Iran 2009 v. Mexico 2006
06/25/2009
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I haven't been paying much attention to Iran, so don't take my word for it, but it seems to be playing out a lot like the disputed election in Mexico in 2006: the party in power says they won the election, the party out of power says they cheated and that they're going to demonstrate until they turn blue, and eventually they turn blue and give up and go home, and the party in power stays in power.
At least, the Washington Post headlines suggest such a scenario:
Hope Fades for Iranian Protesters Numbers dwindle after government crackdown against demonstrators, but their anger remains. - Thomas Erdbrink

Keep in mind that I haven't actually read these articles and probably won't get around to reading them, so I don't know what I'm talking about, but it all sounds a lot like the PRD's months of mass demonstrations in Mexico City's Zocalo from early July 2006 into September, along with mass acts of civil disobedience, before they eventually gave up.

The question that interests me is why almost nobody who is anybody in America cared about Mexico in 2006, but everybody was supposed to care about Iran in 2009.

Indeed, how many elections in that general part of the world, centered around the old Byzantine Empire, have we Americans been told to get excited about in this decade? There was the Ukraine Orange thing, and the purple finger whoop-tee-doo in Iraq, and the whiskey sexy election in Lebanon, and the Rose Revolution in Georgia, and the mob violence in Serbia where the nonviolent democrats burnt down the Parliament building and seized power. And now Iran.

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