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Statistical Suspicions In Iran's Election
hoytak writes "An expert in electoral fraud, professor Walter Melbane, has released a detailed analysis (PDF) of available data in Iran's controversial election (summary here). While he did not find significant indications of fraud, he does note that all the deviations from the predicted model are in Ahmadinejad's favor: 'In general, combining the 2005 and 2009 data conveys the impression that a substantial core of the 2009 results reflected natural political process... [These] stand in contrast to the unusual pattern in which all of the notable discrepancies between the support Ahmadinejad actually received and the support the model predicts are always negative. This pattern needs to be explained before one can have confidence that natural election processes were not supplemented with artificial manipulations.'" In related news, EsonLinji notes reports in the Seattle PI and other sources that the US State Department has asked Twitter to delay system maintenance to prevent cutting off Iranians who have been relying on the service during the post-election crisis. And if you would like to help ease the communication crunch, reader RCulpepper tips a blog post detailing how to set up a proxy server for users with Iranian IP addresses.
Regime Change!
Indulging hysteria is fun.
Ahmadinejad was not unpopular. He has the support of common Iranians. The world is not fair.
Get over it.
The EU did not hesitate to acknowledge his victory; they appreciate Ahmadinejad playing foil to the US.
Western yap about counting ballots has no credibility. Canada copes with a similar number of paper ballots with each election; initial counts require only hours.
Iran is not a liberal democracy. Iran is in no great hurry to become a liberal democracy. The degree to which this confuses you is proportional to your own ignorance.
Are you also certain of your indifference to Iran's nukes? Think hard.
Ya know back in 2000 they made the same claims about the republican vote counters in Florida. And election review committees and legislatures deciding to go republican no matter what the vote showed. It goes both ways at different times.
Why bother
In Iran, the Revolutionary Guards (RG) -- effectively, a council of religious enforcers -- determine who can run for the office of president. The demonstrators in the streets of Iran are not complaining about the theocracy. Indeed, most Iranians love a brutal theocracy. The demonstrators are complaining that one of the candidates approved by the RG did not get all the votes that were cast for him.
Complaining only about the "rigged" election is like complaining only about the bad sound from a cheap radio in a car but ignoring the fact that the car has a broken transmission.
Note the following. After the Kremlin exited Eastern Europe in 1989, the peoples of each nation in Eastern Europe rapidly established a genuine democracy and a free market. Except for Romania (where its people killed their dictator), there was no violence.
That is how people act when they want freedom and free markets.
In 1979, after the Iranian people overthrow the despot whom the Americans supported, the Iranians immediately established a brutal, authoritarian theocracy.
That is how people act when they reject both freedom and free markets.
Cultures are different. Eastern-European culture and Iranian culture are different. The Iranians bear 100% of the blame for the existence of a tyrannical government in Iran.
Now, look at Vietnam. According to a reliable source, "approximately 20 million gallons of [agent orange] were used in Vietnam between 1962 and 1971 to remove unwanted plant life and leaves which otherwise provided cover for enemy forces during the Vietnam Conflict."
This injustice (committed by the Americans) in Vietnam occurred 10 years after the injustice in Iran. The injustice in Vietnam occurred over a 10-year period.
The Americans doused large areas of Vietnam with agent orange, poisoning both the land and the people. Yet, the Vietnamese do not channel their energies into seeking revenge (by, e. g., building a nuclear bomb) against the West. The Vietnamese do not aid and abet terrorist groups seeking to kill Americans. Rather, the Vietnamese are diligently modernizing their society. They will reach 1st-world status (i. e., a prosperous liberal Western democracy) long before the Iranians.
Cultures are different. Vietnamese culture and Iranian culture are different. The Iranians bear 100% of the blame for the existence of a tyrannical government in Iran.
It doesn't even matter if a fair counting of every vote cast does indicate a win for Ahmadinejad; the blatant fraud, police brutality, and the arresting of the opposition has ruined the people's trust in government. I truly hope that Iran doesn't descend into civil war.
I hope it does descend into a civil war. It would demonstrate them to be better people than the Americans who refused to do so when it happened to them and it would demonstrate them to be better people than their parents were when America did it to them.
You make civil war sound like a bad thing. When your government rapes its citizens and pisses in the face of its founding principles, then civil war is a good thing. Americans have a bad view of it because ours was nothing but nigger hating nazis who thought being dumb as fuck while white was somehow a positive and they have enough political power now to shove their douchebaggery into everything.
Yes, murder off all the dumb evil amoral fuckers. It is a far more civil event than letting those evil fuckers keep uncivilizing the society. I propose a $100 bounty on the head of every mullah. 10 times that for every American preacher. That, my friends, is solidarity.
You will never have a free society as long as a single one of those evil magical fairy fuckers is allowed to live.
I respectfully submit that this is the bias - one we've seen in America for years, that comedians have even based routines around. Repeatedly. It is the choice of spokesperson, made by the media, that is the bias.
Come on, THINK a minute! Do you really think this bus-burning vote-ignoring supporter is the only person they spoke to that day? The reporter should be fired, if they just took the words of the first person who ran up screaming to them as The News. No. They took many statements, spoke to many people, and the reporter and editor chose what to present. Simple as that.
Consider also the bet-hedging of "reporting that Ahmadinejad won." What they really reported, you'll notice, is "official results." You know, the ones endorsed by the government. Because the wire can't stand to stay silent for 5 seconds until it actually knows more, anyway; and reports, at any given instant, as if right now is the absolute truth of the matter. Reuters' story was my favorite: Official results are in, the incumbent won, the losers are protesting, the UN calls for the will of the people to be respected. Taken together, it sounds like an endorsement of the official results, doesn't it? When you say "the winner" and "the loser," you are stating facts. You are reinforcing that perception. Makes the opposition sound like "we lost, let's riot" - as your bus-burning spokesperson further reinforces.
"It was crazy as hell!" makes better camera time for the spectacle then "Well, I believe the geopolitical ramifications of this are... hey, where's the cameraman going? Burning, you say?"
IMHO, i think there's a Cheney-like extreme right group that would prefer Mousavi to have lost. An uncooperative, defiant Iran would be easier to demonize.
That which does not kill us makes us... st