Between Tel Aviv and Tehran by Uri Avnery, June 30, 2009 Hundreds of thousands of Iranian citizens pour into the streets in order to protest against their government! What a wonderful sight! Gideon Levy wrote in Ha'aretz that he envies the Iranians. And indeed, anyone who tries these days to get Israelis in any numbers into the streets could die of envy. It is very difficult to get even hundreds of people to protest against the evil deeds or policies of our government – and not because everybody supports it. At the height of the war against Gaza, half a year ago, it was not easy to mobilize ten thousand protesters. Only once a year does the peace camp succeed in bringing a hundred thousand people to the square – and then only to commemorate the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. The atmosphere in Israel is a mixture of indifference, fatigue, and a "loss of the belief in the ability to change reality," as a Supreme Court justice put it this week. A very dramatic change is needed in order to get masses of people to demonstrate for peace. For Mir-Hossein Mousavi hundreds of thousands have demonstrated, and hundreds of thousands have demonstrated for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. That says something about the people and about the regime. Can anyone imagine a hundred thousand people gathering in Cairo's Tahrir Square to protest against the official election results? The police would open fire before a thousand had assembled there. Would even a thousand people be allowed to demonstrate in Amman against His Majesty? The very idea is absurd. Some years ago, the Saudi security forces in Mecca opened fire on unruly pilgrims. In Saudi Arabia, there are never protests against election results – simply because there are no elections. In Iran, however, there are elections, and how! They are more frequent than elections in the U.S., and Iranian presidents change more often than American ones. Indeed, the very protests and riots show how seriously the citizens there treat election results. Of course, the Iranian regime is not democratic in the way we understand democracy. There is a supreme guide who fixes the rules of the game. Religious bodies rule out candidates they do not like. Parliament cannot adopt laws that contradict religious law. And the laws of God are unchangeable – at most, their interpretation can change. All this is not entirely foreign to Israelis. From the very beginning the religious camp has been trying to turn Israel into a religious state, in which religious law (called Halakha) would be above the civil law. Laws "revealed" thousands of years ago and regarded as unchangeable would take precedence over laws enacted by the democratically elected Knesset. To understand Iran, we have only to look at one of the important Israeli parties: Shas. They, too, have a supreme guide, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who decides everything. He appoints the party leadership, he selects the party's Knesset candidates, he directs the party faction how to vote on every single issue. There are no elections in Shas. And in comparison with the frequent outbursts of Rabbi Ovadia, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a model of moderation. Elections differ from country to country. It is very difficult to compare the fairness of elections in one country with those in another. At one end of the scale were the elections in the good old Soviet Union. There it was joked that a voter entered the ballot room, received a closed envelope from an official, and was politely requested to put it into the ballot box. "What, can't I know who I am voting for?" the voter demanded. The official was shocked. "Of course not! In the Soviet Union we have secret elections!" At the other end of the scale there should stand that bastion of democracy, the USA. But in elections there, only nine years ago, the results were decided by the Supreme Court. The losers, who had voted for Al Gore, are convinced to this very day that the results were fraudulent. In Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan, and now, apparently, also in Egypt, rule is passed from father to son or from brother to brother. A family affair. Our own elections are clean, more or less, even if after every election people claim that in the Orthodox Jewish quarters the dead also voted. Three and a half million inhabitants of the occupied Palestinian territories also held democratic elections in 2006, which former president Jimmy Carter described as exemplary, but Israel, the U.S., and Europe refused to accept the results, because they did not like them. So it seems that democracy is a matter of geography. Were the election results in Iran falsified? Practically none of us – in Tel Aviv, Washington, or London – can know. We have no idea, because none of us – and that includes the chiefs of all intelligence agencies – really knows what is happening in that country. We can only try to apply our common sense, based on the little information we have. Clearly, hundreds of thousands of voters honestly believe that the results were faked. Otherwise, they would not have taken to the streets. But this is quite normal among losers. During the intoxication of an election campaign, every party believes that it is about to win. When this does not happen, it is quite sure that the results are forged. Some time ago, Germany's excellent 3Sat television channel