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Iran declares win for Ahmadinejad in disputed vote
« on: 2009-06-13 09:48:18 »
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Source: Yahoo! News

TEHRAN, Iran – Iran declared President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the winner Saturday of an election that pitted the conservative establishment against candidate with broad backing from the country's youth. Riot police attacked opposition supporters, beating them with clubs and smashing cars.

A statement from Mousavi posted on his Web site condemned what he described as the "manipulation" of election results.

Demonstrators wearing the trademark green color of Mir Hossein Mousavi chanted slogans condemning the results that gave 62.6 percent of the vote to Ahmadinejad. Protesters set fire to tires outside the Interior Ministry in the most serious unrest in Tehran in a decade.

Witnesses also said a commercial bank elsewhere in the city was set on fire.

Police attacked the demonstrators near the Interior Ministry, where the election results were announced, beating them with clubs and smashing cars. Police also moved to disperse any large gatherings of people around the city.

An Associated Press photographer saw a plainclothes security official beating a woman with his truncheon.

In another main street of Tehran some 300 young people blocked the avenue by forming a human chain chanted "Ahmadi, shame on you. Leave the government alone."

Interior Minister Sadeq Mahsouli, who supervised the elections and heads the nation's police forces warned people not to join any "unauthorized gatherings" as he gave detailed results for the elections.

"If there are gatherings in some places, people should not join them," he said. "Lets not give opportunities to people who aren't affiliated to any candidates."

He added that in Tehran itself, Mousavi won more votes than the incumbent.

Overall, however, Mousavi only took 33.75 percent of the vote in a contest that was widely perceived to be much closer than the official results.

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has final say on all state matters, thanked the people for their record 85 percent participation and warned opposition candidates to "avoid provocative behavior."

"I assume that enemies intend to eliminate the sweetness of the election with their hostile provocation," he said in his televised address.

He called the results a "divine assessment" and called on all the candidates to support the president.

Nationwide, the text messaging system remained down Saturday and several pro-Mousavi Web sites were blocked or difficult to access. Text messaging is frequently used by many Iranians — especially young Mousavi supporters — to spread election news and organize.
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Re:Iran declares win for Ahmadinejad in disputed vote
« Reply #1 on: 2009-06-13 16:59:19 »
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Classic country vs city situation with a rapidly shifting demographic, with a lot of additional support for Ahmadinejad due to ongoing US interference and support to the tune of millions of dollars - to opposition groups both political and guerilla. It will be interesting to see how things pan out due to the ongoing decrease of average age and urbanization. Even more interesting to see what would happen if the US stopped interfering.
« Last Edit: 2009-06-14 21:40:03 by Hermit » Report to moderator   Logged

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Re:Iran declares win for Ahmadinejad in disputed vote
« Reply #2 on: 2009-06-15 17:37:26 »
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[Blunderov] I was wondering what to make of all of this. Luckily Lenin has done all the thinking - and research - for me.



Iran vote and protests
posted by lenin
Monday, June 15, 2009

I think it's a consensus on the liberal-left in the US and UK that the Iranian elections were fixed. If they are right, we are watching a bloodless coup turn into a bloody one, as protesters have been beaten and are now being shot at and killed by cops. One of Mousavi's supporters alleges he was told that a coup was coming. If they are not right, we are still faced with a state busily beating and killing the opposition. The Iranian state is still detaining 'reformist' MPs, censoring newspapers, shutting down access to social networking sites (although people are still finding ways to Twitter), and behaving as if for all the world it had every reason to act guiltily. It is not inherently implausible that Ahmadinejad got 63% of the vote, and it has to be shown that there was a fix. The fact that Ahmadinejad used state oil revenues to fund programmes for the poor can be approved or derided, but it arguably gave large numbers of people an interest in voting for Ahmadinejad against his more explicitly neoliberal rival. It gave him a base among some of the working class and bazaaris. Still, it is hardly implausible either that some vote-rigging went on, if only to make the win decisive enough to avoid a run-off.

So, the first question that occurs is, why should the ballots be rigged? This is skated over in a lot of the commentary as if the answer were obvious - Mousavi advocated reform, duh! However, Mousavi is hardly a dangerous candidate for the Iranian ruling class: rather, he represents a powerful faction of it. True, he was once on the 'Islamic Left' back in the 1980s, and it was due to the support of the left-leaning majles that he was made prime minister against Khomeini's preferences. Today, however, he is a centrist allied to the 'Modern Right'. His solutions to Iran's problems of accumulation and development are impeccably neoliberal. This is why he got the backing of the old crook, cynic, capitalist and Iran-Contra arms dealer, Hashem Rafsanjani. He supports privatization, and wants to reform Article 44 to assist the process. He supports strong counter-inflationary policies. Of course, he would like to take a slightly less 'hard line' with respect to the US. Indeed, like other would-be 'reform' candidates, his campaign tried to channel Obama - with some success since his wife, who spearheaded some important reforms in the late 1980s, was cast as the Michelle Obama of the campaign. Still, he isn't an outsider by any means. His candidacy wasn't struck off, while those that offend the Council of Guardians usually are. He wasn't excluded from the debates, as far as I can find out. He wasn't excluded from the polls, some of which put him ahead, and some behind. Why should he have suddenly become so dangerous that the Iranian state, or powerful sectors within it, would risk a stupid fix? The answer could only be that by tapping a popular demands for reforms, the candidacy might have unleashed a movement that seriously frightened some factions in the ruling class.

The next question is, what can come of the protests? Whatever the motivations of Mousavi, we have an enormous number of people on the streets, with a clear demand for political reform. They took to those streets, reportedly ignoring warnings that the police were carrying live ammunition. This means they are brave, certainly, and also confident in their numbers. Already, Khamenei has ceded the question of investigating the elections, which it seems clear he didn't want to do. The Iranian state may kill people, but these protesters are already starting to win. They can make gains far beyond the very limited promises that Mousavi made in order to excite progressive layers. (As far as I can tell, Mousavi was mildly critical of some state repression of television channels, and promised to 'review' legislation that could be harmful to women - hardly a tribune of the oppressed). So, whatever the truth about the claims of a fix, these protests can do nothing but good. They may, in addition to getting rid of some particularly onerous forms of oppression, open up a space in which the left can operate more freely, and in which the labour movement can assert itself more forcefully.




