We had stolen presidential elections in 1824, 1876, 1960, 2000, and 2004. Moreover, almost every American election is “stolen” in the sense that it is corrupted by money. Our much revered Founders, excepting Jefferson, feared and loathed democracy. Who are we to say shit to the Iranians?

I guess I mean: Just because Obama is president doesn’t mean that history’s reset button has been pushed.

I agree that this isn’t our show. The US has no claim to being the global authority on human rights, clean elections, or the appropriate use of WMDs. That said, I do hope that the international community can agree on a collective course of action to protect the rights of the Iranian people.

Of course, then we will have to recognize that Iran HAS democratic principles that can be upheld.

It isn’t the job of the United States to police another country’s elections. It isn’t the job of the United States to determine the legitimacy of a country’s administration. It isn’t the job or right of the United States to “spread democracy.” Solidarity with the opposition, yes. Humanitarian imperialism, no.

The problem I have with a lot of rightbloggers is that when they talk about promoting democracy, they’re really only talking about making themselves feel big and tough.

Brad –

as you know, “democracy” only really is in effect when the results are positive for the United States, c.f. Palestinian elections.

Djur — maybe I misspoke. I’m not talking about invading Iran.

HTML — thought you’d object on those grounds. I think this is an important post:

http://revolutionaryflowerpot.blogspot.com/2009/05/human-rights-ba-humbug.html

These are difficult questions, don’t get me wrong. I’m looking for a medium between being supporting uman rights and not being the world’s cops.

Ghaemi’s advice can come across as passivity or indifference. But that reflects a certain arrogance…

That flapping sound you hear is millions of pairs of wingnut ears perking up.

Brad – I’m not accusing you of wanting to invade Iran. I just don’t recognize this as a valid concern of the United States government. If what you’re currently advocating is what you quote — no sanctions other than the devastating blow of Ban Ki-Moon sorrowfully shaking his head — I think we have no serious disagreements on the issue.

I see your Ahmadinejad and raise you Elbegdorj.

The issue with defend-democracy rhetoric is that there is an extremely well-funded movement which, for want of a better word, I tend to use the Russian ‘liberast’ (portmanteau of liberal-as-in-libertarian and pederast) for. They know that the Western media will sympathize with them unreservedly, they know that they have enormous cash reserves to fall back on, they know that if there’s anything like a private media in the country they can essentially dominate it no matter what, and they know that under enough pressure the public will eventually give in and put them in office, at which point they immediately initiate a full-scale smash-and-grab with all the national assets. While the pattern is most pronounced in countries like those of the CIS, where there are significant state assets which are insultingly managed on behalf of the public instead of belonging to incredibly wealthy and well-connected men, a major part of the neoconservative project has been exporting the color-revolution model to the Third World.

I’m not saying that Ahmadinejad wouldn’t be worth seeing out of power, but I’m warning you: you will not know that the opponent of any dictator is his nation’s equivalent of Ahmad Chalabi until after the country has been picked clean. Always, always, always bear that in mind.

Alec — true, although the neocons have been rooting against Mousavi in this particular case. Doesn’t mean the guy isn’t a crook, but it’s worth considering.

Alec — true, although the neocons have been rooting against Mousavi in this particular case. Doesn’t mean the guy isn’t a crook, but it’s worth considering.

Well, that’s the thing – even that isn’t a particularly reliable indicator. Often enough, liberasts are backed heavily enough by one set of foreign agents or another that even their fellow travellers elsewhere consider them unpalatable – there wasn’t exactly an outpouring of support on the European glibbie right for Saavakshili outside of cursory Russophobe outbursts.

I’m more inclined to believe that the reason our neocons have been agin’im is that he’s not our bastard, not that he’s not a bastard at all. And unfortunately, when it comes to the color-revolutionists the center-right and center-left tend to sympathize with exactly the wrong people – the entire liberast strategy basically involves using a constant media barrage of high rhetoric about transparency, democracy in crisis, flowers growing from Stalinist cement, &c to hide the fact that almost nobody outside of the urban elite is interested in them on their own terms and they have little interest in governance except as a means for burglary.

An awful iron triangle of neoimperialists, cold-war relic thinking among politicians, and the relatively uncautious behavior of the media advances the idea that a neoliberal foreign candidate is the only hope against eternal tyranny, and that if they lose the election it is due to fraud and nothing else. Elbegdorj wasn’t just a random name – the main reason he won this election is that after the last one, his party responded to minor, poll-predicted and internationally-monitored losses in the legislature by massive rioting, and nobody outside of Mongolia gave two shits – if anything, they sympathized with the blatant political blackmail.

Incidentally, the main reason I’m reluctant to accept early calls of fraud is that the polls have been all over the place, with the numbers diverging so heavily that my suspicion has been that both major camps were much more interested in providing a pretext to declare the election fraudulent than actually gauging public opinion.

In particular, the fact that most of the Mousavi-friendly polls tended to predict massive landslides (kind of unrealistic given the nature of Iranian politics and the late bellicosity of Israel) has made me extremely suspicious. In my woefully ignorant opinion, it seems more like a case of one thief triumphing over another than a simple waylaying.

But alec, even if Mousavi didn’t win, there was a lot of tampering and the official margin of victory is absurd. Fraud is fraud, even if the “good guys” aren’t as good as our media make them out ot be.

That doesn’t mean that we should invade or insist on a reversal of the election results, but it is pretty obvious that this wasn’t a clean election.

no sanctions other than the devastating blow of Ban Ki-Moon sorrowfully shaking his head

I’m a fan of the potential for using trade as leverage to force some directly relevant reforms (environmental protection, elimination of sweatshops), and generally diminishing the negative effects of globalization.

But I can’t see how that could possibly work in this context. And until we start giving the slightest shit about human rights in China, the notion that we could or should do more in other, less powerful countries is laughably hypocritical.

But I can’t see how that could possibly work in this context. And until we start giving the slightest shit about human rights in China, the notion that we could or should do more in other, less powerful countries is laughably hypocritical.

Especially when we’re talking about a country that had a democratic government until our own CIA replaced it with a dictator.

For Freedom™, of course. And oil.

But alec, even if Mousavi didn’t win, there was a lot of tampering and the official margin of victory is absurd. Fraud is fraud, even if the “good guys” aren’t as good as our media make them out ot be.

That doesn’t mean that we should invade or insist on a reversal of the election results, but it is pretty obvious that this wasn’t a clean election.

Iranian elections can hardly be called ‘clean’ to begin with – remember, the candidates who actually run have to be preapproved by the government, and most positions of significant power are appointed, not elected.

Part of the issue is bleed-over from the media’s turning Ahmadinejad into a cartoon villain, menacing Israel and America and personally beheading queers. The reality is that what being President in Iran involves is fairly limited compared to here:
– Iranian social policy sucks, but it’s not really within the President’s purview – the judicary (as in the Ayatollah) is extremely strong and completely independent. However sympathetic Mousavi might be compared to Ahmadinejad on this, it’s wholly irrelevant. Cross out the social abuses of the Iranian state in your head here, because they’re not electing an Ayatollah and that’s who makes those decisions.
– While the President has more control over foreign policy, he lacks the plenary strength of our President in it; and even if we were to assume that Mousavi could change Iranian foreign policy at will, the major diplomatic problem with Iran right now has more to do with unrealistic American attitudes and an Israeli government that has no actual interest in peace. The most doveish Iranian president possible would still have to deal with Lieberman and Netanyahu at the end of the day.
– That mostly leaves economic and bureaucratic policy, over which the President exercises significant control.

In light of that, the election has essentially been between a social nationalist and a neoliberal, and matters almost exclusively for economic reasons. Between that and the illiberal constitution of the Islamic Republic, legally-sanctioned electoral fraud has far outweighed any covert fraud and the alternative seems even worse.

So it’s not really even a case of the good guys not being as good as they’re made out to be – it’s a case of the issue being less significant than it’s being made out to be and the stakes being completely different from what they’re made out to be. Until something is actually done about the Iranian constitution, this is what’s gonna happen.

and they have little interest in governance except as a means for burglary.

Oh, so we’re talking Bush administration again.

Seriously, though, the wingnuts would love nothing more than
A). I’m-a-de-nutjob retains his spot, and
B). That it is through blatant election fraud, making the Iranian government politically toxic from all angles, thwarting Obama’s “Let’s at least fucking talk to them” policy before it really gets started.

Anything that pisses off the hippies has to be good for them, right?

It wouldn’t really surprise me if Cheney and pals had an advisory hand in things, not that the Iranians are incapable of manipulating international affairs all on their own. It’s just that the fucktards do have something of a history, even if it was with the current loser. Hell, the sheer two-facedness of it just reinforces my suspicion. See: Noriega, Manuel, et al.

