All this commentating in the American media about whether the Iranian powers-that-be have negated the results of the election held there yesterday prompts me to ask about the Palestinian parliamentary elections of January 2006.
How many Americans have ever protested the negating of those certifiedly free and fair elections, that was carried our by our government in coalition with the government of Israel?
… Or, protested other acts like the assassination attempts made by Israel against the political leaders duly elected in Palestine in 2006… or, Israel’s imprisonment without trial of around 40 of the legislators elected in those elections… or, the damaging, collective-punishment siege that Israel imposed on 1.5 million Gazans, and continue to maintain in harsh form until today, in order to “punish” them for the way they voted in 2006… or, the US government project to arm and train an insurgent force tasked to overthrow the results of the elections by force… or, the full-scale military assault Israel launched in December to try to overthrow the results of the 2006 elections with the application of huge amounts of brute force… or, the numerous other moves made to negate the results of those elections and to punish or kill their victors… ?
Just asking.
It strikes me that having a single standard to apply in response to the results of elections in other countries would be a mighty handy thing for a country that aspires to be a worldwide “beacon of democracy” to have.
Actually, if I heard even one peep of protest from the US government or from any MSM commentators here about Israel’s lengthy continuing imprisonment without trial of scores of elected Palestinians legislators, that would already make me just a little bit happy.
Otherwise, all the bloviating about whatever it is that’s going on in Iran these days (and who, actually, knows at this point?) has all the air of hypocritical and decidedly partisan point-scoring.
59 thoughts on “The results of free and fair elections”
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Closer to home, how many American media outlets or foreign policy officials ever questioned the results of the last presidential election in Mexico? One would think that it would be in US interests to have a legitimate, democratic government on its southern border. Yet there were some very credible analyses that revealed statistically impossible voting patterns. These are the same charges being made against the Iranian election, though the patterns are different.
Yes, as Helena says, this “has all the air of hypocritical and decidedly partisan point-scoring.” Worse, it shows that Washington promotes democracy only in countries where they don’t like the regime. If the regime responds well to Washington’s influence, it can pretty much have whatever form of government it wants, tyrannical or not. And Washington will turn a blind eye toward any elections that happen to get stolen by its friends.
The aforementioned injustices were all egregious, as is the ‘electoral coup’ that seems to have taken place in Iran. The important thing is to be consistent. I find it encouraging that the people of Iran are taking to the streets the way the Americans should have in 2000 when Bush stole the election.
I see no evidence Dr No, that in fact the election in Iran has been stolen. A lot of people have an interest in suggesting that it has been. But there is no evidence that Ahmedinejad, who is very popular among the poor masses, and probably benefits from the disdain of the urban middle class, was ever in danger of losing the election.
In fact the victory was predicted in a national poll carried out last month (MRZine has the references).
I am not arguing that the poll was fair or the result correct: I don’t know. But I am very suspicious of these instantaneous responses and, reluctantly, cynical over sudden eruptions of street violence in capitals whose governments have been marked down for ‘regime change’ by the US Congress.
We have seen too many of these rentamob productions not to suspect the dread hand of the NED.
the people of Iran are taking to the streets the way the Americans should have in 2000 when Bush stole the election.
Talking about Bush stolen your election is just an irony here.
There were intense investigations by independent about Bush, none of them came with evidence that Bush have stolen the election, only words from time to time we hear here like Dr. NO .
What stricken here we cannot compare Iranians election with Palestinians for very simple reason , Palestinians have really free choice and more importantly US and other westerns independent monitoring bodies were on the ground when the election happed not like Iran there were no independent western monitoring on the ground.
The only way can describe the attitude and the behaviours of US and the west when it comes to Israel is the double standards and mangling/ interfering in ME for the sick of Israelis even its against the truth or the international laws, same law used to punished Iraq, N. Korea, or Iran and other countries.
This is the reality not Bush stolen the election and all these allegations without any evidences’ were Bush invaded/Occupied Iraq were behind him high portions of US citizens approval and a congress with a majority of democrats who support his war full of crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan till now.
Juan Cole is weighing in by claiming outright fraud in the Iranian elections results. His points seem well thought. He also predicts that nothing will come out of the popular unrest and clashes. I agree and am on record observing that the Iranian people are too coward to risk their necks and get rid of the tyrants on their own. So much for Persian pride.
Mousavi asks clerics to stop the violence of the revolutionary guards ..
