I can't believe there isn't a thread about this already. . . .

I'll just crib some posts from Andrew Sullivan's blog to get things started:

Quote :

"A reader writes: Why did the clergy panic? Because they saw something much larger than just Mousavi being elected. They saw the beginnings of a wave that would sweep them out of power. This started with Khatami. and it won't stop today just because they declared a fraudulent winner. Mousavi would have been the crowbar with which to pry open the tangled nest of corruption that came into power soon after the 1979 revolution. There is enough pent-up anger in Iran's youth to fuel a complete wipeout of the regime. If the thugs were so utterly ham-fisted in their attempt to usurp power, they surely will commit scores of idiotic errors in the days to come. I cannot imagine Rafsanjani staying quiet for much longer; the theocracy is about to break wide open. Resistance will take many forms, and now will not stop until the mullahs are permanently out of power. Iran is headed for civil war. The situation is still too murky for me to agree or disagree with this. I sure hope my reader is right."

Quote :

"50 - 100 Now Dead? from The Daily Dish | By *Andrew Sullivan* by Andrew Sullivan That's what Tehranbureau is reporting as Iran hits midnight. Police on motorbikes are beating people randomly in the streets. This video (http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=195904645507 reveals the violence and terror from the regime. "

Quote :

"[Juan Cole] http://www.juancole.com/2009/06/stealing-iranian-election.html reconstructs the crime scene: 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."

Quote :

" [W]hen autocracies decide to do something like this, why do they do it so clumsily? Why not give Ahmadinejad 52.7% of the vote, which would be at least within the realm of reason? Or force a runoff and let Ahmadinejad win a week from now? Why perpetrate such an obvious fraud? Hard to say. Maybe it's just too hard to orchestrate something more believable. Maybe, against all evidence, they believe that smashing victories are always more convincing than close ones. Maybe it's just rank panic and stupidity. It's a mystery — and a counterproductive one, too: there isn't a person on the planet who thinks that Ahmadinejad could have won two-thirds of the vote with a turnout of 85%, and the possibility of inciting an internal revolt is a lot higher with a barefaced fraud like this than it would be with something a little more subtle. On the other hand, maybe we're looking at this through the wrong lens. Obviously something about Mousavi started to badly spook the powers-that-be during the past week, and maybe they decided something needed to be done about it. Maybe they wanted to provoke a round of violence from Mousavi's supporters as an excuse to lead a crackdown on dissidents. And what better way to do that than to make the election rigging so obvious even a child could see it?"

also there are reports that mousavi is under house-arrest. this all seems about as sketchy as possible. here's a graph of ahmadinejad's lead as reports came in:



looks pretty suspiciously like a straight line, eh?

more:

Quote :

"I talked to my brother who is in Tehran a couple of hours ago. YouTube is apparently down (filtered). The satellite TV and international radio stations (SW) are also jammed. But apparently a VOA satellite TV station has started to broadcast on a new frequency and so they have access to that. They had also lost the cell-phone service. (The phone system is operated by the Ministry of Technology and Communications; so it is state run.) It really is feeling like a coup."

[Edited on June 13, 2009 at 4:25 PM. Reason : .]

6/13/2009 4:05:12 PM

Certainly going to get interesting in the coming days. This may be the beginning of the uprising that's been predicted for the country's youth for years.

6/13/2009 4:44:10 PM

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1184614595?bctid=26274216001

and unrelated to the video above:

Quote :

"CPV representatives point to several indicators of an Iranian neo-conservative plot to steal the election. For one, they note that over 59 million ballots have been printed, far more than the number of registered voters. They also have evidence that a substantial, though undetermined, number of soldiers has been ordered to hand over their national identity cards to officers. Most importantly, according to another CPV report, up to a third of voting booths in Iran will be protected by the Revolutionary Guards, and not the regular Law Enforcement Agency personnel. To lend vote-rigging an air of religious legitimacy, a prominent hardline cleric has reportedly issued a fatwa, or religious edict, that would condone fraud in the name of supposedly defending the spirit of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. "

[Edited on June 13, 2009 at 5:27 PM. Reason : .]