If you haven’t watched Lord of War, you ought to. One of the classic scenes involving an African dictator goes as follows:

Andre Baptiste Sr.: Welcome to Democracy!
Yuri Orlov: Democracy? What have you been drinking Andy?
Andre Baptiste Sr.: Heh, you have not seen the news. You know, they accuse me of rigging elections. But after this –
[holds up a newspaper with the headline “U.S. Supreme Court Reverses Recount Ruling”]
Andre Baptiste Sr.: – with your Florida and your Supreme Court of Kangaroos, now, the U.S. will shut up forever!

We as a nation have very little to say (at least with a straight face).

Hey, at least some of the Iranians are bothering to get upset. After Bush the Younger stole his first election, the “center left’ loudly called anyone who questioned the outcome insane, whiny little cunts who ought to just shut up and salute their new President. For the next 8 years, while good little liberals wandered around in various stages of brokedick malaise, the gestalt alternated between being sadder than funny and funnier than sad. Now, you know, many of the same sane, sagacious post Bush coup “voices of moderation” are still running the party. Progress. Hope. Change. Chess vs checkers. Rock ‘n roll.

Progress. Hope. Change. Chess vs checkers. Rock ‘n roll.

You are a cruel and petty dictator.

Boot reelly, vhet du ve-a hefe-a tu sey ebuoot zee reegged ilecshuns in a cuoontry veet vheech ve-a hefe-a nu deeplumetic releshuns? “Hey Irun, yuoo better cleun up yuoor ect oor ve-a’re-a gueeng tu duooble-a-freeze-a yuoor essets!”

Oon zee oozeer hund, it is trooe-a thet zee Repoobleecuns seem tu hefe-a a heestury ooff deeleeng veet zee Iruneeun moollehs. See-a, fur ixemple-a, zee Ooctuber Soorpreese-a in 1980 und zee Irun-Cuntra deel.

Meybe-a ve-a shuoold get feetted fur teenffuil hets effter ell.

Brad, I don’t. It’s trotskyite bullshit. True, it’s smarter and more seductive than, let’s say, the neocon crapola that duped so many into falling for the Iraq War, but it’s still wrong. The first clue is in the presumption of internationalist — which is to say, universalist — standards of correct socialist behavior. This of course assumes that there is One Socialism, rather than a multiplicity of them according to culture, nation-state, etc. Every people must get to the promised land in their own way; the promised land is different for every people. The second clue is in the complete sophistry by which the author presumes to equate causes, as if “Free Mumia” is a morally equal task to stopping the Iraq War (he says, by a shifty structural calculus which could have been written by Chris Clarke, that they are effectively the same cause). Actually, there is a hierarchy just as there is in medical triage. One deals with the most dangerous shit first, which in this context means: deal first with the problem that is killing the most people. Some socialists (and a great many “socialists”) like to pretend, for the sake of some comrades’ feely-feelings, that utilitarianism has no place in morality. But then they are idiots.

Then there is this:

In the realm of a discussion related to ‘human rights,’ the cynic elaborates in reasonably authoritative sounding language, for example, that working on the human rights situation in Iran is really the work of the Iranian people. People outside Iran should just stay quiet about that. Especially right now! (The present always carries exceptionalities!) If you can do something to stop ‘your own’ government (the U.S., the U.K., what have you) from abusing human rights, do that. But, don’t meddle in other people’s business.

Ironically, a good number of people most likely to say something like that (Iranians among them), especially right now, regularly advocate without any qualms on behalf of other nationalities such as the Palestinians, Iraqis, Afghans, or at one point advocated on behalf of East Timorese, or black South Africans fighting apartheid, and participated in lively international campaigns of solidarity with the people of El Salvador. So, of all the people, they should know best about the importance of international solidarity movements in achieving historical goals. So, what is it that makes them stop seeing the harm they are doing by refusing solidarity to the people of Iran, living under a theocratic dictatorship?

For one thing, I don’t think people per se should be quiet; I think our government should STFU — or at least make, for once, an intelligent, non-hypocritical commentary, and since I know it’s probably incapable of that, well… But the real point is that there’s good reason why I have said things about the Palestinians, the Timorese, the black South Africans, the Salvadorans, etc: because these people were/are directly or indirectly murdered or abused at my country’s behest — or at least with its tacit support. Therefore they become my responsibility in a sense where, let’s say, the Georgians and Iranians do not.

But to get any further involved, even rhetorically, would “instigate the cry that the reformers are somehow driven and directed by the U.S., whether under Bush or under Obama, and there’s no reason to give that unfounded allegation” any chance to spread.

I’ll take “blowback” for $1000, Alex.

At an NSC meeting in early 1953, President Dwight Eisenhower said “it was a matter of great distress to him that we seemed unable to get some of these down-trodden countries to like us instead of hating us.”1 The problem has likewise distressed all administrations since, and is emerging as the core conundrum of American policy in Iraq. In All the Shah’s Men, Stephen Kinzer of the New York Times suggests that the explanation may lie next door in Iran, where the CIA carried out its first successful regime-change operation over half a century ago. The target was not an oppressive Soviet puppet but a democratically elected government whose populist ideology and nationalist fervor threatened Western economic and geopolitical interests. The CIA’s covert intervention—codenamed TPAJAX—preserved the Shah’s power and protected Western control of a hugely lucrative oil infrastructure. It also transformed a turbulent constitutional monarchy into an absolutist kingship and induced a succession of unintended consequences at least as far ahead as the Islamic revolution of 1979—and, Kinzer argues in his breezily written, well-researched popular history, perhaps to today.

BTW, I have not contradicted myself. This guy expects me to meet his standard. I will not. I have my own standards; I don’t expect him to come to them, and don’t care whether he does. A difference.

But to get any further involved, even rhetorically, would “instigate the cry that the reformers are somehow driven and directed by the U.S., whether under Bush or under Obama, and there’s no reason to give that unfounded allegation” any chance to spread.

I’ll take “blowback” for $1000, Alex.

At an NSC meeting in early 1953, President Dwight Eisenhower said “it was a matter of great distress to him that we seemed unable to get some of these down-trodden countries to like us instead of hating us.”1 The problem has likewise distressed all administrations since, and is emerging as the core conundrum of American policy in Iraq. In All the Shah’s Men, Stephen Kinzer of the New York Times suggests that the explanation may lie next door in Iran, where the CIA carried out its first successful regime-change operation over half a century ago. The target was not an oppressive Soviet puppet but a democratically elected government whose populist ideology and nationalist fervor threatened Western economic and geopolitical interests. The CIA’s covert intervention—codenamed TPAJAX—preserved the Shah’s power and protected Western control of a hugely lucrative oil infrastructure. It also transformed a turbulent constitutional monarchy into an absolutist kingship and induced a succession of unintended consequences at least as far ahead as the Islamic revolution of 1979—and, Kinzer argues in his breezily written, well-researched popular history, perhaps to today.

FYWP.

First off, HTML, no need to blame Trotskyism.

Secondly, it is simply not true that the elections were “obviously stolen”. We don’t know if they were. I have still not seen a single convincing piece of evidence.

I think we should rely on our traditional methods for righting these sorts of wrongs: exploding cigars and rusty troopships filled with Cuban exiles. It has a long history of good outcomes.

Free Mumia!

Now for a limited time! Collect them all!

I can’t believe HTML is still holding a grudge against Chris Clarke. Is it one of those sandwich things? Is there a single lefty online that you have even a grudging respect for?

We as a nation have very little to say (at least with a straight face).

Plus there was that whole thing with Mossadegh and the CIA and the Shah, which a lot of Iranians remember better than we do.

But to get any further involved, even rhetorically, would “instigate the cry that the reformers are somehow driven and directed by the U.S., whether under Bush or under Obama, and there’s no reason to give that unfounded allegation” any chance to spread.

I’ll take “blowback” for $1000, Alex.

At an NSC meeting in early 1953, President Dwight Eisenhower said “it was a matter of great distress to him that we seemed unable to get some of these down-trodden countries to like us instead of hating us.”1 The problem has likewise distressed all administrations since, and is emerging as the core conundrum of American policy in Iraq. In All the Shah’s Men, Stephen Kinzer of the New York Times suggests that the explanation may lie next door in Iran, where the CIA carried out its first successful regime-change operation over half a century ago. The target was not an oppressive Soviet puppet but a democratically elected government whose populist ideology and nationalist fervor threatened Western economic and geopolitical interests. The CIA’s covert intervention—codenamed TPAJAX—preserved the Shah’s power and protected Western control of a hugely lucrative oil infrastructure. It also transformed a turbulent constitutional monarchy into an absolutist kingship and induced a succession of unintended consequences at least as far ahead as the Islamic revolution of 1979—and, Kinzer argues in his breezily written, well-researched popular history, perhaps to today.

Yeah, HTML, bless his soul, has never gotten over sandwichgate. Neither has this blog as a whole, of course, but whatevs.

