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Was the Iranian Election Stolen? Does It Matter?
Since the Iranian presidential election of June 12, allegations that the announced winner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's victory was stolen have played an important role in the demonstrations, political conflict, and media reporting on events there. Some say that it does not matter whether the elections were stolen or not, since the government has responded to peaceful protests with violence and arrests. These actions are indeed abhorrent and inexcusable, and the world's outrage is justified. So, too, is the widespread concern for the civil liberties of Iranians who have chosen to exercise their rights to peacefully protest.
At the same time, the issue of whether the election was stolen will remain relevant, both to our understanding of the situation and to U.S.-Iranian relations, for reasons explained below. It is therefore worth looking at whether this allegation is plausible.
According to the official election results, the incumbent president Ahmadinejad won the election by a margin of 63 percent to 34 percent for his main competitor, Mir Hossein Mousavi. This is a difference of approximately 11.3 million votes. Any claim of victory for Mousavi must therefore contain some logically coherent story of how at least 5.65 million votes (one half of the 11.3 million margin) might have been stolen.
This implies looking at the electoral procedures. There were approximately 45,000 polling locations with ballot boxes, not including mobile units. If these ballot boxes were collected by a central authority and taken away to a central location, and counted (or not counted) behind closed doors, this would be consistent with an allegation of massive vote theft.
However, this does not appear to be the case. After searching through thousands of news articles without finding any substantive information on the electoral process, I contacted Seyed Mohammad Marandi, who heads the North American Studies department at the University of Teheran. He described the electoral procedures to me, and together we interviewed, by phone, Sayed Moujtaba Davoodi, a poll worker who participated in the June 12 election in region 13 (of 22 regions) in Tehran. Mr. Daboodi has worked in elections for the past 16 years. The following is from their description of the procedures.
According to their account, there are 14 people working at each polling place, in addition to an observer representing each candidate. Most polling places are schools or mosques; if the polling place is a school then the team of 14 people would include teachers. There are 2-4 representatives of the Guardian Council, and 2 from the local police. After the last votes are cast, the ballots are counted in the presence of the 14 people plus the candidates' representatives. All of them sign five documents that contain the vote totals. One of the documents goes into the ballot box; one stays with the leader of the local election team; and the others go to other levels of the electoral administration, including the Guardian Council and the Interior.
The vote totals are then sent to a local center that also has representatives of the Guardian Council, Interior, and the candidates. They add up the figures from a number of ballot boxes, and then send them to Interior. In this election, the numbers were also sent directly to Interior from the individual polling places, in the presence of the 14-18 witnesses at the ballot box.
Each voter presents identification, and his or her name and information is entered into a computer, and also recorded in writing. The voter's thumbprint is also put on the stub of the ballot. The voter's identification is stamped to prevent multiple voting at different voting places, and there is also a computer and written record of everyone who voted at each polling place.
If this information is near accurate, it would appear that large scale fraud is extremely difficult, if not impossible, without creating an extensive trail of evidence. Indeed, if this election was stolen, there must be tens of thousands of witnesses -- or perhaps hundreds of thousands - to the theft. Yet there are no media accounts of interviews with such witnesses.
Is it possible that, in most of the country, the procedures outlined above - followed in previous elections - were abruptly abandoned, with ballot boxes whisked away before anyone could count them at the precinct level? Again, many of the more than 700,000 people involved in the electoral process would have been witnesses to such a large-scale event. Given the courage that hundreds of thousands of people have demonstrated in taking to the streets, we would expect at least some to come forward with information on what happened.
Rostam Pourzal, an Iranian-American human rights campaigner, told me that it is common knowledge in Iran that these are the election procedures and that they were generally followed in this election. Professor Marandi concurred, and added: "There's just no way that any large-scale or systematic fraud could have taken place."
The government has agreed to post the individual ballot box totals on the web. This would provide another opportunity for any of the hundreds of thousands of witnesses to the precinct-level vote count to say that they witnessed a different count, if any did so.
A number of other arguments have been put forward that the vote must have been rigged. Most of them have been refuted. For example, the idea that the results were announced too quickly: How long does it take to count 500-800 ballots at a polling place, with only the presidential candidates on the ballot? It could easily be done within the time that it took, as it was in 2005.
The New York Times' front page story on Tuesday, June 23 begins with this sentence: "Iran's most powerful oversight council announced on Monday that the number of votes recorded in 50 cities exceeded the number of eligible voters there by three million, further tarnishing a presidential election..." This was widely interpreted as the government admitting to some three million fraudulent votes.