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Re:Iran declares win for Ahmadinejad in disputed vote
« Reply #3 on: 2009-06-15 21:19:45 »
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I read it differently.

I think the investigation has been handed to an independent group precisely because it shows there was no illegitimate vote-skewing action on the part of the government and the government thinks that dirty handprints are going to be found and considers that the announcements of this and whose hands were involved will be more credible coming from an independent group. Given that we know some of the money poured into Iran's political system by the US (75 million) which is 25 times more than the total cost of previous Iranian elections, and given that the previous "color revolutions" all transpired to have been financed by the US State Department and orchestrated by the CIA, I think that the US, possibly assisted by Israel, will eventually be shown to have meddled mightily in Iran's internal affairs in a dramatic reversion to gunboat diplomacy. In fact, I think we are seeing a failed attempt at a "color revolution". It may yet turn into a fighting revolution, and it does, and we are behind it, the blood will be on our hands.

I think that should this be the case all the people of the world but American's (at least those getting their news from Murdoch outlets and the religiously Israeli aligned press) will eventually recognize it, and I think that the US will inevitably attempt to abuse the security council to block retribution. Where that leads to is not clear, but in a time of crises on every front, it will not be good news however it plays out.

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Re:Iran declares win for Ahmadinejad in disputed vote
« Reply #4 on: 2009-06-16 00:08:31 »
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[ Hermit : Perhaps I should mention that the $75 million handed out in 2008, which I mentioned above, came on top of the $400 million voted by Congress to "opposition parties" (which included groups the EU has listed as terrorist organizations but which the USA supports) in 2007 to "destabilize" Ahmadinejad's government. ]

Iran erupts as voters back 'the Democrator'

Source: The Independent
Authors: Robert Fisk
Dated: 2009-06-14

A smash in the face, a kick in the balls – that's how police deal with protesters after Iran's poll kept the hardliners in power

First the cop screamed abuse at Mir Hossein Mousavi's supporter, a white-shirted youth with a straggling beard and unkempt hair. Then he smashed his baton into the young man's face. Then he kicked him viciously in the testicles. It was the same all the way down to Vali Asr Square. Riot police in black rubber body armour and black helmets and black riot sticks, most on foot but followed by a flying column of security men, all on brand new, bright red Honda motorcycles, tearing into the shrieking youths – hundreds of them, running for their lives. They did not accept the results of Iran's presidential elections. They did not believe that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won 62.6 per cent of the votes. And they paid the price.

"Death to the dictator," they were crying on Dr Fatimi Street, now thousands of them shouting abuse at the police. Were they to endure another four years of the smiling, avuncular, ever-so-humble President who swears by democracy while steadily thinning out human freedoms in the Islamic Republic? They were wrong, of course. Ahmadinejad really does love democracy. But he also loves dictatorial order. He is not a dictator. He is a Democrator.

Yesterday wasn't the time for the finer points of Iranian politics. That Mir Hossein Mousavi had been awarded a mere 33 per cent of the votes – by midday, the figure was humiliatingly brought down to 32.26 per cent – brought forth the inevitable claims of massive electoral fraud and vote-rigging. Or, as the crowd round Fatimi Square chorused as they danced in a circle in the street: "Zionist Ahmadinejad – cheating at exams." That's when I noticed that the police always treated the protesters in the same way. Head and testicles. It was an easy message to understand. A smash in the face, a kick in the balls and Long Live the Democrator.

Many of the protesters – some of them now wearing scarves over their faces, all coloured green, the colour of Mousavi's campaign – were trying to reach the Interior Ministry where the government's electoral council were busy counting (or miscounting, depending on your point of view) Friday's huge popular national vote. I descended into the basement of this fiercely ugly edifice – fittingly, it was once the headquarters of the Shah's party, complete with helipad on the roof – where cold chocolate lattes and strawberry fruitcake were on offer to journalists, and where were displayed the very latest poll results, put up at 10.56am Iranian time.

Eighty per cent of the votes had been counted and the results came up as Ahmadinejad 64.78 per cent; Mousavi 32.26 per cent; Mohsen Rezai (a former Revolutionary Guard commander) 2.08 per cent; and Mehdi Karoubi (a former parliament speaker) a miserable 0.89 per cent. How could this be, a man asked me on a scorching, dangerous street an hour later. Karoubi's party has at least 400,000 members. Were they all sleeping on Friday?

There were a few, sparse demonstrators out for the Democrator, all men, of course, and many of them draped in the Iranian flag because the Democrator – devout Muslim as he always displays himself – wrapped his election campaign in the national flag. Each of these burly individuals handed out free copies of the execrable four-page news-sheet Iran.

"Ahmadinejad," the headline read, "24 million votes. People vote for Success, Honesty and the Battle against Corruption." Not the obvious headline that comes to mind. But Mousavi's Green Word newspaper allegedly had its own headline dictated to it by the authorities – before they shut it down yesterday: "Happy Victory to the People." And you can't get more neutral than that.

Back on the streets, there were now worse scenes. The cops had dismounted from their bikes and were breaking up paving stones to hurl at the protesters, many of them now riding their own motorbikes between the rows of police. I saw one immensely tall man – dressed Batman-style in black rubber arm protectors and shin pads, smashing up paving stones with his baton, breaking them with his boots and chucking them pell mell at the Mousavi men. A middle-aged woman walked up to him – the women were braver in confronting the police than the men yesterday – and shouted an obvious question: "Why are you breaking up the pavements of our city?" The policeman raised his baton to strike the woman but an officer ran across the road and stood between them. "You must never hit a woman," he said. Praise where praise is due, even in a riot.

But the policemen went on breaking up stones, a crazy reverse version of France in May 1968. Then it was the young men who wanted revolution who threw stones. In Tehran – fearful of a green Mousavi revolution – it was the police who threw stones.

An interval here for lunch with a true and faithful friend of the Islamic Republic, a man I have known for many years who has risked his life and been imprisoned for Iran and who has never lied to me. We dined in an all-Iranian-food restaurant, along with his wife. He has often criticised the regime. A man unafraid. But I must repeat what he said. "The election figures are correct, Robert. Whatever you saw in Tehran, in the cities and in thousands of towns outside, they voted overwhelmingly for Ahmadinejad. Tabriz voted 80 per cent for Ahmadinejad. It was he who opened university courses there for the Azeri people to learn and win degrees in Azeri. In Mashad, the second city of Iran, there was a huge majority for Ahmadinejad after the imam of the great mosque attacked Rafsanjani of the Expediency Council who had started to ally himself with Mousavi. They knew what that meant: they had to vote for Ahmadinejad."

