A Republic...
There was a recent contested election in Iran, and allegations of fraud. Iran is a country which ascribes to Sharia law. Law with a close relation to original severe Islamic law. You steal a car you may lose your hand. You try to steal a whole country you may lose your head. This was not just an optimistically fraudulent election. One where you keep your head down, but an eye on things and help yourself along: ballot shortages in less sympathetic districts, padding the count in safer districts.
This was an election where the falsification was planned to a massive and comprehensive scale from the outset Was Iran's election rigged? Here's what is known so far. | csmonitor.com. One designed to carry a message. The degree of detail controlled is the key indicator. Uniform results across all districts throughout the country this was intended to be a signal of disrespect for democracy. It began with a false informal announcement of a Mousavi victory. After this a second formal announcement of Ahmadinejad's victory, Only an hour after the polls closed, with no witness observed ballot counting, in a national election conducted by paper ballot
New Analysis Points to Fraud in Iran - Behind the Numbers. Immediately on the heels of this: cell phone, text messaging, and internet interruptions. And later broadcast cut-off of the foreign media on subsequent days. When the totals of the official numbers are released they appear to show many localities voting at 90 to 130 percent of their registered number Iran election turnouts exceeded 100% in 30 towns, website reports | World news | guardian.co.uk. Problematic since there is a well documented ceiling to electoral participation due to natural friction - illness and accident - at or below 80 percent. All this prior-intent amounts to a coup d'etat and hollows the meaning of an Islamic Republic of Iran.
As the scale of the deceit became known and demonstrations started
Social Networks Spread Defiance Online - NYTimes.com. A program of reaction began
Iran elections: mass arrests and campus raids as regime hits back | World news | The Guardian. Arrests, detrainments and an active campaign of agent provocatiership. As Ahmadinejad's thugs ran through the streets in an orgy of violence. I found it interesting that the arrest of Iraqi Civil rights lawyer Abdolfattah Soltani
The Associated Press: Rights groups: reformists seized in Iran crackdown mirrored the arrest of a well-known Vietnamese lawyer, Le Cong Dinh, just last week
BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Vietnam holds high-profile lawyer. At the time I had associated that arrest with the arrest and decertification of civil rights lawyers in China that I had mention in a prior post. My (smart, beautiful) friend Trân Nguyen, adding to what the BBC story told me, said she had heard through Viet community news sources that men gained entry to Le Cong Dinh's office in Saigon under false pretenses and once inside proceeded seize his files and computers without warrant. In charging him the Vietnamese authorities seemed most concerned that he had attempted to write a new version of the Vietnamese constitution: one fairer, more just, and democratic. This they referred to as "reactionary".
All of these events underscore danger of allowing this style of governing to appear successful. One piece of information that struck me as significant; someone interviewed earlier in the week commented that Iran's theocratic leadership had apparently determined they could control the country effectively and permanently with only genuine and reliable support from thirty percent of the population. That they believed a modern society could produce and extract wealth enough to buy support from that margin, give them license, and gain permission to repress and suppress the remaining seventy percent. This is a dangerous notion, and an existential threat to democracy.
Ayatollah Khamenei's statement one Friday 19Jun09 (Tehran Time) that Ahmadinejad was the definite winner of the election, signaled a reassertion of absolutism
BBC NEWS | Middle East | Ayatollah demands end to protests. It was followed by an unapologetic, but at the same time still extra-judicial crackdown. This brutal intimidation was accomplished mainly by Ahmadinejad's Basij militia
Who's behind Iran violence? Website posts video in name-and-shame campaign. | csmonitor.com. Armed not just with batons and fists, but now Kalishnikovs and directed (or inclined) to act in a threatening deadly and increasingly random manner. Iranian leadership continued full of bluster and pronouncement that the violence, injury and damage was Mir Hussein Mousavi's responsibility, not theirs
UTV News - Iranian elections: Ahmadinejad's 'dirt and dust' jibe rebounds. They take care; though, to keep direct agents of the government from actions that might implicate them.
The Obama administration must find a line of engagement no matter how this plays out. A narrow line, to remain prepared to deal with the situation when it settles
Does Obama still want to engage Iran? | csmonitor.com. This isn't like taking New England and ten. If U S politicians support demonstrations and have made a show of it, but nothing comes of it. You can't just pay the bookie and move on. There will be an ever more irrational and paranoid Ahmadinejad in the tomorrow that follows.
This is the problem with fits of shallow and irresponsible indignation among those who preferred genuine freedom only in the breech (thought they like to appear as its champion). Rather they court governments of strong men who can give a constant correct answer irrespective of the noise of their people or their legislatures. They salute the world's peacock thrones. They disparage the diplomatic hand as undemonstrative unproductive, but are incapable of recognizing the military hand is as weak if not weaker still. Not seeing that when military power is used, even when it obtains its end, it becomes smaller. The uncertainty is removed. What can be broken is broken, What is not, can not. The principle that saying too much might be harmful. That making sweeping statements to claim ownership identity and brand, with politics of another country
What's behind Iran's power struggle | csmonitor.com, issuing veiled and empty threats can only backfire and empower those that wish to discredit the protester's cause Iran's elections - the human rights dimension | TPMCafe. Allowing them to make this sudden strife the work of an outside enemy, not the treachery of their own leaders. This is not that difficult to grasp, and yet figures like Charles Krauthammer do it any way. I might conclude that their overriding motivation is harassing the President only. That they have no particular interest in or concern for the protesters on the streets of Iran. No more than the ones shot on the streets of Tehran generations earlier. Or shot in Chile and Argentina. Too often to some U S opinion leaders these were never more than a mere rabble who deserved whatever fate men like Pinochet saw fit to give them. Now that the regime in Tehran has tipped its hand; however, the Obama administration can afford to take a more forward position and acknowledge the courage and passion for democratic rule the Iranian people have shown. I hope that he will and think that that he ought to. Calling the U S and Britain names now cannot restore the legitimacy the clerical autocrats have lost in the eyes of their own people. They cannot make the rest of the world go away like so many inconvenient ballots, inconvenient citizens.
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