Parviz: Khamenei's Aura of Invincibility Shattered
[editorial note: I just received this email by MoA regular Parviz (not his real name) who lives in Iran and I decided to publish it immediately without any change or correction - b.]
Hi Bernhard,Your monitoring has been atrocious but I submit the following as a new thread to redress the balance and compensate for all the doubts you have expressed about the genuineness and independence of Iran's reform movement:
TITLE: Khamenei's Aura of Invincibility Shattered
MoA threads and comments were so one-sided that I left the Blog, but I’ve decided to stop lurking and recommenced commenting out of a sense of responsibility to your armchair intellectuals, and especially in support of those non-Iranian posters (God bless them) who are continuing to ask the same questions I and others repeatedly asked and to which you pointedly refused to respond.
(Some examples: How can you defend "counting" done in complete secret by security officials? What about Karroubi's missing 7 million votes? What about the statement of powerful Ayatollahs in the Holy City of Qom – Grand Ayatollahs Montazeri, Sanei and the Qom Seminary -- that the election was rigged? Why does the Guardian Council say it needs 10 days to check 10 % of votes when the ENTIRE election votes were allegedly counted in just one hour? Exactly how 'random' do you think those 'samples' will be? Why do all the titles of your threads invariably defend Khamenei/Ahmadinejad and cast doubts on Moussavi’s credibility and on the broad-based strength of the protest movement that reached 3 million on Thursday in Tehran alone? etc.,.):
Today I tried to participate in the peaceful demonstration (which is permitted under Article 27 of the very same Islamic Constitution that the Islamicists have subverted, meaning that no Interior Ministry permit is constitutionally necessary), and managed to walk past huge groupings of riot police, Revolutionary Guards and plainclothes militia (Baseej), plus huge numbers of Arab troops (I guess on loan from Hamas and Hezbollah), all heavily armed and wielding truncheons and other weapons. Near Tehran University (= 2 km from Enghelab Square where the peaceful demonstration was to occur) I was stopped by some ugly looking Baseej group which threatened to beat me and my friends up if we walked even one step further south.
When they drew their weapons we were forced to give up the venture, and the thugs probably inadvertently did my group a favour by turning us back before we could get anywhere near the proceedings, because many others who got through have been beaten up, many are missing and Tehran is in chaos and under military rule. I am now back home watching Al Jazeera that showed video footage of one young girl shot through the head by a sharpshooter, among other atrocities.
b, here is what the regime you inexcusably defend actually did today as reported by this eye-witness:
They had troops, Guards and militia stationed at every crossroads and along the length and breadth of every route from the very "upper-middle-class" North of Tehran down to Fadayeen Street (= a total area of about 200 square miles). I guess maybe up to one million regime "helpers" were involved in a Clausewitz-style show of overwhelming strength. This was because, as officially declared by the current Mayor of Tehran, the street protests reached a peak of 3 million on Thursday and were growing daily. As you correctly point out above (sometimes I can agree with you) the regime's aim was to PREVENT millions of people reaching the focal point, so they could kill and maim and arrest the few who actually made it. They closed off all approaches to the Square and then (as evidenced by the latest videos) picked off the demonstrators like penned-in animals.
I believe (but have no proof) that the 'coincidental' bomb explosion near Khomeini's tomb was set off by the regime itself as an excuse for an even harder crackdown. Khamenei mentioned the possibility of bombings at Friday Prayers, and right on cue the next day (today) such an event occurs 25 miles away from the demonstrators. Funny that it served the purpose of 'desecrating' Khomeini's tomb even though the bomb went off outside, giving the regime the excuse it needed to label the opposition 'Godless' and escalate violence even further against these clearly peaceful protesters.
If the regime hadn't cracked down so hard today the crowds in Tehran alone would have swelled to well over the earlier 3 million, as those not bribed/coerced by the regime are sick to death of 30 years of religious hypocrisy and misrule.
Anybody here still believe the Islamic regime is 'democratic'? It’s a regime of thugs, run by thugs on behalf of thugs. Any help to Hamas and Hezbollah is not to help Palestinians but a) for leverage against the U.S., and b) to generate ‘coupons’ that they can use in situations like this. Everybody I spoke to today thought we were in Lebanon after seeing so many heavily armed Arabs in and around Ferdowsi Square and Chamran bridge.
The main thing is that the aura of invincibility and (God forbid) ‘Godliness’ about Khamenei has been shattered. This won’t end until the regime is either overthrown or reforms dramatically and becomes part of the Revolution.
Nobody I know gives a damn about the U.S. or Israel. We are all simply fed up.
Best wishes to all,
Parviz
[additional note: I do not have time today to respond to Parviz' note, but I promise to do so tomorrow - b.]
Posted by b on June 20, 2009 at 18:59 UTC | Permalink
« previous page | next page »Amir S @ 71:
Your government doesn't shoot unarmed young women, exercising their constitutional right
You ignorance knows no bounds. Just google the Kent State massacre where unarmed women were shot like a rabid dog in the street. Google the Waco massacre where babies were burnded alive for exercising their constitutional right to breath. Google how many people are shot by the cops every year.
All revolutions leave a trail of dead liberals. What's your point?
Yah what's the point. That's your mentality. Just dismiss it as something that happens all the time like declaring who cares about dead liberals eh? You are aslo wrong. Just google liberal revolution and you will find many examples throughout history on every continent and count the bodies compared to the fascist regimes. Compare the constitutions between the emerging liberal governments and those of the fascists. Now you tell me which governments gave more liberties to the people and which governments killed the most people? It's not even close. Chavez in Venezuela overturned a western backed coup in which he himself was jailed. Tell me how many people did he kill in retaliation?
Iran is a theocracy where the clerics rule and hand pick a select pre approved slate of candidates pretending the people are getting democracy. This is laughable by any democratic standard. It is no different than a dicatatorship where the Ayatollahs rule over the populace and let them squabble over the few crumbs of power they allow them have. Parviz's dream of tossing out the clergy from power and instituting real democracy is not even on the table.
The Sepah, the most fascist and militarist segment of the Iranian regime has taken over the country right now.
That's funny becuase according to your earlier post they were in power when your side won the elections. How could they have taken over the coutnry if according to you they always ruled the country? How convenient that you can blame all the brutality on the other side when your side is in power and demand that power back because the other side is brutal. This is called cognitive dissonence?
I personally like Mousavi. He is one of the cleanest people the regime has, and the only hope of Iran to regain its path towards independence an freedom.
You've made that very clear but his record is the opposite of your fine words. When he was in power the regime was far more brutal than the regime was when Ahmadinejad was in power. You stated in a previous thread that Mousavi has no intention of changing the constitution and fully intends to ensure the theocracy stays in place. What kind of independence and freedom is that?
Also I'd like to know where you got this number 30k people executed.
I never said any such thing. Maybe you should reread the thread.
There were 5k MEK executed in 1988 after the american/iraqi supported terrorists attacked Iran. So what?
You claim you are appalled by the present government for killing a few people in street protests, but I notice you have no problem at all with killing thousands of people when they are not on your side of the polictical spectrum. Again you dismiss it with a so what? If that isn't the height of hypocrisy then I don't know what is. It's okay to murder when your side does it but if the other side does it they are blood thirsty killers?
Posted by: Sam | Jun 21 2009 2:15 utc | 102
@R'Giap
Yes, simply white noise.
Have you noticed how his claims and references to deaths, beatings, injustice are all very, very, detached & clinical or alternately utterly sensational & emotionally provocative ... yet interaction with other posters is clinical, distanced, sterile, pompously, bombastically dismissive & aggressive where there is not instant acceptance ... creates a continuous ringing in the ears as of tinnitis ...
His kind are performing thier assigned duty, or at best advancing thier agenda, no more ... hence, no credibiltity.
Amir speaks as does a memed and edited script, the audio heard aloud by a poor text-to-speech computer translation through a cheap soundcard ... though there is no script, just a general tasking order ...
Sadly, similar will continue and become far more common during critical incidents of import, as these techniques are reviewed, assessed and lessons learned ... simply additional tools and techniques to add to those proudly touted in Iran '53 and ad infinitum since ...
Still Steel mon Ami
Posted by: Outraged | Jun 21 2009 2:18 utc | 103
Outraged:
arrete avec le faux francais svp, c'est un peu demode apres les annes soixante.
Posted by: Amir S. | Jun 21 2009 2:23 utc | 104
Sam:
very selective quoting of my response.
I was saying if you actually care about the dissidents who were shot in the 80s you'd be on the side of montazeri who fought against khomeini and it cost him. and montazeri is on the side of mousavi.
Posted by: Amir S. | Jun 21 2009 2:25 utc | 105
Amir, in that case the decks are clear for Mousavi to call a temporary halt to the demos, or call for a strike, take the street action off the table and let the councils simmer for a while. This would have the great advantage, one might hope, of putting outside influences temporarily off guard and perhaps allow for some sort of unity to coalesce. Hey, I haven't grown up after all. Still a dreamer.
Posted by: Yuri | Jun 21 2009 2:26 utc | 106
r'giap @ 46
[H]ow much dragonfly would like to see the situation militarised
Could you please stop ascribing motives to people you know nothing about?
How you move from 10 questions about the situation Parviz says he has seen to my wanting to militarize the situation -- whatever that means -- is beyond me. Could you tell me just how you make the connection?
Posted by: Dragonfly | Jun 21 2009 2:27 utc | 107
i asked this earlier, but i'll ask it again: why do the opinions of the non-iranian folks who post here matter? why? the twitter revolution has plenty of friends, so why barge in here and hammer away with your agendas? i would seriously like to know, because this back and forth isn't going anywhere constructive, it's just getting vile and petty.
Posted by: Lizard | Jun 21 2009 2:30 utc | 108
Amir @ 104
I wish he exhibited the thirst for truth so prevalent in the 60s rather than peppering his sentences with Americanized French.
Posted by: Dragonfly | Jun 21 2009 2:32 utc | 109
outraged
to my knowledge it has happened at every historical conjuncture since moa began but especially since the israeli incursion in lebano in 2006. anti arab & @ anti muslim hysteria. people who had never visited here suddenly operating their own incursion & again during hell on gaza. i do not know if b edits out the worst but there is a heavy presence in those times - that is mostly fatiguing as the very reason we are here is to look at subjects through different eyes - not the ones we were doomed
amir is essentially a moron - so it bothers me not at all but the strangest quasi jurisprudential & haughty presence of dragonfly repeating ad nauseum what has been broadcast day after day on sites devoted to their cause. they do not call it twit -ter for nothing
we all work from presumption in in our work here - some more naked than others - but i cannot read the 'presences' as anything other than premeditated & i wonder why they bother - since our multiplicity as a community is there for all to see
they want to see a homogeneity in this community because their own approach is homogeneous. to me b has honoured that multiplicity, fundamentally
the fictions they enunciate are clearly so - verifiable almost immediately - but never so much as today with the fiction of hamas shocktroops armed to the teeth in tehran - tommorrow cnn will say "it is unverifiable but suspicious looking arab types who look like they are from south lebanon are filling the streets" . the living reality there is troubled enough - why they want to add exclamative forms of historical fiction is beyond me
& it seems to me that the actual situation is labrynthine - completely different to the black & white world they present - moussavi was a monster for them a fortnight ago - & now he is a living god ready to commit hari kari - it's a little too much for my delicate morphology
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jun 21 2009 2:40 utc | 110
Amir S stated: This is a picture of Naghshe Jahan. You've never been there. You don't know it takes 30 minutes to walk from one side to the other.
