really 'cool with each other' is highly debatable. They co-operated against the Nazis, but there wasn't a significant difference between FDR and Truman, his vice-president, so I don't think the post-war events would have been much different.

FDR made friendly relations with the Soviets, he recognize them, trade with them even allowed some advisers for his New Deal Plans. So overall relations was well until the warhawk Truman decides to ruin any idea of peaceful co-existence. And don't insult my intelligence, my English is fine. You just don't understand plane as day words.

[Drlee]

Well I am glad too. It would be a very ugly mess.

The US economy is 22% of the world nominal GDP. With that kind of money there is simply no way for this to work.

The US is militarily able to interdict every single global trade route. You may cut off US trade but the US could cut off all trade except those with contiguous land masses.

The US could cut off virtually all international communications. Those satellites we do not outright own, we could easily neutralize in no time.

The US is the center of the world's banking system. That would take a great deal of time to rebuild.

US debt forms a huge portion of the world's sovereign debt. That would tank many economies.

The US is energy independent. We could quickly and without breaking a sweat take Canada and its resources and Mexico and its agriculture. About the time we did it the rest of South America would be quick to make peace. They are virtually defenseless.

But the biggest issue is the easiest. There is no reason too. That is unless you want the two biggest world powers to be Russia and China. Since the EU is completely unwilling to defend itself, and having pissed off the US it would be virtually defenseless other than a few British and French Nukes, is would be ripe for the picking.

Then there is the US military. Not just what it is now but what it could be in less than a year. The worlds third largest air force is held in reserve in the US. Think about that. And you frankly do not know what we have up our sleeve.

This is a preposterous notion. We are around for a long time and we will be very powerful for a very long time. Nice bit of mental masturbation though. Try this one. What if the US decided to shut down the worlds economy overnight. Who would be the big losers? I'm looking at you Europe.

FDR made friendly relations with the Soviets, he recognize them, trade with them even allowed some advisers for his New Deal Plans. So overall relations was well until the warhawk Truman decides to ruin any idea of peaceful co-existence.

Not hardly. As PC said that is simply wartime propaganda. The collision between the US, UK and USSR was inevitable over Poland if nothing else. None of the three who argued at Yalta held any illusion that the end of the war would see the USSR and the west at anything but odds.

[Atlantis]

If Trumps decides to take the US out of the Paris climate agreement, then this could serve as platform to impose a climate tax on US products and services, especially services.

The French have already proposed this. ...

As I said:

French Presidential Hopeful Valls Suggests Tax on US Imports

France's presidential hopeful Manuel Valls, who seeks the Socialist nomination, has pledged to tax U.S. imports if President Donald Trump pulls his country out of the global climate deal reached in Paris in 2015.

Valls proposed a carbon tax on American goods while speaking Monday on RTL radio. He said: "When Donald Trump declares some kind of economic war on Europe, we must be ready."

To impose a "punitive tax" without reason won't get support. But we can count on the support of most countries for a carbon tax on US exports, if Trump were to get out off the Paris agreement.

[MistyTiger]

For instance, %500 tax burden

Also from an Accounting standpoint, that figure would have to be justified on every company's Balance Sheet. Taxes cannot just be set arbitrarily. I have never heard of such large markups in the commercial or retail sector.

There is always some rationale for any tax or expense that a company incurs. Taxes are not placed there just because someone wants it there. A 500% tax burden is excessive.

[anasawad]

Obviously you haven't seen the Jordanian automobile market^.

[One Degree]

While the accepted retail markup for most items is around 100%, there are some products that go a lot higher. Common items like printer ink have a markup of 300%, while text messages get marked up to nearly 6,000% more than they're worth.

We obtained retail markup data from Sumocoupon, an online marketplace that brings together coupon codes, promo codes, and sales for hundreds of online stores. They calculated their numbers based on production pricing data.

What they found was that people are willing to pay unreasonable amounts of money simply for the sake of convenience. For example, house cleaning and snow removal have markups of 5,900% and 3,900%, respectively.

