hoytak writes "An expert in electoral fraud, professor Walter Melbane, has released a detailed analysis (PDF) of available data in Iran's controversial election (summary here). While he did not find significant indications of fraud, he does note that all the deviations from the predicted model are in Ahmadinejad's favor: 'In general, combining the 2005 and 2009 data conveys the impression that a substantial core of the 2009 results reflected natural political process... [These] stand in contrast to the unusual pattern in which all of the notable discrepancies between the support Ahmadinejad actually received and the support the model predicts are always negative. This pattern needs to be explained before one can have confidence that natural election processes were not supplemented with artificial manipulations.'" In related news, EsonLinji notes reports in the Seattle PI and othersources that the US State Department has asked Twitter to delay system maintenance to prevent cutting off Iranians who have been relying on the service during the post-election crisis. And if you would like to help ease the communication crunch, reader RCulpepper tips a blog post detailing how to set up a proxy server for users with Iranian IP addresses.
There are a lot of issues with the data. But even before one gets to the statistical anomalies one has the basic problem of time. Iran uses paper ballots. In the past elections it has taken at least three days for Iran to count the votes. In this case, if the results are to be believed it took a matter of hours. That's just not plausible. Even if there were zero apparent stat problems, this would still be a massive red flag.
Iran uses paper ballots. In the past elections it has taken at least three days for Iran to count the votes. In this case, if the results are to be believed it took a matter of hours. That's just not plausible.
As someone who lives in a country which uses paper ballots, I find no lack of plausibility in the speed of the result. We usually know the result of the election within 4-6 hours of the booths closing. Although it takes longer to get final figures (especially if recounts are triggered) it would have to be an extremely close election to have to wait for the final figure to know who won (and indeed for the loser to conceed).
Given no significant statistical problem has been identified, and given that independant telephone polling prior to the election indicated that A'jad enjoyed a 2:1 lead over his rival, the most parsimonious explanation might simply be that A'jad actaully does enjoy the overwhelming support of the Iranian population.
Until such time that some plausible evidence of irregularities is presented, that should be the presumption we work on. The question of whether we personally want A'jad to have won or not, ought not to colour our intepretation of the results.
by Anonymous Coward
on Tuesday June 16 2009, @09:59PM (#28357139)
So what if they did manipulate the election. What is anybody going to do about it? What has anybody done about the last dozen suspicious elections around the globe?
But they didn't just announce that. They even had a claimed final total shortly thereafter which Ayatollah Khamenei confirmed. That's not explainable by a "we have a representative sample".
It is explainable by a "this is a Theocracy and I am the High Priest."
I don't understand why people act as if they expect Iran to conduct an election like a Western democracy.
Where does the assumption come from that Iran, of all countries, is even capable of a "fair election"? I really don't see how you can be surprised about this outcome *at all*, and I also don't understand what anyone thinks can be "done about it", if Iran's own "government" does not take action.
The Iranians apparently thought they deserved a fair election. This is not a tempest in a teapot, imagined up by the western world. Watch the videos, read the live feeds through twitter, listen to the chants of "Allaho Akbar" that shake the cities: it is very clear that Iran's leadership dramatically overstepped in this election.
It doesn't matter one single bit that the country is an effective dictatorship. The people were promised an election to choose their own president, and no sooner had they made their choice than the government yanked the promise away from them. It doesn't even matter if a fair counting of every vote cast does indicate a win for Ahmadinejad; the blatant fraud, police brutality, and the arresting of the opposition has ruined the people's trust in government. I truly hope that Iran doesn't descend into civil war.
"I truly hope that Iran doesn't descend into civil war."
A lot of uneducated, unsophisticated, even ignorant remarks in this thread. But, I pick this one. A nation doesn't descend into civil war. Things are already bad, and people have already hit rock bottom, long before they determine that they have to find the balls to pick up a weapon and use it. Civil war is the first step on the ladder back up out of the hole.
I know - every bleeding heart on the freaking planet has tried to brainwash us that "violence never solves anything!" Bullshit. Violence solved Adolph Hitler, among other things. Pacifists just fed Hitler whatever he wanted.
War isn't the worst thing that can happen to a nation, nor is death the worst thing that can happen to a man. Those who believe so clearly have no imagination, and have failed to study history.
It's not unreasonable to predict the results of an election with a random sample. For instance, if you are a news organization you may want to do this. However, the official results should not be based on a prediction, they should be the actual counted results. Statistical predictions have a chance of being wrong.
Furthermore, the idea of "random" sample is pretty far-fetched when you are counting votes from certain locations and the proportion of votes for each candidates varied by location. Once you have enough information to take a truly random sample you also have enough information to actually count the votes.
That's correct. But the opposition candidate, Mousavi, said that he received a phone call at 2am the evening of the election indicating that he had won. When the results were announced later, it was Ahmadinejad by a landslide.
Additionally, A'nejad officially had consistent support all across the country and all through demographics. He officially did equally well in cities vs. rural areas. Mousavi was heavily favored in cities. A'nejad officially did equally well among sexes, age groups, class levels, ethnic groups, everything. Mousavi was heavily favored among young students. It's too uniform to be plausible. For example, A'nejad even beat Mousavi in Mousavi's home Azeri province, Iranian Azerbaijan. That was compared to Obama losing the African-American vote to McCain, it's just very suspect and highly improbable.
In addition to that, the other 2 candidates each officially received less than 1% of the total. In the pre-election polls each of those candidates had much higher support.
CNN has done an absolutely terrible job at covering this, the line that CNN is reporting is essentially the government's spin being reported as truth. Fox seems to be the only US network with the balls to show much protest video. The BBC's coverage has been among the best outside of Arabic media, which is difficult to receive in a lot of places. The most up-to-date information about this can usually be found in whichever fark.com thread people are currently posting in, they've gone through 9 or 10 now with several thousand posts in each. Needless to say, any respect I had for CNN has essentially evaporated. Their international coverage used to be among the best in the US, now they might as well be the US-based Iranian spin machine.
I think the story was that they announced the victory after they had counted some portion of the votes and seen that Ahaminejad had a significant lead.
Right. After all, Khamenei's vote is "some potion of the votes."
>Right. After all, Khamenei's vote is "some potion of the votes."
It would be "legitimate", in the sense that it would be consistent with Iran's law, for Khamenei to simply appoint the President setting aside any other considerations (such as elections.)
The Ayatollah's word is absolute law, constrained only by natural consequences -- say, if the protests grow to the point where they represent an actual rebellion.
the US State Department has asked Twitter to delay system maintenance to prevent cutting off Iranians who have been relying on the service during the post-election crisis
What does the US State Department have to do with an election in Iran? By all means they should use their normal channels to express their views. But for me, asking twitter to keep operating for this reason is a minor example of the way other countries have long been interfering in Iranian politics.
This isn't electoral interference. It is an attempt to prevent censorship and aid people who are being oppressed and persecuted. This is exactly the sort of intervention that countries should be doing: helping allow more people to talk to each other. Democracy comes most easily not when imposed by a military invasion but when people are simply given the tools necessary to talk to each other and to those from other countries. Dictators always try to censor and control communications for a reason. I'm not that happy with how the Obama administration has done things (especially in regards to civil liberties issues) but this is precisely the correct reaction. Actions that undermine censorship are very rarely the wrong thing.
I don't think it's an example of electoral interference. That would be if the US tried to influence the outcome of the election. In this case they're trying to enable Iranians to communicate with each other, regardless of what that communication includes. I may not agree with a lot of things the US government does, but this is a good thing.
What? The US wants to make it easier for the protesters to organize. How is that interfering with Iranian politics? Was the rest of the world interfering in US elections by allowing ex-patriots to communicate with other Us citizens stateside ?
Also, if the protesters have to rely on Twitter uptime... They're pretty much screwed.
What does the US State Department have to do with an election in Iran? By all means they should use their normal channels to express their views. But for me, asking twitter to keep operating for this reason is a minor example of the way other countries have long been interfering in Iranian politics.
Meh, The US State Department talking to a US company that provides a services that some Iranians use is hardly a particularly good example of external political influences in the middle east. If anything the big story would be if somebody actually managed to persuade Twitter to keep operating.:) But seriously, when you look at things like Operation Ajax, you can see that the US just trying to make sure Iranians have a convenient way to speak for themselves is extremely hands-off, and probably a very appropriate way to avoid having unclean hands in the situation. The previous administration would have loudly and openly run their mouth about the situation, and inadvertently marginalized the reformist element in Iran by trying to support it. Trying to make sure they can speak for themselves is probably about the best thing America can do right now.