The square is about 500m long; it didn't take me 30 minutes to cross when I was there in April.
Unfortunately you weaken your overall arguments when you include falsities like this.
And to those who fall back on "you don't know my country / you have never been here" arguments, people on this forum are trying to make sense of what is going on.
If we could only comment on places we live in or have visited regularly, the forum would be quite dead.
Thanks, and keep up the good work everyone.
Posted by: Ash | Jun 21 2009 2:43 utc | 111
lizard
yr right of course, the back & forth is useless, they are not listening, nor are they here to listen - but i am especially fatigued & the noise is irksome
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jun 21 2009 2:48 utc | 112
Dragon Fly @99:
Excellent post.
I did what you said, there are multiple cities with >100% vote counts.
In fact, it's even worse than I thought. I took the census data from 2006 here and counted the whole population each township from the age 15 and up.
Then I compared to MOI numbers, and only counting the sum of AN MR MM and MK (not the disqualified ballots). Still there were countless with near 100% or over 100% turnout.
For example, I counted everyone from the age of 15 and up in the data of مازندران
a northern province of Iran:
votes pop district
تنكابن 138718 140978
رامسر 49630 48947
نور 76853 77009
etc.
and many many more.
more worrying the data for the highly contested regions آذربايجان شرقی and آذربايجان غربی (Mousavi's home state) has gone missing from the census website.
Amir
Posted by: Amir S. | Jun 21 2009 2:48 utc | 113
Ash:
I stated that there were 200,000 people in that picture.
I want you to calculated it.
lets take your number of 500m. lets say it's about 150m wide (low estimate).
lets say there are 2-3ppl/m^2
500 x 150 x 2.5 = 187500
How about instead of nitpicking irrelevant details you comment on the actual information I'm providing.
Posted by: Amir S. | Jun 21 2009 2:53 utc | 114
Amir S, I did comment on the actual information you provided: the fact that you stated it takes 30 minutes to walk form one side to the other.
What I'm saying, your argument would have been stronger if you had left this falsehood out.
These "irrelevent details," subsequently proven wrong, weaken any other statements you make, and hence bring into question your points.
I never questioned the amount of people there - I don't know since I didn't see it first hand.
Posted by: Ash | Jun 21 2009 3:09 utc | 115
Amir @ 104
You need to add people who were 12 years of age or more in 2006 so they will be 15 years of age in 2009. Also remember that the death rate in Iran is 6%. So
Population_2006 * 0.94^3 = estimate of Population_2009.
Posted by: Dragonfly | Jun 21 2009 3:09 utc | 116
to my knowledge it has happened at every historical conjuncture since moa began but especially since the israeli incursion in lebano in 2006. anti arab & @ anti muslim hysteria. people who had never visited here suddenly operating their own incursion & again during hell on gaza.
yep
Posted by: annie | Jun 21 2009 3:11 utc | 117
Dragonfly:
wow. I'm looking at lorestan and numbers are not pretty.
Even assuming the 6% deathrate is 2% infant mortality so shouldn't be counted, so doing N2006*0.96^3 =N2009, a very number of districts have >100% turnout.
Posted by: Amir S. | Jun 21 2009 3:16 utc | 118
Ash:
If the statement that it take 30 minutes to walk cross the naghshejahan (when it really takes 20 minutes to walk around it) is the only problem you have the what I've said on this thread, then we're pretty much in agreement.
Amir
Posted by: Amir S. | Jun 21 2009 3:22 utc | 119
Yuri:
I think he will eventually do that.
There may be discussions with the progressive religious groups to issue decrees against the government to further legitimize the movement. That would be the ideal situation.
Posted by: Amir S. | Jun 21 2009 3:28 utc | 120
With Friends like these....
SPEAKING FREELY
The American hand in Iran
By Trish SchuhDipping two fingers in red paint, Corsi waved a peace sign in solidarity "with the blood of oppressed Iranians" and called on "the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King". He declared, "I love the Iranian people. America does not hate the Persian people. We love the Persian people. We want peace and we love the Persian people." Corsi's voice then dropped to a whisper; "We stand here today and we pray in the name of the gods. I embrace Jesus Christ as my savior - and we also pray in the name of Allah, Zoroaster and the B'hai."
But Corsi has expressed very different opinions on Islam in the past. According to his own postings on FreeRepublic.com, on November 18, 2001 Corsi used a racial slur to define Arabs: "Ragheads are boy-bumpers [sodomizers] as clearly as they are women haters - it all goes together."
Using the incendiary style he perfected for "Swiftboat veteran" television attack advertisements, Corsi declares, "Islam is a peaceful religion as long as the women are beaten, the boys buggered and the infidels killed." Comparing Islam to a disease, he added, "How's this for an analogy? The Koran is simply the 'software' for producing deviant cancer cell political behavior and violence in human beings' and Islam is like a virus. It affects the mind. Maybe even better as an analogy: it is a cancer that destroys the body it infects. No doctor would hesitate to eliminate cancer cells from the body." In April 2004 Corsi said, "Let's see why it isn't the case that Islam is a worthless, dangerous, Satanic religion. Where's the proof to the contrary?"
Surrounding Corsi at his walk were three dozen Los Angeles Iranian dissidents and pro-monarchists interviewed by an Orthodox Jewish journalist and by the CIA-backed Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Farda. The Los Angeles Times of March 20 revealed that "Tehrangeles" has become a crucial recruiting ground for Iranian expatriates who gather information for the US intelligence community. Also providing assistance are various Farsi language media which broadcast messages against the Iranian government into Iran.
According to the March 4 Los Angeles Times, the US currently spends US$14.7 million a year on Farsi "opposition broadcasts" into Iran. The Voice of America's Farsi service reaches an estimated 15 million Iranians with news programs and websites, and the Bush administration has recently requested an additional $5.7 million for 2006 to expand the hours of transmission.
Los Angeles Farsi radio station KRSI noted the similarity between current US efforts and the CIA's 1953 overthrow of Iran's democratically elected premier Mohammed Mossadeq. When asked if he was CIA-affiliated, Corsi replied: "No, I'm not. I've never held a government position, never had any government position at all. I've been in universities. I'm an author. I'm in business. I'm not related to the CIA. It's just not true."
But when later asked how he became so committed to Iranian liberation, he explained, "When I was a young man I was an expert in antiterrorism and political violence. I had a top secret clearance when I was in universities and I worked to assist the State Department and the government." Corsi's publisher, Cumberland House, states in his biography that Corsi's top secret clearance came from the government agency US Agency for International Development (USAID). USAID has often served as a conduit for American covert operations funding, under humanitarian auspices.
This writer asked Corsi about the Iran Freedom Foundation's funding. He said the money came from sales of his book Atomic Iran and from private donations, adding that the IFF would apply for government funding when it became available.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GG06Ak03.html
Posted by: Yuri | Jun 21 2009 3:28 utc | 121
Amir S @ 105:
very selective quoting of my response.
I was saying if you actually care about the dissidents who were shot in the 80s you'd be on the side of montazeri who fought against khomeini and it cost him. and montazeri is on the side of mousavi.
It was an exact quoting of your response. You wrote the words I didn't. I am not on the side of any cleric or Ayatollah that presides over a religious dictatorship. For you to expect that from someone who has clearly stated my belief in the seperation of church and state is not only preposterous but just plain stupid. That makes about as much sense as I should be on the side of John bomb bomb Iran McCain because he spoke against torture. There is no logic in discourse with you as you just keep spewing crap and avoiding every atrocity I mention perpretrated by your side when your side was in power. You even dismiss mass extermination by your side with a "so what".
Your side was in power when Zahra Kazemi was brutally raped and tortured just for filming a student protest and your side didn't even have the common decency to allow the family of the torture victim to recieve the body and have a proper funeral. For you to blame the other side when your side was in power during that atrocity and clearly made the decisions is appalling to say the least. You are an apologist for fascism, murder and torture with your own words.
Posted by: Sam | Jun 21 2009 3:31 utc | 122
Your side was in power when Zahra Kazemi was brutally raped and tortured
my side? you mean the reformists? well they're not my side. you clearly have no understanding how factional politics work. and even if they are my side they weren't in power. try to get that through your thick head.
And you did selectively quote my response by leaving out:
the people who did stand up against these human rights abuses, i.e. Montazeri who lost his post as Khomeini's successor due to his opposition are in Mousavi's camp right now.
There was really nothing new in this post of yours, I don't know why even bothered repeating yourself. (though I'm sure you'll repeat yourself again)
Posted by: Amir S. | Jun 21 2009 3:35 utc | 123
@R'Giap & Annie
Yes, it is not coincidental, not at all.
The repetitive, closed, mutually supportive back & forth is nauseous ...
@Dragonfly
You know nothing of my journey or my thirst for truth ...
@Lizard
To you my sincere apologies, yes, it is in no way constructive, and for the disruption and regretfull, yet purposeful use of vulgarity. I apologise to you and others who may see it as such, however, to leave what is occurring unchallanged and unsaid, pollutes what is otherwise a priceless and valuable discourse and resource, MOA, a valuable and unique community.
Sorry, Lizard, however, sometimes a spade must be challenged, even called spade.
The responses to such are also a useful indicator ... MOA is merely a medium for them, a platform for disruption & provocation ...
Lurkers or new posters should not miscontrue my solely personal observations and comments, for that is all they are, as being unwelcoming to new voices or a multiplicity of views, absolutely not.
Peace, Salaam, Shalom.
Posted by: Outraged | Jun 21 2009 3:42 utc | 124
[comment by Parviz via email - b.]
Thanks, f and Lysander, JohnH, Jawbone, Arnold Evans, DavidS -- and my dear fellow countryman Amir S. except for the racist thing ;-)
I appreciate the support of some of you because I'm having to argue with several people simultaneously who have used this thread to accuse me of racism, worship of capitalism, disdain for my fellow Iranian-Arabs and scorn for those less well off ..... while trying to type answers on this 10-metre wide page and at 01:00 a.m. after a really eventful day!
Let me put the 'racism' thing to bed before I myself go to bed: The Iranian Arabs fought against the Iraqis and helped free Khorramshahr Port in 1981. They have been mistreated by both the monarchy and by the mullahs in equal measure, gaining almost nothing from their tireless efforts in 50-degree celsius sun that generates 80 % of my country's oil revenues. Ahwaz is a disgrace, no different from 100 years ago when oil was first discovered there. The people are lovely, honest, hard-working. So much for my "hatred of Arabs".
Some will recall my intensified activity on this Blog during the Christmas invasion of Gaza, the link to the Song for Gaza ("We Will Not Go Down") and my hundreds of comments ....... So much for my hatred of Arabs!
Finally, Imperialism: If the only way to combat imperialism/Zionism is by having as our President someone who has built a marble-paved road to the well down which the Missing Prophet allegedly disappeared at the age of 10 almost 1400 years ago, and who warns us every day that the prophet is going to emerge from the well to save mankind by destroying it first (???), then I would rather give in to Imperialism and come out with my hands held high and waving a white handkerchief. But I don't agree that it's "either/or": I believe that a strong, democratic and wealthy Iran will have the same advantages as China does, in standing up for its rights, than does an Iran rife with corruption and brimming with missiles as was the Soviet Union (which collapsed for similar reasons).