Here is the Guardian Council's statement, from their web site:
"Candidates campaigns have said that in 80-170 towns and cities, more people have voted than are eligible voters. We have determined, based on preliminary studies, that there are only about 50 such cities or towns... The total number of votes in these cities or towns is something close to three million; therefore, even if we were to throw away all of these votes, it would not change the result."
The letter from the Guardian Council also offers a number of reasons that a city or town can have a vote total that exceeds the number of eligible voters: some towns are weekend or vacation destinations, some voters are commuters, some districts are not demographically distinct entities, and Iranians can vote wherever they want (unlike in the United States, where they must vote at their local polling place). On the face of it, this does not appear implausible. Contrary to press reports, there is no admission from the Iranian government that any of these votes were fraudulent, nor has evidence of such fraud been made public.
The only independent poll we have, from the New America Foundation and conducted three weeks before the election, predicts the result that occurred. And a number of experts have presented plausible explanations for why Ahmadinejad could have won by a large margin.
Does it matter if the election was stolen? Certainly there are grounds for challenging the overall legitimacy of the electoral process, in which the government determines which candidates can compete, and the press and other institutions are constrained.
But from the point of view of promoting more normal relations between the United States and Iran, avoiding a military conflict, and bringing stability to the region, the truth as to the more narrow question of whether the election was procedurally fraudulent may be relevant. If in fact the election was not stolen, and Washington (and Europe) pretend that it was, this can contribute to a worsening of relations. It will give further ammunition to hard-liners in Iran, who are portraying the whole uprising as a conspiracy organized by the West. (It doesn't help that the Obama administration hasn't announced an end to the covert operations that the Bush administration was carrying out within Iran). More importantly, it will boost hardliners here - including some in the Obama administration - who want to de-legitimize the government of Iran in order to avoid serious negotiations over its nuclear program. That is something that we should avoid, because a failure to seriously pursue negotiations now may lead to war in the futur.
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44 Comments so far
Show AllTHIS is the type of article that should have come out the day after the election rather then those articles by the likes of Dreyfuss who sits in a country several thousands of miles away and proclaims fraud occurred.
Again no one has presented EVIDENCE of fraud or how it was done.
The overvote problem in certain locales is well known. People are not forced to vote in a home precint yet newspapers in the West did not bother to mention that.
It is not enough simply to declare fraud occurred. Especially when the vote tallies match all the polls.
Declaring FRAUD before the pools even close (as Mousavi and various supposed TWITTER accounts did) and then following it up with organized rallies and newspaper reports of fraud withing hours of those polls closing WITHOUT investigating the facts suggests this was an orchestrated campaign long in preparation.
Now THAT is an opinion.
Nobody has presented EVIDENCE that George Bush stole the 2004 presidential election. Howver, many people (including me) are absolutely sure that that was what happened. In the US, citizens/journalists have the ability to investigate fraud and try to ferret out what actually happened - iranian citizen's have no such right or ability. Their only choice to have their voice heard is to take to the streets.
You are just a BLIND leftist (I am probably further left than you), who just automatically assumes that whatever side the US/Britain supports, is in the wrong and the opposite side never does anything wrong.
I actually had sympathy and respect for Ahmadinejad until this election. But no more. He is just another illegitimate dictator and a brutal one at that (with a more powerful, even less legitimate one, Khamenei behind him) - pretty much like George Bush over the last eight years.
There is no way you could be ignorant of the mountain of evidence that Bush stole the election.
You Ziotrolls will say anything.
Actually, millions of US citizens are "ignorant of the mountain of evidence." This is quite consistent given the vast Orwellian nature of the USA and its MInistry of Truth, otherwise known as the Propaganda and Indoctrination System, also known as the mainstream/corporate media and public education. It's very hard to free one's self from the clutches of the System due to its ubiquity. It's wise to recall Putin's statement about the power of the Anglo-American Propaganda System regarding its role in promoting the lie that Russia started the war with Georgia in the face of massive contrary evidence and how that System pollutes the planet's non-English press [from his interview with CNN]: “Your question doesn’t surprise me. I’m surprised by quite another thing - how powerful the propaganda machine of the West actually is. It is stunning, astonishing. This is out of all notch, but it is in it nevertheless.”
