News from Iran? Good? Bad? Who knows?

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Take 1905 - it may have been a step in the right direction, but 1917 and later were clearly steps in the wrong direction and the Stalinist dictatorship put anything the Czars did to shame.

Total guessing, but I wonder how a Russia that is ruled by perhaps a weak czar and has no powerful ideology would have faced the fascist onslaught of WW2. Would they have crumbled or would they have done better? The destiny of a Russia ruled by the Nazis would have been even more horrible than everything Stalin inflicted on them after all.

without the sovjets the nazis mightnog have gotten much traction with their bolshies = evil rethoric due to the reds being a lot weaker across the board.
No USSR is a pretty big break with the normal timeline tbh.

[The Brain]

Take 1905 - it may have been a step in the right direction, but 1917 and later were clearly steps in the wrong direction and the Stalinist dictatorship put anything the Czars did to shame.

Total guessing, but I wonder how a Russia that is ruled by perhaps a weak czar and has no powerful ideology would have faced the fascist onslaught of WW2. Would they have crumbled or would they have done better? The destiny of a Russia ruled by the Nazis would have been even more horrible than everything Stalin inflicted on them after all.

What was the development of the Russian economy 1918-1941 compared to the typical European democracy (non-rhetorical)?

[Admiral Yi]

What was the development of the Russian economy 1918-1941 compared to the typical European democracy (non-rhetorical)?

IIRC they averaged around 10%/year (starting from a very low base).

[Queequeg]

Massive, wide-scale industrialization, probably around the pace of China's, perhaps moreso, though certainly more haphazard.  That said, comparing it with France or Germany seems unfair as they were advanced industrial economies with high literacy rates going into the Inter-War period, while Russia outside of Moscow+Tula, Petersburg, Kiev and some iron works, oil and fabrics, most of which was destroyed anyway in the RCW, along with a huge amount of the Russian educated classes.  Russia was starting at a far lower level, and thus could expand far faster.

[ulmont]

I would say that given the purges and famines of the Stalinist era that the USSR was probably the weakest possible government for the Nazis to face.

I don't know that you can say that, given the relatively amazing heavy industrialization that the Stalinist government was able to produce.  Lots more tractors became lots more tanks, heavy command economy tradition goes well into a total war scenario, etc.

[CountDeMoney]

Is it just considered cool to be all pessimistic and negative about this stuff?

I dunno, I guess I am just naive, but I think anytime people are standing up and dying while chanting shit like "down with the dictators!" and such, that is pretty fucking awesome. Maybe the guy they want to replace him with isn't Thomas Jefferson, but it is pretty damn likely he is a hell of a lot more amenable to democracy (or will be if the revolt succeeds) than the asshat running the show now.

Most of the people who took over the nascent United States where "part of the system" they overthrew as well - does that mean it would be oh so middle school cool then to pooh-pooh the effort because it wouldn't really matter?

And I bet you were all pumped right up to the moment the tanks rolled into Tiananmen, too.  OH SNAP THEY ARE SERIOUS

[CountDeMoney]

I think this is precisely right.  Psellus has a very distorted, romanticized view of Iranians. Progressive and yearning to be part of the West they are not.

One thing I love about Languish is the invincible ignorance of so many of its posters.  Posturing like this, in complete ignorance of the actual situation, is so amusing I keep coming back.

It amuses me, though, that some people, like Mono, still think they can learn much here that is true.

Invincible ignorance > invincible naivete.

Be sure to bookmark this thread, so 6 years from now when nothing's changed in Iran, we can mock you accordingly.

[Queequeg]

That doesn't back up Jaron's troll.  Jaron is saying that the Iranian people are anit-western caricatures, while if nothing has changed in Iran from today the vast majority of Iranians will look at their clerical leadership with contempt.

[grumbler]

Invincible ignorance > invincible naivete. 

So you have something even more contemptible than invincible ignorance?

Be sure to bookmark this thread, so 6 years from now when nothing's changed in Iran, we can mock you accordingly.

Things have changed in Iran since six days ago.  The question is what will change in the future, and by how much.  This naive "nothing will change" line is totally bogus, and only excused by ignorance.  Willful ignorance, at that.

[grumbler]

...while if nothing has changed in Iran from today the vast majority of Iranians will look at their clerical leadership with contempt.

And that in itself is a change.

[CountDeMoney]

For those of you tards with delusions of democracy.  Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

The Iranian People Speak

By Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty
Monday, June 15, 2009

The election results in Iran may reflect the will of the Iranian people. Many experts are claiming that the margin of victory of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the result of fraud or manipulation, but our nationwide public opinion survey of Iranians three weeks before the vote showed Ahmadinejad leading by a more than 2 to 1 margin -- greater than his actual apparent margin of victory in Friday's election.

While Western news reports from Tehran in the days leading up to the voting portrayed an Iranian public enthusiastic about Ahmadinejad's principal opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi, our scientific sampling from across all 30 of Iran's provinces showed Ahmadinejad well ahead.

