You would have done nothing but blogged, so very effective just like you did in 2004.

1: We'd love to hear what effective things you did in 2004.

Opposing perspectives:
Juan Cole
Guardian

I don't know enough about Iranian politics to know which one seems more plausible.

Andrew Sullivan is reporting that Iran's election commission has declared the election invalid and demanded a do-over. He links to something in Farsi, so no idea how reliable that is. Hundreds of people on Twitter are linking to him.

Also spreading on Twitter are rumored "leaked true vote counts", which don't seem to add up to nearly enough votes, but put Ahmadinejad in third, so that he wouldn't even be involved in the run-off.

There are also claims that the reported vote counts are statistically dubious. Nate Silver tries to debunk those claims, but I'm not convinced. To get a clearer idea of how much of a smoking gun this is I would want to run some Monte Carlo simulations. Maybe later.

Here's the Sullivan post about the election monitoring commission.

The other persistent rumor circulating on the 'tubes is that Moussavi was put under house arrest. No idea if that's true, either. In general it seems difficult to find accurate news.

I'll stop monopolizing the thread now.

I read that Kermit Roosevelt's ghost was seen wandering through the halls of Langley muttering "amateurs, amateurs."

I don't have the bandwidth or power to do the links because I'm partially shut down for summer heat.
But Obama wants to slash 100s of billions from Medicare & Medicaid and replace the coverage later, maybe, I guess. Maybe we'll get a little tax increase on the rich or corporations? Nah. Economy is too weak,

Is that on topic? Shock doctrine. Gonna be a bad war or two, I think. Soon.

Think of Achmedetc and the paramilitaries grabbing control. Why do they think they need to?

Yggles is getting a lot of pushback on this thread. Yggles went out and gathered evidence for another post. What do I know? My initial reaction is to yawn. When does Saudi Arabia or Egypt get an election?

So...

1) Why would the conservative Iranian elite think they need to steal this election?

2) Why is the American so called "center-left" or "center" going fricking apeshit? Well, I remember 2002...

A Nutcase ...pops up at Mark Thoma's I do not see this kind of thing there very often.

"The Morgan/Rothschild cabal is everywhere and pushing their 'right wing' side to do the dirty work at this time."

Another one popped up at LGM in a NK thread, calling for a military coup if "Obama can't keep us safe."

I have empathy. I'm in sync with this shit, in the groove. Farber says I'm always looking for violence and war. Well I don't usually have to look very hard.

Brad DeLong says it's

"Time to Help the People of Iran Overthrow Their Corrupt Regime"

Neat, Brad. Here. We. Go. Again. I'm off the fucking Web for the evening. Cheer up with TDK on HBO.

From the AP's coverage of the rioting:
"But for at least one day, the tone and tactics were more combative than at any time since authorities put down student-led protests in 1999. "

I wonder how they'd have written that sentence if it had been an article about some Molotov and rock throwing at RNC or a similar US demo?

"The brazen and angry confrontations -- including stunning scenes of masked rioters tangling with black-clad police -- pushed the self-styled radical movement closer to a possible moment of truth: Whether to continue defying America's powerful security forces or, as they often have before, retreat into quiet dismay and frustration over losing more ground to the capitalist establishment."

12: Since we're too self-satisfied for him to talk to directly, I wouldn't want anyone to miss dsquared's fine comment in response to Brad's "Time to Help the People of Iran Overthrow Their Corrupt Regime":

"'Help'" appears to be a verb in the "superman conditional" tense here; as in, to simply have "help the people of Iran overthrow their corrupt regime" on your "to do" list would make a lot of sense if you were Superman, or God Almighty, but anyone else probably ought to make it a bit more specific than that. Care to make any slightly more concrete suggestions?

Note to ben et alia: another commenter over there has already pointed out "Surely the superman conditional is a mood, not a tense."

I have to imagine my feelings on the subject would be altered by the existence of an unelected, life-tenure higher official who possesses the final say on basically everything.

Is 16 really as funny as I think it is?

17: No.

Most of the religious right in the US didn't take it so well despite their belief in the existence of such an official.

An Iranian-America friend of mine expressed a feeling of deja vu with 2000 as well. She also provided a link to Mir Hossein Mousavi's Flickr stream which has some striking images of the clashes on the streets of Tehran.

Bob, expanding war is always a dange, but I think this more internal-Iranian than anything.

What's surprising to me, knowing as little as I do, is that the presidency apparently has enough power* to be worth rigging. I had been under the impression that the office was more limited than that.

