Monday, June 22, 2009

For Your Perusal

From Strategic Forecasting, George Friedman's essay about the current events in Iran (kindly reproduced here). There are several good points made here (however pessimistic).

A sample:

But critically, the protesters were not joined by any of the millions whose votes the protesters alleged were stolen. In a complete hijacking of the election by some 13 million votes by an extremely unpopular candidate, we would have expected to see the core of Mousavi's supporters joined by others who had been disenfranchised. On last Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, when the demonstrations were at their height, the millions of Mousavi voters should have made their appearance. They didn't. We might assume that the security apparatus intimidated some, but surely more than just the Tehran professional and student classes posses civic courage. While appearing large, the demonstrations actually comprised a small fraction of society.


I argue that if such factions do exist, we might not hear about them given the media blackout. It is also be reasonable to assume that (as was stated above) they were intimidated and might not be as "savvy" as the intelligentsia in Iran.

Just some thoughts.

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