6/13/2009 5:00:52 PM

how ironic. Americans pointing the finger at a rigged election lol. I guess now that Bush is out of office he can be forgotten

6/13/2009 5:48:14 PM

^ oh please can we ever have adult converstations on here?

6/13/2009 5:53:14 PM

look to yourself before you point the finger

/thread

[Edited on June 13, 2009 at 6:06 PM. Reason : ,]

6/13/2009 6:06:24 PM

^^^, ^ douchebag

6/13/2009 6:13:00 PM

Quote :

" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/13/iran-demonstrations-viole_n_215189.html "My next door neighbor is an Iranian immigrant who came here in 1977. He just received a SAT phone call from his brother in Tehran who reports that the rooftops of nighttime Tehran are filled with people shouting 'Allah O Akbar' in protest of the government and election results. The last time he remembers this happening is in 1979 during the Revolution. Says the sound of tens of thousands on the rooftops is deafening right now." That would be around four in the morning. The last time a news event gave me chills like this was the Soviet coup. It ended the regime."

6/13/2009 7:05:19 PM

i heard a couple crazy things on the radio in the past few days

1) In Iran, there are no pre-printed ballots. Therefore, every ballot has to be hand written, and every person has to hand-write the name of their candidate!! This has tons of problems, for one, possible confusion with bad handwriting or weak excuses ("can't read this one, throw it out"). However, the bigger sham is that is is impossible to count 50 million hand written ballots in one day!. The election was yesterday, and they've read and counted 50 million ballots since then? Bullshit


2) An NPR reporter talked on satellite phone today said that last week, the gov't made the cell phone companies shut down SMS/texting service, because the challenger was using texts to millions of people for last minute communication

3) since yesterday, all internet, land line and cell phone towers have been shut off, at least in Teheran

6/13/2009 8:06:28 PM

How is this news? Did anyone not think this was what was going to happen?

6/13/2009 8:09:35 PM

pardon me for thinking that one of the biggest uprisings in a generation in iran (peaceful pre-election and violent post-) is news-worthy.

i don't know if i mentioned this above, but it's being reported that mousavi and some of his family and top advisers are being held under house arrest.

[Edited on June 13, 2009 at 8:26 PM. Reason : .]

6/13/2009 8:24:46 PM

definitely news worthy and exciting, have to concede not surprising though. a generational change in iran is something that has been on the verge for awhile.

the story i read said they were under house arrest for their protection, but that sounds like misinformation. probably under arrest to silence them.

6/13/2009 9:52:41 PM

We should have bombed them when we had the chance.

They are evil after all.

6/13/2009 9:59:48 PM

Quote :

"i don't know if i mentioned this above, but it's being reported that mousavi and some of his family and top advisers are being held under house arrest."

For their own safety, I'm sure.

6/13/2009 10:04:08 PM

Did the ruling mullahs not realize that putting on a rigged election would upset an already upset populace?

6/13/2009 10:36:32 PM

i don't think they realized until far too late that ahmadinejad would lose a legitimate election.

6/13/2009 10:54:30 PM

Gee. I can't see this going anywhere but straight downhill. That's definitely obvious as hell, and it's completely foolish of them to have done this. They would've probably had less trouble if they just abolished elections and enacted martial law before the populace got all riled up about Mousavi winning the election.

I wonder if the cutting of communications has hampered the government as well. I mean, without internet or phone services both sides would be fairly limited in their ability to communicate and act in the coming days. I'm sure the government has a limited backup communications system, but I still imagine this decision hurt them as well.

6/13/2009 11:25:00 PM

the gov't controls the communication. i'm sure they can communicate just fine.