*In the institutional sense. It could be that on the symbolic/cultural impact level, the election of a reformer is now seen as more threatening to the current leadership than it was when Khatami was in office.

Or rather, the Flickr account being kept in his name.

I don't know if the election was actually rigged or not, but the fact that no one except the religious authorities is in a position to know makes it impossible to achieve a democratic result.

This could all end with just another round of head bashings and crack-downs, but you get the sense that the mullahs, in the interest of not even letting a moderate critic near official power, may have overplayed their hand.

you get the sense that the mullahs, in the interest of not even letting a moderate critic near official power, may have overplayed their hand.

Or so the mullahs would have you believe.

Right, I guess it really should be "to be worth allegedly rigging." Maybe they're release a full and complete accounting of the votes showing that they called the result correctly, but I doubt it.

BTW, Delong responded, kind of, to dsquared at CT in one of the philosophy threads.

Yes, they are tricky that way.

By "kind of", I mean that his response is more on-topic for the philosophy thread than for the Iran thread.

I have a really, really strong instinct believe that the election was rigged, and that the pro-Moussavi demonstrators would win the day in a just world.

When I try to identify my motivations for this belief, this is what I come up with

1. The election was largely about the economy. How can an economy like this break in favor of the incumbant?

2. The theocrats have long been afraid of the kind of nonviolent populist revolution that comes after elections. I mean, do you remember that propaganda video Ogged linked to, which showed Gene fucking Sharp as an enemy of the Iranian people on the level of the CIA and John McCain?

3. And the Moussavi movement has a color--green--just liek the Orange revolution in Ukraine.

And... and...

Ok, I just want see a populist moment here.

Nothing I can do to make one.

21:Domestic politics and economics, I think

I think, in total ignorance, Iran is a theocratic model. Like medieval France, with monasteries controlling thousands of square miles of land and mosque/market areas while leaving the secular sector alone.

It;s the economy.

18: Thanks.

29: The question isn't whether the Ayatollah Khamenei has has much power as the US Supreme Court, but whether the Iranian people have more spine than the American.

27: Nothing I can do to make one.

You could put on a green bandanna an go shout Allah o Akbar from your rooftop. Solidarity, man.

may have overplayed their hand.

The public exposure of rigged elections was one of the events that precipitated the fall of Honecker. Not that that really means anything about what's happening in Iran.

The Bush admin had a number of people thinking the Middle East would democratize just like Eastern Europe did - it just needed a bit of a push for the US to help them on their way. No matter that there was no American invasion of an Eastern European country.

Yeah, on some level I felt OK about Iran being fair in their own particular rigged way. Distressing to learn that, apparently, when push comes to shove, it's fake-votes time.

Not the same dynamic, but it brings back the sick feelings of Tiananmen Square - they can't actually get away with this, can they? Holy shit, yes they can. Dammit.*

* Tonight at dinner a bird flew away before Iris got a good look at it, causing her to say, "Dammit." So AB & I had a brief explanation of why "darnit" is more suitable for 5-y.o.s.

The election was largely about the economy. How can an economy like this break in favor of the incumbant?

because the incumbent was the "left" socialist guy who favored redistribution, while the challenger was the pro-capitalist who favored IMF type austerity measures?

It might well have been rigged...but what do any of us know about internal Iranian politics? Do we trust the media coverage?

"Time to Help the People of Iran Overthrow Their Corrupt Regime"

My guess is that, given the smashing successes of the US occupations of the countries on their eastern and western borders, not to mention our long history in Iran proper, a huge majority of Iranians of every political stripe would prefer we just leave them the fuck alone.

35: I dunno, apo. If we can just find the Iranian version of Ahmed Chalabi, it just might work!

You know what'd be great? An Iranian guy who could explain all this to us. If only we had one of them...

Somebody email Christiane Amanpour and tell her to get her ass over here to start explaining.

37: But maybe a Mexican would do in a pinch?

Brad DeLong is the biggest fucking idiot on the planet.

But what do you really think, iir?

40: It's possible that there was a little bit of irony in DeLong's post title.

41: I think I want to airdrop him into what's left of Fallujah for a couple months, and then see if he remembers that he used to pretend to be opposed to the U.S. just randomly overthrowing governments it doesn't like.

I have new appreciation for Twitter now. This one, for instance.

33.3: I don't see the problem.

It might well have been rigged...but what do any of us know about internal Iranian politics? Do we trust the media coverage?