The Washington Post did an independent poll [washingtonpost.com] before the election showing that the majority of the public DID support Ahmadinejad by nearly two thirds, even among Mousavi's native ethnic group, the Azeri. It seems that the only group that DIDN'T support Ahmadinejad was the internet connected (a small minority of the country), which explains why they feel the election was stolen: when everyone you talk to agrees with you, it is easy to believe that the whole world agrees with you, not just the people you talk to.
Other interesting points: most people don't agree with Ahmadinejad's policies. Quote:
more than 70 percent of Iranians also expressed support for providing full access to weapons inspectors and a guarantee that Iran will not develop or possess nuclear weapons, in return for outside aid and investment
That warms my heart. I really don't want Iran to get nuclear weapons (for purely selfish, self-preservation reasons. Don't respond to this saying, 'it is their right' because I don't care). Apparently most people voted for Ahmadinejad not because they agree with his policies, but because they consider him to be a stronger negotiator, and more capable of getting favorable concessions from the US, China, and Russia.
If these results do turn out to be accurate, Obama should call and congratulate Ahmadinejad. After all, there are things we can agree on: we want Iran to be a strong, capable, functioning member of international society, not one that tries to destroy it (of course, our views on how they should reach that goal are different, but we can work on that).
The poll was done by Terror Free Tomorrow: The Center for Public Opinion and New American Foundation. The Washington Post merely did an article on the findings from the poll.
From the survey [terrorfreetomorrow.org] linked to in the article:
TFT and KA use telephone interviewing instead of face-to-face research in Iran because of the political and social constraints inside Iran. Face-to-face interviewing in Iran can be difficult for interviewers who risk possible prosecution and imprisonment. Face-to-face interviewing also poses issues related to access to households and respondents due to social considerations. Access to female respondents across the Middle East can be challenging.
I'm not sure how much better over-the-phone polling is in Iran. Many in Iran are leery of being called by random strangers over the telephone asking them political questions. Whenever we call our relatives in Iran, we are extremely careful with what we say over the phone. More to the point, when you have a brutal regime and some random person calls and asks: "Who will you vote for in Presidential Elections?", I wouldn't be surprised if they answer in one way and vote in another.
I won't dismiss the findings of this survey outright - they did conduct a scientific polling, something that I haven't done. It's just difficult taking the survey very seriously when what you see happening in real life - thousands and thousands of bloodied protesters taking the streets and demanding change - and compare it with a polling sample of 1001 Iranians, as stated in their Methodology section on page 25 of the pdf document. I'm also thinking back to both the entrance and exit polls in the 2004 U.S. elections, where John Kerry was said to have won by a large margin, only to find that the opposite had happened.
I think it is evident that I am quite anti-Ahmadinejad and anti-Mullah and especially anti-Arab when it comes to my ancestral country. But I will concede that he won if more information is released and it points in favor of his victory.
There's a serious omission in that op-ed that misrepresents that 2:1 ratio.
Namely, that Ahmadinejad only had the vote of 34% of the those polled while Mousavi had 14%. So yes, technically that's 2:1 where the the sum total of both figures is less than 50%. Read the actual report [terrorfreetomorrow.org] linked to in the article, they highlight this rather important qualifying information by the big red text on page 3.
And if you look at the actual tallies for that question on page 52, question 27, you will see it's 34% for Ahmadinejad, 14% for Mousavi, 27% (!) don't know and 15% (!!) who refused to answer. Both of those are non-trivial percentages that can swing either candidate for a landslide win. This undermines the implication that there is strong support for Ahmadinejad, by a ratio of 2:1 to his closest rival. Seriously, that's an incredulous omission to make, nevermind the fact that the poll itself was conducted a month ago. It is in these past two weeks that voter's opinion would better reflect their voting preferences, you know, after the actual presidential debates.
Fivethirtyeight.com has a good write up [fivethirtyeight.com] of these points, explaining why the opinion expressed in the editorial is not supported by the report it cites. Juan Cole [juancole.com] has another good explanation as well.
(The most interesting question on the survey for me BTW, was the question that asked about developing nuclear energy. A full 83% responded with 'strongly favour' while 11% said 'somewhat favour'. That's 94% combined.)
Your fear is of Iran, not nuclear weapons, and has more to do with the "they're different to us" Arab stereotyping than it does to any element of fact.
There's a non-trivial amount of irony in that admonition.
As a PoliSci student, I've spent a ton of time looking at election data for many countries, over the past hundred years or so. I see a lot of people jumping to conclusions based on some evidence, and not all necessarily means the election was tampered with.
Oddly, I've found a lot of people take the demonstrations in the street to be indication of fraud. What it is is indication of the belief in fraud. I'm pretty sure some people protested after Kerry lost the 2004 US election, that doesn't mean the election was tampered with (and yeah, I know I'll get some conspiracy nut reply to that with an essay.)
Several other stuff looks at odd vote shifting patterns, specifically the almost total abandonment of this one candidate in favor of the President. That is unusual, and calls to be looked into, but it's far from unprecedented. Quebec, in particular, has a history of some pretty wild swings from one party to another.
Another thing is the "rule" that as turnout goes up, the reformers do better. I've seen countless "rules" made in politics, only to be broken, because voters can act weird sometimes. It would be bucking the trend, but again, not definitive proof.
Overall, there is some evidence to suggest there may have been fraud, but as of yet, I've yet to see any "smoking gun". I saw similar analysis "prove" Kerry really won in 2004, and that didn't really amount to anything.
Looking at the whole situation, my gut tells me that there probably was some tampering, either deliberate or systematic, most likely in the process of actually voting. Basically, I think the strange results are most likely, if anything, the result of intimidation, either direct (guy waving around AK-47) or indirect (ie, Ahmed the voter chose the president because of a climate of fear).
It's very possible that Ahmadinejad won legit, even if his vote total was padded due to intimidation or result tampering. It's also very possible that there's a climate of fear in Iran, that essentially prevents a truly fair and free election from occurring. I honestly don't know much about Iran, so these are just my thoughts from being a (mostly Canadian) politics geek.
In case it's not clear, I'm not defending the Iranian results, only suggesting that I've not seen any "smoking gun" type proof, only "unusual" results, which can still happen in a free and fair election.
"Precedent" really has very little to do with it. Quebec isn't Iran. So something happening there for understandable reasons isn't validation of something odd happening elsewhere.
Explain how Ahmadinejad won areas that have never voted for anyone but their local ethnic candidate, with the same percentage of the votes as Ahmadinejad got everywhere else.
"Doesn't necessarily mean" and "doesn't prove" is a cop-out. Nothing necessarily means anything and nothing definitively proves anything because our basic axioms of the universe could be wrong. We can't prove that there is a universe at all.
This is nothing like Kerry in 04. We're not talking about some counties shifting a couple percentage points one way or the other in an election decided by fractions of a percent. We're talking about areas going from essentially zero support for the President to handing him a landslide victory. You can't just waive your hands and say it doesn't necessarily mean anything. That needs to be explained.
We can't get a "smoking gun" because the only possible "smoking gun" proof would be held by the Iranian government, and I would think their reaction after the election indicates how willing they would be to hand said proof over.
This is a pretty bad post even by slashdot standards.
You start out by proclaiming "As a PoliSci student, I've spent a ton of time looking at election data for many countries", which as an argument to authority is trying to show how your opinion counts more than other posters (it does not).
This is then followed up by a false analogy "I'm pretty sure some people protested after Kerry lost the 2004 US election". The vast differences between these elections renders the analogy meaningless. Never the less you decide to throw in an ad hominem "and yeah, I know I'll get some conspiracy nut reply to that with an essay" just to reinforce it.
Time for some red herrings:
"Quebec, in particular, has a history of some pretty wild swings from one party to another."
"I've seen countless "rules" made in politics, only to be broken"
"I saw similar analysis "prove" Kerry really won in 2004, and that didn't really amount to anything."
All divert attention towards other barely related topics.
You end by stating that you are "only suggesting that I've not seen any "smoking gun" ", which places an unfair burden of proof upon the opposition. The incumbent (Ahmadinejad) controlled every step of the elections, the smoking gun you are looking for is just not possible with this level of control.
I apologise for pointing out the logical fallicies because usually posts like this annoy me in that they don't address (and therefore dismiss) the arguments but the post had too many problems to ignore.
