Re: [Marxism] "Violence flares as Ahmadinejad wins vote"

[Jim Farmelant <farmelantj@xxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, 13 Jun 2009 11:56:15 -0400 "Fred Feldman"
<ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> The possibility of various types of vote fraud are real. However, we 
> should
> not ignore that the Islamic Republic political machine and 
> Ahmadinejad
> himself still have a sizable base of support. 

I suspect that is correct.  I also suspect that
whatever electoral fraud may have taken
place in Iran was not sufficient to effect
the outcome of the election.  Most of
the pre-election polling that I have
seen showed Mousavi easily carrying
the urban vote and Ahmadinejad 
taking the rural vote.  Since most
Iranians are rural rather than urban,
that would rack up a win for
Ahmadinejad.  However, the
existence of a sharp urban/rural
divide poses a very serious problem
for the Iranian regime that is
likely to intensify in the future.

> The reporters who saw 
> Mousavi
> sweeping all before him almost never got out of Tehran, never went 
> to the
> villages and quite likely many never even did interviews in South 
> Tehran,

That's a typical weakness of Western journalism
when it comes to countries like Iran.  They spend
most of their time in the big cities talking to
people from the urban middle class and
they forget that in a country like Iran,
the urban middle class is a relatively
small minority of the population,

> where the city's poor are concentrated. Still, I think the Stratfor 
> judgment
> that the Islamic Republic system is beginning to crack politically 
> is likely
> to prove accurate.
> Fred Feldman
> 
> URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31238321/
> 
>
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