I do trust Juan Cole when he points out statistically improbable voting patterns though.

Also, damn straight we should help the people of Iran overthrow their crap government -- see for instance trades unions solidarity with Iranian comrades (which points out the daftness of calling Ahmadinejad a socialist, except in the most useless sense.)

||

Obama as Rawlsian Political Liberalism Run Berserk ...via OpenLeft

Includes a strong critique of PL

TDK was just awesome way cool.

|>

43: That seems like a very uncharitable reading, inconsistent with all the previous evidence that DeLong is a smart and decent guy.

It's possible that there was a little bit of irony in DeLong's post title.

That seems unlikely, given this.

I can't even imagine how I would have reacted on November 4 if, after all that work and excitement and hope and record turnouts, the incumbent party was declared the winner by more than 60%, defying all reasonable polls and predictions.

BURN. SHIT. DOWN. Good on the protesters--hope they actually make a difference.

damn straight we should help the people of Iran overthrow their crap government

Right, because the only problem with American foreign policy at the moment is that we're not involved in enough wars.

That seems like a willfully stupid reading of Keir's comment.

No one suggested the US involve itself in a war.

Yep, damn that international solidarity of the working class, always starting imperialist wars.

No one suggested the US involve itself in a war.

So is the suggestion that the Iranian government will be overthrown by a series of deeply sincere street demonstrations?

So is the suggestion that the Iranian government will be overthrown by a series of deeply sincere street demonstrations?

Well, ideally the General Strike will finally work as a means of installing a lovely democratic socialist government, but probably not.

Excluded middle fallacy.

50, 55: Burning stuff down nearly always works. After Pittsburgh won the Super Bowl, people burned quite a bit of stuff down and had raging street demonstrations. Which explain why we won the Stanley Cup. But, after winning the Stanley Cup, nobody burned anything (hardly) and the demonstrations were cleared within an hour. So, we can safely predict that Pittsburgh will not win the World Series this year.

56: By all accounts, Ahmadinejad's greatest supporters are the poor and working class. If the US goes and overthrows the Iranian government (again!), it won't be through a grand worker's revolt.

You know, I'm really sick in general of Americans thinking they have some kind of natural veto power over what goes on in someone else's country. The United States has been trying to run the world for a while now, and the world doesn't have much to show for it besides a lot of dead brown people.

Thanks for cluing us in to that Wikipedia link, IIR. Nobody had ever heard of that before.

No one was fucking suggesting that the US government do anything. When I, a Scottish New Zealander, said `we' and referred to trade unionism, I was not talking about the US government; this should be obvious.

I was pointing out that there are things we* can do to help, which don't involve bombing Tehran (although if that's what the Iranian people want we should probably be willing to do that), and which we should bloody well do.

* Again, we =/= the US Federal Government.

iir, it would help us all to follow the discussion if you'd provide us with the comments from your head you're replying to - it's pretty difficult to understand when your comments are clearly not responding to the previous ones in the thread. Thanks!

Yeah, stupid Americans like Keir... wait, what?

This isn't about America vetoing an election result it doesn't like. It's the people of Iran who seem to be doing that, since the election seems to have been stolen. (Here's a plausible account.) I understood DeLong to be expressing solidarity for those people and hope that they will successfully overturn the fraudulent election results, not a desire for the US to forcibly overthrow their government.

And I think the average Unfoggetarian probably knows about Kermit Roosevelt's antics (see comment 8....)

63 to 59, obvs.

|| This is awesome. |>

I didn't write 62, but I fully endorse it. The making up of disagreement in order to feel more righteous in one's rage is, while understandable, kind of stupid and counterproductive.

62,66:I somehow feel compelled to defend shadow boxing and arguing with invisible enemies.

(Watching Into the Wild)

65: Modern axiomatizations of Euclidean geometry can be pretty cool. This guy's thesis is especially neat.

||

Re:ItW

First time I can remember seeing that excellent young actress Kristen Stewart (Twilight series should make her into a megastar) not hunched into a nolo me tangere defensive crouch. Maybe it's me, but that is how I remember her in In the Land of Women so not the parts. Maybe Keener helped KS with confidence and posture. She is very young, but so are/were Jena Malone & Evan Rachel Wood.

Hirsch is just astonishing. Penn is profound & compassionate.

The movie? Well, one of the IMDB reviews says something about "youth runs straightaway." Not just the road, but work, marriage, whatever.

|>

I know this is a bit late, but I just want to get this off my chest.