broadcast an arresting report about Tehran. The crew drove through the main street from the North of the city to the South, stopping frequently along the way, entering people's homes, visiting mosques and nightclubs. I learned that Tehran is largely similar to Tel Aviv at least in one respect: in the North there reside the rich and the well-to-do, in the South the poor and underprivileged. The Northerners imitate the U.S., go to prestigious universities, and dance in the clubs. The women are liberated. The Southerners stick to tradition, revere the ayatollahs or the rabbis, and detest the shameless and corrupt North. Mousavi is the candidate of the North, Ahmadinejad of the South. The villages and small towns – which we call the "periphery" – identify with the South and are alienated from the North. In Tel Aviv, the South voted for Likud, Shas, and the other right-wing parties. The North voted for Labor and Kadima. In our elections, a few months ago, the Right thus won a resounding victory. It seems that something very similar happened in Iran. It is reasonable to assume that Ahmadinejad genuinely won. The sole Western outfit that conducted a serious public opinion poll in Iran prior to the elections came up with figures that proved very close to the official results. It is hard to imagine huge forgeries, concerning many millions of votes, when thousands of polling station personnel are involved. In other words: it is entirely plausible that Ahmadinejad really won. If there were forgeries – and there is no reason to believe that there were not – they probably did not reach proportions that could sway the end result. There is a simple test for the success of a revolution: has the revolutionary spirit penetrated the army? Since the French Revolution, no revolution has succeeded when the army was steadfast in support of the existing regime. Both the 1917 February and October revolutions in Russia succeeded because the army was in a state of dissolution. In 1918, much the same happened in Germany. Mussolini and Hitler took great pains not to challenge the army, and came to power with its support. In many revolutions, the decisive moment arrives when the crowds in the street confront the soldiers and policemen, and the question arises: will they open fire on their own people? When the soldiers refuse, the revolution wins. When they shoot, that is the end of the matter. When Boris Yeltsin climbed on the tank, the solders refused to shoot and he won. The Berlin Wall fell because one East German police officer refused at the decisive moment to give the order to open fire. In Iran, Khomeini won when, in the final test, the soldiers of the shah refused to shoot. That did not happen this time. The security forces were ready to shoot. They were not infected by the revolutionary spirit. The way it looks now, that was the end of the affair. I am not an admirer of Ahmadinejad. Mousavi appeals to me much more. I do not like leaders who are in direct contact with God, who make speeches to the masses from a balcony, who use demagogic and provocative language, who ride on the waves of hatred and fear. His denial of the Holocaust – an idiotic exercise in itself – only adds to Ahmadinejad's image as a primitive or cynical leader. No doubt, he is a sworn enemy of the state of Israel or – as he prefers to call it – the "Zionist regime." Even if he did not promise to wipe it out himself, as erroneously reported, but only expressed his belief that it would "disappear from the map," this does not set my mind at rest. It is an open question whether Mousavi, if elected, would have made a difference as far as we are concerned. Would Iran have abandoned its efforts to produce nuclear weapons? Would it have reduced its support of the Palestinian resistance? The answer is negative. It is an open secret that our leaders hoped that Ahmadinejad would win, exacerbate the hatred of the Western world against himself, and make reconciliation with America more difficult. All through the crisis, Barack Obama has behaved with admirable restraint. American and Western public opinion, as well as the supporters of the Israeli government, called upon him to raise his voice, identify with the protesters, wear a green tie in their honor, condemn the ayatollahs and Ahmadinejad in no uncertain terms. But except for minimal criticism, he did not do so, displaying both wisdom and political courage. Iran is what it is. The U.S. must negotiate with it, for its own sake and for our sake, too. Only this way – if at all – is it possible to prevent or hold up its development of nuclear weapons. And if we are condemned to live under the shadow of an Iranian nuclear bomb, in a classic situation of a balance of terror, it would be better if the bomb were in the hands of an Iranian leadership that keeps up a dialogue with the American president. And of course, it would be good for us if – before reaching that point – we could achieve, with the friendly support of Obama, full peace with the Palestinian people, thus removing the main justification for Iran's hostility toward Israel. The revolt of the Northerners in Iran will remain, so it seems, a passing episode. It may, hopefully, have an impact in the long run, beneath the surface. But in the meantime, it makes no sense to deny the victory of the Iranian denier. |
20090630
Between Tel Aviv and Tehran by Uri Avnery,
Unscientific observation of 'iranian' twitters!