The mullahs are destroying the country from within, and this won't fulfil anyone's anti-Imperialist dreams.
Oh, and yes, this makes me a "paid CIA stooge" according to 'a' who evidently hasn't read anything I've written on politics during the past 12 months. Go back and read, then comment. And, by the way, how's the pay?
Good night, everyone, while I continue my allegedly racist, genocidal, capitalist dreams of global empire in a world dominated by the U.S. and Israel and living off my illicit earnings as a 'paid CIA stooge' .......
I couldn't post this for some reason so have asked 'b' to do me the honours.
[end comment by Parviz via email - b.]
I think he will eventually do that.
There may be discussions with the progressive religious groups to issue decrees against the government to further legitimize the movement.
It's morning, the time is now.
Posted by: yuri | Jun 21 2009 3:51 utc | 126
[another comment by Parviz via email - b.]
Sorry, Dragonfly, just spotted your post. Quick answers:
1. I guess a million tried because there was a lot of movement around the perimeters (I guess most of the potential 3-4 million were discouraged by the threat of vastly increased violence) but only a few thousand got through. I and my friends didn't because we were wearing green from head to toe and were picked out early.
2. The rallies so far were mainly students from ALL social classes, plus maybe 20 % older people, some of them (but not many) chadoris,= religious.
3. 1 1/2 hours.
4. I didn't hear any shots between 15:30 - 17:00, but it turned really ugly during the early evening and I heard shots from my home which I assume came from Chamran Bridge. Everyone shouted Allah Akbar from rooftops louder than ever before.
5. Yes I can, having done 2 years of military service here in Iran (though we used MIs instead of Kalshnikovs in the Shah's days)
6. There were infinitely more riot forces than jeeps, a much higher ratio than 1:20.
7. There were 4 distinct groups: a) Police milling around and keeping a low profile, b) the black-uniformed Pasdarans with helmets and bullet proof vests, high boots, batons and shields, c) the Baseej, some in light khaki uniform and others plain-clothed but all with just batons (and loads of motorbikes behind them) and, finally d) the fiercest bunches of Darth Vaders I've ever seen, protected from head to toe with heavy uniforms and with small satchels around their wastes (None of us knew what was in them). This last group facially resembled the Hamas and Hezbullah soldiers we see daily on news chanels but with a huge amount of additional personal equipment.
8. No, I didn't notice the soft stuff, I was too intrigued by the heavy armour and the variety of forces on display.
9. Of course. Pasdaran = IRGC.
10. No. But they may have showed up later, and only at the square which we didn't reach.
Must get some sleep.
[end comment by Parviz via email - b.]
Amir S # 123:
my side? you mean the reformists? well they're not my side.
So it finally comes eh? You've spent days here studiously defending them but all of a sudden they are not on your side. I've used the term your side now in several posts why the change now? So what does that make you an agent provocatur? Why do you love the dictatorial moollahs so much anyway? Oh and leaving out from your post that one of those dictaroial moollahs was opposed to murdering liberals is not selective quoting - it is irellevent to the discussion since those liberals were murdered anyway. Is that supposed to make the atrocities okay or something since he is supporting one of the killers now?
Posted by: Sam | Jun 21 2009 4:00 utc | 128
Why, exactly, is Parviz given so much attention? Peter, Paul and Mary should have been a dead give away for anyone with half a brain, and yet here we are, people still arguing with obvious disinformation. For starters, there are no baseline facts in this ongoing debate. Let's start with a list a questions.
1.) Who are the protesters?
2.) What do the protesters want?
3.) Who's backing the protesters, if anyone?
4.) What, or Who, is the Regime when people say Regime Change? Is it Ahmadinejad and his henchmen? Is it Khamenai and Ahmadidnejad and their supporters? Is it the Mullahs, and the clerical rule, in general?
5.) What, exactly, is meant by reform when people refer to Reformist?
6.) Is Mousavi really all that different from Ahmadinejad?
7.) Do the candidates matter anymore, meaning has this now morphed into something much more?
There are many more basic questions that need to be answered, and are not be answered by Parviz, or the mainstream media. All we are getting is vague, but convenient propaganda, and that should make anyone suspicious, especially when you hear the ever familiar code words such as Regime Change.
Posted by: Obamageddon | Jun 21 2009 4:07 utc | 129
Outraged @ 124
You know nothing of my journey or my thirst for truth ...
I've made no claims about your "journey"; your thirst for truth in my opinion is dwarfed by your fear of losing an ideology that shapes the way you think. But that's just an opinion.
Besides, you have shown yourself incapable of addressing specific and concrete questions you are asked. Instead you simply sling mud. Such a pity for a truth-seeker, however self-appointed he may be!
Posted by: Dragonfly | Jun 21 2009 4:09 utc | 130
Sam:
Communists and leftists (americans or otherwise) fought against faschists in WWII, fighting along side the british and american war efforts. They supported the side of the imperialists and colonialists, though it was against everything they stood for. Sometimes you have to put aside your ideals when a great danger arrives, and you must choose alliances which don't fit your views or ideology. It takes a bit of maturity to do this.
Ash:
I was reading over your comment again; you're right, I shouldn't have said 30 minutes. It was an exaggeration, and it hurt my argument. However, I do stand by the actually relevant numbers that I've posted here. For example the 200000 quoted in the same post. There are no exaggerations there.
Thanks for pointing this out to me. I have a tendency to sometimes say things like that in the "heat of the moment" and it hurts me in the long run.
---A.S.
Posted by: Amir S. | Jun 21 2009 4:14 utc | 131
@ Amir S - Choosing between the interests of one set of dictatorial moolahs over another set of dictatorial moolahs is not a choice I will ever make period. All that is going to do is decide which set of dictarial moolahs get to exploit the oil money. Talk to me about real change and I'll pour you a drink myself.
Posted by: Sam | Jun 21 2009 4:27 utc | 132
The Assembly of Experts are supporting the Supreme Leader (check mate Hashemi!) so what does this mean that our heated debates, at times overly partisan, over the elections is now coming to an end?
So where does this leave Iran's Republic? Does this signal a victory for the conservatives and the puttering out of the Reformist movement into the dustbin (perhaps to early of a eulogy for my taste) if so then what does this mean for the nature of Republican Iran? Where is the revolution of 79 heading and what does it mean for the revolutions promise of building a modern democratic state (formed from the will of the people) that is attentive to social justice?
Posted by: BenIAM | Jun 21 2009 4:35 utc | 133
r'giap @ 110 - i wonder why they bother - since our multiplicity as a community is there for all to see ... why they want to add exclamative forms of historical fiction is beyond me
could be that the objective is simply to create enough confusion & distraction that the reader just walks away & stop pursuing these lines of inquiry or interest in the affair
Posted by: b real | Jun 21 2009 4:37 utc | 134
Sam:
It's a choice you never have to make.
For people in Iran it's the only choice they can make.
Posted by: Amir S. | Jun 21 2009 4:38 utc | 135
BenIAM:
We already discussed this and why it's probably not true that 86 back the system earlier in this thread.
Posted by: Amir S. | Jun 21 2009 4:50 utc | 136
Amir S:
For people in Iran it's the only choice they can make.
Bullshit, the people of Iran choose to support the religious dictatorship. The religious rulers draw their strength from the ability to call on the support of the faithful masses. 75 million people cannot be oppreseed by religious leaders unless they allow it period end of story. Those that seek real liberal democracy are a minority in Iran and every other country in the Middle East. There is no such thing as real democracy in the ME.
It's no surprise that finally the Assembly of Experts has finally come out in support of the Supreme Leader for if this goes on the people might actually clue in and threaten their hold on power. I never argued over the legitamcy of the election because I think it is irrelevent. Choosing which moolahs ass you are going to have to kiss ain't no democracy in my books.
Posted by: Sam | Jun 21 2009 5:01 utc | 137
Well, I'm awake and knew this debate would get filthy. Thank you, 'Outraged'. You win the prize for verbal filth.
But the prize for sheer stupidity goes to Sam with his unbelievable comment:
"Your side was in power when Zahra Kazemi was brutally raped and tortured just for filming a student protest and your side didn't even have the common decency to allow the family of the torture victim to recieve the body and have a proper funeral."
WHOSE 'side'? Certainly not my side, Amir's side or the side of the peaceful protesters you have seen. They were the Sepah's side, you idiot! People like Amir and I identify as much with the murderers of Kazemi as you do with the U.S. soldiers who raped and killed Iraqi children.
And as for your using the fact that only a few thousand made it to Enghelab Square yesterday, you made that asinine comment without evidently having read all the restrictions that were in place. Can't you read? Or do yu think a red caprpet was laid out forthe protesters and only a few thousand 'bothered' to show up? You're Pathetic.
Nazanin Ansari? Christiane Amanpour? Forget them. They're irrelevant. Must rush.
Posted by: Parviz | Jun 21 2009 5:08 utc | 138
Parviz @ 138:
WHOSE 'side'? Certainly not my side, Amir's side or the side of the peaceful protesters you have seen.
You need to pay attention to more than Amir's last comments because even though he now denies that it is his side here is what he said in his first reply regarding the brutal rape and torture of a woman (whose only crime was trying to report on a student protest) in his own words:
The sepah was in power even when 'my side' the reformists had the presidency.
The Canadian government didn't ask the sepah to return the body they asked the reformists in the presidency. You know the actual people that were elected to represent the country to the World for the moolahs in power. You have been whining since day one that the wrong person won the elections and when it is revealed that there isn't much difference now you are all distancing yourself's from the so called reformers. What's with that? If the reformers have no power when they are actually elected into power then why have you been arguing about the elections in the first place?
Posted by: Sam | Jun 21 2009 5:31 utc | 139
@Parviz 138
Award for verbal filth ... oh no, that would go to Amir for his "... you cunt" and " ... douchenozzle ..." whatever that is ... ;)
You mock this blog, your ridicule and patronise the host, you dismiss anything other than a subserviant viewpoint in utter obesiance, you fling invective and abuse at other posters as a monkey flings it own faeces ... you repeat ad nauseum already challenged, unsupported claims ... yet you claim you are unfairly treated and the non-iranian posters 'one-sided' ... can't have it both ways ...
BUT MOST OF ALL, you claim first hand, Hamas, Hezbollah and Arab stormtroopers 'on the ground', defending the regime, standing in line with riot police and Basij militia ... SIMPLY COMPLETE AND UTTER BULLSHIT !
Posted by: Outraged | Jun 21 2009 5:44 utc | 141
'Parviz' is a plant. Is he Mossad or CIA? Hezbollah and Hamas? Can't you see it folks?
The issue is war, and the murder of another few hundred thousand Muslim children.
The issue is war, and the murder of another few hundred thousand Muslim children.
The issue is war, and the murder of another few hundred thousand Muslim children.
Do you care? Is it too much work to look that far ahead?
Does anyone who comments here, in breathless concern for Mousavi, know who he is?
Do terms like Contras, Nicaragua mean anything to you?
Was Mousavi perhaps involved in a decision to hold the hostages, and defeat Carter, in exchange for…? Would be interesting to know, given his close ties to Ghorbinifar, Ledeen, Franklin, and Feith.
Does he want to privatize the economy, like the rest of the 'color revolutionaries'?
Not to stretch the limits of one's understanding of history, but doesn't this sound a bit like Kuwait? Incubators?