You know, we *can* have our sandwiches and eat them too.

As for this issue: I’m still willing to believe that Ahmedinejad won without ballot-stuffing. But we’ll see.

The problem I have with a lot of rightbloggers is that when they talk about promoting democracy, they’re really only talking about making ^sending a bunch of guys half-way around the world to catch bullets and blow up brown people while they sit on their fat arses at home, fondling their pea-sized balls with one hand and typing out incoherent screeds with the other in order to make themselves feel big and tough.

Fxd.

I can’t believe HTML is still holding a grudge against Chris Clarke.

I was nice about that. I let it go when he asked. Then he cranked it up again unilaterally on another site (keyword: knapsack), and so I finally learned my lesson. Feel free to blame me.

Is there a single lefty online that you have even a grudging respect for?

No! I hate everyone! Especially those on my blogroll!

You just try walking around a mall in a grudge suit and see what…

FWIW, Retardo, I’m just trying to yank your chain a little because it’s amusing to me. I agree with your position here.

“(And memo to everyone who will bring up Bush-Gore — yeah, I’m not saying America’s a perfect country. But we have a different gubmint now that is vastly better than the last one. That counts for something.)”

We have a different gubmint that is vastly marginally better than the last one. That counts for something a little.

But we have a different gubmint now that is vastly better than the last one. That counts for something.

Absolutely right. It counts for multi-trillion dollar deficits, socialized medicine, telling CEOs of privately-held companies how much money they can make, taxing us all out the wazoo and, most importantly,indefinite detention of private American citizens, something that Maddow admitted wasn’t even ATTEMPTED under the Bush/Cheney admin.

Yes, Brad, it does count for something.

Oh Stewardess, I Speak ‘Nut is beginning to see the light, albeit ever so slightly.

Hey, it’s a start!

The right in this country loves them some “democracy”, in other countries, just not at home. At that, their definition of democracy has changed considerably over the years.

In the full flush of the Reagan revolution, when they felt a global tide turning their way, they thought if democracy was unfettered, it would bring Reaganite/Thatcherite parties to power everywhere. They couldn’t understand why the PAN kept losing in Mexico all through the 80’s. It was beyond their comprehension that the Mexican people could see that the PRI, for all their corruption, had the interests of the 3rd-World 80% of the population more at heart than a party explicitly dedicated to the interests of the 1st-World 20% did. When the PRI kept winning, they hollered “corruption” at the top of their lungs. Of course, if anyone was corruptly denied victory, it was Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, but you notice they didn’t jump to his defense!

Under the reign of the neocons, the assumption has been that any regime that was truly democratically elected would support the interests of the United States (the Republican United States, anyway) wholeheartedly, at the expense of their own. When this fails to happen, they also yell “corruption” at the top of their lungs.

Now they’re falling back on the position that “democracy” properly executed, will return governments run by “liberal” pussies that they can push around with impunity. This is the philosophy that led to Macarthur, when he was Emperor of Japan, giving them what amounted to a socialist government, so they would be poor and weak and never be any competition for the US again. (You can see how well that worked out.)

Of course, their reaction to Iran’s election is poisoned, as everything in the Middle East is, by the Israeli factor, and the fact that they can trade on fears of a nuclear-armed Iran, and the ignorance of the American people thinking you can somehow keep 65-year-old technology out of the hands of anyone who wants it.

What’s my point? I don’t have one. I just don’t think we can parse these results as being either “favorable” or “unfavorable” to any particular American interest; and as long as Iran remains a theocracy, it will remain impossible to analyze its situation in purely political terms. One would think the Republicans would love the government of the Ayatollahs, because it’s exactly what they want to impose on us.

One would think the Republicans would love the government of the Ayatollahs, because it’s exactly what they want to impose on us.

See my comment above (especially the Maddow video) and, while you’re at it, stop projecting.

What’s my point? I don’t have one.

Ain’t that the truth.

I’m going to be really generous to you and your obese, sexually promiscuous parents and pretend you didn’t say anything about ‘socialized medicine’, mumbleshits. You just want to believe what you’ve been told at the local Party headquarters and glory hole, and I can, if not respect that, understand it. But that doesn’t mean you can stumble into a conversation other people are having about a different topic and start ladling out half-remembered lines of Limbaugh and then act like you’re a fucking genius.

Seriously, kid, go get some air. God knows you’ll probably be in a wheelchair before you’re 30. Enjoy it while it lasts.

See my comment above (especially the Maddow video) and, while you’re at it, stop projecting.

Isn’t that cute? Troofus learned a new word! Now if only he understood it. Unfortunately, “projection, thy name is wingnut!”

Look, the easiest way to view the Iranian election is by an anaogy to America.

Ahmanijedad (sp) is the repig candidate, and the other guy is the Democratic candidate. The religious authorities are Big Business.

Now analyze away.

The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge,

Nothing to say about the Maddow vid? Hmmm, that’s what I thought.

Go back to sleep, lefty lemmings.

The question I’ve been mulling over is, how can the international community express its displeasure with the obvious electoral theft while not inadvertently boosting the regime’s status among its people?

How did we do it back in 2000 and 2004?

Calling people lemmings to imply slavery to a message = very large fail.

Commence Right Wingers cries to invade Iran in order to Protect their Democracy from Fiends.

“Enjoy it while it lasts.”

I plan to enjoy the last vestiges of freedom before they disappear under an Obama Marxist dictatorship. Thanks for the reminder.

“God knows you’ll probably be in a wheelchair before you’re 30.”

I’m 41 and in great health, many folks take me for late 20s/early 30s.

Your “god” don’t know jack, apparently. Some prophet you are.

Calling people left-wingers lemmings to imply slavery to a message = very large fail truth.

Fixed.

Some prophet you are.

I never claimed to be a prophet. All I claimed was that I am father, grandfather, pediatric surgeon, and former Surgeon General of the United States C. Everett Koop, and additionally that you will suck my dick and like it.

I’m healthy as a horse, even with all my hot stripper bitchez and all my CIA agent friends. I’m smarter than all of you, and have millions of dollars. I’m a total winner. That’s why I’m posting on a blog where everybody laughs at me constantly on a Saturday night.

I plan to enjoy the last vestiges of freedom before they disappear under an Obama Marxist dictatorship. Thanks for the reminder.

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Huh. Amazing how dropping one bumbledicked troll into the killfile will shrink up a thread like nobody’s business. Like spring cleaning, it was.

bumbledicked

Are we talking about someone whose dick cannot but bumble or someone with the genitalia of a bumblebee where those of a normal human being might be? Either way, I think you’re being too kind to the little shaver.

Some socialists (and a great many “socialists”) like to pretend, for the sake of some comrades’ feely-feelings, that utilitarianism has no place in morality. But then they are idiots.

Well, the problem with that is that the Iraq War was justified (in part) on utilitarian grounds, and I’ve seen a great many ‘Democrats’ start fumbling on how getting rid of Saddam would do the world a service and wouldn’t-it-be-great-for-the-Iraqis-if-someone-we-liked-was-running-the-country…

Besides, there is room for scale in Continental deontology. Starting a war pre-emptively is, prima facie, a worse infringement of basic moral imperatives to respect the dignity of persons than just wrongfully imprisoning somebody (though both are, in fact, wrong).

Lemmings don’t willingly jump off cliffs except in Disney movies where their jumping is staged. Also.

Is there a Disney movie with lemmings jumping off cliffs? That sounds pretty gruesome.

Don’t bother watching the 2008 remake. It’s all cheesy CGI effects.

bumbledicked
When my bum bleeds, I go ‘ick’ too.

“Ahmanijedad (sp) is the repig candidate, and the other guy is the Democratic candidate.” That’s just the kind of sophisticated analysis I’ve come to expect from “You Can’t Put Lipstick On A Repig.”

Is there a Disney movie with lemmings jumping off cliffs? That sounds pretty gruesome.

Yes.

It was for some chintzy wild-north documentary. It was standard practice to stage encounters between animals in that genre, even the more high-end productions, and occasionally you got ridiculous fictions like the mass slaughter of the lemmings to show them ‘jumping off cliffs in the Arctic’ (actually being pushed by a massive iron wheel into a river in Ontario).

It’s still being sold. Check out the first review.

I suppose you’re next going to try and tell me that the scene where the baby lemming whose mother was killed befriends a grumpy wolverine and together they set off to stop the launch of a rocket which will threaten a habitat, collecting friends and a fiesty, sassy female dragonfly along the way, was faked too, huh?

a fiesty, sassy female dragonfly
With a Latin-American accent.

Here I am leading up to a joke about “lemming merengue pie”.

Even if lemmings did behave like they thought, non-billionaires who consistently vote against their own interests using the term against the other guys? Just another case of Montoya’s Law in action.

