The situation is disasterous. But, let's analyze some of the questions at hand.
Validity
Ahmadinejad, through sending nibblets of money without anything constituting real structural change, has appeased the rural and urban poor to an extent. Aside from ultra-conservative elements in Iran and the military faction (Revolutionary Guard and militia), this gives him a popular base.
The very timid/moderate reformist, Mousavi, posses a base of urban youth, middle class Iranians, some merchants, and reformists.
Now, naturally, the rural poor are still a large consituency which could, in theory, give Ahmadineajad a popular vicotry. But for the millions of ballots in Iran to be hand counted in four hours strains credibility. The election was obviously decided before the vote.
Prospects
The outcome is not good. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard, factions of the Ministry of Interior, Basij militia, and Supreme Leader seem strongly to side with Ahmadinejad. Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, chairman of the Council of Experts (the council has power to remove the Supreme Leader) and hundreds thousand strong unarmed Green protesters seem to be the base of Mousavi's power. But the Greens really have no military power the Basij are millions strong.
My prospect is dire. Already the militaristic and nationalistic elements in Iran are planning a crackdown. If this serves (though I do not find it that plausable) as a catalyst for foreign military intervention in Iran, matters can only get worse.
Sorry - on one hand, I am watching with raised emotions, but don't pretend to understand it. On the other hand, I have been laughing for 2 days - the Republican Party here in the US said that the Iranian uprising is just like what they did ....
Quote:
Yesterday afternoon, Michigan congressman Pete Hoekstra, after what must have been deep contemplation, tweeted: "Iranian twitter activity similar to what we did in House last year when Republicans were shut down in the House." Yep, he's comparing that time Republicans tweeted a bunch after Nancy Pelosi prevented a vote on an energy bill to the Iranian protesters who are tweeting about the beatings, murders, and overall oppression from their government. A Hoekstra spokesman soon clarified, "The two situations do share the similarity of government leadership attempting to limit debate and deliberation, and the ability of new technologies to bypass their efforts and allow for direct communication. That’s the only point that he was trying to make.” Nevertheless, the Twitter community, deeply immersed in the Iranian conflict, was appalled. An utterly hilarious Hoekstra-mocking meme spontaneously emerged, and, as memes are wont to do, quickly spread throughout the site. It continues relentlessly today, and a new blog devoted to the meme has already sprung up. Here are the best of the tweets so far:
mike_bosworth @petehoekstra I got a sunburn last weekend. Makes me think of Hiroshima.
KyleOrl @petehoekstra My softball game was rained out today. Now I know what Hurricane Katrina felt like.
stealingfrom @petehoekstra Sitting in a chair, feeling a good deal like Stephen Hawking.
mattortega RT @petehoekstra Walked out onto Constitution Ave in D.C. and was almost hit by a taxi. Reminded me of Tienanmen Square.
mmnowakjr85 @petehoekstra our office cooler ran out of water. this must be what its like in Sudan.
curtsmith @petehoekstra, fell off my surfboard in Malibu today, now I know what D-day felt like.
jwzich @petehoekstra Didn't have breakfast this morning, it was exactly like the Great Potato Famine
stevensantos @petehoekstra Still haven't got paid for a job I did. Now I know what slavery is like.
trisloth @petehoekstra Just got into a snowball fight. Reminded me of the Hundred Years' War
donnahon @petehoekstra Got some sand in my shoe. Now I know what it's like to be on my third deployment in Iraq.
ceedub7 @petehoekstra I got a splinter in my hand today. Felt just like Jesus getting nailed to the cross.
netw3rk @petehoekstra Someone walked in on me while I was in the bathroom. Reminded me of Pearl Harbor.
trisloth @petehoekstra My toilet just overflowed a little. Now I know what it was like for the Indonesian tsunami victims.
Joined: Feb 15, 2007 Posts: 2100 Location: England
Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2009 4:49 pm Post subject:
I don't know anything about it beyond what's available online on English and Spanish language sites. I agree that the speed with which votes were supposedly counted is hardly credible. I wish the protesters all the best, but I don't expect them to get much - the hardliners appear to be in firm control of the armed forces, while the opposition is unarmed. I imagine that if it ends in full-blown armed repression, that will strengthen the military at the expense of the clergy, since it would show the clerics as unable to govern without direct military repression. _________________ I am the steppenwolf that never learned to dance. (Sedaka)
El hombre es una bestia famélica, envidiosa e insaciable. (Francisco Tario)
I'm male by the way (yes, I know my avatar is misleading).
Well, we're going to get less and less info, i heard they kicked out most foreign TV representatives.... Guess they want whatever goes on in their country to stay. =/
Millions of ballots are counted in Canada in just two hours... Americans have made a lot of this in Iran but this is because when they vote on the first Tuesday of November they vote for millions of things at once that require machines to count.
I think that the reason for the support of Musavi in the West are simple - they prefer leaders who want to make unforced concessions to the West and neoliberal economics, they like leaders who appeal to that demographic that he has roped in and of course they like to see Ahmadinejad be embarrassed for saying nasty things about Holy Israel.
Moreover, this kind of fight that threatens to cause open warfare in the Iranian regime can provide a wedge to pursue 'regime change' and put Zionists in power in Tehran as desired, the pre-requisite for Iran no longer being "evil" and being accepted as a "civilised" country with access to the corruption opportunities that come with being plugged into the world order.
Millions of ballots are counted in Canada in just two hours...
Because they are counted by machine. As you can imagine, machine-counting ballots is a hell of a lot faster than hand-counting them. _________________ WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
Millions of ballots are counted in Canada in just two hours... Americans have made a lot of this in Iran but this is because when they vote on the first Tuesday of November they vote for millions of things at once that require machines to count.
