Comments on Wide Asleep in America: In Fraud, We Trust?

Simply, Thank you for speaking facts and truths in...

2009-07-20T09:50:28.850-04:00

Simply, Thank you for speaking facts and truths instead of myths and falsehoods as continually disseminating from the BBC et al who want to manufacture a shallow colour revolution in Iran. The North Tehran syndrome suffers want to impose their corrupt will on an ancient and wise people, whose depth and sageness they thought they could run rough-shod over with Rafsanjani dirty money.
Whatever is the will of the Iranian people must be upheld.

Very compelling but this article projects Iranian ...

2009-07-11T06:51:12.465-04:00

Very compelling but this article projects Iranian election system in a better way than that of my home country, India. Surely many electoral malpractices happen in India. But when a candidate doubts his loss, he has always a chance to move the courts of law. Mousavi does not appear to be doing that. is it because of lack of proper judiciary or not, I wonder.

Well done! All the Iranian people, the demonstrato...

2009-06-28T02:44:36.302-04:00

Well done! All the Iranian people, the demonstrators, protesters, and their government, all, are only pawns in "our" game. Bob Dylan got it right in Masters of War.

thanks for this

People are not very motivated to protest or rally,...

2009-06-24T18:29:25.317-04:00

People are not very motivated to protest or rally, when they win. This is particularily true when their candidate is the incumbent and the results were not close. The lack of a pro incumbent rally should not be surprising.

I don't remember masses of people taking to the streets when Clinton was reelected.

I loved the article; like Lord Baltimore's rem...

2009-06-24T15:32:54.010-04:00

I loved the article; like Lord Baltimore's remarks.

I also used the analogy of what HAS happened in the USA in past years; we've seen what happens when those of us demonstrated against Vietnam. We saw the shootings at Kent. We witnessed the riots and the deaths during Watts.

No government allows any kind of demonstration that doesn't adhere 100% to remaining controlled and peaceful. If anything gets out of hand, the National Guard, police, etc., step and stop it just as it was stopped (or tried to be) in Iran.

We don't know the mind-set or purpose of those who chose to demonstrate. We don't know if each were given a small sum of money to promise to demonstrate if Mosavi wasn't elected. We don't know who might be 'pulling the strings', and there's usually either absolutely no reason but anger and emotion that spawns a demonstration, or there's a bigger plan that's funded that also creates an uprising and outburst.

Too many stories; too much speculation, and no one writing about it has an inside track on this - to me, this article put it into a logical and sensible summary.

Who is saying people on the streets "don'...

2009-06-24T01:38:21.596-04:00

Who is saying people on the streets "don't count"? All I am saying is that, if these rallies are about election fraud, then I think the masses may have been duped by the Rafsanjani machine...if, however, this is the beginning of another sort of grassroots movement (though, I have my doubts), one that may change things in Iran for the better, then all the power to the thousands of people in the streets.

I feel like "pro-Mousavi" has begun to equal "pro-democracy" in the eyes of many observers and commentators. In my view, this completely misinterprets what we are actually seeing. If Ahmadinejad (whose supporters have actually come in en masse for peaceful victory rallies) won the election fairly - and I personally think there is plenty of evidence to suggest that he did - then what are we seeing in the streets? A disgruntled losing party protesting over an inglorious defeat that they were pretending wasn't inevitable or even foreseeable?

I think that the protests have become something else entirely in the past week - something, hopefully, more noble than supporting a pretty uninspiring candidate like Mousavi. I am very upset by the reports of dissent suppression by Iranian authorities - as I have been when the same thing happens here in the United States - but I think that the issues of electoral fraud and the violent and condemnable results of a government trying to put an end to 10 days of protests and unrest in the nation's capital need to be separated and not lumped in as one and the same issue.

Imagine what would happen in New York City if hundreds of thousands of people flooded the streets day after day, throwing rocks at police officers, burning motorcycles, busses, and buildings! We'd see martial law within three days, I promise.

Note how the media has changed their use of adjectives when describing the situation in Iran...last Saturday everyone wrote about "stolen" elections...now they're merely "contested" and the focus is has completely shifted to issues regarding the government "crackdown." Seems like the press realized the whole "fraud" angle might not pan out for them...now, all of a sudden, after threatening to bomb Iran into oblivion for eight years, Americans are the Iranian peoples' best friends. Seem a bit odd to anyone?

I guess the thousands of people who risk their liv...

2009-06-23T23:19:19.402-04:00

I guess the thousands of people who risk their lives protesting on the streets don't count.

Where are the 63% who voted for Ahmadinajed? How come they don't come out and hold peaceful rallies?

Writing long essays doesn't make the argument any more sound!