بسمالله الرحمن الرحیم
انا لله و انا الیه راجعون
محضر مبارک مراجع عظام و علمای اعلام
با اهدای سلام، اینجانب اطمینان دارم که روند حوادث انتخابات ریاست جمهوری دهم را با دقت پیگیری کردهاید. اگر چه توسل به دروغ و استفاده بی حساب از امکانات عمومی و دولتی برای تبلیغات یکسویه به سود نامزد حاکم به خوبی نشان دهنده عزم این گروه خاص برای پیروزی به هر قیمت و از هر راه ممکن بود، اما تصور تقلب در آرای مردم تا این اندازه و برابر انظار شگفتزده جهانیان از حکومتی که تعهد به عدالت شرعیه از ارکان اساسی آن شمرده میشود، برای کسی ممکن نبود.
امروز که با حیرت تمام شاهد چنین تصورات جسورانه در امانت مردم هستیم و تمامی راهها برای احقاق حق بسته شده، مواجه شدن مردم مظلوم با سکوت علما و مراجع که ملجا راسخ این ملت شمرده میشوند، خسارتی بیش از یک تغییر در آرا را به دنبال خواهد داشت.
عواملی به بهانههای واهی با چوب و چماق و باطوم و شوک الکتریکی به جان اعضای ستادهای اینجانب و مراجعه کنندگان سرگردان و مبهوت از این وضعیت افتادهاند، در حالی که امیدی به کارایی قوه قضاییه محترم نمیرود زیرا جایی که دادستان کل کشور نتواند از سخن قانونی خود در پیشگیری از سخنرانی اضافی نامزد حاکم در سیما جلوگیری نماید، با چه ابزاری میتواند از این خشونت سیاه بازداری کند؟ به حسب وظیفه صیانت از آرای مردمی که اینک دچار چنین زیان عظیمی شدهاند عرض حالی تقدیم و یادآور میشوم که شاید تذکر به جای شما به مسوولان مفید واقع شود.
ایاک و الظلم لمن لیس له الا الدعا
برادر شما – میرحسین موسوی
Talking about Bush, look he celebrated Ahmedinejad elections
http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=261800&ac=PHnws
As a Baha’i, even if a dissident Baha’i, Juan Cole is an interested party when it comes to Iran, Titus. He has an agenda. He is not a democrat.
No, this discussion is skewed. Helena feels she is on safer and more profitable ground arguing for democracy around the Palestinian case, but that distorts the argument.
It’s the wrong jump, polemically speaking, in my opinion. Rather, the national democratic revolutions (NDRs) should be defended in general. In South Africa, our slogan has for generations past been: Power to the People! We still have to fight for it every single day.
Imperialism and its local agents are always hostile to the NDRs, while crying about “democracy”.
Righteous journalists should not only expose this hypocrisy. They should also vehemently oppose the spindoctorous tendency to reverse the argument. It is not the case that the Palestinian electoral result was more worthy than the Iranian one and therefore morally more defensible and tactically preferable as a ground for argument.
Let me give a different pair of examples. Pallo Jordan wrote (“Democracy is not a Privilege”, http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/anctoday/2008/at19.htm#art1) that even if the Zimbabwean MDC was arguably in the pockets of the Imperialists, yet it was not o.k. to prefer the undoubtedly anti-Imperialist Zanu-PF if they had for other reasons lost the support of the masses; and he compared Zimbabwe’s case with that of patient Nicaragua, where the Sandinistas are now back in power.
The reasoning in favour of national democracy has to be sufficiently strong to serve the anti-Imperialists in good times and in bad times. If we subordinate the strategic goal of national democracy to other considerations, then we will find ourselves in the same arbitrary, opportunist boat with the Imperialists, using all sorts of partisan reasons to support or condemn the results of popular electoral power.
President Ahmedinejad has showed the way by opening relations with other popular democrats around the world, notably in South America. He is right to do so.
In South Africa, our slogan has for generations past been: Power to the People! We still have to fight for it every single day.
Humm..South Africa national democracy… that’s why people leaving in waves from SA refugee in nearby Imperialists democracy countries…!
Dominic, you are a Marxist, though masquerading as a democrat. Therefore you have an agenda, just as does Juan Cole!
JES! Welcome back! Mistaken as ever! Let me put you straight!
Democracy means the collective exercise of agency.
Agency in turn is the essence of humanity and is the only possible basis for human morality. This was noted inter alia in the Bhagavad Gita and has been held on to by humanists forever since.
We Marxists are the humanists of today. Like Christopher Caudwell, I am a communist because I believe in freedom.
Democracy is not, as Churchill would have it, the lesser of many evils. Nor as Rousseau would have it, a miserable bourgeois contractual compromise in the face of a Hobbesian terror of a war of all against all. Democracy is at the heart of the human matter, which is free will.
