June 21, 2005
Ahmadi Nejad, the fundamentalist
I totally disagree with the Western journalists who brand AhmadiNejad as a hard line conservative. He is, with no doubt, a total fundamentalist who is not even shameful of it: They call themselves "Osool gerayan" or literally fundamentalist.
Meanwhile the political climate is rapidly changing in favour of Rafsanjani. All non-fundamentalist groups are rallying behind Rafsanjani, as they see him as the only choice Iran now has to escape a fundamentalist government.
People are also becoming more conscious about this crucial choice, which could be seen as a total referendum on Supreme Leader's vision for the future of Iran. I've personally come across to some young friends who didn't vote in the first round, but are going to vote for Rafsanjani in the second.
So I'm seeing signs of a large voter turnout again, especially in big cities where people are worried about their social, and cultural freedoms, which in turn increases the chance of another Rafsanjani term.
However, if Rafsanjani can't win by a safe margin, as commit ed as Ahmadi Nejad supporters are, it's likely to see some sort of small-scale and legit coup, like the one happened last year during the opening of the Imam Khomeini International Airport in South of Tehran.
Posted by hoder at June 21, 2005 5:57 AM
The news is not good. I've seen two polls so far and in both cases the Fascist's candidate is ahead. We better start mobilizing people to vote for Hashemi. It's quite ironic that Hashemi is the obstacle between the minimum freedom that we have and Fascism. Those who decided to boycott these elections have a choice now: they can move the country toward total isolation and repression or begin mobilizing their friends and colleagues to vote for Hashemi (or against Fascism if they hate Hashemi that much).
---------
I am tired of people making a moral equivalency between the Islamic fascist system in Iran and western democracies, by arguing that none of them are perfect so all of them are the same!
While Bush and corporate America are corrupt and will do whatever it takes to win, even they have to ultimately win the vote of the people. At least by law and the US constitution the only thing preventing somebody from running for president is them not having enough signatures in a petition. There is no guardian council or watchdog body explicitly limiting them because they are women or not religious enough or some other crap reason. Otherwise, the green party, libertarian party, natural reform party, and independent candidates get on the ballot all the time. Ultimately, it is the vote of the people that counts.
If we want to make such arguments, then sure, North Korea, Syria, and even Saddam Hussein were republics where the president gets 99.9% of the vote!
---------
Scott Ritter seems to think that the US is gearing up for a war against Iran. He cites the CIA working with the MEK and the beginnings of a troop build up in Azerbaijan as proof. What are your thoughts?
---------
Note:
* Required
The following HTML tags are allowed in your comments: <a> <b> <i>. To make line and paragraph breaks, press return (don't use <br> or <p>).
The bold, italics, and link buttons (and associated shortcut keys) only work in IE 5+ on the PC.