Regarding The 2010 TIME 100 Poll

Regarding The 2010 TIME 100 Poll
Please use this text and Email to letters@time.com


Dear Editors;
During the past few days, the supporters of Mirhossein Mousavi, the opposition candidate in the disputed Iranian presidential elections and a prominent figure in the movement that followed the elections demanding civil and political rights, have found the 2010 Time 100 Poll as an avenue to voice their opinion to the international community at large and make their demands and the prominence of their heroic move clear. After months of brutal crackdown of a movement that has repeatedly been compared to Gandhi's nonviolent move against British colonialism and the American Civil Rights Movement which has succeed in enforcing a deadly political silence on the Iranian streets, the 2010 Time 100 Poll once again provided a rally ground for re-energizing the same will to be viewed and counted as that the manifested itself in the Iranian streets through the past month. It was thus of no surprise that Mr. Mousavi's votes kept increasing and reached to the top of list on the late hours of April 13th 2010. The main fundamental distinction between Mousavi and his rivals on the 2010 Time 100 Poll was that Mousavi was being supported by great segments of a nation and symbolized not merely a politician but a movement that rose out of the demand to be counted. “We are countless!,” as one motto of the Green Movement explicitly said. Currently, I see people claiming to have complained to Time regarding the resort to fraud by voters of Mousavi. “They must have slave robots voting for them,” one person claimed. I am writing this email not only to remind you that this is an untrue claim given the fact that mobilization for Mosuavi was done on a large scale through not just famous Iranian websites but in some cases satellite televisions, but also to remind you of some of the circumstances in which the Iranian people voted for Mousavi: 1.There were repeated cases of government filtering of the Time website through the voting and many people claimed that the state is purposely bringing the internet speed in Tehran to an unbelievably low level to block the voting process. 2.On April 14th, 2010, the Iranian right-wing newspaper Kayhan wrote a story on how inspire of the fact that the “bankrupted opposition” are using Time to voice their message, Lady Gaga, “a counter-moral singer” is still at the top: http://kayhannews.ir/890125.... 3.Kayhan's report itself showed how sensitive the government is on the issue. In spite of such serious limitations, the will to make Mousavi, as a symbol of the collective consciousness of a movement, outstanding in the list has succeeded so far. I would like to once again thank you for the opportunity you are providing to us, the citizens of the international community, to voice our opinions.

Sincerely Yours

In paragraph three I referred to the mobilization for the voting on Iranian media outlets. One case can be found in the Iranian Digg-like website Balatarin: http://balatarin.com/topic....
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