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“This questions the principles of election and democracy.”

dante

Unabomber
Feb 13, 2004
8,807
9
looking for classic NE singletrack
I'm just floored by the current Iran regime. The Islamic Republic came into being 30 years ago by a popular uprising that was sick and tired of being beaten in the streets and hauled off to jail by the secret police of the Shah. Now they are in danger of being overthrown by a popular uprising that is sick and tired of being beaten in the streets and hauled off to jail by non-uniformed militias. The actions are almost identical, only the names have changed*.


* And many of the names are the same as they were, including Mousavi, Rafsanjani, and... ?
 

jonKranked

Detective Dookie
Nov 10, 2005
85,559
24,182
media blackout
There seems to be a growing rift in the Iranian gov't. I've been following this fairly closely all week. Its pretty obvious that Ayatollah Khamenei has sided with Ahmadinejad, which puts him at odds with Rafsanjani, who supports Moussavi. Rafsanjani is the head of a council which has the authority to remove the president. There's a big power struggle going on behind the scenes of the protest.

I've read unconfirmed reports that people have found boxes of official ballots dumped on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. There are also reports that some provinces reported a larger voter turnout than there are registered voters in those regions.


According to this article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2009/jun/17/iran-uprising someone from the Interior Ministry had leaked the actual results, and was suspiciously killed the next day.

The man who leaked the real election results from the Interior Ministry - the ones showing Ahmadinejad coming third - was killed in a suspicious car accident, according to unconfirmed reports, writes Saeed Kamali Dehghan in Tehran.

Mohammad Asgari, who was responsible for the security of the IT network in Iran's interior ministry, was killed yesterday in Tehran.

Asgari had reportedly leaked results that showed the elections were rigged by government use of new software to alter the votes from the provinces.

Asgari was said to have leaked information that showed Mousavi had won almost 19 million votes, and should therefore be president.
 

Silver

find me a tampon
Jul 20, 2002
10,840
1
Orange County, CA
Woo hoo!

You mean if the good guy wins Iran gets the guy who was a puppet Prime Minister that they had under Khomeni?

That's like picking between cancer and AIDS. At least you have a choice!

(Actually, the clerics might be crazy like a fox here...)
 

sanjuro

Tube Smuggler
Sep 13, 2004
17,373
0
SF
There seems to be a growing rift in the Iranian gov't. I've been following this fairly closely all week. Its pretty obvious that Ayatollah Khamenei has sided with Ahmadinejad, which puts him at odds with Rafsanjani, who supports Moussavi. Rafsanjani is the head of a council which has the authority to remove the president. There's a big power struggle going on behind the scenes of the protest.

I've read unconfirmed reports that people have found boxes of official ballots dumped on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. There are also reports that some provinces reported a larger voter turnout than there are registered voters in those regions.
I don't think it is hard to figure out there was voter fraud. Two things stand out:

1. No outside election monitoring and the internal system was a joke
2. About half the votes were paper ballots, approx 39 million. The election was called 12 hours after the polls closed. Just compare it to the Minnesota Senate election.
 
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jonKranked

Detective Dookie
Nov 10, 2005
85,559
24,182
media blackout
I don't think it is hard to figure out there was voter fraud. Two things stand out:

1. No outside election monitoring and the internal system was a joke
2. About half the votes were paper ballots, approx 39 million. The election was called 12 hours after the polls closed. Just compare it to the Minnesota Senate election.
I'm not arguing that there was or wasn't (all evidence points to fraud). What's important is how the aftermath is playing out. The fact that the younger generation (a growing segment of the population) is standing up and protesting in such an oppressive regime is one of the most important events. These actions are starting to form a rift between the power figures in the Iranian gov't.
 

RenegadeRick

98th percentile on my SAT & all I got was this tin
I've read unconfirmed reports that people have found boxes of official ballots dumped on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. There are also reports that some provinces reported a larger voter turnout than there are registered voters in those regions.
I thought this was about the 2000 US Presidential election.
Sounds just like it. 2004 for that matter as well.
 

Jim Mac

MAKE ENDURO GREAT AGAIN
May 21, 2004
6,352
282
the middle east of NY
So, no more "bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran"?

"Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum at the conservative Hoover Institute, said he'd vote for Ahmadinejad because "I would prefer to have an enemy who's forthright, blatant, and obvious." Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute added that a Moussavi win would make it "easier for Obama to believe that Iran really was figuratively unclenching a fist when, in fact, it had its other hand hidden under its cloak, grasping a dagger."
 

jonKranked

Detective Dookie
Nov 10, 2005
85,559
24,182
media blackout
So, no more "bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran"?

"Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum at the conservative Hoover Institute, said he'd vote for Ahmadinejad because "I would prefer to have an enemy who's forthright, blatant, and obvious." Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute added that a Moussavi win would make it "easier for Obama to believe that Iran really was figuratively unclenching a fist when, in fact, it had its other hand hidden under its cloak, grasping a dagger."
Funny that that sorry racist Pipes has the same opinion as Israel.


Officially and in public, at least, Israeli officials have spoken of their deep concern about Ahmadinejad's apparent re-election. Israel's rightwing government, under the leadership of prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, has made a priority of challenging Iran's nuclear ambitions. On Sunday night, Netanyahu said the world's greatest challenge today was "the nexus between radical Islam and nuclear weapons".

In private, Israeli officials appeared to be hoping for an *Ahmadinejad victory even before the polls opened, despite his vitriolic *criticism of Israel, his denial of the *Holocaust and his apparent eagerness for a nuclear weapons programme.

Israeli newspapers quoted several senior officials anonymously saying that a win for Ahmadinejad would help Israel because, as they saw it, none of the candidates differed very much on policy and Ahmadinejad's strong language and blunt actions made him easier to criticise internationally. "Considering the circumstances, he is the best thing that ever happened to us," one foreign ministry official was quoted as saying in the popular Ma'ariv newspaper last Friday.

Ben Caspit, a Ma'ariv columnist, put it even more bluntly that morning: "If you have friends in Iran, try to convince them to vote for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today … There is no one who will serve Israel's PR interests better than him."

Far fewer were the voices who questioned that line of thinking. Among them was Aluf Benn, a Ha'aretz *columnist who dismissed the support for Ahmadinejad as a "blatant manifestation of the narrow horizons of Israeli strategic thinking".
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/18/iran-election-protests-middle-east