CPV representatives point to several indicators of an Iranian neo-conservative plot to steal the election. For one, they note that over 59 million ballots have been printed, far more than the number of registered voters. They also have evidence that a substantial, though undetermined, number of soldiers has been ordered to hand over their national identity cards to officers. Most importantly, according to another CPV report, up to a third of voting booths in Iran will be protected by the Revolutionary Guards, and not the regular Law Enforcement Agency personnel.posted by LooseFilter at 8:53 AM on June 13, 2009 [5 favorites]
To lend vote-rigging an air of religious legitimacy, a prominent hardline cleric has reportedly issued a fatwa, or religious edict, that would condone fraud in the name of supposedly defending the spirit of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Israel fear an Iran with nukes and an announcement that they will destroy IsraelPlease. Israel has the best military in the region, including an untold number of nuclear weapons. Iran is 1000 miles away, and in between the two countries there's Israel's best buddy with 100,000+ troops, advanced weapons, and an aircraft carrier or two
Like the rest of the world, we were impressed by the vigorous debate and enthusiasm that this election generated, particularly among young Iranians. We continue to monitor the entire situation closely, including reports of irregularities.It doesn't call an apparent fraud a fraud, but it's not "naive" either.
According to Ghalam News and multiple Twitterers in Tehran, the text messaging system in Iran has been taken down, just hours before polls open for Friday's presidential election.(...)posted by DreamerFi at 11:15 AM on June 13, 2009
The Ghalam News report, translated from Persian, says that the popular network "was cut off throughout the country." The action occurred just before midnight local time, less than nine hours before the start of elections. "All walks of life from all over the country" are discovering that "messages on different cell phone networks will not send."
damn dirty ape: They dont seem to mind theocracy, but dictators, but I honestly cant see how you can have one without the other. You cant have justice without secularism.That's the issue in a nutshell. If the religious leadership supports a secular election that is seen as unjust, do they lose credibility? Will the anger die down as people accept the result, or will the theocrats have to backtrack?
Likewise, there was more wave-to-wave variation in the Ahmadinejad-Moosavi results than the statistical analysis I cited above seems to imply. Ignoring votes for minor candidates, Ahmadinejad won a high of 70.4 percent of the votes in Wave 1, and a low of 62.3 percent in the votes newly added in Wave 6. By comparison, Obama's share of the newly-added votes in our experiment ranged from 56.4 percent in Wave 3 to 44.7 percent in Wave 4. That's slightly more variance than we saw in the Iranian results but not much.So even with big variation in results, both in the Iranian election, and with they hypothetical alphabetical organization of states, you still get a linear graph.
What is your reaction to the results of the election?posted by delmoi at 3:25 PM on June 13, 2009
Many of us believe that the election was rigged. Not only Mousavi. We don't have any doubt. And as far as we are concerned, it is not legitimate.
There were many, many irregularities. They did not permit the candidates to supervise the election or the counting of the ballots at the polling places. The minister of the interior announced that he would oversee the final count in his office, at the ministry, with only two aides present.
In previous elections, they announced the results in each district, so people could follow up and make a judgment about the validity of the figures. In 2005, there were problems: in one district there were about 100,000 eligible voters, and they announced a total vote of 150,000. This time they didn't even release information about each particular district.
In all, there were about 45,000 polling places. There were 14,000 mobile ones, that can move from place to place. Many of us protested that. Originally, these mobile polling places were supposed to be used in hospitals and so on. This time, they were used in police stations, army bases, and various military compounds. When it comes to the military compounds and so on, if even 500 extra votes were put into each of the 14,000 boxes, that is seven million votes.
Mousavi and Karroubi had earlier established a joint committee to protect the peoples' votes. Many young people volunteered to work on that committee. But the authorities didn't let it happen. Last night [that is, election night] the security forces closed down that committee. There is no way, independent of the government and the Guardian Council, to verify the results.
I was at a book party for Bob Wright's The Evolution of God last night, and even then it was obvious that the Interior Ministry was probably rigging the vote. One of the topics of conversation was: when autocracies decide to do something like this, why do they do it so clumsily? Why not give Ahmadinejad 52.7% of the vote, which would be at least within the realm of reason? Or force a runoff and let Ahmadinejad win a week from now? Why perpetrate such an obvious fraud?posted by delmoi at 4:19 PM on June 13, 2009
Hard to say. Maybe it's just too hard to orchestrate something more believable. Maybe, against all evidence, they believe that smashing victories are always more convincing than close ones. Maybe it's just rank panic and stupidity. It's a mystery — and a counterproductive one, too: there isn't a person on the planet who thinks that Ahmadinejad could have won two-thirds of the vote with a turnout of 85%, and the possibility of inciting an internal revolt is a lot higher with a barefaced fraud like this than it would be with something a little more subtle.
On the other hand, maybe we're looking at this through the wrong lens. Obviously something about Mousavi started to badly spook the powers-that-be during the past week, and maybe they decided something needed to be done about it. Maybe they wanted to provoke a round of violence from Mousavi's supporters as an excuse to lead a crackdown on dissidents. And what better way to do that than to make the election rigging so obvious even a child could see it?