Independent and uncensored nationwide surveys of Iran are rare. Typically, preelection polls there are either conducted or monitored by the government and are notoriously untrustworthy. By contrast, the poll undertaken by our nonprofit organizations from May 11 to May 20 was the third in a series over the past two years. Conducted by telephone from a neighboring country, field work was carried out in Farsi by a polling company whose work in the region for ABC News and the BBC has received an Emmy award. Our polling was funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

The breadth of Ahmadinejad's support was apparent in our preelection survey. During the campaign, for instance, Mousavi emphasized his identity as an Azeri, the second-largest ethnic group in Iran after Persians, to woo Azeri voters. Our survey indicated, though, that Azeris favored Ahmadinejad by 2 to 1 over Mousavi.

Much commentary has portrayed Iranian youth and the Internet as harbingers of change in this election. But our poll found that only a third of Iranians even have access to the Internet, while 18-to-24-year-olds comprised the strongest voting bloc for Ahmadinejad of all age groups.

The only demographic groups in which our survey found Mousavi leading or competitive with Ahmadinejad were university students and graduates, and the highest-income Iranians. When our poll was taken, almost a third of Iranians were also still undecided. Yet the baseline distributions we found then mirror the results reported by the Iranian authorities, indicating the possibility that the vote is not the product of widespread fraud.

Some might argue that the professed support for Ahmadinejad we found simply reflected fearful respondents' reluctance to provide honest answers to pollsters. Yet the integrity of our results is confirmed by the politically risky responses Iranians were willing to give to a host of questions. For instance, nearly four in five Iranians -- including most Ahmadinejad supporters -- said they wanted to change the political system to give them the right to elect Iran's supreme leader, who is not currently subject to popular vote. Similarly, Iranians chose free elections and a free press as their most important priorities for their government, virtually tied with improving the national economy. These were hardly "politically correct" responses to voice publicly in a largely authoritarian society.

Indeed, and consistently among all three of our surveys over the past two years, more than 70 percent of Iranians also expressed support for providing full access to weapons inspectors and a guarantee that Iran will not develop or possess nuclear weapons, in return for outside aid and investment. And 77 percent of Iranians favored normal relations and trade with the United States, another result consistent with our previous findings.

Iranians view their support for a more democratic system, with normal relations with the United States, as consonant with their support for Ahmadinejad. They do not want him to continue his hard-line policies. Rather, Iranians apparently see Ahmadinejad as their toughest negotiator, the person best positioned to bring home a favorable deal -- rather like a Persian Nixon going to China.

Allegations of fraud and electoral manipulation will serve to further isolate Iran and are likely to increase its belligerence and intransigence against the outside world. Before other countries, including the United States, jump to the conclusion that the Iranian presidential elections were fraudulent, with the grave consequences such charges could bring, they should consider all independent information. The fact may simply be that the reelection of President Ahmadinejad is what the Iranian people wanted.

Ken Ballen is president of Terror Free Tomorrow: The Center for Public Opinion, a nonprofit institute that researches attitudes toward extremism. Patrick Doherty is deputy director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation. The groups' May 11-20 polling consisted of 1,001 interviews across Iran and had a 3.1 percentage point margin of error.

For more on polling in Iran, read Jon Cohen's Behind the Numbers.

[CountDeMoney]

Things have changed in Iran since six days ago.  The question is what will change in the future, and by how much.  This naive "nothing will change" line is totally bogus, and only excused by ignorance.  Willful ignorance, at that.

Sometimes, g, I wonder how you get past the drug tests.

This is a merely hiccup.  This is not 1979 in reverse.  This is not some sort of late 80s-early 90s Eastern European lovefest.

After it's all said and done, all the smart, young, pissed off Iranians are going to do what they've always done the last 30 years:  leave, go to school elsewhere, and never come back.
The rest of the hoity-toity Iranians with too much to lose are going to stay nice and quiet, so their ski resorts in the north don't get messed with.
And the mullahs will stay.  The IRG will stay.

[Razgovory]

Take 1905 - it may have been a step in the right direction, but 1917 and later were clearly steps in the wrong direction and the Stalinist dictatorship put anything the Czars did to shame.

Total guessing, but I wonder how a Russia that is ruled by perhaps a weak czar and has no powerful ideology would have faced the fascist onslaught of WW2. Would they have crumbled or would they have done better? The destiny of a Russia ruled by the Nazis would have been even more horrible than everything Stalin inflicted on them after all.

without the sovjets the nazis mightnog have gotten much traction with their bolshies = evil rethoric due to the reds being a lot weaker across the board.
No USSR is a pretty big break with the normal timeline tbh.

"Sovjets" sound like a Russian football team.

[HVC]

That doesn't back up Jaron's troll.  Jaron is saying that the Iranian people are anit-western caricatures, while if nothing has changed in Iran from today the vast majority of Iranians will look at their clerical leadership with contempt.

or they're spirit might leave as the see the movement melt around them with a relative wimper. Defeat doesn't always leave stronger footings for the next try.


i say that not knowing what the hell will hppen in this case.

[grumbler]

For those of you tards with delusions of democracy.  Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
(snip) 

Old news, and if the tards that keep bringing out this bit of "analysis" bothered to look at the numbers, they would see that the "2-1 margin" was something like 32% favoring Ahmadinijhad and  14% favoring Mousavi, with 52% not answering.  Plus, the polls were taken long before the elections, and so of limited use (since Mousavi had not even started campaigning yet).

But the authors of this opinion piece mention none of that, do they?  Why?  Because they knew the truth made their polling pointless, and they wanted their moment in the sun.

Sometimes a lie is just a lie.