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Iran Election June 09

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  • #46
    1980s, are you writing directly from Iran?

    I ask because I read somewhere that the BBC, Facebook and such websites have been blocked from the elections. Also, I use a software program to watch live television stations from around the world and in the last couple of days Iranian channels (Press TV, Iran NTV, and Iran TV3) have been cut off and don't broadcast anymore.

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    • #47
      from the telegraph

      Iran elections: anger on the streets of Tehran
      Riding around Tehran in dozen-strong posses, the groups of black-clad public order police on motorbikes looked like a bunch of Hells Angels in search of trouble.

      And on Saturday afternoon, on the wide, treelined boulevard of Vali-asr Avenue in the city centre, they found it in spades, as tens of thousands of protesters, furious at Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's questionable election victory, yelled a defiant cry in their faces: "Death to the dictator".

      Vali-asr Ave stretches some 12 miles from the very north of Tehran to the very south, and is said to be the longest street in the Middle East. In the past week, however, it has also earned a different claim to fame – as the gathering point for supporters of Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the reformist challenger tipped to unseat Mr Ahmadinejad's in Friday's polls.
      Yesterday, despite an official order banning demonstrations, it also became the venue for the biggest display of open defiance that the Iranian regime has seen in years. At midmorning, there were just a few hundred people there, with nervous-looking police dishing out beatings to any man or woman who attempted to loiter for any time.

      But by lunchtime the crowds were growing, and by 4pm the streets were packed as far as the eye could see – mainly people in their 20s, but also their parents and even grandparents.

      "People, come and support us," shouted the bolder groups, as the police started menacingly. Up went the cry, at first sporadic, but soon as a constant chant: "Marg Bar Dictator" (Death to the Dictator)

      Then, as the protesters began to throw rocks, the police finally charged.

      Having first badly beaten a few demonstrators who didn't escape in time, the riot squads went on a riot themselves, hurling rocks into the windows of nearby residential flats and smashing shop windows with their truncheons.

      Joining them in their official vandalism were a number of civilians – believed to be basijis, the plain-clothes, pro-regime thugs that Iran's clerical regime deploys to both intimidate and mislead. Mousavi supporters who witnessed the destruction knew straightaway what tomorrow's Iranian newspaper headlines would be: "Reformists go on rampage."

      "They were just vandalising everything and smashing windows, so that they could say publicly that it was the protesters' fault," said Abbas Mohammed, 26, watching in horror as the police laid into a woman protester. "This is their typical tactic."

      By 6pm, as summer stormclouds gathered and lightning snaked down over the Alborz mountains that ring Tehran the crowds around Vali-asr Ave had dispersed. But in the distant streets, the sounds of further trouble could be heard, with demonstrators shouting and occasional bangs and crashes.

      Palls of smoke rose up from side streets, while in shop entrances groups of demonstrators nursed people bleeding from truncheon wounds. Groups of basjis wandered around menacingly, clutching sticks of wood.

      The police crackdown was chilling confirmation of last Wednesday's warning from a senior member of Iran's hardline Revolutionary that any attempt at a "Velvet Revolution" by Mr Mousavi's youthful supporters would be nipped firmly in the bud.

      It was a sour end to a sour day, that had begun in the small hours of Saturday morning when Iran's interior ministry had announced that President Ahmadinejad had an unassailable lead in the vote. His victory came despite widespread predictions that he might head for a crashing defeat, amid widespread anger at his dismal economic policies and aggression towards the West.

      Yet nobody in the reformist camp was that surprised at his 61.6 per cent showing. Why, they said, the authorities had simply rigged the vote again, just as they did in 2005, when Mr Ahmadinejad – then a virtual unknown – first came to power.

      "There was a joke going around town that if there was no vote rigging, Mr Ahmadinejad would come fifth out of four candidates," said Mr Mohammed. "Now it doesn't seem so funny."

      With no international observers present in Iran's elections, the supporters of Mr Mousavi know there is little chance that any alleged skulduggery will be revealed, never mind rectified. But as they chatted on the streets on Saturday, they noted all manner of suspicious things.

      Why had Iran's text message system been switched off since Friday, the system they used to organise rallies? Why was the BBC Persian website blocked, along with a number of other reformist websites normally available? And most curious of all, why did Iran's official new agency announce early in the morning that Mr Ahmadinejad had already only won, when at that time, only 20 per cent of the vote had been counted?

      Yet while the reformists might have lost the election on Saturday, the country's mullahs also seemed to have lost the confidence of their people.

      The free and good-natured street campaigning last week generated a huge expectation that Iran was finally on the brink of a new era, with many comparing the vast pre-election crowds to those who greeted Ayatollah Khomeini when he arrived in Tehran to start the Islamic revolution in 1979.

      But just as the optimism of that time quickly faded, so now has the optimism of last week. "I cannot see anybody wanting to participate in any kind of politics after this," said Mitra Khorshidi, 26, a government worker who attended last week's cheerful pro-Mousavi rallies. "But it has also been a defeat for the mullahs. They had a chance to regain the trust of the people and they lost it."