A huge democratic victory such as that of the ANC in South Africa in April, or that of Ahmedinejad in Iran last week, is first and foremost a victory of the masses.
The achievement of the exercise of democracy as a matter of course is a prerequisite for the further development of humanity.
You don’t have to be a Marxist to understand that, JES, but it does help, of course.
Dominic,
What reason have you to believe that collective agency of Iranians was fairly represented by this election, especially as all the candidates had to be vetted by unelected religious authorities? In the USA, for example, even the communists appear on the ballot, and results can be challenged in court as we have seen in Bush/Gore and also Franken/Coleman.
Iran seems a strange place to look for a “people’s revolution” esp conisdering the contempt its unelected religious leadership has shown for labor unions and communists in particular:
https://www.indymedia.ie/article/87067?comment_order=desc&condense_comments=false&userlanguage=ga&save_prefs=true
Let’s put it like this, Vadim: Election day belongs to the voters, just as a wedding day belongs to the bride, and it should be respected and not forgotten.
That is also how we will remember the election of Barack Obama. It was not his day, it was the electorate’s day. Regardless of what Obama may subsequently do, we will rejoice in that memory.
As for Iran in particular, there is no doubt about the landslide popular majority for Ahmedinejad, or about the popular support that the Iranian revolution continues to enjoy.
The achievement of the exercise of democracy as a matter of course is a prerequisite for the further development of humanity.
Sorry Dominic. I don’t believe in the deterministic view of social and economic evolution any more than I believe in a deterministic view of biological evolution. To do so makes them religions, and that’s why I suggested that, as a Marxist, you had an agenda no less than Juan Cole’s (actually, perhaps even greater).
Question: If Marx were alive today, do you think that he would have been a trekkie?
Cole’s comments are no better thought out than anyone else’s. They contain gaping holes and are founded on massive assumptions. For one thing, like many Obama admirers, he just can’t get over the Mousavi = Iran’s Obama thing.
Who won? I don’t know. I see several things going on. I see an election likely rigged by a fascistic regime. I see massive hypocrisy over it, in which concern over stolen elections is blatantly organized according to political convenience (compare the US reaction and media coverage in response to the 2006 Mexico election). Cobban rightly points to other aspects of the hypocrisy. It’s all too clear that what the US establishment doesn’t like is the fact that our horse didn’t win – and don’t think for a moment that Obama and his partisans aren’t equally prone to such convenient outrage and concern. They still regard Fatah as more legitimate than Hamas despite elections.
What is most striking, perhaps, are the obvious parallels with US backed and manipulated color coups in Ukraine and Georgia. The media narrative was obviously ready to roll. Mousavi was obviously ready to do his part, claiming election cheating even before the election, ready to roll with accusations and demonstrations as soon as it was over, claiming the precious First Media Narrative. This was a Covert Op, in my opinion. That money Sy Hersh talked about was surely involved.
So let’s go deeper: if this was a covert op, it was a total success. Either Mousavi wins the standoff and the US gets its guy on the throne, or Mousavi doesn’t prevail, but the US gets to deal with a less legitimate Iran regime and a left wing at home that is suddenly much more willing to see a US policy of Regime Change in Iran. At least one Obama administration type is reportedly already refering to the Iran government as The Regime. That’s shorthand for ‘we are gonna **** you up’.
Did Ahmadinejad win? I don’t think we’ll ever know. I think the people of Iran do want freedom, and that would have made Mousavi attractive, but I suspect they also want not to cave in to US bullying, and that would have made Ahmadinejad attractive. The publishing this week of Dennis Ross’ heinous call for a vicious attack on Iran’s economy, clearly an act of war, a particularly brutal act of war, can’t have been missed in Iran, and it can’t have gone over well. And while we in the US overlook the bullying words from Obama and especially from Clinton, preferring to focus on the somewhat conciliatory ones mixed in, I don’t suppose Iranians see it all quite the same way.
I don’t know who won, but I think I know who lost. I think peace lost. I think the people in Iran who want change lost. I think democracy lost. I think this was a dark day for the world.
But let’s try, for once, not to be total hypocrites about what happened and what it all means, and let’s try to put aside the ObamaNarcissism that assumes that all any country in the world wants is their own Obama.
Cole’s comments are no better thought out than anyone else’s. They contain gaping holes and are founded on massive assumptions. For one thing, like many Obama admirers, he just can’t get over the Mousavi = Iran’s Obama thing.
