I feel at this point that I have to say something about Iran as the situation there seems to be winding down now. Here's the thing, while what the government over there was doing was indeed wrong, there are some silly things that the Western media has been doing since this whole thing started. First, they have been calling Mousavi and his people "reformers." One thing that people have to understand about Iran's political system is that the guardian council (a counsel of religious clerks (kooks if you ask me)) weed out the political candidates they don't like and only allow the ones they do like to run in the elections. What this means is that there is virtually no difference in the ideology between Mousavi and Ahmadinajed. In fact, Mousavi, was president of Iran during one of the regimes most oppressive times. Also, the president in Iran is really just a figurehead for the ayatollah. Khomeini is the one that runs the show over there, in reality, whatever he says goes regardless of who the president is because the ayatollah is the supreme leader.
Also I have to wonder, while I do believe the protesters in Iran are brave and have some purpose, why is the western media acting like they support the US or something? First of all, there were many pro-ahmedinajed rallies as well, but they weren't covered for obvious reasons. Second, I heard that many of the protesters didn't even vote, but are taking this opportunity to protest because they're sick of a silly, repressive regime, they are not necessarily however, in favor of a regime that supports the US, all they want is a regime where they're vote actually means something. This view point is not covered in the US media because they still have the naive attitude of "you're either with us or against us." Compare this coverage to the coverage of Palestinians who protest against Israeli occupation. They are looked at as "extremists", or "savages", or "terrorists", or people who are somewhat rogues of what Palestinian opinion actually is. In reality, those protesters are just as brave, if not braver then the protesters in Iran considering that they have tanks, bombs, planes, and settlements coming at them, not just tear gas.
Finally, why is our media acting like we're perfect. We still have racism in our country today, Sean Bell was not all that long ago. I read an article after Obama was elected (by the way, if he didn't talk so "proper", would he have been elected? Clearly it worked for a white guy who was terrible at speaking (Baby Bush).") saying that they were "scared that a black man was president", is that not racism? We have so quickly forget about the fact that we sprayed civil rights protesters with hoses and tear gas and whatever else, I wouldn't be shocked to know that we even shot some of them. We could also go on into the massacres of the Native Americans, the McCarthy era, Japanese concentration camps during WWII (who knows what really happened there?), our own civil war, the fact that blacks and poor people are still subjected to serve in the army ahead of the beneficiaries of those wars. How many innocent people have we killed in Iraq and Afghanistan? How would we feel if we had an internal conflict and another world leader chipped his 2 cents in? Now think about how Iranians must have felt after idiot world leaders (including Obama after pressure from kooky republicans) came out and stuck their nose into stuff that has nothing to do with them. Or does it??
This is the same media which supports even more repressive regimes such as the ones in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt. Again, I'm not condoning what the Iranian regime is doing to their people. People all over the world should have the right to peacefully protest with no interference. But think about how its being covered here and don't let the mainstream media fool you.
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