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motbob
United States12546 Posts
On June 17 2009 03:16 Xeris wrote:Show nested quote +On June 17 2009 02:26 Last Romantic wrote:
I still don't understand why Xeris refuses to see that the election was so transparently rigged.
Reports of the strike say most Tehran offices/businesses are deserted. I still don't understand why you're posting here when you have no clue what you're talking about? Maybe try reading my posts in this thread. What evidence do you have that the election was "so transparently rigged" ? You shouldn't make outlandish claims when you don't understand the situation at all.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/06/16/iran.election.questions/index.html
biased foreign press?
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This is beyond the matter of whether it was rigged or not. There is simply no transparency in the electoral system. Even if it wasn't rigged, the elections in Iran are carried in an unacceptable way for a country claiming to be a functioning democracy. Because the system is so poorly and unfairly designed, it is expectable that people will feel the elections are unjust. Iranian authorities use tyrannical supression measures and disallow freedom of press and expression, it is then no wonder there is outrage and riots in the streets.
I understand why stability in Iran would be desireable for some, but it is a stability that leads to a continuation of awfully poor economic policies, an increasing international isolation and a an illiberal state.
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On June 17 2009 03:16 Xeris wrote:Show nested quote +On June 17 2009 02:26 Last Romantic wrote:
I still don't understand why Xeris refuses to see that the election was so transparently rigged.
Reports of the strike say most Tehran offices/businesses are deserted. I still don't understand why you're posting here when you have no clue what you're talking about? Maybe try reading my posts in this thread. What evidence do you have that the election was "so transparently rigged" ? You shouldn't make outlandish claims when you don't understand the situation at all.
To be fair, the idea that this was rigged is being spoken about as if it were fact in the western media. I think it is to early to say what has happened. Obviously if there was foul play that is a problem, but if this was a legitimate victory there needs to be some respect for the institution and the democratic process. On the flip side, I would be surprised if foreign governments were not in some way involved in organizing these protests. In the long run the health of government as an institution is more important than a temporary leader. The access to what is happening on the ground is very interesting, and certainly changes the dynamics of how propaganda can be used.
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On June 17 2009 03:25 motbob wrote:Show nested quote +On June 17 2009 03:16 Xeris wrote:On June 17 2009 02:26 Last Romantic wrote:
I still don't understand why Xeris refuses to see that the election was so transparently rigged.
Reports of the strike say most Tehran offices/businesses are deserted. I still don't understand why you're posting here when you have no clue what you're talking about? Maybe try reading my posts in this thread. What evidence do you have that the election was "so transparently rigged" ? You shouldn't make outlandish claims when you don't understand the situation at all. http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/06/16/iran.election.questions/index.htmlbiased foreign press?
What does that article have to do with my post? CNN is pretty biased, just because they've written a few neutral newses (like the one you just linked) doesn't change that? If you read my thesis I have a whole chapter basically talking about democracy in Iran and I went through several public opinion polls (also taken by Terror Free Tomorrow, among other sources) which found that many Iranians approve of the job Ahmadinejad has done as President.
Again, most evidence points to the fact that Ahmadinejad would win the election, sure Tabriz seems like an anomaly but also you need to consider this: people are saying how it is "strange" Ahmadinejad picked up a large % of votes. These people seem to not consider several factors
1) In 2005, Ahmadinejad was running against 7 people at first, plus he did not have an incumbency advantage. He was not a clear favorite, he was relatively unknown, and he didn't have major clerical support back then.
2) In the run-off he ended up picking up ~60ish percent of the vote
3) Now (2009) Ahmadinejad has an incumbency advantage, which in Iran is HUGE (incumbent has never lost, as I've said about 50x in this thread)
4) Pre-election polling and polls taken in 2006, 2007, and 2008 (each surveying ~1000 different Iranians from all over the country etc etc) show that a majority think Ahmadinejad has done a fairly decent job as President.
5) Ahmadinejad wins 2009 election with 62% of the vote. Surprise? All evidence leaned towards him winning and all of a sudden people are shocked that the expected result actually happened?
Seriously there are very few grounds that the election was rigged. Neither Moussavi or anybody else has put forth any serious challenge other than "IT WAS RIGGED, I KNOW IT!"
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On June 17 2009 03:27 warding wrote:
This is beyond the matter of whether it was rigged or not. There is simply no transparency in the electoral system. Even if it wasn't rigged, the elections in Iran are carried in an unacceptable way for a country claiming to be a functioning democracy. Because the system is so poorly and unfairly designed, it is expectable that people will feel the elections are unjust. Iranian authorities use tyrannical supression measures and disallow freedom of press and expression, it is then no wonder there is outrage and riots in the streets.
I understand why stability in Iran would be desireable for some, but it is a stability that leads to a continuation of awfully poor economic policies, an increasing international isolation and a an illiberal state.
