Iran election protest

Wow. Looks like they're pissed.
http://twitpic.com/7gsk8

I haven't seen a crowd like that since the July 3rd/4th, 1986 rededication of the the Statue of Liberty.

I heard the "Supreme Leader" (ed. WTF?) has requested an investigation. Sounds like he's just trying to appease the people. I'm sure nothing will come of it.

I think its important for Americans to look at this and realize there is a difference between the ruling regime and the common people. This shows there are people that want change and they want their country to be better.

A link to a video that shows the crowd better.
http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-271725

Bubba, agreed. Everything I've heard for years has indicated that the younger Iranian ppl want change, and want DEMOCRACY. I forget the figures, but a majority of their population is under age 35. Oddly enough, they don't even hate on America, which seems to be a national pastime on a par with soccer in that part of the world. Considering the propaganda they get fed, coupled with the USA's actual, occasional misstep, that's truly amazing.

If the gov't pushes back too hard, maybe the police and army will balk at attacking their own ppl (whom they probably already sympathize/agree with). I hope they achieve something lasting and positive here.

See here is where I differ... I don't care if they want democracy or not, all i care is that they have a system that works for them. I think we are a little full of ourselves thinking our system is the only one that works. I am glad there are enough people there willing to stand us against the dictatorship and say "No, this ain't gonna work anymore", in a place like that, that is a very brave statement.

I am appalled at the common notion that we group everyone. i.e. "Iranians hate us"... no... their government has issues with America, but the common Iranian does not. Islam as a religion has no issues with us, its just those on the radical fringe that do. Radicals of any variety are scary, Christian fundamentalists scare me as much as Mormon fundamentalist, as much as Islamic fundamentalists. Your average Christian, Mormon or Islamic person is not the least bit scary (well maybe scary but that has nothing to do with religion ;-)

Bubbaspanky wrote:See here is where I differ... I don't care if they want democracy or not, all i care is that they have a system that works for them. I think we are a little full of ourselves thinking our system is the only one that works. I am glad there are enough people there willing to stand us against the dictatorship and say "No, this ain't gonna work anymore", in a place like that, that is a very brave statement.

I am appalled at the common notion that we group everyone. i.e. "Iranians hate us"... no... their government has issues with America, but the common Iranian does not. Islam as a religion has no issues with us, its just those on the radical fringe that do. Radicals of any variety are scary, Christian fundamentalists scare me as much as Mormon fundamentalist, as much as Islamic fundamentalists. Your average Christian, Mormon or Islamic person is not the least bit scary (well maybe scary but that has nothing to do with religion ;-)

But if they WANT democracy? Admittedly, I've only heard it out of one Iranian, but then, I don't know many 😀

Of course, everyone forgets they had a democracy in the 50's, but he CIA helped to over throw it because they tried to nationalize the oil company's and it pissed all the western company's off.

Bubba, the problem I have with Iran is the whole Islamic Law and Supreme Ruler thing. Tyranny takes many forms and religious fundamentalism is one of them. Islamic law scares the hell out of me. It's backwards, it's unbalanced and hypocritical. Then again, so are some of the Christian based laws. Still, I'll take it over the things I've read about in the middle and far east.

Ooo no, I am fine with anything they want. I dislike the old idea of "We'll impose democracy upon them!"

Atomm wrote:Of course, everyone forgets they had a democracy in the 50's, but he CIA helped to over throw it because they tried to nationalize the oil company's and it pissed all the western company's off.

Which is why the US has to stay out of this. Even a statement of support for the protesters will bring immediate charges of "CIA INVOLVEMENT!!1one!" Gotta let them sort things out for themselves, at least early on. Maybe we can send in humanitarian aid and/or UN peacekeepers later.

Word is, there's going to be a protest, and a counter-protest, held at the same place within two hours of each other on Tuesday. The "counter-protest" ppl might be Lebanese Hezbollah trucked in to put down the protesters. They won't have local ties and sympathies like regular Iranian police and soldiers. I've already heard reports that some of the roving plainclothes gangs are speaking Arabic (Iranians speak Farsi).

Unconfirmed, "fog of war", etc. Seems like reliable sources, previous reports have been verified by MSM, and pics and video, hours later.

