|
On June 15 2009 17:18 Xeris wrote:Show nested quote +On June 15 2009 17:04 InToTheWannaB wrote:
Xeris how can you be so sure the election was free and fair ? The only reason there was no riots in the US was because the opposition could challenge the results. Expelling the media, shutting down communications with the outside world, and rejecting any investigation into the election is not the actions of a party that has nothing to fear. If they had won fair and square I could see using force to put down any violent riots, but you use the media to let the opposition and public at large know that they will have a chance to challenge the results peacefully. You don't kick them out and try to keep everyone in the dark. Ahmadinejad's is guilty of at best being are terrible leader or at worst a despot. I'm not saying it was 100% free and fair, but I am saying that if there was any fraud or rigging, it wouldn't have changed the result. What evidence do you have to support any of your claims about Ahmadinejad? I don't even fucking like him but I'm smart enough to be able to look at his presidency in an objective manner and take both positives and negatives. He has not been a particularly good president, but in no way has he been what you claim. Let's look at it: Terrible leader - that's simply false. In fact, if he's done anything right it has been his image as a leader. He is one of the most popular and recognizable figures not just in Iran but in the entire Middle East. He is seen as an anti-West champion who is leading his country to an increasing regional and world standing despite all the pressure from the West. If anything that makes him a GOOD leader. He has kept a simple lifestyle despite being extremely powerful, and has pursued a nuclear program even though the rest of the world doesn't want him to. Those are good qualities, so I'm not sure how you could claim he is a terrible leader. He's done a lot of bad things - rolling back reforms, messing up the economy, and failing to distribute oil wealth to the people... but he's not as evil as people are making him out to be. He's a fervent nationalist.
I was saying he a terrible leader or a despot because of the way he is handling this election. He could of just came before the media and told the public/opposition that they will have a chance to challenge the results, and people would of been alot calmer. That's what happens in nations that have free elections. His Soviet like actions are just pushing people to react violently.
|
If there is mass protest by the universities (aka the most educated groups), it seems likely there was fraud. I really don't know at all, but that's just my 2 cents.
|
Round up:
* Early reports of mass resignations from Sharif Polytechnic University seem to be true. The summary I'm seeing on facebook reads as follows: " Students from the Sharif Polytechnic University have organized a large protest on the university campus. As they tried to move the protest into the street, in order to march down the streets of Tehran, their exits and gates were blocked by the regime’s security guards and they were blocked from leaving the university grounds; at this juncture the students began to chant loudly and when the sound of their chanting was heard by passersby on the street, they began to gather by the thousands at the other side of the university gates. As reported by the human rights and democracy activists in Iran, the entire area was surrounded by the regime’s guards, who have begun to attack and beat the students and supporting demonstrators. Javan’eh Farda (Tomorrow’s Youth) website reported that, in a statement, 125 members of the Sharif Polytechnic University faculty have condemned the attacks on the students and have jointly announced their resignations, stating that until the time the people’s rights are given, they will neither appear in classes nor for any exams."
As I mentioned in comments earlier today, there are twitter reports that the main Iranian army told the Revolutionary Guard that it would not fire on Iranian citizens. This would square with the widespread reports indicating that the dissent-quellers involve many Arabic speakers. It's hypothesized that the regime is using Ansar-e Hezbollah forces to quell the protests.
Some hospitals were/are being surrounded by troops thereby preventing the injured from being taken care of.
Most or all Iranian news agencies appear to have been taken over by government forces.
Some are asking everyone to show their support for the Green Movement by wearing green on Tuesday.
ABC and NBC affiliates have had their film and cameras confiscated.
BBC has been ordered out of the country.
TehranBureau website has been gone for about half a day.
Mousavi and all other presidential challengers are apparently under house arrest.
Ayatollah Khomeini's granddaughter has reportedly been placed under arrest.
Ben Knight reports that the brother of former president Khatami has been arrested.
