One last word, and I'm out of here.

While Reese Erlich cites much of the same regarding election fraud,

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/06/28-10

he also notes:

"During the course of the week after the elections, the mass movement evolved from one protesting vote fraud into one calling for much broader freedoms. You could see it in the changing composition of the marches. There were not only upper middle class kids in tight jeans and designer sun glasses. There were growing numbers of workers and women in very conservative chadors.

Iranian youth particularly resented President Ahmadinejad's support for religious militia attacks on unmarried young men and women walking together and against women not covering enough hair with their hijab. Workers resented the 24 percent annual inflation that robbed them of real wage increases. Independent trade unionists were fighting for decent wages and for the right to organize.

Some demonstrators wanted a more moderate Islamic government. Others advocated a separation of mosque and state, and a return to parliamentary democracy they had before the 1953 coup. "

---- The narrative here in America is mostly about a stolen election. (It is good that the Iranians are not seemingly much influenced by a western narrative of a stolen election.)

In 2002, Saudi religious police pushed back girls into a blazing building, because they were not in proper attire. Fifteen girls died - fifteen Nedas, as certainly killed by their government as the one in Iran. Where's the American call for revolution in Saudi Arabia?

I hate to say this, but most American liberalism also calls for the overthrow only of American-unfriendly regimes. I'm dismayed because, you, ondelette, are most of the time, the most evidence-based reasoner on this board. And yet you are unable to say that while Ahmedinejad is a horrible leader for Iran to have, the evidence for electoral fraud in Iran is, so far, rather thin.

A lot of so-called intelligent people voted for Bush. A lot of people don't believe in evolution. A lot of people in the streets does not constitute evidence for electoral fraud, any more than a thousand posts here has anything to do with evidence for the guilt or innocence of a Guantanamo prisoner. This may be an Al Gore "I invented the Internet" moment.

"He will be our ...." and other such are totally uncalled for. This is simply a question of evidence.

If the Iranians want to rise against the regime, good for them, but it is not right to feed their protests with a possibly false narrative of a stolen election, if it was indeed not stolen. It is not right to have people risk their lives on a lie. There are of course, other reasons to rebel, including the fact that the regime handpicks all candidates in the election. But then let if be for that.

If the Iranian government is indeed going to post each precinct total and the various people at each precinct who certified the totals have access and can state whether it is the total in question - if this does happen, on what leg will the claim of electoral fraud stand?

Question: If our intelligence agencies have information that contradicts the public wisdom about the election, will they/should they release it?

...The Guardian Council already reported at the beginning of this week election irregularities amounting to of order 3 million votes,...

Regarding this, Weisbrot writes:

The New York Times' front page story on Tuesday, June 23 begins with this sentence: "Iran's most powerful oversight council announced on Monday that the number of votes recorded in 50 cities exceeded the number of eligible voters there by three million, further tarnishing a presidential election..." This was widely interpreted as the government admitting to some three million fraudulent votes.

Here is the Guardian Council's statement, from their web site:

"Candidates campaigns have said that in 80-170 towns and cities, more people have voted than are eligible voters. We have determined, based on preliminary studies, that there are only about 50 such cities or towns... The total number of votes in these cities or towns is something close to three million; therefore, even if we were to throw away all of these votes, it would not change the result."

The letter from the Guardian Council also offers a number of reasons that a city or town can have a vote total that exceeds the number of eligible voters: some towns are weekend or vacation destinations, some voters are commuters, some districts are not demographically distinct entities, and Iranians can vote wherever they want (unlike in the United States, where they must vote at their local polling place). On the face of it, this does not appear implausible. Contrary to press reports, there is no admission from the Iranian government that any of these votes were fraudulent, nor has evidence of such fraud been made public.

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and this:

But from the point of view of promoting more normal relations between the United States and Iran, avoiding a military conflict, and bringing stability to the region, the truth as to the more narrow question of whether the election was procedurally fraudulent may be relevant. If in fact the election was not stolen, and Washington (and Europe) pretend that it was, this can contribute to a worsening of relations. It will give further ammunition to hard-liners in Iran, who are portraying the whole uprising as a conspiracy organized by the West. (It doesn't help that the Obama administration hasn't announced an end to the covert operations that the Bush administration was carrying out within Iran). More importantly, it will boost hardliners here - including some in the Obama administration - who want to de-legitimize the government of Iran in order to avoid serious negotiations over its nuclear program. That is something that we should avoid, because a failure to seriously pursue negotiations now may lead to war in the future.

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