well, on cnn, christiane amanpour reporting, it was hard not to notice that there really were tens of thousands of people out on the streets for ahmadinejad (ma), while the crowds of protestors looked relatively modest. this could be due to a variety of factors; it's a lot easier to gather 20,000 people if the cops will cooperate. but i wouldn't simply assume the thing was fixed. people who are communicating with us are non-representative. obviously, it smells fishy. but i think we do wrong to think that ma doesn't have serious popular support.