Wednesday, 17 June 2009

Voting present

Mr Barack Hussein Obama faces the first real test as leader of the free world over the rigged elections in Iran and, not surprisingly, goes into full Jimmy Carter mode.

Apparently, if supporting democracy doesn't fit in with mesmerising the world with his stirring personal narrative, then it doesn't really matter.

1 comment:

Sergej said...

To be honest, I'm not sure what to think. Way I saw it (as of last week) was, anyone "running" in this "election" was---not approved but selected---by the Council of Black Turbans. I don't think that these fellows select on the basis of hirsuteness and the wearing of cheap suits (though I do detect a certain pattern...). Rather, I think that the Black Turbans are the real power, and the president is their public face. What this means is, if the Turbans chose^W^Wpeople elected Achmedinejad, they were not going to bother coddling the rest of us, and maybe planning on going to war soon. If they chose the other guy, it would mean that they wanted a few years more to solve some rocket guidance problem. Other guy seems tailor-made to keep the Euros and our own Dear Leader talking, indefinitely.

An article at the joshuapundit blog made things appear to make sense for me: the revolution is coordinated via Twitter; this means that only the segment of the population that has access to the technology is really participating. So, I'm feeling a profound sense of Slavic optimism about this thing right now. Yes, I still remember the embassy hostages during my childhood, and would like to see bad things happen to the Iranian government. Even better if the successor of the Islamic Republic is friendly to the US and provides a better life for its people. Just not sure that this bit of unrest is going to make much difference.