But we saved the Kuwaitis, and the Iraqis, from Saddam. Having only to kill a million, or two, more or less, counting the effect of Clinton's sanctions, driving millions into exile, destroying ('pulverizing' according to al Baradei) their country, lives, families, hopes, futures. But they were mostly Muslim, and Arab, and they certainly didn't twitter. And they aren't on NPR, so how important could that be?
And Gaza? More Muslims, mostly, and certainly Arabs, so what's a few hundred children, more or less? Also not on NPR.
So don't think too hard, and get behind the green.
Posted by: Anonymous | Jun 21 2009 5:45 utc | 142
... CIA/Mossad plant eh? Another one for my ever expanding crank-list.
Posted by: Amir S. | Jun 21 2009 5:59 utc | 143
Amir @ 143
One has to wonder about some people's chutzpah. Instant pundits rushing to save Iranian masses duped by the Western mass media into believing a certain Mousavi -- a villain of first degree -- is good for them.
Wondering how the civilizing mission of the white man has shifted from the GB colonial office to armchair analysts pontificating about a land they know very little about.
Posted by: Dragonfly | Jun 21 2009 6:13 utc | 144
Iran Khodro Auto Workers Begin Work Slowdown to Protest the Regime
by Al Giordano - June 18, 2009 at 6:32 pm
The workers of the Khodro automobile company in Iran today issued the following declaration (translated for The Field from the original Farsi by Iraj Omidvar):
Strike in Iran Khodro:
We declare our solidarity with the movement of the people of Iran.
Posted by: yuri | Jun 21 2009 6:22 utc | 145
remember the WTO protests in seattle? man, those were the days. the anti-globalization movement had a level of solidarity that transcended borders because it had to; because its focus wasn't on any one nation, but on a consolidation of power and wealth that motivated these unhinged monsters to increasingly act against the interests of their national host-countries. that was before 9-11 and the GWOT, though. now, things are different.
still, it's worth asking; does it matter that up to 250 indigenous peruvians were killed in bagua? (no, unfortunately they have no youtube vids or tweets to tell their story on cnn, because there is no reason to bring attention to the plight of a bunch of poor natives living like monkeys in the jungle, right?) does it matter that people still resist corporate/fascist events like the olympics, and that dedicated activists have been working for YEARS to oppose the degradation of vancouver for the winter games, 2010?
do iranians resisting their allegedly fraudulent elections feel any sense of solidarity with other flashes of resistance against exploitation and corruption? if not, why?
AND WHY DO YOU CARE ABOUT WHAT WE THINK HERE @ MoA?
Posted by: Lizard | Jun 21 2009 6:27 utc | 146
do iranians resisting their allegedly fraudulent elections feel any sense of solidarity with other flashes of resistance against exploitation and corruption?
Yes. more than flashes in fact.
We just find it insulting when our struggle is dismissed, because of a misplaced admiration for AN on the part of the left.
Yuri:
Very interesting news! The IranKhodro strike is important. I can sleep easy tonight. (incidentally this is even more evidence that this is not a gucci revolution, though that debate is long gone and irrelevant by now)
I wonder if we'll see similar strikes in industries owned by the Sepah. you have to keep in mind, the strike which will win this battle and cripple AN is a strike in the oil industry. The oil industry is owned by the Sepah so this may be less likely.
Also, Mousavi has declared strikes should be called if he is jailed.
Posted by: Amir S. | Jun 21 2009 7:00 utc | 147
Amir, I guess what I was trying to say is if you want to convince people here you need to stick to facts,
otherwise your dubious statements will colour your factual ones until nothing you say will be believed.
However I can appreciate you're emotional at this time!
Anyway, as Obamageddon @129 lists, there are questions and facts which need to be sorted out if we can have any
sort of analysis on the situation. And at the moment, with so many sources - and many of them not having
the best track record for unbiased reporting (mainstream media) - accuracy in facts is probably our ally
for it is all we can base further analysis on.
Posted by: Ash | Jun 21 2009 7:02 utc | 148
I promised to answer Praviz :
MoA threads and comments were so one-sided that I left the Blog, but I’ve decided to stop lurking and recommenced commenting out of a sense of responsibility to your armchair intellectuals, and especially in support of those non-Iranian posters (God bless them) who are continuing to ask the same questions I and others repeatedly asked and to which you pointedly refused to respond.
If you want to see one sided discussions turn on the BBC etc. This blog is certainly one of very few where nearly all sides can be heard and where simple assertions are not swallowed down hook, line and sinker.
(Some examples: How can you defend "counting" done in complete secret by security officials?
To my very best knowledge counting was done in the local precincts (45,000+) with 6 officials in each and (mostly) party folks of all sides present and the results were reported up the chain to the interior ministry which published the (first partial) results. Please provide information that proves something else. (BTW - not even Mousavi alleged what you do - he only claims that is SOME precincts his observers were turned away - Iran's laws demands such IF the observers in the voting locality attempt to influence voters. Could that have happened?)
What about Karroubi's missing 7 million votes?
Who but Karroubi is alleging that he got 7 million votes? Proof? Witnesses?
What about the statement of powerful Ayatollahs in the Holy City of Qom – Grand Ayatollahs Montazeri, Sanei and the Qom Seminary -- that the election was rigged?
Well - what about the statements of the powerful NYT or statements by other Ayatollahs?
Why does the Guardian Council say it needs 10 days to check 10 % of votes when the ENTIRE election votes were allegedly counted in just one hour?
Ten days is the total legal frame set for the Guardian council to investigate claims of election fraud. Given that there 646 official (from the opposition) claims of such fraud, ten days seems quite a short timeframe to me.
Exactly how 'random' do you think those 'samples' will be?
As random as the opposition observers, who were invited to take part in the process, will allow it to be.
Why do all the titles of your threads invariably defend Khamenei/Ahmadinejad and cast doubts on Moussavi’s credibility
Titles of my posts on the Iranian election (latest first):
- Parviz: Khamenei's Aura of Invincibility Shattered
- The Real Clashes Have Begun
- Another Iran Election Thread
- Early Results No Sign For Fraud
- Christian Science Monitor's False Reporting
- What Are Mousavi's Plans?
- Cognitive Dissonance II
- Cognitive Dissonace
- Debs Take On Iran's Election
- Some Dots You May Want To Connect
- More On The Iran Election
- A 'Coup' in Iran? We Don't Know.
- Iran's Election
Please point out which of those titles exactly defends "Khamenei/Ahmadinejad and cast doubts on Moussavi’s credibility"
But indeed I find Moussavi's claim dubious because Moussavi announced his victory before any votes were counted at all and he has brought up ZERO evidence for his election-fraud claims.
Who won the election?
As repeated several times: We do not know
and on the broad-based strength of the protest movement that reached 3 million on Thursday in Tehran alone? etc.,.):
3 million in Tehran city, where Miusavi did win a majority according to the official results, ain't the majority but just a big crowd.
Today I tried to participate in the peaceful demonstration (which is permitted under Article 27 of the very same Islamic Constitution that the Islamicists have subverted, meaning that no Interior Ministry permit is constitutionally necessary),
Article 27 of the Iranian constitution says:
Public gatherings and marches may be freely held, provided arms are not carried and that they are not detrimental to the fundamental principles of Islam.
Please compare that Article 27 to Article 8 of the German constitution (pdf):
Article 8
[Freedom of assembly]
(1) All Germans shall have the right to assemble peacefully and unarmed
without prior notification or permission.
(2) In the case of outdoor assemblies, this right may be restricted by or
pursuant to a law.
Now I can not judge what is "detrimental to the fundamental principles of Islam" or what restriction German laws have on outdoor assemblies, but I am sure some folks will have well founded opinions on that.
and managed to walk past huge groupings of riot police, Revolutionary Guards and plainclothes militia (Baseej), plus huge numbers of Arab troops (I guess on loan from Hamas and Hezbollah), all heavily armed and wielding truncheons and other weapons. Near Tehran University (= 2 km from Enghelab Square where the peaceful demonstration was to occur) I was stopped by some ugly looking Baseej group which threatened to beat me and my friends up if we walked even one step further south.
Typical crowd control as usual in any state I am aware of. The Hamas and (Lebanese) Hizbollah claim is laughable. Fisk certainly knows Lebanese Hizbullah: Robert Fisk’s World: In Tehran, fantasy and reality make uneasy bedfellows
Now for the very latest on the fantasy circuit. The cruel "Iranian" cops aren't Iranian at all. They are members of Lebanon's Hizbollah militia. I've had this one from two reporters, three phone callers (one from Lebanon) and a British politician. I've tried to talk to the cops. They cannot understand Arabic. They don't even look like Arabs, let alone Lebanese. The reality is that many of these street thugs have been brought in from Baluch areas and Zobal province, close to the Afghan border. Even more are Iranian Azeris. Their accents sound as strange to Tehranis as would a Belfast accent to a Cornishman hearing it for the first time.Fantasy and reality make uneasy bedfellows, but once they are combined and spread with high-speed inaccuracy around the world, they are also lethal.
I believe (but have no proof) that the 'coincidental' bomb explosion near Khomeini's tomb was set off by the regime itself as an excuse for an even harder crackdown.
Well - slothrop believes it was the mossad.
I? I do not know, nor does anyone else as far as I am aware of.
What a good one for the Supreme Leader; we can all put our brains in our pocket now. Iranians can sleep tonight, knowing that 10 percent of the votes will be counted. What a splendid election. Those protesters have been agitated for days on end, having the hope that justice might perchance break out. Well, well, confusion to Robespierre; ding dong the revolution is dead. This is where a theocracy can really prove its mettle:
“The remarks of the Leader of the revolution were definitive… and obeying the orders of the velayat-e faqih (supreme jurisprudent) is a religious duty for everyone,”The neocons are unabashed too, with their support for Ahmadinejad. Better the delusional leader you know than the psuedo-reformist whose future is uncertain.
Of course all our hand-wringing here avails us nothing; the fate of Iran is in the hands of Iranians even now. They don't need Westerners to tell them what to do one way or the other; they can decide what they will accept and what they won't accept.
And here at MoA all the rock-throwing at our Iranian visitors can cease. We can listen to our comrade Antifa again, as he describes the Iranian history that should unfold in the next few days and weeks. It's ok to worry about other things. R'giap doesn't believe that the dialectic as it unfolds includes a revolution for the Iranians. I think it was de Montherlant who referred to the Dome of Saint Peter's basilica as "the candlesnuffer of Western thought"; and there exists a similar candlesnuffer of thought in the Islamic Republic. And what I think is that the people who yammer here unceasingly about a bleeding color revolution don't respect the courage of Iranians as much as they should, and don't credit the people with the intelligence and ingenuity that they clearly possess.
And those who have been depreciating the demonstrators would sure as hell not agree to live under theocratic fiat themselves.
@Parviz,
Sorry about that, did not want to cause personal hurt, however your extreme position on this issue has generated such a response. I think you are too emotionally involved in the situation, and your personal likes and dislikes are over-shadowing the ability of making an objective analysis.
So even if the opposition were to win what real change would it bring to Iran, other than they are backed by a different set of Mullahs who are even more corrupt. Too many experienced commentators and observers are seeing a CIA backing to this. I have read a number of your posts before on other issues, however on this, I think you are being extremely naive and refusing to see the whole picture. Either this, or my other conclusion. And then of course you are liberally mixing fiction with facts in your posts.
