If you stepped back, instead of bashing, and just looked at the US history of elections you’d see how strange your “logic” appears when you are assuming bizzare things happened in the Iranian elections. Incumbancy is a powerful advantage in and of itself. Candidates frequently lose their home towns/villages and region/states all the time (ask McGovern, Gore or Edwards).

I’ll assume you are Iranian and add that if you are passionate about change in Iran work for some kind of change. We in the US are having a hell of a time getting that through elected officials and I can assure you that you would not see real change in Iran had Mousavi won. Isn’t it he would is asking Iranian youth to confront and even “die” for him? (Aint no Martin Luther King, Jr. in that man’s bones.) Using the same system that gave us George W. Bush, to “change” the policies gave us Barack Obama whose policies are fundamentally the same (and in some case, with a smile added for good measure, even worse).

It is known that Iran has been in a struggle with the West for decades; and a long war with Iraq that had US support; and wars around its borders and embargos, etc. And yet, it has continued to have elections, more than any other nation over the last 35+ years.

So, think. Why would an almost unknown, with all the polls showing the opposite, win this election? Do some Iranians have a beef with this theocracy? Sure. I wouldn’t want to live in a theocracy and don’t. We have plenty of demons right here in the US to combat. We’re engaged in two acknowledged wars in three countries. As a result we have killed, maimed and created refugees of millions. During this same time, what war has Iran engaged in?

http://www.counterpunch.org/amin06222009.html

First, stop it with your “grown up things”. You probably spend half your day on Twitter and the other half on facebook when you’re not here.

Your positions are being presented with great regularity in the US on Fox and CNN. Have no fear. DV is an alternative to that constant barrage.

And once again, everything became about United States, Israel and Palestine. How self absorbed and arrogant and predictably pathetic.

And we do know you very well. You’re only two hundred years old. You’re not that hard to figure out. We have you down. Come back and talk to me in sixty eight hundred years. By then you might be weened.

Now if you will excuse me, I am through playing with children. I have to do some grown up things now. Body counts, finding the location of secret prisons, where have they taken the wounded, who’s dead and who’s not, that sort of a thing. So stop throwing a tantrum, get off that chair and go play with your marbles….if you haven’t lost them already.

There you go dino, the Iranian people and their “struggle for democracy” are so precious the US and Israel is actually thinking of dropping atomic bombs on their country.

Oxy-moron!

THINK!

It has frequently and rightly been said in recent days that the U.S. should avoid an over-enthusiastic embrace of the demonstrators because the regime will use it to delegitimize them and paint them as tools of a hostile power. What has not been said enough is that any attempt to coopt the protests in the service of American goals risks delegitimizing the movement not merely among the public at large but among its own members. By and large the protesters have no interest in being enlisted in the grand battle between Islam and the West that the “clash of civilizations” crowd so ardently seeks. If their self-proclaimed American supporters persist in trying to turn their admirable political struggle into something that is alien to them — by insisting that in marching against fraud and repression they are really marching against Islam, against the 1979 revolution, and for American interests — then these alleged supporters may succeed only in convincing the protesters that the movement is something they want no part of.

Same tactics employed in Georgia, Venezuela, Bolivia, etc.

The media frenzy is evidence in itself. Why else has CNN been devoting over 50% of their airtime (other than commercials) on these riots. BREAKING NEWS BREAKING NEWS!

There have been deaths at many riots in “Western” “civilized” countries. Most recently a man died at the anti-g20 protests in London. Where was the massive coverage of that? What about the protests during the summit of the Americas, how many straight days was the media showing images of police brutality during those events?

It’s a fucking joke. The Jerusalem Post has a permanent link at the top of their website besides the News, and Weather sections entitled “Iranian Threat”…. what a joke.

Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Iran? It’s almost as if there was a pattern….

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/afrasiabi170609.html

Elections have been contested since there have been elections. But playing back 2005 is just a waste of time.

In 2009 Ahmadinejad has the popular vote. Things happened in Iran that grew his constituency and he was an incumbant.

