Telephones Cut Off, Mousavi Arrested, Rafsanjani Resigns

[jingofever]

Link.

"Telephone communication between Tehran and the rest of Iran has been completely disconnected."

"Rafsanjani has resigned all duties in protest to Supreme Leader Khamenei's endorsement of Ahmadinejad as winner of yesterday's election."

"Mousavi has been place under house arrest. He was arrested on his way to Khamenei's house. All communication has been shut off. Khamenei has issued a statement claiming that HE that he is leading this coup to SAVE the Islamic Government."

"Sianat az ara (Protectors of Votes) Iran' Election Commission, have called the result fraud and are calling for new election."

Of course I cannot even verify that the sourced website is claiming all of this.

[jingofever]

"A committee of respected Ayatollahs (the spiritual fighters) have requested that the election be invalidated for the purpose of restoring the people’s trust in the Islamic Republic. We request the people to stay calm and not to provoke the government agents."

[JackRiddler]

.

Wow, I am so out of my depth on this one. Clueless. No Farsi, never been to Iran... though I've no doubt I'd be opposing Ahmedinejad, the way these things work is that everything with a chance in the election is usually a front for something bad. Or am I too cynical?

Since I am clueless, bear with me as I attempt to work some of it out in my mind but on screen:

US and intl media sure made it sound like Mousavi had the majority going in, but it's also true they're centered entirely in Tehran, where he did. Meanwhile, the rest of the country? The NYT coverage is kind of conceding it to Ahmedinejad, but it's not like they'd really have a clue even if they were trying to report the truth.

I can't find anything else under news about "Sianat az ara," which the Kos diarist calls, "a group of election monitors chosen by the four candidates." That would be very interesting. The same sentence has already been cross-posted 10,000 ways, but nothing seems to exist on this group in English under that name prior to today. They add: "Ahmadinejad campaign is rejecting the claim of fraud and dismissed the committee as pro-Mousavi."

On the other hand, here's a blogger who says he's in Iran right now:

http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/when-in ... n-yes.html

Democracy in Iran? Yes
Mohammad Sagha on 06.13.09 | 1 comment | share


The final results of Iran's presidential elections are in, and with amazing statistics. Turnout was a whopping 85% across Iran. I've never seen a turnout so large.

Reading western media, however, one might get a different idea. While Mousavi's supporters are definitely disputing the results, such disputes are not taken very seriously or with much legitimacy. It may be because I'm not in Tehran, but there are no serious doubts that Ahmadinejad won out here in northern Iran. Tehran and its surrounding suburbs contain about 20% of Iran's population; I'm out here within the rest of the 80%, where I've seen heavy support for Ahmadinejad.

It's expected that Mousavi supporters would be upset, and I've seen many parallels to our own 2008 presidential elections, with Mousavi's side stating they would not be able to tolerate four more years under Ahmadinejad. However, the Ahmadinejad side voiced similar concerns that it would be hard for them to accept Mousavi. All these are indicators that this was a extraordinarily politicized and competitive campaign -- a sure sign of democratic qualities.

I've had amazing access these past few days in Iran and have interviewed Babol's governor, all four of the candidates campaign managers to Babol, and many regular voters as well. On election day I asked Mousavi's campaign manager to Babol if he had seen any cheating at the polls (each candidate had poll observers at the booth locations). He answered his observers saw nothing serious, although since then his side seems to have changed its position. In fact, I asked each of the campaign managers if they observed any cheating and they all repoted no foul play had been observed.

Ahmadinejad's victory is now official and there doesn't seem to be much chance any reversals are to come. Overall, Mousavi's supporters were much more enthusiastic but I encountered many more Ahamadinejad supporters, making them, as the saying goes, "the silent majority."

I'm literally hearing the celebrations out in the streets now, and have to run. I'll make sure to touch back soon. It should be a memorable night.

As things stand I would have no trouble believing any or several of the following, except for the ones that are mutually exclusive:

1) The silent majority did speak out for Ahmedinejad, as unbearable as that idea is to the post-enlightenment population of Tehran.

(And I don't want to hear apologetics for Ahmedinejad being a genuine nationalist and economic fighter for the people, whereas the people of Tehran are "Westernized" middle-class without a connection to their poorer compatriots. Ahmedinejad can be all that, and win on that, and still be a hardliner in a theocratic regime that tramples the rights of women, executes people for "adultery," etc.)

2) The election was rigged, as the Mousavi supporters and apparently Rafsanjani and even a group of Ayatollahs are claiming.