The really funny thing is that Troofy’s never heard of Jose Padilla…

What kind of cognitive dissonance does it take to be able to go from saying “ha-HA, libs, Obama didn’t give you all those queer liberal things you wanted him to, suck it bitches!!” to saying “OBAMA IS GOING TO GIVE THE LIBERALS ALL THE THINGS THEY WANT OH MY GAWWWWD“?

What kind of cognitive dissonance does it take to be able to go from saying “ha-HA, libs, Obama didn’t give you all those queer liberal things you wanted him to, suck it bitches!!” to saying “OBAMA IS GOING TO GIVE THE LIBERALS ALL THE THINGS THEY WANT OH MY GAWWWWD“?

The best kind. The American Good Patriot Conservative kind.

Absolutely right. It counts for multi-trillion dollar deficits, socialized medicine, telling CEOs of privately-held companies how much money they can make, taxing us all out the wazoo and, most importantly,indefinite detention of private American citizens, something that Maddow admitted wasn’t even ATTEMPTED under the Bush/Cheney admin.

Socialized medicine? WRONG. Obama’s not even close to achieving public health care. He’s failing big on that promise so far.

Telling CEOs of privately-held companies how much money they can make? WRONG. The $500,000 annual cap he promised on the finance crooks was withdrawn. Those Wall Street criminals who tanked the entire global economy are back wearing more even more gall on their sleeves.

Most importantly,indefinite detention of private American citizens – The only thing you got right.
…something that Maddow admitted wasn’t even ATTEMPTED under the Bush/Cheney admin. Bullshit, lying arsehole troll. Bush ripped up habeas corpus and Gitmo’s mission statement was indefinite detention.

“It’s not who votes that counts. It’s who counts the votes.” – Joseph Stalin (alleged)

Is there a Disney movie with lemmings jumping off cliffs? That sounds pretty gruesome.

Yes.

Disney proposed making a movie about Tarra and Bella’s unique friendship using a ‘trained’ i.e. enslaved circus elephant. They were politely told by the elephant sanctuary to fuck off.

If Pixar wants to make an animated film and get the word out about the sanctuary, great; otherwise it’s a no go.

The only reason Tarra and Bella have a friendship is because they’re living in an environment that supports their individual needs. If Tarra lived at Disney’s animal kingdom she’d be in chains half the time, prodded with bullhooks, yelled at by scummy control freaks like the other elephants forced to live there.

Regardless of what anyone thinks of the state of democracy in the U.S., that shouldn’t prevent people from expressing support and solidarity as, dare I say it and remain patriotic? -World Citizens. Heck, Reagan said he was a World Citizen, so I guess that is my aegis and sword to wield against the wingnuts.

It already looks like an ‘case closed’ clumsy vote steal. Preemptive repression on election day, Juan Cole says that Iranian government violated its own election laws to ‘call’ the election a few hours after the polls closed (they are supposed to wait for the election commission report , which by law takes a three day review) Absurd regional voting patterns. Warnings to opposition to STF Up before the election even starts. Government vote suppression and intimidation.

So, I think people should look for ways of expressing support for a ‘good’ outcome in Iran, which at this point means first of all, not allowing a fixed election to stand: petitions, publicizing voices for democracy from inside Iran, slap down our domestic wingnuts who want to use the Iranian people as if they were disposable tools, for their own nefarious purposes. Whatever else people see that will do a little good.

So, I do not feel bound or shackled by the myriad BS the US government has pulled. Need to speak out in support of progress, humanity and enlightenment.

Hope that is not too earnest for this blog

“Ahmanijedad (sp) is the repig candidate, and the other guy is the Democratic candidate.” That’s just the kind of sophisticated analysis I’ve come to expect from “You Can’t Put Lipstick On A Repig.”

No need to be snippy. I’ll be happy to hear about your sophisticated analysis. How many months have you spent in Iran, talking to the average Joes, the politicians, and the religious authorites? I’m eager to hear about your experiences.

It already looks like an ‘case closed’ clumsy vote steal.

Maybe not too earnest for this blog, but it looks like an troll.

If Tarra lived at Disney’s animal kingdom she’d be in chains half the time, prodded with bullhooks, yelled at by scummy control freaks like the other elephants forced to live there.

Disney, not FEMA, is in charge of the re-education camps? I’d be okay with that, at least until the delicious sense of poetic justice wore off.

…yelled at by scummy control freaks like the other elephants forced to live there.

That’s just cruel and baseless character assassination against those other elephants. Do you know them personally? Did they ever yell at you? Then I think an apology is in order.

“An troll”? Whatever. I don’t need no feeding. What will you say when your local wingnuts yell that this means war next week?

The more sophisticated will shake their heads sadly, dolefully note “dilemma for Obama” and that these developments are “deeply troubling” and “talking has failed” and find excuses to create more war, death, and disaster.

This is the time for discretion, patience, and perseverance, and hope that this is the beginning of change in Iran.

Need to speak out in support of progress, humanity and enlightenment.

It’s a good impulse, but the problem is that there’s a big industry in the first world of presenting those things in a corrupt and inaccurate light. Hitchens would have said the same thing about Iraq, for instance, and billions of dollars were put into pretending that he was telling the truth.

I’m less skeptical about the fraud itself than christian h, but I still think the pat way it’s being presented stinks of narrative management by the opposition and that taking the neoliberal, color-revolution-connected Mousavi at his word as he seeks a primarily economistic and bureaucratic national office is dangerous.

There is nothing wrong with earnesty, but just remember that there are few good guys out there – progress usually involves a bad guy defeating a slightly less bad guy, or bad guys doing good things for bad reasons. I’ve got a nasty feeling that American progressives are being taken for a ride right now. Cynical ain’t a swear word, you know.

No need to be snippy.

He’s had a lousy day, which for someone living in Portland means he’s had to settle for decent pot and intermittent blowjobs.

talking to the average Joes

I shudder to think of the circumstances under which we would find average Joes in Iran. I mean, sure, I could go for drafting Wurzelbacher, but there are limits.

I shudder to think of the circumstances under which we would find average Joes in Iran. I mean, sure, I could go for drafting Wurzelbacher, but there are limits.

Understand where I was coming from with the comment from Djur. I spent many, many moons in the 70’s talking in depth and with great passion about radical politics. In high school I was a Maoist. Even subscribed to the Peking Review & had a Little Red Book. I know a bunch about intellectual noodling concerning political systems, and realized a long time ago most of it is just mental masturbation. The thing that seems to matter most is “boots on the ground”, not abstract ideas. This applies quadruple-fold to a fairly closed society like Iran.

Plus – in fact, double plus – isn’t this a humor blog???

??? ????? ??

That’s your Average Joe in Iran.

It didn’t translate. Rats.

Plus – in fact, double plus – isn’t this a humor blog???

It depends on what the meaning of “is” is – yes, it (habitually) is a humor blog. Sometimes it isn’t.

Yeah, Lipstick, I’m sorry about that. I’m just not any more a fan of “repig” and “reichthuglikkkan” and such than I am of “libtard” and “demonrat” and “dhimmicrap”. And I’m also tired of the Procrustean cliche of superimposing a American political framework on other countries.

Lesley: the troll has a routine. First he’ll gabble about Obama being a Marxist dictator forcing his ropy socialized medicine down our throats. Then, when people point out that Obama hasn’t followed through that or a host of other liberal-type promises, he’ll chortle about how that sly Chicago thug really pulled the wool over you libtards’ eyes, ho ho ho.

Before everyone gets too carried away here, please read this essay in the Sunday Guardian.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/13/iranian-election

I, for one, am FAR from convinced that this election was stolen. And given the amount and scope of the many lies fed to me during my lifetime about Iran, I feel especially entitled to be skeptical about the election coverage this time.

Sure, I suppose it is conceivable that Moussavi is a U.S. agent, and there is a U.S. plot to shill up a bogus ‘Green Revolution’ in Iran.

But I doubt it. Moussavi is one of the orginal revolutionaries, lead the country during the Iran-Iraq war. Rasfanjani quit both his posts, is he an U.S. shill? Reports say that some of election workers in the Interior Ministry are ratting out the manipulation (See New Yorker blog
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2009/06/laura-secor-irans-stolen-election.html)

It is kind of hard to see how the Iranian government did not stone cold break the law when it announced the winner on its own on the same day of the election when they are supposed to wait for the Election Commission to certify.
Moussavi never said anything that indicated he would deer to the US government’s wishes on nuclear program -he said the country would pursue it in the manner it saw fit and had a right to it, for instance. I do not see how a Moussavi presidency would make Obama’s project that much easier. The theocratic geezers run things on foreign policy and nuclear policy in particular.

Right now it looks like the theocrats got nervous about even a small social liberalization (forget anything like a Washington Consensus style economic liberalization happening, or Moussavi taking a radically different course on foreign affairs over which he would have had little control anyway) and they clumsily stole the election.

This does not look like the western meddling in Ukranian, or Lebanese, or Palestinian elections.