Reformist groups are reporting as many as 100 members arrested. Early information suggested that most of these arrests were made early, just after the election to try to decapitate potential protests. (This seems in line with SMS messaging being cut off before the elections and cell phone service going down more recently)
Tabnak, Mr.Rezaie's website, one of the candidates, just announced that Mousavi had a brief meeting with the supreme leader last night.
|
Here's an interesting comment left on 538's updated polling results:
I took a look at the spreadsheet another commenter linked to with the city reports and checked the frequency of all the last digits. In the Vietnam war, they faked body counts and this was statistically noticeable. Here are the counts:
Last Count Normal Cummulative Distribution
0 215 99.04%
1 189 66.98%
2 185 55.82%
3 191 72.10%
4 183 50.00%
5 170 17.05%
6 169 15.26%
7 173 23.20%
8 174 25.49%
9 181 44.18%
0 is the most popular last digit, and it is more than 2 standard deviations above the mean. It is less than 1% likely this would naturally happen.
i'm no math expert, but it makes you wonder
|
All I know from Iran's politics is what I read in this thread + some other websites in these last few days. So please someone correct me if I'm mistaken. Which is highly likely. But this is what I've gathered so far:
- Ahmadinejad is against US foreign politics
- Mousavi supports US foreign politics
- Ahmadinejad won an election that was really expected to win by most Iranians
- Western media accuses Ahmadinejad of fraud and says Mousavi was expected to win, and makes a big fuss about it
then
- afraid of the media trying to ruin him. Ahmadinejad starts mass censoring
- based on western media fraud accusations Mousavi protests and incentives supporters to protests, thus gets arrested
- western media uses censorship, arrests and protests as fuel to pressure Ahmadinejad
Am I correct?
|
United Kingdom2674 Posts
I've been keeping a close eye on media reports of the election in Iran and it seemed to me that during the lead up to the election much of the media in Britain was reporting that Ahmadinejad was the strong favourite to win, although there was considerable interest in what the popularity of his opponent's relatively reformist agenda might tell us about Iran's future.
As far as my own experience of the coverage of the election goes, it was only on the day of the election itself that the media started to entertain the notion that Mousavi might have a real chance of winning.
Certainly the media in Britain now seems to have completely forgotten that it was predicting an Ahmadinejad victory.
As far as general consideration of the election goes, I think there is a strong tendency in the West to reason along the following lines: Ahmadinejad is a really bad guy so he cannot win, so if he does win then the election must have been rigged. This is obviously unsatisfactory thinking, and something people need to guard against.
Of course, I am open to reviewing any evidence of fraud.
|
United Kingdom2674 Posts
Putting the validity of the election result aside, of course the reaction to the protests is a matter of great concern.
|
On June 15 2009 17:32 Xeris wrote:Show nested quote +On June 15 2009 17:29 InToTheWannaB wrote:On June 15 2009 17:06 Xeris wrote:
I don't think there is really a legal avenue with which to dispute election results. If the situation was similar to Gore v. Bush in that it was something like 50.1% vs 49.9% with Ahmadinejad winning by a hair, and there being no formal method for contesting the results, THEN I could understand the frustration and bitterness.
The fact that he won by 12 MILLION votes leaves little doubt about the winner. You can't just make up that kind of shit in broad daylight. If you look at it, nobody was saying a word during the election process, people would have seen the signs of fraud if it was taking place on such a grand scale. lol how can you say that? That's like saying Saddam Hussein really won his election because he had 100% of the vote lol. ITS SUCH A WIDE MARGIN OF VICTORY HOW CAN IT BE FAKE!!! Lets not even look into it lol. You are likely right and that there is no real way to investigate the results but shit. At least pay lip serves to it and calm people down. Before anyone brings it up yes i know he ran against no one but the point remains the same That's not even a comparison. Iraq was a dictatorship, Iran is mostly democratic. Nice try. If you want to randomly interject into an argument you might try actually making reasonable and logical posts rather than coming with completely biased/wrong shit that for all we know you just pulled out of your ass. I'm saying that if there was such mass-scale election fraud, people would have noticed it BEFOREHAND. The government didn't just mysteriously rig 12 million+ votes at the last second under everyone's noses. Remember, Western media was covering that shit in Iran for a little over a week, surely Christiane Amanpour would have sniffed out the election fraud if there was any long ago, right?! Nope, didn't happen, because until the actual results came in nobody said a word about that shit.
