Iran, Egypt

There were the last presidential elections in Iran. The incumbant, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had a well funded, well-run campaign. He did a couple of tours of the country. He opposed privatization of the oil industry which gave him the support of oil workers, he provided health insurance for women who worked at home, so he had the women's vote.

Mousavi, meanwhile, one of several candidates, hadn't held office in ten years when he suddenly announced he was running for president three months before the election. He barely campaigned, only in two cities. Then, the minute the polls closed, he announced that he had won the election. When the real election results were announced, he claimed that Ahmadinejad had stolen the election.

The poor dumb stooges took to the streets. I heard one of their leaders interviewed on public radio, a university student. He was certain that Ahmadinejad lost the election because not a single one of his friends voted for him.

I don't know if the "Iran experts" in the US and British press were lying or if they truly didn't know how Iranian elections worked.

One claimed that the votes in Iran weren't counted at all. How could they have counted millions of ballots so fast? And why was it that, in some towns, the number of ballots cast was higher than the population?

First, in Iran, there is one polling station for every thousand voters. The ballots are tallied by the poll workers as soon as the polls closed. This is how it used to be done many places in the United States. They count the ballots and anyone who wants to can observe. The presidential election was the only issue on the ballot. How long would it take you to tally 1,000 ballots?

The reason that some towns had more voters than residents is that, in Iran, they don't have absentee ballots. If you're away from home on election day, you vote at the polls in whatever town you happen to be in. Towns with a large number of tourists or workers from out of town will have more people show up at the polls than live there.

It's much harder to rig an election in Iran than it is in the United States. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the election fair and square.

The protesters in Iran claimed that they would soon have proof that the election was stolen. They never did and the Iranian people quit listening to them.

Now we have Egypt.

Wikileaks has revealed that the U.S. has been bankrolling these people plotting to use social media to stage massive protests in Egypt. It's safe to assume they did the same in Tunisia and Iran and now in Yemen.

It'll be good to be rid of Mubarak. Did the U.S. turn on him? He served the U.S. so well, torturing prisoners for the U.S., blockading and starving the people of Gaza. Probably why Biden went on TV and declared that Mubarak wasn't a dictator and shouldn't step down.

Remember Biden's performance in the Vice Presidential debates. He whined that he TOLD Bush not to allow elections in Palestine and Lebanon---Israel wouldn't like the results.

Maybe the U.S. government believes its own propaganda and actually wants a democratic government in Egypt. Hard to imagine.