Would you believe that New Zealand has been the location of murderous Western power sponsored terrorism in the past 30 years, and has been the recipient of some very negative US pressure over the years for a series of independent foreign policy stances, including nuclear free status and a refusal to join the coalition of the willing? In fact, would you believe that NZ is the anglo western country with the most experience of US/Great Power bullying, and that lefty NZers are not in fact ignorant of these things?

Isn't it a tad patronising to sneer at `sincere street demonstrations' etc? I might even go so far as to say it buys into a militarising mythology of seriousness vs dfh-ness, and probably an classist/imperialist denial of agency of the aforementioned brown people.

If the US goes and overthrows the Iranian government (again!), it won't be through a grand worker's revolt.

And if I drive to Albuquerque from New York, I won't be going through Oakland. That says nothing about how someone in San Francisco might get to Albuquerque.

In particular, I have no idea how to go about d setting up a nice democratic government in Iran. However, if Iranians who are trying to do so ask me to do something to help them out, and it isn't obviously insane, I think there's a certain duty of solidarity that comes into play.

OT, but not having a working home computer, especially on the weekend, SUCKS. (I'd comment on-topic, but due to the aforementioned problem I only know about the situation what I infer from blog comments. Rigged elections suck too.)

The making up of disagreement

No disagreement is being made up. Unless you've been asleep for the last eight years, you may have noticed there are a number of people in the American government, of both parties, agitating for war or increased hostilities with Iran - including, at the moment, the guy at the State Department in charge of Iran policy. The suggestion that "we" do something to "help" Iranians overthrow their government comes in the context of a long series of policymakers agitating for the violent overthrow of the Iranian government and a previous disastrous decision to do so, to say nothing of "our" ongoing regime-change projects in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Or possibly in the context of previous international worker's solidarity campaigns, things like the South African dockers who wouldn't unload arms for Mugabe. Which, sure, you can attack as idealism, but I really don't see how you can attack as imperialist.

Also why do you keep dragging the US government into it? Nobody but you suggested they do anything.

33: Caroline has taken to saying "freaking" a lot: "That's the freakin' silliest thing I've ever seen!" It really sounded wrong coming from a six year old, even though it is already a substitute for a swear word.

Maybe I should tell her to say "frak" instead.

33,74:It did cross my mind last night that cursing was one activity with which a child can gain access to or complicity with the freedom of adults. It should not be encouraged, for that would take the fun of transgression away. Thus the accumulation of frustrated rebellion would be minimized, and possible deadly adventures in Alaska prevented.

Just saying.

"Bother", also "Blow".

It did cross my mind last night that cursing was one activity with which a child can gain access to or complicity with the freedom of adults.

This is a good point which I had never considered before. My 15 year old has taken to cursing like a sailor. And since I try to moderate my language at home (since unmoderated, I curse like, well, the old soldier that I am), he did not get it much from me and not at all from his mother, who curses only in Korean. I have wondered what is up with this, and I think Bob likely is right about what is going on.

I consider Delong one of the good guys, and I'm certainly willing to give him the benefit of the doubt about his intent.

But surely we can agree that "Time to Help the People of Iran Overthrow Their Corrupt Regime" is, in the context of modern U.S. history, an unfortunate way to express solidarity with Iranian protesters.

We. Must. Stay. On. Topic.

Numerian explains how the Supreme Jurisprudent is selected the Assembly of Experts and controls the Guardians Council which approves the product of the Majlis unless arbitrated by the Expediency Council

Gary Sick. Robert Fisk. Juan Cole. Pretend those are links to informed insightful commentary.

On topic, then. When Ahmadinejad was first elected I read a closely argued piece by an Iranian Trotskyist whose name I forget, which made the case that the coalition that had been put together around him basically represented an attempt by the armed forces, who had wielded considerable economic clout under the Shah and whose influence had been seriously undercut during the revolution, to recover ground.

I mentioned this to a few people, but nobody was much interested, because after all, who was this guy? But with today's developments, with people being arrested left right and centre, it looks as if he may have been right on the ball.

I agree with IIR. In the current American political environment, you have to be naive to think that saying "we should help the people of Iran overthrow the Iranian government" means anything else but violent intervention of one sort or other. Perhaps not bombing (or support of Israeli bombing), but dirty tricks of various sorts. Keir being from New Zealand may work against his understanding of this. If you're an American and you say "we" that WILL be taken as referring to the U.S. government.