I am afraid you are mistaken about the election; according to Greg Palast, Dave Sirota, Jeremy Scahill and others there has been fraud in the last three general elections and very likely in the next one as well.
What's more, we have done nothing about it except denied it, and swept it under the rug. The double standards and hypocrisy of the USA that is merely a public relations democracy, to criticize other countries further damages the reputation of the USA.
If you think that our election, voting and campaign system is free and fair, I am afraid you are either naive or refuse to see the ugly truth.
InjunTrouble June 28th, 2009 12:06 pm
"I actually had sympathy and respect for Ahmadinejad until this election. But no more. He is just another illegitimate dictator and a brutal one at that (with a more powerful, even less legitimate one, Khamenei behind him) - pretty much like George Bush over the last eight years.'
I also rather admired Ahamadinjad for his chutzpha, but no more. I also don't think it matters if the election count was falsified, a significant number of Iranians are not happy with the status quo and have made a point of letting their government know. They are in a much better place to know what life is really like in Iran and the vicious reprisals are also letting the whole world know. I admire their willingness to sacrifice their lives health and future to expose the conditions that they live with.
This is sad to see. All revolutions start out very conservative and then mature to be more tollerant.
It was time for the people of Iran to become more free and open no matter who was elected.
This has set Iran back for decades.
"All revolutions start out very conservative and then mature to be more tollerant."
I suggest that this is not always the case. The French Revolution started out with a 'liberal' approach then became very conservative, if not dictatorial, (through the Committee of Public Safety) and a schism developed between the Robespierre faction and the Danton faction. Danton called for an end to the mindless killing of 'enemies of the revolution' and Robespierre beheaded him to 'save the revolution'. Most of those killed after the first years of the revolution where mere political enemies and not true enemies of the revolution - which was the excuse for beheading them. This went on until Napoleon.
The American Revolution - not as liberal a start, nor as liberal in intention, as the French Revolution but became even more conservative a few years later with the Alien and Sedition Act, and the violent federal response to Shay's Rebellion. The American government has been conservative ever since.
The Russian Revolution was initially supported by the Russian people because (among other things) the Bolsheviks wanted to pull Russia out of the First World war. Soon after Lenin took power, he set up a dictatorship that lasted - more or less - until 1989.
The Cuban Revolution started out with very liberal goals - free the Cuban people from centuries of oppression, eliminate illiteracy, and a poor health system, (and achieve some personal power) and ended up executing people just like Batista did.
They didn't "end up" shooting people like Batista. They shot people like Batista as soon as they got their hands on them. And I recall all the wailing and nashing of teeth when Iran did just the same thing in 1979: cut down the bastards who had been making their lives miserable for the preceeding twenty years first thing. That's what they got, that's what they deserved and I wouldn't mind seeing a few heads roll down in D.C. either.
Lenin started out with a dictatorship- 'The Dictatorship of the Proletariat". He was quite frank about that. Of course there were probably alot of Rip Van Winkles that woke up too late to figure out what was happening.
The French cut their heads off, but no one decries French democracy. Revolutionary justice isn't always pretty, but I don't think it is fair to say they are "like" their predecessors. I think most justice systems recognize a right to self defense...we cheer in the movies when the good guys defeat the bad guys. We don't say, "look, they are just like the bad guys."
Somehow this sounds like I am defending violence as a strategy, and I am not. But I don't think it is fair to oversimplify people's situations. These are life and death struggles.
Or as J.J. Rosseau wrote:
"Governments inevitably tend towards arbitrary power as their corruption and extreme limit. This power is by its nature illegitimate, and new revolutions must dissolve the government altogether or bring it closer to its legitimate institution. The uprising that ends by strangling or dethroning a sultan is as lawful an act as those by which he disposed, the day before, of the lives and goods of his subjects. Force alone maintained him, force alone overthrows him."
"If in fact the election was not stolen, and Washington (and Europe) pretend that it was, this can contribute to a worsening of relations."
Surely the author is not trying to suggest that exactly such a consequence was overlooked or unplanned.
I find it interesting that there is no mention at all of Israel's pretences. Perhaps that would invite too many comparisons to the certified results of the recent Palestinian election and the markerdly different reactions to that one.
To the rest of the world it does matter, the election officials must be exonerated the false charges must be addressed and the leaders of the putsch must be dealt with. To malign the election process in any country is a grave matter.I suspect that even the shooters of the innocent protesters were imported from abroad.
