Statistical Suspicions In Iran's Election 512
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 other sources 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.
I was suspicious (Score:3, Funny)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
many commentators are now levelling the accusation of fraud because that suits the purposes of much of the West...
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.
In light of past US and British government/corporate behavior when it comes to securing rights to Iranian oil (i.e. Operation Ajax [wikipedia.org]), the many fraud claims being thrown about reek of self-interest propaganda similar to that used in the plot to depose Mosaddeq [wikipedia.org] - which any way you slice it was a very evil deed to secure oil rights. Anyway, today there is to much shit flying about (even more than in the Bush in Florida 2000 elections [scoop.co.nz], at least on the international news circuit) to really know what the truth i
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The police raided Tehran university, beat, robbed and killed students who were speaking their mind or taking pictures. This was not unexpected. Not at all unexpected. It already happened before, it's why the university was gated and controlled by private security.
When people live in fear of being beaten or killed for kissing or holding hands, and everyone knows that they can bribe the police to get off the charges, it doesn't create a proud society, it creates unrest.
I don't think the election has to
Re:Israeli Effort to Destabilize Iran Via Twitter (Score:4, Interesting)
There's no excuse for opening fire on protestors whether they are backed by foreign powers or not. But in answer to your question of whether I believe the West is behind the protests, the answer is a detailed 'no.' That wasn't the thrust of what I was saying. I was just illustrating how extremely the West would like to see Mousavi in power, motivations for casting doubt on the legitimacy of Ahmadinejad's rule and reasons why he is popular.
With regard to Western involvement in the protests, I was simply cautioning the GP not to dismiss such as conspiracy theories rather than saying there was such involvement this time. There are a number of proven examples of Western interference in Iran's political processes (let alone other Middle Eastern countries). The most notable of which is US and UK's very active involvement in a coup there in 1953 that deposed the democratically elected ruler in favour of a brutal dictator who would support their strategic and oil interests. A dictatorship that lasted 26 years incidentally with US support.
In this instance I have seen no evidence of outside involvement in organising the protests. However, it's extremely naive to think that Mousavi and his allies haven't had ongoing contact with Western powers. He is a former Prime Minister of Iran - of course he has contacts and diplomatic ties abroad and will have discussed intentions should he have won the election. Iran's relationship to the USA is one of the platforms on which he campaigned. So active involvement in this instance - not that I'm aware of. My worry is that seeing the sudden media war on the legitimacy of the election (and the Western media did as they were told back in 1953, too), is that the ground may be being prepared for active involvement now and that is what we're seeing.
So again, I never said that the West was behind the protests. As far as I can tell. the West's role so far is merely that of wealthy bridegroom that Mousavi and his followers hope to court. But it is wrong to dismiss claims of outside involvement just because it couldn't happen. And it is wrong at this point to, as the GP did, state baldly that the election was stolen because there is little reason to suppose that, the people saying so have a strong reason to want it to be so and there is good reason based on Ahmadinejad's popularity to think the results are legitimate.
I hope that clears up what I was saying and that we now see eye to eye again.
Regards,
H.
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Re:Israeli Effort to Destabilize Iran Via Twitter (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
The problem of time (Score:5, Interesting)
If you know anything about statistics... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:If you know anything about statistics... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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.
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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As always, it's a mix of causes, in this case with violence as much among them as economic trouble. One cannot take
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.
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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CNN repeatably has stated that they are going on second and third hand information. That they are watching German and british news sites for information.
It is in all their articles.
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In many parts of the world voting is not a two horse race or a highest vote wins system (I don't know which applies to Iran).
Iran requires a true majority of votes (50% of all votes, not just more than any other candidate). The other two candidates only got about 1% each, so the election was effectively whichever of Ahmadinejad and Mousavi got more votes.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The analysis relies on one glaringly suspect assumption.. that the 2005 election was free and fair and can be used as a baseline. That election was also suspect from what I heard on the radio today. So what does a trend analysis from one fraudulent election to the next really show? All it would show is that the fraud was committed with some consistency with the previous fraud.
For all we know it could very well be the case that both elections went through honestly, but the people that voted are talking to
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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Canada, with paper ballots, 1/2 the population and 7x size has achieved this for at least 40 years. Does Iran lack Canadas 1970 technology? I doubt it.
This isn't a red flag, at best a pale beige. They might have a little better communications infrastructure, for an obvious explanation.
No offence to OP's analysis guy, but CNN-style instant analysis has a very odd smell, a bit like napalm in the morning.
Re:The problem of time (Score:4, Insightful)
Canada also has 200,000 volunteers, and representatives from every major political party present at ballot counting. At least three people must agree on the content of the ballot for it to be counted.
Canada's system works well because it is -extremely- transparent, and works through volunteers.
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?
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."
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.
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)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This reads like electoral interference to me (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Also, if the protesters have to rely on Twitter uptime ... They're pretty much screwed.
Does Twitter need to introduce the "Fail Camel" to not alienate the Iranian population?
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.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
What? The US wants to make it easier for the protesters to organize. How is that interfering with Iranian politics?