This empire has 100,000 or so troops occupying the country on my western border
Top four headlines on CNN.com at the moment:Unhappy twitterers have made #CNNFail one of the current Trending Topics.
Six Flags files for bankruptcy
Are you at Bonnaroo?
'Pelham 123' with a twist
America's best burgers
The next few days will reveal how far Mousavi supporters are willing to go to challenge the regime. They will also show how far the authorities are willing to go in suppressing dissent, whether they will clamp down on former safety valves for dissent like the internet. Either way, the events of the past few days have the makings of a turning point. It seems unlikely that Iran can carry on as before. It will be more repressive and quite possibly more turbulent.posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 12:24 PM on June 14, 2009
We have to wait for the result of Rafsanjani-Mousavi meeting to find out how the reformists are planning to respond to what they call "the fraud of the century." Judging from their past actions they will most probably reluctantly will accept the result and will not do much. That will leave their supporters angry and suppressed. The events of the past few weeks, especially last night's result, have polarized Iranians. The political developments may not result in any mass demonstrations such as those that brought down the shah in 1979. But today's chaos on Vali Asr Avenue shows that a great number of Iranians, at least those millions who voted for Mousavi can at some point in the future ask for a change that may not only reform the Islamic Republic but undermine it as a political system.posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 12:29 PM on June 14, 2009
Exactly. These people, aside from urban elites, are anti-west islamic theocrats. They have no love of secularism or anything western. In fact they hate these values. The blog fivethirtyeight has already debunked the only real data that people think points to vote fraudThat's absurd. There is nothing wrong with the chart but there is enormous evidence that the election wasn't on the level. Juan Cole posted nine different pieces of evidence last night.
This all sounds like 2000 and 2004 again. The typical "ZOMG THEY STOLE THE ELECTION WITH THUGS AND VOTING MACHINES DIEBOLD NEW WORLD ORDER 9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB" bullshit.Dude, this is Iran. It would not be very difficult at all to suppress the results.
"The 10th presidential election was an epic and ominous event," Ayatollah Khamenei said on Sunday."Epic and ominous"?
[A] selection of popular links, many of which have been written from a particular point of view but - when taken together - provide a wide range of perspectives.posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 5:23 PM on June 14, 2009
posted by Surfurrus at 11:28 PM on June 14, 2009 [2 favorites]
wow such a lovely atmosphere,these yells is because of the result of election and we show our defiance like this
about 13 hours ago from web
#IranElection everything is horrible here,police hasn't any men to send here city contoroled by people,all ashcan had fired in the street-
about 10 hours ago from web
#IranElection I have not slept for 40 hours now:(( cause i can't sleep
about 9 hours ago from web
@Nuztorad lock up everydoors we are in bedroom and sit a corner
about 9 hours ago from TwitterFox in reply to Nuztorad
#IranElection i just can says President Obama help us...hete 2:13 am we can't sleep at all even eat something even cry.we are out of tears about 8 hours ago from web
#iranelection i eats some pills and wanna sleep and i scared that if they can find me ...i going...thx for your supports....
about 8 hours ago from web
It was a departure for CNN, known for its breaking news coverage, including its celebrated reporting during the Tiananmen Square crackdown 20 years ago. [...] Steve LaBate, an Atlanta resident, said on Twitter, “Why aren’t you covering this with everything you’ve got?” About the same time, CNN was showing a repeat of Larry King’s interview of the stars of the “American Chopper” show.posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 8:42 AM on June 15, 2009
Andrew Sullivan (and others in this thread) have noted that neo-cons seem to want Ahmedinejad to win, or have won, and don't seem particularly upset at the possibility of fraud.I'm not sure that they want Ahmedinejad to have won. I think that they believe that he won, because that confirms their opinions about how things work in Iran. Ordinary people in Iran are wacky, brainwashed Muslims who hate freedom and happiness and the West, and nobody is going to convince them differently. On the other side, I think that a lot of American liberals really want to believe that ordinary Iranians are basically just like us, and there might be some confirmation bias there, too.
Amid a swirl of rumour, two alternative sets of statistics purporting to represent the reformist presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi as the "true" winner of Iran's disputed presidential election have been circulating in Tehran.posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 11:39 AM on June 15, 2009
According to Voice of America reports, up to 5,000 Hezbollah militia members from Lebanon would be assisting the regime in the confrontation.posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 6:14 PM on June 15, 2009
[T]here is virtually no mass opposition to the regime, and little likelihood of it brewing up in 2009. So the regime, though pained by sanctions, will reckon on surviving them.No mention of Mousavi, either. To be fair, they are often wrong, and as it's an out-and-out crystal ball, speculate-what-will-happen-next-year affair, I can't really blame them when it comes to "The World In...". Interesting nonetheless.
The biggest political event in Iran’s calendar will be the presidential election. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the incumbent, is widely considered to have messed up the economy, so more pragmatic leaders will bid to oust him. Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president who opposes Mr Ahmadinejad, is ineligible to run, because he will turn 75 in February, but Mehdi Karroubi, a former speaker of parliament, and Muhammad Khatami, another former president, may stand for the pragmatists’ wing. As before, out-and-out reformers will be barred by vetting councils of conservative clerics.
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posted by elfgirl at 8:39 AM on June 13, 2009 [2 favorites]