I think that the reason for the support of Musavi in the West are simple - they prefer leaders who want to make unforced concessions to the West and neoliberal economics, they like leaders who appeal to that demographic that he has roped in and of course they like to see Ahmadinejad be embarrassed for saying nasty things about Holy Israel.
Moreover, this kind of fight that threatens to cause open warfare in the Iranian regime can provide a wedge to pursue 'regime change' and put Zionists in power in Tehran as desired, the pre-requisite for Iran no longer being "evil" and being accepted as a "civilised" country with access to the corruption opportunities that come with being plugged into the world order.
Ahmadinejad won fair and square.
Orwell's dealt nicely with your comparison to elections in my native land (Not to say that they can't use improvement!)
While I'm generally not a fan of third world privatization (especially given the nature of "privatiziation" in the third world), Mousavi is no western puppet. He's a pragmatic, almost conservative, reformist. He poses about as much a threat to the fundamental institutional structure of Iran than Obama does to the Military-Industrial Complex (none).
He's defended the civillian nuclear program in Iran quite vocally.
Joined: Feb 15, 2007 Posts: 2100 Location: England
Posted: Fri Jun 19, 2009 10:06 pm Post subject:
Master_Pedant wrote:
xenon13 wrote:
Millions of ballots are counted in Canada in just two hours... Americans have made a lot of this in Iran but this is because when they vote on the first Tuesday of November they vote for millions of things at once that require machines to count.
I think that the reason for the support of Musavi in the West are simple - they prefer leaders who want to make unforced concessions to the West and neoliberal economics, they like leaders who appeal to that demographic that he has roped in and of course they like to see Ahmadinejad be embarrassed for saying nasty things about Holy Israel.
Moreover, this kind of fight that threatens to cause open warfare in the Iranian regime can provide a wedge to pursue 'regime change' and put Zionists in power in Tehran as desired, the pre-requisite for Iran no longer being "evil" and being accepted as a "civilised" country with access to the corruption opportunities that come with being plugged into the world order.
Ahmadinejad won fair and square.
Orwell's dealt nicely with your comparison to elections in my native land (Not to say that they can't use improvement!)
While I'm generally not a fan of third world privatization (especially given the nature of "privatiziation" in the third world), Mousavi is no western puppet. He's a pragmatic, almost conservative, reformist. He poses about as much a threat to the fundamental institutional structure of Iran than Obama does to the Military-Industrial Complex (none).
He's defended the civillian nuclear program in Iran quite vocally.
Yep, he's been an integral part of the theocratic establishment for a long time, and has served in important government positions before. The West is unlikely to get any more concessions out of him than it did out of the feckless Khatami.
The refusal to do any kind of electoral recount - with instead the the Supreme Leader determining by diktat that the election was clean - is, apart from the impossibility of manually counting so many votes so fast, in itself pretty good evidence that it was rigged. _________________ I am the steppenwolf that never learned to dance. (Sedaka)
El hombre es una bestia famélica, envidiosa e insaciable. (Francisco Tario)
I'm male by the way (yes, I know my avatar is misleading).
Millions of ballots are counted in Canada in just two hours... Americans have made a lot of this in Iran but this is because when they vote on the first Tuesday of November they vote for millions of things at once that require machines to count.
I think that the reason for the support of Musavi in the West are simple - they prefer leaders who want to make unforced concessions to the West and neoliberal economics, they like leaders who appeal to that demographic that he has roped in and of course they like to see Ahmadinejad be embarrassed for saying nasty things about Holy Israel.
Moreover, this kind of fight that threatens to cause open warfare in the Iranian regime can provide a wedge to pursue 'regime change' and put Zionists in power in Tehran as desired, the pre-requisite for Iran no longer being "evil" and being accepted as a "civilised" country with access to the corruption opportunities that come with being plugged into the world order.
Ahmadinejad won fair and square.
Orwell's dealt nicely with your comparison to elections in my native land (Not to say that they can't use improvement!)
While I'm generally not a fan of third world privatization (especially given the nature of "privatiziation" in the third world), Mousavi is no western puppet. He's a pragmatic, almost conservative, reformist. He poses about as much a threat to the fundamental institutional structure of Iran than Obama does to the Military-Industrial Complex (none).
He's defended the civillian nuclear program in Iran quite vocally.
Yep, he's been an integral part of the theocratic establishment for a long time, and has served in important government positions before. The West is unlikely to get any more concessions out of him than it did out of the feckless Khatami.
The refusal to do any kind of electoral recount - with instead the the Supreme Leader determining by diktat that the election was clean - is, apart from the impossibility of manually counting so many votes so fast, in itself pretty good evidence that it was rigged.
It's almost like the Iranian military-milita-conservative elite are just trying to thumb the Greens in the nose. I mean, if you're going to rig an election, why not wait a reasonable amount of time so that the rigging is at least plausible?
Ballots in Canada are marked on paper and counted by hand. They just empty the ballot boxes, count the ballots, send the figures on... and it goes from there. It can be done quickly. In Quebec during the Bouchard years they had a machine system at one point... but since they have returned to hand-counted paper ballots.
Musavi represents Rafsanjani, who heads the Council of Experts - so Rafsanjani is a bit like an Iranian Vice-President... he was president through the early to mid '90s...
He reminds me of Vojislav Kostunica and Viktor Goncharik. The "coloured revolution" manufacturers decided to go with someone who is "conservative" and almost dour and part of the establishment. They would have Western-financed shock troops like Otpor supposedly fighting for the candidate. The Kostunica would justify giving in on the grounds that the isolation is too much to bear and that he is a good establishment candidate would cater to the "have things both ways" tendancy people have. People can be a good nationalist AND surrender to the West at the same time. Meanwhile, shock troops in direct Western pay would cause trouble.
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