| I have been on twitter for a very long time and was very surprised that many of the so called Iranian twitters pupped up and got 1000s of followers in a very short time so I did an unscientific follow up on them based on the time they twitts and what they say, I tried to contact them and only managed to get in touch with only 2, one in the US who is living in the UK right now (not in the list) and the second one was Gita who was quoted as being in Iran by many ppl sicne she was twitting in Farsi. This is as I said highly innaccurate but interesting to observe for the next time since most of these so called Iranian tiwitters start sending messages between 9:30 A.M European time and 11 or 12 pm european time, and others start writing around 11:30 EU time and end up around 3-4 A.M EU time which does not make sense for a person who lives in Iran unless they have a very odd sleeping hours. Cheers, /Farhad http://twitter.com/madyar Always gets on around noon EU time, very active, sends 100s of twits per day. http://twitter.com/persiankiwi Highly reported by media, ALWAYS sends messages in EU time, probably in the UK http://twitter.com/mousavi1388 Probably in Iran, but mostly repeats what others have sent, LOTS of rumers comes from himm highly inaccurate reporting, source of the 'mousave under house arrest' news http://twitter.com/IranElect Started recently, definitely in the US (east coast) http://twitter.com/iran09 Hard to say, he twits all the time, always from his computer using FireFox, and pretends he is actually THERE! http://twitter.com/Gita She is one of the few who actually responds to ppl. She admitted she does is not living in Iran "right now" but that "she lives in Iran" caught her when she said that she had called her relatives "in Iran" to check things out in Farsi but said differently in English! http://twitter.com/StopAhmadi One of the most famous ones, his time of sending is like the US east coast ALWAYS, never responds to people and acts like he is sitting in the head quarter of Mousavim lots of BS, but lots of good news too, mostly repeated from others. |
شخصیت های کشور: ابراهيم نبوي
ابراهيم نبوي در این ماه اتفاقات مهمی رخ داد که باعث شد تعدادی از شخصیت های کشور از چیزی که قبلا بودند، خواسته و ناخواسته تبدیل به چیزی بشوند که نبودند. سید محمد خاتمی: یک فیلسوف اصلاح طلب که همه بخاطر او به موسوی رای دادند، تبدیل شد به یک فیلسوف اصلاح طلب که همه بخاطر موسوی دوستش دارند. مهدی کروبی: یک نامزد لر شجاع که اصلاح طلب بود، تبدیل شد به رئیس دیده بان حقوق بشر و رئیس سازمان زنان ایران و پس از انتخابات در شلوغی خیابانها گم شد. محسن رضایی: یک سردار متخصص استراتژی و کارشناس فدرالیسم که در عرض 24 ساعت تبدیل به قهرمان ملی شد و آنچنان مورد توجه قرار گرفت که یادش رفت قبل از انتخابات انصراف بدهد، در نتیجه بعد از انتخابات از قهرمانی ملی اعلام انصراف کرده و سالم به پایگاه خود بازگشت. محمود احمدی نژاد: یک قهرمان بین المللی در عرصه