Glen Greenwald says the election was on the level, so move on folks...

It's too easy to get jaded by the numbers, so this is one of the thirty.

http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2009/06/iranian-regime-shoots-woman-protester.html

If they elected Kim Jong Il, Glenn would be cheering.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fepZe3aoC7g

toop, gaz, basiji, digar asar nadarad.

Translation: bullets, gas, basij militia, they don't work anymore.

But fuck them, they don't Twitter.

See here for study of election results in Iran:

http://images.derstandard.at/2009/06/19/0906.2789v1.pdf

The American people would never have the balls to take to the streets as the Iranians are in opposition to oppression. We talk a lot of shit and we love our guns. But at heart we are sheep.

When the US right-wing was stealing the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, the US public barely shrugged and continued shopping and watching football. That's why I find the prospect of Americans commenting on the situation in Iran so infuriating. People who don't care enough about their own democracy to even get mildly upset aren't in a position to encourage other nations to risk and scarify their lives for their own democracy.

This is all I've seen from Glenn Greenwald on the Iranian election:

"Speaking of Iran, I don't have any idea what really happened with its presidential election -- if, as Juan Cole argues, there was widespread fraud, that would be entirely unsurprising --" but Iran is not as full of Reformist lefties as we might wish.

How is that an endorsement of the election?

her name was Neda.

The taking (and later freeing) of the American hostages is one of my earliest political memories. I was 7, the same age as my daughter is now. According to Fareed Zakaria, the Iranian Revolution is over (as a philosophy), even if the regime manages to squash the protests and remain in power. The people are no longer buying what the Supreme Leader is selling. I certainly hope for real political change in Iran, with a few lives lost as possible.

Maybe in recent years. But civil disobedience and organized protests served the abolitionists, the labor law reformers, the suffragettes, and the civil rights movement.

The American people would never have the balls to take to the streets as the Iranians are in opposition to oppression. We talk a lot of shit and we love our guns. But at heart we are sheep.

One of life's little ironies: The "American way of life" that is so hated by the ayatollahs is probably what makes Americans so easy to control. If Iran was more like the U.S., its leaders probably wouldn't be having these problems now.

"The American people would never have the balls to take to the streets as the Iranians are in opposition to oppression."

We had a court system to address the disputed 2000 election that centered on the terms under which ballots could be counted or rejected. It went all the way to the Supreme Court. The Iranians don't have that, hence they make their voices heard in the streets.

The dissent/protests in Iran have gained traction because for the first time ever the US media is paying close attention to dissident voices. These Iranian voices are in turn using the US media to amplify their voices and to try to instigate a pro-Western revolution in Iran.

First, the fact remains that there is no clear evidence that the election was rigged.

Second, the protestors are mostly limited to Tehranians, well-to-do, educated, Westernized types (probably educated in the West). The majority of rural, and quite possibly a majority of all Iranians, support Ahmadinejad and are at the very least ambivalent towards the West.

Third, these protests would have abated after the first few days had the US media ignored it as it has every other election in Iranian history.

Fourth, the US media's reporting on the situation is unbalanced and clearly supportive of the protestors, who are, again, a minority confined mostly to Tehran.

But without transparency in the counting process it is impossible to convince those supporting the losing side that the other guy won fair and square.

to come here and act like, well, children:

If they elected Kim Jong Il, Glenn would be cheering.

-- GLR

And,

Nothing to see here ... Glen Greenwald says the election was on the level, so move on folks...

-- odog11

Pussiness is so unattractive, gents, and it looks particularly bad when accompanied by a linguistic moue passing for a rhetorical flourish.

"Second, the protestors are mostly limited to Tehranians, well-to-do, educated, Westernized types (probably educated in the West). The majority of rural, and quite possibly a majority of all Iranians, support Ahmadinejad and are at the very least ambivalent towards the West."

Iran has become an urban society. I read something like 70 percent of Iranians live in the cities. Many of them probably eke out a living in the informal economy, typical of recent arrivals from the countryside, and may find Ahmadinejad's populism attractive.

The great irony is that the Islamic revolution ushered in unprecedented opportunities for female education. Conservative families felt comfortable sending their daughters to school confident that religious taboos would not be violated. Now there are more females than males enrolled in higher education. But there are so few jobs and some of these people have the skills to succeed in the global post-industrial economy.

Finally, there are no legal channels for Iranian immigration to the US. Persian-Americans came with the Shah (or arrived earlier). While people go back to visit on an irregular basis, there's no bridge to present-day Iran so we know little of the inner workings of the government or much about the society.

It seems like the anti-government, pro-Mousavi crowd couldn't get enough protesters on the streets to outnumber the police and pro-government militias. Moreover, the protests seem to be limited to Teheran and there's no indication of serious anti-government sentiments in the countryside or other cities. As much as I despise the mullahs, it makes me wonder what popular support the "greens" really have. Additionally, repulsive as the theocrats are, there hasn't been one shred of evidence yet of actual electoral fraud. It's probably more a situation where the younger people and educated classes are just fed up with the theocratic, medieval mullahs.