It was in stable condition until it was set on fire by a westerner and until part of the remains were stolen by other westerners. Plus the country would be a democracy today without western 1953 coup.
Xerxes shouldn't have burned Athens. His father, Darius, in fact had advised him to follow the protocol set by himself and Cyrus.
Dr. Mossadeqh was not running a "democracy". Post WWII Iran's political space was far more complex than the caricature presented since the fall of the Shah, and sans British instigated support for counter-coup to remove Mossadegh with help from USA, a quite significant chunk of Iranian military and society, including the Clergy (who were already using terror in Iran, btw), agreed with the American analysis that Mossadegh would merely precede a Soviet controlled Tudeh takeover of Iran.
Persepolis wasn’t in great condition when I went but it also wasn’t a shambles. There’s a gift shop, guards, and a reconstruction of part of the palace, and a lot of tourists. Also a small set of offices for archaeologists. I’m a professional historian so I was a little bummed by the lack of adequate public-facing educational markers and texts, but it certainly can’t be compared to something like the Buddhas of Bamiyan as an excuse for removing items to European museums.
Intentionally dressing and acting like a bum is a very American thing and it’s been a gradual descent towards that point. People used to dress up in suit and ties just to leave their house, a trend that began ending sometime in the 60s.
Leave it to Ars to have a comment section that's actually got some decent stuff in there. I think this one directly applies to your comment. After all, what is fraud other than giving people bad advice on investing?
"People scam other consenting adults out of large quantities of money every day, using nothing but the power of speech. We criminalize that and call it 'Fraud'. Why would the same type of action, when it results in death, be treated any differently?"
Well during fraud someone is being misled with false statements, so the victims don't know they will lose money until it's too late. In this case on the other hand, the guy knew he would die when he took his own life.
I'm not sure I would go that far as I think she pushed beyond the bounds of pure free speech, but overall I agree with the sentence.
It seems to me if you can be talked into killing yourself, the person talking you into it can't be held entirely responsible. Obviously he was dealing with pre-existing problems, but in the end he made his own decision.
She's not being held entirely responsible, she's being held partially responsible. If she was held entirely responsible she would have gotten life without parole.
I wonder if they check the usage statistics before getting rid of it? Because surely there are millions of people using it every day. Don't they care about the users?