3) There will or will not be an uprising in Tehran, regardless of what the true results were.

4) The US is preparing or hoping to attempt a "color revolution," regardless of what the true results were.

5) For various reasons the US will tacitly accept Ahmedinejad's victory as a convenient thing and prefer him as the negotiating partner on the nuclear issue and Iraq (the issue most often ignored in this context, which is that Iran has the real hegemony in Iraq).

6) Even the neocons might be split between 4 and 5, depending on whether they prefer "regime change" or demonization of the Iranian people as the prelude to attack.

7) Regardless of what happens, we're unlikely to get a fair or accurate picture of any of it from here.

.

[jingofever]

According to Juan Cole, "Ahmadinejad is claimed to have taken Tehran by over 50%."

[JackRiddler]

Well, he was the mayor there too. There are two Tehrans, far as I know. Meaning, the working class districts where he's been the hero for many years, and the more modern central city with indeed a lot of Westernized people. Normally, I'd be for the champion of the working class, but that's hard to imagine in a theocracy. Remember, the "silent majority" phrase was coined for Nixon, because a majority of the working class (and everyone else) really did vote for him.

[pepsified thinker]

not that this matters in the short term, but I couldn't help thinking that the U.S. elections of 2000 and 2004 gave any 2-bit, thug/dictator a green light to strong-arm and cheat their way through an election to power.

I know there were places where stolen elections were more the rule than the exception long before we had our own system hijacked, but it feels different now--personally, as an U.S. citizen, I don't feel I have any moral authority in with which to call on some other country's leader(s) to respect their electoral process. And there's a link between how individual Americans feel about such things and how we, collectively as a country, feel empowered to act.

and yeah, I know there's not much basis for the U.S. to lecture other countries about morals--but it used to feel different; like there were some bad elements in the U.S., but they didn't represent the entire U.S.

Bush/Cheney changed all that.

[justdrew]

they apparently cut off all SMS text messaging the night before the polls opened.

http://twitter.com/jadi

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/06/13/iran-sms-networks-my.html

[AlicetheKurious]

JackRiddler said:

And I don't want to hear apologetics for Ahmedinejad being a genuine nationalist and economic fighter for the people, whereas the people of Tehran are "Westernized" middle-class without a connection to their poorer compatriots. Ahmedinejad can be all that, and win on that, and still be a hardliner in a theocratic regime that tramples the rights of women, executes people for "adultery," etc.

So I won't give you any. But:

1) It was a democratic, free, fiercely contested election, including heated, live, televised debates between the candidates;

2) A record number of voters, both men and women, went to the polls (more than 46 million out of a total population of 70.4 million) -- neither JackRiddler nor AlicetheKurious were eligible to vote;

3) Ahmadinejad won 63% of the votes, a landslide victory by any standard;

4) While just 30 years ago, Iran was one of them, today Iraqis, Egyptians and Saudis can only dream wistfully of one day, far in the future, if many things change, attaining Iran's level of democracy and freedom.

Too bad for those Iranians who really, really wanted Moussavi to win. I do feel sorry for them, but they are, after all, a minority and the majority simply didn't share their vision of how Iran should be run.

All things considered, Iranians seem to be doing quite well. Now, if we could just be sure that the U.S. or Israel won't bomb them...

Note: Apparently, hundreds of Moussavi's supporters in north Tehran reacted to the news of Ahmedinajad's re-election by rioting in the streets, setting garbage bins on fire and throwing rocks at motorcycle cops.

News reports from other areas show no pro-Moussavi rioters, but lots of pro-Ahmadinejad supporters driving through the streets, honking their horns and waving his picture and the Iranian flag.

Because the Moussavi camp relied heavily on Twitter, Facebook and cellphone text messages to organize rallies throughout the campaign, the government of Iran has decided to shut down phone and internet lines temporarily, AFTER the Ahmadinejad win was confirmed, and AFTER the riots had erupted, to prevent them from spreading to other areas.

[JackRiddler]

.

Well Alice, that's all true, except for now neither of us has any way of knowing about your No. 3, which is the whole crux of the discussion. Did Ahmedinejad win 63% of the vote? Apparently that's in contention. If he did, then the rest of what you write logically follows and is kind of obvious. If there was fraud however, it doesn't follow. The rioters believe it was a fraud, presumably. They may be wrong. They may even be playing a role within a "color revolution" operation. I confess ignorance and acknowledge the possibility that the election was not rigged, and a silent majority voted for Ahmedinejad.

.

