how to win an election

probably one of the funniest tweets i've seen in a while: iranian media: guardian council says more votes cast than eligible voters in 50 cities, but denies it affected outcome.

i must have sat in my seat laughing about it for a long time, because when i finally got myself together, i had completely forgotten what i was laughing about.

we should all take a moment to applaud the ingenuity of the elected regime. who would have thought that if you could put all of the world's leaders in the same room, that the smartest guy in the room would be mahmoud ahmadinejad? what he'd done is actually quite simple really, at the same time quite revolutionary. it takes a man of his caliber to have been able to come up with something that amazing, just like how isaac newton invented gravity, and how thomas edison invented light. without whom we might still all be in floating around uncontrollably in the dark.

what's his secret to success? many people might ask. i think it comes down to what most folks call a "winning formula": you promise the people an election to put the kibosh on any general negative sentiments towards you, then lecture the public on how just and fair the election was going to be, proceed to install a bunch of crooks who can't do math worth bananas in the electorial council, sit back and relax. seriously, it is that simple.

a lot of the current world leaders must be watching with a keen eye at the moment, many of whom are probably learning a trick or two from ahmadinejad himself and taking notes as we speak in preparation for their re-elections. then there are the facist and dictators out there (read: north korea, cambodia, somalia, etc.) who might be tempted to inject some much needed excitement into their mundane and boring political systems. can you imagine how much fun it would be if they could be seen by the world not as dictatorships but democracies, while being able to manipulate the outcome of elections at will? quite. and then there are the losers, who must be kicking themselves right now because they wouldn't have ended up the way they were had ahmadinjad shared his secrets to success with the world sooner.

in all seriousness, could a man named mir hossein moussavi have won the election? i don't think so. and even if moussavi had won the election, could the people really expect change? again, i don't think so. let's just take a moment and check out some of his accolades: ex-prime minister, check. defended taking of US hostages in 1979, check. supports controversial nuclear programme, check. regularly executed dissidents and backed the fatwa, check. and the list only gets longer.

sound pretty much identical to ahmadinejad, doesn't it? maybe the people have forgotten about moussavi's hardline, ball-busting approaches because really nobody knows where he had been or what he had done in a long time. after all, he had all but disappeared completely from the radar of public scrutiny for over 20 years.

and the ultimate irony? moussavi is a child of the revolution that the current system was founded upon. he was never a real reformer, either, when he was prime minister. and now he's being faced with the question: should he unleash the young people out onto the streets who supported him - thus threatening the very system that he fought for?

whatever the case, only iran can get itself out of the mess it is in. we can't really do much save look upon the tragedy that is unfolding all over the country, at the loss of innocent lives to the thuggery of government troops and militias alike. what we can do now is hope, and pray that such atrocities may end as soon as possible such that people's lives may regain some normalcy.

and to those who have perished, may you rest in peace.


+listening to: grave digger by dave matthews band