Give me some real evidence, here

"There can be no question that the June...Iranian presidential election was stolen."

How do we know this? "Dissident employees of the Interior Ministry...have REPORTEDLY issued an open letter saying as much." Don't ask to see the open letter, of course.

Not convinced? How about this:

"Government polls...that were leaked..." (don't ask who leaked them - and don't ask to see the exact numbers) "ALLEGEDLY showed ten- to twenty-point leads for Mousavi a week before the election; earlier polls had them neck and neck, with Mousavi leading by one percent, and Karoubi just behind."

And, of course, then there's history:

"low turnout has ALWAYS favored conservatives in Iranian elections, while high turnout favors reformers."

Lots of speculation, alleged polls, and reported letters here. Not a lot of fact. I'd like to believe Ahmadinejad lost but we still aren't seeing any real facts that prove it.

This whacky world we live in

So how does one read the presidential election in Iran? Is it a conservative "silent majority" speaking out in favor of religious conservatism? Is it the opposite...a first-time election based more on class issues than religious? The new President-elect is, after all, Iran's first non-clerical winner of the high office. Is it a sign that the election was stolen by conservative forces operating behind the scenes - and perhaps at odds with the Ayatollah and the Guardian Council? Or is it largely an empty issue since power remains in the hands of the Guardian Council and Iran's Supreme Leader? What can I say? I've seen indications of all these possibilities.

I'll tell you the trend I'm starting to see across much of the world being left behind by globalism (Iran included...). It's a return to populist candidates appealing to the masses with a sort of pseudo-socialism wrapped in nationalism. We see it in Central and South America, we see it in the Middle East, and we see it in even in the French electorate's refusal of the EU constitution. An interesting dynamic...one thought to be largely dead after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Iron Curtain, and the Eastern European Communist regimes.

Where will it lead? How much will it stifle the continued growth of globalization? How much will it, in the end, spark more immigration to higher growth countries even as the populist leaders of countries being abandoned swear they are operating in the best interests of the common man?

Tags:

Iran elections
Populism
Nationalism
Globalization