خارجی و یک رئیس جمهور بدنام بی عرضه در عرصه داخلی که در عرض یک هفته تبدیل به یک جنایتکار جنگی در عرصه جهانی و یک کودتاچی بدنام بی عرضه دروغگو در عرصه داخلی شد. اکبر هاشمی رفسنجانی: یک سوپرمن که قرار بود وارد اتاقش بشود و کت و شلوارش را دربیاورد و به نجات همه بپردازد، وی وارد اتاق شد و با گذشت سه هفته هنوز از آن خارج نشده است. اکبر ناطق نوری: یک رئیس دفتر رهبری که از سوی یک نامزد محبوب رهبری متهم به فساد مالی شد. وی از آن تاریخ از خانه خارج شده و هنوز مراجعه نکرده است. علی لاریجانی: شخصیت هشتم حکومت جمهوری اسلامی که به دلیل حذف نابهنگام پنج شخصیت دیگر، تبدیل به شخصیت سوم حکومت شد. وی در حالی که داشت می دوید از همه تندروها عقب ماند و به مدت یک هفته تبدیل به یک شخصیت میانه رو شد. محمد علی ابطحی: یک شخصیت روحانی اینترنتی دوست داشتنی میانه رو و معتدل که به دلیل انقلابیگری دیگران دستگیر و از صحنه مبارزات دیلیت شد. عطاء الله مهاجرانی: راست ترین نیروی اپوزیسیون در طول تاریخ که قرار بود چپ ترین نیروی پوزیسیون بعدی بشود، ولی در اثر یک تصادف نابهنگام تبدیل به رهبر معترضین شد. شیرین عبادی: مهم ترین شخصیت بین المللی ایرانی که اخیرا متوجه شده است انتخاباتی در ایران صورت گرفته است. محسن مخملباف: یک فیلمساز معتبر بین المللی که بیست سال از سیاست جدا شد و از ده روز قبل، روزی یک سال عقب ماندگی اش را جبران می کند. غلامحسین کرباسچی: یک شهردار اسبق که ده سال مشغول زیباسازی شهر تهران بود و بشکلی موفقیت آمیز همین پروژه زیباسازی را در مورد شیخ اصلاحات انجام داد و او را از یک کوهستان بی آب و علف تبدیل به یک چشم انداز دیدنی کرده و مجددا به همین اتهام زندانی شد. صادق محصولی: یک وزیر میلیاردر که به دلیل عدم آشنایی با مقدمات ریاضیات حاصل جمع اعداد را قبل از انجام چهار عمل اصلی به عنوان نتیجه انتخابات اعلام کرد. او ترجیح داد به جای چهار عمل اصلی ریاضی( منها، جمع، ضرب و تقسیم) از چهار عمل اصلی فیزیکی( زدن، انداختن، سقوط و شتاب دادن) استفاده کند. فاطمه رجبی: همسر سخنگوی دولت که تا یک ماه قبل کسانی را که به طرف صاحبش حمله می کردند گاز می گرفت، وی در ماه گذشته اصولا گاز می گیرد، دلیل خاصی هم ندارد. میرحسین موسوی: یک نخست وزیر سابق که بیست سال نقاشی می کرد و حرف نزد، نزد، نزد، نزد، نزد، نزد، اممممما حالا که آمد حرف بزند، آی زد!!!! سید علی خامنه ای: یک رهبر متوسط و معمولی که هیچ وقت نه خیلی چپ زده بود نه خیلی راست، نه خیلی کند رفته بود، نه خیلی تند، نه خیلی مورد توجه بود، نه خیلی مورد بی احترامی، و سرانجام تصمیم گرفت حرف آخرش را بزند، اما دستپاچه شد و آخرین حرفش را زد. حزب الله: گروهی از آدمهایی که پیراهنشان را روی شلوارشان می انداختند و به مردم اخم می کردند، سرانجام آنان دست شان را زیر پیراهن شان بردند و اسلحه های شان را کشیدند. مردم ایران: هفتاد میلیون نفر که سی سال بود رفته بودند توی خانه و بیرون نمی آمدند، حالا سی روز است که از خانه بیرون آمدند و دیگر توی خانه نمی روند. |
20090628
Bon Jovi Sings in Farsi (baa man baash - Stand By me )!
| http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdAnRB_Truw I don't like Bon Jovi or Andy at all, but it is interesting that he sings in Farsi! Cheers, /Farhad |
20090624
Nice GNU based schematic and PCB CAD program!