[AlicetheKurious]

There is no credible case for voter fraud in these elections: all the candidates had the right to place their representatives at every single voting station, a right which they exercised. The paper ballots were carefully monitored by these representatives so that no tampering could take place.

If Moussavi seriously believed that the vote had been rigged, he would have made a written complaint detailing his allegation and specifying his reasons why. There has been no written complaint, nor has Moussavi presented any specific evidence to back up his vague accusation of fraud.

Most tellingly, Moussavi has failed to request a re-count of the ballots.

Instead, thugs filled the streets of Tehran, setting fire to vehicles, attacking police, and vandalizing property. All in the name of "democracy", of course.

The Western press is playing again the same role it played in the CIA-sponsored anti-Chavez coup in 2002, in which it portrayed Chavez as a hated dictator and the rioters as the representatives of popular will. Given the Western media's shamefully biased coverage of the so-called "color revolutions" in Georgia, Ukraine and Lebanon, it's incredible that these reports, of Iran's own color revolution, are not viewed with more skepticism. But nobody ever accused Western audiences of too much critical thinking when it comes to what they see on teevee.

I don't usually post anonymous comments made by other people on other boards, but this one is worth it:

Most (may be even all) of those who protest with voter fraud never present a specific case to argue with. Even Mousavi has not presented a written protest with a clear demand (like recounting). Running out of ballot papers hurts all parties proportionally and is not a corroborating factor for Mousavi's complaint. 63.29% for Ahmadinejad is "impossible" is meaningless unless supported by factual data.

Ahmadinejad is not popular in big cities, where you find the greatest number of educated youngsters, artists, entrepreneurs, film makers, musicians, who are full of vigor and demand for more space for maneuver. But demographically the greater percentage of population live in the country sides not the cities. And they know only Ahmadinejad, because he spend four years visiting the most remote communities that had never seen a ranking official visiting them just to see how things are. He provided 22 million villagers with health insurance coverage.

My guess is that pretty much all of Mousavi's 13+ million voters come from big cities, which with a generous 60-70% allocation, the total number makes a lot of sense. All of the protests also come from the city dwellers who think they are the ones who are supposed to decide the out come. They are the ones with cameras, microphones, cell phones, access to foreign media, and of course they can make a lot of noise.

My gut feelings are that some voted for Ahmadinejad against their plan and desire as a backlash and a sense of disgust at Mousavi's campaign managers who resorted to coloring their faction just as in Yugoslavia, Georgia, Ukrain, Lebanon, and Kyrgysstan to bring corrupt amerophile/ziophile regimes to power. The coloring may have backfired terribly.

Mousavi would have been much better for cultural and civil and maybe economic advancements, but would have been a disaster for national security and foreign policy which are nothing to experiment with now. He resigned during the war as prime minister, which culminated in a letter by Khomeini later describing the event as he would have court martialed Mousavi only if they were not in the middle of a war.
____
kats | 06.14.09 - 12:34 am | #

[lupercal]

The Western press is playing again the same role it played in the CIA-sponsored anti-Chavez coup in 2002, in which it portrayed Chavez as a hated dictator and the rioters as the representatives of popular will.

That would be my guess. The CIA is very good at this. Remember those riots about the cartoon? Rigged. Ditto the riots about the pope's faux pas, not that he didn't make one. The twitter-facebook business is a huge giveaway because twitter at least has always struck me as an intel gag to begin with, and facebook isn't exactly famous for protecting privacy.

[American Dream]

http://www.truthout.org/061409Z

Stealing the Iranian Election
Saturday 13 June 2009
by: Juan Cole

A woman holds rocks gathered for throwing at police in Tehran, Iran. A second day of protests is currently underway. (Photo: Reuters)


Top Pieces of Evidence that the Iranian Presidential Election Was Stolen

1. It is claimed that Ahmadinejad won the city of Tabriz with 57%. His main opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi, is an Azeri from Azerbaijan province, of which Tabriz is the capital. Mousavi, according to such polls as exist in Iran and widespread anecdotal evidence, did better in cities and is popular in Azerbaijan. Certainly, his rallies there were very well attended. So for an Azeri urban center to go so heavily for Ahmadinejad just makes no sense. In past elections, Azeris voted disproportionately for even minor presidential candidates who hailed from that province.

2. Ahmadinejad is claimed to have taken Tehran by over 50%. Again, he is not popular in the cities, even, as he claims, in the poor neighborhoods, in part because his policies have produced high inflation and high unemployment. That he should have won Tehran is so unlikely as to raise real questions about these numbers. [Ahmadinejad is widely thought only to have won Tehran in 2005 because the pro-reform groups were discouraged and stayed home rather than voting.)