6/13/2009 11:41:21 PM

Quote :

"Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, closed the door on any chance he could use his limitless powers to intervene in the disputes from Friday's election. In a message on state TV, he urged the nation to unite behind Ahmadinejad, calling the result a "divine assessment." Mousavi rejected the result as rigged and urged his supporters to resist a government of "lies and dictatorship." "I'm warning that I won't surrender to this manipulation," said a statement on Mousavi's Web site. "The outcome of what we've seen from the performance of officials ... is nothing but shaking the pillars of the Islamic Republic of Iran's sacred system and governance of lies and dictatorship," it added. Mousavi warned "people won't respect those who take power through fraud." The headline on one of his Web sites read: "I won't give in to this dangerous manipulation." Mousavi appealed directly to Khamenei to intervene and stop what he said were violations of the law. Khamenei, who is not elected, holds ultimate political authority in Iran and controls all major policy decisions."

"divine assessment"? Let this be a warning to those hard-line republicans who wish for a more "Christian-led" nation.

6/14/2009 12:11:00 AM

khamenei is sort of elected. he is appointed by basically the iranian version of the senate (the assembly of experts) and the assembly is elected by the people. of course you can only be a candidate for the assembly of experts if you have been cleared through khemenei's people first. so it's all kind of a sham.

the supreme leader can also be dismissed by the assembly of experts.

[Edited on June 14, 2009 at 12:16 AM. Reason : .]

6/14/2009 12:16:37 AM

Quote :

"I had seen unconfirmed reports that former Iranian President Rafsanjani had resigned from the Expediency Discernment Council but not the Assembly of Experts. But al Arabiya says he's actually resigned from both, as a protest to the election ... "Moreover, in a protest against election results Iran's Hashemi Rafsanjani resigned from his posts as the chairman of the Assembly of Experts and as head of the Expediency Discernment Council, the two most influential institutions in the country." Iranian authorities have also reportedly asked foreign reporters to leave the country -- always a good sign. "

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/06/rafsanjani.php

6/14/2009 1:03:41 AM

its not like the president of Iran actually has real control, no matter who won, the clergy still rules that country

6/14/2009 2:55:12 AM

Quote :

"the gov't controls the communication. i'm sure they can communicate just fine."

I realize. My point was more that, unless they have spent double the money on all their communications systems so government employees (the most important ones anyway like police, major leaders, military) can still use their cell phones and have internet access, people on both sides will be in the dark. Maybe their government doesn't rely on cell phones at all though and doesn't have to worry about internet access (internet access being much easier to keep "in the government" if they wanted to).

Anyway, looks like this is going to either A: Be a major destabilization of the region resulting in domestic civil war and terrorism or B: Be a disgusting violation of human rights by a country's government that will end in massive bloodshed and a new supreme asshole nation in the middle east. I mean, up until now Iran has been less terrible to its people than Iraq had been before we declared war, right?

6/14/2009 3:05:09 AM

If you're going to rig an election, you should at least make the faked results somewhat believable. From what I've read, there are several provinces, including the opposition candidate's home province and ethnic group voted overwhelmingly in favor of Ahmadinejad...

6/14/2009 3:24:57 AM

^that doesn't really make sense.

if they voted overwhelmingly for MA, then the current results would be more believable.

6/14/2009 3:35:39 AM

Quote :

"how ironic. Americans pointing the finger at a rigged election lol. I guess now that Bush is out of office he can be forgotten "

First thing that came to my mind

The Simpsons United States did it!!

[Edited on June 14, 2009 at 3:36 AM. Reason : o how so quickly we forget]

6/14/2009 3:35:51 AM

so 2 wrongs make a right?

6/14/2009 3:39:49 AM

i never said either was right, it just shouldn't be that surprising. Esp. in a country like Iran.

The mistake the US made is that we just let it go as we do with all the other corrupt doings that happen in our govt.

I mean there was a miscount in the state where the "winnner's" brother was governor. American Idol must of had a new season debuting b/c America moved on pretty quickly...

[Edited on June 14, 2009 at 3:58 AM. Reason : ...]

6/14/2009 3:55:57 AM

ACORN must be in Iran too

6/14/2009 5:59:26 AM

some updates. . .

Quote :

"Grand Ayatollah Sanei in Iran has declared Ahmadinejad's presidency illegitimate and cooperating with his government against Islam. There are strong rumors that his house and office are surrounded by the police and his website is filtered. He had previously issued a fatwa, against rigging of the elections in any form or shape, calling it a mortal sin."