I’ll change my mind if the funny stuff can be explained any other way, and if the unrest and election protests are not widespread. But it does not look that way now.

I think news reports have outrun the Guardian piece, but I will keep an open mind.

Well, the problem with that is that the Iraq War was justified (in part) on utilitarian grounds, and I’ve seen a great many ‘Democrats’ start fumbling on how getting rid of Saddam would do the world a service and wouldn’t-it-be-great-for-the-Iraqis-if-someone-we-liked-was-running-the-country…

True, true. But there utilitarianism conflicts with that responsibility thing I was talking about. There’s also a practicality issue to address. The only compelling argument to my mind for the Iraq War was Hitchens’s: since America played a large part in placing Saddam on the throne, it owed it to the Iraqis to get him off it. But this assumes that the American government, composed of murderous fuck-ups, could be assumed to a)do such a thing in good faith and b)competently execute such a plan. Of course it operated in bad faith, and incompetently — it tried to install yet another puppet (Chalabi). Saddam was an instance of blowback. So too is (if you follow the causal chain back to ’53) the awful government of Iran. Are we responsible? To a degree, but since we can’t be trusted to right past wrongs in good faith and competence, we might as well follow the rule that it’s best not to meddle at all. This is about when idiot liberals who love intervention say, “OMG you would have totally allowed the Axis powers to win WW2.” But that of course is bullshit, an exception that proves the rule, because when governments are truly *that bad* they end up attacking even countries that try to stay out of conflict: the Axis was so awful that Pearl Harbor or something like it was basically inevitable.

Starting a war pre-emptively is, prima facie, a worse infringement of basic moral imperatives to respect the dignity of persons than just wrongfully imprisoning somebody (though both are, in fact, wrong).

I agree, but isn’t this because, at least in part, of utilitarian estimates of what the results would be (read: death toll) were both imperatives infringed in worst case scenarios? If everyone’s allowed to pre-emptively start wars I imagine the results would be worse than if everyone were wrongfully imprisoned.

Hope that is not too earnest for this blog

Not…PETITIONS!!11!!

/castlethunder

world citizen action time

Thanks for at LEAST reading the Guardian piece. I live in Minnesota and we have just lived through a VERY contested Senate race. The recount was done by extravagantly honest folks and done with extraordinary care. Yet there are those in the rest of the country who are claiming the Franken is “stealing” the election.

So pardon me if I refuse to believe as fact ANY claims of election fraud until they are proven to the standards of the Minnesota Senate recount.

techno said,
June 14, 2009 at 6:06

Fair enough. We should keep an open mind. My view is that all the pieces, including a couple of diaries on Daily Kos, that say that election was probably not rigged, are long on opinions and short on facts. We should watch the news, see the level of discontent, see how the regime explains itself. The news reports over last few hours are disturbing.

My view right now is that there is more than enough evidence to cast very serious doubt on election and regime needs to provide evidence that election was fair (as any government, including ours, needs to do). The smoking gun for me is that the Iranian government violated its own election laws in announcing result prematurely, and with no apparent input from the election commission.

So, at the very least, Iran is going backwards on democratic government, and that is a matter of concern.

How neocons will try to advance their plans in response to this is also a matter of concern.

So pardon me if I refuse to believe as fact ANY claims of election fraud until they are proven to the standards of the Minnesota Senate recount.

Thanks for the LOL moment in an otherwise serious thread. There is zero chance of you or anyone else here in the US getting any kind of honest accounting of what the real vote counts were but you let me know what you here.

Meanwhile, it may be that those who are protesting care less about those vote counts than people here do and more about the whole sham of a system that they live under.

Demonstrators in the streets in Iran today utilize allegations of fraud as the tip of their spear, but what fuels those protests goes beyond the official results of an election. That is even more true of Iran than of other recent examples of this post-electoral dynamic because the terms of the election itself were a farce even before the votes were counted: The Iranian “president” and “parliament” – elected powers – are in the end overruled by a Supreme Leader, his “advisors,” his “experts,” his “Guardian Council” (Ayatollahs, which is to say fundamentalist religious clergy) and the elected leaders live under their veto power on virtually all matters except for some of style and tone and what to eat for lunch.

To the extent that the worldwide community gets bogged down in the question of “was there electoral fraud or not?” in Iran it will allow said Ayatollahs to set up the perfect bureaucratic traps to exhaust and defeat the revolt, as occurred (minus the theocratic flavorings) in the 2000 US and 2006 Mexican post-electoral struggles.

More to the point: The yearnings by those in the streets of Iran today precede and supercede the concerns about yesterday’s election results. They are seizing the moment of the election, but this is not really about the election. This is about a much deeper and wider discontent with the theocratic-political system they have lived under for 30 years. The timing of the protests has as much to do with the world’s eyes being on Iran at this moment and the quorum of international media reporters that are inside Iran as part of that watch. (It’s an advantage that the 1989 protesters at Beijing’s Tienanmen Square did not have when their demonstration was cut short by a massacre.) The cost for the Iranian state of resorting to excess violence and brutality to shut down this revolt would, as a result, be much higher to its own goals at home and abroad, than it was for the Chinese regime twenty years ago. In that, the protesters have the system over a barrel.

This makes sense to me unless you think those Iranian protesters are stupid enough to care so much about one figurehead beating out another figurehead that they’ll risk their safety over it. They know the system is a sham.

testing? testing?

So, at the very least, Iran is going backwards on democratic government, and that is a matter of concern.

Well, while it’s overstated a lot here in the US, it’s still worth remembering that Iran is an unusual middle-ground between hard democracy and soft dictatorship in which a relatively hard democracy is, within limits, left alone by a relatively soft dictatorship, and the overlapping magisteria of the two overall leave the soft dictatorship on top.

The rules, such as they are, are extremely corrupt by democratic standards. They were and are the main pretext by which American political scientists ignore ostensibly democratic processes in Communist countries. While if this is a simple case of election-thieving it’s pretty shitty, Mousavi had to have a lot of common ground with Ahmadinejad to get past the gate at all, and we’re leery enough about that when it’s the result of informal rather than codified processes.

I think I overstated Mousavi as a neoliberal slightly, or at least misstated. Chalabi is, to be fair, better known as a puppet than an aspirant kleptocrat, but he has for the last few decades aspired to be the model by which puppet-kleptocracies form in the Middle East, at times seeking patronage from Jordan, Israel, Iran, and the US. In light of that, and because of the obvious conflicts with our most aggressive puppet-masters, I do think you’re right that Mousavi would not even in the worst circumstances be a puppet of the US.

But, that isn’t to say he wouldn’t be essentially running the country for external interests, or at the very least for the sake of local oligarchs, big men, and party loyalists.

When you put neoliberals in power in developing countries, the results are usually pretty nasty. This is why I have a tentatively cynical attitude towards all of this; it could be as clear-cut as Florida 2000 or it could be as complex as Nevada in 1864. (Lie told to children: we were admitted to secure our silver for the Union. Reality: we telegraphed our constitution in October, became a state (whose formal borders amounted to ‘somewhere between Kansas and the Pacific Ocean’) almost before the McClellan campaign knew we had been made a territory, and delivered two electoral votes (and an abstention) representing essentially Virginia City and a few scattered prospectors, Mormons, and other perverts. Qualification: winning the election for Lincoln in 1864 is about the noblest cause you could contrive to commit fraud for, but…)

Huh? The pieces who doubt fraud are “short on facts”? Isn’t it more troubling that the ones that allege fraud are completely devoid of evidence?

Juan Cole at least tries to present evidence, but it simply doesn’t hold up.

Do we know, for example, when, after previous elections the supreme leader would declare someone a winner? did he always wait three days until certification? Supposing he didn’t, why would his action today suggest fraud, given that he controls the election commission and surely no-one would officially contradict him, three days or not? Isn’t it much more likely that Khamenei wanted to act immediately and decisively to head off further unrest and uncertainty about the outcome?

All the other points made by those sure there was fraud are either based on a complete lack of knowledge of statistics or can be reduced to “everyone I know voted against A.”. As I wrote on a previous thread, if I applied that standard I’d have to say the 2000 election was stolen… from Ralph Nader.

There needs to be some clarity here: the Iranian regime will not be overthrown by the Westernized professional and business class. Partly because they aren’t strong enough, partly because it is not entirely in their interests, partly because they have allied themselves with the most corrupt faction in the clerical establishment. To succeed, the opposition forces will need, at the very least, strong support among the urban poor and some credibility among the rural population.

yes, it (habitually) is a humor blog. Sometimes it isn’t.

Perhaps we should use a simple metaphor, held in the back of our minds, so that we may still seriously discuss the issue while subconsciously maintaining the humor element of this blog.