3. It is claimed that cleric Mehdi Karoubi, the other reformist candidate, received 320,000 votes, and that he did poorly in Iran's western provinces, even losing in Luristan. He is a Lur and is popular in the west, including in Kurdistan. Karoubi received 17 percent of the vote in the first round of presidential elections in 2005. While it is possible that his support has substantially declined since then, it is hard to believe that he would get less than one percent of the vote. Moreover, he should have at least done well in the west, which he did not.

4. Mohsen Rezaie, who polled very badly and seems not to have been at all popular, is alleged to have received 670,000 votes, twice as much as Karoubi.

5. Ahmadinejad's numbers were fairly standard across Iran's provinces. In past elections there have been substantial ethnic and provincial variations.

6. The Electoral Commission is supposed to wait three days before certifying the results of the election, at which point they are to inform Khamenei of the results, and he signs off on the process. The three-day delay is intended to allow charges of irregularities to be adjudicated. In this case, Khamenei immediately approved the alleged results.

I am aware of the difficulties of catching history on the run. Some explanation may emerge for Ahmadinejad's upset that does not involve fraud. For instance, it is possible that he has gotten the credit for spreading around a lot of oil money in the form of favors to his constituencies, but somehow managed to escape the blame for the resultant high inflation.

But just as a first reaction, this post-election situation looks to me like a crime scene. And here is how I would reconstruct the crime.

As the real numbers started coming into the Interior Ministry late on Friday, it became clear that Mousavi was winning. Mousavi's spokesman abroad, filmmaker Mohsen Makhbalbaf, alleges > that the ministry even contacted Mousavi's camp and said it would begin preparing the population for this victory. The ministry must have informed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who has had a feud with Mousavi for over 30 years, who found this outcome unsupportable. And, apparently, he and other top leaders had been so confident of an Ahmadinejad win that they had made no contingency plans for what to do if he looked as though he would lose.

They therefore sent blanket instructions to the Electoral Commission to falsify the vote counts.

This clumsy cover-up then produced the incredible result of an Ahmadinejad landlside in Tabriz and Isfahan and Tehran.

The reason for which Rezaie and Karoubi had to be assigned such implausibly low totals was to make sure Ahmadinejad got over 51% of the vote and thus avoid a run-off between him and Mousavi next Friday, which would have given the Mousavi camp a chance to attempt to rally the public and forestall further tampering with the election.

This scenario accounts for all known anomalies and is consistent with what we know of the major players.

More in my column, just out, in Salon.com: More in my column, just out, in Salon.com: "Ahmadinejad reelected under cloud of fraud," where I argue that the outcome of the presidential elections does not and should not affect Obama's policies toward that country - they are the right policies and should be followed through on regardless.

The public demonstrations against the result don't appear to be that big. In the past decade, reformers have always backed down in Iran when challenged by hardliners, in part because no one wants to relive the horrible Great Terror of the 1980s after the revolution, when faction-fighting produced blood in the streets. Mousavi is still from that generation.

My own guess is that you have to get a leadership born after the revolution, who does not remember it and its sanguinary aftermath, before you get people willing to push back hard against the rightwingers.

So, there are protests against an allegedly stolen election. The Basij paramilitary thugs and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards will break some heads. Unless there has been a sea change in Iran, the theocrats may well get away with this soft coup for the moment. But the regime's legitimacy will take a critical hit, and its ultimate demise may have been hastened, over the next decade or two.

What I've said is full of speculation and informed guesses. I'd be glad to be proved wrong on several of these points. Maybe I will be.

PS: Here's the data:

So here is what Interior Minister Sadeq Mahsouli said Saturday about the outcome of the Iranian presidential elections:

"Of 39,165,191 votes counted (85 percent), Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the election with 24,527,516 (62.63 percent)."

He announced that Mir-Hossein Mousavi came in second with 13,216,411 votes (33.75 percent).

Mohsen Rezaei got 678,240 votes (1.73 percent)

Mehdi Karroubi with 333,635 votes (0.85 percent).

He put the void ballots at 409,389 (1.04 percent).


.

[JackRiddler]

.

Once again acknowledging my lack of a deep background in Iranian affairs, I am open to either possibility but leaning to the rather depressing idea that Ahmedinejad's win is legit.

