Though I walk through the valley and shadow of death

We in Canada are a complacent people. We avoid any sort of civil disobedience, we dislike protests, rallies, and all forms of politically-motivated unrest in general. As a result, we tend to gravitate towards the lower forms of political discussion: Bitching and whining about the most pathetic issues that can spring into your mind (blue bins, road construction, pithy remarks made by MLAs and MPs).
To make matters worse, the political climate over the last month has been one of brutal unpleasantness. Fascists and ultranationalists made huge gains in the EU elections, Geert Wilders - that ever racist and paranoid Dutch politician - looks set to gain huge ground in The Netherlands, the Israel-Palestine peace process continues to stall under the hawkish regime of Netenyahu and Lieberman, while Canada looks set for another election soon, with equal amounts of apathy and ignorance on all sides.
Living amid such a climate as a politically active individual is often depressing, to the point where you begin to believe that the entire world is like this. It begins to look as if complacency will reign supreme.
Enter the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Long noted as the most powerful and influential of the Islamic theocracies, Iran has long been ruled by despots and tyrants, from the British Empire to the Shah to Ayatollah Khomenei. A string of corrupt, cruel, and extraordinarily well-organized torture groups - from the Shah's Savak to the post-1979 Revolutionary Guards to today's Basij Militia - have supressed dissent, crushed opposition, and turned Iran into one of the longest-standing one-party-states in the world (alongside Cuba): Since 1956, absolute power has rested in the hands of only three individuals.
As a result, I went into watching last Friday's Iranian elections with - I must confess - a great deal of cynicism. Though - on paper - Mir-Hossein Mousavi looks thousands of times better than the crackpot Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the fact that the control of foreign policy and the military rests with Ali Khamenei still prevents major reforms from happening in terms of Iranian policy towards the west - particularly the United States and Israel.
The result was predictable: The counted result and the polled result were almost polar opposites of one another. Ahmadinejad claimed 64% of the vote, Mousavi a mere 33%. All told, it looked like the psychopaths were set to take power in the Middle East once again.
But the events of the last week have played out very, very differently.
Almost as soon as the results had been announced, Mousavi's infuriated supporters took to the streets in Tehran to protest the result. Khamenei's response: Send in the police and the Basij militia. Dozens were arrested on the 13th"public demonstrations against the result don't appear to be that big... reformers have always backed down in Iran when challenged by hardliners". How wrong he would prove to be.
By the 14th, the throngs of protesters had grown considerably, both in size and violence. Buses, government buildings, and stores were burned. In the evening, Basij and police killed or wounded fifteen students at Tehran university. Khamenei likely hoped that such intimidation would stem the protests, and ensure that the results went ahead as he planned.
That, however, didn't happen. On the 15th, Khamenei and the Guardian Council issued a warning that further protests were illegal. That didn't stop hundreds of thousands from gathering in Tehran, with seven protesters killed by Basij militia. The police, however, largely looked on, likely struck by the sheer magnitude of the crowd, which formed a nine-kilometer march to Freedom Square. The significance of this has not been lost on those covering the protests. The last time the police refused to fire on demonstrators, the year was 1979, and The Shah's brutal regime was about to fall.
The protests on the 16th were even larger, with some estimating over one million people in the streets of Tehran, including 120 Tehran University professors who resigned over the results and the treatment of students by the Basij. For the first time, police were called in to ensure that the Basij and the protesters did not have contact with one another.
On the 17th, the Iranian National soccer team - one of Ahmadinejad's pet joys - joined the protest, with seven of their members (the captain included) sporting green armbands - now the symbol of Mousavi's supporters. An estimated 500,000 protested in Tehran again, for the fifth consecutive day. Today, over 100,000 protested for the sixth consecutive day.
As someone who has been so suffocated by political despair and complacency over the last months, the last week has been a ray of light through the dark clouds. It proves that not all of us are so complacent, that we can choose to ignore the truncheon, ignore the tear-gas and assault rifles, ignore the remarks that you are "like dust and dirt" that will "be brushed from the river of Iran" (both by Ahmadinejad), and continue to fight anyways.
The citizens of Tehran have finally come to the realization that is so aptly put by V (from the film of the same name), that "while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning and, for those who will listen, the annunciation of truth; and the truth is that there is something terribly wrong in this country." The words have been spoken, the truth has been annunciated and - more importantly - translated into action. Not even the threats of Iran's Supreme Leader have turned back the green tides that have flooded Tehran's streets over the last week.
There were those who said this day would never come, when democracy would trump theocracy, where the voice of the Supreme Leader would be ignored and openly defied. that day has finally come, let us hope that there are many more like it.