Why are you assuming an illiberal state is good? Do you not understand that there is more than one conception of what a successful state can be? Have you considered that people in the country are fairly pleased with how things are? Sure Iran is not a utopian society, but it is not this "backward, oppressive regime" that you people are making it out to believe. I know there are even many Iranians who think this way, most Iranians living outside Iran think this way, and there are perhaps even a few million IN Iran who also think that way. But a majority of the country doesn't. A majority of the country are deeply religious and are generally happy with the way things are. It is not our business to tell Iran what kind of government they should have, what they should do with their media, and how they should run elections.
Elections have not been a major problem up until now, because a reformist lost who happened to run a pretty strong, modern campaign... that's the only reason. If Iran was such a tyrannical, conservative state there is NO WAY Khatami would have been President for 8 years. Anyone who thinks Iran is some sort of authoritarian/dictatorship country would have a pretty hard time explaining why a massively popular Khatami (he was probably 10x more popular than Moussavi ever will be) was elected and RE-elected to the Presidency. If any election were to be rigged to put a conservative in office it would have been either the 97 election or the 2000 election
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United States20666 Posts
1. You in your willful ignorance have simply been insisting the vote was fair and Ahmedinejad was a sure win. This completely circumvents the points that:
a) Every opposition candidate lost in their home district by a margin roughly equal to the total supposed vote [2:1ish] You insist on incumbent victory precedent - but you ignore hometown victory precedent. This is an odd double standard. Karroubi's votecount went from 5 million four years ago to a few hundred thousand this year; he has done nothing to lose that much popularity. If we accept the premise that 85% of the ~400,000+ party members he has registered in his home district went to vote, he would be expected to get more votes in his hometown than the national results gave him nationwide. This is patently absurd.
b) pre-election polling does not favour Ahmedinejad as much as you so vehemently trumpet. There are multiple polls suggesting 55-60ish for Mousavi and 20-25ish for ANejad. The polls that do give massive support for ANejad are the ones conducted by state-controlled media overseen by the President/Supreme Leader. Western talking heads suggested that it would likely go to a second round runoff, as in previous elections.
http://www.roozonline.com/persian/opinion/opinion-article/article/2009/june/08//-a2239d36f0.html
http://www.ilna.ir/newsText.aspx?ID=59037
[I do not read Farsi; however one of my best friends is an Iranian nat'l whom I have been asking for updates from]
c) The very way the elections were run - counted by a ministry controlled by the President - allows for easy manipulation. You have not addressed how the results were announced MUCH faster than in any previous election [instead of 3-10 days, hours].
d) Increased voter turnout in every election in human history suggests dissatisfaction with the current regime. The election results say that, of the extra ~11m voters, ~7.5m voted for the incumbent, assuming ANejad's original voters voted the same way. This is eminently illogical.
2. I've been keeping up with every verified twitter feed; a # are Ministry officials saying that they were instructed to say 62% without even counting. Journalist interviews corroborate this, as does the massive baseej/police/revolutionary guard force around vote-counting buildings.
3. Unlike previous protests in '99 and '03, this one is NOT primarily student based, as you can see even "poorer" elements of Tehran [road workers, civil servants] demonstrating alongside the doctors, students, etc. [cf. youtube videos] This shows broader support than the wealthy/affluent/educated.
4. Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, a high-ranking cleric and intimate/student of the founder of the IRI, has said himself in an official address that the election was not free/fair. While midranking/minor clerics have been doing this, the fact that a huge and influential Ayatollah has thrown in further reinforces popular religious as well as political sentiment against the fairness of the elections.
5. While the Guardian Council / Supreme Leader have allowed a recount/investigation, for some reason - though it is technically within their right - voided the election and called for a new one. GC claims it is illegal; a look at Iranian Republic law says otherwise. Fear of a revote suggests irregularities/rigging.
P.S. I agree that ANejad has regional/national popularity, and has increased it during his tenure as president. However, he is a polarizing figure - while his supporters may have increased / become more insistent, his detractors have also become more vocal [either b/c he's screwing the economy or they disagree with his expansionist/regional intent]. It is unfair to say his political capital has only increased over the past 4 years.
@Xeris baseless claims of ignorance are insipid, petty, and unbecoming of forum veterans. If anyone in this thread has been making uncorroborated statements devoid of factual evidence, it is you. Your Iranian heritage does not somehow give you carte blanche to trumpet your beliefs without any backing, just as my heritage does not somehow make me dumb and unworthy to comment. I expected more responsible posting from a noted member of the community.
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Xeris, your data is only supported by your fingers so far.
Its obvious that it was rigged, and the reason is the following, no one in the opposition really belives in the plausability of the vote counting, theres no trust in the vote count, and since its so extremelly simple to solve that issue (put a bunch of people from the opposite party to count the votes) all leads to believing that there is indeed a conspiracy to keep the true count as mysterious and secret as possible, therefore indicating fraud.
