Maybe this will be the catalys for the people of Iran to rise up against the Mullah’s. One can dream right?
Check out this video
Lots of at the TehranBureau.com including a bunch more videos.
From Iran expert Farideh Farhi in Hawaii
What happened in Iran was not only a stolen election (which is different from a selection), it was a brazenly stolen election against a people who in unprecedented numbers had chosen to acknowledge the legitimacy of Iran’s electoral process.
The lovely folks at the Interior Ministry did not even try to make it look like it was not stolen. Aside from the clear irregularities in comparison to Iran’s own past elections in the way the results were reported (e.g., lump sum reporting instead of district reporting as mentioned by Ibrahim Yazdi, not announcing the number of voided ballots and so on), there is absolutely no way the numbers add up.
Ahmadinejad is reported to have received 24 million (even more than Khatami they keep repeating) out of total voter turnout of 39 million voter. This presumes an increase of about 8 million votes for him from the second round of the last election and the unbelievable implication that the majority of the additional 11 million voters that usually do not vote and voted in this election cast their ballot for Ahmadinejad! The argument is simply not credible to anyone who knows Iran.
Why did they do it so brazenly? Why not try to fiddle with the results in ways they have done with the past , by voiding ballots, stuffing them here and there and so on and lo and behold draw Ahmadinejad’s name with let us say 52 percent of the vote. Because they couldn’t. The incredible turnout made it impossible for such subtle manipulation of results. This brazenness was deemed necessary as a show of force; to make sure that the chunk of the electorate that is usually silent in Iran but was turned vocal/political in this election again becomes silent, apolitical, and cynical.
I must however say that as an Iranian there was one result that would have been even more devastating for me than what just happened and that would have been the possibility of the majority of Iranians voting for a man whose mendacity and wrong-headed policies were clearly exposed during the campaign.
Not only Mr. Ahmadinejad will head an illegitimate government but, by accepting the contested results even before the Guardian Council had certified them, the office of Iran’s leader has further delegitimized itself in front of a large chunk of the Iranian political and economic elite and the majority of the Iranian people. It is a shameful day for them and a very sad day for Iran merely because it didn’t have to be.
Did the IRanian people actually think they were going to get a fiar election? I mean, I looka t this and say, “well duh”, but the Iranian people seem to believe that an Islamofascsist totalitarian state is somehow supposed to have free and open elections. Talked about being duped by your own gov’t.
*update*
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz, is reporting that Mousavi, the opposition candidate has been arrested on his way to Khomenei’s house.
Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi was reportedly arrested Saturday following the reformist’s defeat at the polls by hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Supporters of Mousavi, the main challenger to Ahmadinejad, have responded to the election with the most serious unrest in Tehran in a decade and claim that the result was the work of a dictatorship.
There have been a number of contradictory reports from Iran, in large part due to the heavy restrictions imposed on the media in the Islamic Republic and in particular on foreign reporters.
Mousavi’s arrest was reported by an unofficial source, who said that the presidential contender had been arrested en route to the home of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
*update*
There are reports coming out that there are 50-100 people dead from the rioting…no confirmation on this yet either.
More video:
Here’s Ahmadeniwackjob speaking to the Iranian people after the election:
Related posts:
- Iran: Mullahnazi’s ban opposition protest over possible election fraud
- Iran: Group of powerful clerics side with opposition, call election illegitimate
- Iran Officials: Round Up Opposition Leaders
- Report: Mousavi was behind the Marine Barracks attack in Lebanon
- Iran: Mullahnazi regime shuts down opposition newspaper. Again
- Iran: Leading feminist lawyer ‘arrested’
- Western human rights lobby ignoring Iranian suffering
- Despite hundreds of dead protesters, Obama still wants unconditional talks with Iran
- Report: Israel planned to strike Iran during riots
- Iran: Arrested British Embassy staff to be put on trial
