Anyone here rooting for Ahmadinejad to WIN the election in Iran?

[PixelPusher]

I know that seems like a ridiculous question to ask, but apparently some on the right actually are hoping Ahmadinejad stays in power. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/12/right-wing-neocons-rootin_n_214698.html)

[SnakeBoy]

Yeah it's a ridiculous question. I don't hope for him to win or lose. I expect the winner will be whoever this guy chooses to be his puppet...

http://latimes.image2.trb.com/lanews/media/photo/2008-01/34855089.jpg

[Barry O'Bama]

Yeah it's a ridiculous question. I don't hope for him to win or lose. I expect the winner will be whoever this guy chooses to be his puppet...

http://latimes.image2.trb.com/lanews/media/photo/2008-01/34855089.jpg

That's what my Iranian co-workers says.

[Cant_Be_Faded]

do with this what you will but supposedly ahmedinijad is not really the ayatollah's 'guy'

[Oh, Gee!!]

plus I'm sure conservatives are worried about the internal stability of the Iranian nation if Ahmadinejad is ousted.

[Winehole23]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/bsp/hi/image_maps/manuals/09/iran_flow/img/iran_flow786x292.gif

[Winehole23]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8051750.stm

[FaithInOne]

I hope he fails.

[SnakeBoy]

Well, Ahmadinejad "won" in a landslide. Reformers protest and are beaten in the streets.

[SnakeBoy]

Obama's apology tours don't seem to be having the desired effect.

[jack sommerset]

Obama's apology tours don't seem to be having the desired effect.

Don't say apology tour!!!! You will be thought only as a robot! Think of a new way to say Obama is a pussy and tells our enemies sorry all the freaken time.

[clambake]

what are enimies?

[jack sommerset]

what are enimies?

Fixed!

[Marcus Bryant]

Politics as sport, part MMMMCC....

[Das Texan]

That was a fun sham of a fixed election.

[Wild Cobra]

That was a fun sham of a fixed election.

Did anyone believe it wasn't fixed?

[braeden0613]

This is a very interesting story...so why aren't the 24 hours "news" channels covering it? It had violence and killing---everything they love to show.

[SnakeBoy]

This is a very interesting story...so why aren't the 24 hours "news" channels covering it? It had violence and killing---everything they love to show.

Weekend, media doesn't cover shit on the weekend. Why do you think politicians wait until the end of the day on friday to announce controversial stuff.

[Jacob1983]

FOX News won't show it. They have to show Huckabee and have his band butcher Foo Fighters songs. CNN won't show it because they're probably showing something about blacks or Muslims.

[PixelPusher]

Yeah it's a ridiculous question. I don't hope for him to win or lose. I expect the winner will be whoever this guy chooses to be his puppet...

http://latimes.image2.trb.com/lanews/media/photo/2008-01/34855089.jpg


http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/bsp/hi/image_maps/manuals/09/iran_flow/img/iran_flow786x292.gif

We might need a new chart.



http://americanfootprints.com/drupal/node/4435

A coup that originated with the military rather than the clerical or lay political leaders resolves what I saw the the main flaw with Juan Cole's reconstruction. It also dovetails well with Interior Ministry employees' warnings that Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi, who is influential in the military, issued a fatwa authorizing manipulation of the elections. A coup led by the military is also easier to explain than one ordered by Ayatollah Khamene'i. I had been thinking about the implications of a Mousavi victory, and concluded that, given the continuing conservative dominance of Parliament, the most important changes for Iranians would be a different economic policy and the replacement of someone hostile to the old revolutionary establishment embodied by the likes of Rafsanjani with someone who was actually a part of it.

[Winehole23]

What I don't get is why Mousavi was allowed to run at all if he was unacceptable to the mullahs. If he'd been excluded in the first place, no electoral shenanigans would've been necessary. This stinks.

[Cant_Be_Faded]

LOL. Doesn't really matter if Ahmaedinjad stays, he'll serve as a good counter-point rhetoric to homeboy Barack.

[Marcus Bryant]

LOL. Doesn't really matter if Ahmaedinjad stays, he'll serve as a good counter-point rhetoric to homeboy Barack.

Which will only serve to increase the antipathy towards the US in the region as the federal government reflexively bends over for Israel.

Of course, I'm assuming that the US military could eventually (probably in a decade) GTFO of the ME.

[SnakeBoy]

What I don't get is why Mousavi was allowed to run at all if he was unacceptable to the mullahs. If he'd been excluded in the first place, no electoral shenanigans would've been necessary. This stinks.


Judging from his bio on wiki, maybe they didn't think he would run as this great reformist.


Mir-Hossein Mousavi was born on 29 September 1941 in Khameneh, East Azarbaijan, Iran, to Mir-Esma'il Mousavi (Persian: میراسماعیل موسوی), a merchant from Tabriz.

Mir-Hossein Mousavi was a student studying architecture during the Shah's regime at Tehran University. Two years after the revolution (1981), he was nominated as the Prime Minister by Khomeini. He was responsible, as head of the Council of Cultural Revolution, for shutting down the entire university system for four years. Starting in 1988, on the orders of Khomeini, a council was formed, with Mousavi as a member, to revise the regime's constitution to drastically increase the powers of the supreme leader.

Mousavi's socialist ideology became very apparent during the 1980s when he initiated Islamic Socialist policies such as subsidized food coupons, oil coupons and converting private enterprises into government controlled entities. Mr. Mousavi was responsible for the mass executions of 80-81 and the dark summer of 1988 where over thirty thousand political prisoners were executed and buried and mass graves.