Who won? I don’t know. I see several things going on. I see an election likely rigged by a fascistic regime. I see massive hypocrisy over it, in which concern over stolen elections is blatantly organized according to political convenience (compare the US reaction and media coverage in response to the 2006 Mexico election). Cobban rightly points to other aspects of the hypocrisy. It’s all too clear that what the US establishment doesn’t like is the fact that our horse didn’t win – and don’t think for a moment that Obama and his partisans aren’t equally prone to such convenient outrage and concern. They still regard Fatah as more legitimate than Hamas despite elections.
What is most striking, perhaps, are the obvious parallels with US backed and manipulated color coups in Ukraine and Georgia. The media narrative was obviously ready to roll. Mousavi was obviously ready to do his part, claiming election cheating even before the election, ready to roll with accusations and demonstrations as soon as it was over, claiming the precious First Media Narrative. This was a Covert Op, in my opinion. That money Sy Hersh talked about was surely involved.
So let’s go deeper: if this was a covert op, it was a total success. Either Mousavi wins the standoff and the US gets its guy on the throne, or Mousavi doesn’t prevail, but the US gets to deal with a less legitimate Iran regime and a left wing at home that is suddenly much more willing to see a US policy of Regime Change in Iran. At least one Obama administration type is reportedly already refering to the Iran government as The Regime. That’s shorthand for ‘we are gonna **** you up’.
Did Ahmadinejad win? I don’t think we’ll ever know. I think the people of Iran do want freedom, and that would have made Mousavi attractive, but I suspect they also want not to cave in to US bullying, and that would have made Ahmadinejad attractive. The publishing this week of Dennis Ross’ heinous call for a vicious attack on Iran’s economy, clearly an act of war, a particularly brutal act of war, can’t have been missed in Iran, and it can’t have gone over well. And while we in the US overlook the bullying words from Obama and especially from Clinton, preferring to focus on the somewhat conciliatory ones mixed in, I don’t suppose Iranians see it all quite the same way.
I don’t know who won, but I think I know who lost. I think peace lost. I think the people in Iran who want change lost. I think democracy lost. I think this was a dark day for the world.
But let’s try, for once, not to be total hypocrites about what happened and what it all means, and let’s try to put aside the ObamaNarcissism that assumes that all any country in the world wants is their own Obama.
…there is no doubt about the landslide popular majority for Ahmedinejad, or about the popular support that the Iranian revolution continues to enjoy.
I would ask how our provincial “expert” can speak with such authority and certainty…
At any rate, I’ve already taken up enough of our host’s space. Check out my new blog.
Here’s what to watch for – we’ll be seeing the phrase ‘regime change’ re Iran more and more in the US media, US political establishment and, before too long, in the Obama administration. It will probably start with Clinton. Watch for this.
Here’s what to watch for – we’ll be seeing the phrase ‘regime change’ re Iran more and more in the US media, US political establishment and, before too long, in the Obama administration. It will probably start with Clinton. Watch for this.
Juan Cole may be a fine scholar but he is not much of a Political Scientist: the nonsense about ‘culture wars’ and the simplistic determinism of his equation of urban with secular with liberal, with moderate, with doing what Uncle Sam expects of you misses out one vital factor: since 2001 Iranians have been under a sentence of death passed by Congress, the President and the entire neo-con propaganda machine. When Christopher Hitchens and Paul Wolfowitz are laughing aloud after the criminal bombing of Baghdad and promising that Tehran is next, it tends, to paraphrase Dr Johnson “to concentrate the mind, wonderfully.”
It will take more than one exercise in rhetoric under the watchful eye of President Mubarak to compensate for the shameless bullying to which Iranians have been subjected this last decade.
And not least because Iran has made the mistake of turning the other cheek once before: Khatami’s election came while the wounds of the carnage of the Iraq -Iran war (one of Washington’s cunning tricks in its characteristic mixing up of genocide and diplomacy) wwere still bleeding.
Iranians made the mistake of thinking that America had civilised itself and might feel a certain guilt over the million dead they lost to an army set on and subsidised by the ‘west’; they elected Khatami.
And the neo-cons interpreted it as a sign of weakness. So any advances on Iran’s part were sneered at. Khatami was treated with contempt. Iranwas part of an ‘axis of evil’; while its co-religionists in Iraq were subjected to Israeli detention, torture and terrorism tactics at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.
As for Ahmedinejad, he has been subjected to the sort of racist insolence in which the USA specialises. In the media he has been treated execrably, subjected to lies regarding Israel, regarding his views on European History and generally been shown that before lifting its threats to bomb Iran the ‘west’ expects surrender.
The result, a fellow human notes with relief and pride, has been for Iranians to rally round him and to reject calls to submit.
