You mean they have labor leaders in Iran? I thought they just pray and protest.

Richard,
I wrote "last June's Iranian presidential election, which almost certainly was not fraud­u­lent." Pollsters always expressly disavow such readings. But the election itself has to be considered non fraudulent until there is compelling evidence otherwise. Instead there's plenty of compelling evidence say that it wasn't fraudulent. do you disagree?

I don't know "some elements of the Marxist left" refers to. can't be me. electoral processes are indications of political/electoral legitimacy--indications only, legitimacy being a complicated affair and you anyway know where stand on the legitimacy of state-based politics so the comment is odd, especially in light of what i have to say about the green movement and economic redistribution and "restructuring the iranian state." i kind of think you're responding to the abrasive tone--deliberately abrasive and abrasive to the people i link to quite deliberately.

so why vent spleen on a country subject to imperial destabilization, Jenny, unless you want to sound holy?

Who is discussing Mugabe. Not me, not interested in doing so here, here I am discussing Iran.

Thanks. He is popular, from what I can tell, not reading Farsi. Most analysis misses that point and then heads off the deep end.

Re: John, he would rather believe those sources, and in fact believes them every day. Traumatized right-wing Zionist.

In reply to the first question, I have not the slightest idea. He must be the most incompetent liberal journalist alive. I heard that Alterman had threatened the editors via his "influence" with donors regarding coverage of I-P too. The stuff about Venezuela beggars belief. Some of that, I gather has been due to Marc Cooper. But of course other parts have been due to the inability of intelligent Americans to let people in the global South manage their own political affairs/revolutions without patronizing attack.

Richard are you referring to swing-state support for Democratic Party candidates? I know you took slight issue, for example with his Nation editorial, but that wasn't more than just a mis-placed word. I would need some more textual evidence to decide how to respond to your comment. But speaking more generally, I don't think he was ever sanitized--or sanitized himself--to "socially acceptable dissent"; he was too forthright always about social and aggressive war for that, which is why the liberal intelligentsia doesn't like him.

Hah.
Here is the most touching eulogy I've seen about him:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/zinn_is_dead_...

It's excellent. When I was younger I think I didn't really understand Zinn's project, and in a way his simplicity made me underestimate him. Staughton Lynd has an essay partially reflecting on Zinn in Visions of History that made me totally re-think his work and his own vision, and commenting on his ability to emotionally engage with an audience both through the spoken and written word, a gift that he must have been conscious of toward the end. What's wonderful about Zinn is that he is NOT writing for intellectuals or those who consider themselves to be such, but for everyone.

So healthy that it can mock itself. That's cute, but doesn't rise to the level of diagnosis. Democracy entails enfranchisement. Health entails treating citizens and non-citizens alike well. Here's one metric, transposed from elsewhere, but it fits: how do you judge the health of a society? by how it treats its prisoners. by that measure Israel is kind of fucked, since 1.4 million of them living in Gaza aren't treated too well.