I would question more the spontaneity of these riots than the election.

Again, a bourgeois revolt, is not a revolution. I will not speculate about what fomented this outburst until the dust settles and there is more sunlight and less, brewhaha with the mainstream media.

The article in the Foreign Policy Journal lays out the Iranian economy. Overall solid. Ahmadinejad has no foreign policy or nuclear program authority, but where he does have influence an authority he has used it to make sure there is distribution of state’s wealth. He is clearly a populist.

So far it’s another bourgeois revolt, with an election as pretext. We’ve seen this movie before.

The 2005 elections were held in two rounds. In the first round the voter turnout was about 63%, but (and this is the significant number) went down to only 48% in the second round.

Why? Because in the first round, a ‘reformist’ candidate (Karrubi) was in the running, but he got bumped off in the first round. So, people faced with the very uninspiring contest between Mr. Corruption himself (Rafsanjani) and Ahmadinejad (former Pasdar), they chose to stay home for the most part. So, Ahmadinejad’s 61% in the second round back then, was from only 48% of the voters. That is NOT equal to (in fact, it’s just over half) the same percentage of 85% the government says participated this year.

There is another significant piece of knowledge in the above numbers. If you pause a little and pay attention to the difference between the elections turnout in the first and the second round in 2005 (going from 61% to 48%), you should be able to see what Iranians know for a fact: that the turnout increases ONLY when reformists run. So, the huge jump from 48% turnout to 85% can be attributed to the fact that people had come to vote Ahmadinejad out of office! The fact that millions of people have taken to the streets across the country proves it.

http://www.payvand.com/news/09/jun/1150.html

How long 10,000 years well the next twenty will not be boring trust me on this one.