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1) I already mentioned that irregularity of Tabriz. That itself isn't grounds for assuming the election "was so transparently rigged"
2) Karroubi got almost no press and throughout the entire election campaign he was a pretty marginal candidate. Khatami and a bunch of reformists essentially urged Karroubi supporters to vote for Moussavi in order for the reformist-leaning vote to not be split among two candidates. So it really isn't that much of a surprise that he went from 5 million votes to just a few hundred thousand.
3) Difference between polling that you're referring to and those that I used are that the polls (multiple) that I used came from credible international sources, yours are from liberal Iranian media. Who's to say which is correct? I suppose nobody would really know, it's tough to get truly accurate information from Iran.
4) Perhaps the people conducting the election made a ton of extra preparations and put in a lot of extra work in order to be able to quickly get the results out. If you'd been reading news about this prior to the election you would know that they had been saying all along that they were going to work hard to get the results counted within 24 hours (which they did). Why is it so unreasonable for Iran to become efficient at vote counting/tallying?
5) What if there were twitter feeds saying exactly the contrary? You can't believe everything you're hearing especially if you aren't there.
6) For every hundred thousand protesters there are a million people who aren't protesting.
7) I never claimed the election was fully free and fair. Just because he claims it was not doesn't mean the whole thing was rigged. Again if you had read any of my previous posts you would know my stance.
8) How can you assume fear of a recount suggests rigging? You could easily say that they don't want to recount because they didn't make a mistake the first time and they don't want to waste time / harm their image by admitting the election system is flawed (I am saying it is flawed just in case you didn't understand)
9) I never said Ahmadinejad has ONLY become more popular. I've also said that he's a polarizing figure. However a majority of Iranians do support him. Just because his detractors have become louder doesn't mean the election was rigged, this just gives them a reason to fight.
To recap:
a) I never said the election was totally free and fair
b) I've backed up all of my claims
c) I'm not making these claims just because I'm Iranian. I'm making these claims (as I said before) because I wrote a 100+ page paper about Iran, I've read over 60 books about Iranian politics/etc, and I've been following the election for many months now, plus I've been in communication with my family in Iran, plus I've been able to speak personally to some very influential Middle East scholars, plus I've talked to several of my professors about this very issue.
d) Quote me stuff I've said that had no backing.
Next,
- you can't trust with a lot of confidence numbers you get coming out of Iran, regardless of the source, so they should be used as a guide rather than fact
- your claim that the election was totally "transparently rigged" is false. at best there are a few irregularities in the voting that suggest something fishy, but nothing that outright says "THIS ELECTION WAS RIGGED". unless you think you and your best friend are more of an authority on whether the election was rigged than most Middle East specialists.
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On June 17 2009 04:20 D10 wrote:
Xeris, your data is only supported by your fingers so far.
Its obvious that it was rigged, and the reason is the following, no one in the opposition really belives in the plausability of the vote counting, theres no trust in the vote count, and since its so extremelly simple to solve that issue (put a bunch of people from the opposite party to count the votes) all leads to believing that there is indeed a conspiracy to keep the true count as mysterious and secret as possible, therefore indicating fraud.
Uh if Moussavi counted the votes then you would have the EXACT same problem? Ahmadinejad supporters would call foul if Moussavi won.
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Until I see serious scholarly articles/etc giving solid evidence of why they think the election was rigged, I'll continue to have faith that it was not. Most scholars that I've read so far say that there isn't enough evidence to confidently say it was rigged.
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All democratic elections are to be completely transparent. Saying there isn't "enough" evidence of rigging has the entire burden of proof completely backwards. There should be no evidence whatsoever.
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Claiming that the election was rigged because it wasn't transparent is a logical fallacy. Correlation does not equate to causation.
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motbob
United States12546 Posts
On June 17 2009 04:42 Xeris wrote:
Claiming that the election was rigged because it wasn't transparent is a logical fallacy. Correlation does not equate to causation.
I think my main problem with your posts is that you keep making straw man arguments. He never claimed that because the election wasn't transparent, that it was rigged.
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On June 17 2009 04:42 Xeris wrote:
Claiming that the election was rigged because it wasn't transparent is a logical fallacy. Correlation does not equate to causation.
so what?
why not run a transparent election?
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On June 17 2009 04:47 travis wrote:Show nested quote +On June 17 2009 04:42 Xeris wrote:
Claiming that the election was rigged because it wasn't transparent is a logical fallacy. Correlation does not equate to causation.
so what? why not run a transparent election?
why not? I'm not defending the way they run the elections, I'm defending the results...
it would be nice if they ran transparent elections; but they don't really do that unfortunately. but just because they aren't transparent doesn't mean there's always foul play going on. that's all I'm saying.