This is an interesting CAD program, with some really good examples:
http://www.lis.inpg.fr/realise_au_lis/kicad/
Kicad has been developed for years. It becomes a multilingual, cross-platform and complete independent EDA tool, follows GPLv2 license. It is a set of software tools with a project manager:
- eeschema: Schematic Capture;
- PCBnew: Board Editor with 3D viewer, requires open source Wings3D as 3D modeler;
- Gerbview: GERBER viewer;
- CVPCB: footprint selector;
- Kicad: project manager.
And library generator
http://kicad.rohrbacher.net/quicklib.php
Some info and comments:
http://dev.emcelettronica.com/kicad-free-and-open-source-eda-tool
20090623
Zimbabwean Nightmare Of Neglect Continues In South Africa
 | |||||||
20090622
FYI: Bush sanctions 'black ops' against Iran
Do you remember this?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1552784/Bush-sanctions-black-ops-against-Iran.html
Bush sanctions 'black ops' against Iran
President George W Bush has given the CIA approval to launch covert "black" operations to achieve regime change in
Mr Bush has signed an official document endorsing CIA plans for a propaganda and disinformation campaign intended to destabilise, and eventually topple, the theocratic rule of the mullahs.
Under the plan, pressure will be brought to bear on the Iranian economy by manipulating the country's currency and international financial transactions.
Details have also emerged of a covert scheme to sabotage the Iranian nuclear programme, which United Nations nuclear watchdogs said last week could lead to a bomb within three years.
Security officials in Washington have disclosed that Teheran has been sold defective parts on the black market in a bid to delay and disrupt its uranium enrichment programme, the precursor to building a nuclear weapon.
A security source in the US told The Sunday Telegraph that the presidential directive, known as a "non-lethal presidential finding", would give the CIA the right to collect intelligence on home soil, an area that is usually the preserve of the FBI, from the many Iranian exiles and emigrés within the US.
"Iranians in America have links with their families at home, and they are a good two-way source of information," he said.
The CIA will also be allowed to supply communications equipment which would enable opposition groups in Iran to work together and bypass internet censorship by the clerical regime.
The plans, which significantly increase American pressure on Iran, were leaked just days before a meeting in Iraq tomorrow between the US ambassador, Ryan Crocker, and his Iranian counterpart.
Tensions have been raised by Iran's seizure of what the US regards as a series of "hostages" in recent weeks. Three academics who hold dual Iranian-American citizenship are being held, accused of working to undermine the Iranian government or of spying.
An Iranian-American reporter with Radio Free Europe, who was visiting Iran, has had her passport seized. Another Iranian American, businessman Ali Shakeri, was believed to have been detained as he tried to leave Teheran last week.
The US responded with a show of force by the navy, sending nine warships, including two aircraft carriers, into the Persian Gulf.
Authorisation of the new CIA mission, which will not be allowed to use lethal force, appears to suggest that President Bush has, for the time being, ruled out military action against Iran.
Bruce Riedel, until six months ago the senior CIA official who dealt with Iran, said: "Vice-President [Dick] Cheney helped to lead the side favouring a military strike, but I think they have concluded that a military strike has more downsides than upsides."
However, the CIA is giving arms-length support, supplying money and weapons, to an Iranian militant group, Jundullah, which has conducted raids into Iran from bases in Pakistan.
Iranian officials say they captured 10 members of Jundullah last weekend, carrying $500,000 in cash along with "maps of sensitive areas" and "modern spy equipment".
Mark Fitzpatrick, a former senior State Department official now with the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said industrial sabotage was the favoured way to combat Iran's nuclear programme "without military action, without fingerprints on the operation."
He added: "One way to sabotage a programme is to make minor modifications in some of the components Iran obtains on the black market."
Components and blueprints obtained by Iranian intelligence agents in Europe, and shipped home using the diplomatic bag from the Iranian consulate in Frankfurt, have been blamed for an explosion that destroyed 50 nuclear centrifuges at the Natanz nuclear plant last year.
The White House National Security Council and CIA refused to comment on intelligence matters.