As to those wealthy, urbane bazaaris, wearing veils and haute couture knock-offs, flashing gold jewelery and longing to be able to drink martinis in sidewalk cafes: they didn’t come across their wealth and luxury by chance. They grew rich, as the rich do grow rich, while their fellows grew poor.
And those poor fellows, all free to vote without jumping through registration hoops and without being subjected to the ‘vote culling’ whereby millions of Americans lose their franchise, seem to have voted in their millions for Ahmedinejad.
In part because he has re-distributed wealth and initiated welfare programmes for the needy but largely, I suspect, because Iranians want to send a message to Washington that they are human beings with dignity and will not be intimidated or patronised by a nation with massive military power but no manners and a conscience that is for sale to any passing fad, such as Revisionist Zionism.
What the US should be doing is to ask Iran how it manages to get almost as many votes out of less than half as many adults. And how it achieves, without comnpulsion, an 85% participation rate.
With all due respect to our hostess (and much respect is in fact due), responding to events in Iran with “what about Palestine?” works as well as responding to events in Palestine with “what about Darfur?” What’s happening in Iran right now isn’t about Palestine and it isn’t about Western hypocrisy. It’s about whether the Iranian election was stolen and the Iranian people deprived of their fundamental rights.
If Juan Cole is correct and the election was stolen, then the people protesting the results are right to do so regardless of whether they have shown moral consistency on past occasions. If Bevin and Domza are correct, then the protesters are wrong, even if they have been consistent in the past. Not every conversation is about Israel and Palestine, and the events in Iran should be discussed on their own merits.
Robert Fisk (unlike Juan Cole; unlike me) is on the scene. Here below are two key grafs from what he reported in today’s Independent, which I’ll quote in full, in violation of comment-length limits. They completely give the lie to any idea that it is “evident” that A-N stole the election.
These couple of grafs are particularly interesting because throughout the rest of the piece Bob makes very clear he has deep criticisms of A-N, whom he dubs ‘The Democrator’. Note, though the signs of these judgments wrestling with his reportorial integrity in the first of these grafs: “But I must repeat what he said.” (Reportorial integrity won out there. Thanks, Bob.)
Here, then, are the two grafs, which outweigh anything Juan has to say on the subject from the verdant fastnesses of Ann Arbor, Michigan:
An interval here for lunch with a true and faithful friend of the Islamic Republic, a man I have known for many years who has risked his life and been imprisoned for Iran and who has never lied to me. We dined in an all-Iranian-food restaurant, along with his wife. He has often criticised the regime. A man unafraid. But I must repeat what he said. “The election figures are correct, Robert. Whatever you saw in Tehran, in the cities and in thousands of towns outside, they voted overwhelmingly for Ahmadinejad. Tabriz voted 80 per cent for Ahmadinejad. It was he who opened university courses there for the Azeri people to learn and win degrees in Azeri. In Mashad, the second city of Iran, there was a huge majority for Ahmadinejad after the imam of the great mosque attacked Rafsanjani of the Expediency Council who had started to ally himself with Mousavi. They knew what that meant: they had to vote for Ahmadinejad.”
My guest and I drank dookh, the cool Iranian drinking yoghurt so popular here. The streets of Tehran were a thousand miles away. “You know why so many poorer women voted for Ahmadinejad? There are three million of them who make carpets in their homes. They had no insurance. When Ahmadinejad realised this, he immediately brought in a law to give them full insurance. Ahmadinejad’s supporters were very shrewd. They got the people out in huge numbers to vote – and then presented this into their vote for Ahmadinejad.”
Azazel, you are absolutely correct: the Iranian elections need to be judged on their own merits. And while Fisk may currently be in Tehran and have known the person whom he quotes for years, there is no reason for us to assume that what this individual says is anything more than a personal opinion. It certainly isn’t based on anything emprical that I can see from the two “grafs”, and I’m sorry, but I don’t see how they “completely give the lie to any idea that it is ‘evident’ that A-N stole the election.”
but I don’t see how they “completely give the lie to any idea that it is ‘evident’ that A-N stole the election.”
JES, there are many ways that Mullahs used to move in these cases.
As noted before looks Free Potatoes do good job for AN boost, also it might very interesting and useful to listen to Timur Goksel is former senior advisor of UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon). He is a security consultant and teaches courses on the UN and conflict management in the Middle East at the American University of Beirut, how Mullah crat their supports machine as he study in this case Hezbollah.
Worth reading Laura Rozen
Thanks Domza and Epppie for your perspectives, they really added a new angle to my narrow view. I didn’t know that Juan Cole was a Bahai. Is that affiliation adopted or kind of transmitted by birth and family like other religions? I have read Cole a lot over the years, heard him on NPR as the resident expert and was never presented as a partisan actor, always the impartial scholar.