The point is that enough of the people of Iran find the results incredible and are in general angry enough about their present conditions that they have lost faith in the current government and desire significant reforms. This won't go away, ever. Even if a complete do-over of the election is performed, the fact that peaceful assembly was denied and communications have been disrupted, among many other things, makes this a moot point.
Ya, that's sorta the point of democracy. You have to have enough faith in the system to tolerate peaceful protest, otherwise you're just a military dictatorship pretending to be a democracy. But most democracies are.....
I did go ahead and set up a squid proxy - how do I get the IP address to Iranians who need it without the government seeing it? I've asked this question on twitter several times over the last day, and my messages seem to just get drowned out by all the other information flooding in. Is there a trusted source who can pass the server address on to Iranian users who need it?
It's amazing how easily people are manipulated by the media. I'm going to paste some accurate analysis from Stratfor about the reality of politics in Iran, and why as Westerners we are getting a distorted picture (above and beyond the fact that the CIA would like to see the government of Iran overthrown).
----
Stratfor
WESTERN MISCONCEPTIONS MEET IRANIAN REALITY
By George Friedman
In 1979, when we were still young and starry-eyed, a revolution took place in Iran. When I asked experts what would happen, they divided into two camps.
The first group of Iran experts argued that the Shah of Iran would certainly survive, that the unrest was simply a cyclical event readily manageable by his security, and that the Iranian people were united behind the Iranian monarch's modernization program. These experts developed this view by talking to the same Iranian officials and businessmen they had been talking to for years -- Iranians who had grown wealthy and powerful under the shah and who spoke English, since Iran experts frequently didn't speak Farsi all that well.
The second group of Iran experts regarded the shah as a repressive brute, and saw the revolution as aimed at liberalizing the country. Their sources were the professionals and academics who supported the uprising -- Iranians who knew what former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini believed, but didn't think he had much popular support. They thought the revolution would result in an increase in human rights and liberty. The experts in this group spoke even less Farsi than the those in the first group.
Misreading Sentiment in Iran
Limited to information on Iran from English-speaking opponents of the regime, both groups of Iran experts got a very misleading vision of where the revolution was heading -- because the Iranian revolution was not brought about by the people who spoke English. It was made by merchants in city bazaars, by rural peasants, by the clergy -- people Americans didn't speak to because they couldn't. This demographic was unsure of the virtues of modernization and not at all clear on the virtues of liberalism. From the time they were born, its members knew the virtue of Islam, and that the Iranian state must be an Islamic state.
Americans and Europeans have been misreading Iran for 30 years. Even after the shah fell, the myth has survived that a mass movement of people exists demanding liberalization -- a movement that if encouraged by the West eventually would form a majority and rule the country. We call this outlook "iPod liberalism," the idea that anyone who listens to rock 'n' roll on an iPod, writes blogs and knows what it means to Twitter must be an enthusiastic supporter of Western liberalism. Even more significantly, this outlook fails to recognize that iPod owners represent a small minority in Iran -- a country that is poor, pious and content on the whole with the revolution forged 30 years ago.
There are undoubtedly people who want to liberalize the Iranian regime. They are to be found among the professional classes in Tehran, as well as among students. Many speak English, making them accessible to the touring journalists, diplomats and intelligence people who pass through. They are the ones who can speak to Westerners, and they are the ones willing to speak to Westerners. And these people give Westerners a wildly distorted view of Iran. They can create the impression that a fantastic liberalization is at hand -- but not when you realize that iPod-owning Anglophones are not exactly the majority in Iran.
Last Friday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was re-elected with about two-thirds of the vote. Supporters of his opponent, both inside and outside Iran, were stunned. A poll revealed that former Iranian Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi was beating Ahmadinejad. It is, of course, interesting to meditate on how you could conduct a poll in a country where phones are not universal, and making a call once you have found a phone can be a trial. A poll therefore would
We hand count around 10M votes in Canada in a few hours each federal election (which is around once a year these days....) You can say "well, that's Canada and this is Iran", but Iranians have the same hands Canadians do. (Well, minus those cut off due to Sharia, if Iran practices that.)
There's a good chance the election was manipulated but that's no indication at all.
Except that you have good transit systems and are counting around 30M fewer votes.
1) The counting and reporting is done right from the polling stations. Checks and rechecks, and additional audits might benefit from being able to move the ballots around efficiently, but the initial counting and reporting is very efficient.
2) The number of ballots being counted is completely irrelevant, and would make no difference in how long it takes. We allocate polling stations and staff them on a per capita basis. So if our population doubled it wouldn't take twice as long, we'd just have twice as many polling stations and staff.
(And it would cost twice as much, but there would be twice the population paying for it, so it all works out the same whether its 30M or 300M people.)
The only effort that goes up, is summarizing results, but: a) that is largely done using computers b) the amount of effort grows logarithmically so 300M ballots would only require a handful more staff than 30M ballots.
Really, people who think you can't run an efficient paper ballot system with a large population aren't really thinking.
Except that you have good transit systems and are counting around 30M fewer votes.
From what I understand, Iran has a good, or at least decent, transit system, (they aren't a third world country) and a decent communication grid.
Having 4x more votes means nothing. They could easily have 4x (or more) counters.
The US could hand count over 100m ballots in the same time frame, if you only had one election at a time, like Canada. Because you have a FREAKING CRAP TON of elections (President, Senate, House, State Senate, State House, DA, Judge, School Board, Official State Dog Walker) and often several referendums all at one time, hand counting becomes impractical. BTW, I am not bashing having so many elections, just pointing out that it is the major reason why hand counting is impractical in the US.
They somehow managed to hand-count ~40M votes in a couple hours. It doesn't take a brain surgeon (or a statistician, in this case) to realize there's something fishy going on.
How so? I believe the way it works in Canada is that ballots are counted at each polling station and parties are free to have a representative oversee the election process. This ensures that we have an unofficial count a couple of hours after the polling stations close. (See The Electoral System of Canada [elections.ca], on page 34 of the PDF)
The official count comes, by law, up to seven days later, but it usually doesn't differ from the unofficial count.
How about we compare what can be compared instead of comparing Iran to Canada? Iran has had paper elections before, how about we compare to how long it took them then to do it? Nowhere near as fast? And they didn't change anything to the way they count votes?
What's really stupid is when people assume that fudged election numbers are only off by a few percent, and that only a few key results are fudged. That's the way an idiot would do it, but anyone remotely intelligent (or remotely smart enough to hire someone who WAS intelligent) would tweak all the results. Especially in the case of electronic voting, where there's no physical record of the votes. Start with current polls, and just nudge the numbers to give small, statistically probable swings across the board.
If the election was properly rigged, you wouldn't be able to tell via this kind of statistical analysis.
QED. The null hypothesis was not rejected, therefore your study determined nothing. Speculation is not science.
Yes, yes, but that's not the point. The point is that the election didn't come out the way we wanted and it didn't come out in the way the minority of Iranians with internet access wanted. Do we really need to be scientific when questioning the credibility of a result we don't like and which (if it isn't the result of manipulation) reflects the views of the under-educated rural religiouly conservative masses?
Do we really need to be scientific when questioning the credibility of a result we don't like and which (if it isn't the result of manipulation) reflects the views of the under-educated rural religiouly conservative masses?
Juan Cole politely tells you that you're full of shit here [juancole.com]. He knows more about this than you do. Go read him.
You mean aside from the bizarre statistical anomalies? I'm starting to get a distinct "la la la I can't hear you"
You're absolutely correct, once I read "did not find significant indications of fraud" I cannot hear anyone talking about statistical anomalies. Well no, not absolutely correct, there's no "la la la" about it. It's just the same cold uncompromising "I can't hear you" a Judge will give if you attempt to submit irrelevant evidence.
You clearly either haven't read the stat breakdown on the official results, don't understand what they mean, or are a lvl 23 Erudite Troll.
Hey FU buddy, I'm at least a lvl 30!;) You're probably correct about my lack of understanding, so maybe you can help me with this. Quoting from TFA:
... a statistically sharp approach to statistical testing--taking the multiple testing into account--fails to provide evidence against the hypothesis that the second digits are distributed according to Benford's Law. Tests based on the means of the second digits also fail to suggest any deviation from
the second-digit Benford's Law distribution...