BTW, the CIA foot soldier hardly ever makes any money, so if you are smart you will have to move up the food chain :-)
Posted by: a | Jun 21 2009 7:55 utc | 151
Ash:
This is getting very old, most of the questions have already been answered or resolved but out of respect for you i'll give you my view on this 'new' set of questions which 'must' be answered first. (of course nothing 'must' be anything.)
1.) Who are the protesters?
people of Iran. young old poor student labor cleric. tehran isfehan shiraz tabriz qom babol rasht.
2.) What do the protesters want?
they want their votes to count.
3.) Who's backing the protesters, if anyone?
not sure what backing means here. financially? no one. no one is paying my cousins to go in the streets. spiritually? 100 years of revolutionary history and consciousness.
4.) What, or Who, is the Regime when people say Regime Change? Is it Ahmadinejad and his henchmen? Is it Khamenai and Ahmadidnejad and their supporters? Is it the Mullahs, and the clerical rule, in general?
regime change is the wrong word. basically they want the Sepah (IRGC) to stop owning the country. its ports, its industries, its oil, its communication, its media. the constitution of the islamic republic allowed them to vote a president in who is not part of the sepah, but the sepah, thanks to its control of the MoI among other places has circumvented the will of the people. right now, the sepah has the presidency, and leadership. they are the single most powerful entity in Iran, and their corruption is devastating and broadly felt in the populace.
5.) What, exactly, is meant by reform when people refer to Reformist?
Mousavi was very clear about this. Returning to the rule of the law. Returning to the cores of the revolution; its constitution. The constitution of the islamic republic, i believe is actually quite a workable document.
Reformists are a faction inside the Islamic republic who have tried to increase civil liberties, freedom of the press, women's rights and improve relations with the west.
6.) Is Mousavi really all that different from Ahmadinejad?
Worlds apart.
7.) Do the candidates matter anymore, meaning has this now morphed into something much more?
I'm not in Iran right now. I speak to cousins who take part in the protests (in Isfehan and Tehran). The demands of the protesters is still very clear, present even in their English slogan "Where is my vote?". They simply want the law of the Islamic republic to be respected. Of course, sticking to this line is kind of a necessity considering the suppression that would follow if they deviate from it. This may change as the situation deteriorates.
Personally, I'm not happy with an "Islamic" Republic in any shape or form. However, being pragmatic, and believing that change must come from within the system, and not from the outside as in Iraq, I along with a majority of the Iranians believe (once again) in the Reform movement. For most in the streets, the concerns are economic. AN and his Sepah have completely mismanaged the economy. Iranians are feeling hardship. During Mousavi's tenure, despite crippling sanctions, single-digit oil prices, war, terrorism and foreign interference, he managed Iran in a competent manner.
Posted by: Amir S. | Jun 21 2009 7:56 utc | 152
@Amir S. @113
Dragon Fly @99:
Excellent post.
I did what you said, there are multiple cities with >100% vote counts.
In fact, it's even worse than I thought. I took the census data from 2006 here and counted the whole population each township from the age 15 and up.
That proves exactly what?
That in Iran you can vote in any election locality provided you have your identification papers.
The vote was on a long weekend and people from the cities may well have been visiting their friends and families in their hometowns and might have voted there.
Can I prove that? No. But the numbers do not prove the opposite either.
Besides of that - voting age in Iran is 16 not 15 - wonder why you do not know that.
b, the statistics was arranged in parts 10 15 20 etc.
what is suspicious is that everywhere >100% vote, they vote by very large margins to AN.
I don't think any vote rigging occured.
I think the votes weren't even counted. These numbers are fake. You can't prove to me that they aren't, and I can't prove to you that they are. I've only found for you hints of fraud.
i.e.
1. the >100% stats above.
2. the refusal to give ballot info (rezai letter to MoI)
3. the roukema benford's number paper
4. the mebane paper "I think the results give moderately strong support for a diagnosis that the 2009 election was affected by significant fraud."
5. the fact that MoI is headed by an AN appointee and the process was done, as opposed to the rest of the election in a very closed and suspicious manner.
etc.
Anyway, do we want to go down this road again?
Posted by: Amir S. | Jun 21 2009 8:04 utc | 154
b: btw I'm pretty sure voting age in Iran is 15. Though I don't remember exactly. haven't been 15 for a while.
Posted by: Amir S. | Jun 21 2009 8:05 utc | 155
Statistical analysis says the voting results were very unlikely to have happened by chance.
But is that the prosecutor's fallacy?
Posted by: scarshapedstar | Jun 21 2009 8:07 utc | 156
I'm going to be leaving for a while (some days). So I won't be able to reply to people's messages. Interesting forum. Nice people. Thanks b. sorry if I was an asshole. I get a bit aggressive during arguments. Particularly when they're close to home.
Amir
Posted by: Amir S. | Jun 21 2009 8:19 utc | 157
@156 - that is a pretty dumb understanding of statistics. A Chi square test would is the standard tool to do this and not on the last numbers but on the second one and with a greater than just 29 sample. It does not prove anything but that those PhD political science candidates who wrote that up need some more statistic lessons.
@154 - what is suspicious is that everywhere >100% vote, they vote by very large margins to AN.
I don't think any vote rigging occured.
I think the votes weren't even counted. These numbers are fake. You can't prove to me that they aren't, and I can't prove to you that they are. I've only found for you hints of fraud.
i.e.
1. the >100% stats above.
2. the refusal to give ballot info (rezai letter to MoI)
3. the roukema benford's number paper
4. the mebane paper "I think the results give moderately strong support for a diagnosis that the 2009 election was affected by significant fraud."
5. the fact that MoI is headed by an AN appointee and the process was done, as opposed to the rest of the election in a very closed and suspicious manner.
etc.
Anyway, do we want to go down this road again?
If the votes were not counted at the local precincts why is nobody coming forward and says just that. Where are 45,000 precinct x 6 officials = 300,000 people who say the votes were NOT counted locally?
1. refuted above - doesn't say a thing as voting locality does not have to match the 2006 residence at all.
2. A commentator at Juan Cole asserted something else yesterday.
By the way, the Interior Ministry just published the results of individual ballot boxes. (It had not done so in any prior election.) This should make it easier for the candidates to dispute results and document concerns on the basis of evidence.
3. You mean this? New Benford Law Analysis [Update:4:01 pm 6/18] The professionals at FiveThirtyEight dealt with that:
I don't buy it. First off, the whole first-digit-of-7 thing seems irrelevant to me. Second, the sample size is huge, so a p-value of 0.007 isn't so impressive. After all, we wouldn't expect the model to really be true with actual votes. It's just a model! Finally, I don't see why we should be expecting distributions to be lognormal.Also here
4. Mebane - "moderately strong" but also inconclusive and "need more numbers"
5. Head of MoI - well I guess the head of the German MoI is also member of the currently ruling party. One usually does not put an opposition figure in ones cabinet. As MoI he would also be responsible for the next election. That does not mean that there will be fraud.
There are thousands of people working in the MoI and hundred thousands who have worked as election officials. Why ain't they coming forward if something was fraudulent? Is there no one sympathetic to the opposition in that huge group?
Anyway, do we want to go down this road again?
Yes. Especially as that road was not yet been taken.
Mousavi asserts there has been fraud. Where is the evidence?
Amir
Voting age was raised to 16 about a decade ago if I'm not mistaken.
It doesn't materially affect the argument though - since the 1997 reformist landslide, repeated in 2001, a good 15 million new voters have been added to the electoral roll, and thus far no-one has come up with any analysis why in general this group has voted in massive, and likely disproportionate, numbers for Ahmadinejad, and more specifically, why the most educated female population cohort in Iranian history has also overwhelmingly favoured him. If we're to take the 64% vote for Ahmadinejad seriously - which I don't for one moment - in his local setting his level of support is a good deal more intense than Obama's is in the US, and Mousavi - well, he's no John McCain.
B - whilst it's true that people can vote anywhere, there would have to be a corresponding drop-off in participation rates elsewhere to match it, and this should be readily observable. I'd also add that you could reasonably assert that the drop-off would be very noticeable in the large metropolitan centres - ie Teheran, Shiraz, Isfahan, Tabriz and possibly Mashhad.
Posted by: dan | Jun 21 2009 9:43 utc | 159
@dan - thus far no-one has come up with any analysis why in general this group has voted in massive, and likely disproportionate, numbers for Ahmadinejad, and more specifically, why the most educated female population cohort in Iranian history has also overwhelmingly favoured him
Right - there is no sociological analysis for this. All we have is the TFT poll:
The breadth of Ahmadinejad's support was apparent in our preelection survey. During the campaign, for instance, Mousavi emphasized his identity as an Azeri, the second-largest ethnic group in Iran after Persians, to woo Azeri voters. Our survey indicated, though, that Azeris favored Ahmadinejad by 2 to 1 over Mousavi.Much commentary has portrayed Iranian youth and the Internet as harbingers of change in this election. But our poll found that only a third of Iranians even have access to the Internet, while 18-to-24-year-olds comprised the strongest voting bloc for Ahmadinejad of all age groups.
B
Where are the election officials - there are some 270,000 across Iran directly involved in the supervision of the ballot according to the info given - coming forward to validate that the process was beyond reproach. A rough estimate suggests that some 1/2% of the voting age Iranian population was involved in running the election.....
Thus far I've seen nothing to corroborate the converse - election officials interviewed on domestic Iranian media country-wide saying, yup, we did it all correctly and the results in my neck of the woods are 100% correct.
Posted by: dan | Jun 21 2009 10:06 utc | 161
B
You do know that the TFT poll has support for Ahmadinejad at 34%, with a whopping 50% saying undedecided/won't answer. Now if those 50% of respondents who declined to tip their hand had not gone to the polls, then we could readily conclude that Ahmadinejad kept his base and the challengers failed to overcome voter apathy - this clearly didn't happen with the high turnout.
For an incumbent going into the first round of an election, those are actually very soft numbers and suggest that the election is very open. Given that the poll was concluded before the campaign got going in earnest, we have no way to judge how effective the respective candidates were at generating support/enthusiasm. However, it is clear that the campaign generated a great deal of enthusiasm for going to the polls - there was a very high turnout.
I'm pretty sure that there is plenty of solid sociological analysis out there - but it's mostly in Farsi.
Posted by: dan | Jun 21 2009 10:31 utc | 162
Thanks, AmirS, your post 152 should be required reading for all. Don't stay away too long since, as Copeland has warned, we on-the-spot Iranians are vastly outnumbered by the armchair skeptics, critics and pseudo intellectuals who refuse to believe what is developing before their very eyes despite stifling censorship.
The prize for MoA's Most Illogical Poster goes to poor Sam who asks why the regime is still in power if I claim it's so unpopular. He forgets the Soviet Union stayed in power for 75 years but collapsed within 72 hours only after the masses saw genuine hope for its collapse. Sam denigrates the courage of 3000 unarmed students against thousands of Darth Vaders as proof that "nobody bothered to show up", even though I explained in minute detail why 'only' 3000 got through.
Posted by: Parviz | Jun 21 2009 10:44 utc | 163
For those of you here who know who you are:
Let me sing a song of glee
for those of us who try to be
and stay
clear of things which bind and hurt,
of things that stifle generous hearts,
who want to share, and dance, and play
and keep their brothers and sisters through day
and night.