My guest and I drank dookh, the cool Iranian drinking yoghurt so popular here. The streets of Tehran were a thousand miles away. "You know why so many poorer women voted for Ahmadinejad? There are three million of them who make carpets in their homes. They had no insurance. When Ahmadinejad realised this, he immediately brought in a law to give them full insurance. Ahmadinejad's supporters were very shrewd. They got the people out in huge numbers to vote – and then presented this into their vote for Ahmadinejad."


But of course, the streets of Tehran were only a hundred metres away. And the police were now far more abusive to their adversaries. My own Persian translator was beaten three times on the back. The cops had brought their own photographers on to the pavements to take pictures of the protesters – hence the green scarves – and overfed plain-clothes men were now mixing with the Batmen. The Democrator was obviously displeased. One of the agents demanded to see my pass but when I showed my Iranian press card to him, he merely patted me on the shoulder and waved me through.

Thus did I arrive opposite the Interior Ministry as the police brought their prisoners back from the front line down the road. The first was a green-pullovered youth of perhaps 15 or 16 who was frog-marched by two uniformed paramilitary police to a van with a cage over the back. He was thrown on the steel floor, then one of the cops climbed in and set about him with his baton. Behind me, more than 20 policemen, sweating after a hard morning's work bruising the bones of their enemies, were sitting on the steps of a shop, munching through pre-packed luncheon boxes. One smiled and offered me a share. Politely declined, I need hardly add.

They watched – and I watched – as the next unfortunate was brought to the cage-van. In a shirt falling over his filthy trousers, he was beaten outside the vehicle, kicked in the balls, and then beaten on to a seat at the back of the vehicle. Another cop climbed in and began batoning him in the face. The man was howling with pain. Another cop came – and this, remember, was in front of dozens of other security men, in front of myself, an obvious Westerner, and many women in chadors who were walking on the opposite pavement, all staring in horror at the scene.

Now another policeman, in an army uniform, climbed into the vehicle, tied the man's hands behind his back with plastic handcuffs, took out his baton and whacked him across the face. The prisoner was in tears but the blows kept coming; until more young men arrived for their torment. Then more police vans arrived and ever more prisoners to be beaten. All were taken in these caged trucks to the basement of the Interior Ministry. I saw them drive in.

A break now from these outrages, because this was about the moment that Mousavi's printed statement arrived at his campaign headquarters. I say "arrived", although the police had already closed his downtown office – Palestine Street, it was called, only fitting since the Iranian police were behaving in exactly the same way as the Israeli army when they turn into a rabble to confront Palestinian protesters – and Mousavi's men could only toss the sheets of paper over the wall.

It was strong stuff. "The results of these elections are shocking," he proclaimed. "People who stood in the voting lines, they know the situation, they know who they voted for. They are looking now with astonishment at this magic game of the authorities on the television and radio. What has happened has shaken the whole foundation of the Islamic Republic of Iran and now it is governing by lies and dictatorship. I recommend to the authorities to stop this at once and return to law and order, to care for the people's votes. The first message of our revolution is that people are intelligent and will not obey those who gain power by cheating. This whole land of Iran belongs to them and not to the cheaters."

Mousavi's head office in Qeitariyeh Street in north Tehran had already been besieged by the Democrator's loyal "Basiji" volunteers a few hours earlier. They had chucked tear gas at the windows. They were still smouldering when I arrived. "Please go or they will come back," one of his supporters pleaded to me. It was the same all over the city. The opposition either asked you to leave or invited you to watch them as they tormented the police. The Democrator's men, waving their Iranian flags, faced off Mousavi's men. Then, through their ranks, came the armed cops again, running towards the opposition. So whose side were the police really on? Rule number one: never ask stupid questions in Iran.

Last night, all SMS calls were blocked. The Iranian news agency announced that, since there would be no second round of elections, there would be no extension of visas for foreign journalists – one can well see why – and so many of the people who were praised by the government for their patriotism in voting on Friday were assaulted by their own government on Saturday.

Last night, the Democrator was still silent, but his ever-grinning face turned up on the posters of his supporters. There were more baton charges, ever greater crowds running from them. Thus was the courage of Friday's Iranian elections turned into fratricidal battles on the streets of Tehran. "Any rallies," announced the Tehran police chief, General Ahmad Reza Radan, "will be dealt with according to the law." Well, we all know what that means. So does the Democrator.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the blacksmith's son and former Revolutionary Guard, who, since his surprise victory four years ago, has seemingly gone out of his way to play bogeyman to the US. In his first term in office, Mr Ahmadinejad became known for his fierce rhetoric against America and Israel, his proud promotion of Iran's nuclear programme and persistent questioning of the Holocaust.

In Iran, he benefited from a surge in petrodollar revenues and has distributed loans, money and other help on his frequent provincial tours. But critics say his free spending fuelled inflation and wasted windfall oil revenues without reducing unemployment. Prices of basics have risen sharply, hitting more than 15 million Iranian families who live on less than $600 a month. He blamed the inflation, which officially stands at 15 per cent, on a global surge in food and fuel prices that peaked last year, and pursued unorthodox policies such as trying to curb prices while setting interest rates well below inflation.

During the campaign, in a series of bitter TV debates with his three rivals, he was repeatedly accused of lying about the extent of price rises. Mir Hossein Mousavi also accused Mr Ahmadinejad, 53, of undermining Iran's foreign relations with his fiery anti-Western speeches and said Iranians had been "humiliated around the globe" since he was first elected.

During Mr Ahmadinejad's first term, the UN Security Council imposed three sets of sanctions on Iran over its nuclear programme, which the West suspects has military aims.

Mr Ahmadinejad, the first non-clerical president in more than 25 years, basks in the support of Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who called on Iranians to vote for an anti-Western candidate. The Ayatollah ultimately calls the shots in Iran, where the president can only influence policy, not decide it.