Ants inhabit 'world without sex' :(
This is too funny not to spread, specially the last part that says that the ants have learned “not to operate under the usual constraints of sexual reproduction” J
Ants inhabit 'world without sex'
| By Victoria Gill |
|
These ants do not need males |
An Amazonian ant has dispensed with sex and developed into an all-female species, researchers have found.
The ants reproduce via cloning - the queen ants copy themselves to produce genetically identical daughters.
This species - the first ever to be shown to reproduce entirely without sex - cultivates a garden of fungus, which also reproduces asexually.
The finding of the ants' "world without sex" is published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Anna Himler, the biologist from the University of Arizona who led the research, told BBC News that the team used a battery of tests to verify their findings.
Unusual evolution
By "fingerprinting" DNA of the ant species - Mycocepurus smithii - they found them all to be clones of the colony's queen.
And when they dissected the female insects, they found them to be physically incapable of mating, as an essential part of their reproductive system known as the "mussel organ" had degenerated.
|
|
Anna Himler |
Asexual reproduction of males from unfertilised eggs is a normal part of some insect reproduction, but asexual reproduction of females is "exceedingly rare in ants", wrote the researchers.
"In social insects, there are a number of different types of reproduction," explained Dr Himler. "But this species has evolved its own unusual mode."
She and her colleagues do not know exactly why this particular species has become fully asexual, and how long ago the phenomenon evolved.
They are carrying out further genetic experiments, which will enable them to estimate how long ago the evolutionary change occurred.
No sex please
There are advantages to life without sex, Dr Himler explained.
"It avoids the energetic cost of producing males, and doubles the number of reproductive females produced each generation from 50% to 100% of the offspring."
But combining genetic material in sexual reproduction gives future generations many more advantages.
"If we're more diverse, we're more resistant to parasites and disease," explained Laurent Keller, an expert in social insects from the University of Lausanne.
"In a colony of clones, if one ant is susceptible to a parasite, they will all be susceptible. So if you're asexual, you normally don't last very long.
"But in ants we're seeing more and more reports of unusual methods of reproduction," added Professor Keller, who was not involved in this study.
He also points out that social insects, like ants, may be particularly well suited to this type of reproduction because it enables the queen to control the caste and sex of all the offspring in her colony.
The first farmers
Dr Himler's interest in Mycocepurus smithii was originally sparked not by their unusually biased sex ratio, but by their ability to cultivate crops.
"Ants discovered farming long before we did - they have been cultivating fungus gardens for an estimated 80 million years.
|
More interested in gardening than sex |
"They collect plant material, insect faeces and even dead insects from the forest floor and feed it to their crops," she said.
Many different species of ant - including the famous leafcutter ants - cultivate fungi, relying on it for nutrition.
But this particular species is able to grow "a greater number of crops than other ant species", she explained.
"When we started to study this species more closely, we just weren't finding any males. That's when we started to look at them in a different way."
Since the fungus crop reproduces asexually, Dr Himler thinks it might give the ants some kind of advantage "not to operate under the usual constraints of sexual reproduction".
"There is certainly more work to be done in this system," she added. "We're quite excited about the direction this research might take us, and its implications."
20090620
چیز آقای موسوی و چیز آقای احمدی نژادینا
| http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0pORyyeXds Probably made by Rajavi's group, but it is funny! |
20090618
NPR : Which Tweets From Iran Are True?
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2009/06/which_tweats_from_iran_are_tru.html?ft=1&f=103943429
Which Tweets From Iran Are True?
By Frank James
Many media organizations, present company included, have turned to social networking sites, including Twitter in the search for first-hand information on what's happening in Iran, especially since Iranian authorities have greatly restricted what foreign journalists there can report on and have stopped renewing journalists' visas.
But who can tell what's reliable and what isn't on Twitter? It's impossible to know even if what you're reading was actually written by people in Tehran or elsewhere in Iran, especially since there's a movement for as many people in the Twittersphere to use the Iranian capital as their location a là "I'm Spartacus" to make it harder for Iranian censors to stop tweets that are actually from Iran.