I have gone to protests against US plans for an attack on Iran and am well aware of the demonization campaign practiced against that country and Ahmedinejad, which I always reject in debate. As a little Web warrior just like the rest of us I said my piece against the disgusting "two minutes hate" campaign run by the US media during Ahmedinejad's visit to New York in 2007.

Certainly there is a big divide between Tehran where the media focus is, and rural areas where Ahmedinejad is more popular.

Alice, you accept as definitive an assessment of Mousavi that comes from the great Khomeini. You rather easily and remotely characterize the protestors as thugs who fill the streets on some unseen command. Your emphasis on Mousavi's failure to file a proper election protest in triplicate is, at this stage, not an argument that his case is therefore weak.

Election authorities chose to announce the results before the vote count was done, a big departure from prior elections where they'd take three days. The clampdown came on the same evening, and next morning Mousavi was arrested while on his way to the supreme leader. So when was he supposed to write his grad student's thesis in support of his case? (This doesn't mean he can't turn out to be a CIA backed fraud, of course.)

And Ahmedinejad is no Chavez, even if they have been pushed together by US bullying and Chavez (at least according to a report I read) gave an endorsement. Not every "anti-American" leader subjected to vilification in the West is therefore a good guy.

And need I remind people that the US propaganda intervention in 2005 seemed tailor-made to help Ahmedinejad win? For those who support war he makes the perfect enemy.

Juan Cole is making the case for election fraud:
http://www.juancole.com

Nate Silver I think convincingly rejects one statistical case now circulating widely and arguing for fraud, though many of the comments continue to contend otherwise:
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/06/ ... prove.html

Here's a blog from the Mousavi camp:
http://www.djavadi.net/2009/06/13/an-el ... p-in-iran/

Abbas Barzegar argues that the Iranian majority is for Ahmedinejad:

Wishful thinking from Tehran

Since the revolution, academics and pundits have predicted the collapse of the Iranian regime. This week, they did no better

I have been in Iran for exactly one week covering the 2009 Iranian election carnival. Since I arrived, few here doubted that the incumbent firebrand President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad would win. My airport cab driver reminded me that the president had visited every province twice in the last four years – "Iran isn't Tehran," he said. Even when I asked Mousavi supporters if their man could really carry more than capital, their responses were filled with an Obamasque provisional optimism – "Yes we can", "I hope so", "If you vote." So the question occupying the international media, "How did Mousavi lose?" seems to be less a problem of the Iranian election commission and more a matter of bad perception rooted in the stubborn refusal to understand the role of religion in Iran.

Of course, the rather real possibility of voter fraud exists and one must wait in the coming weeks to see how these allegations unfold. But one should recall that in three decades of presidential elections, the accusations of rigging have rarely been levied against the vote count. Elections here are typically controlled by banning candidates from the start or closing opposition newspapers in advance.

In this election moreover, there were two separate governmental election monitors in addition to observers from each camp to prevent mass voter fraud. The sentimental implausibility of Ahmedinejad's victory that Mousavi's supporters set forth as the evidence of state corruption must be met by the equal implausibility that such widespread corruption could take place under clear daylight. So, until hard evidence emerges that can substantiate the claims of the opposition camp we need to look to other reasons to explain why so many are stunned by the day's events.

As far as international media coverage is concerned, it seems that wishful thinking got the better of credible reporting. It is true that Mousavi supporters jammed Tehran traffic for hours every night over the last week, though it was rarely mentioned that they did so only in the northern well-to-do neighborhoods of the capital. Women did relax their head covers and young men did dance in the street.

On Monday night at least 100,000 of the former prime minister's supporters set up a human chain across Tehran. But, hours before I had attended a mass rally for the incumbent president that got little to no coverage in the western press because, on account of the crowds, he never made it inside the hall to give his speech. Minimal estimates from that gathering have been placed at 600,000 (enthusiasts say a million). From the roof I watched as the veiled women and bearded men of all ages poured like lava.

But the failure to properly gauge Iran's affairs is hardly a new phenomenon. When the 1979 revolution shattered the military dictatorship of America's strongest ally in the region few experts outside of the country suspected that the Islamic current would emerge as the leading party.

But in Iran, even the secular intellectual Jalal Al-e Ahmad, author of the infamous Occidentosis predicted the collapse of the regime at the hands of Islamic movement well over a decade before the fateful events of 1979. The maverick French philosopher, Michel Foucault, also made the right bet as he reported the events from the street – an insight that his many admirers still shy from. Since the revolution, academics, intellectuals and pundits have predicted the imminent collapse of the regime. As of today, they have done no better.