Ahmadinejad is known among all social classes due to his frequent trips he made during the past 4 years and earlier as a governor or the mayor of Tehran when he entered the race for the first time.
He is genuinely interested in helping the poor people thus the disadvantage groups have benefited the most from his policy especially those in the rural areas. Ahmadinejad is also popular among people in small towns and cities and working class. He is not, however, popular with the rich and the 5th column western educated phony
‘intellectuals’ who are cooperating with the US project, “New Middle East” in the region like Sadeq Ziba Kalam, a university professor, Hamid Zaid- Abadi, a journalist, who has been recently arrested . Both are Mousavi’s supporters. The middle class are split between the two candidates.
The fight among leadership is between Khamenei’s camps where Ahmadinejad is associated with and supporters of Rafsanjani, a corrupt businessman cleric who has used his power in the government to accumulate vast amount of wealth. There is a rumor that his son has taken 15 million dollars bribe from Total, French oil co., to promote their interests in an oil deal. The fight is not only about financial corruption but also about political influence in the matter of economy and state. Rafsanjani is known as pragmatism and elected president for two terms from 1989 to 1997. He ran for a third term in office, winning the first round of elections but losing to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the run-off round in the 2005 by wide margin. Rafsanjani is associated with the Iranian business class and is hostile to Ahmandinejad’s circle and his economic policy. Rafsanjani advocates free market economy and is against hand out to the poor.
Ahmadinejad’s slogan, “to bring oil money to people’s dining tables” won him the elections against Rafsanjani by 2 to 1 margin in 2005. The west tried to paint the elections 2005 as fraud by its puppets especially sell out Iranian ‘oppositions’ like Mohsen Sasegara who works for VOA, but was not successful since Ahmadinejad received millions more votes against his rival Rafsanjani. Thus, the west could not carry its campaign of lies and deception for longer time.
In the 10th Iranian elections, June 2009, a debate was introduced into the elections process where greatly helped Ahmadinejad re-election due to his superior debate skills, ability to use language effectively, and having a strategy to throw the ball early on into Mousavi’s yard and keep it there for the rest of the night, where left Mousavi stunned, confused, not to be able to express himself clearly and his frequent use of ‘be-estela’ and ‘cheese’ – in Persian means ‘ meaning’ and ‘ thing’ – , and lack of energy and passion, let to his defeat in the debate against Ahmadinejad and never recovered.
Ahmadinejad presented himself as a victim of corrupt Iranian elite led by Rafsanjani and his associates, the ‘reformists’ including Khatami and Mousavi and pointed out number of serious corruption charges against few families from ruling elite including Rafsanjani, Nouri and other people.
I must confess that neither Rafsanjani nor Mousavi were part of the ‘reformists.’ In fact Mousavi and his wife Zahra Rahnavard were supporters of Ali Shariati, an Iranian sociologist trainted in the west who used religion as a tool to move the population against colonial and imperial west to free Iran from American influence and its puppet the Shah. Shariati was popular among certain faction of intelligentsia including Mujahedeen Khalq, a terrorist group who designed the Islamic dress code for women, long coat and scarf, used since the revolution. MEK is on list of terrorist groups of State Department where the neocons close to Israel at the Washington Institute for Near East policy, Patrick Clawson, and elsewhere are trying very hard to take Mujahedeen’s name off the list so they can be used effectively in their destabilization program, bombing and killing. The leadership of Mujahedeen escaped the country early 1980s and settled first in France and later in Iraq cooperating with Saddam, Israel, US and the neocon for regime change. During Mousavi premiership in 1980s, he was silent on terror and violence and has lived in isolation working on his ‘painting’ since he left the office in 1989. He implemented state control economy and introduced rationing for basic necessities during his time in office. Therefore, it is very interesting to see that he has changed his economic views on for Iran and now he supports market economy siding with Rafsanjani and Khatami, American style. He has suddenly brought into the political scene after 20 years of inactive political life.
When Rafsanjani’s two terms came to the end in 1997, Mohammad Khatami became president from 1997 to 2005.
During his two terms as president, Khatami advocated freedom of expression, tolerance and civil society, and an economic policy supporting free market and foreign investment where let to a wide gap between the rich and the poor supported by the rich Iranians, thus, they are called ‘reformists.’ Khamenie’s camp including Ahmadinejad is called ‘hard liners’ by the west, because they place the interest of Iran first, like other independent countries and they are not against privatization but Ahmadinejad is against fast implementation of privatization policy into Iranian economy since he thinks we need to prepare the infrastructure of the economy first.
Khatami was an impotent president because he was not able to fulfill his promises and compromised the vital interest of Iran regarding the legal uranium enrichment program yet received close to nothing for his services to the west. He was helpful to George Bush in Afghanistan and neutral in Iraq yet Iran was demonized by ‘axis of evil’ label created by a Zionist Jew, David Frum, to benefit Israel. Ahmadinejad supporters claim that Khatami had promised the west to stop Iran legal enrichment program permanently or for a long time, in exchange for economic and technical assistance, and security guarantees but received nothing but more sanctions and threat of a nuclear war. As a result Iran became weak and vulnerable and chance of an attack by a foreign enemy increased many folds under the ‘reformists’ headed by Khatami, therefore, the ‘reformists” lost credibility throughout the country. What has been achieved during the ‘reformists’ in power, however, was more privatization in Iran following the instruction of IMF and World Bank. The ‘reformists’ received heavy losses in 2005 elections.
The charge of fraud brought by Mousavi and Karrubi, who received only 0.88 percent of the votes, is laughable. They did not follow rules of the game either meaning to send a written compalain about the points of disagreement. Instead Mossavi submitted a letter to the Council of Guardians asking for a new elections. How can Iranian people accept a ‘leader’ who presents himself as protector of law yet he refuses to follow the law and keep insisting on his stupid demand calling for a new elections where provides opportunity to the enemy of state, the agent of the west to destabilize the country over a legitimate elections’s result where was foreseen by an American independent source, ‘THE NEW AMERICAN FOUNDATION’ where conducted a survey in Persian from Turkey by phone 4 weeks before the Iranian elections. Their poll shows that Ahmadinejad is the winner by 2 to 1 margin.