Mir Hossein Mousavi

Life for President Barack Obama would be a great deal easier if Mir Hossein Mousavi had won Iran's election. The man who was prime minister during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s says he would seek detente with the West, ask Mr Obama to debate at the UN with him, and floated the idea of an international consortium overseeing uranium enrichment in Iran.

On the domestic front, the 67-year-old architect and painter urged a return to the "fundamental values" of the Islamic Republic's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. He advocated economic liberalisation, and pledged to control inflation through monetary policies and make life easier for private business. He has also promised to change the "extremist" image that Iran has earned abroad under Mr Ahmadinejad and has hit out at his profligate spending of petrodollars and cash hand-outs to the poor, which, he says, have stoked rising consumer prices. He also advocated removing the ban on private firms owning TV stations.

Mr Mousavi has been politically silent for the past 20 years, but he broke new ground in Iranian campaigning by having his wife, Zahra Rahnavard, a former university chancellor, not only join him on the stump but work for him. The couple even held hands at rallies, rare behaviour for politicians in the socially conservative state. His support was largely urban, and mostly young. He enjoyed also the backing of reformist former president Mohammad Khatami and apparent backing from Mr Khatami's pragmatic predecessor, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

He was widely expected to make a close-run thing of the election. But even as he was claiming a premature victory on Friday night, Mr Mousavi was alleging widespread malpractice in the conduct of the election. Where he goes from here – apart from into history – is far from clear.
« Last Edit: 2009-06-16 00:13:08 by Hermit » Report to moderator   Logged

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Re:Iran declares win for Ahmadinejad in disputed vote
« Reply #5 on: 2009-06-16 03:24:53 »
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Geopolitical Weekly : Western Misconceptions Meet Iranian Reality

[ Hermit : Nice to see that the well connected analysts at Stratfor are, more often than not, still agreeing with me. ]

Source: stratfor.com
Authors: Not Credited
Dated:  2009-06-16
Related Links:

In 1979, when we were still young and starry-eyed, a revolution took place in Iran. When I asked experts what would happen, they divided into two camps.

The first group of Iran experts argued that the Shah of Iran would certainly survive, that the unrest was simply a cyclical event readily manageable by his security, and that the Iranian people were united behind the Iranian monarch’s modernization program. These experts developed this view by talking to the same Iranian officials and businessmen they had been talking to for years — Iranians who had grown wealthy and powerful under the shah and who spoke English, since Iran experts frequently didn’t speak Farsi all that well.

The second group of Iran experts regarded the shah as a repressive brute, and saw the revolution as aimed at liberalizing the country. Their sources were the professionals and academics who supported the uprising — Iranians who knew what former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini believed, but didn’t think he had much popular support. They thought the revolution would result in an increase in human rights and liberty. The experts in this group spoke even less Farsi than the those in the first group.

Misreading Sentiment in Iran

Limited to information on Iran from English-speaking opponents of the regime, both groups of Iran experts got a very misleading vision of where the revolution was heading — because the Iranian revolution was not brought about by the people who spoke English. It was made by merchants in city bazaars, by rural peasants, by the clergy — people Americans didn’t speak to because they couldn’t. This demographic was unsure of the virtues of modernization and not at all clear on the virtues of liberalism. From the time they were born, its members knew the virtue of Islam, and that the Iranian state must be an Islamic state.

Americans and Europeans have been misreading Iran for 30 years. Even after the shah fell, the myth has survived that a mass movement of people exists demanding liberalization — a movement that if encouraged by the West eventually would form a majority and rule the country. We call this outlook “iPod liberalism,” the idea that anyone who listens to rock ‘n’ roll on an iPod, writes blogs and knows what it means to Twitter must be an enthusiastic supporter of Western liberalism. Even more significantly, this outlook fails to recognize that iPod owners represent a small minority in Iran — a country that is poor, pious and content on the whole with the revolution forged 30 years ago.

There are undoubtedly people who want to liberalize the Iranian regime. They are to be found among the professional classes in Tehran, as well as among students. Many speak English, making them accessible to the touring journalists, diplomats and intelligence people who pass through. They are the ones who can speak to Westerners, and they are the ones willing to speak to Westerners. And these people give Westerners a wildly distorted view of Iran. They can create the impression that a fantastic liberalization is at hand — but not when you realize that iPod-owning Anglophones are not exactly the majority in Iran.

Last Friday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was re-elected with about two-thirds of the vote. Supporters of his opponent, both inside and outside Iran, were stunned. A poll revealed that former Iranian Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi was beating Ahmadinejad. It is, of course, interesting to meditate on how you could conduct a poll in a country where phones are not universal, and making a call once you have found a phone can be a trial. A poll therefore would probably reach people who had phones and lived in Tehran and other urban areas. Among those, Mousavi probably did win. But outside Tehran, and beyond persons easy to poll, the numbers turned out quite different.

Some still charge that Ahmadinejad cheated. That is certainly a possibility, but it is difficult to see how he could have stolen the election by such a large margin. Doing so would have required the involvement of an incredible number of people, and would have risked creating numbers that quite plainly did not jibe with sentiment in each precinct. Widespread fraud would mean that Ahmadinejad manufactured numbers in Tehran without any regard for the vote. But he has many powerful enemies who would quickly have spotted this and would have called him on it. Mousavi still insists he was robbed, and we must remain open to the possibility that he was, although it is hard to see the mechanics of this.
Ahmadinejad’s Popularity

It also misses a crucial point: Ahmadinejad enjoys widespread popularity. He doesn’t speak to the issues that matter to the urban professionals, namely, the economy and liberalization. But Ahmadinejad speaks to three fundamental issues that accord with the rest of the country.

First, Ahmadinejad speaks of piety. Among vast swathes of Iranian society, the willingness to speak unaffectedly about religion is crucial. Though it may be difficult for Americans and Europeans to believe, there are people in the world to whom economic progress is not of the essence; people who want to maintain their communities as they are and live the way their grandparents lived. These are people who see modernization — whether from the shah or Mousavi — as unattractive. They forgive Ahmadinejad his economic failures.

Second, Ahmadinejad speaks of corruption. There is a sense in the countryside that the ayatollahs — who enjoy enormous wealth and power, and often have lifestyles that reflect this — have corrupted the Islamic Revolution. Ahmadinejad is disliked by many of the religious elite precisely because he has systematically raised the corruption issue, which resonates in the countryside.