NPR reported that Iran blocked cell phone texting, then the cell network and now the internet. Interesting times, the few images I see don’t look very pretty, like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Osq4WTU822Y&feature=player_embedded
and I agree that the Obama effect is dead in Iran any way one looks at it.
I agree – nothing in Fisks piece “giving lie” to the idea that the vote was stolen, but then no way for a Westerner like Cole to make the claim in the first place.
What’s obvious is that the entire election process lacks transparency and therefore credibility. And judging from Fisk’s piece it seems as if the powers that be don’t take criticism especially well. Shutting down cell phones and the internet and pummelling reporters with clubs? Is this really how democrats behave Domza? Are we really supposed to celebrate all these people getting their privates kicked in?
Democracy what ever nick name link to its can not created in a societies that lack of knowledge, respect first for themselves and for others.
Societies like Iran, Iraq and most ME east states have long way to work as functioning democracy.
This long way not starting with free transparency election, they need to train, adjudicate their societies for this big process with real freedom not imposing strong ideology like Mullah or others in other ME states.
For now we hope things comes down in Iran and people realise that things should be solved in a peaceful and right way to put things in right direction.
Well cheers, Vadim. Thanks for trying to bowl bouncers at me. It’s not pleasant but you won’t get me out that way. Let me say it again: It’s the voters that count. There is no doubt at all that the people of Iran voted in massive numbers for Ahmedinejad. All of your bouncers will not take anything away from that. Only the willfully blind will not see it.
Let me also point out that there is very little to be gained for you in the US “public opinion” market, glutted as it already is with anti-Iranian bile. But the US foreign policy operatives have to eat this democratic Iranian victory up and they know that it counts. It’s a big factor in their calculations from now on. It’s a set-back for the war party, thank God.
The kind of blustering preaching-to-the-choir that you are putting on here makes very little difference to the billions outside of the USA who are pig-sick of your colour-coded bogus revolutions, which we all know are only reactionary, fraudulent counter-revolutions. All countries are special, but don’t forget that this is Iran we are talking about. We know about Mossadegh. We know a lot about Iran.
Still and all it’s the voters that count. Weird that one has to keep on saying that, isn’t it?
Only one in five Israeli Jews believes a nuclear-armed Iran would try to destroy Israel
Regarding Professor Cole’s “evidence”, he starts his posing with “Top Pieces of Evidence that the Iranian Presidential Election Was Stolen”. What most people neglect to read is the following sentence at the bottom of his post. “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.”
There is an article in Asia Times written by Mahan Abedin about this election. Although this article was written before the election, to me, it is more informative than anything I read regarding this subject before or after the election. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KF13Ak03.html
The article says that “Mahan Abedin is a senior researcher in terrorism studies and a consultant to independent media in Iran. He is currently based in northern Iraq, where he is helping to develop local media capacity”.
No doubt he may have some biases. But I concluded from this article that Ahmadinejad’s reelection is not that surprising and quite possibly legitimate.
I’m astonished at the assumption that because “he’s there” he (Fisk) must be right, and Cole wrong.
I happen to be far more persuaded by the many, many arguments that the election outcome was rigged….
ah, but I’m here in Virginia….
I must not know a thing.
All of my Iranian friends (and yes some live in Iran) are sending e-mails around asking people to tell the govts where they reside not to recognize AN as the president.
I find all a bit too reactive that so many supposedly progressive people in the West are apparently saying ‘Well, the US doesn’t like Ahmadinejad so he must be good…” or ” We know America has an interest in destabilizing Iran, supporting a coup in Iran so that explains this episode.” It’s all too America-centric. This appears to have little to do with America. This appears to be about Iran’s internal politics.
“In South Africa, our slogan has for generations past been: Power to the People! We still have to fight for it every single day. ”
Domza, is this the same South Africa that has the very same democratic electoral voting system as Israel and Iraq?
Power to the People!
No, Dr No, we are not saying that. We are saying that it is the electorate that matters. It is the voters that matter. It is the voters that can be and have been counted.
We demonstrate for democracy. In South Africa the struggle lasted for decades and centuries depending on where you take your start, but at least the entire lifetime of anyone alive today, including saamself yours truly.
You don’t have the vote and then demonstrate afterwards. If you care about it you respect it.
It is easy to see that nobody has pressed you to specify how this election was allegedly stolen or to provide any facts as opposed to what Scott H calls “arguments”. Stealing an election is a massive operation on the scale of the election itself. Where is the evidence? What are the details?