By making it easier for protesters to organize. Consider the impact on public opinion towards protesters in Iran if they find out the protesters are being in any way aided by the US.
Re:This reads like electoral interference to me (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:This reads like electoral interference to me (Score:4, Funny)
Well, there are rumours that the DoD has comissioned for a rewrite of Twitter in ADA with an Oracle backend. And it seems that the programmers already did the code, stress tested it and it could make twitter work.
But, the formal review and inspections process will take at least 6 months, that is, 6 months *after* the developers manage to write at least 5000 pages of documents, print them, sign each page and submit the work as done.
Reports says the rewrite was really easy, after the 3 programmers learned how to dodge the meetings, by convincing the 230 Program and Project Managers that humble programmers shouldn't be allowed to go to meetings so important to the success of the project.
Makes me feel good on the inside. (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm proud to see these young people stand up for their rights and for what they believe in. It's good to see these kids fighting the good fight. (Morgan Freedman anyone?)
I'm hoping this will come to a peaceful end, but any government that steals an election should be punished, and it seems the people of Iran will have none of it.
Keep fighting guys, I only wish I could help fro way over here.
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."
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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You're so right. Look at all the democracies we promote. Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Indonesia, Syria, Egypt... USA! USA!
No one believes that load of crap you just spewed, at least no one who's taken a cursory look at the list of countries we've overthrown and vandalized [wikipedia.org]. Especially Iran, where we not only overthrew their democratically elected government in 1953, but may have even fomented the Iran-Iraq War in 1980.
I'm sorry, comrade! I did not mean to be unpatriotic and dare criticize our motherland, which is
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The US plays the same game every other country plays. The US just has more power and influence then any other country right now. You don't think the US would love to have a
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I cannot stomach this sort of moral relativist BS anymore.
We're talking about Iran here, the same Iran that had a functioning democracy that the "fair" US Of A decided it didn't like so fully funded, armed AND trained a group of radicals specifically to overthrow said democracy and install a radical and brutal dictator. Resulting in a decade of the worst most brutal treatment of the citizens of Iran out of any secular nation in modern history. 100% morally, financially and politically backed by the "fair"
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.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
As for people being afraid to talk on the phone, you might be right, but the pollsters addressed that claim:
Some might argue that the professed support for Ahmadinejad we found simply reflected fearful respondents' reluctance to provide honest answers to pollsters. Yet the integrity of our results is confirmed by the politically risky responses Iranians were willing to give to a host of questions. For instance, nearly four in five Iranians -- including most Ahmadinejad supporters -- said they wanted to change the political system to give them the right to elect Iran's supreme leader, who is not currently subject to popular vote. Similarly, Iranians chose free elections and a free press as their most important priorities for their government, virtually tied with improving the national economy. These were hardly "politically correct" responses to voice publicly in a largely authoritarian society.
Also, they were only able to ask people who had telephones, which may have skewed the results.
Regardless, it shows that the results shouldn't have been completely unexpected, for people who were paying attention.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
With 400 million US "invested" beforehand in support for the "Iranian opposition"
The $400 million went to supporting groups like the Jundallah, not for reformist politicians like Mousavi and Tehrani students who like rock music and hate the moral police.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jundallah [wikipedia.org]
No amount of money can buy a popular uprising. Sorry.
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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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.
Also, in Iran you get only 30 days to actually campaign. This poll was taken right at the start of campaigning. Of course the current Pres will fare better in the polls then, more people are familiar with his platform.
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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Why is this so hard to understand? So long as Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons, the US will be thinking about how to invade them. The Iranians are not thinking of invading the US and won't ever be. As such, the greatest threat to the life of Americans is when Iran does not have nuclear weapons.
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>The greatest safety will be when we both realize that we can accomplish more by working together than by fighting with each other.
There are some powerful people in this world who do not desire "safety" or "accomplishment" because they fundamentally believe that the end of the world is a desirable, richly anticipated event, and whose greatest wish is to have the world's end arrive during their own lifetime.
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
That statistic sounds impressive, but it's not like there's much precedent. Iran has only had six presidents, and only for the last two has there been any real contest. When you only have 30 years of voting history to go on, big 'unexplainable' changes are bound to pop up once in a while. There is a very real possibility that the announced election results were fairly accurate.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Iran has only had six presidents, and only for the last two has there been any real contest. When you only have 30 years of voting history to go on, big 'unexplainable' changes are bound to pop up once in a while.
In other words its just serendipity. That's great. You do realize that while statistics operate under the assumption that variance is random, that's just a way of predicting mass behavior and does not mean that the actual result is itself random, in particular when we're talking about human behav
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I actually pretty much agree with what you've said. My post was pretty much a jumbled collection of my thoughts. The basic idea that I was saying is that there's a lot of circumstantial evidence of tampering, but nothing I haven't seen in legit elections. I think there was some degree of tampering, either in outright fraud, or intimidation, but I hate jumping to conclusions, and (even with Iran) I prefer to take an "innocent until proven guilty" approach.