Third, Ahmadinejad is a spokesman for Iranian national security, a tremendously popular stance. It must always be remembered that Iran fought a war with Iraq in the 1980s that lasted eight years, cost untold lives and suffering, and effectively ended in its defeat. Iranians, particularly the poor, experienced this war on an intimate level. They fought in the war, and lost husbands and sons in it. As in other countries, memories of a lost war don’t necessarily delegitimize the regime. Rather, they can generate hopes for a resurgent Iran, thus validating the sacrifices made in that war — something Ahmadinejad taps into. By arguing that Iran should not back down but become a major power, he speaks to the veterans and their families, who want something positive to emerge from all their sacrifices in the war.

Perhaps the greatest factor in Ahmadinejad’s favor is that Mousavi spoke for the better districts of Tehran — something akin to running a U.S. presidential election as a spokesman for Georgetown and the Lower East Side. Such a base will get you hammered, and Mousavi got hammered. Fraud or not, Ahmadinejad won and he won significantly. That he won is not the mystery; the mystery is why others thought he wouldn’t win.

For a time on Friday, it seemed that Mousavi might be able to call for an uprising in Tehran. But the moment passed when Ahmadinejad’s security forces on motorcycles intervened. And that leaves the West with its worst-case scenario: a democratically elected anti-liberal.

Western democracies assume that publics will elect liberals who will protect their rights. In reality, it’s a more complicated world. Hitler is the classic example of someone who came to power constitutionally, and then preceded to gut the constitution [ Hermit : This is a dramatic simplification. Over concerted opposition by the cabinet, despite having never obtained more than 40% of any vote, Hitler was appointed as Chancellor by Hindenburg on the basis that he would be able to control his mobs which, together with (at least partially American engineered) economic havoc, had been instrumental in the collapse of the previous two governments] . Similarly, Ahmadinejad’s victory is a triumph of both democracy and repression.

The Road Ahead: More of the Same

The question now is what will happen next. Internally, we can expect Ahmadinejad to consolidate his position under the cover of anti-corruption. He wants to clean up the ayatollahs, many of whom are his enemies. He will need the support of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. This election has made Ahmadinejad a powerful president, perhaps the most powerful in Iran since the revolution. Ahmadinejad does not want to challenge Khamenei, and we suspect that Khamenei will not want to challenge Ahmadinejad. A forced marriage is emerging, one which may place many other religious leaders in a difficult position.

Certainly, hopes that a new political leadership would cut back on Iran’s nuclear program have been dashed. The champion of that program has won, in part because he championed the program. We still see Iran as far from developing a deliverable nuclear weapon [ Hermit : And there is no evidence that Iran desires one or is working towards one or has ever done so, and no evidence that any nuclear material, required to produce any sort of nuclear weapon, has been diverted from the civilian nuclear programs. ] , but certainly the Obama administration’s hopes that Ahmadinejad would either be replaced — or at least weakened and forced to be more conciliatory — have been crushed. Interestingly, Ahmadinejad sent congratulations to U.S. President Barack Obama on his inauguration. We would expect Obama to reciprocate under his opening policy, which U.S. Vice President Joe Biden appears to have affirmed, assuming he was speaking for Obama. Once the vote fraud issue settles, we will have a better idea of whether Obama’s policies will continue. (We expect they will.)

What we have now are two presidents in a politically secure position, something that normally forms a basis for negotiations. The problem is that it is not clear what the Iranians are prepared to negotiate on, nor is it clear what the Americans are prepared to give the Iranians to induce them to negotiate. Iran wants greater influence in Iraq and its role as a regional leader acknowledged, something the United States doesn’t want to give them. The United States wants an end to the Iranian nuclear program, which Iran doesn’t want to give.

On the surface, this would seem to open the door for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Former U.S. President George W. Bush did not — and Obama does not — have any appetite for such an attack. Both presidents blocked the Israelis from attacking, assuming the Israelis ever actually wanted to attack.

For the moment, the election appears to have frozen the status quo in place. Neither the United States nor Iran seem prepared to move significantly, and there are no third parties that want to get involved in the issue beyond the occasional European diplomatic mission or Russian threat to sell something to Iran. In the end, this shows what we have long known: This game is locked in place, and goes on.
« Last Edit: 2009-06-16 04:12:17 by Hermit » Report to moderator   Logged

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Re:Iran declares win for Ahmadinejad in disputed vote
« Reply #6 on: 2009-06-16 04:35:53 »
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Appearing yesterday on ABC's "This Week," former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (R) said, "What has occurred is that the election is a fraud, the results are inaccurate, and you're seeing a brutal repression of the people as they protest." [ Source: Washington Post ]

After the embarrassments of 2000 and 2004, and my recollection of his own misspeaking about Iran, I'd have thought that even lumbering Republican dolts would heed the beams sticking out of their own eyes and restrain their criticism. Prior to posting a humorous response, I googled to confirm my facts, and discovered that "Avenging Angel" had done a wonderfully droll post mortem on Mitt Romney over at Daily Kos. Linked for your pleasure - Despite Own Iran Follies, Romney Blames Obama for Election Fraud

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Re:Iran declares win for Ahmadinejad in disputed vote
« Reply #7 on: 2009-06-19 06:56:01 »
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Proof: Israeli Effort to Destabilize Iran Via Twitter #IranElection

[ Hermit : If you wondered why Twitter became the most overhyped technology ever to have been broadcast by the media, we now may have a reason. It is one way to sway global perception, insert news stories and start revolutions. A lovely bit of detective work follows. The formatting and emphasis other than use of color is original. A screenshot of the relevant JPost page is appended. Read the Related items. I found them compelling support for this articles' thesis.]

Source: ChartingStocks.net
Authors: Anonymous
Dated: 2009-06-15
Related:
    [1]  The ‘Stolen Elections’ Hoax - Prof. James Petras #IranElection
    [2] JPost Removes the Evidence and Issues a Response #IranElection
    [3] Iran’s Election; Early Results Indicate Landslide for Ahmadinejad

    Right-wing Israeli interests are engaged in an all out Twitter attack with hopes of delegitimizing the Iranian election and causing political instability within Iran.

