Riverside

Reporting ICE crimes is also atrocity propaganda. Propaganda doesn't mean it's bad, it just means you're swaying public opinion. I believe that spreading anti-ICE propaganda is good because ICE are a bunch of fascist pigs, I believe that propagating anti-Iran propaganda in the context of the military buildup against Iran is bad because it serves to justify the casus belli and the upcoming military invasion.

From the text in the post, I've added emphasis:

‘Our classrooms are empty because the graveyards are full’: Iran’s students on why they are protesting again

As details of the death toll for January’s protests continue to emerge, three students explain why they are resisting a return to normality

More than 45 days after a brutal January crackdown that left thousands of Iranian protesters dead, students across several universities are protesting again. As Iran’s new academic term began on Saturday, students in Tehran gathered on campus, chanting anti-government slogans, despite a heavy security presence and plainclothes officers stationed outside university gates.

The Guardian spoke to protesting students about why they were rallying despite the fact that thousands had been killed and tens of thousands arrested in the January demonstrations.

“Our classrooms are empty because the graveyards are full,” said Hossein*, 21, a student at the University of Tehran. “It’s for them – our friends, classmates and compatriots, who were gunned down in front of our eyes, that we decided to boycott the classes.”

There is literally not one paragraph in the post text without atrocity propaganda, some paragraphs with several cases. Are you being purposefully obtuse?

They are spreading details about the crimes committed by the enemy, whether factual or not, and this can serve to justify a casus belli. It's literally the definition of atrocity propaganda.

Iran has been under extreme sanctions for 45 years. Trump has intensified them prior to military invasion, yes, but the entire US government apparatus is complicit in the murder of hundreds of thousands if not millions of Iranians through economic deprivation.

As an American I've long supported assisting rebels

The best way to support Iranians would be to mass-protest against the US-imposed economic sanctions demolishing their economy. US economic sanctions murder half a million people yearly, per latest medical studies.

The biggest death toll in the Iraq war didn't come from the US explicitly bombing civilians, it came from the US destroying the infrastructure and military of Iraq, leading to a failed state which melted the economy, led millions to destitute poverty, and created the conditions for the appearance of ISIS.

The US doesn't need to bomb civilians to murder them, they already murder half a million civilians worldwide every single year through economic sanctions, in which Iran is plastered.

From the Wikipedia article of Atrocity Propaganda (I added emphasis):

Atrocity propaganda is the spreading of information about the crimes committed by an enemy, which can be factual, but often includes or features deliberate fabrications or exaggerations. This can involve photographs, videos, illustrations, interviews, and other forms of information presentation or reporting

"The inherently violent nature of war means that exaggeration and invention of atrocities often becomes the main staple of propaganda. Patriotism is often not enough to make people hate the enemy, and propaganda is also necessary"

The application of atrocity propaganda is not limited to times of conflict but can be implemented to sway public opinion and create a casus belli to declare war

Most people polled in most eastern Europe post-Soviet countries who lived in socialism (except a few like Poland or Estonia) claim that life was better under socialism. Hard to blame them, I can't imagine how safe and free from anxiety I'd feel if I had a guaranteed job, housing costed 3% of my monthly income, and my neighborhood was walkable and full of affordable canteens with cheap seasonal ready meals. Sure, it would be a small flat, I wouldn't own a car, and I'd have to wait 4 years on a list to buy a new radio, but those are literally non-issues to me in comparison.

See, I think capitalism can work, we just need way more controls

But that's literally the problem right there. We don't lack control because there isn't enough scientific knowledge or because the people naturally oppose this control. We don't and we won't have control because the capitalists, who happen to be in power, profit more from fossil fuels whose supply they can control than from renewables which are endless and affordable.

If you want an example of somewhere where there is this control, I can point you towards China, the manufacturer of some 95% of the world's supply of photovoltaic modules and the spearhead of electrification. In China it's not capitalists in power, it's the people through their communist party, and this results in, well, actual policy.

Your comment, to me, reads like "we don't need to abolish absolutist monarchy, we just need controls on the rights of the serfs". Like, it's literally the system preventing these controls, and once abolished, the problems sort themselves out rather automatically.

I am not sure how another economic system will fix this

You answer yourself shortly afterwards

The issue is getting this done politically

Under socialism, since there are no private owners of companies or oil, there is no incentive for them to lobby the policy in their favour. If you want evidence for this, I could pinpoint you to the People's Republic of China manufacturing some 95% of the world's supply of photovoltaic modules (already the cheapest form of energy available to humanity), spearheading electrification with Ultra-High-Voltage electric transmission lines and battery technology and supply, and leading the current generation of nuclear reactors. In contrast, my capitalist homeland of Spain had a "tax to the sun" during the previous decade that destroyed whatever solar industry we had, because in Spain the fossil fuel lobbyists do have the power to dictate policy, as opposed to China's socialist system.

Maybe if all of the renewable sector pooled together

We don't need to wait for private companies to collude, though, the socialist policy of the Peoples Republic of China has made it so that 95%ish of solar panels are manufactured in that country, we just need to follow the Chinese example.

I have thing or skill. You want things or skill. Depending how many people want thing or skill, I get paid fairly for it

This is famously not how capitalism works. What you're describing is primitive manufacture as it happened in medieval workshops: a class of tradespeople who owned their tools and their workshop and sold the fruits of their own labour by themselves.

Capitalism works differently because the people with the skills don't own the tools or the workshop, the workshops and tools are owned by people who happen to have generational wealth, called the capitalist class. These people don't have skills, they have money, and with this money they acquire means of producing things, like factories. Then, the skilled workers who don't have the money to buy such factories, enter into "free and voluntary" contracts (not so free or voluntary when unemployment exists) in which they get paid not according to how much they produce, but according to how much they can manage to scrape from the capitalist owner, which always gets a profit from the labour of said people.

This has been well-understood for 200 years since the first formal definitions of capitalism appeared, what you're describing is 13th century primitive capitalism