I've taken on board the fact that hetrogeneity of the data might obscure local problems, but that's not really relevant since the onus of proof clearly lies with those alleging fraud anyway. I've also taken on board that the non-sharp approach (ie looking at one of the candidates results) might lead one to another conclusion. As to the other (non-significant) anomalities in his modified conclusion Mebane observes:
In general, combining the 2005 and 2009 data conveys the impression that a substantial core of the 2009 results reflected natural political processes.... These natural aspects of the election results stand in contrast to the unusual pattern in which most of the notable discrepancies between the support Ahmadinejad actually received and the support the model predicts are negative.... It appears that the specification using the two conditioning variables... does not fully capture the baseline support for the candidates or the pattern of new mobilization.... It is not possible given only the current data to say whether this reflects natural complexity in the political processes or artificial manipulations.
I admit I lack the confidence with stats (1978 was the last time I had to look at stats in any deeper way than merely applying tests of significance), to make a call on non-significant results. I get nervous when statisticians talk about "impressions" in place of "significance." Perhaps you can educate me here and convince me why I should draw conclusions based on non-significant results?
I'm not sure where you're coming from on this issue.... What, in fact, is your deal?
I avidly opposed to theocracy as a form of government, a fortiori a nuclear armed theocracy. I am opposed to the Iranian regime even though I don't live there (some might point out it is none of my business). I don't consider A'jad to be entirely a sane man (though by the standards of his culture he may well be). I would dearly have loved to see him defeated (and he may still be, extra-democratically).
However I also endorse an evidence based view of reality, and I don't think it is valid to construe the world in a way which lacks evidence merely on the basis that I might like it to be that way. I believe that, unpalatable though we may find it, we might have to accept that a majority of Iranians disagree with us. Moreover, in the absence of clear evidence to the contrary (eyewitness, statistical, or whatever), I strongly believe the only (rebuttable) presumption we are entitled to draw (upon evidence-based criteria) is that the election result reflects the will of the majority of Iranian voters. To draw any other conclusion in the absence of compelling evidence to the contrary is, IMHO, to fall victim to the trap of believing in one's own propaganda.
Whether or not the elections were stolen, it seems that in Iran there is a significant difference in political views between the major cities and rural areas. Maybe there was a selection bias in the media?
In 2004, to outsiders it looked as if everybody but an insignificant few right wing nut jobs hated George Bush, and he didn't have any chance of being reelected. After his fairly comfortable victory, it turned out that people in the major urban districts more likely to be interviewed on TV or in the papers indeed voted against Bush, but the rest of the country had supported him.
Could a similar effect have happened in Iran? Iran is one of the few places in the region where women and minorities have the right to vote, and where a president normally steps down after losing an election. The only major difference between the Iranian and western democracies seems to be that their version of the senate is not elected by the people, but by a religious council.
Of course it's possible the elections were stolen, but maybe this is another example of people voting for a politician for entirely local reasons, without really caring what the rest of the world thinks of him? In fact, has there ever been a democratic election anywhere, where foreign opinion played a significant role?
Proxies: Squid installed and listening on ports: 7, 13, 53, 993, 995, 3128 Polipo installed and listening on port: 8123. Polipo is routed through Tor. Tor: port 9050 (a socks5 proxy) Ziproxy: Port 8080 (good for low bandwidth connections. It recompress images & text. Socat: Must be run manually, but listens on port 443 and routes through Squid.
SSH enabled, listening on ports 22,80,2222,22222 2 Users: root:#iran and iran:election. If you enable ssh to the world, change the root password (passwd). This should enable ssh tunneling. - I created this for people on Fark who were having problems with squid. Everyone here shouldn't have a problem. It's a bare bones (netinst) debian install with all the above installed and setup.
I did NOT put ACLs in because there are reports here: http://iran.sharearchy.com/ [sharearchy.com] that the ACL list is actually blocking some people in Iran.
And could one of the mods please change to the coral cache of Austin's website? He's already getting DDoS'd by Iran all this morning. Slashdot isn't going to help anything.
If any/.ers would like to help make it smaller, better, faster (VPN?), jjarvis98 at gmail.com
And you're free to inspect it to make sure I'm not trying to r00t you.
Thank you for such an informative and helpful post, obviously you've been contributing to this cause long before it hit/. We're always griping about threats to free speech and fair elections, but here's something a person with some technical skill can do to combat it.
Also, this has nothing to do with the election results. Even if Ahmadinejad received more votes, silencing the opposition is a major injustice. The fact that everyday joes can thwart his efforts with a PC and internet connection is pretty amazing. The power of the Internet has been subject to a lot of hyperbole and BS, but this is an example of how it really does change history.
Like the US has never spread FUD to undermine a regime they disapprove of.
But at least the American citizens have the decency to remain calm when their own presidential elections are rigged. None of this yelling and fighting in the streets. It doesn't even stop them voting him in for real in the next election.
Keep fighting guys, I only wish I could help fro way over here.
You can help: by keeping out of it.
Even my progressive American friends are all flag-waving and drum-beating over this. The last thing the world needs is for anyone in the United States to do anything other than say, "We really hope the Iranian constitutional democratic process works this out. As a fellow-democracy we understand that elections can be contentious, but we also understand that the Iranian people and the Iranian people alone need to decide the outcome here, without interference by any other sovereign power."
Imperialism has taken such deep root in the American mind that even the progressives take it for granted that whatever happens anywhere Americans should be taking a hand. Do you think the Swiss--a much older democracy--are doing so? I doubt it. They are probably shaking their heads and saying, "Yes, it was like that here in 1500, but we got over it and so will they."
"We really hope the Iranian constitutional democratic process works this out. As a fellow-democracy we understand that elections can be contentious, but we also understand that the Iranian people and the Iranian people alone need to decide the outcome here, without interference by any other sovereign power."
Why would the US pretend that Iran is a democracy? The US has, and accurately so, been on the record as noting that the President has no real authority in Iran and is a hand picked figured head. Iran is anything but a democracy.
I remember before the US election the US military saying it would put down any attempt at "change". Oh, wait, no that was Iran and that was last week. The only reason the clerics even allow anything resembling freedom in Iran is because they have to to empower the scientific community in hopes of gaining military and economic power. Hey, look, it's not like power is bad. It's just all these good intentions in posts like yours disappear when asked the question of whether you would be OK if the US and Iran switch places in regards to military power? I'm sure the world would be just swell in that case. I know I'd love to be forced to turn to Mecca a few times a day.
For all the hate the US gets I still can't recall a single nation having as much power (and let's be fair, compare nations to peers of the time) and wielding it so fairly. Sure, you can bitch about the current Iraq war, and some support and aid for some overthrows you might now agree with. Boo hoo! It's all-n-all pretty damn good. And still trying to get better.
Actually, from what I've heard the rioters aren't just for Mousavi anymore. Their list of demands includes revising the Iranian constitution to grant religious freedom (not so much that they love their minorities as that they've discovered that Muslim theocracy oppresses Muslims too), dissolving all "organs of repression", and release of all political prisoners. All sounds like big, good changes to me.
Ignoring the post you replied to, are you sure that the election was "stolen". On the whole, the West would really, really have liked Mousavi to have won. They would really, really have liked his defeat to be the result of fraud. But truthfully, Ahmadinejad is very popular with the common Iranian. He provided insurance for millions of women who work at home. He has carried out a lot of things that have benefited the common Iranian. And when Iranians see the US invading neighbouring countries, threatening their own country both verbally in diplomatic channels and through sending armed forces scouting through their waters, someone who is perceived as standing up to the US is, rightly or wrongly, well thought of for that.
Mousavi is popular mainly with better off Iranians who believe they stand to benefit more from taking a more pacifying approach to the US (some would say submissive). It was, it now seems, wishful thinking that he would win and it seems that many commentators are now levelling the accusation of fraud because that suits the purposes of much of the West. But we see that the supporters of Mousavi taking to the streets aren't receiving popular support (and more blatantly, this is taking place only in the capital - the rest of the country seems content with the result which is also supports the election results) and in fact these supporters in many cases have initiated the violence. (The Independent paper in the UK gave a full page interview to one of Mousavi's supporters who, when you managed to overlook the bias, was praising her fellows for managing to have set a bus on fire and pretty much said that it didn't matter whether Ahmadinejad got more votes because he shouldn't be President and Mousavi should).
The behaviour of the Iranian police has been brutal (predictably) and Ahmadinejad remains horrible on certain human rights issues. But as far as I can see, it looks like he won (and earlier Western reports grudgingly admitted this before they realised they could get away with overt suggestions of fraud). And so it is essentially Mousavi's supporters who are a smaller faction trying to undermine democracy with violence. If they get anywhere (and whatever you think of the GP, covert Western support or promises of support for his followers is extremely plausible), then it would just push Iran back to a more totalitarian state because they certainly wont win whatever the West would like to pretend. They don't have the support of the common people and, quite frankly, they appear to have lost the election.
