Juan Cole: "Top Pieces of Evidence that the Iranian Presidential Election Was Stolen"....

This guy knows his shit. Listen to him.

http://www.juancole.com/2009/06/stealing-iranian-election.html

"1. It is claimed that Ahmadinejad won the city of Tabriz with 57%. His main opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi, is an Azeri from Azerbaijan province, of which Tabriz is the capital. Mousavi, according to such polls as exist in Iran and widespread anecdotal evidence, did better in cities and is popular in Azerbaijan. Certainly, his rallies there were very well attended. So for an Azeri urban center to go so heavily for Ahmadinejad just makes no sense. In past elections, Azeris voted disproportionately for even minor presidential candidates who hailed from that province.

2. Ahmadinejad is claimed to have taken Tehran by over 50%. Again, he is not popular in the cities, even, as he claims, in the poor neighborhoods, in part because his policies have produced high inflation and high unemployment. That he should have won Tehran is so unlikely as to raise real questions about these numbers.

3. It is claimed that cleric Mehdi Karoubi, the other reformist candidate, received 320,000 votes, and that he did poorly in Iran's western provinces, even losing in Luristan. He is a Lur and is popular in the west, including in Kurdistan. Karoubi received 17 percent of the vote in the first round of presidential elections in 2005. While it is possible that his support has substantially declined since then, it is hard to believe that he would get less than one percent of the vote. Moreover, he should have at least done well in the west, which he did not.

4. Mohsen Rezaie, who polled very badly and seems not to have been at all popular, is alleged to have received 670,000 votes, twice as much as Karoubi.

5. Ahmadinejad's numbers were fairly standard across Iran's provinces. In past elections there have been substantial ethnic and provincial variations.

6. The Electoral Commission is supposed to wait three days before certifying the results of the election, at which point they are to inform Khamenei of the results, and he signs off on the process. The three-day delay is intended to allow charges of irregularities to be adjudicated. In this case, Khamenei immediately approved the alleged results.

I am aware of the difficulties of catching history on the run. Some explanation may emerge for Ahmadinejad's upset that does not involve fraud. For instance, it is possible that he has gotten the credit for spreading around a lot of oil money in the form of favors to his constituencies, but somehow managed to escape the blame for the resultant high inflation.

But just as a first reaction, this post-election situation looks to me like a crime scene. And here is how I would reconstruct the crime...."


More at the linky.


EDIT: Added a little more.

Thank you. It's quite informative. There is something clearly wrong with that election.

With ethnic divisions and political differences as widespread as they are, I find this difficult to believe.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/06/because-they-panicked.html

" Drum is both shrewd and correct. A bare Ahmadinejad win would have hidden the fraud. A bare Mousavi win would have been much better for the regime’s atomic bomb program, however. But they may have fatally overreached, like the Shah.

Remember when the Shah sent the Imperial Guard (“the Immortals”) into the streets, and they broke before the masses? We may be on the cusp of another legitimacy crisis here. Mousavi WAS the smarter choice for the regime: a smoother talker, talk of reform, while the centrifuges spin away and the bomb is built in secret. Meanwhle, the IAF’s Squadron 69 is kept on a tight leash by Obama lest the “moderate” President be undermined.

But no, apparently Khameinei is undermined by his own inner demons and past disagreements with Mousavi from the Revolutionary Days and the War Years. So, the urge to humiliate the Upstart overwhelmed Khameini.

Unless there is a popular uprising in favor of Mousavi and democratic legitimacy, the fascist coup will succeed. In that case, matters will be far worse. Bear this in mind: Hewitt and Krauthammer are correct. "

:thumbsup:

Whose entire career has been spent on this subject, is the author of numerous books, and is recognized within his field as one of the best there is.

But not proof. :)

Thanks! You beat me by a few hours. I did a search but didn't find your post til now so I reposted it.

is the Epic WIN for the blogosphere.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/06/the-revolution-will-be-twittered-1.html

Or as close to LIVE as you will get.

NOT on CNN. NOT on NBC. NOT on NPR.

NOT on CBS. NOT on ABC. NEVER on FOX.

In Iran, the Internet was shut down on Friday for the coup d'etat.

In the U.S., the media is shut down since 2000 for the Christianist military-industrial coup d'etat.