[Marcus Bryant]

So it was a choice between one fascist ideologue or another.

[SnakeBoy]

Or maybe they just used Mousavi to draw out the reformers so they who know who to arrest/eliminate.

[boutons_deux]

I'm reading that Ahmaedinjad stealing the election is great news for neo-cons and AIPAC who want to bomb the fuck of Iran.

The imperialistic US military and its mercenaries buddies ain't ever getting out of M/E or West Asia as long as hydrocarbons are to be had.

[PixelPusher]

This is a very interesting story...so why aren't the 24 hours "news" channels covering it? It had violence and killing---everything they love to show.


Weekend, media doesn't cover shit on the weekend. Why do you think politicians wait until the end of the day on friday to announce controversial stuff.

I canceled my cable a year ago...



Hey; Is Something Going On? (http://lefarkins.blogspot.com/2009/06/hey-is-something-going-on.html)

So, I'm trying to find out something about what's going on in Iran, and on CNN I can watch a rerun of Larry King interviewing several gentlemen without shirtsleeves who apparently assemble choppers. On Fox Mike Huckabee is trying to explain why Jesus hates credit card relief. MSNBC is rerunning something about a prison in New Mexico. CNBC is evaluating whether college students should be able to afford Chanel tote bags.

Media fail.


...I do miss the Food Network.

[SnakeBoy]

They have to show Huckabee and have his band butcher Foo Fighters songs.

Yeah but he's going to get the youth vote...he's cool.

-QJrJbWkF-c

[Winehole23]

Or maybe they just used Mousavi to draw out the reformers so they who know who to arrest/eliminate.Judas goat. Could be.

[boutons_deux]

"so they who know who to arrest/eliminate"

Ahmaedinjad refuses to guarantee Mousavi's safety.

[Viva Las Espuelas]

"I have doubts, but withhold comment"

:lmao

[Winehole23]

Counterintuitively (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/14/AR2009061401757.html) in the WaPo, Ken Ballen and Patrick Doherty say the Iran election was legit.

[Winehole23]

More fraud skepticism (http://www.newsweek.com/id/201934) in Newsweek.


What happened to all those charming, articulate young men and women in North Tehran, interviewed again and again on Western television? They were so enthusiastic about Ahmadinejad's main opponent, former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi. They were excited about the prospect of more freedoms. They thought Ahmadinejad was a failure and an embarrassment, and they really seemed to like us Americans. Indeed, they seemed almost to be like us Americans. Didn't they speak for the real Iran?

Actually, no. 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. And while Mousavi and his supporters are protesting and even scuffling with police, they are just as likely to be overwhelmed in the streets as they were at the polls.

[FromWayDowntown]

More fraud skepticism (http://www.newsweek.com/id/201934) in Newsweek.

Since the "results" were first announced, that struck me as a pretty realistic explanation. I certainly had hoped that Mr. Mousavi could mount a serious challenge and would defeat Mr. Ahmadinejad, but if voter turnout across the country was 75%, it seemed likely to me that there was a solid chance that the non-elite, non-reform-minded portion of the electorate in Iran was voting for the incumbent or even against the challenger.

[jman3000]

This "investigation" ordered by the Supreme Leader is just a tool being implemented to quell the protests. Nothing will come of it.

The bright spot is that the youth of Iran are exponentially more pro-West than their parents and many don't view us as the "Great Satan" they were told we are.

[PixelPusher]

More fraud skepticism (http://www.newsweek.com/id/201934) in Newsweek.

yeah, nothing screams "well ordered election" like cutting off communications and placing the losing candidate under house arrest.

EDIT: nevermind on the "house arrest" (http://www.tehrantimes.com/Index_view.asp?code=196739) part, more like "surveillance"



Via my contacts at the Farsi-speaking BBC, a telephone plea:

I AM UNDER EXTREME PRESSURE TO ACCEPT THE RESULTS OF THE SHAM ELECTION. THEY HAVE CUT ME OFF FROM ANY COMMUNICATION WITH PEOPLE AND AM UNDER SURVEILLANCE. I ASK THE PEOPLE TO STAY IN THE STREETS BUT AVOID VIOLENCE

[FaithInOne]

Why were so many expecting golden nuggets out of dog shit.

[sonic21]

just a shameful display of demagogy. that dude ahmadinejad even had the balls to say that all the post-election protests were proof that iran is a free country

[SnakeBoy]

At a news conference on Sunday, Ahmadinejad sought to allay fears about a media crackdown and said: "Don't worry about freedom in Iran. Newspapers come and go and reappear. Don't worry about it."

[PixelPusher]

^ and that's the guy neocons are "relieved" to have won.

[Spurtacus]

Come on Persians stand up and revolt!

[sabar]

Everyone loses no matter who wins. Iran is a theocracy and the guardian council can bar anyone or anything for pretty much any random interpretation they have of islamic law. Imagine a bunch of christian bishops trying to interpret biblical law onto us. They could do anything since the book is filled with double-meanings and uncertain wording. Same dealio in Iran. There is no freedom there.

[Ignignokt]

Pixel Pusher was rooting for Iraq not having free elections.

Pixel Pusher was rooting for the Oklahoma City bombings, boy o boy! EVeryone knows Rush limbaugh incited Timothy MCveigh.

Cry Havoc was appalled at america having an opposition party.