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Look Xeris, I understand your point of view and I agree with most of the things you're posting. But you can't realistically assume the elections wasn't rigged simply because it wasn't proved otherwise. The evidence you have that it wasn't might be strong. But you have to at least agree that your evidence just as circumstantial as their evidence. You can't be sure of either.
The only way to be 100% sure that the flaws (that you admit) didn't change the winner would be well fiscalized (does this word exists?) recounting. There is no fair justified reason to not recount. You should be even glad that recounting is possible. If it was here in Brazil there would be no recounting because it is technically impossible in our system, that is even more flawed than Iran's lol
So all in all I do support the protesters for demanding a recount, regardless if that would change anything.
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http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/06/iran-does-have-some-fishy-numbers.html
538 was an amazing website during the American Elections. Their number crunching is unmatched by any MSM
Again, as we have mentioned on several occasions, the numbers still do not prove any wrongdoing, as large scale changes in public opinion do happen regularly around the world. However, given the polling data in the run-up to the balloting, and the historical trend away from electoral domination in the first round by one candidate, this very fishy regional data tends to strongly support that which the canceled Mousavi protest was meant to express.
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On June 17 2009 05:20 VIB wrote:
Look Xeris, I understand your point of view and I agree with most of the things you're posting. But you can't realistically assume the elections wasn't rigged simply because it wasn't proved otherwise. The evidence you have that it wasn't might be strong. But you have to at least agree that your evidence just as circumstantial as their evidence. You can't be sure of either.
The only way to be 100% sure that the flaws (that you admit) didn't change the winner would be well fiscalized (does this word exists?) recounting. There is no fair justified reason to not recount. You should be even glad that recounting is possible. If it was here in Brazil there would be no recounting because it is technically impossible in our system, that is even more flawed than Iran's lol
So all in all I do support the protesters for demanding a recount, regardless if that would change anything.
I'm not saying for sure that the election wasn't rigged. It's possible, I think there might have been some rigging (but not that would have significantly changed the results). What I AM saying is that I have more faith in Iran than most people and I'd like to believe that it was a fairly legitimate election. I was disappointed that Ahmadinejad won because I'm a big Moussavi fan, but more than the particular regime in power, I am a supporter of Iran.
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The results of an election that wasn't transparent is meaningless. The results of an election that was held in the absence of free press is meaningless. Yeah, every election in Iran is that way. And that's precisely what is wrong with Iran. It's a totalitarian state. Even Mousavi has been part of a government executing ten thousands of political opponents. There are no freedoms and no human rights. The government controls all media. Every day newspaper content has to be approved by government officials.
The people have every moral right to go unto the streets and protest. And no one can give strong evidence that the election was rigged. That's the point. That's why the people are angry. And the Iran government likes it that way. There is a reason why they crack down on every journalist. Why they don't allow international observers. Why put the burden of proof the way you do? Isn't a government corrupt unless proven otherwise? Doesn't history show that?
But right now it doesn't even matter anymore if the election was rigged or not. It doesn't matter if we think the election was rigged. It doesn't matter if 'experts' in the western media think it was rigged. A very large part of the Iranian people think it's rigged or they are at least angry enough about not being able to know if they were cheated or not. They are on the street risking 20 years in prison by official law and they risk to be killed by paramilitary units. Iran is not the worst tyranny in the world. But it's a perfect example of a tyranny.
As for the Islamic republic. It's a fairy tale. The clerics were never able to enforce their vision of what is an Islamic republic. No matter how cruel and extreme the punishments, people still disobey them. There is no way they are going to enforce their morality on the Iranian people. Especially not after these few days. They better figure this out and give up on that for their own good. Or else they regime will be even more vulnerable. But their problem is that with Achmedinejad that probably isn't possible. He is a polarising figure with little pragmatism, trusting in that the Basij and Ansar thugs to keep him in power no matter what the common people think. And trusting in that Khamenei can't give up on him because of his popularity under Khamenei's most important supporters. It's not easy for Khamenei to drop Ahmadinejad because right now without Ahmadinejad and his supporters he will have problems vs Rafsanjani and co.
Xeris, it's sad to hear that you support the Iranian regime over the Iranian people. I don't know how you can say this. Half of Iran is female and even if they support politicians that enforce their Islamic morality, they still don't get the human rights they have. Woman have all the human rights everyone else has even if they vote against it.
The whole islamic regime is build on violence and tyranny. Maybe a bit less than the last shah. But that doesn't matter. You can't defend this government. Their human rights record speaks for itself. You are on the wrong side of history.
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On June 17 2009 05:24 Xeris wrote:
(but not that would have significantly changed the results) That's what I'm saying that you can't be sure of. Just recount and get over with it. No matter what you believe is more "probable", you should be supporting recounting either way. It's the only way to guarantee fairness.
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EPT