Let’s picture for a moment the whole thing as a crowd giving a fat man a delicious “sammich” and then another fatter man grabbing the sammich and saying “hey, thanks, everyone, for giving me this delicious sammich!” Hold that thought, deep within your mind…

Now, back to the discussion.

It doesn’t have to be a “sammich,” BTW.

It could also be a birthday cake or a leg of mutton.

(But it would have to be one of those three, or otherwise the whole thing would be prepsosterous.)

“preposterous,” that is.

Juan Cole at least tries to present evidence, but it simply doesn’t hold up.

How do you explain the consistency of the numbers? It’s an overwhelmingly common feature of elections with an even hypothetically open franchise to have stark and regular regional divides. It seems more likely that a regime accustomed to rigging the election before it starts being forced to rig it as it happens would do so in an inexpert and peculiar way than that an entire country, with vast contrasts between rural and urban living standards, many ethnic and religious cleavages, and a strongly regionalist and elite-driven opposition campaign would vote in as complete coherence as Rhode Island or Wyoming.

Alec, the consistency isn’t throughout regions (as far as I can tell, while A. won pretty much everywhere, there were considerable differences between, for example, Tehran and the rest of the country), it’s over time. This blog post shows how you can “prove” that Obama stole the 2008 election in a similar fashion.

In general I am extremely skeptical about “statistical evidence” for vote fraud (I don’t believe that the 2004 US election was rigged either). It is a commonplace in statistics that even in a completely random data set, if it is of sufficient size, there will be correlations (funny example: there was a strong correlation between stork population and birth rate in Sweden throughout the fifties, iirc). In the context of elections, this means that someone looking for unlikely statistical indicators after the fact will always find them.

If America could re-elect George W. Bush then it’s completely plausible that Iran would re-elect Ahmed Ahmadinejad. It’s even more plausible when you consider the fact that Ahmadinejad is openly supported by masses of jingoistic religious-fanatic rubes and covertly supported by those who have enriched themselves through the corruption of his government.

masses of jingoistic religious-fanatic rubes… corruption of his government.

Can you be any more condescending? Bullshit. In 2005, A. was elected in large part because he’s perceived as being less corrupt, and less beholden to the upper class, than his opponent, Rafsandshani, who’s one of the richest men in Iran – riches he has accumulated through his connections in the clerical establishment. Unfortunately, that same man supported Massoud this time around, and A. managed to force Massoud to defend his corruption in one of the televised debates. A., on the other hand, lives a simple life. Not faux simple like Bush, really simple. He’s a reactionary piece of shit of course, but that’s a different issue. The rural poor in Iran aren’t stupid, as Dennis suggests. They know very well that their interests aren’t identical to those of the elites in North Tehran.

Can you be any more condescending?
There’s a difference between being condescinding and stating a fact. There are jingoistic rubes in our country and in Iraq. They sometimes manage to elect shitnozzles. None of the candidates in Iran’s last election were anything like saints, or even decent politicians. To root for one or another is like rooting for a shit sandwich rather than a disposable douche.

The conspiracy-minded part of me thinks that this whole thing has been in the works as a CIA operation, and that’s why the Obama administration has been reversing course and doing other odd things lest they upset the people at Langley in the middle of a delicate situation.

Tangential to c.h., I’d like to point out that in a lot of the world it’s kind of rare to see politics work the way they do in America – right-market versus left-social. While socialist parties tend to look a great deal alike, a lot of parties which are both reactionary and neoliberal tend to be direct exports of one or both of the US or UK. The more common mix for right-wing douchebags is paternalism – strong management of both public resources and public morality. Think Huckabee on steroids.

And in the developing world, the wealthy have long since learned that they can usually gain pretty good protective cover with the northern media by dabbling in progressive social politics.

I can see where a disposable douche might be useful from time to time; they sell reasonably well at fine pharmacies everywhere. Shit sandwiches usually take some amount of fraud to purvey, unless you have a very specialized clientele.

Otherwise, the analogy holds up very well. Except where it falls to pieces.

The purely statistical evidence shown so far IS BS. Nate Silver’s rebuttal is also BS. You cannot do a statistical analysis that means anything on six data points. Statistics specialists who know how to detect cooked data will be able to do a good analysis when (or if) more election data are released. Nate Silver didn’t show anything with his analysis, and did not even clearly show he understood how to find cooked data.

For know-it-alls, actually, no, the Iranian government did not pretend that they could count tens of millions of votes within a day in previous elections. And the leading cleric of the country did not declare the results a divine edict within a day of the election without going through formalities.

There was not preemptive repression imposed, communication blackouts and voter suppression at this scale before.

Tehran Bureu presented the silly statistical analysis, but they seem to have good reporting. Assuming this reporter is honest, it was hard to find an Ahmedinejad voter even in poor parts of Tehran.
http://tehranbureau.com/2009/06/13/who-voted-for-ahmadinejad/

The twitter feeds say there have been serious riots in other cities than Tehran.

I do agree to some extent that the whole election process in Iran is a charade, and from interviews I have read, many voters who voted against Ahmedinejad said it was mainly a protest vote.

My mind could be changed about whether there was massive fraud. But it is simply silly and against all reported facts to say that this election is the same as previous ones. There is massive outrage and unrest in Iran, and very obvious election irregularities on the part of the government are obvious. Something is different in this election.

People can hide in their own little arrogant and cynical wonderland, but I do not think that is a good idea.

Destructive forces here in the U.S. are going to use this crisis as an excuse to argue for more war, more destructive and dangerous policies. If some people want to just dismiss it all and applaud themselves for their faux sophistication and cynicism, and stand by while sh*t happens, that is OK. It’s a free country.

the conspiracy-minded part of me thinks that this whole thing has been in the works as a CIA operation

It’s remotely possible, but I think you are assuming too much competence by the CIA. This is the central fallacy of many conspiracy theories, in my opinion: they tend to have an inordinate amount of faith in human institutions, particularly government ones.

I’m not knocking you, btw. I’m just making note of something I’ve noticed about conspiracy theories generally: they seem to take as an article of faith that human designs are infallible, e.g., “The Twin Towers couldn’t have collapsed on their own, because they were designed not to”.

To be clear on the obviousness of Iranian election irregularities, I should have typed:

“did not pretend that they could count tens of millions of votes *cast with paper ballots* within a day in previous elections”

This election was screwed up, and all solid reported factual evidence we have so far is that the Iranian government did the screwing.

Sure, the presidential candidates may be pathetic tools in a power struggle between the clerics, the real leaders. Sure, one could suppose it is all a devious CIA plot, on exactly zero evidence.

But I think it is a better idea to take the facts that we have and think seriously about how to react to the events in a serious way that will steer things in a better direction. How to support those in Iran who want more democracy, and how to respond to the call for war in the U.S. You know, the idiots in the corporate media will start babbling about this and have nutball wingnut guests on their teevee shows about What It All Means (I predict the answer will be: Give War a Chance!)

The twitter feeds say there have been serious riots in other cities than Tehran.

What caused me to groan in anger and frustration in the anticipation of a long, awful news cycle of liberast recriminations, lies, and pandering was the discussion of Iran blocking Facebook because of a group with 6000 users against Ahmadinejad.

As anyone following the CIS (or our local equivalent of the liberasts, nice folks like Odom and Freedomworks) can tell you, the single most easily identifiable characteristic of astroturfing and narrative fraud is an obsession with, and heavy political investment in, organization via the Internet. It’s already a horrible cliche – you can make something completely stage-managed look reasonably grassrootsy with little to no effort online, and like most liberast tactics it’s an imperfectly-thought-out US import. At best, as in the Ukraine, internet access is wide enough or concentrated enough to allow a central body to coordinate ‘spontaneous’ outpourings of support and organization effectively. At worst, it completely ignores the extremely low local level of Internet use and can even interfere with more productive and legitimately populist work via SMS.

The latter, unless I miss my guess, is the case in Iran. The Facebook story provides a pat narrative complete with prepackaged imagery, actors, and moral without actually requiring any interference at all from political realities in Iran, and it quietly – too quietly for the American media to pick up – implies that the people responsible have no concept of how unrealistic the narrative is or how completely estranged it is from the way their organization actually works. SMS has precipitated riots, supported terrorism, and fundamentally changed the way a lot of the world deals with information technology. The equivalent on Facebook is about as realistic as expecting the populace of Esfahan to throw a fucking Tea Party.

Disclaimer: it’s 3:40 AM ET, my painkillers have worn off and I’m not supposed to take the next batch for more than an hour, and my wife is sleeping the sleep-of-the-just-and-ran-errands-for-her-temporarily-crippled-husband-all-day. My apologies in advance for incoherence and lack of funny.

I know no more about Iran’s internal politics than anyone else who relies on US media for info (including some of the better media, like “The Nation,” but still…) If there are reports of civil disturbance on a large scale, isn’t it moot whether there were voting irregularities (up to and including full-scale stealing)? If people believe the vote was stolen and act on that belief, what does it matter if the tree actually fell?