Another perspective from a veteran reporter on Iran.

The analysis linked in 63 seems sickeningly accurate---and it certainly dovetails with OFE's insight. Ahmadinejad's power base is not only among the poor, rural, and religious. You have to have loyalties within the state apparatus if you're going to steal an election.

There have been rumors and stories for a long time about Ahmadinejad's consolidating support within the Revolutionary Guards (and all of the weird subgroups within that general category). A couple of years ago there was some sort of constitutional struggle between Ahmadinejad and the Grand Ayatollah, which the Ayatollah won; I don't remember the exact contours of it, but it had something to do with, basically, the Unitary Executive.

If this is actually a military coup with Ahmadinejad as a frontman, things could get very very interesting. For one thing, you'd have opposing state apparatuses with an interest in pushing back against the election. The biggest lever, obviously, would be Ayatollah Khamenei. I've always hoped that he saw Ahmadinejad as a dangerous ally; maybe he will see this as an assault on his power.

Oh, that's right. I'd forgotten that the Ayatollah rushed to endorse the election results, indicating his utter complicity. Fucker.

From the link in 82:

It appears that the working classes and the rural poor--the people who do not much look or act or talk like us--voted overwhelmingly for the scruffy, scrappy president who looks and acts and talks more or less like them.

82, 85: This sort of thing worries me a bit. There's no shortage of plausible-looking accounts on the internet about how Western media sources systematically bias their understanding of the region by talking only to well-educated, upper-middle-class Iranians. And some people link to polls purporting to show overwhelming support for Ahmadinejad. Against that there are people like Juan Cole, who I trust but really just have to take at his word, and the sources that come from Mousavi or his supporters themselves. I'm pretty sure I believe the sources that are saying the election was stolen, but I wish there was a way to be more confident that I'm not just being snookered by savvy people who know how to manipulate Western opinion.

The extremely low vote counts reported for Karoubi and Rezae seem like maybe the clearest unbiased signal that something is very much not right here.

||

From a New York Times father's day article about building character by example:

Now that I'm a parent, I've adopted the grassroots approach for character development. Instead of mowing lawns, my children and I are having fun with messy experiments we do in our kitchen and in their classrooms. I'm building character through chromatography, distilling morals from molecules, and crystallizing values.

Where do they get these people? This was from a book of published essays no less.

|>

Gary Sick's analysis of the Iranian election is well worth reading.

It is true that one would like to know what ogged may hear through his connections, but one doesn't wish to presume in such a way. It's nosy in the extreme.

Otherwise, whatever DeLong's intention in his blog post, yeah, for god's sake, the post title is deeply unfortunate. Can't imagine what he was thinking. Maybe he's clarified; still, think first, man.

72: iir, did you even bother to read the thread before you commented? Every single point you make in 72 was made in this thread before you showed up.

91: M/tch, whatever - maybe it's best to leave it alone. iir is distressed for understandable reasons. DeLong probably shouldn't have said what he did. Then again, he's just some guy on the internet.

68: This formulation requires no set theory and only first order logic with equality. You can actually play with the axioms here.

Hey, is any of the US right-wing "leadership" making any suggestions re Iran right now?

[bobblogging]

Just watched The Incredibles with the kids. Nasty anti-egalitarian subtext. Some people are better than others and should be allowed to be better than others and wouldn't count as better unless some other people were worse. Had to remind the kids that everyone is super in their own way. Sang it to them.

Nice blending of family dynamics and superhero action, though. Also good on women's issues. Holly Hunter has sexy voice.

[/bobblogging]

92: You're likely right about leaving it alone, but the fact is that "DeLong shouldn't have said what he did" was a point made repeatedly in this thread before iir showed up to scold us because clearly we're all proposing a US invasion.

94: Digby has some links (Joe Lieberman, Redstate).

Spackerman is also well worth reading on the subject.

94: That's a good question. I tend to avoid any place that would tell me what they're saying, leaving it to the progressive wing to report on it. It's possible they're in a kerfuffle, which is for the best: they should shut up, for once, and absorb and consider.

99 posted before seeing 97, 98.

100 posted before I could get there.

I noticed that.

102 to anything, really.

Worth reading. (via Spackerman)

Dagens nyheter thinks it's possible it was legit but poinsts out:

Mousavi should have won Azerbaijan province at least, he's azeri.

