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The vote was probably fair. It's just the reporting of the results that's off.
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Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. - Ben Franklin
Iain Banks missed deadline due to Civ | The eyes are the groin of the head. - Dwight Schrute.
One more turn .... One more turn .... | WWTSD
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Quite a ringing endorsement.Among the countries congratulating Mr Ahmadinejad on his victory were Iraq, Afghanistan, Venezuela and North Korea.
It's almost as if all his overconfident, absolutist assertions were spoonfed to him by a trusted website or subreddit. Sheeple
RIP Tony Bogey & Baron OComment
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It's almost as if all his overconfident, absolutist assertions were spoonfed to him by a trusted website or subreddit. Sheeple
RIP Tony Bogey & Baron OComment
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BTW What is wrong with Iraq and Afganistan aren't they supposed to be US vassals?Modern man calls walking more quickly in the same direction down the same road “change.”
The world, in the last three hundred years, has not changed except in that sense.
The simple suggestion of a true change scandalizes and terrifies modern man. -Nicolás Gómez DávilaComment
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They're aware that the realm of the Ahmawhatever is directly at their bordersBlahComment
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There's two vassals to the west in that listOriginally posted by rah View PostQuite a ringing endorsement. 
EDIT: oh bugger Heraclitus..."An archaeologist is the best husband a women can have; the older she gets, the more interested he is in her." - Agatha Christie
"Non mortem timemus, sed cogitationem mortis." - SenecaComment
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Iranian voices on the Interwebs (disclaimer: they can be silenced any moment now):
Twitter: http://www.simoncolumbus.com/2009/06...erers-in-iran/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/I-IRAN...was=1682234247
There is some heavy stuff in there
Within weeks they'll be re-opening the shipyards
And notifying the next of kin
Once again...Comment
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Are you guys aware of how the Iranian government works?
Basically the Supreme Leader and the Guardian Council have veto powers over all candidates for offices in the secular side of the government, all bills in Parliament, and control the military and the judiciary. The Supreme Leader ultimately controls the composition of the Guardian Council, and is monitored by the Council of Experts, who are selected by the Guardian Council.
The results of this election never really mattered anyway. Iran's only hope is revolution. The situation in Iran is going to have to get bad enough that the common man will admit that theocracy is a bad thing."I say shoot'em all and let God sort it out in the end!Comment
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Most of the youth probably were idealistic enough to think that their opinions mattered. Maybe they know now.Originally posted by Dr Strangelove View PostWhich side are we on? We're on the side of the demons, Chief. We are evil men in the gardens of paradise, sent by the forces of death to spread devastation and destruction wherever we go. I'm surprised you didn't know that. --Saul TighComment
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That's incorrect. The Council of Experts is an elected body. Khamenei opponent, former Pres Rafsanjani, won key elections in 2006, and took control of the Council. It's even possible that he has the votes to depose Khamenei (some reporting suggests that he has been trying to whip up opposition - but I doubt he'll be successful).Originally posted by Dr Strangelove View PostAre you guys aware of how the Iranian government works?
Basically the Supreme Leader and the Guardian Council have veto powers over all candidates for offices in the secular side of the government, all bills in Parliament, and control the military and the judiciary. The Supreme Leader ultimately controls the composition of the Guardian Council, and is monitored by the Council of Experts, who are selected by the Guardian Council.
Nonsense. The Revolutionary Guard just staged a coup d'etat (probably). They destroyed the popular legitimacy of the Iranian government. This wouldn't have happened if the election "never really mattered."The results of this election never really mattered anyway.
There was a large space for popular input in government before. There isn't any more. It was previously assumed that the government would swing a close election, but not reverse a landslide (see the landslides Khatami achieved).
The coup against Mossadegh is central to Iran's national narrative. That was 55 years ago, and it's still a big deal. It's reasonable to assume that they're prickly about coups."Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way. "
-BokononComment
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What do y'all make of this...
The Iranian People Speak
By Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty
Monday, June 15, 2009
The election results in Iran may reflect the will of the Iranian people. Many experts are claiming that the margin of victory of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the result of fraud or manipulation, but our nationwide public opinion survey of Iranians three weeks before the vote showed Ahmadinejad leading by a more than 2 to 1 margin -- greater than his actual apparent margin of victory in Friday's election.I came upon a barroom full of bad Salon pictures in which men with hats on the backs of their heads were wolfing food from a counter. It was the institution of the "free lunch" I had struck. You paid for a drink and got as much as you wanted to eat. For something less than a rupee a day a man can feed himself sumptuously in San Francisco, even though he be a bankrupt. Remember this if ever you are stranded in these parts. ~ Rudyard Kipling, 1891Comment
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Terror Free Tomorrow Poll Did not Predict Ahmadinejad Win
Noting my skepticism about the announced outcome of Friday's presidential elections in Iran, readers have been asking me what I think about this WaPo op-ed by Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty pointing out that a scientifically weighted Project for a Terror Free Tomorrow poll in mid-May found Ahmadinejad beating Mir-Hosain Mousavi by a 2 to 1 margin.
I have enormous respect for Ballen, PFTFT and Doherty & the New America Foundation.
But as a mere social historian I would say that the poll actually tends to confirm some of my doubts about the announced electoral tallies.
The poll did not find that Ahmadinejad had majority support. It found that the level of support for the incumbent was 34%, with Mousavi at 14%.