Well. Obviously my Saturday night/Sunday morning isn’t going to be closed by a few moments perusing sophisticated/obscure bon mots & PENIS here.

They keep saying there’s a tomorrow. We’ll see.

That post wasn’t so funny. And it had a LOT of words.

The guy over at 538.com has an interesting post about the statistical analysis of the Iranian election that people are using to show shenanigans. He’s not so convinced (at least by those stats).

I tend to agree with N__B, that the reality doesn’t make that big a difference.

Shorter Likud: “Thank G-D the right guy won!”

(CNN) — Israel warned Sunday that the apparent re-election of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad represented “an intensification of the Iranian threat,” and called for redoubled international efforts to halt its nuclear program.

“After Ahmadinejad’s re-election, the international community must continue to act uncompromisingly to prevent the nuclearization of Iran, and to halt its activity in support of terror organizations and undermining stability in the Middle East,” Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said.

Personally I think what we need to do right now is sit tight, see what happens with the Iranian people, and resist any calls for attacking Iran even for “humanitarian” reasons.

oops cite for the above

Personally I think what we need to do right now is sit tight, see what happens with the Iranian people, and resist any calls for attacking Iran even for “humanitarian” reasons.

Well, yeah. Not to mention, military intervention for humanitarian reasons is this close to an oxymoron.

It’s real hard for the US to take a position of moral rectitude with respect to the citizens of Iran NOT rising, en mass, to challenge the results of what are apparently (transparently) falsified returns and the installation of an unelected leader for reasons I should not have to enumerate.

It is even more difficult to disparage them when, to do so (UNlike the pertinent conditions if the US in the election cycles prior to this past one), would require them to face the bullets, batons, and prosecutions which will NECESSARILY ensue if, indeed, the authoritarians stole the whole thing.

Which, under the circumstances, wouldn’t surprise me, either.

Hail the Leader: President AhmadinaBush!

I’m not knocking you, btw. I’m just making note of something I’ve noticed about conspiracy theories generally: they seem to take as an article of faith that human designs are infallible, e.g., “The Twin Towers couldn’t have collapsed on their own, because they were designed not to”.

My god, I thought I was the only person on the intertoobz who had asked himself what people would have said before 9/11/2001 if the companies & Port Authority behind the WTC construction had assured people that the buildings could withstand aerial collisions and to please trust them because they had designed and specified it and they absolutely promised that they used all the correct materials and nobody in the 1960s took any shortcuts to save money at all, no way, no how, trust us.

El Cid – you aren’t the only person on the intertoobz who asked himself that but fortunately you’re one who is intelligent enough to know that even if all the conditions you specified were met to the letter of what was said when the towers were built, they would have fallen anyway with the hit they took.

I personally dispute that 2004 was stolen. I’ve read analyses from liberal sources, further banged on by very statistics-skilz-havin’ liberals on Daily Kos and elsewhere – and their explanations of the voted results made sense to me. A reluctantly-accepted sense, but still.

El Cid, leave us not forget that the Titanic was unsinkable and there was no way that the Hindenburg could catch fire..

I am completely nonplussed with the idea that this isn’t being covered on cable news, tho. Really??

I turned off cable entirely and get all my media straight from the Internet now, so I’ll take your word for it. But that is straight-up weird. The only way it makes sense is if the major media is so scared to lose money, that it won’t even cover controversy in *other* nations.

But to be that scared to lose a dime, that you won’t make a clear dollar in what’s **supposed to be your job** – that makes absolutely no sense.

Do they really just not want to report anything unless they absolutely know what’s going to happen?

How in hell do you fix that?

Let us also not forget that the invasion of Iraq would be a cakewalk and that our soldiers would be met with candy and flowers.

Ok, bad example.

Another jim – I don’t find it weird at all.

Cable news is staffed by celebrities, not professional journalists. You can’t expect a celebrity to work on a weekend, now, can you?

Cable news is inhibited by the fact that none of the networks have a bureau staffed with reporters in the ME. And no white women have gone missing there also.

world citizen action time:

1. Nate Silver didn’t need to show how to find cooked data. He merely needed to demonstrate that the “statistical” evidence presented for fraud so far is bogus, which he did. He never claimed the data disproved fraud and neither do I. It simply doesn’t tell us either way.

2. It is entirely possible to count millions of paper ballots, by hand, in a short period of time. Numerous countries do it every four years. The reason it doesn’t work in the US are (a) there’s often dozens or hundreds of items to vote on and (b) not enough resources are expended. In fact, Iran does so, too. Counting the votes is different from officially certifying the elections.

3. What is your source for the contention that anti-riot equipments wasn’t prepared before previous elections? Why would you think such pre-placement is evidence of fraud rather than the usual control freakery of the regime? I read an article the day before the elections warning riots could erupt if either side lost.

4. If a revolution should break out in Iran, fine with me. It might even go further than Massoud ever would have and topple the regime. But that seems extremely unlikely to happen. There have been much larger and more intense riots in the Islamic Republic in the past, to no avail.

5. I still see no evidence for fraud. To repeat, there may have been massive irregularities, or the thing may have been clean – I do not know. It is absolutely absurd to look at the current information and proclaim confidently one way or another.

I’m not typically inclined towards the conspiratorial mode of thinking, but it seems to me that “[Color] Revolution” has played out many times recently, and people in those countries start wondering about Western meddling/influence. But the part about Obama and the CIA, obviously, just a back-of-my-mind bored and quirky possibility.

El Cid – you aren’t the only person on the intertoobz who asked himself that but fortunately you’re one who is intelligent enough to know that even if all the conditions you specified were met to the letter of what was said when the towers were built, they would have fallen anyway with the hit they took.

That’s certainly how my own intuitions would lead me, but I don’t play engineer when I’m not one. Not when it would lead to an explanation I favor and not when it wouldn’t, either.

If some terrible calamity happened at a particle accelerator which actually had anything to do with the physics of the particle collisions, I wouldn’t pretend to be able to analyze the physics of that either.

Similarly I don’t attempt to weigh directly in on a huge variety of medical debates, because I just don’t have anything in the way of the real knowledge and expertise required.

Thankfully most of reality as having to do with politics and history is blindingly simplistic and requires none of the sorts of specialized knowledge and training (and ability to some extent) that real sciences require. And it’s in part due to the willful creation of the illusion that politics is more complicated than it is which allows for so much organized and systematized theft to go one.

El Cid – well, I’m not an engineer either, but I studied structural engineering for 4 years in the course of getting my degree, and the causes of failure there were pretty basic straightforward mechanical physics in action, so I feel completely comfortable in signing off on it, even not being an engineer or expert.

Though with so many self-proclaimed experts running around on the tubes, it’s to your credit that you make no pretense of being one where you’re not, in a lot of cases, it’s not a de facto requirement when you can inform yourself of the basic principles involved. I’m 100% with you on the particle accelerator, but I’d also be willing to bet that in such a scenario, both of us would be able to form an understanding what had happened if it was set out in a straightforward way, walking us through the science. That’s the main thing – to be able to approach something with an open mind so you can gain understanding of it. Having that open mind requires us to admit that we don’t already have the answer.

In all the Iranian matters, let us not forget the Law of Unintended Consequences. It’s quite possible that the Iranian military &/or religious authorities have just shot themselves in the metaphorical foot.

As an American, I’m just hoping that WE don’t …

@christian h: Laura Secor makes a convincing case that the election was stolen here.

I don’t want to appear as an A. supporter, but there’s nothing convincing about Secor’s case. There’s four arguments there:

1. “It just can’t be true” – we can dismiss that one out of hand. I am quite certain the number of royalists in Iran isn’t as large as in Manhattan.

2. “Reportedly” dissident employees of the Interior Ministry…: Useless. “Reported” by whom? Based on what information? She doesn’t say. It would be just as accurate to claim that the protests are “reportedly” controlled by the CIA, since this has, in fact, been reported.

3. “Allegedly” official polls showed…: See 2. Alleged by whom, when, where? We don’t take this kind of stuff seriously when it’s used to attack, say, Judge Sotomayor – why should we do so now?

4. High turnout favors reformists: this argument rests on the unsupported assumption that A. is widely perceived as the candidate of the establishment in Iran, while Moussawi, who was supported by some of the richest people in that establishment, isn’t. Already in 2005, many who voted for Khatami in 1998 voted for A., suggesting they didn’t vote for Khatami then because of his “reformism”, but rather because of his anti-establishment credentials.

if you read previous output by Secor, you’ll notice that she is clearly close to the pro-Western, neo-liberal elites in Iran. This will skew her view, and it’s not an unwarranted assumption that the sources for her “reported” “allegations” reside in those circles, too. I’m happy to be convinced otherwise, of course.

I really detect an “it would irresponsible not to speculate” approach on the question of fraud in much liberal comment.