To the forces of Israel, USA and Britain who wish to destabilize the region it does not matter, either way stolen or not meddlesome outsiders stung the government of that country. If you are aligned with the power politics of those entities then the election does not matter because the destabilization efforts will continue unabated.
In Iran there appears to be a robust democracy which makes the USA experience look like fascism and the Canadian process a Shamocracy. The fact that the USA with it's flagrant election abuses makes the claims against Iran is deeply shameful and repugnant to decent people everywhere.
Sophie Scholl-The Final Days
Maybe Iranians are more free than we because they are brave.
When our election was stolen Americans did not get off their asses and protest.... No, the Repubs did and used their connections on the Supreme Court. That's the American way.
Now Iran used criminal violence and goons to put down the protests and that is a mistake that they will deal with because Iran is goin through a revolution and it is good that people are demanding accountability and Justice....
That is right President Obama.
Just like my song The Old Voting Machine.... "when freedom needs to win you might need me again... you might need me again cause I'm an old Voting Machine"
That's it Folks!
They have a much more safe secure and accurate voting system than we do with our elections counted by computers programed by Republican Corporations and Private Business.
Now this is the truth because It is the truth.... so there!!!
Obama knows this and the military knows this so they better not start the big one and they know that too.
So Everyone, including Obama, Cheer up, cause things will get worse and...
love the revolution
We are all by now extremely familiar with the US's more than casual, if not downright flippant, attitude towards the suplying of evidence: remember
1) the weapons of mass of destruction that Iraq had allegedly made and stored on its territory (recall that shamelss speech delivered by Powell before the UN!!);
2) the so-called collusion between Al Qaeda and Sadam Hussein;
3) the totally unsupported allegations that Russia started the hostilities with Georgia; and
4) the still to this day unverified and unsbstantiated charge that bin Laden orchestrated the attacks of 9/11 (the White Paper promised by Powell on this very issue has never been produced and made available for public inspection, and the FBI does not seek bin Laden for the 9/11 attacks, for lack of evidence (see its Most Wanted Web page)).
So why should anyone believe anything stated by the White House or Congress on the Iranian elections? Where is the evidence? Has the White House or Congress presented any? Just saying something does not make it so (save in certain performative utterances, such as baptizing).
It will be a long time before the US government's relation to evidence and truth becomes trustworthy again. It will indeed have to make serious progress in that department to be a partner again in a serious and non-deceitful conversation.
Abendland
Good points. Like others have pointed out, seeing as the integrity of our last three presidential elections are themselves in doubt what the hell business do we have worrying about the internal affairs of Iran? And regarding the abusive way Iran deals with protesters how about the way the US tortures suspects that have been convicted of nothing and jails them indefinitely in violation of the law not to mentions the tens of thousands of innocent civilians we have murdered in the name of the GWOT.
Sioux Rose
ABENDLAND: That's how I see it! I guess a lot of Americans have a "short attention span inner theater" dynamic operating.
Excellent posts: John Shaplin (although I don't entirely agree with your concluding paragraph), Lucitania, & Ole Man River.
InjunTrouble writes on this thread:
"Nobody has presented EVIDENCE that George Bush stole the 2004 presidential election. Howver, many people (including me) are absolutely sure that that was what happened."
The first sentence is simply not true. See esp. the intense reporting of Harvey Wasserman and Bob Fitrakis at the Columbus Free Press on how the 2004 election was stolen in Ohio. I think they also published a book on the subject. Those of us who were paying attention in Ohio knew much of what was being rigged as it was being rigged by then-Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, who while Sec. of State also chaired Bush's campaign in the state! It was not one single massive fraud but instead death by a thousand well-placed cuts. It is very well-documented, although grossly under-reported in the national Media.
Funny how much media attention was given to a non-event in Iran when what happened in Ohio should have produced outrage. Says a lot about Truth, Justice, and The American Way!
-30-
See also the article by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman, "Blowback from Ohio's 2004 Stolen Election is Escalating," posted at Common Dreams on March 20, 2007.
The two authors and Steve Rosenfeld published two books on the matter:
"What Happened in Ohio? A Documentary Record of Theft and Fraud in the 2004 Election" (Ohio: The New Press, 2006)
"Did George W. Bush Steal America's 2004 Election? Essential Documents" (Columbus Alive, 2005)
Fitrakis and Wasserman also published:
"How the GOP Stole America's 2004 Election & Is Rigging 2008" (published at harveywasserman.com, 2005), and,
with Jonathan Harris:
"As Goes Ohio: Election Theft Since 2004" (CICJ Books, 2008).