Mousavi - good or bad (and he's no angel, just more amenable to Western interests), you can't just allow democracy when it elects the people you want elected.
The greatest trick the Israeli government ever pulled was to convince the world that to be Jewish is to support Israel and that to criticise Israel is to be anti-semitic. There are plenty of jews who either object to the Israeli government's behaviour or simply don't care about it. People are not their ethnicity and nobody gets to speak on your behalf because you share some ancestory with them.
The problem of time (Score:5, Interesting)
No problem of time (Score:5, Interesting)
Iran uses paper ballots. In the past elections it has taken at least three days for Iran to count the votes. In this case, if the results are to be believed it took a matter of hours. That's just not plausible.
As someone who lives in a country which uses paper ballots, I find no lack of plausibility in the speed of the result. We usually know the result of the election within 4-6 hours of the booths closing. Although it takes longer to get final figures (especially if recounts are triggered) it would have to be an extremely close election to have to wait for the final figure to know who won (and indeed for the loser to conceed).
Given no significant statistical problem has been identified, and given that independant telephone polling prior to the election indicated that A'jad enjoyed a 2:1 lead over his rival, the most parsimonious explanation might simply be that A'jad actaully does enjoy the overwhelming support of the Iranian population.
Until such time that some plausible evidence of irregularities is presented, that should be the presumption we work on. The question of whether we personally want A'jad to have won or not, ought not to colour our intepretation of the results.
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Re:The problem of time (Score:5, Insightful)
So what if they did manipulate the election. What is anybody going to do about it? What has anybody done about the last dozen suspicious elections around the globe?
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Re:If you know anything about statistics... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:If you know anything about statistics... (Score:5, Insightful)
It is explainable by a "this is a Theocracy and I am the High Priest."
I don't understand why people act as if they expect Iran to conduct an election like a Western democracy.
Where does the assumption come from that Iran, of all countries, is even capable of a "fair election"? I really don't see how you can be surprised about this outcome *at all*, and I also don't understand what anyone thinks can be "done about it", if Iran's own "government" does not take action.
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Re:If you know anything about statistics... (Score:5, Insightful)
The Iranians apparently thought they deserved a fair election. This is not a tempest in a teapot, imagined up by the western world. Watch the videos, read the live feeds through twitter, listen to the chants of "Allaho Akbar" that shake the cities: it is very clear that Iran's leadership dramatically overstepped in this election.
It doesn't matter one single bit that the country is an effective dictatorship. The people were promised an election to choose their own president, and no sooner had they made their choice than the government yanked the promise away from them. It doesn't even matter if a fair counting of every vote cast does indicate a win for Ahmadinejad; the blatant fraud, police brutality, and the arresting of the opposition has ruined the people's trust in government. I truly hope that Iran doesn't descend into civil war.
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Re:If you know anything about statistics... (Score:5, Insightful)
"I truly hope that Iran doesn't descend into civil war."
A lot of uneducated, unsophisticated, even ignorant remarks in this thread. But, I pick this one. A nation doesn't descend into civil war. Things are already bad, and people have already hit rock bottom, long before they determine that they have to find the balls to pick up a weapon and use it. Civil war is the first step on the ladder back up out of the hole.
I know - every bleeding heart on the freaking planet has tried to brainwash us that "violence never solves anything!" Bullshit. Violence solved Adolph Hitler, among other things. Pacifists just fed Hitler whatever he wanted.
War isn't the worst thing that can happen to a nation, nor is death the worst thing that can happen to a man. Those who believe so clearly have no imagination, and have failed to study history.
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Re:If you know anything about statistics... (Score:4, Insightful)
Furthermore, the idea of "random" sample is pretty far-fetched when you are counting votes from certain locations and the proportion of votes for each candidates varied by location. Once you have enough information to take a truly random sample you also have enough information to actually count the votes.
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Re:If you know anything about statistics... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's correct. But the opposition candidate, Mousavi, said that he received a phone call at 2am the evening of the election indicating that he had won. When the results were announced later, it was Ahmadinejad by a landslide.
Additionally, A'nejad officially had consistent support all across the country and all through demographics. He officially did equally well in cities vs. rural areas. Mousavi was heavily favored in cities. A'nejad officially did equally well among sexes, age groups, class levels, ethnic groups, everything. Mousavi was heavily favored among young students. It's too uniform to be plausible. For example, A'nejad even beat Mousavi in Mousavi's home Azeri province, Iranian Azerbaijan. That was compared to Obama losing the African-American vote to McCain, it's just very suspect and highly improbable.
In addition to that, the other 2 candidates each officially received less than 1% of the total. In the pre-election polls each of those candidates had much higher support.
CNN has done an absolutely terrible job at covering this, the line that CNN is reporting is essentially the government's spin being reported as truth. Fox seems to be the only US network with the balls to show much protest video. The BBC's coverage has been among the best outside of Arabic media, which is difficult to receive in a lot of places. The most up-to-date information about this can usually be found in whichever fark.com thread people are currently posting in, they've gone through 9 or 10 now with several thousand posts in each. Needless to say, any respect I had for CNN has essentially evaporated. Their international coverage used to be among the best in the US, now they might as well be the US-based Iranian spin machine.
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Re:The problem of time (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the story was that they announced the victory after they had counted some portion of the votes and seen that Ahaminejad had a significant lead.
Right. After all, Khamenei's vote is "some potion of the votes."
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Re:The problem of time (Score:5, Insightful)
>Right. After all, Khamenei's vote is "some potion of the votes."
It would be "legitimate", in the sense that it would be consistent with Iran's law, for Khamenei to simply appoint the President setting aside any other considerations (such as elections.)
The Ayatollah's word is absolute law, constrained only by natural consequences -- say, if the protests grow to the point where they represent an actual rebellion.
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This reads like electoral interference to me (Score:4, Interesting)
the US State Department has asked Twitter to delay system maintenance to prevent cutting off Iranians who have been relying on the service during the post-election crisis
What does the US State Department have to do with an election in Iran? By all means they should use their normal channels to express their views. But for me, asking twitter to keep operating for this reason is a minor example of the way other countries have long been interfering in Iranian politics.
Re:This reads like electoral interference to me (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:This reads like electoral interference to me (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:This reads like electoral interference to me (Score:5, Insightful)
What? The US wants to make it easier for the protesters to organize. How is that interfering with Iranian politics? Was the rest of the world interfering in US elections by allowing ex-patriots to communicate with other Us citizens stateside ?
Also, if the protesters have to rely on Twitter uptime ... They're pretty much screwed.
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Re:This reads like electoral interference to me (Score:5, Informative)
Just to clarify, Iran is a mountainous and largely forested country inhabited neither by Arabs nor Arabic speakers.
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Re:This reads like electoral interference to me (Score:5, Insightful)
Meh, The US State Department talking to a US company that provides a services that some Iranians use is hardly a particularly good example of external political influences in the middle east. If anything the big story would be if somebody actually managed to persuade Twitter to keep operating. :) But seriously, when you look at things like Operation Ajax, you can see that the US just trying to make sure Iranians have a convenient way to speak for themselves is extremely hands-off, and probably a very appropriate way to avoid having unclean hands in the situation. The previous administration would have loudly and openly run their mouth about the situation, and inadvertently marginalized the reformist element in Iran by trying to support it. Trying to make sure they can speak for themselves is probably about the best thing America can do right now.
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The results match pre-election poll (Score:5, Interesting)
Other interesting points: most people don't agree with Ahmadinejad's policies. Quote:
more than 70 percent of Iranians also expressed support for providing full access to weapons inspectors and a guarantee that Iran will not develop or possess nuclear weapons, in return for outside aid and investment
That warms my heart. I really don't want Iran to get nuclear weapons (for purely selfish, self-preservation reasons. Don't respond to this saying, 'it is their right' because I don't care). Apparently most people voted for Ahmadinejad not because they agree with his policies, but because they consider him to be a stronger negotiator, and more capable of getting favorable concessions from the US, China, and Russia.
If these results do turn out to be accurate, Obama should call and congratulate Ahmadinejad. After all, there are things we can agree on: we want Iran to be a strong, capable, functioning member of international society, not one that tries to destroy it (of course, our views on how they should reach that goal are different, but we can work on that).
Re:The results match pre-election poll (Score:5, Informative)
The poll was done by Terror Free Tomorrow: The Center for Public Opinion and New American Foundation. The Washington Post merely did an article on the findings from the poll.
