[ExI] left on iran

[spike]

....> >  The press 
> > seems to strike a puzzling neutral stance.  Where is 
> Hollyweird Inc?  Where are the feminists?
> > Where is the speak-truth-to-power crowd?  Where are the washed-up 
> > movie stars getting air time telling the world about how 
> evil is the 
> > Iranian government?  spike
> 
> A quick Google search shows that most US left wing 
> organisations do support the protesters. Where do you get the 
> information for your assertion that they don't? Stathis Papaioannou

Celebrities used to have causes.  Back in the 60s a bunch of them protested
the war for instance.  For some reason they are gone.  I don't understand
why that went away, or when.  It just faded.

The reason this whole Iran thing caught my attention is that I have been
thinking of ways to do elections in such a way as to maintain secrecy of the
ballot, while simultaneously allowing confirmation of the validity of the
election, while defeating vote-buying, and ideally having automated counting
so that the winner could be determined on the same day as the election.  I
have thought of a number of schemes for doing this, and others made
suggestions last time we discussed the matter here.

The one thing that I find striking is that while it would be theoretically
possible and even easy to do, not one democracy anywhere is doing it, not a
single one.  Result: hundreds of Iranians perish because they don't believe
the election results.  Perhaps we USians wish to pretend we do not face a
similar risk.

spike