[ExI] left on iran
spike
spike66 at att.net
Fri Jun 26 15:23:21 UTC 2009
....> > 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
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