I'm not speaking as an expert on Iran. I don't know a
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.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
"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."
Thats a long time to be a student.
Well, you know us university students, we hate to grow up and get a job.
Now to party like it's 1909 again!
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.....
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?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Proxy (Score:4, Informative)
I did email him twice but got no response. I also tailed my squid logs all night and nobody used it. I would like to help out here but am not much use if no one can find my proxy. Oh well.
The biggest statistical red flags (Score:3, Funny)
There were several of the more liberal districts around Tehran where Pat Buchanan won.
Some great photos (Score:4, Interesting)
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).
----
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Counting paper ballots is an embarrassingly parallelizable task. If you get enough people doing the counting, you could count 400M votes and sum up the results in half an hour.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Re:Statistical nothing (Score:4, Insightful)
Same in France (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Take out a chess board. Starting with the bottom left, and in any order you please, place a mustard seed in the first square. Then two in the next square. Then double that in the next square. Keep going until you get to a little less than half the board (25 squares I should think). Those are your voters. If each of the inhabitants of the next lower square sums the ones above them and passes the count down to the first seed, you can see that it shouldn't take very long at all to count any number of vot
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.
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.
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?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
While I don't like your implication with the
under-educated rural religiouly conservative masses
comment, I agree in general with your premise. Another way to look at it is: after the 2008 US election, 40 million people could have taken to the streets in protest of the result. That's a shitload of people, and would look like something really underhanded happened in the election.
Similarly, the expected outcome of the 2004 election was "President John Kerry," yet he lost decidedly amidst gasps of democrat horror.
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.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Juan Cole politely tells you that you're full of shit here. ... Go read him.
He has a different opinion, yes. Personally I find his analysis far from persuasive.
IMHO he overemphasises the "culture wars" of a decade ago (if they ever existed as he imagines) and completely ignores appeal of A'jad jingositic nationalism, ineed he completely ignores the last 4 years of A'jad. Moreover Cole's assumption that support for Khatami in 2000 is indicative of a the success of moderates against religionists seems a l
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.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
but enough about the GOP...
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?
Mod parent up. (Score:3, Informative)
The study did not reject the null hypothesis ( that the results are not rigged.)
The strongest pattern observed was that in 2009 Amadi-nejad (sp?) did the best in districts he did the best in 2005. (no surprise). The authors note that to the extent that prediction for 2009 deviated from a model based on 2005, then his deviations were always above the extrapolated line. The thought here is that if the model were perfect then the deivations should be unbiased and thus depending on their distributions nature
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Other people have noted that with an 85% turnout, common sense suggests this should favor the challenger. that is, angry people are more motivated to turn out. But while perhaps compelling it's not a hard rule. Iceland had a recent election where something like 70% turned out and the incumbent won.
Pardon? Iceland recently had an election, yes. But turnout was 85.1% compared to last election's 83.6% - not a big change (and lower than the turnout in the election before 87.5% were there was no change in government). Yes, the winner was the incumbent - on a technicality, because the coalition only came in power a few weeks before after the previous government coalition, (close) winners of the last election (by 1 seat) had resigned after massive public protests.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In 1979, after the Iranian people overthrow the despot whom the Americans supported, the Iranians immediately established a brutal, authoritarian theocracy.
Because the despot whom the Americans supported had previously crushed on all opposition until the gang around Khomeini was the strongest, and such became the obvious leader of the opposition. After the opposition had won the revolution, the strongest party then turned on the others. Not because it had the majority behind them, but because it had violent force.
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.
-
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.
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.
Re:Come on, It's Iran already (Score:4, Insightful)
Like the US has never spread FUD to undermine a regime they disapprove of.
Whatever the truth of the situation, I find that more and more news these days smells like propaganda.
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, an Iranian friend of a friend who lives in the USA remarked when Bush won (the first time) that if this had happened in Iran, there would be riots in the streets and she asked why no-one was rioting in the USA over the Florida debacle. My US friend replied that everyone was too busy paying off mortgages.
If you could mod up comments in real life, that would have got a +5 Insightful in no time.
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.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Here's the thing that most slashdotters don't get about Iran, they are not just Muslims, previous to the Islamic revolution in 79 a large portion of the population was Zoroastrian and Baha'i. The US/British backed Shah was so bad that when the Islamic revolutionaries offered them another choice they j
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Here's the thing that most slashdotters don't get about Iran, they are not just Muslims, previous to the Islamic revolution in 79 a large portion of the population was Zoroastrian and Baha'i.
I do in fact get that. Iran is one of the most ethnically and religiously diverse countries in the Middle East.
From what I've been told this has ignited a lot of Racial tensions in Iran, the Ayatollah and ruling council have set up a separate police force made almost exclusively from non-Persians (mostly Palestinian and Lebanese migrants) for the purposes of guaranteeing that the government has a force to use against its own people.
I can confirm this. Those aren't "migrants", though, they're members of Lebanese Hizballah and Palestinian Hamas. Yet another reason I want to see this revolution succeed.
I'm going to go listen to "Yallah Yah Nasrallah" now.