    Anyone using Twitter over the past few days knows that the topic of the Iranian election has been the most popular. Thousands of tweets and retweets alleging that the election was a fraud, calling for protests in Iran, and even urging followers hack various Iranian news websites (which they did successfully). The Twitter popularity caught the eye of various blogs such as Mashable and TechCrunch and even made its way to mainstream news media sites.

    Were these legitimate Iranian people or the works of a propaganda machine? I became curious and decided to investigate the origins of the information. In doing so, I narrowed it down to a handful of people who have accounted for 30,000 Iran related  tweets in the past few days. Each of them had some striking similarities -
      [1.] They each created their twitter accounts on Saturday June 13th.
      [2.]  Each had extremely high number of Tweets since creating their profiles.
      [3.] “IranElection” was each of their most popular keyword
      [4.]  With some very small exceptions, each were posting in ENGLISH.
      [5.]  Half of them had the exact same profile photo
      [6.]  Each had thousands of followers, with only a few friends. Most of their friends were EACH OTHER.
    Why were these tweets in English? Why were all of these profiles OBSESSED with Iran? It became obvious that this was the work of a team of people with an interest in destabilizing Iran. The profiles are phonies and were created with the sole intention of destabilizing Iran and effecting public opinion as to the legitimacy of Iran’s election.

    I narrowed the spammers down to three of the most persistent - @StopAhmadi @IranRiggedElect @Change_For_Iran

    I decided to do a google search for 2 of the 3 - @StopAhmadi and @IranRiggedElect. The first page to come up was JPost (Jerusalem Post) which is a right wing newspaper pro-Israeli newspaper.

    JPost actually ran a story about 3 people “who joined the social network mere hours ago have already amassed thousands of followers.” Why would a news organization post a story about 3 people who JUST JOINED TWITTER hours earlier? Is that newsworthy? JPost was the first (and only to my knowledge) major news source that mentioned these 3 spammers.

    JPost, a major news organization,  promoted these three Twitterers who went on the be the source of the IranElection Twitter bombardment. Why is JPost so concerned about Iranian students all of a sudden (which these spammers claim to be)? I must admit that I had my suspicions. After all, Que Bono?  (who benefits).

    There’s no question that Israel perceives Iran as an enemy, more so than any other nation. According to a recent poll, more than half of Israel’s population support using military force against Iran if they do not cease from developing nuclear energy (which they have the legal right to do as per the NNP treaty). Oddly enough, this comes out of a country which is not a cosigner to the NNP treaty and has no right to develop nuclear energy, yet posses an arsenal of nuclear BOMBS. [ Hermit : The author no doubt means NPT (Non Proliferation Treaty) when he says NNP, and misunderstands what it means not to be a member - or even why the USA and France's collusion with Israel's nuclear developments makes them the world's two most egregious violators of the NPT. That does not detract from the balance of the analysis. ]

    Of course, Mousavi himself plays an important role in causing the social unrest within Iran. How often do you see a candidate declare himself the winner before any votes are counted and then, when faced with defeat, call the entire election process a fraud? As obvious as it was in our own 2000 election, Al Gore would not touch the topic of voter fraud. No major US politician goes near the subject. They know full well that such an accusation would shake the entire foundation of our democracy and threaten the political structures that are in place.

    These twitting spammers began crying foul before the final votes were even counted, just as Mousavi had. The spammer @IranRiggedElect created his profile before a winner was announced and preformed the public service of informing us in the United States , in English and every 10 minutes,  of the unfair election. He did so unselfishly, and without any regard for his fellow friends and citizens of Iran, who don’t speak English and don’t use Twitter!



    [Update] JPost removes the evidence and issues a response

    Meet The Spammers

    IranRiggedElect
    3146 followers. 31 friends.
    340 tweets in past 4 days. none before that.
    Top 5 words - iranelection, cnnfail, mousavi, tehran,
    All tweets in English
    Time: Bulk between 12pm and 2pm eastern standard time
    Most retweets: @StopAhmadi @IranElection09 @change_for_iran

    Change_for_Iran
    14,000 followers. 0 friends
    117 tweets in 2 days. none before that.
    All tweets in English
    Time: Bulk between 8:00 pm and 11:00 pm eastern.
    Top 5 words: iranelection, people, police, right, students
    No retweets

    IranElection09
    800 followers. 9 friends.
    196 tweets in 3 days. none before that.
    185 in English. 11 in Farsi (Arabic appearing letters. Not sure if it’s Farsi)
    Time: bulk between 2:00pm and 6:00pm eastern. Also 1:00am.
    Top 5 words: iranelection, rt, mousavi, tehran, march
    Most retweets: @IranRiggedElect @StopAhmadi

    StopAhmadi
    6199 followers. 53 friends.
    1107 tweets in past 3 days. None before then.
    top 5 words: iranelection, ppl, news, rt, iran.
    All tweets in English
    Time: bulk between 9:00am and 5:00pm eastern
    Most retweets: @mohamadreza @mahdi

    mohamadreza
    1433 followers. 142 friends
    (protected account. cant see data)

    The following all have the same photo in their profile [ Hermit : "Where is my vote" in English on a green square ] and are followed by the profiles previously mentioned.

    [ Hermit : Image, "whereismyvote_normal" omitted ]

    http://twitter.com/SadeqEn
    http://twitter.com/greenvote
    http://twitter.com/Change_for_Iran (14,000 followers)
    http://twitter.com/iranbaan
    http://twitter.com/sdavood
    http://twitter.com/IranElection09 (800 followers. 9 friends.)

    Click below for the JPost Article

    jpost

    [Update 1] Reuter’s on Pre-election Polling: Ahmadinejad lead by a 2-to-1 ratio, greater than the announced results of the “contested” vote.

    [Update 2] NBC foreign correspondent Richard Engel says Twitter and Facebook are helping Iranians organize a “revolution.”

    [Update 3] Wonder where all of the nasty comments are coming from? FYI- DDOS = distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is one in which a multitude of compromised systems attack a single target, thereby causing denial of service for users of the targeted system. (Recognize the avatar?) BUT….their latest spamming campaign (Against CS) is backfiring.

    [ Hermit : Graphic reflecting requests on twitter for people to DDOS the site reporting this (http://www.chartingstocks.net) by various people omitted ]

    Spammers get a taste of their own medicine!: Block CS eh? It’s not us being blocked…..