Mousavi, Karrubi and the circle around them are guilty to provide a golden opportunity to the enemy of state to turn Iran into chaos to compromise improved relations between Iran and the US achieved under Ahmadinejad leadership. It was a golden opportunity for the enemy of Iran to sabotage the work of Ahmadinejad.
The protest was not voice of majority of Iranians rather a segment of society who imitates the West more than others and want a normal relations with the west to have the opportunity to travel with no problems. These groups are consumerist of the western goods and want the sanctions to be removed. Mr. Mousavi is guilty because the protest turned into violence yet he did nothing to control the violence and insisted on his stupid position and did not follow rule of law. The riot was used by destabilizing forces in Iran supported by Israel and the US using their puppets, Mujahedeen Khalq, MEK, let by a traitor by the name of Masoud Rajavi, a terrorist group to foment violence and compromise improve relations between Iran and the US to help Israel’s agenda and paint Iran as a ‘dictatorship’ run by a dictator, Ahmadinejad. EU removed the name of MEK from the terrorist list more than a year ago and Maryam Rajavi, a political whore of the Zionist who has accepted THE WORLD RELIGION, HOLOCAUST, visited Holocaust Memorial in Germany a few months ago.

http://ncr-iran.org/content/view/5807/1/

Iranians are not fools to forget what the West, with US leadership, has done to Iran’s interest around the world for the past 30 years. American policy of terror and destruction is known to majority of Iranians. Iranians have not forgotten Iran- Iraq war where majority of Iranians hold the United States responsible for lost of million Iranian lives by WMD and Chemical weapon provided by the west including the United States and paid by the Arab countries especially the so called “moderate Arab States” where are working with Israel and the US against Iran in the region and beyond. Israel, US and their puppets, The Arab head of States, feel threaten by Iranian resistance for the past 30 years despite the fact that Iranians have paid a high price for their independence. Iranian resistance becomes a model for other countries in the region fighting against Zionism and colonialism, in Lebanon, Iraq, and Palestine, to some extend Syria. Ahmadinejad is widely popular among Arab people. Thus, they are using any means to destabilize Iran for regime change and partition to change the map of the region to benefit Israel and create non-Arab allies for Israel. This is the neocon’s plan for the region and American people must unseat fifth column Zionists from the power in the US.

The population of the West should not be fooled by the mass media printing only the opinion of English speaking Iranians where many of them are trained in conferences held in Dubai by a rich Zionist by the name of Peter Ackerman who runs INTERNATIONAL CENTER ON NONVIOLENT CONFLICT where promotes ‘democracy’ Zionist style through fomenting ‘color revolution’ in Islamic countries. Iranians do not have the means or the time to write their opinions or send a video clip abroad except those agents who are working with destabilization forces in Iran. Those Iranians you see on TV or hear them on the radio are mainly western educated, either living in Iran or abroad and are supported by the “human rights” organizations that have close relations with intelligent agencies of the west. The phony Iranian ‘left’ who used the language of ‘Down with Imperialism’ does not exist anymore since majority of them are in the pocket of the US and Israel.
Many of the Iranian phony ‘left’ are cooperating with the Zionist/imperialist destabilization project including the Kurds.
What we are going to see in the coming weeks in Iran is the continuation of Israel/US destabilization policy through their agents in Iran who are going to use the golden opportunity provided by elite representatives Mousavi and Karrubi and their supporters. We may witness isolated act of terror and bombing around the country. Iranian government has the responsibility to protect Iranian citizens from these agents and must act firmly and effectively against any act of violence in the coming weeks.

When these stories are told, I think of the upper classes in Chile and their pots and pains “rebellion”; I think of the anti-Hugo Chavez crowd, the old Batista crowd who live in our midst now. They all love America, land of the free, home of the brave…god bless America. If only Iran could be like America, if only Chile and Venezuela and Peru, and Cuba, could be like America…what a wonderful world this would be.

Come one and all to America where you can plot with the CIA the overthrowing of your former country. They love us….they really really really really do.