From the survey [terrorfreetomorrow.org] linked to in the article:
TFT and KA use telephone interviewing instead of face-to-face research in Iran because of the political and social constraints inside Iran. Face-to-face interviewing in Iran can be difficult for interviewers who risk possible prosecution and imprisonment. Face-to-face interviewing also poses issues related to access to households and respondents due to social considerations. Access to female respondents across the Middle East can be challenging.
I'm not sure how much better over-the-phone polling is in Iran. Many in Iran are leery of being called by random strangers over the telephone asking them political questions. Whenever we call our relatives in Iran, we are extremely careful with what we say over the phone. More to the point, when you have a brutal regime and some random person calls and asks: "Who will you vote for in Presidential Elections?", I wouldn't be surprised if they answer in one way and vote in another.
I won't dismiss the findings of this survey outright - they did conduct a scientific polling, something that I haven't done. It's just difficult taking the survey very seriously when what you see happening in real life - thousands and thousands of bloodied protesters taking the streets and demanding change - and compare it with a polling sample of 1001 Iranians, as stated in their Methodology section on page 25 of the pdf document. I'm also thinking back to both the entrance and exit polls in the 2004 U.S. elections, where John Kerry was said to have won by a large margin, only to find that the opposite had happened.
I think it is evident that I am quite anti-Ahmadinejad and anti-Mullah and especially anti-Arab when it comes to my ancestral country. But I will concede that he won if more information is released and it points in favor of his victory.
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Re:The results match pre-election poll (Score:5, Interesting)
Namely, that Ahmadinejad only had the vote of 34% of the those polled while Mousavi had 14%. So yes, technically that's 2:1 where the the sum total of both figures is less than 50%. Read the actual report [terrorfreetomorrow.org] linked to in the article, they highlight this rather important qualifying information by the big red text on page 3.
And if you look at the actual tallies for that question on page 52, question 27, you will see it's 34% for Ahmadinejad, 14% for Mousavi, 27% (!) don't know and 15% (!!) who refused to answer. Both of those are non-trivial percentages that can swing either candidate for a landslide win. This undermines the implication that there is strong support for Ahmadinejad, by a ratio of 2:1 to his closest rival. Seriously, that's an incredulous omission to make, nevermind the fact that the poll itself was conducted a month ago. It is in these past two weeks that voter's opinion would better reflect their voting preferences, you know, after the actual presidential debates.
Fivethirtyeight.com has a good write up [fivethirtyeight.com] of these points, explaining why the opinion expressed in the editorial is not supported by the report it cites. Juan Cole [juancole.com] has another good explanation as well.
(The most interesting question on the survey for me BTW, was the question that asked about developing nuclear energy. A full 83% responded with 'strongly favour' while 11% said 'somewhat favour'. That's 94% combined.)
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Re:The results match pre-election poll (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a non-trivial amount of irony in that admonition.
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Election irregularities (Score:5, Interesting)
As a PoliSci student, I've spent a ton of time looking at election data for many countries, over the past hundred years or so. I see a lot of people jumping to conclusions based on some evidence, and not all necessarily means the election was tampered with.
Oddly, I've found a lot of people take the demonstrations in the street to be indication of fraud. What it is is indication of the belief in fraud. I'm pretty sure some people protested after Kerry lost the 2004 US election, that doesn't mean the election was tampered with (and yeah, I know I'll get some conspiracy nut reply to that with an essay.)
Several other stuff looks at odd vote shifting patterns, specifically the almost total abandonment of this one candidate in favor of the President. That is unusual, and calls to be looked into, but it's far from unprecedented. Quebec, in particular, has a history of some pretty wild swings from one party to another.
Another thing is the "rule" that as turnout goes up, the reformers do better. I've seen countless "rules" made in politics, only to be broken, because voters can act weird sometimes. It would be bucking the trend, but again, not definitive proof.
Overall, there is some evidence to suggest there may have been fraud, but as of yet, I've yet to see any "smoking gun". I saw similar analysis "prove" Kerry really won in 2004, and that didn't really amount to anything.
Looking at the whole situation, my gut tells me that there probably was some tampering, either deliberate or systematic, most likely in the process of actually voting. Basically, I think the strange results are most likely, if anything, the result of intimidation, either direct (guy waving around AK-47) or indirect (ie, Ahmed the voter chose the president because of a climate of fear).
It's very possible that Ahmadinejad won legit, even if his vote total was padded due to intimidation or result tampering. It's also very possible that there's a climate of fear in Iran, that essentially prevents a truly fair and free election from occurring. I honestly don't know much about Iran, so these are just my thoughts from being a (mostly Canadian) politics geek.
In case it's not clear, I'm not defending the Iranian results, only suggesting that I've not seen any "smoking gun" type proof, only "unusual" results, which can still happen in a free and fair election.
Re:Election irregularities (Score:5, Interesting)
"Precedent" really has very little to do with it. Quebec isn't Iran. So something happening there for understandable reasons isn't validation of something odd happening elsewhere.
Explain how Ahmadinejad won areas that have never voted for anyone but their local ethnic candidate, with the same percentage of the votes as Ahmadinejad got everywhere else.
"Doesn't necessarily mean" and "doesn't prove" is a cop-out. Nothing necessarily means anything and nothing definitively proves anything because our basic axioms of the universe could be wrong. We can't prove that there is a universe at all.
This is nothing like Kerry in 04. We're not talking about some counties shifting a couple percentage points one way or the other in an election decided by fractions of a percent. We're talking about areas going from essentially zero support for the President to handing him a landslide victory. You can't just waive your hands and say it doesn't necessarily mean anything. That needs to be explained.
We can't get a "smoking gun" because the only possible "smoking gun" proof would be held by the Iranian government, and I would think their reaction after the election indicates how willing they would be to hand said proof over.
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Re:Election irregularities (Score:5, Insightful)
You start out by proclaiming "As a PoliSci student, I've spent a ton of time looking at election data for many countries", which as an argument to authority is trying to show how your opinion counts more than other posters (it does not).
This is then followed up by a false analogy "I'm pretty sure some people protested after Kerry lost the 2004 US election". The vast differences between these elections renders the analogy meaningless. Never the less you decide to throw in an ad hominem "and yeah, I know I'll get some conspiracy nut reply to that with an essay" just to reinforce it.
Time for some red herrings:
"Quebec, in particular, has a history of some pretty wild swings from one party to another."
"I've seen countless "rules" made in politics, only to be broken"
"I saw similar analysis "prove" Kerry really won in 2004, and that didn't really amount to anything."
All divert attention towards other barely related topics.
You end by stating that you are "only suggesting that I've not seen any "smoking gun" ", which places an unfair burden of proof upon the opposition. The incumbent (Ahmadinejad) controlled every step of the elections, the smoking gun you are looking for is just not possible with this level of control.
I apologise for pointing out the logical fallicies because usually posts like this annoy me in that they don't address (and therefore dismiss) the arguments but the post had too many problems to ignore.
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It doesn't matter whether the election was rigged (Score:5, Interesting)
The point is that enough of the people of Iran find the results incredible and are in general angry enough about their present conditions that they have lost faith in the current government and desire significant reforms. This won't go away, ever. Even if a complete do-over of the election is performed, the fact that peaceful assembly was denied and communications have been disrupted, among many other things, makes this a moot point.
Re:It doesn't matter whether the election was rigg (Score:4, Insightful)
Ya, that's sorta the point of democracy. You have to have enough faith in the system to tolerate peaceful protest, otherwise you're just a military dictatorship pretending to be a democracy. But most democracies are.....
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Modammad Asgari knew (Score:4, Interesting)
Proxy (Score:5, Interesting)
I did go ahead and set up a squid proxy - how do I get the IP address to Iranians who need it without the government seeing it? I've asked this question on twitter several times over the last day, and my messages seem to just get drowned out by all the other information flooding in. Is there a trusted source who can pass the server address on to Iranian users who need it?
STFU about this already (Score:5, Interesting)
It's amazing how easily people are manipulated by the media. I'm going to paste some accurate analysis from Stratfor about the reality of politics in Iran, and why as Westerners we are getting a distorted picture (above and beyond the fact that the CIA would like to see the government of Iran overthrown).
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Stratfor
WESTERN MISCONCEPTIONS MEET IRANIAN REALITY
By George Friedman
In 1979, when we were still young and starry-eyed, a revolution took place in Iran. When I asked experts what would happen, they divided into two camps.