The unintended consequence of that move was to make it even harder for the non-Iranian censors to figure out what's really from Iran and what isn't. For instance, how do we know that Gabhan is really in Tehran and not, say, spoofing from Johannesburg?
And even if he's in Iran, how do we know his information is credible? It's even possible that some of the tweets are coming from Iranian authorities or foreign intelligence agencies issuing disinformation.
One function of mainstream media journalism is to disseminate information we've determined to be reliable. It's not easy to do and we journalists make mistakes in vetting "facts," witness much of the important reportage leading to the Iraq War. We're human.
But the reliance on Twitter and Facebook is essentially throwing the doors open to everything and anything.
All of which makes Jon Stewart's satirical riff last night on CNN's use of social-networking sites not only very funny but trenchant too.
| Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | ||||
| | ||||
This isn't meant to denigrate the social-networking sites. Clearly, they are making it impossible for Iranian authorities to accomplish their goal of keeping the world ignorant of what's happening there.
But much of the information coming across those sites requires some heavy caveat emptor. We have to assume a lot of the information we're seeing on Twitter is true. We just don't know which part of the Twitter flow is and which isn't.
20090614
Juan Cole: Stealing the Iranian Election
Informed Comment: Stealing the Iranian ElectionTop Pieces of Evidence that the Iranian Presidential Election Was Stolen 1. It is claimed that Ahmadinejad won the city of Tabriz with 57%. His main opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi, is an Azeri from Azerbaijan province, of which Tabriz is the capital. Mousavi, according to such polls as exist in Iran and widespread anecdotal evidence, did better in cities and is popular in Azerbaijan. Certainly, his rallies there were very well attended. So for an Azeri urban center to go so heavily for Ahmadinejad just makes no sense. In past elections, Azeris voted disproportionately for even minor presidential candidates who hailed from that province. 2. Ahmadinejad is claimed to have taken Tehran by over 50%. Again, he is not popular in the cities, even, as he claims, in the poor neighborhoods, in part because his policies have produced high inflation and high unemployment. That he should have won Tehran is so unlikely as to raise real questions about these numbers. [Ahmadinejad is widely thought only to have won Tehran in 2005 because the pro-reform groups were discouraged and stayed home rather than voting.) 3. It is claimed that cleric Mehdi Karoubi, the other reformist candidate, received 320,000 votes, and that he did poorly in Iran's western provinces, even losing in Luristan. He is a Lur and is popular in the west, including in Kurdistan. Karoubi received 17 percent of the vote in the first round of presidential elections in 2005. While it is possible that his support has substantially declined since then, it is hard to believe that he would get less than one percent of the vote. Moreover, he should have at least done well in the west, which he did not. 4. Mohsen Rezaie, who polled very badly and seems not to have been at all popular, is alleged to have received 670,000 votes, twice as much as Karoubi. 5. Ahmadinejad's numbers were fairly standard across Iran's provinces. In past elections there have been substantial ethnic and provincial variations. 6. The Electoral Commission is supposed to wait three days before certifying the results of the election, at which point they are to inform Khamenei of the results, and he signs off on the process. The three-day delay is intended to allow charges of irregularities to be adjudicated. In this case, Khamenei immediately approved the alleged results. I am aware of the difficulties of catching history on the run. Some explanation may emerge for Ahmadinejad's upset that does not involve fraud. For instance, it is possible that he has gotten the credit for spreading around a lot of oil money in the form of favors to his constituencies, but somehow managed to escape the blame for the resultant high inflation. But just as a first reaction, this post-election situation looks to me like a crime scene. And here is how I would reconstruct the crime. As the real numbers started coming into the Interior Ministry late on Friday, it became clear that Mousavi was winning. Mousavi's spokesman abroad, filmmaker Mohsen Makhbalbaf, alleges that the ministry even contacted Mousavi's camp and said it would begin preparing the population for this victory. The ministry must have informed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who has had a feud with Mousavi for over 30 years, who found this outcome unsupportable. And, apparently, he and other top leaders had been