Also, Mehdi Karroubi should have gotten disproportionate support in home province Luristan, home of the wily lurs, only got 0,85 total despite getting 17% in 05. And Rezai in Khuzestan.'

Also, ayatollah Khamenei's own poll said he would get 58 %, leaked in Sunday Times.

And the interior ministry announced result's today even though that's against the constitution.

It's really the implausible margin coupled with the huge turnout which should favor Moussavi which makes it implausible.

And with that I bow out, deadline tomorrow.

97: Neither Lieberman nor Redstate qualifies as 'right-wing "leadership"', though, even under the current debasement of that phrase, and Lieberman seems to be calling only for the administration to "speak out" and "express solidarity", which & $3.85 will get you a vanilla latte.

I can only conclude that the GOP has finally realized that the American people aren't interested in starting a third war.

Ukraine 2004 or China 1989? So far as our leverage is concerned, it may as well be the latter.

I read that Kermit Roosevelt's ghost was seen wandering through the halls of Langley muttering "amateurs, amateurs."

Oh, that most Americans knew any damn history. I think I've mentioned it before, but All the Shah's Men is a good account of the coup and super accessible for people not necessarily keen on reading a lot of foreign history.

I'm not much of a Mideast scholar, though, so if anyone wants to issue a corrective, I'd be happy to hear it.

110.1 should be italicized, of course. I don't want to take credit for Moby Hick's witty formulation.

JM, am I right in remembering that your honey is Iranian/Iranian-American? Are there sources he trusts that are available in English.

111: I just like the name Kermit and am still sort of irked that nobody can think of anything but a frog when it comes up.

Also, knowing history has its good points and its bad points (e.g. the Balkans). There's a sweet spot between not caring about the past and not being able to escape it.

95: I was originally enthused about The Incredibles, but I watched it again to see if I wanted to show it to my daughter, and I had the same reaction. I can't even imagine what it was in response to. The fact that the egalitarian impulse is merely endangered, and has not been totally crushed out of Americans?

I will use italics from now on in honor of the death of my enthusiasm for The Incredibles.

As a site dedicated to the advancement of the Lur, Karroubi is the official candidate of Unfogged. None of us can sleep until he assumes his rightful place as the President of Iran, and ultimately, the World.

Don't listen! It's a Lur trap! Really, there's fuck all to do, but I bet if you yelled allahu akbar off the top of your roof you'd annoy at least one neighbor.

111: I just like the name Kermit and am still sort of irked that nobody can think of anything but a frog when it comes up.

As Moussavi supporters have learned, it's not easy being green.

JM, am I right in remembering that your honey is Iranian/Iranian-American? Are there sources he trusts that are available in English.

Not really that I know of. He sometimes listens to Iranian radio or youtubes, but that's mostly for language practice (or for drum technique pointers).

That the opposition is rioting proves nothing of course, other than that they've paid good attention to the various western backed colour revolutions over the years and are trying out the script for themselves. The opposition is trying to force a crisis of legitimacy against a president who for better or worse does have a substantial following.

That Ahmadinejad's victory seems so implausible to us in the west is not just because we only talk to those people who tell us what we want to hear, but because we only engage with Iran and Ahmadinejad through the prism of US foreign policy. If you describe somebody as a dangerous clown often enough you start to believe it; hence our dear old media is flabbergasted to see that voters in Iran itself, voting on quite different issues than whether or not Ahmadinejad swore to wipe Israel of the map, might disagree.

If you describe somebody as a dangerous clown often enough you start to believe it; hence our dear old media is flabbergasted to see that voters in Iran itself, voting on quite different issues than whether or not Ahmadinejad swore to wipe Israel of the map, might disagree.

Oh for fuck's sake. NPR's coverage prior to the election made it quite clear that to a large swath of the Iranian electorate, the economy was the main issue, and Ahmedinejad fucked that one up royally.

But, you know, don't let that stop you from lecturing us about how you understand the Iranian electorate better than the rest of us.

I agree with IIR. In the current American political environment, you have to be naive to think that saying "we should help the people of Iran overthrow the Iranian government" means anything else but violent intervention of one sort or other. Perhaps not bombing (or support of Israeli bombing), but dirty tricks of various sorts. Keir being from New Zealand may work against his understanding of this. If you're an American and you say "we" that WILL be taken as referring to the U.S. government.

Well, yes, if you said it without qualifiers, which you will note that I didn't do. That was the point of the second half of the sentence, which IIR had to disregard in order to get the reading they wanted out of it. I'm just very very unimpressed at the blatant misquoting in order to be more left than thou.