Quote :

"This is hearsay - but under conditions of a police state coup, we are best advised to glean what information we can, hold it provisionally, and test it as time passes. Here's what Kos Diarist Electronic Maji is hearing from Iranian journalist friends under lockdown: Unofficial news - reports leaked results from Interior Ministry: Eligible voters: 49,322,412 Votes cast: 42,026,078 Spoilt votes: 38,716 Mir Hossein Mousavi: 19,075,623 Mehdi Karoubi: 13,387,104 Mahmoud Ahmadi-nejad (incumbent): 5,698,417 Mohsen Rezaei (conservative candidate): 3,754,218 If this is true, it would explain the comically lop-sided total in reverse - a lovely gesture from the regime taken direct from Machiavelli - and the panicked reaction by the regime. "

Quote :

"“Here is my country,” a young woman said to me, voice breaking. “This is a coup. I could have worked in Europe but I came back for my people.” And she, too, sobbed. “Don’t cry, be brave,” a man admonished her. He was from the Interior Ministry. He showed his ID card. He said he’d worked there 30 years. He said he hadn’t been allowed in; nor had most other employees. He said the votes never got counted. He said numbers just got affixed to each candidate. He said he’d demanded of the police why “victory” required such oppression. He said he’d fought in the 1980-88 Iraq war, his brother was a martyr, and now his youth seemed wasted and the nation’s sacrifice in vain. Quoting Ferdowsi, the epic poet, he said, “If there is no Iran, let me be not.”"

ahmadinejad:

Quote :

"The situation in the country is in a very good condition. Iran is the most stable country in the world, and there’s the rule of law in this country, and all the people are equal before the law. And the presidential election has witnessed people’s massive turnout. As I said, even in a soccer match, people may become excited and that may lead to a confrontation between them and the police force. This is something natural. A person coming out of a stadium may violate the traffic regulations. He wil be fined by the police no matter who he is, an ordinary person or even a minister. So these are not problems for the people of Iran. "

[Edited on June 14, 2009 at 12:07 PM. Reason : .]

6/14/2009 12:05:47 PM

and this whole thing is worth a read:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/6/14/742253/-Early-Report-Day-Two:-Media-Police-Run,-Protestors-Trapped-by-Police,-Ayatollahs-Daughter-Arrested.

Quote :

" * 1. The Green protesters have taken over at least two police stations in north of Tehran, the Guards are trying to take back the buildings. * 2. University dormitories across Iran have been attacked by the Revolutionary Guards. * 3. The building of the ministry of Industry, and a major telecommunication center, have been set on fire. * 4. Sharif University's professors have resigned on mass. * 5. Unrest in Rasht, Tabriz, Isfahan, Shiraz and every other major city. "

6/14/2009 12:40:52 PM

Quote :

"pardon me for thinking that one of the biggest uprisings in a generation in iran (peaceful pre-election and violent post-) is news-worthy."

Hah, sorry. I was referring to the elections being rigged, not the unrest.

But remember, this is not the first time these things have happened. There have been several small scale riots after elections, and we really don't know how wide spread these are nor how large.

6/14/2009 1:16:49 PM

I wonder if its widespread enough for the CIA to do its whole backing the subversion thing.

6/14/2009 1:18:24 PM

^^the best i can do is take the word of people who are there and have been there their whole lives, who say it's the biggest uprising since the revolution in '79.

6/14/2009 1:23:39 PM

I think the CIA has done enough in Iran for a few centuries.

Quote :

"the best i can do is take the word of people who are there and have been there their whole lives, who say it's the biggest uprising since the revolution in '79."

Which may or may not be true. Honestly we don't know right now. Even those in Iran have no clue how widespread the unrest is.

[Edited on June 14, 2009 at 1:44 PM. Reason : .]

6/14/2009 1:26:28 PM

it's interesting how twitter has been a major means of communication among journalists and protesters alike.

6/14/2009 4:03:28 PM

^ i was just gonna say http://www.h3x.no/2009/06/14/iranians-on-twitter-during-the-june-clashes/

6/14/2009 4:12:56 PM

Quote :

"I think the CIA has done enough in Iran for a few centuries."