ETA:

Der Spiegel link:
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,15...30463-2,00.html

crappy Google Translate version:
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=ht...=auto&tl=en

"Nach Berichten des Senders "Voice of America" sollen bis zu 5000 libanesische Kämpfer der Hisbollah-Miliz dem Regime beim Showdown zur Hand gehen.

After reports of the station "Voice of America" will be up to 5000 fighters of the Lebanese Hezbollah militia, the regime at the showdown to go down. "

Wow, scary stuff.....

Reports of Lebanese Hezbollah still unconfirmed, so I'm considering it false. Violence is escolating, ppl are dying.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/06/21/....woman.twitter/

A young woman is shot and killed. It's in a code box because you need to stop and think before seeing this.

Just remember. . .what is seen cannot be unseen. I usually associate that phrase with a LOLCAT caption, but it's lost it's humor here. Two thoughts occurred to me when seeing this. One was that movie effects are more realistic than I thought. The second was that it's a hell of a lot more horrific when it's real. It's a bit bloody, certainly, but it's not the gore that's disturbing. It's the reality. She's being called, "Neda", which is Farsi for, "The Voice". I kinda think that's not her real name, since she has become something of a symbol, or voice, for the protests.

The news networks seem to have difficulty keeping up with what's happening in Iran, probably because journalists have been kicked out or confined to hotels. However, as Mr. Universe said in Serenity, 'You can't stop the signal." The revolution won't be televised, but Twittered, Youtubed, and Farked.

Who knows what the days or weeks to follow will bring? Whatever comes, I think that things have changed in a fundamental way on a couple fronts.

Sadly for the people of Iran, it seems the change will likely be in the wrong direction.

DocJon wrote:A young woman is shot and killed. It's in a code box because you need to stop and think before seeing this.

In a situation like this ppl are taken away by the emotions too fast.
Most of the demonstrators are well informed ppl who went to university, but more and more also young families. Those ppl are more orientated towards western world values and democracy.
I can imagine the payed Lebanese militia under given circumstances - the folk against them - uprising - are getting nervous easily. So demonstrators should be quite aware of this. It is highly dangerous to attend any demonstration now.

It is a crying shame that Neda had to die - her father went to the demonstration with her (Spiegel-online) - but really I don´t have to SEE that - to believe it - to grasp the reality of it.

Real death is not very spectacular, like in most films. It does not come with special effects.

Demonstrations will go on. There were 90.000 ppl on the street on Saturday - as Spiegel-online stated - 19 killed - 100 injured.

These are numbers.
Behind every number is a real experience.
Lifes that are changed forever.

Its a tough time for those ppl and my prayers are with them.

Do you guys believe that the current president won by 11 Million votes? It just doesn't seem possible. I imagine for every protester, there are 10 more who won't publicly show their anger.

Atomm wrote:Do you guys believe that the current president won by 11 Million votes? It just doesn't seem possible. I imagine for every protester, there are 10 more who won't publicly show their anger.

Some ppl have pointed out that he DOES have support in rural areas. It's even possible that he won, but if he did, it wasn't by a large margin. Given that there more than 2 candidates, he didn't get 51% of the vote either, so he could have won and still have a majority of the population pissed.

But no, I don't think he won. I think there was some behind the scenes shenanigans, and that he, or he and one or more of the Supreme/Grand Ayatollahs were looking to solidify his position on a more permanent basis. In the Ayatollahs case(if one or more are involved), he/they are looking to increase their own power.

I've been reading some of the statistical analysis on the vote. It's really interesting.

It seems that the incumbent won the two largest urban areas. This is the exact opposite of what happened during the last election.

In some areas where challengers were doing better, the amount of invalid votes was as high as 10%. That's significant to me.

One analysis says it looks like every third vote went to the Incumbent, suggesting it was changed from whoever it was originally cast for.

The most interesting statistical analysis looks at the last 2 digits. It was very interesting and I wish I had a link. Basically, it says that people are bad at making up numbers and statistics will point out that the last two digits do not fall where they should based on analysis of other elections. It also says that people will tend to stay away from consecutive numbers, ie 23 or 45 and in this analysis, the number of vote totals that do not end in consecutive numbers is well above it's statistical expectation. Leading the researcher to conclude the numbers were changed.