Look at the CP of Iran and the Tudeh Party who want international support and solidarity -- are they too proposing US dirty tricks? (And note that these are comrades of people shot by various oppressive regimes, including the US backed one.)

Significant development or sophisticated cover up?

As a site dedicated to the advancement of the Lur, Karroubi is the official candidate of Unfogged.

Luristan is a notable outlier on this scatterplot (scroll down). I'm not even minimally informed about these matters, but this kind of result seems to be feeding the allegations of vote tampering.

Watching CNN cover Iran this morning, for all of two minutes. There was 10 seconds of grainy footage of folks in green running from riot police. Followed by one minute and 50 seconds of someone reporting from a desk in London about Iranian expats protesting there, complete with mock-up examples of the signs they were carrying. Cut to commercial, followed by a fluff piece on Joe Biden.

Cut to commercial, followed by a fluff piece on Joe Biden.

Lint on the personage of the Vice President is no laughing matter.

Lint on the personage of the Vice President is no laughing matter.

Mouseover

I didn't lose the election! I just had a big sandwich and then put on an ugly sweater!

Lint on the personage of the Vice President is no laughing matter.

There is an opening for a one-liner here that involves Dick Cheney having his dry-cleaner waterboarded. Had I the time and inclination to compose it in a pithy delivery, it might even have been funny. Instead, you get three lines of banality, because it is Monday morning, and I am not yet caffeinated.

123.---God only knows. I'm just happy that the Ayatollah sees the importance of at least pretending to observe the law.

130: Or so the mullahs would have you believe.

123: My completely uneducated take is that it's probably the warm-up for some slow-mo rubber-stamping of the official results. My gut tells me the election results are a massive fraud, but of course I'm just some ignoramus on the internet. My gut also tells me that if the Ayatollah is asking for investigations of fraud that what he's asking is for everyone to loudly agree, in public, that there was no fraud and then call it a day.

I confess that when the protests/riots/etc. came up in conversation yesterday with a friend, and he asked what I thought of the possibility the Iranian government would topple or be crippled from within, my kneejerk reaction was to say, "All I know is that this beats the hell out of us doing it to them," and that's about where my comprehension ends.

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How come Minutemen wackjobs shooting up a family isn't getting more national play? Is it because domestic right wing violence is so ten minutes ago?

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Is it because domestic right wing violence is so ten minutes ago?

It's just all part of the price of freedom.

At least partly because the victims were drug dealers and the perpetrators were drug robbers. There's an apparent right-wing violence angle to it, but a much more apparently drug violence angle. And drug violence is so ten years ago.

NPR's coverage prior to the election made it quite clear that to a large swath of the Iranian electorate, the economy was the main issue, and Ahmedinejad fucked that one up royally.

And an even larger swath of the public apparently chose not to blame him for the state of the economy, if pre-election polling is to be believed:

American "Iran experts" assumed that "disastrous" economic conditions in Iran would undermine Ahmadinejad's reelection prospects. But the IMF projects that Iran's economy will actually grow modestly this year (when the economies of most Gulf Arab states are in recession). A significant number of Iranians - including the religiously pious, lower income groups, civil servants, and pensioners - appear to believe that Ahmadinejad's policies have benefited them. And, while many Iranians complain about inflation, the TFT poll found that most Iranian voters do not hold Ahmadinejad responsible.

136 - That TFT poll isn't nearly as dispositive as people (including op-ed writers in the Washington Post) say it is. Also, Rafsanjani, who Ahmadinejad ran against in 2005, is widely despised, and the reform elements weren't nearly as energized that year.

More broadly, why the desire to ignore the very sketchy behavior on the part of the electoral officials? Is it because Ahmadinejad was the most populist of the major candidates? Something to do with him being a thumb in the eye of American imperialism? Reaction based on the (imho flawed) analogy to the bad behavior on the part of the Beltway axis when Hugo Chavez was re-elected?

137.2 - The most economically progressive, I should say. Mousavi's positioning on women's rights was tremendously clever and, depending on which polls you believe, politically effective.

More broadly, why the desire to ignore the very sketchy behavior on the part of the electoral officials?

Understandable and justified lying liars disbelief of US Establishment figures would seem the answer.

I certainly wouldn't believe anything out of DC on Iran --- the reasons I think the election likely was stolen are statistical anomalies of the Juan Cole type, not Biden's pontifications or someone out of Brookings.