Because the CIA has been operating for a few centuries.

6/14/2009 4:22:44 PM

^
I was thinking that the quoted text was insinuating that the CIA has intervened enough over the past half century to warrant no more intervention for the next 150 years or so.

6/14/2009 4:57:20 PM

it was obvious to those of us who are not intentionally difficult

6/14/2009 5:12:02 PM

this and other posts saying the same thing are going around twitter. also, that Moussavi has been arrested (as opposed to house arrested)

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/06/followup-on-earlier-posts.html

Quote :

"Yes, the president of Iran's own election monitoring commission has declared the result invalid and called for a do-over. That is huge news: when a regime's own electoral monitors beak ranks, what chance does the regime have of persuading anyone in the world or Iran that it has democratic legitimacy? Second: Stratfor is reporting that Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, head of the Expediency Council, has resigned. Though unconfirmed, the report is saying that Rafsanjani is resigning from his position as head of the Expediencey Council, NOT his position as the leader of the Assembly of Experts, which has oversight responsibility over the office of the Supreme Leader and would be responsible for naming Ayatollah Khamenei’s successor."

[Edited on June 14, 2009 at 5:27 PM. Reason : you can watch the "real time" conversation at http://iran.twazzup.com/]

6/14/2009 5:27:20 PM

http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2009/06/14/ahmadinejad.challenger.presstv

i feel sorry for those translators they sound so hesistant/confused relaying the answer.

6/14/2009 5:48:15 PM

^uhh... that's because they are translating. they can't do it at full speed in real time. have you ever heard live-translated speech before?

Not to mention that persian has the verb at the end of the sentence, so the translator has to wait until the speaker finishes the sentence before he can make a meaningful english sentence.


[Edited on June 14, 2009 at 6:11 PM. Reason : .]

6/14/2009 6:08:35 PM

so i just flipped over from the cnn coverage to ol' fox news to see if they had some different camera angles... or maybe a general or two... nope... some dude calling obama a socialist

i wish cspan would invent a news network... or 24/7 pbs news

anyone know what the slant's been on al-jazeera?

[Edited on June 14, 2009 at 6:24 PM. Reason : +]

6/14/2009 6:23:34 PM

Quote :

"how ironic. Americans pointing the finger at a rigged election lol. I guess now that Bush is out of office he can be forgotten"

I do not think the election was rigged but i do not see why people think its unreasonable that the election was skewed, nudged, or influenced in a certain way; especially since coincidentally George Dubya's brother Jeb was gov of the critical contested state that tipped the balance of the election one way or the other.

Even with out doing anything illegal; I think someone as powerful of a governor has the capacity to affect an election and proceeding recount in the grey areas of his executive control.

There is a reason why so much argument and heat rises when an election ends up coming down to a very slim margin. This day and age its hard to bullshit a windfall sweeping victory but it is possible for some corrupt leader to slightly skew an election into his favor without drawing to much notice.

6/14/2009 6:26:16 PM

Quote :

"^uhh... that's because they are translating. they can't do it at full speed in real time. have you ever heard live-translated speech before? Not to mention that persian has the verb at the end of the sentence, so the translator has to wait until the speaker finishes the sentence before he can make a meaningful english sentence"

yes i have and i have translated stuff for other people in real time so that is why i feel sorry for them especially when he used traffic light in a response.

[Edited on June 14, 2009 at 6:38 PM. Reason : the translator probably thought "wtf traffic light?"]

6/14/2009 6:35:42 PM

haven't read this thread, but why would anyone thing the Iranian election was NOT rigged?

6/14/2009 7:54:12 PM

I thought it was possible for them to have basically free (as free as they could be) elections because of the security the powers that be felt with having overarching theocratic control

guess I was wrong...

[Edited on June 14, 2009 at 8:24 PM. Reason : .]

6/14/2009 8:24:26 PM

Quote :

"^^^, ^ douchebag"

hey look, its the fagboat.

6/14/2009 8:32:15 PM

jesus christ can you two please keep it out of the thread

6/14/2009 8:50:05 PM