The International Writers Magazine - Our Tenth Year: Iran

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Iran Stands Up Against Tyranny • Dean Borok What is happening in Iran, with mass street demonstrations and civil unrest over the stealing of the election that should have gone to Moussavi, is an indication of the more comprehensive cultural values that the Persian people enjoy as a result of their ancient civilization and culture.

Sometimes elections are stolen. If the people of a country determine that their votes are not being fairly represented, they have the inalienable right to overturn the result by any means available at hand.

Many peoples have a propensity to go into the streets if they feel they are being cheated or manipulated. The other country that comes to mind is France, although Japan and Korea also have histories of extra- parliamentary protest.
To our great shame, the American people have a tendency to accept whatever results are inflicted upon us, no matter how much the process stinks. The 2000 presidential election is the case in point. The election was stolen by Bush, even though the popular vote was manifestly in favor of Gore and the Democrats. The results in Florida, the pivotal state in that election, were manipulated and perverted by the state’s Republican governor and secretary of state, even though the whole nation knew perfectly well that voter exclusion and ballot manipulation were scandalously obvious. The decision went to the U.S. Supreme Court, whose Republican majority later joked about throwing the election to Bush.

Elections count. The result of the Bush coup d’état was to reverberate for the eight following years. We ended up with a reactionary dictatorship that mishandled 9/11, dragged us into a vindictive foreign war of choice against Iraq, threw the country’s banking system into chaos, completely flubbed the relief effort following Hurricane Katrina, as well as many other grave consequences too numerous to be recounted here.

The American people, by not flooding into the streets in 2000 to protest the stealing of the election and the installation of a puppet administration, that of the idiot Bush, are partly responsible for our own decline. Part of the blame goes to Al Gore, who, instead of spearheading protests in Washington and provoking Americans to demonstrate in all other cities and towns, grew a beard and accepted a lecturer’s post at Columbia University, to his everlasting shame.

Things turned out fine for Gore. He ended up receiving the Nobel Prize and an Academy Award. As for the rest of us, not so good. We don’t have jobs or medical insurance. The World Trade Center is dust, with thousands of casualties. We are saddled with two foreign wars. Our international reputation is a shambles. Our currency is debased, its value debated on a daily basis. We are diminished as a nation.

Maybe that is why President Obama is hesitant to add the weight of his opinion to the disruptions taking over the disputed Iranian election. It might draw uncomplimentary comparison to our own impotent reaction under the same circumstances, where we just went to work the next day and accepted the humiliation of being played for suckers.

Tiananmen - Twenty years On
Dean Borok
China still detains up to 30 democracy protestors who were given the life or death sentences that were commuted to life imprisonment for their activities of 20 years ago

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