Even more peculiar from the point of view of us all being Internet freaks, how was the alleged block on the Internet done? And how come they can still send e-mails? I don’t believe this Internet block story, people. It sounds like I am being lied to, Dr No.
Scott H is now going on about the blogs he is reading. Did they block the Internet or didn’t they? How did they manage to do that without things coming to a halt? Well, actually, because it never happened. It was a wild piece of disinformation of the kind that gives the wag-the-dog game away.
Hey, bb, man, don’t talk in riddles.
I tell you what, when people start getting petty at you, you know you have won. You are being petty with me. Obviously I have won.
The next phase will be when some US officials, realising that it is now safe to do so, and knowing that they cannot be taken seriously at the diplomatic level, will start to make intemperate statements.
Like dogs, they will bark when it is safe to do so.
It’s over. Ahmedinejad won by a landslide. Don’t be a denialist. Get used to it.
There is no doubt at all that the people of Iran voted in massive numbers for Ahmedinejad.
And just how do you know that Dominic? I think that the polling was questionable for a variety of reasons, not least of which is the fact that the results were announced immediately following the closing of the polls – before officials even had a chance to begin tabulating the votes. (And remember, there are not exit polls in Iran’s elections.)
The reality is that we don’t know what the results were of the elections, and we may never know. Maybe AhmadiNejad really did win. Maybe he didn’t. There is certainly plenty of cause for suspicion that the election was rigged, and it looks like an awful lot of Iranians think so too. But the most interesting thing about this is the way so many Iranians are reacting to the announced result. That says something important in and of itself.
If I have to keep repeating myself I’ll be breaking the rules, JES, like you always do.
I thought you had gone off to your own blog, anyway.
That’s what you said you were going to do. Now what’s wrong? Nobody reading it?
Dear Shirin, we do know the results of the elections. They have been announced.
Your statement is not impartial at all. Your statement implies that those who announced the election result cannot be trusted, but it does not say why you do not trust them.
You are impressed with the middle-class outcry that is hasbariciously slopping around in cyberspace, but that is not comparing like with like, Shirin. You hold up an indeterminate “so many Iranians” against an actual on-paper national ballot, with fingerprint on each ballot-paper if I am not mistaken. Why are you being dazzled so? Why are you being stampeded in a cyber-stampede?
Alleging electoral fraud of an entire nation is a hell of a strong accusation to make. Why is it suddenly acceptable to make such an accusation without any evidence? Especially in conditions of incipient war hysteria?
What was that you were saying a moment ago about “being petty”? LOL.
Still there, JES? Why am I not surprised?
Then let me tell you something that might give you pause for thought for once in your life.
In the 2008 national elections in Zimbabwe, the MDC collected the results of the counts as posted on the the doors of the polling stations, tabulated them, totalised them, and announced the results before the Electoral Commission announced them “officially” (the latter announcement took weeks and was done in pairs, one MDC, one Zanu-PF, leaving the net result in doubt while the weeks passed).
For announcing what was already in the public realm, the S-G of the MDC, Tendai Biti, was arrested, locked up and charged with treason.
Are you now supporting the idea that if a party announces victory ahead of the electoral commission it is treason?
In case you don’t know, Tendai Biti is now the Finance Minister of Zimbabwe in the government of national unity.
I think you anti-Ahmedinejads are relying on a great deal of basic ignorance of how elections work. The candidates and their parties are part of the electoral process, and intimately involved with it. Anybody who has taken part in an election must be baffled by all this ballyhoo about the Iranian election. None of the detail is there. How and where was the counting done? Were the party agents banned from the count, or not? Et cetera.
Or is there a bit of racism going on here, that says those Asians can’t be trusted to be doing any of that stuff, and if they did it, they would only be pretending?
Dear Dominic, your logic seems flawed. Since when does the fact that something has been announced make it ipso facto true? I feel quite confident that you have in your life, as I have in mine, experiences in which something was announced that turned out not to be true at all.
I have no stake in whom the Iranians elect as president and will reserve judgment on whether the announced results of the election were correct or not.
Shirin, the resulted of the Iranian election was duly announced without any delay. The defeated candidate, who must have agreed to the modalities of the election prior to the campaign, and did campaign on the basis that everything was being properly done and in good faith, has not lodged any specific objections as far as we know, but only a generalised “We wuz robbed!”
If the result had gone the other way, the now-defeated candidate would have had no problems accepting it. We have a prima facie case for believing that the defeated candidate is an insincere opportunist.
There is no prima facie case for saying that the result is in doubt, and in the absence of such it becomes partisan to say that it is in doubt.