Moreover, these irregularities do not, in themselves, amount to electoral fraud even by American legal standards. And, compared to the U.S. presidential election in Florida in 2000, the flaws in Iran's electoral process seem less significant. (From IIR's link.)

Yeah, Bush stole 2000. What the fuck does that have to do with an election on the other side of the bloody world? Come on, the Ahmadinejad won folks are just as bad for seeing everything through the prism of US-Iran relations.

>a href="http://agonist.org/michael_collins/20090615/iranian_election_fraud_2009_who_was_the_real_target_and_why">Iranian Election Fraud ...Michael Collins at the Agonist

Iran's reformers favor a more open society, openings to the West, and a more capitalist economy. Ahmadinejad's faction has a radical interpretation of Islamic law that's highly restrictive. This restrictiveness includes criminal acts like executing those convicted of homosexual behavior. Ahmadinejad is also pushing a hard for a redistribution of wealth.

Rafsanjani is opposed to this for several reasons. According to Forbes he's one of thee wealthiest men in the world. He wants more openings to the West. In this campaign, he has also been the target of highly personal attacks by Ahmadinejad who accused him of fraud in a presidential debate.

(Elsewhere I have read that Rafsanjani financed the Mousavi campaign.)

There is lot more to that article, and a lot of other stuff going on in Iraq, but it does fit the pattern:
Rapacious finance capitalists forming a coalition with social issue & identity liberals.

From the socialist PoV it is not only "What's the Matter with Kansas" but also "Whats the Matter with DC & Manhattan" And Teheran.

Better Link for 140/ Prett good article.

For the record, I am opposed to the death penalty for homosexuality.

Does that mean I have to support the billionaire's puppet?

Maybe so. I voted for Obama.

121, Josh: defensive much?

If your only counter example is NPR...

For those of you who don't read John Cole (he had a Damascene conversion a couple years ago, ya' know), you're missing out on some devastating wit.

See for example this response to the drearily familiar moral preening of Andrew Sullivan:

Yeah. They are risking THEIR lives for freedom. You changed your font color.

Yeah, he's a good writer. This, too:

One of the most irritating things about the current Iranian uprising is that I've seen a spate of WWRD (What Would Ronnie Do?) posts all over the place. I'm not on my normal computer, so I don't have my browser history to help me, but I know there was one or two at Hot Air, I know I've seen them at the NRO, and I'm pretty sure there was one at Commentary magazine. At any rate, you know what Reagan would do? Nothing. Why? Because he's dead. [...]

But back to the point. The days of Lech Walesa and General Jeruzelski and Reagan and Kirkland are long, long past, and the current situation in Iran doesn't resemble them in the least. All these "Reagan was manly in Poland while Obama is being a pussy with Iran" so completely miss the mark that it is akin to standing underneath a trapeze artist doing his high wire act and yelling "ELWAY WENT DEEP IN THE SUPER BOWL" and thinking you've added some value to the conversation.

trapeze artist doing his high wire act

Though that's one horribly mixed metaphor.

In fairness to Sullivan, I think there is arguably some merit in non-Iranians (including Americans) sporting green ribbons as a symbol of solidarity, at a people-to-people level. Were Obama or other representatives of American officialdom to do the same, it would likely be contrary to the interests (and wishes) of the protestors. It goes without saying that it is counterproductive bordering on perverse for the same neocons to wave the green banner who just last week called for bombing Iran into submission.

Regarding the aforementioned Damascene conversion, does anyone here have a thorough enough command of Cole's oeuvre to say what aspect of W's malfeasance pushed him over the edge? I know he was rabidly anti-Kerry in the 2004 election, and by 2006 had flipped around to full-throated opposition.

the same neocons to wave the green banner

Also, as Daniel Larison notes, "the absurdity of avidly cheering Mousavi's supporters, who voted for a man likely instrumental in the creation of Hizbullah, a few days after avidly cheering the so-called 'crushing defeat' of Hizbullah in Lebanese elections earlier in the week should be apparent to everyone, but it is not clear to many people at all."

147: Terry Schiavo.

Josh: defensive much?

Again, for fuck's sake. I was pointing out that your caricature of the American news was just that: a caricature. I'm quite certain that NPR's coverage has its own flaws, but they're not the flaws you pretended to identify.

It's certainly true that my impatience with your preening about how you understand the world so much better than us poor impoverished Americans (which I've been reading for longer than I care to contemplate) got the better of me, though.