    [ Hermit : Graphic reflecting requests on twitter for people to block the idiots calling for DDOSing above omitted ]

    [Update 4] The Guardian: Iran’s election result may not be fraudulent. Our polling suggests that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s victory is what voters wanted

    [Update 5] Iran blocked access to twitter yesterday BUT that doesn’t stop the “Iranian Students” from continuing to tweet every 10 or so minutes. [ Hermit : I find this compelling. ]

    [Update 6] Iranian intelligence arrested “Agents” within the country “who masterminded the recent post-election violence in Tehran.”

    [Update 7] JPost removes the evidence and issues a response

    [Update 8] Tehran- Riots orchestrated by enemies

    [Update 9] Washington Post: “Twitter’s impact inside Iran is zero,” said Mehdi Yahyanejad, manager of a Farsi-language news site based in Los Angeles. “Here, there is lots of buzz, but once you look . . . you see most of it are Americans tweeting among themselves.”

    [Update 10] CIA Factbook: Languages spoken in Iran: Persian and Persian dialects 58%, Turkic and Turkic dialects 26%, Kurdish 9%, Luri 2%, Balochi 1%, Arabic 1%, Turkish 1%, other 2%. Sure, some of the more educated people (a small amount) do speak English but its not at all popular.

    [Update 11] This post became one of the most followed, tweeted and retweeted stories regarding the  #IranElection on the net yesterday. The 3 “Iranian Student” spammers specifically mentioned this post as  did hundreds of others. So, um, where are the Iranians?? The screen shot below is of our traffic yesterday by country.



    Disclaimer: Before I get attacked as being an Anti-Semite,you should know that I am half Jewish. Alternatively, I hope that people do not misinterpret this as some “JEWISH” conspiracy. It isn’t. These are the workings of the extreme right wing of Israeli politics. They have their own Bush’s and Cheney’s there too.
 jpost-IranTwitterFail.jpg
« Last Edit: 2009-06-19 06:56:55 by Hermit »
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Re:Iran declares win for Ahmadinejad in disputed vote
« Reply #8 on: 2009-06-19 07:26:35 »
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Very interesting article Hermit. But I wonder how this now compares and why Iran's Supreme Leader deemed the election a "definitive victory". The plot thickens.

Source: Yahoo! News

Iran's top leader warns against further protests


TEHRAN, Iran – Iran's supreme leader said Friday that Iran's disputed presidential vote had not been rigged, sternly warning protesters to halt massive demonstrations demanding a new election or be held responsible for creating chaos.

Ayatollah Ayatollah Ali Khamenei sided with hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and offered no concessions to the opposition. He effectively closed any chance for a new vote by calling the June 12 election a "definitive victory."

The speech created a stark choice for candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi and his supporters: drop their demands for a new vote or take to the streets again in blatant defiance of the man endowed with virtually limitless powers under Iran's constitution.

Khamenei blamed foreign media and Western countries of trying to create a political rift and stir up chaos in Iran.

"Some of our enemies in different parts of the world intended to depict this absolute victory, this definitive victory, as a doubtful victory," he said, according to an official translation on state TV's English-language channel. "It is your victory. They cannot manipulate it."

Khamenei said the 11 million votes that separated Ahmadinejad from his top opponent, Mousavi, was proof that fraud did not occur.

"If the difference as 100,000 or 200,000 or 1 million, one may say fraud could happen. But how can one rig 11 million votes?" Khamenei asked during Friday prayers at Tehran University.

Mousavi and his supporters have staged massive street rallies in recent days that have posed the greatest challenge to the Iran's Islamic ruling system since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that brought it to power.

So far, the government has mostly allowed the protests to take place. But Khamenei opened the door for a much harder crackdown.

"It must be determined at the ballot box what the people want and what they don't want, not in the streets," he said. "I call on all to put an end to this method. ... If they don't, they will be held responsible for the chaos and the consequences."

Khamenei blamed Great Britain and Iran's external enemies for fomenting unrest and said Iran would not see a second revolution like those that transformed the countries of the former Soviet Union.

He remained staunch in his defense of Ahmadinejad, who attended Friday's prayers, saying his views were closer to the president's than to those of former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, a powerful patron of Mousavi.

Khamenei's address was his first since hundreds of thousands of Mousavi supporters flooded the streets in Tehran and elsewhere in the country in rallies evoking the revolution that ended Iran's U.S.-backed monarchy. On Thursday, supporters dressed in black and green flooded downtown Tehran in a somber, candlelit show of mourning for those who have been killed in clashes since Friday's vote.

Khamenei said the street protests would not have any impact.

"Some may imagine that street action will create political leverage against the system and force the authorities to give in to threats. No, this is wrong," he said.

The supreme leader left open a small window for a legal challenge to the vote. He reiterated that he has ordered the Guardian Council, an unelected body of 12 clerics and Islamic law experts close to the supreme leader, to investigate voter fraud claims.

The Council has said it was prepared to conduct a limited recount of ballots at sites where candidates claim irregularities.

He stressed that the four candidates were part of the country's Islamic system reminded listeners that Mousavi was prime minister of Iran when Khamenei was president in the 1980s.

"All of them belong to the system. It was a competition within the ruling system," he said.

So far, protesters have focused on the results of the balloting rather than challenging the Islamic system of government. But a shift in anger toward Iran's non-elected theocracy could result in a showdown over the foundation of Iran's system of rule.

Ahmadinejad has appeared to take the growing opposition more seriously in recent days, backtracking Thursday on his dismissal of the protesters as "dust" and sore losers.

The crowds in Tehran and elsewhere have been able to organize despite a government clampdown on the Internet and cell phones. The government has blocked certain Web sites, such as BBC Farsi, Facebook, Twitter and several pro-Mousavi sites that are vital conduits for Iranians to tell the world about protests and violence.

Text messaging, which is a primary source of spreading information in Tehran, has not been working since last week, and cell phone service in Tehran is frequently down. The government also has barred foreign news organizations from reporting on Tehran's streets.
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Re:Iran declares win for Ahmadinejad in disputed vote
« Reply #9 on: 2009-06-19 12:59:00 »
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[Fox] Very interesting article Hermit. But I wonder how this now compares and why Iran's Supreme Leader deemed the election a "definitive victory". The plot thickens.

[Hermit] Actually, I think that this simply supports what I have been saying all along. The highly popular, at least in the teeming masses with which Iran is well supplied, incumbent, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was re-elected with a very healthy two-thirds majority of the vote.