You can’t hedge in a situation like this. It could be a matter of war and peace, life and death.
You talk about my experiences. This, electoral politics, is actually one of the things I have experienced. I know what has to be there to make such accusations stick, and I can see that it is not there. I can see that writers are skirting the facts. I used to be an auditor, once. I am trained for this. That is another part of my experience. Certain types of answers can only be predicated on certain types of questions. In this case, the correct questions are not even being asked.
Dominic, as a former auditor and one with a lot of experience in elections, don’t you find it just a tad suspicious that the elections results were announced without delay immediately after the polls were closed, before there was even a chance to open the sealed ballot boxes and count the ballots?
JES, it is more that normal for parties to claim victory (or concede defeat) long before polling has ceased.
We all know that, whether we are auditors or not, so what are you mithering about?
To audit, you must have all the facts, not gobbety tids and tads, offered up like a sheep’s eyeball.
People are not being serious about this. You are not being serious. So give it a rest, won’t you?
Dominic, please read this slowly and move your lips if you have to. It is not the announcement by the “normal parties” that you, Shirin and I have been discussing here. It is the official government announcement of the results. The problem here is that there were no outside observers to validate the elections and no audit trail to subsequently determine whether or not there was fraud. That is what Shirin means (and, God bless her, I have to agree with her this time) when she says that we’ll probably never know.
BTW, I love your provincial and colorful “gobbety tids and tads, offered up like a sheep’s eyeball”.
“Dear Shirin, we do know the results of the elections. They have been announced.” …
and
” Shirin, the resulted of the Iranian election was duly announced without any delay.”
Shirin – I fear you are earmarked as a candidate for re-education.
Comrade Domza clearly leans more to the Stalinist wing of 20th century Marxism, rather than say the Trotskyite?
However Domza’s devotion to the South African democracy, given it is unashamedly based on the Israeli electoral system, is a cause for suspicion that he is, in fact, hasbara?
In addition, it can be remembered that it was Stalin who ordered the Soviet bloc and satellites to vote for the establishment of the Israeli state in 1947. Without those votes, of course, the jewish state wouldn’t exist today and might lead objective observers to conclude Hasbara = Stalinism? Ergo: Domza=Stalinism=Hasbara. Etc.
Going back to Helena’s thread topic, I would like to comment that moi as a lifetime left social democrat, has much empathy. The Palestinians have everybody’s football for their own ends since 1948.
Even Hamas who used the people so cynically in ’06 by campaigning on “reform and change” and then betraying them.
Check this:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/14/AR2009061401757_pf.html
“Shirin, the resulted of the Iranian election was duly announced without any delay.”
By what possible reasoning does that mean anything at all except that the result was “duly announced without any delay”?
By the reasons I gave. Do you only read the first line?
I have a little more time now, Shirin, so let me answer you in another way. The thing is like this. All our democratic collective structures from small committees through branches and up to trade unions and parties and the national electoral collective must all strive for resolution. This can only be achieved if the minority acquiesces and does not rebel, split, run or fade.
If it were the case that all attempts at resolution were to be held in doubt (Until when? Until who speaks?) then all of the above becomes impossible. In this case of Iran the minority refuses and is encouraged to refuse. The doubt that you have is a dagger aimed at the heart of democracy.
In Kenya the year before last and in Zimbabwe last year we had cases of the losers refusing to accept. People died. These were disasters. In the first, Kenya case, the incumbents were encouraged to hang on by the USA, because they were believed to be more “pro-Western”. In both cases the winners were obliged to take a humiliating position in a “unity government” for the sake of avoiding more slaughter, yet in a sense they were made to betray the voters who had given them the majority. These were tragic things, and all because of doubt, whether innocent, or naive, or pretended.
When the results of an election are announced they should be accepted. It is the wrong moment to start a barney. There are opportunities and remedies before and after, but to make a chaos of it at that moment is wrong.
“Do you only read the first line?”
I read the whole thing, and with considerable incredulity.
I only responded to the first line because I did not find your arguments even a little bit persuasive.
Apples and oranges, Dominic.
Still not persuasive in the least.
We’ll find out soon enough. The voice of the people is the voice of God.
“The voice of the people is the voice of God.”
Oh, puleeeeeeeze! Can we keep this somewhere in the vicinity of the real world, if you don’t mind?
Wow, JES, we actually agree on something! Quick, check to see if they are selling ice cream cones in hell!
Domza=Stalinism=Hasbara ?
And it should also be kept in mind that the hardline zionists are backing Ahmadinejad in this fight.
Domza=Stalinism=Hasbara ?
Hahahah Well done bb…