      By 7pm, as trouble flared up yet again in Vali-asr Ave, and riot police laid into another female onlooker, word spread on the streets of another dubious official statement from the interior ministry. It declared that there had been "no post-election violence" in Tehran.

      By Colin Freeman in Tehran
      Published: 6:20PM BST 13 Jun 2009
      Last edited by gabriel; 13 Jun 09,, 20:13.

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      • #48
        Seen it before to often to have much hope.The young Iranians have my sympathies,but they have little chance.Unless somehow the clerics decide to commit suicide and turn on A-jad,the Guard and the Basij.It still depends on the scale of protests.The larger,the better.
        Those who know don't speak
        He said to them, "But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. Luke 22:36

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        • #49
          I am not posting from Iran and yes i have also been told that sms service (in Tehran at least) has been disrupted (possibly also mobile networks) and facebook, youtube and other websites have been filtered in Iran to prevent the truth from coming out. There are also rumours that Mir-Hossein Mousavi is under house arrest. His websites have been taken offline.

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          • #50
            Originally posted by Oscar View Post
            Its sad but I would think that the majority of Iranians still support Ahmadinedjad.

            So what makes you think so?


            Stalin said that it matters not who people vote for; what matters is who counts the votes. This regime looks like being quite capable of something like that.

            Look at the people in the pictures, they could be from Madrid. So I don't know the situation in the rural areas, but these people don't come out of the blue, it seems awkward that A-jad should represent them.
            L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux

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            • #51
              Originally posted by Oscar View Post
              I think Ahmaninedjad has found a model in Chavez. He played the populist card, pleased the crowd with cheap anti US slogans and showered his clientele (the poor and the rurals) with subsidies that economically make no sense and ultimately wreck the economy but as long as it secures his seat....

              I wish Bush had dealt with him like he did with the "Bolivarian" clown. Just ignore him...
              Its hard to when he's working on a nuke.

              I feel for the Iranian people. Hopefully this is the sign of them being fed up and not willing to take it anymore. They deserve better.
              F/A-18E/F Super Hornet: The Honda Accord of fighters.

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              • #52
                I'm watching the protests from liveleak.com its fkn insaneeeeeee

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                • #53
                  Originally posted by Mobbme View Post
                  I'm watching the protests from liveleak.com its fkn insaneeeeeee
                  Thanks for the link M/M
                  ;)

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                  • #54
                    That stuff is simply amazing and awe inspiring. I have nothing but respect and admiration for the younger generation of Iranians.
                    "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. " Today it may be the patriots but tomorrow it will be the tyrants. I think the genie is out of the bottle and will be difficult to return. I don't think the hardline government or rule can survivewithout some real concessions to the "greens" even if the rigged elction does stand.
                    That's a lot of pent up hopes and hostility for the way things are being shown to the world. All those videos just leave me speechless us americans are suckers for republican protests! To go out in the streets when they know they could be beaten and jailed if not killed takes a lot of courage. /salute I just hope the Israelis dont bomb now. An outside threat to rally people around the flag is the hard-liners dream right now. I would think this might be a tenser time on the gulf for our navy. I understand it's pretty bad now with radar games but, they might be tempted to create a real incident to rally the people
                    Where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost.”
                    ~Ronald Reagan

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                    • #55

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                      • #56
                        Does the election outcome matter

                        Whilst the possibility of of fraudulent election process and the brutality of the authorities is not what any body should have to live with, would the return of Ahmadinejad matter that much and is it such a bad thing?

                        The following article from the National Review Online, The corner, makes some very good points to consider.


                        Thursday, June 11, 2009

                        Eye on Iran [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

                        Tomorrow is election day in Iran. I asked our friend, AEI's Iran expert, Michael Rubin some questions about what to watch.

                        KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: How real is this election in Iran tomorrow?

                        MICHAEL RUBIN: In a sense, the elections are real. Fraud is a problem and election tallies are often tinkered with (indeed, this enabled Ahmadinejad to avoid elimination in the first round back in 2005) but this year, four candidates have engaged in a real campaign, and held real debates. That said, the worst thing any analyst can do is engage in projection, and assume that Iranian elections are equivalent to elections elsewhere. In the Islamic Republic, for example, a Council of Guardians determines who can and cannot compete in elections. This year, less than 1 percent of applicants were allowed to compete. Only those that agree with the Supreme Leader can run. An analogy would be if the Soviet Union held elections in the 1970s, but only candidates that espoused the policies of Leonid Brezhnev could compete. In such circumstances, we would hardly call the Soviet Union a democracy.

                        As a result, Iranian elections are much more about style than about substance. There’s a tendency among analysts to amplify differences, but when it comes to key U.S. policy concerns: Iran’s nuclear ambitions, violent opposition to the Middle East peace process, and support for terrorism, there are none. Remember, that it was under “pragmatist” President ‘Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and “reformist” President Mohammad Khatami that the Islamic Republic not only built up its nuclear capability but also, according to the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, experimented with warhead design.