Why does it matter if Iran is mostly democratic and Iraq was a dictatorship? The point is that a large margin of victory does not mean the election was legit. As for your point that 12 million votes could not be rigged the day of an election. Well.... I really don't know how long it would take, or if it can be hidden from people. I have never tryed to rig an election before, but i am betting nether have you. So maybe someone should be aloud to investigate rather then just boldly proclaming it could not have possibly been done and he would of won anyway because you really just don't know do you?
|
On June 15 2009 17:55 VIB wrote:
All I know from Iran's politics is what I read in this thread + some other websites in these last few days. So please someone correct me if I'm mistaken. Which is highly likely. But this is what I've gathered so far:
- Ahmadinejad is against US foreign politics
- Mousavi supports US foreign politics
- Ahmadinejad won an election that was really expected to win by most Iranians
- Western media accuses Ahmadinejad of fraud and says Mousavi was expected to win, and makes a big fuss about it
then
- afraid of the media trying to ruin him. Ahmadinejad starts mass censoring
- based on western media fraud accusations Mousavi protests and incentives supporters to protests, thus gets arrested
- western media uses censorship, arrests and protests as fuel to pressure Ahmadinejad
Am I correct?
your 3rd and 4th points are definitely up for debate / have little support
|
- Western media accuses Ahmadinejad of fraud and says Mousavi was expected to win, and makes a big fuss about it
wtf?
All i heard in western media before the actual results is that Ahmadinejad was expected to win but Mousavi has at least a chance / is doing better than most people would have thought.
|
On June 15 2009 17:40 travis wrote:
If there is mass protest by the universities (aka the most educated groups), it seems likely there was fraud. I really don't know at all, but that's just my 2 cents.
Mate, this is the problem with this kind of democracy. It's all about the masses of uneducated people, not about the elites.
Of course, they are upset, because as far as i understand most educated people/elites voted for Moussavi instead of Ahmani-nejad. But that simply does not involve a real fraud.
VIB, yes, but it's nothing new.
And that comparison with Saddam... does it mean that if Saddam would have won elections it was fraud just because he was a "bad guy"? (in western vision). Also don't try and make a silly claim like that, 100% isn't anyway near 70-80% (which have been happening in many countries).
As for statistics, can anyone post the official statistics of the votes?
|
I don't understand you Xeris. You or your parents had to flee the current regime in Iran.
While you are getting an education and organizing SC tournaments, those people you condemn are, out of total desperation, risking their lives for your vote and your country. You are basically supporting Ahmadinejad. Why? You already gave up on Iran? Or do you plan to return? Not everyone has the luxury of leaving Iran to live elsewhere. In the mean time Iran is becoming the Zimbabwe of the middle east. Despite oil riches the economy has some of the worst inflation. People with university degrees can't get any jobs. And woman have little rights. Sure, not Saudi Arabia. But the Iranian people are different from those of Saudi Arabia.
Iran is being destroyed. All young educated people will leave if they have the chance. It's isolated in the world; Iran has no allies and that's exactly how Ahmadinejad wants it. That's why his supporters support him. And the economy is in freefall.
Change has to happen. But there is an authoritative government so they have to resist change or lose all power.
Now these people are up against the famous Iranian paramilitary units. And you are angry at them? Why? Yes, stuff is being destroyed. People are hurt at both sides. But this has to happen. Authoritive regimes like this one cannot last. Especially not when the economy fails like it is doing now. Young men now have to fight for their votes. Even more so in a country where like 2/3rd is under 30 and the elite is trying to enforce Saudi Arabia style religious morals.
Yeah, its the US fault they were even able to get to power. But this is all ugly dirty business. Freedom you can only have with bloodshed. In every country where people have freedom many had to die.
It doesn't even mean if Ahmadinejad supporters are truly the majority. They can't oppress the more liberal thinking western oriented young people like they are doing now. They are forcing their religious way of life on others, not the other way around. If they can't then there will be violence. The more suppressive a regime, the more force is on it trying to pull it down. All these authoritative governments erode themselves and fall. And they always know this. That is why they are responding so desperately. And it works. Look at China. The only difference is that there Deng Xiaoping learned his lesson and only barely was able to do away with communist dogma and make China an oppressive state with impressive economic growth. Then freedom doesn't matter that much anymore. Ahmadinejad is more about dogma than anyone else. But it's better to ruin the country with Ahmadinejad than to have a revolution and lose all power.
If I were an Iranian I would seriously be very pissed off at what you say. You are there living your cosy life in the US, 'the arch enemy', and you tell them to just surrender and accept their fate. If not everyone supports the protest despite the risks and possible violence and destruction then it will never work. Imagine being there inside that university believing a revolution may be within reach while being besieged by some very hardline Ansar-e Hezbollah or Basij paramilitary units, all to eager to beat you up as close to death as they can if given the oppertunity. And then you read some stuff on the internet and you see all these American-Iranians condemning you. Angry for what you are doing to their country. I would call them traitors.
|
Oh, and all those people critical of democracy. You really need to think a lot harder about this. You can't have human rights without democracy. Yeah, it has some huge disadvantages. But without it there are no safety checks.
|
On June 15 2009 18:47 Pika Chu wrote:Show nested quote +On June 15 2009 17:40 travis wrote:
If there is mass protest by the universities (aka the most educated groups), it seems likely there was fraud. I really don't know at all, but that's just my 2 cents. Mate, this is the problem with this kind of democracy. It's all about the masses of uneducated people, not about the elites.
