Senate Iran — now discussing the nuclear deal and Congress

Even if the election itself was fair, and the voters were free to choose between the candidates on the ballot, that wouldn't make it truely free. What about all the other candidates who didn't get on the ballot? Is it really that different to rig the election after than it is to rig it before? Not to mention that the President doesn't have most of the power, the Supreme Leader does.

I really have no idea who won the election. It is useful for us to now say that it was rigged, but a few months from now we may have to deal these people who may have actually won. We can all hope for a counter revolution, but you need force to back it up, and I just don't know if the Iranian liberal middle class have it.

And even if Ahmadenijad did win, western media pushing the story that he didn't will help us fracture Iranian society. There are really only three outcomes. The conservatives crack down hard, get stronger, and the world sees them as a threat and lets us use more sticks against them. The protests fade away through repression but you have a third of the country disillusioned with the system looking for future opportunities. Or they actually are able to introduce real reform.

So if our reaction is a bit of propaganda and so is theirs, we can leave the truth to the historians, which if we win we will be writing. Of course it would be nice if we could meddle with them one last time without it blowing up in our faces.

 

It's looking like the movement is extending beyond just those groups though. As the story I mentioned in my last post discussed, this is seeming like it may be expanding beyond the initial concerns as Khamenei has involved himself in the politics in a way that may be undermining his power.

 

Lowbacca is right, Eps. The latest stuff isn't looking good for the government if it's true. Leave the doctored pictures out of the equation: if it's true that the unrest is reaching beyond the students and intelligencia, that's a SERIOUS problem. Iran is already 70-80% in the hands of the young. There's a point when not even the military can keep down the unrest without completely gutting the country.

There's another way this could turn out, which is the result of the Russian 1991 coup -- which did a fair bit more than just introduce reform considering Communism was gone. Of course, that's the best possible scenario.

As for our reactions I wouldn't put too much into that. The western governments have been a lot more cautious in reacting to this, as well they should be. They've currently done very little that could seriously come back to haunt them if the government retains control. I suppose Iran could go the North Korean angle and just say they did anyway, of course.

 

One thing that just struck me as I was looking at the latest news was how many of the signs carried by protesters are in English.

 

yankee, I've been noticing that too. I think part of that is the large role students are playing in this, who are more educated. I've seen things like interviews with protesters as well, taking advantage of that. There's no hiding that the students are a big part in the initial protests, and being the most vocal. Of course, in return the students are one of the big targets of the government crackdown, as the raids and arrests in the dorms of some of the universities in Iran has highlighted.

I think there is also that they view this as in part a PR thing, in that they're trying to get this stuff out to the rest of the world as well, and for that, English is the best tool.

 

One thing that just struck me as I was looking at the latest news was how many of the signs carried by protesters are in English.

Yeah, but the police wear uniforms that say "Police" too.

 

I was thinking of it in the way of your last point -- an attempt at some sort of PR with the West.

 

I'm living in a larger city now. I've been thinking on going down to some of the demonstrations on the weekend to check them out.

They had demonstrations concerning the Tamil conflict in Sri Lanka recently too which caused large disruptions -- but then I didn't support those at all considering they were in support of a violent movement. This is something very different.

 

I've been trying to find ones in the L.A. area, myself.
Interesting thing from twitter:

I think this is an interesting point that defends the silence of the White House, even though I'm not sure if thats necessarily the reasoning involved in nothing being said.

 

There was a Slate.com article yesterday which said that Obama isn't saying much because he doesn't want Ahmedinijad to be able to point at him and the US as the villian. But then Yahoo! News said that the Iranian government is blaming us anyway.

 

They can point fingers at the US all they want, but if the US's actions are so obviously contrary to what the Iranian authorities are claiming, it's putting them at a disadvantage. Either they tone down the rhetoric or they continue to look like liars putting down a smokescreen.

This is, of course, dependent on Iranians' access to the internet and other forms of communication with the outside...

 

Ahma needs too energise his own suporters somehow in these troubling times.

 

This is amazing. I wondered a few days ago here how far this would go.

Now it does appear we might be at a tipping point.

I still wonder though about the conservative rural areas that are still widely illiterate and supportive of Ahma.

Are there any signs that it is spreading into those areas?

If there are, then this could be revolutionary.

 

This will probably be tougher than Tianammen. The crowd had staked out one place and stayed there, and I'm not sure it was suppsoed to have grown further than that. Plus it was pre-internet.

The government still holds all the cards, though. But it does mean that it might just take one figure in the military to turn everything around.

 

I suppose so. I wasn't even considering that.

 

Relating to this, the videos for the most recent protests I'm not seeing any English on signs. Although this was a protest of a more different nature this time.

 

Yes, it really is. Especially since there are meaningful differences between the major candidates, and those differences are expressed in policy. Less so than in other systems, yes, but no one is arguing the Iranian system of government is fully democratic. It is, though, easily among the most functional democratic societies in the region. It's just silly to pretend you don't see the importance of democratic tradition and institution-building.

The rest of your post is awful.

 

Well that was constructive.

Who said anything about me not seeing the importance of democratic tradition? That has nothing to do with what I said. What I said was that this isn't just a system that isn't "fully democratic" (something that could just as easily be applied to US government) but that the government has always rigged the elections. I do think the comparision to the person who sneaks into the bank at night vs those who hold it up in broad daylight is valid. You think it important that one doesn't point guns at you, I just don't think that in the end it matters that much.