'Cause what they fight, it's a veil of fears,
and it won't be heard, nor felt, nor seen,
but the TV will put it on each day,
and the video-audios will always say
that we're wrong,
it's right, and 'less we all jump on,
then our only choice is to unleash the bombs,
on them --
the brothers, and sisters, and their children, all distant --
to kill them and their world, and end their resistance.
The arguments
go on, with consummate passion
pushing for justice where it has no ration,
The policemen, their agents, the tycoons and their theives
all join the elite to promote the aggrieved,
And then
It begins again, the world goes unhinged,
and humans go feral, and the animals cringe.
So let me sing a song of glee
for those of us who try to be
clear of things that bind and hurt,
of things that stifle generous hearts,
who keep our brothers and sisters by day
and night,
who set aside that veil of fears,
to nurture, and settle, and ease the tears.
Posted by: china_hand2 | Jun 21 2009 10:44 utc | 164
b, thanks for responding. You actually proved my point: The only thread that states the vote was rigged was mine, and with my title. The nonsense thread by Debs, who has zero knowledge of what's going on inside Iran, and your repeated suggestions that there was no vote-rigging, are reflected in just 2 of the threads I repeat below:
- Early Results No Sign For Fraud
- Christian Science Monitor's False Reporting
Even "What Are Moussavi's Plans" thread was surreptitiously diverted from a discussion of his 'plans' to your skepticism about the rigging! The thread should have stuck to Moussavi's plans.
Your 'Cognitive Dissonance' was the ultimate disgrace, asking how the picture fits the text. Everybody knews the picture was of the incumbent President. It was just a picture, but you made a big thing of it instead of examining the vote rigging that has been discussed subsequently in detail.
Unfortunately this Blog is dominated by a few short-sighted (dare I say 'blind'?) ideologists who believe that ANY regime, no matter how domestically evil, is to be praised and protected as long as it opposes imperialism. These ideologists don't realize that such brutal regimes invariably dig their own graves and collapse as did the Soviet Union, thereby making them even easier prey for imperialism. It seems the armchair ideologists have no sense of history.
Posted by: Parviz | Jun 21 2009 11:06 utc | 165
Thank you, ChinaHand, but let me respond with a more recent poem, written by the sister of Neda who was shot in the head yesterday afternoon and died in her father's arms:
I'm here to tell you my sister died while in her father's hands
I'm here to tell you my sister had big dreams...
I'm here to tell you my sister who died was a decent person... and like me yearned for a day when her hair would be swept by the wind... and like me read "Forough" [Forough Farrokhzad]... and longed to live free and equal... and she longed to hold her head up and announce, "I'm Iranian"... and she longed to one day fall in love to a man with a shaggy hair... and she longed for a daughter to braid her hair and sing lullaby by her crib...
my sister died from not having life... my sister died as injustice has no end... my sister died since she loved life too much... and my sister died since she lovingly cared for people...
my loving sister, I wish you had closed your eyes when your time had come... the very end of your last glance burns my soul....
sister have a short sleep. your last dream be sweet.
Posted by: Parviz | Jun 21 2009 11:14 utc | 166
b (160), you simply won't admit there was fraud, will you? The TFT poll was taken THREE WEEKS before the vote, while the sea change in opinion occurred DURING THE ACTUAL WEEK of the vote when the entire sewage of the Islamic Republic was exhibited before 50 million viewers and two of the candidates swore they were going to change the Constitution.
Everybody I know, literally everybody, including myself, had decided not to bother to vote (= "voter apathy"), until the debates occurred and sparks really flew with accusation and counter-accusation about fraud and mismanagement. Ahmadinejad made a complete ass of himself before 50 million viewers, claiming that steel production was 17 million tons (it is 11 million tons, less than in Khatemi's time) and that inflation was 14 % (The Iranian Central Bank had front page announcements in all newspapers the next day stating the figure was 25 %, = double the inflation rate he inherited!).
Ex British premier Harold Wilson used to say that "in politics one week is a long time", but in this case it was an eternity, sufficient to mobilize the 20 million who boycotted the vote in 2005 and who actually voted this time by the regime's own admission. Now, whom do you think these "apathetic voters", who suddenly and inexplicably cast their "apathy" aside, decided to actually vote for?
By the way, you wrote (153):
"Besides of that - voting age in Iran is 16 not 15 - wonder why you do not know that."
Wrong again. It is 18 and the heavily Ahmadinejad-stacked Parliament refused a reduction to 15 to prevent an even greater youth vote against their incumbent monkey:
Posted by: Parviz | Jun 21 2009 11:37 utc | 167
Parviz,
first of all Amir S is not on the spot, he/she is in the US and is confused about even what timezone Tehran is in. He/she also does not know the voting age in Iran. From what I have found it is 18 which was passed by your parliament in 2006 and opposed by AN. AN apparently wanted to keep it at 15 and lately has been sponsoring a law to lower the age to 16.
funny that none of you Iranian experts wanted to comment on that, especially in light of the big to do you are attempting by showing some Excel spreadsheets and claiming more people have voted than exist in the county.
should you wish to sway opinion you might try linking to some verifiable information and not just continue to insult our host and other thoughtful commenters here. as it is, you come off as an arrogant gucci wearing asshole.
Posted by: dan of steele | Jun 21 2009 11:49 utc | 168
me @ 146: AND WHY DO YOU CARE ABOUT WHAT WE THINK HERE @ MoA?
it's a simple question. any takers?
Posted by: Lizard | Jun 21 2009 12:18 utc | 169
Sure, Lizard, because I assume those who argue and debate want to persuade others, even strangers in the virtual world, to change their minds. You ask: "do iranians resisting their allegedly fraudulent elections feel any sense of solidarity with other flashes of resistance against exploitation and corruption". My fierce defence of the Palestinians, even though I detest my regime which supports them, is your answer.
We are (or should all be) driven by a sense of injustice, wherever it occurs.
Posted by: Parviz | Jun 21 2009 13:02 utc | 170
'Iron Man', I provided the link, so who's the 'asshole'? Do you know how to open a link? Ahmadinejad changed his mind when he understood the effects of a lower voting age.
Thoughtful commentators? Oh, I suppose you mean Anonymous, Obamageddon, Outraged and Sam, to mention a few.
As for the host, whose Blog and skills I have admired right up until this election, I provided a detailed analysis of the reasons I considered his entire approach subjective and skewed (Posts 165/167). Can't you read?
Posted by: Parviz | Jun 21 2009 13:04 utc | 171
I assume those who argue and debate want to persuade others, even strangers in the virtual world, to change their minds.
so, you are not here to inform, but persuade, to change minds. that is why you ignore the very good reasons folks have for being skeptical. i think that's an important distinction. the non-iranian skeptics here, or armchair intellectuals as you obnoxiously refer to us, are trying to understand, and there are more factors being considered than what those with clear agendas are trying to convince us of.
Posted by: Lizard | Jun 21 2009 13:32 utc | 172
even your own link calls out your disinformation.
it says
President Ahmadinejad had argued that the proposed bill would boost the engagement of the young generation in the country's social and political scene. He named the move "the ninth government's gift to the students.
and you say
Ahmadinejad changed his mind when he understood the effects of a lower voting age.
In 2007 Parliament raised the voting age over the objection of AN Times of India
so, I can open links and did, I also know how to create them and did. You however are capable of only repeating the same BS and are completely oblivious to reality seemingly able to only follow your Lincoln Group script to the tee.
Posted by: dan of steele | Jun 21 2009 13:47 utc | 173
b, you've stated, repeatedly, that there was no 'evidence' of fraud when you know full well that the only 'evidence' that exists is in the hands of the regime's goons (= the security officials who killed Zahra Kazemi about whom Sam is conveniently crying crocodile tears -- but evidently not crying enough to question that same brutal regime's rigging of the reformist vote and the brutal suppression of peaceful demonstrations!?!).
I can take any shit Dan or anyone else throws at me. I would rather come across as 'arrogant' than to suffer the shameless comments of those who feign offence at U.S.-supported dictators (Mubarak, the Saudi Royal Family) but applaud anti-U.S. dictators and couldn't recognize a nation's courage even if it got up and slapped them in the face. Khamenei said there were "just a few thousand rubbish demonstrators". Ahmadinejad said the same thing. I know whose side many MoAers are on.
And b, let's reverse your constant refrain: I demand that YOU provide 'solid evidence' that the election was NOT rigged, and by 'solid evidence' I don't mean the statements of Khamenei and Ahmadinejad. I still haven’t recovered from your statement that the demonstrations defied Article 27 of the Islamic Constitution when you should be fully aware that anything Khamenei doesn’t like is by definition ‘anti-Constitutional’, which is exactly what everyone is protesting against. No Iranians fought the Shah to see him summarily replaced by an even worse dictator. You at MoA pick every empire and pro-U.S. dictator to pieces on the most minor technicalities but face away from glaring injustices by the U.S.’s enemies and apologize for criminal regimes on the spurious grounds that the majority opposition movement either doesn’t exist or is foreign-led.
As Freud liked to say: “Sometimes a cigar is only a cigar”.
Posted by: Parviz | Jun 21 2009 13:51 utc | 174
iron man, I only provided the link to show the voting age, which I did. State-run Press TV usually presents the facts but not the correct background or interpretation.
I don't have an agenda. If you think I do, then tell me what it is?
Pro-Israel? (So why have I supported the Palestinian cause so strongly?)
Pro-U.S.A.? (So why have I slammed the U.S. foreign policy at every opportunity?)
Pro-Capitalism? (So why have I slammed U.S.-style capitalism so strongly and recommended the U.S. at least adopt German/French welfare reforms and basic security instead of that "hired is fired" shit?)
So who is 'guiding me', as you suggest? You claim I have an agenda but never say which one or even attempt to describe it.
Come on, you can do better than that! This isn't a kindergarten where you can throw accusations without even beginning to explain what those accusations are.
Posted by: Parviz | Jun 21 2009 14:01 utc | 175
parviz, i am so goddamn tired of your insinuations, generalizations, unfair depictions, and just plain incivility toward the guy who hosts, thus provides, this venue for you.
...couldn't recognize a nation's courage even if it got up and slapped them in the face.
plenty of folks here, who are skeptical of how this twitter/lipstick revolution is playing out, have expressed admiration for the courageousness of the people who are facing violent oppression.
you suck at persuasion.
Posted by: Lizard | Jun 21 2009 14:07 utc | 176
it is absolutely clear to me that some of new visitors are a losed shop & the management has gone home. they are neither open to discourse nnor open to any real interrogation. for that reason, the repitition. the repitition of talking points that are themselves oranically chaotic & thus possess no fluidity
parviz i'll read because he has in his own way walked towards his version of the 'truth. loyal also represents a real voice. the others, less so.
so much less so that i imagine they are doing so from the comfortable offices of exile oorganisations
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jun 21 2009 14:14 utc | 177
So why have I slammed U.S.-style capitalism so strongly
ha, ha, ha. good one. pro-bank bailout, and supporter of AIG executives. you are fucking hilarious, parviz.
Posted by: Lizard | Jun 21 2009 14:23 utc | 178
ok, this is tiring and I will not bore anyone any longer.
You provided the Press TV link without reading it and stated that AN opposed lowering the voting age. Other sources also say that AN supported leaving the voting age at 15, you can find them if you wanted to. I did include the Times of India just to not have you discredit me for quoting an official Iranian news source.