[Hermit] Any other claim is smoke and mirrors, and the hysteria to the contrary was created, probably deliberately and likely by people who are no friends of Iran.

[Hermit] The smoke is now clearing a little, allowing most of those without personal bias to see what was there all the time. There was lots of evidence for Ahmadinejad's public support, and no tangible evidence of electoral fraud at all.

[Hermit] What will take time to unravel is who if anyone was responsible for the claims to the contrary (America? Israel? Individuals? Liberals? Neocons?), the "perfect storm" of media lead hysteria, and perhaps whether this lead directly to the riots and deaths. Whether Iran will be able to act against anyone who bore legal or ethical responsibility, direct or contributory is less than clear. For example, had the deaths been Israeli, an American Court may well establish that the directors of Twitter carry a contributory legal responsibility, although, being that the mayhem and deaths were Iranian, even if Americans are shown to be involved, America's rather visibly biased injustice system might well refuse to examine such questions. And if Israelis or national intelligence services were involved, it may well be difficult for Iran to respond in any public fashion, although my guess is that if they are not already disgusted beyond belief (and they ought to be), they might try to take any evidence they develop before the Security Council. Unfortunately for Iran and the world, it is clear that the US controls that body in an even more blatantly partisan fashion than they do their court system - or there would not currently be sanctions causing massive damage to Iran's economy when Iran has clearly not provided any cause for such sanctions.

[Hermit] I am content to let this develop over time without trying to predict every turn and twist in the plot. I will say that the Iranians are not only one of the world's oldest civilizations, but that they are extremely clever and very, very good at dealing with court intrigue. I'm sure they will develop a response. Even if the response is to simply close their shell a little tighter against Western ideas. Which is all that sanctions ever really achieves - other than starving the poor in the futile hope that this will lead the wealthy to surrender.
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Re:Iran declares win for Ahmadinejad in disputed vote
« Reply #10 on: 2009-06-19 20:11:18 »
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Re:Iran declares win for Ahmadinejad in disputed vote
« Reply #11 on: 2009-06-19 23:04:04 »
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Re:Iran declares win for Ahmadinejad in disputed vote
« Reply #12 on: 2009-06-20 01:05:49 »
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Mo, I think perhaps:
  • You greatly underestimate the Iranians. You have forgotten that they not only invented chess, but also the puzzle of its inventor who asked for 1 grain of rice on the 1st square, 2 grains on the second square, etc. And who the Shah of the day was smart enough to execute immediately rather than having to wait to discover that he could not afford the final sum (a moral may be drawn from the contrast with Americans, who are still paying their bankers handsomely to create money for them). These are also the people who used teams of thousands of women to sort and paste the fragments of tens of thousands of documents shredded by the Americans in the embassy at the fall of the Peacock Throne, and pasted them back into complete documents which were then photographed - on both sides, interpreted, and the originals and interpretations placed on exhibition, to prove to the world how America had conspired against the Iranian people. They understand pattern analysis, mathematics, progressions and percentages as well as anyone. They have successfully launched vehicles into space and solved many nuclear challenges alone and while suffering under bruising sanctions.
  • You don't understand that the chronology is all wrong for fraud. First the opposition claimed to have won the election, then claimed electoral fraud well before official electoral results were available. The twitter storm, begun after the JPost pointed to a few twitterers, also began well before official results were released.
  • You don't understand the Iranian poll counting methodology perhaps because you have forgotten (if you knew) that during the Second World War the major combatants called rooms full of women computers and used them to perform amazing complicated calculations for ballistics, bomb-aimers, encryption, nuclear fission and so forth. This was not a new idea. The Persians  (now known, of course, as the Iranians) were using rooms full of abasists (l'ab'aq - the sand) to perform complex calculations by 600 BCE (ie, over 2600 years ago). The idea was reinvented by a French astronomer in the 1700s and used by the British for their global trigonometric surveys in the 1800s. Amazing what you can accomplish with parallel processing. So when you say their results were given too fast, you may have missed the point that each polling point had a team of workers that validated and counted the ballots into piles, totalized them and called the totals. In parallel. In case you missed the point. Not only is it very quick, but also thousands of people are involved in the counting. Which actually makes fraud very difficult to accomplish.
  • Like many others, you are seeing a small English speaking elite protesting using sophisticated methods, not the huge masses who are not.
I think all the above points are well supported by the articles and analysis I posted prior to the troll-flood. I give particular credit to the article by the Farsi speaking Robert Fisk, internationally recognized doyen of foreign correspondents and brilliant Arabist. Pay careful attention to what he reports, not about the brutality, but about the voting. "The election figures are correct, Robert. Whatever you saw in Tehran, in the cities and in thousands of towns outside, they voted overwhelmingly for Ahmadinejad. Tabriz voted 80 per cent for Ahmadinejad. It was he who opened university courses there for the Azeri people to learn and win degrees in Azeri. In Mashad, the second city of Iran, there was a huge majority for Ahmadinejad after the imam of the great mosque attacked Rafsanjani of the Expediency Council who had started to ally himself with Mousavi. They knew what that meant: they had to vote for Ahmadinejad." ... "You know why so many poorer women voted for Ahmadinejad? There are three million of them who make carpets in their homes. They had no insurance. When Ahmadinejad realised this, he immediately brought in a law to give them full insurance. Ahmadinejad's supporters were very shrewd. They got the people out in huge numbers to vote – and then presented this into their vote for Ahmadinejad."

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Re:Iran declares win for Ahmadinejad in disputed vote
« Reply #13 on: 2009-06-20 04:15:25 »
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[Blunderov] Why is it, I can't help wondering, that Israel is so hell bent on precipitating a war between America and Iran? (This business about an "existential" threat to Israel is, let's face it, very obviously snake oil of the rudest sort.) So why? Answer: so that Zion can bask in an actual relevance to the United States amounting to more than just the trinket of the Jewish vote back home. Bottom line: Israel has no oil and "peak oil" is now an acknowledged geo-political fact. Remember; "America has no friends, only interests." The times they are a changin' - and Israel knows it!

My take, anyway.



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Re:Iran declares win for Ahmadinejad in disputed vote
« Reply #14 on: 2009-06-21 14:55:19 »
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