Congressman John Conyers published a book on the issue as well.
Exactly, not one iota of evidence presented that the balloting itself was rigged so far. Just like in the case of Iran's alleged bomb program- not a single piece of information dredged up by any U.S. intelligence service in the last twenty years that they are even enriching uranium to the degree necessary for a bomb. Yet the "the Iranian bomb" is thrown about by politicians and the media as if it were an incontrovertible fact.
Now, just how far the government actually cracked down on peaceful protestors is another question the answer to which Mr. Weisbrot himself unaccountably takes for granted. I don't call throwing stones at the cops, overturning cars, smashing shop windows, burning buses all that peaceful and I don't recall any significant "crack-down" before all that started happening. In fact, I read some accounts of police defending peaceful protestors against the intimidations of counter-protestor militia-types.
If this kind of chaos started occurring in such huge crowds in D.C. you can be sure that water-cannons, tear gas and baton-weilding police would clear the streets in short order even if Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. were on the Capitol steps exorting the crowd to remain peaceful.
Under these circumstances the most recent pronouncements of the President, following the line of the ignoramuses down at the Heritage Foundation and the nasty, knee-jerk resolution of Congress were definately ugly and interfering.A Senate Committee even voted to sanction firms doing business with Iran just two days ago, in direct contradiction of Obama's early advice.
And the actions of the News media has been utterly contemptable.. Not only the BBC which willfully suppresses the truth uncovered during their early morning reports and a best downplays the lies it recieves from totally biased observers, but the U.S. media which just yesterday reported the inflamatory remarks of one 'radical' cleric with a limited following and completely ignored the calls of the most senior and most respected cleric for genuine reconciliation. CNN put the Son of the Shah on stage, for God's sake! Do they ever mention Mousavi's former connection to Hezbollah at the time they bombed the embassy in Beirut? Do they mention the utter corruption of Rafsanjani? How about the line of the Chinese government in all this" wouldn't that be more significant that what Iran's other so-called allies ( Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria) think?
To me it's as clear as hell what our government intends by all this nonsense: distract the American people from the deficiencies in their own democratic system ( Ohio ballot tricks, Hanging chads in Florida, Supreme Court decision determining the outcome of a national election) the lack of one Bill moved to put forward a single-payer, medicare for all H.C. system , continuation of the War in Afghanistan, and the overwheming dominance of special interests in Congress irrespective of the expressed will of the majority of people.
NO event in recent history has demonstrated the utter incompetance and corruption of our govnment than its response to events in Iran during the last two weeks.
" I don't call throwing stones at the cops, overturning cars, smashing shop windows, burning buses all that peaceful and I don't recall any significant "crack-down" before all that started happening. In fact, I read some accounts of police defending peaceful protestors against the intimidations of counter-protestor militia-types.
If this kind of chaos started occurring in such huge crowds in D.C. you can be sure that water-cannons, tear gas and baton-weilding police would clear the streets in short order even if Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr. were on the Capitol steps exorting the crowd to remain peaceful."
I wonder what your response would be the next time leftist protesters in western countries are assaulted by police. And the next time the police in western countries are claim that they were defending peaceful protesters / people against intimidation.
Exactly -- how many people in the US were outraged by the repression of the protesters at the RNC (or DNC) conventions? What about Amy Goodman and her colleagues getting arrested for simply covering the protests? The kids rounded up BEFORE they ever did anything? What about Seattle? New York? Florida?
bligh4
No, it doesn't matter if the election was stolen. The simple fact of the matter is that the President of Iran is simply a mouthpiece for the "Supreme Leader", ie religious dictator.
The toilet attendant at the White House has more power.
"The toilet attendant at the White House has more power"
This is ridiculous. The Iranian president is not equivalent to the US president. That doesn't mean that he is a powerless figurehead.
There is an excellent article here, http://www.counterpunch.org/ross06262009.html comparing and contrasting how the Propaganda System reacted to the stolen Mexican election versus the non-stolen Iranian, amongst other examples.
I would say this is the first Big Lie of the Obama period. And there will certainly be more to come as the truth will destroy our Orwellian government and those it works for.