Why did you not call out your friends when they continued to state that the voting numbers were all skewed when you included 15 year old voters? Why would you let them spread BS if you are trying to show you are authentic? Makes no sense, if you lie about one thing your credibility is shot. You still dance around the issue by making counter accusations and changing the subject.
the biggest whopper of them all is for you to flatly state you have no agenda.
You and your friends have come here and shit all over the floor and now are demanding that our host provide you will answers. at the very least that is impolite and I find it quite offensive. You were certainly afforded every courtesy when you started posting here.
Posted by: dan of steele | Jun 21 2009 14:24 utc | 179
r'giap, if by 'new visitors' you mean AmirS I beg to differ. Even if he lives abroad most of what he has written has made a lot of sense.
Lizard, be tired as much as you want. The general view on this Blog is patronising towards the opposition (at best) and downright insulting (at worst). There are notable exceptions, but you're not one of them.
I have complimented AND defended b on many past threads, so I have nothing against b other than his handling of this particular crisis. The quote above wasn't directed specifically at b., so stop jumping to conclusions or sucking up to the Blog editor. I even complimented b for his spirit in not only featuring this 'contrary' thread but in posting all the stuff I cannot print directly for some reason. It shows he has a lot more principle and guts than many of you.
What I object to are the double standards some of you display in appearing to back the exceptionally brutal Iranian dictatorship by giving it the benefit of the doubt, while attributing the opposition as being foreign-led because of some stupid New York Times article or headline. You (and I) churn up pages and pages of evidence to condemn Israel and the U.S. but you (not I) hesitate to write anything damaging to the Islamic Republic of Hooligans in which one 'Representative of God' makes the law, because you might lose an anti-U.S. 'ally'.
Religious Dictatorship? This is the 21st century, for God's sake. Get a grip.
Posted by: Parviz | Jun 21 2009 14:36 utc | 180
today witnesses another day where there is little or no expression of a mass movement. repression explains only a small part of that. genuine mass movements - simply by their numbers have their own unstoppable force. that is why i have waited to see if a general strike is a real possibility. i don't think it is - largely because the people required to do that - while perhaps not sypatheric to ahmedinijad are not sympathetic to the oppostion.
moussavi says he wants to be a martyr but i think it is the people he wants martyred
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jun 21 2009 14:36 utc | 181
parviz from his front-paged post about "THE DANGER OF UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS"
By now everyone knows that Edward Liddy just stepped down as Chairman and CEO of AIG. I believe this is highly relevant to this blog as the event validates many of the criticisms I have leveled at the majority of MoA posters. Liddy left because he could no longer tolerate the self-aggrandizing politics that was hindering his honest attempt at paying off tax-payers in as careful and deliberate a fashion as possible.
you are a duplicitous shit, parviz.
danger of unrealistic expectations? take your own advice, parviz, and realize how the situation in your country will be exploited.
Posted by: Lizard | Jun 21 2009 14:40 utc | 182
Lizard:
"ha, ha, ha. good one. pro-bank bailout, and supporter of AIG executives. you are fucking hilarious, parviz."
You show your lying and weak intellect. I never supported U.S.-style capitalism but merely stated that the sinking ship had to have its holes plugged before it could be towed to harbour for major repairs.
I explained why allowing banks to fail would create even greater economic distress and defeat the purpose. I also stated that the entire banking and insurance system has to be subjected to strict regulation.
No, it's you who are not only 'fucking hilarious' but an intellectual lightweight to boot.
Posted by: Parviz | Jun 21 2009 14:41 utc | 183
iron man:
"the biggest whopper of them all is for you to flatly state you have no agenda.
Exactly WHAT do you even remotely IMAGINE my agenda is??? Put up or shut up.
Posted by: Parviz | Jun 21 2009 14:42 utc | 184
No, it's you who are not only 'fucking hilarious' but an intellectual lightweight to boot.
i agree, i am an intellectual lightweight, which is why i frequent this whiskey bar with an open mind; to learn.
you, on the other hand, have been making gross generalizations about the commentary here since you started coming around these parts. your agenda is clear to even an intellectual lightweight like myself: to persuade us that your interpretation of a complicated situation is the correct one, and one of your pathetic tactics is to belittle and demean anyone who has alternatives interpretations.
Posted by: Lizard | Jun 21 2009 14:50 utc | 185
lizard
thiks is not new here. the archive proves that. in fact parviz is not the worst example. but at every historic conjuncture at moon - especially ones where the mass media are creating a bloody circus or in the case of gaza - a specific blindness to the bloody terror - we have a crew who will come & perform in exactly the same way that amir, dragonfly & others behave
i know we are tough enpugh to have shades of our opinion changed - so opposite opinions are welcomed, as they should be. but what is happening is not honest opinion - it is a campaign of sorts - as it has been before by people's whose motives may not be politics after all, but financial
if i am correct about the general situation - the attack on iran will now come from outside because the opposition movement is not a mass movement though more errors by ahmadinejads circle could create one. moussavi, i don't believe at all, not one word
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jun 21 2009 15:04 utc | 186
why did you not correct the false assertation of voting age by Amir? Did you not know or was the deception deliberate? Since you choose not to reply I assume it was intentional.
Posted by: dan of steele | Jun 21 2009 15:13 utc | 187
"...what is otherwise a priceless and valuable discourse and resource, MOA, a valuable and unique community."
Funny, I don't know about most of you guys, but I hate being buttered up like that. Much more cherished for me would be, "The assholes, pricks and cynics here, festering in their skeptical, tired negativity are a rotting nub of the internet, FUCK all you bastards."
Now that would make me smile, kiss my ass and I'm obliged, in your mind to tip you. If you want to kiss my ass, don't expect a thank you, though if you're good, I might spread my legs.
Now, let me defend the Koran and Islam. I find it really funny that Neo-cons and Zionists are so fond of accusing others of their unique flaws.
I know of no religious text that is so dangerous and advocates atrocity like the old Testament. How the fuck do you love your neighbor as yourself if you believe you're chosen of God, not for your righteousness, not your mercy, but for your lineage. The genocides that are unequivocally cheered in Joshua enjoy no parallel in the Koran.
When Mohammad is called, as the political leader of Medina to execute some Jews who were guilty of Treason and double dealing, he tries to avoid executing the judgment. The Jews broke their bond, and were judged according to Jewish law as interpreted by rabbis.
But Joshua shows no hesitation to kill all the women, children and animals. Sometime they loot the booty, sometime they deem it beneath them. Clearly, just as Corsi says, "How's this for an analogy? The Koran is simply the 'software' for producing deviant cancer cell political behavior and violence in human beings' and Islam is like a virus. It affects the mind. Maybe even better as an analogy: it is a cancer that destroys the body it infects. No doctor would hesitate to eliminate cancer cells from the body." One can apply this argument more appropriately to those exceptionalist everywhere. Nowhere is this message conveyed without reservation as it is among some interpretations of Judaism.
I grew up Christian, have moved from Episcopal, to more fundamentalist, to liberal (Tillich, Neiber, Bonhoeffer) to Taoist, Buddist and Islam. These are all united in their advocacy of the Golden Rule. The God I believe in lies behind yours. That God lacks Identity, for even that would diminish my God. We won't agree on the precise details of the Godhead, hell, I doubt any two fellows in any congregation would concur if queried.
Therefore, It is meaningless to focus on "loving God with all your heart, soul and mind," but fairly easy to "love your neighbor as ourselves." Any faith which is incompatible with this latter proposition, is incompatible with veneration, credibility or reverence.
Posted by: scott | Jun 21 2009 15:14 utc | 188
Iron Man:
"why did you not correct the false assertation of voting age by Amir? Did you not know or was the deception deliberate? Since you choose not to reply I assume it was intentional.
I was asleep at the time. You're asleep ALL the time.
Posted by: Parviz | Jun 21 2009 16:21 utc | 189
Lizard and Iron Man, here's soem advice for you:
If you ideologists don't want to hear other opinions, especially from those who know more than you about specific topics, why don't you just alter the Blog format to one of "By Invitation Only"? That way you can chat with each other to your heart's content without suffering any interruption from 'strangers'.
Posted by: Parviz | Jun 21 2009 16:23 utc | 190
(182), You're not a lizard but a snake: You selectively and conveniently omitted my other statements on the same thread, e.g.,
"China_Hand2, I fully agree with you that "the Tsunami is yet to come", which is why I wrote this piece.
I also agree that corrupt bankers and corporate chiefs should be thrown into prison. What I disagree with is closing some of the corrupt corporations and institutions that can clearly be nurtured back to health. They should be assisted with new management, thereby minimizing the disruption to an economy that is already in I.C..
or
Put the crooks in jail, increase fines, raise capital ratios for banks, cap lending rates at LIBOR Plus 3 %, tighten regulations and regulatory control, educate the public, improve educational standards, impose welfare and health care reform, smash the political lobbies and the corporate monopolies, ......
To the above I would add imposition of an additional 50 cent/gallon gasoline tax, the elimination of agro/steel subsidies that keep these sectors bloated and backward, elimination of all tax loopholes for the rich, etc.,.
I just don't believe Obama can achieve the above (at a cost of even greater disruption and an additional $ 10 trillion deficit) overnight. It will take time.
On Obama's foreign policy, however, I believe he could and should have been far bolder. He's messing up big-time.
Duplicitous bastard? Look in the mirror, you pathetic creature. Did you lose money gambling on AIG? Is that what has made you so mad? When have I ever defended U.S.-style, laissez-faire Capitalism?
Posted by: Parviz | Jun 21 2009 16:44 utc | 191
I'll vouch for you on those points, Parviz.
But you need to recognize that, as a player within the system, you have a certain blindness to the outrage others feel at the excesses that have taken place under the rubrik of "business".
@Scott:
Your spiritual history sounds a lot like mine. I'm a big advocate of Vipassana, these days. Will be taking the wife on a trip there in a few weeks, i think.
In that vein, i'll add two other laudatory aspects to Islam:
Charity is not a choice. It's a command. Justice is not an event for the afterlife; it is an obligation in this one.
Posted by: china_hand2 | Jun 21 2009 17:06 utc | 192
i didn't lose money on AIG, just confidence in an elected leaders ability to identify the problem, and act decisively, as evidenced by the continuing attempt to re-regulate a totally fucked financial sector by using corrupt institutions as regulatory lynch pins, like the fed.
your depiction of Liddy, though, was laughable, and your depiction of "the majority of MoA posters" an over-generalization, and that's what i'm trying to get at. it's the patronizing arrogance of your tone that bugged the hell out of me then, and generally makes me not want to listen to you now, regardless of how valid some of your points may be. i think the more you try to bash people over the head with your interpretation, the more you are doing a disservice to your cause.
Posted by: Lizard | Jun 21 2009 18:07 utc | 193
O.K., Lizard, let's make peace. I think I've proved to you that I am anti-Capitalist (as China_Hand has witnessed) and do NOT have any specific agenda, either economic or political, other than the ones fashioned by my own conscience (right OR wrong).
Please don't ever doubt my motives again, and I'll try not to insult anyone -- though this promise came too late to prevent my post on the "It's Over" thread to Jony_b_cool
;-)
Posted by: Parviz | Jun 21 2009 18:17 utc | 194
I don't intend to evangelize, I just believe I've investigated the various faiths, and that is my take away. I imagine many/some haven't investigated it so closely, or have dismissed "religion" as ugly and necessarily flawed. All human institutions are flawed, Islam, specifically the Suni/Sufi are apparently the most austere and least hierarchical.