The first group of Iran experts argued that the Shah of Iran would certainly survive, that the unrest was simply a cyclical event readily manageable by his security, and that the Iranian people were united behind the Iranian monarch's modernization program. These experts developed this view by talking to the same Iranian officials and businessmen they had been talking to for years -- Iranians who had grown wealthy and powerful under the shah and who spoke English, since Iran experts frequently didn't speak Farsi all that well.
The second group of Iran experts regarded the shah as a repressive brute, and saw the revolution as aimed at liberalizing the country. Their sources were the professionals and academics who supported the uprising -- Iranians who knew what former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini believed, but didn't think he had much popular support. They thought the revolution would result in an increase in human rights and liberty. The experts in this group spoke even less Farsi than the those in the first group.
Misreading Sentiment in Iran
Limited to information on Iran from English-speaking opponents of the regime, both groups of Iran experts got a very misleading vision of where the revolution was heading -- because the Iranian revolution was not brought about by the people who spoke English. It was made by merchants in city bazaars, by rural peasants, by the clergy -- people Americans didn't speak to because they couldn't. This demographic was unsure of the virtues of modernization and not at all clear on the virtues of liberalism. From the time they were born, its members knew the virtue of Islam, and that the Iranian state must be an Islamic state.
Americans and Europeans have been misreading Iran for 30 years. Even after the shah fell, the myth has survived that a mass movement of people exists demanding liberalization -- a movement that if encouraged by the West eventually would form a majority and rule the country. We call this outlook "iPod liberalism," the idea that anyone who listens to rock 'n' roll on an iPod, writes blogs and knows what it means to Twitter must be an enthusiastic supporter of Western liberalism. Even more significantly, this outlook fails to recognize that iPod owners represent a small minority in Iran -- a country that is poor, pious and content on the whole with the revolution forged 30 years ago.
There are undoubtedly people who want to liberalize the Iranian regime. They are to be found among the professional classes in Tehran, as well as among students. Many speak English, making them accessible to the touring journalists, diplomats and intelligence people who pass through. They are the ones who can speak to Westerners, and they are the ones willing to speak to Westerners. And these people give Westerners a wildly distorted view of Iran. They can create the impression that a fantastic liberalization is at hand -- but not when you realize that iPod-owning Anglophones are not exactly the majority in Iran.
Last Friday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was re-elected with about two-thirds of the vote. Supporters of his opponent, both inside and outside Iran, were stunned. A poll revealed that former Iranian Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi was beating Ahmadinejad. It is, of course, interesting to meditate on how you could conduct a poll in a country where phones are not universal, and making a call once you have found a phone can be a trial. A poll therefore would
Re:Statistical nothing (Score:5, Informative)
We hand count around 10M votes in Canada in a few hours each federal election (which is around once a year these days....) You can say "well, that's Canada and this is Iran", but Iranians have the same hands Canadians do. (Well, minus those cut off due to Sharia, if Iran practices that.)
There's a good chance the election was manipulated but that's no indication at all.
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Re:Statistical nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that you have good transit systems and are counting around 30M fewer votes.
1) The counting and reporting is done right from the polling stations. Checks and rechecks, and additional audits might benefit from being able to move the ballots around efficiently, but the initial counting and reporting is very efficient.
2) The number of ballots being counted is completely irrelevant, and would make no difference in how long it takes. We allocate polling stations and staff them on a per capita basis. So if our population doubled it wouldn't take twice as long, we'd just have twice as many polling stations and staff.
(And it would cost twice as much, but there would be twice the population paying for it, so it all works out the same whether its 30M or 300M people.)
The only effort that goes up, is summarizing results, but:
a) that is largely done using computers
b) the amount of effort grows logarithmically so 300M ballots would only require a handful more staff than 30M ballots.
Really, people who think you can't run an efficient paper ballot system with a large population aren't really thinking.
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Re:Statistical nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that you have good transit systems and are counting around 30M fewer votes.
From what I understand, Iran has a good, or at least decent, transit system, (they aren't a third world country) and a decent communication grid.
Having 4x more votes means nothing. They could easily have 4x (or more) counters.
The US could hand count over 100m ballots in the same time frame, if you only had one election at a time, like Canada. Because you have a FREAKING CRAP TON of elections (President, Senate, House, State Senate, State House, DA, Judge, School Board, Official State Dog Walker) and often several referendums all at one time, hand counting becomes impractical. BTW, I am not bashing having so many elections, just pointing out that it is the major reason why hand counting is impractical in the US.
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Re:Statistical nothing (Score:5, Informative)
They somehow managed to hand-count ~40M votes in a couple hours. It doesn't take a brain surgeon (or a statistician, in this case) to realize there's something fishy going on.
How so? I believe the way it works in Canada is that ballots are counted at each polling station and parties are free to have a representative oversee the election process. This ensures that we have an unofficial count a couple of hours after the polling stations close. (See The Electoral System of Canada [elections.ca], on page 34 of the PDF)
The official count comes, by law, up to seven days later, but it usually doesn't differ from the unofficial count.
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Re:Statistical nothing (Score:5, Informative)
AFAIK the official line was that the boxes were sealed and were brought to a central location for counting.
This was after the elections observers from the opposition parties were kicked out of the polling places, of course.
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Re:Statistical nothing (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Come on, It's Iran already (Score:5, Informative)
While he did not find significant indications of fraud
QED. The null hypothesis was not rejected, therefore your study determined nothing. Speculation is not science.
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Re:Come on, It's Iran already (Score:5, Interesting)
If the election was properly rigged, you wouldn't be able to tell via this kind of statistical analysis.
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Re:Come on, It's Iran already (Score:5, Insightful)
QED. The null hypothesis was not rejected, therefore your study determined nothing. Speculation is not science.
Yes, yes, but that's not the point. The point is that the election didn't come out the way we wanted and it didn't come out in the way the minority of Iranians with internet access wanted. Do we really need to be scientific when questioning the credibility of a result we don't like and which (if it isn't the result of manipulation) reflects the views of the under-educated rural religiouly conservative masses?
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Re:Come on, It's Iran already (Score:5, Informative)
Juan Cole politely tells you that you're full of shit here [juancole.com]. He knows more about this than you do. Go read him.
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Re:Come on, It's Iran already (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean aside from the bizarre statistical anomalies? I'm starting to get a distinct "la la la I can't hear you"
You're absolutely correct, once I read "did not find significant indications of fraud" I cannot hear anyone talking about statistical anomalies. Well no, not absolutely correct, there's no "la la la" about it. It's just the same cold uncompromising "I can't hear you" a Judge will give if you attempt to submit irrelevant evidence.
You clearly either haven't read the stat breakdown on the official results, don't understand what they mean, or are a lvl 23 Erudite Troll.
Hey FU buddy, I'm at least a lvl 30! ;) You're probably correct about my lack of understanding, so maybe you can help me with this. Quoting from TFA:
... a statistically sharp approach to statistical testing--taking the multiple testing into account--fails to provide evidence against the hypothesis that the second digits are distributed according to Benford's Law. Tests based on the means of the second digits also fail to suggest any deviation from the second-digit Benford's Law distribution ...
I've taken on board the fact that hetrogeneity of the data might obscure local problems, but that's not really relevant since the onus of proof clearly lies with those alleging fraud anyway. I've also taken on board that the non-sharp approach (ie looking at one of the candidates results) might lead one to another conclusion. As to the other (non-significant) anomalities in his modified conclusion Mebane observes:
In general, combining the 2005 and 2009 data conveys the impression that a substantial core of the 2009 results reflected natural political processes. ... These natural aspects of the election results stand in contrast to the unusual pattern in which most of the notable discrepancies between the support Ahmadinejad actually received and the support the model predicts are negative. ... It appears that the specification using the two conditioning variables ... does not fully capture the baseline support for the candidates or the pattern of new mobilization. ... It is not possible given only the current data to say whether this reflects natural complexity in the political processes or artificial manipulations.
I admit I lack the confidence with stats (1978 was the last time I had to look at stats in any deeper way than merely applying tests of significance), to make a call on non-significant results. I get nervous when statisticians talk about "impressions" in place of "significance." Perhaps you can educate me here and convince me why I should draw conclusions based on non-significant results?
I'm not sure where you're coming from on this issue. ... What, in fact, is your deal?
I avidly opposed to theocracy as a form of government, a fortiori a nuclear armed theocracy. I am opposed to the Iranian regime even though I don't live there (some might point out it is none of my business). I don't consider A'jad to be entirely a sane man (though by the standards of his culture he may well be). I would dearly have loved to see him defeated (and he may still be, extra-democratically).