                        The last thing to remember is that the real power in the Islamic Republic rests with the Office of the Supreme Leader, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and, in the economic sphere, with the Revolutionary Foundations.


                        LOPEZ: Should we want Ahmadinejad to lose the election this weekend?

                        RUBIN: The Obama administration tends to conflate advocacy with analysis. They see in the Islamic Republic what they want to see, not what the Iranian leadership’s intentions really are. As such, should someone more soft-spoken and less defiant — someone like former prime minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi — win, it would be easier for Obama to believe that Iran really was figuratively unclenching a fist when, in fact, it had it had its other hand hidden under its cloak, grasping a dagger. What Ahmadinjead did was to expose the ideology of the power holders in Iran for what it actually is. Holocaust denial, for example, is nothing new to the Islamic Republic. Both Rafsanjani and Khatami also encourage it. Ahmadinejad’s bluntness, however, forced even the Europeans to react.


                        LOPEZ: Does he disappear if that happens?

                        RUBIN: No one in the Islamic Republic ever fades away until they die. The Supreme Leader maintains power by balancing factions and personalities against each other. When Rafsanjani got too big for his britches, he magically failed to even win elections to parliament. Likewise, Mousavi disappeared for 20 years, only to re-emerge as Ahmadinejad’s strongest challenger.


                        LOPEZ: Who is Mir-Hussein Mousavi and what kind of president would he make?

                        RUBIN: As prime minister throughout the Iran-Iraq War, he sought to ease Iran’s international isolation; however, he did this without seeking to compromise the Islamic Republic’s fundamental policy positions. Behind Mousavi’s soft-spoken exterior, he is a fervent revolutionary who purged the universities of Western-educated intellectuals and argued for an invasion of Israel. As president, Mousavi would be the face of the regime. He would not delight in antagonism as Ahmadinejad does, but he would not make the substantive changes to or compromises on policy that any real rapprochement will require. Domestically, he has painted himself as a reformer, promising, for example, to abolish the morality police that harass women showing too much hair and young men dressing in too Western a fashion. But, he really would have no control over security matters and so he would face widespread disgruntlement quickly. We would also see a resurgence of the vigilante groups (I wrote my first book about this phenomenon) who, in a manner analogous to Brown Shirts’, would rough up opponents to prevent implementation of policies of which their hardline bosses disapprove.


                        LOPEZ: What's Rafsanjani's role in this race?


                        RUBIN: Rafsanjani and Ahmadinejad represent two separate polls in Islamic Republic politics. Rafsanjani, likely the wealthiest man in Iran, represents the Islamic Republic elite. Ahmadinejad represents the so-called Principalists (usulgaryan) who seek to revive the spirit and principles of the Revolution’s early years. Ahmadinejad has used Rafsanjani as the archetype of the corrupt politician who has perverted the revolution. Even those who may disagree with Ahmadinejad’s religious views will find his populism attractive, as many resent the class which Rafsanjani represents for using their positions for personal gain.


                        LOPEZ: How will the Cedar Revolution from last week's Lebanon election going to effect Iran?

                        RUBIN: Not much. Some reformists say it highlights Iran’s isolation, but Ahmadinejad can argue that he oversaw rapprochement with Arab states, expanded Iranian influence in Africa and South America, was welcomed at Columbia University, and even brought America to the table.


                        LOPEZ: What's Netanyahu watching for?


                        RUBIN: There are three different assessments of the Iranian nuclear challenge. Europe looks at the Iranian nuclear challenge in terms of being a threat to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and the efficacy of multilateralism. The United States looks at the Iranian nuclear challenge in terms of strategic tenability. Israel sees a nuclear weapons-capable Islamic Republic as an existential threat. Netanyahu is waiting to see if the United States will act in a serious fashion to deny the Islamic Republic nuclear weapons capability. If he determines that the United States is willing to accommodate Iran, he will act unilaterally, even if he has no good unilateral options.


                        LOPEZ: How should President Obama respond, whatever happens?

                        RUBIN: He should judge Iran by its actions, not its words. He should verify, but he should never trust. He should not project, but recognize that the Islamic Republic’s strategists do not think like him. He should stop conflating advocacy with analysis.


                        06/11 12:00 PMShare
                        Source;The Corner on National Review Online

                        Cheers.

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                        • #57
                          [quote ]would the return of Ahmadinejad matter that much and is it such a bad thing? [/quote]
                          Attached Files
                          Last edited by gabriel; 14 Jun 09,, 09:57.

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                          • #58
                            Depends on bad for who. For the US, or for the West, or for Israel?

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                            • #59
                              Originally posted by gabriel View Post
                              would the return of Ahmadinejad matter that much and is it such a bad thing?
                              Read and make comment on the article Gabriel!

                              Posting those photos does not accomplish anything.

                              Would the sort of thing in the photos not happen when the puppet master is the guy who determines what goes on with little/no regard for the Iranian people.

                              Cheers.

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                              • #60
                                Originally posted by captain View Post
                                Posting those photos does not accomplish anything.
                                Just wanted you to see them.

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