You don’t need to understand Newtonian Mechanics to catch a fly ball.

Sometimes things are EXACTLY what they seem to be.

And not knowing for sure doesn’t mean you can’t interpret large-scale events and reach a tentative conclusion…

mikey

My pointy/pointless two-bits’ worth:

Sounds cold, I know, even flat-out nasty, buuuuut … I don’t know & don’t care. I’m a lot more concerned about the violence that’s going on now than whatever did or didn’t happen on election-day.

Think about it for a minute: would a more “progressive” president serving as window-dressing for the theocrats be a major improvement for the real lives of Iranians?

There’s no way in hell the clergy is going to allow the genesis of the same sort of secular state that Saddam set up in Iraq, so which figurehead they put in place as president there is largely a moot point to me.

Sorry, but the international concern-trolling angle kind of sucks, too. If you seriously think Israel (or the US for that matter) will suddenly warm to an Iran “ruled” by Mousavi-Sockpuppet as opposed to Ahmedinijad-Sockpuppet, kindly give your head a good long shake. If you think people here are cynical, try chatting up a diplomat sometime, especially over “refreshments” – I’d bet that within an hour, chances are you’d hear some shit slip out that’d curl your toes & grow hair on your tongue.

On the other hand, if these pro-Mousavi protests lead to a hardcore movement against the mullahs, my ambivalence will change fast.

This smells like some broken bones & bruises for a bunch of well-meaning folks, followed by a return to the status quo … but if it turns into a revolt against the Big Boss Ayatollah, we might well be looking at a serious mass-slaughter far worse than the one that marked the end of the Shah’s regime, & the political reverberations could be dire – not just for Iran.

I’m not saying “election fraud rulez OK” – I’m saying “figure out where the train is headed before you get on” … if your ticket says *Big Fucking Brick Wall – ONE WAY*, you might want to jump off before it gets up to full throttle.

I’m 100% with you on the particle accelerator, but I’d also be willing to bet that in such a scenario, both of us would be able to form an understanding what had happened if it was set out in a straightforward way, walking us through the science.

True, but I’d still be completely dependent upon those physicists who would be the ones setting out the straightforward case.

But it’s great to hear from someone with significant levels of training and expertise in the matters you mentioned.

I try to be a skeptic, and often this means I have to be a skeptic of skeptics, too.

Also, penis.
http://failblog.org/2009/06/05/wordwheel-fail/

also.
http://failblog.org/2009/06/04/monumental-fail/

Somebody mentioned Esfahan. What the hell does Gloria Esfahan have to do with it? She’s like Cuban or something, isn’t she?

It’s in Asia somewhere. They have no qualms about the penis. There are penis shaped popsicles (including the balls) and there’s a festival of some kind. A Penis Festival! ha!

ha, indeed.

Somebody mentioned Esfahan. What the hell does Gloria Esfahan have to do with it? She’s like Cuban or something, isn’t she?

Yes, but she really knows how to cut a rug.

Another Jim,

I’m actually wondering myself if the Obama Administration hasn’t asked the news agencies to squelch it, if only because they’re worried about the couch-potato residents of Outer Wingnuttia demanding we ‘liberate’ iran out of pure pavlovian reflex.

‘Coz you can bet your bottom dollar that if BushCo and the lads were still in control, they’d be all “INSTALL PUPPET GUBMINT GO GO GO” with the invasions and the bombings and the ‘we’ll be greeted as liberators!’ speeches all ready to go.

But they *aren’t* in power. And if they prepped up all the prewar hysteria and the Obama administration balked, their audience might start asking a few awkward questions about the last few wars.

I also not that this is one of those postulates where BOTH conditions could be true; e.g.

1) Ahmadinejad legitimately won the election by electoral count
AND
2) The legislative power engineered massive voting fraud and illegally declared a victor before counting the votes.

These statements are ***NOT*** mutually exclusive.

From the Globe and Mail today

Mehdi Khalaji, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Studies (and a Shiite theologian trained in Qom, Iran) has studied the intricacies of Iran’s voting and vote-counting system.

He notes that there are at least five ways that voting can be manipulated.

Birth Certificates

In Iran, there is no voter registration. Instead, a person’s voting eligibility is determined by his or her birth certificate, a document that looks like a passport, with pages that can be stamped.

Mr. Khalaji notes that there have been reports in the past that various groups have “rented” birth certificates from the poor, and used them to secure and fill in ballots fraudulently. Such activity, he says, is often perpetrated after regular voting hours, or when polls remain open for many hours after the designated closing time – as was the case Friday.

“In previous elections,” he wrote this week, “reports have surfaced that the Imam Khomeini Committee, a large state charity affiliated with the [supreme] leader, Ali Khamenei, ‘rent’ birth certificates belonging to the poor.”

Eligible voters

Relying on birth certificates complicates the calculation of eligible voters, Mr. Khalaji, says. Different government offices give very different estimates: “While the Interior Ministry puts the total number of eligible Iranian voters at 46 million, Iran’s Center for Statistics claims the number is over 51 million,” he explains.

Without an accurate estimate of eligible voters, it’s impossible to determine if “ghost” votes have been cast.The National Organization for Civil Registration says that the number of existing birth certificates greatly exceeds the number of Iranians. This can be caused by the loss or theft of certificates, which are then replaced.

Also, says Mr. Khalaji, some Iranians do not invalidate their relatives’ birth certificates after they die.

“In the last presidential election, reformist sources announced that more than two million fraudulent birth certificates may have been used … to obtain ballots.”

[…]

20 per cent [of Iranians] are illiterate, yet the ballot each person casts requires the voter to write out the name of his or her choice – an X is not allowed.

This makes it possible for polling station “volunteers” to write in the name of the candidate they favour, without the voter knowing any better.

Mobile polling stations

In the name of greater voter participation, an estimated 14,000 mobile ballot boxes were to be used in Friday’s vote. These were intended to reach those who could not reach any of the 47,000 regular voting stations (because of disability, members of the military, etc).

However, notes Mr. Khalaji, adequate supervision of the mobile boxes is extremely difficult, creating a situation where no one watches who casts the ballots or is present during the tally.”

Counting process

Counting the ballots is the area with the greatest potential for abuse.

The Guardian Council has the duty of supervising the process at each polling station and has uses observation committees with more than 130,000 members. Importantly, notes Mr. Khalaji, “each candidate has the right to send an observer to each fixed polling station to observe both the voting process and the ballot count.”

However, after the vote is counted at each station the results are recorded on a form, but not released to the press or public. This form is then sent to the Interior Ministry where all the forms are tallied and published. There is no guarantee that the first form’s figures are used in later forms, and no outside or candidates’ observers are allowed to oversee this compilation.

“In other words,” says Mr. Khalaji, “it is possible for agents from the Guardian Council or the Interior Ministry to change the vote totals before announcing them.”

Official validation

Once tallied, the results must be validated in a two-stage process.

The first stage is validation by the Guardian Council. Candidates have three days in which to appeal to this body if fraud or manipulation is suspected. But such an appeal is a double-edged sword.

In the past, says Mr. Khalaji, “the Guardian Council has canceled the voting in some districts where voting problems allegedly occurred and, not surprisingly, these are often districts where reformers do well.”

The second stage of validation is by Supreme Leader Khamenei, who has the constitutional authority to overrule the voters if he so chooses. Ayatollah Khamenei’s official statement issued Saturday embracing the election of Mr. Ahmadinejad, puts an end to and chance of him overturned the results.

In an open letter published last Sunday, a group of Interior Ministry employees expressed concern about the ministry’s plans to manipulate the vote. They cited a fatwa issued by an ayatollah in Qom – allegedly Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, who was Mr. Ahmadinejad’s teacher — that justifies such manipulation.

All in all, concludes Mr. Khajali, “it is abundantly clear that Iran’s election procedures leave ample opportunity for massive voter fraud.”

oops on the bold tag

Anderson Cooper will care about what I tell him to care about and I do not care about a bunch of fucking Iranians and their fucking cocksucking antics. I didn’t give two shits about Gore (liberal whackjob, not a team player) so what makes you think I care about fucking elections in some fucking country we’re just gonna subsidize Israel to eventually nuke anyway?

I think it was best said a couple thousand years ago:

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

Matthew 7:3-5 KJV

You can’t say you weren’t warned this was going to happen. America and its stooges no longer have the credibility to criticize anyone else. Personally, I find this a good thing indeed.

“(… But we have a different gubmint now that is vastly better than the last one. That counts for something.)”

How do you figure that?…

Given what a shitload of damage was done to Democracy/democracy during the Bush administration, the U.S. can hardly afford to whimper any complaint about the Iranian election results, let alone criticise the process and call it a “stolen election” (ahem…Florida 2000, Ohio 2004). Everyone ought to chill the fuck out and let the Iranians sort it out.