The question has already gone well beyond whether the election was a fraud or not. The supreme Ayatollah and the Guardian Council of Iran as well as the government of Pres. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have to come to terms with the fact that a “very significant number” of citizens do not accept their honesty, their veracity, and the more they are attacked, beaten up and even killed by authorized thugs like the Basijis, the less credible is the authority of the government, and the more they betray their revolutionary origins to appear like the dictatorship they replaced 30 years ago.
Continued:
This rejection of the status quo, as it has become, even if it is only by a significant minority, whether it is in the interest of one or another faction or whether outside powers have an interest in the outcome, is neither here nor there. It is not relevant to the question, although it is convenient for the Ayatollah and Ahmadinejad to have an apparent “foreign” adversary to blame for internal shortcomings and the resultant conflicts.
In the end of this unrest Iran will emerge the country of its people, bending to no foreign interference. They have been there and done that and know the discomfort of that position. The millions of youthful exuberant and determined Iranians will also not be beaten away by thugs or wooed by foreign intelligence agencies to forget past acts or responsibilities. If anything the waves of demands of these Iranians can only get stronger as their numbers continue to swell with each injustice heaped on them becoming widely known. Above all they are supported by millions of expatriate Iranians, a force, it might be said, far more effective and probably more powerful in this context than any CIA or MI5.
Continued again:
Whether one or another camp likes it or not the changes have started in Iran and the old line conservatives will inevitably have to give ground, unfortunately they seem to want to do it the hard way which probably means they have to loose more, and more painfully all round as well, with more precious Iranian blood spilled unnecessarily.
The question must be though what kind of Iran will emerge? One can only see that by the old conservatives resisting the inevitable change demanded by the young, educated intellectuals and liberals, a more fractured and weaker Iran will result. At this stage, that would be a disaster for Iran, for the Middle East, and in my opinion the world in general. A weaker Iran can only benefit the Zionist/Neocon Imperialists and Disaster Capitalists who have successfully embroiled the region and beyond in violence and destruction quite enough so far.
Iran is a democracy and that needs to be strengthened from within by good sense. Ironically we can only “pray” that the Guardian Council can come up with just that. The Basijis are certainly not the way to resolve the real discontent many Iranians have with the system.
"The Green Party of Iran is a political party founded to defend Iran's environment, particularly its forests, soil, air and water resources. We believe that the Iranian population has the right to a safe and clean environment, and to political, economical, social and cultural freedom. Furthermore, the Green Party of Iran intends to expose and oppose the current Iranian regime's nuclear, chemical, and biological mass production of weapons.
In view of the increasing environmental destruction in Iran, we believe that a Green Party is required on the Iranian political stage. In addition to proposing environmental policies, the Green Party of Iran advocates a democratic political and economic system for Iran."
http://www.iran-e-sabz.org/eindex.html
I just can't belief most of the comments on this page. While ordinary Iranians are battling armed militia as well as the police - they are being brutally beaten up and imprisoned, the media has been muzzled, foreign journalists have been thrown out, local ones shut down or worse and all you 'librral' people want 'evidence' of fraud and choose to believe the words of an unelected theocratic regime?
Khamenei is no better than Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell (RIP), only probelm is that he has power over lives of all iranians. And to claim that Iranians have more freedom than Americans - this sounds like Fox News calling Obama a dictator or 'socialist'.
This knee-jerk support of a theocratic regime merely beacuse it is anti-West, when it is trampling on people's rights, is ridiculous.
Pat and Jerry did not have the democratically elected leader of their country overthrown in a CIA coup....
Welcome to Common Dreams, my friend.
(Won't be surprised at all if this comment is deleted by the moderators - after all, Iran sets such a good example.)
And yet it wasn't and won't be. Whine, whine, whine...
> And yet it wasn't and won't be. Whine, whine, whine...
Let's wait and see about that.
http://
digg.com/politics/CommonDreams_org_Censors_Comments_Section
http://www.distantocean.com/2007/10/commondreams-sp.html
http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/001708.html
The truth is there if you care to look for it.
That's not the point -- it is the exploitation of the situation in Iran by the Western media for political purposes. As others have pointed out, it is the way this is being carried out. Clearly an ulterior motive considering how they generally ignore popular struggles -- including the ones that occur right here at home. Feels very much like we are being primed for some sort of attack.