I'll keep looking for the link.

Atomm wrote:I've been reading some of the statistical analysis on the vote. It's really interesting.

It seems that the incumbent won the two largest urban areas. This is the exact opposite of what happened during the last election.

In some areas where challengers were doing better, the amount of invalid votes was as high as 10%. That's significant to me.

One analysis says it looks like every third vote went to the Incumbent, suggesting it was changed from whoever it was originally cast for.

The most interesting statistical analysis looks at the last 2 digits. It was very interesting and I wish I had a link. Basically, it says that people are bad at making up numbers and statistics will point out that the last two digits do not fall where they should based on analysis of other elections. It also says that people will tend to stay away from consecutive numbers, ie 23 or 45 and in this analysis, the number of vote totals that do not end in consecutive numbers is well above it's statistical expectation. Leading the researcher to conclude the numbers were changed.

I'll keep looking for the link.

I'd read some things on the statistical expectations and actualities of the Iranian election, but I didn't investigate it in-depth. I wouldn't be able to interpret the results for myself anyway, since I never took statistics. I used to think of that as a good thing, based on what my friends have told me about that course. 😀

Fivethirtyeight.com usually has interesting info on polls and election results, and the main guy there seems heavily into statistics.

Statistics is a wonderfully easy class, if taught correctly. Unfortunately, it seems no one does that. I figured it out and it made class way easy from there on in. I am, however, by no means a statistics person.

To this day, I have no idea how I made it through Statistics. I think the teacher took it easy on us.

I learned that statistics can be done much quicker with calculus, but since most people can't understand calculus they don't teach it that way. I was an engineer, so I knew calculus and taught myself an alternate statistics that was faster and easy.

saintchism wrote:These are numbers.
Behind every number is a real experience.
Lifes that are changed forever.

"One death is a tragedy; A million deaths is a statistic." -Josef Stalin

The old megalomaniac was right. How do you wrap your mind around dozens, hundreds, thousands of deaths, or more? That's why such things as Neda's death draw attention, and steels resolve. We aren't wired to fully grasp mass tragedy, but watching one person die hits us. We can understand that - and then we try, try to extrapolate that out. Still, that one person is what we see in our mind's eye, and what affects us.

Another Stalin quote came up when I refreshed my memory of the above quote with Google.

"The people who cast the votes don’t decide an election, the people who count the votes do." -Josef Stalin


And a final one, from someone else:
"In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved." - Franklin D. Roosevelt


It seems to be the case with everything in this universe that nothing is made, maintained, or achieved without blood, sweat and tears. It's a cold, hard existence, but what's the alternative?

Here's a link to the analysis of "last digits" and why they might point out a fixed election.

http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movable...evil_is_in.html

That's the article. Thanks Sarge!

Read that. It may be statistics, but it's interesting none the less.

Here is my issue... (I have only perused the article so maybe it speaks to this, will read tonight) Its all well and good that the last two numbers may seem made up, but there is still a chance that those numbers would happen.

Bubbaspanky wrote:Here is my issue... (I have only perused the article so maybe it speaks to this, will read tonight) Its all well and good that the last two numbers may seem made up, but there is still a chance that those numbers would happen.

That's what the article says. He probably doesn't go far enough in saying that statistically there is still a pretty good chance that this could happen, but he does say it.

Part of the problem is that we want to believe it was rigged and that can lead to all sorts of assumptions about outcomes that may or may not be true. We are likely at the point now where no matter how much statistical evidence to the contrary is presented, people are generally going to believe that it was rigged.

I myself think it was rigged but doubt we will be able to prove it definitively, especially in Iran which is somewhat closed to outside involvement. There are some very brave and indignant people standing up for themselves however which is good to see. Self-determination is something that every person should feel that their country practices.

Sarge wrote:I myself think it was rigged but doubt we will be able to prove it definitively, especially in Iran which is somewhat closed to outside involvement.

Well, it was rigged from the outset, when you consider that the candidates are picked by the ayatollahs. The ppl aren't allowed to pick candidates through a primary process, for example. As for the final vote, there are many things that point to a fix, like some precincts having more than 100% turnout, candidates losing their home districts, the vote being announced after one day, instead of the prescribed three days, etc.