Restaurant markups are surprising as well. Most people realize that wine at restaurants has a high markup (400%) so they may sometimes opt for soda instead — however, the markup for soda at restaurants is astronomically higher, ringing in at 1,150%. Diners might feel like they are saving, but they aren't really getting their money's worth.

Here are 37 products with crazy high markups:

From Business Insider. @MistyTiger http://www.businessinsider.com/products ... ups-2014-7

[Istanbuller]

There are pretty good reasons to cut off US trade. If Trump administration goes further points, US should be sanctioned either.

There is no way that the US can win a trade war against the rest. Those countries will not import anything from you and the situation can just be worse if you take military actions to solve your problem.

You can't make people buy your goods and services forcefully. This is why it is called "free trade". Trade just exist in this form. I don't know any other concept of trade.

Free trade is fair trade. Fairness doesn't mean exporting equal amount of goods and services.

[One Degree]

There are pretty good reasons to cut off US trade.

Which of your 'patriotic' CEO's are going to support that?
It would actually be good for the world. Maybe that would force people to realize the importance of being self sustaining and reducing their populations. Let the trade war begin.

[Atlantis]

@Istanbuller, a trade war is bad for all and should best be avoided.

But if Trump does escalate trade conflicts and/or military conflicts, the rest of the world should have a plan in place. Unfortunately, the rest of the world is not an organisation. Therefore, the only viable opposition I see is the EU. From what I understand, the Germans are taking Trump's protectionism very seriously. And they are willing to act through the EU. The UK may block any initiative, but I think once they have triggered Art. 50 in March, they'll be far less able to veto the EU. The Trumpistas seem to be determined to antagonize the EU by any means possible. That should help to maintain a united front. Perhaps they believe an alt-right takeover in Europe is imminent, but they are completely ignorant of European politics.

The EU should create trade and finance platforms together with China and other emerging economies to create a global network that can function without the US.

From what I hear, Erdogan will probably be on the side of Trump, even though economically Turkey depends more on the EU. And the Turkish economy isn't in good shape anyways.

[Drlee]

The problem Atlantis, is that your solution simply will not work. If any group of nations combined to wage an all-out trade war with the US it could trigger a real war. And one that would, at best for the challengers, be a draw. The free market will simply adjust to any tariffs on the part of the US and motor on.

I doubt the congress will allow Trump to put severe tariffs in place. Consider that just last night Grover Norquist (God forbid) slammed any new taxes including border taxes.

I posted in another thread just what will happen with these taxes when the US consumer has to start paying more for food and stuff. Then there are the million plus jobs we will lose if President Trump shuts down trade with Mexico. Mexico could do that. If Trump starts mass deportations to Mexico the people here will not like it much at all.

Look at what the President is trying to destroy, it appears:

In 2009, the United States exported 1.01 million passenger vehicles throughout the world. The number of exports increased to 1.39 million vehicles in 2010, and by 2014 the number of vehicles exported totaled 2.11 million. In terms of dollar value, U.S. vehicle exports increased 138 percent from $24.2 billion in 2009 to over $57 billion in 2014. Given that the automotive industry is the largest manufactured goods export sector, the success of the U.S. automotive industry (vehicles and parts) plays a critical role towards increasing overall U.S. exports.

snip

In 2014, the top five export markets for light vehicles (by units) assembled in the United States were: Canada, China, Mexico, Germany, and Saudi Arabia

Since a great many "Japanese" cars are made in the US it will be fun to see how quickly the powerful Automobile industry moves to stop the pain.

Fortunately most of the pronouncements that President Trump is churning out do not have the force of law but rather require congressional approval. There are some in congress who will move to block an all-out trade war.

But make no mistake Atlantis. You do not want a shooting war with the US. If the US moved to interdict global trade we could stop it overnight. This is a fun game to contemplate but the reality is ugly.

[Albert]

This poll is ridiculous. Istanbuller is just venting his frustration because USA is leading the charge that will hopefully reverse western self destruction. As a Turk that pisses him off as he was hoping to get some blonde European women as his wives.