I found it interesting that the author of this article claims that most Iranians don't have access to Twitter, and yet so much credit is given to Twitter. Also, I find it suspect that Iranians carry signs in English when they protest against their own government. The author of the article doesn't seem all that familiar with the classic moves of the CIA. Moreover, things frequently get started by the CIA, but don't always go as planned or take on a life of their own. No denying the massive budget assigned to black ops to destabilize Iranian government -- to use something like an election to spark something. The fact that neither candidate looks all that good to the US sort of helps them.
golly, this is a timely piece, isn't it? and still, weisbrot draws the wrong conclusion. "well, we were wrong and a bit overenthusiastic in our projection. but hey, it was all for a good cause!"
jackasses.
The US should deep-six our fraud ridden voting system and adopt the Iranian model. Sounds very transparent and honest.
The Fraud was in the reporting by the west, the cia mossad meddling.
So who really shot that girl? Hollywood style...all the world's a stage...
Is The So-Called Green Revolution Nothing But A Reprise Of The 1953 CIA Engineered Overthrow Of Iran's Government?
"If it is?"
"The would be revolutionaries will have succeeded only in jumping from the boiling pan into the fire."
"And if it isn't a reprise of the 1953 CIA engineered coup?"
"Said revolutionaries must stay engaged in the struggle to change their country."
"Otherwise?"
"The window of opportunity closes."
"Anything else?"
"They must not only renounce but oppose any attempts by the CIA to meddle in Iran's internal affairs."
My thoughts exactly!!!
But I could be wrong !
""They must not only renounce but oppose any attempts by the CIA to meddle in Iran's internal affairs.""
They have done so. Repeatedly. Including by carrying banners of Mohammad Mossadegh.
Does anyone know the following:
Once tallies are sent to the Interior Ministry, who oversees this next aspect of the count at the Interior Ministry? What mechanisms for oversight are there at this level?
Was the U.S. presidential election stolen in 2000 (and probably 2004)? Did United Statesians take to the streets unarmed? Even armed to the teeth, United Statesians lay submissively down, exposing their slack bellies and throats to the predatory capitalists they call leaders.
A fine piece of work, Mr. Weisbrot, thank you.
Richard Dalton (U.K. ambassador to Iran, 2003-2006) led the usual U.S./U.K. charge, to reverse the burden of proof, and require Iran to prove its election is fair, he blessed the extravagant, factless, allegations from the Mousavi camp, the usual unnamed sources.
The media would normally do what you did, summon a professor to explain the ballot-count system, interview a poll-worker. But they did not, implying a conspiracy, at any rate an agenda.
Your report reverses the burden of proof back again, where it belongs, on the challenger, to prove his case. AK the preacher, and the guardian council too, they said Mousavi could recount any of the 45,713 ballot boxes he was suspicious about (plus the 304 boxes from 32 foreign polling stations). He refuses, implying he knows what the result will be, viz, as originally reported. I'm guessing he was lied to by some of his people and later discovered their claims were inventions.
I'm wondering this, about Dr. Marandi (UT) and Mr. Davoodi (poll worker). I've read it's an offense for Iranians to talk to foreigners, exactly how that's phrased, I don't know, over the years I've seen plenty of Iranians talking to the media, including UT professors. What did they have to say about this, about talking to you, did they worry about it, seek permission first, or simply figure nothing they had to say would trouble anybody. -CJ Harwood (Warlaw)
This media attention is a ruse. In light of how the US election went electing Bush it seems to me bizarre the over US media interest in this Iranian election . I think it had more to do with Israel’s concern about Iran being a threat then if the Iranian election had gone bad. The over reaction seems to me be all about destabilizing Iran. Not the election going bad. If it was about destabilizing Iran, and not as much about whether Iran has nuclear capabilities. Then why all the fuss,?
I am suspecting Israel does not want a stable Islamic government in it reach. Not just politically stable, but mostly economically stable. Outside of Arab states having bombs what would be the most threatening thing Israel could face.? The most dangerous thing for Israel is have Arab neighbors that they cannot control. If Lebanon for instance took it’s rightful place as being the Wall Street of that part of the world this would threaten Israel equally as if Lebanon had nuclear bombs.
Israel does not want a stable Iran because a stable Iran could push Lebanon back to it’s historical place as being the center of Mediterranean commerce. Israel does not want that. They bombed Beirut a couple years ago under the guise of destroying Hezbollah. The good thing about this war for Israel was not that they tried to destroy Hezbollah . But it destroyed much of Beirut’s rebuilding efforts setting it back a few more years. They would like to do that to Iran. Not as much to destroy nuclear bombs potential, but to keep Iran from economically developing. As much as attaining a nuke.