I would expect if they were actually going out to protest the election as a fraud, they would have some sort of proof and/or it would be obvious.
|
United Kingdom2674 Posts
On June 15 2009 18:12 Velr wrote:Show nested quote +- Western media accuses Ahmadinejad of fraud and says Mousavi was expected to win, and makes a big fuss about it wtf? All i heard in western media before the actual results is that Ahmadinejad was expected to win but Mousavi has at least a chance / is doing better than most people would have thought.
Quite. But I think you misunderstood at least part of Velr's point.
As I noted above, as far as I could tell the British media was predicting an Ahmadinejad victory right up to election day. That is, before the election. Now, in much of the British media at least, this has been consigned to the memory hole and the prevailing framework is that that Mousavi was expected to win.
|
Glaucus:
On June 15 2009 02:31 Xeris wrote:Show nested quote +On June 15 2009 02:27 MarklarMarklar wrote:
so who did (would) you vote for xeris I made my dad vote for Moussavi Pay more attention  Xeris is just pointing out that the western media coverage was misleading. That doesn't mean he is supporting Ahmadinejad.
|
You pay more attention. I said he is angry at those that are risking their life for his vote to be counted. Or at least that is what they believe.
What the true result has been doesn't even matter anymore. They probably made it look like it was rigged to trigger a response.
Yes he is basically supporting Ahmadinejad eventhough he voted for Mousavi. He is against a revolution. Even if Mousavi lost there should still be a revolution. Even those that agree with Ahmadinejad on every issue should support a revolution. Imagine the west somehow gets a new puppet in place. How are you going to get rid of it if you have such an oppressive government?
As for the actual result. No one knows.But if you compare it to last election, which was boycotted, then it makes sense for it to have been much closer. So many new people went out to vote. They didn't vote this time and not last time to vote for Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad got like 7 million more votes this time. That's like 42% more. You think denying the holocaust, offending the world and letting the economy get destroying got him so many new votes? Not saying he didn't win but it was made so to be obviously rigged.
And there are many reported irregularities and no international observers. Then when there are protests they respond the way they do. What can one say? Either it's a coup or they are very Incompetent.
|
On June 15 2009 17:55 VIB wrote:
Am I correct?
How the hell would any of us be able to answer that with any certainty? But yeah sure, the people of Iran could all be complicit in some Yanqui plot, rioting at our beck and call.
|
Hahahaha, saying this election wasn't rigged is quite funny. Anyway doesn't matter. Iran with it's current structure is a piece of shit and quite backwards anyway. How is the economy going Mr blacksmith boy Ahmanazijad? Do you still enjoy hanging 18 year old boys for being homosexual? Are you still kissing that nazi beard of heil ayatollah? Still want to eradicate every last Jew in Israel? Got nukes yet to use them against Israel?
A person like Masouvi with a broad base among the more educated people of Iran could change things for the better. So if it was a fair election, the results are still rubbish. A holocaust denier, state destroyer, mass gay murderer, intolerant piece of shit should not be president of a nation with more than 70 million people and people rightfully so protest against that.
|
On June 15 2009 19:45 Glaucus wrote:
As for the actual result. No one knows.But if you compare it to last election, which was boycotted, then it makes sense for it to have been much closer. So many new people went out to vote. They didn't vote this time and not last time to vote for Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad got like 7 million more votes this time. That's like 42% more. You think denying the holocaust, offending the world and letting the economy get destroying got him so many new votes? Not saying he didn't win but it was made so to be obviously rigged.
And there are many reported irregularities and no international observers. Then when there are protests they respond the way they do. What can one say? Either it's a coup or they are very Incompetent.
Ehh... I actually think denying the holocaust and attacking the west and Israel would get you more votes in Iran, especially if you constantly remind people it is the west that has imposed the sanctions and embargos on your country that has made the economy what it is and when has attacking israel ever hurt your political prospects in an islamic state?
Do U.S elections have international observers?
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
