I appreciate your point here but the problem may be that there are a couple of threads running simultaneously on this issue and on the other one I do mention that the results certainly appear to have been manipulated to increase Ahmadinejad’s share of the vote. What I hesitate to pronounce on is whether or not the results were manipulated enough to actually change the outcome of the vote, i.e. to put Ahmadinejad ahead of the real winner. And we have seen pictures of Ahmadinejad addressing a huge rally of his supporters after the results were announced. Maybe I’m over-cynical about this but I do think that we sometimes take our desirtes for reality. Make no mistake about it, when I talk about the Iranian middle classes being perhaps not as representative of the Iranian population as they think they are, I do not in any sense mean to delegitimise them.

As an HP poster pointed out on another thread, if Ahmadinejad was really the choice of 60%+ of the eligible voters, you’d think we’d be seeing numbers of supporters out in the streets of those parts of Iran that support the regime celebrating on Press TV.

Instead, we’re only seeing and hearing about truncheon wielding regime flacks beating up on the anti-regime demonstrators.

It’s boring to watch Seymour & johng squirm as their pro Syria, March 8 heroes in Lebanon and their pro Achmadinejad/Khameini heroes in Iran meet unpredicted resistance from Lebanese and Iranian voters. Just another hackneyed page out of: The Swuppie Case for Brutal Dictatorships Abroad and ‘Democratic Centralism’ at Home.

He still doesn’t know whether to support the protestors though as they might be “neo-liberals” and that might be worse.

johng on the other hand is probably only interested in what might happen to his beloved Hezbollah.

No wonder he is now bigging up the case for the Hezbo’s biggest fan.

On the other hand maybe I’m wrong – perhaps he and the SWP idiot Left willl be delighted when and if Iran emerges from tyranny.

Lets see shall we.

I possibly don’t come here often enough to get a clear sense of most commenters’ general take on things and you may have your reasons for attacking Johng but I see nothing in his actual comment of 8:58 to justify what you wrote at 9:25.

The Iranian middle classes, in my experience, do tend to underestimate the popularity of the Islamic Republic among the rest of the population. They may need to do so, for all sorts of psychological reasons. It isn’t nice to think that most of your compatriots might be happy enough to live in a
represive theocracy.So tThis election may have been stolen. Then again, it may not have been.

That’s the idiot farLeftRight in a nutshell.