OFFICIAL IRANIAN PROPAGANDA CROSSING INTO PROLEFEED CLAIMETH THAT SOME 60% OF ELIGIBLE VOTERS TURNED OUT in the recent parliamentary elections, reinforced by all manner of campaigns smelling of the coercive to get people to the polling stations.
But that's as maybe: A BBC reporter assigned to Tehran noticed where one central Tehran polling station was rather empty and quiet enough to the point where you could hear a pin drop, or so it seems.
In all, such was another in those elections as were neither free nor fair; returns to the moment suggest that conservative candidates opposed to moderate-leaning President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were winning a clear majority thanks to certain reformist candidates having been "disqualified" on technical issues (or so the Council of Guardians, an appointed body of Muslim clerics seeking to ensure the purity of the Islamic Revolution and its articles of faith, thinks).
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WHICH BRINGS TO MIND THIS REMINDER AND WARNING FROM HISTORY by way of religiopolitical conservative activist Paul Weyrich (as quoted by Right Wing Watch, People For the American Way's blog) @ the 1980 National Affairs Briefing of the Religious Roundtable (emphasis added):
Now many of our Christians have what I call the goo-goo syndrome--good government. They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people, they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.
Which, to the Elmer Gantry Theological Seminary's way of thinking, is justification for voter-suppression tactics by which His Name can be invoked against especially National Minorities "by whatever means necessary," no matter how crass or disgusting they may be.
And which serves as reminder to all of you to remain all the more vigilant to voter-intimidation and voter-registration-interference campaigns and tactics by the weird and unwholesome element, particularly so where such causes use patriotic-sounding "feel-good" names to conceal sinister intent, operating more than likely out of mail drops "for privacy reasons," or so they want us thinking.
That, and interference with the electoral process being a penal offence, with enhanced penalties likely where National Minorities are targeted in such efforts. Hence, if you encounter any such campaigns in your part of the country, be sure to contact:
No doubt there are elements who would stop @ nothing to ensure that, true to maxim, "bad leaders are elected by good people who don't vote."
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THE DALAI LAMA, TIBET'S EXILED RELIGIONATIONAL LEADER, HAS GONE ON RECORD in describing Chinese actions against Tibetan nationalists seeking the restoration of Tibet's antient and pecuilar soverignty and soverign identity as nothing less than, in his words, "cultural genocide."
But then again, how much longer before the Archie Bunker/Alf Garnett crowd starts picking up the term and perverts it for their own sick and dangerous delusions of White Christian Supremacy and Honour being "in clear and present danger of being compromised"?
Such is something as bears watching, especially because of its dangerous possibilities among Those Who Should Know Better.
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