27% said that they were undecided. (Some 22% of respondents are not accounted for by any of the 4 candidates or by the undecided category, and I cannot find an explanation for this. Did they plan to write in for other candidates? A little over a quarter of respondents did say they wanted more choice than they were being given. Update: Some of this 22% refused to answer, others said they did not like any of the candidates. Ahmadinejad is unlikely to have picked up the latter, and Mousavi supporters were more likely to refuse to answer.)
Here's the important point: 60% of the 27% who said they were undecided favored political reform. As Ballen wrote at that time:
' A close examination of our survey results reveals that the race may actually be closer than a first look at the numbers would indicate. More than 60 percent of those who state they don’t know who they will vote for in the Presidential elections reflect individuals who favor political reform and change in the current system.'
That is, supporters of the challenger's principles may not quite have committed to him at that point but were likely leaning to him on the basis of his platform. They were 16% of the sample. This finding suggests that in mid-May, Mousavi may have actually had 30% support.
If Ahmadinejad got all of the other 11% among undecideds, the race would have stood at 45% to 30%.
Ballen noted in May,
'The current mood indicates that none of the candidates will likely pass the 50 percent threshold needed to automatically win; meaning that a second round runoff between the two highest finishers, as things stand, Mr. Ahmadinejad and
Mr. Moussavi, is likely.'
That is, based on his polling, Ballen did not expect Ahmadinejad to get to 51%.
In fact, the regime has announced that Ahmadinejad received almost 63% of the vote. So while Ballen's polling does suggest that it was plausible that Ahmadinejad could have won a run-off election against Mousavi, it indicated that Ahmadinejad was unlikely to win a first round.
Moreover, given the PFTFT numbers, all of the undecideds would have had to vote for Ahmadinejad in order for him to get over 60% of the total vote. That outcome seems to me so statistically unlikely as to rate as an impossibility.
Note that the regime is not merely claiming that Ahmadinejad barely avoided a run-off by getting 51% of the vote. They are saying he received nearly two-thirds of the vote. No such outcome was predicted by the PFTFT poll-- quite the opposite.
So my commonsense, non-technical, historian's comment is that the poll may well have been sound, and Ballen's original conclusions may also have been. But the tenor of his WaPo article contradicts the poll in seeming to find a 63% margin of victory for Ahmadinejad plausible on the basis of it.
Particularly puzzling is that he seems to have forgotten his own observation that the race in May was closer than it seemed, since 60% of undecideds identified with reform principles.
Finally, 42% of respondents successfully contacted declined to answer the poll. Since it is much more likely that reformists would be afraid of government reprisal and afraid of talking about their politics than that Ahmadinejad supporters would be, the possibility that declines were disproportionately pro-Mousavi voters is strong. Although Ballen says voters were willing to answer controversial questions on press freedom or voting for the supreme leader, in fact these are vague and general issues. Imagine if a woman was pro-Mousavi and the phone rang when her husband, a pro-Ahmadinejad voter, was present. She might well just hang up rather than risk a domestic squabble. The decline rate strikes me as quite large, and of a sort that might well skew the results toward Ahmadinejad supporters.
"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way. "
-BokononComment
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Excellent picture coverage:
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/200..._election.html
Interesting post about the media
Do you agree?Total, epic, media FAIL on Iran
Mon, Jun 15, 2009
Foreign Policy, Media
Unfortunately, I am old enough to remember media coverage of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Tianenmen Square, both of which I observed from the US, and the fall of the Berlin Wall, which I watched live on the BBC while living in London. At the time, media were unencumbered by competition from the internet, tied into the Cold War narrative, and pushing the envelope of what was possible with cable news.
Editors certainly recognized what they were seeing, and made decisions about coverage accordingly. Coverage of those events was constant, hitting saturation point immediately, and stayed there for days. Media executives seemed to understand the history unfolding before their eyes, and took it as their responsibility to be eyes and ears not just for their audiences, but for the people in the crosshairs.
No obstacle was enough to stop the coverage. Even when China cut off CNN from Beijing, CNN reported repeatedly that they were cut off. BECAUSE IT IS NEWS WHEN A NEWS ORGANIZATION IS SHUT DOWN. When tanks hit the streets in Moscow in 1991, cameras were there, regardless of safety concerns, in one of the most closed societies on earth at the time, as the outcome was in grave doubt. Reporters risked their lives.
Today, as global geopolitics is shaken to its core by events in Iran, I turned on cable news this morning, and saw endless ads for a Larry King Jonas Brothers “interview”, Morning Joe yukking it up discussing Kuwaiti massage therapists, a video of a tomato throwing contest on CNN, talk radio blowhard Bill Bennett…and occasionally a phone call from Christiane Amanpour in Tehran. I can’t even bring myself to turn on the network morning programs, I might vomit.
All the while, I have been hitting refresh like a crazy person on this thread at Huffington Post, which reports on news organizations banned, reporters arrested, crowds building for a Mousavi rally as I post this, etc. etc. Huffington Post has no reporter on the ground, no international bureau, no satellite phones in Tehran, and yet, that is the most thorough news source on this story you can find.
I suppose, in fact, pray to GOD, this will turn around at some point, but as of this moment, I cannot think of a bigger failure of our media culture in my lifetime. Not only is there limited coverage, it appears editors don’t even recognize what they are seeing before their eyes.Comment
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The internet makes a world of difference.Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.
"Hating America is something best left to Mobius. He is an expert Yank hater.
He also hates Texans and Australians, he does diversify." ~ BraindeadComment
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