Parvis, I think you mistake our perspective vis a vis Iran. We are Americans, Westerners generally, we are all deeply committed citizens trying to discern the political landscape. Everyone here has moved beyond the promises of the two parties, best I can tell. We see a run away military intelligence complex. Most of us see Israel as cog in that machine, a machine that holds no prejudices, no party affiliation, no ideology, save greed, creative destruction as one put it.
Your little rabble raising is intensely interesting to everyone here. We are trying to discern truth from fiction. We are hearing ONE story from our press, we know we're supporting dissidents, we know our history.
This country has never failed to interject itself into the democratic process in any country of concern in it's sphere of influence.
You're probably right, I'm fucking nuts. It really doesn't matter, you've got an opening, a chance. But, "getting your vote counted," is nebulous. There is the first kilometer in a marathon, a better word is jihad. Cause this is a daily struggle for each of us in every country.
I don't know if our votes are counted here. But we Americans have experienced over the last decade an America that is totally divided. American social circles are as likely divided among political affiliation as any other factor, save wealth. Those aren't exactly different categories, but truly the political divide runs deeper than the wealth divide.
So, here in America we experienced 3 Presidential elections where we were so divided, the aggrieved party couldn't believe the polls. As a third party voter, I wonder if our votes are counted or marked and discounted.
Finally Parvis, I don't think anyone here supports the Iranian Political establishment. But if you were honest, you probably don't hang too tight with the real religious folk among you. Those people withdraw from you, and you them. I imagine the people of Iran are like most Arabs, as venerable trading cultures. I imagine when you visit the hinterlands of Iran those merchants, the curious are either professionally tolerant or your kindred spirits.
It's so easy to get a skewed view of the world. "Seems like everyone I know does X" is captured nicely by the old cliche, "birds of a feather." So we wonder about the objectivity of your, and the twitters that are coming out of Iran.
Do you think the kids that are on Twitter are the more conservative or progressive among your lot? We have to consider the contrary, as this certainly is not a totally black and white issue, being a human event.
We have to seek to discover the role our gov't might be playing, what propaganda they are forwarding. That is our duty, yours is to raise hell, and take notes.
Try to challenge your own biases, be as skeptical as we are, and report the facts that pass that scrutiny as facts. You've been hammered enough for your conjectures, but try to clearly label such as such.
Finally please go back and answer those 15 questions as best you can. I don't think they were vicious, but very revealing. You have a bias, that is fine, but try to be forthcoming about conjecture with us, and yourself.
Good Luck, and peace be with you.
Posted by: scott | Jun 21 2009 18:19 utc | 195
You bias is pro-change, pro-liberty as you see it. We want that for you too. The French revolution was great and all, but really more of a big cluster fuck that killed many and gave us Napoleon--The Louisiana Purchase. Which was good for America but not so much for the French, or the rest of the monde.
Posted by: scott | Jun 21 2009 18:24 utc | 196
Parviz, a hopeful point, the American Revolution was only supported by 1/3 of the people, a third didn't care and 1/3 supported the crown. So, you got the numbers, I don't think the Iranian Army wants to shoot unarmed kids, you should go, get your prayer rugs and sit in the streets.
That would be the best strike. When you're walking around, you can be pushed. If you got the numbers, sit on the sidewalks, if it swells to the street.
Seriously, if you got any balls, go, buy a prayer rug and get it started.
Posted by: scott | Jun 21 2009 18:28 utc | 197
scott, interesting comments. Will reply tomorrow. As for my balls, I lost them during yesterday's demonstration, which left me shaking after I saw on TV what I had missed just a couple of km away. No, I'm not a hero.
Posted by: Parviz | Jun 21 2009 18:53 utc | 198
b @ 158
Before the apparatchik pounce on me, calling me all sorts of names, let me give you a disclaimer:
1. I am not a Jew, nor American nor Israeli, nor the Iranian opposition abroad.
2. I am a practicing statistician and political economist. So I might know a thing or two about these matters.
3. I have studied, lived and worked in Iran for three decades. The nature of what I used to do is irrelevant to this discussion.
Your disparaging of the poor PhD candidate at Columbia
It does not prove anything but that those PhD political science candidates who wrote that up need some more statistic lessons.
Statistical inference cannot by nature prove a statement. All it can do is to reject or fail to reject a statement. Failure to reject is not tantamount to acceptance or proof. So even if his method was correct, he can never prove anything. He can simply reject fraud or fail to reject fraud.
Utter lack of understanding of the Iranian electoral process
If the votes were not counted at the local precincts why is nobody coming forward and says just that. Where are 45,000 precinct x 6 officials = 300,000 people who say the votes were NOT counted locally?
This line of argument shows that your knowledge of the Iranian electoral process is at best rudimentary. Each polling station is staffed by local election administrators picked by the MOI and approved by the GC; MOI, GC and candidates' representatives. Election administrators used to be trusted people in the neighborhood who regularly attend the mosque, the principal of the neighborhood school, the staff of a hospital that was chosen as the polling station and so forth. Not in this election. In this election the overwhelming number of election administrators are handpicked to be from the local Basij militia given all the anecdotal and snowball sampling evidence that I have.
My own experience as an election representative for the MOI and GC in the 1990s and early 2000s was that as a standard measure most GC representatives would be either from the IRGC or the Basij or at the minimum conservative political factions. What makes this election different is that in most cases the IRGC, Basij and others deemed "loyal" to the system administered the election as well. Here is the most important part: A candidate's representative by law cannot intervene in anything. He can observe and observe only. He cannot stand close to the voters; he cannot stand close to the ballot box; he cannot talk to election administrators. All he can do is observe. Crucially, he can voice his concerns about some irregularity to the GC representative on the spot, but here is the catch: If he does, he is highly likely to be booted out of the polling station by the MOI or GC representatives; it is practically impossible for the campaign to have him reinstated in time. So almost all candidate representatives stand aside and report the irregularities they see to their respective campaigns: For example, we noticed that the GC representative is coaching voters at polling station 200. This is all they can do during the election. In this election they could hardly do that either, because the SMS and some cell phone services were reported to have been spotty at best. The same applies when it comes to counting the votes. It is quite easy to simply kick the candidates' representatives out on any pretext (Who is there to say the MOI representative overstepped his bounds? Will he be prosecuted? Will the GC representative be prosecuted for illegally throwing out a candidate representative? Is there any competent court in the country mandated to hear these complaints? If you answered no to all of the questions above, pat yourself on the back.), because the vote in a polling station is certified by the election administrators and the MOI and GC representatives, not by the candidates' representatives. The signature of the candidates' representatives is not required for certification. So the election officials can simply count the votes either in front of the candidates' representatives or not and are not obliged to tell the candidates' representatives what the tally is; finally they do not provide candidates' representatives a certificate with their own signatures that spells out the final tally of the polling station. Therefore, they cannot be held accountable by the campaigns later. No campaign can tell the MOI that your representatives have certified that we received these many votes in this polling station, but now you are giving us a different number. So it is not like the campaigns have the final tally of each polling station once the votes are counted. In most cases they don't. That is why fraud is quite easy once the ballot box is moved by the Law Enforcement Forces (LEF) to the Governor's Office. A ballot box can be certified and re-certified, since no certificate is issued to the candidates' representatives on the spot.
The data that hint at fraud
I will deal with this issue in another post.
Releasing the polling station numbers
A week is an eternity for an administration whose President has made lying with numbers a daily habit. This is hard to catch because as I mentioned above there is no tally that the campaigns can compare the newly released numbers against.
Head of MOI
Head of MoI - well I guess the head of the German MoI is also member of the currently ruling party. One usually does not put an opposition figure in ones cabinet.
With all due respect b, comparing a mature, institutionalized democracy that does have a reasonably independent judiciary with a Janus-faced government in Iran that is partly democratic, partly theocratic is utterly pathetic.
Poor MOI employees
There are thousands of people working in the MoI and hundred thousands who have worked as election officials. Why ain't they coming forward if something was fraudulent? Is there no one sympathetic to the opposition in that huge group?
Some did before the election. But what if they don't? Who would protect them against the government when everyone in the country has known for a long time who the preferred candidate by the Ayatollah Khamenei is?
There is no way for a recount to be fair as I mentioned satirically in another post. It is surprising how you guys impose your own understanding of how an election is run and how a recount works on the Iranian system without much compunction. Sad!
Posted by: Dragonfly | Jun 21 2009 19:06 utc | 199
fine by me, parviz. just try to refrain from generalizations about the commentary here, and i'll refrain from ascribing any nefarious motivations to your comments.
Posted by: Lizard | Jun 21 2009 19:11 utc | 200
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Amir S @ 71:
Your government doesn't shoot unarmed young women, exercising their constitutional right
You ignorance knows no bounds. Just google the Kent State massacre where unarmed women were shot like a rabid dog in the street. Google the Waco massacre where babies were burnded alive for exercising their constitutional right to breath. Google how many people are shot by the cops every year.
All revolutions leave a trail of dead liberals. What's your point?
Yah what's the point. That's your mentality. Just dismiss it as something that happens all the time like declaring who cares about dead liberals eh? You are aslo wrong. Just google liberal revolution and you will find many examples throughout history on every continent and count the bodies compared to the fascist regimes. Compare the constitutions between the emerging liberal governments and those of the fascists. Now you tell me which governments gave more liberties to the people and which governments killed the most people? It's not even close. Chavez in Venezuela overturned a western backed coup in which he himself was jailed. Tell me how many people did he kill in retaliation?
Iran is a theocracy where the clerics rule and hand pick a select pre approved slate of candidates pretending the people are getting democracy. This is laughable by any democratic standard. It is no different than a dicatatorship where the Ayatollahs rule over the populace and let them squabble over the few crumbs of power they allow them have. Parviz's dream of tossing out the clergy from power and instituting real democracy is not even on the table.
The Sepah, the most fascist and militarist segment of the Iranian regime has taken over the country right now.
That's funny becuase according to your earlier post they were in power when your side won the elections. How could they have taken over the coutnry if according to you they always ruled the country? How convenient that you can blame all the brutality on the other side when your side is in power and demand that power back because the other side is brutal. This is called cognitive dissonence?
I personally like Mousavi. He is one of the cleanest people the regime has, and the only hope of Iran to regain its path towards independence an freedom.
You've made that very clear but his record is the opposite of your fine words. When he was in power the regime was far more brutal than the regime was when Ahmadinejad was in power. You stated in a previous thread that Mousavi has no intention of changing the constitution and fully intends to ensure the theocracy stays in place. What kind of independence and freedom is that?
Also I'd like to know where you got this number 30k people executed.
I never said any such thing. Maybe you should reread the thread.
There were 5k MEK executed in 1988 after the american/iraqi supported terrorists attacked Iran. So what?
You claim you are appalled by the present government for killing a few people in street protests, but I notice you have no problem at all with killing thousands of people when they are not on your side of the polictical spectrum. Again you dismiss it with a so what? If that isn't the height of hypocrisy then I don't know what is. It's okay to murder when your side does it but if the other side does it they are blood thirsty killers?
Posted by: Sam | Jun 21 2009 2:10 utc | 101