However I also endorse an evidence based view of reality, and I don't think it is valid to construe the world in a way which lacks evidence merely on the basis that I might like it to be that way. I believe that, unpalatable though we may find it, we might have to accept that a majority of Iranians disagree with us. Moreover, in the absence of clear evidence to the contrary (eyewitness, statistical, or whatever), I strongly believe the only (rebuttable) presumption we are entitled to draw (upon evidence-based criteria) is that the election result reflects the will of the majority of Iranian voters. To draw any other conclusion in the absence of compelling evidence to the contrary is, IMHO, to fall victim to the trap of believing in one's own propaganda.
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Re:Come on, It's Iran already (Score:5, Insightful)
Whether or not the elections were stolen, it seems that in Iran there is a significant difference in political views between the major cities and rural areas. Maybe there was a selection bias in the media?
In 2004, to outsiders it looked as if everybody but an insignificant few right wing nut jobs hated George Bush, and he didn't have any chance of being reelected. After his fairly comfortable victory, it turned out that people in the major urban districts more likely to be interviewed on TV or in the papers indeed voted against Bush, but the rest of the country had supported him.
Could a similar effect have happened in Iran? Iran is one of the few places in the region where women and minorities have the right to vote, and where a president normally steps down after losing an election. The only major difference between the Iranian and western democracies seems to be that their version of the senate is not elected by the people, but by a religious council.
Of course it's possible the elections were stolen, but maybe this is another example of people voting for a politician for entirely local reasons, without really caring what the rest of the world thinks of him? In fact, has there ever been a democratic election anywhere, where foreign opinion played a significant role?
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ProxyBox Virtual Appliance (Score:5, Informative)
Mirror 1 [exstatic.org]
Mirror 2 [128.210.109.29]
Proxies:
Squid installed and listening on ports: 7, 13, 53, 993, 995, 3128
Polipo installed and listening on port: 8123. Polipo is routed through Tor.
Tor: port 9050 (a socks5 proxy)
Ziproxy: Port 8080 (good for low bandwidth connections. It recompress images & text.
Socat: Must be run manually, but listens on port 443 and routes through Squid.
SSH enabled, listening on ports 22,80,2222,22222
2 Users: root:#iran and iran:election. If you enable ssh to the world, change the root password (passwd). This should enable ssh tunneling.
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I created this for people on Fark who were having problems with squid. Everyone here shouldn't have a problem. It's a bare bones (netinst) debian install with all the above installed and setup.
I did NOT put ACLs in because there are reports here: http://iran.sharearchy.com/ [sharearchy.com] that the ACL list is actually blocking some people in Iran.
And could one of the mods please change to the coral cache of Austin's website? He's already getting DDoS'd by Iran all this morning. Slashdot isn't going to help anything.
If any /.ers would like to help make it smaller, better, faster (VPN?), jjarvis98 at gmail.com
And you're free to inspect it to make sure I'm not trying to r00t you.
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Re:ProxyBox Virtual Appliance (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, this has nothing to do with the election results. Even if Ahmadinejad received more votes, silencing the opposition is a major injustice. The fact that everyday joes can thwart his efforts with a PC and internet connection is pretty amazing. The power of the Internet has been subject to a lot of hyperbole and BS, but this is an example of how it really does change history.
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Re:Come on, It's Iran already (Score:5, Insightful)
Like the US has never spread FUD to undermine a regime they disapprove of.
But at least the American citizens have the decency to remain calm when their own presidential elections are rigged.
None of this yelling and fighting in the streets. It doesn't even stop them voting him in for real in the next election.
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Re:It happens (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that, amongst other issues, the turnout in this election is 60%+, and the differences weren't a few votes
Also, Ahmadinejad won in *all* his opponents' home provinces and amongst *all* his opponents' ethnic groups, which is unlikely, to say the least.
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Re:Makes me feel good on the inside. (Score:5, Interesting)
Keep fighting guys, I only wish I could help fro way over here.
You can help: by keeping out of it.
Even my progressive American friends are all flag-waving and drum-beating over this. The last thing the world needs is for anyone in the United States to do anything other than say, "We really hope the Iranian constitutional democratic process works this out. As a fellow-democracy we understand that elections can be contentious, but we also understand that the Iranian people and the Iranian people alone need to decide the outcome here, without interference by any other sovereign power."
Imperialism has taken such deep root in the American mind that even the progressives take it for granted that whatever happens anywhere Americans should be taking a hand. Do you think the Swiss--a much older democracy--are doing so? I doubt it. They are probably shaking their heads and saying, "Yes, it was like that here in 1500, but we got over it and so will they."
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Re:Makes me feel good on the inside. (Score:5, Interesting)
Why would the US pretend that Iran is a democracy? The US has, and accurately so, been on the record as noting that the President has no real authority in Iran and is a hand picked figured head. Iran is anything but a democracy.
I remember before the US election the US military saying it would put down any attempt at "change". Oh, wait, no that was Iran and that was last week. The only reason the clerics even allow anything resembling freedom in Iran is because they have to to empower the scientific community in hopes of gaining military and economic power. Hey, look, it's not like power is bad. It's just all these good intentions in posts like yours disappear when asked the question of whether you would be OK if the US and Iran switch places in regards to military power? I'm sure the world would be just swell in that case. I know I'd love to be forced to turn to Mecca a few times a day.
For all the hate the US gets I still can't recall a single nation having as much power (and let's be fair, compare nations to peers of the time) and wielding it so fairly. Sure, you can bitch about the current Iraq war, and some support and aid for some overthrows you might now agree with. Boo hoo! It's all-n-all pretty damn good. And still trying to get better.
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Re:What if they are? (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, from what I've heard the rioters aren't just for Mousavi anymore. Their list of demands includes revising the Iranian constitution to grant religious freedom (not so much that they love their minorities as that they've discovered that Muslim theocracy oppresses Muslims too), dissolving all "organs of repression", and release of all political prisoners. All sounds like big, good changes to me.
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Re:Israeli Effort to Destabilize Iran Via Twitter (Score:5, Interesting)
Ignoring the post you replied to, are you sure that the election was "stolen". On the whole, the West would really, really have liked Mousavi to have won. They would really, really have liked his defeat to be the result of fraud. But truthfully, Ahmadinejad is very popular with the common Iranian. He provided insurance for millions of women who work at home. He has carried out a lot of things that have benefited the common Iranian. And when Iranians see the US invading neighbouring countries, threatening their own country both verbally in diplomatic channels and through sending armed forces scouting through their waters, someone who is perceived as standing up to the US is, rightly or wrongly, well thought of for that.
Mousavi is popular mainly with better off Iranians who believe they stand to benefit more from taking a more pacifying approach to the US (some would say submissive). It was, it now seems, wishful thinking that he would win and it seems that many commentators are now levelling the accusation of fraud because that suits the purposes of much of the West. But we see that the supporters of Mousavi taking to the streets aren't receiving popular support (and more blatantly, this is taking place only in the capital - the rest of the country seems content with the result which is also supports the election results) and in fact these supporters in many cases have initiated the violence. (The Independent paper in the UK gave a full page interview to one of Mousavi's supporters who, when you managed to overlook the bias, was praising her fellows for managing to have set a bus on fire and pretty much said that it didn't matter whether Ahmadinejad got more votes because he shouldn't be President and Mousavi should).
The behaviour of the Iranian police has been brutal (predictably) and Ahmadinejad remains horrible on certain human rights issues. But as far as I can see, it looks like he won (and earlier Western reports grudgingly admitted this before they realised they could get away with overt suggestions of fraud). And so it is essentially Mousavi's supporters who are a smaller faction trying to undermine democracy with violence. If they get anywhere (and whatever you think of the GP, covert Western support or promises of support for his followers is extremely plausible), then it would just push Iran back to a more totalitarian state because they certainly wont win whatever the West would like to pretend. They don't have the support of the common people and, quite frankly, they appear to have lost the election.
Mousavi - good or bad (and he's no angel, just more amenable to Western interests), you can't just allow democracy when it elects the people you want elected.
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Re:Israeli Effort to Destabilize Iran Via Twitter (Score:5, Insightful)
The greatest trick the Israeli government ever pulled was to convince the world that to be Jewish is to support Israel and that to criticise Israel is to be anti-semitic. There are plenty of jews who either object to the Israeli government's behaviour or simply don't care about it. People are not their ethnicity and nobody gets to speak on your behalf because you share some ancestory with them.
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