so confident of an Ahmadinejad win that they had made no contingency plans for what to do if he looked as though he would lose. They therefore sent blanket instructions to the Electoral Commission to falsify the vote counts. This clumsy cover-up then produced the incredible result of an Ahmadinejad landlside in Tabriz and Isfahan and Tehran. The reason for which Rezaie and Karoubi had to be assigned such implausibly low totals was to make sure Ahmadinejad got over 51% of the vote and thus avoid a run-off between him and Mousavi next Friday, which would have given the Mousavi camp a chance to attempt to rally the public and forestall further tampering with the election. This scenario accounts for all known anomalies and is consistent with what we know of the major players. More in my column, just out, in Salon.com: "Ahmadinejad reelected under cloud of fraud," where I argue that the outcome of the presidential elections does not and should not affect Obama's policies toward that country-- they are the right policies and should be followed through on regardless. The public demonstrations against the result don't appear to be that big. In the past decade, reformers have always backed down in Iran when challenged by hardliners, in part because no one wants to relive the horrible Great Terror of the 1980s after the revolution, when faction-fighting produced blood in the streets. Mousavi is still from that generation. My own guess is that you have to get a leadership born after the revolution, who does not remember it and its sanguinary aftermath, before you get people willing to push back hard against the rightwingers. So, there are protests against an allegedly stolen election. The Basij paramilitary thugs and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards will break some heads. Unless there has been a sea change in Iran, the theocrats may well get away with this soft coup for the moment. But the regime's legitimacy will take a critical hit, and its ultimate demise may have been hastened, over the next decade or two. What I've said is full of speculation and informed guesses. I'd be glad to be proved wrong on several of these points. Maybe I will be. PS: Here's the data: So here is what Interior Minister Sadeq Mahsouli said Saturday about the outcome of the Iranian presidential elections: "Of 39,165,191 votes counted (85 percent), Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the election with 24,527,516 (62.63 percent)." He announced that Mir-Hossein Mousavi came in second with 13,216,411 votes (33.75 percent). Mohsen Rezaei got 678,240 votes (1.73 percent) Mehdi Karroubi with 333,635 votes (0.85 percent). He put the void ballots at 409,389 (1.04 percent). |
Is Ahmadinejad the Iranian Hafizollah Amin?
| Ever since the day this idiot came into power, his way of acting, his bold stupid words and his arrogant behavior inside and outside of Iran reminded me of another "revolutionary" leader in our recent history. Amin, who was a radical "communist" enforced radical secular changes into Afghanistan in the 70s, killing and imprisoning many mullahs or religious elders all around Afghanistan and paved the way for the Mujahedin and CIA's propaganda machine to use him as an example of the evil intention of the Soviet to destroy Islam, the outcome of Amin's action was the Soviet invasion that was the tipping point needed for the sick empire to collaps. Amin, was nothing but a CIA stoog who did what he was told to fulfill the long time dream of Berzinskey, George Bush and his radical gang inside the CIA to make Soviet suffer for the defeat and humiliation they faced in Vietnam. http://www.afghanland.com/history/amin.html http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=haizullah_amin_1 In Iran, the scenario seems to be the same, the stoog is acting in accordance to the need of the foreign powers to create a perfect image of Iran as Evil, unpredictable and dangerous to teh world. His so called re-election and the demonstration we see in Iran may be the last draw in the game and it will be the "needed" push that many Iran strategists were talking about when they were asking about removal of Iran's "danger" from their map. Maybe the 300 million dollars that Bush left asside for "change" in Iran, was not to be used by the opposition, but to be spent on idiot IRI activists who wanted their "beloved" leader to be re-elected. I know it is far-fetched, but possible! Cheers, /Farhad |
20090608
FYI: Complete Software CD for educational use
This is part of the UNESCO supported activity to create a free, safe and solid SW for educational purposes. You can download the SW at their site at: http://edubuntu.org/
|
20090605
10 second of your time and Save the children will get 25 cents!
Just visit the page and click on their link, Intel will donate 25 cents to Save the Children for every click you make
http://www.smallthingschallenge.com/?view=thankyou&d=y