Such anomalies can only be explained by a longue duree. Iran is a deeply religious society. Of the Shah's mistakes nepotism, autocracy, and repression were fought by communists and liberals for decades with no success, but it was his attack on the religious establishment that led to his almost overnight demise.

Since then common Iranians have applied their ideals through the ballot box. In 1997 as the ashes of the Iran-Iraq war settled and the country saw a decade relative stability, voters came out in mass to support the former president-cleric Khatami against his rival, Natiq Nouri, a senior member of the establishment. Western reporters saw this in terms of a grand generational divide: young freedom loving liberals against elder conservative clerics. But it was really a vote for the ideal of honesty and piety against allegations of entrenched corruption. Many of those same Khatami supporters voted for Ahmedinejad yesterday, despite the fact that Khatami's face was on every one of Mousavi's campaign posters.

For over a week the same social impulses of anti-corruption, populism, and religious piety that led to the revolution have been on the streets available to anyone who wanted to report on them. Ahmedinejad, for most in the country, embodies those ideals. Since he came into office he has refused to wear a suit, refused to move out of the home he inherited from his father, and has refused to tone down the rhetoric he uses against those he accuses of betraying the nation. When he openly accused his towering rival, Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanji, a lion of the revolution himself, of parasitical corruption and compared his betrayal to the alleged deception against the Prophet Muhammad that led to the Sunni-Shia split 1,400 years ago, he unleashed a popular impulse that has held the imagination of the masses here for generations. That Rafsanji defended himself through Mousavi's newspaper meant the end for the reformists.

In the last week Ahmedinejad turned the election into a referendum on the very project of Iran's Islamic revolution. Their street chants yelled "Death to all those against the Supreme Leader" followed by traditional Shia rituals and elegies. It was no match for the high-spirited fun-loving youth of northern Tehran who sang "Ahmedi-bye-bye, Ahmedi-bye-bye" or "ye hafte-do hafte, Mahmud hamum na-rafte" (One week, two weeks, Mahmoud hasn't taken a shower).

Perhaps from the start Mousavi was destined to fail as he hoped to combine the articulate energies of the liberal upper class with the business interests of the bazaar merchants. The Facebook campaigns and text-messaging were perfectly irrelevant for the rural and working classes who struggle to make a day's ends meet, much less have the time to review the week's blogs in an internet cafe. Although Mousavi tried to appeal to such classes by addressing the problems of inflation and poverty, they voted otherwise.

In the future, observers would do us a favour by taking a deeper look into Iranian society, giving us a more accurate picture of the very organic religious structures of the country, and dispensing with the narrative of liberal inevitability. It is the religious aspects of enigmatic Persia that helped put an 80-year-old exiled ascetic at the head of state 30 years ago, then the charismatic cleric Khatami in office 12 years ago, the honest son of a blacksmith – Ahmedinejad – four years ago, and the same yesterday.

• Abbas Barzegar is a PhD candidate in religious studies at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia

[AlicetheKurious]

JackRiddler said:

Alice, you accept as definitive an assessment of Mousavi that comes from the great Khomeini.

Huh? I didn't understand that part.

You rather easily and remotely characterize the protestors as thugs who fill the streets on some unseen command.

I don't know about the "unseen command" part, but how would you characterize people who set buses on fire, break the windows of shops and banks, throw rocks at policemen riding motorcycles and armed only with batons, and for what? Because they don't like the election results?

Apparently, their views are not shared by anybody outside a few neighborhoods in north Tehran, so it's funny for the Western press to praise democracy in one breath and then ignore the will of what is clearly the majority of Iranians.

Perhaps actions of these THUGS would make sense if Moussavi had put his money where his mouth is, demanded a recount of the votes, and been refused, or if his supporters had made their allegations of election irregularities BEFORE he lost. Because until then, despite their close monitoring of the vote, they evidently had no problem with the way it was carried out.

What really rings my alarm bells is that, rather than ask for an independent investigation, Mousavi has demanded that the elections be 'canceled'.

Your emphasis on Mousavi's failure to file a proper election protest in triplicate is, at this stage, not an argument that his case is therefore weak.

Come on. Those elections had more mechanisms in place to guarantee a free and fair election, than those held in the U.S. since 2000. Mousavi had many opportunities to make his accusations before the results were announced. What he's demanding now has nothing to do with making sure that the elections were free and fair, but that they be canceled, on no other basis but his vague, unspecific accusations.

In any case, that was an interesting article.

[tron]

i love how the press are all over the vote rigging thing in iran. but were silent over the rigging in america