i know it's not a popular thing to say

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... but I do seriously admire the determination to teach Western leadership about their audacity this way. Every time I pay attention I find the Iranian leaders trying to teach decency to Westerners one way or another. This is part of how I know they are not as awful as people there or here are making them out to be. They might be awful in many ways, but on the question of standing up to assholes, they are impeccable, impeccable, impeccable. From the refusal to give a straight answer to some shithead asking them hugely discourteous questions, outrageous questions, as though they had every right, as though they can't hear themselves being green fuming shills for fascists, right on up to issuing an ultimatum back to world leaders with bloated ideas about what they're entitled to do and say to other world leaders, and never forgetting their stubborn support for freedom fighters where others are too cowed to do the right thing.

Plus, knowing not at all how much truth there is to the reports of such harsh treatment of the stupid assholes on the streets trying to start WWIII, because so much lying has been going on in the press and on the blogs that no one I've found can tell anymore, I gotta say it would follow that they aren't a tenth as nasty as they're made out to be. I could be wrong, completely wrong about this, because, as I say, the lies and the obviously American-backed insurrection make it impossible to get a reasonable read on it. I did hear some Iranian guy on al Jazeera the other night, while hands too wet from washing dishes to come to my machine and try to note his name, who was sympathetic to the reform marchers/rioters, mentioning that they still needed to get the working class and general population behind them before they had a real movement, imploring the kids to cut the violence toward the regime... and I don't know if he realized it while he was also conceding that the election wasn't rigged, but he was in fact conceding too that this is not the general population of Iran kicking up all this fuss. It's the rich kids.
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