The superficial democracy Iran has isn't building the institution of democracy or creating a democratic tradition, it is a cover to give the apperance of choice by handing over the small stuff so they can control the policies that matter. I mean you say you aren't calling them "fully democratic" but in the same post you just called them the most functional democracy in the region. The Nazi who killed the least Jews shouldn't be called the greatest human rights advocate. It isn't a functional democracy, if you believe in democracy.

 

The Nazi who killed the least Jews shouldn't be called the greatest human rights advocate.

Although this is splitting hairs Eps, that's not a proper analogy vis a vis the democracy comparison. That would be like calling Iran the greatest Democracy in the world -- including the US, France, and all the rest.

This is more like calling the Nazi who killed the least Jews the least bad of the Nazis.

 

Apologies, I guess that came off much less tongue-in-cheek than I'd meant it to. Realistically, though, there's very little to say. Your earlier (and continuing) moralizing belies what is essentially unabashed advocacy of realpolitik. I could've tried to make some point about how unlikely it was that you could ever dodge blowback in the long run, but suffice it to say I find your stated position unendorsable for reasons of morality.

Perhaps paradoxically, I feel that actual democracy is one of the last, and probably least important components to a stable, functional democracy. That is, as we've seen by modern attempts to make accelerated transitions to democracy, this form of government doesn't necessarily work well (or at all) absent the proper societal support. In particular, you need well grounded institutions to play a major role. For instance, a free, independent press allows people to be informed about their government's actions and have healthy public debate about its wisdom. Without it, even full "democracies" can subvert the will of their people by extreme opacity and information manipulation. In this case, the important democratic institution in place is voting. While you call it "meaningless" it has in fact established a number of important things. Outright vote buying is frowned upon, politicians are judged by their policies and performance, vote rigging is unacceptable, machine politics in its most vulgar form are rejected, and people expect to have a voice in shaping their government. All these things are crucial, and cannot be taken for granted.

Similarly, I guess I don't see your need to go out of the way to denigrate the post of President. Yes, it's certainly nothing like the American office, and in Iranian govnerment all roads lead back to the Ayatollah. However, it's equally ridiculous to suggest he's some sort of figurehead on the order of the popular perception of Queen Elizabeth. There is a real portfolio there, and they can have real bureaucratic clashes with the rest of the power structure that can have impact on the way the country is governed. Which is precisely why they go to the trouble of disqualifying candidates who they disagree with too much. As much concentration of power as exists, it's not simply one person ruling by fiat, all else be damned. There are real divisions of powers, and officials can make an impact. We ought to acknowledge that.

I'm entirely bewildered by the Holocaust reference to the point where it seems like the sort of thing that gave Godwin's Law its infamy. What other nation do you think is more democratic? Most of the states in the region don't even embrace the pretense of democracy at the national level. Of those that do, your candidates are probably Israel, Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Egypt is, for all practical purposes, still a dictatorship,

 

http://wsws.org/articles/2009/jun2009/pers-j17.shtml

Here is some dirt about Mousavi, i dont know how true it is, but i am sure they hadnt lied about his role in the government.

 

Well, I just finished watching Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's prayer speech, and some of the claims he went for seemed to truly be trying to create a fresh reality.

He basically took the time to first address the people of Iran, then the politicians and activists, and then the arrogant west (both the US and the UK got "death to " chants, but the UK got theirs first. HA).
To the people, he tried to say that this is entirely an issue within the establishment and not counterrevolutionary, and that he liked to see the election process. Very nearly a "I love democracy. I love the Islamic republic" moment here. He also made the case that clearly people trust the system because they voted, so no one has an issue with the system because they trust it and voted, completely ignoring that what happened IN the election is what has shaken trust in said system.
However, he then tried to argue that because vote rigging is illegal, the vote could not have been rigged, and that because the vote was by 11 million votes, the vote could not have been rigged.
He then said that protests are not the way to go, that these things should go through legal channels, and said that people get hurt when people protest, and took a very harsh line saying that this had to stop.
When he got to the west, it was intriguing. He said that people are attributing words to Obama about how we have been waiting for the day that there are people in the streets, which Obama has said no such thing unless I was seriously not paying attention, and at this point, I do hope that Congress and the White House remains silent SPECIFICALLY because of how their words and actions will get twisted. Also of note, he criticised America for saying we were concerned with human rights abuses but had our own issues, and listed 4 examples. He briefly mentioned Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine, however he focused strongly on Waco, pointing out that it was carried out by the Democrats, burning dozens of people that were just refusing to leave a house. He did also go on to say that Iran supported helping oppressed people everywhere, which doesn't seem to go terribly well with the hundreds of Iranians that have been arrested in the past week, including journalists, human rights activists, and political thinkers.

What now remains to be seen is how the people take this, but he made a very clear call to people to stop protesting, but his case was exceedingly circular as to why the elections should be considered valid, but its now up to the movement to see if it is sustained. Incidentally, there were reports from some cities in Iran that there were posters up advertising buses that would bring people to hear the Ayatollah, indicating that they tried to get him a good audience for this that would be most receptive.

 

The man apparently has incredible hubris, and if he doesn't watch out, it's going to get him hung.

 

I was to bored to watch it, thanks for your comment.

 

I haven't seen it but that sounds... pathetic. Guy almost has a revolution on his hands, the entire thing is strictly a national affair, and what does he do? Go on TV to complain about Waco.