First of all – hint – hint – in terms of imitating the west’s style of democratic elections.
One. You wait to count all the ballots no matter how many days that might take.
Two. If you in fact do get 62% of the vote, it is a landslide and it is evident to everyoine who has won.
Three. If you need James Baker, Anthony Scalia or the Ayatollah Khamenei to tell you who won, then maybe you as a country are in deep shit – up to your arm pits in fact.
Putting aside all the last minute enthusiasm from the young, the majority of the nation, the future of the nation, last week in a sort of velvet, texting, twitter, spring, revolution atmosphere, I would have believed a squeaker election with 51% for the predictable winner to have been more palatable to the nation and to the world. Whatever.
The real issue today is if there is going to be war or airstrikes on Iran because of the theocracy posing as a democracy and within reach of nuclear mayhem.
I think that we in the west have been patient with the rhetoric coming and going out of the Islamic Republic of Iran. A lot of this rhetoric has to do in one way with the rights of a nation to develop peaceful nuclear technology.
There is always that awkward moment when words, ideas, thoughts get lost or misunderstood in translation. Persia has a very old rich mid east culture. Iran, aside from the historic Persia, is a secular state of sorts fronting for religious fanatics.
The west, that used Iran for decades as a convenient puppet state and bulwark against Soviet hegemony, got ungraciously kicked out in 1979. Iran now is within reach of being a nuclear power, bombs and all.
At this point in time with all the rhetoric floating around and with the good intentions to negotiate a peaceful solution to Iran’s nuclear ambitions – one thought comes to this crazy cultural secularist christian – would I want the pope to have a nuke?
No. No. No. NO. NO!
No matter if the Supreme Leader of Iran Khamenei has Ahmadinejad or Mousavi as a stooge for President, the point is that nobody who claims to talk for God/Allah should have nuclear weapons at their command.
Secular leadership in the arms race is bad enough. I have seen enough of anger and hate filled theocratic rhetoric from Iran, translated or mistranslated over thirty years back to the west, to say that enough is enough.
Polls in Israel are for a so-called strategic strike against Iran’s nuclear industrial network. I fear that such a strike at this point in time will set the whole world into blinding rage and uncontrollable global warfare.
The emerging modern global world is in need of global fiscal economic and democratic responsibilities. This new world order of things does not need another armed nuclear power. The world does not need another backward looking Medieval State.
Iran is entitled to live in benign isolation and religious bliss. (but without nukes for the sake of everybody else living on this planet) (it is also time to disarm everywhere else)
That's me in the corner
That's me in the spotlight
Losing my religion
Trying to keep a view
And I don't know if I can do it
Oh no I've said too much
I hadn't said enough
I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try… (lyrics – R.E.M.)